SERVE THE NATION – SERVE THE SOLDIER WHO FIGHTS FOR YOUR COUNTRY

In September 1969, I joined Indian Army Medical Corps to serve the soldier who fights for my country. I am pleased to share Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal’s tribute to the Indian Soldier.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

THE INDIAN SOLDIER IS A ROLE MODEL FOR THE NATION

Indian Defence Review, January 15, 2016

Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal

The Idea of India

The Indian soldier is a role model for the people of India. Scrupulously honest, positively secular, completely apolitical, with an ethos of working hard, simple needs and frugal habits, he is the epitome of courage and unflinching devotion to duty. More than any other group or community in the country, the Indian soldier embodies and represents the idea of India.

In hail, sleet and snow, in icy blizzards and pouring rain, he stands sentinel over the nation’s borders in the high Himalayas. He maintains a silent and lonely vigil along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). He has held the Saltoro Ridgeline west of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, for almost 30 years and denied the adversary the opportunity to alter the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL). He has repeatedly shown his mettle while meeting the Chinese challenge along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with Tibet.

From the snow-clad and wind-swept mountains of the Himalayas in the north, to the steaming hot and humid jungles of the seven sisters in the north-east and the shimmering sands of the burning Thar Desert in the west, he never lowers his guard. Along the LoC, he braves daily spells of intermittent small arms and mortar fire from a wily enemy. Sometimes he lives through many days of heavy artillery shelling when the very earth around him shakes ominously. Despite the omnipresent danger, hardships and privations of life on the nation’s troubled frontiers, he stands tall and firm. Stoic and resolute, his courage never wavers, his spirit never flags.

Guardian of the Frontiers

He stopped the rape of Baramulla by Pakistani Razakars in 1947 and saved Srinagar from a similar fate. He took tanks to the 12,000 feet high Zoji La pass in 1948 to push back Pakistani invaders. In a battle that has gone down in military history as the ultimate example of courage under fire, he fought to the last man and last round at Rezang La, near Chushul in Ladakh, in 1962. He stood fast against the Chinese at Walong. He fought off the Chinese despite being ill-clad for a winter in the high Himalayas and being armed with World War II vintage .303 rifles.

He smashed Pakistan’s Patton tanks at Asal Uttar in 1965. He stormed the invincible Haji Pir citadel. At Nathu La in 1967 and at Wangdung in 1986, the glint of his bayonet made the Chinese blink. In 1971, he raced across the Sunderbans to liberate Bangladesh and gave back to the oppressed Bengali people their freedom and their dreams. His naval counterparts sank the Gazi and left Karachi burning. The tiny Gnats of his air force colleagues flew rings around Pakistan’s Sabres and Starfighters that had been gifted by America.

In 1999, his indomitable courage in the face of daunting odds and steadfast devotion to duty triumphed over Pakistan’s regular soldiers entrenched on the mountain tops on the Indian side of the LoC in Kargil district of J&K. As the world watched in awe, he manned his guns unflinchingly under the very nose of the enemy and, firing in the pistol-gun ‘direct fire’ role, he blew every bunker on Tiger Hill and half a dozen other mountain tops to smithereens. He took back every mountain inch-by-bloody-inch. His unparalleled valour inflicted another crushing defeat on the perfidious enemy.

Role in Nation Building

His role in nation building has been outstanding. He spearheaded the effort to integrate Junagadh (1947), Hyderabad (Operation Polo, 1948), Goa (Operation Vijay, 1961) and Sikkim (1975) with the Indian Union. He participated in the interventions in the Maldives and Sri Lanka at the behest of the governments of these countries and was ready to do so in Mauritius. He evacuated beleaguered Indian citizens from some of the world’s most dangerous war zones: Iraq (2003), Lebanon (2006), Egypt, Libya and Yemen (2011), Ukraine and Syria-Iraq (2014) and Yemen (2015).

For many decades in the northeast and since 1989-90 in J&K, he has fought insurgents and mercenary terrorists unleashed by the country’s enemies to de-stabilise India. He has been ambushed, fired upon with machine guns, made the target of land-mines and has been tortured and killed in cold blood by ruthless Islamist fundamentalists sent to wage a war through terror on India, but has never wilted. He has quelled communal and political riots and police revolts. In all the internal security challenges confronting India, he has never struck back in anger even in the face of the gravest provocations. In fact, while fighting with one hand tied behind his back, he has given a new meaning to the term ‘use of minimum force’.

He is called out regularly for flood relief all over the country. He has removed bodies buried under the rubble of earthquakes at Latur and Dharchula and landslides at Kedar Nath and other places in the Kumaon Hills. He coped with determination in the aftermath of the South East Asian Tsunami in December 2004. He has risked his life in cyclonic storms in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh to bring succour to his suffering countrymen. He has often provided essential services during strikes. He has taken medical aid to remote corners of the country. He has braved epidemics and plagues. He has quelled communal disturbances and riots. He has participated in peace-keeping operations and earned the gratitude of beleaguered people from Korea to the Congo, from Kampuchea to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Flag Bearer

Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and belonging to many other faiths, he prays, eats, lives, plays and fights for India together with his brothers in uniform. He is positively secular in that he not only tolerates other religions, but also participates in their rituals and observes their customs and gets immense joy from celebrating their festivals. He has evolved the concept of a dharmasthal where the idols of Hindu Gods and Goddesses are installed side by side with the Guru Granth Sahib and soldiers of all religions pray together. On Dussehra all soldiers participate with folded hands and bowed heads in Shastra Pooja regardless of their religion.

In many remote corners of the country, he is the flag bearer. He represents the government of India. Whenever he goes on leave to his village and when he finally retires, he spreads the message of nationhood and a disciplined way of life in all corners of the country. He has done more to knit India together than all the pompous politicians with their pseudo national integration programmes and high-sounding slogans.

Often reviled, mostly ignored, sometimes venerated, he has taken it all in his stride. He has never complained. He has stood by the nation through thick and thin. He has held the nation together for 68 turbulent years. In the cesspool of filth, squalor and corruption in public life, he alone stands apart like is a shining lotus. His life is one of honour, glory and sacrifice – of life and limb. His blood has hallowed the nation’s battlefields.

For our tomorrow, he willingly, selflessly, unpretentiously, gives his today, but asks for nothing in return. Apolitical by nature, he knows he will get nothing from uncaring politicians and scheming civil servants. If he frets about anything at all, it is about the national leadership’s callousness in failing to erect a befitting war memorial to commemorate the supreme sacrifice made by his fallen comrades. He is troubled that his brothers-in-arms who laid down their lives have remained “unwept, unhonoured and unsung”. But, even here he draws comfort from the famous poem ‘The Bivouac of the Dead’: “On fame’s eternal camping ground, their silent tents are spread; and, glory guards with solemn round, the bivouac of the dead.”

He has truly lived up to Lord Krishna’s exhortation: “Reward is not thy concern.” For him, duty is the most supreme religion – the only one he professes (Seva Parmo Dharma).

He gives so much, gets so little in return, and yet serves with a smile. He is the quintessential Indian who has knit India together. If there is some truth in the phrase “kuchh baat hai jo hasti mit-ti nahin hamari” (there is something about us that we cannot be destroyed), it is because of his indomitable courage and his immeasurable sacrifices.

(The writer is former Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi.)

BHARAT DARSHAN – TRANSFORMATION OF AUROVILLE – SADHANA FOREST MISSION

On podroze.pl

Congratulations to Sadhana Forest Mission (U Mission.Org) for planting trees and for transforming 70 acres of barren land of Auroville,Tamil Nadu. Thank You Aviram Rozin for this green transformation.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

This Israeli Man Left His Job, Came To India And Transformed 70 Acres Of Barren Land Into A Forest

Bobins Abraham

February 7, 2016

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It was in 2000, Israeli citizen Aviram Rozin first visited India. Wanting to get lost in the forest and greenery in India, Rozin was pained and shocked to see the rapid deforestation across the country.

umission.org
Wanting to do something to protect the forests, Rozin along with his wife Yorit and daughter Osher moved to India in 2003.
They family bought some 70 acres of barren land in Auroville, Tamil Nadu and started slowly transforming it.

umission.org
With the help of local volunteers, the planted the barren land with seeds of endangered plant specious and edible plants.

umission.org
In the next 13 years they transformed the place into a a forest, teeming with life and greenery.

auroville

auroville
Today the ‘Sadhana Forest’ founded by the trio has developed into a bustling eco-friendly settlement with thatched houses, wind pump, solar powered LED lighting, compost toilets and vegan kitchen with energy efficient stoves.
Some 18000 indigenous trees have been planted so far on 70 acre mostly eroded land.

umission.org

Sadhana Forest
More than 150 young volunteers from all over the world live in the settlement at any given time planting trees, building bunds and experiencing a simple ecologically conscious life.
After tasting success in India, Rozin has taken his Sadhana Forest model to countries like Haiti and Kenya where he get the local community to grow forests.

Sadhana Forest

Sadhana Forest
The mission at first was to plant trees. Now the mission is also to support people in terms of growing food on trees. We are also supporting the learning and transformation of young people that come to volunteer – which are many. Sadhana Forest has evolved into something more than we expected – which is beautiful, said Rozin who calls the volunteers, his family.

On aurovilletv.org

On www.excitingindia.in

On inoutpeaceproject.org

On www.caleidoscope.in

On diggingthroughthegrassroots.wordpress.com

On carlobevilacqua.photoshelter.com

On alternativetraveling.com

On inoutpeaceproject.org

On www.flickr.com

On www.indiatimes.com

On anabruno.wordpress.com

SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE – TRIBUTE TO FALLEN SOLDIERS:

On Memorial Day, United States honors its citizens who have died in War. Originally commemorating soldiers killed in the American Civil War, the observance was later extended to all US war dead. The holiday is observed on the last Monday in the month of May and an official tradition began in 1971, the same year during which I had witnessed the death of some young soldiers who served in Special Frontier Force, which is known as Establishment No. 22 in India. Approximately, one million men and women died in defense of the United States since 1775. I cannot give a precise count of the men and women who died serving the cause of Freedom at Special Frontier Force.

The custom of honoring the graves of the war dead began before the close of the Civil War. In 1868, Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued a general order designating May 30, 1868 “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”

Tibetan soldiers with whom I served in Special Frontier Force died in the remote jungles of Chittagong Hill Tracts while our military action code-named ‘Operation Eagle’ initiated Liberation of Bangladesh during November – December 1971. We buried them or cremated them and our fallen comrades have no graves which I can visit for purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the sites where they died to defend the cause of Freedom. However, I am pleased to remember them and honor them on this Memorial Day for we fought our battles with weapons, ammunition, field gear, medical supplies, rations, radio sets, and other military supplies provided by the United States. We are partners with India and the United States to defend Tibet and restore its lost Freedom.

On this Memorial Day while I pay my tribute to honor memory of the fallen Tibetan soldiers of Special Frontier Force, I respectfully remind the US and India to renew our pledge to work in support of Peace, Justice, Freedom and Democracy in Occupied Tibet.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162, USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

BHARAT DARSHAN – STATUS OF TAJ MAHAL AS AN INDIAN ICON

Taj Mahal, most ornate mausoleum in the world, is viewed by millions of people for it stands out as beautiful, romantic building. It stands in a walled garden with an oblong reflective pool. The white marble exterior is inlaid with semi precious stones, floral designs, and arabesques. The dome, 80 feet high and 50 feet in diameter inside, forms a bulb outside, tapering to a spike topped by a crescent. The building has meticulous symmetry across its long and wide diameters.The octagonal tomb chamber is lit by light passing through intricately carved screens. However, the grave site is not perfectly symmetrical. Mumtaz Mahal’s casket is in the exact center of the Palace crypt. Emperor Shah Jahan’s grave, introduced to the mausoleum following his death in 1666, has a west-of-center resting place.

The story about Taj Mahal construction has been firmly associated with life story of Emperor Shah Jahan’s third wife Arjumand Banu Begum. She acquired the name ‘MUMTAZ’ for she was the ‘Chosen One of the Palace’. She was married for 19 years and led to the birth of 14 children. She died in 1631 at the age of 39 during the birth of her final child. Construction of mausoleum began in 1632, one year after her death. Construction of main building continued for 18 years and the entire complex, immediate adjuncts such as Mosque, wall, and Gateway, took another four years for completion. In development of Taj Mahal complex nearly one thousand elephants handled the transport of heavy building materials. The two-decade construction project may have involved over 20,000 artisans. Credit of designing the building complex is given to Turkish Architect Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. Much of the intricate calligraphy work was done by Abd-al Haqq known as Amanat Khan Shirazi. French explorer Jean-Baptiste Tavernier visited India and Taj Mahal in 1665.

Shah Jahan (1529 – 1666), Mogul Emperor (1592 – 1658), nine years before his death, fell gravely ill which led to his sons fighting over succession. His two sons with Mumtaz Mahal, Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb had begun fighting. Shah Jahan sided with his elder son Dara but his younger son Aurangzeb emerged victorious, killing Dara and imprisoning father in Agra Fort. Shah Jahan remained imprisoned and was barred from visiting Taj Mahal which was completed by about 1649 around the same time he fell ill.

Indian historian P.N. Oak and sociologist Amarnath Mishra raised several issues about the status of Taj Mahal as an Indian icon. The architectural Truth of Taj Mahal has yet to be revealed. I am pleased to share view of Professor Marvin H. Mills, American architect, Pratt Institute, New York.

Taj Mahal as a funerary monument is not representative of Indian Civilization. However, the building material such as marble stone represents India, apart from elephants which lifted these stones, thousands of artisans who carved these stones, and the site along River Jamuna or Yamuna definitely impart Indian flavor to this Mahal or Palace where two human beings remain buried.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

AN ARCHITECT LOOKS AT THE TAJ MAHAL LEGEND

AN ARCHITECT LOOKS AT THE TAJ MAHAL LEGEND http://www.stephen-knapp.com/an_architect_looks_at_the_taj_mahal_legend.htm
AN ARCHITECT LOOKS AT THE TAJ MAHAL LEGEND
by
Professor Marvin H. Mills
Pratt Institute, New York

In their book TAJ MAHAL – THE ILLUMINED TOMB, Wayne Edison Begley and Ziyaud-Din Ahmad Desai have put together a very commendable body of data and information derived from contemporary sources and augmented with numerous photo illustrations, chroniclers’ descriptions, imperial directives plus letters, plans, elevations and diagrams. They have performed a valuable service to the community of scholars and laymen concerned with the circumstances surrounding the origin and development of the Taj Mahal.

But these positive contributions exist within a framework of analysis and interpretation that distorts a potential source of enlightenment into support for fantasy and misinformation that has plagued scholarship in this field for hundreds of years, thus obscuring the true origin of the Taj Mahal complex. The two basic procedural errors that they make is to assume that the dated inscriptions are accurate and that court chroniclers are behaving like objective historians.

As an architect, my principal argument with the authors is their facile acceptance of the compact time frame that they uncritically accept for the coming into being of the Taj from conception to its first Urs (anniversary) of the death of Mumtaz and the completion of the main building. Construction processes that had to consume substantial blocks of time are condensed into a few months. They feel justified in relying on what evidence is available, but fail to consider the objective needs of construction. They regret the loss of what, they say, must have been millions of Mughal state records and documents produced each year on all aspects of the Taj’s construction. They do not consider that the lack of drawings, specifications and records of payment may be due to their not being generated at the time. Nor do they consider Shah Jahan’s potential for deception as to when and by whom it was built. Yet they point out Shah Jahan’s careful monitoring of the contents of court history:

“Shah Jahan himself was probably responsible for this twisting of historical truth. The truth would have shown him to be inconsistent and this could not be tolerated. For this reason also, the histories contain no statements of any kind that are critical of the Emperor or his policies, and even military defeats are rationalized so that no blame could be attached to him. … effusive praise of the Emperor is carried to such extremes that he seems more a divinity than a mortal man.” (p. xxvi)

With the court chroniclers’ histories carefully edited, and with the great scarcity of documents we are fortunate to have four surviving farmans or directives issued by Shah Jahan to Raja Jai Singh of Amber-the very same local ruler from whom the Emperor acquired the Taj property. On the basis of these farmans, the court chroniclers and a visiting European traveler, we learn that: (i) Mumtaz died and was buried temporarily at Burhanpur on June 17, 1631; (ii) her body was exhumed and taken to Agra on December 11, 1631; (iii) she was reburied somewhere on the Taj grounds on January 8, 1632; and (iv) European traveler Peter Mundy witnessed Shah Jahan’s return to Agra with his cavalcade on June 11, 1632.

The first farman was issued on September 20, 1632 in which the Emperor urges Raja Jai Singh to hasten the shipment of marble for the facing of the interior walls of the mausoleum, i.e., the Taj main building. Naturally a building had to be there to receive the finish. How much time was needed to put that basic building in place?

Every successful new building construction follows what we call in modern-day construction a “critical path”. There is a normal sequence of steps requiring a minimum time before other processes follow. Since Mumtaz died unexpectedly and relatively young (having survived thirteen previous child-births), we can assume that Shah Jahan was unprepared for her sudden demise. He had to conceive, in the midst of his trauma, of a world-class tomb dedicated to her, select an architect (whose identity is still debated), work out a design program with the architect, and have the architect prepare designs, engineer the structure and mechanical systems, detail the drawings, organize the contractors and thousands of workers, and prepare a complex construction schedule. Mysteriously, no documents relating to this elaborate procedure, other than the four farmans have survived.

We cannot assume that the Taj complex was built additively with the buildings and landscaping built as needed. It was designed as a unified whole. Begley and Desai make this clear by their analysis of the grid system that was employed by the designer to unite the complex horizontally and vertically to into a three-dimensional whole. If one did not “know” that it was a solemn burial grounds, one would believe that it was designed as a palace with a delightful air of fantasy and secular delights of waterways and flowering plants. Could it be that this is Raja Jai Singh’s palace, never destroyed, converted by decree and some minimum face-lifting to a Mughal tomb?

Assuming that Shah Jahan was galvanized into prompt action to initiate the project on behalf of his deceased beloved, we can safely assume that he needed one year minimum between conception and ground-breaking. Since Mumtaz died in June 1631, that would take us to June 1632. But construction is said to have begun in January 1632.

Excavation must have presented a formidable task. First, the demolition of Raja Jai Singh’s palace would have had to occur. We know that the property had a palace on it from the chronicles of Mirza Qazini and Abd al-Hamid Lahori. Lahori writes:

“As there was a tract of land (zamini) of great eminence and pleasantness towards the south of that large city, on which before there was this mansion (manzil) of Raja Man Singh, and which now belongs to his grandson Raja Jai Singh, it was selected for the burial place (madfan) of that tenant of paradise.[Mumtaz]” (p. 43)

Measures would have to be taken during excavation of this main building and the other buildings to the north to retain the Jumna River from inundating the excavation. The next steps would have been to sink the massive foundation piers, put in the footings, retaining the walls and the plinth or podium to support the Taj and its two accompanying buildings to the east and west plus the foundations for the corner towers, the well house, the underground rooms, and assuming the complex was done at one time, all the supports for the remainder of the buildings throughout the complex. To be conservative in our estimate, we need at least another year of construction which takes us up to January 1634.

But here is the problem. On the anniversary of the death of Mumtaz, each year Shah Jahan would stage the Urs celebration at the Taj. The first Urs occurred on June 22, 1632. Though construction had allegedly begun only six months earlier, the great plinth of red sandstone over brick, 374 yards long, 140 yards wide, and 14 yards high was already in place! Even Begley and Desai are somewhat amazed.

Where was all the construction debris, the piles of materials, the marble, the brick scaffolding, the temporary housing for thousands of workers, the numerous animals needed to haul materials? If “heaven was surpassed by the magnificence of the rituals”, as one chronicler puts it, then nothing should have been visible to mar the exquisite panorama that the occasion called for.

But by June 1632, it was not physically possible that construction could have progressed to completion of excavation, construction of all the footings and foundations, completion of the immense platform and clearing of all the debris and eyesores in preparation for the first Urs.

Begley and Desai have little use for the testimony of the European travelers to the court of Shah Jahan. But they consider Peter Mundy, an agent of the British East India Company, to be the most important source on the Taj because he was there shortly before the first Urs at the new grave site, and one year later at the second Urs.

It was Mundy who said that he saw the installation of the enameled gold railing surrounding Mumtaz’s cenotaph at the time of the second Urs on May 26, 1633. But there is no way that construction could have moved ahead so vigorously from January 1632 to May 1633 as to be ready to receive the railing. After all, the railing could not have stood forth in the open air. It means that the Taj building had to be already there. It must have been immensely valuable since the cost of the Taj complex was reported to be fifty lakhs, while the cost of the gold railing was six lakhs of rupees. The gold railing was removed by Shah Jahan on February 6, 1643 when it was replaced by the inlaid white marble screen one sees now.

An alternate interpretation of events regarding the railing is that Shah Jahan revealed the gold railing of Raja Jai Singh at the first or second Urs. In 1643 he appropriated it for himself and put in its place the very fine marble screen with its inlaid semi-precious stones, a screen that was not nearly as valuable as the gold railing.

If Shah Jahan’s construction and interior adornment of the Taj are in question, what rework of the Taj can we attribute to him? The inscriptions were undoubtedly among the few rework tasks that he was obliged to do. He may also have removed any obvious references to Hinduism in the form of symbolic decor that existed.

The book’s plate illustrations show that the inscriptions are almost always in a discrete rectangular frame which renders them capable of being modified or added to without damaging the adjacent material. In my judgement the black script on the white marble background seems inappropriate esthetically in the midst of the soft beige marble that surrounds it. By adding the inscriptions Shah Jahan probably sought to establish the credibility of its having been his creation as a sacred mausoleum instead of the Hindu palace that time will undoubtedly prove that it was.

Based on the latest inscriptions dated 1638-39, which appear on the tomb, the authors estimate a construction period of six years. Six years in my judgement is simply not enough time. As reasonable approximation of the total time required to build the Taj complex, we can consider Tavernier’s estimate of twenty-two years. Although he first arrived in Agra in 1640, he probably witnessed some rework or repair. The time frame of twenty-two years may have been passed on to him by local people as part of the collective memory from some previous century when the Taj was actually built.

The issue of repairs is taken up by the authors in their translation of the original letter of Aurangzeb to his father dated December 9, 1652. He reports serious leaks on the north side, the four arched portals, the four small domes, the four northern vestibules, subchambers of the plinth, plus leaks from the previous rainy season. The question the authors do not raise is: Would the Taj, being at most only thirteen years old, already have shown symptoms of decay? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to believe that by 1652 it was already hundreds of years old and was showing normal wear and tear.

Who built the Taj? The authors say it was Ahmad Ustad Lahori, chief architect for Shah Jahan. They base this belief mainly on the assertion by Luft Allah, the son of Lahori, in a collection of verses, that Shah Jahan commanded Lahori to build both the Taj and the Red Fort at Delhi. As evidence this is quite weak.

The court historians are unfailing in their praise for the Emperor’s personal participation in his massive architectural projects and they are never lacking in glorifying his sterling character. But the European travelers have other things to say about his personality and his inability to focus on anything for long except his lust for women. Nor is the object of his supposed great love either tender or compassionate. It seems that both “lovers” were cruel, self-centered and vicious. To believe that out of this relationship, with the support of Shah Jahan’s alleged great architectural skills, came what many consider to be the most beautiful building complex in the world, is sheer romantic nonsense.

While Begley and Desai are sceptical of the Taj Mahal’s being a consequence of romantic devotion, they yield not an inch in asserting its Mughal origin. They support this traditional view by overlooking some key problems:

1. Consider the identical character of the two buildings on either side of the Taj main building. If they had different functions-one a mosque, the other a guest residence-then, they should have been designed differently to reflect their individual functions.

2. Why does the perimeter wall of the complex have a Medieval, pre-artillery, defense character when artillery (cannons) was already in use in the Mughal invasions of India? [Why does a
mausoleum need a protective wall in the first place? For a palace it is
understandable.]

3. Why are there some twenty rooms below the terrace level on the north side of the Taj facing the Jumna River? Why does a mausoleum need these rooms? A palace could put them to good use. The authors do not even mention their existence.

4. What is in the sealed-up rooms on the south side of the long corridor opposite the twenty contiguous rooms? Who filled in the doorway with masonry? Why are scholars not allowed to enter and study whatever objects or decor are within?

5. Why does the “mosque” face due west instead of facing Mecca? Certainly, by the seventeenth century there was no problem in orienting a building precisely!

6. Why has the Archaeological Survey of India blocked any dating of the Taj by means of Carbon-14 or thermoluminescence? Any controversy over which century the Taj was built could easily be resolved. [Radiocarbon dating of a piece of wood surreptitiously taken from one of the doors
gave 13th century as a possible date. But more data is needed.]

If Shah Jahan did not build the Taj for the love of Mumtaz, then why did he want it? His love for Mumtaz was evidently a convenient subterfuge. He actually wanted the existing palace for himself. He appropriated it from Raja Jai Singh by making him an offer he could not refuse, the gift of other properties in exchange. He also acquired whatever was precious within the building including the immensely valuable gold railing.

By converting the complex into a sacred Moslem mausoleum he insured that the Hindus would never want it back. Shah Jahan converted the residential quarters to the west of the main building to a mosque simply by modifying the interior of the west wall to create a mihrab niche. He added Islamic inscriptions around many doorways and entries to give the impression that the Taj had always been Islamic. Sure enough, the scholars have been silent or deceived ever since.

Yet, we must thank Begley and Desai for having assembled so much useful data and translated contemporary writings and inscriptions. Where they failed is in accepting an apocryphal legend of the Taj for an absolute fact. Their interpretations and analyses have been forced into the mold of their bias. It would be well to take advantage of their work by scholars and laymen interested in deepening their knowledge of the Taj Mahal to read the book while keeping an open mind as to when and by whom it was built.

Added note:

A leading Indian architect, former professor of architecture at Mysore University adds:
There are fundamental problems with the current theory of Islamic Architecture in India of which the following may be noted.

(1) Unlike in the case of Hindu architecture, where there are literally hundreds of works on Vastu in several Indian languages, there seem to be almost no texts or manuals on Islamic architecture. It is difficult to see how a great school of architecture lasting 600 years could flourish without any technical literature.

(2) Hindu architectural practices and traditions are maintained by thousands of mason families, especially in South India. These are known as Vishwakarmas or Vishwa Brahmanas. They are greatly in demand all over the world. No such Muslim families are known.

(3) There are no standards of units and measurements for Islamic architecture in India. It is inconceivable that great works of architecture could come up without them. This is an objective requirement.

TAJ MAHAL – The Illumined Tomb, an anthology of seventeenth century Mughal and European documentary sources, by W.E. Begley and Z.A. Desai: Published by the University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1989 (The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture).

The reviewer Marvin Mills is a leading New York architect and professor of architecture at the Pratt Institute.

Ever since P N Oak wrote the books ( it ran into four editions) proving that the Taj Mahal was an erstwhile Rajput Palace commandeered as a Mongol Tomb public opinion is now slowly but surely accepting his findings.

First and foremost in their book TAJ MAHAL – THE ILLUMINED TOMB, Wayne Edison Begley and Ziyaud-Din Ahmad Desai have put together a very commendable body of data and … Taj Mahal: the illumined tomb : an anthology of seventeenth.

begley&desaifirman.pdf

SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – THE PROBLEM OF MORTALITY

On healthmedicinet.com

Reports indicate that death rate for Americans has increased reversing long-term trend of declining mortality rate. Some of the contributing factors for higher mortality rate are mentioned as drug overdose, firearm injuries, and suicide. The problem of premature death, or death due to all conditions has to be explained in the context of sickness or injury leading to loss of life. The primary concern is that of man’s health and well-being.

To define health and well-being, man has to be known in all his dimensions; 1.Physical, Mortal Being, 2. Mental Being, 3. Social Being, 4. Moral Being, 5. Spiritual Being, and 6. Created Being. Man’s sickness or injury, factors involved in mortality have to be associated with man’s dimension that is at risk under the influence of given mortality factor. It demands recognition of symptoms of physical sickness, mental sickness, social sickness, moral sickness, spiritual sickness, and inherited sickness. If man is created in God’s own image without sickness, how did man inherit sickness that causes death or mortality?

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

THE WASHINGTON POST

REVERSING LONG-TERM TREND, DEATH RATE FOR AMERICANS TICKS UPWARD

By JOEL ACHENBACH June 1

A heroin user prepares to inject himself in New London, Conn. Communities nationwide are struggling with an unprecedented epidemic of opioid and heroin overdose deaths, which are contributing to a sudden increase in Americans’ overall mortality rate. (John Moore/Getty Images)

The long decline in Americans’ death rates has reversed course, according to preliminary 2015 numbers for all causes of mortality as compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Many factors are implicated in the turnaround, including a rise in deaths from firearms, drug overdoses, accidental injuries, suicides, Alzheimer’s disease, hypertension and stroke.

In a report released Wednesday, the CDC looked at changes in death rates per 100,000 people between 2014 and 2015, adjusting the findings to reflect an aging population as the baby boomers head into their retirement years.

The agency identified gains on the cancer front: The disease is killing Americans at a lower rate. But that medical progress was overtaken by the other factors. Lethal drug overdoses, for example, rose from 14.0 per 100,000 people in early 2014 to 15.2 by mid-2015. And even though heart disease was basically flat, that was a change from the major killer’s years-long decline — a decrease that had helped drive down the overall mortality rate.

Whether the uptick in the death rate is a statistical fluke is unclear. The CDC will have final numbers in December, and one year does not make a trend. But the report echoes other recent research suggesting that these days the American way of life is too often leading to an early death.

“There’s no smoking gun here,” said Farida Ahmad, mortality surveillance lead for the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. She calls the increase in mortality “unusual,” noting that it’s the first time since 2004-2005 that the rate went up rather than down.

“It’s something that we’re going to be looking into and watching to see if it holds for 2016. It could be that it’s just a blip as it was 10 years ago,” she said.

The historical trend in health and mortality has largely been a story of medical triumphs and longer lives. For example, in 1950, when rates of infant mortality were much higher than today, the death rate per 100,000 Americans was 1,446. By 2014 the rate had fallen to exactly half that — 723. But the preliminary 2015 numbers show a bump up to 729.5.

Numerous researchers have been focusing on the sharp and unanticipated rise in mortality among whites, particularly white women, in their midlife years. The Washington Post’s own analysis of the nation’s death rates indicates that this increase is pronounced in small cities, small towns and the most rural areas.

This latest report does not break down deaths by sex, race, geography or other demographic indicators.

“When we’re spending $3 trillion in health care, and we’re seeing mortality rise — even if this is only a momentary rise — we need to examine what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” said Ellen Meara, professor of health policy and clinical practice at Dartmouth College. “Clearly we’re doing something wrong.”

Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National Desk. Achenbach also helms the “Achenblog.”
Follow @joelachenbach

© 1996-2016 The Washington Post

SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE – OPERATION EAGLE – PETITION TO GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, Government of India informed me that Joint Secretary, Ministry of Defence on May 31, 2016 rejected my petition. The notification simply mentions, “Case Closed.” Apparently this decision is not made by Chief of Army Staff or Prime Minister of India.
Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE
:: Grievance Status ::

Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System
(CPGRAMS)
Department of Administrative
Reforms & Public Grievances
Government of India

Grievance Status
Status as on 05 Jun 2016
Registration Number : DARPG/E/2013/82606
Name Of Complainant : R R Narasimham

Date of Receipt : 07 Sep 2013

Received by : Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances

Forwarded to : D Ceremonials

Contact Address : Room No. 363V B South Block, New Delhi
110011
Contact Number : 23011872
Grievance Description :

Dear Sir, or Madam,

This grievance pertains to the following petitions registered by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. 1. MODEF/E/2011/00761 dated 24 Sep 2011, 2. CABST/E/2012/00154 dated 26 May 2012, 3. DARPG/E/2013/82597 dated 07 Sep 2013, and 4. MODEF/E/2013/01709 dated 05 Sep 2013.

1.A gallantry award is granted in recognition of a past event and the gallant action would always exist as a past event.

2. In the history of Republic of India, for the first time during 1971, the Prime Minister sanctioned a military action that was not planned by Army/Ministry of Defence.

3. Operation Eagle in which I had the honour to participate was not planned and executed under orders issued by Army Headquarters/Ministry of Defence.

4. The gallant action did not happen in the context of a border skirmish or that of a border conflict. It was not related to the Official War between India and Pakistan that was declared by the Prime Minister on 04 December 1971.

5. The gallant action pertains to a deliberate, planned attack deep inside the territory defended by the Enemy’s Regular Army. I had marched with the men to participate in the attack.

6. The battlefield casualties were treated at the Enemy Post we captured and not in Indian territory.

7. There was no Regimental Aid Post at the border, inside Indian territory. The treatment of battle casualties began at the site of battle, about 40 miles from the border.

8.The Brigade Headquarters which had the primary responsibility for airlifting of battle casualties could not dispatch the helicopter as the Prime Minister did not sanction the violation of Pakistan’s airspace during the first phase of Operation Eagle in the month of November 1971.

9. I as the Unit Medical Officer went beyond the call of my duty to ensure a safe, and timely evacuation of the battlefield casualties. I had marched a distance of over 80 miles from Sunrise to Sunset to complete my task inside the Enemy territory while the Enemy was still dispersed in the area.

10. Indian Army concluded its phase of military operations inside Bangladesh on 16 December 1971 when the Enemy totally surrendered. However, Operation Eagle concluded its military operation during January 1972.

11. The fact that the Prime Minister had established the eligibility criteria for the sanction of military awards, honours, and decorations to the participants of Operation Eagle could be proved by the simple fact that the Gallantry Award of Vir Chakra was given to Shri. G B Velankar, a civilian officer of my Unit who was allowed the use of Major’s rank on a honorary basis.

12. Under the battle plan of Operation Eagle, to grant military awards, the Prime Minister did not impose any time constraints as it was not a battle operation launched by Indian Army.

13. The citation that recommended the grant of Vir Chakra for my gallant action during Operation Eagle was initiated by Lieutenant Colonel B K Narayan of my Unit, it was reviewed and recommended by Brigade Commander, Brigadier T S Oberoi, and it was finally approved and recommended by the Formation Commander, Major General Sujan Singh Uban.

14. Special Frontier Force had strictly followed the guidelines included in the battle plan of Operation Eagle and the citation was directly submitted to the Director of Medical Services(Army), Medical Directorate, Army Headquarters, New Delhi before the conclusion of Operation Eagle.

15. I am not responsible for delivering the citation to the MS Branch, Ministry of Defence, New Delhi while I am on operational duty in the field. If the Medical Directorate had failed in the performance of its duty, I should not be penalized.

Current Status : CASE CLOSED

Date of Action : 31 May 2016

Details : Appropriate reply has been sent to the complainant. May be closed.

Designed, Developed and hosted by National Informatics Centre

MOLECULAR BASIS OF SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE

On www.zuniv.net

To account for human existence, to face challenges to human survival, man has to identify molecules that operate various living functions. Man defends his life deploying protein molecules that recognize and respond to invasion of human body by pathogens consisting of foreign protein molecules. While learned experience provides cortical awareness of human immunological responses to attacks by pathogens, human mind is blissfully unaware of presence of pathogens. Recognition of non-self proteins and molecules called antigens is not a mental function. If Spirit or Soul functions as guiding mechanism, Spirit or Soul will have awareness of invasion of body by foreign antigens and body’s immunological response to such invasion. If Reticular Formation of Brain Stem, the site at which contents of Consciousness are composed, is viewed as seat of human Spirit or Soul, it has awareness of body’s invasion and response to attacks by pathogens. Immunological responses to infections trigger a stress response mediated by Hypothalamus – Pituitary – Adrenal Cortex Pathway.

The discovery of antibiotic-resistant Superbugs may eventually lead to better understanding of Spirit or Soul in shaping human survival while warding off invasion by pathogens.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

Behind the scenes of a U.S. superbug discovery that made headlines around the world

By LENA H. SUN June 6 at 5:43 PM

On news.com.au

The Post’s Lena Sun visited Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., where scientists identified a strain of bacteria resistant to the last-resort antibiotic, colistin. The bacteria was found in a Pennsylvania woman. Microbiologist Patrick McGann explains how his team identified the gene that gives the bacteria this resistance (Monica Akhtar,Lena Sun/The Washington Post)

Microbiologist Patrick McGann knew he had identified a dangerous germ. He just didn’t know how dangerous.
In mid-May, a colleague had found a strain of E. coli bacteria from a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman that tested positive for resistance to a drug called colistin. That’s the antibiotic used when all others fail.

McGann, whose job is to prevent outbreaks of new pathogens in the U.S. military’s sprawling health-care system, wasn’t yet alarmed. Sometimes mutations occur spontaneously that make bacteria resistant to an antibiotic. It would be a completely different problem, though, if the bacteria turned out to carry a certain ­colistin-resistant gene called mcr-1.

But that required deeper molecular testing. McGann asked his research team at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., to do an initial test for the presence of the resistant gene. And on May 18, he got the result as he rode Metro’s Red Line back to the lab from a meeting.

Research technician Ana Ong texted him to say the strain of E. coli had tested positive for the mcr-1 gene.
Stunned, McGann texted back: “You’re s—-ing me??” And then, realizing what the discovery meant, he didn’t wait for her reply.
“Onto the sequencer ASAP,” he wrote back, referring to the labor-intensive, round-the-clock effort required to read the entire genetic code of the bacteria and determine how easily the gene might spread.
“We had to drop everything else to get this done,” he explained later. “When [the test] came back positive, all hell broke loose.”

U.S. health officials and experts had been bracing for this moment since the gene’s discovery late last year in China. They’d hunted for mcr-1 in tens of thousands of samples from meat sources, animals and people.

And now that it’s definitively here, officials expect to find more cases — provoking even greater alarm. Immediately, the discovery in Pennsylvania gave new urgency to measures throughout the military and the federal government to determine where else the gene might be lurking and how to control its spread.

Patrick McGann, left, and Kathy “Ana” Ong, prepare blood plates as their team at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research looks for evidence of a dangerous antibiotic-resistant gene in
bacteria. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

For infectious-disease experts, the nightmare scenario is for the gene to spread to bacteria that are now susceptible only to colistin. That would make them invincible to any antibiotic, unstoppable by the most lifesaving drugs of modern medicine.

‘This one popped up’

The gene mcr-1 was found first in pigs and people in China and then spread across Asia and Europe. By March, there were even more reports from France, Switzerland, Malaysia, Brazil and Argentina.

Still, the gene remains relatively rare. After the initial report from China, McGann’s team tested more than 3,000 antibiotic-resistant bacteria that had been collected from military facilities around the world. None contained the mcr-1 gene.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that drug-resistant bacteria cause 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths each year in the United States. Many service members wounded during the Iraq War contracted a strain of bacteria that the media later dubbed “Iraqibacter.” The normally harmless bacteria, found in soil and on skin, got into wounds and caused stubborn bloodstream infections, many of them resistant to many types of antibiotics. After about 2007, colistin was often one of the most effective treatment options available, McGann said.

Technician Brendan Corey watches a robotic micro lab prepare DNA samples for sequencing at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
That’s one reason the Army created the Multidrug-resistant Organism Repository and Surveillance Network (MRSN) in 2009; McGann is its chief of molecular research and diagnostics. Researchers say the detection of colistin-resistant bacteria in the Pennsylvania woman was a result of this strong surveillance system — but also sheer luck.

McGann got the initial call about a resistant E. coli sample from Kurt Schaecher, chief of the infectious-diseases laboratory at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The hospital has the reference lab for about 100 military facilities, which regularly send it drug-resistant organisms.

Schaecher, who had just started in the job, was troubled by the number of reports coming in from around the world about the mcr-1 gene. Testing for colistin resistance was not routinely done in the lab, but he thought it would be prudent to start.

On May 12, he pulled out six of the lab’s most recent samples to test for resistance to colistin. The next day, the results were back. “And lo and behold, this one popped up,” he recalled, referring to the Pennsylvania sample.

He immediately alerted McGann. Both men were very surprised, Schaecher said.
They didn’t know why the bacteria weren’t killed by colistin — it could have been a spontaneous mutation rather than the mcr-1 gene. McGann’s team went straight to Bethesda to collect the sample for more testing.
Once McGann’s lab detected the gene on May 18, he alerted Schaecher and began fully sequencing the bacterium’s genome.

Rosslyn Maybank, left, and McGann work on tracing the mcr-1, antibiotic resistant gene. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

‘A NEEDLE IN A STACK OF NEEDLES’‘

Sequencing would tell everyone where the gene was located. Was it on the bacterium’s single chromosome? Or in a much more troubling spot, on something called a plasmid, a mobile piece of DNA that exists outside the chromosome?

If the gene were on the chromosome, that wouldn’t be so bad. The bacterium could pass the resistance only to its progeny, limiting the spread. But finding the gene on the plasmid would be much, much worse. Plasmids can transfer their genes to other bacteria, McGann said, even strains that aren’t closely related. The technical term for this ability is “promiscuity.”

The sequencing process took several days. The researchers had to extract the DNA from the bacteria and set up the sequencing machines that would read the entire genome and determine not only what genes were in the organism, but also if there were plasmids and what kind.

By 9 p.m. on May 20, they were ready to proceed. They ran the same test on two machines. One sequencer is less accurate but takes about eight hours. The other, larger sequencer is more accurate but takes 72 hours.
By the following day, early results confirmed that the gene was fully present and was most likely on a plasmid. Barely 24 hours later, another researcher had confirmed that the mcr-1 gene was present “on a promiscuous plasmid,” McGann said. The final verification took until May 23.
“It was like finding a needle in a stack of needles in another stack of needles,” Schaecher recalled.

McGann likened plasmids to cars that can carry a gene and transport it to other bacteria. Some plasmids can transfer those genes more readily than others. “This one moved pretty well,” he said. “Not quite a Fiat, more like a BMW.”

Even as the patient was being treated — her bacteria, while resistant to colistin, were sensitive to other drugs — researchers began to notify colleagues in the Defense Department and other government agencies. They alerted the CDC as well as the Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments that a superbug capable of spreading colistin resistance far and wide had finally surfaced in a person in the United States.

Some officials have complained that they should have been informed sooner. McGann said it would have been imprudent to send an alert before results were completely confirmed. Around the same time, he, Schaecher and the research team submitted a paper about their findings to a medical journal. The editor, Yohei Doi, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Pittsburgh, raced to get it reviewed.

The paper was published May 26, and the discovery made headlines around the world.

These are the top superbug threats in the U.S.

View Photos

THE WHITE HOUSE HAS MADE THE GERMS ARE SERIOUS PRIORITY

Urgent threat. According to the White House plan to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriacea, CRE, is one of the country’s most urgent threats. Forty-four states have had at least one type of confirmed CRE case, which are resistant to nearly all antibiotics including last-resort drugs. CDC

Meanwhile, another surveillance system that includes the CDC, the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration has also been searching for the gene in bacteria collected from food animals, meat sources and people. Scientists have scoured more than 44,000 samples of salmonella bacteria and 9,000 samples of E. coli and shigella bacteria.

That search is how the USDA scientists recently found the gene in a sample from a pig intestine. It also was in a strain of E. coli, and also on a plasmid. The USDA is working to determine the sample’s origin.

The strains and plasmids appear to be different, McGann said. That suggests that the gene is circulating through at least two — and possibly more — routes within the United States.

McGann said he learned about the mcr-1 gene in the pig sample only when his team notified government officials about its own finding. U.S. officials haven’t provided details about when the animal sample was found or why information about it wasn’t disclosed earlier.

Public health officials are most worried about the colistin-resistant gene spreading to a family of superbugs known as CRE, for carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, which the CDC has called one of the country’s most urgent public health threats. In some instances, CRE kills up to 50 percent of patients who become infected. Colistin is increasingly the last-resort drug to treat patients with such infections.

McGann checks a DNA sampling before loading it into a genome sequencer. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

Already, doctors have been forced to rely on colistin as a last-line defense for many drug-resistant infections. Colistin, more than half a century old, is otherwise rarely used in human medicine because it can cause severe kidney damage.

The drug is not used in animals in the United States, but in Europe it has been widely used in veterinary medicine for decades to treat and prevent infection. In May, the European Medicines Agency recommended limiting its use in animals to halt the spread of resistance. It’s also widely used in farm animals in China.

The Army’s MRSN system receives 400 to 500 samples of multidrug-resistant organisms each month, primarily from its facilities around the world. About half are MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, bacteria resistant to many antibiotics that can cause a variety of problems, including skin infections and bloodstream infections. Another third are E. coli, and less than 1 percent are CRE.

The new information about the Pennsylvania woman’s colistin-resistant bacteria means McGann and his team can do more targeted searching in the repository of organisms. They’ve already scoured an additional 6,000 samples without again finding the gene.

This summer, all military services will be expected to begin providing the repository system with multidrug-resistant organisms.
By contrast, the national antibiotic resistance surveillance system that the CDC, USDA and FDA operate collectively serves all civilian hospitals in the country. It covers a far larger patient population and collects thousands of pathogen samples for each of the 15 antibiotic-resistant bacteria that the CDC has deemed to be urgent or serious threats.

Until now, the resistance testing has taken place at the CDC. But late last year, Congress approved $160 million in additional funding to boost the Obama administration’s antibiotic-resistance detection efforts. As a result, the agency plans to start funding state health departments this fall to do improved testing for antimicrobial resistance. That will include colistin.

Lena H. Sun is a national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on health.
Follow @bylenasun

© 1996-2016 The Washington Post

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SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – IMPERISHABLE, IMMUTABLE, AND IMMORTAL PRINCIPLE OF LIVING THINGS

Living Things are made up of 1. Living Matter, and 2. Physical Form. The Form or Morphological Appearance of Living Things is used in their identification and for classification.

Theory of Evolution carefully records similarities between different living things and claims that living things are constantly changing and descend into new forms of living things that are again identified by their morphological appearance. Change is a Natural Phenomenon. Things in Nature change under influence of Time.

However, the problem of biodiversity is not resolved by Theory of Evolution. Living things change in appearance due to natural process called Growth and Development or due to aging process.  Changes in Genetic Code called Mutation does not affect Chemical Composition of Living Matter while it may cause change in form or appearance.But any such observed change in appearance is possible if and only if Living Matter retains its basic chemical composition and behaves as if it is operated by Imperishable, Immutable, and Immortal Principle.

All living things exist in nature by consuming other living things or consuming products made by other living things. All living things appear to be varied and yet consist of the same kind of Chemical Compounds. To a great extent, Chemical Elements retain their attributes as if they are imperishable, immutable, and can even said to be immortal. This unchanging nature or Spiritual attribute helps formulation of Fundamental Laws of Matter described by classical Physics and Chemistry. Over billions of years, Living Matter retained its basic Chemical Composition as Chemical Elements and Chemical Compounds governed or operated by imperishable, immutable, and immortal or Spiritual Principle not influenced by time or changes in climate, or other variable external conditions.

The Organic Material called Protoplasm or Cytoplasm exhibits Nature that can neither be created nor destroyed. Its Nature is not subject to ‘Evolutionary Change’.

In my analysis, Theory of Evolution is fundamentally flawed for its focus on change in morphological appearance does not take into account Unchanging Nature of Chemical Elements and Chemical Compounds. There is no evolution for there is no natural factor, or natural mechanism, or natural condition that can violate Fundamental Laws of Nature.

Biological Diversity is reflected by the number of Living Animal and Plant species which are all operated by Unchanging Spiritual Principle. I explain Biological Diversity as a creative mechanism that formulates the morphological appearance of living things while they are essentially made up of the same Living Substance. Every living thing fundamentally exists as an Individual with Individuality. There are no two perfectly identical living things. For there is such vast diversity of living things, for purposes of convenience, they may be grouped and classified using principles shared by Taxonomy. Some Forms of Life became extinct over course of time but Life has not perished for Living Matter continues to exist as before. Indeed all varied Forms of Life are Formed by the same Chemical Components.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

THIS FUNNY-LOOKING ANCIENT FISH IS ACTUALLY YOUR GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT (YOU GET THE IDEA) GRAND-UNCLE.

 By SARAH KAPLAN June 3

Qingmendous, a 409 million-year-old predatory fish provides unique insights into the early evolution of modern lobe-finned fishes. (Brian Choo/Flinders University)

MEET QINGMENDOUS

He’s half a foot long, 409 million years old and fierce as they come. Huge, squiggly teeth protrude from his lower lip, and powerful, muscle-bound fins allow him to sluice through the brackish water of a prehistoric lagoon. When he’s hungry, he lies in wait for creatures that are as much as half his size and ambushes them. His jagged teeth make quick work of the unsuspecting prey.

He’s also your great-great-great-great (you get the idea) grand-uncle. Pleased to make your acquaintance.
Qingmendous, scientists report in the journal Science Advances on Friday, was part of a group of “lobe finned fishes” that included the first vertebrates to crawl onto land. Analysis of his skull will give researchers insight into how our distant fishy forebears evolved, they say, and a literal glimpse into the brain of a creature of that ancient world.

This prehistoric, predatory sea creature was first identified back in 2009, after paleontologists in China uncovered fossils of his hindquarters. Jing Lu and Min Zhu, both researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and also lead authors on this report, identified Qingmendous as the oldest of a mysterious group of fish known as onychodonts.

Not much is known about the onychodonts, aside from the fact that they were predators with funny-looking faces (like Qingmendous, they all had squiggly teeth at the front of their lower jaw) and that they died out some 350 million years ago.

“We basically had two stages in the evolutionary history of the lobe finned fishes,” said You’an Zhu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Uppsala University in Sweden.
“There were the very primitive ones — so primitive they didn’t even have lobed fins,” he continued. “And then we get complete sets of lineages we are quite familiar with: coelacanths, also lungfish, and of course our direct ancestors the tetrapods (every land vertebrate ever, plus birds, bats, dolphins and whales).”

But few fossils have been found from the creatures that lived in between those two stages, and many aren’t in great shape. So it was hard to figure out how Qingmendous was related to other creatures alive at the time, not to mention everything that came after.

That’s when You’an Zhu joined the team. Using CT scans, he and his colleagues digitally reconstructed the inside of Qingmendous’s skull, allowing them to get a better look at who he was and how his brain worked.
“It turned out to be a mosaic of characteristics,” he said. “It kind of filled in the gaps between the primitive and the modern lobe finned fishes, bridging the two stages together.”

Qingmendous is not a missing link, he said — evolution is not linear. But the characteristics of his body and brain can help explain how the sea creatures made the leap onto land. Like the ancestors of modern terrestrial creatures, Qingmendous dwelled in brackish waters of lagoons, bays and deltas — within spitting distance of land. He had the same muscular fins that his cousins would use to clamber gracelessly out of the water. His skull also shares some of the advanced features of still-living lobe finned fish (well, advanced for 409 million years ago), indicating that his brain was more modern as well.

The lobe finned fish had the right tools for terrestrial exploration. They also had good luck and good timing, You’an Zhu said. There are plenty of fish that can survive out of the water for short periods of time today, but they don’t stick around because there’s too much competition and too many predators.

But 390 million years ago, plants had comfortably colonized land and insects were widespread. The continents were essentially a well-stocked, all-you-can-eat buffet — with no one else to hog the food and not a single predator large enough to make you regret sticking your head out of the sea.
“So the lobe finned fish will take their chance and venture onto land and become our ancestors,” he said.

Sarah Kaplan is a reporter for Speaking of Science.
Follow @sarahkaplan48

© 1996-2016 The Washington Post

SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – CHANGING COSMOS – UNCHANGING REALITY

Man exists in a World and Universe that are constantly on move. Reports indicate that the galaxies are moving at a faster rate than we thought leading to speculation that the Cosmos is expanding. However, it will be incorrect to suggest that The Universe is expanding at a fast rate. Atoms and Molecules maintain their structural configuration and as per Fundamental Laws of classical Physics and Chemistry certain quantities, or values are always conserved. In general, celestial bodies move in a predictable manner as quantities or values like Mass and Momentum remain conserved. Planet Earth partakes in the motions of Sun as it revolves around Milky Way Galactic Center. The entire Solar System moves as a single unit while Milky Way Galaxy keeps moving at a fast rate of its own.

As such, Solar System and Milky Way Galaxy are not expanding. The dimensions of the Universe are not known for Space is an immaterial dimension. It is not known if dimensions of Space are altering if Galaxies keep moving faster than we thought. If unknown ‘Dark Matter’ is exerting force to make galaxies move faster, there is nothing to suggest that Solar System or Milky Way Galaxy are expanding.  Matter occupies Space. For Matter is neither created nor destroyed, Matter can neither create nor destroy absolute value called ‘Total Space’ of the Universe which is not yet quantified. No natural change in size, or position is possible without operation of Unchanging Principle that may govern Universal Laws of Conservation. Cosmos is Changing but this Change is operated by an Unchanging Reality which conserves values to retain Cosmic Balance, Cosmic Order and Cosmic Equilibrium.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

Hold on tight: The universe is expanding faster than we thought

BY RACHEL FELTMAN JUNE 3

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows one of the galaxies in the survey to refine the measurement for how fast the universe expands with time.
(NASA, ESA and A. Riess (STScI/JHU))

You’ve probably already heard that the universe is expanding. It’s been doing so since the BigBang — about 13.7 billion years ago — so you’ve had plenty of time to get in the loop. But according to new research, that relentless, ever-quickening expansion is happening at a rate 5 to 9 percent faster than previously thought.

Led by Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, the research team developed new, more accurate techniques for measuring the ever-increasing size of the cosmos.

It measured stars and supernovae commonly used as “cosmic yardsticks”: 2,400 Cepheid Stars (in 19 different galaxies), which pulsate in a way that allows scientists to compare their true brightness to their apparent brightness and figure out how far away they are, and 300 Type Ia Supernovae, which flare with a brightness so reliable it can be used to measure distance.

The calculations, which will be published in an upcoming edition of the Astrophysical Journal, estimate the rate of expansion to be 45.5 miles per second per megaparsec (3.26 million light-years). That means that the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years.

And the more we learn, the less we know.

“If you really believe our number — and we have shed blood, sweat and tears to get our measurement right and to accurately understand the uncertainties — then it leads to the conclusion that there is a problem with predictions based on measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the leftover glow from the Big Bang,” study co-author Alex Filippenko of UC Berkeley said in a statement.

“If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the big bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today,” Riess said in a statement. “However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today.”

Riess and his colleagues believe there must be some way to marry the two estimates — some obvious data we’re missing or misunderstanding. It could be that dark energy is pushing galaxies apart faster than we think it is. Or that dark matter has some kind of properties we understand even less than its other properties. Maybe some undiscovered “dark radiation” — subatomic particles like the Neutrino — was present during the big bang, and we’ve yet to add it to the expansion equation. Or Einstein’s general theory of relativity isn’t quite right. If these measurements are confirmed by other scientists, something’s gotta give.

“You start at two ends, and you expect to meet in the middle if all of your drawings are right and your measurements are right,” Riess said. “But now the ends are not quite meeting in the middle and we want to know why.”

It’s a reminder of just how mysterious most of the universe is to us: Scientists estimate that some 95 percent of the cosmos is made up of substances like dark energy, dark matter and dark radiation — things we know only by the forces they exert on our galaxies.

Rachel Feltman runs The Post’s Speaking of Science blog.
FOLLOW @rachelfeltman

© 1996-2016 The Washington Post

SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – SYNTHETIC PARASITIC GENOMES

On bhavanajagat.com

Each living cell of human body is essentially same as fertilized Ovum or Egg Cell called Zygote which consists of nucleus and cytoplasm. The nucleus has chromosomes which carry genes or genetic information used in protein synthesis to develop structures of body. However, human genome found in nucleus has no ability to acquire energy from its external environment.

On slideplayer.com

Cytoplasm has the power of ‘Nutrition’ with which it attracts matter found in cell’s external environment. Cytoplasm has intracellular organelle called mitochondria which oxidize nutrients and manipulate energy yielding molecules to generate chemical molecules such as Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) that provide energy for protein synthesis and other cellular activities. Genome depends upon cytoplasm for its energy requirements. If a synthetic genome is introduced into a living cell, it will function as a parasite like Virus which has no ability of its own to acquire energy for its living functions.

On bhavanajagat.com

Scientists plans for Synthetic Human Genomes in essence represent Biotic Interaction called Parasitism. Synthetic Parasitic Genomes may pose same problems that are commonly associated with Viral parasitic infections of host living cells.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

After secret Harvard meeting, scientists announce plans for synthetic human genomes

By JOEL ACHENBACH June 2

Photo illustration of sequenced DNA (iStock)

Three weeks ago, 130 scientists, entrepreneurs and policy leaders held an invitation-only, closed-door meeting at Harvard University to discuss an ambitious plan to create synthetic human genomes. Now, after a flurry of criticism over the secrecy of the effort, the participants have published their idea, declaring that they’re launching a project to radically reduce the cost of synthesizing genomes — a potentially revolutionary development in biotechnology that could enable technicians to grow human organs for transplantation.

The announcement, published Thursday in the Journal Science, is the latest sign that biotechnology is going through a rapidly advancing but ethically fraught period. Scientists have been honing their techniques for manipulating the complex molecules that serve as the code for all life on the planet, and this same issue of the journal Science reports a breakthrough in editing RNA, a molecule that is the close cousin of DNA.

The promoters of synthetic genomes envision a project that would eventually be on the same scale as the Human Genome Project of the 1990s, which led to the sequencing of the first human genomes. The difference this time would be that, instead of “reading” genetic codes, which is what sequencing does, the scientists would be “writing” them. They have dubbed this the “Genome Project-write.”

“[T]he goal of HGP-write is to reduce the costs of engineering and testing large genomes, including a human genome, in cell lines, more than 1,000-fold within ten years, while developing new technologies and an ethical framework for genome-scale engineering as well as transformative medical applications,” the group wrote in a draft of a news release obtained by The Post. The project will be administered by a non-profit organization called the Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology, the news release said.
The plan drew a negative response from the head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, who had led the earlier Human Genome Project. In a statement released by NIH, Collins said it was premature to launch such an initiative.

“NIH has not considered the time to be right for funding a large-scale production-oriented ‘HGP-write’ effort, as is framed in the Science article,” Collins said. He added, “There are only limited ethical concerns about synthesizing segments of DNA for laboratory experiments. But whole-genome, whole-organism synthesis projects extend far beyond current scientific capabilities, and immediately raise numerous ethical and philosophical red flags.”

No one is talking about creating human beings from scratch. One application of cheaper genome synthesis, according to geneticist George Church, one of the authors of the Science article, would be to create cells that are resistant to viruses. These would not be cells used directly in human therapies, but rather in cell lines grown by the pharmaceutical industry for developing drugs. Such processes are vulnerable now to viral contamination.

“If you’re manufacturing human therapeutics in mammalian cells, and you get contamination, it can blow you away for two years, which has actually happened,” Church said.
The Science paper gives a number of examples of what could emerge from cheaper synthesized genomes: “growing transplantable human organs; engineering immunity to viruses in cell lines via genome-wide recoding; engineering cancer resistance into new therapeutic cell lines; and accelerating high-productivity, cost-efficient vaccine and pharmaceutical development using human cells and organoids.”

The synthetic genome plan emerged from two closed-door meetings, one in New York City last year, and the second on May 10 at Harvard.

The latter drew criticism from researchers who objected to the closed-door nature of the event; organizers said they didn’t want to publicize their idea in advance of the publication of the article in Science. They said they plan to put a video of the proceedings online.

Drew Endy, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford, wrote on Twitter, “If you need secrecy to discuss your proposed research (synthesizing a human genome), you are doing something wrong.”

Endy and Laurie Zoloth, a professor of medical ethics and humanities at Northwestern University, published an essay in which they said that, although this technology has promising applications, “it is easy to make up far stranger uses of human genome synthesis capacities.”

Endy on Thursday renewed his criticism. He said the group is proceeding without approval of the broader scientific community or any independent ethical review, he said.
“Do we wish to be operating in a world where people are capable of organizing themselves to make human genomes? Should we pause and reflect on that question before we launch into doing it?” Endy told The Post. “They’re talking about making real the capacity to make the thing that defines humanity – the human genome.”

He said the article published in Science does not address any ethical questions. The promoters of the project say they will handle the ethical questions that come up, but Endy said in an email that this appears to be “a brazen attempt to preempt independent ethical review.”

The project has four lead organizers: Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School; Jef Boeke, director of the Institute for Systems Genetics at the NYU Langone Medical Center; Andrew Hessel, a researcher with the publicly traded company Autodesk; and Nancy J. Kelley, formerly executive director of the New York Genome Center.
The news release stated that Kelley will be the top executive for the project, and that Autodesk has committed $250,000 in funding for the planning efforts.

The organizers hope to raise $100 million by the end of this year, with an eventual goal of devoting $3 billion to the effort. The authors of the Science article wrote that some portion of the money that would be raised for the project should be directed toward addressing the ethical, legal and social issues surrounding how new genetic engineering technologies will be used.

Church, informed of Endy’s latest comments, said nine of the participants in the Harvard meeting were experts on the ethical, legal and social implications of technology, and he said he expects many more will respond to the article in Science.

“Even when we identify something that we do not want, we need to think deeply about how to prevent it — effective surveillance, deterrents and consequences,” Church told The Post.
Church, whose laboratory at Harvard Medical School is renowned for breakthroughs in genetic engineering, said that in a span of three to 10 years it should be possible to bring down the cost of synthesizing long stretches of DNA by a thousand-fold. That would mirror the huge declines in the cost of sequencing – that is, reading – human genomes. He said researchers are already synthesizing stretches of genetic code, but only in small pieces. The obstacle to widespread application and testing of synthetic genomes is the cost, he said.

The field of genetic engineering has been dealing with ethical quandaries since the 1970s. In December, for example, scientists from the U.S., Europe and China met in Washington and agreed to put limits on the breakthrough gene-editing technique known as CRISPR, which has the potential to make heritable changes in a person’s genome.

Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National Desk. Achenbach also helms the “Achenblog.”
FOLLOW @joelachenbach

© 1996-2016 The Washington Post

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SUMMER SOLSTICE – RARE FULL MOON DAY OF JUNE 20, 2016

Man’s existence on planet Earth is governed by Sun’s apparent motions across Earthly Sky with no concern for true or real motion of Sun in Milky Way Galaxy. Light is by far the most important environmental stimulus that operates Biological Rhythms. Human existence is synchronized with alternating periods of Light and Darkness while Sun shines all the time without Sunrise and Sunset.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

IrishCentral.com

Rare full moon for the first time in 30 years on summer solstice

IrishCentral Staff Writers @irishcentral
June 20,2016 11:00 AM

Ancient site, The Hill of Tara: Longest day of the year was of huge significance to ancient pagan society and is still recognized by the Irish. Photo by: Tourism Ireland

Today, June 20, marks Summer Solstice in Ireland, the longest day of the year, a day a huge significance to ancient pagan society and one still recognized by the Irish at sites, such as the Hill of Tara every year. This year will also see the first full moon, in nearly 50 years, coincide with the solstice.

This evening (June 20) those gazing skyward will catch a glimpse of the first full moon to appear on the same day as summer solstice since 1967. Not only will it be a full moon but also a Strawberry Moon.

Despite its name the Strawberry Moon is not necessarily pink or red in color but is the full moon which arrives each June, and coincides with the start of the strawberry season. This name was given to the moon by Native American tribes and became known in Europe as the Full Rose Moon and the Honey Moon.

Heads up: Full “Strawberry” moon to coincide w/ summer solstice for first time since 1948 https://t.co/IqGOR6agnA pic.twitter.com/AHkewTB5Sm
— KTLA (@KTLA) June 18, 2016

The summer solstice marks the day when the sun is at its highest point in the northern hemisphere providing up to 17 hours of daylight. This was seen as an important time for fertility when the harvest of the coming year was blessed. This significance of the solstice is mirrored in the places of worship and burial sites, from standing stones to pyramids and tombs, that Neolithic pagan cultures built throughout the world and many were designed in alignment with the sun at this sacred time of the year, when the sun was at its most powerful.

The name “solstice” is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).

In Ireland the Hill of Tara is the location most associated with the solstice, where hundreds still gather each year, over the five days of the solstice, to mark the event. This area, the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland, is an archaeological complex that runs from Navan and Dunshaughlin, in County Meath.

Elsewhere in Ireland, especial in rural communities, locals traditional gather around a bonfire and celebrate the longest day of the year with song and dance.

Below is an infographic, on the summer solstice and its Celtic traditions created by CelticCrossOnline.com:

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BHARAT DARSHAN – REMEMBERING SAM BAHADUR

I have good reasons to pay this tribute to Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw(‘SAM BAHADUR’) who passed away on June 27, 2008. I count him as my ‘Parsi Connection’ apart from Mrs. Indira Gandhi who was India’s Prime Minister when I reported to Officers Training School, AMC Centre, Lucknow on July 26, 1970 to attend Basic Medical Officers Course 20/70. Interestingly, when I left military service, I was at Strait of Hormuz near Hormuz region of Iran to which Parsi community has its historical relationship.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

The video jerked into play… realised I wasn’t looking for the Great Man: Sam Manekshaw’s daughter Maja Daruwala

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw died this day in 2008. A daughter remembers.

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw led the Indian Army to victory in East Pakistan. (Photo: Express Archive)Written by Maja Daruwala | New Delhi | Published:June 27, 2016 1:27 am

Perhaps because there are so few of us around, people feel obliged to email and SMS me snippets of news and views, blogs, pictures and videos about Parsees. The complimentary pieces are bittersweet gestures of affection for a friend. They come tinged with regret that seems to mourn the inevitable passing away of our tiny community. The last little video I got came with the message “You should be proud” and opened into a montage of the usual greats. I watched with only tepid interest as the pictures and names in blazoned heroic script passed across the screen. There was Jamshedji, and Dorabji, Nani, Fali and Soli. There was Bhikhaji Cama and atomic energy Bhabha and Rattan of course, Adi, and apro Zubin and Cyrus. I’d seen them all before. At the end, the video stalled and I realised I was mildly miffed at the producers who had missed one name.Still and sad, I stared hard at the little dots going round and round as the video buffered into its last five seconds. In those long moments, I felt my chest tighten and my eyes prick as I remembered the missing man. He had meant so much to us. Eight years dead this week, he was still right there at every family gathering, lighting up the room with silly teasing and laughter, telling funny stories about the cook in Amritsar whose kheema my mother could never match, or the fair girl who’d given him his first innocent kiss by the back loo in exchange for a promise not to tell the elders she was meeting with the local rake, or the tale of how he had exasperated his mother into throwing a bunch of keys at him for explaining to all the household that his hazel eyes came from being born in Egypt. When we asked; “Why Egypt? His only explanation was “Baby, that’s the only name I knew!”

Remembering Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw
Rediscovering Sam Manekshaw

Army to install Field Marshal Manekshaw statues in Delhi,Wellington
Birth anniversary of Field Marshal Manekshaw marked
Ex-Lt Gen questions Manekshaw’s strategy during 1971 war
Always standing tall,Field Marshal Manekshaw
He taught us the names of all the flowers in the garden and read us Scheherazade stories from the Arabian Nights. Then wickedly played king. My sister was the favoured and beautiful Lal Pari, I the ugly sidey grateful to be included. When we asked what our mother was he’d say airily: “Oh, she’s the lady in waiting — waiting for everything.” He loved being the hero and would post us scurrilous detective stories at boarding school. In the hols, I complained to my aunt that no one believed the letters were from my father and she cried out “Bhai, you’re still doing the same thing!” She had been an early victim in their school days.
He had enthusiasms and dragged us willy-nilly into them because they had to be shared by everyone around. So my mother, straw hat on head, walked across the winter sun fields near Delhi while he shot quail and joined the locals in chai on the khatia after. At home, my sister wiggled hot and impatient under studio lights while he perfected the angle of his tripod camera. At the race course, he taught me to feed our one-fourth of a race horse with an open flat hand so I wouldn’t get bitten. It mattered not at all that First Entry never won a race.
In Ferozpur, the huge grounds of Flagstaff House turned him farmer. So we all dug potatoes out of the ground, picked cotton and felt how aniseed tasted right off the stalk. In Mhow, he battled the cook for suzerainty over the kitchen and competed with him to show he could make the best tasting chola ever — for breakfast! In Coonoor, it was trout fishing and endless hours fiddling to find just the right rods and reels and being coaxed into spearing live bait on to hook because he wasn’t going to do it.
Then it was milch cows. We had to have them. All the houses along Porter Avenue got milk at the same price for 20 years. Meticulous accounts were kept. The grandchildren got the 6 am milk run and my mother got to name the animals: Rose (naturally, what else can you name a cow), then Rose Bud, then just Bud, then Bud Bud. Until the Gorkhas put their foot down and only a minimal cow was allowed to remain on the premises.
He loved being loved and retired hurt one time when our long time charioteer cook and Gorkhas agreed that “hamari madam jaisa koi nahi”. He wasn’t expecting it. Beyond the jesting, there was wisdom. “You must spoil your children and spoil your children but they must never get spoiled.” He’d say.
The video jerked into play and pulled me out of my reverie. At last I was face to face with the last name and portrait. We looked at each other and I realised I wasn’t looking for the Great Man at all but for the funny, handsome brave father whose face anyway lives behind my eyes — always.

BHARAT DARSHAN – LADAKH, JAMMU AND KASHMIR, INDIA

India’s Ladakh region faced unprovoked aggression by Red China in 1962 apart from Red China’s illegal occupation of Ladakh territory known as Aksai Chin. Red China’s military occupation of Tibet since 1950s remains a major security threat to India’s Himalayan Frontier.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

8 Overwhelming Things About Ladakh – Part 1

Written by: Akshatha Vinayak
Updated: Wednesday, June 29, 2016, 15:57 [IST]

The thought of life in the Himalayan regions is scary and exciting at the same time. In modernised world, every place is developed into cities with skyscrapers. It is hard to find a place which is not hit by modernisation yet alluring! Somehow, nature has its defence against human strategies; that is why we still have a few regions that are untouched! Among such wonders, Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir is a mystical region which remains pristine even to this day!
Shall we explore some interesting things about Ladakh?!

A Road Trip in Ladakh. Photo Courtesy: FULVIO SPADA

Ancient Trade Route

Ladakh became famous for its strategic location; it connects China, Tibet and Central Asia. Hence it was one of the prominent trade routes till 1960’s. It was when China closed its interaction with Tibet and Central Asia that Ladakh lost its fame and became only a tourist hub.

Peaks near Pangong Tso Lake.  Photo Courtesy: FULVIO SPADA

Mentioned in Greek Literature

Records suggest that Ladakh region was inhabited from the Neolithic age. Interestingly, it is also referred to in several Greek works of Herodotus, Megasthanese, etc.

Locals of Ladakh.  Photo Courtesy: PRAVEEN

Indo-Aryan Origin

Indo-Aryans and Tibetans mostly inhabit Ladakh. Indo-Aryans belong to an ethnolinguistic group from the Indo-European origin. After Tibet’s dispute against China, many immigrant Tibetans made this region their home.

Magnetic Hill.  Photo Courtesy: FULVIO SPADA

Magnetic Hill, a Wonder

A tour in Ladakh is never complete without visiting the Magnetic Hill. It is also known as Gravity Hill which creates a unique illusion.

A Place of High Altitude Lakes

Just imagine the water bodies in an almost dry high mountains. Surprisingly, Ladakh is a region with several beautiful high-altitude lakes. Pangong Tso, Kiagar Tso, Mirapal Tso, Tso Moriri Lake are some famous lakes in Ladakh.

Pangong Tso Lake.  Photo Courtesy: FULVIO SPADA

Sparsely Populated

Unlike other parts of India, Ladakh is not crowded. In fact, it is one of the main reasons why Ladakh has preserved its original state. You will only find a few communities of people and travellers here.

Double-Humped Camels.  Photo Courtesy: KARUNAKAR RAYKER

Have you Heard of Twin-Humped Camels?

For Indians can only imagine big humped camels in the desert regions like Rajasthan. However, Ladakh is a home to some unique species of camels – Twin-Humped (Bactrian) Camels. They are rare and much smaller in size when compared to regular camels.

Maitreya Buddha.  Photo Courtesy: SAURABH KUMAR

Land of Monasteries

Tibetan Buddhists are one of the primary inhabitants in Ladakh. Hence, the region is full of Buddhist Monasteries or Gompas.
We are sure these interesting facts about Ladakh to make you curious to visit this place. Pack your bags and get set for an unforgettable adventure in Ladakh.
Be on the look out for Interesting Things About Ladakh – Part 2

Photos

 © 2016 Native Planet. All rights reserved. A Product of Oneindia.

SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – GREENPEACE vs GMOs

On chicago.suntimes.com

107 Nobel laureates signed a letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs. I worked for Greenpeace USA at its Ann Arbor office from 1986 to 1996 but at that time GMOs was not on the top of our agenda. However, Greenpeace opposed use of chemical pesticides, insecticides and other chemical products that impact natural environment and compromise ecological balance.

The term ‘food’ has to be defined to understand man’s relationship with food. To define food, we may have to recognize the functions performed by food. The functions performed are, 1. Provide substances called nutrients to provide energy and matter that body needs to sustain its metabolic activities, 2. Provide mental satisfaction or psychological contentment in living experience, 3. Provide basis for social interactions and to develop or maintain social relationships, 4. Provide basis for expression of moral, social, and cultural values, and 5. Provide basis for man’s spiritual relationship with Divine or LORD, God Creator.

If food provides material basis for man’s spiritual relationship with God, this spiritual dimension of food has to be included in the discussion about the role of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in human Nutrition.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

By JOEL ACHENBACH June 29 at 12:01 PM

A worker tends to corn crops at the Monsanto test field in Woodland, Calif., on Aug. 10, 2012. Monsanto is the world’s leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate and the largest producer of genetically engineered seed. (Noah Berger/Bloomberg News)

More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world.

“We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against ‘GMOs’ in general and Golden Rice in particular,” the letter states.

The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and, with Phillip Sharp, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as introns. The campaign has a website, supportprecisionagriculture.org, that includes a running list of the signatories, and the group plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning at the National Press Club in Washington.

“We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It’s easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science,” Roberts told The Washington Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause.”

Roberts said he endorses many other activities of Greenpeace, and said he hopes the group, after reading the letter, would “admit that this is an issue that they got wrong and focus on the stuff that they do well.”

Greenpeace has not yet responded to requests for comment on the letter. It is hardly the only group that opposes GMOs, but it has a robust global presence, and the laureates in their letter contend that Greenpeace has led the effort to block Golden Rice.

The list of signatories had risen to 107 names by Wednesday morning. Roberts said that, by his count, there are 296 living laureates.

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world’s agricultural future.”

The letter states:

Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.

Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 – 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

The scientific consensus is that that gene editing in a laboratory is not more hazardous than modifications through traditional breeding, and that engineered plants potentially have environmental or health benefits, such as cutting down on the need for pesticides. A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in May, said there is no substantiated evidence that GMO crops have sickened people or harmed the environment, but also cautioned that such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety.

Opponents of GMOs have said these crops may not be safe for human or animal consumption, have not been shown to improve crop yields, have led to excessive use of herbicides and can potentially spread engineered genes beyond the boundaries of farms.

Greenpeace International’s website states that the release of GMOs into the natural world is a form of “genetic pollution.” The site states:

Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally.
These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non ‘GE’ environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.

Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding. Genetically modified crops started to become common in the mid-1990s; today, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton in the country have been modified to be resistant to insects or tolerant of herbicide, according to government statistics.

Opponents of GMOs have focused a great deal on the economic and social repercussions of the introduction of lab-modified crops. Greenpeace has warned of the corporate domination of the food supply, saying that small farmers will suffer. A Greenpeace spokesman Wednesday referred a reporter to a Greenpeace publication titled “Twenty Years of Failure: Why GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises.”

This debate between mainstream scientists and environmental activists isn’t new, and there is little reason to suspect that the letter signed by the Nobel laureates will persuade GMO opponents to stand down.

But Columbia University’s Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for research on green fluorescent protein, said he thinks laureates can be influential on the GMO issue.

“Is there something special about Nobel laureates? I’m not so sure we’re any more special than other scientists who have looked at the evidence involved, but we have considerably more visibility because of the prize. I think that this behooves us, that when we feel that science is not being listened to, that we speak out.”

Roberts said he has worked on previous campaigns that sought to leverage the influence of Nobel laureates. In 2012, for example, he organized a campaign to persuade Chinese authorities to release from house arrest the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Roberts said he decided to take on the GMO issue after hearing from scientific colleagues their research was being impeded by anti-GMO activism from Greenpeace and other organizations. He said he has no financial interest in GMO research.

Humans have been genetically manipulating fruits and vegetables for thousands of years through selective cultivation. Once we started cultivating wild plants, fruits and vegetables got a lot more colorful. (Daron Taylor,Dani Johnson,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)

Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National Desk. Achenbach also helms the “Achenblog.”

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BHARAT DARSHAN – INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION – STATUS OF HARAPPAN MAN

Before rewriting Indian History with reference to timeline of Indus Valley Civilization, I would like to ascertain status of Harappan Man as determined by skeletal features, particularly Skull of Harappan Man as compared to Skull of Anatomically Modern Man called Homo sapiens sapiens. Harappan Man may belong to unknown archaic Homo sapiens species which suddenly disappeared while population of Homo sapiens sapiens started expanding in all continents.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – THE ORIGIN OF MAN

				SPIRITUALITY SCIENCE – THE ORIGIN OF MANHuman Civilization can be described as the Civilization of Dialogue and the conversation continues from one generation to the next as if man is not a perish…
				View on Bhavanajagat.com	Preview by Yahoo

The problem of origin of man has to be studied along with  problem of origin of language. Most human languages are about 6,000 years old.

Indus era 8,000 years old, not 5,500; ended because of weaker monsoon

JHIMI MUKHERJEE PANDEY TNN May 29, 2016, 01.37 AM IST

A painting on Indus Valley civilization.( TOI photo by Sanjay Hadkar)

KOLKATA: It may be time to rewrite history textbooks. Scientists from IIT-Kharagpur and Archaeological Survey of India(ASI) have uncovered evidence that the Indus Valley Civilization is at least 8,000 years old, and not 5,500 years old, taking root well before the Egyptian (7000 BC to 3000 BC) and Mesopotamian (6500 BC to 3100 BC) civilizations. What’s more, the researchers have found evidence of a pre-Harappan civilization that existed for at least 1,000 years before this.

The discovery, published in the prestigious ‘Nature’ journal on May 25, may force a global rethink on the timelines of the so-called ‘cradles of civilization’. The scientists believe they also know why the civilization ended about 3,000 years ago — climate change.

“We have recovered perhaps the oldest pottery from the civilization. We used a technique called ‘optically stimulated luminescence’ to date pottery shards of the Early Mature Harappan time to nearly 6,000 years ago and the cultural levels of pre-Harappan Hakra phase as far back as 8,000 years,” said Anindya Sarkar, head of the department of geology and geophysics at IIT-Kgp.

The team had actually set out to prove that the civilization proliferated to other Indian sites like Bhirrana and Rakhigarrhi in Haryana, apart from the known locations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan and Lothal, Dholavira and Kalibangan in India. They took their dig to an unexplored site, Bhirrana — and ended up unearthing something much bigger. The excavation also yielded large quantities of animal remains like bones, teeth, horn cores of cow, goat, deer and antelope, which were put through Carbon 14 analysis to decipher antiquity and the climatic conditions in which the civilization flourished, said Arati Deshpande Mukherjee of Deccan College, which helped analyse the finds along with Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

The researchers believe that the Indus Valley Civilization spread over a vast expanse of India — stretching to the banks of the now “lost” Saraswati river or the Ghaggar-Hakra river – but this has not been studied enough because what we know so far is based on British excavations. “At the excavation sites, we saw preservation of all cultural levels right from the pre-Indus Valley Civilization phase (9000-8000 BC) through what we have categorised as Early Harappan (8000 – 7000 BC) to the Mature Harappan times,” said Sarkar.

While the earlier phases were represented by pastoral and early village farming communities, the mature Harappan settlements were highly urbanised with organised cities, and a much developed material and craft culture. They also had regular trade with Arabia and Mesopotamia. The Late Harappan phase witnessed large-scale de-urbanisation, drop in population, abandonment of established settlements, lack of basic amenities, violence and even the disappearance of the Harappan script, the researchers say.

“We analysed the oxygen isotope composition in the bone and tooth phosphates of these remains to unravel the climate pattern. The oxygen isotope in mammal bones and teeth preserve the signature of ancient meteoric water and in turn the intensity of monsoon rainfall. Our study shows that the pre-Harappan humans started inhabiting this area along the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers in a climate that was favourable for human settlement and agriculture. The monsoon was much stronger between 9000 years and 7000 years from now and probably fed these rivers making them mightier with vast floodplains,” explained Deshpande Mukherjee.

Indus Valley evolved even as monsoon declined

They took their dig to an unexplored site, Bhairanna — and ended up unearthing something much bigger. The excavation also yielded large quantities of animal remains like bones, teeth, horn cores of cow, goat, deer and antelope, which were put through Carbon 14 analysis to decipher antiquity and the climatic conditions in which the civilization flourished, said Arati Deshpande Mukherjee of Deccan College, which helped analyse the finds along with Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

The researchers believe that the Indus Valley Civilization spread over a vast expanse of India — stretching to the banks of the now “lost” Saraswati river or the Ghaggar-Hakra river — but this has not been studied enough because what we know so far is based on British excavations. “At the excavation sites, we saw preservation of all cultural levels right from the pre-Indus Valley Civilisation phase (9,000-8,000 years ago) through what we have categorised as Early Harappan (8,000-7,000 years ago) to the Mature Harappan times,” said Sarkar.

The late Harappan phase witnessed large-scale de-urbanisation, drop in population, abandonment of established settlements, violence and even the disappearance of the Harappan script, the researchers say. The study revealed that monsoon started weakening 7,000 years ago but, surprisingly, the civilization did not disappear.The Indus Valley people were very resolute and flexible and continued to evolve even in the face of declining monsoon. The people shifted their crop patterns from large-grained cereals like wheat and barley during the early part of intensified monsoon to drought-resistant species like rice in the latter part. As the yield diminished, the organised large storage system of the Mature Harappan period gave way to more individual household-based crop processing and storage systems that acted as a catalyst for the de-urbanisation of the civilization rather than an abrupt collapse, they say.

On www.huffingtonpost.com
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On www.flickr.com

On toplowridersites.com

On squitel.blogspot.com

On archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com

On www.madrasnow.com

On archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.nl

On www.archaeology.org

On newsgram.com

On us.india.com

On www.slidego.com

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On homeworkitblog.blogspot.com

On stop.pk

On bizlifes.net

On jerryandgod.com

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On scrawlings-in-indian-ink.blogspot.com

On www.bbc.co.uk

On www.bbc.co.uk

On amazingancient.com

On zhuye.asia

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BHARAT DARSHAN – SALUTATIONS TO MARIGOLD

I warmly share the feelings of Ian Cardozo to recognize Marigold flower as Symbol of India’s Remembrance Day to pay our respectful tribute to all soldiers who sacrificed their lives defending our Nation since the day of its birth on August 15, 1947.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

REMEMBRANCE DAY – REMEMBERING INDIA’S WAR DEAD

Would be grateful if you could send this attached article and poem on Remembrance Day and the Marigold to your list of persons and veterans who are in receipt of your e-mails.

Thanks.

Ian Cardozo

Remembrance Day – Remembering India’s War Dead

Soldiers die every day in the line of duty – in the jungles of the North East, in the icy wastes of Ladakh and Siachen, fighting terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and in a myriad other death-defying scenarios. Sometimes when the death is dramatic, it makes news – most often they die in quiet oblivion. Either way, they are soon forgotten, except by the families in whose homes the lights went out when they lost a father, son or brother.

What is important however is to realise that the ultimate sacrifice made by soldiers yesterday, today and tomorrow needs to be remembered

Next year will make seventy years since the 1947-48 Indo-Pak war, and we as yet, do not have a proper war memorial for all who have died in all the wars and counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency operations that we have fought since independence. Families of dead soldiers have been waiting patiently for the war memorial so that they can pray at the site for their loved ones who made the supreme sacrifice. In the meantime many of these families have themselves passed away having waited all these years in vain. The Indian soldier has been told that the memorial is in the pipeline and that this project will be completed in five years time. When did the countdown of five years start and when will it finish? A promise is a promise only if it has a deadline!

In the meanwhile, veterans of the armed forces feel that something ought to be done till then. They have voiced the need for a Remembrance Day and a symbol to remember India’s ‘Unknown Soldier’. The West has the poppy as its symbol of remembrance. Indian veterans feel that no flower could be more meaningful as a symbol of remembrance for the war dead of India than the marigold. They suggest that a day could be nominated as ‘Remembrance Day’ and the marigold as the symbol of remembrance. The poem below encapsulates their sentiments.

Ian Cardozo, 28 March 2016

The Marigold

In Remembrance
Our Marigold, this simple flower
In many ways it meets the hour
of valiant soldiers who in combat die
And to their Maker skywards fly.

From ancient times, this favourite bloom
Has commemorated ‘womb to tomb’
Of life and death in equal measure
And other moments we all treasure

But in time of war, this flower has shed
Her fragrant petals to mourn her dead
For those who fought for you and me
And sacrificed their destiny.

So pause a moment all that care
And offer up in silent prayer
This sacred flower for a soldier’s death
To remember, lest we soon forget
Ian Cardozo, 28 March, 2016

TE3N MOVIE REVIEW – INDIAN ARMY vs SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

TE3N Movie is of personal interest for its theme gives prominence to Hindi word ‘TEEN’ which means numerical number ‘3’. In Indian tradition, Number ‘3’ is culturally of high significance for it describes three dimensions of God; 1. The Creator, 2. The Protector, and 3. The Destroyer. Life is viewed as cyclical flow of three events; 1. Birth, 2. Death, and 3. Rebirth. Each dimension of God is represented by God Personality with given names, Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu, and Lord Shiva representing creation, sustenance, and eventual destruction of all lifeforms.

Number ‘3’ or ‘TEEN’, or ‘TE3N’ is of interest for it has shaped my entire life journey till now. I am third among five siblings and my father who consulted Vedic Astrologer was forced to name me as ‘RUDRA’ and designated Lord Shiva, the Destroyer as my Personal Protector.

At age 3, I was abducted from a busy street in Rajahmundry, East Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh, India. I am the most fortunate survivor of childhood abduction. Within minutes of my abduction, miraculously, a stranger riding bike on the street, decided to intervene and snatched from the hands of my abductors. He rescued me, offered me food, and took me home making several inquiries in the entire neighborhood as I was not able to provide my home address.

TE3N Movie in a Screenshot that lasts for a few seconds, presented to viewers, a selection of photo images of Indian Army personnel. Most viewers can easily recognize the famous image of Surrender Agreement signed in Dhaka on December 16, 1971 signifying India’s Victory in Bangladesh Liberation War. However, most viewers may not recognize the secondary role played by military organization called Special Frontier Force. My 1972 Indian Army Picture ID photo image seen on the Movie screen does not reveal my affiliation to Special Frontier Force. I demand Transparency and Public Accountability in all aspects of Democratic Governance and hence viewers of Movie TE3N and general public have to know the difference between Indian Army and Special Frontier Force.

INDIAN ARMY vs SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

Central Government Act of 1950 known as Army Act 1950 regulates laws relating to the government of Indian Army personnel and defines their chain of Command. Section 34 of Army Act lists offences in relation to the Enemy that are punishable with death. Section 34(c) of Army Act reads: “in the presence of the enemy, shamefully casts away his arms, ammunition, tools or equipment or misbehaves in such manner as to show cowardice;”

Special Frontier Force initiated Liberation of Bangladesh in November 1971 with discrete military action in Chittagong Hill Tracts. This battle plan was code named ‘Operation Eagle’ and I participated in this battle without constraints imposed by Army Act 1950, Section 34(c). Prior to entering Enemy territory to engage in military attack, I had willfully cast away my personal weapon and ammunition without attracting any disciplinary action mandated by Army Act 1950 Section 34(c). The reason is very simple. Army Act 1950 does not govern the conduct of Special Frontier Force personnel. My Indian Army ID does not subject me to conditions and terms imposed by Army Act while I serve to perform military duties assisting Special Frontier Force to accomplish its military mission. Special Frontier Force represents military pact between three participating nations and its members owe their allegiance to their own national authority. For example, Tibetan nationals serving in Special Frontier Force acknowledge Dalai Lama as the Supreme, Independent, Political Authority and Ruler of Tibet. Tibetan nationals serving in Special Frontier Force acknowledge no other Superior Authority. They owe their total allegiance to Supreme Authority of the Dalai Lama. However, Tibetan nationals serving in Special Frontier Force acknowledge authority of other nationals if that authority is vested in them by the Dalai Lama. In principle, Command and Control of Tibetans serving in Special Frontier Force is derived from authority vested by the Dalai Lama and not that of authority or power sanctioned by President of U.S.A., or President of Republic of India.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

NUMBER ‘3’, DESTROYER UNSEALS DOOMSDAY SCENARIO NOT SHOWN IN MOVIE TE3N

TE3N is a suspense thriller set in Kolkata. Industry’s best actors Amitabh Bachchan, Vidya Balan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui coming together in one film.

Story in detail:

It’s been 8 years since John Biswas (Amitabh Bachchan) lost his granddaughter, Angela, in a tragic kidnapping incident that scarred him & his wife Nancy forever. But eight years later, while the world has moved, John hasn’t given up his relentless quest for justice.

He continues to visit the police station where he’s shunned & ignored every day. The only person whose help he seeks is Martin Das (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), an ex-cop turned priest who has one thing in common with John – the death of Angela had a life altering impact on both men.

But then, 1 day, 8 years after that tragic incident, there’s another kidnapping & everything about it echoes of similarity with the kidnapping of Angela. Father Martin is once again dragged into the investigation by cop Sarita Sarkar (Vidya Balan).

HINDI MOVIE TE3N OR TEEN

On wholedude.com

DOOMSAYER OF DOOM DOOMA – REVELATION

On bhavanajagat.com

I use my Indian Army Photo ID image of 1972 to describe my connection with City of Doom Dooma, in Tinsukia District of Assam, India. I unsealed the prophecy shared by Book of Revelation, Chapter 18 that gives detailed account of sudden, unexpected, downfall of Evil Empire in one single day.

On bhavanajagat.com

On bhavanajagat.com

On bhavanajagat.com

On bhavanajagat.com

On bhavanajagat.com

.

My Indian Army Photo ID image taken in 1972 at Doom Dooma serves just one purpose; it unseals Revelation Prophecy and it helps me to announce, “BEIJING IS DOOMED.”

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

TE3N MOVIE REVIEW – TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

In the interests of promoting transparency and public accountability in governance by either Public or Private entities, I am sharing contents of my electronic communication with Reliance Entertainment.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

TE3N Pre-recorded DVD – Photo Images.

Dear Sir,

1.On behalf of Special Frontier Force I am pleased to inform you that a few photo images included in screenshot of Section.15 of TE3N Pre-recorded DVD, PKD: July/2016 belong to our military organization, people currently affiliated to organization under terms and conditions established by Government of India. These photo images shared with general public give people full rights to further use them or distribute them to promote transparency and public accountability in democratic governance.

2. It appears that you have imposed some restrictions on contents of your DVD. Kindly clarify if those restrictions apply to Section. 15 of your DVD which uses Photo images shared by my organization.

3. The Movie TE3N is remake of South Korean film, and inclusion of the photo images of personnel affiliated to Special Frontier Force is of interest. My organization would like to thank members of Production Team who made decision to use these images giving general public or viewers a mistaken notion about their identity. Special Frontier Force represents a military organization distinct from Indian Army while it draws Indian Army personnel apart from other nationals.

4. I warmly appreciate artistic freedom exercised by Producer Sujoy Ghosh and Director Ribhu Das Gupta in producing Movie TE3N. I am sure they would extend the same courtesy and Free Speech Rights to other entities to use some contents of your DVD.

Thanking You,

Yours Sincerely,

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

WHOLE MENDELISM – ORIGIN OF LIFE

On topdefinitions.com

I coined the phrase ‘Whole Mendelism’ to interpret information about Biogeneration and Propagation using the mechanism of reproduction. Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance describe the transmission of hereditary traits from parent species to offspring. However, the story of reproductive success is not ‘Whole’ or complete without including other aspects of ‘Inheritance’.

On www.transcendancing.net

Cells are the building blocks of life. Each living Cell has three basic components, 1. Nucleus or genetic material, 2. Corporeal substance, living matter called protoplasm, cytoplasm, or cytosol which has several kinds of intracellular organelles with membranes, and 3. Limiting Membrane called Plasma Membrane or Biological Membrane with which living Cell separates itself from its surrounding environment including other living cells.

Modern Evolutionary Biologists interpret Theory of Evolution chiefly as that of transmission of genetic traits giving attention to genes and alterations of genetic information or mutation. They do not give attention to Maternal Cytoplasmic Inheritance and Inheritance of Biological Membrane when Mother Cell reproduces to develop Daughter Cells.

Information about Biological Inheritance has to be interpreted in reference to ‘The Law of Individuality’ that governs existence of all kinds; no Mother Cell and Daughter Cells are alike for they always exist as Individuals with Individuality with no choice of their own.

The concept of ‘Last Universal Common Ancestor’ or ‘LUCA’ is not consistent with creative attribute of reproduction that formulates birth of new organisms as Individuals, unique, original, distinctive, and one of their own kind with no exceptions.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
BHAVANAJAGAT.ORG

Was this ancient organism the first life on Earth, or just the luckiest?

By SARAH KAPLAN July 25

A hydrothermal vent spews hot water and white bits of bacterial matter that are blooming in the chemical-rich hot-spring water. (Bill Chadwick, Oregon State University via Reuters)

It was Charles Darwin who first guessed at the mysterious creature that gave rise to all life as we know it.
“Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this Earth have descended from some primordial form, into which life was first breathed,” he wrote in “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

But that primordial form lived and died 4 billion years ago. Its traits — where it lived, what it ate, how it survived the brutal conditions on early Earth — are obscured by time and a scant fossil record. So researchers have tried to learn about the Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA, by looking at its legacy: every creature alive on Earth today.

In a study published Monday in the Journal Nature Microbiology, scientists at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, examined 6.1 million protein-coding genes found in simple, single-celled creatures today. They created phylogenetic (or evolutionary family) trees for each gene and evaluated them to determine whether they were present in both bacteria and archaea — the two oldest domains of life. That process helped them identify 355 genes that were probably present in LUCA, which in turn helped illuminate what this ancient ancestor was: a simple organism that lived off the gases spewing out of deep sea fissures in the Earth’s crust.

Not only was LUCA our most recent ancestor, said co-author Bill Martin, a microbiologist who lead the team. It was probably our first — a find that supports theories that life began around hydrothermal vents.

“We are seeing something for which there was previously no evidence,” Martin said. “Just by asking the right questions of genome data, we were able to obtain some very interesting answers that also mesh well with what we know from geochemistry.”

The genetic reconstruction suggests that LUCA was an autotrophic (“self-nourishing”) organism that lived in a hot, oxygen-less environment; on a scale from “D.C. metro in August” to “stinky, boiling hot spring,” it would have been at the latter end. LUCA had an enzyme that allowed it to exist at extremely high temperatures and was dependent on metallic elements, like iron. It was also equipped for a set of reactions called the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, by which some single-celled organisms use carbon dioxide and hydrogen (rather than oxygen) to acquire energy. The hydrogen for the reaction must have come from geologic sources, they say, indicating that LUCA lived around the cracks in Earth’s crust where that kind of chemistry takes place.

Similar organisms still exist today. Martin and his colleagues write that LUCA is most closely related to a class of bacteria called Clostridia and archaeons known as Methanogens. The former group includes the bacteria that produces botulism; the latter includes organisms that produce methane inside human guts (causing flatulence) and dwell inside hot springs or deep in the solid “rock” of the crust.

Though they come from different domains in the tree of life, both groups use LUCA’s unusual metabolic pathway of turning carbon dioxide and hydrogen into energy. And phylogenetic analysis suggests they “branch deeply in trees of LUCA’s genes,” the scientists say.

LUCA would have been well-suited to the conditions on Earth at the time. Constant bombardment by comets and asteroids would have made the planet almost unbearably hot; even the oceans may have been periodically vaporized. Oxygen would have been hard to come by, since the first photosynthetic organisms hadn’t evolved yet.

Until about 40 years ago, we didn’t know that life could exist in that environment. It was assumed that living things needed light and oxygen to survive.
But in 1977 scientists found strange creatures thriving around hydrothermal vents, and years of research since has revealed organisms hidden in dark caves, buried in Antarctic ice, borne aloft in clouds, and bubbling inside hot springs. These discoveries demonstrated that life is far more pervasive than we thought, and could have lived at a time when we considered Earth inhospitable. Martin and his colleagues say that hydrothermal vents provide the right ingredients for simple, chemically powered life to arise.

“I think that there’s a very direct link between geochemical processes, LUCA … and the first lineages of microorganisms that arose,” Martin said.

The authors acknowledge a hitch in their results: Microbes are infamous for horizontal gene transfer, a process by which cells can acquire snippets of DNA from other organisms. It’s not clear whether the shared genes the team identified were all passed down vertically from LUCA, or distributed by other means.

But Martin said that his team was extremely stringent about what genetic material they examined. Rather than simply looking for common bits of code, they focused on ones that were present in at least two species of bacteria and two archaea — it’s unlikely that horizontal transfer could account for a gene that was so widespread.

The findings “have significantly advanced our understanding of what LUCA did for a living,” writes University of Manchester biologist James McInerney.

But they don’t tell us everything we need to know about the origins of life. Although LUCA was our oldest ancestor and certainly a very early life form, it was not necessarily the first living thing. McInerney points out that LUCA’s heat-loving, autotrophic traits may have meant it was simply the only organism to survive an evolutionary bottleneck, and thus the only one to pass on its genes. To be the parent of all living things, LUCA didn’t need to be the first organism on Earth — just the luckiest.

Other scientists were even more skeptical of the claim that life originated with a deep sea dwelling organism like LUCA. University of Cambridge chemist John Sutherland, who has done experiments reproducing the chemistry that may have given rise to early organisms, believes that living things required ultraviolet light to set the right reactions in motion. He told the New York Times it seems more likely that life got started in land-based pools, then took refuge in the deep ocean during the bombardment of Earth 3.8 billion to 4 billion years ago.

But Martin said that LUCA’s reconstructed genome doesn’t include any of the genetic coding for energy synthesis fueled by light. It only has the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, which is fueled completely by chemical energy.

As for McInerney’s suggestion that other organisms may have preceded LUCA and died out, “yes it’s possible,” Martin said, “but I’m not sure how we would go about investigating any kind of question like that.” Without fossil evidence and no genetic legacy, life before LUCA — if it ever existed — will always be a black box.
“The goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the history of the organisms that we know,” Martin said. “When we’re done with that we can worry about the ones we can imagine.”

Sarah Kaplan is a reporter for Speaking of Science.

On www.ibtimes.co.uk

On lamuerteteniaunblog.blogspot.com

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On openi.nlm.nih.gov

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On www.kidsdiscover.com

TE3N MOVIE REVIEW – VICTORY OVER DEATH

RELIANCE BIG ENTERTAINMENT PVT LTD,

Grandeur,

8th Floor, Veera Desai Road Extension,

Oshiwara, Andheri (West),

MUMBAI – 400053, INDIA.

AND

RELIANCE BIG ENTERTAINMENT PVT LTD,

502, Plot No. 91/94, Prabhat Colony,

Santacruz (E), MUMBAI – 400053, INDIA.

Dear Sir,

Subject: TE3N Pre-recorded DVD, PKD: July/2016, Section.15, Photo Images

Reference: Electronic mail dated July 26, 2016 sent to customercare@reliancehvg.com

1. Reliance Big Entertainment Pvt.Ltd is distributing TE3N Movie DVD exhibiting my portrait in Section.15 of DVD.

2. In Indian traditions of my Telugu or Andhra Family, such a framed portrait seen mounted on a wall in a living room is often used to show respect to a deceased person. TE3N Movie used my photo image to prepare this framed portrait in a manner that indirectly acknowledges the death of person shown in the image. It is reasonable to assume that TE3N Movie Producer and Director have counted me among War Dead.

3. I inform you that I have legal right to distribute contents of TE3N Movie DVD to counteract the impression given to TE3N Movie DVD viewers.

Thanking You,

Yours Sincerely,

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

Ann Arbor, MI, USA. 48104 – 4162.

SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE 

SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE – OPERATION EAGLE – LIBERATION WAR OF BANGLADESH 1971:

Mrs.Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India initiated Liberation of Bangladesh during 1971 with military action in Chittagong Hill Tracts. The battle plan of this military action is known as Operation Eagle. 

MRITYUNJAYA MAHA MANTRA :

Om, Triyambakam, Yajamahe,

Sugandhim Pushti Vardhanam,

Urvaru kamiva bandhanaan

Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritaat.

This hymn in praise of Lord Shiva also known as ‘Triyambaka’ appears in the ancient Vedic Book of ‘Rig Veda’. It expresses a very unique idea or concept about conquering death. This idea has originated in India as this idea relates  to a plant that is a native of India. Man is mortal, and just like a fully ripened fruit falls off from a tree, a man ripe in his age, even when not afflicted by any disease or sickness, would meet natural physical death. This Mantra suggests that a man can become ‘immortal'( a person  who has consumed the divine nectar known as ‘Amrita’) and conquer physical death( Mrityu) by simply severing his psychological attachment to his own life and liberating( Mukshiya) himself from bondage. This Mantra compares the act of cutting attachments to free oneself( Mukti) to secure victory( Jaya) over physical death( Mrityu) to the act of harvesting Cucumbers( Urvaru). The pedicle(Kamiva or the stalk of the fruit) should be severed to separate the fruit from its attachment(Bandhan) to the Vine.

Cucumber, Cucumis sativus is a vine fruit. It is a member of the Cucurbitaceae family. It is native to northwestern India and is being cultivated for thousands of years. The fruit is harvested in the immature stage and is eaten in its unripe, green form. The ripe fruit turns bitter and is not eaten. The fruit is firmly attached to the vine by its stalk or pedicle. The unripe, green fruit would not naturally fall off from the vine. The farmer harvests the Cucumber by cutting off the pedicle( Kamiva). This analogy of severing the connection and freeing the Cucumber also implies that man should not wait until he reaches a very ripe age to conquer physical death. A man who is still at an unripe age or still young in years, just like the unripe and green fruit of Cucumber, should plan to overcome death or his ‘liberation’ from death, by cutting away the stalk or pedicle which symbolizes ‘attachment'( bandhan). The ‘attachment’ in the context of man and his mortality could be described as his ‘Fear of Death’. By overcoming his ‘Fear of Death’, a man’s ‘attachment’ to the ‘Vine of Life’ is severed and he is ‘Liberated’ (Mukshiya) from Death(Mrityu). As long as the ‘Fear of Death’ is alive, man cannot win his battle against Death and mortality. To achieve ‘immortality’, man must conquer his ‘Fear of Death’. Indians seek to praise (Yajamahe) the Lord known as ‘Triyambaka’ for He had declared His victory over Death(Mrityu) by burning away all of His desires and had become Free from all Attachments. Lord Shiva physically demonstrates His Freedom from Attachments by covering His entire body with ashes (Bhasma), the burnt residue of His desires.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WARFARE  :

An Infantry soldier to ‘attack’ his enemy’s position has to physically ‘advance’ towards the entrenched enemy and directly confront the enemy. The ‘assault’ on the enemy’s position or site is carefully planned and the Infantry soldier is physically, and psychologically ready for his task which exposes him to the threat of death. The soldier loosens the attachment called the ‘Fear of Death’ in his march towards the enemy. A man who is tied down by the ‘Fear of Death’ cannot physically move towards his enemy who symbolizes the threat of death.

I took part in the 1971 War of Liberation of Bangladesh. The men of my Unit did not recite the ‘Mrityunjaya Maha Mantra’, but they used its concept in their psychological preparation for War and in their attack on our enemy’s positions. Our success in 1971 over the enemy demonstrates that the concept of breaking the stalk or pedicle is useful to gain victory over the ‘Fear of Death’ before we actually meet the threat of Death.

In my blog post titled “PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN”, dated Monday, September 17, 2007, I described the ability to conquer fear as ‘Courage’. Courage does not mean the absence of ‘Fear’. Rani Padmini truly immortalized herself by her victory over the ‘Fear of Death’. She defeated her enemy’s intention to violate her personal dignity and honor. She could embrace fire for she had overcome the ‘Fear of Death’. She lives in our hearts today as a truly “IMMORTAL” person. She could be described as a person who declared “Victory Over Death.” (Mrityun Jaya).

Dr. Rudranarasimham, Rebbapragada, B.Sc., M.B.B.S.,

Service Number: MS-8466/MR-03277K, Rank: LIEUTENANT/CAPTAIN/MAJOR

Branch: Army Medical Corps

Type of Commission: Short Service Regular Commission/Direct Permanent Commission 

Designation: Medical Officer, South Column Unit, Operation Eagle, 

Headquarters Establishment No. 22  C/O  56  APO.

Related articles

• Operation Eagle – Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 (bhavanajagat.wordpress.com)
• The Battle Plan of Operation Eagle – Permission for Disclosure (bhavanajagat.wordpress.com)
• Operation Eagle – Registration of Public Grievance (bhavanajagat.wordpress.com)
• Operation Eagle – a Letter to Union Minister of State for Defence (bhavanajagat.wordpress.com)
• Operation Eagle – a Demand for Justice From Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India (bhavanajagat.wordpress.com)
• Operation Eagle – Honours and Awards Representation (bhavanajagat.com)
• Special Frontier Force-operation Eagle-gallantry Award (bhavanajagat.com)