jabdakhata

The people who doubt that Netaji ever came back to India by literally rising from the dead have many questions. The first and foremost is of course, if he at all came back why didn't he announce himself? Why did he choose to remain as a recluse, as an ascetic? They claim that it was uncharacteristic of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose not to declare himself, not to become a sensation as he would have always done. They said that they cannot believe that Netaji feared for his life and therefore chose to remain hidden from public. They therefore claim that all the stories about Netaji becoming a sannyasin are false. The sadhus are dummies created by the political class for hoodwinking people. In the context of Gumnami Baba or Bhagwanjee being Netaji, let us try to analyze why he could not appear before the public and only could reveal himself to a select few. There are however very good reasons of Netaji's choosing the life of a recluse, a hermit and not announcing himself to the

According to Dr. Sinha's account he met a eye witness who was a Chinese spy working in a Japanese canteen. He had apparently got wind of the entire plan of the Japanese to send Netaji out to Dairen after feigning an accident. It seems for several days every day the Japanese tutored Habibur Rahman and other associates on Netaji on how the plane crash theory would be propagated. Of course he was not an interested party in the affairs of Netaji, so he had no reason to lie. Another person whom he met gave him an account of Netaji's life in Dairen. Apparently this latter person was working with Chinese Nationalists against the Chinese Communists. He was working as a barber. He saw Netaji along with other Japanese soldiers. He had already known Netaji through his work in Calcutta. So he spoke with Netaji in Bengali. In order to provide evidence this men showed Dr. Sinha a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose dressed up as a Confucian monk. Apparently this is how he had helped Netaji to rem

Coming back to Dr. Satyanarayana Sinha. His writing was published in Hinsdustan Standard and in Anandabazar. According to his claim, he went personally in Formossa (Taiwan) and enquired there about an aircraft accident on 18 Aug in Taipei. The response that he got was that there was no airplane accident in that port on that day. Instead an accident happened about a year back in October 1944. But that did not kill Netaji as it is very evident that he lived till August 1945. That there was no aircraft accident was a fact acknowledged by Mukherjee Commission that was set up in early 2000. Although Mukherjee Commission report was rejected by the UPA government which showed open hostility towards it and although the findings of the commission remained inconclusive on account of an alleged falsification of handwriting and DNA reports by two Government experts and two Government labs, justice Mukherjee had clearly articulated that Netaji did not die in the aircrash. The theory was false.

There is now a renewed attempt to get the facts on Netaji straight. The incidents were deliberately obfuscated and put to burial by the erstwhile Governments on account of vested political reasons. The first Government of India started this deliberate obfuscation because of political and selfish personal interests of the then Prime Minister. The successive governments only tried to perpetuate it as otherwise many names of the ruling party Congress would have been dis-reputed because of their involvement and malafide intentions in the cover up. It was assumed that the public of India had a very short memory. The best way to give a quite burial to Netaji is to let the issue settle down and through clever means of propaganda, concealment and with the help of the brute force of the state administrations any opposition or attempt to find the truth could be overcome. The two puppet commissions - Shah Nawaz in 1956 and Khosla in 1970 were set up for the intention of giving an official stamp

In an artificial neural network, every neuron chosen has certain parameters or weights and biases associated with every feature. So decision making is basically dependent on the weights that we assign to the different parameters and the assigned biases. The weights are adjusted as we move through the back propagation so that the loss is minimized. This is also the way in which a rational choice happens. All our decisions are based on certain evaluation criteria or factors. We already have inherent biases that influence that decision making process. The weights are adjusted according to our perception or analysis of the situation often driven by our ego or emotional conditions. We rationalize our decisions. So in effect there is nothing black and white. Its all shades of gray that we operate with. The world is a complex maze of choices that operate within the realms of gray of varying degree. In choosing our partners to choosing the political party to choosing the religion or for that

There are certain views that are floating around in intellectual circles that Rabindranath Tagore was an anti Nationalist. I am not sure why Nationalism has become a dirty word with some people, esp. with the liberal elites and the media. Nationalism, which conveys deep sense of pride and respect for one's own country is now synonymous with war mongering, chest thumping and positioning one's own country as greater than the others. No harm in taking that position, in fact the dictionary meanings also convey the similar impression. The dictionary definition of Nationalism as per  https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/ nationalism  - begins with "Loyalty and Devotion to Nation". To me that's important, even though the next few lines dilutes the main definition a little bit. Oxford dictionary defines Nationalistic as Having or expressing strong identification with one's own nation and vigorous support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or d

The great poet shared a unique relationship with Ramakrishna. He made repeated demands to him that he be born as his son. Ramakrishna refused saying that his father was a pious brahmin. Girish, in a  drunken state abused him profusely for this refusal, but at times while abusing he prostrated on the dirty ground and made pranaam. When Ramakrishna visited his house the next day, Girish was dejected thinking about the colossal blunder that he did. But Sri Ramakrishna's lack of ego made him exclaim that Ramakrishna was nothing but God. That reinforced his belief. Sri Ramakrishna also told him that he would become purer day by day, people would be amazed by his transformation. Exactly that happened. In his later days people used to visit Girish just to hear about Sri Rmakrishna for hours. He was never tired of speaking about his guru. He used to take dip in Ganga during the Dasahara festival saying that he was not doing it to become pure and get absolved from his sins as others do. H

Now we come to the most important part - the relationship between Girish and Sri Ramakrishna. The lion of the Bengali stage had a tremendous talent. Yet this talent was going haywire owing to the rebellious spirit and the tremendous suffering that the person underwent. This intellectual giant spared nobody in debate and intellectual discussions. His tremendous scholarship and intellect enabled him to have many arguments with eminent scholars of that age, including good natured banters with Swami Vivekananda. But to one person this lion was nothing but a rebellious child. And he turned the actor-director-producer's life to the right course just when he had reached the pinnacle of glory and was about to ruin himself. Sri Ramakrishna had a vision of a naked child holding a glass of wine before Girish had come to him. He always used to have a vision about the real nature of the people of his "inner circle". He saw Narendranath as an ancient sage of the divine realm of t

Krishna did not want the Mahabharata war. Yet he knew that Mahabharata war was inevitable. He knew the consequences and he knew his larger duty as a friend of Pandavas and as an incarnation to set the wheel of dharma running for ages to come. He knew that given the attitude of the Kauravas towards the Pandavas, given their greed and hatred, a peace treaty was not possible. Duryadhana was sure of his superiority. He had Bhisma, Drona and above everybody else Karna to fight for him. Yet one thing he did not have, dharma, on his side. His mother told him before the beginning of the war - yatah dharma tatah jaya, but he did not listen. He was sure that Pandavas with their limited resources esp. after spending 13 years in the forest and in exile would not be able to muster enough manpower to wage a war. Even if they dared to do so, he had his full army, support of many kings whom he had won over a period of time through either good behavior, bribe or treachery, warriors like Bhisma, Drona

This prolific actor director had produced many dramas in a span of thirty years. Some of them are masterpieces. When Girish used to write a play, he also used to act in multiple roles so that the characters became living to him. He could smell them, talk to them, hear them and even see them. Once Swami Brahmananda saw him in a pensive mood after writing Mirkasim. When asked the reason he said that the character would not leave him in peace. He was dreaming Mirkasim and could smell the odour of onion and garlic coming from the character's mouth. He wrote 28 songs in one night for one of his plays. He was untiring in his effort and was demanding as well. His actors and actresses would have to give their best, no compromise. For them Girish was a guru, a living god, who taught them everything by picking them up from the gutter. Aparesh Mukherjee, a noted actor who later married co actor Tinkadi Dasi was one of them. Girish's influence did not go away from Bengal stage anytime so

Can artificial intelligence be ever conscious? That is, can artificially created intelligence surpass human beings? This is an interesting speculation. Many of the leading atheist philosophers, technology heads and scientists think so. In fact they have pointed out the dangers of making an intelligence that may someday become too intelligent to claim power and dominate over its creator, the mankind. There is a perception that it will happen by the turn of this century. The general thought behind is nature given intelligence originates in our brains. More powerful our brains are, more intelligent we become. Humans dominate over animals because of their superior brain power. There is nothing called consciousness other than the one manufactured within the factory of brain and central nervous system, through interactions of neurons. An animal is inferior because its brain is not as developed as that of a human. So if we create intelligence that can perform one task, we can create intelli

There is a beautiful story in the Upanishadas. Once gods, demons and human beings received an instruction from the supreme Brahman on what they should be doing. The word they all heard is "Da", and they interpreted it as their own deficiencies that needed to improve. The gods, belonging to the subtle realms were addicted to sense pleasures. They were asked to exercise "Dama" (beginning with Da. Dama implies control, controlling of the mind and the senses, not giving in to external impulses. The Asuras or the demons heard the word "Daya", implying compassion. They are by nature cruel, mean and selfish and have least consideration for others. The Humans heard it as "Dana" or Gift. The humans, being intermediary between gods and asuras in terms of tendencies were in best position to practice selflessness by giving away what they possessed. This story has a very wide implication. In today's world gods are the powerful, mighty, great men, sc

Girish Ghosh was a Bohemian, in every sense. In his young days he destroyed a Durga idol that was mischievously put in his house by some people to embarrass the family. He chased an astrologer and a pretentious sannyasin away when he discovered their falsehoods. He flaunted his atheism to anybody and everybody. Nobody could argue with him as they were sure to get defeated by his tremendous intellectual acumen. But Girish also had a large heart. He collected a group of young boys and helped anybody who was in need - like takings the unwanted corpse for cremation, providing health care to the sick, providing financial help to the poor and needy and many such selfless activities. He first set up his theater, the National Theater, as an amateur actor and  produced Sadhabar Ekadashi, a satire written by Michael Madhusudan Datta, the famous poet, and Neeldarpan, based on the novel of the same name written by Dinabandhu Mitra against the brutal tyranny and oppression of the indigo planters

An article appeared in Times of India by a certain Mr. Verma on the distinction between Nationalism and Patriotism. Thankfully, unlike other "liberals", the author has not used the term jingoism to denote the Nationalistic fervours. One of course cannot accuse ToI to be either a Nationalistic or a Patriotic Newspaper. It just wants to position itself as a "secular", "liberal" paper and therefore happy to give opportunity to like minded secular and liberals to express their view points, however fallacious they may be. First, on the point of Nationalism. There is a misguided perception prevalent that supporting the country's rights to defend itself from the inimical interests and protecting its interests by raising a pitch against the arch enemies is "Nationalism". Earlier they used to call it jingoism, now mercifully they have toned down the rhetoric as it finds no takers. The author carefully pins the blame on the present Government to