India's UGC to fund jyotissastra

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

That was a handy example of paranoid onesided journalism from UK. A more
balanced report can be assuredly found at India-today which has one of the
world's best journalistic standards.

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20000807/edits.html   (scroll down)

How many people know that India has a partisan approach to government-church
relationship, in which funds of Hindu temples end up in government coffers
to be spent/misused on public works? (This does not apply to minorities and
Hindu missions which claimed as "not Hindu".) If Hindus were to ask for a
refund, govt would go belly up or it has to legalize country liquor to make
more money. Public projects are invariably started with a pUja and Prime
ministers and presidents visit temples prompting people to become more
religious and contribute more, leading to higher collections. But what is
the return for Hindus? I suppose speaking in inflationary terms, British
govt spent more money on Hindu studies in 19th century than independent
India.

Why doesn't anyone question compassionate conservatism when it is a common
knowledge that most of the money will end up with Church, thanks to
propaganda against other religions? While UGC grants only go towards those
who already believe, compassionate funds will most probably go for
proselytizing or subsidize charitable activities of church so rest of the
money can be used for proselytizing.

Is it that only useful parts of the ancient practices(like grammar) must be
studied and other stuff(like ritual) must be discarded? How to separate out
both, when indra, the object of ritual worship is also the chief grammarian?
Astrology has 10% worth of astronomy. The latter is obsolete after
relativity, but if local scholars want to continue or improve their
tradition what is wrong? If an average US citizen today has no time to look
at the moon who is to blame? Is it that social activities like astrology
must be only taken up after achieving 100% opulence but not before? Is there
is a universal formula for social and economic growth of individual nations?
Do people have to only embrace pop culture and pokemons for a social
diversion? Why not apply this formula to their own battling cousins in
Europe? Why is the journalist still harping on the 5000 year old invasion?
Hasn't he updated himself about AMT replacing AIT?

Best regards,
Bhadraiah
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