HC lifts ban on Sanskrit asst profs' recruitment
Rajasthan High Court
Thursday lifted the ban on interviews for Sanskrit Assistant Professor Recruitment-2024, asserting that the selection process should restart based on old rules, requiring candidates to obtain 40% in each written exam.
The division bench of Chief Justice MM Srivastava and Justice Chandra Prakash Shrimali issued the order while hearing a petition filed by Manoj Kumar and others in which the state and RPSC pleaded for the ban on interviews to be lifted.
Additional attorney general GS Gill and advocate MF Baig, representing RPSC, argued that interviews for 200 recruitment posts were in limbo as a result of the stay orders. Advocate Harendra Neel told court that RPSC's Jan 2024 recruitment notice for posts of Assistant Professor Sahayak Acharaya in Sanskrit education mandated that candidates obtain at least 40% marks in each written paper to make the cut for the interview.
However, petitioners claimed the state govt changed the rules on Feb 25,. TNN
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hans India
5 hours ago
- Hans India
PM Modi receives spiritual welcome in Rio with 'Om Gan Ganpataye Namah' performance
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was given a unique and spiritually charged welcome as he arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the 17th BRICS Summit where a local musical ensemble performed the revered Sanskrit mantra 'Om Gan Ganpataye Namah'. The powerful rendition, blending traditional Indian rhythms with Brazilian musical arrangements, featured both male and female vocalists and created an atmosphere of devotion and respect. Prime Minister Modi was visibly moved, standing with folded hands and a smile. Following the ceremonial welcome, PM Modi personally met with the performers backstage. 'It gave us so much hope and joy to see Prime Minister Modi truly enjoying the performance,' one of the artists said. 'He shook hands with each one of us and thanked us personally. It was a very special moment, something we will never forget,' the artists said The spiritual welcome set a symbolic tone for the Prime Minister's four-day visit to Brazil, reflecting India's growing soft power and the global resonance of its cultural heritage. PM Modi's visit to Brazil comes as part of his five-nation diplomatic tour, with the Brazil leg being the fourth. He arrived from Argentina, where he held extensive bilateral talks with President Javier Milei. In Brazil, PM Modi will participate in the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio, followed by a formal state visit to the capital, Brasilia, at the invitation of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Posting on social media platform X, PM Modi wrote: "Landed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where I will take part in the BRICS Summit and later go to their capital, Brasília, for a state visit... Hoping for a productive round of meetings and interactions during this visit." The BRICS group, now expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, continues to shape global economic and political discourse, and PM Modi's participation underscores India's commitment to multilateral cooperation.
The Wire
8 hours ago
- The Wire
'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' and the Way of the Jackal
What is needed is a clear-eyed assessment of our past and present so that we know what it would take to create a truly egalitarian and cosmopolitan culture at home and in the world. Illustration: The Wire, with Canva. It was barely two years ago when the entire country was plastered with posters featuring the G20 logo, accompanied by pictures of a beaming Narendra Modi. The logo was adorned with a blooming lotus, the Bharatiya Janata Party's symbol, and carried this uplifting message: वयुधैव कुटुम्बकम्, ONE EARTH. ONE FAMILY. ONE FUTURE. India's G20 logo. Not unexpectedly, Modi milked this motto for all its worth in his opening remarks at the G20. He reminded the foreign heads of state and other guests that the global conduct of this 'mother of democracy' is 'rooted in the fundamental principle of ' Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,' which means 'world is one family.'' This Sanskrit phrase, वयुधैव कुटुम्बकम्, is second only to the other maha-mantra of Hindu nationalists: एकं सद्विप्रा वदन्ति, the Existent is one, the sages express it variously, a verse from the Rg Veda. Both these phrases are thrown around endlessly – and unthinkingly – to prove the openness, the tolerance, the wholeness, the ecological wisdom, and the cosmopolitanism of the 'eternal' Hindu civilization. No one can deny that the mantra of vasudhaiva kutumbakam expresses a noble, cosmopolitan sentiment: the world would indeed be a better place if we treated it as one big family. If India practiced – today, or ever in its history – what this mantra preaches, no one would deny the nation the moral superiority that it so badly craves. But who in their right minds can deny that the India that treats its non-Hindu minorities as second-class citizens, and its poor and lower orders as dispensable, does not practice what it so piously preaches to the rest of the world. The question is whether vasudhaiva kutumbakam has ever meant what modern-day interpreters claim it means. Was this phrase originally meant as a moral injunction to extend the same love to everyone that one has for one's family? Is there any evidence that the sentiment that the entire cosmos was one big family is something that Hindus have lived by in the past, or live by today? To answer this question, one has to locate vasudhaiva kutumbakam in the context it appears in the sacred literature of the Hindus. One thing is for sure: it is nowhere to be found in any of the Vedas, the gold standard for Hindu beliefs and practices. Some claim to find it in the so-called 'Maha-Upanishad,' which, if it exists, is not a part of the 10 principal Upanishads that Hindus consider canonical. So, where does this mantra come from? It makes its appearance in a story in the Hitopadesha, where a cunning jackal mouths a noble-sounding shloka to get close to a deer that he wants to have for dinner! It was never meant as an injunction to love others as you love your family. It was rather a case of the devil quoting the scripture, or equivalently, a rogue donning a saffron robe and smearing his forehead with a big tilak. The provenance of vasudhaiva kutumbakam in the Hitopadesha was established by professor Brian Hatcher, a scholar of Hinduism at Tufts University in the United States. I first became aware of the Hitopadesha connection after reading his 1994 essay on the subject. This provenance and the plot of the story in which the famous words appear are worthy of closer examination, as they lay bare the danger of taking lofty Sanskrit phrases out of context and turning them into badges of Hindu wisdom and exceptionalism. § As with most of Hindu sacred literature, it is hard to say definitively when and where Hitopadesha was composed; the accepted timeline is anywhere between the 9th and the 15th centuries. According to the authoritative Sanskrit-Bengali-English text edited by Lakshi Narayan Nyalankar and published in 1830, a raja named Sudarsana in Pataliputra invited a pandit by the name of Vishnu-Sarma to teach niti-shastra (ethical and moral precepts) to his wayward sons. (There is no trace of the said raja in historical records, and nothing is known about Vishnu-Sarma either.) Vishnu-Sarma creatively spun didactic stories with deer, crows, jackals, tortoises, vultures, and other rather learned and talkative animals. It is these stories that have come down to us as Hitopadesha, which translates into 'beneficial instruction.' Now for the story: Once upon a time, there was a deer and a crow who were great friends. A jackal spotted the deer and wanted to eat him. He knew that the crow would warn the deer before he could get to him. So, he decided to befriend the duo. The crow, being worldly wise and very smart, was suspicious of the jackal's motives. The crow proceeds to narrate a story of how a crafty cat pretended to be a saintly vegetarian and ended up eating the birds it had befriended. The conclusion the crow drew from this murderous cat was that one should be wary of inviting strangers into one's midst. The jackal got annoyed at such comparisons and said to the crow: 'Listen, my friend, you, too, were once a stranger to this deer. Now look at the two of you. You're bosom friends.' The jackal then proceeds to recite a Sanskrit verse which reads as follows: The narrow-minded ask, 'Is this person one of us, or is he a stranger?' But to those of noble character, the whole world is one family. These high-minded words impressed the deer and the crow, and they, not wanting to appear narrow-minded, allowed the jackal to live with them. The misadventure continues: the deer gets trapped in a farmer's net, with the jackal waiting in the wings; the crow manages to set the deer free; the jackal falls into the farmer's trap and meets his maker. All's well that ends well! The phrase 'to those of noble character, the whole world is one family' – to the udarcharita, all of v asudha is thus a kutumbh – is hardly a lofty call to live ethically and humanely in this story. On the contrary, it is a sly scheme of a schemer. If there is a moral to the story, it is not that the world is a family, but rather, you should not lower your guard when someone makes lofty declarations. § When our nationalists piously cite these Sanskrit words, they are following the jackal's way. Like the jackal, they use high-minded words to further their Hindu supremacist ends while harbouring murderous hatreds. They wow the world with Sanskrit shlokas, while they go about systematically unraveling the multi-faith fabric of this country. Even more problematic – and more consequential — than the bad faith of our current Hindutva regime is how Indian scholars have honed the art of reading all that is worthy of emulation in the modern world back into the Great Tradition of Sanskritic Hinduism. That we can so smoothly slide from the words of a sly trickster in the Hitopadesha into the language of cosmopolitan humanism is the result of a scholarly tradition that began with the 19th-century Hindu Renaissance. In the spirit of anti-colonialism, nationalist intellectuals developed the fine art of stretching Hindu philosophical concepts in all directions to encompass the new and revolutionary ideas born in the modern age. The ancestral concepts were denuded of their original intent and context and filled in with those features of the modern West that were seen as conferring prestige and power – scientific rationalism, equality, democracy, and other such virtues. Thus, the old was turned into the 'mother' of the new, and the new turned into something ever present in the 'eternal' dharma. It is through such sleights of hand that a Hindu Golden Age of an enlightened, democratic, rational (even 'scientific' in the modern sense of the word) polity was constructed. While this Golden Age imagery may help us puff up our chests with pride, it does nothing to make us more enlightened, democratic, or rational. The problem is that these values are not the real values that the people of India live by today or have lived by in the past. To think that the traditional Indian cultural universe was democratic or 'scientific' is no different from interpreting the jackal's 'noble-mindedness' as a message of brotherly love. Unfortunately, this romantic rewriting of traditions extends beyond the Hindu nationalists. The postcolonial Left that battles the cultural after-effects of colonialism in the name of the non-modern masses (the 'subaltern') is also guilty of reading a uniquely wholesome communitarianism and a non-reductionist, holistic rationality in India's indigenous traditions. If the Hindu nationalists are guilty of projecting their cultural chauvinism into history, the postcolonial Left is guilty of projecting its disillusionment with the project of modernity and the Enlightenment into the subaltern life-world. As I argue in my new book, Postcolonial Theory and the Making of Hindu Nationalism: The Wages of Unreason, both are fighting the same battle for a non-Eurocentric 'alternative modernity' that is rooted in indigenous conceptual categories. While the Hindu nationalists trace all indigenous concepts and practices to our Vedic heritage, the postcolonial Left looks for them in the local knowledge traditions of the marginalised, as if the two evolved in water-tight compartments. The quest for indigeneity, whether from the Right or the Left, can only lead to nativism and claims of exceptionalism. What is needed is a clear-eyed assessment of our past and present so that we learn to distinguish between the jackal's way and what it would take to create a truly egalitarian and cosmopolitan culture at home and in the world. Meera Nanda is a historian of science. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
Scroll.in
9 hours ago
- Scroll.in
Struggle to ‘defeat Hindi imposition' transcended state boundaries: MK Stalin after Thackeray rally
The struggle to ' defeat Hindi imposition ' has transcended state boundaries, said Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Saturday. His statement came hours after a ' victory rally ' held in Maharashtra by Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) chief Uddhav Thackeray and his cousin Raj Thackeray, president of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, to mark the state government's rollback of the policy to teach Hindi as a third language in primary schools. 'The language rights struggle, waged generation after generation by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the people of Tamil Nadu to defeat Hindi imposition, has now transcended state boundaries and is swirling like a storm of protest in Maharashtra,' Stalin wrote in a social media post. Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of acting 'lawlessly and anarchically', the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said the Maharashtra government was forced to withdraw the policy due to fear of the 'people's uprising'. The BJP is part of the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra. It also comprises the Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction and the Nationalist Congress Party group led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. 'The enthusiasm and powerful oratory of the victory rally held today in Mumbai under the leadership of brother Uddhav Thackeray against Hindi imposition fills us with immense excitement,' said Stalin. He added that the Union government, which he claimed prioritises the promotion of Hindi and Sanskrit, does not have answers to Raj Thackeray's questions about the third language being taught in schools of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray had announced the joint rally on June 27 to protest against the Maharashtra government's proposal to teach Hindi as the third language to students from Class 1 to Class 5 in Marathi and English medium schools. However, on June 29, the state government withdrew its resolution. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also announced that a new committee had been formed to advise the state on implementing the National Education Policy's three-language formula. Following this, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena decided to hold a joint 'victory rally'. Stalin said on Saturday that the 'uprising in Maharashtra will open' the eyes of those who are 'unaware of the history of numerous Indian languages being destroyed due to Hindi imposition'. 'Won't allow discrimination against Tamil Nadu' The Tamil Nadu chief minister also once again criticised the Union government for withholding funds under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme for the financial year 2024-'25 to Tamil Nadu. 'We will not allow the discrimination in fund allocation for Tamil Nadu,' said Stalin. The Samagra Shiksha scheme, implemented in 2018, is the scheme through which the Union government provides support for elementary and secondary school education. It resulted from the merger of three schemes: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for universal elementary education, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan for secondary and higher secondary schools and Teacher Training Education such as the District Institutes of Education and Training. In April, the Union education ministry had told the Rajya Sabha that Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal received no funds under the central education scheme for 2024-'25. Data shared in the Upper House by Minister of State for Education Jayant Choudhary showed that while Kerala was allocated Rs 328.90 crore, Tamil Nadu Rs 2,151.60 crore and West Bengal Rs 1,745.80 crore from the Centre for the current fiscal year under the scheme, no funds had been released to these states as of March 27. Choudhary said that funds under the scheme, which is used for educational components like textbooks, infrastructure upgrades and teacher salaries, were released to states and Union territories based on several criteria. The halt in funding to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal comes against the backdrop of these states refusing to comply with the PM Schools for Rising India, or PM SHRI, scheme. The centrally-sponsored scheme aims to upgrade the infrastructure of schools managed by central, state or regional bodies. However, to avail the scheme's benefits, state governments must first sign a memorandum of understanding with the Centre to implement the 2020 National Education Policy. The 2020 National Education Policy proposes major changes to the curricular structure for school education, claims to promote flexibility in choosing academic streams and emphasises on using the mother tongue as a key medium of instruction in primary school, among other measures. The policy has been criticised by sections of the academic community, for encouraging the privatisation of public institutions. It was also criticised for creating numerous 'exit' options for students, which opponents said would encourage dropouts. Tamil Nadu has repeatedly expressed opposition to the three-language formula in the National Education Policy. The state government said it will not change its decades-old two-language policy of teaching students Tamil and English. The three-language formula refers to teaching students English, Hindi and the native language of a state. It was introduced in the first National Education Policy in 1968 and was retained in the new policy introduced in 2020.
