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| Wednesday, 31 March 2004 |
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India's Past Perfect, Present Continuous and Future Continuous by Rohan Jayetileke India is in the throes of a general elections with the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party led by incumbent Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee wooing the electorate to govern the country. Walls of cities are not daubed with electioneering posters or are there any character assassinations or vituperative outbursts at election meetings. The battle is restricted to the big cities and the 86 per cent of the one billion population of India is living in rural areas and the rural folk toil and moil on the agricultural fields and other industries unmindful of the elections. In the big cities there are large bill boards with the slogans, - India Shining ..... Proud to be an Indian. The former gives statistics of development under the BJP and the programmes on the pipeline. The latter gives why it is a pride to be an Indian. This writer being enthused with the latter, did study the heritage of India in the libraries, and also surfing the thousands of web site to find justification for the claim - Pride to be an Indian. The claim is justified as authenticated by the following irrefutable data. From the oldest to the fastest to the finest, India is home to these facts and more. India is the world's largest, oldest, continuous civilization; India never invaded any country for the last 1,000 years; India is the world's largest democracy; Varanasi, also known as Benares, was called the ancient city when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 BC and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today; India invented the number system. Zero was invented by the mathematician Aryabhatta; The world's first university was established in Takshashils in 700 BC. More than 15,000 students from all over the world studied more than 50 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education; Sanskrit is the mother of all the European languages. Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software, a report in Forbes Magazine July 1987; Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2,500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in the world civilization; although modern images of India show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India's wealth. The art of Navigation was born in the river Sindhu, India's 6,000 years ago. The very word navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word Navgatih. The word Navy is also derived from Sanaskrit Nou. Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365, 258756484 days: the value of 'pi' was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, long before the European mathematicians: Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus came from India. Quadratic Equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers of the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 1053 (10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5,000 BC during the vedic period. Even today the largest used number is Tora 1012 (10 to the power of 12; IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Indian Prof. Jagdish Bose and not Marconi; The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra, India: According to Saka King Rudraman One of 150 BC, a beautiful lake called Sudharshana was constructed on the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya's reign in India; The game of Chess (Shatarnja or Astha Pada) was invented in India; Sushruta is the father of surgery 2,600 years ago, he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like caesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery. The usage of anaesthesia was well-known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipment were used. Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, aetiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many medical texts of old. When many cultures were only nomadic first dwellers over 5,000 years ago, Indians established Harappa and Mohendajaro cultures in Sindhi Vallet (India Valley civilization). Recent studies have revealed these sublime and developed cultures are datable to even 50,000 years before the Christian era. The four religions born in India Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikkhism, are followed by 25 per cent of the world's population: The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC; India has the largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world; India is the only country in the world with the largest English speaking population; India is the only country other than US and Japan, to have built a super computer indigenously: Indian expatriates in America are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America, even faring better than the whites and the natives: There are 3.22 million Indians in the US (1.5 per cent of the population). And 38 per cent doctors in US are Indians, 12 per cent scientists are Indians, 36 per cent of NASA scientists are Indians, 34 per cent of Microsoft employees are Indians (USA); 28 per cent of IBM employees are Indians,17 per cent INTEL scientists are Indians and 13 per cent XEROX employees are Indians. Famous Indians The co-founder of Sun Microsystems is Vinod Khosla. The creator of the Pentium chip (90 per cent of today's computers run on the Pentium) is Vinod Dham. According to the latest report in Fortune Magazine USA, Azim Premjit, the CEO of Wipro Industries is the third richest man in the world. The Sultan of Brunei is at the sixth position now. The founder and creator of Hotmail (the world Number One web-based e-mail programme) is Sabeer Bhatia. The president of AT and T-Bell Labs (creator of programming languages such as C, C plus plus, Unix to name a few) is Arun Netravali. The General Manager of Multinational Hewlett Packard is Rajiv Gupta. The new Microsoft Testing Director of Windows 2000, responsible for ironing all initial problems is Sanjay Tejwrika. The Chief Executives of Citi Bank, Mckensey and Stanchart are Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupata and Rana Talwar. In mid February Chief Minister of Tamilnadu Madame Jayarani Jayalalitha, from her office in Chennai, electronically unveiled a plaque in Mahindra City, base of Mahibdra and Mahindra Automobiles conglomerate, 10 miles off Chennai, to set up the world largest Information Technology (Computer) university on a 128 are site to accommodate 25,000 students. Observations on India Now multinationals the world over based their computerised head offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Chennai (outsourcing) as India is the only country with a high IT literary skills in the world. The growth rate over the last four years stood at 6 per cent and projected to reach 9 per cent so that by 2056 India will be a super economic power in the world. Albert Einstein, the atomic scientist and the inventor of the Theory of Relativity said, "We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." Mark Twain, noted, "India is the cradle of the human race, the birth place of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grandmother of tradition". The French scholar Romain Rollan wrote, If there is one place on the face of the earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. "Hu Shin, the former Chinese ambassador to the US, explained, "India conquered and Dominated China culturally for twenty centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. In the posters - Pride to be an Indian - the perspective that is hidden in Indians need an Indian to lead the country and note one of Italian parentage. The surmise of this writer with his extensive exposure to India is, Indians may leave their country for many reasons, but wherever they may be no power or force can take the Indian out of the Indian. |
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