OCHS Weblog

Source: http://www.ddinews.gov.in/International/International+-+South+Asia/asa.htm

Source: http://indiaview.wordpress.com/

By Amrit Dhillon in Cochin, Kerala

Adorned with gold, and carrying a Hindu deity on his broad back, Babu the elephant plays a central role in religious ceremonies across the Indian state of Kerala.

	Out of chains: After 36 years’ work, Babu the elephant will be pampered in retirement

Now aged 45, he is approaching retirement after a hard working life - and, like many of the 650 working elephants in the state, there have always been fears for his future.

Elephants cost £340 a month to maintain, a great expense when the average monthly wage is only £50, and many owners cannot afford to look after their beasts when they finally stop working.

But help is at hand. India’s first retirement home for elderly elephants opens next month inside a tranquil forest at Kottur, outside the state capital Trivandrum, where the colossal beasts can spend their twilight years in dignity.

Paid for by the state government, the home will buy old elephants for a nominal sum from owners who cannot or will not look after them properly.

“We want them to enjoy their last years after being such good workers without worrying where their next meal will come from,” said V.S. Verghese, Kerala’s chief wildlife warden who is in charge of the scheme.

“They’ll get special treats like big slabs of rice, a course sugar called jaggery, and honey. And vets will be on hand.”

The home will consist of 1,000 acres of woodland where each of the elephants can roam freely, as well as having its own personal pen. There, they will be fed, watered, bathed and massaged with large pumice stones and coconut husks by dedicated mahouts (elephant grooms) to keep their blood circulation healthy.

The mahouts will also mix special Ayurvedic tonics from local herbs, which can be consumed as pills or rubbed into their skin as a balm. Elephants, including Babu, suffer greatly from allergies.

Mr Verghese describes the home as “like a wildlife sanctuary”, with plenty of trees, reeds and bamboo where the elephants can forage. The surrounding countryside is mostly rubber plantations and eucalyptus forests.

“A temple elephant I saw a few months ago died a painful death,” said Ganesh Kumar, chairman of the Cochin elephant owners’ association.

“He was horribly bloated and covered in a rash. He died without any care. If this home works out, we can prevent such miserable deaths.”

The first 30 beasts will move into the sanctuary in May, but officials say there is plenty of room for expansion when more arrive. The home will also be open - for a small fee from owners - to elephants who are still working but are in need of a month’s holiday to rejuvenate themselves.

“I’ve seen old elephants who are very sick and need medical care but their owners don’t call the vet because it’s so expensive,” said Babu’s mahout Vinod Kumar.

“Elephants can drink up to 60 bottles of glucose! The home will be a good option for them.”

Described by Mr Vinod as a patient, hard-working and good-natured animal, Babu now amuses a crowd of awestruck schoolchildren by relieving himself prodigiously.

It has been a long day, standing in a truck to travel 50 miles to the temple in Cochin. Elephants are an integral part of Keralan culture.

The southwestern state, best known for its verdant scenery and tranquil backwaters, has 650 captive elephants - the highest number of any Indian state. No religious procession is complete without one (or several) to provide some glamour and solemnity.

In recent years, their popularity has surged and the picturesque port of Cochin is dotted with posters announcing the arrival of particularly famous elephants as though they were rock stars.

The most charismatic beasts even have fan clubs and are judged in beauty contests.

“Now even churches and mosques have taken to parading elephants around. People are mad about elephants,” said Jose Louise, senior programme officer with the Wildlife Trust of India, which first proposed setting up the home.

A handful work in logging but as cranes have taken over, the vast majority of elephants are used in temples. Their work is gruelling.

During ceremonies, they often stand in the scorching heat for hours on end and walk long distances from one temple to another. They are also great symbols of social prestige. They require 880lb (63st) of fodder a month, as well as medical aid and three mahouts each.

Vivek Menon, the trust’s executive director, quotes a famous Kerala saying that alludes to this ruinous expense: ‘if you have an enemy, give him an elephant’. Wildlife advisers say the animals should work only eight hours a day and avoid the searing midday sun. Some respect these guidelines, others do not.

“Some owners are callous. They let their elephants die painful deaths, unwilling to spend money on them once they are too old or weak or ill to work. I know cases of elephants being fed urea by their owners,” said Mr Menon.

When the old age home opens, at least it will provide a safety valve for those who are fed up and grumpy with being overworked.

“We want to save them from the cruelties not just of old age but the cruelties of their owners who show old elephants no gratitude for a lifetime’s labour,” said Mr Verghese.

Source: http://www.hinduonnet.com/holnus/002200804190321.htm

Source: http://telegraphindia.com/1080425/jsp/frontpage/story_9186161.jsp

After the very successful play  - a sell out in fact - at the beginning of April, staged to raise awareness and funds for the OCHS, our Friends of the OCHS team in Harrow are staging the following:

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/07/stories/2008040758871000.htm

From The Sunday Times, March 30, 2008

By Dean Nelson in Delhi

The assembled businessmen wore black ties and listened politely to a string quartet under crystal chandeliers in a magnificent ballroom. The room buzzed with talk of the old country, but more importantly with commercial speculation about their new domain. What was to be their next takeover target in the local economy?

It could have been a sepia print of the British East India Company, which effectively ruled India as a private colony for 100 years, but a closer look revealed a different kind of burra sahib. More Chandigarh than Cheam, the men gathered at the Grosvenor House hotel in Mayfair, central London, last year were the representatives of a new Indian raj, powerful men intent on buying up chunks of the homeland of their old imperial masters.

They included the host Subodh Agrawal, dealmaker for some of India’s tycoons, and the Hinduja brothers, fourth on The Sunday Times Rich List. An aide to Lakshmi Mittal, the world’s wealthiest steel baron, was there, along with the Birlas and the Jindals, representing India’s oldest industrial families. Britain’s new Indian aristocracy – such as Mike Jatania, who bought Yardley cosmetics – were also in attendance.

They have been called the Indian Billionaires Club and last week one of its celebrated members pulled off the most symbolic corporate takeover in Indian history.

When Tata, the Mumbai-based conglomerate headed by Ratan Tata, bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford last week, a nation still reeling from a few cannabis-infused bhang lassis over the Hindu festival of Holi extended the party. The £1.15 billion takeover was worth far more than the money paid. The acquisition of Jaguar – a symbol of British style and engineering superiority, albeit until last week owned by Americans – was a moment of national triumph almost matching India’s victory in last year’s Twenty20 Cricket World Cup.

Tata has been buying British since 2000 when it purchased Tetley, which had been selling Indian tea to the UK since 1856. Last year it completed the £6.2 billion takeover of Corus, the British steel giant, in the biggest foreign takeover by an Indian company.

Its purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover was smaller in scale but greater in symbolism. The Indians had bought the makers of James Bond’s new wheels, Inspector Morse’s classic and the workhorse of the British Army for a song. “It took a company from a former colony to come to the rescue of a beleaguered British brand,” said The Times of India with undisguised pride.

Tata is not the only Indian firm on a buying spree in Britain. In the past year Vijay Mallya, the airlines and breweries magnate, has bought Whyte & Mackay, the Scottish distiller which makes the Dalmore and Isle of Jura single malt whiskies as well as Vladivar vodka.

Last week Hichens Harrison, Britain’s oldest independent stockbroker, announced that it was considering a £49m offer from Religare, a Mumbai-based stockbroker which wants to cash in on the Indian rush to buy British companies.

The deep pockets of the reverse colonists is revealed in the bidding for Jaguar. Had Tata not been successful, next in line was Mahindra, its Indian rival.

Britain is beginning to look like a significant outpost in a new Indian empire.

WHEN Agrawal told executives of an American finance company in 2001 that Indians would be involved in $10 billion takeovers in Britain by 2010, his audience had laughed. Spurred on by their disdain he set up Euromax Capital in London in 2003 to finance Indian takeovers and has already become a multi-millionaire on the back of it.

Britain is the beneficiary of the startling growth of the Indian economy, which is often overshadowed by the attention focused on that of China. Last year India’s economy grew at 9% and Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, has predicted that the size of the country’s gross domestic product will outstrip that of Britain between 2015 and 2020 if it continues at the same rate. Germany and Japan would be overtaken in the following decade.

China has spent more on global takeovers than India – in 2007 it bought 84 companies for $21 billion, compared with India’s 110 deals for $17 billion – but when it comes to Britain, the shared history of empire gives India a clear advantage. It is now the third biggest investor in the UK after the United States and Japan.

Agrawal said this latest Indian takeover spree had been made possible by the immigration of senior Indian bankers, lawyers and entrepreneurs in the 1980s and 1990s. Mittal, the Hinduja brothers, Naresh Goyal, the airline boss, and Anil Agarwal, the aluminium tycoon, made vast fortunes in Britain during this period.

“Mittal brought India and Indians to the forefront of the international stage and turned us from being perceived as second-class citizens to emerging as first among equals,” said Agrawal.

“Indians are most at home in Britain, especially London. The English language, friendly culture and familiar legal and commercial environment make it far easier to consummate deals here than anywhere else. Indians regard a UK acquisition as the biggest trophy prize.

“I don’t know if this can be termed a ‘reverse raj’ – I’d rather call it a coming home to the empire.”

There is more to the new Indian raj, however, than just money. There is culture and sport, too. The British Council in Delhi, which once celebrated English literature, music and drama, has been downgraded. It is closing much-loved libraries of Chaucer and Shakespeare around the country and instead selling English courses and A-levels to the young Indian tycoons of tomorrow.

The council also uses almost entirely British-Indian artists to promote the cultural life of the UK. The impression is that Britain is being sold as an Indian satellite – don’t be afraid, it’s just like India really.

Even cricket, the game that Britain’s high-handed sahibs introduced to Indians only to “teach them a lesson”, is slipping away from the grip of Lord’s. The new Indian Premier League has dangled previously unimaginable sums in front of the world’s best cricketers and the England authorities are being forced to fight a rear-guard effort to keep their stars in the domestic game.

As England cricketers consider flying out to play for new masters, India’s tycoons and Bollywood’s most glamorous film stars are preparing to come the other way.

At the height of the British empire, its officials used to escape the oppressive heat of Calcutta in the summer by decamping en masse to Shimla in the cool of the Himalayan foothills. Now the great and good of India are using London as their “summer capital” for the same reasons.

Karan Johar, India’s leading television interviewer and media player, and Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan, the screen heart-throbs, are part of an annual migration to Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Mayfair which sees them arrive in June and stay until the monsoon brings relief a month later.

Sunil Mittal of Airtel, India’s biggest mobile phone operator, will be there along with K P Singh, the world’s richest property developer, the Birlas, the Ambanis, and the Ruias of Essar, all of whom have London homes.

According to Agrawal, “living in London is like living in a cleaner version of India”.

The shift in power has been noticed by Britain’s own Indian population, which migrated here in the 1960s to escape Indian poverty. In an echo of the time when Britons stationed in the subcontinent sent their children back to the homeland to be educated at public school, British-Indians are now sending their children to Indian boarding schools to make sure they are well placed to thrive in the new raj. At Woodstock, the 150-year-old boarding school built by the British in the old hill station of Mussoorie, teachers say they have had a sharp increase in applications from British-Indians who want their children to experience the country, absorb its culture and be prepared for a new future in India.

Jagjit Johal, 48, had been in Britain for more than 20 years and worked overseas for an investment company. But when he finished his last posting, he decided to return to India to make sure his sons were fluent in Hindi, unfazed by India’s street-level poverty and able to prosper in the motherland.

“We wanted them to be familiar with the Indian environment, the cultural aspect. The education standards are higher in India, it’s more rigorous. We’re British citizens, and it is home in so many ways, but with all of these mergers going on, the Indian-British community can play a much bigger role. As families with both cultures we can understand the subtleties and have a better chance of succeeding,” he said.

FOR many Indians, their country’s new-found wealth and the power over its old colonial masters bring with them a sense of a natural order being reestablished.

Pavan Varma, a former Indian diplomat and now head of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in Delhi, said there was a sense of “historical vindication” in India at its return to global influence after centuries of submission.

“When the first British envoy came to meet Emperor Jahangir in the 17th century, he was not allowed to sit in the royal presence, he had to stand,” he said. “Then India controlled 24% of the world’s gross domestic product and a quarter of international trade.

“Now there’s a sense of pride that the wheel of history is changing. The biggest success of colonialism was the colonisation of our minds. It takes a great deal of time to reverse that, but there is a reversal.

“Indians take pride that the relationship is now one of equality, that India is an emerging power and Britain is a former power.”

From, Blueprint, Staff News for the University of Oxford  • March 2008

Oxford academics collaborate in every conceivable ield with experts in institutions around the world. When those institutions are closer to home, however, the relationship is sometimes more formally recognised with the designation ‘Recognised Independent Centre’ (RIC).  RICs are educational charities based in the Oxford area which, while not part of the University, are recognised for their contribution to University research and teaching in contemporary and historical areas of interest. The formal designation was created in 2006. Five institutions have so far been awarded RIC status: the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies; the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies; the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies; and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

A student at an RIC is not a member of the University but can apply to use its facilities, and of course libraries, manuscript collections and ideas can all be shared.  Some academics hold joint appointments between University faculties and independent centres. Dr Adeel Malik, for example, is Globe Fellow in the Economics of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) and a Fellow at the University’s Department of International Development. He divides his time between the two institutions.

OCIS provides a meeting point for the Western and Islamic worlds of learning  – a fact relected in its new building (above, currently under construction), which is an architectural synthesis of the traditional Oxford college and classical Islamic structure. Researchers at the Centre have, for example, studied the theory and practice of Islamic inancial management and the housing needs of British Muslims alongside the UK Housing Corporation. Dr Malik himself specialises in the study of economic development in the Muslim world, using established social science methods. ‘OCIS is part of the de-centralised tradition of Oxford University: we aim to complement, rather than compete with, University teaching,’ he says.

The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (OCHJS), based at scenic Yarnton Manor, has offered an MSt in Jewish Studies since 2003, and some students are now fully matriculated into the University. The centre is academic in nature rather than religious. ‘Our academic activities are part of the University’s activities,’ says Professor Peter Oppenheimer, President of OCHJS.  ‘We focus on the language, culture and history of Jewish Studies. There is no synagogue here, and the study of the Jewish faith is not our primary concern.’ The Bodleian Library in fact sought its irst Hebraica and Judaica Librarian appointment through the OCHJS. Currently, Dr Piet Van Boxel holds this post jointly with that of librarian of OCHJS’s Muller Memorial Library.  As well as participating in University-wide research and teaching, the RICs interact with each other. Shaunaka Rishi Das, the Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS) since its inception in 1997, was mentored by Professor David Patterson, the founder of the OCHJS.  The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies (OCBS) specialises in Buddhist text, thought and social history, and in May will receive a visit from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  OCBS also works in conjunction with the University’s Department of Psychiatry through the Oxford Mindfulness Centre.  Traditional Buddhist practices are successful in some instances of treating depression, and a combination of ancient and modern techniques called ‘Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy’ has been approved  by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

RICs are not conined to centres interested in world religions. The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies is dedicated to the study of social science aspects of energy issues, in particular the economics of petroleum, oil, gas, nuclear power, and solar and renewable energy. Its aim is to promote dialogue between consumers and producers, government and industry, and academics and decision-makers in order  to gain a more informed understanding of the factors that inluence international energy markets.

Whatever its specialist interest, each RIC helps to link distinct communities and cultures with scholars, the government, and the media in a fast-paced critical dialogue.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_shining_US_headhunts_Hindi_teachers/articleshow/2890036.cms

http://www.indianewengland.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=3210F1F970D447279FF1211E284D8B95

LONDON, ENGLAND, March 22, 2008:

Click on the URL below to see a set of photos on the Holi festival as celebrated across India.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7309258.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7250316.stm

BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, February 20, 2008: Indian archaeologists say they have found remains which point to the existence of a city which flourished 2,500 years ago in eastern India. Discovered at Sisupalgarh, near Bhubaneswar, capital of Orissa, the items found during point to a highly developed urban settlement. The population of the city could have been in the region of 20,000 to 25,000, the archaeologists claim.The excavations include 18 stone pillars, pottery, terracotta ornaments and bangles, finger rings, ear spools and pendants made of clay.

R.K. Mohanty of the department of archaeology, Deccan College, Pune, who is one of the two researchers involved in the excavations, said “The significance of this ancient city becomes clear when one bears in mind the fact that the population of classical Athens was barely 10,000.” Mr. Mohanty, along with Monica Smith of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, has been carrying out limited excavations at the site every year since 2005.

Theme: Identities: Reflections on Global Gujarati Communities

Date: 23rd - 24th May, 2008, Venue: University of Toronto (St. George Campus), Canada

Keynote Speakers: Professor Raymond B. Williams (Wabash College), Professor Ali Asani (Harvard University), Professor Radhika Desai (University of Manitoba)

From ancient times to the present people have sought to understand their identities both from an individual as well as collective perspective. In so doing, not only do they define who they are, but also who they are not. In the mass migrations of the last 200 years, millions of people have left their ancestral homelands and cultures to settle in new places.

This conference will explore the connections between ancestral homelands and new belongings, and focus on the complexities of shaping and reshaping linguistic, cultural and religious identities.

The preliminary programme is now available online at: http://www.gujaratstudies.org/index_files/page0012.htm

Further details and registration forms are available from www.gujaratstudies.org . Registration Deadline: 17 March 2008

http://www.ifpindia.org/ecrire/upload/press_ifp_website/tamil_brahmi_21nov07.jpg

Oxford researchers have received a £1.9 million grant for the development of the study of the cognitive science of religion – a scientific approach to why humans believe in God and other issues around the nature and origin of religious belief.

The award has been made by the John Templeton Foundation to the Oxford Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind. It will be used to draw together and promote the latest scientific ideas about the meaning of religion and its origin in the human mind.

The cognitive sciences include all aspects of the study of the mind and intelligence, ranging across fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, neuroscience, linguistics and computer sciences. They offer a complex set of tools for looking at the full range of human behaviour.

Dr Justin Barrett, a psychologist who has been at the forefront of the development of the cognitive science of religion, will be playing a lead role in the new study. He said: ‘Cognitive science can help to explain the origin and nature of human religion. For example, developmental psychology has been instrumental in determining that belief in religion seems to be an integral part of human nature – it is found across all cultures and is something that we grasp from a young age.

‘The cognitive science of religion allows us to take a subtler approach to questions such as the alleged divisiveness of religion – looking at whether the conflicts associated with religion are a product of human nature itself.’

‘The next step therefore is to look at some of the detailed questions – which religious beliefs are most common, and most natural for the human mind to grasp. The exciting questions in this field are in the details – how does the mind vary in its response to different forms of religion, such as polytheism and monotheism for example, and what is the relationships between religion and evolutionary biology – is religion a part of the selection process that has helped us survive or merely a by-product of evolution?’

Professor Roger Trigg, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Theology Faculty and Co-Principal Investigator for the study, said: ‘Religion has played an important role in public life over the last few years and the debate about the origin of religion, and how it fits into the human mind has intensified. This study will not prove or disprove any aspect of religion, it will allow us to have a more intelligent and informed debate and to support this with a vastly expanded and improved supply of evidence – particularly the quantitative skills which tend to be less common amongst theologians.’

The grant will also provide training for scholars to build up scientific and quantitative skills and support a number of seminars and workshops. A large part of the award, £800,000, will be used to run a ‘small grant competition’ providing 41 grants to support work by a range of scholars carrying out diverse individual research projects that will be the building blocks of the further development of the field.

The Independent, Tuesday, 12 February 2008
As India’s economy grows, the middle class is hunting for the latest waysto flaunt its affluence. Andrew Buncombe reports from Delhi on the growing popularity of the grape in a nation more famous for its tea

A guest sips wine at the Chateau Indage Chantilli wine festival in Mumbai in 2005

By the flickering light of the restaurant’s candles, suspicious particles seemed to be floating in the wine the waiter had just poured. It was hardly an auspicious start to the evening.

But in an instant came the explanation. There was nothing wrong with the wine; these were pure flakes of 24-carat gold added to the Californian chardonnay by the manufacturer simply for additional “wow factor”. And it worked. The group of well-dressed men and women laughed and smiled and lifted their glasses towards the light, better to see the wine sparkle.

In India, wine is being drunk as never before. This year, as for the past half-dozen years, sales are expected to increase by at least 35 per cent and perhaps even more. Partly fuelled by India’s newly buoyant consumerism and partly by the increasing numbers of people travelling abroad for business or holidays, wine has rapidly become the latest symbol of affluence and supposed sophistication for the country’s newly wealthy middle-classes. Like carrying the right handbag or driving an elegant car, nothing says “I’ve arrived” better than to be seen swirling a glass of wine.

Of course, there are plenty of people who actually enjoy the stuff. Across the country, wine clubs are being set up, tastings are being organised by some of the world’s leading producers and India’s own wine industry is starting to make a handful of vintages that can compete with international competition. In the past decade, the number of Indian vineyards has grown from no more than half a dozen to about 50, concentrated mainly in the Nashik region of Maharastra, 120 miles from Mumbai.

“The wine market is booming,” said Kapil Grover, owner of Grover Vineyards, one India’s oldest and most respected producers, whose French-imported vines grow at elevation at Nandi Hills near Bangalore in southern India. “I’m 52 and think we’re going to see 30 to 35 per cent growth for the rest of my lifetime.”

In India, the history of wine can be traced to the culture’s oldest religious writings. The Yarjuveda – one of the four Indian Vedas or “knowledges” written in Sanskrit and believed to date from several centuries BC – tells how the Hindu gods Indra and Varuna drank a mixture of wine and herbs known as Somrasa. One line of the Yarjuveda reads: “Oh plants, it was Indra and Varuna who first drank the Somrasa. Having gratified him, now I partake of the oblational food with Somrasa.” Yet despite the support of the gods, those promoting the spread of a genuine wine culture in India today face many hurdles. In a country where an estimated 77 per cent of India’s population of 1.15 billion people survive on perhaps as little as 25p a day and where the gap between the rich and poor is increasing, the market for wine operates at the top of the economic pyramid.

High taxes mean the cheapest bottle of ordinary or indifferent Indian wine costs 400 rupees (£5). An imported bottle is considerably more. A poor labourer wishing for an instant anaesthetic to the rigours of his daily life can buy a small bottle of industrially made rum or whisky for a handful of coins. And he doesn’t have to worry about flakes of gold.

That well-heeled group enjoying the so-called “gold wine” on a recent evening at a peaceful restaurant in the south of Delhi were typical of the people behind the surge in the growth of wine sales and for whom importers are furiously stepping up efforts to market their products. Middle-aged professionals at the higher levels of their jobs, many had first tasted wine when travelling abroad. Returning to India they had joined the Delhi Wine Circle to learn more about this discovery.

“We like to travel,” said Shravani Dang, head of corporate communications for a leading Indian industrial conglomerate and a member of the circle for the past three years. “We were in Rome and we learnt a bit about wine. It’s good to learn things such as pairing food and wines,” “We had drunk wine before … a few years ago we had a case of South American wine and we had a cheese and wine party. Nobody knew anything about it. People would ask, ‘When are you bringing out the real drinks?’”

Another member, a woman who described herself as “mid-level management professional” in her 30s but declined to give her name, said she had been in the club for two years. She enjoyed trying the different wines and meeting people who furnished interesting conversation. “I joined because it seemed like the club had interesting events,” she said.

Anil and Reena Khana, said they had joined the club after their children sent them to France to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. They had found themselves touring the vineyards of Bordeaux and were instantly hooked. When they returned to India they signed up. “We wanted to learn more about wine and different wines. We just started to learn,” said Mr Khana, a friendly business manager for a large Indian group. “It’s really like a hobby.”

The evening’s dinner and tasting had started with the gold wines from the 100 Acres label in the Napa Valley, a chardonnay and viognier blend and a rosé, and rapidly progressed to several wines from the Australian producer Buller. There were two different chardonnays, a shiraz, a merlot and finally a 2005 cabernet merlot blend.

Members munched their way through mozzarella salad, a vegetable risotto, a series of main courses which included the rare delight – in Hindu-majority India – of seared beef tenderloin, and finished off with an apple tart. The evening concluded with a mulled red wine that did not appear to be the toast of the night.

Even among the country’s wealthy set, wine still encounters opposition from those who prefer India’s drink of choice - Scotch whisky. Tusha Gupta, an interior designer, said it was taking time to break down prejudice against wine. “You go to a party and people still don’t like to have wine,” she said. “People believe it’s women who will have a glass. They’ll have a cocktail or a whisky.”

Indeed, despite the headline figure of 35 per cent year on year growth, India’s wine consumption remains tiny. The country’s sales of about 1.2 million cases of wine equates to just a teaspoon per person. At the other end of the scale, the thirsty French drink 55 litres per person every year. But a more telling comparison may be with China, so often listed with India as a superpower of the future. There the annual per capita consumption of wine is a glass. In terms of sales, China may also be ahead of its rival and neighbour.

Robert Joseph, the British wine writer and founder of the International Wine Challenge, said to be the world’s biggest competition, said India was not progressing as quickly as some people might like to think. He said: “I’ve been running wine competitions in the emerging markets – Singapore, China, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Vietnam, etc – since 1997. Over that time, I’ve been watching India with great interest, and a certain degree of impatience. Compared to China, the development of a wine-drinking culture has been slow and India remains way behind in consumption.”

Mr Joseph said improvements in India’s wine production had also been made in the past five years, largely as a result of efforts by the Grover and Sula vineyards. But Indian wine producers retained a reverence to French labels when the new techniques they ought to be utilising were being developed by New World producers, in particular the Australians.

“Grover and Sula … have produced world-class wines,” he added. “But the best of these wineries’ efforts are the exceptions to the rule. No other Indian winery is yet making wine that would stand comparison with successful efforts from Europe or the New World, though many Indian examples are far better than plenty of unsuccessful efforts from Europe.”

But those in the trade in India are adamant that the tide is turning. Three years ago, publisher Reva Singh started a wine newsletter that was sent out to a small group of subscribers. Now Sommelier India, the country’s only magazine devoted to wine, is a grown-up, bi-monthly glossy on sale at selected stores. Subscriptions for the magazine, which contains news and features on both Indian and imported wine, she says, are up by 25 per cent on last year. “Things are changing. People are becoming increasingly sophisticated with wine and want to learn more about it. When we started, people perceived drinking wine as being trendy. Many men preferred to drink Scotch. Now it has got to where people are asking questions.”

Another optimist is Subhash Arora, the irrepressibly enthusiastic president of the Delhi Wine Circle and publisher of an online newsletter. He is responsible for the 20 or so wine dinners and tastings held by the club every year. Mr Arora is more than aware of the challenge he faces. He knows the sale of whisky and beer outstrip that of wine more than a hundred-fold; he knows too that wine is a product only a tiny fraction of Indians could ever hope to afford.

And yet he is convinced that the momentum is on his side. At the recent tasting in Delhi, as people began to wander away, Mr Arora lingered to explain more about his enthusiasm. Standing with a half-glass of ruby-coloured Australian wine, he said: “This is more than just my hobby, it’s my passion.”

http://www.nytimes.com/

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, February 5, 2008: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died Tuesday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said. He was thought to be 91 years old. “He died peacefully at about 7 p.m.,” said Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation movement that the Maharishi founded. He said his death appeared to be due to “natural causes, his age.”

Once dismissed as hippie mysticism, the Hindu practice of mind control known as meditation gradually gained medical respectability. Maharishi Yogi began teaching TM in 1955 and brought the technique to the United States in 1959. But the movement really took off after the Beatles attended one of his lectures in 1967 and visited his ashram in India in 1968.

Donations and the $2,500 fee to learn TM financed the construction of Peace Palaces, or meditation centers, in dozens of cities around the world. It paid for hundreds of new schools in India. In 1971, Maharishi founded a university in Fairfield, Iowa, that taught meditation alongside the arts and sciences to 700 students and served organic vegetarian food in its cafeterias.

Maharishi was born Mahesh Srivastava in central India, reportedly on Jan. 12, 1917 — though he refused to confirm the date or discuss his early life. He studied physics at Allahabad University before becoming secretary to a well known Hindu holy man. After the death of his teacher, Maharishi went into a nomadic two-year retreat of silence in the Himalayan foothills of northern India.

With his background in physics, he brought his message to the West in a language mixing occult and science that became the buzz of college campuses. He described TM as “the unified field of all the laws of nature.” But aides say Maharishi became disillusioned that TM had become identified with the counterculture. In 1990 he moved onto the wooded grounds of a monastery in Vlodrop, about 125 miles southeast of Amsterdam. In fragile health, he secluded himself in two rooms of the wooden pavilion he built on the compound, studying sanskrit and scripture until his passing.

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NEW YORK, USA, January 31, 2008: An religious group in Los Angeles that has had an urn of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes for over 50 years and has set up a much-venerated memorial is hesitant to part with it — for now.Tushar Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s great grandson, had asked the Self Realization Fellowship (SRF) to immerse the ashes in water.

“In Hinduism, ashes from the funeral pyre must be immersed in water. It is sacrilege to keep them,” Tushar’s father Arun Gandhi told IANS in New York.

“This is the first time we are hearing about the matter. There is no way we can respond in an immediate way on something we have had in our possession all along,” SRF spokeswoman Lauren Landress told IANS on telephone from California.

The ashes are kept in an ancient Chinese stone sarcophagus, at the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial, which is part of the Lake Shrine seaside ashram established by Yogananda in 1950.

Gandhi’s ashes from the last surviving urn in India were immersed on Wednesday at Mumbai’s Chowpatty beach on the 60th anniversary of his martyrdom. The urn was handed over to Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya two months ago by the son of ex-Governor of Gujarat, Sriman Narayan, who had it since 1948.

A new MSc in Contemporary India has been launched by the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies in response to the growing interest in India and will be welcoming its first students in October 2008.

This new interdisciplinary programme will provide students with the opportunity to learn about both India’s achievements and persistent problems and will provide high-quality training in research methods and in the critical analysis theory in the main social science disciplines.

The degree is designed for students from a wide range of backgrounds, particularly the Social Sciences and History, but there is no requirement to to have studied India at undergraduate level. The course will provide stand-alone training for those wishing to specialise in India, either out of academic interest or as preparation for work in the private sector, international organisations, government, NGOs, multi-lateral and bi-lateral aid and development agencies and media organisations. The course will also serve as first stage preparation for subsequent doctoral research on India.

The Masters comprises two core courses: ‘Research Methodology’, and ‘Themes in Contemporary India’ which includes topics such as India as a global and regional power; India’s democracy; the environment; energy and water; society and culture; the political economy, and human development. Students will also submit an extended essay on a critical treatment of theories, paradigms or mini-narratives. In the final term a dissertation of 10,000 words will be submitted on a topic of the student’s choice, subject to the approval of the Graduate Studies Committee. The dissertation may form the basis for doctoral research for those students who wish to proceed to a DPhil degree.

Barbara Harris-White, Professor of Development Studies, said: ‘India is a fascinating country to study: it is the largest democracy in the world, a regional superpower and has had great IT business success on the one hand, but there is political violence, widespread environmental degradation and human development failure on the other.’

21 Jan 08

Indian MBA students at the Said Business School Indian MBA students at the Said Business School Oxford University is to establish an India Business Centre and a new Chair in Indian business studies, the Vice-Chancellor Dr John Hood has announced at a visit to New Delhi, where he is accompanying the Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Centre, which will be located at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, will address major business issues affecting India, through collaborative research between academics in Oxford, India and elsewhere. Dr John Hood, said: ‘The primary objective of this research centre is to learn from India’s business success. A clear understanding of the issues faced by India and their innovative solutions, as India transitions from poverty to prosperity, will form a guide to future generations of countries attempting similar transitions.’

The Oxford University India Business Centre has been generously supported by Lavasa Corporation and as part of this support, Lavasa has endowed a new Chair – The Ajit Gulabchand Professor of Indian Business Studies named after Lavasa’s Chairman. The new Professor will be based at the Saïd Business School in Oxford, and it is envisaged that the appointment will be made for the next academic year.

The official Memorandum of Agreement will be signed by Mr Ajit Gulabchand and Dr John Hood at the World Economic Forum at Davos on 25 January 2008. Professor Colin Mayer, Dean of the Saїd Business School, said: ‘We are enormously grateful for the generosity of Lavasa in making the establishment of this important Centre possible.

The purpose of the Centre is to address major business policy questions in India through collaborative research between academics in Oxford, in India, and from around the world, and to engage practitioners and policymakers actively in formulating a research agenda that will be relevant and significant. ‘Besides the generation of research-based projects, the Centre will be concerned with teaching and will provide doctoral programmes for students and scholarships for our degree programmes in Oxford. We will also develop a range of executive education programmes for practitioners to be delivered in India. We will welcome the involvement of both practitioners and visiting academics with the work of the Centre, as well as the contributions of colleagues from throughout the University of Oxford, who have an interest in these issues.’

One of the key activities of the Oxford University India Business Centre will be to develop a range of custom and open executive education programmes which will be delivered in India at a new facility located in Lavasa, near Pune.

Mr Gulabchand, Chairman of Lavasa Corporation, commented: ‘It is a matter of great pride for Lavasa to have partnered with the most respected educational institution in the world. This will open new paradigms of educational and managerial excellence for students in both countries.’

The Centre is seeking further funding to support a range of scholarships for Indian students to join the Saïd Business School’s degree programmes in Oxford, and is in discussion with a small number of organisations. Professor Colin Mayer commented: ‘We want to encourage the widest possible engagement with the Centre among companies with interests in India, as well as among academics and policy makers, and we look forward to working closely with a number of organisations to take forward the work of the Centre. It is our intention that students joining one of the Centre’s scholarship programmes will be encouraged to work in Indian institutions on completion of their studies in Oxford.’