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Wednesday 13 April 2016

WATCH: Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks about Dr Ambedkar

WATCH: Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks about Dr Ambedkar

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today said the Constitution of India had ensured "dignity of Indians, and unity of India." He was speaking in the Lok Sabha, on the occasion of the special sitting to commemorate Constitution Day, and the 125th birth anniversary of the architect of constitution,Dr B R Ambedkar
The Prime Minister said that in a diverse country such as India, we need to actively take the provisions of the Constitution to the people. The observance of 26th November as Constitution Day reflects the Union Government’s thinking in that light, he said, adding that the concept will evolve over time.
The Prime Minister said that no praise is enough for the people who created our Constitution, and added that Dr. Ambedkar's contributions can never be denied. Dr. BR Ambedkar's thoughts and teachings have been valid, true, and applicable to all generations, the Prime Minister said.

He said that democracy becomes stronger through consensus and agreement; while the concept of majority and minority is always the last resort.

The Prime Minister said that citizens should pay equal attention to their rights and duties. The Prime Minister described his "Idea of India" as "Satyameva Jayate" and "Sarva Panth Sambhav."

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Sunday 10 April 2016

Aamir Khan 125th Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Anniversary

Nation Builder Vishwaratna Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Vichar Mahotsav Samiti celebrated the biggest event of the year marking the 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar at MMRDA Grounds BKC,Mumbai

Special Guests for the event were-
- Aamir Khan (Actor)
- Adv. Prakash Ambedkar (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's Grandson)
- Ramdas Athavale (Member of Rajya Sabha)
- Hariharan (Singer)
- Prof. Sukhdev Thorat (Chariman, ISSR)
- Gautam Chakravarti (UK)
- Prof. Kevin Brown (USA)
- Ashish Chavan (CEO, Bombay Stock)
- Kishor Kharat (Chairman IDBI) and many more.

Actor Aamir Khan gets a warm welcome from Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar at the 125th birth anniversary celebration of the late national leader at MMRDA grounds, BKC on Saturday.

 Pic/Atul Kamble

Here is Amir Khan's speech :




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Wednesday 6 April 2016

Chung Tai Chan Monastery

Just a few kilometres north of Puli, the Chung Tai Chan Monastery (中台禪寺; zhōngtái chán sì) is one of the world’s most lavish modern monuments to Chan Buddhism, fusing ancient tradition with contemporary building techniques. Designed by C.Y. Lee (the architect of Taipei 101), at an estimated cost of US$110m, the monastery is worth half a day of exploring.

Chan is better known as “Zen” in the West, though you’ll see few signs of the more austere Japanese version of the practice here. Chung Tai founder Grand Master Wei Chueh began a life of simple meditation in the 1970s in the mountains of Taipei County, and established Chung Tai Chan Monastery in 1987. Today he is head of Chung Tai World, a Buddhist order that includes several monasteries and over eighty meditation centres located throughout Taiwan and the world.

The monastery complex is dominated by the massive central building with its 37 floors, and surrounded by a series of ancillary halls and statues. The 150m central tower is its most distinctive feature, flanked by two sloping dormitory wings and topped by an ornate gold pearl, set on gilded lotus leaves. From the entrance, it’s a short walk to the main building and the Hall of Heavenly Kings, with its impressive 12m-high guardians and colourful Milefo (the chubby, smiling incarnaton of Buddha). They protect the Great Majesty Hall where Sakyamuni Buddha is enshrined – this incarnation represents the historical Buddha and the virtue of liberation, carved from Indian red granite. To the right is Sangharana Hall, where in typically eclectic Taiwan style, Taoist deity Guan Di is enshrined as temple protector, while to the left you’ll find a statue of Indian monk Bodhidharma (or Damo, the 28th Buddhist patriarch and founder of the Chan school) in the Patriarch Hall, along with the inscribed religious lineage of the temple’s founder, Wei Chueh. To go further you’ll need to have arranged a guide in advance – this is highly recommended.

The fifth floor contains the Great Magnificence Hall, housing a graceful statue of the Rocana Buddha, crafted from white jade and positioned on a gold-covered thousand lotus platform. This incarnation represents the virtue of wisdom. From here it’s customary to walk up to the ninth floor via a series of inclined corridors, eventually leading to the Great Enlightenment Hall. Everything here is brilliant white: the ceramic glass walls and floor, the doors, ceiling and even the statue of the Vairocana Buddha, which represents the spiritual or “dharma” body.

The sixteenth floor is usually as far as most tours go: the Hall of 10,000 Buddhas contains a seven-storey teak wood pagoda, facing Puli through two giant windows. The walls of the hall are decorated with twenty thousand tiny copper Buddha statues. From here you can descend down the pilgrims’ staircase, or if you’re lucky, continue up into the sacred higher levels of the monastery – this will depend on the mood of your guide. The 31st floor is the Sutra Treasury Pavilion, containing the monastery’s most valuable texts and decorated with soft jade carvings, while the very top, the 37th floor, is known as the Mani Pearl. The shell is made of titanium, but the interior of the ball is a simple shrine finished in wood containing a small Buddha statue and is rarely open to visitors.


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Wednesday 28 January 2015

Barack Obama - India will succeed if not splintered over religion

Barack Obama: India will succeed if not splintered over religion
Barack Obama: India will succeed if not splintered over religion
US Prez dwells on diversity, equality, empowering women
In what is being seen in some quarters as a parting shot at the Narendra Modi government, in the wake of domestic controversies over religious freedom and reconversion in India in the past few months, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday talked tough on religious tolerance, saying India will succeed as long as it is not “splintered” over religious lines. He spoke about the values of democracy that is common to both countries, and also the values of religious freedom and equality that are a vital part of the Constitutions of both nations. The US President added that “diversity” was, in fact, the strength of both nations.

The Modi government has been facing a lot of heat from the Opposition in Parliament in the past few months over these controversies. Congress leader Digvijay Singh got into action swiftly on Tuesday and took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wondering if he would advise his “friends” in the Sangh Parivar to stop justifying the “Ghar Wapsi” (reconversion) programme.

Speaking on “India and America: The Future We Can Build Together” at New Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium, the US President said: “Every person has the right to practise his faith without any persecution, fear or discrimination. India will succeed so long it is not splintered on religious lines,” Mr Obama told the audience that included a lot of young people in his 30-minute speech. The US President’s comments came in the backdrop of multiple controversies in India over religious conversions and the “Ghar Wapsi” programme by right-wing Hindutva outfits. President Obama also cited Article 25 of India’s Constitution, that deals with the right to freedom of religion, noting that freedom of religion was an integral part of the US Constitution as well.

“Your (Constitution) Article 25 says all people are equally entitled to the freedom of conscience and have right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion. In both our countries, in all countries... upholding freedom of religion is the utmost responsibility of the government, but also the responsibility of every person,” he said. “We have to guard against any efforts to divide us on sectarian lines or any other thing,” he said. He also said there were people belonging to all faiths in both countries.

President Obama further said no society is immune from the “darkest impulses of man”, and that religion has sometimes been used to tap into it. He recounted an incident that occurred three years ago in Wisconsin (US), where a man went into a Sikh gurdwara and “in a terrible act of violence” killed six innocent people, including both American and Indians. “In that moment of shared grief, the two countries reaffirmed the basic truth that we must again today. Every person has a right to practise the faith that they choose and to practise no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution, fear or discrimination,” he said.

In his speech, attended by young students, scholars and others, Mr Obama said such a proposition holds much importance in India. “Nowhere is it more important than in India. Nowhere is it going to be more necessary for that foundational value to be upheld,” he said.

Underlining the factors that unify both countries, President Obama said “our diversity is our strength” and warned that both India and the US had to be on their guard against divisive efforts along sectarian lines or any other lines. “If we do that well and if America shows itself as an example of its diversity and the capacity to live and work together in common effort and common purpose, and if India, as massive as it is with so much diversity, so many differences, is able to continuously reaffirm its democracy, that is an example for every other country. That’s what makes us world leaders... Not just the size of our economies or the number of weapons we have but our ability to show the way and how we work together,” he said.

The US President referred to prominent Indians belonging to different faiths like actor Shah Rukh Khan, sports icons like Milkha Singh and Mary Kom, and Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi (who was in the select audience at Siri Fort on Tuesday) to make a point that courage and humanitarian values unify both nations. He also dwelt at some length on the message that Swami Vivekananda had carried to his (Obama’s) home town, Chicago, 100 years ago at the Parliament of Religions.

“By what Dr King (Martin Luther King Jr) called content of our character rather than the colour of our skin or the manner in which we worship our God. In both our countries, in India and America, our diversity is our strength,” he said.

Recalling his own experiences earlier in the US, President Obama said while he has had extraordinary opportunities, “there were moments in my life where I’ve been treated differently because of the colour of my skin”. Mentioning the Christian faith of both himself and wife Michelle, the US President in a reference to false rumours that he was a Muslim said: “There have been times where my faith has at times been questioned by people who don’t know me, or they’ve said that I adhere to a different religion, as if that were somehow a bad thing.” He added: “The peace we seek in the world begins in the human heart.”

In a swift reaction, Congress leader Digvijay Singh tweeted: “Would Modi take his friend Barack’s advice and ask his friends in the VHP to shut up and request (RSS chief) Mohan Bhagwat to stop justifying ‘Ghar Vapsi’?” The Congress leader reportedly thanked Mr Obama for “speaking up for the Indian Citizen’s Rights to Profess Practice and Propagate his Religious Belief”.

Meanwhile, President Obama also referred to the principle of equality and equal opportunities for all, pointing out that his own grandfather had been a cook with the British Army in Kenya. In a reference to the architect of the Indian Constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, and also Prime Minister Modi, he said it was this equality through which a dalit could write the Indian Constitution and a tea-seller could become Prime Minister. The US President noted that both he and his wife Michelle did not come from wealthy families, and what they had achieved had been due to the education they received with the help of scholarships and opportunities that were made available to them.

The US President also made a strong pitch for women’s empowerment, saying that nations were more successful when their women were more successful. He also pointed to the “incredible women (officers) in the (Indian) armed forces”. President Obama referred to the woman IAF officer who had led the guard of honour for him at Rashtrapati Bhavan. This year’s Republic Day parade had all-woman officers’ contingents from the three services marching down Rajpath.

He also referred to a 16-year-old boy Vishal, whom he had first met at Humayun’s Tomb during his previous visit in 2010, and said the boy’s dreams were as important as the dreams of his (President Obama’s) own daughters Sasha and Malia. He added that all young people should have the chance to pursue their dreams.
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Wednesday 21 January 2015

बाबासाहेब आंबेडकरांनी बौद्ध धर्मच का स्वीकारला?

डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकरांची धर्मांतराची संकल्पना स्पष्ट होती ती अशी की, हिंदू धर्मात अस्पृश्यांना सहानुभूतीची वागणूक मिळत नाही. जो धर्म जातिव्यवस्थेचा पुरस्कार करून माणसा-माणसांत भेद करतो, ज्या धर्मात स्वातंत्र्य, समता, बंधुता नाही, त्या धर्मात राहून अस्पृश्यांचा उद्धार होणार नाही म्हणून त्यांनी धर्मांतर केले पाहिजे. 
 
बाबासाहेबांचा हिंदू धर्म नि समाजव्यवस्थेला असा सवाल होता की,‘जो धर्म अस्पृश्यांना देवळात जाऊ देत नाही, प्यायला पाणी मिळू देत नाही, विद्या ग्रहण करू देत नाही, अस्पृश्यांच्या सावलीचाही विटाळ मानतो, त्या हिंदू धर्मात अस्पृश्यांनी कशासाठी राहावयाचे?’ 

डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकरांनी हिंदू धर्म त्यागाची घोषणा म्हणूनच 13 आॅक्टोबर 1935 रोजी येवला मुक्कामी करताच त्याचे तीव्र पडसाद देशभर उमटले.

बाबासाहेबांनी इस्लाम धर्म स्वीकारला तर अस्पृश्यांच्या हितासाठी पाच कोटी रुपयांची तरतूद करण्याची घोषणा हैदराबादच्या निझामाने केली होती. 

ख्रिस्ती धर्मोपदेशकांनीही बाबासाहेबांना ख्रिस्ती धर्म स्वीकारण्याचे आवाहन केले होते. पण बाबासाहेबांनी इस्लाम वा ख्रिस्ती धर्म स्वीकारण्याचा विचार कधीच केला नाही. कारण इस्लाम वा ख्रिस्ती धर्म स्वीकारल्यामुळे भारतीय संस्कृती व राष्ट्रीयत्वास हानी पोहोचेल तसेच ख्रिस्ती व इस्लाम धर्मीयांची संख्या वाढून राष्ट्रहितास धोका निर्माण होईल, असे डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकर यांचे स्पष्ट मत होते. शिवाय त्यांना बुद्धिनिष्ठ धर्म हवा होता.

बाबासाहेबांचा कल काही काळ शीख धर्म स्वीकारण्याकडे झाला होता. पण विचारांती तो त्यांनी बदलला. बाबासाहेबांना अशी भीती वाटत होती की शीख धर्म स्वीकारला तर धर्माच्याच परवानगीने अस्पृश्यांच्या हाती कृपाण  येईल आणि हजारो वर्षे हिंदू धर्माची अमानवी छळवणूक सोसत आलेला दलित समाज अन्यायाचा सूड म्हणून रक्तपात करायला मागेपुढे पाहणार नाही.

बाबासाहेबांनी धर्मांतरांच्या घोषणेनंतर सलग एकवीस वर्षे विविध धर्मांचा सखोल अभ्यास केला. या काळात त्यांचा कल बौद्ध धम्माकडे वळला. धर्मांतरापूर्वी म्हणूनच मुंबईत 1945 मध्ये स्थापन केलेल्या महाविद्यालयास त्यांनी सिद्धार्थ, तर औरंगाबादेत 1950 मध्ये काढलेल्या महाविद्यालयास मिलिंद आणि परिसरास नागसेनवन अशी नावे दिली. मुंबईतील दादर येथील आपल्या निवासस्थानालाही त्यांनी ‘राजगृह’ असे नाव दिले. 

बाबासाहेबांना अखेर बुद्धाचा जीवनमार्ग लोककल्याण, सदाचार, समता, स्वातंत्र्य, बंधुतेचा वाटला म्हणून त्यांनी 14 आॅक्टोबर 1956 रोजी नागपूर येथे आपल्या अनुयायांसह बौद्ध धम्म स्वीकारला. बौद्ध समाजात धम्माने स्वाभिमान जागवला. 

बौद्धांनी देव्हाºयातील देवदेवतांचे विसर्जन करून टाकले. गंडेदोरे तोडले. वस्त्या-वस्त्यात बुद्धविहार आले. मुलांची, घरांची, वस्त्यांची नावे बदलली. लग्नविधी, नामकरण विधी बदलले. घरादारांवर बौद्ध स्थापत्यकला अवतीर्ण झाली. कर्मकांडे बंद झाली. पण आजची स्थिती काय आहे? तर बौद्ध समाज परत देवदेवतांकडे आकर्षित होऊन कर्मकांड, अंगारे-धुपारे, उपास-तापास, नवस-सायास करू लागला आहे. बुवांच्या-दगडांच्या नादी लागून बकरे-कोंबडे मारू लागला आहे.

देव्हारा आता त्याला परत-परत छळतो आहे. बाबासाहेबांनी धर्मांतराच्या वेळी मी देव मानणार नाही, कर्मकांड करणार नाही अशा एकूण बावीस प्रतिज्ञा दिल्या होत्या. त्या प्रतिज्ञांचा आणि बुद्धाच्या शिकवणुकीचा बौद्धानुयायाला आज विसर पडला आहे.

धर्म आणि धम्मातील मूलभूत फरकही तो विसरला आहे.धर्माचा संबंध देवाशी आहे, तर धम्माचा संबंध मानवाशी आहे. धर्म हा बुद्धिप्रामाण्य नाकारतो. धम्म बुद्धिप्रामाण्य मानतो. धर्म म्हणजे बंधन. धम्म म्हणजे स्वातंत्र्य. धर्म म्हणजे चमत्कार, भाकडकथा, दैववाद, तर धम्म म्हणजे विज्ञानवादी चिकित्सक बुद्धिनिष्ठा. 

डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकरांंनी धर्म आणि धम्मात केलेला हा फरक नजरेआड केल्यामुळेच आज बौद्ध समाज पुन्हा एकदा जीर्ण-शीर्ण हिंदू रूढी-परंपरांकडे वळला आहे. बौद्धांची मानसिक स्थिती आज जुने सोडवेना आणि नवे स्वीकारता येईना अशी झाली आहे. बाबासाहेबांना बौद्ध धम्माद्वारे एक नवा समाज, नवा माणूस घडवायचा होता. जातिसंस्थेचे उच्चाटन करून सामाजिक ऐक्य निर्माण करायचे होते. सर्वांना समान संधी उपलब्ध करून द्यावयाची होती. लोकशाही धर्मनिरपेक्षता बळकट करणे हाही त्यांच्या धम्मस्वीकाराचा मूळ उद्देश होता. त्या अनुषंगाने आपण किती प्रगती केली याचे चिंतन धम्मचक्र प्रवर्तन दिनाच्या निमित्ताने व्हायला पाहिजे.
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