India's Revolutionary Icons who followed the paths of The Buddha

India's Revolutionary Icons who followed the paths of  The Buddha
It all began with Buddha... and these are some of the great Torch Bearer's of Buddha's Dhamma.... This Blog is a Scholarly Blog created to provide insights into the life, services and Social contributions of some of the Greatest of Indian Scholars, Humanitarians, Saints and social activists about whom the vested interests and Rotten Indian media do not write. Nor there is a State or center policies to restore and protect the stunning stories of these great men and woman...let me walk you through the greatness..!!

Google Website Translator Gadget

Father of Nation of India Dr.Bheemarao Ambedkar

The first Law Minister of India and the Father of Indian Constitution Bheemrao Ramji Ambedkar (Dr.B.R.Ambedkar)spoke, wrote and demonstrated quite extensively and comprehensively than any other known living or dead humans of India as to how treacherous, dangerous this so called Indian hindu society and it's deadly cultures that spread discrimination and bigotry between each of thousands of heterogeneous groups. To find a way to bring them all these "heterogeneous mess of India", and to put them in single order to lead a happy, free and prosperous life, to make them behave like humans and to treat fellow humans DrAmbedkar crafted this finest of the fine Constitution that even Americans refer to it when they are in crisis. Ofcourse, Dr.Ambedkar was an American Scholar and Columbia Doctorate, he did learn lots about humanity and freedom while he was in America, but he also studied American Constitution, so a well learned scholar and genius DrAmbedkar fathered the Indian constitution in real sense, he is the Father of Modern India, while SakyaMuni Buddha was the Father of ancient and all time Father of India. Here is the dedication to the Father of India: http://fatherofnationi.blogspot.com/

Friday, January 5, 2007

A Dalit Village Farmer & Intellectual:-- Novel Rice Discovery!

DADAJI RAMJI KHOBARGADE
Sabottage of Dalit Intellectual Rights:--
Sabotage of Dalit intellecuatalism and their intellectual and property rights must be dealt with serious legal bindings and conciliatory actions, otherwise, the hindu's will continue to rob one's own rights their backyards.
This agricultural farmer in the picture above is a dalit intellectual farmer and he is from a small village, he is well known locally for his novel development of great rice types.
He has been toiling in his land for years, worked hard and deligently developed techniques and approaches that finaly was conducive for him to develop a new variety rice called HMT, further more this initial finding enabled him to develop half a dozen new variety of rice that is a blockbuster seller in northern India.
As usual in India, this man's ability to own his own creativity was in danger ever since he developed the newer rice types. Robbery in his land and house was a regular affair, besides his properties getting stolen by outsiders and neighbours, the products cultivated in his land too was under attack. People kept on stealing things, beyond all this petty cimilaity lies the huge robberer, that is the local university scientists. They wanted to find out what is going on from this villagers land, so they wanted to check out the developed rice variety, took some samples of rice from Dadaji and investigated ran some tests in the name rice purification (what the heck, rice purification, don't they have a better biological or biotechnological or agricultural terms) in their laboratory (find all the references and citations in the following news articles).
While none of the agricultuaralists came forward to honor or recognize this gentleman, as he was born in a poor family and hindu contaminted India as a dalit, nor the governmental agencies helped him in the appropriate ways and means.
So, everything boils down to one fact, he is a dalit, hindu's cannot stand a dalit coming up in life or dalit beeing creative, they either will not recognize to start with, or they will attack as it is happening? or they will intellectually robe his intellectualism (which is also happening in the highest place, the university) or they will rob such geniuses from dalit society and own as their own Brahma? LoL....!
This is a saga of 3000 years of hindu tradition to steal, tamper and loot any creativity that comes out of dalits.
So, I was not surprised by this great Farmer Dadaji Ramji Khobargade's fight to own his creativity. For practical purposes I drawn the weaknesses as follows, meaning, this is how things are in the villages. The first weakness is he lives in a village, no body gives a damn about a villager, the second weakness is he is a dalit whom the hindu people ruined them for the last 3000 years and the next weakness is he is not a PhD or some sort of academic person with other qualifications that would have caught someone's eye. So, if not on his own by someone's help Dadaji would have been identified and recognized.
Right now, it seems like no one seriously tried to help him to legitimize and legalize his inventions to make it equitable and expandable. Not a single human or Indian wants to identify the talents at least for money making purposes, wow....I can't realy believe what goes in India.
I wish from this blog or by bringing Dadaji's novel and scholarly work into the international audiences and to dalit scholars, I am hoping to see some fruitful initiatives. I would like to bring some immediate and equitable attention paid to his hard work and the innovative techniques of Dadaji. In the meantime, it is a shame that none of the farmers advocate came forward to help
Dadaji, what happen to those freaking ladies go fast over Narmada dam or such things, are these woman activists are real or for only hindus, what kind of village reformers are these ladies. What happened to those self-procaliamed high esteemed scientists like Swaminathan, who did not bather to look into this matter.
Worst of all , there were no dalit activist or leader came forward to fix the mundane paper work and the universitis cheating behavior to steal away the novel rice variety and its creativity. Dadaji developed 7 varieties of new rice types, which is deliciously popular in the northern states of India.
Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade (65) grew up in a small forest village called Nanded in Naghbid taluka of Chandipur district in Maharashtra. He left school after the 3rd standard due to adverse economic conditions and also because his help was necessary in the farm. Currently, he is the only earning member of his family, which comprises his son (who does not earn due to his ill health), his daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. He owns 1.5 acres of land and his income is Rs.12, 000 per annum. At present Dadaji Ramaji also cultivates three acres, once given to his son by a relative.He had to sell two acres due to the illness of his son. Occasionally he works as a daily wage labourer to support his seven-member family.


Atrocity News: Indian Carver cheated: Intellectual dishonesty
05Jan07
68-yr-old Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade is a Indian Buddhist farmer with a grouse. Ten years ago he shot to fame for breeding a variety of rice called Hmt which went on to become one of the highest yielding varieties in the region.It even became popular in neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In Maharashtra it is grown in over 6,88,000 hectares reports NDTV. Dadaji Khobragade, HMT Rice Variety Developer” When my neighbours took it to the market to sell it, the traders could immediately tell this was different variety and asked for its name. One of the farmers was wearing an Hmt watch and decided to call the rice variety that. Eversince it been called Hmt rice”. Grassroots innovation like Khobragade’s are classic example of necessity being the mother of invention. And yet he is a bitter man today. While the seeds he helped develop sell for as much as 1500 rupees a quintal he’s got nothing. Leave alone money even recognition seems to be taking its time finding him.

Fighting for a grain of truth
Jaideep Hardikar Sunday, November 06, 2005 22:37 IST
NANDED/CHANDRAPUR: Thefts at Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade’s one-acre farm are a common occurrence. “Last month,” says the 66-year-old farmer, “someone stole two pumpkins. Earlier, thieves stole my wooden cots.” But these, he says, are nothing compared to the grand heist: the robbing of credit for developing some of central India’s most popular rice varieties.
The culprit is a premier agriculture university of Maharashtra that claims to have “purified and refined” the parent breed. But Dadaji, who was bestowed with an award by the National Innovation Foundation of India at the hands of President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam this year, vows he’s not giving up his fight for the credit line.

By VIVEK DESHPANDE
Two months ago, The Indian Express had reported how Dadaji Khobragade, the developer of seven popular rice varieties, was living a life of penury even as the Maharashtra government’s Punjabrao Krishi Vidyapeeth (PKV) passed off his HMT variety in a ‘‘purified’’ form as PKV HMT. And now that Dadaji is seeking to apply for a once-in-a-lifetime award of Rs 2 lakh from the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), the PKV is playing spoilsport again. The bone of contention now is a copy of the Varietal Research Proposal—a record of the development of the rice varieties—which Dadaji needs to submit to the NRDC for the award.
‘‘I have had the NRDC letter for many months now. I met PKV vice-chancellor Sharad Nimbalkar at Chandrapur last month. He asked me to approach the PKV’s Rice Breeder Centre at Sindewahi. But they refused to part with the document,’’ Dadaji said.
Suspicions that this isn’t just another whirl of the bureaucratic merry-go-round arise because of Dadaji’s past run-ins with PKV. The HMT Sona—one of the seven varieties Dadaji developed over 20 years, a feat recognised by the National Innovation Foundation’s second all-India prize—was picked up by the PKV, ‘‘purified’’ and sent back to the market as PKV HMT.

Farmer seeks recognition for rice strain

Rice of the rural kind

WESTERN BUDDHISTS TO LEARN FROM AMERICAN JEWS By PPLakshmanJi

I read with great interest "A Challenge to Buddhism" by Ven.Bhikkhu Bodhi that I was fortunate to read on the internet. 
We all know and revere Bhikkhu Bodhi. His talks and writings are always inspiring and  provocative. His distress evident in the above-mentioned article will be shared by all those who read it.
Of late we have been hearing a lot about the expression  "Engaged Buddhism". I find the expression mostly among the Mahayanists rather than among the Therawadis in the Western world. Mahayanists also use the expression "Humanistic Buddhism". To everyone who is not a Buddhist, it simply means Applied Buddhism or practical Budhism.
There has been  challenges to Buddhism in all eras. To my mind, there is no greater solution, no enduring remedy to the challenges in any era than the creation of Buddha's disciples known as Arhants who would advice and give lead to people to solve their problems as and when they arise, regardless of color, race, creed or nation. Whatever the problems - social problems like injustice or natural catastrophies like earthquake or global problems like climate change 
-  the cutting edges of weapons in Buddhist armory to counter them always lay in individuals in the first instance, and subsequently in their organizations, with or without the support of governments. Therawada Buddhism which I am more familiar with has had a monastic order in place since Buddha'.s time where trained monks are turned out in large numbers, year after year, in Therawada countries -  Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia.  Many of the trained monastics become bodhisatvas (seekers of enlightenment), few if any become fully enlightened worthy ones known as arhants who are worthy to advice and lead. Finding arhants is like mining for diamonds.
Many of the social service organizations, Buddhist or other,  fail because of the absence of arhants, the fully enlightened ones, to lead them. The fully enlightened arhants emerge out of the multitudes of monks, worthy to advice and worthy to lead..  
 
There have been a plethora of institutions with long histories of social service like the CARE, the American Peace Core, Red Cross, YMCAs, and many others. Bhikkhu Bodhi has mentioned American Jewish World Service (AJWS) which is relatively a new organization like the Islamic Relief USA and others, all of which "aiming to alleviate suffering, hunger, illiteracy and disease, worldwide". On the other hand,  organizations with limited goals also take birth like the Armenian Relief Society with its limited goal of serving the humanitarian needs of the Armenian people worldwide, who still suffer from the effects of its underreported holocaust of early 20th century. I wonder what make AJWS exceptional. 

Has AJWS  tested its declared objective of social service on the soils of Israel's next door neighbors or in the  Arab sector inside Israel itself?  Some material on the internet gave me the impression that AJWS perhaps took birth out of cognitive dissonance among American Jews suffering from psychological conflicts between incompatible beliefs and attitudes.  
The highly efficient style of working of organizations like AJWS backed by media support can make favourable impression of them even if they do not have enlightened leaders and violate one or more of the five precepts that the Buddhists always practise in all their endeavours.
Social service is the objective of most organizations, but they have besides social service something which make them distinct. For instance, the U.S. after taking thousands of lives in Japan with their nuclear armory seek to create a better image of the U.S.with its Peace Core volunteers, YMCAs seek to spread Christian messages behind their altruism,  what if AJWS seeks to show Jewish presence in world service, no matter that the Jews are only 0.2 percent of a world population of 7 billion.   
 
I wish to draw the attention of my readers to an organization which I had in  mind when I wrote earlier in this piece about arhants and searching for them like mining for diamonds. 
The organization is called Fo Guang Shan (FGS), which means literally "Buddha's Light Mountain", and its organizer is Master Venerable Hsing Yun, born in mainland China in 1927. Master Venrable Hsing Yun founded FGS in 1967 in a remote quiet area in the hills of  Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. It is a Mahayana Buddhist order promoting Humanistic Budddhism, a modern Chinese philosophy. Humanistic Buddhism aims to make Buddhism relevant in the world and in the people's lives and hearts. It is a monastic order and not a theoretical school of thought per se.
In May 1997, Hsing Yun got the gates of FGS closed to the general public in order to give a cloistered atmosphere to the temple residents.
But, following the plea of the public headed by the President of Taiwan, FGS reopened the gates in December 2000. In the last 40 years since its inception, FGS has been remarkably successful in extending its services beyond Taiwan,  setting up temples and organizations in 173 countries and encompassing more than 3,500 monastics. FGS also created an affiliate in 1992, Buddha's  Light International Association (BLIA),  
which has now over 100 chapters in the world.  The monastic order represented by Fo Guang Shan and Buddha's Light International Association has now over a milliom followers worldwide. It has been said  "In Master Venerable Hsing Yun, Buddhism has found a reformer, an innovator and an educator. Under his strong  leadership, Buddhism has extended beyond traditional temple life to integrate and further enrich the modern city dwellers."
 
 P.P.Lakshman
December 18, 2008
 
 

Total Pageviews

Ravana & the depiction of 10 Heads? What is the Rationale?

Ravana's ten heads represent the ten crowns he wore as a result of his being the sovereign of ten countries.