BodhgayaNews

Myanmar General Visits Bodhgaya
28 July 2010. Peter Friedlander. There are lots of stories about the visit of senior delegation from Myanmar, including its leader General Than Shwe, to Bodhgaya and other sacred Buddhist sites in the Hindi and English press. Meanwhile other local stories reported in the Dainik Jagran included items like a head on crash between two motor cycles on the river road between Gaya and Bodhgaya on the 21st July in which two were injured. There is also a lot of election campaigning going on such as a speech by former central minister Shah Navaz saying that tourism should be developed and declared an industry but that the central government is not interested in this.

Cash payments if re-elected: Lalu
24 June 2010. Peter Friedlander, Melbourne. Jagran reported on June 19th that in a speech made by Lalu Prasad, former chief minister of Bihar, to an assembly in a village near Bodhgaya he promised that he would give regular employment to teachers without contracts in the state and make cash payments in place of providing housing under the 'Indira Dwellings' scheme. He was addressing a meeting which sought to create unity between extreme Dalit groups and other groups in society. He claimed that the present government was falsely asserting that it was creating progress when the funds were actually coming from the central government. For more on the story, in Hindi, visit Jagran - Yahoo! India.

Solstice Scenes in Yarra Valley
24 June 2010. Peter Friedlander, Melbourne. Back in Melbourne again in mid winter, click on images for more.


Melbourne From Ferny Creek	Near Woori Yallock and Millgrove

Life Imprisonment for three convicted of gang rape, two still absconding
1 June 2010. Peter Friedlander. There are reports in various Hindi papers, such as Dainik Bhaskar, that three of the accused in the case of Japanese woman who was raped in April on her way to Gaya station have been sentenced to life imprisonment and that two others are still absconding but their possessions have been seized. This is an instance of how remarkably quick justice can be in India when there is a need for it to be, and when a special court is set up to deal with a case. See this coverage of the story on Zeenews and the Judge's highlighting of the harm the case had done to Bihar's reputation and on Nitish Kumar's directions to the police see this story on the India Today website.

Yogyakarta skyline
31 May 2010. Peter Friedlander. A sketch from a recent trip to Yogyakarta, more images on May Sketch page.

PaintedWorlds: Pictures by Peter Friedlander
19 May 2010. Peter Friedlander. Only very tangentally related to Bodhgaya I am afraid, but I recently gave a talk about my painting and sketching activities over the years which does include mentions of Bodhgaya and India so I thought I would post a link to it here. The presentation is here in the form of six YouTube clips.


Introduction Overland to India in 1977	Part 1 From Cambridge to Varanasi	Part 2 Singapore and beyond

Part 3 Q&A part 1	Part 4 Q&A part 2	Ending Impossiblesky

Awareness of Road impovements delayed and a sad story
18 April 2010. Peter Friedlander. There is a recent (27 March) article on the BBC Hindi website by Vinod Varma about the improvements to the roads to Bodhgaya going on a the moment. Apparently now the previous trip time of ten to twelve hours on a single lane road to Varanasi has been reduced to two or three hours due to the new road. He reports mixed receptions to this in some quarters though. In particular local taxi drivers have found their business harmed as people no longer fly, or catch the train, to Bodhaya and then hire taxis there. There is a also a suggestion that this may lead to more traffic reaching Bodhgaya due to people prefering to come by car rather than having to make railway bookings. What this will do for the traffic situation in Bodhgaya I am not sure. For more read the Hindi article on the BBC Hindi website. The reputation of the local taxi services is also not helped by events such as the recent case (17 April 2010) of a Japanese woman who hired a taxi to the station from Bodhgaya and was then gangraped by the a group of five men en route, for more on this see a report in Dainik Bhaskar.

551,000,000 Hindi speakers vs 125,000,000 English speakers: 2001 census data
14 March 2010. Peter Friedlander. A report in the Times of India gives a break down of the 2001 census of India data on people's second and third languages. After almost a decade ago now this data has been released that shows how knowledge of English as a second, or third, language has been growing in India. It also shows how the number of those who know Hindi as a second or third language keeps growing.

	(millions)
Hindi	551.4
English	125
Bengali	91
Telegu	85
Marathi	84.2
Tamil	66.7
Urdu	59
Kannada	50.8
Gujarati	50.3
Oriya	36.6
Malayalam	33.3
Punjabi	31.4
Assamese	18.9

For more details read the report on the Times of India website

Attacks on Indians in Australia not just Racism: Australian born Peter speaks?
Tuesday 23 February. Below is the text, and translation, of an article based on on an interview published in Hindustan, a major Hindi daily paper, with me in Varanasi recently when I was visiting the Kabir Panth monastery. Surojeet, the reporter, and his editor(s) manage to report what I said in a way which is quite pleasing, but in which they connect what I said in a rather odd way which at times obscures, or slightly 'pinches' the meaning of what I said by the way things get put together. Its a great example of how journalism works, I can recognise in it what I said, but there is also much that comes from the paper's way of approaching what I said. Here is my rough translation of what they said, I said.

Attacks on Indians in Australia not just Racism: Australian born Peter speaks of believing in the Kabir Panth as a religion Surojeet Chaterjee, Hindustan, Monday 15 February, Varanasi, page seven.
Doctor Peter Gerard Friedlander, who abandoned an aetheist life to become a Buddhist says that the Kabir Panth can be regarded as a religion. This is important in the context of Indian relgion as Kabir is relevant in every age. He taught that rather than looking at outward appearances we should look within. "Everybody knows, there are drops in the ocean; but few realise, there are oceans in every drop". On another front due to the ongoing racism in Australia there is an atmosphere of consumerism [I said that consumerism was a factor contributing to crime]. Also during the last twenty years there has been an economic downtown. In addition there are factional and political Indian organisations which are raising their voices for the Indians which may be a factor [which then misses out - a factor in highlighting publicity about the attacks]. Moreover, everybody is afraid to travel on public transport in Melbourne [then missed out - at night]. London born National University of Singapore Hindi lecturer Peter came to Banaras in 1977. Recently for a number of years he has been working on a study of the translations of Kabir's poems done by Rabindranath Tagore as 'One Hundred Poems of Kabir'. He wants to know what were the factors which led to Tagore adding elements of his own words to the translation. Speaking in the Kabir Chaura Monastery on Sunday to Hindustan he said - Tagore made his translation based on a work made by Kshitimohan Sen. Through this in in the 19th century [should be early 20th] the works of Kabir become well established throughout the world. I am not interested in determining fault [misses out in the sense of whether there there are faults in the translations]. Furthermore, nobody knows the sources for some of the verses in the collection made by Baleshwar Prasad Agrawal [misses out that these are the basis for Kshitimohan Sen's collection]. The translations always change, but the message remains the same.

Chief Minister to visit various religious sites
Jan 25, 2010 (Jagran Yahoo!).
Gaya. The Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is coming on Tuesday for a four trip to Gaya and will pay honour (literally 'bow') at various religious sites. The district administration officers have notified the ordinary people at these sites after site inspections that he may be coming knocking on their doors at the possible locations. Whilst the start may be in Bodhgaya there is also the possibility of visiting, Vishnupad, Mangalagauri, Pita Maheshwar, Peer Mansur etc. etc. At an official level during his trip (techically described here as a pravas a 'journey away from home' perhaps here in the sense of 'leave') there will be no notification of his tours of inspection during this period. The reasons for this include his security and other possible reasons. It is possible that where and when he will go anywhere will be decided everyday during the night watches and information given to the officers. So the district administration of Gaya district is watching out over all the archeological and historical sites in the district where the CM might go.
There has been cleaning work going on for two days at Vishnupad. Amongst the Gayawal priests there is considerable talk that the CM is coming to the Vishnupad temple. On the way he will also have darshan at Mangalagauri. This is because when he was about to become CM he had darshan at Mangalagauri. (the implication is perhaps that he might have made some sort of pledge, manauti, to the deity there that if he became CM he would return and make offerings in thanks for the goddess's aid). It is also said that it is possible he will visit the grave of Peer Mansur (i.e. a Muslim sacred site) which is situated near to Pita Maheshvar temple. The administration has also started cleaning and painting works at various other sacred sites as well as Vishnupad. Because the CM knows that Hindus as well as making offering at Vishnupad do so at dozens of other sites for making offerings to the ancestors (vedi). Finally, work is also in progress to clean up at the river Phalgu, it is also possible that the CM may take a glimpse of this (seasonally) dried up river. (Note: this story was then followed up by two more, first that the All India Monks Federation have announced that they will demonstrate during his visit in support of their demand that the temple management be handed over to only Buddhists, and second that the Temple Management Committee will roll our the red carpet in honour of the CM's visit.)

Third Cultural Evening of Buddhist Festival cancelled
Jan 17 2010, (Jagran - Yahoo! India). Bodhgaya. On the news of the passing away of the former chief minister and senior CPM leader Jyoti Basu the program for the third cultural evening at the third Buddhist cultural festival was cancelled. Meanwhile after the concluding ceremony of the Buddhist festival at the Kalacakra field there was a memorial ceremony organised by the DM Mr Singh along with other officials, along with the Secretary of the BTMC N. Dorje and the member Radha Krishna Mishra and a two minute silence as an expression of faith.