India’s Endangered Democracy Ganguly, Šumit
Journal of Democracy,
10/2021, Letnik:
32, Številka:
4
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
According to the most recent UN data, 20.9 percent of Indian children younger than five are too short for their age (stunted), and 17.3 percent are too thin for their height (wasted). ...despite a ...supine election commission, widespread fear-mongering about illegal immigration from Bangladesh, and a highly skilled state-run social-media campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to dislodge the incumbent Trinamool Congress government in the 2021 West Bengal state elections. ...the efforts of the BJP state machinery proved mostly futile. ...the electoral system’s troubles are pervasive: Since India lacks public campaign financing and weakly implements electoral laws, the quantity of dark money in both national and state elections has surged, further eroding the integrity of the polls.
How I Became a Tree (review) Baishya, Amit R
World Literature Today,
05/2017, Letnik:
91, Številka:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
Roy meticulously follows the paper trails left by tree lovers like the artist Nandalal Bose, the Bengali literary icon Rabindranath Tagore, and the physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose. ...as the ...narrative grows and proliferates through discussions of the thoughts of soulmates, the recall of personal memories, and the explications of the representation of trees in literary and philosophical works, the active anthropocentric desire to transform into the other gradually fades.
Speaking of translations, one cannot but remember the works of Homer and Virgil, the translations of which have greatly contributed to changes in western thought and civilization. The works of ...Rabindranath Tagore written in Bengali, but carefully translated into English, have conveyed to the western world the power of an uncorrupted eastern mind. Tamil is a language with a continuous literary tradition from ancient times to the present. The sangam anthologies constitute a highly unified literary corpus, defined not only by its chronological placement in Tamil literary history, but also by a shared repertoire of situations, settings, characters, and poetic figures. One of the oldest regional literatures from the Indian subcontinent, Tamil literature is known for the beauty of its classical love poetry and heroic poetry, the variety of its religious texts, and the existence of a sophisticated and self-critical commentarial traditional.
Gitanjali's Weak Theology Iyer, Bharatwaj
Cross currents (New Rochelle, N.Y.),
June 2019, 20190601, Letnik:
69, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Gitanjali contains 103 songs in the English translation by the author. and every single one contains religious or, even, theological significance. So, it does make sense to consider the songs as ...offerings to God. The difficulty arises when one tries pinning this God down.
Atorvastatin-80mg/day and Rosuvastatin-40mg/day are the commonest high-dose statin (3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme-A reductase inhibitors) regimes for post-PCI (Percutaneous Coronary ...Interventions) patients to lower (by ≥50%) blood low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). Dearth of conclusive evidence from developing world, regarding overall safety, tolerability and comparative effectiveness (outcome/safety/tolerability/endothelial inflammation control) of Rosuvastatin over Atorvastatin in high-dose, given its higher cost, called for an overall and comparative assessment among post-PCI patients in a tertiary cardiac-care hospital of Kolkata, India.
A record-based non-concurrent cohort study was conducted involving 942 post-PCI patients, aged 18-75 years, on high-dose statin for three months and followed up for ≥one year. Those on Atorvastatin-80mg (n = 321) and Rosuvastatin-40mg (n = 621) were compared regarding outcome (death/non-fatal myocardial infarction: MI/repeated hospitalization/target-vessel revascularisation/control of LDL and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein: hsCRP), safety (transaminitis/myopathy/myalgia/myositis/rhabdomyolysis), tolerability (gastroesophageal reflux disease: GERD/gastritis) and inflammation control adjusting for socio-demographics, tobacco-use, medications and comorbidities using SAS-9.4.
Groups varied minimally regarding distribution of age/gender/tobacco-use/medication/comorbidity/baseline (pre-PCI) LDL and hs-CRP level. During one-year post-PCI follow up, none died. One acute MI and two target vessel revascularizations occurred per group. Repeated hospitalization for angina/stroke was 2.18% in Atorvastatin group vs. 2.90% in Rosuvastatin group. At three-months follow up, GERD/Gastritis (2.18% vs 4.83%), uncontrolled hs-CRP (22.74% vs 31.08%) and overall non-tolerability (4.67% vs. 8.21%) were lower for Atorvastatin group. Multiple logistic regression did show that compared to Atorvastatin-80mg, Rosuvastatin-40mg regime had poorer control of hs-CRP (A3OR = 1.45,p = 0.0202), higher (A3OR = 2.07) adverse effects, poorer safety profile (A3OR = 1.23), higher GERD/Gastritis (A3OR = 1.50) and poorer overall tolerability (A3OR = 1.50).
Post-PCI high dose statins were effective, safe and well-tolerated. High dose Rosuvastatin as compared to high dose Atorvastatin were similar in their clinical efficacy. Patients treated with Atrovastatin had significantly lower number of patients with hs-CRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein)/C-reactive protein (CRP) level beyond comparable safe limit and relatively better tolerated as opposed to Rosuvastatin-40mg.Thus given the lower price, Atorvastatin 80mg/day appeared to be more cost-effective. A head-to-head cost-effectiveness as well as efficacy trial may be the need of the hour.
The spread of Western education in Bengal in the wake of British conquest of the province made the province’s literati painfully aware of the contempt with which the new rulers treated them. British ...portrayal of India as a subjugated country passing from its Muslim conquerors to the British hurt their pride. Their ancient religion came under attack from Christian missionaries for its bigotries and social superstitions. This produced a strong reaction among its leading intellects such as Raja Rammohun Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, who tried to resuscitate the glory of ancient Indian civilisation by blending them with European ideas of Enlightenment and rationality. Rabindranath Tagore gave a fillip to it by arguing that Indian civilisation did not deserve to be judged by Western yardsticks as it had fixed its ideals in the assimilation of all conflicting influences from outside. India might have been invaded from the outside, but thereafter the invaders always merged with the local people and became India’s own. Therein lay the greatness of Indian civilisation.
Contrary to his usual depiction as a modern secular thinker, heteronomous imaginaries of sacrality and kingship are pervasive in Rabindranath Tagore's plays. A return to these referents, as I show in ...this paper, releases Tagore's thought-world from the stranglehold of derivative categories and allows for his reconstruction as a political thinker. Eschewing the nationalist ideal of valiant and noble rulers shored up from histories and myths as legitimate alternatives to the colonial regime, Tagore aesthetically employed the imaginary of an "absent king" sourced from the Upanishads. Avoiding the tropes of spectrality of a dead king or an exceptional interregnal anarchic moment, emptiness was inscribed in the very heart of the monarchical model, thereby transfiguring it into a radical instituting imaginary of the social. This curiously brought together the apparently antithetical categories of sovereignty and freedom through an insistence on creative will and action.
Nation and Nationalism are concepts drawing in admittedly both negative and positive literary reflections. The idea of nation has the observable outcome that is supplemented strongly with the ...nation's people. It could be, collectively, or individually grasped as one's love for the country. Nationalism can also be acknowledged with patriotism. Both signify the love for one's nation. Nationalism is denoted in terms of Individualistic, collective, political, or cultural congeniality. The association of culture, religion, gender discrimination and other social set up like caste, with nationalism and its deleterious effects on individual and society are some philosophical and realistic themes presented in some of his writings. Tagore's steadfast view on freedom indulges in culture within the strata of nation at the same time draws out his disenchantment for violence. He preached and practiced humanity drawing upon his travel exposure and rich education compounded in the rich fabric of Indian culture.
The essay focuses on two Bengali novels—Bankim Chandra Chatterji's Anandamath (1882) and Rabindranath Tagore's Gora (1909)—to reflect on how they register Bengal's transition to colonial capitalist ...modernity. It begins by discussing the novels' portrayal of the famine of 1769-73 and the Indigo Revolt, specific events from Bengal's colonial history. It then examines the novels' formal peculiarities to understand their mediation of Bengal's experience of transition. Arguing that the novels signal a crisis of praxis, the essay posits that how the texts each resolve this crisis illuminates a divergent conception of politics.
Robert Volpicelli’s Transatlantic Modernism and the US Lecture Tour, co-winner of the MSA First Book Prize, offers readers a new way to consider how modernist writers circulated in the American ...literary and social ecosystem through the “paraliterary practice” of the lecture tour (8). ...Volpicelli shows how the lecture circuit participates in the shaping of American national identity. In “circulating Irishness abroad”—and circulating Yeats—as a product, Volpicelli shows us a poet who was canny about how he wanted both his art and his nationalism portrayed. Volpicelli’s reading of Everybody’s Autobiography (1937) as a form of documentary shows how Stein mirrors the Federal Writers Project guidebook mode to produce “art as a democratized form of capital
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