Comments on Friday December 27, 2019 PBS NewsHour broadcast

To: viewermail@newshour.org
Cc: alyssa@alyssaayres.com
Bcc: thebahuofbengal@gmail.com, presswingeoi@gmail.com, info@hafsite.org

Dear PBS NewsHour, I am writing with respect to the segment on What ongoing Indian protests say about the country’s secular identity, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-ongoing-indian-protests-say-about-the-countrys-secular-identity, on your Friday, September 27, 2019 broadcast. I have copied Alyssa Ayres, whom Lisa Desjardins interviewed for this segment, on this email.

Alyssa Ayres

My comments:

• I'm embittered that the media pays so much attention to the status of Muslims in India but cares not one whit about the plight of religious minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Tell your listeners about discrimination and abuse that religious minorities face in the Islamic countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Religious minorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh are not migrants, but refugees. Tell your listeners about the precipitous drop in the number/percentage of non-Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh. These are the reasons that the Citizenship Amendment Act is needed. 

• While Ms. Ayres focused on anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests, which she called “inspiring,” she said nothing about large PRO-Citizenship Amendment Act rallies in major cities of India. Nor did she say anything about wide support for the CAA among the Indian public. 

• Concerning the “secular identity” of India, please note that "secular" was not in the preamble of the original Constitution of India. According to Wikipedia, “secularity” is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity. Many Hindus chafe at the clauses in the Constitution of India that omit protection of Hindu institutions from state seizure. This is not secularism. 

• A video of two hijab-clad university students who were protecting a man from police went viral. Here's Ladeeda Sakhaloon, one of the two so-called "sheroes," said about secularism: 

Clearly, Ms. Sakhaloon is a protester who is not agitating for so-called secularism.

Do better. Report news that supports the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Yours sincerely, xxxx
Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Bouma-of-Bengal-161615384026398/ 
Twitter: @TheBahuOfBengal

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To learn more, consult:

Charter of Hindu Demands – Introduction, https://hinducharter.org/introduction/, which discusses inequities in the Constitution of India

Human Rights Report | Hindu American Foundation (HAF), https://www.hafsite.org/resources/human-rights-report, which covers human rights conditions for Hindus around the world, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. HAF has been publishing these reports since 2005.

Sanskrit declension table

नमस्ते I created some tools to help you learn Sanskrit declensions.

Below is a template that I uploaded to SlideShare:
 

Sanskrit declension table 

You may clip this slide from SlideShare and print so that you can practice declensions.

Alternatively, you may download a template in PDF from Google Sites.

I have also created a study set on Quizlet so that you can learn the Sanskrit declension cases.

Districts of India with Shakti Pithas

Here is a map that I created of districts of India that contain at least one shakti pitha.

Districts with Shakti Pithas

Here is the table I used to create the map:

Shakti Pithas in India

I will update blog content to tell the story behind the shakti pithas and explain how I created the map.

Ten useful sites for learning Sanskrit

I've been taking online courses in Sanskrit through the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and here are ten sites that have been helpful in my studies:

1. Glashoff, K. (n.d.). Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://spokensanskrit.org/
2. Google Input Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.google.com/inputtools/
3. Huet, G. (n.d.). The Sanskrit Grammarian. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/grammar.fr.html
4. Huet, G. (n.d.). The Sandhi Engine. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/sandhi.fr.html
5. Jha, G. N. (n.d.). Computational Linguistics R & D at J.N.U. New Delhi. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://sanskrit.jnu.ac.in/index.jsp
6. Kurumathur, P. (2018, February 07). Lesson 2 – Declension. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://oursanskrit.com/2016/12/11/lesson-2/
7. Sanskrit. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sanskrit
8. Sanskrit Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://sanskritdictionary.com/
9. Sanskrit verb conjugation. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.verbix.com/languages/sanskrit.html
10. Wiktionary. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.wiktionary.org/

Places to visit in India

It's been over five years since my husband and I last visited India. I'm anxious to reconnect with family and friends.

Here's a video that I created in Google Earth Pro.



This is the list of places where I'd like to visit:

city	state
Delhi	DL
Kolkata	WB
Bankura	WB
Bardhman	WB
Bengaluru	KA
Kozhikode	KL
Aldona	GA
Mumbai	MH
Vadodara	GJ

Invocation to the Isopanishad ईशोपनिषद्

This video presents the invocation in Devanagari, translation to English, declension table, and analysis of cases used in the invocation. Audio is included.

More work needs to be done.