Kathiresan Ramachanderam

Indira became the prime minister of India in 1966 following the death of India’s second prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri on the 11th of January 1965. Both Nehru and Shastri were from the Gandhi camp and they were no doubt inspired and influenced by his non-violent stance and his rather peaceful approach to things.
While both men were able administrators, and were more than capable of governing the country in times of peace neither were suitable candidates to govern in times of war and could be blamed at least partly for India’s relatively poor showing in the first Indo-Pakistan war (1947 – 1948) or the war of Kashmir, the Sino-India War of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. Despite the fact that almost little or no territory changed hands in all three wars there was a significant loss of lives.
Things however were vastly different in the Liberation War of Bangladesh 1971. The Nixon administration fearing a rise in Soviet influence, primarily due to affairs in Afghanistan where th…

This is my first attempt at writing something that remotely resembles a biography and the person I have selected is none other than the iron lady of India, its second longest serving prime minister and perhaps the most complex person to serve as the prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi.
Of all the prime ministers of India, I am most fascinated by Indira and unlike most prime ministers who served in times of peace, she was one of the few women prime ministers who served during a war - a war that India was never expected to win, and if it wasn’t for her tenacity, India in all probability, would have lost the war.
At the onset, I have to admit that it is impossible to cover her whole life in an article or a series of articles because it was a long and illustrious career and her tenure as prime minister spanned more than a decade. Her first tenure lasted for ten years and her second tenure for four.
The events that we will be looking at here will be the events that piqued my interest as a …

The invasion of Malaya begun just after midnight on the 8th of December 1941, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor with a naval assault on the 8th Indian Infantry Brigade stationed in Kota Baru, Kelantan, followed by an amphibious landing supported by air strikes by Air Group III.

The attack was led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita; the man selected for the job and later dubbed the Tiger of Malaya. The destruction on the Malayan side of things was total and both British and Commonwealth troops were on the retreat from the start, driven back from the north to the south and by the 31st of January 1942, British and Commonwealth forces had completely withdrawn to Singapore, and Malaya had fallen. The allies suffered massive casualties with 9,000 dead and almost 130,000 captured.

Between the 31st of January 1942 to the 15th of August 1945, Malaya was administered by the Japanese and much of its wealth as were its people were used to further Japan’s war efforts.

In 1943 the Japanese commenced w…

Almost a week had gone by and in that time, Molly had managed to ease into her new role relatively well. She’d managed to make the transition from student to teacher comfortably enough and she was determined to help see her students through. Her third class still revolved around the physical elements in a crime.
She began her class in the customary manner by asking a few questions. “Can anyone tell me what are the two ingredients or components to a crime?” she asked. Otto was the first to put up his hand and Molly pointed to him. “The mental and physical element” he replied.
Molly nodded her head and pointed to Olly, “Can you please elaborate on that Olly?” she asked and the owl promptly replied “yes, thought and action, the thought of committing the crime, which is not necessarily in itself an offence and the act of committing it” he said and Molly nodded her head.
“Now, can anyone tell me if it is possible to commit a crime without an act or without any action or by refraining from act…

Molly had to admit that her first class had taken off relatively well. There were no unexpected twists or turns and with the exception of five students, whose faces were brimming with eagerness to acquire more knowledge, there was nothing to stop her from conducting a smooth session at the end of which she was certain that her students had acquired, at least, a basic understanding of the mental component in a criminal act.

Her most promising student was a bright and cheery lass; who was a member of the local constabulary, Sally Rabbit. She was hoping to be promoted to the rank of inspector once she had completed her degree.
The others were Otto Otter, who appeared to be somewhat of a career student and who was in the process of becoming an academician of sorts, Gary Gopher, a somewhat excitable lad who was always smiling and nodding his head to everything Molly said, Olly Owl, a serious bespectacled nocturnal bird who was now on its second degree and Wally Weasel a shifty eyed lad who’d…

Molly Mole couldn’t believe her luck. She had just graduated as a criminologist after three long years of diligent studies and within a couple of months after the completion of her degree she’d managed to land herself a job at Hicksville Community College as a part-time lecturer. Peter Badger, the principle, had promised her a full time position in the Sociology Department if she could put the college on equal footing with the rest of the colleges in the county.
Thus far despite having been in operation for almost a hundred years Hicksville Community College had not produced a criminologist of any note. Molly however was ready to change all of that and hoped to push the college up the ranking. It was currently sitting at the bottom of the ladder and Molly had made up her mind to push it up at least a notch or two. She felt that it was the only way she could thank Principle Badger for his faith in her.
Today was her first class and she got on her bicycle, just before 8 in the morning, to…

The legacy of the Cholas, its monumental temples, were discovered by accident when in 1838 an English explorer while hacking his way through the dense jungles of Southern India, Tamil Nadu to be precise, came across what would later be dubbed the erotic temples of India because of the lurid and lucid sculptures, carvings and engravings that adorn the walls of these temples.
The temples were discovered in the same manner that Henri Mouhot discovered the lost temples of Angkor. Henri Mouhot after working in Siam was travelling through Cambodia collecting zoological and botanical samples when while cutting his way through the dense forests of Cambodia he stumbled across the temples of Angkor.
The first question that comes to mind with regards to both these sets of temples is; are these temples in any way connected? I don’t believe that they are and I am certain that we are dealing with two distinct and separate blends of Hinduism. For starters the Cholas are Shaivites and the Angkor temple…

The bond between a shaman and his or her spirit tree has been a long-established principle of shamanism and many cultures of antiquity adhere to the principle that the abilities of the shaman are very much dependent on the shaman’s spirit tree, to the extent that the metaphoric tree has taken on a life of its own and has become a central feature or facet of shamanism.
The shaman tree can be divided into two types. The first type or category of shaman trees are trees where spirits or spiritual entities reside. These trees have their origins in the realm of folklore and are often divided into different tiers. The strength of the spirit is dependent on the tier that the spirit occupies. Spirits that reside on higher tiers are stronger than those that occupy lower tiers. It is therefore possible, in this manner, to distinguish between inferior spirits and spirits of a higher capacity.
The second type of shamanic trees are trees that have a spirit i.e. these trees have a soul and it is the s…

Black Elk was a famous medicine man from the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) and second cousin to the famed Native American warrior Crazy Horse who rebelled against the Federal Government for intruding on Native American territories.
Born on December 1st 1863 in Little Powder River Wyoming he was a medicine man of substance and his experiences, during which he becomes aware of the Seven Sacred Rights of the Lakota, reaffirms the outer body experience as propagated by Jung, which occurs as a result of either natural sleep or induced sleep i.e. hypnosis. It confirms what parapsychologists like Jung have asserted for years in that the mind is a vast untapped resource that has never been fully explored.
When Black Elk was nine years old he was struck by a sudden illness that left him unconscious and unresponsive. During this time, he experienced visitations from cosmic entities who he described as thunder beings (Wakinyan) and who he perceived to be the forefathers or the ancestors of the Oglala Siou…