A prominent Muslim scholar has warned that the West’s failure to include the incarceration in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Muslim world of pro-democracy religious scholars risks perpetuating autocratic rule. “The world manufactures the condition that it condemns. We don’t rise up to condemn the persecution of Muslim democrats when it occurs, and we don’...
Bhishma said he waited for 58 days to leave this earth, while Krishna mentioned 56 days. To know when exactly the first day of the 58-day period commenced, let me construct the tithi-star alignment from the known factor. The known factor is Magha Shukla Ashtami coinciding with Rohini when Bhishma left his mortal coils. To recap the verses discussed in Part 4...
Duryodhana was killed on the evening of Pushya Amawasya that coincided with a solar eclipse in Shravana. Magha adhika masa started the next day. Vaisampayana says, “Having offered oblations, of water unto all their friends and kinsmen, the sons of Pandu, and Vidura, and Dhritarashtra, and all the Bharata ladies, continued to dwell there (on the banks of Bhag...
As the United States moves resolutely towards civil war, President Joe Biden is relying on left-wing believers of different faiths. He sees Donald Trump’s voters as people who have been abused in their faith and whom he must bring back to the true path. By manipulating religions, the Democratic Party is dividing the country, not between different faiths, but...
Two recent reports documenting significant Saudi progress in countering ingrained religious anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-Shiite supremacism as well as anti-Western and other xenophobic attitudes suggest the kingdom’s receptivity to external pressure as it endeavours to position itself as the leader of a vaguely defined ‘moderate’ form of Islam. So d...
The next event of a celestial reference occurred on the evening of the 14th day of the war when Arjuna was trying to breach the security cordon around Jayadratha whom he avowed to kill in revenge for the killing of Abhimanyu, his son, the previous day. If he failed to kill him before sunset he would have to jump into fire. With no great progress in sight as ...
The globalist Davos World Economic Forum is proclaiming the necessity of reaching a worldwide goal of “net zero carbon” by 2050. This for most sounds far in the future and hence largely ignored. Yet transformations underway from Germany to the USA, to countless other economies, are setting the stage for creation of what in the 1970’s was called the New Inter...
President Emmanuel Macron and the government of Jean Castex drafted a bill to combat the political instrumentation of the Muslim faith. This text is currently being discussed in Parliament. It revolves around four strong ideas, including the prohibition of the financing of religious associations by foreign States. Everyone is well aware that this is the hea...
The two armies arrayed against each other, with the Pandavas facing east and the Kauravas facing west. Contrary to the popular belief, the narration of the war does not start from the first day. It started after the fall of Bhishma. Sanjaya, the charioteer of Dhritarashtra endowed with divine vision to see the events of the war, was in the battlefield at tha...
A week after carrying out a bloodless coup on January 31, Myanmar’s military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing made an official statement. The coup was triggered after the military, known locally as Tatmadaw, refused to accept the results of the November 8, 2020, general election, alleging electoral fraud. It is a matter of detail that the allegation was ...
On February 10, India and China began a “synchronised and organised disengagement” from the north and south banks of the Pangong Tso Lake. The information was first given by the Chinese media; Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a statement in Parliament confirming the same the next day. “I am happy to inform the House today that, as a result of our well th...
The day the war started can be deduced from the Gitopadesa date (Margashira Shukla Ekadasi – 22nd October, 3136 BCE). That date must fulfill the astronomy features of the text. The war started on the first day of the solar month of Pushya (Makara) in lunar Pushya Shukla Dwadasi. The day corresponds to 23rd October, 3136 BCE. It was a Thursday with the moon a...
Covid-19 is a viral disease causing the death, in the worst case, of 0.001% of the population. The average age of death from Covid-19 in developed states is about 80 years, with a median age of about 83 years. In comparison, countries at war experience an additional mortality, due to war, that is 5 to 8 times higher, but mainly affects males aged 18 to 30. T...
The army has often been plagued by rights’ abuses as it battles counter-insurgency in various states. To ameliorate the situation, an Additional Director General (Human Rights) has been appointed. The New Year eve announcement of the Indian Army appointing Major General Gautam Chauhan as ADG (HR) formally recognises the importance of human rights in military...
The Pandava troops left Upaplavya for Kurukshetra on the Pushya day of Margashira under the advice of Krishna. The next event given in Mahabharata was that the two sides assembled on the Magha day. [Mbh: 6-17-2] This means the Pandava army reached Kurukshetra by the third day. There is no information on when the Kaurava troops started from Hastinapur. The fi...
The Davos Group of nations recently held its annual meeting electronically, the coronavirus preventing attendance in person for the first time. The United States was represented by John Kerry, one of many Democrats recycled from the Obama years. Russia was represented by its president, Vladimir Putin, and China, for the first time since 2017, by its presiden...
With the USA Biden Presidency, Washington has rejoined the Global Warming agenda of the Paris Accords. With China making loud pledges about meeting strict CO2 emission standards by 2060, now the World Economic Forum is about to unveil what will transform the way we all live in what WEF head Klaus Schwab calls the Great Reset. Make no mistake. This all fits i...
This statement having come from Balarama, it becomes the primary evidence for the dates and the duration of his pilgrimage. It means somewhere in between he had resumed the pilgrimage on Anuradha star. The confusion is solved when we read the sequence of events narrated by Vaisampayana to king Janamejaya in Shalya Parva who wanted to know the events pertaini...
The decision by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on January 7, to suspend Donald Trump’s page, essentially acting a grand silencer over the 45th President of the United States, represents not only the most profound assertion of power by Big Tech over a democratic nation’s political life, but underlines the need for greater oversight by elected state representati...
The first month of the year 2021 gave a glimpse to Sri Lankans of the three major, inter-related issues they are likely to confront during the year. These are: further hardening of government attitudes to ethnic reconciliation, more militarisation of governance, and fighting a losing battle to managing the battered economy. Two of the issues are not new; but...
The sequence in terms of months, tithi and nakshatra of the respective months would solve many problems and confusions in understanding the verses. A systematic listing of the events in respective months is done below to arrive at the correct date of the events. [1] Lunar Ashadha month: (Sun in Cancer). Exile ended on Krishna Dasami (11th May, 3136 BCE). Wit...
President Biden’s state of health will not allow him to govern. Already a group of activists are preparing his decisions. Quite far from his electoral programme, he has signed decrees representing a “woke” culture that distances him from the majority of his fellow citizens. However, nothing can be done about it, the extreme-left groups have already demonstra...
Turkey’s state-controlled top religious authority has conditionally endorsed usury in a ruling that is likely to fuel debate about concepts of Islamic finance and could weaken President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to garner religious soft power by projecting Turkey as a leader defending Muslim causes. The ruling, issued by the Directorate of R...
The fragmentary fall of a disintegrating comet over days described in Mahabharata must have left widespread imprints on the earth particularly in Europe which seemed to have borne the brunt of a major fragment. Occasionally we come across information on the presence of nuclear radiation in different places outside India, pointing to an atomic blast some 5000...
More than anything else, riots in Washington D.C. showed that the US politics, while apparently shifting from the ‘mad’ Republicans to the ‘wise’ Democrats, is likely to remain in the grip of intense internal power struggle between what have become ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ Trump groups. The Biden administration is most likely to remain, at least for some time, focus...
The United States presents an unedifying sight at the moment as gleeful Democrats celebrate the second condemnation of Donald Trump, and the latter’s apparent concession of the United States’ presidential race to Joe Biden. It is difficult for the external observer to see what they have to be glad about. Certainly, the presidency of Donald Trump has not ...
Four unnatural sightings are found in Mahabharata, three stated by Vyasa and one by Karna. Mars wheeling towards Anuradha from Jyeṣtha (in reverse) in a sign occupied by the Sun is impossible in nature. An outer planet such as Mars can never go retrograde while it is seen in the company of the sun. But this was stated by Karna on Uttara Phalguni day, i.e. th...
If the 2010s were a decade of defiance and dissent, the 2020s promise to make mass anti-government protests a fixture of the greater Middle East’s political landscape. Protests in the coming decade are likely to be fuelled by the challenges Middle Eastern states face in enacting economic and social reforms as well as reducing their dependence on energy expor...