BS Murthy

Fracas of Free Speech   The irony of the alleged lack of free speech in Modi India lies in the absolute freedom of its uninhibited propagation in its subsidiary media. In so far as the right-wing blowback in the social media, the left-libs fall short on the idiom that ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’. When it comes to the ‘agencies’ knocking at free speakers’ doors, the legal dictum paraphrased as ‘one must go to town with clean hands’ has to be borne in mind by one and all. Be that as it may, it’s not as if it was all hunky-dory in the Nehruvian order of yore that nurtured the Modi-aggrieved of the day, and this is not an essay of its dark shades but an attempt to reach the roots of the self-defeating Hindu mindset, passing through my life and times.   I was born on 27 Aug 1948 and that means I was conceived after India became free but yet in colonial hangover for by then, the century-old Macaulay method to divest the Hindus from their “false history...

Manu’s Shadow on Gita’s Path            By BS Murthy When I thought I am done with the study of interpolations in the Gita after my critique, Inane Interpolations in Bhagvad-Gita (An Invocation for their Revocation) I was tempted to turn my attention to the seldom read but much maligned Manu Smriti*. While I found that that testament is Incongruent and its motivated castigation is nothing but flogging a dead horse riding a blind donkey (an eponymous essay is due on this aspect), nevertheless, I could discern Manu’s shadow on the Gita’s path that is sought to be placed here for a public view.                       It is worth noting that at the end of each of its eighteen chapters, it is asserted in the Gita that it is the quintessence of the Upanishads and the Brahmasutr ā s, and as argued in my critique supra, one-hundred and ten v...

My ‘Novel’ Account of Human Possibility   Whenever I look at my body of work of ten books, the underlying human possibility intrigues me no end, and why not. I was born into a land-owning family in a remote village of Andhra Pradesh in India that is after the British had folded their colonial tents from there, but much before the rural education mechanism was geared up. It was thus the circumstances of my birth enabled me to escape from the tiresome chores of the primary schooling till I had a nine-year fill of an unbridled childhood, embellished by village plays and grandma’s tales, made all the more interesting by her uncanny ability for storytelling. As my maternal grandfather’s grandfather happened to be a poet laureate at the court of a princeling of yore, maybe their genes together strived to infuse the muses in me their progeny.  However, as the English plants that Lord Macaulay planted in the Indian soil hadn’t taken roots in its hinterland till then, it’s the nati...

An ode to the Muse (Cināre)   This is BS Murthy’s English rendition of Dwana Sastry’s nānēs tribute in Telugu to the  Jn ā np ē th  ascendant, Dr. C. Narayana Reddy (Cināre), on his 75 th birthday       1                                               So to savour                                            Cināre’s verse, Goes  Jn ā np ē th To Hanumānjipet.   2. Hi, Sastry ji Cināre greets, Brings that warmth To Dwana’s heart.   3 Beckons as Dwana Eve...