The acronym ‘BIMARU states’ was widely used in the mid-1980s to refer to the population issues of India’s four largest states—Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Ashish Bose, the man who coined this much-discussed term, is the pioneer of demographic studies in the country. In Headcount, the demographer sets the record straight on BIMARU, and in the process, presents his unique view of modern India. In his inimitable engaging style, Bose, who was born in 1930, paints a vivid portrait of a life well-lived—from his childhood in Kolhapur, then a princely state, to his encounters with three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family and his recollections of the darkest days of Indian democracy: the Emergency. Filled with little known facts and insights into the people and events that have shaped independent India, this is a deeply compassionate and readable memoir by one of the most important social scientists of modern India.
For anyone who has wondered ‘What is life all about? Why are we born? And does it all just end with death?’ the essays in this anthology provide profound answers. The author, Sri Madhava Ashish, was for many years the head of a remote and rather unconventional ashram in the Himalayan foothills of northern India. The ashram drew visitors from India and all over the world—people driven by just such questions about ultimate meaning and purpose. The distilled teaching that Ashishda, as he was fondly known, offered freely and that forms the core of these essays, is intensely relevant to our lives today. It has little to do with conventional religions, but can be called secular spirituality. It points out the folly of viewing the cosmos in material terms alone, encouraging us to open our minds and see that our lives are not restricted to the closed box of purely physical existence. Sri Madhava Ashish urges us to set out on the most urgent of all quests: the path of self-knowledge that integrates timeless inner practices—such as meditation—with a meaningful and active outer life. Using methods that include intelligent inquiry, psychological self-examination and dream analysis, his unorthodox teaching provides a road-map for the emotions, the intellect and the soul to develop in harmony—so that both individuals and society can free themselves from egoism, violence and greed, and begin to base their values on the reality of their spiritual source.
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