The intellectual scene in Post-independence India

A speech of S. Gurumurthy given to IIT Chennai

One must spare some time to read this beautiful article. A must read for present educated and non-intellectual generation with biased and reserved mindset

Defeat and anger go together. Abuse and defeat go together. So, it is in this norm and with this understanding of what an intellectual debate means, I would like to place before you some of my thoughts today. Some of may find it provocative. I am confident that the audience is competent enough to absorb this and think rather than get into the mood which all of us have got used to in the last 30-40 years abuse.

Background: India before Independence
Let us see the pre-independence background, the intellectual content of India. See the kind of personalities who led the Indian mind Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhiji, Tilak- giants in their own way. Most of them were involved in politics, active politics, day-to-day politics, handling men, walking on the road, addressing meetings, solving problems between their followers. And, meeting the challenges posed by the enemy, the conspiracies hatched against them. They were handling everything, yet, they were maintaining an intellectual supremacy, and an originality which history has recorded.

Let us look at the academic side. Whether it is a P.C. Ray who wrote on Indian Chemistry in 1905 or Sir C.V. Raman who wrote about mridangam, tabala, and violin, and saw the physics in it (this was in 1913); whether it was R.C. Majumdar or Radhakumud Mukherjee who saw greatness in the Indian civilization; trying to bring up points, instances, historical evidence to mirror the greatness of India to the defeated Indian race, they were all building the Indian mind brick by brick.

Sri Aurobindo spoke of Sanatana Dharma as the nationalism of India. He didn't rank it as a philosophy. He brought it down to the level of emotional consciousness. Swami Vivekananda spoke of spiritual nationalism; it was the same Swami who spoke of Universal brotherhood. For them philosophy was not removed from the ground reality. The nation was at the core of their philosophy. Swami Vivekananda was called the "patriot monk".

Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Rama Rajya. Bankim Chandra wrote Bande Maataram. The song, the slogans in it, the mantra in it made hundreds of people kiss the gallows smilingly and many others went to jail. It transformed the life of the people. This was the intellectual scene, this was the content. This is what powered the intellectual as well as the mass movement in India. This was the core of India, the soul of the Indian freedom movement.

The symptoms: India immediately after Independence

Imagine what happened in 1947 and after, India was able to intellectually lead not only Indians but also the whole world because of the intellectual assertion that the freedom movement brought about. Let us look at post Independence India. The persons who led post-Independence India were also trained in the same freedom movement. They went to jail, but they were not rooted in the intellectual content of the Freedom movement!

The first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru was in jail for 7 years. He was a great intellectual, purely in the sense of his capacity to reason, understand, read, and expound a thought. He told Galbrieth once, "I would be regarded as the last English Prime Minister of India." See the intellectual capability of the man, the enormously competent mind.

But intellectualism doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has to be rooted in something concrete. Swami Vivekananda's universal brotherhood was rooted in India's greatness as a civilization. The concept of "Vasudaiva Kutumbakam" cannot exist without a living form, a population which believes in it and believes in itself. You need to have a society which believes in it.

That is why India could invite the Jews who were butchered, raped, all over the world. In 107 out of 108 countries, this race was butchered. At least they had the courtesy and the gratitude to publish a book. The Israeli government published a book that out of 108 countries that we sought refuge, the only civilization, the only country, the only people, the only ideology that gave us refuge was the Indian civilization. They published a book, which most Indians are unaware of. And we invited the Muslims. The refugee Muslims first landed in Kutch. And they are called the Kutchy Memons even today but not the Memons who bomb Mumbai. But the Memons who lived with us.

In the year 1917, many of you might be aware, a case went to the Prey Council, equivalent to the Supreme Court now. The Kutchy Memons went and told the Prey Council that we are Muslims for namesake, but we follow only the Hindu law. Please don't impose the Shariat on us. The Prey Council ruled that they are Muslims but the only sacred book they have is called "Dasaavathaara", it is not Koran. In fact they knew no language other than the Kutchy language.
And in the "Dasaavathaara", nine avatharas were common between Hindus and Kutchy Memons. We call the tenth avathaara "Kalki" and they call him "Ali". The Prey Council ruled that the Shariyat law is not applicable to them. The All India Muslim League took up the case, went to the British and told them that this finding is dangerous to Islam and requested them to pass a law which will overrule this judgment. The British government passed a law in 1923 which was called the "The Kutchy Memons Act" declaring, "If a Kutchy Memon wants to follow the Shariat, allow him to do so".

It doesn't mean a Muslim must follow the Shariat. Between 1923-1937, before the All India Shariat Act was passed not a single Kutchy Memon filed an affidavit with the plea that he wants to follow the Shariaat. That was the integration prevalent in India.

In 1937, when the All India Shariat Act was passed, the preamble to the act mentioned that this was being passed by a demand made by the AIML leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Today, the Shariat has become a part of Muslim consciousness.

The purpose behind making you aware of this background is that 99% of the people who speak about the constitutional rights of the minorities or the distinctiveness of Muslim life are unaware of the facts. Till the year 1980, in Cooch Behar district, the Shariat law was not applicable. In 32 instances between 1923 and 1947 by legislation, the Shariyat law was not applicable to the Muslims. This is the extent of the intellectual gap in India.

Secularism: A Reversal and perversion of the Indian mind
And now, coming to what is the position today. Everything that drove the freedom movement - everything that constituted the soul of the freedom movement, whether it is the Ram rajya of Gandhiji or Sanaatana Dharma of Sri Aurobindo or the spiritual patriotism of Vivekananda or the soul stirring Vande Maataram song, came to be regarded not only as unsecular but as sectarian, communal and even as something harmful to the country.

Thus, there was a reversal, a perversion of the Indian mind. How did it occur? Today, the intellectualism of India means to denigrate India. There are mobile citizens and there are non- citizens deriding India. Go to the Indian Airlines counter you will find people deriding India. Go to a post office they will deride India. Go to a railway station, they will deride India. It is the English educated Indian's privilege to deride India.

When I was talking to postal employees in the GPO, Chennai (a majority of them were women). I told them the basic facts about the post office. I said it is one of the most efficient postal systems in the world, one of the cheapest in the world, one of the most delivery perfect postal systems in the world. For one rupee, you are able to transport information from one end of the country to the other.

And you have a postman, no where in the world this happens the postman goes to the illiterate mother and reads out the letter, he is asked to sit there and shares a cup of coffee and comes away. Money orders are delivered to the last rupee. It is an amazing system, one of the largest postal systems linking one of the most populous nations, one of the most complicated nations with so many languages.

Somebody writes the address in Tamil and it gets delivered in Patna! It gets delivered to Jawaan at warfront! When I completed my speech many of the women were wiping their tears. I asked why are you crying I have only praised you. They said, "Sir, this is the first time we've been praised, otherwise we've only been abused!"

You know how many people use the railways in India? A million people and that is equivalent to the population of Australia! And we have only abuses for them!

Have we any idea of what this country is? India has been compared with Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. You can walk across many of these countries in one night (laughs)! The best politicians, intellectuals, sociologists in India have compared us with them because, we have never understood what we are and unless you do that, you can never relate us with others.

Demonising India: Projecting a negative image.

This enormous intellectual failure, to the extent of being intellectually bankrupt, did not occur overnight, it was no accident. There is a history behind this enormous erosion. And I told you about these mobile citizens, what they have done to us. Every country has problems. There is no country without any problem. Are you aware of what is one of the most pressing problems in America today? It is incurable according to the American sociologists; even American economists have begun to agree with them. American politicians are shaken, one third of the pregnant women are school going children. And mothers mix the anti-pregnancy pill in the food without daughter's knowledge everyday.

But this is not the image of America. The image of America is a technologically advanced country etc. etc. Ours is the only country where the mobile citizens of India have transformed the problems of India into the image of India -its identity is inherently related with its problems.
Go to any country and the same negative stereotype is echoed that India is suffering from poverty and malnutrition. India has no drinking water. Indian women are burnt. If they are married, they are burnt, if they are widows, they are burnt. See the image that has been built about this country. Who did this? The English educated Indian.

And one Kaluraam Meena (have you ever heard of him? Asks the audience to raise their hands if they have), only a small fraction of this large audience has heard of him. When Clinton came to India, he went to a village called Nayla where the villagers interacted with him. And one of the panchayat board members asked him, "Sir, I am told that in the West, all of you believe that this country is a rotten country, a backward country, a poor, hungry country. Do you also think like that?"

Clinton was shaken, because he might have thought that this person might be approaching him for some favour. I will relate my experience when I went to the Carter Centre in 1993. They were talking about dispute resolution and all that. I went there to meet somebody, if not Carter, somebody else at least. His Deputy, a lady, was very hesitant to receive me. "Mr. Gurumurthy", she said, "Mr. Carter is not around, anyway, I can spare seven-eight minutes for you." I said three or four minutes of your time would do. Even before I could start, she said, "Mr.Gurumurthy, we don't have funds, we will not be able to help" (laughter from the audience). I replied, "Let us assume you have a hundred billion dollars, how much will you give me? One billion? One million?" She kept quiet, I said: "I don't need your money. I came here to discuss whether community living is an answer to disputes. I have come to discuss this because you have suggested electoral means to resolve problems in communities which have no damn idea of what an election is; whether community living is an answer because you don't what that means. She sat and discussed this with me for two hours. This is the image we have projected that anybody, who comes from India, comes to beg. Ordinary Indians did not create this impression; educated Indians created it. This is the work of civil servants, NGOs. Christian missionaries during the freedom movement created this. Indians are filthy, rotten, dirty and unhealthy, advertising abroad these are the people who need to be saved. We have to Christianise them, enlighten them, and give us money. I can understand that because it is their business. But what did we do after 1947?

We repeated the same mistakes. We projected India as a country of unending problems. As I said, every country has problems. Only in India, problems become identities. How many dowry deaths take place in India in a year? Yet, India is projected as a country burning its own daughter-in-laws. And we also talk about it. Every damn newspaper will be writing about it. We believe in self-deprecation. And this goes on in the guise of intellectualism in India. And one woman, she attempted to take a film of the widows. I wrote an article, asking her to go to Lijjat Paapad. A widow brought me up. Millions of widows have worked to bring up their children. It is a nation, which believes in Tapasya. You may not believe in it but you are an exception. Compare Deepa Mehta"s attitude with Sarada Maa's who was the wife, who became a widow after Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's passing away. She went to the very same place where Deepa Mehta went and saw the widows. Sarada Maa said, "These widows are so pure, they are an illustration and an example to me." Deepa Mehta saw them as prostitutes. The widows have already been hurt once. Why are you sprinkling salt on their wounds?

I am very sorry to speak about this, but I have to, this audience is enlightened enough to understand me. Indian women are sexually unsatisfied and so they are becoming lesbians? This is one bloody story against us, about us. This is the image of Indian men and women, and this film is in English. Catherine Mayo wrote a book and Mahatma Gandhi said about it, "I have no time to read this filth. But I am under a compulsion, under pressure because this has been published abroad. The image of India has been rubbished and I have to counter it." With this introduction, he wrote about the book and said that this woman is a gutter inspector (laughs).

The intellectualism in India is gutter inspection- people are of this kind etc. Understand the level of erosion.

Indian Politics: Weaknesses and Pitfalls
Let us look at the post independence scenario from the macro level. We installed a system of governance and it postulated all the important goals for the Indian society and polity, which was gulped by the Indian academia, by the Indian intellectuals. We will have a classless society through socialism. We will have a casteless society through equality. We will have a faithless society through secularism. We will have a modern society devoid of tradition.

Instead of politics restructuring caste, caste has restructured politics today. Political parties are talking only in terms of castes. Has any Indian intellectual come to terms with caste? You must understand caste if you want to handle the Indian society. You cannot say that I want to have a very different kind of society. You have to handle the Indian sentiment, the Indian tradition and Indian beliefs. You can't clone a society of your choice in India. Social engineering has failed everywhere; the masters of social engineering have given up the Communists - whether it is sociologists or economists you have to accept a society as it is. You can only increase the momentum of evolution in the society; you can't forcibly bring about a revolution today. But, Indian leaders and intellectuals, till today, keep abusing caste. They don't know how to handle the caste.

Let me narrate to you how a community in Karaikudi handled this issue. The Chettiyar community assembled top businessmen, professionals from all over the world for 3 days to discuss their culinary act, how to construct houses, what languages they use, what old adages and stories their grand parents used to tell, what clothes they used to wear; not one word of politics, mind you. This was not even published in the newspapers. Intellectuals were not even aware of it. So, caste is a very important instrument in India, you may not like it. Unfortunately, every intellectual leads a caste life inside, but outside he is casteless! He is cloning an approach outside. There is no intellectual honesty at all.

And what happened in the case of secularism? In India, any one who is not a Hindu is per se secular. In the year 1947, just 10 years had passed after the Muslim League demanded and got the country partitioned, the leader who voted for the resolution for the partition of India was Quazi Millath Ismail, (who was leading the same Muslim League on the Indian side), the Congress certified that the Muslim League in Kerala is secular and hence it can associate with them. The Muslim League outside Kerala is communal with the same president! Three hundred and fifty crores are spent today for the Haj pilgrims out of the funds of secular India every year. No one can raise an objection. At least I can understand why politicians don't want to do that because they want the Muslim votes. But what about the intelligentsia. What about newspaper editors and journalists? And academicians? None of them speak out. The reason is that we have produced a state dependent intellectualism in India. We don't produce Nakkeerans anymore, our intellectualism is a derivative of the State and the State is a derivative of the polity. And in turn the polity is a derivative of the mind of Macaulay and Marx.

The Indian education system: A Legacy of Macaulay.

This Macaulayian system of education is a poison injected into our system. At least I had the opportunity of schooling in Tamil and hence could withstand the corruption that this English education brings with it. This corruption begins the moment the child steps out of the house. He is told to converse in English at home. This did not happen even in pre-Independence India, even when Macaulay wrote that notorious note sitting in Ooty. How many of you know Macaulay's formulation? Just those two or three sentences at least which form the crux - "We require an education system in India which will produce a class of interpreters, who will be Indian in colour and Englishmen in taste, opinions and morals."

This is the education system, which we have been continuing with, which was earlier conceived to produce clerks for the British Empire. If you have to differ from an English educated person you have to differ only through the English language. If you have to abuse somebody, even that has to be done in English! If you abuse the Anglicised Indian, he will not find fault with the blame but with the grammar in your language! This is the extent to which a foreign language has possessed us. But, we must master English, that is needed, but why do we have to become slaves of the English language? We must use that language as a tool, but why do we consider it as a status symbol? This is the influence of Macaulay.

If you want to understand the Macaulay/Marxist mix in India, you have to go a little back to see how Marxism grew out of the Christian civilisation. I recommend that you read the Nov 27, 1999 edition of the Newsweek, which describes how the Christian idea of the end of time called the "apocalypse", influenced the entire history, art, music, prognosis, sociology, economics, and the entire attitude of the Christian civilisation towards the non-Christian civilisations.

A Christian scholar who describes how Communism grew out of Christianity has written it. In 1624, Anna Baptists, a group of Christians who believed in the basic tenets of Christianity seized power in a particular place, banned private property and use of any book other than the Bible. When Marxism came up later through the exposition of Das Capital, the Marxists began expounding their doctrine as an extension of Christianity.

The thesis, antithesis and synthesis of making Christianity acceptable to the age of enlightenment was the Hegelian way demanded rationalisation of Christianity in the days of the Protestant movement. Hegel began with a disagreement, then started interacting with Christianity and ultimately ended up accepting Christianity.

You can see the same phenomenon with Marxist postulates- "Capitalism is my enemy, we have to deal with capitalism" and finally "we have to find a synthesis with capitalism".

Marx on India
In fact in the year 1857, Marx wrote about India, " India was a prosperous civilisation. It had a very high standard of living. Their productivity was higher. India was an economic giant." It was so. If you look at the statistics in 1820, India's share of world production was 19%, and England's share was 9%, please note that Britain was deep into the industrial revolution at that time. 18% of the world trade was in Indian hands at that time whereas 8% was the figure for Britain and 1% for US. When 80% of the American population was engaged in agriculture, India had 60% of the population engaged in non-agricultural occupations. This is supposed to be an index of development. All these statistics can be found in Paul S. Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of Great Powers".

So, Marx says, "This was a great civilisation which had produced prosperous communities." A prosperity which went deep into the villages. In the early stages, when the East India Company came to Murshidabad, an unknown name in Bengal today the Britishers were awe struck with its prosperity and wrote that it was more prosperous than London. This is no more disputed anyway, even by Indian intellectuals. Marx acknowledges the fact that this was a prosperous country and also had equality but unfortunately, he says for 2000 years the society did not change nor did it allow any revolutionary forces to enter! In his worldview human beings cannot progress without a revolution!

In the two articles on British rule in India and the East India Company- history and results written by Marx, quoted in the New York daily "Karl Marx does grant though somewhat in a grudging manner that "materially, India was fairly industrious and prosperous even before the onset of the British rule. He said that India was an exporting country till 1830 and started importing because it had opened its trade to the British." Many of you may not be aware that the kings in India had no right to over the lands, which came under the jurisdiction of panchayats. Whether it was Emperor Ashoka or Bhagavan Sri Ramachandra, the rule was the same. It was changed only during the British rule under the Ryotwari system. Even the Mughals could not change it. It was also found that family communities were based on domestic industry, with the peculiar combination of hand-spinning, hand- weaving, agriculture etc. which gave them a supporting power.

The misery inflicted by the British on Hindusthan is of an entirely different kind and infinitely more intense than what it had to suffer before civil wars, invasions, revolutions, conquests, famines all these did not go deeper than the surface. But, England broke the entire framework of Hindusthan, the symptoms of reconstitution are yet to emerge clearly. This loss of the Old World without the emergence of a new order imparts a particular melancholy to the present misery of Hindus and Hindusthan. Marx goes on to say that the British interference destroyed the union between agriculture and the manufacturing industry. Suddenly he remarks that the English interference dissolved this semi barbarian, semi-civilised community.

He concedes that they were prosperous, that they organised their affairs well, they have a measure of independence, they have a democracy at the lowest level, all this has been conceded. Then, how does he classify us as "semi-barbarian and semi-civilised communities"? He notes that India's social condition remained unaltered since remote antiquity. This is important, for him revolution is the core, the soul and centre of the society. This society never had a revolution; hence it cannot be modern! There is an underlying assumption, which considers revolution as a pre- requisite for being modern.

Hence, he feels that the destruction wrought by the British is the inevitable revolution needed for the development of the Indian society. England had vested interests, violent interests in bringing about this "revolution". But, the question in focus is whether mankind can fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state? Whatever might have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about a revolution, whatever bitterness the spectacle of crumbling of an ancient world may evoke, from the point of history, we have to exclaim - should this torture torment us?

Since it brings us great pleasure, were not the rule of Taimur, souls delivered without measure? It is a creative destruction in the cause of revolution according to him. If you see Indian Communism which was expounded by a man called Rajane Palme Dutt. Has anyone heard of his name? (Two persons from the audience raised their hands). Two. He was born of a white woman and an Indian father in England. He was in charge of Indian Communism for 25 years. He never came to India though. In his book, "India Today", he laid down the framework, the policy for Indian Communists, what must be done, what is the kind of revolution needed in India, the development model etc.

In those days, even good photographs of India were not available, yet this man spoke about India sitting in London. He came to India for the first time in 1946, ten years after he wrote this book and realised that he had to revise it. He stayed for 30 days! A visitor to India was the father of Indian Communism! And from that day till date, the Indian Communist has never been with India. Not only that, they took over the Indian mind in the post- independence period. It is these Marxist/Macaulayist intellectuals who will certify whether somebody is modern or traditional, backward or secular or communal, progressive or regressive. They were running an Open Air University issuing certificates every day through the press. They have branded me as a communal man.

Labels: Tools for stultifying important debates

Labels substituted debate in India. Simply a label - communal, that is enough. Four or five editorials will appear preaching that Gurumurthy is communal and the matter must end there. No one would even discuss what communalism is! Religious fundamentalism, RSS/Bajrang Dal fundamentalism! Anyone, who exposes the Hindu cause in India is a fundamentalist! We have seen this term being used so casually and superfluously and incessantly by politicians and newspapers. Has anyone bothered to understand the meaning of religious fundamentalism going beyond these slogans?

Secularism is an intra-Christian phenomenon. It has no application outside Christianity at all. Secularism resolved the fight between two powerful persons, the King and the Archbishop who were loyal to the same faith, to the same prophet, to the same book and to the same Church. It is not a multi-religious virtue.

A multi-religious idea, a multi-religious living, a multi-religious culture, a multi-religious fabric or a multi-religious structure was unknown outside India. There was usually only one faith and no place for any other, not even for a variation of the same faith.

Fifty six thousand Bahais were butchered in one hour in Tehran! They believed in the same Koran, in the same Muhammad, the only difference was that they said that Muhammad might come in another form again. That was their only fault and they were all butchered.

But we have no such problem. We can play with God, we can abuse God, and we can beat God!
If I say that monotheistic religions have had a violent history, and the reply will be "you are communal." But this is exactly the same conclusion that a study in Chicago revealed, probably, the only study on fundamentalism conducted by anybody so far. This fundamentalism project brought out five volumes each volume about eight hundred to nine hundred pages. The conclusion they have reached is that, "Fundamentalism is a virtue of Abrahamic religions. It is not applicable to eastern faiths at all.

What about the Indian intellectuals? Day in and day out, they keep abusing us as fundamentalists, communalists, that we are anti-secular and it is being gulped down by everyone including those from the IITs and IIMs, lawyers and police officials, journalists and politicians. Look at this intellectual bankruptcy.

An inner revolution: The much needed change
We need a mental revolution, an inner revolution; we need to get rooted in our own soul. There is a missing element in India today and it is this. That element has to be restored otherwise Indian intellectualism will only be a carbon copy of Western intellectualism. We are borrowing not only their language and idiom but also we trying to copy the very soul of the West.

So, all that we need to do is (it is impossible to share the entire depth of the subject in one evening's lecture programme. I have only tried out point out in an incoherent way, how a completely fresh mindset has to be evolved. And unless it evolves, the Indian mind, which leads India, will be in a perpetual state of confusion ordinary people are perfectly all right.

Consider for example how thirty years before there was a question whether Tamil Nadu will be a part of India or not. The Dravidian parties have taken over the mind of Tamil Nadu. It had virtually ceased to be a part of India. And their attack was aimed at Hinduism. The moment you attack Hinduism you attack India. This is a fact. Neither politicians nor intellectuals nor academicians realised this. But, the ordinary people did. Just three religious movements- the Ayyappa movement, the Kavadi movement and the Melmaruvatthur Adi Para Sakti movement- have finished the Dravidian ideology to a very great extent. It is only the outer shell of Dravidianism that remains today. Tamil Nadu has been brought back successfully by Ayyappa, Muruga and Para Sakti, not by the Congress or the BJP or any other political party.

How many people have intellectually assessed the depth and the reach, the deep influence of religion over the people? A paradigm shift in a study of India would be an intellectual approach to this subject. Or consider for example its influence on economics. Many of you by now would have studied economics in some detail. Take a look at the society in India and compare the figures for public expenditure for private purposes, which is called the social security system in the West. 30% of the GDP in America is spent for social security, 48% in England, 49% in France, 56% in Germany and 67% in Sweden. This private expenditure is nothing but what you and I do by taking care of parents, our wives and children, brothers and sisters and grandparents, widowed sisters and distant relatives. This expenditure is met by the society in India.

And there is no law in India that people should do this. We consider it as our dharma. A person went to a court and demanded a divorce from his father and mother. The American court granted it saying that the only relationship that exists between two persons of America is their citizenship. The law in America recognises no other relationship ... In the year 1978, an interesting incident occurred in Manhattan. There was a power failure for six hours. Manhattan is in the heart of New York where you find the UN building, the World Trade Centre and the head quarters of many multi-national companies. One third of the world's health is concentrated in Manhattan. Within six hours, hundreds of people were killed, robbed and assaulted. We don't need electricity to behave in a civilised manner. How many intellectuals in India have ever articulated from such a sympathetic approach? We have only tarnished the image of this country. We must be ashamed of this.

Conclusion
I shall conclude my speech with this example. When Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry in search of a new light. He used to get five rupees from a friend and four persons used to live on this. A cup of tea was one of the luxuries they used to have everyday in the morning, on the Pondicherry beach.

Sri Aurobindo used to always look at a mystic called Kullachamy (Subramanya Bharati has written a poem about him). He used to behave like a madman, wandering here and there, throwing stones ... One, day he came near Sri Aurobindo, lifted his cup of tea and emptied it in front of him. Then he showed the empty cup to him, placed it on the table and went away. Sri Aurobindo's friends were angry and wanted to chase him. Sri Aurobindo stopped them and said, "This is the kind of instruction I had been expecting from him. He wants me to empty my mind and start thinking afresh."

That is my appeal to you.

Questions and answer session after Sri Gurumurthy's talk

..The King cannot take over any land in the conquered territory. He has to appoint another person from that land who will maintain the Desachaara or the Dharma of that region. If a Sanaatani King invades a kingdom with a Bauddha Vihaara, our Dharma Shaastras say that the king should go and worship in that Vihaara even though he may not be a follower of the Buddha. That is why on 17 occasions Mohammed Ghauri was treated like this by Prithvi Raj Chauhan, 17 times he was captured but pardoned and let off. The next time he invaded, Chauhan was killed by deceit.

We tend to compare a non-aggressive Dharma with an aggressive one. We are a non-aggressive civilisation. We were and still are facing a problem with Islam but are we fully aware of it? Today, do you have any idea what Islamic fundamentalism is? I am willing to have a debate. The problem is in Islam not with the Muslims. A true Muslim has to kill me, this is the problem with Islam, have we ever studied Islam in depth?

Hindus are unable to understand the firepower that issues out of religion. This consciousness has been lacking. That consciousness that somebody can be fanatic enough to break temples is absent. The only time the Hindus did what the Muslims normally do is when they broke the Babri Masjid. That was the only Islamic committed by Hindus (loud applause).

Q: What about the laws of the Manu Dharma Shaastra.
There is no theology in Hinduism. Shrutis and Smritis are different. Smritis are valid for a certain time, but they can be overruled. Anybody who is familiar with the law must be aware of a principle called the Blue Pencil Theorem.that time invalidates the law.

Do Hindus insist on living as per the laws of Manu Dharma Shaastra? If it is not valid or suited to the times, our dharma gives the freedom to throw it into the Ganges.

Hindus are not going to commit sati along with the Manu Dharma Shaastra. We can have a debate on whether the Manu Dharma Shaastra was correct or not, that is a different issue.

But what about the Shariyat? Why doesn't anybody talk about it, leave alone crtitcising it? It mentions clearly all the guidelines for jehad. When a particular place is captured, all the people except young women and the aged are to be killed. The rules for sharing the booty are there. We should not be cowards in dealing with such matters. After all it is a war of words and not of swords.

Q: You have not mentioned the contribution of people like Moulana Abul Kalaam Azad and other Muslim leaders to the freedom movement?
Have you ever heard of Tabliqi Islam". No? It was a fundamentalist sect, which insisted on a rigid adherence to the Shariyat and the Umma. Moulana and some other Muslim leaders were part of this sect. That is why I have not mentioned their names.

Q: A question about the Mandal Commission and reservations.
Say, we introduce reservations for 300 years. What after that? The Brahmin will become the Harijan, then we will find this has to be changed. We must sort out a proper method to deal with it. When I was having a discussion with a bishop in America, I told him that Hindus were not used to manslaughter. If Hindus had committed such massacres probably you wouldn't be raising this issue against us. The Mayans and the Red Indians who were massacred were a hundred and ten million in number. There were many other societies exterminated, how many have studied the impact of colonialism in South America?

If you study the accounts recorded by the colonial authorities, whites themselves, you will notice that disease was unknown in those societies, plague was unknown, malaria was unknown. They led a peaceful life. How many of us are aware that Columbus set out to sail to discover. India, the motive, which inspired them, was the belief that Satan was settled in India! And that this is delaying the return of Christ! Look up the Encyclopaedia Britainicca, which mentions that Columbus believed in eschatology. There is one thing that these whitemen do which is commendable i.e., honest writing. Anyway, coming back to the thread, how many of you have studied Christianity to understand this concept? Have you heard of eschatology? Only two persons. Christ is supposed to return and when he does, for a thousand years there will be a rule of justice and peace on earth.

But, if he has to return, there should be no other religion, that is a pre-requisite. It is not non-Christian religions will disappear of their own. All non-Christians have to be converted to Christianity. Then Christ will come. This is eschatology. Traders were merely the tools; it is religion, which was the prime imperialistic force behind. Columbus instead discovered America, but could not succeed in converting them, so they were killed. How many of these Indian intellectuals have the guts to say this?

Q: What do you have to say about some instances of upper caste Hindus and Muslims joining hands to kill lower caste Hindus?
The subject in focus is the Indian intellectual scenario and Indian intellectuals, don't jump to issues related to the masses. What have the intellectuals done to lead the masses in a proper direction? So, it is natural that the masses behave in their own way. In India, the masses are leading the intellectuals! When that happens you cannot avoid such distortions, there must at least be an intellectual appraisal of what the masses do.

Why do ten million people gather at the Kumbh Mela? Nobody sends an invitation to them! And they have been doing this year after year for centuries together. Have you ever heard of the Kavari procession in the North? People carrying Ganges water, they walk right up to Rishikesh and hundreds of people on the way will be distributing food for them. These intellectuals are not even aware of the various activities, which go on in the country. arrogance has its roots in ignorance.

How many of you have ever been to a slum? In 1987, I was asked by the RSS to go to a slum, to have food and sleep there. A slum girl prepared tea by squeezing the tealeaf in hot water using her cloth that was the tea I took. I was about to vomit! It is easy to blame India. But are we willing to own India?

I was persuaded to do this by the RSS, in order to understand India from different angles. I didn.t learn economics simply through textbooks and colleges. I have been to Ludhiana, Jamanagar, Tirupur, Sivakasi, Rajkot- these are the places where you will find boards like, "we want people for work". It is not in Bombay, Madras or Calcutta. In these villages, it is the traditional communities, which have built up the industries.

The entire Ludhiana was built by the Ramgadia community, not by engineers. A diesel engine in Rajkot is being built completely by a Patel community. None of them is an engineer. 75% of fans produced in India are from Kasi, produced by traditional communities. In Punjab, the entire Australian cricket control order amounting to 3 crores has been given to one carpenter. He makes cricket bats for the Australian cricket control board. Carpenters can make ten willows a day; this man makes fifty per day and earns Rs.200/- per willow.

He drives car but doesn't know English. Our HRD index is 135. But, have we ever certified the roadside mechanic as an automobile engineer? Who repairs your Mercedes car? The IIT graduate or the roadside mechanic? Automobile Engineering is one of the most intricate subjects, this can mechanic can handle it, but do we recognise him as an educated man? Certify this unrecognised talent in India and see where India stands in terms of HRD index.

We don't know India. There is a gigantic intellectual vacuum; I am willing to have a daylong debate on it.

Programming Arena - VB 6.0 and VB.NEt issue

"When They Rip It from My Cold, Dead Fingers"
Bradley Jones (view profile) October 18, 2004

Disclaimer: (Article From CodeGuru). I like this article is too informative and ased on my flavor that i planned to provide it in my space

Visual Basic 6 is now two versions old with yet newer versions in beta. VB 6.0 was followed by Visual Basic .NET (2002) and then Visual Basic .NET 2003. Visual Basic 2005 is now in beta and due out next year. Just as Visual Basic 3.0 and other popular past versions have faded out of mainstream existence, so is the predicted future for VB 6.0.(continued)

With VB 6.0, however, there are some arguments being made as to why it should not pass into the graveyard as quickly as some of the even older versions. But, are these valid arguments or are those comfortable with the product simply grasping at excuses to prolong the standard evolution that follows all software products and languages?
Are people really sticking with Visual Basic 6? If so, what are the reasons for sticking with an old version? Will the .NET version of Visual Basic be forced upon those who would otherwise continue forward with the old version? Is this situation any different from virtually every other product that has established itself in the market? Are gains being lost by not going to the newer .NET versions, or are gains lost by going to a new version?
Is this really an issue?
Why isn't Visual Basic 3 still around?
Are People Sticking with Visual Basic 6.0?

A large percentage of people are still using Visual Basic 6.0. There are enough people still using VB 6 that Microsoft is still looking for ways to make the transition to .NET even easier for these programmers and their applications. Many Visual Basic discussion forums, including Jupitermedia's own VBForums, continue to have high traffic in the "classic" (version 6) VB sections, and numerous articles continue to be published. While the world is being inundated with .NET articles, VB 6 is not being completely forgotten.

Within the forums, you'll find that many developers have stated that they see no reason to upgrade. In fact, many give reasons on why they don't plan to upgrade and why they believe most shouldn't upgrade. It is worth looking at a number of these reasons for sticking with VB 6. It is also worth noting how accurate the reasons are.

VB .NET Is a Different Language
One of the most common complaints is that Visual Basic .NET is not an upgrade from VB 6, but rather it is an entirely new language. This is one of the most popular issues raised when VB 6 developers were asked why they were not upgrading to .NET.

Within the forums, Ice_531 stated "Different syntax means more time to learn it. Sure, some things are still the same or similar but really .NET is a completely different language."
Merri had similar comments when he stated, "In my opinion, VB.NET isn't a sequel to the Visual Basic series: The syntax is different; it isn't of the same version line. It isn't an improved version of VB; it is a completely new language. Microsoft probably just wants to make more people use their C#."

Yet another person, BruceG, stated it succinctly, ".NET does not build on the previous versions of VB." BruceG expanded this, however, to state, "Up until .NET, VB has to some degree retained the flavor of its great-grandfather, BASIC. I would say the 'flavor' of BASIC is that it is a very high-level language with simplified syntax—you could concentrate on the problem at hand and let the computer do the work." He continued with "Saw demo, it was not easy. Have to know this-dot-that-dot-the other thing, blah, blah, blah."

Is Visual Basic .NET a new language?
This is a rough question to answer clearly. The syntax is very similar in that an if statement is still an if and a foreach statement is still a foreach. Capitalization is not required and semicolons are not needed to end commands.

Overall, the basic syntax is similar; however, most people mix language and libraries into the same bucket. This is where .NET pulls away from the Visual Basic of the past. Additionally, some basic commands and features that have been grandfathered in Visual Basic editions did go missing in .NET. This includes very common commands such as OPEN for opening basic files. Others commands were included, such as CType.

The commands that may have been lost in VB 6 are replaced in VB .NET with a robust library of routines. These routines are the .NET Framework classes that go beyond what VB 6 included. Within the .NET Framework is a number of routines within the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace that are specifically focused at the original VB commands. With this library as a part of a project, you have access to many of the original commands. For those commands that were lost, the .NET Framework provided other more robust solutions.

The .NET Framework is full of new classes and, thus, people are correct in that they have to be learned. The benefit of learning these classes, however, is that they are the exact same classes being used by other .NET languages, including C# and managed C++. Once you learn these classes, you will find that you can work with other .NET languages much easier.

Adding commands and classes is great, but losing them doesn't generally create goodwill. In VB .NET 2003, a lot of the functionality of VB was maintained. There were editor features that were critical to the language that were lost in the first .NET versions, including 2003. In VB 2005, the biggest return will be "edit & continue," which was a critical feature for the average VB developer. The loss of "edit & continue" alone caused a number of developers to go running from VB .NET. Microsoft, however, is listening to the developer community and is working to resolve many of these issues. This can be seen in some of the other features being added to the IDE that will help to make it the easiest development tool to use.

VB .NET Is Not Good for the Hobbyist!
".NET just isn't good for a hobbyist programmer."
This comment was made by Merri as a matter of fact. Others using Visual Basic 6 have made the same comment regarding VB .NET.

One of the values of Visual Basic is that it was quick and easy to create simple applications. You could drag and drop controls in a simple IDE and quickly create applications. Additionally, it was relatively easy to get entry-level versions at a low cost. This all added up to a product that hobbyists picked up and used.

There is the perception that VB .NET isn't for the hobbyists. There is a perception that it can no longer be easy. There are a number of reasons for these perceptions.

One reason for VB .NET appearing harder to use is that the IDE seems to be more complex. This is a result of having more features. It is possible, however, to customize the IDE back to something simpler. Additionally, Microsoft is releasing an Express version of Visual Basic 2005 that cuts out a lot of the items not needed by a hobbyist developer. This will greatly simplify working with VB.

In addition to releasing the Express editions, Microsoft has also increased the number of starter kits that are available. A starter kit is a full-fledged sample application that includes all of the source code. These applications can be cusomtomized and re-used. Existing starter kits do things ranging from a complete Web site to tracking a person's time. The starter kits provide a perfect starting point for a hobbyist who is primarily interested in simply building a solution and not as worried about writing every single line of code.

Another factor that complicates VB .NET has already been mentioned. The use of "edit & continue" is a huge factor in the perception of an easy-to-use product. This single item seems to be able to make the IDE friendly and responsive. According to those working with Microsoft, this is continually one of the biggest issues raised regarding VB .NET, and it is an issue that is finally being resolved in the 2005 version. In the current version, this feature was lost.

The need to compile and use a runtime also comes up in conversations as to why VB .NET is more complicated and less of a hobbyist tool. While the older VB also required a runtime, many people neglect to mention that. The facts are that the .NET Framework is needed for a VB .NET application to run. This is a much more substantial requirement than the runtime file needed in the past. In the short term, this is an issue; however, .NET is becoming a part of the operating system. Additionally, by Microsoft's count, there are over 100 million desktops with the .NET Framework on them already.

As machines upgrade to newer versions of Windows, it will be more likely that the .NET Framework will already be on the machine. The next version of Windows (Longhorn) has the .NET Framework built in. Additionally, many of the service pack disks that have been distributed also include the .NET Framework on them. The runtime will have to be installed before your .NET application will run. Granted, you can build an installation that pulls the runtime down from the Web or include it with your application when you distribute it. This is the same situation that was faced by earlier VB developers with its runtime. Granted, the required runtime files are substantially larger; however, Microsoft has included a "bootstrapper" that makes including the runtime install with your application easy.

Visual Basic .NET Programs Are Huge!
One of the other perceptions with VB .NET is that the resulting programs (EXEs) are huge. Steven made the comment, "there seems to be a lot more overhead when I toyed around with it on a friend's computer and just created a simple hello world app; the dern thing was like 300 Kbs!!!"(continued)

I have found that this is simply not the case. With VB .NET, much of the functionality is within the .NET Framework. All of the Framework functionality is provided in the runtime. As such, this functionality is not needed in the VB .NET file you create. As a quick example, and to test out Steven's comment, I wrote my version of a "hello world" test. It is a small program that copies text from a textbox into a label. The text is simply appended onto the existing in text in the label. The application has three buttons: one to clear the controls, one to do the append, and one to exit the program. Figure 1 shows the form for this application, which took less than five minutes to create, counting the time for the IDE to launch.

This application—or one similar to it—is what I generally create the first time I open up a new tool or work with a new programming language. It is a little more than simply typing out "Hello World" on a form, but it provides the ability to see how easy it is to create a form, add controls and customization, and work with basic text.

I'd speculate that this small application is much more robust than the Hello World application mentioned by Steven. The resulting executable program that was created was 15 Kb. This was the version created with debug information. A release version should be even smaller. This is a far cry smaller than 300 Kb! In general, you will find that if your application relies upon Framework classes, its size will not be outrageous.

Visual Basic .NET Costs Too Much!
Another reason people believe that VB .NET is not for them is the cost. This issue also stands on its own.
"Strictly because of the cost." Was the reason dglienna gave when asked why he hadn't upgraded.

Szlamany echoed cost as well; however, not regarding the product itself; "Lots of dollars to develop—lots of time—switching to something new costs R&D dollars that no one wants to give us..." He goes on to say, "Cost of MS product has nothing to do with it—we have MSDN license to just about everything—bought action-pack two years ago. MS sends me CDs every month—we don't even have time to catalog them... It's all about internal cost to make the transition. And getting customers to want to do it as well."

mudfish also noted the secondary cost, "I do not think the people I work for want the expense of the training to shift us to .NET now! The longer they wait, the more it will cost in man-hours!"
The cost of going to .NET can be summed up into two areas. The first is the cost of the product and the second is the cost to train in order to understand and use the product.
Visual Basic .NET is free. More specifically, the compiler for VB .NET is a part of the .NET Framework, which is freely available. The development environment and all the tools that make VB visual are what cost. Whereas there are third-party tools that can be used to create VB applications, the Microsoft product is the primary one that people want. There are trial versions that last from 60 to 120 days; they can be obtained in books and other places. Additionally, there is a standard version that can be obtained for under $100. There are a variety of other versions as well. Most cost about the same as the original prices of their VB 6 counterparts.

With Visual Studio 2005, you can expect the inclusion of Visual Basic in as a part of the Standard Edition. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, Microsoft has announced—and has in beta—a Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition; it has a simplified interface. While Microsoft hasn't committed to pricing on the Express versions, it have said that it will be competitive. Because this is a SKU below the Standard edition, it could be assumed that it will be substantially lower in price than that version. Right now, you can get the beta of Visual Basic 2005 Express freely at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/.

While options for getting VB .NET cheaper are being announced, the other issue of cost centers on training. Learning takes time, and time is often considered a cost.

There are no great answers for getting around the cost of training; however, there are some good ones. The number of Webcasts and chats being done by Microsoft and other companies has increased dramatically in the past year. At the time this article is being written, Microsoft was even advertising on Developer.com that if you attended three free Webcasts, they would give you a copy of the standard edition of VB .NET! Microsoft is also distributing a resource kit and has provided numerous documents on upgrading. The Express Edition includes starter kits and "Getting Started" content. Add to this the targetted help functions, the smart tags, and the other features and the result should be that less training is needed to get up and coding with VB .NET.

Numerous sites have popped up with articles and other information to help you get started as well. Sites such as CodeGuru and Developer.com include sections for VB .NET. You can also find numerous discussion forums where questions can be asked.

Although articles, Webcasts, and discussions are not classroom training, they do provide free information to help you learn to use VB .NET. The cost of time is still there; however, it can already be seen that people with .NET experience are becoming more valuable than those without.

Visual Basic 6 Works and Can Do It All!
One of the most interesting and simple comments made when asking people why they are sticking with VB 6 came from Bruce Fox. Bruce simply stated, "Why? VB6 does everything I need."

Another comment was made by Pasvorto, "I don't see where I could provide any more functionality to my company. So, if there is no return, why pay the price to change?"

I've seen this argument made numerous times. The language or tool I am using works and I can do anything needed, so why change? I watched a manager make this argument for keeping a team of C programmers on a distributed program. C worked, the libraries had been created, and things were getting done. There was no need to switch to a GUI RAD tool. Fortunately, the switch was eventually made and a team of twenty developers was reduced to around a half dozen developers who produced more than the original team that was three times their size!

Initially, you will be less productive in a new environment; however, once you become familiar with the environment (such as the .NET Framework) and with the tools (such as the Visual Basic .NET IDE), you will quickly realize that there are a lot of features that will make you even more productive than you were before. The short time loss of productivity should be more than made up for in the long run. This becomes even truer within VB .NET 2005, where things such as Intellisense get supplemented with Intellitask and where features such as auto-correction are made available. For Web development, the addition of features such as Master pages help to focus your coding into the areas that are most important. Wizards and options help to eliminate many of the redundant tasks that you do.

A Digression...
It is worth mentioning one big difference between VB .NET and VB 6. VB .NET is an OOP tool. It was created to do Object-Oriented Programming. VB 6 and earlier were more focused on being RAD tools. The focus was on rapid development. This focus on the RAD came at the cost of some of the features that more advanced languages have. With VB .NET, the doors are open to tap into the same feature set that the advance-level languages have. This doesn't mean that the RAD has to be gone. In fact, Microsoft is focused on making VB .NET even more appropriate for rapid application development while maintaining its ability to tap into all the features of advanced languages and OOP.

Real Reasons to Go Visual Basic .NET
I often get calls from recruiters and companies looking for developers. I am asked for more recommendations for VB .NET developers than for VB developers. In fact, when asked for people using Microsoft developer technologies, it has become very rare to be asked for a person having no .NET development experience.(continued)

What is the point of stating this? Simply, if you are going to be looking for a new VB job in the future, chances are that your VB 6 credentials are not going to be enough to get you the job. Chances are, you are going to have to have .NET experience as well.

Where is DBase today? How many Paradox applications are being built? Where are all the requests for PowerBuilder developers? Have you met many Clipper developers lately? If you look really hard, you will find that there are still some systems out there using these languages and tools, but for the most part, they are yesterday's technologies. They were all great products. They were all the best in their class at one point. Those who knew the tools would tell you that they did everything that was needed at the time. Those who knew the tool are most likely programming in a different language or tool today.

If you are doing professional-level development with VB, chances are that within a few more years, there will be little new development for you to do if you don't move to .NET or something else. Visual Basic 6 is an older version. Microsoft has a support plan in place, but with time that support will cost and with even more time it will go away.

Although VB 6 does do a lot, VB .NET is being positioned to be able to do more. VB .NET includes access to the complete .NET Framework. This is thousands of classes and methods for getting things done. Additionally, VB .NET can tap into and use any libraries or classes created with any other .NET language. This means that VB .NET programmers have access to all the routines created by C# and managed C++ developers. While access to these was available before, it was not as easy.

What Does Microsoft Say?
Microsoft obviously wants everyone to upgrade for a variety of reasons. I feel comfortable in saying that they also understand that you are not going to upgrade simply because they would like you to.

.NET offers a lot of promise and VB .NET does as well. As I mentioned previously, the Visual Basic team at Microsoft is working to make sure VB 2005 has many of the features that VB 6 developers wanted. In many ways, those promises are starting to materialize.

Microsoft is not simply abandoning VB for C#; however, it did make the hard decision in regard to backward compatibility. S. Somaseger, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corporation, states it clearly in his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2004/08/01/204540.aspx (referring to the Visual Basic language):

"We're 120% committed to the language and the product not just today but for a long, long, long time to come, as we have been in the last decade now. I know that when we moved from VB6 to VB.NET, we broke compatibility and that is a sore point with some of our developer customers. It was a huge decision that we did not take lightly at that time. The trade-off clearly was making a leapfrog jump in innovation as we moved to the .NET platform versus ensuring full compatibility."

In a conversation with Craig Symonds, General Manager of the Visual Studio Tools, he stated, "Forrester Research recently reported that 56% of enterprises are using the .NET Framework for their development (see http://www.microsoft.com/forrester). Clearly, we've seen a significant amount of momentum since we launched three years ago." Craig went on to say," A key goal for 2005 is to add or fix key adoption blockers for those folks that haven't made the move to .NET as of yet."

Knowing that Microsoft is interested in addressing the blocking factors for migrating to VB .NET, it is worth looking to see what is coming next. Visual Basic 2005 .NET is in beta. Robert Green, Program Manager for Visual Basic at Microsoft, stated the following when asked what the best features of VB 2005 would be:

"Drag and drop data binding to local data, server-based data, Web services, and business objects. Code snippets. My, which is a speed dial into the Framework, (for example, My.Computer.Network.IsAvailable). Language features such as generics and operator overloading. Strongly typed resources and settings, (as in Form1.BackgroundImage = My.Resources.CoolBackground, where CoolBackground is actually coolbackground.jpg). Edit and continue. Auto-correction, where the background compiler detects errors in your code and suggests ways to fix the error, and then automatically makes the correction. Those are some of my favorites."

Robert points out a number of features that will make VB .NET go beyond the RAD tool it was in version 6.

In the most recent conversation I had with Craig Symonds, he echoed many of the features that Robert mentioned. Additionally, Craig stated that Microsoft is definitely focused on taking steps to making it easier for the VB 6 developer to learn VB 2005 .NET quicker. He stated that a ton of time is being spent on VB 2005 with the focus on making things simpler. This simplification should help to make VB the RAD tool it has been in the past. Craig stated that this focus for simplifying things would continue into the future for VB.

Craig also mentioned that there is a perception that VB .NET requires the "ripping and replacing" of VB 6 applications. He stated that this was one of the perceptions along with many of the items mentioned earlier in this article that are causing people to avoid .NET. There is also the perception that C# has taken over VB. Although C# is gaining a ton of momentum, VB is still very high in usage. Additionally, VB .NET does not require the re-writing of older VB applications. The old and the new can work together.

Support for Craig's comments about C# versus VB can be found in the TIOBE numbers published on Developer.com. The numbers for Visual Basic are 500% greater than for C#. Even taking into account the additional items tracked in the Visual Basic category, it should still land substantially higher on the chart. The TIOBE rankings show current interest in a topic. (See http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3417831.)

When Should Visual Basic 6.0 Be Killed?
Visual Basic 6 is going to be around for quite a while. VB .NET is, however, taking over and the reasons for upgrading are becoming more compelling with each new version. With the release of 2005, many of the remaining issues about upgrading are going to be addressed—including edit & continue.

While VB 6 may be around for a long time, it can already be seen that employers looking for VB experience are looking for .NET people more so than those without. For those doing professional development, the need for VB 6 in new development should be going away sooner rather than later. As .NET becomes a standard within Windows systems, so will development using .NET.
Although VB .NET is only three years old, it is entering its third version. The magic at Microsoft seems to peak in the third version of a product. Just think about VB 3 and Windows 3.0! The third version of VB .NET will be VB 2005. It is in beta now and will be released next year.

Conclusions
Although there are a number of reasons to stick with VB 6, Microsoft is working to tilt the scale to VB .NET. Microsoft made a tough decision to avoid hurting VB .NET with backward compatibility. Statistics are already starting to show that .NET development is becoming more predominant.

The promise of using VB .NET is the ability to tap into the full .NET Framework and to make Visual Basic a first class programming language. As Craig Symonds stated, "[VB .NET] removes the glass ceiling in 6.0."

If you are a professional developer doing VB 6.0 development, the days of developing new systems with your tool of choice are numbered. It may be time to start looking at VB .NET even if you have to do it on your own. Otherwise, you may be working with the guys who didn't want to upgrade from VB 3.

After all, Visual Basic 3 could do almost everything in its day, too! Sidebar

Bradley Jones, is a Microsoft MVP that works for Jupitermedia as an Executive Editor over many of the software development sites and channels. His experience includes development in C, C++, VB, some Java, C#, ASP, COBOL, and more as well as having been a developer, consultant, analyst, lead, and much more. His recent books include Teach Yourself the C# Language in 21 Days.

The Olympic Spirit in my life

The Olympic Games are the world's largest pageant of athletic skill and competitive spirit. The spirit of the Olympic Games is about more than just medals. It's about ordinary people displaying extraordinary determination, skill, character and cooperation. The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

I am indeed fortunate to be part of such events when a group of students displayed extraordinary determination and skills to organise event to its success. First among these memorable events was organisation of seminar on Information Technology. The thought of organizing such event rose during discussion among friends. This idea was discussed with professors and other students all of them found this as innovative and interesting and they shown there inclination for active participation. College administration provided just infrastructure help required for organizing seminar but avoided any financial support.

For financial support we had contacted to several computer coaching institutes and even The Institution of Engineers local chapter authorities. Fortunately the authorities have shown their kind interest in sponsoring the event by providing prizes for best papers in each session. This was a major boost up for our team as Institution of Engineers was backing up our event. The seminar was scheduled after a week because of forthcoming examination. This was indeed a short time period, but news of this event spread waves through the college and students from various fields formed groups and came forward to participate actively. To our astonishment we received 52 good papers from about 80 participants. This was indeed more important in such a college where just a few students know about technical papers and their presentation in seminars. This was collective effort and co-operation of all the participants and members of orgainising committee who displayed extraordinary determination, teamwork and practiced hard to make the seminar as memorable event.

This memorable event formed a solid benchmark and was followed by organisation of National Student Seminar supported by State regulatory authority. This time the team of experienced organizers was ready to take care of several aspects related to the organisation of seminar. This was indeed a good platform where students from various states participated to share their knowledge and expertise not only educational but also their cultural.

International education is also one such similar platform where students from different countries with different language, race, culture, religion and knowledge background come close to each other and share their knowledge. This leads in better understanding of other fellow as a human being without any consideration to its religion, races and origin and develops respect and healthy relationship among them. This in long term helps in bridging the gap in between the different nations and hence spreads spirit of friendship.

The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing - Joel on Software

Disclaimer: This article belongs to Joel on Software and written by By Joel Spolsky onThursday, March 23, 2000. I hope thsi article will be helpful for everybody on the other end of screen, so i am sharing this.

Hiring the right people is extremely crucial to Fog Creek Software. In our field, there are three types of people. At one end of the scale, there are the unwashed masses, lacking even the most basic skills for this job. They are easy to ferret out and eliminate, often just by reviewing a resume and asking two or three quick questions. At the other extreme, are the brilliant superstars who write lisp compilers for fun, in a weekend, in Assembler for the Palm Pilot. And in the middle, you have a large number of "maybes" who seem like they might just be able to contribute something. The trick is telling the difference between the superstars and the maybes, because at Fog Creek Software we only hire the superstars. Here are some techniques for doing that.

First of all, the #1 cardinal criteria for getting hired at Fog Creek:
Smart, andGets Things Done.

That's it. That's all we're looking for. Memorize that. Recite it to yourself before you go to bed every night. Our goal is to hire people with aptitude, not a particular skill set. Any skill set that people can bring to the job will be technologically obsolete in a couple of years, anyway, so it's better to hire people that are going to be able to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know SQL programming right this minute.

Smart is hard to define, but as we look at some possible interview questions we'll see how you can ferret it out. Gets Things Done is crucial. People who are Smart but don't Get Things Done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical. They would rather mull over something academic about a problem rather than ship on time. These kind of people can be identified because they love to point out the theoretical similarity between two widely divergent concepts. For example, they will say "Spreadsheets are really just a special case of programming language" and then go off for a week and write a thrilling, brilliant white paper about the theoretical computational linguistic attributes of a spreadsheet as a programming language. Smart, but not useful.

Now, people who Get Things Done but are not Smart will do stupid things, seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will have to come clean up their mess later. This makes them liabilities to the company because not only don't they contribute, but they soak up good people's time. They are the kind of people who copy big chunks of code around rather than writing a subroutine, because it gets the job done, just not in the smartest way.
The most important rule about interviewing:
Make A Decision

At the conclusion of the interview, you have to be ready to make a sharp decision about the candidate. There are only two possible outcomes to this decision: Hire or No Hire. Turn to your computer and send immediate feedback to the recruiter. The subject line should be the name of the candidate. The first line of the email should be Hire or No Hire. Then you should spend about 2 paragraphs backing up your decision.

There is no other possible answer. Never say, "Hire, but not in my group." This is rude and implies that the candidate is not smart enough to work with you, but maybe he's smart enough for those losers over in that other group. If you find yourself tempted to say "Hire, but not in my group," simply translate that mechanically to "No Hire" and you'll be OK. Even if you have a candidate that would be brilliant at doing 1 particular thing, but wouldn't be very good in another group, that's a No Hire. Things change so often and so rapidly that we need people that can succeed anywhere. If for some reason you find an idiot savant that is really, really, really good at SQL but completely incapable of ever learning any other topic, No Hire. They don't have a future at Fog Creek.

Never say "Maybe, I can't tell." If you can't tell, that means No Hire. It's really easier than you'd think. Can't tell? Just say no! Similarly, if you are on the fence, that means No Hire. Never say,

"Well, Hire, I guess, but I'm a little bit concerned about..." That's a No Hire as well.
An important thing to remember about interviewing is this: it is much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. A bad candidate will cost a lot of money and effort and waste other people's time fixing all their bugs. If you have any doubts whatsoever, No Hire.

While you are conducting the interview, don't worry that if you reject a lot of people, Fog Creek won't be able to find anyone to hire. That's not your problem. It's the recruiter's problem, it's H.R.'s problem, it's Joel's problem, but it's not your problem. Keep asking yourself which is worse - that we grow into a big, lousy software company with lots of coconuts, or that we stay small but high quality? Of course, it's important to seek out good candidates and everybody should see it as a part of their mission to find and recruit smart people who get things done. But once you're actually interviewing someone, pretend that Fog Creek has plenty of great candidates. Never lower your standards no matter how hard it seems to find great candidates.
But how do you make this difficult decision? You just have to keep asking yourself during the interview: is this person smart? Does this person get things done? In order to be able to tell, you're going to have to ask the right questions.

Just for fun, here is the worst interview question on Earth: "What's the difference between varchar and varchar2 in Oracle 8i?" This is a terrible question. There is no possible, imaginable correlation between people that know that particular piece of useless trivia and people that Fog Creek wants to hire. Who cares what the difference is? You can find out online in about 15 seconds!

Actually, there are some even worse questions. I'll get to that later.

So now we get to the fun part: interview questions. My list of interview questions comes from my first job at Microsoft. There are actually hundreds of famous Microsoft interview questions. Everybody has a set of questions that they really like. You, too, will develop a particular set of questions and a personal interviewing style which helps you make the Hire/No Hire decision. Here are some techniques that I have used that have been successful.

Before the interview, I read over the candidates resume and jot down an interview plan on a scrap of paper. That's just a list of questions that I want to ask. Here's a typical plan for interviewing a programmer:
A) Introduction
B) Question about recent project candidate worked on
C) Impossible Question
D) C Function
E) Are you satisfied?
F) Design Question
G) The Challenge
H) Do you have any questions?

Before the interview, I am very, very careful to avoid anything that might give me some preconceived notions about the candidate. If you think that someone is smart before they even walk into the room, just because they have a Ph.D. from MIT, then nothing they can say in 1 hour is going to overcome that initial prejudice. If you think they are a bozo, nothing they can say will overcome that initial impression. An interview is like a very, very delicate scale -- it's very hard to judge someone based on a 1 hour interview and it may seem like a very close call. But if you know a little bit about the candidate beforehand, it's like a big weight on one side of the scale, and the interview is useless. Once, right before an interview, a recruiter came into my office. "You're going to love this guy," she said. BOY did this make me mad. What I should have said was, "well, if you're so sure I'm going to love him, why don't you just hire him instead of wasting my time going through this interview." But I was young and naïve, so I interviewed him. When he said not-so-smart things, I thought to myself, "gee, must be the exception that proves the rule." I looked at everything he said through rose-colored glasses. I wound up saying Hire even though he was a crappy candidate. You know what? Everybody else who interviewed him said No Hire. So: don't listen to recruiters; don't ask around about the person before you interview them; and never, ever talk to the other interviewers about the candidate until you've both made your decisions independently. It's the scientific method!

The Introduction phase of the interview is intended to put the candidate at ease. I spend about 30 seconds telling the person who I am and how the interview will work. I always reassure the candidate that we are interested in how he goes about solving problems, not the actual answer. By the way, in doing the interview, you should make sure that you are not sitting across a desk from the candidate. This creates a formal barrier which will not place the candidate at ease. It is better to move the desk against a wall, or to go around and sit on the other side of the desk with the candidate; this does help put the candidate at ease. This results in a better interview because it is less distorted by nervousness.

Part 2 is a question about some recent project that the candidate worked on. For interviewing college kids, ask them about their senior thesis, if they had one, or about a course they took that involved a long project that they really enjoyed. For example, sometimes I will ask, "what class did you take last semester that you liked the most? It doesn't have to be computer-related." Actually I am usually pretty happy if they choose a non-computer related course. Sometimes you look at their schedule, and it looks like they are taking the bare minimum number of Comp Sci courses, but every elective is something related to Music. Then they will tell you that their favorite course was Object Oriented Databases. Yeah, right. I'd be happier if they admitted that they just liked music more than computers, instead of sucking up.

When interviewing experienced candidates, you can talk about their previous job.

In this question, I'm looking for one thing: passion. When you find a project that the person worked on recently, these are all good signs:

They get very excited talking about it; they tend to talk more quickly and get animated. This shows that when they are interesting in something, they will be passionate about it. There are far too many people around that can work on something and not really care one way or the other. Even if they are passionately negative, this can be just as good a sign. "I was working on installing Foo Bar Mark II for my previous employer, but he was such a dope!" These are good candidates that we want to hire. Bad candidates just don't care and will not get enthusiastic at all during the interview. A really good sign that a candidate is passionate about something is that when they are talking about it, they will forget for a moment that they are in an interview. Sometimes a candidate comes in who is very nervous about being in an interview situation -- this is normal so I always overlook that. But then when you get them talking about Computational Monochromatic Art they will get extremely excited and lose all signs of nervousness. Good. I like passionate people who really care. (To see an example of Computational Monochromatic Art try unplugging your monitor.)

They are careful to explain things. I have rejected candidates because when they talked about their previous project, they couldn't explain it in terms that a normal person could understand. Often engineering majors will just assume that everyone knows what Bates Theorem is or what Peano's Axioms are. If they start doing this, stop them for a minute and say, "could you do me a favor, just for the sake of the exercise, could you please explain this in terms my grandmother could understand." At this point many people will still continue to use jargon and will completely fail to make themselves understood. GONG!

If the project was a team project, look for signs that they took a leadership role. A candidate might say: "we were working on X, but the boss said Y and the client said Z." I'll ask, "so what did you do?" A good answer to this might be "I got together with the other members of the team and wrote a proposal..." A bad answer might be, "Well, there was nothing I could do. It was an impossible situation." Remember, Smart and Gets Things Done. A good way to tell if somebody Gets Things Done is to see if historically they have tended to get things done in the past. In fact, you can even ask them directly to give you an example from their recent past when they took a leadership role and got something done -- overcame some institutional inertia, for example.

OK, the third thing on that list is the impossible question. This is fun. The idea is to ask a question that they have no possible way of answering, just to see how they handle it. "How many optometrists are there in Seattle?" "How many tons does the Washington Monument weigh?" "How many gas stations are in Los Angeles?" "How many piano tuners are there in New York?"

Smart candidates will realize that you are not quizzing them on their knowledge, and they will enthusiastically leap into trying to figure out some back-of-the-envelope answer. "Well, lets see, the population of LA is about 7 million; each person in LA has about 2.5 cars..." Of course it's OK if they are radically wrong. The important thing is that they leapt into the question enthusiastically. They may try to figure out the capacity of a gas station. "Gee, it takes 4 minutes to tank up, gas stations have about 10 pumps and are open about 18 hours a day..." They may try to figure it out by area. Sometimes they will surprise you with their creativity or ask for a Los Angeles yellow pages. All good signs.

Not-so-smart candidates will get flustered and upset. They will just stare at you like you landed from Mars. You have to coach them. "Well, if you were building a new city the size of Los Angeles, how many gas stations would you put in it?" You can give them little hints. "How long does it take to fill up a tank of gas?" Still, with not-smart candidates, you will have to drag them along while they sit there stupidly and wait for you to rescue them. These people are not problem solvers and we don't want them working for us.

For programming questions, I ask candidates to write a small function in C. Here are some typical problems I would ask:
1.0 Reverse a string in place
2.0 Reverse a linked list
3.0 Count all the bits that are on in a byte
4.0 Binary search
5.0 Find the longest run in a string
6.0 atoi
7.0 itoa (great, because they have to use a stack or strrev)

You don't want to give them any problems that take more than about 5 lines of code; you won't have time for that.

Let's look at a couple of these in detail. #1: reverse a string in place. Every candidate I've ever interviewed in my life has done this wrong the first time. Without exception, they try to allocate another buffer and reverse the string into that buffer. The trouble is, who allocates the buffer? Who frees the buffer? In giving this question to dozens of candidates I found out an interesting fact. Most people who think that they know C really do not understand memory or pointers. They just don't get it. It's amazing that these people are working as programmers, but they are. With this question, here are some ways to judge the candidate:

Is their function fast? Look at how many times they call strlen. I've seen O(n^2) algorithms for strrev when it should be O(n), because they are calling strlen again and again in a loop.

Do they use pointer arithmetic? This is a good sign. Many "C programmers" just don't know how to make pointer arithmetic work. Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't reject a candidate just because he lacked a particular skill. However, I've discovered that understanding pointers in C is not a skill, it's an aptitude. In Freshman year CompSci, there are always about 200 kids at the beginning of the semester, all of whom wrote complex adventure games in BASIC for their Atari 800s when they were 4 years old. They are having a good ol'; time learning Pascal in college, until one day their professor introduces pointers, and suddenly, they don't get it. They just don't understand anything any more. 90% of the class goes off and becomes PoliSci majors, then they tell their friends that there weren't enough good looking members of the appropriate sex in their CompSci classes, that's why they switched. For some reason most people seem to be born without the part of the brain that understands pointers. This is an aptitude thing, not a skill thing – it requires a complex form of doubly-indirected thinking that some people just can't do.

For #3, you can see how well they learned the bitwise operators in C.... but this is a skill, not an aptitude, so you can help them with these. The interesting thing is to watch them write a subroutine that counts all the bits in a byte, then ask them to make it much, much faster. Really smart candidates will create a lookup table (after all, it's only got 256 entries) that they only have to create once. With good candidates, you can have a really interesting conversation about the different space/speed tradeoffs. Press them further: tell them you don't want to spend any time building the lookup table during initialization. Brilliant candidates might even suggest a caching scheme where bits are counted the first time they are used, and then stored in a lookup table so they don't have to be counted if they are used again. Really, really brilliant candidates will try to devise a way to compute the table using some kind of a shortcut taking advantage of the patterns that occur.

When you watch somebody write code, here are some techniques that may be helpful:
Always reassure them that you understand that it's hard to write code without an editor, and you will forgive them if their paper gets really messy. Also you understand that it's hard to write bug-free code without a compiler, and you will take that into account.

Some signs of a good programmer: good programmers have a habit of writing their { and then skipping down to the bottom of the page and writing their }s right away, then filling in the blank later. They also tend to have some kind of a variable naming convention, primitive though it may be... Good programmers tend to use really short variable names for loop indices. If they name their loop index CurrentPagePositionLoopCounter it is sure sign that they have not written a lot of code in their life. Occasionally, you will see a C programmer write something like if (0==strlen(x)), putting the constant on the left hand side of the == . This is a really good sign. It means that they were stung once too many times by confusing = and == and have forced themselves to learn a new habit to avoid that trap.

Good programmers plan before they write code, especially when there are pointers involved. For example, if you ask them to reverse a linked list, good candidates will always make a little drawing on the side and draw all the pointers and where they go. They have to. It is humanly impossible to write code to reverse a linked list without drawing little boxes with arrows between them. Bad programmers will start writing code right away.

Inevitably, you will see a bug in their function. So we come to question 5: Are you satisfied with that code? You may want to ask, "OK, so where's the bug?" The quintessential Open Ended Question From Hell. All programmers make mistakes, there's nothing wrong with that, they just have to be able to find them. With the string functions, they'll almost always forget to null-terminate the new string. With almost any function, they are likely to have off-by-one errors. They will forget semicolons sometimes. Their function won't work correctly on 0 length strings, or it will GPF if malloc fails... Very, very rarely, you will find a candidate that doesn't have any bugs the first time. In this case, this question is even more fun. When you say, "There's a bug in that code," they will review their code carefully, and then you get to see if they can be diplomatic yet firm in asserting that the code is perfect... In general, it's always a good idea to ask the candidate if they are satisfied with their answer before moving on. Be Regis.

Part 6: the design question. Ask the candidate to design something. Jabe Blumenthal, the original designer of Excel, liked to ask candidates to design a house. According to Jabe, he's had candidates who would go up to the whiteboard and immediately draw a square. A square! These were immediate No Hires. In design questions, what are you looking for?

Good candidates will try to get more information out of you about the problem. Who is the house for? As a policy, I will not hire someone who leaps into the design without asking more about who it's for. Often I am so annoyed that I will give them a hard time by interrupting them in the middle and saying, "actually, you forgot to ask this, but this is a house for a family of 48-foot tall blind giraffes."

Not-so-smart candidates think that design is like painting: you get a blank slate, and you can do whatever you want. Smart candidates understand that design is a difficult series of trade-offs. A great design question: design a trash can for a city street corner. Think of all the trade offs! It has to be easy to empty, but impossible to steal; it has to be easy to put things into, but hard for things to fly out of on a windy day; it has to be solid, yet inexpensive; in some cities, it has to be specially designed so that terrorists can't hide a bomb in it.

Creative candidates will often surprise you with an interesting, non-obvious answer. One of my favorite questions is Design a Spice Rack for Blind People. Inevitably, candidates will put Braille somewhere on the spice bottles, and it usually winds up being on top of the lid for various reasons which you'll discover after you've asked this question 100 times. I had one candidate who decided that it would be better to put the spices in a drawer, because it is more comfortable to scan Braille with your fingertips horizontal than vertical. (Try it!) This was so creative it surprised me -- in dozens of interviews, I had never heard that answer. And it really took a major creative "leap" outside of the bounds of the problem. On the strength of that answer alone, and no negatives, I hired the candidate, who went on to be one of the best program managers on the Excel team.

Look for closure. This is part of Get Things Done. Sometimes candidates will drift back and forth, unable to make a decision, or they will try to avoid hard questions. Sometimes they will leave difficult decisions unanswered and try to move on. Not good. Good candidates have a tendency to try to naturally keep things moving forward, even when you try to hold them back. If the conversation ever starts going around in circles, and the candidate says something like "well, we can talk about this all day, but we've got to do something, so let's go with decision X" that's a really good sign.

Which brings us to #7, The Challenge. This is fun. Throughout the interview, you look for the candidate to say something that is absolutely, positively, unarguably correct. Then you say, "wait a minute, wait a minute," and spend about 2 minutes playing devil's advocate. Argue with them when you are sure they are right.

Weak candidates will give in. No Hire.

Strong candidates will find a way to persuade you. They will have a whole laundry list of Dale Carnegie techniques to win you over. "Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you," they will say. But they will stand their ground. Hire.

Admittedly, in an interview situation, you are not equal parties. Thus there is a risk that the candidate will be afraid to argue with you because you are in a position of power over him. BUT, good candidates will tend to get fairly passionate about the argument, and they may momentarily forget that they are in an interview, and they will get very involved in trying to convince you. These are the people we want to hire.

Finally, you should ask the candidate if they have any questions. Some people like to look to see if the candidate will ask intelligent questions, which is a standard technique in the interviewing books. Personally, I don't care what questions they ask; by this point I've already made my decision. The trouble is, candidates have to see about 5-6 people in one day, and it's hard for them to ask 5-6 people different, brilliant questions, so if they don't have any questions, fine.

I always, always leave about 5 minutes a the end of the interview to sell Fog Creek. This is very important even if you are not going to hire them. If you've been lucky enough to find a really good candidate, you want to do everything you can at this point to make sure that they want to come to Fog Creek. Even if they are a bad candidate, you want to get them excited about Fog Creek Software so that they go away with a positive impression of the company. Think of it this way: these people are not just potential hires; they are also customers. They are also salesmen for our recruiting effort: if they think that Fog Creek is a great place to work, they will encourage their friends to apply.

Ah, I just remembered that I promised to give you some more examples of really bad questions to avoid.

First of all, avoid the illegal questions. Anything related to race, religion, gender, national origin, age, military service eligibility, veteran status, sexual orientation, or physical handicap is just illegal. If their resume says they were in the Army in 1990, don't ask them, even to make pleasant conversation, if they were in the Gulf war. It's against the law. If their resume says that they attended the Technion in Haifa, don't ask them, even conversationally, if they are Israeli. It's against the law. There's a pretty good discussion of what's illegal here. (But the rest of the interview questions at that site are pretty stupid).

Next, avoid any questions which might make it seem like we care about, or are discriminating based on, things which we don't actually care about or discriminate based on. The best example of this I can think of is asking someone if they have kids or if they are married. This might give the false impression that we think that people with kids aren't going to devote enough time to their work or that they are going to run off and take maternity leave.

Finally, avoid brain teaser questions like the one where you have to arrange 6 equal length matches to make exactly 4 identical perfect triangles. If it's an "aha!" question, you don't get any information about "smart/get things done" by figuring out if they happen to make the mental leap or not.

Interviewing is more of an art than a science, but if you remember the Smart/Gets Thing Done principle you will be in good shape. When you get a chance, ask some of your co-workers what their favorite questions are and what kinds of answers they look for. In the Building 16 cafeteria in Redmond this is a perennial favorite topic of lunchtime conversation.The company I started, Fog Creek Software, makes a terrific product called FogBUGZ for software project management and bug tracking. It's web based, affordable, and runs on your own server, and it's now available for Windows, Unix, or Mac OS X servers. Check it out now — there's a free online trial! Enter your email address to receive a (very occasional) email whenever I write a major new article. You can unsubscribe at any time, of course.