Some Thoughts On Mail, Comments, Links

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I  want to clarify one more time how I deal with reader comments and letters.

1.  I  no longer put an email contact on my blog, because email addresses out there tend to attract huge amounts of spam and become impossible to clean up. They also attract malicious people, who hack and access personal information.

2. If you comment on this blog and I recognize you as a regular reader, I can send you a personal email address to a contact you provide. However, I only tend to do this for regular readers and contributors. Sorry, but there are lots of people who make up email addresses and pose as readers simply to get information.

3. Encryption is a good idea when commenting on this blog or writing to me, because I cannot guarantee that your IP address might not be visible to a hacker or spammer. I don’t track my readers, but someone else might. However, if you actually relish my NSFW writing, you are tough enough and smart enough to take care of any attendant problems.

4. I do reply to emails in my inbox, sometimes long after the fact, I am afraid. But that is the result of having multiples email addresses, a blog that gets attacked, and a day job. If you don’t get a fast enough reply to an email, just post a comment on the blog and tell me not to publish it. I won’t.

5. Please let me know if links are broken on this site or to another site to which I have linked. If you have the time, I would much appreciate any links that you can can get redirected to the new URL of this site, https://lilarajiva.com.

So far, people I have contacted have been very helpful.

There is a wordpress plugin that could help with it: search-and-replace.

6. Pay no attention to contradictory personal information about me on the web. I  rarely sign up anywhere with accurate information and when Google rehashes the public records, the result is quite inaccurate.

7. Whatever I have stated on this blog about my personal experiences with flaming and stalking is hundred-percent accurate. I might not be able to say everything I want, but I am not in this business to mislead.

“Guerilla blogging,” as I call it, or defensive blogging, is meant to protect me from law-suits, not cover up anything.  I am exactly what I say I am: an ordinary citizen, a former academic and teacher, with no connections to intelligence, except in so far as some of my editors might have those ties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Migrant Invasion of Asia: Pedo Rapist Huckle

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A headline you will never see at any alt-right blog:

“UK’s worst paedo faces 22 life sentences after raping 200 kids including baby in nappy.”

From age 19- 29, Richard Huckle, the grammar school-educated, church -going son of a British actress, posed as a volunteer at Christian orphanages all across Asia, while secretly molesting and raping some 200 or more children, ranging from babies to pre-teens. Huckle crowd-funded his crimes by selling a how-to manual on the dark web, where he bragged about his rapes on notorious paedo site, The Love Zone.

Huckle’s crimes are part of a tidal wave of  tourist/expat sex-crimes, perpetrated largely by males from Australia, the UK, Canada, the US and Europe.

This is the demographic that forms the growing market for the livestreaming of child-rape and abuse committed mostly against poor Asian children, many orphaned.

Now that’s a migrant crime wave you won’t hear about on Breitbart or FrontPageMagazine.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that white males are uniquely child molesters.

Anymore than any rational person would suggest that all inner-city blacks are violent or all Mexican or Muslim immigrants are rapists and jihadists.

But that is precisely what nativist sites on the right and sometimes the left consistently do.

If a pattern shows up, we are correct to point it out, regardless of ethnic sensibilities.

We are not correct to misinterpret the data to ascribe or insinuate unique biological propensities for crime to the perpetrators.

Keeping the big picture of elite manipulation in mind, we see a pattern of breakdown in all groups that follows the fault lines peculiar to their ethnic and socio-political history.

Western males have greater access to technology and more freedom to travel. They are also the product of  a culture that glorifies pornography and denigrates religious or social strictures against unlicensed sexual expression. They are the targets of aggressive feminism.

The combination might make the sexual exploitation of the weakest members of society more attractive to the worst instincts of some men.

The same holds true for the so-called migrant crime wave in the US and Europe.  Incentivize immigration with welfare; make it hard for legal, highly-skilled workers to immigrate and easy for illegal, low-skilled ones to; promote a culture of drugs, violence, and misogyny in popular culture; then throw in opportunistic interactions between criminal gangs and governments and you have a recipe for migrant crime- waves.

Race is not the cause, it should be obvious. It is culture, orchestrated from above.

If only white nationalists and black nationalists would see that.

 

This blog is now back up at a new URL

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So….. I got sucker punched.

For the last several months, as you probably know, I have been inundated by spam bots, code executing excessively, and other problems that led to my blog being offline most the time. It was up maybe a few hours each month and never in time for me to correct anything.

With that going on, some email miscommunication, oversights by tech support and globe-trotting on my part created what I must admit is a bit of a disaster. My domain was sold. I won’t comment on the blog to which it now directs. But I wonder if there is some connection to the scrapers that were piling on before.

Chief among them was a Russian scraper called Megaindex, which some sites consider shady. But then a lot of bots also disguise themselves, so I have no idea who or what was really behind all of that.

Next thing you know, Godaddy, the mother..or daddy..of all domain-snatchers had gobbled me up. Godaddy is a whole story to itself. But then, my former domain host and its reseller are also now sisters in a huge combine called Endurance International Group. Turns out that Goldman Sachs owns shares in EIG, which bought my host in 2014.

Thrilling any conspiracy fan, that was when problems of access to my cpanel began. In 2016 the bot attacks began. They accelerated into 2017, leaving me afraid they would wipe out the blog itself.

Well, the blog seems to have got through. But the domain is lost, maybe for good.

Also gone, and probably the object of the whole sabot…I mean sale.. were hundreds of links.

Gone are traffic, domain authority, page rank and other important things.

They were disguised and distorted by the spam attacks and by Google, the spy-state’s bff, but they were solid.

The links were my petty proof that I could take a licking and survive.

Ah well.

If I sound stoic, it’s because I am.

This is a war and the prize is your mind. Erasing people from the web, rewriting history, stealing IP (and links are not intrinsic to the domain – they are intrinsic to the blog), are all part of the war.

What does the law have to say about it?

The law, as usual, is a flat-footed copper, opening fire on the victims and letting the guilty off.

The underworld of the internet on the other hand is the dark kingdom of Dr. Moriarty.

It needs Sherlock.

 

 

Back to Blogging

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Apologies for the site having been down so long. First, there was a long spell of bot attacks that I could never tackle in time.

Then, there were a bunch of technical glitches. I’m up now, but for how long I can’t say. I’ll take it as it comes.

My latest preoccupation is the growing menace of biometric identification, the worst specimen of which is India’s monstrous Aadhaar card.

Aadhaar, as duly noted on this blog, has the same meaning as Al Qaeda, that is, ‘the base’..which is another word for a ‘the foundation’. But it is also a pun on a more obviously ominous word – ‘data-base.’

A data-base of human beings, that is.

These sorts of cogitations will be dismissed in the major media as conspiracy theory.

But it is nothing of the sort, to anyone who follows the day-to-day encroachment of the state on the remaining rags of privacy.

Aadhaar is exceptional in that it includes a person’s name, his/her parents’ names, a photograph, all ten finger-prints, iris scans, and a signature, all in one easily duplicated piece of paper.

Already, despite Supreme Court pronouncements to the contrary, the Indian government has demanded it for public welfare schemes, for government scholarships, for new bank accounts, for government pensions, for gas subsidies, for cell phone accounts, and now, perhaps,  for income-tax filings.

Already, millions of people with Aadhaar have had all their personal and financial details leaked, for weeks and months at a time, on multiple government websites.

The implications are horrendous, by any measure. The helpless citizen is now trapped between the surveillance state and the criminal mafias, pinned down like prey, cowering between the gimlet-eyed eagle of global government overhead and the insidious snake of international crime underfoot.

BJP Behind Tamil Power Struggle

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Hindustan Times has summarized 10 steps in the power struggle being waged between Sasikala Natarajan, former CM Jayalalithaa’s former confidante and current party secretary of the AIADMK (All India Anna DMK):

The power struggle can be summarised in the following 10 points:

1. Meditation and then revolt

Feb 7: Panneerselvam goes to Marina Beach in Chennai, and meditates for around 40 minutes at Jayalalithaa’s memorial. Says he was compelled to resign as CM and propose Sasikala’s name for the post of leader of the AIADMK legislature party.

“I was forced to step down… Amma’s spirit told me that I should come out and tell the truth to the people.

[Lila: My previous post reported on the widespread use in current Tamil Nadu TV  (Sun TV serials) of occult symbols drawn from mother- goddess (Amma) worship, accompanied by imagery of lamias and snakes and references to divination, seances,  and black magic. Was this intended to reinforce the idea of the former TN chief minister as a goddess, whose departed spirit could then be appropriated by others for their own purposes? If so, who would profit from such a manipulation? Who has the power to insert such symbols into television? Would they be the owners of the channels in league with outside forces?

47% of Tamil viewers watch Sun TV and its sister channels, a result of the monopoly of distribution channels by the owner, Kalanidhi Maran, from the politically prominent family of Marans. Dayanidhi, Kala’s brother, is the Union Minister for Communications.  The Maran family controls of the DMK, one of the leading Tamil identity parties and rival to the splinter party AIADM.  Kala’s grand-uncle is former chief minister of TN Karunanidhi.

I posted evidence that the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and DARPA were some of the external forces behind the Tamil faces orchestrating the pro-Jallikattu protests that also played on Shaivite and Tamil symbols. I showed that the current BJP “Hindu nationalist” government of Modi is nothing more than a front for the Rothschild cabal, so presumably, this imagery can also be linked to them.]

Jayalalithaa told me to take over as CM when she was in hospital,” he says.

2. Sasikala sacks Panneerselvam as AIADMK treasurer, he asks banks to block party funds

Feb 7: After a meeting with party leaders, party announces that Sasikala has sacked Panneerselvam as AIADMK treasurer and replaced with Dindigul C Srinivasan, forest minister and No. 2 in the council of ministers.

After his sacking, Panneerselvam says, “I have carried forward the post of treasurer which was entrusted upon me by Amma and I think no one can take it away from me.” He writes to banks saying he was still the treasurer and no transactions should be done in party accounts without his assent.

3. Panneerselvam announces plan to probe Amma’s death, Sasikala parades MLAs

Feb 8: Panneerselvan says he personally does not have any suspicion on the death of Jayalalithaa, but that a commission of inquiry headed by a sitting Supreme Court judge will be set up to probe into the death.

“Doubts about Amma’s health still prevail. A probe commission will be set up… health queries regarding Amma have been raised in the recent past. It’s the duty of the state government to enquire. Recommended an enquiry commission,” he says.

Makes another major revelation, saying, “I had visited the hospital daily to enquire about Jayalalithaa’s health condition, but couldn’t meet her even once.”

[Lila: A comment under this article points out that this statement contradicts OPS’ previous assertion in Point 1 that Jaya had told him to take over while she was in Apollo Hospital. OPS is lying here.]

Feb 8: Sasikala parades 130-plus lawmakers in a show of strength to counter the rebellion.
4. Panneerselvan says Sasikala wants only to grab power to grab money

Feb 8: Panneerselvan says Sasikala “does not understand the situation” in Tamil Nadu. Gets support from another AIADMK leader, OP Pandian, who says Sasikala “only cares about money, money, money. She wants to grab power to get money.”

[Lila: OPS was a close friend of Shekhar Reddy, the sand-mining baron who was arrested during an income tax raid that recovered crores of allegedly unaccounted money in the form of the new Rs. 2000 notes, barely 25 days from the date that the banks began issuing them. Note that Reddy was on the board of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Trust, overseeing the 26 billion dollar annual income of the outfit in charge of the second-richest religious center in the world.  Reddy is said to be linked to the TN Chief Secretary Rama Mohana Rao, who was the target of a shocking, militarized raid by the IT department last year. At issue was crores of rupees from illegal sand-mining allegedly laundered through new notes into the construction industry and/or used to pay political supporters. ]

5. Panneerselvan promises to give due credit to Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar

Feb 8: Panneerselvan promises to meet people in every part of the state. “I will prove my majority and lead the people,” he says. Adds that he will give Deepa (Jayalalithaa’s niece) “the respect she deserves”, and that he will ask her to join his camp.

[Lila: Deepa, Jaya’s niece, is backed by the BJP who pushed her forward to create divisions in Tamil politics, it is reported.]

6. Panneerselvan calls for party polls to elect general secretary

Feb 8: Calls for elections as per AIADMK rules for the post of general secretary, saying the party council has the power only to appoint a temporary general secretary.

7. Panneerselvan says may take back resignation if party wishes

Feb 8: Panneerselvam says he has never betrayed the party and may take back resignation as chief minister if the party so desires. “I have always followed Amma’s path. There has been no instance where I betrayed the party, while remaining in power or opposition,” he says.

8. Panneerselvam parades support of senior legislators, meets Governor

Feb 9: Panneerselvam says Sasikala “betrayed” a 2011 vow to her “mentor” Jayalalithaa by staking claim to form the government.

At a press conference, parades the support of senior legislator E Madhusudanan, who worked with Amma and her mentor MG Ramachandran for more than 50 years.

Reads out a letter Sasikala allegedly wrote to Jayalalithaa, seeking apology for her actions and promising not to seek any political position and use her influence.

Panneerselvam meets Governor C Vidyasagar Rao at Raj Bhavan, alleges most of the party MLAs were being held hostage in a resort outside Chennai and that police were not responding to complaints.

[Lila: Rao is a former  RSS functionary and one-time governor of Maharashtra, now acting governor of TN. He is seen as another proxy of the BJP, as he was also once Andhra state president of the BJP. He comes from the Velamma community from the leading Karimnagar family of northern Telengana. Former CPI (Communist Party of India) general secretary Rajeshwar Rao is his brother, as is Planning Commission member, Hanumantha Rao. Telengana was part of Andhra Pradesh until its secession, which Rao supported. Andhra is a prominent locus of Western and church influence. It is the state in which the fabulously wealthy Tirumala temple is located. Rao was educated at Osmania University, a hot-bed of leftist politics.]

9. Panneerselvam says will prove majority, Sasikala stakes claim to govt, visits Jaya memorial

Feb 9: Panneerselvam declines to reveal the number of legislators who were supporting him and says he will prove his strength on the floor of the house. Says party legislators will have the chance to vote as per their conscience and he would be able to prove his majority.

Feb 9: Sasikala visits Jayalalithaa’s memorial at Marina Beach, pays floral tributes to the late chief minister, before heading to Raj Bhavan to meet the Governor with a list of MLAs loyal to her

Sasikala stakes claim to form the government, while Panneerselvam says “dharma” will triumph.

10. Sasikala holds meeting with MLAs, sacks Madhusudanan, Panneerselvam lodges complaint

Feb 9: Sasikala holds meeting with AIADMK?MLAs loyal to her at Poes Garden residence. Reports also say she held a meeting via video link with MLAs kept at the Golden Bay Resorts

Feb 10: Sasikala dismisses E Madhusudanan from the party for backing Panneerselvam, and appoints KA Sengottaiyan as the party presidium chairman.

Feb 10: Panneerselvam lodges formal complaint with Governor on MLAs being held hostage in resort.

Feb 10: Governor Vidyasagar Rao sends report to Union home ministry, says “cannot call Sasikala to form the government now”, asks DGP to probe allegations that MLAs are being kept against their will at the resort.

 

“Shiva” Rising In Tamil Nadu

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The Tamil serials these days are full of the images and icons of Shaivism.

An aficionado tells me this is a recent thing.

This is a lazy blog-post in a spare moment. I don’t have the energy to insert the links, but google the Tamil serials, Nandini, Nagini, Mahamayi, Ganga, Keladi Kanmani, and several others whose names elude me.

Cobras slither through them and morph into human beings…usually gorgeous women who do battle with evil.

[Note that in Jewish lore, the female spirit/demon Lilith, supposedly the mate of Adam before Eve, is associated with a half-woman, half-serpent lamia-like figure.]

Goddesses named Amman (mother) abound in contemporary Tamil Nadu cinema.

The trappings of Shaivism from the trishul (trident) to the horizontal ash on the forehead appear everywhere, as well as images of Shiva himself.

Besides Kashmir, Tamil Nadu is the great center of Shaivite worship.

The serials play up the idolatrous, superstitious side of it….presenting it seductively…  Black magic abounds.

The sudden appearance of such imagery this year, along with the (Shiva) bull-centric Jallikattu riots, makes me wonder.

Hollywood has always been a favorite venue for propaganda and the subliminal insertion of memes and imagery into the public consciousness.

There’s nothing to say the same thing is not going on here in TN, where cinema has such a potent hold on the minds of millions of people.

Christianity too has its Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who infused occult and pagan imagery into Christian themes.

But this goes beyond that.

This is more akin to Dungeons and Dragons or Harry Potter.

It is magic for its own sake.

It is an attack on the sober, agamic Hinduism of the aam admi that stresses moral duty.

 

 

 

Blogsplaining myself

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Sometimes I look back over old posts and catch things that need explaining.

Last night, I saw a post about feminism, in which I said I was not a femin-ist but a human-ist.

That might confuse readers who note that my other posts are generally written from a Christian perspective, to which “humanism” is opposed.

Humanism refers to the Enlightenment philosophy of human reason as the arbiter of all things.

I am not that kind of humanist.

However,  in that post, I was differentiating myself from feminists. I wanted to be clear that I was concerned for women as human-beings…not as some special gender elevated above men. That was the sense in which I used the word human-ist in the post.

There and elsewhere, a casual reader might get confused by the conflicting view-points  published on this blog.

They’re easily explained.

I publish anything that strikes me as containing an important insight, even if it contradicts my own world-view.

It’s my way of keeping myself honest and not succumbing to ideology.

The second point I wanted to make is that I am not an anti-Semite in the traditional sense, despite my tendency to rummage through white nationalist/so-called anti-Semitic sites.

I consider global government a very bad idea and I see its roots going back to the rabbinical dream of world conquest under a Messiah-King.

Deciphering that project requires plain-speaking…but I am not motivated by hatred for Judaism itself, either Torah-based or Talmudic, although certainly there are things in the latter I dislike intensely.

As to Christianity itself, I used to be a rather liberal and unorthodox Christian, as you can see from earlier writing on the web.

These days, I have moved much closer to a conservative position. That’s a result of extensive research over the last few years.

And personal experience.

I now hold an orthodox faith, but I still differ from orthodox believers in one thing – I do not believe that Christ’s salvation is conferred only on those who profess Christian doctrine. I believe it is conferred on all, regardless of confession. It depends only on what is in the heart.

If a person strives to embody truth and love as Christ practiced it, they are “believers” in the sense Christ meant.

They worship Christ, only without naming him.

There are many practicing “Christians” who are actually idolaters, because their belief is superstitious and a profession of the lips.

There are many practicing “pagans” who are actually Christians, because their belief is in the true god, regardless of what name they’ve chosen to give him.

Christ will draw them to him, one way or other.

This is not an idle conclusion. It’s one I’ve reached after many years of back-and-forth, study, observation, and interaction with people of all faiths.

 

 

 

 

 

Libertarian Republic On Steve Bannon’s Art Of The “New Deal”

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Libertarian Republic gets it right:

Taking Bannon at his own word, and in the context of 1930s, it sounds a lot like the rhetoric coming from Germany pre-World War II. His rhetoric matches the anger, scapegoating, and emotional ploys spoken in the early days of Adolf Hitler‘s rise.

While this may seem pejorative, or hyperbolic, let us look at how the Mises Institute, an Austrian Economic think tank, explains 1930 Germany’s economic situation.

In the 1930s, Hitler was widely viewed as just another protectionist central planner who recognized the supposed failure of the free market and the need for nationally guided economic development. Proto-Keynesian socialist economist Joan Robinson wrote that “Hitler found a cure against unemployment before Keynes was finished explaining it.”

What were those economic policies? He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public-works programs like autobahns, protected industry from foreign competition, expanded credit, instituted jobs programs, bullied the private sector on prices and production decisions, vastly expanded the military, enforced capital controls, instituted family planning, penalized smoking, brought about national healthcare and unemployment insurance, imposed education standards, and eventually ran huge deficits. The Nazi interventionist program was essential to the regime’s rejection of the market economy and its embrace of socialism in one country.

Now compare that to how Bannon and Trump have described their plans and vision for having won the White House.

  1. 1 Trillion Dollar Infrastructure matches the huge public works programs
  2. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia,”  along with Trumps promises to coerce business back into the US, matches protection of industry from foreign competition,
  3. “With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything,” added to Trumps call to continue borrowing, matches expanding credit and the continuance of large deficits
  4. “Rebuild everything. Shipyards, iron works, get them all jacked up,” matches the instituted jobs programs
  5. Trumps possible control of capital through protectionist trade.
  6. The comment by Bannon about being in power for the next “50 years” sounds awfully similar to the how Nazi’s described the Third Reich. “It is our will that this state shall endure for a thousand years. We are happy to know that the future is ours entirely!” – Triumph of Will (1935)

This not to say that Bannon or Trump should be compared to Nazis or that they have come close to committing the acts against humanity that occurred in that period of history. Rather it is a simple question which compares the rhetoric being used by the two administrations in their rise to power. After all, this perspective is a simple look back at history, so as to learn from it and utilize it to spot potential issues in the future. If we willfully ignore details, even if just as a safety measure, then we leave ourselves at risk of missing what could’ve been right under our nose. Famed philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”

The Sandy Foundation Of Tamil Politics

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From Scroll.in, a fascinating look into the sand mafia that rules Tamil Nadu (and many other Indian states) and its impact on politics and the environment there:

However, people in villages see this money [Lila: from the sale of sand from dried up river beds] circulating. A part of it, they say, goes to local party workers. A farmer from a village near Karur claimed that “about Rs 1,000 from each unit is shared amongst the local party workers: Rs 25 to the person in the village, Rs 150 to the taluka head, Rs 350 to the district members, and so on.” This is echoed by both researchers and politicians like K Kaliyan of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Abhijit Sen, a former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, said India’s political parties “maintain their party cadres predominantly through the construction sector”. In Punjab, people close to the ruling Akali Dal control both sand mining and stone crushing. In West Bengal, syndicates control urban infrastructure projects. Another part of this money, said the researcher, goes into fighting elections. Be it for campaigning or for paying voters in cash.

These questions – about money flowing from sand mining to AIADMK’s cadre and being used in elections – were listed in the questionnaires sent to Jayalalithaa, Venkataramanan and Arumugasamy. This article will be updated when they respond.

For now, Sen’s observation triggers a fresh question. If a ruling party depends on the mining of a mineral resource to maintain itself, what is the fallout?

What it all means

Some years ago, farmers from 12 villages in Ettayapuram Taluk of Tuticorin district decided to stop sand mining. Among other things, they seized earthmovers and trucks. In response, said an article by R Seenivasan, a PhD Candidate with the University of Westminster, the farmers “were slapped with criminal charges and branded as ‘extremists’ who take ‘law into their hands’. Many farmers were sent to jail for days and charged for ‘unlawful assembly, rioting, obstructing government work and officers,’ under various penal sections of the Indian penal code.”

This is a common refrain. The police similarly slapped cases on the women of Kalathur, a village on the Palar, when they protested last year against sand mining. When this reporter met V Chandrasekhar, who has been agitating against sand mining in Villupuram and Pondicherry, it was shortly after Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was beaten up in the Patiala House complex. “That happens every day here. The police is an instrument of the state. No one would dare go to the police here,” said Chandrasekhar.

This pattern, of siding with the miners and not with the locals, shows up in poor supervision of sand mining. As the PUCL study found, sand was being mined till almost a 10 metre depth in the Palar. It also shows in the state government’s support for sand mining over, say, environmental concerns.

Responding to a petition filed in the Madras High Court by the Cauvery Neervala Athara Pathukappu Sangam, a non-profit in Erode, the state government argued that sand mining doesn’t need an environment clearance since quarrying operations were carried out by the PWD scientifically.

When the court insisted on an environmental impact assessment, a lawyer in the Madurai court who fought against sand mining, told Scroll on the condition of anonymity, the state government rushed through an environmental clearance in just three months.

Scroll asked Jayalalitha, Rama Mohana Rao, Venkataramanan and Arumugasamy for their comment on the charges that the state government and the ruling party have acted in a manner which benefits sand miners and not local communities. There was no response.

The combined fallout of all this has not been pretty. As these quarries scour their way along Tamil Nadu’s rivers, the state’s water crisis is worsening. Groundwater levels, for instance, are collapsing across the state. That said, the ravages of sand mining go beyond ecological damage. The state’s villages and politics have been damaged as well.”

Infosys Foundation Chair Joins Tirumala Temple Trust

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The chairman of the Infosys Foundation has joined the board of the largest and richest temple trust in India and the second-richest in the world.

From The Hindu:

The appointment of Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Narayana Murthy as a member of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Trust Board is being seen as an initiative that will bolster the image of the board.

The nomination of Ms. Murthy, a prolific writer, philanthropist, and member of public health care initiatives of the Gates Foundation, meets the long-standing demand that only iconic personalities with a religious bent of mind be nominated to the board.”

The Hindu piece doesn’t tell you exactly who Mrs. Narayana Murthy is. She is the wife of the Infosys co-founder, and Infosys is one of the leading business consulting and outsourcing companies in India.

Narayana Murthy, often regarded as the father of Indian IT, figured prominently in Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” (which I have trounced on several occasions). Murthy, a Kannada Madhwa Brahmin, may be an entrepreneur but he is a self-proclaimed socialist.

He, like fellow-globalist Nandan Nilakeni, the other co-founder of Infosys,  is also an ardent promoter of the digitilization and e-surveillance of India.

Nilekani heads the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which, along with the RBI, is the driving force between the imposition of the national biometric ID card, Aadhar. His former boss, Narayan Murthy, formerly headed the National Payments Corporation (NPC), the umbrella outfit that covers all retail payment systems like merchant cards, ATMs, etc.

Nilekani is a Konkani Brahmin and second-generation Fabian Socialist:

His father worked as a general manager of Mysore and Minerva Mills and subscribed to Fabian Socialist ideals that influenced Nilekani in his early years.”

The Hindu article also doesn’t mention the significance of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD).

They oversee the work of the second richest and most visited religious center in the world, taking in some 130 million rupees a month (about 13 crore rupees or nearly 2 million dollars). The trust earned 2600 crore rupees (26 billion dollars) last year.

The trust oversees not only the Tirumala temple in Andhra Pradesh, but Hindu temples all over the world. Besides this, it is involved in numberless charitable works and in the propagation and preservation of Hindu and Sanskrit classics.

Please note that enormous amounts of gold, silver, and other donations flow into the temple coffers regularly:

While gold alone is estimated to add up to one tonne a year in offerings, silver, diamond and other items also flow into the temple trust’s exchequer. “In the case of property deeds, due procedure is followed by the concerned department to transfer the title,” noted an official.”

and this:

The temple trust said in April that it had deposited 1,311 kg of gold with Punjab National Bank under India’s Gold Monetisation Scheme. The deposit apparently is under a three-year short-term programme that earns the trust an annual interest of 1.75 percent.

In a statement, the temple’s investment committee expressed satisfaction at the interest rates earned from its investment so far. Further, it sought a shorter investment time frame between one to three years for depositing its yearly turnout of gold. The temple trust may negotiate with banks that would offer higher interest rates.

The trust, which seeks gold, not cash, in interest on its gold deposits, has chosen the government’s monetisation scheme’s three year short-term programme primarily for that benefit. Evincing interest to plough in more gold as deposits, it has requested the Reserve Bank of India to extend the same for other gold monetisation programmes that range from medium to long terms.”

Sudha Narayana Murthy replaces mining baron Shekhar Reddy on the board. Reddy was arrested in December 2016, for allegedly laundering money.  A widely circulated picture showed him standing in front of the Tirupati temple with current chief minister O.P Paneerselvam.