Our government has proved that alliances do work, a fact never accepted by Congress, till now,? said Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, while inaugurating Information Technology Institute for the Tribes of India in Dehradun recently. ?We proved our adversaries wrong by not only successfully running the government but also taking India on the road of prosperity as never before,? he said.
Taking the opportunity to castigate the Congress, Shri Vajpayee said that it was difficult to trust Congress following its past records in breaking coalition governments.
Declaring Rs 10 million assistance for the institute, he hoped that it will prove to be the pioneer in the sphere of IT education. He announced a Rs 250 crore package for the treatment and the relief works concerning the Varunavrat landslides in the remote district of Uttaranchal. He also assured the people of Uttaranchal to increase the recruitment quota percentage in the defence services for Uttaranchal. A better deal for the Tehri dam oustees and more facilities for the ex-service men were some of the assurances given by Shri Vajpayee in his address.
The situation in Uttaranchal is indeed pathetic. The State is in a shambles and there is virtually no government. Vested interests, mafias, political groups with diverse loyalties and interests rule the roost in the State. There is no cohesion between the Government and the Congress Party.
The 1881 French encyclopaedia shows river Saraswati
This map, printed in 1881 in an encyclopaedia published in Paris, France, demonstrates that Saraswati was a recognised Himalayan river system in the 19th century. Ghaggar was one of the tributaries of Saraswati (ref. Map Two). This belies the irresponsible statements made by the likes of Prof. Irfan Habib that people are imagining Saraswati to be Ghaggar. Saraswati is ground-truth and there are a few historians who have lost touch with commonsense and refuse to realise the ground-truth. This evidence provided by the map is a fitting reply to those who talk about Hindutva while debating an important historical fact related to Bharatiya heritage. It should be clear that there was no talk of saffronisation in 1881 when the map was drawn to show the rivers mentioned in the Rigveda.
(This information has been sent to us by Dr S. Kalyanaraman of Saraswati Nadi, Shodh Praklap, Akhila Bharatiya Itihaasa Sankalana Yojana, 3 Temple Avenue, Srinagar Colony, Chennai-600 015.) Phone: 044 22350557 E-mail: [email protected], Website: www.hindunet.org/saraswati
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