Hindu Astrology - Author: Late Dr. Anthony Stone

This blog entry is in two parts, the first on the book "Hindu Astrology" by my late friend Dr. Anthony Stone (Tony) and the second part of the blog is the inauguration of the Ram Mandir Temple in Ayodhya by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 22nd January 2024.

The first part is being cross-posted on all my major blogs while the second part is only being posted on my main blog - Jacob’s Blog.

Late Dr. Anthony Stone

Tony was my teacher of Mathematics in St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and my good friend. His book on Hindu astrology is to be shortly released as a paperback and I wanted to give you a look into the facts behind Indophile, Tony, and our relationship pre the release oif the paperback edition.

I was sent the details of this book by the publisher, another dear friend and alumni of St. Stephen’s College, Professor Prabhu Guptara.  

Tony was the teacher of Mathematics in St. Stephen’s College in 1962-63, my final year. He took over the duties of Principal S. C. Sircar in the Mathematics Department and joined Professors S.R. Nagpaul, S. B. Mathur,  and Ranjit Bhatia (Rhodes Scholar and of Indian Olympic fame) in the college Mathematics Department.

I lost touch with Tony till he turned up on my Kooler Talk Blog in the late 1990s. We established a close  relationship. When his wife Bertha was hospitalised and he had a short holiday in 2000, as he was then caring for Bertha, he decided to visit Annikki and me in Oulu, Finland. He stayed with us for a week and we had wonderful reunion, and discussed many of his projects.

He was well versed in Indian culture and he was working on a few projects, one of which was Hindu Astrology.

He was also working on a special area of mathematical research which coincided with the interest of a Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai, friend of mine, Bhupinder Singh Anand (Bhupi).

Bhupi was a couple of years senior to me but stayed on in School to do the 12th standard HSC qualification. He was also from Savage House and in our final year, he was the Head Boy of the school while I was the Savage House Captain.  

Bhupi, the School Captain is sitting third from the left, while I am sitting second from the right.

I did keep in touch with Bhupi as he joined my “Seventh Heaven” Cathedralite Heaven Google Group although he was not technically a 59er. I had great respect for dear Bhupi as he was a sincere individual and a true Cathedralite.

The publisher of this book on Hindu astrology is Professor. Prabhu Guptara, from St. Stephen’s College, junior to me but also a good friend now living in Cambridge in the UK.

Prabhu had done an chapter in the book "Malayali Diaspora" several years ago about the oldest Malayali in Continental Europe (not the UK), which was about me. 

Frank Raj was the editor of "The International Indian till 2017".

Frank Raj (Picture from LinkedIn)

This was later published in his magazine with pictures of us and our family in the Dubai publication “The Indian International” edited by Frank Raj.

In 2014, when for several reason, I was stranded in New Delhi, which is explained in Annikki and my book “The Titanic Called India”, Prabhu put me in touch with Ivan and Silvia Kostka.

Ivan and Dr.Silvia Kostka (Picture from LinkedIN)

I had the pleasure of dining with them and a couple of friends. Just a couple of months after they were harassed by the Hindutava faction because they were practicing Christians devoting their their life to uplifting the OBC Community. They were raided by the Delhi Police in October 2014 for supposedly saying derogatory statements about Goddess Durga. Their publication FORWARD Press was being targeted by the Hindutava faction of Narendra Modi’s BJP/RSS wing claiming that Ivan and Silvia were converting Indians to Christianity.

Here I must make a point that I went to Christian schools in Mysore, Bangalore and Mumbai. In my class in Mumbai we were just 4 Christian’s while the rest of the students were Hindus, Jews, Muslims Parsi, Sindhis and Sikhs, from all parts of the world, not just India. I did not even know or even care, what religion the students in my class were.

60 years later, I am still the fulcrum of keeping the surviving classmates together and there is not one single student who has changed his/her religion. They all subscribe too a secular education which has broadened their attitude to life and there is no discrimination on any grounds whatsoever. 

Christians lead by example of the two principles laid down by Christ. . 

There is only one God (different names: Jehovah, Allah, Brahma). Secondly, we must love our neighbour as ourselves. 

All the other laws are man-made derivatives of these two fundamental principles.

Thefollowing year, I had the good fortune to get an email from Silvia (a noted plastic surgeon) that she and Ivan were likely to transit through Helsinki and they were likely to be delayed in their return trip to India. She was interested in meeting up with me.

I did offer to put them up in one of the apartments that Annikki and I had in Helsinki during their stay but we lost contact after that.

Ivan was the Founding Editor of FORWARD Press and it was likely to be shut down by the intolerant society which had spread its wings under Narendra Modi. Silvia had told me then that the last edition of FORWARD Press was likely to be in March of that year (2015).

However, FORWARD Press has survived and is thriving even today under Anil Varghese who is the current editor-in-chief.

So that is my personal background to the book on Hindu Astrology penned by Tony.

Until a few years ago, interest in astrology was widespread - but thin. 

Now the astrology market is growing by leaps and bounds.

In the US, over the four years to 2019, revenue from the top 10 astrology apps market saw an astonishing  compound growth rate of 72.8 percent per year! In India, ten astrology firms in 2021 raised INR 1300  million -300% the combined amount raised by ALL such start-ups over the previous five years!!

No figures for the UK are available, but here is a BBC report:

 https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210205-why-astrology-is-so-popular-now

Into this burgeoning international demand, Prabhu Guptara’s “Pippa Rann Books” imprint is publishing the paperback version of Tony’s book, Hindu Astrology.

The hardback came out some decades ago, but only in India.

The author, late Tony, was an Oxford PhD in Mathematics who went as a university teacher to India, where he was so intrigued at finding most highly-educated people allowing their lives to be ruled by astrology that he learned Sanskrit for the specific purpose of reading the texts in the original language, and writing an adequate history of Indian astrology as well as evaluation of it. 

Brief information on the book is attached below, in form of the full cover the book.

But of course the field is highly contested!  

The honourable Supreme Court of India proclaimed in 2004 that astrology is a SCIENCE.

On the other hand, Madhavankutty Pillai argued in OPEN magazine (2011) that astrology is a HOAX - 

openthemagazine.com/features/living/the-scientific-case-against-astrology/

In a 2018 article in The Guardian, “I was an astrologer”, Felicity Carter concludes that astrology is a form of ENTERTAINMENT.

And here is a recent article arguing that astrology is a SCAM: Digital ‘Vedic Astrology’: The $40 Billion Scam | Madras Courier

Naturally not with reference to the articles mentioned immediately above but, in general, Tony concludes: “…it is a pity that many critics of astrology argue at a very superficial level. My purpose in this book is to shed some genuine light on the subject.  I hope the book will stimulate serious discussion about astrology.”

Do we need to start more knowledgeable debates and discussions on astrology?

Read the book and come to your own conclusions.

Remembering our loved ones

 Dateline 28th November 2023

(Posted on Jacob's Blog, Seventh Heaven Blog for Cathedralites and Kooler Talk (Web Version) Blog for St. Stephen's College alumni.

Cathedral & John Connon School 59ers have lost many of our ones in the last few years. 

Here is a partial list of those from our 2969class who have passed on. 

(I do not have any information about our lady classmates except dear Farhana. I hope someone will update me on this.)

Ashok Ruia

Bala Parasursman

Dossu Pagdiwalla

Fali Dhondy

Farhana (Kably) Poonawala

Farukh Kanga

Flicky Shroff

Hasnain Chinwala

Indrajit Shah

Jacob Eapen 

Jack Haskell

 Jaswant Ghatge

Kurshed Balsata

Michael Colaco

Murali Balani

Naubir Mohindar

Pradeep Bhakar

Prem Goel

Ramesh Mirchandani

Virat Gidwani

Trevor Newnes

I have deliberately left out from this list, one of our dearest, who was tragically lost  15 years ago, Ashok Kapur.

59erGolden Reunion Directory

Our Mumbai 59ers met as a memoriam to Ashok

At our 2009 Golden  Reunion of 59ers,  Annikki and I dedicated our Reunion Directory to Ashok with these pages:

But besides Ashok, we lost many others during those fateful days, which has been brought to mind by Rajiv Bhatia on his Facebook page.

26/11

Remembering the late - Ajit & Monica Chhabria, Sunil & Reshma Parikh, Sanjay & Rita Agarwal, Rohinton Maloo, Mohit Harjani, Lavina Harjani, Anand Bhatt, Pankaj Shah, Vishnidas-Nilam-Gunjan Narang, Neeti-Uday-Samar-Kang, Rupinder Randhawa, Ashok Kamte, Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar, Tukaram Omble

I also remember one of my other alumni from St. Stephen’s College with this post from our alumni Facebook page. 

None other than the heroic Ashok Kamte:

Ashish Joshi , the Moderator of our alumni Facebook   page posted this.

LEST WE FORGET

This is what my friend & college senior, Gary (Justice Anupinder Grewal), wrote in the memory of late Ashok Kamte (Gary's batchmate) a brilliant police officer who attained martyrdom on 26/11. Late Kamte was a friend & one year senior to me in the College .

ASHOK KAMTE

I have been attending the annual St. Stephen's College, Reunion very frequently ever since I passed out of college in 1987. However, this year on 14th December, it was drastically different as it turned into memorial service for Ashok Kamte and I was entrusted the painful task of paying tribute to Ashok. 

It was a tragic personal loss as besides being my classmate in college and a friend, I had the privilege of living with Ashok and his family at his mother’s Flat in Hira Mahal on the Amrita Shergill Marg for about year while studying law. 

Ashok had joined us at St. Stephen's College for his Post Graduation after he had Graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. What stood him apart from the rest of the Stephanians was the enormity of his physical stature, which alongwith his quest for academic excellence was a rather unique combination. What surprised many was why is the National Power Lifting Champion pursuing Post Graduation at St. Stephen's. There is no preference for sports persons for admission in M.A. Little did they realize then that Ashok always strove for excellence, whether in the classroom or the playing field. He had single minded commitment to succeed. He was very happy when he was selected to the I.P.S. He used to say that he was meant for action and disliked other civil services for their bureaucratic file work.

While training for the Power Lifting Championship, he would not compromise on his diet. As his mother would not allow him to have more than two eggs, due to its high cholesterol content he would buy a dozen eggs from the market, cook and eat them at his neighbour's house. He had broken three national records in Power Lifting and won half a dozen Gold and Silver Medals. He had also won the Bronze Medal in Junior World Power Lifting Championship. Power Lifting is one of the toughest sport and Ashok would train for hours in complete solitude. Despite his powerful build, he was extremely agile and could sprint quite fast. Besides his love for swimming and squash he would generate amazing pace and bounce while bowling on the rather placid College Cricket pitch at Morigate. He had played an important role in the victory of our team. 

Ashok was proud of the fact that he had the blood of two Martial Races the Maratha’s and the Sikhs. While his father is a retired Colonel settled in Pune, his grand-father was in the Imperial Police. His mother Mrs. Paramjit Kamte,, who now lives in Gulmohar Park is from the well known Bawa Family of Goindwal Sahib and is grand-daughter of Late Bawa Budh Singh of the Indian Service of Engineers. Bawa Budh Singh was the 14th descendent of the Third Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Dass. When I called on Mrs. Kamte, she said that though she is proud of the fact that Ashok has become a National Hero yet at times she cannot comprehend that he is no more. He was the only male member in the family whom she could look forward in times of need. He had perhaps inherited his very fair features from his maternal grandmother Mrs.Surinder Bawa (maiden name Violet) an English Lady. His sister, Sharmila, a well known model and a ballet dancer, now runs her famous Dance Academy in Dubai. His wife, Vinita, stays at Pune alongwith his sons, Rahul and Arjun. Besides serving the U.N. Force in Bosnia, Ashok had also trained in Punjab for some time. 

Ashok was known for his high integrity and efficiency which was evident in his earlier stints in Maharashtra especially in Solapur, where he had brought an inflammable communal situation under control within a few hours. I had spoken to Ashok sometime back when as Commissioner of Police, Solapur, was in the news for bringing to book the local M.L.A who was flouting the law for noise pollution. Ashok had personally gone and arrested the M.L.A. from his residence at mid-night after the M.L.A. had earlier roughed up police officials. I had asked him whether he had really beaten up the M.L.A. He replied that if he had done so, the man would not have survived as though he no longer competed in power lifting but maintained regular exercise regime. It was his conscientiousness, patriotism and devotion to duty which made him the target of the terrorist attack at Mumbai. He was the Additional Commissioner, (East) and even though the area around the Cama Hospital(South) did not fall within his jurisdiction, he had reached there as he had undergone specialized training to handle terrorism and hostage situation. He would lead from the front and was not the kind to send subordinates to do risky jobs. He lived for others and had a proactive approach. He made the supreme sacrifice and attained martyrdom in the battle field and made his family, friends and the nation proud. "

Anupinder Grewal

Additional Advocate General, Punjab (Now Judge, Punjab High Court)

Let us each keep a moment’s silence, wherever we are, to honour of all our alumni. Founder’s Day for the school was November 14th. That for our college is 7th December. 

May all these dear ones friends 

Rest In Peace.

Nobel Prize - Living Green in India

I return to subject of the environmental chaos in India - this is not a political statement but a continuation of what we have written about continuously for over 30 years. 

We are lucky today to live in the 4th most Living Green country in the world, Finland,

India comes in near the bottom of the global rankings at 168th place worldwide, and only Afghanistan (178th place) ranks below India in Southern Asia. Leading the region is Bhutan (107th), with relatively high scores in biodiversity & habitat protection. (Many Indians will claim that is a western conspiracy against India to run it down!)

Yesterday, I read in The Wire this article by Elisha Vermin:

‘If Only the Government Worked as Hard as Waste Pickers’

Hundreds of scrap dealers are recycling most of Delhi’s plastic waste while being on the run from the government.

Elisha Vermani

Bahadurgarh: Among the flurry of lush green farmlands at the Delhi-Haryana border, hundreds of scrap dealers are involved in the process of recycling nearly all of Delhi’s plastic waste tucked safely away from the city’s eyes.

A few kilometres from Tikri Kalan’s PVC market, one of the biggest legitimate plastic markets in Delhi, acres of agricultural land in Shiddipur and Lowa Kalan has been turned into an open plastic market. Each trader in this area deals with nearly 300-500 kg of plastic waste per day.

 

According to a report by the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi generates over 600 tonnes of plastic waste daily. Most of this waste is brought to plastic markets like the one at Tikri where these dealers or aardhis segregate and reduce it to shreds before selling it forward. They are the most important link in the plastic recycling chain, and also the ones facing the most harassment.

Running nearly entirely as an informal economy, aardhis have the skill and eye to sort the waste without any chemical testing or lab equipment. All they need is empty stretches of land. However, they are constantly caught in a cat-and-mouse chase with the authorities. “First we were removed from Mundka, then from Kamruddin Nagar and they are still chasing us away even after we’ve crossed the Delhi border” said 38-year-old Rajesh, an aardhi at the Shiddipur market.

Rajesh and Bablu weren’t the only aardhis angry with the government. The huddle of two gradually swelled to about 15 men and a few women all expressing their frustration at the treatment they receive from the municipal corporation and National Green Tribunal officials. “They come and raze our temporary structures whenever they feel like it. I want to quit this profession now. If the government worked as hard as the waste pickers, the country would be elsewhere,” said 55-year-old Mangeram, who lost most of his business when he left the market at Mundka.

Aardhis believe that they are not the problem, but a solution to a problem. “The plastic is not going to decompose itself. If we don’t clean this mess then there will be heaps lying around in the city,” said 25-year-old Sonu, who works with his father at the market in Lowa.

Truckloads of plastic waste is unloaded at the market every few hours.

The aardhis told me that it’s not just Delhi’s waste that makes it way to these plastic markets. The government imports plastic waste, charges a custom duty on it and then the dealers pay an 18% GST on subsequent trading.

 

“Nobody is trying to shut down the bigger factories contributing to pollution in broad daylight because their owners can pay off the officials. We are preventing pollution on the other hand but nobody cares,” a 36-year-old aardhi who did not want to be named, said.

 

These traders work under the scorching sun without access to toilets or a clean resting place in the absence of a refuge away from the piles of waste. While they pride themselves on keeping Delhi “from coming to a standstill, trapped under its own garbage”, most of them seem to have lost hope and plan to move back to their villages if they face further harassment by government officials.

It is ironic that their contribution to waste management doesn’t guarantee them any financial or personal security. To quote Kaveri Gill, the author of Of Plastic and Poverty, who was one of the first few to document Delhi’s informal recycling markets: “If we can’t help them, leave them alone.”

Developed in collaboration with Ekaansh Arora. 

As I am, by profession, a Plastics Technologist, this article specifically interested me. Now that I am retired for over 15 years, the only subject in plastics I do still follow is the recycling of plastics as it is a highly controversial one. 

Plastics as a material is demonised rather than the people who misuse plastics.

When I was working in England at the British Rubber and Plastics Research Association (RAPRA) of Great Britain, one of my several projects was to counter the complaint by many professions, especially archiects that claimed that plastics did not have any durability!

One of my tasks was to prove to the the scientific world that plastics was a durable material. I searched all around England to find proof of the durability of plastics.

The oldest use of plastics I found then was an acrylic dome roof light system in the centre of London which had then lasted 30 years with no problems. 

This was documented in a paper "Weathering of Plastics" published in October 1968 in the journal Plastics which was authored by Dr. Crowder of the Building Research Station and myself. It shows a photograph that I captured during my time at the research centre.

Over the two years of my study, which took me across and up and down the English country, I found many uses of plastics which had withstood the elements and performed better than any comparable material. 

I stood on the roof of Wembley Stadium, confident that I was standing on a thin reinforced plastic sheeting with no loss in its strength as the sheer drop was many tens of metres!

I authored over 11 major reviews which covered all the plastics materials and their durability that were exposed to the elements.

That established the lovengity of plastics and should have been the guiding light to users that plastics was going to be a problem if it was used in applications where they would not be degraded! 

In 2022 the production of plastics was estimated as 450 million tonnes. Of this, it is estimated that 44% is used for packaging, a totally unnecessary waste of an most important resource!

Unfortunately, plastics became fashionable and started to be used in disposable packaging, something that should never have been permitted. The first step should have been that the use of plastics for packaging should have been subjected to the obsolescence law.

Today we are suffering the environmental consequences of the misuse of plastics.

When I returned to India I saw the use of plastics was becoming rampant in packaging. I took up this matter with the late Lavraj Kumar who was the Advisor to the Ministry of Petrochemicals. He listened but was powerless in the face of political pressure.

It was very appropriate those days to push the use of plastics for packaging of consumable foodstuffs as the losses due to infestation and rodents due to poor packaging and storage was enormous. 

Plastics became the life saver but it grew and grew unchecked with no control on the environmental impact.

But India had its own solution as the jerrypuranawalla moved street by street collecting the waste materials and these were then regenerated back to useful materials, going down the chain till finally it was used in non critical applications.

Hence, India had a solution and as can be seen from the map it topped the world in the recycling of plastics. 

I still remember driving in Bombay from Sion towards Chamber where, on one side of the road, there was a "plastics ghat" where used plastics film could be seen drying in the sun after washing till it was then sent for re-extrusion and generation into plastics granules for further use.

This scavenging and regeneration provided employment for many thousands of people around  the country. The chain was perfect as everyone benefitted financially.

The purpose should have been to develop this as a regular industrial activity with adequate input of technology, but it has stayed for generations in this unorganised fashion.

It is, therefore, no wonder that the recyclers of Delhi are treated as persona non-grata instead of valuable contributors to the Indian economy.

This 1993 article written by me, which appeared in ”Findians Briefings”called for "Western Recycling Doomed" was reposted in our blog in 2020.

When we wrote our blog entry "The Garbage Dump - India" we pointed out that the Environmental Minister of that time, Jairam Ramesh, had stated that India should be given the Nobel Prize for  the filth of the world!

If there is a Nobel prize for filth, India will win it: Jairam Ramesh

In this, plastics is a major contributor. 

If the authorities are not able to control it with the correct approach in technology, do not punish those who, by their own initiative, are trying to reduce the impact on the environment.

I firmly stand with the people, who despite all odds, are part of the chain reclaiming plastics in India!