Negotiating Secular School Textbooks in Colonial Madras Presidency

The common sense assumption would inform that the textbooks produced and distributed during the colonial period ‘ought to be’, if not directly, at the least alluding to the religion of the masters. Further, post colonial studies of education often focus on the colonial purpose of the spread of education and bring to light the ideology ingrained in the content, pedagogy and structure of the school education. While it would be naïve to think of the spread of education during the British Raj as a benevolent act, albeit unintended, it would also be wrong to assume that the natives who were being governed had no say or hand in shaping it. The modern education was the contour by which social mobility was attained and it was an important instrument that engendered the nationalist movement. In recent times, Nehruvian vision is often derided in particular for its economic ideology — ‘licence-quota raj’1 — along with it even concerns such as liberalism, secularism and scientific temper are questioned. Secularism is chided as ‘gift of Christianity’ having no roots or applicability in the Indian cultural milieu. This paper looks at the emergence of ‘secular’ textbooks during the turn of the nineteenth century in colonial Madras, and shows the active agency of the ‘natives’ in shaping the same

Star Wars in colonial Tamil region: contours of a discourse between European missionary and a ‘native’ pañcāngkam computer on ‘modern’ astronomy

A showdown between an overbearing American missionary wielding Copernican astronomy and a proud ‘native’ Tamil pañcāngkam computer clinging to absurd purāṇic myths may appear as an obvious fertile field to narrate the story of the spread of western science. Errors in native pañcāngkam were publicly demonstrated during the lunar eclipse on March 20, 1829, shocking the audacious natives to the core. This incident left the complacent native literati were dismayed to see the European missionaries could predict the eclipses without using to native ‘secret mnemonics’ Vākya. While the missionaries were perplexed at the predictions, even if inexact, made by the Tamil pañcāngkam paying obeisance to kantapurāṇam, which was steeped in flat earth theory, with legendary Mount Meru at the centre surrounded by concentric alternating seven continents and seven seas with luminaries like Sun, Moon and Grahas going around the axle passing through the centre of Meru. In ensuing interactions, conviviality, circulation and cosmopolitanism of ideas, the native literati encountering novel instruments like globe, telescope, clock, orrery, eclipse diagram, and the missionaries gleaning hitherto mysterious Vākya method and the heritage of native astronomy, cannot be fully captured the in the dichotomies of western/non-western (Hindu, Arabic and so on), metropole and periphery, traditional and modern, and secular and religious. The reconfiguration of ideas, both by natives and missionaries, were not by coercion, but by compulsion ofocular evidence and the protagonists behaved as if they were members of one community of rational beings, despite power hierarchies

Negotiating Secular School Textbooks in Colonial Madras Presidency

143-197The common sense assumption would inform that the textbooks produced and distributed during the colonial period ‘ought to be’, if not directly, at the least alluding to the religion of the masters. Further, post colonial studies of education often focus on the colonial purpose of the spread of education and bring to light the ideology ingrained in the content, pedagogy and structure of the school education. While it would be naïve to think of the spread of education during the British Raj as a benevolent act, albeit unintended, it would also be wrong to assume that the natives who were being governed had no say or hand in shaping it. The modern education was the contour by which social mobility was attained and it was an important instrument that engendered the nationalist movement. In recent times, Nehruvian vision is often derided in particular for its economic ideology — ‘licence-quota raj’1 — along with it even concerns such as liberalism, secularism and scientific temper are questioned. Secularism is chided as ‘gift of Christianity’ having no roots or applicability in the Indian cultural milieu. This paper looks at the emergence of ‘secular’ textbooks during the turn of the nineteenth century in colonial Madras, and shows the active agency of the ‘natives’ in shaping the same

Application of clinical score in sick neonates received at our emergency unit and its impact on the outcome of the neonate and to compare the effect of trained personnel accompanying the child.

India contributes to one fourth of neonatal mortality .This study objective is to device and apply a score in sick neonates received in our emergency ward and its impact on the outcome of the neonate and to compare the effect of trained personnel accompanying the child. METHODS: A prospective descriptive study was conducted in our institute during the period of 1.7.2014-15.9.2014 in the department of newborn emergency room and neonatal wards of institute of child health .The neonates fulfilling the inclusion criteria were included in the study .Demographic details pertaining to the mother and baby ,transport details, personnel accompanying, referral indications, pre hospital therapy were collected on admission.On arrival in the emergency room vital parameters were recorded,stabilised and admitted in the ward. These neonates were followed up till discharge or death. RESULTS: Sepsis(29.4%),asphyxia(16%),prematurity(11%) were the common indications for referral.39.4% of neonates were transported by dedicated 108 Neonatal ambulances followed by own modes of transport.60% of neonates were accompanied by the trained personnel.14.6% succumb to the illness among the referred neonates.Among the parameters recorded on arrival Heart rate,Perfusion,Capillary blood glucose,temperature and Apgar at 5 minutes were considered significant.A score was devised using these parameters,cut off of 3 was obtained by ROC curve with high mortality when the score is >3 with sensitivity88.2% and specificity 82.8%.Neonates who were accompanied by trained personnel had better outcome than the neonates brought unaccompanied. CONCLUSION: The score devised by our study is simple and effective in predicting mortality and highlights the need for aggressive management on arrival for better outcome.Neonates accompanied by trained personnel had a better outcome

Discrete Controller Design for A Hybrid Three Tank System

Systems in which the dynamical behaviour evolves based on the interaction between the continuous dynamics and the discrete dynamics, present in the system, are called hybrid systems. Traditionally such systems were analysed either as purely continuous or purely discrete systems. The interactions between discrete and continuous systems in today’s technological problems have become so important that hybrid modelling of such systems is called for. In this paper a discrete controller is designed for such a hybrid system. Hybrid modelling technique is used to model the hybrid three tank systems. The hybrid model is simulated in SIMULINK and STATEFLOW is used to design the discrete controller

Intrusion Detection Systems for Community Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are being increasingly used to provide affordable network connectivity to communities where wired deployment strategies are either not possible or are prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, computer networks (including mesh networks) are frequently being exploited by increasingly profit-driven and insidious attackers, which can affect their utility for legitimate use. In response to this, a number of countermeasures have been developed, including intrusion detection systems that aim to detect anomalous behaviour caused by attacks. We present a set of socio-technical challenges associated with developing an intrusion detection system for a community wireless mesh network. The attack space on a mesh network is particularly large; we motivate the need for and describe the challenges of adopting an asset-driven approach to managing this space. Finally, we present an initial design of a modular architecture for intrusion detection, highlighting how it addresses the identified challenges

Hybrid Analog-Digital Precoding Revisited Under Realistic RF Modeling

In this letter, we revisit hybrid analog-digital precoding systems with emphasis on the modeling of their radio-frequency (RF) losses, to realistically evaluate their benefits in 5G system implementations. We focus on fully-connected analog beamforming networks (FC-ABFNs) and on discrete Fourier transform implementations, and decompose these as a bank of commonly used RF components. We then model their losses based on their S-parameters. Our results reveal that the performance and energy efficiency of hybrid precoding systems are severely affected once these, commonly ignored, losses are considered in the overall design. In this context, we also show that hybrid precoder designs similar to Butler matrices are capable of providing better performances than FC-ABFN for systems with a large number of RF chains