My First Post

I've been meaning to do this for a very long time. I guess finally being in a place by myself with nothing to do is enough incentive to start blogging. This place is gonna have me ranting about everything from the latest and greatest technologies that intrigue me, a modest review of the newest AR Rahman albums (occasionally some translations if I manage to get around to it), and the most random topics that you would find on the web. I started thinking what my first post should be on, and considering I just finished watching Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, and I came across some intriguing questions relating to the man himself. A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article that questioned Gandhi's last words. The common belief including my own till about 2 weeks ago was Gandhi's last words were "He Ram". Other sources indicated that Gandhi in fact said "Ram Ram" and not "He Ram". So you ask, why does this matter? "Ram Ram" and "He Ram" really don't make much of a difference. What the article goes on to state is that a few months before his death, Gandhi went on to say "Even if I am killed, I will not give up, repeating the names of Ram and Rahim, which mean to me the same God. With these names on my lips, I will die cheerfully." I suppose you can now see where I'm going with this. If Gandhi did in fact say "Ram Rahim" and not "Ram Ram", it could go a long way in promoting Hindu-Muslim co-operation in India and Pakistan. Gandhi, who to a large extent, is seen as the man who stood by hindu ideals and was an ardent believer of the bhagavad gita and its teachings has "He Ram" written in his tombstone. The man who millions follow may even be an atheist, based on a conversation published between Gandhi and Goparaju Ramachandra Rao, a devout Gandhi follower and a self-proclaimed atheist. Albeit, these claims were made by Rao in his book, one can never know if Gandhi actually claimed to be a "super-atheist" as mentioned in the book. All things aside, I guess the point of this entry is just to explore the far reaching effects of one statement, that may have potentially been misheard. All comments welcome.