Chaitanya’s Companions, Associates, Devotees, and Followers

This chapter deals with the way the religious faith and inspiration provided by Chaitanya turned into a successful organized movement, going beyond the frontiers of ethnic Bengal into the adjoining state of Odisha and in specific locales of north India. Broadly speaking, this was carried out over two generations. The first of these was represented by the work of Chaitanya’s most devoted and trusted companions such as Nityananda, Advaita Acharya, Haridas, Gadadhar Pandit, and the well-known ‘Shada Goswamis’ or Six Goswamis, all of whom eventually camped at Vrindavan and spent the rest of their lives in profound scholarship and devotional pursuits. Of these, some were on non-Bengali provenance which itself speaks for the far-reaching and trans-regional appeal of Chaitanya and his movement. The second generation of evangelists such as Narottam, Srinivas, and Shyamananda were post-Chaitanya figures and highly successful in converting their followers into Vaishnavism, including both peasant cultivators and local ruling families.

Struggling to Save Malaysia's Endau–Rompin Rain Forest, 1972–92

The protracted dispute over the fate of the Endau-Rompin rain-forest in southern Peninsular Malaysia is outlined. Attention is focused on why a proposal to create an Endau-Rompin national park was eventually abandoned, on what has been done of late to protect the wilderness region, and on what has been learned from the dispute. The main points are as follows:1. Endau-Rompin is one of the last-remaining extensive tracts of largely undisturbed rain-forest in southern Peninsular Malaysia.2. The Third Malaysia Plan 1976–1980 incorporated an earlier proposal to create a national park in the Endau-Rompin region.3. A controversy erupted in 1977 when the state govern ment of Pahang approved a logging concession in the core area of the proposed park.4. Logging ceased in 1978, but in spite of the preparation of a preliminary management plan and the passage of the National Parks Act (both in 1980), a national park was not created.5. The 1985–6 ‘Malaysian Heritage and Scientific Expedition’ to Endau—Rompin focused a great deal of public attention on the wilderness region, but still a national park was not created.6. In mid-1987 it was announced that there would be two adjoining state parks, not a national park, in the Endau-Rompin region.7. The proposal to create a national park came to nothing because Pahang and Johor were unwilling to surrender their jurisdiction over their respective components of the required land to the Federal Government, and because the latter made no attempt to acquire the land in the national interest.8. A state park has been established in the Johor part of the wilderness region, but the promised adjoining state park in Pahang has yet to be established. It would appear that the two parts of the protected area will be managed separately, with eco-tourism as an important focus.9. For more than fifteen years the Malayan Nature Society has played a key role in the struggle to save the wilderness region.10. The Endau-Rompin dispute revealed that NGOs such as the Malayan Nature Society can play a key role in the environmental arena, that ever-increasing competition for scarce natural resources makes it increasingly unlikely that new protected areas will be established, and that the protection and management of Malaysia's natural heritage is greatly confounded by the constitutional division of powers between the Federal and state governments.

Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis

The fundamental philosophy of prenatal genetic diagnosis is to enable prospective parents at risk to have children selectively, unaffected by a specific hereditary disorder.1 In practice, this new technology has allowed healthy children to be born to many couples who, without the reassurance that it is now possible to extend to them, would not have had any on any further children. Indeed, it is clear that the number of children born because of the opportunities provided by prenatal diagnosis exceeds the number of pregnancies terminated on account of fetal genetic disease. Despite the availability of prenatal diagnosis for more than a decade, utilization has been slow. Even today, the vast majority of states provide studies for less than 10% of women aged 35 years or more. In Massachusetts, where strenuous efforts at professional and public education have been made, utilization in this age category is about 20%. In the United States, the remarkable tardiness in the application of this valuable technology may be related to earlier concerns about the risk and accuracy of second trimester amniocentesis. Today, however, the explanations are more likely to be a lack of awareness of the indications for prenatal genetic studies and antipathy to abortion. Virtually all states now have at least a single prenatal diagnostic facility or are able to use laboratories in an adjoining state.