Guru Nanak Jayanti

        About Guru Nanak:

• Guru Nanak was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated worldwide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on Kartik Pooranmashi, the full-moon day in the month of Katak, October–November.
• Guru Nanak travelled far and wide teaching people the message of one God who dwells in every one of His creations and constitutes the eternal Truth.He set up a unique spiritual, social, and political platform based on equality, fraternal love, goodness, and virtue.
• Guru Nanak's words are registered in the form of 974 poetic hymns in the holy text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, with some of the major prayers being the Japji Sahib, the Asa di Var and the Sidh-Ghost.
• It is part of Sikh religious belief that the spirit of Guru Nanak's sanctity, divinity and religious authority descended upon each of the nine subsequent Gurus when the Guruship was devolved on to them.

        Guru Nanak Teachings:

• The most famous teachings attributed to Guru Nanak are that there is only one God, and that all human beings can have direct access to God with no need of rituals or priests. His most radical social teachings denounced the caste system and  taught that everyone is equal, regardless of caste or gender.
• He was inspired by a powerful spiritual experience that gave him a vision of the true nature of God, and confirmed his idea that the way to spiritual growth was through meditation and through living in a way that reflected the presence of the divine within each human being.
• Nanak continued to demonstrate a radical spiritual streak - arguing with local holy men and sages, both Hindu and Muslim, that external things like pilgrimages, penances, and poverty were of far less spiritual importance than internal changes to the individual's soul.

Government to observe the remembrance of 100 years of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre

        About Jallianwalla Bagh massacre:

• The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer fired rifles into a crowd of Indians, who had gathered in
• Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab. The civilians had assembled for a peaceful protest to condemn the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew.
• On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer was convinced of a major insurrection and he banned all meetings; however this notice was not widely disseminated.
• That was the day of Baisakhi, the main Sikh festival, and many villagers had gathered in the Bagh.
• On hearing that a meeting had assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer went with soldiers and  they entered the garden, blocking the main entrance after them, and on Dyer's orders fired on the crowd for about ten minutes, directing their bullets largely towards the few open gates through which people were trying to flee, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted.
• Dyer stated that approximately 1,650 rounds had been fired, a number apparently derived by counting empty cartridge cases picked up by the troops.
• Official British Indian sources gave a figure of 379 identified dead, with approximately 1,100 wounded. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500 injured, with approximately 1,000 dead.

         Aftermath:

• Both Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill and former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith however, openly condemned the attack, Churchill referring to it as "monstrous", while Asquith called it "one of the worst outrages in the whole of our  history".
• Major General William Beynon supported and replied: "Your action correct and Lieutenant Governor approves.
• "O'Dwyer requested that martial law should be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas, and this was granted by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford.
• Rabindranath Tagore decided to renounce his British knighthood as "a symbolic act of protest".
• On 13 March 1940, at Caxton Hall in London, Udham Singh, an Indian independence activist from Sunam who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and had himself been wounded, shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer.

Martyrdom Day of Guru Teg Bahadur

        About Guru Teg Bahadur:

• Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621 –1675) was the ninth of ten Gurus of the Sikh religion.
• Tegh Bahadur continued in the spirit of the first guru, Nanak; his 116 poetic hymns are registered in Guru Granth Sahib.
• Guru Tegh Bahadur resisted the forced conversions of Kashmiri Pandits and non-Muslims to Islam, and was publicly beheaded in 1675 on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Delhi for himself refusing to convert to Islam.
• Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib and Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib in Delhi mark the places of execution and cremation of the Guru's body.
• The martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur is remembered as the Shaheedi Divas of Guru Tegh Bahadur every year on 24 November, according to the Nanakshahi calendar released by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 2003.

        Works:

• Guru Tegh Bahadur contributed many hymns to Granth Sahib including the Saloks, or couplets near the end of the Guru Granth Sahib.
• Guru Tegh Bahadur toured various parts of Mughal Empire and was asked by Gobind Sahali to construct several Sikh temples in Mahali. His works include 116 shabads, 15 ragas and his bhagats are credited with 782 compositions that are part of bani in Sikhism.
• His works are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. They cover a wide range of topics, such as the nature of God, human  attachments, body, mind, sorrow, dignity, service, death and deliverance.

NASA counts down to landing of Martian quake-sensor, InSight

        About InSight:

• InSight — Studying the 'Inner Space' of Mars
• InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago.
• It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the "inner space" of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.

        Interior of Mars

• Studying Mars' interior structure answers key questions about the early formation of rocky planets in our inner solar system - Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars - more than 4 billion years ago, as well as rocky exoplanets.
• InSight also measures tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars today.
• The lander uses cutting edge instruments, to delve deep beneath the surface and seek the fingerprints of the processes that formed the terrestrial planets.
• It does so by measuring the planet's "vital signs": its "pulse" (seismology), "temperature" (heat flow), and "reflexes" (precision tracking).
• This mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program for highly focused science missions that ask critical questions in solar system science.

        First CubeSat to Deep Space

• The rocket that launched InSight also launched a separate NASA technology experiment: two mini-spacecraft called Mars Cube One, or MarCO. These briefcase-sized CubeSats fly on their own path to Mars behind InSight.
• Their goal is to test new miniaturized deep space communication equipment and, if the MarCOs make it to Mars, may relay back InSight data as it enters the Martian atmosphere and lands.
• This is the first test of miniaturized CubeSat technology at another planet, which researchers hope can offer new capabilities to future missions.
• If successful, the MarCOs could represent a new kind of communication capability to Earth. InSight’s success is independent of its CubeSat tag-alongs.

        InSight Science Goals

• The InSight mission seeks to uncover how a rocky body forms and evolves to become a planet by investigating the interior structure and composition of Mars.
• The mission will also determine the rate of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts.