Kashmiri Pundits observe 20th Martyrs Day
From Khajuria S Kant in Jammu
Kashmiri Pundits observe September 14 as "Martyrs Day" after their exodus from the land of their origin by remembering Pt Tika Lal Taploo who was the first Kashmiri Pundit assassinated by the terrorists in the valley, this day 20 years ago.
On this day, 20 years ago, a veteran KP leader and vice president of J&K BJP, Tika Lal Taploo, was killed in broad daylight by separatists outside his residence in Srinagar, four months before the community members were forced to leave the Valley at the height of terrorism.
Sarla Devi, who is settled in Delhi now, had come here to attend "Amar Balidan Diwas" organised by the All-State Kashmiri Pundit Conference (ASKPC) to pay tributes to those Kashmiri Pundits who attained martyrdom since 1989-90.
Tears rolled down the eyes of Sarla Taploo as she remembered her husband Pt Tika Lal Taploo, who was the first Kashmiri Pundit assassinated by the terrorists in the valley, this day 20 years ago.
Remembering that awful day, Sarla said, "different groups of terrorists used to give life threats to him but he did not bother because he was a brave man."
"Before his death, he took a promise from me that I should continue his work as a social activist and I am doing it. The BJP gave me ticket and I contested the assembly and general elections but unfortunately I couldn’t win."
Expressing the pain, Kavita Saraf (daughter) said, "When I went out of my home, I saw my father’s body surrounded by hundreds of Muslims of our area. I can not forget that scene in my life."
"Two days before his assignation he gave a daring speech at Haba Kadal and suddenly after that we received a threat from terrorists to leave the valley within 15 days. On that very day one agent called him out and said that he had to go to the court for an important case. That was a conspiracy for his assassination."
The ASKPC honoured the family members of few such persons who were killed by the terrorists in the valley since 1989-90 by presenting "Tika Lal Taploo Shaheedi Puraskar".
Protests, public meetings, performance of hawans marked the observance of Martyrs Day.
Continuing its series of protest demonstrations, JKVM paid homage on roads to the martyrs who fell to the bullets and onslaught of Jehadi terrorists.
Addressing the demonstrators JKVM leaders said that Kashmiri Hindus have only been given false assurances and empty promises from the government since their exile. Though different governments have talked of honorable return of Kashmiri Hindus but they have proved only bare words.
They said if Government was sincere towards Pundits it should have directly talked to those who were protesting on roads. They also accused the government of burying the Kashmiri Hindu Shrines Bill.
Panun Kashmir (PK) organised a function at Abhinav theatre in which rich tributes were paid to the martyrs. Two minutes silence was also observed in their memory. The function started with hoisting of PK flag on the dais by a team of organising secretaries. Floral tributes were paid to the martyrs and on the occasion a framed picture with 20 chinar leaves depicting the 20 years of exile was showcased.
While in Delhi, as a symbolic protest to mark the anniversary, 20 Kashmiri Pundits tonsured their heads and offered prayers for thousands of unfortunate victims. Each of the persons who underwent tonsuring symbolically represented each year of their life in exile.
In another programme held at Jantar Mantar here activists of various KP organisations staged a demonstration to mark the 20th Martyrs Day. On the occasion rich tributes were paid to Mr Tika Lal Taploo. Around 80,000 Kashmir Pundits are "living in exile in Delhi and its suburbs and all of them have expressed solidarity with the initiative".
Monday, September 28, 2009
US the wrong place to go to talk about Pak terror
By Dr. Jay Dubashi
The Chinese fooled even Nehru, for, he called all such incursions cartographic aggressions-Nehru was a master of words, for didn’t he spend time in Eton and Cambridge, where such words are coined?-meaning they were no problems at all and not worth fighting over. The Chinese didn’t think so. They may have invented paper two thousand years ago, but they have more faith in their armies than that in their fancy paperwork.
Our friend, Home Minister P Chidambaram is back from the US after reporting to his bosses over there that Pakistan is not behaving properly and India is deeply dissatisfied with progress of ‘investigations" into 26/11 supposed to be conducted by Pakistan. Read that sentence again and you will start laughing. Firstly, it was the Home Minister who was reporting to Washington, not the Foreign Minister. Now, why should a home minister, or any minister for that matter, report to anyone outside the country? Are we a colony of the United States? Do we have to report to them every now and then as the Viceroy used to do to 10 Downing Street from time-to-time when we were indeed a colony?
Then comes the bit about investigations. Who says that Pakistan is conducting investigations? The Pakistan government’s writ does not run beyond a few miles outside Islamabad. How long since we had any news about Asif Ali Zardari, who is supposed to be Pakistan’s President? Is he still alive, maybe reading that book about Jinnah by his favourite author, or has he been bumped, as most Pakistani presidents are? And if he is out of action, who exactly has taken his place?
The fact is that if Chidambaram was in the US to complain about Pakistan, he went to the wrong place. Pakistan, the little bit that still exists on paper, and America are allies, and have been allies ever since the birth of that country. The two allies collaborate closely on everything from nuclear energy to missiles, and while Pakistan pretends to fight the terrorists, America pretends to believe it is really doing so. America has had bases in Pakistan for the last 50 years and will continue to do so till kingdom come. And currently it provides a big base for their forces in Afghanistan.
In fact, Barack Obama has realised that he has lost the fight in Afghanistan and the American people are tired of sending their young men to fight all over the world from where they return home in caskets. They do not know why they are fighting in Afghanistan just as they did not know why they were fighting in Vietnam. The Vietnam war was over long before it was officially declared closed and so is the Afghan war. Actually, almost the whole of Afghanistan is now under the Taliban, except a few bits around Kabul and it is a matter of time before that falls too.
When Chidambaram goes to Washington to complain against Pakistan, he will be complaining to the wrong party, for, as I said, Pakistan is an ally of America, and nothing happens in Pakistan without the knowledge of the United States. I am quite sure Washington has a copy of the list of complaints he has taken with him. America is not a neutral party in the affair; it is very much involved in everything that is happening in Pakistan. If Chidambaram does not know this, he has a great deal to learn, just as he had a great deal to learn about finance when he became Finance Minister. If Chidambaram is so keen on the Washington trip, let him have one, but let him not pretend that he is doing anything useful. The Americans in the State Department, or to whoever he will be reporting, will be laughing behind his back and saying under their breath what a foolish lot Indians are, as our minister goes from office to office asking for a hearing.
Then there is another colleague of Chidambaram’s in the cabinet, the so-called Minister of External Affairs, so-called because we rarely hear about him, and who, one would have thought, would be doing what Chidambaram proposes to do. But SM Krishna, that is what his name is in case you do not know, seems to be the least informed Foreign Minister in this part of the world. He told reporters in Delhi that the India-China border is the most peaceful around India and our relations with China have never been friendlier.
You can say that again. Krishna feels that China’s incursions into India-and this is what our air force has said in so many words-are no incursions at all and in any case, there is a committee of experts to look into such problems. "I don’t think", said the man who is more interested in his wardrobe than in the goings-on in Ladakh, or wherever it is that the Chinese are massing, and called for his tailor to stitch another band-gala for his next outing in, where else, Venezuela.
If small-time committees could tackle problems of incursions, you would not need armies and navies at all. All wars start when nations intrude, often with their armies, into other nations’ backyards. This is how the Second World War started. Right up to the start of the war, Neville Chamberlain was saying that everything was under control, that all committees, to tackle border disputes were in place, and everybody could switch off lights and go to sleep. Incidentally, Chamberlain was fond of natty suits too, except that they were of the wrong cut, just like Krishna’s suits!
Actually it was Chamberlain, like Krishna, who was going to sleep, while Hitler was cooking up maps and alerting his cronies. Krishna is basically a babu; he thinks that all problems can be solved if you have proper files with proper notings and nothing can go wrong as long as the files are there. And that is precisely what Krishna is saying. He says that there are proper border dispute committees with a joint secretary, a deputy secretary and maybe a couple of peons, and as long as they have not reported anything, everything is fine. And if the Chinese are really intent on creating trouble, they will first inform the committee-in triplicate-and then we shall see what to do.
The Chinese fooled even Nehru, for, he called all such incursions cartographic aggressions-Nehru was a master of words, for didn’t he spend time in Eton and Cambridge, where such words are coined?-meaning they were no problems at all and not worth fighting over. The Chinese didn’t think so. They may have invented paper two thousand years ago, but they have more faith in their armies than that in their fancy paperwork. They came over the Himalayas, firing from all sides, and in no time at all, had Nehru running for cover, looking for help. And there was no trace of the border committees and, of course, Nehru’s faithful but useless servant, Krishna Menon.
We have another Krishna who operated from Maurya Sheraton at a cost of Rs one lakh per day, and he is going about mumbling the same nonsense. Surely, the least Manmohan Singh can do is get another foreign minister and send this Maurya Krishna back to wherever he came from!
The Chinese fooled even Nehru, for, he called all such incursions cartographic aggressions-Nehru was a master of words, for didn’t he spend time in Eton and Cambridge, where such words are coined?-meaning they were no problems at all and not worth fighting over. The Chinese didn’t think so. They may have invented paper two thousand years ago, but they have more faith in their armies than that in their fancy paperwork.
Our friend, Home Minister P Chidambaram is back from the US after reporting to his bosses over there that Pakistan is not behaving properly and India is deeply dissatisfied with progress of ‘investigations" into 26/11 supposed to be conducted by Pakistan. Read that sentence again and you will start laughing. Firstly, it was the Home Minister who was reporting to Washington, not the Foreign Minister. Now, why should a home minister, or any minister for that matter, report to anyone outside the country? Are we a colony of the United States? Do we have to report to them every now and then as the Viceroy used to do to 10 Downing Street from time-to-time when we were indeed a colony?
Then comes the bit about investigations. Who says that Pakistan is conducting investigations? The Pakistan government’s writ does not run beyond a few miles outside Islamabad. How long since we had any news about Asif Ali Zardari, who is supposed to be Pakistan’s President? Is he still alive, maybe reading that book about Jinnah by his favourite author, or has he been bumped, as most Pakistani presidents are? And if he is out of action, who exactly has taken his place?
The fact is that if Chidambaram was in the US to complain about Pakistan, he went to the wrong place. Pakistan, the little bit that still exists on paper, and America are allies, and have been allies ever since the birth of that country. The two allies collaborate closely on everything from nuclear energy to missiles, and while Pakistan pretends to fight the terrorists, America pretends to believe it is really doing so. America has had bases in Pakistan for the last 50 years and will continue to do so till kingdom come. And currently it provides a big base for their forces in Afghanistan.
In fact, Barack Obama has realised that he has lost the fight in Afghanistan and the American people are tired of sending their young men to fight all over the world from where they return home in caskets. They do not know why they are fighting in Afghanistan just as they did not know why they were fighting in Vietnam. The Vietnam war was over long before it was officially declared closed and so is the Afghan war. Actually, almost the whole of Afghanistan is now under the Taliban, except a few bits around Kabul and it is a matter of time before that falls too.
When Chidambaram goes to Washington to complain against Pakistan, he will be complaining to the wrong party, for, as I said, Pakistan is an ally of America, and nothing happens in Pakistan without the knowledge of the United States. I am quite sure Washington has a copy of the list of complaints he has taken with him. America is not a neutral party in the affair; it is very much involved in everything that is happening in Pakistan. If Chidambaram does not know this, he has a great deal to learn, just as he had a great deal to learn about finance when he became Finance Minister. If Chidambaram is so keen on the Washington trip, let him have one, but let him not pretend that he is doing anything useful. The Americans in the State Department, or to whoever he will be reporting, will be laughing behind his back and saying under their breath what a foolish lot Indians are, as our minister goes from office to office asking for a hearing.
Then there is another colleague of Chidambaram’s in the cabinet, the so-called Minister of External Affairs, so-called because we rarely hear about him, and who, one would have thought, would be doing what Chidambaram proposes to do. But SM Krishna, that is what his name is in case you do not know, seems to be the least informed Foreign Minister in this part of the world. He told reporters in Delhi that the India-China border is the most peaceful around India and our relations with China have never been friendlier.
You can say that again. Krishna feels that China’s incursions into India-and this is what our air force has said in so many words-are no incursions at all and in any case, there is a committee of experts to look into such problems. "I don’t think", said the man who is more interested in his wardrobe than in the goings-on in Ladakh, or wherever it is that the Chinese are massing, and called for his tailor to stitch another band-gala for his next outing in, where else, Venezuela.
If small-time committees could tackle problems of incursions, you would not need armies and navies at all. All wars start when nations intrude, often with their armies, into other nations’ backyards. This is how the Second World War started. Right up to the start of the war, Neville Chamberlain was saying that everything was under control, that all committees, to tackle border disputes were in place, and everybody could switch off lights and go to sleep. Incidentally, Chamberlain was fond of natty suits too, except that they were of the wrong cut, just like Krishna’s suits!
Actually it was Chamberlain, like Krishna, who was going to sleep, while Hitler was cooking up maps and alerting his cronies. Krishna is basically a babu; he thinks that all problems can be solved if you have proper files with proper notings and nothing can go wrong as long as the files are there. And that is precisely what Krishna is saying. He says that there are proper border dispute committees with a joint secretary, a deputy secretary and maybe a couple of peons, and as long as they have not reported anything, everything is fine. And if the Chinese are really intent on creating trouble, they will first inform the committee-in triplicate-and then we shall see what to do.
The Chinese fooled even Nehru, for, he called all such incursions cartographic aggressions-Nehru was a master of words, for didn’t he spend time in Eton and Cambridge, where such words are coined?-meaning they were no problems at all and not worth fighting over. The Chinese didn’t think so. They may have invented paper two thousand years ago, but they have more faith in their armies than that in their fancy paperwork. They came over the Himalayas, firing from all sides, and in no time at all, had Nehru running for cover, looking for help. And there was no trace of the border committees and, of course, Nehru’s faithful but useless servant, Krishna Menon.
We have another Krishna who operated from Maurya Sheraton at a cost of Rs one lakh per day, and he is going about mumbling the same nonsense. Surely, the least Manmohan Singh can do is get another foreign minister and send this Maurya Krishna back to wherever he came from!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
A study of Tipu: His religion and politics
By S Aravindan Neelakandan 'Skanthem'
Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadhi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as "Kafirs".
Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the "terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition" and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be "united in repelling and conquering the infidels" and the Muslim population could live in peace.
Fateh Ali Tipu (1750 - 1799) had been hailed by a section of historians and politicians as not just another earliest of freedom fighters but as a pioneer in modernisation and as a visionary. For others he is etched in their historical memories as a fanatical and gruesome villain. What is the truth?
As ever, with all such figures in history, the truth about Tipu remains elusively, in between these two extreme ends of the spectrum and is multi-dimensioned.
This article is an attempt to track down the real motives behind the actions of Tipu and the forces that shaped his career. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from his life - for all Indians irrespective of their caste or creed.
His age
The age in which Tipu lived was a period of great transition in Indian history. Mughal Empire was at its lowest ebb. The Islamic sovereignty over India was giving way to Maratha and Sikh power. And the British as well as other European powers were beginning to make their presence felt in the South. Uncertainty prevailed as to who would become the dominant ruling power in post-Mughal Hindustan. In the Deccan Hyderabad Nizam was an important traditional Islamic ruler. But he was neither powerful nor ambitious. It was in such a situation that a military official from the small feudal state of Mysore had established himself as a powerful and ambitious ruler with great possibilities for the future - his was Hyder Ali, the father of Tipu. Tipu who succeeded Hyder, set his eyes on the Indian scenario. He saw the slowly vanishing Islamic empire at Delhi and he wanted to emerge as the next Islamic empire builder in India. But there was a hitch.
His Lineage, his legitimacy
Despite his flirtations with Hyder Ali against British which ended in a defeat, Nizam of Hyderabad had been careful never to recognise Hyder Ali as a royal personage. He called him in 1779 as a mere Zamindar. So after the death of his father, Tipu realised his vulnerable state particularly in view of his empire-building ambitions. He needed to be recognised as a legitimate Islamic prince- Sultan. So in 1784, two years after his father’s death he approached the Mughal court to get recognised as one of the princes of the Empire. But then the Mughal emperor Shah Alam III, near blind and at the mercy of pro-British Majud-dawalah, who was the acting chief-minister and for all practical purposes ran the affairs of Mughal Empire, refused to recognize Tipu as a legitimate Sultan.1
For his ambitions of territorial expansion, this was a real problem for Tipu. If the news of the inability of Tipu to be recognised as a traditional Islamic prince spread amidst his Islamic soldiers that would dampen their spirits to fight for him. So after a failed attempt to get Marathas address him as a "Badshah", Tipu started projecting him as a soldier in the cause of Islam-fighting against the idolatrous Hindus around him.
Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the "terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition"2 and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be "united in repelling and conquering the infidels" and the Muslim population could live in peace. Nizam was initially inclined to accept the offer but what made him break ranks with Tipu was the mention of matrimonial alliance that Tipu suggested. Contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani describes the scene:
"-as the sentences of the letter included the mention of matrimonial connexion, Nizam, excited by his folly, became angry and gave these joy dispensing words no place in his envious mind, and considering the term Naik which belonged to the Sultan’s forefathers as discreditable and relationship with him a disgrace ...he turned his face aside from the true path and dismissed the embassador (of Tipu)."3
Generally the Marxist historians and Islamic apologists argue that the atrocities said to have been perpetrated by him, were actually exaggerated by the British to justify their own aggression against the native ruler. For example Mohibbul Hasan states that the atrocities "were allegedly fabricated either by persons embittered and angry on account of the defeats which they had sustained at (Tipu’s) hands."4
His jehad for the title of Sultan
However "Neshani Hyduri" written in praise of Tipu Sultan written by contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani narrates with unhidden enthusiasm the enslavement of the infidels and their humiliating treatment at the hands of Tipu’s forces:
"The conquering Sultan now therefore appointed and dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish these idolaters and reduce the whole of the country to subjection...in a short time attacked and destroyed many of their towns, returning with eight thousand men and women with their children as prisoners. In the same way Monsieur Lally collected from the Ilaichee Mountains an immense crowd of these wild men, like a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks and returned with them to the presence".5
The irony will not be last on the reader that Tipu who is projected today as a champion of native freedom did allow his European friends to treat fellow Indians as "a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks". During his invasion of Travancore Tipu’s men executed his orders and "relieved the shoulders of all the infidels they met, man or boy, from the weight of their heads."6 Kirmani even speaks of Tipu taking "eighty thousand men, women and children" as prisoners of war.7 Many historians dismiss the figures as exaggerated.8 However it begs the question what kind of socio-political environment did force a court historian to record such exaggerated atrocities against "infidels"?
In fact, Tipu himself was very eager to project his wars as religious wars and spread the news that he was promoting Islam through the sword. In a letter dated January 18, 1790, Tipu expressed the confidence that almost all Hindus in Calicut would be converted to Islam and declared his military expedition as "holy war" (Jihad).9 The very next day in a letter sent to one Budruz Zuman Khan after informing him of conversion of four hundred thousand infidels to Islam in the war ravaged areas he exclaimed that for him "religious concerns and the duty of waging war against infidels superceding all other considerations" "10 During his Tamil Nadu expedition (1790), Muslim women "who had given their impure bodies to the lust of men of other religion" were impaled by his order.11
Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as "Kafirs".12
His compromises
The alienation of fellow Indian forces because of his misplaced search for pan-Islamic recognition cost Tipu dearly in subsequent years. In 1792 when Lord Cornwallis defeated Tipu in a surprise attack, the latter agreed not only to cede territory to the British and pay them three crore and thirty lakh of rupees either in gold mohurs, pagodas or bullion (of which one crore and thirty five lakh he had to pay immediately and the rest in installments) but also give two of the three eldest sons as hostage to the British for the due performance of the treaty.13 His main anxiety was his recognition as a legitimate Islamic king-from some quarters-for which he was ready to go to any length to achieve that and it was that recognition that eluded him.
However Britishers were not ready to trust Tipu as much as they trusted the Nizam of Hyderabad. Tipu himself proved to be untrustworthy to any of the major forces then acting in Indian political scene. Even his legendary relation with French was not entirely sincere. Even as he was sharing wine with the French, he was writing to British governor-general congratulating "his Lordship" regarding the British victory over the French "who are of a crooked disposition, faithless and the enemies of mankind, may ever be depressed and ruined" and expressing his "firmest hope that the leaders of the English and the Company Bahauder...are the well wishers of mankind, will at all times be successful and victorious"14
His submissions to the Caliphate
Meanwhile in his letters to the Ottoman Caliphate as well as to the king of Afghanistan he sought help by portraying him as an emerging Islamic empire builder in Hindustan and sought his recognition. In seeking diplomatic ties with Caliphate, Tipu had two objectives-both interrelated. One was, as I.H.Qureshi the eminent Islamic historian points out, to confirm and legitimise his title.15
The other was to create a pan-Islamic support for him against his enemies. In order to arouse the Islamic sentiments of the Caliphate Tipu portrayed his conflict as a religious one. He wrote that ten thousand Muslim children had been forcibly converted to Christianity and many mosques and Muslim cemeteries had been destroyed and turned into churches.16 Tipu proposed to Istanbul "cooperation in political and economic spheres" through "trade relations, factory establishments, new arms and naval power." Sultan tactfully refused Tipu all his requests. As far as recognition of his position, Sultan viewed Tipu’s request as one from a lesser Muslim ruler and as an acknowledgement of Istanbul’s primacy as the seat of Caliphate.17 The letter is also important as perhaps the first of its kind in proclaiming the subservience of India’s Islamic sovereignty to that of Caliphate. Azmi Özcan points out that this "was the first and only instance of its kind on the part of an Indian ruler seeking recognition from the Ottoman Caliphs-"18
(To be continued)
(The writer a student of history can be contacted at 441, Kavimani Nagar, Nagarcoil-629 002, Kanyakumari Distt.)
Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadhi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as "Kafirs".
Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the "terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition" and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be "united in repelling and conquering the infidels" and the Muslim population could live in peace.
Fateh Ali Tipu (1750 - 1799) had been hailed by a section of historians and politicians as not just another earliest of freedom fighters but as a pioneer in modernisation and as a visionary. For others he is etched in their historical memories as a fanatical and gruesome villain. What is the truth?
As ever, with all such figures in history, the truth about Tipu remains elusively, in between these two extreme ends of the spectrum and is multi-dimensioned.
This article is an attempt to track down the real motives behind the actions of Tipu and the forces that shaped his career. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from his life - for all Indians irrespective of their caste or creed.
His age
The age in which Tipu lived was a period of great transition in Indian history. Mughal Empire was at its lowest ebb. The Islamic sovereignty over India was giving way to Maratha and Sikh power. And the British as well as other European powers were beginning to make their presence felt in the South. Uncertainty prevailed as to who would become the dominant ruling power in post-Mughal Hindustan. In the Deccan Hyderabad Nizam was an important traditional Islamic ruler. But he was neither powerful nor ambitious. It was in such a situation that a military official from the small feudal state of Mysore had established himself as a powerful and ambitious ruler with great possibilities for the future - his was Hyder Ali, the father of Tipu. Tipu who succeeded Hyder, set his eyes on the Indian scenario. He saw the slowly vanishing Islamic empire at Delhi and he wanted to emerge as the next Islamic empire builder in India. But there was a hitch.
His Lineage, his legitimacy
Despite his flirtations with Hyder Ali against British which ended in a defeat, Nizam of Hyderabad had been careful never to recognise Hyder Ali as a royal personage. He called him in 1779 as a mere Zamindar. So after the death of his father, Tipu realised his vulnerable state particularly in view of his empire-building ambitions. He needed to be recognised as a legitimate Islamic prince- Sultan. So in 1784, two years after his father’s death he approached the Mughal court to get recognised as one of the princes of the Empire. But then the Mughal emperor Shah Alam III, near blind and at the mercy of pro-British Majud-dawalah, who was the acting chief-minister and for all practical purposes ran the affairs of Mughal Empire, refused to recognize Tipu as a legitimate Sultan.1
For his ambitions of territorial expansion, this was a real problem for Tipu. If the news of the inability of Tipu to be recognised as a traditional Islamic prince spread amidst his Islamic soldiers that would dampen their spirits to fight for him. So after a failed attempt to get Marathas address him as a "Badshah", Tipu started projecting him as a soldier in the cause of Islam-fighting against the idolatrous Hindus around him.
Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the "terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition"2 and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be "united in repelling and conquering the infidels" and the Muslim population could live in peace. Nizam was initially inclined to accept the offer but what made him break ranks with Tipu was the mention of matrimonial alliance that Tipu suggested. Contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani describes the scene:
"-as the sentences of the letter included the mention of matrimonial connexion, Nizam, excited by his folly, became angry and gave these joy dispensing words no place in his envious mind, and considering the term Naik which belonged to the Sultan’s forefathers as discreditable and relationship with him a disgrace ...he turned his face aside from the true path and dismissed the embassador (of Tipu)."3
Generally the Marxist historians and Islamic apologists argue that the atrocities said to have been perpetrated by him, were actually exaggerated by the British to justify their own aggression against the native ruler. For example Mohibbul Hasan states that the atrocities "were allegedly fabricated either by persons embittered and angry on account of the defeats which they had sustained at (Tipu’s) hands."4
His jehad for the title of Sultan
However "Neshani Hyduri" written in praise of Tipu Sultan written by contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani narrates with unhidden enthusiasm the enslavement of the infidels and their humiliating treatment at the hands of Tipu’s forces:
"The conquering Sultan now therefore appointed and dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish these idolaters and reduce the whole of the country to subjection...in a short time attacked and destroyed many of their towns, returning with eight thousand men and women with their children as prisoners. In the same way Monsieur Lally collected from the Ilaichee Mountains an immense crowd of these wild men, like a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks and returned with them to the presence".5
The irony will not be last on the reader that Tipu who is projected today as a champion of native freedom did allow his European friends to treat fellow Indians as "a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks". During his invasion of Travancore Tipu’s men executed his orders and "relieved the shoulders of all the infidels they met, man or boy, from the weight of their heads."6 Kirmani even speaks of Tipu taking "eighty thousand men, women and children" as prisoners of war.7 Many historians dismiss the figures as exaggerated.8 However it begs the question what kind of socio-political environment did force a court historian to record such exaggerated atrocities against "infidels"?
In fact, Tipu himself was very eager to project his wars as religious wars and spread the news that he was promoting Islam through the sword. In a letter dated January 18, 1790, Tipu expressed the confidence that almost all Hindus in Calicut would be converted to Islam and declared his military expedition as "holy war" (Jihad).9 The very next day in a letter sent to one Budruz Zuman Khan after informing him of conversion of four hundred thousand infidels to Islam in the war ravaged areas he exclaimed that for him "religious concerns and the duty of waging war against infidels superceding all other considerations" "10 During his Tamil Nadu expedition (1790), Muslim women "who had given their impure bodies to the lust of men of other religion" were impaled by his order.11
Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as "Kafirs".12
His compromises
The alienation of fellow Indian forces because of his misplaced search for pan-Islamic recognition cost Tipu dearly in subsequent years. In 1792 when Lord Cornwallis defeated Tipu in a surprise attack, the latter agreed not only to cede territory to the British and pay them three crore and thirty lakh of rupees either in gold mohurs, pagodas or bullion (of which one crore and thirty five lakh he had to pay immediately and the rest in installments) but also give two of the three eldest sons as hostage to the British for the due performance of the treaty.13 His main anxiety was his recognition as a legitimate Islamic king-from some quarters-for which he was ready to go to any length to achieve that and it was that recognition that eluded him.
However Britishers were not ready to trust Tipu as much as they trusted the Nizam of Hyderabad. Tipu himself proved to be untrustworthy to any of the major forces then acting in Indian political scene. Even his legendary relation with French was not entirely sincere. Even as he was sharing wine with the French, he was writing to British governor-general congratulating "his Lordship" regarding the British victory over the French "who are of a crooked disposition, faithless and the enemies of mankind, may ever be depressed and ruined" and expressing his "firmest hope that the leaders of the English and the Company Bahauder...are the well wishers of mankind, will at all times be successful and victorious"14
His submissions to the Caliphate
Meanwhile in his letters to the Ottoman Caliphate as well as to the king of Afghanistan he sought help by portraying him as an emerging Islamic empire builder in Hindustan and sought his recognition. In seeking diplomatic ties with Caliphate, Tipu had two objectives-both interrelated. One was, as I.H.Qureshi the eminent Islamic historian points out, to confirm and legitimise his title.15
The other was to create a pan-Islamic support for him against his enemies. In order to arouse the Islamic sentiments of the Caliphate Tipu portrayed his conflict as a religious one. He wrote that ten thousand Muslim children had been forcibly converted to Christianity and many mosques and Muslim cemeteries had been destroyed and turned into churches.16 Tipu proposed to Istanbul "cooperation in political and economic spheres" through "trade relations, factory establishments, new arms and naval power." Sultan tactfully refused Tipu all his requests. As far as recognition of his position, Sultan viewed Tipu’s request as one from a lesser Muslim ruler and as an acknowledgement of Istanbul’s primacy as the seat of Caliphate.17 The letter is also important as perhaps the first of its kind in proclaiming the subservience of India’s Islamic sovereignty to that of Caliphate. Azmi Özcan points out that this "was the first and only instance of its kind on the part of an Indian ruler seeking recognition from the Ottoman Caliphs-"18
(To be continued)
(The writer a student of history can be contacted at 441, Kavimani Nagar, Nagarcoil-629 002, Kanyakumari Distt.)
Church and Monks
By MSN Menon
A word to clear up my stand. I have nothing against Jesus, but everything against the church. It has been the source of hatred in the world ever since its inception. It wants to convert the Hindus. It says that Christianity is superior. Dear Reader, here are some glimpses of Christian history. You judge for yourself whether Christianity is superior. - Author
This is what an authority writes on the Christian monks of the second and third centuries: "Whoever wore a black robe was invested with tyrannical powers-temples were turned into tombs of these monks for the adoration of their bones-even of the basest and most depraved of men."
Alexandria, not Greece, was the centre of Greek civilisation. The church naturally wanted to destroy it. A virtuous, beautiful and influential lady was one of its victims. She was the leader of the Neo-Platonists (a kind of Advaitists). A Christian mob killed her in the most brutal manner in 415 AD. She was stripped and cut into pieces and burnt. All for what? For holding a different opinion.
* * *
Christian crimes and brutalities were the worst in Latin America. European adventurers conquered, pillaged and devastated the Antilles, Peru and Mexico. Whole Red Indian populations perished at the hands of these Christian conquistadores armed with the sword and the Bible. The greed for gold led the Spaniards to commit appalling atrocities in their newly conquered territories. "By million upon million whole nations and races were remorselessly cut off," writes Draper (Intellectual Development of Europe Vol. II) The Bishop of Chiape, he says, and recorded that 15 million were exterminated in his time. Draper goes on: "From Mexico and Peru a civilisation that might have instructed Europe was crushed out."
* * *
Was Christianity interested in knowledge? It was not. When the Christians came to power in Rome the barbarous ways of the Romans did not lessen. In fact, they grew. The emperor Theodissius ordered the destruction of the most splendid library in the temple of Seraphis. The job was entrusted to Archbishop Theophilus, a fanatic. In his enthusiasm he destroyed many temples in Egypt.
* * *
The slave trade was the worst crime in human history. It denied humanity to the Negroe. It was perpetrated by Christians and had the blessing of the pope. The trade began in the 16th century and lasted for three centuries. It was called "the commerce in ebony" derisively. Here is a description of the trade: "The Negroes were piled in the holds of the ships as many as they could contain and they remained there without air or light during the passage of several weeks. They died in hundreds. The survivors were sent to sugar and coffee plantations where the overseers made them work under the leash. (Seignobos, History of Medieval and Modern Civilisation) The dead were thrown into the sea so that for centuries this sea route to America was invested by sharks."
* * *
All these show that the highly ethical doctrines of Jesus had no impact on these white men even after 1500 years of Christianity. As in the case of the Mongols, who could not absorb the compassionate doctrines of the Buddha and remained pagan and shamanists, Christian Euroe failed to absorb the spirit of mercy.
Writes one of the great historians of Europe: "They (Christians) might have baptized their children, they might have flocked to the church-all these they might have done and yet they were as far away from the spirit of Christianity as they were from their pagan gods.
* * *
The story of the Inquisition is perhaps the most terrible of all. It was instituted by the Pope himself and manned by churchmen. It shows how the church had no impact on the Europeans.
Lorento, who had free access to the records of the Spanish Inquisition, tells us that more than 30,000 "apostates" were burnt alive and 24,000 were given various punishments by the Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisition perfected torture. On this historian WEH Lecky says: "What strikes us most in considering the medieval torture is not so much their diabolical barbarity, which is impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordinary variety and what may be termed the artistic skill they displayed- In every prison, the crucifix and the rack stood side by side."
Torture was finally abolished, but not through the remorse of the Church, but by pressure brought on the church by the intellectuals of the age-Montesquieu, Voltaire, Montague and others.
But the Christian societies of Europe and America took to other forms of torture for they initiated new barbarities as masters of the new colonies.
Dear Reader, judge for yourself: can such a religion claim to be superior to Hinduism? Can people who profess such a religion be entrusted with the care of humanity? The answer is No. Mahavira preached Ahimsa 2500 years ago. And it is still a living faith among Jains. Why? Because the Jains are true to their faith.
A word to clear up my stand. I have nothing against Jesus, but everything against the church. It has been the source of hatred in the world ever since its inception. It wants to convert the Hindus. It says that Christianity is superior. Dear Reader, here are some glimpses of Christian history. You judge for yourself whether Christianity is superior. - Author
This is what an authority writes on the Christian monks of the second and third centuries: "Whoever wore a black robe was invested with tyrannical powers-temples were turned into tombs of these monks for the adoration of their bones-even of the basest and most depraved of men."
Alexandria, not Greece, was the centre of Greek civilisation. The church naturally wanted to destroy it. A virtuous, beautiful and influential lady was one of its victims. She was the leader of the Neo-Platonists (a kind of Advaitists). A Christian mob killed her in the most brutal manner in 415 AD. She was stripped and cut into pieces and burnt. All for what? For holding a different opinion.
* * *
Christian crimes and brutalities were the worst in Latin America. European adventurers conquered, pillaged and devastated the Antilles, Peru and Mexico. Whole Red Indian populations perished at the hands of these Christian conquistadores armed with the sword and the Bible. The greed for gold led the Spaniards to commit appalling atrocities in their newly conquered territories. "By million upon million whole nations and races were remorselessly cut off," writes Draper (Intellectual Development of Europe Vol. II) The Bishop of Chiape, he says, and recorded that 15 million were exterminated in his time. Draper goes on: "From Mexico and Peru a civilisation that might have instructed Europe was crushed out."
* * *
Was Christianity interested in knowledge? It was not. When the Christians came to power in Rome the barbarous ways of the Romans did not lessen. In fact, they grew. The emperor Theodissius ordered the destruction of the most splendid library in the temple of Seraphis. The job was entrusted to Archbishop Theophilus, a fanatic. In his enthusiasm he destroyed many temples in Egypt.
* * *
The slave trade was the worst crime in human history. It denied humanity to the Negroe. It was perpetrated by Christians and had the blessing of the pope. The trade began in the 16th century and lasted for three centuries. It was called "the commerce in ebony" derisively. Here is a description of the trade: "The Negroes were piled in the holds of the ships as many as they could contain and they remained there without air or light during the passage of several weeks. They died in hundreds. The survivors were sent to sugar and coffee plantations where the overseers made them work under the leash. (Seignobos, History of Medieval and Modern Civilisation) The dead were thrown into the sea so that for centuries this sea route to America was invested by sharks."
* * *
All these show that the highly ethical doctrines of Jesus had no impact on these white men even after 1500 years of Christianity. As in the case of the Mongols, who could not absorb the compassionate doctrines of the Buddha and remained pagan and shamanists, Christian Euroe failed to absorb the spirit of mercy.
Writes one of the great historians of Europe: "They (Christians) might have baptized their children, they might have flocked to the church-all these they might have done and yet they were as far away from the spirit of Christianity as they were from their pagan gods.
* * *
The story of the Inquisition is perhaps the most terrible of all. It was instituted by the Pope himself and manned by churchmen. It shows how the church had no impact on the Europeans.
Lorento, who had free access to the records of the Spanish Inquisition, tells us that more than 30,000 "apostates" were burnt alive and 24,000 were given various punishments by the Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisition perfected torture. On this historian WEH Lecky says: "What strikes us most in considering the medieval torture is not so much their diabolical barbarity, which is impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordinary variety and what may be termed the artistic skill they displayed- In every prison, the crucifix and the rack stood side by side."
Torture was finally abolished, but not through the remorse of the Church, but by pressure brought on the church by the intellectuals of the age-Montesquieu, Voltaire, Montague and others.
But the Christian societies of Europe and America took to other forms of torture for they initiated new barbarities as masters of the new colonies.
Dear Reader, judge for yourself: can such a religion claim to be superior to Hinduism? Can people who profess such a religion be entrusted with the care of humanity? The answer is No. Mahavira preached Ahimsa 2500 years ago. And it is still a living faith among Jains. Why? Because the Jains are true to their faith.
For 300 years Britain has outsourced mayhem. Finally it's coming home
George Monbiot
Why now? It's not as if this is the first time Britain's representatives have been caught out. The history of governments in all countries is the history of scandal, as those who rise to the top are generally the most ambitious, ruthless and unscrupulous people politics can produce. Pushing their own interests to the limit, they teeter perennially on the brink of disgrace, except when they fly clean over the edge. So why does the current ballyhoo threaten to destroy not only the government but also our antediluvian political system?
The past 15 years have produced the cash-for-questions racket, the Hinduja and Ecclestone affairs, the lies and fabrications that led to the invasion of Iraq, the forced abandonment of the BAE corruption probe, the cash-for-honours caper and the cash-for-amendments scandal. By comparison to the outright subversion of the functions of government in some of these cases, the is small beer. Any one of them should have prompted the sweeping political reforms we are now debating. But they didn't.
The expenses scandal, by contrast, could kill the Labour party. It might also force politicians of all parties to address our unjust voting system, the unelected Lords, the excessive power of the executive, the legalised blackmail used by the whips, and a score of further anachronisms and injustices. Why is it different?
I believe that the current political crisis has little to do with the expenses scandal, still less with Gordon Brown's leadership. It arises because our economic system can no longer extract wealth from other nations. For the past 300 years, the revolutions and reforms experienced by almost all other developed countries have been averted in Britain by foreign remittances.
The social unrest that might have transformed our politics was instead outsourced to our colonies and unwilling trading partners. The rebellions in Ireland, India, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa, Malaya, Kenya, Iran and other places we subjugated were the price of political peace in Britain. After decolonisation, our plunder of other nations was sustained by the banks. Now, for the first time in three centuries, they can no longer deliver, and we must at last confront our problems.
There will probably never be a full account of the robbery this country organised, but there are a few snapshots. In his book Capitalism and Colonial Production, Hamza Alavi estimates that the resource flow from India to Britain between 1793 and 1803 was in the order of £2m a year, the equivalent of many billions today. The economic drain from India, he notes, "has not only been a major factor in India's impoverishment … it has also been a very significant factor in the industrial revolution in Britain". As Ralph Davis observes in The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, from the 1760s onwards India's wealth "bought the national debt back from the Dutch and others … leaving Britain nearly free from overseas indebtedness when it came to face the great French wars from 1793".
In France by contrast, as Eric Hobsbawm notes in The Age of Revolution, "the financial troubles of the monarchy brought matters to a head". In 1788 half of France's national expenditure was used to service its debt: the "American War and its debt broke the back of the monarchy".
Even as the French were overthrowing the ancien regime, Britain's landed classes were able to strengthen their economic power, seizing common property from the country's poor by means of enclosure. Partly as a result of remittances from India and the Caribbean, the economy was booming and the state had the funds to ride out political crises. Later, after smashing India's own industrial capacity, Britain forced that country to become a major export market for our manufactured goods, sustaining industrial employment here (and avoiding social unrest) long after our products and processes became uncompetitive.
Colonial plunder permitted the British state to balance its resource deficits as well. For some 200 years a river of food flowed into this country from such places as Ireland, India and the Caribbean. In The Blood Never Dried, John Newsinger reveals that in 1748 Jamaica alone sent 17,400 tons of sugar to Britain; by 1815 this had risen to 73,800. It was all produced by stolen labour.
Just as grain was sucked out of Ireland at the height of its great famine, so Britain continued to drain India of food during its catastrophic hungers. In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis shows that between 1876 and 1877 wheat exports to the UK from India doubled as subsistence there collapsed, and several million died of starvation. In the North-Western provinces famine was wholly engineered by British policy, as good harvests were exported to offset poor English production in 1876 and 1877.
Britain, in other words, outsourced famine as well as social unrest. There was terrible poverty in this country in the second half of the 19th century, but not mass starvation. The bad harvest of 1788 helped precipitate the French revolution, but the British state avoided such hazards. Others died on our behalf.
In the late 19th century, Davis shows, Britain's vast deficits with the United States, Germany and its white dominions were balanced by huge annual surpluses with India and (as a result of the opium trade) China. For a generation "the starving Indian and Chinese peasantries … braced the entire system of international settlements, allowing England's continued financial supremacy to temporarily co-exist with its relative industrial decline". Britain's trade surpluses with India allowed the City to become the world's financial capital.
Its role in British colonisation was not a passive one. The bankruptcy, and subsequent British takeover, of Egypt in 1882 was hastened by a loan from Rothschild's bank whose execution, Newsinger records, amounted to "fraud on a massive scale". Jardine Matheson, once the biggest narco-trafficking outfit in history (it dominated the Chinese opium trade), later formed a major investment bank, Jardine Fleming. It was taken over by JP Morgan Chase in 2000.
We lost our colonies, but the plunder has continued by other means. As Joseph Stiglitz shows in Globalisation and its Discontents, the capital liberalisation forced on Asian economies by the IMF permitted northern traders to loot hundreds of billions of dollars, precipitating the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Poorer nations have also been strong-armed into a series of amazingly one-sided treaties and commitments, such as trade-related investment measures, bilateral investment agreements and the EU's economic partnership agreements. If you have ever wondered how a small, densely populated country which produces very little supports itself, I would urge you to study these asymmetric arrangements.
But now, as John Lanchester demonstrates in a fascinating essay in the London Review of Books, the City could be fatally wounded. The nation that relied on financial services may take generations to recover from their collapse. The great British adventure – three centuries spent pillaging the labour, wealth and resources of other countries – is over. We cannot accept this, and seek gleeful revenge on a government that can no longer insulate us from reality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/british-empire-colonies-banks-reform
Why now? It's not as if this is the first time Britain's representatives have been caught out. The history of governments in all countries is the history of scandal, as those who rise to the top are generally the most ambitious, ruthless and unscrupulous people politics can produce. Pushing their own interests to the limit, they teeter perennially on the brink of disgrace, except when they fly clean over the edge. So why does the current ballyhoo threaten to destroy not only the government but also our antediluvian political system?
The past 15 years have produced the cash-for-questions racket, the Hinduja and Ecclestone affairs, the lies and fabrications that led to the invasion of Iraq, the forced abandonment of the BAE corruption probe, the cash-for-honours caper and the cash-for-amendments scandal. By comparison to the outright subversion of the functions of government in some of these cases, the is small beer. Any one of them should have prompted the sweeping political reforms we are now debating. But they didn't.
The expenses scandal, by contrast, could kill the Labour party. It might also force politicians of all parties to address our unjust voting system, the unelected Lords, the excessive power of the executive, the legalised blackmail used by the whips, and a score of further anachronisms and injustices. Why is it different?
I believe that the current political crisis has little to do with the expenses scandal, still less with Gordon Brown's leadership. It arises because our economic system can no longer extract wealth from other nations. For the past 300 years, the revolutions and reforms experienced by almost all other developed countries have been averted in Britain by foreign remittances.
The social unrest that might have transformed our politics was instead outsourced to our colonies and unwilling trading partners. The rebellions in Ireland, India, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa, Malaya, Kenya, Iran and other places we subjugated were the price of political peace in Britain. After decolonisation, our plunder of other nations was sustained by the banks. Now, for the first time in three centuries, they can no longer deliver, and we must at last confront our problems.
There will probably never be a full account of the robbery this country organised, but there are a few snapshots. In his book Capitalism and Colonial Production, Hamza Alavi estimates that the resource flow from India to Britain between 1793 and 1803 was in the order of £2m a year, the equivalent of many billions today. The economic drain from India, he notes, "has not only been a major factor in India's impoverishment … it has also been a very significant factor in the industrial revolution in Britain". As Ralph Davis observes in The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, from the 1760s onwards India's wealth "bought the national debt back from the Dutch and others … leaving Britain nearly free from overseas indebtedness when it came to face the great French wars from 1793".
In France by contrast, as Eric Hobsbawm notes in The Age of Revolution, "the financial troubles of the monarchy brought matters to a head". In 1788 half of France's national expenditure was used to service its debt: the "American War and its debt broke the back of the monarchy".
Even as the French were overthrowing the ancien regime, Britain's landed classes were able to strengthen their economic power, seizing common property from the country's poor by means of enclosure. Partly as a result of remittances from India and the Caribbean, the economy was booming and the state had the funds to ride out political crises. Later, after smashing India's own industrial capacity, Britain forced that country to become a major export market for our manufactured goods, sustaining industrial employment here (and avoiding social unrest) long after our products and processes became uncompetitive.
Colonial plunder permitted the British state to balance its resource deficits as well. For some 200 years a river of food flowed into this country from such places as Ireland, India and the Caribbean. In The Blood Never Dried, John Newsinger reveals that in 1748 Jamaica alone sent 17,400 tons of sugar to Britain; by 1815 this had risen to 73,800. It was all produced by stolen labour.
Just as grain was sucked out of Ireland at the height of its great famine, so Britain continued to drain India of food during its catastrophic hungers. In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis shows that between 1876 and 1877 wheat exports to the UK from India doubled as subsistence there collapsed, and several million died of starvation. In the North-Western provinces famine was wholly engineered by British policy, as good harvests were exported to offset poor English production in 1876 and 1877.
Britain, in other words, outsourced famine as well as social unrest. There was terrible poverty in this country in the second half of the 19th century, but not mass starvation. The bad harvest of 1788 helped precipitate the French revolution, but the British state avoided such hazards. Others died on our behalf.
In the late 19th century, Davis shows, Britain's vast deficits with the United States, Germany and its white dominions were balanced by huge annual surpluses with India and (as a result of the opium trade) China. For a generation "the starving Indian and Chinese peasantries … braced the entire system of international settlements, allowing England's continued financial supremacy to temporarily co-exist with its relative industrial decline". Britain's trade surpluses with India allowed the City to become the world's financial capital.
Its role in British colonisation was not a passive one. The bankruptcy, and subsequent British takeover, of Egypt in 1882 was hastened by a loan from Rothschild's bank whose execution, Newsinger records, amounted to "fraud on a massive scale". Jardine Matheson, once the biggest narco-trafficking outfit in history (it dominated the Chinese opium trade), later formed a major investment bank, Jardine Fleming. It was taken over by JP Morgan Chase in 2000.
We lost our colonies, but the plunder has continued by other means. As Joseph Stiglitz shows in Globalisation and its Discontents, the capital liberalisation forced on Asian economies by the IMF permitted northern traders to loot hundreds of billions of dollars, precipitating the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Poorer nations have also been strong-armed into a series of amazingly one-sided treaties and commitments, such as trade-related investment measures, bilateral investment agreements and the EU's economic partnership agreements. If you have ever wondered how a small, densely populated country which produces very little supports itself, I would urge you to study these asymmetric arrangements.
But now, as John Lanchester demonstrates in a fascinating essay in the London Review of Books, the City could be fatally wounded. The nation that relied on financial services may take generations to recover from their collapse. The great British adventure – three centuries spent pillaging the labour, wealth and resources of other countries – is over. We cannot accept this, and seek gleeful revenge on a government that can no longer insulate us from reality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/british-empire-colonies-banks-reform
Monday, August 10, 2009
China should break up India: Chinese strategist
Almost coinciding with the 13th round of Sino-Indian border talks (New Delhi [ Images ], August 7-8, 2009), an article (in the Chinese language) has appeared in China captioned 'If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up' (Zhong Guo Zhan Lue Gang, www.iiss.cn, Chinese, August 8, 2009).
Interestingly, it has been reproduced in several other strategic and military Web sites of the country and by all means, targets the domestic audience. The authoritative host site is located in Beijing [ Images ] and is the new edition of one, which so far represented the China International Institute for Strategic Studies (www.chinaiiss.org).
Claiming that Beijing's 'China-Centric' Asian strategy, provides for splitting India, the writer of the article, Zhan Lue (strategy), has found that New Delhi's corresponding 'India-Centric' policy in Asia, is in reality a 'Hindustan centric' one. Stating that on the other hand 'local centres' exist in several of the country's provinces (excepting for the UP and certain northern regions), Zhan Lue has felt that in the face of such local characteristics, the 'so-called' Indian nation cannot be considered as one having existed in history.
According to the article, if India today relies on any thing for unity, it is the Hindu religion. The partition of the country was based on religion. Stating that today nation states are the main current in the world, it has said that India could only be termed now as a 'Hindu religious state'. Adding that Hinduism is a decadent religion as it allows caste exploitation and is unhelpful to the country's modernisation, it described the Indian government as one in a dilemma with regard to eradication of the caste system as it realises that the process to do away with castes may shake the foundation of the consciousness of the Indian nation.
The writer has argued that in view of the above, China in its own interest and the progress of Asia, should join forces with different nationalities like the Assamese, Tamils, and Kashmiris and support the latter in establishing independent nation-States of their own, out of India. In particular, the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) in Assam, a territory neighboring China, can be helped by China so that Assam realises its national independence.
The article has also felt that for Bangladesh, the biggest threat is from India, which wants to develop a great Indian Federation extending from Afghanistan to Myanmar. India is also targeting China with support to Vietnam's efforts to occupy Nansha (Spratly) group of islands in South China Sea.
Hence the need for China's consolidation of its alliance with Bangladesh, a country with which the US and Japan [ Images ] are also improving their relations to counter China.
It has pointed out that China can give political support to Bangladesh enabling the latter to encourage ethnic Bengalis in India to get rid of Indian control and unite with Bangladesh as one Bengali nation; if the same is not possible, creation of at least another free Bengali nation state as a friendly neighbour of Bangladesh, would be desirable, for the purpose of weakening India's expansion and threat aimed at forming a 'unified South Asia'.
The punch line in the article has been that to split India, China can bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support ULFA in attaining its goal for Assam's independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like the Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal [ Images ] and lastly recover the 90,000 sq km territory in southern Tibet [ Images ].
Wishing for India's break-up into 20 to 30 nation-States like in Europe, the article has concluded by saying that if the consciousness of nationalities in India could be aroused, social reforms in South Asia can be achieved, the caste system can be eradicated and the region can march along the road of prosperity.
The Chinese article in question will certainly outrage readers in India. Its suggestion that China can follow a strategy to dismember India, a country always with a tradition of unity in diversity, is atrocious, to say the least. The write-up could not have been published without the permission of the Chinese authorities, but it is sure that Beijing will wash its hands out of this if the matter is taken up with it by New Delhi.
It has generally been seen that China is speaking in two voices -- its diplomatic interlocutors have always shown understanding during their dealings with their Indian counterparts, but its selected media is pouring venom on India in their reporting. Which one to believe is a question confronting the public opinion and even policy makers in India.
In any case, an approach of panic towards such outbursts will be a mistake, but also ignoring them will prove to be costly for India.
D S Rajan, is Director, Chennai Centre for China Studies.
Interestingly, it has been reproduced in several other strategic and military Web sites of the country and by all means, targets the domestic audience. The authoritative host site is located in Beijing [ Images ] and is the new edition of one, which so far represented the China International Institute for Strategic Studies (www.chinaiiss.org).
Claiming that Beijing's 'China-Centric' Asian strategy, provides for splitting India, the writer of the article, Zhan Lue (strategy), has found that New Delhi's corresponding 'India-Centric' policy in Asia, is in reality a 'Hindustan centric' one. Stating that on the other hand 'local centres' exist in several of the country's provinces (excepting for the UP and certain northern regions), Zhan Lue has felt that in the face of such local characteristics, the 'so-called' Indian nation cannot be considered as one having existed in history.
According to the article, if India today relies on any thing for unity, it is the Hindu religion. The partition of the country was based on religion. Stating that today nation states are the main current in the world, it has said that India could only be termed now as a 'Hindu religious state'. Adding that Hinduism is a decadent religion as it allows caste exploitation and is unhelpful to the country's modernisation, it described the Indian government as one in a dilemma with regard to eradication of the caste system as it realises that the process to do away with castes may shake the foundation of the consciousness of the Indian nation.
The writer has argued that in view of the above, China in its own interest and the progress of Asia, should join forces with different nationalities like the Assamese, Tamils, and Kashmiris and support the latter in establishing independent nation-States of their own, out of India. In particular, the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) in Assam, a territory neighboring China, can be helped by China so that Assam realises its national independence.
The article has also felt that for Bangladesh, the biggest threat is from India, which wants to develop a great Indian Federation extending from Afghanistan to Myanmar. India is also targeting China with support to Vietnam's efforts to occupy Nansha (Spratly) group of islands in South China Sea.
Hence the need for China's consolidation of its alliance with Bangladesh, a country with which the US and Japan [ Images ] are also improving their relations to counter China.
It has pointed out that China can give political support to Bangladesh enabling the latter to encourage ethnic Bengalis in India to get rid of Indian control and unite with Bangladesh as one Bengali nation; if the same is not possible, creation of at least another free Bengali nation state as a friendly neighbour of Bangladesh, would be desirable, for the purpose of weakening India's expansion and threat aimed at forming a 'unified South Asia'.
The punch line in the article has been that to split India, China can bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support ULFA in attaining its goal for Assam's independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like the Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal [ Images ] and lastly recover the 90,000 sq km territory in southern Tibet [ Images ].
Wishing for India's break-up into 20 to 30 nation-States like in Europe, the article has concluded by saying that if the consciousness of nationalities in India could be aroused, social reforms in South Asia can be achieved, the caste system can be eradicated and the region can march along the road of prosperity.
The Chinese article in question will certainly outrage readers in India. Its suggestion that China can follow a strategy to dismember India, a country always with a tradition of unity in diversity, is atrocious, to say the least. The write-up could not have been published without the permission of the Chinese authorities, but it is sure that Beijing will wash its hands out of this if the matter is taken up with it by New Delhi.
It has generally been seen that China is speaking in two voices -- its diplomatic interlocutors have always shown understanding during their dealings with their Indian counterparts, but its selected media is pouring venom on India in their reporting. Which one to believe is a question confronting the public opinion and even policy makers in India.
In any case, an approach of panic towards such outbursts will be a mistake, but also ignoring them will prove to be costly for India.
D S Rajan, is Director, Chennai Centre for China Studies.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
wake up GOI (goverment of India)
Pakistan is having a last laugh in all the recent developments. First out PM gets ridiculed by pakis (that's why I wanted some shrewed person to deal with pakis..more like Mayawati)than the cross border terrorism still countniuing full fledged, if that was not enough the new Chinese bases coming out in POK.
Although this is not the first time that Indian soldiers died in valour and got us win the wars, it's congress goverment to be precise who ridiculed India after independence. Mr Nehru's close lisions with China who like ever communists are stabbed us on our backs and Nehru went depression and eventually died. Nehru not only got craxy people in his cabinet but had real liking for sycophants (like all later gandhi's had)he got K Menon(Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menonas) defense minister who gave him incomplete information about CHinese aggressions (I doubt if he knew anything)
Before joining the cabinet in 1957 he was appointed first high commissner to England (47-52)and there it was said he used to have sex in his office with his secretary ,although he comes from royal family in Travancore. He is guy who ruined India in the world, he defended China all out in 50's started the non allignment sided with China and gave an 8 hour speech in UN about Kashmir.
I know I am losing the point I want to make about, our congress govermant debacle on diplomacy. Indira Gandhi era was worse than Nehru's but maybe later I'll discuss it. But the naked truth is that India wins all the military battles against Pakistan but loses in diplomacy, it is very well known that Colin Powell was given expensive gifts by Mushraff regime ,so was Rice.
Finally the Reserve Bank of India has estimated the amount of fake currency in circulation at almost 1.7 trln rupees, I hope the GOI does some thing about it, I'm postive about P.C Chidambaram, he will surely take action (he's one of the best Home Minister Congress have given so far)
Although this is not the first time that Indian soldiers died in valour and got us win the wars, it's congress goverment to be precise who ridiculed India after independence. Mr Nehru's close lisions with China who like ever communists are stabbed us on our backs and Nehru went depression and eventually died. Nehru not only got craxy people in his cabinet but had real liking for sycophants (like all later gandhi's had)he got K Menon(Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menonas) defense minister who gave him incomplete information about CHinese aggressions (I doubt if he knew anything)
Before joining the cabinet in 1957 he was appointed first high commissner to England (47-52)and there it was said he used to have sex in his office with his secretary ,although he comes from royal family in Travancore. He is guy who ruined India in the world, he defended China all out in 50's started the non allignment sided with China and gave an 8 hour speech in UN about Kashmir.
I know I am losing the point I want to make about, our congress govermant debacle on diplomacy. Indira Gandhi era was worse than Nehru's but maybe later I'll discuss it. But the naked truth is that India wins all the military battles against Pakistan but loses in diplomacy, it is very well known that Colin Powell was given expensive gifts by Mushraff regime ,so was Rice.
Finally the Reserve Bank of India has estimated the amount of fake currency in circulation at almost 1.7 trln rupees, I hope the GOI does some thing about it, I'm postive about P.C Chidambaram, he will surely take action (he's one of the best Home Minister Congress have given so far)
Friday, July 31, 2009
How Ocean came into existence
By Manju Gupta
King Sagar lived peacefully with his family. Gradually, as his sons became older, the king saw that they were turning out to be rather wild and unruly. They showed no signs of politeness or good upbringing.
One day, his son Asmanjas behaved so badly with the king that in a fit of anger the king told him to leave the kingdom. The king’s other queen named Sumati had 60,000 sons, almost the size of an army. How could he throw them out? Instead they all could have overpowered him and occupied his throne. So he had no alternative but to tolerate them.
One day, King Sagar decided to hold an ashwamedha yajna (a horse is set free and as far as it reaches is considered the border of the king’s kingdom) to establish his power over the empire. He called his 60,000 sons and said, “In a month’s time I plan to hold an ashwamedha yajna. I would like you all to guard my white horse very carefully. Let it not escape nor be stolen.”
The sons willingly agreed and kept a watch on him day and night. On keeping a watch over the horse continuously for so long, they all fell asleep one day. The next morning they found the horse missing. They were terribly worried as they did not know how to face the king. However, the king came to know of it and called his sons. They all rushed to given their explanation, “Father, we were all guarding the horse but it seems to have escaped or has been stolen when we fell asleep.”
The king told them, “I know the horse is neither on Earth, nor in Heaven. It must be in the netherworld then. Go and find my horse.”
The princes left and began to dig deep into the earth till they reached the netherworld. In the dark interior they saw the white horse standing proudly with Sage Kapila sitting in front, in deep mediation. They all thought, “So the sage had stolen our horse. He is a thief. Look how calmly he sits as through nothing has happened.”
One of the princes suggested, “Let us kill him.”
Another prince added, “No, let me pierce my dagger into him.”
The third prince said, “I am very angry with him. Let me throttle him.”
The sage opened his eyes and saw 60,000 young men peeping and peering at him. He flew into a rage; a wild rage that slowly began to burn all the 60,000 of them.
Meanwhile King Sagar waited impatiently for his sons to return. After some time he sent Asmanjas’s son Ansumat to go in search of his sons. Ansumat searched everywhere and on reaching the netherworld, he discovered the body parts of his uncles burning. Their bodies were burning as they were dying slowly, bit by bit.
He immediately went and fell at Sage Kapila’s feet and begged, “Please I beg of you, do forgive my uncles as they had no idea as to what they were doing. Do restore them to life, else my father will die of sorrow.”
Sage Kapila looked at him with kind eyes and said, “To take them to Earth, you will have to bring down the river of Heaven on Earth. Meanwhile, you can take the horse with you to give it to the king.”
Ansumat returned with the horse and the ashwamedha yajna was completed.
King Sagar, however, was very sad as none of his sons was left with him. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he remembered them till an ocean (i.e. Sagar) was formed.
King Sagar lived peacefully with his family. Gradually, as his sons became older, the king saw that they were turning out to be rather wild and unruly. They showed no signs of politeness or good upbringing.
One day, his son Asmanjas behaved so badly with the king that in a fit of anger the king told him to leave the kingdom. The king’s other queen named Sumati had 60,000 sons, almost the size of an army. How could he throw them out? Instead they all could have overpowered him and occupied his throne. So he had no alternative but to tolerate them.
One day, King Sagar decided to hold an ashwamedha yajna (a horse is set free and as far as it reaches is considered the border of the king’s kingdom) to establish his power over the empire. He called his 60,000 sons and said, “In a month’s time I plan to hold an ashwamedha yajna. I would like you all to guard my white horse very carefully. Let it not escape nor be stolen.”
The sons willingly agreed and kept a watch on him day and night. On keeping a watch over the horse continuously for so long, they all fell asleep one day. The next morning they found the horse missing. They were terribly worried as they did not know how to face the king. However, the king came to know of it and called his sons. They all rushed to given their explanation, “Father, we were all guarding the horse but it seems to have escaped or has been stolen when we fell asleep.”
The king told them, “I know the horse is neither on Earth, nor in Heaven. It must be in the netherworld then. Go and find my horse.”
The princes left and began to dig deep into the earth till they reached the netherworld. In the dark interior they saw the white horse standing proudly with Sage Kapila sitting in front, in deep mediation. They all thought, “So the sage had stolen our horse. He is a thief. Look how calmly he sits as through nothing has happened.”
One of the princes suggested, “Let us kill him.”
Another prince added, “No, let me pierce my dagger into him.”
The third prince said, “I am very angry with him. Let me throttle him.”
The sage opened his eyes and saw 60,000 young men peeping and peering at him. He flew into a rage; a wild rage that slowly began to burn all the 60,000 of them.
Meanwhile King Sagar waited impatiently for his sons to return. After some time he sent Asmanjas’s son Ansumat to go in search of his sons. Ansumat searched everywhere and on reaching the netherworld, he discovered the body parts of his uncles burning. Their bodies were burning as they were dying slowly, bit by bit.
He immediately went and fell at Sage Kapila’s feet and begged, “Please I beg of you, do forgive my uncles as they had no idea as to what they were doing. Do restore them to life, else my father will die of sorrow.”
Sage Kapila looked at him with kind eyes and said, “To take them to Earth, you will have to bring down the river of Heaven on Earth. Meanwhile, you can take the horse with you to give it to the king.”
Ansumat returned with the horse and the ashwamedha yajna was completed.
King Sagar, however, was very sad as none of his sons was left with him. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he remembered them till an ocean (i.e. Sagar) was formed.
Indus-Sarasvati civilisation: No Aryan conquest
By Prof Nick Gier
At least three different ethnic types: Austro-Asians, earliest peoples related to Australian aborigines; Dravidians, the people that the Aryans encountered; and the Aryans themselves. This divides up into three different language types, too, with the Northern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit and the Southern languages having Dravidian roots. (Many indologists however dispute the Aryan-Dravidian classification—Ed.)
Indus river is called Sindhu (a river goddess) in Sanskrit. Persians could not pronounce initial “S,” so it therefore became “Hindu.”
Why did the first great civilisations spring up in some of the driest areas of the world? Not the Mississippi, Amazon, or Danube river valleys, where the sod could not be plowed, but the river systems were the land that did not have to be cleared. Alluvial soil is easier to plow and very fertile.
Indus cities thrived from ca. 3000 to 2000 BCE and went into slow decline after that time. Two great cities (Mohenjo Daro and Harappa) sprang seemingly from nowhere, fully planned and functional, even more rationally planned than Mesopotamia or Egypt (contrast irregular streets of Babylon. Excellent plumbing and evidence of municipal control over the drainage are found. City blocks 200 yards by 400 yards. Indoor showers and drains were also there.
Unimaginative but well-designed and sturdy structures. Well built and comparatively spacious housing for workers and slaves. Language still has yet to be deciphered; some scholars discern a similarity with Polynesian languages (specifically Easter Island!). Not much art except for assorted seals.
Agriculture was central. Surpluses to support city. Grain and cotton; famous for latter. The harrow only, because the plow was not needed in the soft soil. Some animals domesticated, but not elephant or horse. No irrigation. Some evidence of dam building to flood areas. Did not have iron and mediocre metallurgy (bronze only). Did not penetrate jungle for that very reason. Very poor weapons. No military fortresses, etc. No swords. The people seemed to be extremely conservative; they did not pick up new things even though there is much evidence of trade with Mesopotamia and Persia.
Religion: mother goddess, fertility, etc. Great communal bath at Mohenjo Daro. Definitely for religious purposes. Temple prostitutes. Common also in Babylon. Female figurines and the horned gods with erect penis. Phallus worship. Aryans called them “dark,” “phallus-worshiping,” “foul-mouthed,” and “godless.” Horned-god as “proto-Shiva” sitting in the lotus position. Lord of the Forest (Vanaspati) and Beasts (Pashupati). Proto-Venus fertility goddess. The humped-backed bull, but not the sacred cow.
World-wide comparisons: Aryans vs. Indus Valley people; Israelites (non-Aryans) vs. Canaanites; Earliest Greeks (Aryans) vs. Minoans on Crete; Sky-gods and war-gods vs. Fertility gods and goddesses.
Breakdown of Indus Valley Civilisation
Three possible causes, and probably a combination of all three:
External human forces: Invading nomadic tribes of Aryan warriors. Harrapans had very poor weapons—stone tipped arrows. Aryan war-god Indra vs. Indus pacifists.
Natural forces: floods, droughts, radical geologic changes. Natural dams flooded the cities. Back up of salt water from the ocean.
Internal human forces: urban pollution and over population. Decline of trade with Mesopotamia. Conservative culture that did not pick up new ideas. Didn’t use their ingenuity to defend themselves.
Pre-Aryan Religious Heritage
Ahimsa (non-injury)—the principle of non-violence.
Karma and Reincarnation.
Yoga—proto-Shiva in the lotus position.
Worship of Great Goddess—goddess figurines from the Indus cities.
Cults of trees, waters, animals, e.g., the fig tree, the most famous being the Buddha’s Bo Tree.
Phallus worship connected with the proto-Shiva.
Bhaktism—devotion to a savior god. I personally have seen no evidence of this.
Village deities, demons, ghosts, spirits.
Third Eye—the mind’s eye, the eye of introspection and meditation. Perhaps seen on the forehead of nobleman/priest of Indus seals.
New Evidence
Much larger than previously thought. May be the largest prehistoric urban civilisation.
May have had a democratic organisation. At least more egalitarian than any other civilisation.
Largest exporters in the ancient world. 700 ft. long dock in Gujarat.
Suffered depression rather than Aryan conquest. Migration eastward to Sarasvati.
Largest Ancient Civilisation
1.5 million square kilometers. Larger than Western Europe.
Iranian border to the West; Turkmenistan and Kashmir to the North; Delhi to the East; and the southern Gujarat to the South.
1,400 sites: 917 in India, 481 in Pakistan, and one in Afganistan.
Sarasvati not Indus?
Most of the sites are in the ancient Sarasvati River basin.
Sarasvati River mentioned in the Rigveda, running between the Indus and the Yamuna Rivers.
Satellite images proved this to be correct.
Some scholars warn that we should stay clear from potential Pakistani-Indian conflict.
Who were these people?
Examination of skeletel remains show that they are directly linked to present day Indians.
Many practices (farming, sailing, jewelry) preserved intact.
The tandoori oven is an Indus-Sarasvati invention.
Indus Chronology
Stage 1: 7000-4000 BC
Beginnings of village farming communities
Stage 2: 4300-3200 BC
Developed farming and pastoral communities
Stage 3: 3200-2600 BC
Agricultural surplus societies, urbanisation
Stage 4: 2600-2500 BC
The big leap. Advanced town-planning and scripts emerge
Stage 5: 2500-2000 BC
Civilisation in full bloom
Stage 6: 2000-1600 BC
Dramatic decline in Sindh and resurgence in Punjab and Haryana. Back to farming units
Indus-Sarasvati Egalitarianism
No cult of personality or royal tombs.
Some social stratification but still no control by one class. Competing elites?
Obvious administrative organisation (standardised weights, measurements, and brick size) but only regional capitals.
Seals with what looks like a priest but there is no evidence that they had any great control.
(The writer is a Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy University of Idaho. Source: http://www.class.uidoho.edu and http://sites.google.com)
At least three different ethnic types: Austro-Asians, earliest peoples related to Australian aborigines; Dravidians, the people that the Aryans encountered; and the Aryans themselves. This divides up into three different language types, too, with the Northern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit and the Southern languages having Dravidian roots. (Many indologists however dispute the Aryan-Dravidian classification—Ed.)
Indus river is called Sindhu (a river goddess) in Sanskrit. Persians could not pronounce initial “S,” so it therefore became “Hindu.”
Why did the first great civilisations spring up in some of the driest areas of the world? Not the Mississippi, Amazon, or Danube river valleys, where the sod could not be plowed, but the river systems were the land that did not have to be cleared. Alluvial soil is easier to plow and very fertile.
Indus cities thrived from ca. 3000 to 2000 BCE and went into slow decline after that time. Two great cities (Mohenjo Daro and Harappa) sprang seemingly from nowhere, fully planned and functional, even more rationally planned than Mesopotamia or Egypt (contrast irregular streets of Babylon. Excellent plumbing and evidence of municipal control over the drainage are found. City blocks 200 yards by 400 yards. Indoor showers and drains were also there.
Unimaginative but well-designed and sturdy structures. Well built and comparatively spacious housing for workers and slaves. Language still has yet to be deciphered; some scholars discern a similarity with Polynesian languages (specifically Easter Island!). Not much art except for assorted seals.
Agriculture was central. Surpluses to support city. Grain and cotton; famous for latter. The harrow only, because the plow was not needed in the soft soil. Some animals domesticated, but not elephant or horse. No irrigation. Some evidence of dam building to flood areas. Did not have iron and mediocre metallurgy (bronze only). Did not penetrate jungle for that very reason. Very poor weapons. No military fortresses, etc. No swords. The people seemed to be extremely conservative; they did not pick up new things even though there is much evidence of trade with Mesopotamia and Persia.
Religion: mother goddess, fertility, etc. Great communal bath at Mohenjo Daro. Definitely for religious purposes. Temple prostitutes. Common also in Babylon. Female figurines and the horned gods with erect penis. Phallus worship. Aryans called them “dark,” “phallus-worshiping,” “foul-mouthed,” and “godless.” Horned-god as “proto-Shiva” sitting in the lotus position. Lord of the Forest (Vanaspati) and Beasts (Pashupati). Proto-Venus fertility goddess. The humped-backed bull, but not the sacred cow.
World-wide comparisons: Aryans vs. Indus Valley people; Israelites (non-Aryans) vs. Canaanites; Earliest Greeks (Aryans) vs. Minoans on Crete; Sky-gods and war-gods vs. Fertility gods and goddesses.
Breakdown of Indus Valley Civilisation
Three possible causes, and probably a combination of all three:
External human forces: Invading nomadic tribes of Aryan warriors. Harrapans had very poor weapons—stone tipped arrows. Aryan war-god Indra vs. Indus pacifists.
Natural forces: floods, droughts, radical geologic changes. Natural dams flooded the cities. Back up of salt water from the ocean.
Internal human forces: urban pollution and over population. Decline of trade with Mesopotamia. Conservative culture that did not pick up new ideas. Didn’t use their ingenuity to defend themselves.
Pre-Aryan Religious Heritage
Ahimsa (non-injury)—the principle of non-violence.
Karma and Reincarnation.
Yoga—proto-Shiva in the lotus position.
Worship of Great Goddess—goddess figurines from the Indus cities.
Cults of trees, waters, animals, e.g., the fig tree, the most famous being the Buddha’s Bo Tree.
Phallus worship connected with the proto-Shiva.
Bhaktism—devotion to a savior god. I personally have seen no evidence of this.
Village deities, demons, ghosts, spirits.
Third Eye—the mind’s eye, the eye of introspection and meditation. Perhaps seen on the forehead of nobleman/priest of Indus seals.
New Evidence
Much larger than previously thought. May be the largest prehistoric urban civilisation.
May have had a democratic organisation. At least more egalitarian than any other civilisation.
Largest exporters in the ancient world. 700 ft. long dock in Gujarat.
Suffered depression rather than Aryan conquest. Migration eastward to Sarasvati.
Largest Ancient Civilisation
1.5 million square kilometers. Larger than Western Europe.
Iranian border to the West; Turkmenistan and Kashmir to the North; Delhi to the East; and the southern Gujarat to the South.
1,400 sites: 917 in India, 481 in Pakistan, and one in Afganistan.
Sarasvati not Indus?
Most of the sites are in the ancient Sarasvati River basin.
Sarasvati River mentioned in the Rigveda, running between the Indus and the Yamuna Rivers.
Satellite images proved this to be correct.
Some scholars warn that we should stay clear from potential Pakistani-Indian conflict.
Who were these people?
Examination of skeletel remains show that they are directly linked to present day Indians.
Many practices (farming, sailing, jewelry) preserved intact.
The tandoori oven is an Indus-Sarasvati invention.
Indus Chronology
Stage 1: 7000-4000 BC
Beginnings of village farming communities
Stage 2: 4300-3200 BC
Developed farming and pastoral communities
Stage 3: 3200-2600 BC
Agricultural surplus societies, urbanisation
Stage 4: 2600-2500 BC
The big leap. Advanced town-planning and scripts emerge
Stage 5: 2500-2000 BC
Civilisation in full bloom
Stage 6: 2000-1600 BC
Dramatic decline in Sindh and resurgence in Punjab and Haryana. Back to farming units
Indus-Sarasvati Egalitarianism
No cult of personality or royal tombs.
Some social stratification but still no control by one class. Competing elites?
Obvious administrative organisation (standardised weights, measurements, and brick size) but only regional capitals.
Seals with what looks like a priest but there is no evidence that they had any great control.
(The writer is a Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy University of Idaho. Source: http://www.class.uidoho.edu and http://sites.google.com)
India is top on corruption chart
By Dr Jay Dubashi
According to Transparency International(TI), a think tank based in Germany, which keeps tabs on corruption across the world, India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and there are only three or four more corrupt countries than India, all of them in Africa. I was not aware of this International “reputation” of India’s until I came across the TI’s report.
On a single day last month, a newspaper in the small town where I live (Pune) carried almost a dozen stories of instances of corruption in the state. They all involve high government officials and, of course, their patrons, the politicians. One politician, member of parliament, no less, was arrested for the alleged murder of fellow legislator. The politician is said to be the right hand man of the president of a so-called national party which is a constituent of the state government, and is actually related to him. Murder is not corruption, you might say. But when his house was searched, the police found revolvers and guns, apart from swords and lakhs of rupees in cash. The murder took place three years ago but the man was not arrested because of his links with the big party bosses.
A corporator was found to own 25 houses and flats in and around Pune along with several plots. He is only a corporator but is worth hundreds of crores of rupees which he is said to have acquired in less than three years that he held the office. The corporator is missing and has not been traced.
Then there is the ubiquitous official with his hand in the till, this time a director of agriculture. I was not aware that there was so much money involved in the administration of what is supposed to be one of the poorest sectors of the economy viz. agriculture. But apparently you can make millions out of anything, if you put your mind to it. The entire family was apparently involved and the police are still looking for the hidden loot.
Why are we Indians so corrupt? The simple answer is that they manage to go scot free and the punishment never fits the crime. You rarely hear about high bureaucrats, let alone high politicians, being sentenced to prison, even after ten or twenty years. Not a single babu connected with the Bofors case has seen the inside of a jail and the Italian middle man who masterminded the whole affair is enjoying himself at the Riviera.
There is a minister in the Maharashtra government who is building a huge mall in a central location in Pune. Every body knows about it and everybody talks about it, but the man continues to be minister and goes about in his car with the red lamp. He even visits the mall from time to time, but the income tax officials and others look the other way.
These are obvious cases. There are also others. The co-operative sector in Maharashtra—the sector that supplies all its politicians—is a beehive of corruption, where looting is a regular—and respectable—occupation. Apart from the sugar factories, there are scores, may be hundreds, of co-operative banks whose managements, most of whom happen to be local politicians, routinely defraud the depositors. But very few managements are brought to account and almost none convicted. Most directors and chairmen wind up as legislators and ministers in course of time, where they continue their public “work”.
This must be happening all over India, but, for some reason, everybody ignores it. Have we become so inured to corruption that we do not notice it any more, just as we don’t’ notice dirt in the streets, or are we so involved in it that we do not wish to take any action? We now take corruption for granted, like murders and railway accidents, and when we come across a big headline in the morning newspaper, we just have another sip of tea and turn the page.
It used to be said that our bureaucrats—and our legislators—were underpaid unlike in other countries and often fell victims to temptation. I never bought this spurious argument. If it is lack of money that makes you corrupt, why do millionaires do it? In any case, neither the bureaucrats nor the legislator are under paid now. They take home more per month than we used to per year, yet they are as corrupt as ever.
In China, bureaucrats who are caught embezzling money are executed. It is as simple as that. China executes more people than the rest of the world together. But corruption is still a busy occupation in China and foreigners are in the habit of distributing cash in envelopes from top to bottom and claim that as business expense!
I think we Indians tend to compromise with irregular behaviour, to put it mildly, which in its extreme form becomes corruption, and think up all kinds of excuses to justify it. There is one standard for hoi polloi, and quite another for the top dog. We often read about a constable being sent to jail for five years for asking for a small bribe for a traffic offence, but never about minister and secretaries with their millions in foreign bank accounts.
When I first landed in England immediately after the last war, I was astonished at the high standard of conduct of not only officials but also the common man. Although things were scarce—I used to get an egg per week and a small bar of chocolate per month—there was no black market. We queued up at our grocer’s –and old man whose only man had died in the war—and collected our meager rations week after week, but nobody complained. I once saw an old man behind me at a village fish—and–chips shop. The face looked familiar. The man turned out to be Lord Pethick-Lawrence, secretary of state for India, who had just sent Mountbatten to New Delhi to negotiate transfer of power and give up the empire.
Harold Wilson was chancellor of the exchequer—equivalent to our finance minister—in the first Attlee government after the last war and later became Prime Minister. Before he came into politics, he was a lecturer in Oxford. After he retired from polities, he started looking for a house in London but couldn’t find any as he had very little money, and went back to this Yorkshire home. There his ailing wife fell ill but they didn’t have enough money for her treatment. So his friends—not businessmen—came to his rescue and raised funds to pay the bills. Towards the end, he couldn’t afford even a nurse to look after her.
Corruption, thy name is greed. When you have thousands, you want lakhs, and when you have lakhs, you want crores. Look at the houses of ministers in Delhi. I do not think ministers have such palatial houses, even in Washington, the capital of the world’s richest country. A federal Reserve Chairman, equivalent to governor of our Reserve Bank, had an ailing wife in New York, but he himself lived in Washington. Since he couldn’t afford two homes, he lived in a single room in a hotel and commuted between New York and Washington every week-end. Can you imagine our babus or politicians doing that? Greed corrupts and corrodes not only the corrupt individuals but the whole system, and ultimately the nation. It was corruption that destroyed Rome and may destroy us also!
According to Transparency International(TI), a think tank based in Germany, which keeps tabs on corruption across the world, India is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and there are only three or four more corrupt countries than India, all of them in Africa. I was not aware of this International “reputation” of India’s until I came across the TI’s report.
On a single day last month, a newspaper in the small town where I live (Pune) carried almost a dozen stories of instances of corruption in the state. They all involve high government officials and, of course, their patrons, the politicians. One politician, member of parliament, no less, was arrested for the alleged murder of fellow legislator. The politician is said to be the right hand man of the president of a so-called national party which is a constituent of the state government, and is actually related to him. Murder is not corruption, you might say. But when his house was searched, the police found revolvers and guns, apart from swords and lakhs of rupees in cash. The murder took place three years ago but the man was not arrested because of his links with the big party bosses.
A corporator was found to own 25 houses and flats in and around Pune along with several plots. He is only a corporator but is worth hundreds of crores of rupees which he is said to have acquired in less than three years that he held the office. The corporator is missing and has not been traced.
Then there is the ubiquitous official with his hand in the till, this time a director of agriculture. I was not aware that there was so much money involved in the administration of what is supposed to be one of the poorest sectors of the economy viz. agriculture. But apparently you can make millions out of anything, if you put your mind to it. The entire family was apparently involved and the police are still looking for the hidden loot.
Why are we Indians so corrupt? The simple answer is that they manage to go scot free and the punishment never fits the crime. You rarely hear about high bureaucrats, let alone high politicians, being sentenced to prison, even after ten or twenty years. Not a single babu connected with the Bofors case has seen the inside of a jail and the Italian middle man who masterminded the whole affair is enjoying himself at the Riviera.
There is a minister in the Maharashtra government who is building a huge mall in a central location in Pune. Every body knows about it and everybody talks about it, but the man continues to be minister and goes about in his car with the red lamp. He even visits the mall from time to time, but the income tax officials and others look the other way.
These are obvious cases. There are also others. The co-operative sector in Maharashtra—the sector that supplies all its politicians—is a beehive of corruption, where looting is a regular—and respectable—occupation. Apart from the sugar factories, there are scores, may be hundreds, of co-operative banks whose managements, most of whom happen to be local politicians, routinely defraud the depositors. But very few managements are brought to account and almost none convicted. Most directors and chairmen wind up as legislators and ministers in course of time, where they continue their public “work”.
This must be happening all over India, but, for some reason, everybody ignores it. Have we become so inured to corruption that we do not notice it any more, just as we don’t’ notice dirt in the streets, or are we so involved in it that we do not wish to take any action? We now take corruption for granted, like murders and railway accidents, and when we come across a big headline in the morning newspaper, we just have another sip of tea and turn the page.
It used to be said that our bureaucrats—and our legislators—were underpaid unlike in other countries and often fell victims to temptation. I never bought this spurious argument. If it is lack of money that makes you corrupt, why do millionaires do it? In any case, neither the bureaucrats nor the legislator are under paid now. They take home more per month than we used to per year, yet they are as corrupt as ever.
In China, bureaucrats who are caught embezzling money are executed. It is as simple as that. China executes more people than the rest of the world together. But corruption is still a busy occupation in China and foreigners are in the habit of distributing cash in envelopes from top to bottom and claim that as business expense!
I think we Indians tend to compromise with irregular behaviour, to put it mildly, which in its extreme form becomes corruption, and think up all kinds of excuses to justify it. There is one standard for hoi polloi, and quite another for the top dog. We often read about a constable being sent to jail for five years for asking for a small bribe for a traffic offence, but never about minister and secretaries with their millions in foreign bank accounts.
When I first landed in England immediately after the last war, I was astonished at the high standard of conduct of not only officials but also the common man. Although things were scarce—I used to get an egg per week and a small bar of chocolate per month—there was no black market. We queued up at our grocer’s –and old man whose only man had died in the war—and collected our meager rations week after week, but nobody complained. I once saw an old man behind me at a village fish—and–chips shop. The face looked familiar. The man turned out to be Lord Pethick-Lawrence, secretary of state for India, who had just sent Mountbatten to New Delhi to negotiate transfer of power and give up the empire.
Harold Wilson was chancellor of the exchequer—equivalent to our finance minister—in the first Attlee government after the last war and later became Prime Minister. Before he came into politics, he was a lecturer in Oxford. After he retired from polities, he started looking for a house in London but couldn’t find any as he had very little money, and went back to this Yorkshire home. There his ailing wife fell ill but they didn’t have enough money for her treatment. So his friends—not businessmen—came to his rescue and raised funds to pay the bills. Towards the end, he couldn’t afford even a nurse to look after her.
Corruption, thy name is greed. When you have thousands, you want lakhs, and when you have lakhs, you want crores. Look at the houses of ministers in Delhi. I do not think ministers have such palatial houses, even in Washington, the capital of the world’s richest country. A federal Reserve Chairman, equivalent to governor of our Reserve Bank, had an ailing wife in New York, but he himself lived in Washington. Since he couldn’t afford two homes, he lived in a single room in a hotel and commuted between New York and Washington every week-end. Can you imagine our babus or politicians doing that? Greed corrupts and corrodes not only the corrupt individuals but the whole system, and ultimately the nation. It was corruption that destroyed Rome and may destroy us also!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
History of black day
‘Martyrs day’ is the first organised violence against the Kashmiri Pandits by the then Muslim Conference of Kashmir.
July 13, 1931, is linked with some heartrending happenings, which were the outcome of the conspiracy hatched by the imperialists who had created a communal frenzy to create hurdles on the path of achieving Independence of India and then worked for communal division of Bharat with a design for having a theoretic State of Pakistan.
The originator of July 13 incident was one Abdul Qadir who was not even a resident of the state and had come from Peshawar to Kashmir with a British high-up staying in Kashmir and his highly provocative speeches resulted in communal hostility. So he was arrested and charged with inciting communal passions. When the trial began on July 8, 1931, the majority community of the Valley took to streets in large numbers and the processions continued for days together. Fearing riots, the administration discontinued the open trial and decided to continue it in Central Jail.
On July 13, when the trial was to restart, a huge crowd gathered and at the arrival of the magistrate, the mob broke into the jail premises saying that they want to have a glimpse of Qadir. As the mob was not allowed to enter the jail premises, it turned violent and attacked minority Hindus, plundered their shops and looted their properties. When the situation went out of control, the state administration resorted to the use of the armed forces and in the firing some hoodlums from the rioting mob were killed. The Muslim Conference, now National Conference, declared them ‘martyrs’ of Kashmir.
July 13, 1931, is linked with some heartrending happenings, which were the outcome of the conspiracy hatched by the imperialists who had created a communal frenzy to create hurdles on the path of achieving Independence of India and then worked for communal division of Bharat with a design for having a theoretic State of Pakistan.
The originator of July 13 incident was one Abdul Qadir who was not even a resident of the state and had come from Peshawar to Kashmir with a British high-up staying in Kashmir and his highly provocative speeches resulted in communal hostility. So he was arrested and charged with inciting communal passions. When the trial began on July 8, 1931, the majority community of the Valley took to streets in large numbers and the processions continued for days together. Fearing riots, the administration discontinued the open trial and decided to continue it in Central Jail.
On July 13, when the trial was to restart, a huge crowd gathered and at the arrival of the magistrate, the mob broke into the jail premises saying that they want to have a glimpse of Qadir. As the mob was not allowed to enter the jail premises, it turned violent and attacked minority Hindus, plundered their shops and looted their properties. When the situation went out of control, the state administration resorted to the use of the armed forces and in the firing some hoodlums from the rioting mob were killed. The Muslim Conference, now National Conference, declared them ‘martyrs’ of Kashmir.
Kashmiri Hindus organise protests, observe July 13 as black day
By Khajuria S Kant in Jammu
Kashmiriyat demands that the majority community should apologise for the horrendous acts of the black day and if they have any regard for minority sentiments, they should openly condemn the atrocities of July 13, as that day is celebrated to show appreciation to a fanatic and to keep the communal hatred alive.
Massive protest demonstrations were organised by Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu on July 13 to observe this day as a black day. July 13, 1931 marks the beginning of the first organised genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir.
Kashmiri Pandits assembled in large numbers outside the Press Club of Jammu to register their protest against the observance of July 13 as the ‘martyrs day’ in the state. Wearing black badges, holding placards and shouting slogans, the protesters registered their outrage. On the occasion, a survivor and witness of the 1931 massacre, Radha Krishan Mattoo narrated the horror tales of that day, which occurred in his village Kanikote in Budgam district of Kashmir.
Seventy-eight years ago on July 13, 1931, the majority community in Kashmir rose in one body in support of a sheer communalist Abdul Qadir, who was not even a resident of the state and had come from Peshawar, now in Pakistan.
Radha Krishan said that earlier on June 21, 1931, Qadir made a blistering speech at Khan Kahi Moula asking the majority community members to rise against the Hindu King and massacre non-Muslims. Later, he was arrested and charged with inciting communal passions, he added.
He said Kashmiriyat demands that the majority community should apologise for the horrendous acts of that black day and if they have any regard for minority sentiments, they should openly condemn the atrocities of July 13, as the day is celebrated to show appreciation to a fanatic and to keep the communal hatred alive.
On the occasion, Prof RK Kaul, a noted scholar, also spoke about the horrors of 1931 and brought to light the enormity of the first organised brutal carnage of the Kashmiri Pandits by the then Muslim Conference of Kashmir. Shri Kaul scoffed at the so-called martyrs of 1931 and instead called the Kashmiri Pandit victims of the communal carnage the real martyrs.
Dr Agnishekhar, convener, while speaking on the occasion said that the process of genocide of Kashmiri Pandits began in 1931 and culminated in 1990 with the large-scale exodus of the entire population of our community. To observe July 13 as the ‘martyrs day’ in the state is an insult and grave injustice to the sufferings of the Kashmiri Pandits. The process of ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir began with the advent of Muslim rule and there is no change in that mindset even in the 21st century. In 1931, the revolt against the then Maharaja of Kashmir was used as an alibi to perpetrate violence against the minorities in Kashmir.
He further stated that the most shameful aspect of the black day is that the aims and agendas of July 13, 1931, have continued to rule the minds and policies of this state for last 78 years including 61 years of Independence.
He expressed deep concern over the role of the so-called secularist politicians and bureaucrats for their soft approach towards terrorists and anti-national elements.
BJP state president, Ashok Khajuria took strong exception to CM’s statement in which he described July 13 as ‘martyrs day’. He strongly criticised the statement of Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, saying that “NC is the torch-bearer of martyrs’ principles”. He further said that such a statement has hurt the sentiments of the nationalist forces in the state.
He remarked that such statements would only promote the cause of the separatists and encourage the anti-national elements. Such a statement, which has come from none other than the Chief Minister himself, is also an indication of the soft approach of the government towards all such elements who indulge in creating a wedge between Hindus and Muslims of the state and towards those who have been causing the communal tension in the state.
Kashmiriyat demands that the majority community should apologise for the horrendous acts of the black day and if they have any regard for minority sentiments, they should openly condemn the atrocities of July 13, as that day is celebrated to show appreciation to a fanatic and to keep the communal hatred alive.
Massive protest demonstrations were organised by Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu on July 13 to observe this day as a black day. July 13, 1931 marks the beginning of the first organised genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir.
Kashmiri Pandits assembled in large numbers outside the Press Club of Jammu to register their protest against the observance of July 13 as the ‘martyrs day’ in the state. Wearing black badges, holding placards and shouting slogans, the protesters registered their outrage. On the occasion, a survivor and witness of the 1931 massacre, Radha Krishan Mattoo narrated the horror tales of that day, which occurred in his village Kanikote in Budgam district of Kashmir.
Seventy-eight years ago on July 13, 1931, the majority community in Kashmir rose in one body in support of a sheer communalist Abdul Qadir, who was not even a resident of the state and had come from Peshawar, now in Pakistan.
Radha Krishan said that earlier on June 21, 1931, Qadir made a blistering speech at Khan Kahi Moula asking the majority community members to rise against the Hindu King and massacre non-Muslims. Later, he was arrested and charged with inciting communal passions, he added.
He said Kashmiriyat demands that the majority community should apologise for the horrendous acts of that black day and if they have any regard for minority sentiments, they should openly condemn the atrocities of July 13, as the day is celebrated to show appreciation to a fanatic and to keep the communal hatred alive.
On the occasion, Prof RK Kaul, a noted scholar, also spoke about the horrors of 1931 and brought to light the enormity of the first organised brutal carnage of the Kashmiri Pandits by the then Muslim Conference of Kashmir. Shri Kaul scoffed at the so-called martyrs of 1931 and instead called the Kashmiri Pandit victims of the communal carnage the real martyrs.
Dr Agnishekhar, convener, while speaking on the occasion said that the process of genocide of Kashmiri Pandits began in 1931 and culminated in 1990 with the large-scale exodus of the entire population of our community. To observe July 13 as the ‘martyrs day’ in the state is an insult and grave injustice to the sufferings of the Kashmiri Pandits. The process of ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir began with the advent of Muslim rule and there is no change in that mindset even in the 21st century. In 1931, the revolt against the then Maharaja of Kashmir was used as an alibi to perpetrate violence against the minorities in Kashmir.
He further stated that the most shameful aspect of the black day is that the aims and agendas of July 13, 1931, have continued to rule the minds and policies of this state for last 78 years including 61 years of Independence.
He expressed deep concern over the role of the so-called secularist politicians and bureaucrats for their soft approach towards terrorists and anti-national elements.
BJP state president, Ashok Khajuria took strong exception to CM’s statement in which he described July 13 as ‘martyrs day’. He strongly criticised the statement of Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, saying that “NC is the torch-bearer of martyrs’ principles”. He further said that such a statement has hurt the sentiments of the nationalist forces in the state.
He remarked that such statements would only promote the cause of the separatists and encourage the anti-national elements. Such a statement, which has come from none other than the Chief Minister himself, is also an indication of the soft approach of the government towards all such elements who indulge in creating a wedge between Hindus and Muslims of the state and towards those who have been causing the communal tension in the state.
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