3500 year old stone and Tamil Nadu politics

Recently a neolithic stone, shaped like a hand held axe which had some Indus valley signs on it, dating to between 2000 BC – 1500 BC was found near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu. Does this mean that the people of Tamil Nadu and people of Indus Valley shared the same language. Some experts think so. Some people who are not experts, like Karunanidhi also think so for political reasons. Who would have thought that archaeology would be an election issue?

Taking note of AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa’s remarks calling him a ‘traditional enemy’, in an obvious reference to her Brahmin caste, Karunanidhi told an election rally here that recent archaeological findings of Indus valley scripts in Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district indicated that the people who lived in Tamil Nadu belonged to the Dravidian race similar to those who lived in the Indus valley[MK vows to develop Dravidian culture]

Finding a stone with Indus script in Tamil Nadu does not prove that people belong to the same race, for all you know, it could have been left behind by travellers or traders. As Michael Danino writes

Language apart, I wish to stress that the implication made in the articles (and relayed a few days later by a prominent politician of Tamil Nadu) to the effect that the Harappan civilization is “Dravidian” is wholly baseless and has long been rejected. Some of the reasons for this include: (1) the absence in the archaeological record of any clear southward migratory pattern, especially through the Deccan; (2) the phenotypical continuity between the Harappan physical types and today’s types in the same region, which precludes any massive southward migration; (3) recent genetic studies pointing to the indigenous origin of Dravidians in the South; (4) the absence of any Dravidian names in the toponymy and hydronymy in India’s North-West; (5) the growing consensus among linguists that Brahui (a Dravidian dialect in Baluchistan) is an import of the historical period into the region, not an ancient relic; (6) finally the fact that the Harappans could not have migrated to the South and reverted from an advance Bronze Age culture to a Neolithic or Megalithic one, forgotten all about their typical crafts and techniques, pottery designs, urbanism.[Michel Danino at India Archaeology]

Moving to E85

While we are debating if rising oil prices leads to less freedom or vice versa, the point of truth is that, oil prices are rising. The price of crude is going up and the price at the pump is moving faster. Various businesses have decided to pass on the the rising costs directly to the consumer. Since consumers are already struggling to make ends meet, they probably may not notice this slight increase in price for almost everything. The situation is so bad that President Bush raised the CAFE standards, which sets the fuel economy for vehicles.
Meanwhile American car makers are seeing their cars sitting on the lot, while Toyota cannot make enough Prius for American consumption. Is there a way to get rid of the oil dependency and at the same time boost the slowing sales of American cars? Tom Daschle and VInod Khosla seem to have a solution. Their proposal is to give automakers incentives for making vehicles which can run on gasoline or E85 fuel, a blend of ethanol and gasoline.

First, it could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil. As Brazil’s “energy independence miracle” proves, an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil.
Second, switching from gasoline to ethanol produced from perennial energy crops like switch grass can slash our carbon dioxide emissions.
Third, it could build on a comparative advantage of American automakers. American auto manufacturers are churning out hundreds of thousands of flex-fuel vehicles. Their foreign competitors make far fewer. Promoting these vehicles will help our automakers build on their already strong market share.
And fourth, by encouraging the production of ethanol and new renewable fuel technologies, this new CAFE standard could invigorate rural communities in America’s heartland and innovation and research centers along its coasts. [Miles Per Cob]

When the Wall Street Journal agrees with New York Times, then you know either an asteroid is going to hit the earth or something serious is going on. Currently US imports ethanol and there are tariffs and duties on it making it not so competitive. A bill has been introduced to suspend taxes on imported ethanol till 2007
Ethanol based cars are not without issues for this fuel results in lower fuel economy. This would result in the driver paying more and currently it is not cost effective compared to regular gasoline based vehicles. According to Business Week “it would cost around $3,368 per year to run a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup on regular gas and $3,615 on E85.” Even if you want to buy a flex fuel car, there are not many choices right now. If you own one, then you don’t have many fueling stations.
A lot has to happen before E85 becomes a viable alternative to oil. Atleast people are thinking about it.

On Deepa Mehta and New York Times

Sandeep on the New York Times article about Deepa Mehta’s Water.

THIS is the problem with coconuts–to borrow Richard Crasta’s delightful term for pseudo-westernized Indians like Mehta–who stoop to any antics to impress the White skin by painting their own culture black. Add to this a dash of their message of social reform and liberation and you have a hideous caricature that defies description. On the contrary, this actually aptly describes the likes of Deepa Mehta. Deepa Mehta is no social reformer or maker of meaningful cinema but a crass opportunist who is out to earn fast money by misrepresenting a culture she is ashamed to belong to. Unable to counter genuine criticism by people like Gurumurthy, she takes refuge in pompous statements [Hindu-Baiting New York Times]

Rashomon Effect – Episode 4

Two Indian parliamentarians talk to American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice together. When they come out they have two stories on what the Secretary said
Shahid Siddiqui

Rajya Sabha member Shahid Siddiqui of the Samajwadi Party told reporters that ‘our main concern was over expected amendments to the legislation, but she (Rice) said, if the amendments are within the spirit of the July 18 agreement, then you should be prepared for it.The message was that there are going to be amendments and we should be ready for it’.

Sachin Pilot

But Sachin Pilot of the Congress party told rediff.com that Rice had not spoken about any amendments but agreed that ‘the essence of the agreement is what we should focus on and that’s what we are going to achieve. That whatever the understanding the two governments have, that’s what it is. There’s been no additions or deleting’.

Surrounded by failed states

Foreign Policy magazine has announced its failed states index. The indicators of instability include factors like demographic pressures, public services, external interventionand delegitimization of state. The top countries in the list are Sudan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Iraq and Zimbabwe.
In this list India’s neighbourhood does not look promising at all. Almost all its neighbours, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma are among the toppers in the failed states list. Leading the list in our region is Pakistan with a ranking of 9, just faring better than Somalia and Chad. Even a war torn Afghanistan did better than Pakistan. Regarding Pakistan, the report mentions that it remains “acutely vulnerable to internal conflict and social disintegration”.

Pakistan moved from 34th last year to ninth in the new report – one of the sharpest changes in the overallscore of any country on the list. The contributing factors were Pakistan’s inability to police the tribal areas near the Afghan border, the devastating earthquake last October in Kashmir and rising ethnic tensions, the report said. [Pakistan ‘is a top failed state’]

The others did not do much better. Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are ranked 18th, 19th, 20th and 25th respectively. China is ranked 57th, while India did much better with a ranking of 93.

The authors cite India as an example of a state which has pulled back from the brink, saying that in the 1970s analysts predicted dire consequences as a result of population growth, economic mismanagement, poverty and corruption. Now, they say, India today has turned itself around and might have the edge over China (ranked 57) in the long run. Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, told the Associated Press news agency that India had greater social mobility and was more decentralised than its more populous neighbour. [Pakistan ‘is a top failed state’]

While India is facing both internal and external threats, the failing of these neighbours should be a major concern. The Acorn’s item number 2 & 10 on the Foreign Policy Objectives has to be pursued seriously to avoid another 1971 type of situation.

Monsoon caused Indus Valley decline

The Indus Valley civilization flourised between the time period of 3300 – 1700 BCE. Around 1900 BCE, people started leaving and the cities started to decline. There are many reasons attributed for this decline, and the theories include tectonic activity along the Indo-Asian plate boundary, or flooding. Another reason could be the disappearance of the Ghaggar-Hakra river system which was part of Sarasvathi. Then there is the infamous Aryan invasion theory.
Now according to new research, it was not Aryans, but monsoons, which were responsible for the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization. Geologist Anil Gupta of IIT Kharagpur studied the effect of monsoons over the past 10,000 years and have come to the conclusion that a strong monsoon helped the civlization grow, while a weakening monsoon might have led to its decline.

The Arabian Sea sediments and other geological studies show that the monsoon began to weaken about 5,000 years ago. The dry spell, lasting several hundred years, might have led people to abandon the Indus cities and move eastward into the Gangetic plain, which has been an area of higher rainfall than the northwestern part of the subcontinent.
“It’s not high temperatures, but lack of water that drove the people eastward and southward,” Gupta said.
About 1,700 years ago, the monsoon began to improve again, leading to increased farm produce for several centuries and contributing to the relative prosperity in India during the medieval ages, from AD 700 to 1200. [Indus cities dried up with monsoon]

Pay as you go Bandhs – II

Two years back when people of Mumbai suffered losses due to bandhs organized by Shiv Sena and BJP, they had a bunch of petitions asking the parties to pay for the losses. Don’t know what happened to that. Now in Kerala, the High Court has asked CPI(M), and DYFI to pay some money to a textile shop owner. His shop suffered damages in a strike called by these parties for miscellaneous reasons such as protesting againt the sun rising in the east.

In view of the High Court’s earlier judgement that political parties and organisations who call for strike (hartal) and bandhs and who enforce such calls are liable to pay compensation for the loss suffered by them, “CPI(M) and DYFI ‘vicariously’ are liable to pay compensation to the petitioners,” the court held.
Though both CPI(M) and DYFI denied having made a call for hartal, the bench, however, said there was no reason to disbelieve newspaper reports in this regard[HC directs CPI(M), DYFI to pay compensation ]

In Kerala where strikes are rampant, this could be a new way of earning a living.
See Also: Pay as you go Bandhs

Indus Script celt found in Tamil Nadu

A Neolithic stone shaped like a hand held axe, dating to between 2000 BC – 1500 BC has been found near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu. What makes this find more interesting is the fact that this stone has Indus Valley signs on it. This is one great find since this brings out evidence that the Indus script had reached Tamil Nadu around the same time the Indus civilization was in its glory.

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the first sign on the celt depicted a skeletal body with ribs. The figure is seated on his haunches, body bent and contracted, with lower limbs folded and knees drawn up. The second sign showed a jar. Hundreds of this pair have been found on seals and sealings at Harappa. Mr Mahadevan read the first sign as “muruku” and the second sign as “an.” In other words, it is “Murukan.” The earliest references in Old Tamil poetry portrayed him as a “wrathful killer,” indicating his prowess as a war god and hunter. The third sign looked like a trident and the fourth like a crescent with a loop in the middle.[Discovery of a century” in Tamil Nadu via email from Anand Krishnamoorthi]

Does this mean that Harappans and the people of Tamil Nadu shared a same language? Iravatham Mahadevan, an expert on Indus Valley script thinks so.

He said: “`Muruku’ and ‘an’ are shown hundreds of times in the Indus script found at Harappa. This is the importance of the find at Sembiyan-Kandiyur. Not only do the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Harappans share the same script but the same language.” In Tamil Nadu, the muruku symbol was first identified from a pottery graffiti at Sanur, near Tindivanam. B.B. Lal, former Director-General of ASI, correctly identified this symbol with sign 47 of the Indus script. In recent years, the muruku symbol turned up among the pottery graffiti found at Mangudi, near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, and at Muciri, Kerala. But this was the first time that a complete, classical Indus script had been found on a polished Neolithic stone celt, Mr. Mahadevan pointed out.[ Significance of Mayiladuthurai find]

Early representation of Ursa Major

Ursa Major (Great Bear) constellation consists among other stars, the formation called the Big Dipper, a group of seven bright stars. In Hindu mythology, these are known as Saptarishis. Now a representation of Ursa Major has been discovered on a piece of rock at Mudumula village of Mahabubnagar district in Andhra Pradesh. This representation has been dated to 500 B.C, the time of Buddha.

The representation of the group of stars was found on a square table-like rock with a flat slanting top. “This appears to have been deliberately planted by the megalithic people to plot the Great Bear constellation, also known as `Ursa Major’ and referred to as `Saptarshi Mandala’ in Indian astronomy,” Dr.Rao said.
The group of seven stars, four of which appear like a rectangle and a tail-like formation with three stars, has been mapped on the rock in the form of cup-marks. The Great Bear constellation was used by several communities especially the caravans and sea voyagers to identify the `Pole Star’, located above the north pole and thus locate the exact north. [Signature of the sky in rock]

On Amartya Sen's new book

Recently there was an interview on KQED with Amartya Sen on his new book Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. In the book Sen makes the argument that we tend to compartmentalize people with singular identities like American, or Iraqi or Muslim whereas a person could have multiple identities. “The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician,” etc.
He says that during communal riots, people focus on the single identity of opponents and hence are willing to murder strangers. For example, if you look at the the incident in Marad, Kerala or Kashmir, people were murdered because they were Hindus.
Not many people have taken kindly to this argument. For his argument Sen has tried to present a compassionate view of Islam which has not gone well with public. In an effort to present tolerance of Islam he wrote about Akbar and the example of Muslim rule in Cordoba and the Iberian Peninsula. He has even twisted one story to suit his purposes, the one about Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who according to Sen found refuge in a tolerant Arab world. Not so true says Fouad Ajami, writing in the Washington Post.

Here, for Sen’s benefit, is a passage from Maimonides’ seminal “Epistle to Yemen”: “Our hearts are weakened, our minds are confused, and our strength wanes because of the dire misfortunes that have come upon us in the form of religious persecution in the two ends of the world, the East and the West.” Maimonides’ geography was Islamic: The East in the “Epistle” was Yemen, then a battleground between Sunni and Shiite Islam, a place where Jews were being subjected to forced conversions to Islam; the Western lands were the burning grounds of Andalusia. The Almohads’ pitiless warriors were in every way the Taliban of their age, the ancestors of today’s religious radicals in the world of Islam. They put to the sword the fabled world of Andalusian tolerance, and young Maimonides witnessed the shattering collapse of that culture. [Free to be you and me in Amartya Sen’s world]

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan cites Sen’s background

To understand Mr. Sen’s desire to get away from religion-based political taxonomy, one must be aware of where, as they say, he is coming from. The Nobel laureate–who has taken to describing himself as a “feminist economist”–is a full-fledged member of the Indian “progressive” left. If there is one concern that drives this group, that animates its politics like no other, it is the perfectly well-meaning desire to safeguard India’s Muslim minority from the excesses of the country’s Hindu right. This desire has led to such contortions as the left’s defense of a separate personal law for India’s Muslims (which leaves Muslim women at the mercy of inequitable rules on divorce and inheritance) merely because the Hindu right campaigns for a uniform civil code for all Indian citizens, irrespective of religion.