There was considerable excitement when Marine Archeologists discovered “proof of Dwaraka”:http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2002/11/20/stories/2002112000450200.htm in the Gulf of Cambay. But now it seems the exploration has come to standstill. “The article”:http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=28&page=2 in the Organizer has lot of details on the discoveries.
bq. The layout of the excavated city, the spread and the location of fort walls and bastions match the descriptions mentioned in Harivamsha, a prologue to Mahabharata. Harivamsha described the city of Dwarka in minute details. According to it, the area of Dwarka was 12 yojnas. It was connected to the mainland by a strip, which is visible even now, in low tide. The city excavated is of the same size.
bq. Harivamsha, detailing the security arrangements, says that there were seals, without which one could not enter the city. Seals of a particular description were found on the seabed. A stone image of Vishnu, chert blades and pottery are all part of the recovered objects. [“Organizer”:http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=28&page=2]
Author: जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ
The Style of Hinduism Experts
“Sankrant Sanu”:http://www.sulekha.com/memberpages/profile.asp?shortcut=/sankrant_Sanu has “an article”:http://www.beliefnet.com/story/146/story_14684_1.html in BeliefNet on the shoddy scholarship by some _eminent_ scholars, who have discovered that
* In his book on Ganesha, the beloved elephant-headed deity of Hindus, Emory University professor Paul Courtright made claims that Ganesha?s trunk represents a limp phallus and the fondness for sweets of this child deity carries ?overtones? of a desire for oral sex.
* University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger has been quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text, ?a dishonest book? that “justifies war.”
* In her article on Hinduism in Encarta, which serves as a mainstream introduction for general audiences, Doniger highlights what she calls ?contradictions? in the Hindu tradition–often using deprecating parenthetical asides, unusual for such an encyclopedia entry.
* In “Kali’s Child,” Rice University professor Jeffrey Kripal portrays Sri Ramakrishna, a much-revered Hindu spiritual leader, as a sexually abused homosexual child-molester. [“BeliefNet”:http://www.beliefnet.com/story/146/story_14684_2.html]
People who question the quality of their research are immediately branded as Hindu Militants, BJP Activists etc and thus taking the discussion away from the quality of scholarship. As Sanu writes
bq. Critical articles, including my own, raise the issue of the quality of scholarship of some of these prominent members of the academy. These articles have pointed out errors, inconsistencies, mistranslations, missing references, suspect theories and interpretative techniques and, in some cases, troubling evidence of outright prejudice displayed by the academicians.
bq. Let’s look at what happened when the Hindu community tried to address Courtright’s work. Serious questions have been raised about the book–such as the non-existence of the references that Coutright cites in some cases, and their clear misconstrual in others.
bq. While Doniger et al make exaggerated claims of violence based on ducking a stray egg, the real issue they have been ducking is that of shoddy scholarship. They charge that their critics do not read books, yet it is these academicians who haven?t bothered to read their critics. Perhaps they don?t need to. It is easier to remain ensconced in an ivory tower and make sure that the airwaves carry only the story of the scholars being ?attacked.? The alternative would be to engage in dialogue with the community who find their traditions unrecognizably mauled at their hands rather than talking past them, as Marty does, by caricaturing all criticism as ?fundamentalist? and ?militant.? This engagement can only help all those that genuinely care to see the academy as a place for the dissemination of knowledge, rather than of one-sided propaganda.[“BeliefNet”:http://www.beliefnet.com/story/146/story_14684_2.html]
Yahoo! Mail: Increased Capacity
Since GMail is offering 1GB storage, the Folks at “Yahoo!”:http://mail.yahoo.com have increased my mailbox capacity to 100MB. This was a meagre 6MB before. They have also increased the message size to 10MB. I wonder when Hotmail is going to follow.
Competition is good. Competition is very good.
Enlightened Moderation
On Jan 1, Pervez Musharraf wrote an Op-Ed piece in NY Times preaching what he called _enlightened moderation_. Now there is a rebuttal of the same piece by Samina Ahmed and John Norris.
bq. First and foremost, he continues to avoid handing real power back to democratically elected officials. While the Bush administration repeatedly holds up Iraq as a nation that could serve as a shining example of Islamic democracy in action, it continues to offer a blank check to a Pakistani government in which all power resides in the military. Curbs on democratic freedoms in Pakistan remain draconian. To discourage domestic dissent, the government has sentenced Javed Hashmi, leader of Musharraf’s main political opposition, to 23 years in prison for daring to offer criticism. And it deported an exiled opposition leader, Shahbaz Sharif, when he had the temerity to attempt to return home after the Supreme Court confirmed the right of all citizens to actually reside in Pakistan.
bq. The Pakistani government has taken a similar approach to jihadist organizations. The growth of jihadist networks continues to threaten both domestic and international security. After declaring that no group would be allowed to engage in terrorist activities in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the government ordered a number of extremist groups to do little more than change their name. One extremist leader was allowed to run for parliament, and won, even though he had been charged with more than 20 violent crimes. The leaders of other banned groups, designated as terrorist organizations by the United States, continue to preach freely their sectarian and anti-Western jihad. Pakistan has also notably failed to adequately address important issues such as terrorist financing, including money laundering, making the country a favorite base of operation for all too many extremist organizations. [“NY Times”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42030-2004Jun14.html]
Musharraf is one person who has learned to milk the West for doing absolutely nothing and the entire Bush Administration remains enamored with him hoping that he will deliver Osama very soon. But Ahmed Rashid, the author of “Taliban”:https://varnam.org/archives/000266.html says
bq. Karzai’s presence in Washington holds some peril for Bush as well, because it’s an occasion to raise the embarrassing question of what happened to the search for Osama bin Laden. In February, 20,000 U.S.-led coalition forces announced, with much fanfare, a major offensive to crush the Taliban, capture its leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and track down Bin Laden. But U.S. military officers in Pakistan and Afghanistan now privately say it is highly unlikely that the Al Qaeda leader will be nabbed or killed before the U.S. election. [“LA Times”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-rashid13jun13,1,2991974.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions]
Reasons for Muslim Extremism
bq. Abdelwahed Belkeziz – Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – made the stinging attack at meeting in Turkey. He blamed the rise of Muslim extremism on the feeling of “powerlessness” felt by members of the Islamic world.
bq. Mr Belkeziz told the foreign ministers from the 57-member states that their countries had a poor record on issues ranging from education and health to economic development. “The aggregate gross domestic product of all our member states remains lower than that of one single advanced country such as France or Britain,” he said. Mr Belkeziz concentrated on the failures of the Islamic umma or community. There was, he said, a sharp contrast between its present and past. Today, he said, the community was dispersed, divided, diminished and debased, overwhelmed by a debilitating feeling of impotence. “The powerlessness that the Muslim world is experiencing today and the difficulty of finding solutions to our just causes have been the reason behind the rise of extremism,” he said [“BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3805649.stm]
Finally, an analysis without blaming America.
Book Review: The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out
When America started project on the nuclear bomb with the aim of making it before the Germans, Richard Feynman was one of the young scientists involved. He moved to Los Alamos in New Mexico where the new lab was just coming up. The administrators had decided that two scientists would share an apartment. Feynman did not want to share his apartment. So he spread out woman’s clothes on the other bed daily and went to work. Everyday evening the cleaning lady would fold it neatly and keep it back. The Army which got the report from the cleaning lady was wondering who this mysterious woman was who stayed with Richard Feynman and since they could not find, they asked the cleaning lady to act as if nothing happened.
Another prank he was famous for was cracking safes. He used to open the safes of people in Los Alamos by knowing what project the safe owner was working on, and what physical constant he would use as the safe number. But this is not just about his pranks. There are very serious lectures, and many of them on miniaturization of the computer. These lectures were given in the 50s, much before everyone was talking about nanotechnology. There is also his famous minority report on the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.
bq. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science-a life like no other. From Feynman’s ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will fascinate anyone interested in the world of ideas. Newcomers to Feynman will be moved by his wit and his deep understanding of the natural world and of the human experience; longtime admirers will discover many treasures available nowhere else.
But the article I liked was where Feynman explains how his father, a uniform salesman, influenced him to be a scientist. His father taught him to identify patterns and always to keep an inquisitive mind. Some of the lectures in the book are very deep, especially the ones on miniaturization. But rest are all very interesting and some are extremely funny. This is my first book by Feynman and I enjoyed it a lot.
On Vacation
I am on a short vacation till Monday. So there may not be any postings till then.
The Biggest Proliferator
Madeline Albright and Robin Cook have a “commentary in Los Angeles Times”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-albright7jun07,1,2981694.story on Nuclear Proliferation.
bq. Third, the G-8 nations must bring to bear all the incentives and sanctions they have at their disposal to stop proliferation. This includes closing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty loophole that enables states like North Korea to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of programs to produce nuclear energy. [“LA Times”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-albright7jun07,1,2981694.story (regn reqd)]
Read through the whole article and there is no mention of the biggest “proliferator”:https://varnam.org/archives/000306.html of all. If only Madeline Albright had read a report by “David Albright, a former IAEA Inspector”:https://varnam.org/archives/000290.html. But then whatever Pakistan does is totally transparent to the entire Western World.
Book Review: Roma Eterna
I did not know about a genre called speculative alternate history till I read “Roma Eterna”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380814889/jksobservat-20. Books like “Da Vinci Code”:https://varnam.org/archives/000340.html do present alternate history which gets supressed. But Silverberg takes it one step furthur.
The question asked is: What if the Roman empire never died ? What would happen if it had lived for thousands of years. How would that affect the history as we know now. The book is a collection of ten short stories set in different periods of time till about the year 2000 AD.
Some generous assumptions are made. The Exodus under Moses is mentioned as a failed movement. As a result, the Hebrews never make it to Egypt and Christianity is never born.
The first tale “With Caesar in the Underworld” takes us into the underbelly of Rome itself, which is quite different from the polished culture that it presented to the outside world. The Emperor is dying and his eldest son is to take his place after his death. A Greek ambassador who comes with a alliance for the eldest prince is taken on a tour of the underground Roma by the youngest Prince and his friend. There is a sudden twist of events and someone unexpected takes over the throne.
In the second tale, “A Hero of the Empire”, a Roman who has fallen from grace with the Emperor is banished to Arabia in 7th century AD. There while roaming in Mecca, he meets a person named Mahmud, who wants to banish all idol worshippers and unite the feuding tribes under the name of his God called “Allah”. The Greeks had established a trading post in Mecca and Mahmud asks the Roman to join him in defeating the Greeks. But the Roman thinks that Mahmud is a much bigger danger and gets him killed, thus preventing Islam from taking root.
The final story “To the promised land” is about a Hebew named Moshe, set in near 2000 AD, who is going to lead an Exodus of his people. This story of Exodus is not about crossing the Red Sea, but by traveling out of the Earth using a spaceship.
Between the stories I mentioned, you see how the Western Empire with Rome as the capital and the Eastern Greek empire with Constantinople as the capital collide. At some point the Greeks take over Rome and later the Romans take it back. There are stories of money spent in futile wars in Mexico and massacre of the entire Royal family by Consuls.
Most of the stories are excellent and have been written with brilliant imagination. The characters are well established and you get to know their fears and ambitions very well. The vivid descriptions of the ancient cities really take you back in time. But the book is not a quick read. Each of the stories take their own time to establish the era and people. So you have to be patient. On the whole, a good read.
Thanks to “InstaPundit”:http://www.instapundit.com/ for “recommending this book”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/015337.php.
Globalization and Indian elections
“Thomas Friedman has an article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/opinion/06FRIE.html explaining why the anti-globalization movement has lost its steam. To explain this, he uses the example of the recent elections in India.
bq. To everyone’s surprise, India’s elections ended with the rightist Hindu nationalist B.J.P. alliance being thrown out and replaced by the left-leaning Congress Party alliance. Of course, no sooner did the B.J.P. ? which ran on a platform of taking credit for India’s high-tech revolution ? go down than the usual suspects from the antiglobalization movement declared this was a grass-roots rejection of India’s globalization strategy. They got it exactly wrong. What Indian voters were saying was not: “Stop the globalization train, we want to get off.” It was, “Slow down the globalization train, and build me a better step-stool, because I want to get on.” [“NY Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/opinion/06FRIE.html, regn reqd]
When you talk about anything in India, you cannot come up with a simple theory. For example in my home state of Kerala, there was no rapid globalization movement. Kerala is already a globalized state with most of the revenues coming from NRIs. The problem there was the infighting between two groups of Congress, which caused most of the people to vote for the Communists. But in many other states Friedman’s theory holds true. The prosperity advertised by the “India Shining” campaign did not reach the people who actually go out and vote.
The advice he has for the anti-globalization crowd is apt.
bq. My own recent travels to India have left me convinced that the most important forces combating poverty there today are those activists who are fighting for better local governance. The world doesn’t need the antiglobalization movement to go away now ? it just needs for the movement to grow up. It had a lot of energy and a lot of mobilizing capacity. What it lacked was a real agenda for helping the poor. Here’s what its agenda should be: Helping the poor by improving governance ? accountability, transparency, education and the rule of law ? at the local level, by using the Internet and other tools to spotlight corruption, mismanagement and tax avoidance. It may not be as sexy as protesting against world leaders on CNN, but it is a lot more important. Ask any Indian villager.