Author: जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ

Vision and Vitriol

“Resident Idiot”:http://www.tni.org/fellows/bidwai.htm in “Frontline”:http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2108/stories/20040423007612700.htm
bq. The Bharatiya Janata Party has stooped low in building up an egregious personality cult around Atal Bihari Vajpayee…
bq. Such sycophancy around an individual is only slightly less crude than the personality cult around Hitler – who too gave Germany the autobahn (high-speed motorway) – and Mussolini, or Stalin and Kim-Il Sung. The BJP’s publicity material has the same fawning, adoring attitude to Vajpayee as Nazi sympathiser Leni Riefenstahl’s films on Hitler.
But a few days back he himself wrote in “Rediff”:http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/apr/12bidwai.htm
bq. Ms Priyanka Gandhi’s campaign entry, despite its ‘dynastic’ pitfalls, will definitely energise the Congress. She can certainly put some icing on its electoral cake.
Also to see that Sonia Gandhi Pvt. Ltd is not an egregious personality cult, just go to Congress(I) “election posters web page”:http://www.aicc.org.in/elec-posters.htm and see how many of them have Sonia on them. (Also while you are at the page, note that Rajiv Gandhi has a tab by himself, while people like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi are all general history). So would Congress’s sycophancy around an individual be cruder than the personality cult around Hitler ?
bq. These advertisements had a definite pattern: Vajpayee’s face was everywhere. Here, he was shown playing with children. There, he was with Adivasis, donning traditional headgear. Not to be missed was the much-replayed picture of Vajpayee handling a computer mouse to inaugurate a project (although he is computer-illiterate.) In the BJP’s campaign, Vajpayee always stands taller than ordinary mortals. He is invariably shown as leading the nation by theatrically raising his right hand and exhorting the people to rise and shine.
Do you remember the last election Congress fought under Rajiv Gandhi when we had pictures of him with Adivasis, donning traditional headgear etc ? As the “editorial”:http://www.samachar.com/features/250204-editorial.html in samachar.com notes
bq. For over four decades when the Congress Party was in power the fine line dividing the party from the government had been fully obliterated. There was a time when Congressmen were openly chanting `Indira is India and India is Indira’ and misusing public funds for their own personal advancement, nay, enrichment. Ironically, even as the senior leaders of the Congress Party rail against the Shining India campaign, the Congress Party governments in the States are shamelessly squandering taxpayers’ monies to tom-tom their so-called achievements in national and regional papers and on various television channels.
bq. One of the biggest spenders in this regard is the non-performing Amarinder Singh Government in Punjab. Conjuring up its so-called achievements from thin air, almost daily the Punjab Government ads appear in national and regional papers with the mandatory photographs of the Congress President Sonia Gandhi and, of course, the feckless Amarinder Singh himself. Surely, if the State Governments run by the Congress Party could waste crores of rupees of public monies on taking out print and TV ads to peddle their non-achievements, there was no reason why the Vajpayee Government could not launch a media campaign to inform the people what it had achieved in the last five years.
Yada Yada Yada and
bq. It will stoop extremely low to get votes. That can only hurt our democracy, although it might not even help the BJP return to power.
The election results are a month away. At that time we will come back to these statements.

Buddha's Contribution

The Buddha taught many meditation techniques that were already known. In terms of technique what was his contribution ?
bq. What is called yoga today is actually a later development. Patanjali lived about 500 years after the time of the Buddha, and naturally his _Yoga Sutra_ shows the influence of the Buddha’s teachings. Of course yogic practices were known in India even before the Buddha, and he himself experimented with them before achieving enlightenment. All these practices, however were limited to _sila_ and _samadhi_, concentration up to the level of the eighth _jhana_, the eighth stage of absorption, which is still within the field of sensory experience. The Buddha found the ninth _jhana_, and that is Vipassana, the development of insight that will take the meditator to the ultimate goal beyond all sensory experience.
[excerpt from “Vipassana Meditation”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060637242/jksobservat-20]

I really don't know

bq. But it was her failure to elucidate the claims made in the party’s manifesto that exposed Gandhi’s lack of understanding of economic issues. The Congress manifesto promises to create ten million new jobs every year, just like the National Democratic Alliance’s manifesto had done in the last election. A questioner asked how the Congress intended to achieve this. Her answer was all of three words — “by accelerating growth.” When a reporter asked which policies of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government her party would discard if it came to power, Gandhi pointed towards Mukherjee. Another question about divestment was likewise referred to Dr Singh. [via “Rediff”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=331735]
That is the President of Congress (I), the party that ruled India for about 50 years.

From the Campaign Trail – II

Apparently Sonia Gandhi Pvt. Ltd will come to power after the General Elections according to “Rahul Gandhi”:http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=Polls2004&slug=Rahul+flays+Mahajan+for+his+remark&id=52023&callid=1&category=National&headline=Rahul~flays~Mahajan~for~his~remark, who recently declared that his “heart beats for India”:https://varnam.org/archives/000354.html.
bq. “The BJP knows that the Congress is going to come back to power,” he said adding “sacred by this scenario the BJP is indulging in attacks on my family.”
One of the strategies that the party is following is to ally with the communists to fight against the BJP. So for example in “Orissa”:http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=Polls2004&slug=Cong%2C+Left+take+on+BJP+in+Orissa&id=52026&callid=1&category=National&headline=Cong,~Left~take~on~BJP~in~Orissa
bq. Senior Congress leaders including former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh and J B Patnaik rubbed shoulders with CPI Secretary D Raja and CPI-M State Secretary Janardan Pati on the stage and talked of throwing out BJP and its allies from power together.
But in Kerala and West Bengal, the same party is against the Communists. So when a leader from Sonia Gandhi Pvt. Ltd is traveling across states, he should first find out, if they are against the communists or with the communists. Looks like a winning strategy.
Also, now that the private sector is flying, the party thinks it is time to intervene there as well. So if Sonia Gandhi Pvt. Ltd comes to power:
bq. Anxious to win back the support of Muslims, tribals, and dalits who once formed the core of the Congress? electoral base, the party has promised reservation for Dalits in the private sector and seperate quota for socially and educationally backward Muslims. [via “Economic Times”:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/575804.cms]
Excellent. But then Congress never claimed that it is a party with a difference.

From the Campaign Trail

bq. “Let them attack us, let them abuse us, let them beat us or even let them kill us, my family’s and my heart beats for India and will continue to beat for India,” he said in Amethi, from where he will contest the Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket. [“Rahul Gandhi”:http://www.rediff.com/election/2004/mar/29rahul.htm, son of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Grandson of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and great-grandson of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru]
It is pathetic when you have credentials like these and still have to make explicit statements that your heart beats for India.
Senior Congress Leader “Karunakaran”:http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IER20040410124959&Page=R&Title=Kerala&Topic=0
bq. Seeking to clarify his position on the issue, Karunakaran said that he still believed that community-based organisations should refrain from using their influence for electoral bargaining.
but “according to Congress Sources”:https://varnam.org/archives/000331.html in a separate issue
bq. ”Only a Latin Catholic will be fielded from Ernakulam. And the Church has a major say in the whole process. We are discussing the matter,”
But then Congress is not claiming to be a party with a difference.

The Change of Perception

*How do you explain the dramatic improvements in the bilateral relationship between New Delhi and Washington?*
bq. The role played by the Indian expatriate community in the US acted as the lever for this change of perception about India. When we found that 40 percent of IT engineers had an Indian background or were Indians, there was a feeling that something was going on. We saw President Clinton taking interest in promoting India-US relations, he also visited India. Now the US government has agreed to go in for a strategic partnership with us, and the strategic partnership document was signed in November 2001 between President Bush and Prime Minister Vajpayee. In January 2004, the two leaders pledged to implement the strategic partnership at the highest level. [“India’s Foreign Secretary Shashank”:http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/mar/30inter.htm]

Ultimate Reality of Matter

 He found that the entire material universe was composed of particles or “indivisible units”. These units exhibit in endless variation the basic qualities of matter: mass, cohesion, temperature, and movement. They combine to form structures which seem to have some permanence. But actually these are all composed of miniscule _kalapas_ which are in a state of continuously arising and passing away. This is the ultimate reality of matter: a constant stream of waves or particles. This is the body which we each call “myself”

And this scientist was: Buddha.
[from Art of Living – Vipassana Meditation as taught by S N Goenka]

Hunting for Muziris

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a travelog written by an unknown author in the first century about travel in the Indian Ocean. According to K.A. Nilakanta Sastri in his book, A History of South India.
bq. The author of the _Periplus_ (c A.D. 75) gives the most valuable information about this trade between India and the Roman empire. He mentions the ports of Naura (Cannanore), Tyndis–the Tondi of the poems, identified with Ponnani–and Muziris (Musiri, Crangannore), and Nelcynda very near Kottayam, as of leading importance on the west coast. Muziris abounded in ships sent there with cargoes from Arabia and by the Greeks.
A Sreedhara Menon in his book, A Survey of Kerala History writes that there is no doubt that the present Kodungallor is the ancient Musiris. Now Dr. Shajan, an archeologist “has proposed”:http://www.hindu.com/lf/2004/03/28/stories/2004032800080200.htm based on some evidence that Muziris, the legendary seaport of the ancient world, stood at Pattanam, a small town some 12 km south of the Periyar rivermouth (present day Kodungallur)
bq. Radiocarbon dating of peat samples showed that Kodungalloor and Paravur areas were part of the sea some 5,000 years ago. By about 1,000 B.C., however, the sea had regressed and the coastline had more or less stabilised about two km west of the area where these two towns are situated at present. Another clue that led the team to Pattanam was the finding, based on remote-sensing data, that Periyar had changed course during the millennia, and the river course was in the Pattanam area 2,000 years ago. “My view is that the Paravur Thodu, which flows near Pattanam, was the old channel of the Periyar,” says Dr. Shajan.
bq. The most important find was the rim and handle of a classic Italian wine amphora, which came from Naples and belonged to the late first century B.C. The amphora, which was used to transport wine and olive oil, had been identified from a number of Roman sites in India, including Arikamedu and Alagankulam in Tamil Nadu. [via “The Hindu”:http://www.hindu.com/lf/2004/03/28/stories/2004032800080200.htm]

Romila Thapar: No Aryan Invasion – II

“Few days back”:https://varnam.org/archives/000346.html Romila Thapar in a letter to the editor to The Hindu said that all along she had maintained that there was no Aryan Invasion. I am currently reading her book Early India: From the origins to the AD 1300” Here are some exceprts

Indo-European and Indo-Aryan are language labels, but in the nineteenth century these were also incorrectly used as racial labels and this confusion persists. The correct usage should be “Indo-European-speaking people” and `Indo-Aryan-Speaking-people’, but the shortened labels, Indo-European and Indo-Aryan are commonly used. Language is a cultural label and should not be confused with race, which although also a social construct, claims that it has to do with biological descent.
Some migrated to Anatolia, others to Iran, and some among the latterm it is thought migrated to India. In the texts composed by them, such as __Avesta__ in Iran and the __Rig-Veda__ in India, they refer to themselves as __airiia__ and __arya__, hence the European term, Aryan.
There are clearly many sources of information on the beginings of Indian history. Archeological evidence is chronologically more precise, but cannot be used to identify any culture as ‘Aryan’ since archeology, in the absence of a script cannot supply information on a language. Unfortunately, the Harappan script remains undeciphered. The theory of an Aryan invasion no longer has credence.

So there you have it, right from the horse’s mouth. There was no Aryan Invasion. Aryan is a language label. Aryans composed Rig Veda.