Time for a reboot?

It is said that ancient Indians had certain ethics in war. Fighting can only be done between dawn and dusk. So, a pre-dawn surprise attack is technically wrong in their book. Their code of conduct also dictates that a warrior of a certain stature could only engage in combat with someone of the enemy of a similar calibre. That is a foot soldier duels with another foot soldier, a warrior on the elephant battalion with another one on an elephant and so on. The commander does not watch the battle on the sidelines but gets his hands dirty by being in the thick of things. By convention, come dusk, both warring factions would lay down their arms and continue in natural light the following sunrise.

The Kurukshetra War (circa 3000 BCE, dates debated) is said to have ended all the codes of war. When cousins and uncles go for each other's carotids, niceties are expectedly put aside. As the cyclical nature of time was pushing to Kaliyuga, anarchy is what one just expects. With battles sometimes going beyond the stipulated times and deceit taking charge, the gentlemanly behaviours of wars are cast aside. Drona, the archery teacher of both Pandavas and Kauravas, was fighting on the side of the Kauravas. He and his son, Ashwatthama, were charging gallantly and needed to be neutralised. A white lie was told to Drona that Ashwatthama had been killed, to shake Drona's concentration. In actual fact, an elephant christened 'Aswatthama' was purposely killed. This type of deceitful 'below the belt' manoeuvres became acceptable.  

Fast forward to the 21st century, nothing is sacrosanct anymore. There is no gentlemanly conduct in war. It is a free-for-all, no-holds-barred kind of affair. Women are taken as spoils. Children are used as human shields, to be sacrificial lambs for sympathy and to paint a bad picture of the opponents. Media is used and abused to algorithmically influence people's minds about a particular perceived agenda. Everybody seems to have a truth. At which point of history one wants to take as the beginning of the truth is the bone of contention no one can agree. 

Is there any way to curb all these, or is it merely an inevitable end to complete the cyclical of time to restart and reboot civilisation as we know, as it had happened many times before, again and again, and yet again!

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Crash course!

The Incredible History of India's Geography

Author: Sanjeev Sanyal

2023 seems to be the year when India showcases to the world that it has arrived. With the euphoria of the moon landing still lingering on every Indian psyche, the G20 summit put India and its leaders on a pedestal. Seeing Modi walking bare feet, shoulder to shoulder with foreign leaders reminds Indians that they have come a long way since they were looted of their prized collection and left out in the cold as a basket case struggling as once the world's most impoverished countries. 

It is interesting to note that throughout the history of the world, India (and China) have not been considered a poor nation. In fact, before the Industrial Revolution and the Great Game, these countries combined provided more than two-thirds of the world's GDP. The exploration and Western understanding of world geography changed the history of the East and the world at large. 

Sanjeev Sanyal, an economist, a Rhodes scholarship, and an economic advisor to PM Modi, is also a prolific writer and speaker on India's untold ancient history. He is one of the growing band of people who decry that the history of India that is told and taught to its people and the world is Eurocentric and Moghul-centric.

In this book, Sanyal takes a peek into the geography of India and sees how it influenced its history over the years. The beginning of time started with the supercontinent of Rodinia 1 billion years ago. About 250 million later, in the pre-Cambrian period, the supercontinent began to drift apart. (The pre-Cambrian era had single-cell organisms; the Cambrian explosion had large numbers of complex organisms.) Another 250 million years later, the continents reassembled to form Pangea. Then Pangea split into a northern continent, Laurasia, and Gondwana, the southern continent. Laurasia split further to include North America, Europe and Asia, and Gondwana to Africa, South America, Antarctica and India. India separated from Africa and collided with the European plate. The collision is still in progress, and the Himalayas are still seismically unstable. River Saraswati went on under this tectonic shift.

The book discusses the migration of people and animals out of Africa until the world geography came to be as it is. After that, things become fuzzy. Where did all the milestones in human civilisation happen? Where did farming start? Was it in regions around Persia and spread outwardly, or did they begin independently elsewhere, like in the Indic part?

Genetic studies now support an 'out of India' theory rather than the 'Aryan Invasion Theory', which gave the European powers to legitimately rule over and civilised people in India.

Archaeologists and historians have differing views on India's early history. Vedic traditions support the possible existence of a glorious river named Saraswati upon which the sophisticated cities of the Harappan Civilisation developed. Its drying up altered the course of history. People started migrating out of Harappan. Are Harappans the same as the Vedic people? If horseback riding invaded Harappan, why is there no evidence of destruction as explained by the Aryan Invasion Theory? It is unbelievable that horsemen could be civilised, knowledge-yielding planters and town planners.

Geography and the forces of nature played an important role in Indian history. A vast coastline drew maritime visitors and sent explorers overseas. A ragged terrain over the North was the avenue of a busy highway with traffic jams of convoys of bullock carts. The tributaries of the great rivers for the Himalayas also provided two major 'highways' of trade - the North-South and the East-West axes. 

The book further discusses the various invasions via land from the North by Greeks and Islamic invaders. As the land routes were closely controlled, the. Europeans needed an alternate way of trade. India was also a place with internal wars by local chieftains in their zest to build Empires, Maurya, Gupta, Cholas, Pallavas, Pandyas, Cheras, and others. 

Bharat is supposed to have its name from the victor of the 'Battle of Ten Kings', the Bharata tribe, as mentioned in Rigveda. The wheel of 'Chakravartin' (Universal Monarch) became the imperial symbol and survived through the Maurya dynasty, Buddhism and finally made it to the Indian flag.

The area around Punjab and Afghanistan
were ardent Shakti worshippers

India is proud to say it is the only country in the world where lions and tigers co-exist.

The Romans and India had a robust business exchange in the first Century CE. Unfortunately, it was lopsided, favouring the Indians so much that Rome had cut down imports of luxury items from India. Jews came to trade in India during King Solomon's era, but Jewish refugees trickled in after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE to settle in Kerala. St Thomas, the apostle, landed there to convert people who refer to themselves as Syrian Christians.

Indians have a long maritime history, trading with the Middle East, Greeks, Romans, to South East Asia and all the way to China. Chinese Buddhist scholars frequented India to delve into Buddhism. Details of their journeys are nicely documented.

   

The Arabs were trading even before Islam. The Mohamadans, the Arabs, who went on a conquering spree after the Prophet's demise, reached Sindh as invaders in the 8th Century. They were warded off. The Turks attacked Aghanistan, then a Hindu region, and captured Ghazni. Mahmud of Ghazni kept repeatedly attacking Hindu temples for their enormous wealth. Slowly, these Islamic invaders reached Delhi and started making their mark in Indian history. Others followed -Thuglaq and Moghuls.

Indian seafaring vessel

The Chinese seamen were going places in the seas with their mammoth vessels. It all came to a halt in the 15th Century. Meanwhile, the Portuguese and other Europeans were making baby steps in finding a sea route to the East, bypassing the Muslim-controlled land routes. 

The animosity between the Europeans and Muslims, leftovers of the Crusade Wars, continued on the Eastern shores of Africa and the Western coasts of India when Portuguese ships circumvented Africa to reach there. Arab traders, being long there and naturally having developed a working relationship with the local rulers, showed their displeasure. Hostility was reciprocated, and the Portuguese slowly gained ground in India with their superior weapons. Evangelists and later other European nations came to be drawn in, like bees drawn to pollen. 

The pilfering and looting progressed at an industrial scale afterwards. The rest of the story we know. India and China contributed two-thirds of the world's GDP when the British sauntered in. 200 years later, when they left, India was left with a begging bowl as one the poorest nations in the world, together with other fellow colonies. Two Industrial Revolutions left whilst the Indians were busy defending their own land and amongst each other.

The local looming industry started losing to Spinning Jenny, but the railways came to India, and India had to foot the bill. Of course, it was a shot in the arm for British engineers and industrialists.

At the beginning of all these shenanigans, the Europeans who thought the world was flat soon managed to draw a composite picture of a round earth on a flat map. 

The colonial masters left in 1947, but not after slicing the country into two. There were still pockets of the country that still needed to be in the Union of India. The princely states had to be arm-twisted to choose India or Pakistan. The Portuguese had to be chased off from Goa. The French needed to be evacuated from Pondicherry. Pakistan continued starting skirmishes in Kashmir, the problems of which continue till date. The two parts of Pakistan began clashing in 1971 and parted ways.

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A lotus by any other name...

There I was, minding myself performing my daytime duties, when someone approached me.

"Excuse me, where can I meet Mr Rajeev?" 

I scratched my head thinking, "Rajeev, Rajeev…?" 

"Sorry buddy, can't help you there. Don't know any Rajeev." 

Then it hit me. Of course, Majid. Before Majid was Majid, in another life, he was known as Rajeev. 

"Oh yes. I remember now. Ranjeev is on the 1st floor. He is now Majid." I told him. 

Then I left the place thinking… 

A name is for the convenience of others to pick us out of the 8 million people on Earth. If Majid is comfortable with his new name, so be it. We should respect it. It, in no way, changes who Rajeev or, for that matter, Majid is. In the imagery of Avicenna's flying man, he is who he is. 

A new name does not exclude the follies of the previous past, just as Pakistan came to discover. Wanting to carve itself out of the perceived vagaries of its motherland, it realised it could not disentangle itself from the shared history with ex, no matter how much it detects. 

During the Great Game era, Imperialists sliced much of Africa for personal consumption. Imagine, Cecil Rhodes even named a vast piece of land after himself, which years later became a country. Of course, descendants of the initial inhabitants of Rhodesia renamed their country Zimbabwe, after the stone enclosure they used to live, after Independence. After years of being inadvertently referenced to the poultry industry and the colloquial term of a moron, Turkey applied to have its name, or its spelling, altered. Türkiye, as it was written in its Latin script, has become the official name. As we know, Türkiye, in its zest to modernise after the fall of the sick man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, chose a Latin script over Arabic. That explains the umlaut over its 'u'. 

Konark Sun Temple

Nobody chose to raise the alarm when Czhechia (Czech Republic,1993), Myanmar (Burma, nee Brahmadesh, 1989), Eswatini (Swaziland, 2018) and even Netherlands (Holland, 2020) changed their names. 

The World suddenly looked up when a dinner invitation card to G20 delegates read letterheaded from the President of Bharat, not India as commonly known. To the rest of the World, the name Bharat reminds them of the nationalistic RSS's desire to reinstate India to its ancient name, as mentioned in the old scriptures. To the nationalists, this exercise of renaming old names is a branding exercise to spur its citizens' sense of patriotism. The leftists, who missed the nostalgic days of Fabian Society card-carrying Pandit Nehru, decry the majority's dominance over the minority and the oppressed. In their minds, this move reaffirms their belief that the ruling party is ultra-nationalist, Islamophobic and Hindutva in ideology in wanting to create a Hindu Rajthra. 

A bit of context here. In Indonesian and Malay languages, the word for west is Barat. Since Bharat was a civilisational icon in those days and was situated west of the Malay archipelago, the term 'Barat' was assumed west. Article 1 of the Indian Constitution starts with 'India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states.' It denotes that both names are interchangeable. A name is for others to use. What others decide to call us sticks with us. Back in the day, the people on the West of the Sindhu River, i.e. Persians, had a problem with the letter 'S'. It simply did not exist in their language. They would refer to the people on the other side as Hindus. This is further exemplified by how they address their God, Ahura Mazda. The people in Bharat also have Asura and Deva. Both their belief systems were not much different - fire temples in Zoroastrianism and Agni pooja in Hinduism. Asura became Ahura. 

A rose, by any other name, smells as fragrant. A lotus, irrelevant to where it grows, appears as pristine. India, or Bharat, will stay as chaotic, colourful, and opinionated as ever, with much culture and wisdom to impart to the World. With its newfound zest, it is going places, including the Moon and the Sun. The name change is merely a branding exercise to remind the World that it catching up after missing the bus that brought the World's first two Industrial Revolutions involving steam and coal, respectively.

P/S. Thanks to Aman for instigating me to write up this piece.

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Out of India it is, not Aryan Migration theory!

The Saraswati Civilisation. (2019)

(A Paradigm Shift in Ancient Indian History)
Author: Maj General Dr GD Bakshi

In secondary school history class, we were taught to believe that civilisation developed circa 1500 BCE around the Indus River. Then came mighty learned men from the Steppe Land on horsebacks to bring knowledge and wisdom to this region. The original inhabitants of this region ran helter-skelter, crossing the Vindhya Hills to root themselves in the Southern part of the subcontinent. We vaguely remember being told about the Aryan Invasion Theory and the clear demarcation between the Northern part of India and the South.

.

Later in life, we were exposed to Mahabharata, Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita. What was taught as mythological tales, we later found out, was actually backed with scientific facts. For starters, the birth dates of specific icons could be fact-checked as their birthdates were described in relation to astronomical positions. These scriptures also illustrate a lush culture along the banks of a massive river with a width of up to 6-8km with torrents of glacier water, traversing 4,600km from the Himalayas. The scientific calculations of this event place it somewhere 5,000 to 6,000 years before the present, i.e. ~3000 BCE. It is also said to bear water from Yamuna and Sutlej.

Bunkum, say the Western historians and leftist-minded members of the academia. Even modern-day Indian historians, among which Romila Thapar is infamous, concur with the theory that Aryan Invasion is true and the Sarasvati River did not exist.

Since the 1970s, with the aid of satellite images, traces the presence of a large basin reminiscent of a dried-up river. We know Carbon C14 dating on archaeological finds is not easy. However, local archaeologists are confident that Indus-Saraswati could be as old as 9,500 years before the present. If that is true, the Indus-Saraswati must be the cradle of civilisation, preceding the Tigris-Euphrates one.

The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro
Indus Valley Civilisation
?2300-1750 BCE.

Archaeological excavation reveals they find spoils away from Indus, nearer to Saraswati River's 'mythical' placement. Perhaps, the descriptions of Rig Veda, about the glory of Saraswati and the glorious kingdom surrounding Saraswati, actually denote Harappa civilisation. Is it not amazing that cultural traditions, as seen in statues from Mohinjo-Daro and Harappa, are still practised in the sub-continent even today? 

Geologists suggest massive technotic plate movements that made the Yamuna and Salrej rivers change course between 4,600 and 2,700 years ago. Only during monsoons the Sarswati used to drain. Later, Saraswati water went underground, leaving pockets of pools. The Ganges became more prominent as Yamuna and Sutlej brought in a glacial stream of water. So, the Saraswathi described in Rig Veda corresponds to the lifeline of the scriptures.

If the Aryans did indeed move into Indus/Sarasvathi Valley, we would have been moving into a desiccated plain where the rivers had run dry by 1500 BCE. If the Aryans brought in culture, archaeological dating of Mohinjo-Daro and Harappa buildings would pre-date this timeline.

Now, who are these Aryans? Are they alien immigrants or indigenous to the area? Genetic tracking via maternal and paternal DNA to differentiate Aryans and Dravidians and to prove migration into India does not seem convincing. Its methodology is also allegedly flawed. Its sample failed to include subjects from essential groups. There is proof Aryans were local people who had evolved all through the Paleolithic (Stone Age) through to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic (Bronze) stages of civilisation. They had become farmers and domesticated plants and animals.

In fact, many now believe that, just like there was an 'Out of Africa' theory to explain the migration of primitive homosapiens, there is a convincing case for an 'Out of India' deduction to expanding human civilisation. There is ample proof that eco-catastrophe made them out of Indus/Saraswati.

It looks like the age-old Aryan Invasion Theory propagated by Max Müller, and Mortimer Wheeler will get the boot. There is evidence of genocide to convince us that Aryans butchered cultured Dravidians and drove them southwardly. The theory that came out later, Indo-Aryan Migration, says that Aryans supposedly came in droves to a desert land.

The colonial masters probably introduced the Aryan Invasion Theory to convince their subjects that they had indeed been colonised for aeons. In a way, it was their justification to rule over India and 'civilise' them. The British left long ago, but the push to maintain the status quo is ever so strong. Detractors have, in their sleeves, many deceptive ways to prove their point of Europe and Central Asia being the cradle of civilisation, which forms the basis of Judeo-Christian ideology, not Hinduism, not India. It is peculiar that features seen in the dancing girl of Mahinjo-Daro, like the multiple bangle adornment and the vermillion marking at the parting of the hair characteristic of married women in the subcontinent, are still present today.

It drives home the point that Indian or Hindu culture, as that was how the way of life practised in this part of the world was referred to, still stand tall despite all the external forces and invaders that permeated and tried to dominate over theirs.

[P.S. The analysis of DNA samples extracted from the skeleton of a woman buried in Rakhigarhi, Haryana, four to five millennia ago rejected the theory of Steppe pastoral or ancient Iranian farmers as a source of ancestry to the Harappan population. It demolished the hypothesis about mass human migration during Harappan time from outside south Asian genes. The sample had traces of genes of Iranian lineage. Since the pieces were as old as 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, it is way before Harappan.]

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Because of bad leftists' publicity?

The RSS: Roadmaps 21st Century
Sunil Ambekar

Imagine a time 20 years ago. We were all fed with a single narrative. The government-controlled media or media barons churned out cable news will tell us 'the truth'. There was no counter-narrative to argue this. The world accepted this one version. The fringe publishment that aired an alternative perspective of the event is labelled a rabble-rouser and scorned. Now with the availability of all the information at our disposal, we are still unsure of many things. For every piece of news churned, there is an immediate contradictory explanation just to shoot it down at its inception, making us none the wiser.

I have always been given the impression that RSS is terrible news. My brother-in-law, who spent much of his formative years in India, and his wife, an Indian citizen who gave up her citizenship for her newfound love and land, Malaysia, have no qualms that RSS is synonymous with bigotry and fanaticism. Any piece of news from RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; National Volunteer Organisation) is immediately labelled propaganda and untrue. Yet another family member who has found employment in Malaysia has nothing nice to say about RSS. To him, the RSS management cherry-picked delinquents and academically weak students to do their dirty job in the name of religion.

My schoolmate, who probably had his long-lost ancestors coming from India, believes Muslims are selectively persecuted in India. He himself is a Muslim. He is convinced that RSS in India is what Mossad is to Israel, just like the symbiotic relationship between Sein Fenn and the IRA. He is cocksure that RSS is the militant wing of the BJP (like Al-Aqsa martyr Brigades and Fatah). 

But then alternative news tells me otherwise. In the aftermath of any calamity, volunteers of RSS are the first to be at the scene giving moral and humanitarian support. They are so well organised and are said to provide service without much fanfare. Being an NRI, I was naturally conflicted between what I read and what I had heard.

Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar

I thought this book gives a complete account of RSS' genesis, its earlier objectives, and how it evolved in a post-independent India. India was a restless country from the turn of the 19th century to the 20th. The rebel yell was heard from all four corners of Bharat. Every third person that one saw was a freedom fighter. Events like the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 further ignited the fire for self-rule.

Against this background, with the shouts of 'Vande Matram' and Lokmanya Tilak's 1906 visit to Nagpur, Maharashtra, a young Keshav Baliram Hedgewar's national interest was piqued. Thilak was labelled 'the Father of Political Unrest'. He made a political life of agitating the British for self-rule. Nagpur, at that time, was a fertile ground for nationalistic activities steeped deep into the Hindu way of life. Keshav went on to read medicine in Calcutta in 1910. Dr Keshav Hedgewar returned to Nagpur in 1915 with a medical degree and a chest full of Indian nationalism after interacting with Bengali revolutionaries. 

RSS flag

His idea of disciplining the young mind was through physical activity, traditional martial arts and wrestling. Slowly his group started participating in satyagraha movements and campaigning against social ills. Somewhere around the 1920s, the British managed to introduce the idea of the 'Muslim-Hindu unity' concept. Gandhi, with his Congress Party, parted ways with Hedgewar over Gandhi's support of the Khalifat movement. Some within the Congress Party also opposed Hedgewar's so-called militant-natured activities. RSS was formed in 1925. Its objective at inception was to influence the mind and soul of the Nation to gain independence. Not wanting to fall into the British divide-and-rule trap, the RSS decided to dig deep into the Nation's civilisation to inculcate value readily present into the subcontinent before the invaders wrecked our knowledge and infused theirs. 

After independence, the RSS continues their service to the needy. It promotes the Hindu way of life, fights for social and caste justice, and tries to improve modern familial relationships. Contrary to what they are accused of, RSS is not a misogynistic organisation. They have many prominent female leaders. Even though detractors hurl abuses of religious bigotry, the RSS have many Christian, Muslim and Farsi members and leaders in their fold. 

They must be doing something right for being around for almost a century. The RSS must be relevant for drawing so many non-Hindu members into their fold. Something to ponder.

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