Danger of swift justice!

We Want Justice!

A thing or two came up on my radar recently. Firstly, yet again, the unending saga of 1MDB took another court postponement. The deposed Malaysian PM has not finished disposing of his cases. This time, he has excruciating knee pain that needs hospitalisation. When told to be wheeled into the courtroom, the defence lawyers quipped that since he would be on opioid painkillers, he would not be in the correct frame of mind to follow the proceeding. They said their client must be seen to be given a fair trial. So be it, said the judges. 

Across the Straits of Malacca and Bay of Bengal, over in Kalkota, demonstrators are screaming that new legislation must be passed to expedite trials on rapists and impose the death penalty on them. The West Bengal Legislative Assembly even stipulated that investigations into sexual assault and rape must be concluded in 21 days.

Are we overdoing it in the haste to right the wrong, punish the wrongdoers, and set an example to potential offenders? 

The story of Kannagi, which was written by Illango in Silapathikaram in the Sangam epoch, probably in the 2nd century CE, comes to mind. Even though it is generally accepted as a literary work, some insist the likes of Kannagi walked as flesh and blood in the lands of Madurai. There is evidence that a big fire actually engulfed Madurai around that time. There is even a temple commemorating Kanagi as a symbol of chastity. To this day, people in Northern Sri Lanka still have a commemorative celebration on a particular day of her ascension to the heavens. Kannagi is said to have arrived in Sri Lanka after leaving Madurai and stopping at Kerala.

What does Kannagi's story have to do with dispensing justice? Everything!

Kannagi, a wealthy merchant's daughter, married Kovalan, a trader. During his business trips, Kovalan met a dancer, Madhavi. Kovalan started an affair with Madhavi, spending way too much time and money on her. When he realised his coffers were dry, Kovalan finally came to his senses and returned to his faithful wife. 

Kannagi and Kovalan decide to start all over again. They left their hometown, Perompahar, to settle in Madurai. For money, Kovalan left to sell Kannagi's anklet. 

Coincidentally, the news was that the Queen had lost her anklet. The royal goldsmith, who had stolen the anklet, accused Kovalan of being the thief. Kovalan was apprehended, given a half-hearted trial, and beheaded for being caught red-handed with the anklet.

Chera-Chola-Pandya kingdoms
300BCE - 300 CE

Kannagi charged into the royal court after hearing what had befallen her husband. She demanded justice from the King who had erred. She threw in her other anklet, similar to the confiscated one. It had rubies implanted into it, unlike the Queen's, which had pearls. Pandya King Nedilcharan had a heart attack and died on the spot. The Queen followed suit. The raged Kannagi started burning the curtains, and fires spread rapidly. She is said to have sliced off her breast in a fit of rage and fled the town. Fable has it that Meenachi, the city's guardian Goddess, had to come down to pacify her.

The event highlighted the trouble with hasty trials without proper detailed investigations and adequate representations. One innocent life lost is one life too many.

No matter how enraged society is, due process of the law must continue. Striking the iron when it is hot may burn one's fingers.

Silapathigaram is one of the five great epics said to have come from South India in the Sangam era, the golden era of Tamil literature. The epics of the Sangam period, which lasted between 300 BCE and 300 CE, are Seevaka-Kintamani, Silappathigaram, Manimegalai, Kundalakesi and Valayapathi. Tolkappiam is said to be the oldest scripture available from this era. In this period, different parts of this region were ruled by three major Empires, Chera, Chola and Pandya, with Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism with various popularity over time. Some staunch Tamil literary figures insist that scriptures of the Sangam period are of higher literary value than even epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. It is less cluttered and gives a vivid description of life and culture in ancient Tamil lands without involving too many characters. Works emanating from this era gave valuable South religious, sociopolitical and economic conditions. They were written in poetry and sometimes prose form in Tamil script.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Without mercy, man is like a beast

Sansho the Bailiff (山椒大夫, Japanese; 1954)
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

At the outset, we are told the story occurred in "an era when mankind had not yet awakened as human beings." I pictured that time can any time in Man's history. We just have yet to awaken. We can scream all we want that all Men are created equal in the image of God and whatnot, but the fact is that people always try to dominate each other. Humans always try to be one up against their neighbour and, if possible, push him down an imaginary hierarchy.

Even before the mass transatlantic migration of slaves from Africa to the New World, slavery was already very much alive in every civilisation. There was a penchant for white slaves as brown people (read Arabic) prospered. The Vikings and Barbers were famous for the trade of white slaves. Some were captured crew members of small ship-jacked vessels. Others were bundled up when pirates landed on shores to snap up unassuming bystanders. There are stories of pirates picking men off English coasts at late as the 16th century.

Malik Ambar

Even within communities, having slaves became a norm as society started having more disposable income. The darker-skinned or the economically disadvanced always get trapped in slavery. As spoils of war, the conquered are enslaved. One can safely say all civilisations had some kind of slave community. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Muslim Empire, the Indians and the European colonial masters all had them. Perhaps, only the Harrapan society escape such stereotyping. Excavation of Harrapan remains revealed no structures denying hierarchical arrangements in their architecture. Cyrus the Great is said to be the first leader to have given his slaves and workers wages.

History tells of an Ethiopian slave, Malik Ambar, who was sold off as a slave after his territory was conquered by enemy factions and landed in Jeddah. He converted to Islam and reached the Deccan plains as a slave soldier/mercenary. He got embroiled in local politics,  was a threat to the Mughal Empire and eventually became the Ahmadnagar Sultanate's ruler. His descendants integrated into the complex Indian diaspora. 

Domestic helper abuse in Malaysia.

As the world progressed, people looked at slavery as barbaric and felt they needed change. Change they made, only in cosmesis. Slavery took different names; bonded labour, indentured servants, foreign maids, unskilled workers, etcetera.

In modern times, most religions agree that enslaving someone is not permitted. Perhaps, only the leaders of the Religion of Peace have not unequivocally condemned slavery. In their faith, the non-believers are of the same standing as the slaves. They are serfs meant to serve the believers. Through conversion, they attain equal status with the rest.

The Climatic 'Si Tanggang' scene!

Even in this age and time, we read reports of employers keeping their domestic helpers under the chain and lock for various offences, no different from the transatlantic slave trade and or slave markets in the Ottoman Empire. That begs the question of whether we are or will we ever be 'awakened'?

This is another classic from Japanese cinema. Set in 11th-century medieval Japan, an aristocrat is disposed of by pirates. His wife and children scurry to safety after the aristocrat is exiled. The wife is separated from her two kids. The wife is sold off into prostitution, and the children are enslaved. The melancholic film tells how the son eventually meets his mother.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Overstretched assumption?

Ancient Apocalypse (2022)

Netflix, Documentary series

Graham Hancock is an old hand at this. A veteran journalist prolific at this topic, he has earned himself the dubious reputation of being a pseudo-historian and pseudo-archaeologist. Many of his previous books have dabbled with the same issue. His premise is this: Even before mainstream history dated humans to be hunter-gatherers around the end of the Ice Age 11,600 years ago, Hancock's research posits that a far more advanced civilisation existed during this wave of hunter-gatherers. 

The ruins he so skilfully shows in this series of documentaries depict the advanced skill of architectural marvel and skill that those people exhibited. 

If Erich von Däniken had earlier suggested an ancient alien race to have assisted human civilisation, here Hancock does not invoke ancient intelligence. He instead suggests that we had already developed all these advanced levels of knowledge in building and astronomy but lost most of it to the rise in sea levels due to the melting of glaciers at the end of the Ice Age. Many land bridges disappeared. Sunda, which engulfed all of Indonesia from Borneo to the Malayan peninsula, was separated by rising seas. He explores ruins in Gunung Padang to reveal a possible civilisation lost to a cataclysm. 

Like that, many ancient mammoth structures around Malta went underwater. So did building around Central America. Then there is Öbekil Tepe, ruins in Turkey dated to be 12,000 years old, before the end of the Ice Age.

Graham Hancock

Exploring the folk tales that have emanated around the foregoing areas reveals one thing that is common: People in that area were visited by somebody in a serpentine-looking boat to teach the locals about farming, building, science, and technology. 

Hancock explains the purpose of building many of these mammoth structures. Astrological references are of paramount importance in the layout of these buildings. There may even be animal drawings which could refer to constellations. Could our ancients be so advanced as the developers of the fabled Atlantis?

Many of the proposals here are considered too preposterous by mainstream historians. His association with Joe Rogan and other conspiracy theorists only lends little credence to his scholarship. 

Generally, archaeologists and historians admit loopholes in their understanding and explanations of the complex ancient buildings. But to attribute all these to an advanced intelligence before the end of the Ice Age is an overstretch. 

The archaeological fraternity does not see any scientific correlation to support Hancock's theory. 

Whatever is said and done, this documentary is made with brilliant cinematography using drones and a production team spanning continents. Many local historians and archaeologists were interviewed to drive home his point of view. The good thing about this show is that it makes its viewers take a step back and ponder whether we know everything about our history and world. 

Now, the exciting thing is that Hancock is saying that the whole world was civilised to a single advanced civilisation. It seems humans did not have the intelligence to discover things for themselves. The human race seems amnesiac about its past. There needs to be more depth in our knowledge about our world. What happened during Younger Dryas, the later part of the Ice Age, before Earth became warmer?

Knowing that bringing up India's past is like opening a Pandora's Box, he conveniently avoided mentioning India in his discussion. He may be suggesting that the Mesopotamians and the fire-worshipping Zoroastrians were the first civilisation in the world. 

Some in the media call for this series to be axed and view it as dangerous for public viewing. They insist that the show is a freak show that reinforces the rhetorics of conspiracy theorists. They call for research not to be funded by public funding.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.