varnam

Till recently aam junta like us believed that Subhash Bose died in plane crash in Taiwan. But investigations by the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry has revealed that it was a hoax. According to the Taiwanese, there was no plane crash during that period. The question then is, did anyone know about this previously and allow this false story to be propagated? Turns out our "favourite" Prime Minister, J Nehru knew about this and he kept quiet.

The biggest revelation, complete with documentation, is about the guilt of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in suppressing the basic facts about the Taiwan non-crash and subsequent bogus cremation of Netaji. Nehru, who doubled as India's External Affairs Minister, had been personally informed by the Government of Formosa (as Taiwan was then called), albeit through British channels, in August 1956 about the full facts behind Japan's staging of a spectacular "death" for the Indian hero.

Yet, Nehru had allowed the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee to go on with its command performance of an inquiry. He had accepted a report that completely contradicted the Formosan version. The myth about the air crash was allowed to grow under the assumption that a lie told many times becomes the truth. The Khosla Commission, instituted by his daughter Indira Gandhi, also reiterated it. Finally, in January 2005, the JMCI got the truth straight from Taiwan. [Did Nehru mislead nation on Bose?]

Did the first Prime Minister of India treat the Formosa papers as his personal property? There is reason to believe in the affirmative. He did not place it before Shah Nawaz Khan. Fourteen years later, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, did not turn them over to the GD Khosla Commission she had constituted to perpetuate the fiction about the Taihoku crash.

Had the British Government not declassified them in 1996, the Formosa papers would never have reached JMCI. The Vajpayee Government, which turned over hundreds of valuable files to JMCI during its six-year term, would certainly have included the Formosa papers if they were available in the archives of the MEA.[Despite Formosa probe, Nehru closed chapter on Netaji]

They found no ashes. There were parts of a human skull, portion of a jaw, some teeth (no gold filling in any of them) and some bone fragments. If, as the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee and GD Khosla Commission claimed, "Netaji's body" had been "cremated " for an entire night, no medico-legal expert would adduce that such soft bones would survive. Dr Madhusudan Paul of Kolkata Medical College, who went as a deponent, opined that skull fragments, three-fourths of the mandible and teeth would, in the event of cremation, be the first to vanish. Justice Mukherjee saved this crucial piece of insight for his final report.[Those aren't Netaji's ashes in Renkoji]

Related Links: Subhash Bose: Was not in Russia, Subhash Bose: The Investigations - II, Subhash Bose: The investigations, How did Subhash Bose die?

We are strongly against this air drill since we think it will harm our sovereignty and the protest is aimed at booing the joint exercise," said Nandy, a CPI-M strongman.

"We are strongly against military exercises with the US because we believe they will be detrimental to our national security and help the US expand its military presence in South Asia," CPI-M politburo member Anil Biswas said. [Communists protest India-US air force exercise]

Navy ships of India and China Thursday conducted joint exercises off the Kochi coast Thursday in the first bilateral exercise in India. Communication exercises between the two ships, manoeuvre procedures and exercises relating to casualty evacuation were held during the day-long exercises, naval sources in Kochi said. In 2003, Indian naval vessels had taken part in joint exercises in China.[Indian and Chinese naval vessels conduct bilateral exercises]

More Communist hypocrisy here: Man bites dog: DYFI opposes CPI(M), The Communist "U" turn, More Catholic than the Pope

The opponents of globalization in India make you believe that once the economy is opened up, Indians would be overrun by competition and eventually all Indians would be rendered jobless. This fear campaign plays right into the inferiority complex driven mindset of people and gives political parties one more reason to destroy public property.

These kind of arguments against globalization have few issues, the primary one being the assumption that we Indians cannot compete in a global market. The opponents of globalization assume or want to assume that Indians are incompetent, cannot compete against foreigners and need protection all the time. These opponents also do not mention the number the jobs that can get created due to investments from abroad.

Sadly such views are not answered with a historical perspective. India was a globalized country since Harappan times and there was prosperity all around and it was this prosperity that made India the target of so many invasions. There are many Indian technologies which had a global market in ancient times and one of the items we covered at The Palm Leaf, was Wootz Steel. A form of crucible steel formed by adding large quantities of carbon to Iron in South India, Wootz was famous all around the world. Another area where Indians had a monopoly was textiles and in some parts of the world Indian clothes were considered 'sacred' and preserved for their ceremonial, religious and magical power.

Like the gaja or elephant patola, woven using the double ikat technique with elephants and tigers signifying wealth and power. Sourced from Gujarat, the Dutch offered them to South Asian kings in exchange for trading privileges. Or, the 'maa' cloths sent to Indonesia for ceremonial use; radiocarbon testing dates these to the 13th century. There are also fragile hand-blocked fabrics excavated from Fustat, Egyptâ??considered the earliest surviving Indian textiles in the world. Says Dhamija: "People wouldn't trade spices for gold, silver, nor any other commodity, they wanted Indian power cloths to keep away evil spirits, heal, protect and foretell the future." Today too, the Madras check is "considered a gift from a goddess, a measure of wealth and status" in Nigeria. Most exquisite of all are the DuRukha Kashmiri shawls that warmed Empress Josephine and Queen Victoria's shoulders. [Sacred Threads]

In fact, so proverbial was the skill of the Indian dyers that Saint Jerome, in his 4th century Bible translation, likened the lasting value of wisdom to the permanence of the Indian dyed colours. And India retained this weaver-dyer power status until the Manchester mills and annealing dyes of Germany came up. The sheer volume of India's textile trade testifies to this: in 1610, 10 million yards of cloth was exported. By 1684, 45 million yards went to the English East India Company alone, six yards more than needed to clothe every man, woman and child in England. [Sacred Threads]

The new India that was stirred in the 1980s showed that it was ready to be different, once again. Indian enterprise has proved to the world that it is capable of taking on competition when it sets out to do so. In 1985, when your first Summit met, no one had even heard of Infosys, or Wipro, no one had imagined that an Indian would become the Steel Czar of the world, no one had imagined that a Telco car would compete with the Japanese car. We now have a track record of success in some vital areas to feel confident that we can replicate these success stories in other sectors. Why should we then be gripped by diffidence? Why should we still live in fear of globalisation[ More Open, Less Controlled]

Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb by Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution Press (August, 2004), 268 pages

Following the Indian nuclear tests of 1998, Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State and Jaswant Singh, Minister of External Affairs conducted a series of dialogues, meeting fourteen times in seven countries on three continents which according to Talbott were the most intense negotiations between Indian and American officials ever. There was an objection to the word "negotiation" from the Indian side as it implied talking to someone in a position of strength. The reason it was called a dialogue was because the participants were not talking to change each others minds, but to understand what each person had to say. It was an attempt to fix the broken Indo-US relationship as well as to define the visions of economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries.

At the start of the dialogue both camps had diametrically opposite view of the future. The Americans thought that India, by acquiring the bomb had threatened the world order and other countries would cite this as a reason to acquire the bomb. The Indian stand was that it was an issue of sovereignity and security. If five nations in the world could have the bomb, then why not India? The compromise position taken by the Americans was to get India to limit the deployment and development of its nuclear arsenal and the Indian position was disinclined to compromise. The goal of the Indian team was to get India accepted as a fully entitled member of the International community.

When Clinton became the President, one of his goals was to get India to sign the NPT and get the Congress to ratify CTBT. Narasimha Rao, who was the Prime Minister was invited to Washington for discussions and Rao being the smart guy he is definitely wanted good relations with United States for India's prosperity, but did not want to be forced to sign the NPT. But knowing that the Clinton administration was serious about getting CTBT ratified, Rao ordered the nuclear tests to be conducted. But American satellites passing over Pokhran saw cables running through L-shaped tunnels indicating suspicious activity. Frank Wisner, the US Ambassador, showed Rao's principal secretary a picture of the satellite imagery and warned that a test would backfire against India and the tests never happened in Rao's term.

After Rao, Vajpayee became the Prime Minister and the tests were arranged in such secrecy that the Americans got their information from CNN. This set off in motion the talks which is the subject of this book. Finally according to Talbott, Jaswant Singh came close to acheiving his goal in the dialogue than the Americans. Also due to these talks, Prime Minister Vajpayee trusted President Clinton to resolve the Kargil crisis and two years after the bomb, Clinton visited India. This book contains the details of various events and people which made it possible and is a story of the diplomacy and the dialogue that took place.

"Glittering like the glitter of gold, silkened in ochry silks, you are like a lotus-tendril garlanded with divine lotuses as your ensemble, who are you?" Thus Ravanan started addressing Seetha

"Oh, rosy faced one, are you the personified numen of Respect, Renown or Resplendence, or the Felicitous Lakshmi herself, or oh, curvaceous one, are you a nymphal Apsara, or the numen of Benefactress, or a self-motivated woman, or Rati Devi, the consort of Manmatha, the Love God. [3-46-17]

"Your teeth are evenly, smooth and their tips are like jasmine buds, and your whitish broad eyes are spotless, reddish at ends, and pupils are black. [3-46-18]

"Your hips are beamy, thighs burly akin to elephant's trunks, and these two breasts of yours that are ornamented with best jewellery are rotund, rubbing and bumping each other, and they are swinging up and up, their nipples are brawny and jutting out, and they are smoothish like palm-fruits, thus they are covetable for they are beautiful." [Ramayana Book III : Aranya Kanda - The Forest Trek]

The Los Angeles Times has an editorial on the prescence of terrorists in Bangladesh and the support of officials for Islamic extremism.

What makes the situation more precarious is that Bangladesh only just admitted that violent extremists were a problem. Since 2001, Western intelligence agencies have reported the presence in Bangladesh of Taliban remnants along with various other militant groups. It was not until February 2005, however, that Bangladesh addressed the issue at the behest of the international community, banning two terrorist groups and putting some of their ranks in prison.

But acknowledgment of a problem is just the first step in solving it. Bangladesh has yet to deal with one of the more disturbing aspects of its problem: the implicit support by some Bangladeshi officials of various Islamic extremist groups. The increasing involvement of mostly peaceful Islamic parties in the Bangladesh National Party's coalition government is a positive development. But some ministers and officials are widely believed to have sympathy for the militant counterparts of those parties.

Bangladesh is far from becoming a haven for terrorists like Afghanistan was (and, some say, still is). But the development of ties among Bangladeshi politicians, local militants and extremists abroad could endanger an already tense region. Dhaka should break those ties whenever they are exposed.[Dangerous ties]

Related Links: Bangladesh - the new base

• Lifehacker's best time savers
• Apparently you don't have to order checks from your bank. I did not know that.
• Cannot write good blog posts? Try this technique.
• The series on the IT industry in Bangalore by Mercury News staff. Don't forget to watch the multimedia presentation.
• Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian write about Google's Ten Golden Rules. Wish other companies too listened to them.
• Vellithira writes about the rivalry between the Malayalam actors Mohanlal and Mammootty
• Kuttan writes about using school children for marches
• The best Indian podcast - Amit Varshneya's Indian Music.
• The first Malayalam podcast

Time Magazine has an article on the the 39th largest GDP in the world. That credit does not go to a nation, but to the expatriate community which sends money back home. The amount is set to cross $232B and in many countries the money from the expatriates have exceeded that from exports and foreign aid.

The article talks about immigrants from Africa, Indonesia and Mexico who work in Europe, Singapore and United States and send money back through both legal and illegal means of fund transfer. These migrants sometimes live in miserable conditions so that their family can have a decent life.

The life of squirreling away money is grueling: it involves years-long separation from families, miserable living conditions, and the threat of deportation for the many who are working illegally. All the same, remittances play a vital role in recycling money from the rich world to the poor one. "Migration is going up," says Ratha. "We had better not wish it away, because it's very much there to stay." [Follow The Money]

Some of these expatriates, especially the ones in Arab countries, live in miserable living conditions without access to fair trial and the right to practice their religion. The state of Kerala depends a lot on this NRI money obtained due to the globalization of labor and in turn they protest globalization of capital.

The article concludes witht the following observations

Vital though the flow of remittances may be, it cannot, on its own, lift entire nations out of poverty. Those who study the impact of remittances argue that the money allows poor countries to put off basic decisions of economic management, like reforming their tax-collection systems and building decent schools.

Remittances to poor countries can also mask the fact that they don't produce much at home. [Follow The Money]

Another disagreement with the article is regarding the image it portrays of immigrants in various countries are people being opressed. There are educated Indian immigrants in various countries who live in excellent conditions (sometimes even better than natives) with their families, without facing any threats of deportation.

The protocol you use to browse the web, called HTTP is a stateless protocol. This means that once a request is served, the connection between the browser and the webserver is terminated and for a new request to the same server, another connection is established.

For example, when you type http://varnam.org/blog in your browser, an http connection is made from your browser to the server hosting this site. Now after visiting the site, you find that there is an anti-communist article of your liking and click on it. For this request, a new connection is made, even though it is to the same server. What this means is that, there is no memory of the previous connection.

To understand this concept better, let's take the help of P. Musharraf, the man running the country next door. Today he issued a statement that Pakistan should have increased cultural ties with India as it would lead to 'speedy resolution of disputes'.

Currently India is on the receiving end of the explosive Pakistani culture spread by organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and there should be some way for us to reciprocate, by exporting some movies of Uday Chopra, Suneil Shetty and Bobby Deol. This call for increased cultural ties comes at a time when Pakistan has banned the import of Indian movies and Musharraf, the friendly culture-vulture, seems to have forgotten it. If this export cannot happen, how can any 'dispute' be solved?

For the sake of the media, Musharraf produces these sound bites one after the other without any memory of the previous transactions, just like the HTTP protocol.

Leftists in West Bengal on Thursday took up cudgels against the axing of Sourav Ganguly from the Indian team for the third Test against Sri Lanka, with CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta sending a protest letter to BCCI chief Sharad Pawar urging him to protect Indian cricket from politics. [Left flays axing of Sourav Ganguly]

According to Harvard Professor Michael Witzel, scientific evidence against the creationism based Aryan Invasion Theory is a Hindu conspiracy!

A few months back, Science magazine published a paper that disproves the Aryan Invasion Theory. You can read about that paper here.

The research shows that there was only a single dispersal from Africa, via a southern coastal route, across the mouth of the red Sea, through India and onward into Southeast Asia and Australasia. There was subsequently a northern offshoot from the Gulf region, leading ultimately to the settlement of the Near East and Europe, but this only occurred much later.

However, this turns out to be wrong. According to the Harvard Professor who supports theories based on Biblical creationism, this is nothing but a conspiracy hatched by Hindus!

Witzel claimed the changes were motivated by "Hindutva" forces and would "lead without fail to an international educational scandal if they are accepted by the California's State Board of Education."

Hindus had suggested changes in textbooks based on this paper to California's State Board of Education. According to another "scholar" named James Heitzman who was on the "Super Review Team" to assess the facts placed by Hindus, the "undecayed body of Saint Francis Xavier" is actually a miracle! And Islam began when "Muhammad received visions in which the Archangel Gabriel revealed the word of God to him." Heitzman also states that Hinduism is based on speculations.

The activists led by Michael Witzel were also planning to contact BBC and make them take off the section on Hinduism that stated that the Aryan Invasion Theory "was not just wrong, it included unacceptably racist ideas." Apparently, they temporarily succeeded in their efforts to foil the Hindu conspiracy to plant DNA evidence when BBC pulled down the page for two days, but the page was restored after BBC received complaints from people who believed in DNA evidence. [SABHA 4M Report]

Finally we have a fool proof plan for making Kerala the hub of IT development. This plan is so perfect that once implemented, investors will be running to the state with the same enthusiasm with which Karunakaran is running towards the Communists.

Previously, some management types working for investors did some research on places to invest in India and came up with Kochi, Kerala. The person had used factors like educated workforce, access to airport, roads etc and Kochi was the perfect match like the hammer to the sickle or Prakash to a Karat.

A bunch of VC's came with bag loads of money, made the decision to setup shop, and while trying to enjoy the trip were are stuck in a houseboat in middle on a lake in Kumarakom due to an instant hartal called by the Communists, protesting the lack of hartal for a month. The oarsman who was a Communist had deserted the boat.

After living on fresh fish for two days, the realization stuck them that they need to add more parameters into their Excel spreadsheet while choosing places to invest. Since then Kochi was blacklisted among all VCs and they instructed their travel departments never to book a ticket to God's own country, even if an actual God ordered them. So no one invests in Kerala anymore.

If you have been reading news, you know that politicians have changed the name of Bangalore to its ancient name Bengaluru to more accurately reflect the 16th century infrastructure there. As a result, the name Bangalore is up for grabs.

Our plan consists of instantly renaming Kochi to Bangalore. Now when a VC wants to invest in Bangalore and books a ticket guess where he is going to land? I mean who calls his travel agent and says, book a ticket to Bengaluru? Before you know investors will be landing in the Kerala and creating startups. IBM, Microsoft and Google will be having offices in coconut groves and employees will be getting free Ayurvedic massages as perks.

By the time the Comrades return back from their conclave in Kolkatta, the palce would have changed like anything. Internet cafes would have changed to dotcoms. Old dilapidated shops which used to sell bananas, cigarettes and Ma magazines would be having a BPO operation on the side. DYFI members would be speaking Malayalam with an American accent and SFI activists would be enthusiastically discussing BitComet's non-honoring of BitTorrent private flag.

Looking at this, the Comrades would be wondering if a coconut fell on their heads. They would take out their Nokia phones and dial each other to protest this invasion of globalization. Wouldn't that be a sight to see.

At the end of 2005 here is a look at the topics that were covered in varnam and some of the important posts, in blogmela style.

India: We discussed the story of how Natwar Singh was found with his hands covered with oil and lamented on the demise of the argumentative Indian. The ban on showing cigarettes in movies irritated us

There was some talk about the hypocrisy of the Communists in these posts: Man bites dog: DYFI opposes CPI(M), Your's are small too, Not for the family, The Communist "U" turn, More Catholic than the Pope

How could we miss Praful Bidwai?. We analyzed some of his thoughts in Praful Bidwai: New Theorems and Praful Bidwai: In defence of Maoists

We also covered the mystery behind the death of Subash Bose in the following posts. Subhash Bose: Was not in Russia, Subhash Bose: The Investigations - II, Subhash Bose: The investigations, How did Subhash Bose die ?

Foreign Affairs: We talked about the Pakistani apologists and wondered about the stability of China. It's been only few years and people seem to have forgotten the Taliban.

What does Musharraf want from the peace process?. He might get it since we are so flexible. We also find out how Chachaji messed up Nepal

Economy & Globalization: A Time Magazine article talked about the expatriate economy and we had some comments on how it applied to Kerala. India was a globalized country from historic times and so Why Fear Globalization?. Also if America was in control of globalization as portrayed, then why are American car manufacturers in trouble?

History: An Indus valley skeleton was discovered near Delhi. Cheraman Perumal's trip to Mecca seems to be a myth. We also talk about the various manuscripts that were translated into other languages. We dispel another myth that Indian historical writing started with the arrival of Muslims.

We also found some uncanny similarities among various mythologies

Book and Movie Reviews: Engaging India, The Motorcycle Diaries, Blink, Lankaparvam (Malayalam), Massacre at the Palace, Maximum City, A Short History of Nearly Everything, State of Fear

We participated in the Book Tag meme and listed few of our favourite books.

Photos: Sunset, Thalikkulam Beach, Kerala, Temple Pond, Harippad, Kerala, Water Lily, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Butchart Gardens, Victoria, Canada

Humor: Kerala does not have many industries thanks to many world class factors. But now there is a way to make it the hub of development. For that you need to read HOWTO: Develop Kerala. We also thanked Microsoft for not entering the desktop widget race.

What is similar between Musharraf and HTTP?

Announcements: The history section of this blog was spun off into a separate blog called The Palm Leaf. It is expected to go IPO in 2007.