varnam

A Neolithic stone shaped like a hand held axe, dating to between 2000 BC - 1500 BC has been found near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu. What makes this find more interesting is the fact that this stone has Indus Valley signs on it. This is one great find since this brings out evidence that the Indus script had reached Tamil Nadu around the same time the Indus civilization was in its glory.

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the first sign on the celt depicted a skeletal body with ribs. The figure is seated on his haunches, body bent and contracted, with lower limbs folded and knees drawn up. The second sign showed a jar. Hundreds of this pair have been found on seals and sealings at Harappa. Mr Mahadevan read the first sign as "muruku" and the second sign as "an." In other words, it is "Murukan." The earliest references in Old Tamil poetry portrayed him as a "wrathful killer," indicating his prowess as a war god and hunter. The third sign looked like a trident and the fourth like a crescent with a loop in the middle.[Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu via email from Anand Krishnamoorthi]

He said: "`Muruku' and 'an' are shown hundreds of times in the Indus script found at Harappa. This is the importance of the find at Sembiyan-Kandiyur. Not only do the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Harappans share the same script but the same language." In Tamil Nadu, the muruku symbol was first identified from a pottery graffiti at Sanur, near Tindivanam. B.B. Lal, former Director-General of ASI, correctly identified this symbol with sign 47 of the Indus script. In recent years, the muruku symbol turned up among the pottery graffiti found at Mangudi, near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, and at Muciri, Kerala. But this was the first time that a complete, classical Indus script had been found on a polished Neolithic stone celt, Mr. Mahadevan pointed out.[ Significance of Mayiladuthurai find]

Two years back when people of Mumbai suffered losses due to bandhs organized by Shiv Sena and BJP, they had a bunch of petitions asking the parties to pay for the losses. Don't know what happened to that. Now in Kerala, the High Court has asked CPI(M), and DYFI to pay some money to a textile shop owner. His shop suffered damages in a strike called by these parties for miscellaneous reasons such as protesting againt the sun rising in the east.

In view of the High Court's earlier judgement that political parties and organisations who call for strike (hartal) and bandhs and who enforce such calls are liable to pay compensation for the loss suffered by them, "CPI(M) and DYFI 'vicariously' are liable to pay compensation to the petitioners," the court held.

Though both CPI(M) and DYFI denied having made a call for hartal, the bench, however, said there was no reason to disbelieve newspaper reports in this regard[HC directs CPI(M), DYFI to pay compensation ]

See Also: Pay as you go Bandhs

The Indus Valley civilization flourised between the time period of 3300 - 1700 BCE. Around 1900 BCE, people started leaving and the cities started to decline. There are many reasons attributed for this decline, and the theories include tectonic activity along the Indo-Asian plate boundary, or flooding. Another reason could be the disappearance of the Ghaggar-Hakra river system which was part of Sarasvathi. Then there is the infamous Aryan invasion theory.

Now according to new research, it was not Aryans, but monsoons, which were responsible for the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization. Geologist Anil Gupta of IIT Kharagpur studied the effect of monsoons over the past 10,000 years and have come to the conclusion that a strong monsoon helped the civlization grow, while a weakening monsoon might have led to its decline.

The Arabian Sea sediments and other geological studies show that the monsoon began to weaken about 5,000 years ago. The dry spell, lasting several hundred years, might have led people to abandon the Indus cities and move eastward into the Gangetic plain, which has been an area of higher rainfall than the northwestern part of the subcontinent.

“It’s not high temperatures, but lack of water that drove the people eastward and southward,” Gupta said.

About 1,700 years ago, the monsoon began to improve again, leading to increased farm produce for several centuries and contributing to the relative prosperity in India during the medieval ages, from AD 700 to 1200. [Indus cities dried up with monsoon]

Foreign Policy magazine has announced its failed states index. The indicators of instability include factors like demographic pressures, public services, external interventionand delegitimization of state. The top countries in the list are Sudan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Iraq and Zimbabwe.

In this list India's neighbourhood does not look promising at all. Almost all its neighbours, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma are among the toppers in the failed states list. Leading the list in our region is Pakistan with a ranking of 9, just faring better than Somalia and Chad. Even a war torn Afghanistan did better than Pakistan. Regarding Pakistan, the report mentions that it remains "acutely vulnerable to internal conflict and social disintegration".

Pakistan moved from 34th last year to ninth in the new report - one of the sharpest changes in the overallscore of any country on the list. The contributing factors were Pakistan's inability to police the tribal areas near the Afghan border, the devastating earthquake last October in Kashmir and rising ethnic tensions, the report said. [Pakistan 'is a top failed state']

The authors cite India as an example of a state which has pulled back from the brink, saying that in the 1970s analysts predicted dire consequences as a result of population growth, economic mismanagement, poverty and corruption. Now, they say, India today has turned itself around and might have the edge over China (ranked 57) in the long run. Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, told the Associated Press news agency that India had greater social mobility and was more decentralised than its more populous neighbour. [Pakistan 'is a top failed state']

Two Indian parliamentarians talk to American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice together. When they come out they have two stories on what the Secretary said

Shahid Siddiqui

Rajya Sabha member Shahid Siddiqui of the Samajwadi Party told reporters that 'our main concern was over expected amendments to the legislation, but she (Rice) said, if the amendments are within the spirit of the July 18 agreement, then you should be prepared for it.The message was that there are going to be amendments and we should be ready for it'.

But Sachin Pilot of the Congress party told rediff.com that Rice had not spoken about any amendments but agreed that 'the essence of the agreement is what we should focus on and that's what we are going to achieve. That whatever the understanding the two governments have, that's what it is. There's been no additions or deleting'.

Sandeep on the New York Times article about Deepa Mehta's Water.

THIS is the problem with coconuts–to borrow Richard Crasta’s delightful term for pseudo-westernized Indians like Mehta–who stoop to any antics to impress the White skin by painting their own culture black. Add to this a dash of their message of social reform and liberation and you have a hideous caricature that defies description. On the contrary, this actually aptly describes the likes of Deepa Mehta. Deepa Mehta is no social reformer or maker of meaningful cinema but a crass opportunist who is out to earn fast money by misrepresenting a culture she is ashamed to belong to. Unable to counter genuine criticism by people like Gurumurthy, she takes refuge in pompous statements [Hindu-Baiting New York Times]

While we are debating if rising oil prices leads to less freedom or vice versa, the point of truth is that, oil prices are rising. The price of crude is going up and the price at the pump is moving faster. Various businesses have decided to pass on the the rising costs directly to the consumer. Since consumers are already struggling to make ends meet, they probably may not notice this slight increase in price for almost everything. The situation is so bad that President Bush raised the CAFE standards, which sets the fuel economy for vehicles.

Meanwhile American car makers are seeing their cars sitting on the lot, while Toyota cannot make enough Prius for American consumption. Is there a way to get rid of the oil dependency and at the same time boost the slowing sales of American cars? Tom Daschle and VInod Khosla seem to have a solution. Their proposal is to give automakers incentives for making vehicles which can run on gasoline or E85 fuel, a blend of ethanol and gasoline.

First, it could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil. As Brazil's "energy independence miracle" proves, an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil.

Second, switching from gasoline to ethanol produced from perennial energy crops like switch grass can slash our carbon dioxide emissions.

Third, it could build on a comparative advantage of American automakers. American auto manufacturers are churning out hundreds of thousands of flex-fuel vehicles. Their foreign competitors make far fewer. Promoting these vehicles will help our automakers build on their already strong market share.

And fourth, by encouraging the production of ethanol and new renewable fuel technologies, this new CAFE standard could invigorate rural communities in America's heartland and innovation and research centers along its coasts. [Miles Per Cob]

Ethanol based cars are not without issues for this fuel results in lower fuel economy. This would result in the driver paying more and currently it is not cost effective compared to regular gasoline based vehicles. According to Business Week "it would cost around $3,368 per year to run a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup on regular gas and $3,615 on E85." Even if you want to buy a flex fuel car, there are not many choices right now. If you own one, then you don't have many fueling stations.

A lot has to happen before E85 becomes a viable alternative to oil. Atleast people are thinking about it.

Recently a neolithic stone, shaped like a hand held axe which had some Indus valley signs on it, dating to between 2000 BC - 1500 BC was found near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu. Does this mean that the people of Tamil Nadu and people of Indus Valley shared the same language. Some experts think so. Some people who are not experts, like Karunanidhi also think so for political reasons. Who would have thought that archaeology would be an election issue?

Taking note of AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa's remarks calling him a 'traditional enemy', in an obvious reference to her Brahmin caste, Karunanidhi told an election rally here that recent archaeological findings of Indus valley scripts in Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district indicated that the people who lived in Tamil Nadu belonged to the Dravidian race similar to those who lived in the Indus valley[MK vows to develop Dravidian culture]

Language apart, I wish to stress that the implication made in the articles (and relayed a few days later by a prominent politician of Tamil Nadu) to the effect that the Harappan civilization is "Dravidian" is wholly baseless and has long been rejected. Some of the reasons for this include: (1) the absence in the archaeological record of any clear southward migratory pattern, especially through the Deccan; (2) the phenotypical continuity between the Harappan physical types and today's types in the same region, which precludes any massive southward migration; (3) recent genetic studies pointing to the indigenous origin of Dravidians in the South; (4) the absence of any Dravidian names in the toponymy and hydronymy in India's North-West; (5) the growing consensus among linguists that Brahui (a Dravidian dialect in Baluchistan) is an import of the historical period into the region, not an ancient relic; (6) finally the fact that the Harappans could not have migrated to the South and reverted from an advance Bronze Age culture to a Neolithic or Megalithic one, forgotten all about their typical crafts and techniques, pottery designs, urbanism.[Michel Danino at India Archaeology]

On February 14th, 1998, before L K Advani was to arrive in Coimbatore, there were serial blasts and 58 innocent people lost their lives. The mastermind behind the attacks, Abdul Nasser Madani, was arrested and jailed. Madani had started an organization called Islamic Sewak Sangh (ISS) in 1990 as an opposition to the Ramjanmabhoomi movement. He spread communal hatred through his speeches, but disbanded the organization immediately after the demolition of the Babri Masjid structure.

Soon after the Union government banned the ISS in 1992, he launched the People's Democratic Party to forge a broad Muslim-dalit-backward alliance. Though Madani entered into parleys with the Congress and the Indian Union of Muslim League, his political aspirations did not fructify.

Today Madani is imprisoned in the Coimbatore jail. He was arrested from his Kochi home on the night of March 31, 1998 in connection with the Coimbatore bomb blasts. He has been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 153 (a) (spreading communal hatred), 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 124 (a) (sedition), and also under the Arms Act. [Madani: Kerala's most notorious fundamentalist]

On May 2, 2003, armed men hacked eight fishermen to death in Marad, Kerala. The judicial commission report which probed this incident found all arms of the "secular" Congress Govt., which was ruling till now, guilty . According to the commission, atleast one senior politician belonging to the Muslim League, a coalition buddy of Congress, had advance knowledge of this conspiracy. The other findings of the commission are explosive and "vote bank" politics was explcitly blamed for this.

When the Communists were actively courting Madani's PDP, the Congressmen did not want to be seen lacking in secular credentials. In an amazing act of insensitivity to the 58 people who were murdered in Coimbatore, the Kerala Assembly, at a special session on Holi, passed a unanimous resolution calling for freeing Madani on parole on humanitarian grounds. Such is the power of vote bank politics.

With the current elections, one set of fundamentalists have been voted out of power and another set has taken over. We will soon know what quid pro quo arrangement the Communists have made with the fundamentalists.

In Lhasa, Tibet, some followers of Dalai Lama entered a monastery and attacked some statues. This story is funny in various aspects. First you have Buddhist monks attacking statues of Dorje Shugden, a deity criticised by the Dalai Lama because he called it a divine offshoot.

Attacking a statue? Hopefully the statue did not come alive and tell them to go deepen their Vipassana practice. Imagine how many Sankha-ra's this activity must have created (Unless they were doing this with mindfulness ).

Secondly, certainly people got upset over this religious intolerance by Buddhist and who better to express the outrage than a member of the Communist Party, which is the epitome of tolerance.

"What the Dalai Lama has done violates the religious freedom of believers," Zhang Qingli, the acting Communist Party secretary of Tibet said, according to Xinhua. [Buddhist monks 'storm' temple in Tibet]

In his book, Shivaji : Hindu King in Islamic India, James W. Laine presented a non-flattering view of Shivaji.

Shivaji remains a "mountain rat", a guerrilla of the hills and a narrow-minded fanatic Hindu rebel who, animated by vaulting ambitions and animus, had indulged recklessly in plunder for the gratification of his vanity.[An image that might be disturbing]

When it comes to controversial books, banning and burning are two activities we do with enthusiasam. Soon after the Satanic Verses was published, India was one of the first countries to ban the book. Similarly exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen's book Lajja was banned by the West Bengal Govt.

The new controversy is not over a book, but on a movie based on a controversial book - Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Several Catholic groups in India have threatened to shutdown cinema halls showing the movie and All-India Sunni Jamiyat-ul-Ulema has come out in support of the protestors.

"If the government doesn't do anything, we will try our own ways of stopping the film from being shown," said Syed Noori, president of Mumbai-based Raza Academy, a Muslim cultural organization that often organizes protests on issues concerning Islam. "We are prepared for violent protests in India if needed."

Several Indian Christian groups have said they would protest against the film, with one little known Catholic organization even calling on Christians to begin a fast until death.

Last week, small groups of protesters marched in Mumbai and burned a copy of the book. ["Da Vinci" unites Indian Muslims and Christians]

Related Links: Shame on the Catholic Church in India , Banning Da Vinci?, More Catholic Than The Pope, Fragments â?? 13, Laughingstock, Watch the book, The code of unity(???!!!)

Micro-credits, pioneered by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has been an effective way to bring poor people out of poverty, not by depending on politicians, but by allowing people to take control over their destiny. In this program, small loans are provided mainly to women for self-employment projects that generate income. While traditional money lenders charge large interest rates, these micro-credits provide loans at reasonable rates.

Big businesses are also involved in this. While they advertise and market for an urban audience, they are missing the rural population, which forms the majority in India. While there were women availing micro-credits, they needed businesses to run and the companies stepped in.

When executives at Hindustan Lever were plotting how best to reach untouched markets in rural India in 1999, they noticed that dozens of agencies were lending microcredit funds to poor women all over the country. These would-be microentrepreneurs, the company thought, needed businesses to run.

So Hindustan Lever approached the Andhra Pradesh state government in 2000 and asked for access to clients of a state-run microlending program. The government agreed to a small pilot project that quickly grew. The initiative, dubbed Project Shakti (which means strength in Hindi), has expanded to 12 states. Agencies such as CARE India, which oversees one of the subcontinent's biggest microcredit programs, also have teamed up with the company.

Mrs. Nandyala has repaid her start-up microloan and hasn't needed to take another one. Today, she sells regularly to about 50 homes, and even serves as a miniwholesaler, stocking tiny shops in outlying villages a short bus ride from her own. She sells about $230 of goods each month, earning about $16 in profit. The rest is used to restock products.

For NGOs, such commercial link-ups have meant shedding distrust of big business. "At first we were unsure about it," says Vipin Sharma, director of CARE India. "But in the long run, we think the poor will benefit from learning about retailing, distribution and marketing." [Microcredit helps women entrepreneurs in India]

Finally the report by the one man commission on Subhash Chandra Bose's disappearance has been tabled in the Lok Sabha. The folklore that was told to us was that Bose died in plane crash in Taipei in 1945. One of the commission discoveries is that no such plane crash happened and this has upset some of Netaji's family members.

"They say that the crash did not happen. On what basis have they said that? There is overwhelming proof that the crash happened," said Krishna Bose, Netaji's close relative. [Govt rejects Mukherjee Commission report]

The second discovery by the commission was that the ashes kept in Renkoji Temple near Tokyo were not that of Subhash Bose.

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. [Subhash Bose: Nehru's Role]

At the end, the Commission has no clue on what happened to Bose. The Congress Party and the Govt. both have rejected the findings for they still believe that the plane crash happened and the ashes in Tokyo are those of Bose. What are they trying to protect?

Indian Engineer K.Suryanarayana was murdered in Afghanistan by the Taliban. The Acorn wrote

Suryanarayana was a telecom engineer working for a Bahraini company. He was neither a soldier nor an employee of the Indian government. His Taliban kidnappers killed him simply because of his nationality and religion. His kidnapping may have been opportunistic or premeditated.[Send Special Forces to Afghanistan]

When the 35 Hindus were murdered in cold blood in Doda, the Manmohan Singh ministry decided that such activities will not deter us from talking to terrorist supporters as Indian lives are meant to be sacrificed in the altar of peace. Due to this divine guiding philosophy and worrying concern that Pakistanis might feel offended, New Delihi has not taken Suryanarayana's beheading as an issue with Pakistan. The official excuse is that we are waiting for Afghanistan to complete their investigation.

Pakistan meanwhile did not wait for India to make an issue of it and issued a denial. They have the standard denial template and all they had to do was fill in the date and cause and publish it. Now that Pakistan has denied it, there is no reason for us to worry about their involvement.

If the Indian Govt. does not have the guts to pursue this, we should use other sophisticated techniques. We have successfully used other pressure tactics which has brought terrorism to its knees. I am talking about sending the candle holders to Wagah border (after checking to see they have candles with them). But then, suddenly all those folks are missing.

In the introduction for Madeline Albright's new book, The Mighty and the Almighty, Bill Clinton wrote:

During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn't made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn't made the trip because I feared what religious extremists might do, I couldn't have done my job as president of the United States

Great work Nitin.

There is one requirement for political parties to be accepted by the 100% literate populate of Kerala - they should have atleast two factions. The nice thing about having two factions is that you don't need to waste time governing the state. When you have to fight the opponent faction all the time, who has the time to improve the state. Then, what is there to improve in the state? We already rank #1 in suicides and unemployment.

Factionalism is an artform perfected by Karunakaran, former chief minister of Kerala and the only witness to Parasurama throwing the axe ( the act which created Kerala). He wanted his son Muralidharan, famous all around Kerala for being Karunakaran's son, to be given a good position. Sadly Muralidharan lacked the qualification even to be a road side eve teaser, and hence the Congress party ignored him. Karunakaran, who according to carbon dating is as old as Giant Sequoia tree, got angry. He quit the Congress Party and formed a new party called DIC (K), to remind everyone that it was a fight about "positions".

After thinking of various way to humiliate the Congress Party, Karunakaran decided to join the Communists. That honeymoon lasted less than the time it takes for Arjun Singh to count the hair on his head. DIC (K) came running back to the Congress camp and decided to contest in 18 seats. Even people who were going to commit suicide forgot their worries for a moment and watched this reunion with excitement. Newspapers covered this news ignoring everything else. In the elections, all 17 DIC (K) candidates lost their deposits.

Now the Communists are in power and the Chief Minister is Achyutanandan, who claims that he too saw Parasurama throwing the axe. First of all the Communists did not want to give him a seat in this elections. Due to pressure exerted by "public", he was given a seat which he won convincingly. Then there was no other option but to make him the Chief Minister, since he is one of the oldest Marxists. In fact Achyutanandan was a Marxist even before Karl Marx was born.

Since Achyutanandan was named the Chief Minister, cronies of Pinarayi Vijayan, Achuyutanandan's nemesis, took all other cabinet positions. The aim was to make Achyutanandan a Chief Minister without portfolio. Achyutanandan, who in fact suggested the title The Communist Manifesto to Karl Marx, knew better. He ignored the portfolio list given by the party and gave his own list to the Governor.

It has been less than a week since the new Govt. took over and we already have the build up to a Mahabharata. Newspapers are already drooling at the prospect of this new guerilla warfare between the politburo, party state committee and the new Chief Minister. If anyone in Kerala is hoping for development, they will have to wait. This is more important.

In Hindu mythology, there are many stories about how Ganesha got his elephant head. One of them says that Lord Shiva cut off the head in a fit of anger and was adivced by Brahma to replce it with the head of the first living being he came across. Recently, Parvathi, Ganesha's mother also got her head back and thankfully, it was the same one she lost.

This believe-it-or-not story comes from Cambodia, where once the statue of Parvathy was decapitated in the 15th century. This headless body was taken by French Archaeologists and exhibited in Paris.

Last autumn, the museum held an exhibition on Vietnamese art which paid tribute in its catalogue to a retired American diplomat, John Gunther Dean. The catalogue recounted Mr Dean's efforts, as ambassador to Cambodia in the early 1970s, to rescue ancient Khmer art from the ravages of the Khmer Rouge, which was determined to expunge all record of Cambodia's past.

To thank the museum, Mr Dean, now 80, offered a gift from his own collection of ancient Khmer artefacts. Last month, the gift arrived, the sculpted head of a woman found at the Bakong temple site in 1939.

"I asked him for a Khmer head because we only had headless statues but I didn't think for a moment about a possible match," said Pierre Baptiste, the museum's curator for south-east Asian art.

"I brought the head into our [Cambodian] hall looking for a place that it could be exhibited," said M. Baptiste. "I had a sudden notion the two pieces resembled each other but then thought, 'no, things never happen that way'.

"I put the head on the statue's shoulders. It shifted a few millimetres. I heard the little click that you get when two stones fit together and the head fell perfectly into place. It was as if it had put itself together. I still get goose-bumps thinking about it." [ After 500 years, sheer chance reunites head and body of Hindu statue in Paris]

The Haryana Archaeology Department found something significant recently - some huge bricks 4500 years old.

Huge bricks belonging to the ancient Indian Kushan Dynasty have been found near the famous Kurukshetra battlefield, around which the Indian epic, Mahabharata, involving a fatricidal conflict between the Pandavas and Kauravas, is centered. [4,500 year-old bricks found near `Mahabharata' battlefield Kurukshetra]