After further objections to the “imaginary learning” of Hindu schools, he [Ram Mohan Roy] summarily assures Lord Amherst that “the Sanskrit system of education would be the best calculat-  ed to keep this country in darkness.” What he wants to see established is “a more liberal and enlightened system of  instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences.” This, he urges “may be accomplished with the sums proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talent and learning educated  in Europe and providing a College furnished with neces- sary books, instruments, and other apparatus.” [The life and letters of Raja Rammohun Roy]

Macaulay was of the opinion that there was no point in perfecting the vernaculars, since there was nothing intelligent, but falsehood in them. In his Minute, he noted that he had no knowledge of Sanskrit or Arabic, but was convinced that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. On the other hand, whoever learned English had access to the vast intellectual wealth of the wisest nations of the earth and the literature available in English is valuable that the literature of all languages of the world together.[Macaulay's Education Part 3: The Minute]

Duff had already done this without any Government support and had solved many problems which the administration would face later. When a medical college was established in Calcutta there seemed to be a problem since Hindu shastras prohibited touching a dead body for anatomical purposes. To find a way out, the education commission visited Duff’s school. The students told the commission that it was a fact that shastras prohibited handling of a dead body, but they did not care. They wanted to take up the medical profession. Later orthodox priests told William Bentinck that there was no prohibition against touching a dead body for learning, but Duff was praised for showing that modern science was compatible with traditionalism.

Duff’s work continued and Bengalis from high castes, ignoring opposition from their families, converted. The conversion process was dramatic: people would leave their families and take refuge in Duff’s house where he would baptize them. Soon he could not handle the flood of people and had to build a home for the new converts.  He gave Sunday classes to clerks, weekly lectures for students who kept in touch with him and theological lectures for the converts. Duff’s converts became Indian missionaries and pastors and some of them went abroad and served in foreign missions. The ones who stayed India also hit the jackpot; soon the Governor General Sir Henrey Harding opened Government service to English educated Indians and Duff looked like a visionary.

Due to bad health, Duff often left India for Scotland for rest. After one such trip he arrived back in 1856 – a crucial year in Indian history. There were agrarian revolts and revolts by the aboriginals and soon the First War of Independence broke out. Duff was in Calcutta which was not a site for the revolt, but he lived in panic.

From Bengal, Duff expanded his activities. He started a mission for the Santals; his disciples too started spreading around starting missions in Jalna, which was part of the state of Hyderabad. It bothered Duff that missionaries were ill-educated and fanatical and this was not the quality he wanted in people for his missionary enterprise, which for him was the heart of the Gospel. He wanted to create an army of educated and experienced men and for this training he wanted a Missionary Institute to be set up in Scotland similar to the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome.

His campaign worked and the institute was set up with Duff as the first Professor, but unlike his mission in India, this turned out to be a failure.He had become old and could not connect to the younger people with his lengthy speeches. Besides this, he was not keeping well. The Indian weather was not agreeable to him and he had returned often due to jungle fever and dysentery. He died on Feb 12, 1878.

The Duff Effect

Due to the efforts of Duff and  Macaulay, English became the language of the educated people, replacing Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit. Also due to this Western literature and science  became accessible to the educated. It has also been argued that nationalism was a consequence of English education, but that would be ignoring the fact that the Vellore mutiny and First war of Independence happened without the infusion of English language.

Duff’s work highlights a less mentioned part of Indian history:  the decision to impose English had reasons other than the economics of text books and the need for educated employees. Though he only had a superficial knowledge of the religion, Duff sincerely believed that Hinduism was an evil darkness from which people had to be rescued. During one of his trips to Scotland, he lectured on his technique – spreading Western education linked with Christian teaching – and thought it was the best way to preach to Hindus without antagonizing them.

Duff hated secular education; in a spiritual country like India, he thought  it would be dangerous to try it. He did not want education to create a “spiritual barrenness”, but instead address the whole personality.  Duff’s concept of teaching Christian truths in educational institutions had a great effect. Soon there were many such schools, not just in Bengal, but also in Madras, Bombay and Lahore; about 1/4th of the educational institutions were missionary schools. Members of the Indian Christian Community became highly educated and started occupying positions of power in the Government.

If the success was measured in terms of the number of converts, probably Duff was a failure. His success was in making Christian thought very popular in India and in spreading those ideas among the educated. When Duff had started his school, it was considered sacrilege to even touch the Bible, but he was able to change that attitude. Duff legacy lies in creating a favorable image of Christianity among the educated which continues even to this day.

1. Alexander Duff, pioneer of missionary education, by William Paton
2. The Life of Alexander Duff by George Smith.
3. Clive, John. 1973. “Indian Education: The Minute” and “Indian Education: The Consequences”. Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian , 342 – 426. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

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But seven years later, on May 27th, 1830, a Scottish missionary arrived in Calcutta and his goal was to “prepare a mine which should one day explode beneath the very citadel of Hinduism.” This 24 year thought that the methods of other missionaries, like directly appealing Hindus to renounce their faith, would do nothing but anger the natives. Instead he claimed to have found a unique way to destroy Hinduism in a peaceful manner.

1. The language of the Government was Persian and there were a few educational institutions which taught Arabic and Sanskrit. The learned people spoke these Oriental languages and not English.
2. Duff arrived at a time when there was a controversy in British India over the language to be used for Indian higher education. On the one side there were the British Orientalists who wanted to use Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic and on the other side there were the Anglicists who had scorn for Oriental languages and Indian culture and wanted to enforce English
3. The missionary activities were not very successful. The missionary technique consisted of standing in the street corner and preaching which fetched an occasional convert or two, but nothing of great significance. Even in South India, where there were more converts, the converts came from the out castes; the Hindu masses remained unaffected.

1. Provide English education for the masses
2. Make Bible studies an integral part of this education
3. Be non-apologetic about teaching Christianity.

Duff was very clear about what Christian education meant: it was not secular education with some Biblical studies thrown in. For him Christianity contained all knowledge and his goal was to teach with Christianity revelation at the center.

When Duff first proposed this method, veteran missionaries did not find it appealing. Still he went ahead without any government support. Bengalis did not mind an English school, but had reservations about an English school where Bible was an important subject. This reservation made it difficult for Duff to get started; he could not even find a building to start his classes.

One Indian who helped get Duff was Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Mohan Roy who worked with Lord William Bentinck in suppressing sati and who believed that the pure faith of the vedas were corrupted by various cults had founded Brahma Samaj to teach the worship of one God. Ram Mohan Roy provided Duff with a hall as well as his first students. When parents learned that Bible was being taught there, they were reluctant to send their kids, but Ram Mohan Roy helped there as well. On the first day of school, Ram Mohan Roy, who had three more years to live, calmed the students who refused to read the Bible and appeared daily for the Bible class.

Though Duff was a proponent of higher studies in English, he did not hate Bengali. He did not want students to be alien to their culture and hence Bengali studies were an important part of the curriculum. After one year, Duff conducted a public exam  – in front of parents and the media – and students demonstrated their knowledge in language, science and Bible. This was a huge success and it convinced both Indians and the British. Soon the number of students started increasing.

Not everyone in Calcutta was his fan. One of the newspapers published an article suggesting that all students who attended Duff’s school be outcasted. This warning had an effect and the attendance dropped briefly, but later picked up.

Soon Duff encountered students —- not from his school, but from the Hindu college — who were enamored by Western thought and had a low opinion of Hinduism. These were the kind of people Duff wanted to seed Christian religion into and he invited them to his home to attend lectures on “God and His Revealing.” Hindus reacted strongly against Duff and asked the Government to stop this. Lord William Bentinck asked Duff to slow down and this crisis too passed.

But soon Duff got his converts — Krishna Mohan Banerjee, Mohesh Chunder Ghosh, Gopinath Nandi and Anando Chand Mazumdar  — and as he had expected they came from the higher castes. Some of them were Brahmins who ate beef to show their defiance against Hinduism and whose moral vacuum was happily filled by Duff.

By this time the Orientalist-Anglicist fight had reached critical mass. The East India Company needed a supply of qualified clerks and there were educational institutions like the Mohammedan college in Calcutta and Sanskrit college in Benares which provided the employees. The company even started a new Sanskrit college in Calcutta and Oriental colleges in Delhi and Agra. A large sum of money was spent in publishing books in the Oriental languages and translating European works into these languages. For the amount of money spent on education, there was not enough demand for these books.

In the language fight, the Government, missionaries and Orientalists wanted to use the Oriental languages, while Duff sided along with the Anglicists. If Indians were to learn Western culture and Christian theology, he said, it was not possible to do it in Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian or the vernacular Bengali. This decision on which language to choose for Duff was very critical and in a later speech given in Scotland, he said that it concerned the ultimate evangelization of India.

His arguments against Sanskrit were that (a) it was not perfect for Western education (b) ordinary people did not speak Sanskrit and © Western literature was not translated to Sanskrit. Since Sanskrit was tied to Hinduism, even if one were to teach Western literature in Sanskrit, the association formed in the mind of people would of an idolatrous and superstitious religion whereas English, would bring fresh ideas without the burden of association.

(Read Part 2)

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In this episode Mr Wood did three things. Standing at Khyber Pass, looking down at the valley of Kabul river, he quoted the translation of a verse from Baudhayana Srautasutra which reads, “some went east..but some stayed at home in the west”. This verse, Wood opined, suggests an Aryan migration from Afghanistan into India.

Second, he went to Turkmenistan to meet Viktor Sarianidi, the legendary Russian archaeologist, who besides unearthing the Bactrian gold in northern Afghanistan, found horses, wheeled vehicles and mud-brick fire altars in Gonur Tepe, Turkmenistan. According to Dr Sarianidi, the Aryans arrived there around 2000 BC and left in 1800 BC towards Afghanistan.

Third, Mr Wood mentioned a 1786 discovery by the polyglot Sir William Jones on the similarities between Sanskrit and various European languages, due to which if a Sanskrit speaker mentioned the word ashva, a Lithuanian farmer would know exactly what he meant. All these indicated that  the ancestors of the Aryans were part of a language group which spread from the area between Caspian sea and Aral mountains 4000 years ago. As per this theory, these Sanskrit speaking newcomers subjugated the natives—Dravidians and tribals—and established themselves at the top of the caste hierarchy.

Sounds logical, but Mr Wood’s claims are controvertible. According to B B Lal, who was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, the correct translation of Baudhayana Srautasutra says that while some Aryan tribes went east and the others went west from some intermediary point. This intermediary point for Dr Lal is not the valley of the Kabul river, but that of the Indus.

In a lecture given at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology in July 2007, Dr Lal analysed Dr Sarianidi’s evidence—fire-worship, soma rituals, ashvamedha—and in the case of fire worship he proved that the direction of movement was from India to Central Asia. He also showed that there was no soma in Gonur Tepe, and the skeleton of the horse was unrelated to asvamedha.

Now genetic studies too are challenging the Aryan migration theory, the successor of the discredited Aryan invasion theory. Some studies have revealed that Southern castes and tribes are similar to each other and their gene pool is related to the castes of North India. It was not possible to confirm any difference between the caste and tribal pools and find any clean delineation between the Dravidian and Indo-European speakers. Another study compared the genes of Brahmins and tribals and found autochthnous origins for Brahmins and the caste system. Also, there was no evidence for a massive migration in the 1500-1200 BC period.

If so where did the Aryans originate? In the accompanying book, Mr Wood mentions that many Indian scholars and polemicists believe that Aryans were indigenous to India. Gavin Flood, senior lecturer in religious studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland, is neither an Indian nor a polemicist, but in his book An Introduction to Hinduism, he mentions the Aryan migration theory, but also the alternate: the cultural transformation thesis. According to this view, the Aryan culture was an indigenous development in the Indus valley, uninfluenced by invaders or migrants. Thus Hinduism evolved with the Aryan culture interacting with non-Aryan and tribal cultures.  This cultural transformation thesis works well with the Out of India theory according to which India is the Indo-European homeland from where some groups migrated to Central and West Asia and Europe.

The Debates and Consequences

Fuelling the debate over Aryans and their origins are various schools—the Orientalist, the Nationalist and the Marxist—with different positions. This seems perfect since the bias of each of these schools will get corrected by opinions from other schools. Unfortunately in Indian historiography, some schools are more equal than the other. Blessed by the Indian government and aided by a list of approved scholars, only certain versions of history get into school textbooks. Thus genetic studies which overwhelmingly contradict the Aryan Migration Theory never see the light of the day. One state government—West Bengal—even goes so far as to publicly declare what is shuddho and what is ashuddo. Thus depending on the clerisy running the Indian Council of Historical Studies, the colour of history oscillates between saffron and red.

In such an atmosphere, when the government is a partner in identity politics, promoting one version of history and silencing others, the chips are not allowed to fall where it should. When a historian, who identifies himself with a label—Orientalist, Marxist or Nationalist—controls the debate, history is a prisoner of dogma. Such labelled historians silence unpopular ideas, keep inconvenient facts in the dark and display intellectual cowardice.

In this acerbic debate, any one who opposes the Aryan migration theory is branded a Hindu nationalist out to eliminate other minorities from India. But Edwin Bryant, in his book, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, notes that there are a number of Western scholars too who don’t believe in the external origins of Aryans. Among the Indian scholars who he met during his research, “one prominent Indigenous Aryanist turned out to be an atheist and very irreverent Marxist.”

The media can play an activist role in this debate. In 1993, a decision by Mexico’s education minister not to publish new history books as they did not conform to the “preferred version” resulted in considerable outrage. The Mexican media pursued the story and critically evaluated the text books the same way Indian media panned the Murli Manohar Joshi’s revisions.

Parents too can be activists. In California, upset by the representation of Hinduism in school textbooks, Indian-Americans filed a lawsuit against the Board of Education demanding edits. One of the disputes was about the Aryan theory and during the hearing, a California curriculum commissioner, Stan Metzenberg, said “I’ve read the DNA research and there was no Aryan migration. I believe the hard evidence of DNA more than I believe historians.” We have to wait and see if the text books will actually reflect the change.

Politicians too can be activists. In Kerala, there was a controversy last year over text books which highlighted communist struggles over the freedom struggle, ignored non-communist social leaders, and used a picture of a frog instead of that of Mahatma Gandhi. When it was suspected that the Communists were trying to teach atheism, Hindus, Muslims and Christians united in opposition. The Opposition staged walkouts. Finally the curriculum committee agreed to modify the text.

Such activism, from the media, from the parents, from opposition politicians, is missing when it comes to balancing the distortions in existing textbooks.

Lawsuits, protests, activism—these can be an effective tools, but there is also a need to popularise the discourse. Stephen Ambrose, David McCullough are masters of the popular history genre in the West. Barring a few honourable exceptions, in the Indian context this genre consists of writing more biographies of Nehru and Gandhi. There is a need to add more voices to this discourse—to explain how the invasion theory evolved to migration theory to Aryan trickle down theory—because this Aryan-Dravidian race theory still has serious social and political implications in India.

In 1915, Justice Mahadeo Govind Ranade lamented that the Aryan Brahmins were few in number to make any influence on the aboriginal races in the South. Opponents claimed that aboriginals were robbed by the Aryan invaders of their culture. Periyar E V Ramaswami Naicker, went one step further: he despised Hinduism, asked Tamils to liberate themselves from the Aryan yoke and claimed Ravana was the Dravidian hero, not Rama. Recently, Dravidar Kazhagam leader K Veeramani called for people to reject “Aryan” leaders. The politicians who promote a ideology of caste hatred that should not be able to get away with their fundamentalist agenda.

For this we need to evolve from Stalinized history and saffronized history to objective history— on Aryan theory, on Hindu-Muslim relations, on Independence struggle—by weeding out absurd ‘nationalist’ claims and distortions written for religious appeasement. Theories on the origins of Indian civilisation must correlate with archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence. The standard for acceptance of theories and hypotheses must not be government approval, religious sanction or secular ideological compliance, but rather ability to withstand the scientific stress test on a level playing field.

Image Credits: Charles Haynes, Natmandu
Editing Credits: Nitin Pai

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There is another place in the world, which is holy not just for Christians and Muslims, but also for Hindus and Buddhists where such problems do not exist. Located in Sri Lanka and currently called Adam’s peak, it was called Samanalakanda by the Sinhalese and Shivanolipatha Malai and Shiva padam by Hindus.So connection does Adam have with Sri Lanka and how did it become Adam’s peak?

First, what’s at the top of the mountain.? Captain John Ribeyro who fought in the civil war in the 17th century described the summit^[5].

Hindus believe that this depression on the mountain which resembles a giant foot is the foot step of Shiva; for Buddhists it is the foot print of Buddha. Chrisitians believe that it belongs to St. Thomas and there are many other traditions which attribute the foot print to Jehovah, Eunuch of Candace and Satan^[1]. It is Muslim tradition that attributes the foot print to Adam, their first prophet.

In fact there is an explanation for how Adam, a person from a middle eastern tradition, reached Sri Lanka. God, upset by Adam and Eve, threw them out of heaven and Adam landed in Sri Lanka creating an impression on the peak. He repented for a millennium when Gabriel took him to Arabia where Eve had landed. They both then returned to Sri Lanka and propagated the human race^[4].

Soleyman, an Arab merchant who visited Ceylon in the ninth century, mentioned the Adam tradition, which suggests that it was prevalent within two centuries of Islam’s founding. Sindbad the Sailor’s tales, believed to be partly based on real sailors tales, also mentions a pilgrimage to the place “where Adam was confined after his banishment from Paradiese.” It is believed that this tradition originated among the Copts (Egyptian Christians) of the fourth and fifth centuries^[4]. There is also a story which mentions that a group of three Arabs led by Sheikh Seijuddin, who according to tradition, converted Cheraman Perumal of Kodungallur, were on a pilgrimage to Adam’s peak.

Diego de Couto, a Portuguese writer of the 16th century did not believe it was the foot print of Adam; he thought it belonged to St. Thomas. Marco Polo had heard from Muslims and Christians that there was a monument to Adam, but he did not agree with that it had anything to do with Adam. This was because, according to the scripture of Marco Polo’s Church, Adam belonged to another part of the world. Instead he believed the Buddhist version and that the teeth, hairs and bowl of some “venerable figure” was commemorated^[2].

When he heard about the relics, Marco Polo’s patron Kublai Khan sent emissaries to Ceylon
to ask Parakkamabahu II, a Sri Lankan King without a Wikipedia entry, for these items. It took three years for the emissaries to reach Ceylon and they got two molar teeth, some hair, and the bowl. According to Marco Polo, Kublai Khan received these items with respect^[2].

Marco Polo never climbed the mountain, but Ibn Battuta did. He went to Ceylon specifically for mountaineering. With an entourage of 10 Brahmin priests, 15 porters, 10 courtiers and 4 yogis (provided by Martanda Cinkaiariyan of the Aryacakravarti dynasty) he made the trip to the peak and back. The final climb was quite hard  – a vertical ascent “by means of little stirrups affixed to chains suspended from iron pegs.” There he prayed with Buddhists and Muslims but does not mention seeing Christians^[3].

The mountain was officially renamed to Adam’s peak by Major James Rennell, the British geographer who worked in India.

1. The History of a Mountain By Elise Reclus, Bertha Ness, John Lillie
2. Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by by Laurence Bergreen
3. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta by Ross E. Dunn.
4. Adam’s Peak by William Skeen
5. History Of Ceylon: Presented By Captain John Ribeyro To The King Of Portugal, In 1685 (1847)

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Is this action — Pakistan publicly admitting terrorists from it soil launching attacks — such a great step forward that India should offer some carrots in return.? Some say, it is time to go soft on Pakistan; some, want to overlook loopholes in Pakistan’s investigation into the incident ; others want to make the right moves in the diplomatic tango.

For the right reaction, uninfluenced by a Ghajini like amnesia, we need to look at the events of the past two months.

POST 26/11

Following the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan, along with other countries, expressed solidarity with India and President Zardari agreed to co-operate to find the masterminds. Soon Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar stated that Pakistan played no role in the attacks. It was then announced that Pakistan would send the ISI chief, Shuja Pasha, to visit New Delhi. Soon they reneged.

President Zardari blamed non-state actors and accused that India did not provide any evidence that Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the surviving terrorist, was a Pakistani. In January, when Pakistan’s national security advisor, Mahmud Ali Durrani confirmed that Muhammad Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani, he was fired for “irresponsible behavior.”

The visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi denied that the terrorists traveled by boat from Karachi to Bombay and asked reporters if they had seen the boat? He told Indians that Pakistan too was a victim of terrorism and what was needed was a joint anti-terror mechanism.

When the dossier, which contained previously undisclosed transcripts of telephone conversations and evidence from the trawler used by the terrorists, was sent to Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh upped the ante verbally, Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s information minister said that scoring points like this would not help solve the issue of regional and global terror. Also Pakistan found a Bangladeshi connection by the involvement of a banned militant organisation, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-B) and announced that the plot was hatched in Dubai by an “international network of Muslim fundamentalists”.

Thus in response to the terrorist attack of 26/11, Pakistan mocked facts, trivialized Indian demands and displayed evasive behavior. From such a position what caused Pakistan to admit involvement in 26/11.? Was it the strength of our dossier or the guilt we created by arguing ourselves out of surgical strikes or those warnings against “neighboring countries.”?

The admissions came on Feb 12th, but even on the Monday before that Pakistan was busy denying involvement. So what changed abruptly.? Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy to the troubled regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan raised the issue with Pakistan according to New York Times. At the same time President Obama  made a call to the Pakistan President. As soon as Mr. Holbrooke left Pakistan for Afghanistan, Rehman Malik of the Interior Ministry made the admission.

Besides this there has been CIA brokered back channel activity as well which allowed India and Pakistan to exchange sensitive information. According to this news, which was revealed by Washington Post, “the unparalleled cooperation was a factor in Pakistan’s decision to bring criminal charges against nine Pakistanis accused of involvement in the attack.”

Pakistan Foreign Minister insisted that Holbrooke’s visit had nothing to do with the change of plans, but it hard to believe. With sufficient pressure Pakistan has produced rabbits out of a hat: Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, who  was considered third, in command in Taliban was arrested immediately after Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit ; in 2005, President Bush telephoned President Musharraf and after the 25 minute conversation, President Musharraf expelled all foreigners from Pakistani madrassas.

A COERCED CONFESSION

While Pakistan admitting to terrorism originating from its soil is definitely welcome, it is not sufficient to display irrational exuberance.

First, in their admission, Pakistan singled out two suspects who are connected to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which apparently is a group banned by Pakistan. The goal of this group is to  wrest control of not just a small part of India, but “All of India, including Kashmir, Hyderabad, Assam, Nepal, Burma, Bihar and Junagadh.” The fact that such a group is operating, just by changing the name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, with impunity in Pakistan even now should make it clear that the Augean stable is not clean.

Second, to believe how effective the arrests of these suspects are, one has to look at what Omar Saeed was able to do from jail . In death row for the murder of Daniel Pearl, Omar Saeed was able to call Gen Pervez Musharraf on his personal cell phone and issue a death threat. On investigation, the authorities found that he was running a terror network from the jail. Rashid Rauf, the suspect in the plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic, escaped from custody in a plot which the late film maker Manmohan Desai would have found unbelievable.

Third, this concession came due to American coercion. Pakistan and United States have a strange relation. As a front line ally in the war on terror Pakistan gets financial aid and weapons; as the epicenter in the war on terror Pakistan gets bombed by unmanned Predators. This gives America leverage, not India. This admission by Pakistan, after American pressure, could also be a temporary gesture to gain concessions. So let us not build a rope ladder from dental floss.

Finally, this admission came from the civilian government. There is an opinion that India should strengthen the civilian government of Pakistan and see them as partners and not  as adversaries. Those who suggest this seem to be ignorant of what happened in Kargil just a few months after Prime Minister Vajpayee and the civilian leader Nawaz Sharif recited poetry at the border. So it is hard to believe that by supporting the civilian administration, there will be a miraculous act of appropriation by which the other players in Pakistan — the actual power centers — will allow the terror infrastructure to be dismantled or stop such events from happening again.

All the Pakistani drama before the admission states a harsh truth: it will be hard for India alone make any progress. Next.? The crucial question is this: Will President Obama have to get involved — like President Clinton during Kargil war — to force Pakistan make the next positive step.? Will we see justice served or more meaningless statements like “we are determined to get to the bottom of this attacks.”?

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The simplest is that the Confucians prevailed. The imperial bureaucracy sought to contain the expansionary ambitions of its sailors and the increasing power of its merchant class: Confucian ideology venerates authority and agrarian ways, not innovation and trade. “Barbarian” nations were thought to offer little of value to China. [The Asian Voyage: In the Wake of the Admiral]

Other factors contributed: the renovation of the north-south Grand Canal, for one, facilitated grain transportand other internal commerce in gentle inland waters, obviating the need for an ocean route. And the tax burden of maintaining a big fleet was severe. But the decision to scuttle the great ships was in large part political. With the death of Yongle, the Emperor who sent Zheng He on his voyages, the conservatives began their ascendancy. China suspended naval expeditions. By century’s end, construction of any ship with more than two masts was deemed a capital offense. [The Asian Voyage: In the Wake of the Admiral

If the Chinese were a naval power during the ascent of the European powers, the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean would have seen a different geo-political equilibrium.

References: This article was motivated by the lecture on China by Prof. Matthew Herbst in MMW4 series. By then Maddy had posted his well researched article on Zheng He (Cheng Ho) in Calicut. Michael Yamashita got paid to travel along his path for a year resulting in the book Zheng He (Discovery) which has amazing photographs. I did not read Gavin Menzies’ book, but picked the PBS documentary 1421: The Year China Discovered America (PBS)? based on it. When China Ruled the Seas devotes few pages to what they did in Calicut. Maddy also has a comprehensive article covering the Chinese trade in Calicut.

Postscript: A British submarine commander, Gavin Menzies, in a best selling book 1421: The Year China Discovered America argued that Zheng He’s fleet reached America in 1421. A PBS documentary by the same name put Gavin Menzies on camera and contradicted most of his assumptions. Mr. Menzies agreed with the producers that most of his evidence is flimsy, but he still stood by his theory.

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Much before Europeans became major players in the Indian Ocean, traders routinely sailed from the Malabar coast to the Swahili coast. During that time the Chinese built the biggest ships of the era and under Admiral Zheng He (pronounced Jung Huh) made seven voyages reaching as far as the Swahili coast. With such technology, the Chinese could have dominated trade, instead of the Europeans, but they did not. It is interesting to see why.

Ming and Zheng He

This story begins on September 10, 1368 when Ukhaantu Khan of the Yuan dynasty fled to Inner Mongolia unable to face the rebels under the leadership of Zhu Yuanzhang. These rebels would establish the native Ming dynasty. The third Ming emperor Zhu Di, wanted to improve trade, enhance the empire’s prestige, and encourage a tribute system for which he ordered an armada to be built.

Zhu Di’s admiral for the mission was Zheng He, a six and half feet tall two hundred pound man. This 34 year old Muslim originally named Ma Ho, was captured as a child by the Ming army from the Mongol village of Yunan. Like the Egyptian Mamluks, these slaves had career paths, but only after castration and so Zheng He eventually became the Grand Eunuch.

Even before the Ming dynasty, huge Chinese ships were spotted in Kerala. In 1340, Ibn Battuta, who was in Calicut, saw 13 Chinese junks wintering in the port. Ibn Battuta who had traveled in various type of ships and dhows in his travels from Morocco to India never mentioned much construction details in his accounts, but the Chinese ships impressed him so much that he wrote about three types of ships — the large junks, middle sized zaws, and small kakams. Ibn Battuta also expressed happiness at the privacy offered in their cabins that he could take his slave girls and wives and no one on board would know about it.

In 1330, Jordan Catalani, a Dominican monk saw them in Quilon and wrote that they had over 100 cabins and 10 sails. They were triple keeled and held together not by nails or metal structures, but the thread of some plant. Ibn Battuta wrote that these ships carried thousand men of which four hundred were soldiers.

Zhu Di’s ships, under the command of Zheng He sailed in 1405. There were 317 ships of which 60 were the large junks. These treasure ships held lacquers, porcelain, and silks. They carried a total of 27,000 men which included soldiers, carpenters, physicians, astrologers, cartographers and interpreters. Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan or Francis Drake would never command such a fleet nor as many men.

Under his leadership, the fleet made seven voyages trading, transporting ambassadors and establishing Chinese colonies. Three of those were to India, one to the Persian Gulf and three to the Swahili Coast and in the process he visited the Champa kingdom, Cambodia, Sumatra, Nicobar Islands, Ceylon, Maldives. One item which Zheng He took back to China was a giraffe; how the giraffe was transported on a ship passing through a rough ocean is not documented well, but it certainly amused the king. So did zebras which were called celestial
horses.

They called Calicut, “a great country” and people as “honest and trustworthy”. They had good opinion of the Zamorin and observed that Calicut had a highly structured society, well trained army and a harsh system of justice. In Calicut they traded using the language of the fingers.

(Read Part 2)

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3. Monotheism did not happen instantly. (contd.)

Still the Israelites practiced polytheism,worshiping not just Yahweh, but also the fertility goddess Asherah and the Canaanite God Baal, though they were not supposed to. Whenever a major calamity fell on the Israelites, like the Assyrian invasion in 722 B.C.E and the Babylonian invasion followed by the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E it was blamed on polytheism.

Israelites were reminded that they had broke the covenant with God and hence were incurring his wrath. Still this was not taken seriously till the time the Babylonians exiled the Caananites. It was during this exile that one of the scribes of that era, known as “P”, took all the previous revisions and created the present version of the Bible. The documentary suggests that the Abraham story was created then, by this scribe, to enforce the concept of the covenant. The scribe lived in Babylon and Abraham was placed in the nearby Ur; Abraham’s goal was to reach the promised land, so was the dream of the exiles.

It was also during the exile that the observances like sabbath were emphasized. Israelites learned to pray in groups and to worship without a temple, king or priests. This was the formation of modern Judaism.

4. Archaeology disproves other events as well

Following the Exodus, as per the Bible, Joshua takes the Israelites into Canaan through a military conquest. Archaeology has found evidence of destruction in various settlements which seem to agree with the Bible. But on dating the sites, it was found to happen much before Exodus and among the 31 sites listed by the Bible, just a few showed signs of war.

Similarly there is no evidence of the First Temple as well which made Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian Authority official leading all peace talks with Israel to provocatively say that it was a Jewish invention. The problem is that the First temple lies below the third holiest site in Islam which makes archaeology impossible. The Bible has a detailed description of the temple and in fact there is a temple which matches this description at Ain Dara, in modern-day Syria.

Sometimes there is a kernel of truth in myths. But as we go back in time it becomes difficult to find even this kernel. The documentary says that, “Genesis is, for the most part, a compilation of myths, creation stories, things like that, and to find a historical core there is very difficult.”

5. Archaeology vs Scripture

While the documentary suggests that the concept of one God was evolved during the Babylonian exile, in fact for a brief period in Egypt, the Pharaoh Akhenaten had this concept of One God and he ruled before the time frame suggested for the Exodus? Is it possible that the small number of people who fled Egypt carried with them the seeds of this story? This possibility was not raised in the documentary.

While archaeology disproved many Biblical narratives, there are a few places where the text agrees, like in the case of the House of David. There was scepticism about King David, but on a victory stele dedicated by the king of Damascus, the words, “I slew mighty kings who harnessed thousands of chariots and thousands of horsemen. I killed the king of the House of David.” were found which makes David, the earliest Biblical figure to be confirmed by archaeology. He lived around 1000 B.C.E, as a petty warlord of a small chiefdom with few settlements.

Archaeology also shuts up the sceptics who claim that the entire Bible was an invention. A silver scroll with a Priestly Benediction earlier then the Dead Sea Scrolls by 400 years have been found. And those scrolls contain the word – Yahweh.

While this program enraged certain believers – for using government funding to prove there was no God – there is consensus, with some quibbles, that this program was a fairly accurate summary of a century of Biblical Studies.

Finally

We want to make the Bible history. Many people think it has to be history or nothing. But there is no word for history in the Hebrew Bible. In other words, what did the biblical writers think they were doing? Writing objective history? No. That’s a modern discipline. They were telling stories. They wanted you to know what these purported events mean.

Too often in modern western thinking we see things in terms of black and white, history or fiction, with nothing in between. But there are other ways of understanding how people have recorded events of their past. There’s something called mnemohistory, or memory history, that I find particularly useful in thinking about biblical materials. It’s not like the history that individuals may have of their own families, which tends to survive only a generation or two. Rather, it’s a kind of collective cultural memory.

Update (Dec 9): DIY Scholar has a list of online resources which will enhance the understanding of this period.

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