The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (Paperback), by Ross E. Dunn, 379 pages, University of California Press; 1 edition (December 9, 2004)

The first thing that Prof Matthew Herbst asks students to do in the introductory lecture of the series New Ideas/Clash of Cultures at University of California, San Diego is to draw a map of the world and label as many countries as possible. A minute later they are asked to keep their pens down and  name the country at the centre of the map. Some have Italy, a few have North America, and some the Atlantic Ocean.

This instinctive action, which illustrates the cultural bias of historians, is amplified if education starts with the typical Western Civilization till 1600 followed by the Western Civilization since 1600 course. A student could thus specialise in the Ancient Near East with tangential knowledge about India, China, Africa, or the Muslim empires.

Affinity towards one’s homeland is natural, but it should be balanced with knowledge about other civilisations. It is natural that for Indians, the centre of their world is India, but when they read about the Buddha, knowledge of the Axial age — when Socrates, the Jewish prophets, and Confucius  revolutionised thinking — gives better perspective. Such perspective provides awareness that the empiricism of John Locke and scepticism of David Hume could be derived from the dialogue between Indra and Prajapathi in Chandogya Upanishad. Proper context for local history will be obtained by taking an introductory course in World Civilisation instead of Western Civilisation, as well as by reading the works of ancient travellers like Ibn Battuta.

In 1325, this twenty-one year old Moroccan left home to perform the haj. In fact he visited Mecca four times—first from Morocco via North Africa, Egypt, Palestine and Syria, the second after visiting Iraq and Persia, the third after going down the Swahili coast up to Tanzania and the final one after visiting Anatolia, Delhi, Calicut, Maldives and China. When he returned  to Morocco, surviving the Black Plague that devastated Europe, he had visited about forty countries in the modern map covering a distance of 117,000 km.

Settling down in Tangier he collaborated with a young literary scholar, Ibn Juzayy, to compose the rihla—a book of travels in Arabic literature—about his impressions of all the countries and his experience which included working as a judge for Mohammed bin Tughluq, becoming penniless near the Doab, and attempting a coup in Maldives.

Since Ibn Battuta wrote his rihla towards the end of his itinerant career, some details are incorrect and fuzzy; after visiting Constantinople, Ibn Battuta was impressed by the markets, monasteries and the Genoese colony of Galata while in reality, by that time, it was a city on the decline. Also his book is not an encyclopedia; he wrote about things which fascinated him, like saints, life among the upper crust of society, and Muslim culture.

So using the rihla as spine, Ross E Dunn has fleshed out this book by providing the history of each city that Ibn Battuta visited. The chapter on Anatolia provides a brief history of the transformation of a country of Greek and Armenian Christians into Turkey and the sections on Cairo and Delhi provides background information on how they both rose to prominence, thanks to the Mongol empire. Since Ibn Battuta’s objects of fascination were few, Dr Dunn juxtaposes the missing pieces from other history books and writings from other travellers like Simon Semeonis, Ludolph von Suchem, and Ibn Jubayr, making this book comprehensive.

Ibn Battuta’s World

Some time after the first haj Ibn Battuta heard about India’s riches and wanted to seek employment there. He already had exposure to Indians; some selling drugs and food items in Mecca, some as pages accompanying Princess Bayalun of the Golden Horde, and some scholars in Oman. He knew that Indian ships sailed to Aden regularly. He also knew that the Delhi Sultanate welcomed foreigners and paid well.

It is interesting to contrast some of the places Ibn Battuta visited with their current state. Mogadishu, currently invokes the images of civil war, militias and poverty, but at the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit, it was one of the richest ports owing to the connections with the Horn of Africa and Ethiopia. Ibn Battuta met the ruler, Abu Bakr, who wore a “robe of green Jerusalem stuff” above “fine loose robes of Egypt with a wrapper of silk.” During a meal of chicken, meat, fish, green ginger, mangoes and pickled lemon, he observed that a single resident of Mogadishu ate more than a whole company of visitors.

While the Mongols had reduced Baghdad to a small provincial town, Cairo was prospering under the Mamluk Sultanate—members of a slave dynasty—due to the Red Sea trade. Jerusalem, which was under Mamluk control, was a small town of no great importance; Ibn Battuta spent a week there meeting various scholars and Sufi masters. By the time he arrived in Delhi, Mohammed bin Tughluq, who had succeeded a Slave Dynasty, had finished his experiment in shifting capitals. A seven year drought and the first of the twenty-two rebellions that would bring his downfall was about to start.

On his first visit, the sultan’s mother gave Ibn Battuta 2000 silver dinars. Even before he got the job of the judge, Tughluq ordered him to be paid 5000 silver dinars and the revenue from two villages. On his appointment, he got 12,000 dinars as perquisite with an annual salary of 12,000 dinars.  According to Dunn, at that time an average Hindu family lived on 5 dinars per month; a soldier, 20.

Even though he was rich, the cost of living in Delhi was high. The hamster that kept the Delhi’s economic wheel turning, much like the present, was sycophancy. Nobles borrowed money to buy expensive gifts for the sultan and other nobles, who then reciprocated with gifts of higher value. Soon Ibn Battuta amassed debts of more than 55,000 dinars to get out of which, quite interestingly, he composed an ode to the Sultan.

Also he faced first hand the job risks in working with a pixilated Sultan. Tughluq took umbrage at Ibn Battuta’s association with a Sufi ascetic who had fallen out of favour. Tughluq first got the ascetic’s beard plucked hair by hair, then later tortured and beheaded him. Ibn Battuta was put under house arrest for nine days and expected to be executed. Surprisingly he was freed and entrusted with a mission to China.

Arriving in Calicut and Quilon on his way to China as the Mughal emissary to the Mongol court carrying a gift of 200 Hindu slaves, he found that the entire trade of the Malabar and Coromandel coast was controlled by Muslims. He also found that the Hindu rulers of those provinces allowed Muslims to worship as they pleased and encouraged these trade communities. Also, similar to the frequent battles between the countries on the African coast, battles among small provinces along the Indian west coast was also common and Ibn Battuta participated in the battle by Honavar against Sandapur (Goa).

Ibn Battuta’s travels showcase the importance of Muslim trade networks and the prosperity it bought to the trading communities in India and elsewhere. He travelled during a period of relative calm; the crusades were over, the Mongols were Islamised and the Muslim caravan routes throbbed with activity carrying not just merchants, but scholars, craftsmen, Sufis and converts. Thus a Muslim grandee seized by wanderlust could travel through Dar al-Islam staying in mosques, or with the scholars, kings, and saints receiving gifts of robes, horses and camels.

The relative peace during Ibn Battuta’s time soon changed. In China, Genghis Khan’s heir fled with his entire court unable to halt the advance of the rebels. The Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople and turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Timur invaded Delhi and by his own account killed 10,000 infidels in an hour.  The most important event happened, a century later, in the Malabar coast with the arrival of Vasco da Gama’s fleet. This was not just a great navigational feat, but a major geo-political event by which Europeans cut off the Muslim middlemen.

Dr. Dunn’s book presents Ibn Battuta’s world not in isolation, but in a global context helping us better understand  the world of 14th century. It is not surprising that this book was required reading in Prof. Herbst’s class.

Image Credits: cgsheldon, lloydi, mckaysavage

(This review appeared in the June 2009 edition of Pragati)

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The June 14th edition of Mail Today published this Op-Ed piece which was first written for the history special issue of Pragati.[PDF]

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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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To commemorate the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, P Govinda Pillai, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) ideologue, in an article in the Malayalam newspaper Mathruboomi, examined the legacy of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. He also bought out an important topic – Eurocentrism in history writing – due to which we know about the work done on telescopes by Galileo, Hans Lippershey and Roger Bacon, but almost nothing by the Arab scientist al-Hassan.

Mr. Pillai stopped there. He wrote nothing about the contributions of mathematicians and astronomers from his state, Kerala, in developing the heliocentric model and calculating planetary orbits. It is not Mr. Pillai alone who is at fault. This apathy, this ignorance, this refusal to acknowledge Indian contributions — all point to a deep malaise in our historical studies. For perspective on this issue, we need to understand the contributions of Indian astronomers and decide if we should be like Confucians during the time of the Ming dynasty or 21st century Peruvian archaeologists.

The Kerala School of Mathematics

In 1832, a paper, “On the Hindu quadrature of a circle”, was read at the Royal Asiatic Society. This paper by Charles M. Whish of the East Indian Company Civil Service described eight mathematical series quoting from a text called Tantra Sangraham (1500 CE) which he had discovered in Kerala. These series were also mentioned in Yukti Dipika by Sankara Variyar and Yukti-Bhasa by Jyestadevan; both those authors had learned mathematics and astronomy from Kellalur Nilakanta Somayaji, the author of Tantra Sangraham. Some of those series were linked to Madhavan of Sangramagramam (1340-1425 CE). These mathematicians who lived between the 14th and 16th centuries formed the Kerala School of Mathematics and were proof that Indian mathematics did not vanish after Bhaskaracharya.

The importance of the Kerala school can be appreciated only by understanding the Copernican revolution. The contribution of Copernicus was two fold: first he improved
the mathematics behind the Ptolemaic system and second, changed the model from geocentric to heliocentric. The heliocentric model was proposed as early as the third century BCE by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos and so it is the math that made the difference.

In his Tantra Sangraham, Nilakanta revised the Indian planetary model for the interior planets, Mercury and Venus and for this he formulated equations to find the center of the planets better than both Islamic and European traditions. He also described the planetary motion in which Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn moved in eccentric orbits around the Sun, which in turn went around the Earth. Till Nilakanta, the Indian planetary theory had different rules for calculating  latitudes for interior and exterior planets. Nilakanta provided a unified rule. The heliocentric model of Copernicus did not alter the computational scheme for interior planets; it would have to wait till Kepler (who wrote horoscopes to supplement his income).

In their propensity to solve astronomical problems, mathematicians of the Kerala school developed concepts like Gregory’s series and the Leibniz’s series. The hallmark of earlier texts, like those of Madhava, were instructions and results without proofs or explanations. It is believed that the proofs and explanations were passed orally and hence rarely recorded. Yuktibhasha, the text written by Jyesthadeva, contain proofs of the theorems and the derivations of the rules, making it a complete text of mathematical analysis and possibly the first calculus text.

Lessons from Peru

Our education system, based on content from Western textbooks, have rarely questioned Western accomplishments. But Peruvians thought differently. When Peruvian archaeologists revisited the history written by the victors they discovered that the romantic tales woven by the Conquistadors were – well, tales. According to the original story, Francisco Pizarro, a Spaniard arrived in Peru in 1532 with few hundred men. Few weeks after their arrival, in a surprise attack, they killed the Inca king Atahualpa and took Cusco, the Inca capital. Four years later the Inca rebellion attacked Cusco and the new city of Lima.

On August 10, 1536, while Copernicus and the Kerala school were revolutionizing the world of astronomy half a world away, Francisco Pizzaro watched as tens of thousands of Incas closed in on Lima. With just a few hundred troops, Pizzaro had to come up with a strategy for survival. The Spaniards lead a cavalry attack and first killed the Inca general and his captains. Devoid of leadership the Incas scattered and once again the Spaniards won.

Recent archaeological excavations found a different version of this story. Out of the many skeletons found in the grave near Lima, only three were found to be killed by Spanish weapons; the rest by Incas. A testimony by Incas who were present in the battle was found in the Archive of the Franciscans at the Convent of San Francisco de Lima, which mentioned that it was not a great battle, but just a few skirmishes. Pizzaro was helped by a large army of Indian allies and the battle was not between the Spaniards and Incas, but between two Inca groups. It was also found that size of rebels were not in tens of thousands, but in thousands and there was no cavalry charge.

Thanks to the work of native archaeologists dramatic accounts of a small band of heroic Europeans subduing the Incas has a new narrative.

Lessons from China

Instead of following such examples and popularizing the work of Indian mathematicians, we have been behaving like Confucians at the court of the 15th century Ming emperor Zhu Di who erased evidence of the large fleets that sailed as far as the Swahili coast. While the world knows about the accomplishments of Europeans like Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Magellan and Francis Drake, little is known about Zheng He who arrived in Calicut eighty years before da Gama commanding a fleet of three hundred ships carrying 28,000 men; Vasco da Gama arrived with three ships and less than two hundred men.

Between 1405 to 1433, Zheng He’s fleet made seven voyages —- three to India, one to Persian Gulf and three to the African coast — trading, transporting ambassadors, and establishing Chinese colonies. Following the death of the emperor who  commissioned these voyages, the Confucians at the court gained influence. Confucius thought that foreign travel interfered with family obligations and Confucians wanted to curtail the ambitious sailors and the prosperous merchants.

So ships were let to rot in the port and the logs books and maps were destroyed. The construction of any ship with more than two masts was considered a capital offense. A major attempt at erasing a proud chapter in their history was done by the natives themselves.

Appreciating our stars

The goal is not to diminish the accomplishments of Copernicus or Galileo but to note that no less important accomplishments were achieved by the Kerala school either before or around the same time. Interestingly in the West, Copernican revolution was considered a movement into science to which the Church, obstinate in religious dogma, would take umbrage. In India no one was burned at the stake or put under house arrest for proposing a heliocentric model.

Instead of accepting the astronomical concepts of the Church on faith, Galileo investigated them and found new truths. Extrapolating that to historical studies we need to critically examine the Eurocentric history like the Peruvians and popularize the work of our ancestors. In this International year of astronomy, if we do not inform everyone about our great astronomers, who will ?

Postscript: In the midst of all this Eurocentric history, as a surprising exception to the norm, the only educational institution where one can take an elective course in The Pre-History of Calculus and Celestial Mechanics in Medieval Kerala is Canisius College, New York.

References: This credit for this article goes to Ranjith, a reader of this blog. He alerted me to Govinda Pillai’s article and then sent various research papers and articles about the Kerala School. He made me read Modification of the earlier Indian planetary theory by the Kerala astronomers, 500 years of Tantrasangraha, Madhavan, the father of analysis, Whish’s showroom revisited and The Pre-History of Calculus and Celestial Mechanics in Medieval Kerala.

Dick Teresi’s book Lost Discoveries, which I first read in 2003, covers the ancient roots of modern science and has sections on Indian mathematicians and astronomers. I remember buying The Crest of the Peacock and lending it to a mathematician friend; the book is now inside a singularity. The Great Inca rebellion was covered in the excellent PBS documentary of the same name. References for Zheng He can be found in an earlier article. In 2000, the University of Madras organized a conference to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Tantrasangraha. The papers presented at this conference can be found in 500 Years of Tantrasangraha

Finally, Rajiv Malhotra on Eurocentrism of Hegel, Marx, Mueller, Monier Williams, Husserl.

(images via wikipedia and indiaclub)

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“There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India, The economic disparities are startling, and India has been very slow to publicly embrace its rising Muslim problem. You cannot put lipstick on this pig” – That was Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation offering insta-advice on the Mumbai terrorist attacks. This  was printed on Nov 27th in the International Herald Tribune even before the identity of the terrorists were known.

It was not just Christine Fair who had such sound bites. Maria Mishra wrote in the Times, “The extreme poverty of many Muslims in India, whose status, according to a recent report, was below that of the “Untouchable” caste of Hindus, has increased frustration.” This untouchables meme was carried forward by Asra Q. Nomani in an Op-Ed in Los Angeles Times. Appearing on Larry King Deepak Chopra said, “We cannot, if we do not appease and actually recruit the help of this Muslim world, we’re going to have a problem on our hands.”

As per these experts, poverty of Indian Muslims, the institutional discrimination and lack of appeasement caused terrorists belonging to Laskhar-e-Taiba to take a boat from Karachi, land in Mumbai, and shoot indiscriminately at Indians and Westerners in railway stations, five star hotels, and hospitals.

The second category of experts had the Hindu right to blame. If only the Gujarat riots and demolition of Babri Masjid had not happened, such ill fate would not have fallen on India, they claimed. Most prominent among them, Martha Nussbaum, who wrote in an Op-Ed in Los Angeles Times about the Gujarat riots and the attacks on Christian churches skilfully ignoring other violent incidents in India like the rampage of the Congress party on Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s assassination or the Naxalite terrorism rampant in many states.

These two theories fail to convincingly explain the Mumbai attacks: why did the terrorists murder Americans, Britons, and Israelis.? They also ignore the elephant in the room – the stated goals of Lashkar-e-Taiba. There is, hence, a need to balance these by certain obvious points which have been left out during the sound bite generation.

Omissions

The image, presented by these both these categories of commentators, is of an India resembling the Europe of the crusades while it so far from the truth. The great Indian middle class is approximately 300 million, which means that about 700 million Indians are not doing so well. The entire Muslim population in India is around 150 million and so the oft repeated claim that Muslims alone are not getting the share of India’s prosperity does not stand.

India, the land of  contradictions, mocks generalizations. It is the country where Azim Premji can be one of the richest people, Shah Rukh Khan, one of the highest paid actors, and A. R. Rahman, the most sought after music composer. It also the country where Dr. A. P. J Abdul Kalam, who was responsible for India’s missile program and the 1998 nuclear tests can become the President of India. These people are never mentioned because it upsets pet theories.

The coalition government that is in power in Delhi currently consists of two Muslim parties – the Indian Union Muslim League, a party formed “with an object of achieving the constitutional rights of Muslims, other backward and minority people of India. ” and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen which means All India Council of United Muslims.

Muslims sensitivities have played an important role in Indian foreign policy since independence to the Iraq war. A profound example is the relationship with Israel. In 1947 Albert Einstein, who had declined an offer to be Israel’s President, wrote a letter to Prime Minister designate of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, asking for support in establishing a Jewish state. Nehru wrote back saying that he was aware of the Jewish suffering, but did not like the idea of building a nation on Palestinian land. He also wrote that due to the large Muslims minority and the support required from Arab and Muslim states in the fight against Pakistan, he could not support Israel.

Since the start of the Iraq war, there was pressure on India to send troops. The war, which was unpopular in India, was unanimously deplored by the Lok Sabha. Still President Bush spoke to Prime Minister Vajpayee about how much he would “love to have Indian troops in Iraq.” The nation, as well as the ruling NDA administration, was divided on this issue but after the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting in July 2003, India rejected the American request. In his statement India’s Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha mentioned “our concern for the people of Iraq, our long-standing ties with the gulf region as a whole” for staying away. In short, India did not want to be seen as an occupational force among Muslim nations.

Motives

As the dead bodies were being cleared from the Taj, Nariman House and CST, it became evident that supporting the Palestinian cause, showering Yasser Arafat with various Nehru/Gandhi awards, and keeping away from Iraq did not differentiate us from the Americans, British, and Israelis. Also, as terrorist sprayed bullets at CST and Metro Cinema, they did not exclude Muslims for whose cause they claimed they were fighting.

In an interview with a TV station, two Mumbai terrorists mentioned Gujarat and Babri Masjid, among a list of other events against which they were reacting. Though they were trying to sound like Indians, these terrorists were not desperate Indian Muslims, but members of a Pakistani terrorist group banned by India and United States. In a letter sent to the media, the terrorists stated they they were avenging the atrocities committed by Hindus against the Muslims since 1947, much before Babri Masjid and Gujarat, and would stop only after each incident has been accounted for.

Reality

To understand why any future Deepak Chopra style appeasement will fail against such terrorists, one has to look at “The Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups”, written by Husain Haqqani, the current Pakistani Ambassador to United States.The section on Laskar-e-Taiba lists United States, Israel and India as enemies of Islam and their goal for jihad is to “to eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam.” They would like to wrest control of not just a small part of India, but “All of India, including Kashmir, Hyderabad, Assam, Nepal, Burma, Bihar and Junagadh”, since they were all part of the Muslim empire.

While India is not involved in Iraq, it is actively involved in Afghanistan, not as an occupier, but as a partner financing irrigation projects in Northwest Afghanistan, power projects in Herat and Kabul and building roads like the one connecting Delaram on the Kandahar-Herat highway to Zaranj near the Iranian border. The name of an intelligence service which would be upset by the loss of strategic depth in Afghanistan due to Indian presence is left as an exercise to the reader.

This is a war against India by a brutal enemy with a nefarious goal – one which Christine Fair, Maria Mishra, Asra Q. Nomani and Martha Nussbaum have not emphasized in their articles. As for Deepak Chopra, we only hope that he writes a book thicker than “Why Is God Laughing?” so that we can use it to deflect bullets during the next terrorist attack.

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Two books I read recently — John Adams by David McCullough and Blasphemy by Douglas Preston — have relevance to election of Sen. Barack Obama as the President of United States. The first book, a biography of second President, gave historical perspective on the selection of the 44th President while the second, a non-stop thriller, demonstrated why a President needs to keep his religion personal.

A Historic Achievement.

John Adams was the first President to live in the White House which was then known as the President’s House. Mr. Adams visited Washington City in 1800 and was appalled by the sight of the city with the heat and mosquitoes, but more so by the sight of slaves at work and their squalid cabins.

He moved into the President’s House alone, without an honor guard or entourage in October. A few months later he was joined by his wife Abigail who did not like what she saw in the South. According to McCullough, the sight of slaves working in her house left Mrs. Adams, who was from Boston, depressed.

Now, two hundred and eight years after the first resident of the White House, 233 years after Thomas Jefferson wrote, “all men are created equal” while owning slaves and 147 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a man of color will occupy the White House.

Though a lot has improved over the past two centuries, racial tensions are still present. The attacks on Sen. Obama during the campaign season showed that the possibility of a man of color occupying the highest office in the land had upset a minority. A site which claimed to sell funny t-shirts advertised shirts featuring a noose and Ku Klux Klan members chasing Obama. A Republican Party flyer in California featured a phony $10 bill showing Obama surrounded by racist imagery and recently federal authorities disrupted a plot of two white supremacists to go on a national killing spree and murder Sen. Obama.

The Democratic primaries too had drama. Sen. Hillary Clinton made comments which appeared to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. and Pres. Bill Clinton dismissed Sen. Obama’s image as a “fairy tale” both of which generated outrage among African-Americans.

This victory is significant because Sen. Obama won it fair and square by competing on equal terms with his rivals. He did not milk “white guilt.” He did not have an advantage in the election and no seats were reserved for him. Sen. Obama instead ran as a post-racial candidate, comfortable in his Kenyan ancestry and mid western upbringing. Still the odds he had to surmount were enormous which makes this victory an important point in American history.

Blasphemy

In Blasphemy, a Large Hadron Collider type particle accelerator is activated below a Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. The project’s goal — circulate protons and anti-protons in opposite directions, almost at the speed of light, and collide them to create energy levels not seen the since universe was a millionth of a second old.

Meanwhile a bunch of evangelicals turn against the project since they think it is a government-sponsored secular humanist war on Christianity. For them the opening words of Genesis contained exactly how God created the world and there was no need to investigate the Big Bang theory, the atheistic creation model. Rousing their followers, they flock to Arizona to shutdown this anti-Christian activity.

In Blasphemy, the particle accelerator is the President’s pet project. Also he has low opinion of the evangelicals. In contrast President Bush has always deferred to the evangelical base and their religiously-defined  “family values” letting it define American policy.

Soon after he took office, President Bush funded research only on existing stem cell lines and twice vetoed legislation that would have lifted restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Always obstinate in his opinion, Pres. Bush as Seed magazine noted, “turned the very act of defying science into an art.”

In her book The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa Helen Epstein writes about how President Bush’s billion dollar AIDS prevention program worked in Africa. Missionary organizations, funded by United States, have swept Uganda emphasizing abstinence only programs; the church is not in favor of contraception. The book has a humorous anecdote where a pastor on seeing a condom on a mascot used for education, sets it on fire, “in the name of Jesus.”

Separation of Scripture from Public Policy

United States was not created as a Christian nation and when it was launched the country did not have an official cult or official religion. In fact that was the only new thing in the American Constitution since federalism, independent judiciary, bicameral legislature, and tripartite administration existed either in theory or practice. In England the King was the head of Church as well as the State, but United States had the separation of Church and State from the beginning and that was unprecedented for those times. Recently when the Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if he got control over Tibet he replied that he would enforce the separation of Church and State the American way.

Though there is separation of church and state in the country, religious beliefs of the political leaders have played a part in elections. Faith is an important part of American life and every candidate asserts their religious credentials — even the liberals. Sen. Hillary Clinton, during the primary season, mentioned that her faith shaped how she sees the world. Sen. Barack Obama proudly says that he is a Christian; President Jimmy Carter calls himself a Bible evangelist.

All of them declare that Christian faith has provided them with a moral compass. The problem is when they use words in scripture to shape public policy and enforce it on fellow citizens and other nations. Thus in 21st century America there is a debate on the need to teach Creationism or “Intelligent Design” in public schools making it feel as if Pope Urban VIII is in charge.

Under President Obama, government support for embryonic stem cell research will increase. He supported it while in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate. Sen. John McCain, too would have supported stem cell research but with some fine print. He did not want to sacrifice moral values and ethical principles for scientific progress which means yes on adult stem cell research and no on the use of human embryos. McCain’s running mate was sure that she would not support stem cell research which would end in the destruction of life.

Abstinence programs are supported by Sen. Obama as well. But he knows that it cannot reduce teen pregnancy and believes that contraception has to be part of the education process. As one of the sponsors of Prevention First Act he is conscious about the need for funding family planning, ending insurance discrimination against contraception, improving awareness about emergency contraception.

After eight years of religious pandering America is about to move in a secular direction, where faith remains personal and stays away from the steps of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This was the way it was always meant to be and the founding fathers — Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who were behind the separation of church and state — will be smiling.

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My article, Our Voice in Our History, published in the Aug 2008 edition of Pragati was printed in Mail Today.

Their editor sensationalized the title of the article to, We don’t quite get it, the first globalized civilization was in India which demonstrated that the person who did not quite get it was the copy writer who came with the title. In the article I make no claims that India was the first globalized civilization. The article was not about proving it either but about the need for more voices in Indic studies. As it stands now there is disconnect between the title of the article and contents.

Now, back to the break.

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“The Indus Valley civilization dwarfed Egypt and Mesopotamia in area and population, surpassed them in many areas of engineering and was aggressive in globalization 5000 years back.” These are words from Andrew Lawler’s lead article in the June 2008 issue of Science magazine which had Indus Civilization as the cover story

Previously archaeologists believed that Indus people got their ideas from Mesopotamia and was a civilization without deep roots, but as per new evidence, Indus evolved from the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan. Archaeology has also found evidence of occupation in Harappa dating to 3700 B.C.E and in Farmana in India to 3500 B.C.E.

Writing about the religious beliefs of the Indus people, Lawler mentions that the proto-Shiva seal has fuelled speculation that the religious tradition of Indus helped lay the basis for Hinduism. While there are questions to be answered on their language, religion and form of government, decades of archaeology has changed the image of Indus from a xenophobic and egalitarian society to one which was vibrant and complex.

Though the article was fairly balanced covering excavations in Harappa, Baluchistan, and Kot Diji in Pakistan and Farmana, Dholavira, Rakhigarhi and Kalibangan in India, it had the usual western hatchet job, blaming Indian archaeologists for using Hindu texts as a guide. This is a no-no, we are told, because (a) it is inflammatory to the Pakistanis and (b) India has a large Muslim population.

The article has other issues too. Drought, as a reason for the demise of Indus, is scoffed at while many other reasons, including “change in a society that they say emphasized water-related rituals” is offered as an alternative. The western scholars quoted in the article themselves admit their theories are pure speculation, but the drying up of Ghaggar-Hakra around 1900 B.C.E is ignored, since it would involve a reference to the Rig Veda.

As Western scholars condescendingly set the rules of the games — a very different one from that practised in their own research centers — we need to evaluate what can be done. Whining about unfairness can be cathartic, but it does not solve the problem.

Different Standards and Inept Government

Few years back, Stanford University offered a course on the Historical Jesus which was an enquiry based on the scriptures. Biblical Archaeology is quite popular in Israel which has the same percentage of Muslim population as India. These techniques are considered communal in India.

After two centuries of searching and not finding anything spectacular, Biblical Archaeology in the past half century has morphed into the archaeology of the Biblical period. Archaeologists now say the Exodus did not happen, not by speculation, but after conducting extensive archaeology in Egypt. We too should not indulge in speculative archaeology, but first Indian archaeologists and scholars need to be unapologetic about knowing the scriptures and using them for clues.

Sadly this attitude cannot be taken by people who work for government funded institutions like the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and Universities. The Saraswati Heritage Project was canned by the government since it was seen as an attempt to push the antiquity of Indian civilization. (If these people were around in 1921, they would have halted archaeology at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa which pushed the antiquity of Indian civilization by many millennia)

Recently the Government of India cut funding for a major Sanskrit program in schools because – it is getting tad repetitive – India has a large Muslim population and there was a fear that it would instil religious and cultural pride among students. In such an atmosphere, it would be naive to expect the government to lead the battle in understanding our history. Instead of wasting time writing letters to ministers, we might be better off digging in our own backyard for Painted Grey Ware.

The second problem is mentioned in the Lawler’s article itself. Indian archaeologists have done excellent work, like R. S. Bisht in Dholavira and Vasant Shinde in Farmana, but they are slow to publish and collaborate. Bisht’s work has revealed “monumental and aesthetic architecture, a large stadium and an efficient water-management system”, but has largely been unpublished. The lack of data from people who had first access to the location helps in sustaining myths about the civilization.

Solutions

There is an urgent need to create institutions where scholarship is free of bureaucracy and political interference. One such institution — the Indus Heritage Center — funded by the Global Heritage Fund is coming up in Vadodara. Besides starting a Smithsonian class center in India, the center also plans to popularize the findings of Deccan College, the Department of Archaeology of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and the Archaeological Survey of India.

There have been xenophobic comments regarding this institution due to the involvement of western professors, even though the professors don’t believe in the Aryan Invasion theory. The fear is that they will be applying western frameworks on our history resulting in misinterpretation.

But instead of complaining about west, it is time we adopted some of their techniques for popularizing history. Building a Smithsonian style museum is an insuperable problem for the cash strapped ASI which can barely manage the monuments under its care. The Indus Heritage Center model where private donors in association with various colleges build research centers in which native interpretation of history can happen should be considered. Right now there are few sincere individuals who are involved in correcting Western biases; their efforts are exemplary but not sufficient to make an impact.

Past many decades of research have found no archaeological evidence for the Aryan Invasion theory. It has been discredited through genetic research as well. The demise of Indus valley is understood to be due to hydrological changes. Still, pick up a book like Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, which is used as text book in graduate courses, and you will find that colonial politics is still alive and any divarication is branded as nationalism.

One Indus Heritage Center cannot change such entrenched ideas. To give the megaphone to differing voices, more Indus Heritage Centers which are financially secure are required. This dovetails into the larger debate about the need to free higher education and research from government control and facilitate an atmosphere where private capital can provide funding. With such freedom, scholars would be able to delve into research as they see fit, instead of surrendering to artificial political fears.

Five thousand years back our ancestor living in the Indus Valley sailed across the vast Arabian sea in reed boats with cotton sails and made the best of the Bronze age globalized world. It would be a shame, if we did not show even a fraction of their ingenuity in making our voice heard in a debate about our history.

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Governments usually ban books and movies when they think it has or can upset religious sentiments resulting in a break down in law and order. While that may be the official reason, the ground reality is that it is connected to politics. The Communists became a pot among kettles when they banned Taslima Nasreen’s book Dwikhandito in West Bengal and when Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya ordered the cancellation of the screening of “Taurus”, a film which showed Lenin in a less admirable light. With all these bans, the governments made it clear that they would rather appease than take an honorable stand.

…

As usual there will be mob violence and selective outrage, but let not the Iranian Ayatollahs and Bangladeshi fundamentalists be our role models. Instead, it is illuminating to read these lines which Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul wrote in the M.F. Hussain verdict, “A liberal tolerance of a different point of view causes no damage. It means only a greater self restraint. Diversity in expression of views whether in writings, paintings or visual media encourages debate. A debate should never be shut out.”[JPG/PDF]

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