Buddha in Kalinga

The only time Kalinga gets mentioned in ancient history is during the episode where emperor Asoka had a change of heart following the bloody war. The standard line in history books is that Asoka became a Buddhist after the war and then embarked on a mission to globalize Buddhism.
In fact Asoka was associated with Buddhism much before the Kalinga war, according to Dipavamsa. In an early edict Asoka wrote, “I have been a lay Buddhist for more than two and half years, but for a year I did not exert myself well”. Also it is not clear why Asoka had a change of heart after the Kalinga war for he was involved with many wars. It is possible that there was no more territory to conquer and he used the opportunity to craft a pacifist policy which made it easier to manage people [8].
Another fact that does not get mentioned in history books is the association of Buddha with Kalinga. Huen Tsang, during his travels in in 6th century AD saw ten stupas which mentioned Buddha’s travel to Kalinga and now those stupas have been discovered in an archaeological excavation.

The discovery includes 10 Ashoka stupas, a fort which housed the royal headquarters of the Kalinga State and remains of the Ashoka period dating back to the third Century B.C, say Dr. Rout and authorities of the institute.
Excavations have already been carried out at four of the stupas located at Tarapur, Deuli and Kayama in Jajpur, according to Debaraj Pradhan, director of the excavation project and secretary of the institute. Work will be taken up at the other stupas soon. The first discovery of an Ashoka stupa was made at nearby Langudi Hill.
`In the course of the excavation that started in December 2004, we unearthed square stupas made of latrine blocks, burnt bricks, railing pillars and cross-bars, Besides, pottery and terracotta remains of the Ashoka period have been discovered in these hills,” Mr. Pradhan said.
The discovery of several inscriptions at Radhanagar village and other corroborative evidence clearly proved that the place was Toshali, royal headquarters of Kalinga during the time of Ashoka. Although scholars tried to identify Toshali with Sisupalgarh near Bhubaneswar, no inscriptional evidence was found so far, Mr. Pradhan said.
Mr. Pradhan said the research and excavation might also lead to the discovery of the exact venue of the Kalinga war. Till now it was said the war was fought on the banks of the Daya on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. But the current excavation and survey gave indications that the war might have been fought at Yudha Meruda, which comes under the Korei block near Dharmasala.[Stupas, inscription indicate Lord Buddha’s visit to Kalinga]

Teaching retarded theories

The other day President Bush made a telephone call to the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery and praised them for being risk takers for the sake of exploration. As President of United States, he leads a nation which is at the forefront of scientific research in almost every field.
But when there is a conflict between science and his religious beliefs, like medieval era Popes, he chooses religion and all logic goes out of the window. Recently when he was asked about teaching “intelligent design” in schools, he said he supported it. The theory is called “intelligent design” since it is dumb. It promotes the idea that an intelligent being is behind the creation of humanity, the intelligent one being God as mentioned in the Bible.
As the editorial in Washington Post notes

Of course the president is right that, in the context of a philosophical debate, it would be appropriate to discuss both sides of an issue before arriving at a conclusion. In the context of a religious discussion, it would also be very interesting to ponder whether the human race exists on Earth for a purpose or merely by accident. But the proponents of intelligent design are not content with participating in a philosophical or religious debate. They want their theory to be accepted as science and to be taught in ninth-grade biology classes, alongside the theory of evolution. For that, there is no basis whatsoever: The nature of the “evidence” for the theory of evolution is so overwhelming, and so powerful, that it informs all of modern biology. To pretend that the existence of evolution is somehow still an open question, or that it is one of several equally valid theories, is to misunderstand the intellectual and scientific history of the past century.[But Is It Intelligent?]

Since evolution is not banned, children in United States will get an education better than the one in Pakistani madrassa. If you question him further on this matter, President Bush being the intellectual giant he is, will start sounding like a broken record player. Recently after baseball player Rafael Palmeiro was suspended after he tested positive for steroid use, President Bush said, he believes Palmeiro’s testimony that he does not use steroids. As Kevin Drum says, “It’s like listening to a small child. He doesn’t want to believe it, so it isn’t true.”
But if alternate theories about the origin of humanity is being taught, they should also teach that there is a possibility that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe.
Related Links: Religion on the rise

Just a phone call

Whenever any terrorist activity happens and a Pakistani connection is discovered, Musharraf plays the good-cop, producing all the sound bites the western world wants to hear. Occasionally a terrorist pops out of the hat and for this magic trick he gets rewarded with money, F-16s, and invitations to Camp David. Now people in United States seem to be fed up with his delaying tactics.
When Porter Goss was asked when Osama bin Laden would be found, his answer was not the ritualistic one.

`That is a question that goes far deeper than you know,” Goss began. “We have some weak links” that make it impossible for now to get bin Laden, he explained, pointing to “the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states.”
Sounds like you know where he is, the interviewer pressed. “I have an excellent idea of where he is,” Goss responded. The CIA boss was delivering a clear message to the “weak link” — Pakistan and its military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.[Pakistani forces tied to Taliban are hiding bin Laden, CIA thinks]

Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 commission told that Pakistan has not been helpful and other diplomats agree with him. So President Bush made a call to Musharraf and spoke for twenty five minutes on various issues after getting complaints from Indians and Afghanis.

Bush’s phone call was evidently made in this context. A 25-minute phone call would obviously involve lot more than just pleasantries and praise. Soon after the call Musharraf announced that Pakistan would expel all foreigners from madrassas in Pakistan. [Bush calls Mush on terror links]

Earlier either Musharraf used to get invited here or some diplomat would go to Islamabad to get things done. Now all it takes is a phone call.

Stability of China

When Pol Pot, who practiced a version of Maoism adapted for Cambodians, became the Prime Minister, he had a grand vision for his country. In his land there would be no private property. He introduced the idea of communal farms, communal property and communal education. Some people dissented and they were sent on the fast path to Communist hell. In his world there would be no rich nor poor and everyone would be equal and pigs would be flying as cows jumped over the moon.
About 1.6 million people, or about one-fifth of the population paid with their lives in this Communist experiment.
Now Communists have learned their lesson. It has been accepted that in Communist Paradise, there will be inequality. The Communist Party in India is worth about 4000 crore. In China too the gap between the rich and poor are increasing. According to an editorial in People’s Daily, written by some rich Communists for the poor Communists, this fact has to be accepted.

But the editorial said widening inequality is an inevitable phase of growth. “This is a golden period of development,” it said. “And it is also a period when conflict is becoming pronounced. The incessant deepening of reform must inevitably involve the adjustment of interests. “It is unavoidable that different people and different groups enjoy the fruits of reform and development to differing degrees.”[China warns protests won’t be tolerated]

In China, the Communist party controls the land allocation since ordinary people cannot be trusted with important decisions. The powerful and corrupt party leaders sell land to builders and pocket the money. It was such an abuse of power that resulted in violence that resulted in the death of six villagers in Shengyou village.

The battle of Shengyou village has come to highlight one of China’s sharpest social issues – the Communist Party’s complete control of land allocation. More than 66 million Chinese farmers have lost their land in the past 10 years. It is a land grab which has fattened the wallets of government officials and left tens of thousands of people homeless.
In recent years, however, more and more farmers have become aware of their rights, and have begun to resist – leading to rising social unrest. Some estimates suggest more than three million people were involved in demonstrations last year, and the government in Beijing is getting increasingly concerned. [China faces growing land disputes]

The Communist way of addressing unrest is to apply more force and limit freedom of expression and even theatre companies and artistes are not spared. The unrests by villagers, retirees, and ethnic minorities has now caused the ruling class to issue a stern warning to the population. In an unprecedented step an editorial appeared in the front page of People’s Daily with the threats of severe consequences.

The Chinese government has warned citizens that they must obey the law and that any threats to social stability will not be tolerated, a sign that top leaders are growing increasingly worried about unrest in the countryside. “Protecting stability comes before all else,” the editorial cautioned. “Any behavior that wrecks stability and challenges the law will directly damage the people’s fundamental interests.”[China warns protests won’t be tolerated]

There is widespread inequality, there is unrest among the population and the govt. is becoming more authoritarian. When Communists in India are offended, they just kick people out of the party. But that’s not how China is going to deal with its problems. Now with United States making friendly gestures to India and going bellicose on China, and with the nuke word entering the conversation, the external relations do not seem to be faring well either.
Right now with China being the 800 pound economic gorilla in the world, internal and external matters of China cannot be dismissed as regional issues. The stability of China should be of concern to every globalized country.

Confused economics

Tom Friedman has this theory in his book Lexus and Olive Tree that two countries which have McDonalds will not go to war with each other, the idea being that in a globalized economy countries are interdependent and cannot sacrifice prosperity over war. But you try to apply this to Pakistan and you get confused on the direction they want to move.
Yesterday there was news of Pakistan deciding to import sugar from India due to economic pressure. Even as recent as last week, there was a ban on import of sugar from India as it would hurt sugarcane growers and mills. Low rainfall caused the sugar prices to rise and imports from UAE and Thailand were not able to meet the demand. Now it is expected that Pakistan will buy three to four lakh tonnes of sugar from India.
But then all is not so sweet regarding trade between the two countries. In the same breath Pakistan announced that films made or developed in India is in list of banned items even though there is an economic need for importing movies.

According to the Import Policy Order 2005, the banned items include any “cinematograph film wholly or partly exposed or developed in any Pakistani or Indian language, with or without a sound track and depicting Pakistani or Indian way of living either silent or dubbed, or in which leading roles have been played by Pakistani or Indian actors or actresses”.[Pakistan bans import of films made in India]

This means Pakistanis will have to rely on movie pirates to see Meera kissing Ashmit Patel in Nazar. This is so sad since the movie was made by Mahesh Bhatt, a Pakistani lover and Bollywood apologist.
Now both the countries have Prime Ministers who are economists who understand the value of trade. But the wall of hatred erected by Pakistan is so strong that even free market forces are unable to pierce it.
Footnotes:

The list of banned items also include a whole range of military weapons, which means the Pakistani Army can no longer buy machine guns, sub-machine guns and automatic rifles from India to kill Indians.
Siddharth Varadarajan notes that US bombed Yugoslavia and India and Pakistan went to war over Kargil, even though they all had McDonalds.

Pledging allegiance

King Fahd, the dictator of Saudi Arabia died and here is what is happening

Members of the royal family have pledged allegiance to Abdullah. An official ceremony confirming him as king is due to be held on Wednesday.
King Fahd’s funeral is scheduled for Tuesday, while on Wednesday Saudi citizens will be able to pledge their loyalty to their new ruler at a palace in the capital, Riyadh[ King Fahd of Saudi Arabia dies]

And this is the crowd to which President Bush is preaching democracy! But then why make fun of Saudis when this is happening in our democratic India. Here is an editorial from when Sonia Gandhi “saved” the Congress Party from a crisis

There were legitimate fears that the collective wrath of the rank and file of the party might once again fall on senior leaders of the party at the AICC session resulting in torn clothes and broken bones. Also, to leave the AICC session without the last remaining mascot of the party might have emboldened closet rebels. Factions within the party would have vied with each other for the guardianship of the grand old party in absence of the glue that perilously binds them together. Instead, the AICC has hailed the saviour and pledged eternal allegiance to the first family and the totemic symbol of the Congress. The Congress banners on the streets leading to the AICC venue said it all: You love India, and we love you too.[Resigned to rule]

Locked out of GMail

Srijith got his GMail account locked down citing unusual usage. After leaving a comment at his blog, I went to check my GMail and found that I was locked out as well. I had left my GMail browser window open the whole day and when I checked, the page was refreshing every second, instead of whatever default they have. It was when I clicked on one of the unread mails that the screen changed to a locked out message. Unlike Srijith, I had a greasemonkey script running which adds the delete button to GMail.
After disabling greasemonkey, I sent a mail to the address mentioned on the lockdown page and my GMail account was active in an hour. Due to this incident, Srijith has ditched GMail. I am still going to use it, for all the unimportant mails.
Update: Rajat Paharia too got locked out and here is why it happened. So even though Srijith did not have greasemonkey installed, the fact that he was retrieving 150 messages caused GMail to believe so.

Man bites dog: DYFI opposes CPI(M)

When I was doing Engineering in Kerala, there were about eight or nine engineering colleges. It was a competitive atmosphere and only students with good rank would get admission. The losers would pay money and get admission in one of the zillion private engineering colleges in Karnataka. Since lot of Mallu money was flowing to other states realization dawned on some enterprising Mallus that they could mint money if they opened private Engineering Colleges in Kerala.
Now every street corner has an Engineering College. Even Kerala State Road Transport Corporation has one. The qualification for admission is that you should not have a tail.
The wealthy Communists first opposed the establishment of private colleges. When that failed they decided to oppose the fee structure and in a spirited display of violence, SFI and DYFI activists threw stones at the police and destroyed KSRTC buses. In the final toll, 141 police officers were injured and 112 vehicles were damaged.
But now some Communists have gone ahead and started an Engineering College and this has caused the DYFI to agitate against CPI(M).

Interestingly, the People’s Arts and Science College, which is the first self-financing college under the CPM, is functioning in the building of the Azhikodan Memorial Library.
The issue is snowballing into a major crisis in the CPM, which has been in the forefront of agitation against self-financing institutions in the State. While the party workers were getting brutally beaten up in the agitation against self-financing institutions, the CPM leaders themselves were starting self-financing colleges, said the DYFI leaders here. [CPM’s self-financing college evokes protest from cadres]

As a demonstration of how democracy works in Communist parties, the mother ship warned the monkey brigade of dire consequences if DYFI continued with its protests against CPI(M). (No more public property for you to destroy, young man).
But then this is not the first time we have seen hypocrisy from the Communists. Isn’t it?

The factory setup continues

Immediately after the London Bomb blasts, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf came on TV and offered words of advice to Tony Blair and declared that there were no terrorists in Pakistan. He also issued an order to crackdown on terrorists, if there were any. Now this dance routine, which follows every terrorist act in the world has become so perfect that it can be turned into a broadway musical. Sadly no one takes him seriously. The editorial in LA Times notes

Yes, there’s a pattern here. To be clear, it is not that Pakistanis are more inclined toward terrorism than are citizens of any other country. It is that Musharraf is unable, or unwilling, to confront the terrorists in his midst. Musharraf has even had the gall to say that while, yes, Pakistan has a problem with Islamic extremism, so does Britain and the government there needs to address it.
Pakistan has arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists, including top Al Qaeda operatives. For his efforts, Musharraf has twice been the target of assassins. But terrorist training camps can still be found in Pakistan, and the army cracks down on infiltration into India only under foreign pressure.
But Musharraf could direct his underlings to crack down harder. When outside pressure reaches a boil, he reacts. When the pressure eases, so does he. That’s not good enough[Pakistan’s problem

The conveyor belt which leads to the terrorist camps requires as its input some fertile minds which are stuck in the the 7^th century and as Tavleen Singh notes, there is whole region where they are bred.

After last week’s bombings in London our friendly neighbourhood military dictator went on international television to aver, as he usually does after an act of terrorism, that Pakistan would never allow itself to become a breeding ground for terrorists. What he did not mention was that he has little control over the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) government in his Northwest Frontier Province which just passed (July 14) the Northwest Frontier Province Hisba Act, 2005 which will effectively set up an Islamic government of Taliban genre. When it becomes law, one of the first things that will happen is the creation of a governmental department to ‘‘discourage vice and encourage virtue’’. Sound familiar? A mullah will be appointed to head it and his job will be the protection of Islamic values and traditions according to the rules laid down by the Prophet 1400 years ago[Madrasas can only breed fanatics]

Thus as the front-end is busy denying everything, the back-end is busy setting up the factory for future terrorist activities.

How many more should die?

Cynthia McFadden of Nightline was allowed unprecedented access to Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf after the London Bomb blasts. Through her report we come to know that everyday morning he has breakfast with his mother and she gives no advice to him since he requires none. Then he goes about the daily job of making sure Pakistan is run properly. During the day, Musharraf turns to McFadden and describes all the things he is doing and produces sound bites for the media. So he innocently asks why Pakistan is being blamed for all the bomb blasts in London and tears start rolling out of our eyes.
Here is a gentleman, who has breakfast with his mother regularly being accused of breeding terrorists. What a sacrilege. That whole report (available via iTunes Podcast) reminded me of Suketu Mehta’s glorifying tribute to the gangsters of Mumbai in his excellent book Maximum City. But now the Pakistani connection is turning up at every single terrorist activity in the world whether it be the murder of school children in Kashmir, innocent civilians in London or tourists in Egypt

“Al-Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan any more,” he told reporters in Lahore, after unconfirmed reports Pakistanis were being sought over bombs in Egypt.
President Musharraf said al-Qaeda “sanctuaries” in Pakistan had been over-run, and that Pakistani security forces had arrested 700 of the movement’s fighters.[Al-Qaeda ‘destroyed in Pakistan‘]

There is no reason to suspect this man’s statement. After all he is the ally in the war on terror. If he says Al-Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan, it certainly does not. Only some people may disagree with Musharraf – people who actually attended the terrorist camps, like the young man from Lodi, California.

Although Pakistani officials insist they’ve cleaned out al-Qaida training camps in their country, a young Lodi man told FBI agents in June he spent six months in such a camp near Rawalpindi in 2003-04, according to federal court documents.
Hamid Hayat said he “observed hundreds of attendees from various parts of the world at this camp,” his FBI interrogator wrote in the documents.
But Hayat, 22, and his father, Lodi ice cream vendor Umer Hayat, told the FBI of a half-dozen other young Lodi men who received jihadi training in Pakistan, the documents state. Umer Hayat, 47, also said he toured several other training camps and observed training in weaponry and urban warfare, says an affidavit filed in the case.[Pakistan a hotbed for terror recruits]

The graduates of these camps and the associated madrassas are wreaking havoc around the world. Some of these graduates have been streaming into India like ants, to face bullets from the Indian Army. When the Indian Prime Minister spoke that such acts of terror could destabilize the peace process, they were dismissed as allegations. But even as the body count and the number of countries looking for Pakistani suspects are increasing, these Pakistani denials are being taken as the final word.
How many more people should die before Musharraf is asked to clean up his country?