The Carrots can Wait

On February 12th, more than two months after 26/11, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik acknowledged that some part of the planning for the Mumbai attacks were done in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have also said that they obtained confessions from members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and are interrogating one of the Lashkar leaders, Zarrar Shah, believed to be the conduit between ISI and Lashkar.
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.”?
So far pattern of the cross border rhetoric and action has been along predictable lines and we have seen this movie before. Unless we see more sincere gestures to match the words, lets hold off on the carrots.

The Indus Silk

Even though China formally started exporting it only after 119 BCE, silk, dated to much earlier period, has been found in Germany, Egypt, Mediterranean, and Central Asia. This silk, it was explained, came through contact with the Chinese. Now there is a new explanation: sericulture was known to other civilizations and a new paper reveals that the Indus people definitely knew about it.
The new evidence which comes from Harappa and Chanhu-daro show silk threads almost a millennium earlier than previously believed; the earliest find for silk in India was a thread found in Nevasa (1500 BCE). Now three silk fragments, which came from wild silk moth species, dated to the mature Harappan period (2600 – 1700 BCE) show that wild silk was used not just in China.
Previously it was believed that silk and the associated technologies — removing gum from silk and collecting silk strands on to a bobbin — were known only to the Chinese, but now we know that the Indus people too knew about it around the same time. The Chinese knew about silk weaving from 1600 BCE and had silk textiles a millennium back; the Indus discoveries are only few fragments used to connect copper-alloy bangles.
So for all the years of Mature Harappan, we have only three strands of silk. Does this mean that silk was not so important there or that it was not preserved well in the region or that the archaeologists were not trained to look for it specifically.? This finding, hopefully, is the beginning of new discoveries which will answer all those questions.
Reference: New Evidence for Silk in the Indus Valley

Flood Myths Revisited

The Atra-Hasis and Matsya Purana have something in common: flood stories which destroy mankind and one among the men, favored by the gods, becomes the progenitor of mankind. The floods mentioned in the epics are of gargantuan scale, capable of wiping off all life forms. According to the Atra-Hasis, the flood lasted for seven days; I am not sure about Matsya Purana.
Ten thousand years back when the glaciers melted and the sea levels rose, various neolithic settlements must have got wiped off. Are the flood myths an accurate depiction of those events or an exaggeration?
It was known previously that the rise in sea level created a connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. Before this the Black Sea was a fresh water lake. It was also believed that the Black Sea rose 150 to 195 feet, submerged human settlements, and drove the ancient farmers out.
New evidence — based on carbon dating mollusk fossils — suggest that the Black Sea rose only 15 to 30 feet. It also suggests that the land that was submerged was less: 2,000 square kilometers, not 70,000 square kilometers as believed.

“So if this is true, it means that the magnitude of the Black Sea flood was 5 or 10 meters but not 50 to 60 meters,” said Giosan. “Still, having flooded the Black Sea by 5 meters can have important effects, for example, drowning of the Danube Delta and putting an area of 2,000 square kilometers of prime agricultural land underwater. This has important implications for the archaeology and anthropology of southern Europe, as well as on our understanding of how the unique environment of the Black Sea formed.” [Danube Delta Holds Answers to ‘Noah’s Flood’ Debate ]

See: Multimedia presentation

Indian History Carnival – 14

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

  1. After reading Nicolas Ostler’s Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Hari writes about Sanskrit.
  2. Venetia Ansell has an interview with Prof. Lakshmi Thathachar who was a Professor of Sanskrit at Bangalore University on why the modern world needs Sanskrit.
  3. The Michael Wood documentary, The Story of India, which was telecast in six parts on PBS mentioned the connection between bird songs and mantras. varnam asks how old are our mantras?
  4. The previous post was based on a paper written by Frits Staal of UC Berkeley. Sandeep analyzes the paper to say, “We clearly see that the “pre-language era” is a shrewd excuse to push Staal’s ill-understood concoction about Mantras.”
  5. R S Krishna explains Harappan town planning and techniques on teaching this to children.
  6. Chandragupta Maurya’s son Bimbisara once requested Antiochus of Syria to send him figs, Greek wine and a Greek teacher. He got the first two, but a note came back saying that Greek law does not permit the sale of professors. But when Alexander came to Punjab, he took a Jain guru named Calanus back with him. Maddy has that story.
  7. How did ancient India deal with crime? Feanor surveys literature to find the answers.
  8. In an article about Somnath,Manish Khamesra writes about Mahmud of Ghazni’s attacks on the temple and Sardar Patel.
  9. In 1857, the British offended Hindu and Muslim sentiments and paid a price. A similar incident happened on July 10, 1806 and the Indian garrison at Vellore broke in revolt. Even before these two incidents, on April 14, 1721, more than 150 Englishmen were massacred in Kerala by a combined force of Nairs and Muslims. “After all, history teaches us that it teaches us nothing !”, writes Calicut Heritage.
  10. Sir Mirza Mohammed Ismail served as the Diwan of Mysore since 1926, of Jaipur since 1941 and of Hyderabad during independence. Murali Ramavarma has his biography. Murali writes, “Sir Mirza was a Shia Muslim by birth but he encouraged Sanskrit learning, and helped the Hindu and Christian institutions too and attended to the needs of the society with an impartial outlook holding the interest of the state above that of the individual.”
  11. Maiji who first visited Madras in 1945 writes about the differences she sees now.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on March 15th.
See Also: Previous Carnivals

The Peaceful Indus People

In chapter 1 of the companion book of the PBS series The Story of India, which talked about bird songs and mantras, Michael Wood writes about Indus Valley. Excavations in the Indus Valley have, so far, not answered this question: how was the city administered? For 700 years, who managed trade or planned the cities? Who established the script, the standard weights and pottery.? We don’t know.

Besides these usual items, Wood brings up something which is rarely given prominence: Unlike Egypt or Mesopotamia, there is no evidence of war in the Indus.

But, the Indus cities had fortified walls. Archaeologists have found arrowheads, and spearheads, besides a small number of daggers and axes. Sir Mortimer Wheeler believed that the tools could have been used for hunting and not warfare. The walls, it is believed, were built to protect the city against flood or to impress. There is no evidence of swords or body armor or military equipment like swords or catapults. Even the Indus art does not depict warfare or killing. Probably the residents were concerned with defense and had no experience in warfare.

All this caused Mark Kenoyer to say it is possible that the Indus civilization, which evolved over a period of 4000 years from the local cultures of Mehrgarh, managed to resolve conflict without warfare. If so, this would be a unique example of living among the bronze age civilizations – an early example of ahimsa.

Why didn’t the Indus cities fight among themselves? One explanation is that they did a good job in the distribution of resources. The distribution was uneven, but most households had more than adequate supply of food hence mitigating the need to become a communist.

Still this claim of “peaceful” Indus is a bit over the top. Kenoyer himself is skeptic suggesting that battles could have been recorded on perishable material, like painted cloth or clay.

Reference:

Noisy Epics

The other day Amit at Digital Inspiration had a post about iSerenity, which “offers a relaxing web-based environment with soothing sounds and images designed to reduce stress and calm nerves.” If this site was available to ancient Babylonians and Sumerians, Western civilization would have got different myths.
The Babylonian epic Enuma Elis describes the reason for a major conflict – noise. Apsu, one of the primeval gods cannot sleep since his offsprings are making noise. So he has a simple solution: kill his noisy offsprings. The dossier containing this plan gets leaked and one of the offsprings, Ea, comes up with a brilliant solution: kill the person who is complaining. The offsprings win and Apsu gets killed.
Before the Enuma Elis, the Sumerians had a epic called Atra-Hasis. In this epic, the gods want to destroy humans because they have become noisy and the gods can’t get sleep. They try various tricks – plague, famine, and, drought; nothing works. The gods then take the draconian step of unleashing a flood. Again the dossier containing the plan gets leaked to Atra-Hasis by one of the gods, Enki. Thus Atra-Hasis builds a boat, carries animals and survives the flood which lasted seven days.
The Enuma Elis are Atra Hasis are important for their creation myths as well. In Enuma Elis, the creation of humans is a minor plot device. They were created by one of the gods, Marduk, to free gods from hard labor and this was the final act of creation. Atra-Hasis too explains how humans were created – from clay and wisdom. All these literary tropes, including that of a man surving the flood, were adopted by later near east religions.
References: MMW2 (Lecture 3), Enuma Elis , Atra-Hasis, Creation Stories of the Middle East By Ewa Wasilewska

Can the CEC turn a Mongoose Golden?

When Yudhishtira’s yagna was about to end, a mongoose with half his body in golden color turned up. This mongoose, who could speak, opined that this sacrifice was not equal to the deeds of a poor brahmin who lived in Kurukshetra.
Perplexed, the brahmins who were sapient in matters of yagna, asked him to explain. They had done the sacrifice as per the rituals. They had uttered the mantras without thinking of the Reed Wharbler or Whitethroat. So what could go wrong?
The mongoose simply said, “story time.”
There lived a poor brahmin family with nothing to eat. One day the head of the household got some barley. The food was divided and they were about to eat when a guest arrived. The brahmin gave his share to the guest but the guest was still hungry. So his wife gave her share. Soon their son and daughter-in-law followed. The guest departed and the family too departed — to heaven.
The mongoose who was watching this came out, rolled in the barley, and half of his body turned golden. The mongoose rolled around in Yudhishtira’s palace and the other half did not turn golden, but just became dirty.
Yudhishtira told the mongoose that if he visited the Chief Election Commissioner, the fate would be the same. The mongoose read a Rediff article and was shocked

“If you go to his residence, he won’t even offer you a glass of water. He may even eat in front of you without offering you anything,” a close friend said. This attitude is more because of a give-nothing-take-nothing principle than anything else, insiders say “He had to attend so many dinner meetings. In the two decades or so that I have known him, I have never seen him eat outside,” a friend said, adding, “He will entertain you in the drawing room and may talk to you for two hours, but there won’t be a single offer for any refreshments or even water.” [He lives by the give-nothing-take-nothing principle ]

The mongoose thanked Yudhishtira for the tip. He read other Rediff articles and found a person who could help him.

Chawla was also found to have exercised ‘extra-statutory control in jail matters’, including ‘the treatment of detenues’. Not confining himself to dictating to his boss as to the persons to be arrested, he also prescribed how they were to be treated in prison. For instance, he was for constructing special cells with asbestos roofs to ‘bake’ certain prisoners. [Unfair to impute motives to CEC]

The ‘asbestos treatment’ would definitely bring a glow to his skin, the mongoose thought, but he would be dead. Finally the mongoose looked at the 401(k)s, bank balances and house price of various people and decided to be content with what he had. He lived happily ever after.

Hey Ram!

Observing the death anniversary of late chief minister C N Annadurai, the ruling DMK will offer 31 special pujas at various temples on Tuesday. Ironically, Annadurai was an atheist and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s son, M K Stalin, named after a Communist leader, will be attending the maximum number of pujas — three, including one at a temple near the party headquarters, Anna Arivalayam. [‘Rationalist’ DMK turns religious ]

When there is a break between first and second puja, Stalin can probably ask Lord Rama which engineering school he graduated from and tell his daddy. Also in the break between the second and third puja, all those DMK followers and Stalin can discuss what Periyar wrote about Hindu gods .