Moved to WordPress

Finally this blog is running on WordPress on a new host.

For the past one month, the ritual was to get up, finish the morning ablutions and mail my previous host – AN Hosting – to start the mySQL database which ran varnam. They would promptly do magic and the server would be up; but they needed reminders.

After realizing that there are better things to do in life, varnam was moved to a new host over the weekend and in the process migrated to WP.  Lot of fixes still have to be done; for example, few of the old links don’t work, a blogroll has to be added and we have to go plugin crazy. All in due time.

Here are some resources for moving from MT to WP.

  1. Movable Type to WordPress
  2. Switched to WordPress
  3. Migrate from Movable Type 4 to WordPress 2.6 in 10 Steps

God and American Elections

During Pres. George Bush’s eight years there has never been a dull moment — 9/11, invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and North Korea turning a new leaf, economic crash and nationalization of banks  and now the election of Sen. Barack Obama’s as the President of United States. All these are historic events about which books will be written and PBS documentaries made.

While the pundits are busy with their 800 word op-ed pieces analyzing why Joe the Biden trumped Joe the Plumber, one angle that may not get attention is the role of God in the campaign. In spite of the separation of church and state, often there was mention of our God versus theirs, godless people and various humans telling others what God wants.

At a rally, a pastor Arnold Conrad said in his invocation that Sen. McCain’s opponents are praying to their Gods — Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that Sen. Obama wins. The pastor portrayed the election as a battle between his God and other Gods. He wanted his God to do some magic so that his (God’s) reputation is maintained.

In California too few of God’s people told people what to do in a full page ad in various newspapers. The issue  was Proposition 8, which if passed would eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. While Google, Apple,  Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg,  a vast majority of newspapers and mayors were against the proposition, various churches were for denying equal rights for same-sex couples.

Pastors around the country encouraged their followers to give up solid food for 40 days. One editorial writer quoted Genesis 1:26-28 and wrote, “The Constitution (of the U.S. and state) does not give lawmakers, judges or the people any right (so-called rights) to change the definition and responsibilities and joys of the marriage institution God established his way and in his ultimate wisdom.”

In the Senate election in North Carolina, it was not the presence of God, but the absence that was a campaign issue.  Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) released an ad attacking her opponent for being “Godless.”

Dole’s opponent Kay Hagan is a church member and taught Sunday school, but no one asked the question: What if she is godless? There were accusations that Sen. Obama was a Muslim and he came out explaining his Christian roots. What if he is a Muslim? Does that make him a lesser American?

The most eloquent response to this question came from Colin Powell, while endorsing Obama.

Finally as the results came out, Sen. Obama won, which in Pastor Arnold Conrad‘s world means, Hindu, Buddha and Allah triumphed over God. The “Godless” Kay Hagan beat Elizabeth Dole, but Proposition 8 passed in California which for some people means that God’s will triumphed over man’s.

By the way, the year now is 2008.

Quote of the Day

History is grabbed by the roots when it is used to remind a new generation of the accomplishments of the past, when it is used to inspire a people to accomplish what they can and prevent what they must. The invocation of history is particularly powerful when it is used to remind a nation of aspirations long cherished but not fully achieved. [Best of the ’08 Campaign: The effective use of history—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)]

The author is writing about American elections, but it could be true anywhere.

James Ossuary Not a Fake

JamesOssuary

The story of the James ossuary continues. This limestone box carried an inscription “James son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus” and if it was proved to be true, could be historical evidence for one man named Yeshua (who may or may not be the one called Jesus of Nazareth).

One school held that the man who announced the existence of the ossuary had faked it. Biblical Archaeological Review held the position that  most scholars claim the ossuary is a fake, based on a hunch and not reason.

After three years in court, the case collapsed.

In the most recent embarrassment for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the government’s star witness, Yuval Goren, former chairman of Tel Aviv University’s institute of archaeology, was forced to admit on cross-examination that there is original ancient patina in the word “Jesus,” the last word in the inscription that reads “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”[Supporters of James Ossuary Inscription’s Authenticity Vindicated | Daily Bible and Archaeology News]

The battle is not over yet, but probably will be after 6 months depending on if the case against Tel Aviv antiquities collector Oded Golan is dropped or amended.

Technorati Tags: ,

Lost Years of Jesus (2)

Few years back The History Channel showed a documentary titled, The Lost Years of Jesus  which suggested that Jesus could have been in India or England or Qumran or leading a revolution against the Romans in the missing years.

There is a new documentary which says that he was not in all of the above places, but in Egypt. According to this film, titled Jesus: The Lost Years, Joseph, Mary and Jesus escaped to Egypt and “Jesus performed miracles in different towns, he destroyed temples and idols.”

Few months back, there was news about a Jesus Bowl, found in Alexandria, which had an inscription which a French epigrapher translated as “by Christ the magician.” Later it turned out that the words on the bowl did not refer to either “Christ” or “Magician”. That seems to be the case with this theory as well.

Jeffrey Siker, a professor of biblical studies and chair of the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that from a historical perspective, little else is known about Jesus’ youth other than he probably lived in a rural village, spoke Aramaic, studied the Torah and worked in his father’s carpentry trade.

“If you are asking what we do know about the so-called missing years, the answer is nothing,” Siker said. “The lost years of Jesus are always going to be a Christmas special because it sells commercials and is inherently interesting, even though we know nothing about it.” [Documentary explores ‘lost years’ of Jesus – Salt Lake Tribune]

Technorati Tags: ,

Bye Bye Somini

Who thought that Aravind Adiga winning the Booker Prize would have such serious after shocks.? Our beloved New York Times Delhi bureau chief Somini Sengupta is leaving her position. The news of the transition of this South Asian reporter was published on the SAJA forum, a site covering “South Asians”, an imaginary species.

For almost four years Ms. Sengupta worked tirelessly to prove to fellow “South Asians” that “India” was not shining. Her propensity to cover the downtrodden and the ones who were stomped on by upper class members of the Hindu caste system was unparalleled. Sadly that nectar is insufficient for winning awards these days. 

The new man in town is Pulitzer Prize-winner Jim Yardley who comes from the Beijing bureau. A person from any other bureau would have been highly insulting. We hope Mr. Yardley realizes that the cheat sheet has limitations – it cannot even win you a Nehru-Gandhi peace award.

Ms. Sengupta spawned a cottage industry of satirists and social scientists who won’t have, to paraphrase an American President, “Somini to kick around anymore.” The revival of our cottage industry depends on Mr. Yardley’s ingenuity; we will be watching with bated eyelids. Ms. Sengupta meanwhile is moving to Amsterdam, an arcadia, where countless people have found salvation thinking about “social” issues.

Off to the Moon

As the debate continues on if it is prudent to spend money on space missions while there are other needs, it is worth reading how NASA helped invent Silicon Valley.

But if you’d visited the region in 1930, all you’d have seen was a two-lane highway cutting through acres and acres of nothing but farmland and tiny hamlets, and not even a hint of what would someday become arguably the most important commercial technology center in the world.

In December of that year, however, word came that the U.S. Navy was going to open an air station in Sunnyvale, Calif., one that would handle gigantic airships and that would need a mammoth hangar.

The result? The Sunnyvale Naval Air Station, later known as NASA Moffett Field. And today, Moffett is home to NASA’s Ames Research Center, a facility that is at the heart of Silicon Valley, both geographically and figuratively. In 1930 the region didn’t know what was about to arrive, but it soon realized how much change was coming. [How NASA helped invent Silicon Valley – CNET News]

Book Review: Akhenaten

Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth A Novel by Naguib Mahfouz, Anchor (April 4, 2000), 176 pages


In 1989, M T Vasudevan Nair wrote an interesting movie named Uttaram (Answer). In the movie Mammotty played a journalist who is out to find the reason behind the suicide of his friend’s wife. He travels around, gleans various bits of information from acquaintances of the deceased, and reconstructs what happened.

In Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth A Novel(1985), Naguib Mahfouz follows a similar pattern of story telling where a young man, Meriamun, meets contemporaries of Akhenaten (1353 BC-1336 BCE) to find out the truth about the Pharaoh. Akhenaten, known as a heretic for espousing the worship of one god, was an aberration in polytheistic Egypt. While Egypt had a pantheon of gods with Amun being the supreme deity, Akhenaten believed that Aten, the disk of Sun, was the one and only God.

Early in his reign he allowed other deities to continue, but soon execrated them, changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten and moved the capital from Thebes to a new city named Akhetaten. During his time Egypt faced attacks from enemies and civil dissent and he faced both of them with same aggressiveness that Shivraj Patil shows while facing the Indian Mujahideen. He remained obstinate in his opinion that unconditional love was the panacea for all evils and his one and only God would take care of the enemies.

When Meriamun starts his investigation of the truth, Akhenaten had died, his queen Nefertiti was a prisoner in her palace, and the city the Pharaoh had built had been deserted.

When the scribe meets Tey, Nefertiti’s step-mother, she tells her version of events and warns him, “Do not believe anyone who says otherwise. You will hear conflicting accounts and every man will claim to have spoken the truth, but they all have their biases.” Thus, clouded by their biases every one — from the high priest of Amun to the Akhenaten’s body guard — tells Meriamun their version of events creating a contradictory image of the Pharaoh.

For the priests of Amun, Aten worship was a political ploy created by Tiye, Akhenaten’s mother to control their power. For people who were close to Akhenaten, like his teacher Ay or friend Bek, Akhenaten really had a divine experience. According to some others, it was Ay, his father-in-law, who brainwashed Akhenaten into the worship of Aten and came up with the idea of the One God.

The women had a different take. According to Tadukhipa, the Mittani princess who was married to Akhenaten’s father and was ignored by Akhenaten, not only did Akhenaten had an incestuous relationship with his mother Tiye, he was driven by shame and stigma to destroy himself and his country. According to Nefertiti’s step-sister Moutnemendjet, who too was ignored by Akhenaten, Nefertiti was a whore who married the heretic king with perverse sexuality.

In the movie Uttaram, the character played by Mammotty finds the truth behind his friend’s wife’s suicide, but we are in no luck here. Armed with all this information, it  becomes the reader’s responsibility to average out the multiple histories and infer what must have happened. Was Akhenaten a stoic, 1300 years ahead of Zeno of Citium, or a mad man or someone who had a divine inspiration? We are not left a definite truth, but a set of individual experiences which for them were the truth.

This illustrates the trouble with relying only on literary sources for historical reconstruction. If major changes can be made, just over a period of few years, history can be altered radically over millenia. Without multiple attestation, it is hard to to say if a source is a polemic, apologia or neutral and hence no historian accepts written sources uncritically.

Akhenaten and his work is of importance in world history for he can be called the father of monotheistic intolerance. In a conversation with the High Priest of Amun, he declares that there is the One and Only God. When the priest brands it nonsense, the Pharaoh calls upon him to believe in him. This belief in the exclusivity of monotheistic God and condescension for other belief systems has resulted in much pain and suffering over the past 3000 years.