Afridi. Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charaka/

The fury that came out of the Indian online community either in support of or against Afridi had the usual Aman-ki-Asha defense or Pakistan-is-a-terror-supporter attack. I will not comment on either side of the arguments except that I saw many good arguments on both sides. However, I do wish to make a point about “Pakistan is a terrorist state” versus “Pakistanis are terrorist sympathizers” argument that seems to have conveniently folded itself into the argument associated with Afridi’s statements.

On one side, while many agree that the political establishment in Pakistan sympathizes with and actively supports terrorist acts against India, they caution that one should not claim that the state’s support for terrorism is the same as the people’s support for terrorism much like Muage vs. Zimbabweans. On the other side, there are many who argue that a state establishment cannot function without an approval from the masses (even a tacit approval through silence is sufficient). In the latter camp, Greatbong argues that assassination of moderates like Taseer points to a popular sympathy (albeit a tacit one) for Islamic fundamentalism.

I agree with the sentiment that one should not equate the actions of the political establishment with the people of the state. This statement is easy to defend when talking about the people of the state, but the same arguments do not hold when you are considering individuals. The difference is the similar to how statistical inferences, while applicable to a large dataset, become irrelevant when considering the outcome of a single event. Let me explain. While the American public may not favor massive human rights violations in Iraq and may even be against the war in Iraq, you cannot claim the same to be true of some American individual. I know many Americans who actively support America’s invasion of Iraq and deposing of Saddam Hussain. I also know many Americans who oppose it.

The American I know who oppose the Iraq war are quick to blame their political establishment and, if pressed, are willing to offer their apologies to Iraqies and an outright admission that they oppose their goverment’s actions.

Let’s go back and consider Afridi’s comments specifically with respect to this argument ”Pakistan is a terrorist state” versus “Pakistanis are terrorist sympathizers”. Reacting to Gautam Gambhir’s statement that India’s victory over Pakistan will help soothe the pain over 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Afridi said: “I think they were very stupid comments by Gautam Gambhir. I was not expecting this from Gautam. This is all politics, what do you know about who carried out the Mumbai attacks?” [source]

Despite overwhelming evidence that 26/11 attacks received support from Pakistani establishment, Afridi asserts that there is no knowledge of the perpetrators of 26/11. He could have distanced himself from the whole thing by simply saying “This is just politics.” and stopping there. But he did not. For some reason he felt compelled to defend the Pakistani establishment. That sounds like Afridi is batting for the Pakistani establishment. So I cannot give Afridi a reprieve on the ”Pakistan is a terrorist state” versus “Pakistanis are terrorist sympathizers” schism.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv749SCqzuU

Afridi’s response made it to Facebook and other social media sites and was appreciated by many as a mature and responsible response by a de-fact ambassador of Pakistan and cricket.
The very next day, Afridi is interviewed by a reporter from Dawn news and he says this: “The media in India is very negative. One of the reasons India and Pakistan do not get along well is because of the media there. [...] I tried a lot to reach out to the Indian players, but no matter how hard we try they can never be like us.”
Here is the video [the interview is in Urdu]:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXh8Wk9LkqU

So in 24 hours, Afridi goes from chastising Pakistani media for all the hyperbole and starts blaming Indian media and the Indian team for the less than cordial atmosphere between the two nation.

Wonder what prompted the turncoat act. Any theories?

P.S: Note that Afridi avoids eye contact rather conspicuously in the second video and not the first.

The book of Job is about Job’s trials at the hands of Satan. Here is a paraphrased version of the story: Job is a pious man. Satan approaches God and says that Job is so pious mostly because God has kept him fairly well off. If God were to take away all of Job’s possessions, then Job would fail is his duties as a pious man. God accepts this challenge and takes all possessions away from Job. Despite this, Job remains pious. As his misfortunes pile up, Job finally caves in and questions God about this ‘injustice’. In response, God emphasizes his sovereignty in creating and maintaining the world. Finally, humbled by God’s chastising, Job turns speechless, giving up and repenting his previous requests of justice. To this, Job is restored to health, gaining double the riches he possessed before and having new children.

This is a typical story of a righteous sufferer. As you have probably guessed, there is a remarkably similar story in Markandeya Purana: the story of King Harishchandra. Similar to Job, King Harishchandra is an extremely righteous king who never goes back on his word and never lies. For various reasons (the reasons change with every retelling of the story) sage Vishwamitra, once approached Harishchandra and informed him of a promise made by the king to donate his entire kingdom. True to his word, Harishchandra did so. The sage, proclaimed that for an act of donation to be completed, an additional amount as Dakshina (honorarium) had to be paid. Harishchandra, with no money in his hands, had to sell his wife and son. Eventually, he had to sell himself to a guard at a cremation ground.

The king, his wife, and son endured tremendous hardships. Thanks to an unfortunate sequence of events, the son dies, and his wife brings the son’s body to the cremation ground for the last rites. She is so poor that she could not even pay the taxes needed to cremate him. Even though Harishchandra realizes that his son is dead, his wife is begging him to help perform the last rites, and he is overcome is grief, he does not waver from his dharma (duty). He asks for the sacred wedding necklace around his wife’s neck as payment of the tax. She willingly rests her head on a stone slab and asks Harishchandra to chop her head off for the necklace (the only way a woman may take her wedding necklace off while her husband is alive is in death). As he gets ready to chop her head the Gods appear and inform him that his righteousness was being tested. His son, wife, and kingdom is restored to him.

Theological import and motivations for these two myths aside, I am interested in how they came to be so similar. Like with the case of Orpheus and Adi Shankara, there are too many similar elements (riches to rags, death of progeny, survival of the spouse, and so on). So I wager that this is no coincidence.

Let us take a closer look at the earliest known dates for these myths. The earliest textual origins for the Book of Job is placed in 4th century BCE. Whereas, the origins of Markandeya Purana is unknown, the earliest known written form is placed in 3rd century CE. Naturally, it is entirely possible that the puranas were an established oral tradition prior to this date. Besides, this still doesn’t provide us with a connection between the two myths.

Disclaimer: what follows next is entirely my hypothesis without scholarly research. Feel free to debase and/or ignore my speculations.

Looking at the geography between the Middle East and India, we see that the Persian empire occupied most of the space. Interestingly, there is a long history of Judaism in Persia. The 4th century BCE (the period attributed to the written origins of the Book of Job) saw huge political turmoil in Persia thanks to Alexander the Great. His empire reached into the greater India region. Given that some anthropologists hypothesize that Alexander’s troops learned kissing from India and too it back to Greece. It is not at all inconceivable that the story of a righteous sufferer traveled between the Jews in Persia and the Vedic/proto-Hindu people in India.

The question that still remains is which way did it travel? From India to Persia, or the other way around? If anyone has any hypothesis, clues, arguments, I would love to hear them. As of now, my speculation stops here.

UPDATE: The Book of Job seems to have been pre-dated by an ancient Sumerian text “A man and his god“. This gives us a good idea of the direction in which the story may have travelled, but that doesn’t explain the how the exegeses travelled. I have a hard time believing that the Jews came up with it all on their own simply because there aren’t many philosophical treatises written by the ancient Jewish people. The Greek and Indians, on the other hand, were a whole another story. My bet is that the exposition and exegeses associated with the Book of Job either came from Greece with Alexander the Great, or the story first travelled to India, and the philosophers in India gave it the philosophical mortar and this travelled back the Persia via Alexander’s army and made it back to the Jewish people.

The sane will wonder the justification in such a pay rise given that a crippling double digit inflation is strangling the nation’s economy. But the smart figure out a justification for it. Here’s how it goes…. well, on second thoughts, maybe someone who is an expert in these matters should explain them to you. And of course I am referring to Sir Humphry and Sir Arnold. :)

Here is a clip from one of my all time favourite TV series Yes Prime Minister, that describes the entire process in hilarious detail: [link (part 2), link (part 3)]

Part 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObTDctaZOc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB5R40Ds_yg

Thanks to KM’s blogpost, I was alerted to the news that Hari Prasad, an engineer who worked to expose the vulnerabilities of the EVM has now been arrested. Despite Hari Prasad and his colleagues’ evidence of the vulnerabilities in the EVM, the Election Commission of India maintains that the EVMs are tamper proof. This despite evidence of rampant irregularities in the 2009 elections, and a growing concern about the security of EVMs worldwide.

J. Alex Halderman, Hari K. Prasad, and Rop Gonggrijp

I am inclined to suspect that the Election Commission and the political parties are all in collusion to ensure that elections are rigged and done so quietly. Why else would an engineer be arrested for actually speaking the truth?

In fact, the EVMs are so poorly designed that the data isn’t even encrypted in the memory! Come on, even I know to design an EVM better than that! This means anyone can tap into the machine and read/write/alter the votes. Worse, you can actually attach a look-alike piece of hardware to the EVMs to alter the votes remotely through a mobile phone [For details here's the full technical paper]. This looks more like a feature than a bug to me. It looks like this was a deliberate decision to make it easier to sell the election results to the highest bidder.

Welcome to India, a country whose democracy has been bought and paid for. Anyone trying to rock that boat will not be tolerated.

I think I know now. It occured to me when I was listening to the episode “Island Time” on This American Life (on a side note, TAL is one the best produced radio shows in the world, and if you are not subscribed to its podcast, then you are missing out on something great!). In act two of that episode Apricot Irving goes to a Haitian-run hospital and meets with an American doctor Steven who used to head the missionary hospital but left in order to help foster a “new” post-earthquake Haiti at the Haitian-run clinic.

Here she noticed that all the Haitian patients ask for the American doctor and don’t trust the Haitian doctors who are equally qualified. This is no different with other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as well. When a foreigner heads an NGO, then things begin to fall in place because people listen to the foreigner. But put a Haitian in charge and suddenly things become very diffcult to accomplish. Despite this, Steve, the American doctor, refuses to head the hospital. He insists that a Haitian should lead it and Steve should just be a doctor there.

When asked about this, Steve said that the common model of a foriegner-led NGO would work for his hosptial very well, but that leads to the ‘plantation attitude’ where all Haitians start looking up to foreigners to solve all their problems. This forces Steve to take on the mantel of a ‘benevolent dictator’ to save lives. The problem with this model, he contents, is that then Haitians will never become independent and self-sufficient because they wont trust themselves to depend on themselves. They will always look for a benevelent dictator. However, by putting Haitians in charge, things suddenly don’t go smoothly at all. Things that could be fixed very quickly with a benovalent dictator model doesn’t get done, and in case of the hospital, it means that many people who could have been saved by timely treatments, surgeries, or medicine simply die. The very idea that you can do something very quickly and easily to save someone, and yet you let them die because this way Haiti will be more independent in the long run goes against the moral fibre of many NGOs and volunteers. So, the benevolent dictator model perpetuates itself.

But, if Haitians are to become truly independent, then that is the price to pay for nation/community building. It’s a slow and painful process which may take a generation to come to fruition, and people are going to be deperate, poor, and some who could be saved are going to die. But at the end of it, it is hoped that the Haiti that comes out is a self-sufficient, independent, and properous Haiti that does not need NGOs to survive. In NGO parlance, this called Capacity Building.

Let’s come back to the case of India. Colonial India was governed as a dictatorship, although not a benevolent one. It was impressed upon the populace that foreigners, and people who are educated and trained abroad, get things done and others simply cannot do the same things. It was the classic ‘plantation attitude’. After independence, India had a great opportunity to change that attitude by indulging in capacity building. But again, here the price to pay was a long prolonged period to struggle, poverty, desperation, and avoidable deaths. For the Indian leaders, much like the NGOs in Haiti, this was too steep a price and went against all their rules of morality. So instead, they chose to adopt the benevolent dictator model of the more educated and better trained people running all the affairs within the government and not letting the common people learn to take care of themselves without the government.

So now, Indians continue complain that the government doesn’t provide electricity, doesn’t dig irrigation canals, and so on. The dependence over a benevolent dictator is now etched in India’s cultural memory, and it won’t be erased until people are forced to make lives better for themselves without the hope or expectation of the government (the benevolent dictator) lending any support. Real progress can happen only after that.

source: http://www.l4dmaps.com/details.php?file=3052

Josy Joseph argues in the Times of India (ToI) article “Farewell to foreign arms?” that India would benefit from a Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) as a “force for good”. Joseph’s argument is that our reliance on foreign powers for adequate military fire power is hurting us in two ways: (a) its draining our economy, and (b) it could be our Achilles heel. The proposal is to establish a MIC to enforce self-sufficiency in weapon production.

While the end (self-sufficiency in weapon production) is justifiable, the means (a MIC) is not.  Where do I even begin my arguments! There are so many. Let me try and coalesce them down to a few key ones.

First, there is Eisenhower who warned the US against the MIC in his famous farwell address where he said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

We all know how well that warning was heeded to! The US has since become a country that has perpetuated conflict in various parts of the world since world war II, sometimes even to the detriment of its own citizens and soldiers, to ensure that the output of the MIC is sufficiently consumed and adequate profits are generated.

In the ToI article, Joseph argues that the MIC can be used as a force for good, but doesn’t really elaborate on how to ensure that we do not end up with a USA style MIC.

Of course, there are one who argue that the MIC build by the US is something we should strive for.  Let me assure you that its a bad idea!

For starts, the MIC is not working well for the people of USA to begin with; it is ruining their economy. US can afford its MIC because it does not have enemies in its backyard, and any weapons it sells is very unlikely to find its way back to the US mainland. But India shares its border with two enemies (Pakistan and China), and considering the volatility in Pakistan, it will be very difficult to ensure that any arms that India exports will not find its way into Pakistan or China only to be used to against India.

How about India not export its arms? Well, then to keep the MIC active, and hence profitable, India will be forced to engage in a perpetual armed conflict (be it an all out war or low intensity combats) to avoid the dismantling of its MIC by natural economic forces of demand and supply. So any way you look at it, an MIC will only hasten a war with India.

Of course, all my arguments are underpinned on the assumption that the MIC is a private entity whose primary goal is profit. What if India establishes a public-sector based MIC. Unfortunately, Joseph’s own assessment of India’s public sector undertaking DRDO makes a disastrous prediction for the prospects of such an enterprise. Furthermore, India’s abysmal ranking as the 76th most corrupt nation is not lending any confidence to a public-sector based MIC actually producing sufficient weapons in quanity and quality to defend the country in the first place!

So yeah, I have to strongly disagree to the notion of a MIC in India (or anywhere for that matter). Nothing good has come off of MIC so far, and nothing ever will. It is a systemically flawed concept of national security. MIC like any other institution only serves its own self-preservation, and that inevitably involves a perpetual state of war.

source: http://chimpplanet.blogspot.com

The kind of lucidity and clarity in the news reports seemed unusual. Typically the reasons for such “high alert” is one of the following three:

1. Reactionary, that is, in response to confirmed terrorist activity. Examples:
   • July 14, 1997: Himachal Pradesh was put on alert after field officials admitted that terrorists have been entering Himachal for re-grouping and planning attacks [source].
   • June 28, 2003: Army formations were on full alert following a suicide attack on a Dogra battalion camp [source].
   • July 22, 2003: Army formations in Jammu & Kashmir were put of full alert following two major suicide attacks on army camps and intelligence reports that there may be more [source].
   • October 1, 2003: Troops along the Indo-Pak border were put on high alert after Pak army’s Border Action Teams provided cover fire to push terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir [source].
   • November 12, 2007: Army was placed on alert in Jammu & Kashmir after terrorist “sleeper cells” had become active [source].
2. Obvious: on occasions like the Republic day or Independence day, or during known periods of terrorist infiltration. Examples:
   • January 26, 2003: Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, and the Northeast were put under high alert to safeguard against terrorist threats to disrupt the Republic Day celebrations [source].
   • March, 18 2004: Indian forces were put on hight alert because the melting snow along the LoC at the end of winter increases terrorist infiltration [source].
   • August 14, 2007: Security forces around New Delhi were on high alert for Independence day to safeguard against terror attacks [source].
   • August 15, 2008: India rolled out a security clampdown ahead of the Independence Day [source].
3. Secretive or vague information. Examples:
   • July 13, 2006: Army cantonments were put on high alert following intelligence reports that terrorists could carry our suicide attacks [source].
   • January 11, 2007: Airports across India were put on high alter follows intelligence reports on possible attempt by terrorists to hijack an aircraft or storm airport terminals [source].
   • January 16, 2008: Central security agencies were put on guard following intelligence reports of a possible suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group on “VIPs” in Jammu & Kashmir [source].

In contrast the news articles on possible hijacking and paragliding suicide attacks provided us with a lot more and specific information. It seemed to come with more authority, almost trying to convince us that the government is doing its job and is very serious about security. Looks like among the lessons learnt from 26/11 (and mind you that there ARE changes in policy and execution effected by those lessons) is that it is not sufficient to just do your job, you need to make sure that your stakeholders (the people of India) know that you are doing your job. In other words PR/marketing. So are we going to see more ‘transparency’ from the government on intelligence information and credibility of terrorists threats?

Interestingly, in April 2003, security was beefed up around the Vaishno Devi Temple in Jammu & Kashmir following (specific) intelligence warning about a possible suicide attack [source news article]. The news article reported: “Although inputs regarding general threat perceptions are received regularly, the threat is specific this time,” the sources said. So, a less flattering interpretation is that Indian intelligence has been doing what it can, but its work was of really poor quality, and hence the secretive or vague information on terror threats, and hence a catastrophic intelligence failure that lead to 26/11. Post-26/11, there has been a revamping of the Intelligence and now we are finally getting quality intelligence.

A more cynical possibility is that the 2003 Vaishno Devi alter, and the recent two specific intelligence alert were all just accidents! Indian Intelligence simply got lucky, and so don’t expect anything much to change at all!

Wonder where the truth really lies…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b84cDbZrFIk

By his own admission, it took over nearly 40 seconds to do his research on this matter! Must be a new personal record for him!

Now if you looking for an article from a bunch of losers who have spend more than 40 seconds to get their facts and analysis right (like anyone cares about that!), I recommend the article that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 25th, 2009 [link].

They even have boring bar graphs to present the data related to heart surgeries in Narayana Hrudayalaya (in Bangalore, India) vs. the US (national averages):

image source: The Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/

Enough said. If it wasn’t for Glenn Beck, I would have never known the truth!

The story of King Mahabali

Mahabali was the king of asuras (who are a class of deites, and not demons; demons are called rakshasas in Hindu mythology). The asuras ruled in Paatala loka (which is one of the 14 worlds, and is not hell; hell is called Narka in Hindu mythology). Mahabali expanded his empire to all the 7 ‘lower’ worlds and then invaded Bhuloka (or the earthly world): the lowest of the 7 ‘higher’ worlds. Then he set his eyes on the remaining ‘higher’ worlds which were ruled by devas (another class of deities). The king of devas, Indra, was worried by this expansion and realized that he was no match for Mahabali, so he approached lord Vishnu to save his kingdom. Vishnu then took the form of vamana, or a brahmin boy, and approached Mahabali for Daana or donation/alms. Vamana asked for three steps of land for him to live in. Mahabali agreed. Then Vamana grew so large that in one step he covered all of the higher worlds, and in another step he covered the Bhuloka, and asked Mahabali where he should place his third step. Realizing that he has been bested, Mahabali asked the third step to be put on his head and Vishnu placed his third step on Mahabali’s head sending him to Paatala.

The story of Ramayana (hopelessly abridged)

Prince Rama is sent on an exile with his wife and brother. They wander to south of Vindhya mountains and down south, king Ravana of Lanka abducts Rama’s wife. While searching for his wife he comes across a kingdom of monkeys (vanaras) and with their help he defeats Ravana and rescues his wife.

Obvious connections

So how do these stories point to Aryans and Dravidians? The most obvious references here are (a)the notion of Mahabali being from the ‘lower’ world (possibly refering to south India) and the devas and Vishnu being from the ‘higher’ workd (possibly refering to north India, and (b) Rama being an Arya putra from Ayodhya (in north India) and Ravana being from Lanka (in the south) and the Dravidian people being referred to as ‘monkeys’.

But we need more than such annotated instrumentation to make our case.

Mahabali and Onam

First, lets look at the case of Mahabali. King Mahabali is said to been a very just king and all of his subjects were said to have lived properously during his reign. Yet he is cast down back to Paatala. Also, Paatala could well refer to the state of Kerala (again, in the south) because the Hindu  festival of Onam celerbrated only in Kerala is a celebration of King Mahabali, their King Mahabali. It is worth noting that Hindus in Kerala celebrate the reign of an asura king who was cast down by Vishnu and interestingly, such a celebration is endemic to Kerala. It is not celebrated anywhere else!

Vijayadashami in north and south India

In north India the Hindu festival of Vijayadashami marks the defeat of Ravana by Rama. However, in south India, the same festival marks the defeat of Mahishaura by Durga. Why such different reasons to mark the same festival? The only bridge between the two is the tale that Rama performed a sacrifice to Durga in the eve of the battle with Ravana. This suggests that these were really two different festivals in two different cultures and religions. They were later joined together by expansion of Hinduism into all of India.

The legend of Vindhya and Agasthya

The legend is that Vindhya mountains (which separates north and south India) started growing to such heights that it challenged the path of sun in the sky. So sage Agastya, in order to stop this growth asked Vindhyas to stoop down so that he may cross to down south. He also extracted a promise that Vindhyas would not grow any higher until he returned back north. But Agastya permanently settled in the south, and so the Vindhyas did not grow anymore.

The story (which is from the puranas, and is said to have occured before the itihaasas) can be interpreted as the northerners’ (Aryans) conquest over the Vindhyas (much like the conquest of Mt. Everest) which paved way for migration to south India, thus triggering contact with the south Indian Dravidians.

Genetic Markers, Caste System, and the North-South Divide

A recently published study of genetic profiles of Indian peoples concludes a distinct divide among Ancestral North Indian (ANI) tribes and Ancestral South Indian (ASI) tribes with very strong evidence of enogamy. The study  also revealed that individuals descending from the ANI tribes tend to be in the ‘higher castes’ and are genetically closer to europeans where as individuals descending from the ASI tribes tend to be in the ‘lower castes’. This again points to an Aryan-Dravidian divide that has been there for millenia, and the strong enogamy suggests conflict and competition between the groups, and looks like the Aryans won the struggle and encoded it into their mythology which was then shared with the Dravidians when they all became a single Hindu people, yet isolated from each other by caste barriers.