BBC withdraws Vinod Mehta's slanderous article

When the Shankaracharya was arrested allegedly for conspiring to murder Sankararaman, the media went overboard with their character assassination. A major critic was the editor of Outlook, a Vinod Mehta. He went on BBC Radio and gave his version of the story.

Two days later the talk was published as an article on the BBC website with the title of “Murder, Mystery and Politics in India.” Straight away Mr. Mehta set the tone. “The charges are a tabloid journalist”s dream – murder, sleaze, debauchery, greed and sex,” he said. The story he went on to recount was meant to illustrate each of these “charges.” But it was overwhelmingly fictitious and certain crucial details stood in contradiction with the findings of the Supreme Court of India, made public some three weeks before Mr. Mehta delivered his talk on BBC Radio Four. His tabloid dream was of his own making.

When the devotees of the Shankaracharya complained about the inaccuracies in the article to the BBC, they acknowledged it, but refused to remove it from their web site. Finally the devotees engaged some lawyers in London and when faced with the prospect of a lawsuit, the BBC withdrew the article. They also apologized and reimbursed the expenses.
Update (1): M F Hussein is found guilty of hurting Hindu sentiments by a court. According to the court, “Hussain had been found guilty of ‘making objectionable paintings to hurt the feeling of a community and of disturbing communal harmony’.”
Update (2): Various Hindu groups have been fighting the State Board of Education in California on what is being taught in textbooks. Now they have decided to take the State Board to court.

Fighting for rights in Dubai

The ultimate dream for a Malayali is to go to the “Gulf”. For people back home, Gulf is a place where anyone from the educated to the uneducated can get a job, send dirhams back home, and raise the quality of life of their family. Recently a friend was starting a business in Dubai and told me about the problems facing workers there. Whatever he told is mentioned in this New York Times article on the migrant workers in Dubai.

A growing number have resorted to suicide rather than return home with empty pockets: last year, 84 South Asians committed suicide in Dubai, according to the Indian Consulate here, up from 70 in 2004.
Mr. Kumaran, who earns 550 dirhams every month, or about $150, as a laborer, sends home almost half his earnings and lives on the equivalent of roughly $60 a month. That is barely enough to pay for food and cigarettes and using his cellphone from time to time. But he is not sure how he will repay the loan he took to get here.
“If I’d stayed in India and worked just as hard as I do now, I could have made the same money,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have needed to get a loan to come here.”[In Dubai, an Outcry From Asians for Workplace Rights]

Unable to take the abuse of the employers anymore, these immigrants took out protests, some of which were violent.

But the mass action on Tuesday was the most significant of its kind. Hundreds of workers building the Burj Dubai skyscraper chased security guards and broke into offices, smashing computers, scattering files and wrecking cars and construction machines. When they returned to work the next day, demanding better pay and improved working conditions, thousands of laborers building an airport terminal across town also laid down their tools, demanding better conditions, too. The workers also halted work on Thursday, until a settlement was negotiated.

Last time some Malayalees in Baharin and UAE took to the streets to protest and as a result many recruiting companies decided not to hire people from Kerala
There are many angles to this story. We are so used to fighting for our rights in Kerala that we think it will work everywhere. In countries where human rights do not exist, such protests may result in loss of job and deportation. At the same time, these countries require migrant workers to fuel their economy and do jobs which their citizens are not willing to do. Then there are people from less fortunate backgrounds who are willing to take the abuse for a good living and they can displace the protesting Malayalees.

Robert Clive's pet dies

He was around 250 years old and has witnessed the history of India like no one. If he could talk, he would have told many stories, but unfortunately he was a tortoise. Robert Clive’s pet tortoise, Addwaitya died in Calcutta this week.

“Historical records show he was a pet of British general Robert Clive of the East India Company and had spent several years in his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo about 130 years ago,” West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Barman said.
“We have documents to prove that he was more than 150 years old, but we have pieced together other evidence like statements from authentic sources and it seems that he is more than 250 years old,” he said.
The minister said details about Addwaitya’s early life showed that British sailors had brought him from the Seychelles islands and presented him to Clive, who was rising fast in the East India Company’s military hierarchy. [Tortoise that saw Sepoy Mutiny dies]

Lockup deaths in Kerala

In the review of the new Malayalam movie, Vargam, Rishi Raj Singh writes about lockup deaths

The film Vargam serves to portray police officers as they are: both, at times philanthropic and at times swayed by mean desires involving graft and physical torture. There is only one point of disagreement with the theme — where the death of a young boy in police lockup is shown not properly investigated by senior police officers or the ever-alert press. In a highly literate State like Kerala, this kind of police brutality is neither possible nor plausible.[ A love story in police style]

1988, a movie called Piravi (Birth) was made by Shaji Karun on the disappearance of an engineering student in Kerala. This student was tortured and killed by police and is based on the real life incident of Rajan. That particular incident happened during the time of emergency when the police ran wild in India. Recently a parade was held in the Central Jail in Trivandrum to identify police constables in connection with the lockup death of an Udayakumar. That is not the only one and there have been allegations about other deaths as well.
The incidents of police brutality might be less due to a highly literate and political population, but it is certainly there.

GDrive and Privacy

It was probably on the last day of JavaOne 2005. There was a panel discussion with James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy Steele, and John Gage on the future of Java. During that conversation, Gosling joked that since Google maintains a cache of of all the websites, we can shutdown the internet and use Google’s servers to access all information.
Now it seems Google wants to store all information on their servers, including your personal files. This is a new concept called GDrive which promises infinite storage for users.

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today.[Google’s “GDrive” part of promise for infinite storage]

Google Desktop Search already allows you to share files across computers by storing them on Google servers. The only question then to ask is how secure will the data be. Recently Google accidently released details of their financial data on the web, which is very reassuring.
If you live in United States, you can be rest assured that your personal data is all over the place. Medical records are stolen, tax returns are sometimes made public, and whole set of credit card information is lost. The only protection you have is the possibility that hackers do not find your data interesting.

Uttaramerur inscriptions

(Images via Ravages)

Our history crazy man Ravages was on a tour of Kanceepuram, Uttaramerur and few other places. During his trip he went to a temple in Uttaramerur which was a Pallava temple rebuilt by Parantaka I and in the walls of the temple he found inscriptions which talk in detail about a process for selecting an officer. These instructions which are more than 1000 years old are one of the earliest explaining the process for conducting an election.

But broadly, it tells that to elect an officer, candidates are invited from the 30 families living in the 12 villages in and around Uttaramerur. Each member will put write the name of a candidate on a piece of palm-leaf (olai) and put into a small vessel (kudam) after which, one evening, every citizen, without any discrimination or differences will assemble in the hall of the temple. Here, the current village head (Madhiyastan) will accept all the ballot-papers, without cheating (the procedure for accepting is detailed – the head-guy should spread his fingers wide, accept the ballot paper on his fore-arms and prove to the assembly he hides no extra ballot)

The head-guy will then read out the name on the ballot-paper…and as he reads, the scribe will mark it down. This way, the one who gets the max-votes will be elected and everyone in the assembly will accept him as their officer. The final tablet describes the minimum requirements for a candidate as well as what circumstances bar him from competing the elections

Requirements
1) Must own a plot of land
2) His own house on his own land
3) Minimum age: 35. Max: 70
4) Must be well versed in the vedas, and other knowledges. Should be able to explain it competently
5) Must be pious
6) Should not have occupied the same post in the preceeding 3 years

Things that would disqualify a person from the polls

1) One who fails to show proper accounts after elections. (Apparently, bribery in India isn’t new 🙂 The best thing is, a corrupt official also means his family and dependants are barred from the elections
2) The one who has committed adultery, murder, burgulary, and alcohol consumption is disqualified…these four acts are considered great-sins. Also, anybody who has committed the sins and is reforming from them is barred
3) The one who eats that which shouldnt have been eaten (what kinda rule is this?)

Finally, the inscriptions talk of the tenure of the elected official – 360 days. (Perhaps based on the lunar calendar year?) At the end of the period, the official should voluntarily resign from his post. Also, if he faults along the way, he will be removed from his post immediately.

In a followup mail Kingsley says he is skeptical of this interpretation and states that this was pseudo-democracy since it was used only to rotate officers from a pool.
See Also: India – Democracy and Identity

10th century Buddhist statues in Chennai

In Kalki’s epic novel, Ponniyin Selvan, which is about the the early life of 10^th century Chola emperor Raja Raja Chola I, there are many references to Buddhism. In the second book, we get to see him in Sri Lanka restoring the Buddhist Viharas and getting impressed by the size of the statues of Buddha. Later when he gets caught in a cyclone and falls sick, he lives in hiding in the Buddhist Monastery of Nagappatinam in Tamil Nadu.

Recently the Archaeological Survey of India had found a 10^th century Tamil inscription that mentioned the donation of land to build a Shiva temple in Kolapakkam, 20 km from Chennai. Deciphering the inscriptions, they found two Buddha statues in dhyana pose and some ornamental pillars.

S. Rajavelu, epigraphist, ASI, had recently found that the third inscription belonged to “Sri Vijaya Maharaja,” a king from Sumatra, and that it was issued in his eighth regnal year. The inscription mentions his donating 250 kuzhi (a measurement) of land to Agatheeswarar at Kolapakkam, which was in Perur nadu (country), a sub-division of Puliyur. Sri Vijaya was a contemporary of Raja Raja Chola and the palaeography of the inscription showed the script was similar to that of the period of Raja Raja Chola. Sri Vijaya had a cordial relationship with the Chola kingdom. Although the inscription mentioned Sri Vijaya’s donation to the temple, it indirectly indicated Buddhist activity nearby, because Sri Vijaya was a Buddhist.

Dr. Satyamurthy and Dr. Rajavelu explored the area and found the ruins of a Buddhist temple close to the Agatheeswarar temple. The two Buddha sculptures and ornamental pillars, in granite, were unearthed. The Buddha sculptures are three feet tall. One sculpture has a dharma chakra on either side of the Buddha. This was sculpted in the ancient region that is now Tamil Nadu. The other sculpture has a three-tiered umbrella above the Buddha’s head and women bearing fly-whisks.

According to Dr. Satyamurthy, the face of this Buddha has Mongoloid features and this sculpture shows South-East Asian influence. One of the ornamental pillars unearthed has a bas-relief of a human face, with a head-gear that shows South-East Asian influence. An image of Ganesa is carved on this pillar.

Kolapakkam perhaps was a centre of Buddhist activity. According to Dr. Rajavelu, this area coming under Tondaimandalam was noted for Buddhist activity about 1,000 years ago, prior to the Chola period. [Buddha statues unearthed near Chennai]

Update: It seems the statues are not that of Buddha, but of Jain thirthankaras

Jiroft

Even though Subhash Kak et al wrote a book asserting that India is the Cradle of Civilization, still Mesopotamia is though to be the one. Now some new discoveries in Iran may change all that.

Archaeological excavations in the lower layers of a cemetery in Jiroft have revealed that its history goes back to the fouth millennium B.C, much before Mesopotamia. Some inscriptions were also found which proves that the writing language of Jiroft was older than that of Mesopotamia.

As the author of a three-volume history of Mesopotamia and a leading Iranian authority on the third millennium BC, Madjidzadeh has long hypothesized that Jiroft is the legendary land of Aratta, a

The Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts

Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls , the 2000 year old manuscripts that tell us that everything attributed to Jesus–and Christianity–is borrowed from an extremist Jewish sect that existed in the Qumran region of Palestine on the west shore of the Dead Sea. Now, some manuscripts which are called the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism have been dated to between the first and fifth centuries A.D.

The majority of the manuscripts were found in Bamiyan in Afghanistan and were smuggled out to a collector.

It was in 1996 that the first group of manuscripts was discovered. The finders set off towards Pakistan, and after being chased by the Taliban in the Hindu Kush they managed to cross the Khyber Pass, eventually reaching Islamabad. There the manuscripts passed through dealers before being acquired by London specialist Sam Fogg, who sold the 108 fragments to Mr Schøyen. This was followed by further batches, which were considerably larger and usually included hundreds of folios and the occasional complete manuscript. Altogether around 15 separate consignments of Bamiyan material have been acquired by Mr Schøyen.[Buddhism’s “Dead Sea Scrolls” for sale to Norway]

The antiquity of the manuscripts make it an important link in the history of Buddhism.

“Buddhism was originally an oral tradition but little is known about how it developed from spoken word to written word, so the discovery and date confirmation will give us a unique insight into the development of Buddhist literature,” he said. The new manuscripts are therefore the missing link in the historical chain.[‘Dead Sea scrolls’ may be missing link in Buddhism]

One article in the line says

“The Senior collection dating is of particular importance as this result makes a major contribution to Indian chronology in showing that an early date of 78 AD for a key historical figure, the Kushan emperor Kanishka, is no longer tenable.” ‘Dead Sea scrolls’ may be missing link in Buddhism]

There is no explanation on how this conclusion was reached. After reading all this, I am confused as to why these manuscripts are called the equivalent of Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls challenge the origin of Christianity while so far we have not seen anything similar in the Buddhist documents. The only similarity between them is that both are old, which is nothing new in the field of archaeology. So why not just call it ancient Buddhist documents without any reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

varnam