Terrorists in Bangladesh

The Los Angeles Times has an editorial on the prescence of terrorists in Bangladesh and the support of officials for Islamic extremism.

What makes the situation more precarious is that Bangladesh only just admitted that violent extremists were a problem. Since 2001, Western intelligence agencies have reported the presence in Bangladesh of Taliban remnants along with various other militant groups. It was not until February 2005, however, that Bangladesh addressed the issue at the behest of the international community, banning two terrorist groups and putting some of their ranks in prison.
But acknowledgment of a problem is just the first step in solving it. Bangladesh has yet to deal with one of the more disturbing aspects of its problem: the implicit support by some Bangladeshi officials of various Islamic extremist groups. The increasing involvement of mostly peaceful Islamic parties in the Bangladesh National Party’s coalition government is a positive development. But some ministers and officials are widely believed to have sympathy for the militant counterparts of those parties.
Bangladesh is far from becoming a haven for terrorists like Afghanistan was (and, some say, still is). But the development of ties among Bangladeshi politicians, local militants and extremists abroad could endanger an already tense region. Dhaka should break those ties whenever they are exposed.[Dangerous ties]

Related Links: Bangladesh – the new base

When will Ramayan be banned?

“Glittering like the glitter of gold, silkened in ochry silks, you are like a lotus-tendril garlanded with divine lotuses as your ensemble, who are you?” Thus Ravanan started addressing Seetha
“Oh, rosy faced one, are you the personified numen of Respect, Renown or Resplendence, or the Felicitous Lakshmi herself, or oh, curvaceous one, are you a nymphal Apsara, or the numen of Benefactress, or a self-motivated woman, or Rati Devi, the consort of Manmatha, the Love God. [3-46-17]
“Your teeth are evenly, smooth and their tips are like jasmine buds, and your whitish broad eyes are spotless, reddish at ends, and pupils are black. [3-46-18]
“Your hips are beamy, thighs burly akin to elephant’s trunks, and these two breasts of yours that are ornamented with best jewellery are rotund, rubbing and bumping each other, and they are swinging up and up, their nipples are brawny and jutting out, and they are smoothish like palm-fruits, thus they are covetable for they are beautiful.” [Ramayana Book III : Aranya Kanda – The Forest Trek]

In the land where poetry like this was written it is now considered an offence for a man and woman to hold hands. When will the culture police ban Ramayana?

First Harappan burrial site in UP

“An ancient riddle will be solved and historical chronology will change.â??â??

Few months back we reported on a Harappan burrial site in Baghpat, in Uttar Pradesh. There was a mummified body wearing copper bracelets and the site had pottery and other artefacts dating back to the Indus Valley civilisation. Here is another report with some more details.

â??â??It is the first Harappan burial site to be found in Uttar Pradesh,â??â?? says Sharma. Previously Harappan cemetries have been unearthed at Kalibanga and Lothal. Says Upinder Singh, reader in the department of history at St Stephenâ??s College, Delhi: â??â??This is just the tip of the iceberg. Thereâ??s so much new evidence coming in that archaeologists may have to re-think on many counts.â??â??
The burial ground could shed new light on the funeral practices of the Harappans. â??â??It could also point to a larger habitation. Also the pots found here are all unpainted. These should be co-related to the pots found in other burial sites. That exercise is yet to be done,â??â?? says Singh.
At Sinauli, the skeletons lie with their arms crossed and feet close to each other, head facing north-west. The burial site has many layers. â??â??In archaelogical terms it means it was in constant use,â??â?? says Sharma. Evidences of the Harappan civilisation have earlier been found in UP in Saharanpur and Alamgirpur but Sinauliâ??s haul is much richer.
Sinauli has also marked another first. Says Sharma: â??â??There is a copper hoard culture that is presumed to be late Harappan or said to follow it. But no one is sure of its authorship. Now two antenna swords belonging to this culture have been found next to a corpse. This could mean that the copper hoard was a contemporary or belonged to the mature Harappan period. An ancient riddle will be solved and historical chronology will change.â??â??
â??â??What is also interesting is that the soil found here shows that this site was on the banks of the Yamuna. The river now flows 8 km away,â??â?? says Sharma. It will take a while to tie up all these threads blown astray by time. At present, a team from Kolkataâ??s Anthropological Survey of India is conducting DNA and other tests on the ancient bodies.[UP village offers a fresh clue to solve a Harappan puzzle]

Terracota idols in Kerala

Now a days you see only dieties made of stone or marble in temples; very rarely you see ones made of terracota. But during Harappa times, objects made of terracota were common. There was an economic class distinction also there. Stone, metal and ivory were materials of the rich, while terracota was used by the poor.
Crude clay figurines of godesses, some of which were early forms of Durga, were worshipped by the lower class before they were included in the orthodox pantheon. Usuallu most of the terracota objects did not even have any religious significance. There were figurines of mother and child and many figures of man and woman and divine heads. Such figurines are dated from the Mauryan time to the Gupta period, but there has been evidence of modeling in later Buddhist sites in Bihar[13].
Though most of these terracota objects were found in North India, now we have some evidence of such idols being used in Kerala.

Several pieces of terracotta idols, believed to be dating back to the 15th century, have been dug up from the premises of a temple at Kadambattukonam near here. The broken pieces of idols and figurines have been referred to the Archaeological Department, whose experts said they appear to be at least five centuries old.
The figures, some of them so vivid with sharp facial features, were chanced upon the other day when the ground around the temple was being dug up using an excavator for building compound wall around the shrine. On sighting a couple of broken pieces, the local people went ahead with the job, delicately thinking that what was coming out could be remnants of a long buried temple.
According to Director of Archaeology Department, V. Manmadhan Nair, the practice of offering terracotta idols to temples was prevalent during the 15th and 16th centuries in parts of Kerala. Based on that, it could be assumed that these pieces could date back to the 15th century. Similar idols were unearthed in the past from Kodungallur in Thrissur district, known in the annals of history as Muziris centuries back.
“One difficulty in assessing the exact date of these objects is that the carbon-dating method for terracotta is not available in the country now. We are still looking for ways on assessing the date,” Nair said. The finds would be brought to the archaeology museum here, he added.[Terracotta idols found from temple site]

Book Review: Engaging India

Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb by Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution Press (August, 2004), 268 pages
Following the Indian nuclear tests of 1998, Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State and Jaswant Singh, Minister of External Affairs conducted a series of dialogues, meeting fourteen times in seven countries on three continents which according to Talbott were the most intense negotiations between Indian and American officials ever. There was an objection to the word “negotiation” from the Indian side as it implied talking to someone in a position of strength. The reason it was called a dialogue was because the participants were not talking to change each others minds, but to understand what each person had to say. It was an attempt to fix the broken Indo-US relationship as well as to define the visions of economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries.
At the start of the dialogue both camps had diametrically opposite view of the future. The Americans thought that India, by acquiring the bomb had threatened the world order and other countries would cite this as a reason to acquire the bomb. The Indian stand was that it was an issue of sovereignity and security. If five nations in the world could have the bomb, then why not India? The compromise position taken by the Americans was to get India to limit the deployment and development of its nuclear arsenal and the Indian position was disinclined to compromise. The goal of the Indian team was to get India accepted as a fully entitled member of the International community.
When Clinton became the President, one of his goals was to get India to sign the NPT and get the Congress to ratify CTBT. Narasimha Rao, who was the Prime Minister was invited to Washington for discussions and Rao being the smart guy he is definitely wanted good relations with United States for India’s prosperity, but did not want to be forced to sign the NPT. But knowing that the Clinton administration was serious about getting CTBT ratified, Rao ordered the nuclear tests to be conducted. But American satellites passing over Pokhran saw cables running through L-shaped tunnels indicating suspicious activity. Frank Wisner, the US Ambassador, showed Rao’s principal secretary a picture of the satellite imagery and warned that a test would backfire against India and the tests never happened in Rao’s term.
After Rao, Vajpayee became the Prime Minister and the tests were arranged in such secrecy that the Americans got their information from CNN. This set off in motion the talks which is the subject of this book. Finally according to Talbott, Jaswant Singh came close to acheiving his goal in the dialogue than the Americans. Also due to these talks, Prime Minister Vajpayee trusted President Clinton to resolve the Kargil crisis and two years after the bomb, Clinton visited India. This book contains the details of various events and people which made it possible and is a story of the diplomacy and the dialogue that took place.
Continue reading “Book Review: Engaging India” →

Why Fear Globalization?

The opponents of globalization in India make you believe that once the economy is opened up, Indians would be overrun by competition and eventually all Indians would be rendered jobless. This fear campaign plays right into the inferiority complex driven mindset of people and gives political parties one more reason to destroy public property.
These kind of arguments against globalization have few issues, the primary one being the assumption that we Indians cannot compete in a global market. The opponents of globalization assume or want to assume that Indians are incompetent, cannot compete against foreigners and need protection all the time. These opponents also do not mention the number the jobs that can get created due to investments from abroad.
Sadly such views are not answered with a historical perspective. India was a globalized country since Harappan times and there was prosperity all around and it was this prosperity that made India the target of so many invasions. There are many Indian technologies which had a global market in ancient times and one of the items we covered at The Palm Leaf, was Wootz Steel. A form of crucible steel formed by adding large quantities of carbon to Iron in South India, Wootz was famous all around the world. Another area where Indians had a monopoly was textiles and in some parts of the world Indian clothes were considered ‘sacred’ and preserved for their ceremonial, religious and magical power.

Like the gaja or elephant patola, woven using the double ikat technique with elephants and tigers signifying wealth and power. Sourced from Gujarat, the Dutch offered them to South Asian kings in exchange for trading privileges. Or, the ‘maa’ cloths sent to Indonesia for ceremonial use; radiocarbon testing dates these to the 13th century. There are also fragile hand-blocked fabrics excavated from Fustat, Egypt

First labelled portraiture of king Asoka

Here is some breaking news. King Asoka (Chandragupta Maurya’s grandson and the hero of Santosh Sivan’s film) does not look like Shah Rukh Khan. Not even a bit. We can say this for sure since we have an actual labelled portraiture of king Asoka and his queen. This information comes to us via the excavations conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India at Kanganhalli in Gulbarga district of Karnataka.

The site has yielded more than 145 short and 1lengthy donatory inscriptions of which the one referring to Asoka the Great (Rayo Asoka) is inscribed on a carved slab depicting king Asoka and his queen keeping in the view the international importance of the site the Archaeological Survey of India has initiated a project to reconstruct the stupa in its original form. It is also proposed to extend the archaeological excavations to expose the monastic complex, if any, which is a usual feature of the Buddhist sites in India [Kanganhalli]

Here are the pictures and the women in the carvings seem to be bare breasted. This means that Santosh Sivan’s movie was so factually incorrect

Besides this, two other statues of Asoka were also unearthed in Orissa in 2001

One of the two finds is the first individual statue of Asoka bearing an inscription ever to be discovered in India.Dr DR Pradhan, secretary of the state-run Institute of Maritime and South East Asian studies, told the BBC the ancient inscription translates as: “The statue was unveiled by the auspicious hands of Asoka”.Dr Pradhan said the second statue, depicting the king with two of his queens, bore the simple inscription: “The King Asoka”. [Asoka statues unearthed in India]

Don't worry, it's the Chinese

We are strongly against this air drill since we think it will harm our sovereignty and the protest is aimed at booing the joint exercise,” said Nandy, a CPI-M strongman.
“We are strongly against military exercises with the US because we believe they will be detrimental to our national security and help the US expand its military presence in South Asia,” CPI-M politburo member Anil Biswas said. [Communists protest India-US air force exercise]

Those were the Communists protesting the joint military exercise between India and United States.

Navy ships of India and China Thursday conducted joint exercises off the Kochi coast Thursday in the first bilateral exercise in India. Communication exercises between the two ships, manoeuvre procedures and exercises relating to casualty evacuation were held during the day-long exercises, naval sources in Kochi said. In 2003, Indian naval vessels had taken part in joint exercises in China.[Indian and Chinese naval vessels conduct bilateral exercises]

Note that there were no protests by Communists from Kerala over this. Apparently this does not affect national security, soverignity, dignity etc. etc. since after all these are Chinese and not Americans.
More Communist hypocrisy here: Man bites dog: DYFI opposes CPI(M), The Communist “U” turn, More Catholic than the Pope

Subhash Bose: Nehru's Role

Till recently aam junta like us believed that Subhash Bose died in plane crash in Taiwan. But investigations by the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry has revealed that it was a hoax. According to the Taiwanese, there was no plane crash during that period. The question then is, did anyone know about this previously and allow this false story to be propagated? Turns out our “favourite” Prime Minister, J Nehru knew about this and he kept quiet.

The biggest revelation, complete with documentation, is about the guilt of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in suppressing the basic facts about the Taiwan non-crash and subsequent bogus cremation of Netaji. Nehru, who doubled as India’s External Affairs Minister, had been personally informed by the Government of Formosa (as Taiwan was then called), albeit through British channels, in August 1956 about the full facts behind Japan’s staging of a spectacular “death” for the Indian hero.
Yet, Nehru had allowed the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee to go on with its command performance of an inquiry. He had accepted a report that completely contradicted the Formosan version. The myth about the air crash was allowed to grow under the assumption that a lie told many times becomes the truth. The Khosla Commission, instituted by his daughter Indira Gandhi, also reiterated it. Finally, in January 2005, the JMCI got the truth straight from Taiwan. [Did Nehru mislead nation on Bose?]

It seems the British, Formosans and Nehru knew the truth, but then certain documents which were handed over to the MEA in India just disappeared.

Did the first Prime Minister of India treat the Formosa papers as his personal property? There is reason to believe in the affirmative. He did not place it before Shah Nawaz Khan. Fourteen years later, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, did not turn them over to the GD Khosla Commission she had constituted to perpetuate the fiction about the Taihoku crash.
Had the British Government not declassified them in 1996, the Formosa papers would never have reached JMCI. The Vajpayee Government, which turned over hundreds of valuable files to JMCI during its six-year term, would certainly have included the Formosa papers if they were available in the archives of the MEA.[Despite Formosa probe, Nehru closed chapter on Netaji]

Also it turns out that the ashes kept at Renkoji Temple near Tokyo belong to somebody else. Justice Mukherjee went to Japan and had the box opened.

They found no ashes. There were parts of a human skull, portion of a jaw, some teeth (no gold filling in any of them) and some bone fragments. If, as the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee and GD Khosla Commission claimed, “Netaji’s body” had been “cremated ” for an entire night, no medico-legal expert would adduce that such soft bones would survive. Dr Madhusudan Paul of Kolkata Medical College, who went as a deponent, opined that skull fragments, three-fourths of the mandible and teeth would, in the event of cremation, be the first to vanish. Justice Mukherjee saved this crucial piece of insight for his final report.[Those aren’t Netaji’s ashes in Renkoji]

This is the opinion of one “expert” and there could be various other opinions as well. So far the investigation seems to suggest an alternate history, than the one we were made to believe with lot of cover-up at high levels of the Government. This could even be the plot for an episode of X-Files. So far the Pioneer reports have not leaked out information on what actually happened to Subhash Bose. If he did not die in the plane crash, then where was he at that time? Where did he live and how did he eventually die?
Related Links: Subhash Bose: Was not in Russia, Subhash Bose: The Investigations – II, Subhash Bose: The investigations, How did Subhash Bose die?

Amphorae in Elephanta

Amphora, one of the important vessels used by the Greeks was used to transport olives, oil, fish and wine. Such amphoras were found in India in Arikkamedu and Kanchipuram, both in the South. But now the Underwater Archaeology Wing of the Archaeological Survey of India has found Roman amphorae, along with coins and pottery in Elephanta caves, located near Mumbai.
The Elephanta caves are built in the same style as Ellora and are famous for their sculptures, especially that of the Trimurti figure of Shiva. According to A. L. Basham the Elephanta was influenced by the Pallava school of sculpture and he writes that the three-headed bust of Siva, clam with the calmness of eternity is so impressive and so religiously inspired that it needs little comment[13].

Head of ASI’s Underwater Archaeology Wing Dr Alok Tripathi had been quietly exploring the island since 1988, but it’s only in the last two years that extensive explorations were done. The richest site turned out to be the area around village Mora Bandar on the island.
‘‘The discovery of a large variety of amphorae and other antiquities on the island may solve some of the historical riddles,’’ said Tripathi. In addition to indicating continuity of trade with the western world during 5th-7th century AD, the findings may also answer why Chalukya King Pulakesin II of Badami had invaded this small island with a tiny population and limited natural resources in 634 AD.
‘‘We probably know why he did it. Elephanta appears to have been a prosperous island with a thriving trade,’’ said the underwater archaeologist. It is all the more significant since around the same period, the cave temple on the island, enshrining Mahesmurti, was excavated. [ASI to fish out Elephanta island’s Roman links]