Random thoughts 13032017

Contrary to what we may think or believe, India was perhaps a much more multi cultural and Cosmopolitan place during the 18th and 19th centuries than what we have seen in our lifetime. We only talk about the British but other than them , there were many French, Dutch,Spanish, Portuguese, Armenian,Turk,Chinese,Jews,Arabs,Tibetans,Pathans, Iranians, Africans,Parsee, Anglo Indian and other people who have enriched us by intermingling their cultures with us.

How many foreigners do we meet or get to see  in our daily lives nowadays in places other than Delhi or airports . But 200 - 250 years back , it was not so. Many foreigners were present in even small towns  ranging from Darbhanga, Jamnagar, Vizianagaram   Karaikkal, Jind etc. It was more so because most rulers had foreigners on their payroll as  teachers or advisors. French mercenaries were a common sight in the armies of Tipu sultan (Mysore) or the Nizam(Hyderabad).

The Armenian Church in Kolkata, Jewish synagogue in Kochi , La Martiniere College in Lucknow, Danish and Dutch settlements in the South and East etc. are just memories of this era. 

One can only wonder at the vibrant multi cultural period that must have been then and sigh at the  Hinglsh text type culture that we promote now. But , what happened then must have happened for something good . Likewise, what happens now must be happening for something good too.

Random thoughts 10032017

The World War I  took place between 1914. Britain, Russia, France  were the three main countries which constituted the Allied Powers which fought the war against the Central Powers.  The USA, Japan and more interestingly Italy were also part of the Allied powers. Another interesting point to note was that Japan had fought a war with Russia and had won it just a decade back in 1905.

The Central powers constituted mainly of Germany under the Kaiser and the erstwhile Austo-Hungarian empire. They were supported by the Ottoman empire having its capital at Constantinople , now known as Istanbul , in Turkey. During the period of the war itself , Russian revolution happened,  overthrowing Tsar Nicholas and the monarchy in February 1917.

The WW I was predominantly a war between the industrially developed countries and colonial powers of Europe. During the war and after it the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist.Many new countries sprang up on the map of the world. Some have ceased to exist by now. It brought huge devastation in its wake. Though named as the "War to end all wars" , it was followed by the World War II (1939-1945).

Though many Indians may not know or like to forget even after knowing, the participation of Indians in both the World wars was substantial. In the WW I, about a million of Indians or more fought to save the British Empire in the battle fields of Europe, Africa, Egypt and Mesopotamia (Iraq) . An estimated 74 thousand Indian soldiers died in the war. Indian soldiers were posted in Aden to secure the Gulf against the Ottoman forces and the oil fields. The largest contingent of the Indian army was sent to Mesopotamia. In the far east too Singapore and Myanmar were places where the Indian army was deployed. They were even sent to China where the Germans controlled a port in Tianjin. 

A large number of Indians were recruited in the army during the WW I. It provided employment to many Indians, particularly from the northern states and Nepalis too.  The WW I  also gave an opportunity to many Indians to interact with the world outside the shores of the country and integrate with the world . Also it somehow helped to loosen the rigid caste system and expanded the horizon. But at the same time, the Indians were involved in a freedom struggle against the British rule. So  the  story of the soldiers who joined the army mainly to earn their living  did not get so much importance as it deserved. Whether it was right or wrong, one can't say.

Another notable feature was the inclusion of officers of Indian descent. Prior to the WW I , the Indian army consisted of Indian soldiers commanded by officers of British origin. But the casualties in the WW I forced the British to induct Indian officers to command army units . The first time an Indian officer cadet was selected for a training at Royal Military College was in 1919. Remember, the Tata Iron and Steel company and Jmshedpur was already established in 1907, if any reference is required.

Fighting alongside the Indians in the war also changed the perspective of the British who could appreciate the Indian point of view much better and overcome the colonial feeling gradually . It is a fact that without the participation of Indian soldiers and resources, the British would have definitely found it much difficult  to win the two World wars. The presence of the huge Indian army served as a deterrent too.

All these things happened only a hundred years back . Perhaps your grandfather or the great grandfather was alive then . But then how many of us remember the name of our great grand father or even care about it ?

Random thoughts 09032017

Prevalent popular culture often records history better than grand tomes written by eminent historians. Since the last three centuries, the records of events have been steadily improving which helps us to have a glimpse of what happened during various periods of time and then ruminate over them. Sometimes, while reading old books, hearing music or watching movies of bygone days, the details bring the era alive before us. Very often, we look back upon those times with a smile playing on our lips, because however pristine, good or memorable the experience may have been, past always seem to be somewhat foolish place to be.  That of course, is with a lot of hind sight , definitely.

Take music for instance. Whenever I listen to songs dating 70 years back or more, I am struck by the nasal tone of the singers. Maybe it was the style then and perhaps the recording of the songs were more responsible for that. And the sounds of various forgotten instruments like Banjo, Clarionet, Saxophone , flutes and my favourite Piano accordion , to name a few. They just transport me to a different world. One can only wonder how the singers would have fared under the modern techno funk sounds and faster paced music regime.

Not for a moment, I am belittling the songs or the singers. Personally, I like them and feel delighted to hear them. But at the same time the nasal tones of famous singers also makes me imitate them with a slightly juvenile naughtiness. Then, watching the characters in different movies always wearing a lot of suits and smoking pipes and cigars also makes me feel amused. And the clipped accents with slightly affected styles of speech are also quite funny. Or so, it seems nowadays.

Basically reliving the past or watching it unfold always makes us compare with the present and trying to equate or juxtapose the events in the light of what is happening now.  A case in point which I would like to mention is the involvement of USA in Afghanistan. Now this happened during my lifetime and more so within the span of my adulthood. Just three decades and how things have changed. Even the perception of good, bad, friend, enemy, everything changes with time.

The other day I was watching the James Bond movie- The Living Daylights, on TV , for the nth time.  Yes, the one with Timothy Dalton playing 007. By the way, All the James Bond movies have been watched for the nth time, by me; much to the chagrin and dislike of my son and wife. But that is beside the point. What I want to highlight is that, in the movie James Bond helps and is helped by the Afghan Mujahideen . The movie was released in 1987. In another movie Rambo III of 1988  , Sylvester Stallone is on a mission to get his ex-boss Colonel Trautman released from the Russian prison in Afghanistan. Those were the days  when the Afghan rebels were the darlings of the western establishment and the cold war with USSR was on its last leg.  How times change.

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The Sahayak (orderlies) system followed in the Indian army is feudal and regressive . It should be scrapped forthwith. But the fun is that it does not exist on paper or official records. Jawans are deputed to such duties without any mention of what they are supposed to do . Just like that - Report to so and so officer .

And please don't try to counter my statement with ridiculous theories. I have first hand experience of the plight of these Sahayaks. I lived in Army officers' quarters for about five years in two cantonments and know quite a lot about their lifestyle. I have also interacted with many Army officers and also many such Sahayaks informally too. So, I know about the thing.

Alexander the great

Reading  books on history have always fascinated me. And like many, a historical character who fuels the romantic in me has been Alexander the great. I was recently reading a book and was noting down some points from there. Just thought of recording them with my perspective too.

Alexander the Great and his campaign to India is perhaps one of the most early important events in the history of India which has been recorded by the western historians . Though the European historians have written much about Alexander and his campaign , the ancient Indian historians have not  written much about him . That may be because, to the most Indians he was just like another conqueror from the west who tried to invade the Indian subcontinent. Alexander crossed the Hindukush mountains in eastern Afghanistan in the month of May, 327 BC. He fought for more than a year against various tribes in what is now North Pakistan until he could cross the river Indus in February 326 BC.

The king of Takshashila (Taxila) accepted Alexander’s suzerainty without putting up a fight. He proved to be a generous host to the Greeks and is reported to have fed them with the meat of 3,000 oxen and more than 10,000 sheep. Then he also provided the Greeks with 5,000 auxiliary troops so that they could better fight his neighbour, King Poros. King Poros belonged to the tribe of the Pauravas, descended from the Puru tribe mentioned so often in the Rigveda. He joined battle with Alexander at the head of a mighty army with some 2,000 elephants, but Alexander defeated him by a sudden attack after crossing the river Hydaspes at night although the river was in flood. Alexander then reinstated the vanquished Poros and made him his ally.

The river which Greeks called Hydaspes is now known as Jhelum. It was also known as Vitashta in ancient Hindu scriptures. The historical name of Beas is given as Hyphasis by the Greek historians. The surrender of king Poros and his subsequent reinstatement has been romanticised in many novels and has acquired a mythological reference to treatment of captured enemy.

The famous Indian monsoon and the rains are said to have obstructed Alexander’s march east. He was determined to go on, but when his army reached the river Hyphasis (Beas), east of the present city of Lahore, his soldiers refused to obey his orders for the first time in eight years of incessant conquest. It is said that Alexander had motivated them by saying that they were to conquer the lands till the end of the world .  Alexander was convinced that he would soon reach the end of the world, but his soldiers were less and less convinced of this as they proceeded to the east where more kings and war elephants were waiting to fight against them. Greek and Roman authors report that the Nandas, who had their capital at Pataliputra when Alexander the Great conquered north western India, had a powerful standing army of 200,000 infantrymen, 20,000 horsemen, 2,000 chariots drawn by four horses each, and 3,000 elephants. This is the first reference to the large-scale use of elephants in warfare. Such war elephants remained for a long time the most powerful strategic weapons of Indian rulers until the Central Asian conquerors of the medieval period introduced the new method of the large-scale deployment of cavalry.

Alexander’s speech in which he invoked the memory of their victories over the Persians in order to persuade them to march on is one of the most moving documents of Alexander’s time, but so is the reply by Coenus, his general, who spoke on behalf of the soldiers. Alexander finally turned back and proceeded with his troops south along the river Indus where they got involved in battles with the tribes of that area, especially with the Malloi (Malavas). Alexander was almost killed in one of these encounters. He then turned west and crossed, with parts of his army, the desert land of Gedrosia which is a part of present Baluchistan. Very few survived this ordeal. In May 324 BC, three years after he had entered India, Alexander was back at Susa in Persia. In the following year he died in Babylon.

Alexander’s early death and the division of his empire among the Diadochi who fought a struggle for succession put an end to the plan of integrating at least a part of India into the Hellenistic empire. By 317 BC the peripheral Greek outposts in India had been given up. Thus Alexander’s campaign remained a mere episode in Indian history, but the indirect consequences of this intrusion were of great importance. The reports of Alexander’s companions and of the first Greek ambassador at the court of the Mauryas were the main sources of Western knowledge about India from the ancient to the medieval period of history. Also, the Hellenistic states, which arose later on India’s north western frontier in present Afghanistan had an important influence on the development of  Indian art as well as on the evolution of sciences such as astronomy.

The memory of Alexander the Great returned to India only much later with the Islamic conquerors who saw him as a great ruler worth emulating. One of the sultans of Delhi called himself a second Alexander, and the Islamic version of this name (Sikander) was very popular among later Islamic rulers of India and Southeast Asia. The ancient Persian and later Islamic texts also hold Alexander as a truly great conqueror.

There is still a section of India historians and intellectuals who do not rank Alexander of any importance only because he could not or did not invade the Gangetic plain, which still today remains the measure of  India for many. Well, they may be right or wrong in their own way. But considering everything in the context of history, Alexander and his campaign has left their indelible mark on the world and influenced history of Europe and Asia by a very large extent.

Kind acknowledgement - A History of India  by Hermann Kulke and
Dietmar Rothermund

Random thoughts 0203217

#Afterthoughts All around us things happen about which we know really know little about. It is as if we are surrounded by a series of phenomena that we don’t understand. When we don't know something, it is natural for us to be curious, ask questions, and explore assumptions. But does it happen that way for all of us ? Don't we shut our senses to all that happens around us ? We feel contented with the mystery of life and let it be that way. This contentment is a way of shutting ourselves. We need to live a life in which we are always  questioning, investigating and wondering.

Unknown to us there are a lot of invisible super forces working incessantly and dispassionately in the background on our behalf . But we need to be curious to feel these forces . And that is the real essence of liberty  When people denigrate the term liberal  they forget that it is the natural result of being curious and understanding these forces.

Often I find that we, or most of us, let the long shadows of tradition and the confined space of authority guide us to understand life around us and form our worldview. We analyse events and utterances in the light of what we have been taught to think as being the right way, instead of reasoning. But the human societies have not evolved that way. No sacred book or set of religious instructions can be said to be the complete guide to life. It is the questions and the journey to find their answers that shape our lives and also the societies that we live in. The voice of reason is what defines progress of the human being. Whenever the society fails to encourage the voice of reason, it goes back in time and impedes progress by evolution. 

Random thoughts 01032017

Just note how the conspiracy theory with terrorist angle is used to garner votes and hide inefficiency. Only a few days back , we were told by the Prime Minister at an election meeting that the Kanpur rail accident, in which 143 people were killed was a conspiracy and the conspirators carried it out sitting across the border. Now yesterday, the  DG, Railways, Uttar Pradesh Police, told the participants of n official meeting on rail-safety that the cause of derailment of 14 coaches of the Indore–Patna Express near Kanpur was not an act of sabotage but “fatigue of railway tracks” and they had found no traces of explosives at the accident site.

Because the top leader himself uses mockery,lies, falsehoods, rabble rousing half-truths and untruths in his public speeches day in and day out, the smaller minions have to try harder to be relevant and heard . So we find the instances of  rape threats, trolling etc. happens as we find them today. Forgotten is the accident and any reference to its root cause - safety measures. The people who died will not come back. Is this  apathetic administration lesser than terrorists ?

If you remember – last year around this time the JNU issue hogged the limelight. The Delhi Police arrested Kanhaiya Kumar on 9th February 2016 on charges of sedition for shouting antinational slogans. The young man was castigated by the Bhakt brigade and a wave of faux patriotic upsurge was engineered. He was manhandled by the Police as well as goons dressed as nationalist lawyers inside court premises under police custody. Today after an year , Delhi Police have reportedly not found any comprehensive evidence to pursue its sedition case against him.

The people who shouted the slogans have not been punished till now. When they can’t arrange for punishment ,within a year , of people who shout anti national slogans, how do we believe that this government will be able to do anything effective against those who indulge in far greater crimes of harmful  anti national activities. What do you say now , all you creatures who regularly snigger and use words like sickular, libtard, naxalite, AAPist etc to malign anybody who dares to question the crooked shenanigans of the establishment in favour of the ruling party and its lumpen cohorts? No wonder the people of this ilk are now trained their guns on a student - a mere young girl , who has bravely vented her feelings.

Joining the chorus of some celebrities aligned to the negative mindset of ultra nationalism and jingoistic trash , Shazia Ilmi of BJP ( yes , the same person who used to attack BJP aggressively till May 2014 and contested Lok Sabha election against V K Singh) has blamed Congress and AAP for politicizing the DU – Gurmeher  issue and has dared them by asking if the Congress and AAP ready to take out a rally saying - 'Don't blame Pak' for martyrdom of our soldier and want peace with Pakistan.

Now with due respect to the fact that she was a competent TV anchor , well known social activist of yore and also because she is a lady, I won’t be uncharitable towards her for bringing a political angle herself to what is largely a small  issue of rebellious dissent and emotional outburst by a young girl. And in that too she is missing the point by a mile if not more.

Yes Ms Shazia Ilmi , no political party can position themselves for peace with Pakistan under the present atmosphere. Nobody can take out placards with “Don’t blame Pak’ on them . But then it also does not mean that we complete our patriotic duty by blaming Pak and doing nothing else. You and your party love to blame Pak for almost every woe that we face. But it is your party that is running the government. What have you done other than blaming them ? Your PM by himself visited Pakistan  to gain publicity. It was not Gurmeher, her father or a common man like me. There is still a government level friendly relation between Pakistan and India. We maintain full diplomatic relations with them. It has been highlighted many a times before. If we the people want to have a people to people level friendship , why does it raise the hackles of your party ?

I stand with Gurmeher, I don’t blame Pak. I blame our politicians for keeping the Pak bogey alive in an effort to drum up faux nationalism . Either let us admit officially that Pakistan is an enemy country like USA did for Iran, Libya, Cuba etc. or let us accept them as friends and live with a shared bond of  empathy and connect. It can’t be so that you use them as a bogey to make people fall in line for everything from demonetisation to increase in price of LPG . And when somebody decides to give peace a chance at a personal level, please don’t unleash your fanged dogs of hell upon them as retribution. I know you will never read this or care about it . But like Gurmeher or me, there are many who don’t get carried away by the jingoistic tirades of your party. And we will speak out.