Taj Mahal: A Hindu temple ???

Speaking of alternate theories I must admit that for a long time I have had a soft corner for the following:

http://www.stephen-knapp.com/was_the_taj_mahal_a_vedic_temple.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.N._Oak

Some of the arguments and the photographs churn the mind and as yet I haven’t found a strong rebuttal of the same. Criticisms of this theory are generally at a 25000-ft level. Makes me wonder………

Book Review: Children of Kali by Kevin Rushby

I have always been interested in the underdog, in the ‘alternate’ view, in the rebel’s passion and the so-called conspiracy theories,

This book presents such an alternate view of the thuggee cult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee) that existed in India and was exterminated by the British masters during their colonial rule over India. The conventional view being that they were an Indian network of secret fraternities who were engaged in murdering and robbing travelers in the name of the Hindu tantric goddess Kali. Incidentally the word thug finds its derivation from ‘thuggee’.

Some key extracts from the book that throw light on thuggees

It was Sleeman’s grandson James who did the calculation in 1933. One thug strangling 8 men per month for 20 years, multiplied by all the thugs in India for all the years before anyone knew anything about it until its final demise in the 1840s equals, at a conservative estimate, 1 million murders.

The man who eradicated this criminal conspiracy became a hero of the British Raj. During the 1830s and 1840s, William Henry Sleeman supported by 17 assasins and about a 100 sepoys, hunted down and captured over 3000 thugs.

The word thug was punched deep into the English language …….soon to take the modified form of ‘ruffian’ rather then the original ‘deceiver’.

…..the road north from Nagpur to the Nerbudda, the most dangerous and thug-infested territory.

But the surprise of the book is the refutation of the conventional explanation of the religious background to this cult. The author expounds on the following

………….the thugs were drawn from all backgrounds and castes: there were Muslims and Hindus, Brahmins and untouchables, warriors and farmers……perhaps most surprising…..was that one thug was found to be British: a renegade soldier……

The arrival of the British had a huge effect on agriculture, starting the wave of tree clearances that have resulted in the open countryside of India today.

…One of the first acts of the British in their new dominions was to establish an opium monopoly in the suitable upland region of Malwa to the west of Jabalpur……….China had been supplied with the drug by European merchants for many years…….demand was increasing and British merchants saw an opportunity……..Huge areas of land began to go under poppy cultivation in Malwa.

As China became dependent on India chan du, British India developed an unhealthy addiction to the revenue raised……The system was that rich Bombay merchants would send money to buy the product in advance…….Jewels, dollars and gold mohurs came pouring across India into Malwa………The time to do this was shortly after the Dassera festival in mid-October, exactly the same time that all accounts gave as the onset of the thugs ‘hunting season’.

………the thugs were freebooters and to a great extent created by British conquests……….does not mention Kali or nationwide leaders or high levels of organization.

In the view of Stewart Gordon of the Univ.of Michigan, ‘It was the writing of William Sleeman and the evangelical, crusading tone of the British Indian administration of the 1830s that played up these locally-organized, small-scale marauding groups (given the name thugs by the British) into a hideous, widespread religious conspiracy, somehow typical of India and Indian “national character”.’

……….the drug-running East India Company also placed temptation under their noses, then hanged them without too much bothering with evidence. William Sleeman for his pains became a hero to the Raj.

………..The Criminal Tribes Act 1871 was repealed in 1952 soon after Independence being regarded as untenable in a civilized and egalitarian society. No one can now be legitimately described as of a criminal tribe or caste…………At its peak the Act is said to have encompassed 13 million people, all of them criminals by reason of birth……..their lot had been told……where they could and could not live, to be punished for movement outside boundaries, to have their children taken away, their marriages controlled and their men imprisoned. The rules were so stringest, the punishments so draconian that many honest individuals were driven to crime, a fact that was often held up as proof of their recidivist genetic tendencies.

While murder was certainly being done on India’s roads in the 1820s and thirties, the British reaction was partial, unbalanced and unjust. Thuggee was a social evil but it was not a religious cult: it was a threat to the opium trade.

(The Criminal Tribes Act)…….the forces unleashed in India dealt blows to the poorest and most defenceless people at the bottom of the caste system; and into the very foundations of the Indian police service it laid deep veins of corruption, bigotry and injustice that continue to poison its work 170 years later.

The unfortunate truth is that Indian history has been written and is being rewritten by its previous colonial master and their modern counterparts i.e. the British and the Western world. The further unfortunate aspect is that probably there is hardly any original research into such mass brainwashing. Whether it be the Aryan Invasion theory (AIT) or the thuggee cult or …………., the former slaves still follow the slavish theories of their former masters blindly.

A developing nation doesn’t really have the time to do an original and comprehensive study of its history. All it does and can do is following the established theories that are dumped on them. May the sun dawn on our history someday.

Book Review: India’s unending journey – Finding balance in the time of change by Mark Tully

Since I read this book within a short time of reading the book by Asra reviewed below, the following extract is particularly pertinent for the topic under question

In his commentary on the Mahabharata, Chaturvedi Badrinath writes: ‘There has hardly been anything in human history that has produced greater violence and killing than conflicting perceptions of what truth is.’ It is when those perceptions leave no room for doubt or questioning, when they are held too firmly, that violence follows.

Mark is particularly impressed by the ability of Hinduism to accommodate uncertainty and not insist on certainty, its ability to continuously borrow and absorb from all that it comes into contact with it. Although this book reverberates with his love for India and its people, I didn’t find it to be a love blind to the failings of the Indian society.

Although the following text does look at the positives of casteism, it should in no way be read as a condonation (if indeed that is the noun form of the verb ‘condone’) of the horrible atrocities carried out in its name:

Meritocracy is a cruel concept because success becomes the goal of life and we can never all be given equal opportunities from birth onwards in order to succeed and become a meritocrat. Those who do not succeed in a meritocracy often suffer mentally because the social ethos implies that it was their fault that they failed. …such societies tend to turn into a rat race with those who lose being regarded and regarding themselves as failures.

I talked about feminism in religion in my previous blog update. In that context the following statements by Mark make nice reading

..Kamasutra (an Indian sex manual possibly from as early as the 2^nd Century CE)….Vatsyayana (the author) clearly recognizes that women have sexual desires too, and advises them on how these might be fulfilled. His guidance ranges from telling virgins how to get husbands to a discussion of the female orgasm, which as the psychoanalysts Sudhir Kakar and Wendy Doniger rightly point out in their introduction to their translation of the Kama Sutra, is ‘far more subtle than views that prevailed in Europe until very recently indeed’.

A gentle and free flowing book written filled with the milk of human goodness.

Book Review: Standing Alone in Mecca – A Pilgrimage into the Heart of Islam by Asra Q. Nomani

A thought right towards the end of the book ‘Your book is the kicking of the foetus in the belly of Islam’ summarizes this books journey aptly. This is the autobiographic extract of the Islamic journey of a Muslim woman of India origin raised in the US, a single unwed mother, friend of Daniel Pearl the slain Jewish journalist, who travels to Mecca and starts rediscovering her feminist Muslim identity and in the process starts raising a lot of pertinent questions from a feminine angle.

Many of her examples of the pro-feminist leanings of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) delight the mind and also raise despair at the hijacking (generally speaking) of almost all major religions by the male-lobby

Some examples

• …..the Prophet created a community that was built on feminist ideals…..the prophet was Islam’s first feminist…he accepted as his first love and first wife a woman who was savvier, wealthier and more successful in the world than he was…….the Qu’ran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before women gained such rights in the West……During the Prophets time and for some years thereafter, women prayed in the Prophet’s mosque with no partition between them and the men. Historians record women’s presence in the mosque and participation in education and in political and literary debates as well as in asking questions of the Prophet after his sermons, transmitting religious knowledge and providing social services. When the Prophet heard that some men were positioning themselves in the mosque to be closer to an attractive woman, his solution wasn’t to ban the women but to admonish the men………
  

• …feminist Muslim scholars say the Prophet vastly improved the rights of women at the time and encouraged their self-expression…..Aisha…the prophets favourite wife…..Today nearly half of the Islamic jurisprudence of the Hanafi school of thought, which is followed by 70 % of Muslims is based on the theology and jurisprudence communicated by Aisha to her students….She became a transmitter of the 4^th largest number of hadith, or sayings of the Prophet…..She also earned respect as a profound critical thinker and great expert in law, history, medicine, mathematics and astronomy
  
  
• A profound Iranian Muslim thinker, Ali Shariati, appreciated the feminist spirit of the Prophet and told his students:
  
  The Prophet of Islam who was such an elevated personality and one before whom history is humbled, when he entered his home was kind, lenient and gentle. When his wives quarreled with him, he left his home and made a place for himself in the storage area without showing any harsh reaction against them…….The Prophets behavior was so humane that it amazes us.
  

To my delight she also quotes frequently the writings of the religious scholar Karen Armstrong (some of whose books, esp. the ones on the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and the Buddha are classics)

‘The women of the first ummah in Medina took full part in its public life, and some, according to Arab custom, fought alongside the men in battle,’ wrote Karen Armstrong in Islam: A Short Hitory. ‘They did not seem to have experienced Islam as an oppressive religion, though later, as happened in Christianity, men would hijack the faith and bring it in line with the prevailing patriarchy.’

As is to be expected, given the current hostile environment she does not go the whole hog. For e.g. she raises a mild protest against the following quote in her book.

The Qu’ran allows Muslim men to marry Jewish and Christian women…... But non-Muslim men are forbidden to Muslim women. The Qu’ran (2.221) says: ‘Nor marry your girls to unbelievers until they believe. A man slave who believes is better than an unbeliever.’

Compare the current Christian era with the one that existed during the time of Galileo. In the recent past we had some high-up Christian priests in the UK saying that the Bible should be read metaphorically rather than factually. And the situation during the times of Galileo when his heliocentric model of the universe led to his house arrest by the Church since it was their opinion that it probably contradicted with their interpretation of the Bible. Times changes, religious leanings change. Islam was a tolerant religion during its Golden Age, and certainly much much more liberal than the other leading religions during that time. The wheel has turned a circle and today Islam is probably caught in the Saudi / Talibani grip. I am sure that the day is not far off when there will arise strong role models in the Islamic societies who will lead to a revival of the true and tolerant face of Islam with their moderate interpretations and moderating influence. But of course that could take centuries also. As applies to all other societies Democracy, education and globalization is the way forward.

This book though not a classic in terms of writing style, prose or tautness, is certainly a good read.

Random thoughts..........not mine

The Gospel by Kipling

He that hath a gospel
Whereby heaven is won
(Carpenter or cameleer,
Or Maya’s dreaming son)
Many swords shall pierce Him
Mingling blood with gall;
But his own disciple
Shall wound him worst of all!

My swaraj (self rule or independence) is to keep intact the genius of our civilization. I want to write many new things but they must all be written on the Indian slate. I would gladly borrow from the West when I can return the amount with decent interest.

- Mahatma Gandhi

We are the Plgrims, master; we should go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea…

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned;
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand

- James Elroy Flecker

The Story of our lives............

When our ancestors found that wheat
Was a good bread to eat
They settled in Jericho
All of us are settled now
But in our souls there is great woe:
We don’t know where to go

I am settled in a fine place
I own a house, I live in grace,
I have a patio
But late at night when the winds lament,
and the garden shivers – my soul is rent:
I don’t know where to go

One day when I say goodbye
To life and wife, and lie and fly
Somehere in a great flow,
I shall be free to roam again
I’ll try to find but try in vain
Where to go, where to go.

- Henry Shore

Movie Review: Black Friday

Movie Review of Black Friday (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400234/)

This movie is a docu-drama on the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai carried out by Muslim mobsters allegedly in retaliation of the riots in Mumbai where Hindu mobs targeted the Muslims (which followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid by Hindu crowds)

Starting with the brilliantly simple statement of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’, this movie so reminded me of United 93, the docu drama of the 2 planes crashing into the World Trade Centre on 9/11. Its not as crisp as the Hollywood movie but is trendsetting in the Bollywood context.

Although almost universally praised (including many Western film critics), surprisingly I found nobody really mentioned the points I am going to cover below. So here goes

Some aspects of the scenes/script were quite weak

• The policeman advising one of the main investigators not to open the scooter storage compartment since that can trigger the bomb. Duh!!!! And that too when they are actually searching for explosives
• Following an initial lead, the police vans rather overtly arriving in full force down a crowded Mahim Dargah Road to follow a lead at the residence of Rubina Memon. Lots of advance notice for the bomber to make a getaway. I guess to provide a level playing field for all parties.
• The policeman raiding the Rubina Memon house not using gloves and doing a rather amateurish job at raiding, displaying a surprising lack of urgency
• Tiger Memon’s accountant lifting an obviously empty suitcase oh so easily onto the airport trolley.
• The rather comic drama of the capture of Imtiaz and the inept (does that surprise me J?) police. Everybody just seems to have endless reserves of energy in running………and just letting Imtiaz escape
• The Imtiaz character being forced to imprint his bloodied thumb print on presumably a confession. Would it take a very stupid judge not to suspect something fishy?
• The discovery of the RDX sacks among fishstock: a badly made scene
• And I do have a slight crib about the indipop sounding final song accompanying the credits. It seemed to rather trivialize the film, the film seemed to be cruising along at a certain competency of integrity and then this song seemed to reduce it to something totally amateurish

Having got the above points out of the way, I would like to concentrate on the positives of the film, which are many. The scenes standing out in my memory from this film

• The chilling aura generated by Pavan Varma (portraying Tiger Memon)
• The reenactment of the bombings at Stock Market and in the BEST bus
• The rather authentic location shoots throughout India, mostly Mumbai
• Tiger Memon’s short speech drawing Badshah into the plot, a marvelous scene

The small characters who make the movie memorable

• The lady outside Rubina Memon’s house questioned on her whereabouts
• The accountant / manager of Tiger Memon who cracks open
• The Imtiaz character
• Dangale the interrogator

The movie is a must-watch and possibly a collectors-item

And finally I must dedicate this first film review on my blog to http://www.filmigeek.net/ whose regular movie reviews are a treat to read. I hope to draw inspiration from you