Shunya's Notes

Vacation Break

Tis' the season for travel. Usha and I will be away for 15 days to Northeastern Europe: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Our mutually negotiated itinerary begins in Warsaw and takes in Krakow, Oswiecim (Auschwitz/Birkenau), Zamosc, Bialowieza Forest, Kaunas, Vilnius, Trakai, Riga, Sigulda, Tartu, Saremaa, Tallin, and more. Consequently, new posts may not happen at all (unless of course VP springs into heroic rearguard action).

A terrific book I'm reading in preparation is Walking Since Daybreak by Modris Eksteins. Here is an excerpt:

Death of History

The understanding of human behavior in the past has always been the raison d'etre of history. Because of this, history has prided itself on being a progressive discipline. Historians like to think that they have been to the modern world what theologians were to the age of enlightenment. They have provided meaning. In so doing, they have made the world a better place. History has been not only a subject of study; it has been a moral force. History, one could argue, has been the essence of the Enlightenment project.

The Other Guantanamo

David Vine, author of the forthcoming Island of Shame: The Secret History of Exile and Empire on Diego Garcia, chronicles yet another sorry saga of American imperialism.

On the small, remote island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean halfway between Africa and Indonesia, the United States has one of the most secretive military bases in the world ... this huge US air and naval base has been a major, if little known, launch pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the past year, the George W Bush administration has made improvements that point toward its use in a possible attack on Iran. The administration recently admitted what it had long denied and what journalists, human-rights investigators and others had long suspected: the island has also been part of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) secret "rendition" program for captured terrorist suspects.

More here.

A Memorial: My Lai, 1968

Forty years ago today the people of a little village in Vietnam, called My Lai, were subjected to unspeakable atrocities at the hands of a group of young soldiers who were there to persecute America's war against communism. The massacre was ended by the heroic actions of a 24 year old helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, who stepped in to save the villagers, backed by his 18 year old gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and their 20 year old Crew Chief, Glenn Andreotta.

According to the Seattle Times, these were the conditions:

AFTER THREE MONTHS in Vietnam, Charlie Company (Task Force Barker, 11th Brigade, Americal Division), had suffered 28 casualties, including five killed, and was down to 105 men. All the casualties were from mines, booby traps and snipers rather than battles in which troops could clearly identify an enemy. The day after a booby trap killed a popular sergeant, Charlie Company was given orders to invade an area believed to be a North Vietnamese stronghold. Though it is generally agreed commanders ordered soldiers to destroy the villages and "neutralize" the area, there is controversy over whether the directive included killing civilians. The U.S. military's official report found that "from 16-19 March 1968, U.S. Army troops massacred a large number of noncombatants in two hamlets of Son My Village, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of Vietnam. The precise number of Vietnamese killed cannot be determined but was at least 175 and may exceed 400." Later reports tallied 504.

In the spirit of not forgetting, not papering over what war really does to people—civilians and soldiers, both—here are the words of Lawrence Colburn, recalling that day:

The Silence of the Night

Here is an excerpt from a speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in NY City. He was killed exactly a year later when he was only 39. This is how one Christian preacher bravely spoke out against the Vietnam war. A tad different, shall we say, from the Rapture-ready evangelical preachers of today.

... Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
...
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

Further down in this impassioned speech, he quotes a Buddhist leader from Vietnam:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

Noble or Savage?

After 50,000 years of human "progress", some cautiously optimistic thoughts on our future:

Human beings have spent most of their time on the planet as hunter-gatherers. From at least 85,000 years ago to the birth of agriculture around 73,000 years later, they combined hunted meat with gathered veg. Some people, such as those on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea, still do. The Sentinelese are the only hunter-gatherers who still resist contact with the outside world. Fine-looking specimens—strong, slim, fit, black and stark naked except for a small plant-fibre belt round the waist—they are the very model of the noble savage. Genetics suggests that indigenous Andaman islanders have been isolated since the very first expansion out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago.

About 12,000 years ago people embarked on an experiment called agriculture and some say that they, and their planet, have never recovered. Farming brought a population explosion, protein and vitamin deficiency, new diseases and deforestation. Human height actually shrank by nearly six inches after the first adoption of crops in the Near East. So was agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”, as Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist and professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, once called it?

More here.

The Politics of God

Perhaps all that unites feminists today is their goal of making the world a better place for women. Approaches diverge from there: from hard-liners, who see all men as complicit in oppressing women, to moderates, who seek incremental changes by working with men. They rarely see eye-to-eye: the former call the latter anti-feminist sell-outs; the latter see the former as extremists damaging to the cause, etc.

The analogy is not exact but a similar dynamic exists in atheist discourse today. In response to 9/11 and the alarming role of evangelical Christianity in US politics, a host of loud atheistic voices have emerged. Most belong to concerned citizens driven by their secular ideals. But they seem united only by their goal of curbing religion in public life; in their approaches, they too range from hard-line to moderate. The former see most religion as noxious, worth getting rid of like the plague; the latter see it as a universal instance of irrational human nature, and only seek to reform and contain its moral excesses. 

Which stripe of atheists do we side with? We can evaluate them based on results (an amorphous exercise). More often, we evaluate them via their assumptions, analysis, and claims. A part of our answer, as always, comes from subjective and often sub-conscious factors: our culture, experiences, psychological makeup. Another part derives from the understanding we consciously gain about the beast -- religion in this case -- relying on a calm analysis of all relevant data available to us, from biology, history, anthropology, etc.

Understanding religion as practiced by the masses is a prerequisite for a sensible response to it. No science can yet prove that without an agreed-upon purpose or goal, secular values are objectively superior to religious ones (same can be said of the values of individualism and capitalism). With different goals, other values become superior. Secular values are a subjective choice some of us have made, a choice we need to convince others of -- others are not obligated to follow us. We need to sell our ideas, and as with all selling, it helps to understand our "target customers." Corporations do this rather well; pomposity, railing at target customers, and calling them irrational or stupid for patronizing a competing product is a sure way to go out of business!

What does religion provide some of us that is so hard to give up? Are some of us innately less predisposed to religiosity (I became an atheist at 13, without any sophisticated reasons)? What is the lure of fundamentalism? Why is it growing now, and why in the richest, most scientifically advanced nation on the planet? What is the link between fundamentalism and terrorism? What drives educated Muslims to blow themselves up, something they didn't do until a few years ago? Why is their ire directed against a nation that swears by another Abrahamic faith, rather than godless China? Is there a correlation between global capitalism and rising religiosity? What ingredients in a recipe can maximize the odds of turning children into responsible, secular adults? What kinds of reforming efforts have worked best in the history of religion? Etc.

Needless to say, people with significant insights are few and far between -- clarity of thought remains counter-cultural in every culture. It is one thing to be a fearless critic, another to be right or wise. Far easier to succumb to easy answers and to hysterically rage at all those who disappoint us so gravely (those "enemies of reason"?). Hardly the best way to show we're not like them.

One writer I've liked for years is Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University. He has written a book called "The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West." Here is a teaser from a long excerpt that should be required reading for everyone interested in religion and politics:

A little more than two centuries ago we began to believe that the West was on a one-way track toward modern secular democracy and that other societies, once placed on that track, would inevitably follow. Though this has not happened, we still maintain our implicit faith in a modernizing process and blame delays on extenuating circumstances like poverty or colonialism. This assumption shapes the way we see political theology, especially in its Islamic form — as an atavism requiring psychological or sociological analysis but not serious intellectual engagement. Islamists, even if they are learned professionals, appear to us primarily as frustrated, irrational representatives of frustrated, irrational societies, nothing more. We live, so to speak, on the other shore. When we observe those on the opposite bank, we are puzzled, since we have only a distant memory of what it was like to think as they do. We all face the same questions of political existence, yet their way of answering them has become alien to us. On one shore, political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority and spiritual redemption; on the other they are not. And that, as Robert Frost might have put it, makes all the difference.

More here. (Read a book review here.)

The Great Persuader

Paul Laity on Eric Hobsbawm, "the world's best-known historian."

As a scholar who not only has been a formidable presence in the historical profession since the 1940s, but can say that he "remembers vividly" the cold winter night Hitler took power in Berlin, Hobsbawm feels qualified to stand back from the contemporary scene and see it "in a broader context and in a longer perspective". And his standing has never been higher, thanks to his two previous books: the bestselling account of the "short 20th century", The Age of Extremes (1994), which has been called his masterpiece; and his memoir, Interesting Times (2002), the writing in which surpasses the already exacting standards of a renowned stylist. Hobsbawm's range and power of analysis are unquestioned. He speaks numerous languages, has travelled everywhere and is equally at home assessing football's Bosman ruling as he is explaining stock market crashes. Even the Spectator, a magazine assuredly hostile to his unrepentant communism, calls him our "greatest living historian".

He is pleased to have reached 90: soon it won't be that unusual, he points out, but for now it has a certain "scarcity value". Hobsbawm wants to help us see beyond "current passions and sales pitches" - be prepared, however: he has no truck with liberal pieties. "More nonsense and meaningless blather is talked in western public discourse today about democracy than about almost any other word or political concept," he insists. "Fundamentalist Islam isn't a danger, if only because it can't win any wars." Young, "fundamentalist bomb-throwers", he says, are nothing compared to the IRA. He dismisses the idea that the UN has any independent authority, and has no time for humanitarian interventions: "the default position of any state is to pursue its interests".

Hobsbawm assesses current dilemmas with a coolness and detachment that his political opponents have been quick to identify as an unfeeling, mandarin Marxism. Touchy-feely is not his style; he follows, he says, the traditions of Enlightenment rationalism and is frustrated with recent "hysterias" and the "totally unstructured feeling that 'something must be done'". His aim, he writes, is to assist the young "to face the darkening prospects of the 21st century . . . with the requisite pessimism".

More here.  Another review here.

It's All In The Vedas

Once after giving a talk on a seminal piece of work, the brilliant Indian physicist Meghnad Saha was told by an elderly member in the audience, "There is nothing new here. It's all in the Vedas." From then on, whenever Saha came across a new or intriguing development in physics, he is said to have quipped, "But it's all in the Vedas!" He of course was being sarcastic and dismissive of the claims by some Hindu purists that the answer to pretty much anything pertaining to mathematics, physics, metaphysics, ethics, morality and the universe was discovered, understood and transcribed in the Vedas millennia ago by the ancient sages of a burgeoning philosophy which came to constitute the foundations of Hinduism.

Now, I am no Vedic scholar. I have only a vague and incomplete understanding of the original philosophical / ritualistic texts although I am quite familiar with the Puranas which constitute the mythological literature deriving from that line. My own fractured understanding leads me to believe (perhaps erroneously) that the Vedas do touch upon many aspects of the real and imaginary forces governing the universe but much of that, except guidelines to ritual worship and mantras, is vague and open to multiple interpretations in light of subsequent latter day knowledge. Even though the sages speculated on physical laws, I am not sure how much actual verifiable data are present in the ancient texts. Does a rich and rational imagination qualify as knowledge? If one fantasizes about flying, is that proof that one formulated Bernoulli's principle? Does pondering over the nature of matter automatically point to a grasp of the structure of the atom? Should beautiful mythology filled with awesome weapons of mass destruction lead the reader to conclude that the bards were alluding to nuclear fission and fusion? I am not referring to the classical Indian scholars of the early middle ages like Aryabhata, his disciples and their substantial contributions to mathematics, but to the more ancient era - a few thousand years B.C. and earlier. How many of the modern mathematical concepts had been refined during early Vedic times? What exactly is Vedic math? I found an article that mentions it but doesn't explain much except to say that the Vedic system makes computation simpler and liberates the student from an over dependence on calculators. Well, whatever it may be, Houston students can now benefit from Vedic math.

Imported wisdom
Delhi engineers and Houston school children both gain from Indian math traditions

''One more than before," the ancient text advises. In the original Sanskrit, this centuries-old wisdom wasn't meant as a fast track into the global economy.

But for a new generation of Indian technology students, these formulas based on Hindu scriptures offer remarkable shortcuts for success in math. It makes sense for Houston schoolchildren to adopt some of these habits and learning techniques that make many Indians such good mathematicians.

The Pakistan Puzzle

Cross-posted from Neutral Observer .

On August 14th this year, Pakistan completed 60 years as an independent country. In these 60 years, the state of Pakistan has endured, but doubts about it still persist - it has been called a failed state and a rogue state. For its own people, the state has done precious little. Small groups of individuals, however, have enriched themselves. Constitutional democracy has yet to find a foothold in Pakistan. Indeed, the constitution itself has not found a foothold yet. The Pakistani state has fomented and supported insurgencies and terrorism, both of which now pose serious dangers to Pakistani society. Its rulers have flirted with Islamic fundamentalism to various degrees, with the ill effects on society becoming increasingly obvious in recent years.

Is Pakistan really a failed state ? In what form do Pakistan's failures manifest themselves ? What are the reasons for these failures ? What are the possible remedies ? What are the criteria for defining the failure of states?

While thinking about these issues, it struck me that it is far more interesting to analyze the politics of third world countries than it is to think about the historical provenance of liberal Western democracies. In third world countries, external manifestations of democracy such as elections are prominently visible. Political power though, is unevenly distributed. Rhetorical tributes to democracy are frequent. The structure of government looks like that of modern Western nations on paper but reality is quite different. Pakistan offers a good case study.

The Earliest Desis in America

Inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent have traveled the world far and wide for centuries.  Before colonial times the travel was mostly voluntary. Indian influence in the far and middle east spread mainly through trade and religion. Later during the British rule when Britain got busy expanding its colonial reach on several continents, Indian indentured labor was utilized in sugarcane and rubber plantations and for building the infrastructure of the new colonies. Small and large contingents of men of different religious and linguistic backgrounds, from several parts of the subcontinent were transported to different places - some closer to home in Burma and Malaya and others as far away as Africa, the Caribbeans and Fiji. Although the indentured servitude was originally planned as a temporary affair, many among the dislocated groups chose to stay on in the new countries. The laborers, living lives of privation and subjected to systematic exploitation were permitted to bring over brides and other family members from the home country. Sizable Indian communities thus grew around the labor colonies over time. Languages, religious practices and other customs were perpetuated down the generations (incorporating the inevitable organic and eccentric variations as is common to all uprooted populations), thus preserving an Indian identity which was not forgotten even as the scattered and sometimes insular communities learnt to adapt to foreign surroundings. Those early emigres from India and their descendants formed the bulk of the first significant Indian diaspora of the modern era. [See the history of some older Indian diasporic groups here, here and here]

The history of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent in North America on the other hand, is widely believed to be of relatively recent vintage.  Until now I was under the impression that the earliest group of small but ethnically significant number of Indians to settle in the US were the Sikh farmers of Yuba valley in central California in the early part of the twentieth century. The next wave of Indians (and Pakistanis) to arrive were mostly doctors, scientists and other professionals in the 1960s when immigration laws were loosened to admit more non-Europeans into the US. Since then Indians have emigrated to the US in steady numbers, their demographics changing gradually to include small businessmen, financiers, bankers and IT personnel. Unlike some other groups of immigrants who have fled their countries due to dangerous political / ethnic /religious strifes, Indian immigration to the US has been and continues to be voluntary - largely undertaken for economic reasons. Until now I was not aware of "involuntary" transportation of south Asians to America. It was therefore extremely surprising to discover that Asian Indians were present in American colonies as early as the beginning of the 17th century, brought here by British colonists as their indentured servants or personal slaves.

Indian Slaves in Colonial America

Evidence of “East Indians” in 17th-18th century Virginia

The seeds of what was to become modern America were planted on May 13, 1607, when British colonists arrived at an island that they would come to call Jamestown in what is now Virginia.

This first permanent English settlement in the New World would eventually become "the rightful birthing ground of America"; its soil sprinkled with the blood of Native Americans, European settlers, and their African slaves.

To this racial mix we must now include people from the Indian subcontinent.

That’s because, while preparations are underway for a grand commemoration of Jamestown’s 400th anniversary in May-June 2007, we have uncovered compelling evidence of the presence of people from the Indian subcontinent going as far back as 375 years in Virginia: people identified in American court documents of the time as "East Indians," "East India Indians," or "Asiatic Indians."

But unlike the indentured labor populations of Africa, the Caribbeans and Fiji, the newcomers to America were young, single men who either followed their English masters as servants or were poor ship hands shanghaied to the New World by mercenaries. The men had neither the opportunity to marry Indian women in America nor the wherewithal to travel back to India to bring over relatives. They  thus lacked the critical mass of compatriots needed to form a community reflecting their cultural roots. Grouped together with other slaves, mostly from Africa, unable to keep alive an Indian identity, the Indian servants gradually "disappeared" into the African slave population.

As these South Asians melded into the population, they would be identified variously as "Mullato," "Negro," and "colored" in the ethnic cauldron that was evolving in America, thus losing much of their racial distinctiveness with each passing generation, merging into the African-American community, largely unaware of their Indian roots.

research into this early American history suggests that people from South Asia were transported as indentured servants or slaves— first by trading vessels belonging to the Dutch, French, and English; later, by captains of American vessels.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that "lascars" or seamen were recruited from Indian ports by European trading ships, and, on reaching Europe, succumbed to the promises of agents who enlisted indentured workers for the New World. Or else they were taken as servants by East India Company officials who amassed their fortunes in India, and subsequently returned home to England and thence to their newly established colony in America, where they took their servants with them as a sign of their wealth and status as "nabobs."

Documents recently unearthed by researchers looking into the history of Jamestown and Williamsburg in Virginia point to the presence of Indian indentured servants or slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries. Postings such as this [click on the picture on the left; note the reference to the teeth] in the Virginia Gazette, reporting the escape of one such Indian man, is similar to newspaper items relating to slaves in the American South. Another ad in the same paper placed by a man named William Brown on July 13, 1776, who reported the escape of a servant/ slave reads:

"Servant Man named John Newton, about 20 Years of Age, 5 feet 5 or 6 Inches high, slender made, is an Asiatic Indian by Birth, has been about twelve Months in Virginia, but lived ten Years (as he says) in England, in the Service of Sir Charles Whitworth. He wears long black Hair, which inclines to curl, tied behind, and pinned up at the Sides; has a very sour Look, and his Lips project remarkably forward. He left his Master on the Road from Williamsburg, between King William Courthouse and Todd’s Bridge, where he was left behind to come on slowly with a tired Horse --- "… he is a good Barber and Hair-Dresser, it is probable he may endeavour to follow those Occupations as a free Man. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and secures him in Gaol, giving me information thereof, so that I may get him again, shall have eight dollars Reward; and if delivered to me at Westwood, in Prince William, further reasonable Charges, paid by William Brown."

With these findings documented in 18th-century American newspapers, Indian Americans, or South Asian Americans, or Desis, as many of them like to call themselves, stand on the cusp of rewriting their history by acknowledging the full complement of their heritage—including that of slaves in America.

Amazing findings - I had no idea! The full article here.  [Cross posted at Accidental Blogger. Thanks to Namit Arora for the link]