Shunya's Notes

On the Indian Knowledge Systems Calendar from IIT Kharagpur

(This article also appeared in Raiot.)

My alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kharagpur, has created a condensed history of Indian knowledge systems in calendar form. Lavishly produced, it is being widely shared and praised on social media. Sadly, it brims with lies, misleading ideas, and fanciful fictions. Rather than educating to inform and delight, it seeks to inflate cultural pride by taking liberties with the truth. Let me explain.

Early India had many solid achievements in advancing knowledge but this calendar’s authors miss loads of them while twisting the rest into convoluted descriptions laced with Sanskrit jargon. For instance, they ignore the Harappans entirely—their fine urban planning, precision weights, hydraulic engineering, the first indoor toilets, and a relatively egalitarian society with no standing armies or temples. Instead, they begin with legendary Vedic sages. It’s as though they can’t acknowledge that the roots of any knowledge system could possibly lie earlier and outside of the holy Vedas. They also repeat the absurd claim that Sanskrit is ‘the root of the entire Indo-Aryan branch in Asia and systems of European languages.’ No, it’s not. Sanskrit is just another branch of the family, like Persian and Greek.

This false claim also reveals their foundational belief that Aryans did not migrate into the Subcontinent, that Vedic people were indigenous to this land and carried Sanskrit westward. There never was any scholarly justification for this belief, which was driven by ignoble motives: the creators of the Vedas have to be ‘made’ primordially indigenous to promote Hindu pride and ‘faith and fatherland’ nationalism—and to render Islam and Christianity ‘invader’ religions. But the fact is that, to the extent that the Rig Veda, Sanskrit, and priestly fire rituals are seen as foundational to Hinduism, Hinduism too is an ‘invader’ religion that arrived with the Aryans from Central Asia.

Ecce Homo of Zaragoza

Ecce Homo, a fresco painting on a wall of a Roman Catholic church in Zaragoza, Spain, is in the news lately. It is being called "the worst art restoration projects of all time", done by an elderly woman of the flock (the "restored" version is on the right). I have to disagree though! I mean, think about what Ecce Homo means. It means "behold the man". Had you visited the church, you would have walked right past the peeling fresco of Jesus. The "restored" version however captures your attention; you behold the man indeed, even if it is accompanied by a shaking of the head and the thought, "What happened?! How can someone screw it up so badly?" The bottom line though is that she was super successful in making the painting live up to its name. We are compelled to behold the man!

The "restored" image also prompted this thought for me: what if Jesus did actually look like that? Would anyone have listened to him? :)

3QD Arts & Literature Prize

Dear friends,

The voting round for the 2011 Art & Literature Prize at 3 Quarks Daily is now open.

Browse the alphabetical list of all 69 entries here. My review of Joothan: A Dalit's Life is in the running (#4 on the list).

The first round is a popularity contest so your vote will make a difference to the post you vote for.

Click here to vote. The voting deadline is March 11th.

Thanks!

UPDATE 3/13: Well, we made it to the semifinal as well as the final. The 3 winners will be announced on Mar 21. Thanks for your support!

Ten Years of Nothingness

Observing anniversaries is often a way to mark the passage of time, celebrate small achievements, and reflect on the journey. It can also be an exercise in self-absorbed narcissism. ☺ Be that as it may, I'd like to observe a minor milestone in my creative and online life. Earlier this year, Shunya completed its 10th anniversary. I created this website in 2000 to share my travel photos from around the world—photos that were fading away in cardboard boxes—and to learn web publishing. It was to serve as my web address, and perhaps become a quiet record of a personal history. ("Shunya" means the number "zero" as well as "void" or "nothingness" in Buddhist philosophy.)

The site has since evolved much and now includes prose by me and others, photo essays, and videos. A big expansion came when I took a two-year break (2004-06) to visit 100+ destinations in 20+ Indian states. As a result, nearly half of the ~15K photos on Shunya are from India, the rest from ~50 other countries. In the last two years I've added a host of essays to it, including ones I've written for 3 Quarks Daily as well as by others on this group blog. I've even made new friends through Shunya, found long lost ones, and received many notes of appreciation.

Encouraged by the inquiries I got out of the electronic blue, I also began licensing my photos based on the buyer's means and ends. Over a hundred organizations, including 15 museums, 25 academies, and 35 publishers have since licensed photos from Shunya. I've given away quite a few for free, especially to progressive non-profits, students, and starving artists. They have inspired paintings (samples below) and adorned calendars, posters, music CD jackets, slideshows, brochures, ads, postcards, websites, and book and magazine covers.

 
(Artists: Mukta Sareen, Trevor Guitar, Neelam Solanki (3-4), and Cristina Goia.)

Google Analytics reports that Shunya got 3+ million page views in the past year. Each month over 100K people—45K+ from India, 25K+ from the U.S.—stop by at least once. According to Alexa, ~15 out of every million people on the Internet visit Shunya (15 ppm, as I like to think). In 2005, I put ads on the site, which has since paid for at least one vacation abroad each year for me and my partner. Not bad for what is still a labor of love and lunacy (fortunately, I have a day job ☺). Shunya will continue to evolve, but it has already been a very gratifying journey that has helped me grow as a person, writer, and travel photographer. Thank you for your interest, friends and visitors!

(Shunya home pages from 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2010, respectively.)

Seafaring Hominids?

Archaeology seems to be undergoing an explosion of new finds in the past decade or so. More and more, new information is completely scrambling old assumptions about human evolution and early modern human and hominid culture.

The latest amazing find was written up yesterday in the New York Times:

Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.

Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats.

This is part of what I love about archaeology: Just when you think you've got it all figured out, new evidence comes to light, which overturns our ideas, and deepens them too. Whether or not it turns out to be the case that Neanderthals were ancient mariners, I, for one, have a strong suspicion that we substantially underestimate what our ancestors were capable of and just what was going on 50K, 100K, or 200K years ago. After all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Econ 101 Rap

John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek explain the markets, yo!

Shilling for Apples

Friday Cartoons

    

Where the Hell in KGP?

As many readers of this blog know, I went to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP) in West Bengal. Years later I visited my alma mater again and wrote about it here. Guess what I found today? Those familiar with Matt Harding's heartwarming dance videos from around the world (Where the Hell is Matt?) will likely relate to what it has inspired the students of IIT KGP to do. (via Pran)

The soundtrack is the same as in Matt's video — a Bengali poem written by Tagore (Praan, or "Stream of Life") and turned into song by composer Garry Schyman and Bangladeshi-American Palbasha Siddique.

A Poll for You News Junkies

Here is a thought experiment for the readers of Shunya's Notes. Let's say you have been cut-off from all news for a long weekend and have just been informed that 200 people died in India yesterday from a single event. The only other detail given to you is that the event is one of the following:

1. A bubonic plague in the city of Nagpur.
2. Indiscriminate bomb blasts/shootings by Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai.
3. A Naxalite guerrilla attack in Chattisgarh against the police and "class enemies".
4. Shortly after takeoff, a plane crashes outside Chennai. 
5. Food poisoning at a big marriage party in Trivandrum.
6. Indiscriminate bomb blasts/shootings by Indian Muslim terrorists in Mumbai.
7. A Hindu-Muslim communal riot in Hyderabad.
8. A levee breach that floods and drowns a few villages in Bihar.
9. A Hindu pogrom against Muslims in Ahmedabad with tacit support from government officials.
10. A chemical industrial disaster in Kanpur (poisonous gas leakage).

Reorder the list such that 1 is the event you find most upsetting, 10 the least (yes, they're all upsetting but some more than others, right?). I have used copy/paste to create mine in the first comment; add yours too — but don't look at mine just yet; finish your own ordering first!

(Photo: "India: Liberty and Death" Time Magazine Cover, October 27, 1947.)

Phone Sex Theater

Philip Toledano's upcoming book PhoneSex reveals some of the people behind those 1-900 calls (via Mother Jones):

From a few mumbled words, a phone sex operator must weave a bespoke and finely detailed fantasy encounter. It requires a vivid imagination, acting ability, and above all, a deep understanding of the human appetite. What do we crave? What words have the maximum yield? What tone will most effectively reach into a man's trousers? When to be gentle, and when to demand fealty.

Phone-sex is theater. An artificial passion-play in real-time, directed by a skilled verbal fantasist, with only one possible conclusion.

Meat Porn

Does it get any more human-headed than this?

Kenya Sings India

A Kenyan choir sings the Indian national anthem. (Click the photo.)

Scroll down the anthem page to see other groups singing other countries' anthems. This video is from the Pangea Day event, which took place on May 10, 2008.

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, Kaunas, Vilnius, Trakai, Riga, Sigulda, Tartu, 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.

Pangea Day

This afternoon I spent four hours glued to my computer screen watching the live stream of the Pangea Day broadcast, a global film festival hosted simultaneously in Mumbai, London, Cairo, Kigali, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, showcasing short films from new talent all over the world. Interspersed with the short films were video montages of people speaking about universal human experiences—love, anger, sorrow—and short commentaries on human nature and human experience by scientists, activists, and others. The thrust of the event was to promote human understanding by simply presenting a broad sweep of stories that humanize the Other, that break down the categories of "enemy." And as it meandered toward it's final minutes, the focus drew increasingly toward the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

It proved to be a most rewarding way to spend a Saturday. The films, especially, were frequently touching, thoughtful, and moving in surprising ways. I was drawn into the sense of a global experience of discovery that was unfolding at a million points simultaneously across the world, as millions watched and learned and cried together. And (it must be said) laughed together.

But the coup de gras was during the final moments when a Palestinian and an Israeli member from The Bereaved Families Forum stood up together and told their own stories of loss and forgiveness, and this was followed by excerpts from the documentary Combatants for Peace, by the young Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, previously known for her excellent documentary Control Room (2004).

Indeed, the entire Pangea Day event was organized in fulfillment of Ms. Noujaim's dream. When she won the TED prize in 2006, in which the winners are asked to make a wish that the TED community can bring to reality, she asked for a global day of film to break down the barriers and misunderstandings that divide us.

I believe that over the coming days the organizers will post the event highlights along with all of the films, speakers, musical performances, and more, incase you missed them or want to see them again. Or read their blog. Or check out the viewers' stream of consciousness (you may need to click "View the Latest Media").

Thanks, Ms. Noujaim, for your brave and beautiful dream.

Over 1,000,000 Iraqis Killed by US-Lead Invasion?

Here's something you're unlikely to see in the US press:

Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.

This is the conclusion of Opinion Research Business (ORB), an establishmentarian, British polling firm that conducted a study in Iraq in 2007. You can see their results on their website here, with an update here. But apparently, this information isn't newsworthy enough even to warrant discussion in the media.

Meanwhile, the US president is focused on his "legacy." He's aided in the effort by a new Fox documentary eulogizing him and claiming that he's been credited with "some of the most eloquent and visionary speeches ever delivered by an American president." And as the show goes on, with President Bush comparing himself to President Lincoln, it sounds increasingly like a joke. Was this program produced by satirist Stephen Colbert? Unfortunately not. Here's a taste (approx. 10 minutes):

Watch the full documentary here.

Lights, Camera, Action

I am pleased to announce a brand new channel on Shunya — Videos!

Videos should complement the other two channels: Articles and Photos. We will produce original videos besides linking to others on the web. Initially, the original videos will come from the 75+ hours of footage I've taken around the world, most during 2000-05—I've already posted the first five. When appropriate, I'll also showcase some of my favorite music from each region, as I did in the White Desert video. Text captions will be minimal, just enough for context. It's too bad my day job is not as much fun and no one has yet offered to turn my hobbies into a vocation. So a labor of love this remains.

This is also the 200th post on Shunya's Notes in sixteen months. Stay tuned for many more!

Globalization

Shahnaz Hussain, Fox News, reporting in her British accent on Amsterdam inspired Sexpo in Mexico City (click for video).

From the Outside, Looking In

Recently, the crew of a US naval cruiser in the Persian Gulf was alarmed by the actions of some nearby Iranian speedboats, potentially sparking a confrontation. Commenting on the almost-incident, US Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson quipped, "I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing."

Okay, is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen or heard the stereotype—the caricature—often enough to get his joke? I didn’t think so. In fact, in the past six years, we’ve heard some version of this joke so many times that it’s already come to feel old. There’s a whole battery of these jokes by now, with themes ranging from Islamic terrorism to… um, Islamic terrorism. And while America has a nice little collective chuckle over this, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been quite so funny if Thompson had made an equivalent joke about Jews, Mormons, or Baptists, for instance. I have to wonder why fair-minded, clear-thinking people aren’t up in arms over this.

I remember only two years ago when a politician referred to a young Indian-American as “macaca” and—though it never became entirely clear what the hell he was even talking about—his political career was effectively destroyed by a backlash against that single imprudent utterance. And last year former US President Jimmy Carter was hounded by the American press and accused of anti-Semitism for comparing the condition of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to life under South African Apartheid.

But speaking of Muslims as fanatics and terrorists is not even considered bad manners; it’s seen as a comic expression of the truth. Suggesting that it might be a bit more complicated—that it’s ridiculous and hateful to so simplify a group of people who comprise not less than 22% of the world population at last count, across nationalities, skin colors, political beliefs, socioeconomic levels, athletic abilities, educational backgrounds, language groups, intelligence levels, talents, personalities, local histories, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds, varying degrees of faith and religiosity, and whatnot (you know, the ordinary human variety you might expect to find across nearly a quarter of humanity distributed around the globe)—gets you branded as an apologist for terrorism, if you’re not Muslim, and may well get you worse if you are.

I’m sorry, I really don’t understand the math here.

[Above: Random photos of Muslims]

It’s no wonder that the Muslims held up as media darlings in the US right  now are Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, who (unwittingly) fuel the rhetoric of those who need to convince themselves that Muslims have a greater capacity for “evil” or are in need of saving by the West. Having listened to an interview with Ms Ali, it’s my impression that she actually intends to deliver a more nuanced message of Muslim realities. But as a hopeful newcomer to the West, she perhaps doesn’t realize how she plays into the hands of the haters, that her real contribution is finally but to put flesh on the American Nightmare. I understand that she’s a brave and intelligent woman who has surmounted unimaginable horrors in her life. But presenting herself as an expert on Muslims, when it’s not clear that she knows much about the history and culture of Muslims across the globe, and focusing exclusively on the local cultural pathologies that caused the trauma she suffered—important though it is—to the exclusion of a broader view or deeper understanding, does nothing to humanize the caricature of Muslims or advance the dialog. Few of her readers in the US will read her pronouncements with any kind of informed perspective or insight. Because most Americans frankly don’t want much perspective and insight on Muslims. It’s well known that understanding makes it much harder to vilify and kill people. So the only Muslims who get airtime in the States are the ones who say what we want to hear. It lets us feel not just vindicated but downright open-minded and receptive in our collective willful ignorance.

Where Do You Stand Relative to the Candidates in Election 2008?

Can't figure out who to vote for? Never fear: Here's another one of those political quizes that compares you with the candidates on several current issues. The pencil icon in the accompanying picture indicates where I stand and the circle around it indicates the standard deviation for the test. There's only one candidate in the race who falls within a standard deviation of me... no surprise.

Of course, the quiz isn't perfect; it doesn't weigh answers depending on how important the issue is to you, for instance.

Take the quiz at Electoral Compass USA. The quiz is apparently a research project put up by a Dutch group.

Happy New Year!

From the Big Easy, where jazz is king, hurricanes rule, and the Creoles cook up a storm.

Comedy Break

Intelligent comedy is so rarely found. I consider it a gift when I run across something that moves me and makes me laugh and think, or makes me laugh with respect for the speaker. One occasion to do all of these is in Lilly Tomlin's one-woman show, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" (montage; reviews). I highly recommend it.

Happily, I've just discovered another serious comic, Julia Sweeney, whom some may remember as a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. I came across a clip of Sweeney's monologue, "Giving Up God," which she performed during the TED talks in 2006. In this routine, Sweeney talks about the journey she took from being raised as a Catholic, losing her faith, and then finding sense in the idea of understanding the universe without a belief in god. In her blog, she says of this:

One of the astounding results of me losing my faith, (which was a beautiful experience...), was that I suddenly saw how alike we are to our fellow animals. And how different. But different in ways I had not previously considered. I saw my own behavior being influenced by millions of years of evolutionary history, but I also gained a new respect for ethics and the ability of the human race to make informed choices. Much more informed choices than many other animal species. After I lost my faith, I stopped anthropomorphizing in a childlike way and started anthropomorphizing in an informed way.

Alternative Holiday Shopping

I am the very incarnation of Bah Humbug. I have no particular Christmas spirit and no desire to see the whole business encouraged in any way. And while I realize this attitude doesn't exactly win friends and influence people, it is sincere.

However, I am inspired to participate in this small way this year: A good friend of mine has compiled a list of alternative holiday shopping sources and I feel it's worth sharing with others who may be more possessed of winter holiday convictions and shopping traditions. Below is her message.

The holidays are coming and thus ushers in the most materialistically driven time of the year in an already materialistic society. Be unconventional and even subversive this year by refusing to buy in to the lie of the status quo and by creating a new type of demand in the global market: a demand for products that are fairly traded and benefit the billions of people in our world that are in poverty. Or, refuse to buy material things at all and give gifts in the form of donations that will change someone's life.

ALTERNATIVE SHOPPING GUIDE

Made by Survivors of Slavery/Human Trafficking

Made by Survivors
Night Light Bangkok
Girl33
Better Way Imports
Shop in Light
New Life Center Foundation
Divine Inheritance
Emmanuel Jal  (music artist)

Helping the Poor out of Poverty and Creating Sustainability

Moonflower Enterprises
Global Girlfriend
TOMS Shoes
Tabitha
Ten Thousand Villages
A Greater Gift
FAIR
Cards from Africa
Global Goods Partners
Momentum
Alaffia Sustainable Skin Care
Divine Chocolate
Kamay Krafts
BuyChange.com
Global Exchange

Socially Conscious Consumer Search Pages

Conscious Consumer Marketplace
Co-op America: National Green Pages

Unique Gifts to Directly Support Transformational Development and Justice

World Vision
Heifer International
Mennonite Central Committee: Christmas Giving
Garden of Hope
World Hope
Spirit of Giving: Charity Gift Catalog
International Justice Mission

Other Initiatives with Products to Promote Social Justice and Eco-Friendly Shopping

PeaceKeeper Cause-Metics
Rawganique
Hempest
Full Moon Family

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

A New Void

Almost eight years after inception, I'm pleased to announce a new incarnation of Shunya. The new design modernizes the code base and more attractively presents articles in a range of categories, as well as photos from around the world. Software engineers and graphic designers in the Trivandrum office of Vitalect, Inc. worked hard to accomplish the task. More ambitious plans are in the works. Be sure to check out the new pictures from our recent China trip.

One Year of Blogging

Well folks, Shunya's Notes is a year old today! Seems to me that since my inaugural post on Gandhi, it has come a fair distance. It has hosted many good debates and over 130 posts on a wide diversity of topics (most of them original pieces rather than links/excerpts), thanks in good measure to three terrific new bloggers now on board. It got a whole new design midway and its traffic too has steadily risen to average over 350 visitors a day.

Yet the blog remains fairly quiet, with only 3.3 comments per post (might it be because we leave our readers stunned and speechless with our stellar prose?). On the other hand, I am not surprised, given how many articles I myself read on the web and never comment on. Yet a part of me longs to know who the quiet regulars are and would welcome and appreciate their thoughts on Shunya's Notes on this first anniversary.

I've certainly enjoyed blogging and have learned from it. My co-bloggers and a few readers have participated with panache and confidence and haven't shied from strong (yet civil) disagreements. Debating usually involves picking sides; one assumes positions based partly on contingent factors, which may change with time and place, or with audiences and players. Given the time-bound exchanges on a blog, one often chooses words that do not best describe one's position, or nuances thereof, or follow the full protocols of civility. I hope to get better at this over time.

Blogging has consumed a fair bit of my past year. So I thought of compiling a "top 10 reasons I blog" list. Here goes: :-)

10. To try and save the world with my manifestly exquisite pearls of wisdom
09. To realize personal therapeutic benefits by ranting, raving, and showing off
08. To derive a little joy and a sense of accomplishment in whipping an idea into shape out of chaos
07. To acquire the illusion that I am making small (positive) differences while holed up in a nice, warm room or cafe
06. To build a quiet record of a personal history, a journal of sorts, knowing well that it will nevertheless turn to dust
05. To gain independent, third-party validation that I am still sane in a world often incomprehensible to me
04. To chase after the personal growth that (supposedly) accompanies the process of writing
03. To seek conversations with other thoughtful people on topics of mutual interest
02. To kill time, because I have no better use for it
01. Because the world urgently needs to know what I am thinking!

In any case, thanks for patronizing Shunya's Notes. We expect to be around for the foreseeable future. I believe that our best work lies ahead of us. Three cheers!