|
|
|
|
|
Modi@Madison From CM to prisoner |
|
|
Finally, a new govt in Afghanistan
‘Karvachowth’ in Kashmir
A historical view of Indian manuscripts
|
Modi@Madison Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to New York is memorable for a number of reasons. The most visible one is the manner in which US lawmakers and Americans of Indian origin thronged the Madison Square Garden event where his 70-minute speech was lapped up by an eager, cheering audience. Yes, also on hand were some of the most important US Congressmen and Senators, who had answered the calls of their constituents to share the platform with the Indian Prime Minister. The spectacle may have eclipsed the substance which he showed while addressing the 69th session of the UN General Assembly. There Modi's speech was measured. He spoke of the need to reform the United Nations and recast the Security Council, a longstanding position of India. He also addressed issues like terrorism and environmentalism. By not dwelling too much on Pakistan, he negated Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's attempt to rake up the Kashmir issue again at the UN. The symbolism of being the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Centre will not be lost on the Americans. It is also a reminder of how both the US and India are victims of terrorism. Meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netahnyahu is more about recognising the shift in the Indian position on West Asia and the close ties that have developed between the two countries. The business end was addressed by Modi meeting CEOs of top US companies. It is these very companies and others like them who have to make investments that will power India's development. The Prime Minister has made a major impact with his oratory and vision. The New York visit has largely been about atmospherics. Modi has energised the NRIs, who have given him a rousing reception. He has also made a number of promises. The world will be watching as he meets President Barak Obama next.
|
|
From CM to prisoner It
took India’s justice system 18 years to send a corrupt politician to jail. Had the judicial process been completed swiftly, a politician now held guilty of corrupt practices would not have been able to occupy the office of Chief Minister. It is time court cases against political leaders are fast-tracked and justice delivered without delay. Yet the special court in Bangalore should be congratulated for resisting pressure and sending a Chief Minister to jail for corruption. The court also attached Jayalalithaa's illegally acquired properties and fined her Rs 100
crore, more than the amount she was accused of amassing. Her lawyers feel the “unreasonable” fine may help her get bail and acquittal. However, she may have to pay the fine before seeking bail and tell the court from where she has got
the money. In 2001 the Supreme Court declared her appointment as Chief Minister null and void as she was earlier sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment in a corruption case. In 2002 she was cleared of all charges. On both occasions she gifted her post to O.
Panneerselvam, a loyalist. She would try to run the administration again through remote control, though this would not be easy if she is lodged in a Karnataka
jail. Jayalalithaa’s conviction and loss of power became possible due to two reasons. One, her political rival, M.
Karunanidhi, used his power as Chief Minister to gather evidence against her which ultimately led to her conviction. Two, the Supreme Court struck down Section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act last year which meant a legislator jailed for two years or more would lose his/her legislature membership from the date of conviction. Politicians in Parliament had almost succeeded in nullifying the court judgment before Rahul Gandhi intervened and tore the UPA ordinance. Unless her conviction is stayed or overturned, she would not be able to contest any election for 10 years. Jayalalithaa has set a record by getting
convicted as a Chief Minister.
|
|||||
|
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse. — H. L. Mencken
|
|||||
The issues of the war AT the time when Great Britain declared war against Germany, there were some persons both in England and India who felt that England should have kept aloof. But later when the real objects of Germany were known, the justice of England declaring war was fully appreciated. Dr. Clifford writes to the Standard explaining how he was obliged to change his view about the war on his return to England from Germany where he was when the war was declared. He writes: "It seemed to me that it was not war between England and Germany, but between the forces of freedom and those of slavery, between the forces that mean the growth of popular government, of the independence of nations, and fidelity to promises, and those against them; a war for the progress of humanity and all that in my judgment hinges thereon. And we were therefore forced into it." Germans as volunteers in India INDIA received this week reproduces a remarkable statement published by the "Territorial Service Gazette" to the effect that many members of Anglo-Indian Volunteer Corps have been of German extraction. "It is not suggested," says India "that they were of the spy variety, but it is certainly an extraordinary anomaly that the privilege of wearing the King's uniform should ever have been conferred upon these aliens while it is denied to British subjects of Indian blood." Besides, it would appear no one seemed to know whether any of these men were naturalised Britons or not as some of them might have been German subjects. If this is a fact, it exposes a great anomaly, and calls for a change of policy so as to admit Indians to the Volunteer Corps in preference to non-British foreigners.
|
Finally, a new govt in Afghanistan For Afghanistan’s third presidential election since 2004 demonstrated that war and poverty are not barriers to the wish of people to determine their destiny. And the world should congratulate the Afghan voters who defied Taliban violence and took part in the two rounds of polling on April 5 and June 14. The high poll turnout — nearly 60 per cent in each round — in itself marks the continuation of a decade-old troubled, strife-riven yet impressive transition to democracy, made against great odds. Hamid Karzai, the mercurial twice-elected President, also deserves credit for steering his country to a peaceful transfer of power. He completed two terms in office, making war-torn Afghanistan a pleasing contrast to neighbouring Pakistan — where only one president — Asif Ali Zadora — completed his constitutional tenure — since independence in 1947. And the leaders of China, Afghanistan's other, more prosperous neighbour, will have no truck with democracy and the elected rulers. The good news is that both Ghani and Abdullah, who won the first round, are political moderates who seek to bridge ethnic divides, keep Afghanistan on democratic rails and sign a security deal with the US, whose diplomatic intervention facilitated a way out of the electoral impasse. Security, always essential for a successful election, was provided by the fledgling Afghan National Army. Together the high security and turnout signal “progress”. In the 2009 election only 30 per cent of voters braved the insecurity, for which NATO was then accountable, and cast their ballots. Significantly, heavy polling in the Kandahar area marked the success of the US surge in routing the Taliban from their so-called spiritual home. Security will remain the top priority. Voting is the test of political legitimacy and the elections made clear that Taliban extremists do not have this legitimacy. But there is no sign that the Taliban will renounce violence and abide by the Afghan constitution. Whether Pakistan will stop training and exporting them is also an open question, given that it is unable to quash its domestic extremists. And while Afghanistan’s security forces were able to ensure the safety of most voters, they doubtless need further strengthening to save their country from destabilisation by the Taliban. Some 10,000 American troops will remain to help enhance Afghanistan's security. A security deal with Afghanistan would give the US a strategic gateway to the Middle East, South and Central Asia, which should be good news for the US as China and Russia are showing off their territorially expansionist tendencies in Asia and Europe. The US should treat the new Afghan government with respect. Karzai’s refusal to sign a deal with the US turned him into the Afghan leader some in Washington loved to hate - but the fault was not entirely his. Washington should not repeat the mistake it made with Kara by negotiating over an elected government’s head with the Taliban, or of relying on Pakistan to broker a deal with the Taliban. Like Karzai, Ghani and Abdullah will not play the supplicant to Pakistan. The US must realise that no ruler can accept the ignoring of his country's sovereignty. Washington could also avoid giving public lectures to the new Afghanistan government. Corrupt Afghan warlords, corrupt Pakistan — and in Europe, corrupt Ukraine — have all got massive amounts of Western aid over the last decade — without being berated publicly, as Karzai was. India has rightly welcomed the strong showing made by Afghan voters as a ‘resounding rejection of the designs and ideology of terrorists and their supporters’. New Delhi has bestowed more than $2 billion in aid to Afghanistan, and Sushma Swaraj, the new Foreign Minister, recently visited Afghanistan to assure Karzai of India's continuing support for the development and security of his country. India's soft power - in the form of Bollywood movies and music, health, infrastructure projects and the building of new parliament in Kabul — has earned it popularity in Afghanistan. India could expand military cooperation with Afghanistan under the Strategic Partnership Agreement of 2011. India has an agreement with Russia to supply arms to Afghanistan, for which New Delhi will pay in rupees for the Russian military equipment . New Delhi could also try to persuade Beijing to use its financial and military clout over Islamabad to stop Pakistan fomenting extremism and destabilising Afghanistan. China's domestic security is linked with Afghan security. China is the largest foreign investor in Afghanistan, and has, time and again, blamed Pakistan for training extremist-separatists in its western Zinjiang region. Instability in Afghanistan would certainly spill over into China. New Delhi and Beijing share an interest in containing extremism in South Asia. Pakistan’s objections about “Indian influence” should be ignored, since violence before, during and since the elections has highlighted Islamabad's unwillingness or inability to restrain the Taliban. Islamabad's demands for power-sharing with the Taliban — who tried to block the elections — have no legal basis. The elections showed that Afghans rejected religious extremism and ethnic violence. But their war-torn country has few domestic sources of funding to put its economy on the rails. Afghanistan will need international largesse. For a start, donors should honour the pledge made in Tokyo in 2013 to give $16 billion till 2015. Military support should continue long beyond 2016 if the country is not to become another strife-torn Iraq. Afghans voted for democratic security and development: India should lead the international community in helping them build
it. The writer is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, New Delhi
|
||||||
‘Karvachowth’ in Kashmir Here I narrate the story of our visit to the Kashmir Valley mainly to celebrate the Karvachowth day there. After landing in a hotel two days in advance in Amira Kadar, we arranged to book a houseboat with cooking facilities and one was readily available. A friendly Parsi couple from Mumbai was also with us to share the great experience. The weather was all embracing and short visits to various places and gardens elated our mood. On the morning of the Karvachowth day we shifted to the houseboat. We found the arrangements for a 24-hour stay to be comfortable and these included cooking as well. We briefed them about the purpose of our stay in the houseboat and they gave us a list of items for cooking like Kashmiri cheese, peas, potato, tomato and masala. One more dish to be prepared was Kashmiri kheer with badam as a sweet dish. The young boat owners were quite enthusiastic and appreciated a completely new use of a houseboat. The Parsi husband had retired as a senior police officer in Mumbai. He had a friend in the police department in Srinagar who came to meet him on the houseboat. Glad to meet us also, he suggested that it would be more interesting if the short moon-watching ceremony part was carried out in one of the smaller power boats, just half a kilometre away in the open calm waters of the lake. He offered to provide the powerboat with a driver. Just as the sunset was over, all four of us with our traditional sieve (“chhanani”), a wooden stick, a pack of sweets, small candles, a glass of pure water etc. entered the power boat. We crossed a cluster of houseboats around and were soon in the open calm waters. Just within a few minutes we saw the preliminary glow of the moon coming up from the horizon on the right side, blessing millions of “suhagin” women. The beauty of the moon's reflection in the calm and serene waters of the Dal Lake was beyond description. Extremely joyful and happy, we returned to our houseboat to enjoy Kashmiri paneer and Kashmiri badam kheer cooked on the boat. We also took some photographs of the rising moon and the results were superb. Incidentally, we had handed over the “pooja” items like the sieve to a boatman, assuring him that we would use them when we visited Kashmir the next time. We hope that that the happy scene would be recreated someday again!
|
||||||
A historical view of Indian manuscripts
IN the days of high-speed dissemination of knowledge on the Internet, it is hard to imagine a time when knowledge and literature was passed on orally, by word of mouth. Many centuries later this was done through hand-written manuscripts. The story of the written word in India is long and a bit complicated. People of the Indus Valley civilisation were literate and the Harrappan scripts are considered to be the oldest in the subcontinent. However, this script has still not been deciphered. After the decline of the Harrappan civilisation around 1900 BCE, a gap is found in our knowledge of the writing material used till we come to the 4th century BCE. Brahmi, known to have developed around this time, is the oldest deciphered script. The Asokan inscriptions found across the Indian subcontinent are mostly in the early Magadhan Prakrit language or a dialect written in Brahmi. In northwest India, the Kharosthi script was used not only for administrative and commercial work but also for writing Buddhist texts. By word of mouth There was a strong tradition of pursuit of knowledge in our country and it is hard to imagine that the profound knowledge base was developed in a purely oral environment. Religious texts were learnt, recited and heard by people. They were passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth. The Vedas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata survived oral narration for many centuries before they were written down. Oral tradition was followed by Buddhist and Jain religions too. There are indications that Buddhist texts were written several centuries after the passing away of Buddha. The oral learning and memorising is so important in the Indian context that when Chinese Buddhist monk Fa Xian (Fa-Hsien 400 CE) set out to search for manuscripts of the Vinaya, (which deals with internal order) he found that wherever he went it was only orally transmitted. Finally, he obtained a written text in Central India, in a monastery in Patliputra. Two centuries later, another Chinese monk Yi jing (I-Tsing) had a similar experience during his travels to India. Writing about his travels, he says that the scriptures that the Brahmins revere are the four Vedas, which contain about 100,000 verses. These are taught from person to person and are not transcribed on paper or leaves. When oral texts were transmitted almost entirely by oral communication, some changes in the content took place by the process of either forgetting or transforming the parts that people thought were not necessary or relevant. This is apparent from Chinese translations of the Buddhist texts, which bear the same title but in every one or two centuries variations have sneaked in the text. But the highly evolved knowledge systems in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, town planning etc indicate presence of skills in documentation. Libraries existed in the 6th to 5th century BCE, in Takshila, now in Pakistan and Nalanda, founded in 427 CE and considered as “one of the first great universities in recorded history.” Western scholars who had a chance to stay in India reported impressive feats of memorisation by traditionally educated Indians. In many regions of India, the oral narrations still run strong like narrations of the Rajasthan epic of P`ab`uj`I. It tells the story of medieval warrior prince P’ab’uj’I and his ultimate and final feud with Jindr’av Khich’i. Early writings From the Asokan period (third century BCE), writings are available and these developed gradually over several centuries. Around this time manuscripts of religious texts were available. Yet along with it the older recitations stayed. For around two millennia, India transmitted its knowledge and culture through manuscripts. Because of limitations of India’s climatic conditions, manuscripts older than 300 or 400 years are rare to find. Manuscripts to the north of the Indian subcontinent as in Central Asia have a better chance of survival due to dryness of the climate. The oldest birch bark and palm-leaf manuscripts are those discovered around Turfan in and around Tarim Basin (Chinese province of Xinjiang) and in Gilgit (Northern Pakistan). Manuscripts were sent to China, Japan, and Tibet for propagation of Buddhist religion. The Chinese monk Fa-hsian, who visited India, returned with 700 manuscripts. Early manuscripts were written on palm leaf. Paper was invented in China in the 3rd century BCE and a hundred years later it came into regular use. Traditional writing materials and methods continued to be used for many centuries even after the invention of paper. Palm-leaf documents found in Central Asia were apparently made on palm leaves imported from South India or Sri Lanka where the Corypha Umbraculifera Linn, used for writing, grows in abundance. Palm leaves need to go through extensive treatment before they are ready for writing. They must have been rather precious in the north as they were reused multiple times, as is evident by the texture of a few manuscripts. The writing on palm leaf was done by engraving letters with a pointed pen-like object called stylus. After the engraving was complete, the leaf was smeared with soot or powdered charcoal mixed with a thinner to make the writing more visible. The tradition of manuscripts was kept alive by repeatedly making copies of old manuscripts. This is the reason why manuscripts with the same theme could be dated several centuries apart. Many of these were illuminated, where the text was supplemented by the addition of decoration and miniature illustrations. Manuscripts now available are in languages like Sanskrit, Gujarati, Tibetan, Persian, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic, Pali, Prakrit and Brahmi. Popular subjects The list of subjects covered by the manuscripts is long and exhaustive. One of the interesting themes found in the manuscripts deals with the life and feats of Alexander the Great. This theme survived for many centuries and many manuscripts were made keeping the interest of readers in mind. There is little mention of Alexander in Indian records though prior to the arrival of the Turks. Afghans, Turks, Persians, and Arabs introduced oral and written legends of the Macedonian conqueror and assumed the name ‘Sikandar’. Such was the influence of these manuscripts that several rulers assumed his name in official and unofficial titles. During the years of the Delhi Sultanate, Ala-ud-din Khilji (1296-1316) assumed the title of a second Alexander. Nizam Khan (1489-1517) of the Lodhi dynasty took the name of Sikandar and is better known as Sikandar Lodhi. Just the way cult books are reprinted, a few manuscripts inspired other works. Firdausi’s Shahnama and Nizami’s Khamsah (one part of which was the Iskandarnama) were a source of inspiration for artists and poets and were frequently copied in the Sultanate and Mughal periods. During the Mughal period, illustrated manuscripts of Firdausi, Nizami and Amir Khusrau continued to proliferate, as did other sources on life of ‘Sikandar’. The fourth book of Amir Khusrau — A’inah-i-Iskandari (Mirror of Alexander) gave accounts of the life of Alexander. Even after the decline of the Mughal era, illustrated manuscripts of Shahnama and Iskandarnama were produced well into the 19th century. In the years 1819-1825, when William Moorcroft made his survey of the crafts of Kashmir, he noted that some 700 to 800 artists were working under the patronage of Maharaja Ranjit Singh to transcribe the Quran, Firdausi’s Shahnama, and a number of other books. The decline The highly labour-intensive tradition of writing manuscripts started to decline around the 19th century with the coming of the printing press. Manuscripts lost their importance but efforts were made to collect, store and preserve them. In the second half of the 19th century the Government of India supported these efforts and allocated funds for research and collection of manuscripts, which were often privately owned. In the early 1980s, the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts catalogued and microfilmed about 100,000 manuscripts around the country. The DAV College in Chandigarh houses around 10,000 manuscripts. This collection was a part of the Lalchand Library, Lahore, that was set up in 1917. At the time of the Partition, the manuscripts were first brought to Amritsar and then to Hoshiarpur to reach their final destination at Chandigarh. The entire collection has been digitised now. The National Mission for Manuscripts was established in February 2003 by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture. This unique project was set up to unearth and preserve the vast manuscript wealth of the country. The Mission estimated that India possesses close to five million manuscripts. These manuscripts are scattered across the country, in numerous institutions as well as private collections, in families of priests, traditional scholars, in monasteries, temples, libraries, gurudwaras, and palaces. The Mission aimed to locate, document, preserve and render these accessible. To achieve this, resource centres and conservation centres were set up all over the country which worked in tandem with the panchayats and district authorities to identify the manuscripts. They have been able to make a database of about 3.5 million manuscripts. Though it seemed a mammoth task at one time, each step they take brings them closer to achieving their ultimate goal. One only hopes that a similar kind of documentation and preservation drive is planned for textiles, paintings and frescoes to leave behind a rich heritage for our future generations.
Haloed writing
Bark to bytes
The writer is a textile researcher who has worked at the National Museum, New Delhi, and Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva.
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
After
THE ladies’ festival of “Karvachowth” may come while one is on a train holidaying, sailing or flying. But none can match the one which was celebrated while sailing in the calm and cool waters of a lake with a clear reflection of a bright moon. Even the first experience at the sea between Mumbai and Goa did not merit any comparison. Though the recent overflowing of the Jhelum waters, which inundated the beautiful Dal Lake and caused untold misery to so many people, has deprived us of a pleasant and unmatchable experience, it is certain that things would become normal soon. In Amritsar truckloads of chapattis and other food items with a long shelf life were seen being taken to Kashmir for the needy. However, all good things require to be retold to recall those disappearing values. 
