Left and Right Hand castes

In his  column, “Madras Miscellany”, in The Hindu today, Mr S.Muthiah reports on a program hosted by the Chennai Freemasons last week. Referring to one of the speakers there, he asks:

“Who are the Left Hand and the Right Hand Castes about whom K.R.A.Narasiah spoke? From the first days of Madras till well into the 18th century, they were at odds with each other, participants in the most common communal rioting during that period. With generally known caste-communities being found in both groups, the basis of the two groups remains a mystery. Narasiah felt it could be a division based on merchants being the right hand group and artisans the left hand group- but going through the caste-community lists of each of the two groups which kept changing over the years you’ll find even that broad definition comes nowhere near solving the mystery.”

Curious, I logged on to Google Books and found several references to the ‘left-hand, right hand castes”, in books dating back to 1800 AD.

A sample is reproduced below from page 79 of the book, “ Journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar’ by Francis Buchanan, MD, Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, London and a Fellow of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. The research was commissioned by Lord Wellesley and the book was published in the year 1807.

In this country ( Mysore), the division of the people into what are called Eddagai and the left and right hand sides, or Eddagai and Ballagai, is productive of more considerable effects than at any place that I have seen sides' in India, although among the Hindus it is generally known....

The origin of the division of Hindus into the right and left hand sides, is involved in fable. It is said to have taken place at Kunji, or Conjeveram, by order of the goddess Kali; and the rules to be observed by each side were at the same time engraved on a copper plate, which is said to be preserved at the temple of that place. The existence of such a plate, however, is very doubtful; both parties founding on its authority their pretensions, which are diametrically opposite.

The different casts, of which each division is composed, are not united by any common tie of religion, occupation, or kindred: it seems, therefore, to be merely a struggle for certain honorary distinctions. The right hand side pretend, that they have the exclusive privilege of using twelve pillars in the pundal, or shed, under which their marriage ceremonies are performed; and that their adversaries, in their processions, have no right to ride on horseback, nor to carry a flag painted with the figure of Hanumanta.

The left hand side pretend, that all these privileges are confirmed to them by the grant of Kali on the copper plate; and that they are of the highest rank, having been. placed by that goddess on her left hand, which in India is the place of honour.

Frequent disputes arise concerning these important matters; and on such occasions, not only mutual abuse is common, but also the heads of the divisions occasionally stir up the lowest and most ignorant of their followers to have recourse to violence, and encourage them by holding out the houses and shops of their adversaries as proper objects for plunder.

A very serious dispute took place at Seringapatam since it fell into the hands of the English. Thirty families of the weavers, belonging to the left hand side, joined themselves to the Teliga Banijigaru, and were encouraged by them to use all the honorary distinctions claimed by the right hand side. This gave great offence to the Panchum Banijigaru, and the Whalliaru were let loose to plunder : nor could they be repressed without an exertion of military force, by which several people were killed. In order to preserve the peace of the garrison, and to endeavour to bring the two parties to an agreement, it has ever since been thought expedient to prohibit any marriages from being celebrated within the fort.

(Pages 77 and 78 provide the names of nine castes included in the Eddagai ( left hand) group and the eighteen castes included in the Ballagai or right-hand group).

I am sure that a more diligent search through Google Books will clear the 'mystery' fully.

P.S: Browsing through the book, I also found this sketch of a “Brahmin with his wife and a son”.

 Striking colours for a 200-year old book, I must say..

On our indolence and timidity

Mountstuart Elphinstone (6 October 1779 – 20 November 1859) was a Scottish statesman and historian, who later became the Governor of Bombay. He is credited with the opening of several educational institutions accessible to the Indian population. Besides being a noted administrator, he wrote books on India, notable among them being “The History of India’ in two volumes, in the year 1841.

In a chapter ( page 323) dealing with the manners and character of Indians, he makes the following observations:

…All persons who have retired from India think better of the people they have left after comparing them with others even of the most justly admired nations.

These considerations should make us distrust ur own impressions, when unfavourable, but cannot blind us to the fact that the Hindus have, in reality, some great defects of character.

Their defects, no doubt, arise chiefly from moral causes; but they are also to be ascribed, in part, to physical constitution, and in part to soil and climate.

Some races are certainly less vigorous than others ; and all must degenerate if placed in an enervating atmosphere.

Mere heat may not enervate : if it is unavoidable and unremitting, it even produces a sort of hardiness like that arising from the rigours of a northern winter. If sterility be added, and the fruits of hard labour are contested among scattered tribes, the result may be the energy and decision of the Arab.

But, in India, a warm temperature is accompanied by a fertile soil which renders severe labour unnecessary, and an extent of land that would support an almost indefinite increase of inhabitants. The heat is moderated by rain, and warded off by numerous trees and forests : every thing is calculated to produce that state of listless inactivity which foreigners find it so difficult to resist. The shades of character that are found in different parts of India tend to confirm this supposition. The inhabitants of the dry countries in the north, which in winter are cold, are comparatively manly and active. The Marattas, inhabiting a mountainous and unfertile region, are hardy and laborious ; while the Bengalese, with their moist climate and their double crops of rice, where the cocoa-nut tree and the bamboo furnish all the materials 'for construction unwrought, are more effeminate than any other people in India. But love of repose, though not sufficient to extinguish industry or repress occasional exertions, may be taken as a characteristic of the whole people.

Akin to their indolence is their timidity, which arises more from the dread of being involved in trouble and difficulties than from want of physical courage: and from these two radical influences almost all their vices are derived. Indolence and timidity themselves may be thought to be produced by despotism and superstition without any aid from nature; but if those causes were alone sufficient, they would have had the same operation on the indefatigable Chinese and the intrepid Russian: in the present case they are as likely to be effect as cause.

The most prominent vice of the Hindus is want of veracity, in which they outdo most nations even of the East. They do not even resent the imputation of falsehood ; the same man would calmly answer to a doubt by saying, " Why should I tell a lie?" who would shed blood for what he regarded as the slightest infringement of his honour.

Perjury, which is only an aggravated species of falsehood, naturally accompanies other offences of the kind (though it is not more frequent than in other Asiatic countries) ; and those who pay so little regard to statements about the past, cannot be expected to be scrupulous in promises for the future.

It is in people connected with government that deceit is most common ; but in India, this class spreads far; as, from the nature of the laud revenue, the lowest villager is often obliged to resist force by fraud.

In some cases, the faults of the government produce an opposite effect. Merchants and bankers are generally strict observers of their engagements. If it were otherwise, commerce could not go on where justice is so irregularly administered.

It is probably owing to the faults of their government that they are corrupt; to take a bribe in a good cause is almost meritorious ; and it is a venial offence to take one when the cause is bad. Pecuniary fraud is not thought very disgraceful, and, if against the public, scarcely disgraceful at all.

It is to their government, also, that we must impute their flattery and their importunity. The first is gross, even after every allowance has been made for the different degrees of force which nations give to the language of civility. The second arises from the indecision of their own rulers : they never consider an answer final, and are never ashamed to prosecute a suit as long as their varied invention, the possible change of circumstances, or the exhausted patience of the person applied to gives them a hope of carrying their point.

Like all that are slow to actual conflict, they are very litigious, and much addicted to verbal altercation. They will persevere in a law-suit till they are ruined; and will argue, on other occasions, with a violence so unlike their ordinary demeanour, that one unaccustomed to them expects immediate blows or bloodshed.

...Their great defect is a want of manliness. Their slavish constitution, their blind superstition, their extravagant mythology, the subtilities and verbal distinctions of their philosophy, the languid softness of their poetry, their effeminate manners, their love of artifice and delay, their submissive temper, their dread of change, the delight they take in puerile fables, and their neglect of rational history, are so many proofs of the absence of the more robust qualities of disposition and intellect throughout the mass of the nation.

But, their freedom from gross debauchery is the point in which the Hindus appear to most advantage. It can scarcely be expected, from their climate and its concomitants, that they should be less licentious than other nations ; but if we compare them with our own, the absence of drunkenness, and of immodesty in their other vices, will leave the superiority in purity of manners on the side least flattering to our self-esteem.

Good news is no news.

Reports of accidents, floods, drought, recession, unemployment, incurable virus outbreaks, energy shortage, global warming, etc dominate the news programs of TV and newspapers. Forecasts of doom and collapse tend to get far more attention than predictions of rosy scenarios.

“Pessimism has always been big office” says Matt Ridley in his latest book, “The rational optimist”. It plays into what Greg Easterbrook calls ‘the collective refusal to believe that life is getting better’. People do not apply this to their own lives, interestingly: they tend to assume that they will live longer, stay married longer and travel more than they do. Yet surveys consistently reveal individuals to be personally optimistic, yet socially pessimistic. Dane Strangler calls this a ‘non-burdensome form of cognitive dissonance we all walk around with’. About the future of human race and society, people are naturally gloomy. It goes with the fact they are risk-averse: a large literature confirms that people much more viscerally dislike losing a sum of money than they like winning the same sum. And it seems that pessimism genes might quite literally be commoner than optimism genes.

“As the average age of a country’s population rises”, says Ridley, “people get more and more neophobic and gloomy. There is immense vested interest in pessimism too. No charity ever raised money for its cause by saying things are getting better. No journalist ever got the front page by telling his editor that he wanted to write a story about how disaster was now less likely. Good news is no news, so the media megaphone is at the disposal of any politician, journalist or activist who can warn of a coming disaster.”

Ridley adds: “Apocaholics exploit and profit from the natural pessimism of human nature, the innate reactionary in every person. For 200 years, pessimists have had all the headlines, even though optimists have far more often been right.”

Ridley has taken pains to debunk every doom prophesy- be it on climate change, population explosion, nuclear showdown, energy crisis, uncontrolled epidemic- and to show that each is based on irrational fears. True, in his zeal to promote optimism, he has at times, cherry-picked evidences that support his argument. But I’d like to believe him for the simple reason that he makes the world appear far less dreary than it did before I read the book.

Now, is pessimism all wrong? Doesn’t it have some virtues? Trust P.G.Wodehouse to find a silver lining in the cloud of pessimism. Here he is in his book “Something Fresh”.

Among the advantages of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, while it takes the fine edge off whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of thoe gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens at which Ardent Youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties we grow in a habit of mind which looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.

 

"I hate the system, not the British"

This is from the awesome “Letters of note” blog.

An inquisitive letter from a Kansas City resident provoked this insightful typewritten reply from Mohandas Gandhi in 1925. Written to a Fred Campbell just over a year after being released from prison - he had served two years of a six year sentence following his promotion of the Non-cooperation movement - Gandhi took the opportunity to personally respond to the allegation that he 'hated' the British people.

148, Russal Road,

Calcutta.


26th July 1925.

My dear young Friend,

I like your frank and sincere letter for which I thank you.

You seem to have taken it for granted that I hate the British. What makes you think so? I have hundreds of friends among the British people. I cannot love the Mussalmans and for that matter the Hindus if I hate the British. My love is not an exclusive affair. If I hate the British today, I would have to hate the Mohammedans tomorrow and the Hindus the day after. But what I do detest is the system of government that the British have set up in my country. It has almost brought the economic and moral ruin of the people of India. But just as I love my wife and children, in spite of their faults which are many, I love also the British in spite of the bad system for which they have unfortunately made themselves responsible. That love which is blind is no love, that love which shuts its eyes to the faults of loved ones is partial and even dangerous. You must write again if this letter does not satisfy you.
Yours sincerely,



(Signed, 'MKGandhi')

The man’s clarity of thought was amazing.

Three score and three years ago.....

"The solemn reading of a royal proclamation on August 15, officially ends nearly two centuries of British rule over the squalid subcontinent of India. An era of adventure, conquest and imperial exploitation, in which India helped transform Britain from a scrawny little island off the coast of Europe into the richest and most powerful nation on earth is closed. "

Thus begins the article on the transfer of power from Britain to India, in Life magazine (in its edition of August 18, 1947). The photo round-up is also excellent.

The story on page 27 is followed by an editorial on page 34.

The conquest and rule of India by the British is one of the most extraordinary exploits in the annals of mankind. At no time have there been more than a handful of Englishmen in India to govern 400 million people. As one of these administrators described the exploit, “England, not only, in fact, conquered India mainly with Indian troops rather than English troops, but actually made India pay for the privilege.

The British conquered no savage hordes but one of the great world civilizations. The Moghul Emperor Akbar was more powerful than his contemporary Queen Elizabeth and the richest monarch in the world. His grandson, Shah Jahan, built the only building since the Parthenon which is not only breathtakingly beautiful, but also flawless.

Take that, you @#$%^& customer

Having started my career as a Salesperson, I was trained quite early to treat customers with courtesy and never to lose my cool whatever may be the provocation from the other side. In the course of my long stint in Sales, I have met many kinds of customers, starting from the most polite to the most annoying. When confronting the latter type, the training takes over and I usually keep my equanimity intact.

That doesn’t mean that I enjoy doing it. Every salesman’s fantasy is to deliver a resounding kick on the backside of an unreasonable or a needlessly demanding customer. And, if said customer complained about you to your boss, to use some choice expletives against the boss as well and storm out of the office. Tap any salesperson on the shoulder and ask if he dreams of this day, the answer will be a resounding ‘yes’. This is true not only for salespeople, but to all frontline staff in the hospitality sector.

That is why this story about the attendant on a Jetblue flight heaping choice expletives on a misbehaving passenger and then declaring on the spot, “ I have spent 27 years with this airline. This is it. I am quitting, ok?” resonated deeply with me.

Not many of us can see our fantasies some true, but here is this excellent fellow who managed to do it in style. Having hurled the abuses, he deployed the emergency slide and jumped out, remembering to grab some beer cans while exiting. What a man!

Judging from the comments to the news story, most people seem to empathise with the flight attendant. The passenger deserved it, seems to be the general verdict.

A shining star of the sales fraternity.

Copied from 'original'

A few weeks back, I was a victim of plagiarism. Someone had borrowed the central idea and some passages- verbatim- from my blogpost of July 2007 and had managed to get his article published in The Hindu. I shot off a letter in anger to the newspaper. The ‘author’ denied the charges and claimed that he had, in fact, written it first in 2004, re-hashed it in 2008 in his blog and re-hashed it yet again for the article in The Hindu. By this time, I got fed up of the whole thing and left the liar to battle it out with his conscience.

In this opinion piece in the NYT, Stanley Fish explains how the concept of originality- on which rests the concept of plagiarism- is getting to be outdated or, rather, no longer understood or cared about. So much so, when a student is pulled up for plagiarizing his doctoral thesis, what he/she is punished for is “breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe”.

He adds:

In recent years there have been a number of assaults on the notion of originality, issuing from fields as diverse as literary theory, history, cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology, Internet studies. Single authorship, we have been told, is a recent invention of a bourgeois culture obsessed with individualism, individual rights and the myth of progress. All texts are palimpsests of earlier texts; there’s been nothing new under the sun since Plato and Aristotle and they weren’t new either; everything belongs to everybody.....

….Arguments like these (which I am reporting, not endorsing) have been so successful in academic circles that the very word “originality” often appears in quotation marks, and it has seemed to many that there is a direct path from this line of reasoning to the conclusion that plagiarism is an incoherent, even impossible, concept and that a writer or artist accused of plagiarism is being faulted for doing something that cannot be avoided. R.M. Howard makes the point succinctly “If there is no originality and no literary property, there is no basis for the notion of plagiarism”.

So, if you are sure you can escape legal action, go ahead and plagiarise. There are no moral issues to worry about. No pangs of conscience to contend with.

The Indian river

A recent story:

NEW DELHI: The Ganges holds a special place in a billion Indian hearts. But a Melbourne-born artist has become the first to paint the river from source to mouth.

Kevin Pearsh travelled by foot, boat and land vehicle, from the river's source waters in the Himalayan ice cave of Gaumukh to the sprawling delta where the Ganges flows out into the Bay of Bengal, to create an acclaimed series of 21 oils on canvas.

The painter, who lives in France, completed his journey in three stages in 2006 and 2007, keeping a comprehensive travel diary of sketches, notes, photographs and watercolours - all painted with Ganges water.

A Varanasi boatman called Deepak, who accompanied Pearsh for the entire journey, acting as interpreter and assistant, suggested he do 21 paintings because it was an auspicious number in Hindu astrology.

For centuries, the Ganges has provided the inspiration for epics ( Rajaji’s version of the Mahabharat starts with the words : “ “You must marry me whoever you are”. Thus spoke King Santanu to the River Ganges”) and poetry and..painting.

Here is an almost poetic description of the river in a weekly journal called “ All the year round” edited by Charles Dickens. No less. It appears in the edition of Sep 25, 1869 – page 392.

Like the Australian painter above, the writer starts from the source of the river and takes the reader through to the point where it meets the sea.

It opens with this paragraph:

From the mountains covered with eternal snow to the ocean basking in the rays of the tropical sun flows Gunga, the river. By Mahommedan mosque and palace; by Hindoo temple and serai; by European factory and English guardhouse; while all around is ever shifting; while men and manners come and go ; while those that to-day cool their parched throats, or lave their weary limbs, or sport in idleness in its cool and limpid stream, tomorrow float helpless on its bosom, hewn down by the sword of the invading warrior, or victims of a cruel superstition ; unchanged since history began, the river flows on unchanging still. Now bearing the rich goods of nature's Eastern storehouse; now made subservient to the machinery of Western civilisation; stained with the dye of indigo, or red with the blood of the slaughtered ; laughing with tiny ripple in the warm sunshine, or rough and tempest-tossed by the wild cyclone ; now creeping gently in the middle of its bed far away from the banks its course has worn away in the lapse of centuries; now roaring and rushing on, like a second deluge, and covering all around at the same time with fertility and desolation; now gleaming with the rude weapons, the gaudy trappings of some proud Mahommedan prince; now giving passage to a conquering band of fair-haired, white-skinned warriors ; slave of many masters, bestowing its inestimable favours on all; thus flows Gunga, pre-eminently The River.

And ends with this paragraph:

The western branch, or Hooghly, after passing its point of junction with the Bhagirathi, and until it reaches the southern extremity of Calcutta, presents an animated and lively picture, full of all the action and the thousand sights and sounds that surround the seat of government…... On, past private houses, factories, and native huts; past horrible burning-ghats, where the smoke and stench rise continually from funeral pyres; past crowded and dirty wharves, where piles of goods await removal to the ship, the train, or the warehouse; past lines of crowded shipping, with labouring crews and shouting coolies: past the ghat of the East Indian Railway Company, whose busy little steamer puffs backwards and forwards continually, conveying passengers between Calcutta and the train. On again, past English counting-houses and merchants1 offices ; on, past the Esplanade, with its public gardens and promenades, and its pretty line of East Indiamen that might well be mistaken for men of war, moored close to the bank ; on, past Fort William, past the Maidan, and Calcutta's Rotten-row,the Strand. On, past lines of shipping again; past Kidderpore Docks; past Allcypore, with its villa houses peacefully reposing in beautiful grounds; past Garden Reach, fallen from its suburban celebrity, contaminated by the presence of the ex-King of Uude ; past the Botanical gardens and Bishop's College; on, past Calcutta, native, mercantile, civil, and military ; on, past all signs of human habitation, once more alone with the swiftly-flowing stream. Then, the river widening, and retiring with its mud and jungle covered banks to the verge of the horizon, no other objects meet our gaze but lighthouses and telegraphic stations, until at length the lightship at the Sandheads rises into view, and we remember that the Ganges is no longer with us, but is merged in the boundless sea.

That lyrical prose makes you feel as if you are travelling on the river in a steam boat, doesn't it?

Idol worship

A news item in the New York Times:

New Delhi : The girls gathered in a school auditorium here on a recent Saturday were beaming with pride and nervous with anticipation. They would soon have a chance to meet the star of their dreams: Viswanathan Anand.

Mr. Anand is no Bollywood heartthrob or pop singer. The idol the girls were swooning over was an unassuming, bespectacled, 40-year-old world chess champion.

The reporter makes it apparent that had the ‘swooning’ happened over a Bollywood star, it would have been perfectly normal. But the admiration for a mere world-chess champion was something not usually seen.

He is right, of course.

But why should it be so?

When you meet a sportsman like Tendulkar or Anand or Schumacher, you see the same person who had, in real life, done something incredible. You see, in front of you, the same, real hands/feet/brains that had been put to use to achieve that. (Ok, you don’t see the brains, but you get my point). So, seeing the real person, live, in front of you can bring out some gasps of admiration.

But, when you see a movie star in person, what you see is the actor who played out some characters that appealed to you. When you watched the movie on-screen, you were taken in by the character; the actor was incidental. In fact, what the character on screen is supposed to be doing (all that daredevilry) is nothing but deception. In a matter of few frames, the director can delude you into believing that the hero has jumped 200 feet into the air and back. So, not even the on-screen character played by the movie star is real. So, what causes the ‘swooning’ when you bump into the movie star in person at the airport, well outside the entertainment arena?

His/her stunning looks, you say. These people became stars in the first place because of their good looks, and it is the same good looks that bring out the admiring gasps when they step into the real world.

Nonsense. Have you seen Rajnikanth in person? He is a simple person and looks anything but a movie star. Yet, he is mobbed by his fans. Clearly they ignore his real-life persona and see only the characters he has played.

Or, perhaps we admire the actor for his/her histrionic skills and ability to play different roles and characters? No, this is unlikely to cause us to go overboard.

So, what’s the explanation?

The trigonometric tables of the Brahmins

One of my favourite pastimes is to dip into Google Books and scan through books concerning India and published 250-300 years back by the British when they were slowly and steadily gaining control over the vast territory. The area was relatively new to them and they were in an exploratory mode. Their penchant for meticulously recording their observations resulted in many, many books which, thanks to Google, we can access easily now.

This is my 37th post under the label, “Britindia” and I find that, even given the general poor readership of this blog, the series has attracted the least attention. To my dismay, my wife told me yesterday that if she finds the tag “Britindia’, she gives that post a miss.

Be that as it may, I shall carry on bravely…..

In an earlier post, I had linked to a report on the mathematical discoveries of the school of Madhava and their knowledge of the infinite series. In another post, I had linked to a book published in the year 1799 that had provided proof that the Hindus were aware of the binomial theorem.

To add to above, the “Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh” published in the year 1798, contains on page 83,  a chapter titled, “Observations on the trigonometric tables of the Brahmins”. The author provides evidence of the existence of well laid-down trigonometric principles in India, 2000 years before the Europeans arrived at the same conclusions.

In the second volume of the Asiatic Researches, an extract is given from the Surya Siddhanta, the ancient book which has been long, though obscurely pointed out as the source of the astronomical knowledge of the Brahmins. The Surya Siddhanta is in the Sanscrit language: It is one of the Sastras, or inspired writings of the Hindoos, and is called the Jyotifh, or Astronomical, Sastra. It professes, to be a revelation from heaven, communicated to Meya, a man of great sanctity, about four millions of years ago, toward the close of the Satya Jug, or of the Golden Age of the Indian mythologists ; a period at which man is said to have been incomparably better than he is at present ; when his stature exceeded twenty-one cubits, and his life extended to ten thousand years.

Interwoven, however, with all these extravagant fictions, this singular book contains a very sober and rational system of astronomical calculation ; and even the principles and rules of trigonometry, a science of all others the most remote from fable, and the least susceptible of poetical decoration.

It is not a little singular, that we should find a table of versed sines in the Surya Siddhanta; for neither the Greek nor the Arabian mathematicians, had any such, nor had we, in modern Europe, till after the time of Petiscus, who wrote about the end of the century just mentioned. I think it might fairly be concluded, even if we had had no knowledge of the antiquity of the Surya Siddhanta, that the trigonometry contained in it is not borrowed from Greece or Arabia, as its fundamental rule was unknown to the geometers of both those countries, and is greatly preferable to that which they employed.

If we were not already acquainted with the high antiquity of the astronomy of Indostan, nothing could appear more singular, than to find a system of trigonometry, so perfect in its principles, in a book so ancient as the Surya Siddhanta. The antiquity of that book, the oldest of the Sastras, can scarce be accounted less than 2000 years before our era, even if we follow the very moderate system of Indian chronology laid down by Sir William Jones. It is remarkable that the Hindoos should have been thus led, at so early a period, to put in practice a method which has been but lately suggested in Europe as an important improvement in trigonometrical calculation.

If these are claims made by Indians, I would discount them immediately, prone as we are to making exaggerated assertions on our glorious past. But, these conclusions were arrived at by British scholars after a fairly rigourous and impartial analysis, and so carries more credibility.

Capturing the high ground

Scott Adams explains the art of “High Ground Maneuver”.

The move involves taking an argument up to a level where you can say something that is absolutely true while changing the context at the same time. Once the move has been executed, the other participants will fear appearing small-minded if they drag the argument back to the detail level. It's an instant game changer.

For example, if a military drone accidentally kills civilians, and there is a public outcry, it would be a mistake for the military to spend too much time talking about what went wrong with that particular mission. The High Ground Maneuver would go something like this: "War is messy. No one wants civilians to die. We will study this situation to see how we can better avoid it in the future."

Notice that the response is succinct, indisputably true, and that the context has been taken to a higher level, about war in general.

Pakistan has indulged in this ‘high ground maneuver’ time and again and has adeptly neutralized India’s charges against it. For example, if we accuse it of exporting terrorism, it comes up with a statement, “Terrorism is a great threat to the world, and all countries must join hands in fighting this menace”. This changes the context and elevates the argument to a higher level. If we try to counter this with more evidence, we come across as perpetual whiners caught up in small detail. The wind gets removed from our sail and the carpet pulled from under our feet, if I can combine two metaphors.

I think the only way to counter this is by sneaking in our expert sermonisers ( examples of Sri Ravishankar and Abdul Kalam spring to the mind) into Pakistan and subjecting their citizens to some long lectures on morality, philosophy, neighbourly spirit, etc. When Pakistan protests to Hillary Clinton that India is indulging in export of tiresome talkers, we should solemnly shake our heads and say” Yes, garrulousness is to be condemned by all right-thinking people. It Is a serious threat to our sanity and to the well-being of people across the world. We should fight this hazard collectively.” 

This, I am afraid,  is the closest we can come to a "High ground maneuver."

On biscuit bandits

A recent news item in The Hindu carried a report on an initiative taken by the Railway Police to warn passengers against ‘biscuit bandits’ and to refrain from accepting food and drink from strangers.

Times have changed, we muse. Confidence tricksters come up with new tricks every day. We have to be constantly vigilant. The days where we could trust and hobnob freely with fellow passengers are gone, we tell ourselves.

But, if you thought that ‘biscuit banditry’ was a fairly recent phenomenon , you would be mistaken.

An account presented, to the Secretary of State for India in Council on Railways in India for the year 1859, by the Secretary, Railway Department, India Office, (equivalent of our modern-day Railway Budget), has this short report, in page 9:

In the report of Captain Portman, Superintendent of Police for the Bombay, Police cases. Baroda, and Central India Railway, illustrations are given of the various offences committed on railways in India. Two cases of dacoity are mentioned, consistingof night attacks upon stations for the sake of plunder. There is a case of robbery by a female, who administered to a fellow passenger a powerful narcotic, which she described as a " pussad," or sacred sweet, and was taken as such by her victim. She was found asleep in the carriage, deprived of her ornaments and money. Thefts and embezzlement under false declaration of goods are sometimes practised. Bags of gunpowder are despatched as groceries, and opium is smuggled in oil jars, the drug being packed between narrow receptacles for oil one passing through the middle of the jar and another just inside the covering. Opium is also sent in bags, described as containing gum, glue, &c.

So, the trick is, at least, 150 years old. The only difference is that in 1859, prasadams were used to administer drugs, while the modern-day robbers use biscuits. But, it is amazing that we still need to be warned against this modus operandi, as though this is a newly-invented trick.

Heave ho

With my roots in Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu, I have heard several stories about the Brihadeeswara Temple and the grand effort put in by Raja Raja Chola to build it. A fascinating documentary produced by the Discovery Channel explains how the construction could have taken place in the 10th century, how large granite stones were mined in quarries 200 km away, how they were pulled the entire distance using logs and elephants and how the 80 ton stone for the ‘kalash’ was hauled up to the top of the tower on a slope which started at a point 6 km  from the base of the tower.

While on a trip to Beijing this week, I visited the Forbidden City and saw what is referred to as the Large Stone Carving. Made of a single stone and containing figures of dragons, this served as a ramp for carrying the Emperors in their sedans. Being 17m long, 3m wide and 1.7m thick, the stone weighs 200 tons. Compared to this, the stone on top of the BrihadeeswaraTemple will qualify only for the ‘lightweight’ category.

So, how did the Chinese bring the ‘heavyweight’ stone from the mine to the Forbidden City? An explanation provided on a board next to the Large Stone Carving is that the stone was quarried from the Fangshang mountains some distance from Beijing and heaved to the City in winter using logs and by pouring water on to the snow, till the resulting ‘ice’ made it easier to slide the huge block forward. This happened in the 15th century.

So, the same challenge of transporting a large stone was overcome with two different engineering solutions in two different places using different resources. We had the elephants, the Chinese had the snow.

To Honourable Sir, from Obedient Servant.

“The gentleman who wrote the journal from which the following pages are chiefly drawn, went out to India in the beginning of 1805, and returned in 1819. …The impressions made upon his mind by the scenes which he beheld in India, are now, with deference, offered to the public.”

Thus begins the book “Fifteen years in India” or “sketches of a soldier’s life, being an attempt to describe persons and things in various parts of Hindoosthan” written in 1823, by Robert Grenville Wallace.

The book provides fascinating insights into various aspects of life in India in those times. Many parts of the book will not be palatable to our ‘patriots’ (of the chest-thumping variety) but it certainly is an honest account -  even if presented from the viewpoint of an Englishman.

Here is an extract ( page 161-3) where the author writes about the propensity of native Indians to use flowery or even bombastic language. While several anecdotes exist on the subject (remember the one where a passenger left behind on the platform by a departing train sends off a rant to the station master?), this must rank as one of the oldest recorded.

It is wonderful how accurately a Hindoo can copy English, without knowing a word of what he is writing. We find how difficult it is to transcribe Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or French, without being able to read those languages; but many crannies will write in our character, which is as different from their own as Hebrew is from English, and copy proceedings in council, correspondence of government, and papers containing intricate researches in science, without knowing the meaning of one word in the whole, or how to spell a syllable. Some of their attempts at fine English, when they advance so far as to become conceited, are truly ludicrous. A volume of malaprop letters might be produced; but one specimen, from Captain Williamson's East India Vade Mecum, may suffice.

The cranny who composed it was left by his master in charge of his bungalow for a few days : during that time a high wind arose, and blew down one of the window shutters. He determined upon apprizing him of this, and inwardly rejoiced at the opportunity afforded him of showing his proficiency in English. Let the reader conceive an office-desk with a cranny seated at it; a dictionary placed before him, with a slate and pencil, and self-exultation in his countenance. He turns over the leaves with a finger and thumb, and an earnestness of countenance that would have done honour to Dr. Sangrado, upon the occasion of feeling the canon's pulse. He shakes his head—rubs the globe of memory, erases the word he had written as fit for his purpose, and chooses another of more learned and fulminating sound. Then he takes his pen and paper, and dispatches to his master what he thinks will truly surprise him:—

"Honourable Sir, "

Yesterday vesper arrive great hurricane, valve of little apperture not fasten; first make great trepidation and palpitation, then precipitate into precinct. God grant master more long life and more great post.

" I remain, honourable Sir,

" In all token of respect,

" Master's writer,

" BlSSONAUT MAITRE.

" P. S. No tranquillity in house since valve adjourn ; I send for carpenter to make re-unite."

Yet some of the sircars make a very considerable advance towards an accurate knowledge of the grammatical construction of English, and learn to speak and write it well enough for business. The following is an actual letter from a native house of agency, and a specimen of middling composition :—

" Sir,

"We have pleasure acknowledge yours, 18th instant. Have sent goods cording you order, and hope you find all first quality. We madam supply with money whenever she send us. Your remittance last month received in course, and placed your account. Have looked all place here for white cloth, such you want — none can find — soon as we get shall send next supplies with, " Remain, Sir,

" With prayers for health,

" Your obedient humble Servants,

" Huhrumbo, Dass, Sons, & Co."

But some of the letters received from natives are written in perfectly grammatical language; yet the above is about the standard of general correspondence with Europeans in every part of India where the Hindoos, Mahomedans, and Parsees conduct their business in our language

A fine example of Indian style Business English -  that emerged 200 years back.

Birds of the same feather....

In the corporate world, psychometric studies are regularly done to assess personality traits of individuals and to (ostensibly) ensure complementarities and a reasonable degree of heterogeneity at the decision-making levels. You don’t want a meeting room where every participant is strongly extroverted and highly judgemental. You also need someone like me.

The world of politics is littered with dead bodies of leaders who paid the price for cutting off honest, negative feedback and choosing to remain in the comfort zone filled with their sycophants. A good leader must listen to divergent views, even if from little boys who tells him that he is not wearing any clothes.

Alas, we bloggers and tweeters too have this tendency to form homogenous groups and to subcribe to feeds of others who hold views similar to ours. We want to listen only to those people who say what we want to hear.

Jonah Lehrer argues ( or rather, adds to the argument) that adding random strangers to your twitter feed can greatly enhance your creative potential – even when the tweets are nonsensical or just plain silly.

We naturally lead manicured lives, so that our favorite blogs and writers and friends all look and think and sound a lot like us…While this strategy might make life a bit more comfortable - strangers can say such strange things - it also means that our cliches of free-association get reinforced. We start thinking in ever more constricted ways.

And this is why following someone unexpected on Twitter can be a small step towards a more open mind. Because not everybody reacts to the same thing in the same way.

….And this is why we should all follow strangers on Twitter. ..Sometimes, all it takes is a stranger on the internet, exposing us to a new way of thinking…..

So, go through your "I follow' list and shake it up a bit. I strongly recommend that you retain your subscription to my blog  as I am known to offer contrarian views that will add to the diversity of inputs reaching you, but you may want to scratch  those other sycophants off the list.......

"This horse does not eat cucumber salad"

“The Telegraphic Journal” published in April, 1864 provides an idea of the ‘state-of-the-art’ in that period.

Telegraph lines had been laid for a considerable distance in India. In that respect it was even better than the situation  in England.

A brief report in the journal talks about the inverse correlation between increased telegraph lines and the number of railway accidents/casualties.

The Electric Telegraph And The Railway System.—It was stated that 27 per cent, of the accidents in England were due to the want of the telegraph. As all the Indian railways had telegraphs, this percentage might be assumed to be erased from their quota of casualties. It would appear from the parliamentary returns, that out of 4,225,240 passengers carried in lndia during the year 1860, none had been killed from causes beyond their own control, while 94 per million only were injured. On comparing this with the English returns, it appeared that out of an annual average of 139,000,000 passengers carried, 15 per million were killed, while 319 were injured. According to the returns for 1862 the passengers carried were 173,721,238, while the number killed, were 36 per million, and 450 per million received injury. It also appears that one-half of the accidents on the English lines arose from collisions, while on the Indian railroads one-seventh only emanated from the same cause. This .proved that collisions which might be looked upon as preventable accidents, to a certain extent, were less frequent in India, and necessarily so owing to the aid afforded by the electric telegraph in regulating the traffic.

Sir W.O.S.Brooke who had introduced the telegraph in India had said:

There is a great future before the Telegraph in India. By perseverance and determination it should be made the best in the world, inasmuch as it possesses an unity of organization unattainable elsewhere, with all the resources of the empire to promote its extension and improvement. In two, or at most three years from this time, the lines should yield a clear profit, and an uniform minimum charge for messages may then be adopted for all India. This, with the general use of some simple cypher by habitual correspondents, will enable the Telegraph to perform much of the present business of the post-office. Meanwhile, we have at our disposal, at a moderate cost, an instrument of such miraculous power that, by a single message, it has already saved our Indian Empire; while day by day, and hour by hour, it is busy in the promotion of commerce and the furtherance of private interest of every kind. In my extended tours over all parts of India I have seldom met a family who had not some anecdote to tell of the services the Telegraph had done them. There are few Europeans in India who have not experienced a thrill of pleasure when they meet our masts and wires on the margin of every road, and know that these true tokens of science, and civilization, and power, traverse our Indian Empire to its utmost limit. Should I see them no more, I can truly say that I shall ever continue to take the most heartfelt interest in the prosperity and improvement of the department, and feel proud and happy that it has been my lot to bring it even to its present imperfect state."

Incidentally, in the same journal, a small snippet appears about the telephone. This was a good 10-15 years before Alexander Bell came up with his device.

Mr. Reis' Acoustic Telephone.—It has long been known that a magnetic current will produce a sound in wires of iron and other metal. Mr. Reis takes up this fact, and has constructed an acoustic telegraph or telephone, an instrument which delivers a message by sounds of different pitch. As yet it is far from perfect, and to many ears there is no perceptible difference in the tones, but as the possibility of communicating between different places by sounds has been demonstrated, we may expect to hear again of the subject.

I checked up on Reis.. Apparently, he was a German who was the first to transmit signals across the telephone as early as 1860. As Edison explained later, he transmitted musical notes, whereas it was Bell who demonstrated two-way verbal communication in 1875. (source)

Crying foul, BBC published this article in 2003, claiming that archives that had been recently unearthed showed that “successful tests on a German device manufactured in 1863 were covered up to maintain the Scot's reputation. They show the "Telephon", developed by German research scientist Philipp Reis, could transmit and receive speech.

The first spoken words on Reis’ phone were, “ This horse does not eat cucumber salad”. (source)

Vacuous and Verbose-19

In a series of tweets, Prannoy Roy of NDTV writes:

The reason why 50% of our coastline has turned to rock? 1) our beaches are like rivers of sand. Sand flows from south to north.

Whenever a PORT is built the flow of sand is interrupted and sand piles up on the south side of the port & the north side turns to rock.

Port owners should dredge the sand from the south and place it in the north - nobody does this :(. It's a disgrace.

Sand is a filter. When the sandy coastline turns to rock, salty water seeps inland & the village wells become saline & crops can't grow

The result of 180 !!!! ports: 50% of our beaches are now rocks and 50% of our coastal villages are suffering from salty subsoil water

The good news: this is REVERSIBLE.. We can get our beaches back. If we are determined. Watch Pondicherry change their rock back to sand

Yes, since the NDTV campaign the proposed 180 ports are stopped & Pondicherry is getting funds to get it's beach back. A start.

On reading these tweets, I was awestruck. Wow ! Defying commonsense, logic, science, principles of geology, etc, Indian engineers have actually managed to convert sand to rocks in a few months. Nature might take millions of years and many more elements to produce sedimentary rocks out of mud and sand, but we – the modern equivalent of alchemists- have converted sand into rocks in a jiffy a la P.C.Sorcar. Or perhaps a la Medusa.

Now, if Indian engineers are allowed to continue with their sinister designs, they will simply go around with their wand and Medusa gaze and convert all the sand in the land into rocks. Only NDTV can save the country from these madmen. Only they can orchestrate a campaign to change the rocks back into sand. They did it in Pondicherry. They can do it elsewhere too.

All hail Prannoy, the sandman and our saviour.  You rock, man!

Note: A less sensational account of the side-effect of port construction at Pondicherry, due to erosion and disruption in the natural littoral drift is provided in this blog. Yes, natural replenishment of sand was not happening. Yes, tons and tons of rocks were used to construct groynes to prevent the erosion. But sand, per se, was not converted into rocks. Change that mental image.

Conversation with daughter-34

Me: You know something? Muralitharan is close to his 800th wicket, while I am about to write my 700th blogpost. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? Two great achievers in two different fields about to cross important milestones at the same time?

Daughter: Great! How are you going to celebrate the event?

Me: Just like Murali, in a humble, unassuming manner. The world will marvel at the sight of two modest souls quietly reaching their respective milestone without any fuss whatsoever.

Daughter: How boring!

Me: Or do you suggest that I should issue a statement like how Sugary Sachin does when he crosses some landmark? “I don’t keep track of records and personal achievements What is important is that my blogposts must contribute to the prosperity of my fellow-bloggers and the honour of my countrymen”

Daughter: Ugghh!

Me: How about you and I having a bloggable conversation in which you ask remarkably stupid questions and I tick you off sharply thereby emerging astoundingly brilliant?

Daughter: Trying a role reversal? Unlikely to work. Won’t sound convincing to both your readers.

Me: Then how do I commemorate my 700th post?

Daughter: Humbly, like Murali. And, retire from the game, as Murali is about to do..

On shaving and copying.

In a letter to the Times of India, Dilip D’Souza brings to their attention that an article that had appeared in their Crest edition had borrowed some passages from a book of his and adds:

"Believe me, like every writer out there, I am delighted when I find that other writers have found my work good enough to use in their own writing.

Only, it would be nice if they acknowledge what they use."

I had a very similar experience last Sunday. I was reading an article in the 'Open Page' of The Hindu and found several portions very familiar. Then it struck me that the 'familiar paras' had been lifted from a blogpost  that I had published 3 years back.

I now have clear evidence that my writing is good enough for publication in The Hindu.

I write like.......

Dan Brown !

Mind our own language.

At the recently concluded World Tamil Conference, various steps were initiated with a view to popularising the use of Tamil in the state. Sign boards must not merely carry the name of the shop or establishment in Tamil, it must provide a literal translation into Tamil. The Madras University VC has issued an order that requires members of the faculty to sign only in the Tamil script. And many more.

How practical are these measures? Will it lead to increased usage of the language in communication, documents, research papers, etc? How can you shove something down people’s throats. Isn’t it one’s fundamental right to speak or write in a language of his choice? What happens if every state in the country mandates that its language alone can be used in any correspondence, name boards, etc. Won’t our national structure collapse?

By now, those who have such questions in their minds or hold views that are contrary to the ruling party’s in TN have stopped expressing them. Hence there is no debate any more. The argument is closed.

With this cynical attitude, I happened to read Pawan Varma’s, “Becoming Indian”. He is extremely proficient with the English language but argues passionately for the use of one’s own language.

All Indians need to seriously introspect where we are in relation to own language. We need to do this in our own interest because citizens of a great nation cannot afford to appear like linguistic photocopies or caricatures. Photocopies are a convenience for the benefit of others. To win respect we need to be rooted in our own cultural milieu and language is an indispensable element in that effort. At present, we are fast becoming a nation of linguistic half-castes, who can never speak English as their first language, but who are adrift from their mother tongue and unsure in the official language.

..The brilliant Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o who begins his book Decolonising the Mind with the statement that this will be his last book in English, and henceforth he will write only in Giyuku and Kishwahili, makes the basic point that every language has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture. Take English. It is spoken in Britain and in Sweden and in Denmark. But for Swedish and Danish people, English is only a means of communication with non-Scandinavians. It is not a carrier of their culture. For the British, it is additionally and inseparably from its use as a tool of communication, a carrier of their culture and history. We need to urgently understand this difference.

I am not convinced on the validity of this argument, but I am thinking…..

Old brain in new body

Says Russian investment banker Innokenty Osadchy: “I don’t ever want to die... It wouldn’t suit me”. He is ready to pay a small fortune to freeze his brain until future technology allows him to continue his life — after being transplanted into a new body and resuscitated. After all, brain is what shapes our personality, the body is immaterial, he reasons.

He signs up with Russian cryonics company KrioRus which offers to keep any human being’s brain in liquid nitrogen freeze for 10,000 dollars..(source).

But other scientists are full of disdain for the idea. “If you freeze a body today — even one alive and healthy — after it is defrosted, it won’t be alive and whole. We can’t even freeze and preserve organs today — only cells.

But, even assuming technology makes it possible to freeze the brain, will transporting it to a new body help retain the same characteristics of the brain and impart the same personality to the new brain-body combination?

No, points out Alun Anderson, Senior Consultant, New Scientist, in an article in Edge, responding to the question, "What is your dangerous idea?"

Brains cannot become minds without bodies as two-way interactions between mind and body are crucial to thought and health. The brain may partly think in terms of the motor actions it encodes for the body's muscles to carry out.

We've probable fallen for disembodied brains because of the academic tendency to worship abstract thought. If we take a more democratic view of the whole brain we'd find far more of it being used for planning and controlling movement than for cogitation. Sports writers get it right when they describe stars of football or baseball as "geniuses"! Their genius requires massive brain power and a superb body, which is perhaps one better than Einstein.

The brain and body must therefore interact constantly. It is this cooperation that makes you what you are. Inserting your brain into a different body may work one day, but what emerges will not be you.

How checklist improves productivity in Delhi hospital

In his book, “Checklist Manifesto”, Atul Gawande of Harvard Medical School explains how a simple tool such as a ‘checklist’ can eliminate errors and prevent accidents and deaths. Gawande had helped WHO in developing a ‘safe surgery’ check list,  which was later implemented in different pilot sites all over the world.

While visiting the pilot sites, Gawande came across surgeries being performed in so many different kinds of settings. This is how he describes a charity hospital in Delhi:

The volume of patients they were asked to care for in this city of thirteen million people was beyond comprehension. The hospital had seven fully trained anesthetists, for instance, but they had to perform twenty thousand operations a year. To provide a sense of how ludicrous this is, our New Zealand pilot hospital employed ninety-two anesthetists to manage a similar magnitude of surgery. Yet for all the equipment shortages, power outages, waiting lists, fourteen hour days, I heard less unhappiness and complaining from the surgical staff in Delhi than in many American hospitals I’ve been to"

Twenty thousand operations per year handled by seven anesthetics means an average of eight operations per anesthetist for every single day of the year. That’s amazing. I wonder what their technique is. Do they use hammers? The check list for the anesthetist will simply read:

1) Sterilise hammer.

2) Put on surgical gloves.

3) Lift hammer from the table

4) Give a solid whack on the patient’s head.

5) Move to next operating table.

One shining moment....

A friend, in one of his introspective moods, told me, “Raj, let’s be honest. What have you and I achieved in this world? Have we done anything of any significance to anyone? When one of us dies, our entire life story will be summed up thus: “He was born, he lived and then he died” What else is there to write?

In that respect, Edith Shain is better off than either of  us. She suddenly became a celebrity, decades after World War II, asserting that she was the nurse kissed by a sailor in Life magazine’s memorable photograph of V-J Day in Times Square. That was her solitary moment of fame. She died last week. Here tombstone can read, “She was born, she worked as a nurse, she kissed a sailor and died”.

Or take the case of character actor Mac Mohan who died last month. He may have acted in 175 movies, but he is remembered only for his role of Gabbar Singh's sidekick Sambha in Ramesh Sippy's blockbuster "Sholay". That was his only claim to fame. His epitaph can read, “He was born, he was Gabbar Singh’s sidekick, then he died”.

I remember reading a news item many years back about a lift operator in a hotel. Apparently, a leading actress was staying in the hotel and got into the lift. The operator seized the moment to give her a hug. He was reported and was handed over to the police. Now, the poor operator could have gone up and down in his lift a million times and ended his career with nothing to report. But he had sterling stuff in him. ‘Carpe diem’, he shouted while grabbing his opportunity and..the actress. So, when he dies, his obituary can read, “ He was born, he operated lifts, he hugged a leading actress, then he died”. How many of us can claim to have such an impressive CV?

Belief in oneself

After being 8-14 down in the first game, Saina Nehwal fought back and won the finals of the Singapore Open yesterday. Later, she told a reporter, “At 8-14, I was nervous. Then I believed in myself and told myself to play my best and give my 100 percent. That worked for me”. When she won the finals of the Indian Open in Chennai last week, despite being a game down, she said the same thing about believing in ‘herself’.

Saina certainly comes across as a determined person and has demonstrated her grittiness on quite a few occasions when the chips were down.

But then, every sportsperson is trained to behave the same way. Her Chinese competitor must also have been told by her coach, “If you have a 14-8 lead, don’t relax. Go for the kill. And finish your opponent”.

If every competitor believes in herself, plays her best and gives off her 100 percent, as she is trained and mentally conditioned to do, then no match will come to an end. It will stretch on and on, with neither of the players giving in. The one who is leading will bring out her killer instinct, while the one who is trailing will show her fighting spirit, with both ‘believing in themselves’.

But then matches do end and someone does emerge the victor. In this case, was Saina’s 100 percent better than her opponent’s 100 percent? Or was Saina’s belief in ‘herself’ stronger than her opponent’s belief in ‘herself’?

Probably the simpler explanation is that history is written by the winner. The quotes that make it to the headlines are those of the winner’s. So, whenever Saina won she would have been quoted as saying that she believed in herself. And we remember those quotes.

The times that she lost, she wouldn’t have been quoted as saying, “I lost because I didn’t believe in myself”. Or, “I gave only 80% today”.

With reporters screaming for sound bytes, the ‘winner’ is expected to come up with a quotable punch line offering a clear explanation for her victory. It couldn’t have happened by chance. Surely, there was a plan in place and which was executed well? So, the poor sportsperson is forced to come up with these lines whether he or she believes in them or not.


Update 27/6/10: Well, by winning three events in a row, the latest being the Indonesian Open, Saina has demonstrated that her belief in herself is not misplaced. I like her 'quiet' determination, of the non-flamboyant, Rahul Dravid variety. May more such people succeed.

How pleasure works

Aware of my violent reaction if a song not composed by A.R.Rahman is played in my presence, my daughters try to test my loyalty by playing out an unfamiliar number and checking if I like it. If I happen to like the song and it turns out that it is not a Rahman song, or if I dislike a song that turns out to be Rahman’s, I am ticked off sharply.

Despite inheriting some great genes, these kids simply have no clue how the brain works. For their benefit, I am reproducing a quote from a book “ How Pleasure Works” by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom. (source).

As the founder and CEO of Perrier North America, it was important for Bruce Nevins to convey to people how good his product tastes. It was a bad day for him, then, when he was on a live radio show and asked to pick out the Perrier from a selection of seven cups of water. He got it on the fifth try.

There is nothing wrong with his taste buds. In blind taste tests, with waters at equal temperature, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between tap water and luxury bottled waters.

I would bet, though, that once Nevins left the radio show and went back to his life, he still thought that Perrier tasted really good - the radio test didn't prove otherwise. If so, he would be right. That is, someone who prefers the taste of Perrier to other waters but fails a blind taste test is not dishonest or confused. Perrier does taste great. It's just that to appreciate its great taste, you have to know that it is Perrier.

Got it, girls? To appreciate Rahman’s great music, you have to know that the song was composed by Rahman.

My country is the greatest.

An article by Priya Ramani on ‘our pseudo-nationalism’ got her a lot of hate mail and generated quite a buzz in the Twitter world. She wrote:

Recently I’ve become increasingly convinced that I’m not an Indian….. I have no furious loyalties to the Baganapalli or Alphonso. In fact, I can think of at least six fruits that I prefer to the mango. I have never eaten an entire paan or a pot of mishti doi (though I have tried both) and I don’t spit in public or private (except for that one time I tried a meetha paan)…. I don’t understand that other national obsession, cricket, either. White is not my favourite skin colour. I don’t read Chetan Bhagat or Paulo Coelho. I feel depressed every time I wear a salwar-kameez

I don’t think we’re the greatest people on earth. I don’t understand our sense of fake pride and nationalism. That whole chest-thumping Jai Ho phase? I never got it. Most of the insightful books and films/documentaries about India have been written/made by outsiders.

I agree with her about the chest-thumping and the constant proclamation of patriotism that we keep indulging in. When Sachin scores runs, he is not doing it for himself, but is sweating it out for his motherland. When Amitabh is acting, the last thought on his mind is money; he is working for the greater glory of the country and to keep the country’s flag flying high. Every morning these guys wake up and feel the need to say something profoundly patriotic on their blogs or tweats. (“My caste? I am an Indian”).

As Shaw put it, patriotism is the unreasonable belief that your country is the best merely because you were born in it. Being born in India was a random genetic event. Just accept it as a fact and move on. You don’t have to be proud of it, nor have to regret it.

Culpable negligence

Swaminathan Aiyer argues that the Indian Railways has caused more deaths than the Bhopal disaster and yet the public has not displayed the same degree of concern:

Consider Mumbai’s suburban rail services. Activist Chetan Kothari used the Right to Information Act to get data on people killed in Mumbai by the Central and Western Railway, which run through the city. Answer: 20,706 people have been killed in the last five years. This is six times as high as Bhopal’s 3,787 immediate fatalities and higher than even the long-term fatalities estimated at 15,000-20,000.

.. Union Carbide was lambasted for not using the best technology available to avert risks and deaths. But do we castigate the railways for not investing in the best safety technologies, and creating barriers to stop people from crossing the tracks? Union Carbide was slated for negligence in a shutdown plant. But the railways continue to be negligent year after year in a running organization that runs down people.

Many of us howled for justice after Bhopal. Many demanded the arrest of Union Carbide chief Anderson. Those convicted last week included Keshub Mahindra, the non-executive chairman with a largely ceremonial position. How many of us have demanded even the dismissal, let alone conviction, of the railway staff, Railway Board members or railway minister for the continuing holocaust in Mumbai? The non-executive head of the railways is, formally, the President of India. Has anybody demanded that Pratibha Patil be prosecuted for continuing railway deaths?

The Bhopal incident is certainly one of the worst and most tragic the world has seen. But, I also feel sorry for the plant engineers or managers at the Bhopal plant, who were convicted after a trial that ran for 25 years. What happened at Bhopal was an accident and not an act of terror with an intention to kill. But, the law says that negligence that leads to death is an offence. It believes that ‘punishment’ will act as a deterrent and reinforce the message that when safety of public is at stake one is obliged to be extremely vigilant.

But why scream for the head of Anderson alone? As any person who has undergone a basic course in Quality management will tell you, every accident can be traced back to human error. The Mangalore air crash was not an act of God, but caused due to negligence somewhere in the process. Did we ask for the arrest of the Chairman of Air India? The crane collapse at the Metro Railway site was a preventable accident. Did any Chairman get arrested for negligence? Each time we can demonstrate and prove that someone was guilty of an act of commission or omission.

As Aiyar concludes:

NGOs and the media suffer from a terrible double standard. They will pounce on negligence by a multinational, and rightly so. But they act as though the public sector has a licence to kill. That is disgraceful.

God and religion

The Crest Edition of today’s Times of India carries a series of articles probing the subject, “Does God exist?”. The usual arguments, for and against, have been put forward. Depending on one’s pre-disposition, one can find the material to agree with or disagree.

But the subject brought to mind some brilliant articles that I had come across in the website of “Edge, The World Question Centre”. Every year, Edge poses a question and invites experts from different fields to respond to that. The question asked in 2006 was, “What is your dangerous idea?” and some of the responses centred around God and religion.

Some excerpts:

In his article “Science must destroy religion”, Sam Harris, neuroscientist, warned that ‘religious tolerance” could help propogate absurd ideas and that it was as dangerous as religious war.

Despite the ecumenical efforts of many well-intentioned people, irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict.

In response to this situation, most sensible people advocate something called "religious tolerance." While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves — repeatedly and at the highest levels — about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.

 But Robert Provine, psychologist, talked about the futility of trying to resolve religious conflict.

Resolution of religious conflict is impossible because there is no empirical test of the ghostly, and many theologians prey, intentionally or not, upon the fears, superstitions, irrationality, and herd tendencies that are our species' neurobehavioral endowment. Religious fundamentalism inflames conflict and prevents solution—the more extreme and irrational one's position, the stronger one's faith, and, when possessing absolute truth, compromise is not an option

Scott Atran, anthropologist, feels that science must learn a few methods from religion if it has to win the battle.

Science treats humans and intentions only as incidental elements in the universe, whereas for religion they are central. Science is not particularly well-suited to deal with people's existential anxieties, including death, deception, sudden catastrophe, loneliness or longing for love or justice. It cannot tell us what we ought to do, only what we can do. Religion thrives because it addresses people's deepest emotional yearnings and society's foundational moral needs. Religion is the hope that science is missing.

Finally, Jesse Bering, Institute of Cognitive studies, says that it is impossible for Science to get rid of the concept of God and religion. It is something hardwired in our brains and made permanent by natural selection.

No matter how far our thoughts shall vault into the eternal sky of scientific progress, no matter how dazzling the effects of this progress, God will always bite through his muzzle and banish us from the starry night of humanistic ideals. 

Science is an endless series of binding and rebinding his breath; there will never be a day when God does not speak for the majority. There will never be a day even when he does not whisper in the most godless of scientists' ears. This is because God is not an idea, nor a cultural invention, not an 'opiate of the masses' or any such thing; God is a way of thinking that was rendered permanent by natural selection. God too is a biological appendage; until we acknowledge this fact for what it is, until we rear our children with this knowledge, he will continue to howl his discontent for all of time