Jaipur bomb blasts

Several days have passed since May 13, 2008, when a series of bomb blasts hit Jaipur. It would have been remiss of me not to recognize this event on the Mera Bharat Mahan blog, as I have frequently written about Islamic terrorism in India on this blog (I leave documentation of Naxal terrorism to Naxal Terror Watch).

I have read various accounts, which differ in the number of victims and even the number of blasts. However, there were at least six blasts, which left at least 60 dead and 200 injured. The fact that these blasts took place within a short time indicates coordination, thus bearing the hallmarks of an Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist attack.

I will leave editorializing for another day. In the meantime, I pray for the departed, the injured, and their survivors.

The Hindu : From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil Nadu

This article From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil Nadu from the May 3, 2008 edition of The Hindu notes that there are commonalities between arrow-like symbols on megalithic pottery from Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu and Indus Valley symbols.


Megalithic pottery from Tamil Nadu

The pottery from Tamil Nadu is said to be dated between 300 BCE and 300 CE, while the Indus script dates is said to be dated between 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE.

I have been meaning to write a review on the book The Aryan Debate, edited by Thomas R. Trautman. Trautman adheres to the traditionalist view of the origins of the Indian people, which posits that the Aryans migrated from outside India and that the Aryans post-date the Indus Valley Civilization; however, he gives respectful attention to scholars with alternative viewpoints. He bases his judgments on what the vaunted "community of scholars" says about what linguistics and archeology (with emphasis on archeological evidence about the presence of the horse in India) indicate about the origins of the Indian people.

Trautman believes that the Indus Valley script might be some version of Dravidian, but doesn't provide any evidence. Indeed, the articles on the Indus Valley script in The Aryan Debate iterate that there has been no successful decipherment of the Indus Valley Script. Trautman would likely take the similarities of symbols on the Tamil Nadu pottery and Indus Valley script as evidence that the Indus Valley script was some sort of Dravidian.

India's Genetic Map

According to this article Genetic map blurs lines from The Telegraph (Kolkata), findings from the Indian Genome Variation (IGV) project indicate that various populations within India have intermingled throughout the centuries.

As noted in the article:

"Dravidian lineages have mixed with Indo-Europeans, Austroasiatics have mingled with Dravidians, and bridge populations in central India are blends of Dravidian, Indo-European and Himalayan groups."

and

"The analysis has also indicated that Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims are genetically similar and share genetic similarities with Dravidian groups. It has also shown that some Dravidian-speaking population groups in south India have Indo-European lineage."

Samir Brahmachari of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) says that the results of the IGV study recall Tagore's words in Bharat-tirtha:

Aryan and non-Aryan, Dravidian and Chinese... Pathan, Mughal/All have merged into one body.…

Might I also suggest that the findings also recall the words of Subramania Bharati?

She has thirty crores of faces, but her heart is one; she speaks eighteen languages, yet her mind is one.

Bottom line: It's time to put aside divisions among Indo-Europeans, Dravidians, and other groups to build a unified India.

IndianExpress.com :: Why Tibet matters

From IndianExpress.com (via the IndiaPride mailing list) comes an excellent column by Sonia Jabbar on Why Tibet matters.

She cites two reasons why Tibet is important to India.

The first reason is that Tibet has preserved the knowledge that disappeared from India after the Muslim sacking of Nalanda and other centers of Buddhist education. This is an important consideration for this blog, which promotes conservation of India's heritage, be it natural or cultural, tangible or intangible.

The second reason is that India has treaty obligations with Tibet that she inherited from Great Britain when India became independent. As Ms. Jabbar notes, "... when two countries have concluded an agreement between them, China has no locus standi as a third country. A sovereign state is one that negotiates and sign treaties with other states. Once a state exists it cannot simply be wished away simply because another nation has invaded it."


The Brahmaputra Watershed from Watersheds of the World: Asia and Oceania

Ms. Jabbar further notes, "... one should be aware that China controls the headwaters of many Indian rivers that originate in the Tibetan platea." There have been longstanding concerns that China is planning to divert waters from the Brahmaputra to the Yellow River.

India Today's Top 10 Indians poll

Found through the drisyadrisya दृश्यादृश्य (seen/not seen) blog was information about the poll conducted by India Today on the Top 10 Indian leaders.

I agree with drisyadrisya that this was not a scientific poll. India Today states, "The poll began on March 14 and ran for three weeks through the India Today website and SMS." If there were no means to disallow votes from those who had already voted (and I suspect there weren't), then this poll was subject to vote-stuffing.


Bhagat Singh

In descending order of percent voting:

1. Bhagat Singh - 37%


2. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose - 27%


3. Mahatma Gandhi - 13%


4. Sardar Patel - 7%


5. J.R.D. Tata - 4%


6. Indira Gandhi - 3%


7. Rabindranath Tagore - 3%


8. Homi Bhabha - 2%


9. Jawaharlal Nehru - 2%


10. Jayaprakash Narayan - 1%

As drisyadrisya noted, April 13, 2008 marks the 89th anniversary of Jallianwallabagh Massacre, which galvanized Bhagat Singh. So maybe the timing of the poll is why Bhagat Singh took top spot.

I don't mean to disparage the results of the India Today poll; indeed, I take heart in the fact that those who voted in the polls sought to promote assertive leaders.