Brown Pundits

In India it is unfortunate that the poor will not let themselves be eliminated through draconian programs (the elites have tried). Life in a democracy, however flawed, is an insurance against state-sponsored genocide. 

As a revenge we have developed a nation-wide strategy (by intention or by negligence) of letting poor people survive…barely above starvation levels. The good news is technology can help and at some point people will have to find a way around the middlemen (aka corruption)….also using technology (Rajiv Gandhi famously told that only 15 paisa in a rupee reached the poor- we think that ratio is optimistic).

Things will work out best if India is used as a laboratory- usually a basket of solutions will work better than one single silver bullet. From organic farming to biotechnology, let us see what works best, without bowing to one ideology or the other. 

…………………………..
Over one third of humanity is undernourished. Now a group of
scientists are experimenting with specially-bred crops, and hoping to
launch a new Green Revolution — but controversy is brewing.

It may not make his family wealthy, but Devran Mankar is still
grateful for the pearl millet variety called Dhanshakti (meaning
“prosperity and strength”) he has recently begun growing in his small
field in the state of Maharashtra, in western India.
“Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill,” raves
Mankar, a slim man with a gray beard, worn clothing and gold-rimmed
glasses.

…
Mankar and his family are participating in a large-scale nutrition
experiment. He is one of about 30,000 small farmers growing the variety,
which has unusually high levels of iron and zinc — Indian researchers
bred the plant to contain large amounts of these elements in a process
they call “bio-fortification.” 

The grain is very nutritional,” says the
Indian farmer, as his granddaughter Kavya jumps up and down in his lap.
It’s also delicious, he adds. “Even the cattle like the pearl millet.”

…
Mankar’s field on the outskirts of the village of Vadgaon Kashimbe is
barely 100 meters (328 feet) wide and 40 meters long. The grain will be
ripe in a month, and unless there is a hailstorm — may Ganesha, the
elephant god, prevent that from happening — he will harvest about 350
kilograms of pearl millet, says the farmer. It’s enough for half a year.

…
The goal of the project, initiated by the food aid organization
Harvest Plus, is to prevent farmers like Mankar and their families from
going hungry in the future. In fact, the Dhanshakti pearl millet is part
of a new “Green Revolution” with which biologists and nutrition experts
hope to liberate the world from hunger and malnutrition.

 
Global Problem

Today some 870 million people worldwide still lack enough food to
eat, and almost a third of humanity suffers from an affliction known as
hidden famine, a deficiency in vitamins and trace elements like zinc,
iron and iodine. 

The consequences are especially dramatic for mothers
and children: Women with iron deficiencies are more likely to die in
childbirth, and they have a higher rate of premature births and
menstruation problems. Malnourished children can go blind or suffer from
growth disorders. Throughout their lives, they are more susceptible to
infection and suffer from learning disorders, because their brains have
not developed properly.

…
“These children are deprived of their future from birth,” says Indian
agronomist Monkombu Swaminathan, who has campaigned for the
“fundamental human right” of satiety for more than 60 years. 
…
To solve
the problem of hunger once and for all, Swaminathan and other nutrition
experts are calling for a dramatic shift in our approach to agriculture.
They argue that instead of industrial-scale, high-tech agriculture,
farming should become closer to nature — and involve intelligent plant
breeding and a return to old varieties.

…
The world has enough to eat. The only problem is that the poor, whose
diet consists primarily of grain, are eating the wrong food. Corn,
wheat and rice – the grain varieties that dominate factory farming —
are bred primarily for yield and not for their nutritional content. They
cannot adequately feed the poorest of the poor — nutrients and trace
elements are at least as important as calories.

…
Food safety is tied to variety, says Swaminathan, who calls for a
sustainable “evergreen” revolution. He advocates the development of new,
more nutritional grain varieties better adapted to climatic conditions.
“We must re-marry agriculture and nutrition — the two have been too
far away from each other for a long time,” says the scientist.

 
The First Revolution

Swaminathan, 88, is considered the father of India’s 1960s Green
Revolution. He created rice and wheat varieties that were smaller than
normal but with substantial higher yields than existing varieties. He
also worked with heterozygous plants, so-called hybrids, which are up to
twice as productive as their parent generation. 

The walls of his office
in the city of Chennai on the east coast of India are covered with
tributes and certificates — one reads: “India’s Greatest Global Living
Legend” — and in 1987, he received the United Nations World Food Prize.

…
“The Green Revolution was a tremendous success,” says Swaminathan. As
an adolescent, he lived through the “Great Bengal Famine” that killed
millions of Indians in the mid-1940s. “Back then we used to get less
than one ton of wheat per hectare (2.5 acres),” says Swaminathan, adding
that the yield per hectare has more than tripled since then.

….
But at what price? Although new high-performance varieties guaranteed
high yields, they depleted the soil and consumed far too much water.
More and more fertilizer and pesticides were needed. Many small farmers
lost everything when they invested in seed grain and were unable to sell
their harvest at a profit. Meanwhile, they neglected to grow
traditional bread cereals.

…
“Formerly, the farmers were depending on 200 to 300 crops for food
and health security,” says Swaminathan, whereas today there are only few, but gradually we have come to the stage of four or five important
crops, wheat, corn, rice and soy bean.” “The Green Revolution,” says the
scientist, ” did not eliminate hunger and malnutrition.”

 
Springtime in Maharashtra

In India, where about 250 million people, or a fifth of the
population, are undernourished, the problem is urgent. Some 50 to 70
percent of children under the age of five and half of all women suffer
from an iron deficiency. Almost half of all children are physically
underdeveloped or even crippled because they are chronically
undernourished or malnourished.

…
The situation is especially precarious in Maharashtra. In the early
morning, we travel out to the countryside with Bushana Karandikar, an
economist from the city of Pune (formerly Poona). Karandikar manages the
Dhanshakti Project for Harvest Plus. …
..
“Malnutrition is the sad part of
the Indian growth story,” she says during the trip. “It is very
surprising, but India is almost in the same league as sub-Saharan
African countries, which have much, much lower per capita income.”

…
It is spring, and Maharashtra is green — the land looks fertile,
with its lush fields and fruit plantations lining the road. But as
scientist Swaminathan puts it, this is part of “India’s enigma”: “green
mountains and hungry millions.”

…
In the town of Ghodegaon, the problems quickly become apparent. Men,
children and, most of all, young women in colorful saris are waiting on
an unpaved street outside the town’s 15-bed clinic. They remove their
shoes at the door to the building, where the walls are decorated with
portraits of the gods adorned with garlands of flowers.

…
Dr. Rajneesh Potnis greets us on the second floor, where we are
served sweets and aromatic coffee. Potnis has been working in this
clinic for 25 years. His fellow medical students told him he was crazy
when he went to Ghodegaon, but Potnis was determined to help people.
Today he provides advice to nursing mothers, helps women give birth, and
treats conditions like rickets, night blindness and anemia.

…
“The women are the worst off,” says the doctor. “They work the
hardest, and yet they eat what’s left over.” As a result, he explains,
they frequently suffer from premature deliveries and stillbirths,
infections and sudden attacks of faintness. The tribal people, ethnic
minorities which live on the margins of society, are in the worst
position. “They only come when they have no other choice.”

…
Potnis hands out mineral and vitamin pills subsidized by the Indian
government. He also advises families to eat a varied diet, but his
efforts are often futile, he explains. “It’s so easy to say to people:
Eat more pulses, more vegetables and eggs — but most of them can’t
afford any of that.”

 
The Millet Solution

This is where biofortified pearl millet comes into play. Farmers in
the region have always grown pearl millet. So why not simply replace the
traditional variety with Dhanshakti? “Then people will get their
minerals from the bread they eat every day, anyway,” says Potnis.

…
Ramu Dahine’s five-person family, in the nearby village of Vadgaon
Kashimbe, is a case in point. Daughter-in-law Meena is baking bhakri, a
traditional round, unleavened flatbread made from pearl-millet flour.
Dressed in a red sari, she crouches on the floor in front of a small
stone building with a corrugated metal roof. She combines pearl-millet
flour and water, kneads the dough, places the flatbread into a pan and
blows through a long tube onto the coals of a small wood fire until
flames begin to flicker.

…
The Dahines eat the bread, and hardly anything else, twice a day. The
seed dealer recommended the pearl millet, says the farmer. He doesn’t
even know that the grain has a high iron content, but he did notice that
his family was healthier than usual by the end of the last rainy
season. The variety also has another benefit: Because it isn’t a hybrid,
Dahine can use a portion of his harvest as seed for the next season.

…
“For the real poor, this pearl millet is a great hope,” says
Karandikar. Swiss scientists have shown that the consumption of
Dhanshakti millet significantly increased iron levels in the blood of
local women. And Indian researchers showed that a daily serving of only
100 grams of the pearl millet could completely satisfy the iron
requirements of children.

…
Can a New Revolution Take Root?

But for the global champions of the new, gentle Green Revolution and its
campaign against hunger, this is but one of many successful attempts to
develop more nutritious grain and vegetable varieties. 

In Brazil, for
example, the research organization Embrapa developed biofortified beans,
pumpkins and manioc. In Uganda and Mozambique, farmers are growing a
new variety of sweet potato rich in provitamin A. In Rwanda, more than
500,000 families are eating beans enriched with iron. And in India,
farmers will soon begin growing rice and wheat with especially high
levels of zinc.

The Harvest Plus program has already reached about seven million men,
women and children, says program head Howarth Bouis, adding that
biofortified grain is expected to improve the nutrition of a billion
people by 2030. 
…
Bouis’ early decision to apply only conventional methods
in breeding the new varieties was important to its success. “At Harvest
Plus we took the decision not to invest in transgenics, because we
wanted to avoid the controversy,” he says, remembering all too well the
dispute over a variety known as Golden Rice.

 
The Genetic Engineering Conundrum

The transgenic plant, developed in 1992 at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Zurich, contains almost twice as much
beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, as ordinary rice. 
…
Nevertheless,
there has been so much public resistance to genetic engineering that it
has yet to be approved for use anywhere in the world.

…
But in many cases, genetic engineering is unnecessary anyways. There
are often natural varieties with grains that already contain the desired
vitamins or nutrients. Rice is a perfect example, with about 100,000
varieties in existence worldwide. 

“You can basically find any trait you
can think of,” says Swaminathan. In the laboratories of his M. S.
Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai, scientists are
experimenting with high zinc-content rice. The biologists analyzed
thousands of rice strains and eventually discovered about a dozen
varieties with especially high zinc levels. They are now being crossed
with high-yield varieties.

…
But Swaminathan isn’t opposed to choosing the high-tech approach if
it can help alleviate hunger. ” I won’t worship nor discard genetic
engineering,” he says. “It is important to harness all the tools that
traditional wisdom and contemporary science can offer”

…
Because, for example, it is very difficult to increase iron levels in
rice with conventional breeding techniques, the scientists have turned
to biotechnology. “We isolated genes from mangroves and introduced them
into the genome of rice,” explains Ganesan Govindan, one of the
bioengineers at MSSRF. The transgenic rice grains contain elevated
levels of iron, and the plants are more tolerant of drought and salt.
Researchers expect the variety to be ready for market in two or three
years.

 
‘25,000 Farmer Suicides’

But these high-tech solutions are also controversial. Vandana Shiva, a
prominent opponent of modern agricultural engineering, lives in the
Indian capital New Delhi. In the offices of her organization, Navdanya
— located in the affluent neighborhood of Hauz Khas — are decorated
with a flower arrangement on a glass table and clay vases containing
sheaves of grain.

…
Shiva, dressed in a flowing robe and with a large bindi on her
forehead, is an impressive figure, steeled by her tough, decades-long
battle with the establishment. The civil rights activist never tires of
castigating seed companies. “A globally operating industry is pushing
hard to make the world dependent on their products,” she says. 

Farmers
who have made the switch, she explains, give up their traditional seed
and are then forced to buy the commercial varieties, which often come
with license fees, in perpetuity.

….
“This type of agriculture has taken the lives of 25,000 farmers in
India, who committed suicide because they couldn’t pay back their
debts,” says Shiva. She doesn’t think much of biofortified varieties,
either. “Harvest Plus is focused on one nutrient,” she says critically.
“But a single nutrient is not a solution to multidimensional
malnutrition crisis; the body needs all the micronutrients.”

….
Instead of these “monocultures,” Shiva is calling for a return to
diversity in fields. “Most of our traditional crops are full of
nutrients,” she explains. Why create Golden Rice with lots of vitamin A
when carrots and pumpkins contain plenty of it already? Why develop
genetically modified bananas with high iron content when horseradish and
amaranth contain so much iron?

…
Shiva recommends field crop-rotation, and the fostering of vegetable
and fruit gardens and small family farms primarily geared toward
nutrition instead of maximized profit. Because Shiva believes organic
farming is the only viable approach to defeating hunger, her
organization has trained 75,000 farmers in organic farming methods since
the late 1980s.

 
‘There Isn’t Enough Arable Land’

Harvest Plus Director Bouis believes that Shiva’s approach is naïve.
“We have the fundamental problem that there isn’t enough arable land for
a constantly growing population,” he says.

…
A UN Environment Programme report predicts that by 2050, agriculture
will have to produce 70 percent more calories than today to feed an
expected global population of 9.6 billion people. This “food gap” can
only be closed, says Bouis, if we “make agriculture even more
productive.”

…
But in Maharashtra, it’s clear that new varieties of super grains are
not always the entire answer. A third farmer from the town of Vadgaon
Kashimbe, Santosh Pingle, 38, and his family are visibly better off than
their neighbors. They live in a plastered house, they have cows and
goats for milk, and they enjoy the occasional luxury of a chicken from
the market. Pingle’s recipe for success is that he has done more with
his land than other farmers.

…
The farmer grows iron-rich Dhanshakti millet to satisfy the iron
needs of his family of five. On the other half of their field, the
Pingles grow tomatoes and high-yield hybrid millet, which they sell in
the market. They also grow protein-rich pulses and other vegetables in
their house garden, and his wife Jayashree and her daughters harvest
lemons, coconuts and mangoes several times a year.

…
The Pingles are well on their way to achieving “prosperity and strength” — and they always have enough to eat.

……

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/india-experiments-with-pearl-millet-to-end-world-hunger-a-973504.html

….

regards

…..
Mosul, Iraq (05 July 2014)….Muslims
persecuted because they are the wrong type of muslim. Muslim mosque(s)
erased because it was the prayer room of the apostate. Our heroes are your villains. This is how
civilization will end, brothers fighting against brothers. Only
chance…give the sisters a chance.
…………..
Images emerged on Saturday purporting to show that Islamist militants,
who seized parts of northern and western Iraq last month, had destroyed
at least 10 shrines and mosques in the province of Nineveh.



Photos from Nineveh showed bulldozers plowing through walls, demolishing
four shrines of Sunni Arab or Sufi origin. Explosives were used to
destroy six Shiite mosques.


…
Residents of Mosul, which is the capital of Nineveh, said the militants
had also occupied two cathedrals belonging to Chaldean and Orthodox
Christians. Crosses on their frontages had been replaced by the black flag of the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the group which recently
declared itself to be an “Islamic State.”

Iraq’s most senior Christian leader, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako,
appealed on Saturday for the release of two nuns and three orphans who
went missing on Tuesday in Mosul. He appealed to “scholars in Mosul and tribal sheikhs” to help locate the
five and arrange their release, according to the news agency AFP.

“We lived together side-by-side (with Muslims) for 14 centuries. We still want to communicate and live together,” Sako said. According to Sako, “at most” only 500,000 Christians remain in Iraq. Before 2003 they numbered 1.2 million.

…………………

Link: http://www.dw.de/images-show-shrines-demolished-in-iraq/a-17760683

….

regards

Kerala, by most measures, is a progressive state. Universal literacy, sympathy for the downtrodden, the (relatively speaking) liberation of women, these are all huge achievements and mallus are justifiably proud of this progress.

…
Unfortunately the child trafficking incident noted below highlights the racist, perverted and communal nature of some Keralites who know full well that the corrupt, vote-bank seeking politicians have their back. The only way forward that we can think of is to empower women. Women can make a difference (they are the only hope).
…
Also cheers to the Social Welfare Board and the (Kerala High) Court. Building (secular) institutions is what will help improve India and make it a modern nation. But still the stench of prejudice may still not go away.
………………………………
The Kerala conundrum has become a cliché by now. Yet, it refuses to
die, with newer contradictions continuing to pop up every now and then
to remind us just how well and how badly Kerala is doing. The latest
scandal is the ‘orphan trade’ that has recently surfaced to rock the
state.


…
Kerala has a peculiar labour scenario. Thanks to petro-prosperity and
the peculiar status-consciousness created by huge financial
remittances—estimated at Rs 60,000 crore last year—sent by its 2.5
million- strong community of Malayalees employed in the Gulf, there are
almost no takers in the state for blue-collar jobs. This is in spite of
the state’s high rate of unemployment. 

Unsurprisingly, the state’s high
minimum wages have lured unskilled migrant labour by the drove even from
distant states such as Assam. The state that thrives on Gulf money has,
in effect, turned into a Gulf of sorts for migrants from other Indian
states, with their count touching 2.5 million now— the same number of
people from Kerala who are in the Gulf.


…
So while the state has the rare distinction of being the highest
exporter as well as importer of labour, an even more interesting
demographic phenomenon is that its number of immigrants more or less
equals its emigrants. In sectors that range from construction to
domestic help, Kerala depends on labour from other states for most of
its low-paid jobs.


..
Until recently, however, few knew that Kerala has even been sourcing orphans from other states!


..
The state, it seems, does not have enough orphans for its 2,000 odd
private orphanages to admit. Hence, these orphanages, most of them run
by Muslim and Christian religious groups, have been getting hundreds of
poor Muslim children from states such as Bihar, Jharkhand and West
Bengal with the help of a network of agents.


..
It is no secret that more than any humanitarian concern, what drives
orphanages to desperately seek inmates are the liberal government grants
and huge donations from abroad. According to statistics available with
the Union Home Ministry, 1,500-odd organisations based in Kerala—most of
them religious entities or NGOs—received more than Rs 10,000 crore over
the past decade as donations, of which 60 per cent went to those
running orphanages and destitute homes. 

In 2012-13 alone, 1,502
organisations received a total Rs 850 crore. Except the Mata
Amritanandamayi Mutt, all the top recipients were Christian and Muslim
organisations, with the Believers Church leading the pack with Rs 417
crore collected in the past three years.


…
The scandal of Kerala’s orphan trade surfaced dramatically on 24 May
when the Railway Protection Force at Palakkad Railway station
intercepted two long-distance trains coming from Assam and Bihar. Out
came from two coaches of either train about 600 Muslim boys and girls
aged between five and 13 years, all of them originally from Bihar, West
Bengal and Jharkhand. These children, packed like sardines in the
compartments, were utterly exhausted from their long journey, and more
than 150 of them had neither tickets nor any documents. 

Under
interrogation, the eight adults who had travelled with them disclosed
that the children were being brought to be admitted to two orphanages in
Kozhikode and Malappuram districts run by Sunni clerical organisations
closely associated with the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a party
that happens to be the second largest constituent of Kerala’s ruling
United Democratic Front. One of the two orphanages under the scanner is
headed by Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal, the League’s state president.


…
On their arrival at Palakkad, the orphanage authorities paid the
fines levied by the Railways on those who had travelled without tickets,
admitted that the children were being taken to their institutions, and
proclaimed themselves to be do-gooders, wondering aloud what was wrong
with their “humanitarian” mission of helping orphans from other states,
as they had been doing for decades. 

However, the District Child Welfare
Committee under the state Social Welfare department, led ironically by a
Muslim League minister, took custody of the kids and recommended action
against the orphanages and their agents under the Juvenile Justice Act.
On their part, the state police registered cases of child trafficking.


…
Asked Ramesh Chennithala, Kerala’s home minister and former KPCC
President, “Why [do] these orphanages import children from other states
instead of setting up centres there if they’re [so] concerned
about these children?” Even the IUML’s MK Muneer, the state’s social
welfare minister, demanded action against the alleged child traffickers.


…
The children, it was confirmed, had been brought in violation of laws
on orphan admission. This kicked up a storm. Under the Juvenile Justice
Act of 2006, sanction letters from the concerned state governments,
local self-governments and families are mandatory, as also birth
certificates (among other things), for the admission of children from
other states to orphanages. Most children did not have these documents.
Some had fakes.


…
The state government appeared to initiate strict action against the
offenders. But soon, League leaders and scores of Muslim outfits jumped
in to defend the orphanages. They attacked police officers for
registering cases and chastised Chennithala for portraying the so-
claimed ‘minor procedural lapse’ on the orphanages’ part as a case of
child trafficking. They also hit out at him for ‘communalising’ the
issue, as they put it.


…
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy parroted the League line and Chennithala
fell silent. Kerala’s Minorities Commission, led by a Congress leader,
defended the orphanages as well. Muneer, too, changed tack and swallowed
his words, saying there was no case of child trafficking but only a
minor procedural lapse.


…
The state BJP, in the meantime, took the case to the Centre. Union
Minister Maneka Gandhi described it as one of child trafficking.
Malayalam TV channels sent reporters to the children’s villages in Bihar
and Jharkhand, and reported that they had been “purchased” from their
families by agents for Rs 1,000 each to be sold at double the price to
orphanages. 

Officials of the Jharkhand government arrived in
Thiruvananthapuram and confirmed that it was a case of child trafficking
and asked for the children’s immediate return. The state Human Rights
Commission came down heavily on the orphanages and instituted an
investigation. With the Kerala High Court too reprimanding the state
government for its casual attitude towards the incident, League and
Congress leaders have now chosen silence. 

Chandy has offered to bear all
expenses for the children’s return journey. But as the dust over the
scandal settles, the case of child trafficking looks like being given a
silent burial and the orphanages getting back to business as usual.
 
……

Link: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/auctioned-elsewhere-orphaned-in-kerala

…..

regards 

…
Happy days are here again when we can (again) get a masters degree in Jyotir Vigyan Jyotirvigyan or astrology (response to Shah Alam: thanks for the tip, our Sanskrit gyan is bilkul shunya, root word is jyoti, jyotish, jyotishi, jyotirvigyan are all formed by conjoining words…re-written jyotirvigyan as one word). Especially happy are the people who will be dusting off their decade old research proposals in deciphering mythology- the events and the people.

Our favorite query: did India have airplanes as recounted in Ramayana (which Lord Rama used to fly from Sri Lanka to Ayodhya) and atomic weapons as described in the Mahabharata (the Brahma-Shir-Astra that Ashwatthama and Arjuna launched at each other and which threatened to wipe out the world).

We have admittedly mixed feelings about this. Ramayana and Mahabharata are unparalleled as stories which have been retold in million different ways (all possible art forms included) from India to Indonesia. These are no simple tales of good prevailing over evil – Ravana is the greatest of kings (and devotees). It was his blind arrogance that led to his downfall (he was not bothered enough to take insurance against men and monkeys). Rama, the ideal man (maryada purushottam) is cursed with hundred and one flaws – which are recognized as flaws – starting with his treatment of his own wife.

But the jump from mythology to history and science is not acceptable. The RSS is playing the same lousy game that the left has played for such a long time- denigrate and deny the parts of Indian culture that does not meet the purity test. It is stupid and pointless.

Take the example of Kabir and Shirdi Sai Baba. These saints have been fully accepted into the pantheon of Hinduism. If you are convinced that donating money to a shrine/deity will help you score a business deal, the Sai Baba shrine is as good as any (indeed it is one of the richest). The puja ceremony that takes place is identical to the ones that take place in Siddhi Vinayak, the foremost Ganapati temple in Maharashtra.

Thing is, if RSS really wanted to play smart they can use the Baba worship culture as a wedge issue. The reasoning is simple – the muslim communities (primarily Sunnis) have become increasingly disenchanted with the Baba-shrine culture. This is following the Saudi money and Wahabi logic which insists that all such activity is un-islamic.

The fundamental question that RSS is always worried about (and the reason behind all these culture games) is – are you (the muslim) an Indian first or a muslim first? Or even more bluntly, are you (the muslim) with India or with Pakistan? The Baba culture is too deeply rooted in India, the roots are increasingly weak in Pakistan and may vanish at some point. At that time the wall between the Middle East (includes Pakistan) and South Asia (mainly India) will be complete. The sifting that RSS wants will thus happen automatically without lifting a finger.
…………………
The new chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research,
Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, has an interesting blog post from 2013,
about ‘Ayodhya and History’.
….
“All thinking men — religious activists, intellectuals,
politicians, professional historians and archaeologists- are divided
into at least three groups; a) those who stand for the Hindu cause, b)
those who stand for the Mosque and c) the majority of others who support
an amicable settlement of the controversy. In influencing the public
opinion in favour of Muslim community, the ‘secular’ historians and
‘progressive’ intelligentsia make concerted endeavor in support of the
Muslim cause. They further condemn all those who sympathize the Hindu
cause as Hindu fundamentalists and ‘saffron brigade’.”
….
Rao goes on to argue that modern history — which he claims has received
disproportionate attention and legitimacy — will be unable to provide
answers to the Ayodhya issue since “Ayodhya stood even before the modern
genre of history was born.”

…
A retired history professor, Rao has penned several articles arguing
that stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are truthful accounts
of history. According to his blog page, he has interests in Indian
mythology, Vedic literature, Sanatana Dharma, ‘Bharatiya Sanskriti’,
among other subjects. Rao reportedly told The Telegraph that
he hopes to push projects to rewrite ancient history to document the
“continuous Indian civilisation”, including the period of the two epics.

…
“The stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata cannot be termed
a-historical just because there is not enough archaeological hard
evidence,” Rao said, adding,“A lot of historical material has come
through cultural, anthropological, archaeological and ethnographic
studies in the last 60 years about the continuous Indian civilisation.
The findings can be compiled by researchers. I think the ICHR should
support historians interested in doing work on these aspects.”

….
Rao’s elevation is the first of the many NDA decisions that will
determine who will lead India’s top research, educational and cultural
institutions. Asked if he foresees a flood of RSS-sympathetic
appointments to these institutions, former ICHR chairperson and
historian S Settar retorts, “Do you doubt it? I don’t.”

…
Settar was ICHR chairman from 1996 to 1999, and was witness to a gradual
Hindutva takeover of socio-cultural research organisations in the late
1990s. After the UPA assumed office in 2004, Settar was also on a review
committee that examined NCERT books published by the BJP government.
The committee discussed the safronisation of the texts at length and
recommended replacing them.

…
Speaking to Firstpost, Settar says, “There are many rightist corners
hungry to get into the ICHR. But in any case, it is such an incompetent
organisation — the Leftists have used it as a platform for their
ideology and friends, and now the rightists will want to use it for
their ideology and friends.”

…
ICHR will hardly be the only institution to see top-level changes given
the BJP’s track record in power. In 1999, not long after the NDA
government was sworn in, a slew of appointments were made, including
some on the very first day after then HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi
assumed office.

The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) got a new chairman, Prof B R Grover who soon became notorious
for punishing any historical research project or institution perceived
as “hostile” to the ruling government or its saffron view of history.

…
The Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) head at the
time was M L Sondhi, a Rajya Sabha MP from the BJP who would later,
ironically, be summarily replaced
after he complained repeatedly and publicly of pressure from an RSS
cabal within the ICSSR. Sondhi, considered close to then PM Atal Behari
Vajpayee, famously complained that the RSS faction in the institution,
led by Devendera Swaroop, a former editor of RSSmouthpiece Panchajanya,
was hindering a proposed Indo-Pak social scientists’ meet ahead of the
Vajpayee-Musharraf summit in Agra.

…
Also among MM Joshi’s early appointees was RSS sympathiser G C Pande, a
Sanskrit scholar and ancient India historian, who became head of the
Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Shimla. The University
Grants Commission (UGC) top job was handed to Dr Hari Gautam, who soon
after introduced courses in Jyotir Vigyan or ‘Vedic astrology’ and Hindu
karmakand or rituals. …
…
The move raked up a debate on whether the UGC,
the institution that controls higher education institutes across the
country, was legitimising superstition.

…
And it is these institutions and their impending appointments that will
be closely tracked by activists and academicians who will be keeping a
close eye on the research projects they undertake, and changes they
institute in curriculum and historiography.



The appointment of Y Sudershan Rao to the ICHR is only the first of more
appointments to follow. Apart from the ICHR, ICSSR, the NIAS in Shimla,
the UGC, here are other institutions to watch closely in coming months:
The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), the National
Book Trust, NCERT, Films Development Corporation, Censor Board, Sangeet
Natak Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi, to name a few. Also to watch: Likely
expansion plans for the network of Shishu Mandir schools and Vidya
Bharati schools, and funding patterns for other schools including those
run by the VHP.

If history is any indication, these words may soon prove to be ironic, indeed.

…….

Link: http://www.firstpost.com/printpage.php?idno=1602761&sr_no=0
….

regards