Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issai - Inter-religious Bollywood

Artists don't believe in conventions, everyone knows it. Ordinary mortals are expected to follow the social rules, but for artists we are usually ready to make exceptions. Look at Bollywood. It is common enough to find marriages and relationships that go accross religious lines in Bollywood.

But if film artists can go beyond social conventions in their private lives, they also need to sell the tickets of their films. Do people go to watch films that defy social conventions?

In this three parts article, I will look at - (1) inter-religious families in reel-life Bollywood; (2) inter-religious love in reel-life Bollywood; and, (3) inter-religious stories from real life Bollywood. This first part of the article is about inter-religious families in Bollywood films.

Multi-religious societies & Cinema

I think that among all the different films made in different parts of the world, Bollywood and Indian cinema have touched on the issue of inter-religious issues many more times, compared to all other countries. May be it has something to do with the way Indians perceive themselves?

Almost all the countries of the world today are multi-religious. However, most of them do not think of themselves as multi-religious. Or rather did not think of themselves as multi-religous till recently. On the other hand in India, we think of ourselves as being part of a multi-religious country for a long time. May be it is because of our history. It may be also because many religions started in India.

In India 80% of the population is Hindu, though Hinduism can be interpreted very differently among different groups of people in different parts of India, and remaining 20% is composed of different religions. In US, about 75% of population is Christian (protestants and Catholics), while the remaining 25% belong to different religions, including those who do not believe in any religion. In UK about 70% of the population considers themselves as Christians. In Italy, 80% of the population identifies itself as Catholic. So more or less, all these countries have similar percentages of majority groups and minority groups.

Yet, in my opinion, the awareness about different religions and their beliefs, is much higher in India than any where else. Could that be the reason why Bollywood has been extra-sensitive to the issue of inter-religious relationships?

If I think of films from any other country - USA, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, China ... I can't remember even one film on the subject of inter-religious relationships. Even when their films have characters from other countries/religions, usually they are shown in a way where religious differences are not an issue. However, I have seen some American documentary films on this subject, specially on the issue of inter-religious marriages between Christians and Jews.

If you know of some examples of mainstream films from any country touching on inter-religious relationships, please do let me know.

Persons of different religions in Bollyworld

Bollyworld is the make believe world of Bollywood that exists only inside the cinema halls and DVDs. In Bollyworld, the idea of including persons of different religions is so pervasive that it hardly makes news. For reaching out to people of different religions, often Indian films include persons of different religions, most common being Muslims but also Christians and Sikhs, shown usually as "almost family" like friends.

Films where Muslims, Christians or Sikhs or Parsi are the main protagonists are less common, but there are some examples of these. Muslim socials was distinct category of Bollywood films till 1980s with films like Nikaah, Mere Huzoor and Mere Mehboob. However, this genre of films is less common today. Sikh culture has found greater expression in Punjabi cinema, though there are some examples from mainstream Bollywood such as Singh is King and Jo Bole So Nihaal.

More commonly, Bollywood places its main stories in Hindu famlies, while persons of other religions are shown as friends, or less commonly as villains. There was a time when this practice allowed film makers to introduce specific things like ghazals and shairo-shayari in the narrative. It is hard to think of films which did not have such characters from 1960s and 1970s. From Hrikesh Mukherjee, to Ramanand Sagar, Prakash Mehra, Manmohan Desai and Tarachand Barjatya, all their films had such characters.

Even more recently, some of the big box-office successes of Karan Johar, such as "Kuch kuch hota hai" and "Kabhi Khushi kabhi gham", have continued with this idea of close family-friends kind of relationships with persons of different religions.

I think that the basic idea behind it is to make sure that persons of all religions can relate to the film (and make it a commercial success). At the same time, it does reflect the real-life reality of India, where it would be impossible to find any person who has not interacted with persons of other religions in the neighbourhoods, friends and workplaces.

Mixed Religion families in Bollywood

While the more popular Bollywood films used characters of different religions in close family and friendship relationships, they also maintain clear boundaries between them. Thus, in most of these films, Muslims are always married to Muslims, Christians to Christians and Hindus to Hindus.

However, the idea of mixing up of religions in the Bollyworld families has been touched upon many times. When I think of significant Bollywood films that have touched on theme of inter-religious families I think of four films - Dharamputra, Amar Akbar Anthony, Zakhm and Bombay.

There are other significant films like the recent Kurbaan, but I see them more about inter-religious love stories rather than about inter-religious families. However, I do concede that this division into inter-religious love and inter-religious families is arbitrary and subjective.

Dharamputra (1961): This Yash Chopra film was my introduction to a world united and yet divided because of religions. It was about a Muslim girl (Mala Sinha) who has to give away her son, born before her marriage, to a Hindu couple who are her family friends (Manmohan Krishen and Nirupa Roy). Years later, that son (Shashi Kapoor) grows up into a Hindu fanatic and during the partition riots goes to burn the house of his Muslim mother.

Amar, Akbar, Anthony (1977): This Manmohan Desai film is another old favourite about three brothers who get separated when they are young, and grow up in three different families beloning to three different religions - Amar (Vinod Khanna) grows up as Hindu, Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) grows up as a Muslim and Anthony (Amitabh Bacchan) grows up as Christian. One of its most celebrated scene had blood transfusion tubes running from the arms of the three brothers and going into the arm of a blind woman (Nirupa Roy) who is actually their mother, but they don't know it.

The film looked at religious differences as being important for the individuals and yet almost unimportant for the relationships among people. The three brothers growing up with different religions, are shown to be in love with girls from their own religions. They are shown living in the worlds made of persons of their own religions. The film never discusses the impact of religious differences but rather seems to take it for granted that the persons from different religions would love each other "because they are brothers".

There are no religious fanatics or any speeches about religions in this film. Thus, I see this film as an allegory for the ideal multi-religious India, where each religion can maintain its distinctiveness, its own costumes, and yet be like a family.

Zakhm (1998): This is one of the my favourite films of all times. Directed by Mahesh Bhatt, this was an autobiographical film. Against the backdrop of religious riots in Bombay, the film tells the story of an old woman (Pooja Bhatt), who has been burned alive by a Muslim guy. As she struggles for her life in the intensive care unit of a hospital, her younger son, with the help of Hindu hardliners would like to take a revenge on the Muslims. Her elder son (Ajay Devgan) tells the story of their family to his younger borther.

It is the story of a Muslim woman in love with a Hindu film director, who dies in an accident leaving her with two sons. She hides her own faith and brings up her two sons as Hindus, even though she is rejected by her husband's family.

The film had a powerful performance by child actor Kunal Khemu as the elder son, during the parts in flash back, where Ajay tells about his childhood.

In South Asia, the boundaries between religions can often be hazy. Many families carry hidden histories of inter-mixing of different religions. I felt that this film brought out the issue of those hidden histories in a powerful way. It was also a strong voice against the fanatics and the hate-mongers of different hues.

Bombay: This 1995 film by Mani Ratnam is one of those rare films that touched on a vital question in all inter-religious marriages - the question of the religion of their children. The Hindu-Muslim couple in the film opt for a civil marriage and ignore the religions.

However, their two fathers would like that their grandchildren follow the family religion. The couple has twins and thus, the two grandfathers decide that one grandchild can receive Muslim religious knowledge and the other can be Hindu. Only when there are Hindu-Muslim riots that threaten the lives of the two children, it makes them understand the futility of religious fights.

Many mixed-religions couples today are like the couple of this story, who do not feel very religious and who feel that they can continue to follow different faiths. However, the issue of their children's religions is a thorny one, especially when there are family expectations and pressures from the two sides.

The different ways in which families deal with this issue, I think that it needs to be tackled in more films.

Conclusions

Bollyworld often shows persons of different religions, living together as close family friends or relating to each other in positive ways.

In a way it is a reflection of the Indian society and at the same time, I believe that it strengthens knowledge and relationships between people of different religions in India.

The past few decades have been marked by shifting of religions towards more exclusionist and radical positions, not just in India but all over the world. In such a situation, I think that Bollywood's role in promoting a multi-religious society is important.

There are many examples of mixed-religions families in Bollywood cinema. Personally, I believe that in this direction, Bollywood (and Indian cinema in other languages) has been much ahead of all other cinematic traditions in the world.

So if you think of Bollywood films dealing with inter-religious families, are there any films that have impressed you? Are there any such films from other countries, that you know of?

In the next part of this article, I will touch on inter-religious love stories in Bollywood films.

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This article is part of my reflections for an email based research on mixed religious couples and families. This research is called "Mixed Doubles: You, I and our Gods".

If you are or were a part of a mixed religious relationship or if you grew up in a mixed religious family, please consider joining this research by sending me an email at: sunil.deepak(at)gmail.com

You can find more information about this research at the Mixed Doubles Blog.

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New humanism and role of multi-religious societies

This article focuses on changes affecting the religious beliefs of people, that are shaping our world.

Introduction

Different forces are changing our world all the time. We make all kind of theories about these forces and how these are going to change our world and then something new comes and sends all our theories haywire. Not that it stops us from making new theories!

Over the past few decades, the forces of globalization and the changes in geo-political equilibriums with emergence of a multipolar world where China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Russia and many other countries of Asia, Africa and Americas are finding their voices, have also promoted wide social changes that could lead to new unpredictable scenarios.

The crises of raw materials and food on one hand and the dangers of environmental damage, vie for attention along with the advances in genetic mapping and manipulation, development of new technologies like nanotechnologies, the information revolution, etc. At the same time, the last decades have seen increasing polarisations in religious feelings in different parts of the world. These are among the significant forces shaping the world of tomorrow.

The factors that are influencing and shaping our world are so many and so different, that a wider view of everything and making predictions about future is probably unrealistic and foolhardy.

Three broad trends related to religions

I can think of three broad trends related to the principle world religions over the past 3-5 thousand years:

(1) Infinite variations in religious beliefs is common in all major religions of the world: Looking at the way different religions have evolved, it seems inevitable that each religion tends to develop branches that move in different directions. These religious offshoots can be more or less important over periods of times.

Sometimes these religious offshoots are in conflict with other offshoots, that means conflicts with persons of their same religions. Often each branch of the religion feels that it represents the "true" sense of that religion, while others are betrayers or imposters.

At other times, these offshoots, called sects or some times separate religions, can co-exist in peaceful harmony, and even try some kind of dialogue and collaboration.

No religious group can claim to be exempt from this general rule. In addition to differences between different sects or offshoots of a religion, additional geographical differences also develop, that differentiate people living in one place with those living in another country. For example, Catholics in Spain may have some differences compared to the Catholics in Philippines.

Some examples of different sects (or new religions) developing in a religion are:

The sub-groups among Hindus are innumerable, from Shavities, Vaishnavites, followers of Ram and followers of Krishna. Often the differences in religious beliefs about powers of specific deities, do not exclude respect and worship of other deities, so that fosters infinite variety of beliefs and "encroachments" in to other religious traditions.

Some of the more prominent sub-groups among Muslims include Shia, Sunni, Bohra, Ahmadiya, Deobandi, Wahabi, Ashrafs, Ajlafs, Sufi, Hanafi, Shanafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali, etc. The "distances" among some of them are considered big and thus some of them are not even considered as "Muslims" by other groups.

Some of the more prominent sub-groups among Sikhs include Khalsa, Amritdhari, Nanakpanthi, Sahajdhari, Akali Nihang, Nirankari, Namdhari, Radhasoami, 3 HO, etc. The "distances" among some of them are considered big and thus some of them are not even considered as "Sikhs" by other groups.

Similarly Christians include Catholic, Orthodox, Syrian, Jaocbites, Malabar, Methodist, Jehovah's witness and other innumerable groups.

I don't know all the details but I can imagine that Jain, Buddhist, Parsi, Bahai, Jews and other religions, all have some sub-groups.

(2) In all religions, some groups, especially the more orthodox and conservative among them, try to have a dominating role, claim to be the only real religion and dictate rules for the others: This seems to be another common feature of all religions, that more conservative groups among them provoke very strong feelings in their followers and they feel it like their life's mission to ensure that all others follow the "true" path and punish those who try to deviate from the path.

Often such groups come to use violence, verbal or physical, to impose their will on other groups. Usually, they also ask the State to use their religious principles to guide the laws of the country.

(3) Rise of a new humanism among a cross-section of persons in a wide number of countries, influenced by ideas of human rights: Over the past three decades, my work has given me the opportunity to visit a large number of countries in different parts of the world, and increasingly I have met persons of different religions, who share some common beliefs. They believe in terms of individuals' rights, irrespective of their religious beliefs, to live fulfilling lives with dignity.

Some times, their beliefs go against traditional religious beliefs of their individual religions, in areas such as role of women at home and in society, role of religion in the life, possibility of living in co-existence with other religions, role of religious education in their children's lives. Many of them look to and accept the basic principles of Universal Declcaration of Human Rights.

With globalisation and information technology, there is rise in opportunities for social interaction with people of other countries, cultures and religions. TV and films, newspapers and magazines, often talk about and show these relationships and interactions. For example, people from different parts of same countries or from different countries fall in love, some of whom, also marry and set-up multi-religious families.

I like calling this phenonmenon, the new humanism of religions. This new humanism is linked to a crisis of traditional religions, especially in industrialized societies that had strong economic development and a shift from rural to urban societies over the past couple of centuries.

I think that the rise of new humanism of religions is closely linked to the desire of domination by more conservative religious groups to impose their way of religious thinking on everyone. Communities and persons, who have held power for centuries are being threatened by the rise of new humanism of religions.

Challenges of orthodoxies for the future

Over the past couple of decades, slowly issues related to orthodox and conservative versions of Islam have occupied centre-stage of global debate. About 15-20 years ago, Afghanistan, Iran and may be Kashmir in India, seemed like the flash points of Islamic conservatives. Over the past decade, situations in Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, etc. has become more problematic , as country after country (or part of a country), adopts Shariat based laws. Invariably, in such places, communities are dominated by more orthodox and conservative elements and more progressive Muslims as well as minority groups of other religions, face increasing violence and marginalization.

Now as dictators that guaranteed some kind of check on radical Islamic groups in Tunisi, Algeria and Egypt, are being toppled and civil societies are hoping for more democracy, there are increasing fears of rise of these radical Islamic groups. I have heard of stories of violence and verbal assaults against Coptic Christians in Egypt. Situation in Pakistan, after killing of Taseer, seems to be getting worse. Thus fears among minority groups are running high.

M. K. Bhadra Kumar, scholar of political Islam, on Indian Punchline had recently written, "What happens in Egypt will determine the course of Middle Eastern history... Muslim Brotherhood is waiting in the wings as the flames of anger spread in the Middle East."

Many of my Muslim friends insist that Islam is a religion of peace and that Prophet Mohammed never condoned violence on the innocent. However, in the situation today, perhaps the real message of Holy Kuran does not matter. What matters more is how in country after country, the name of Islam is used to silence dissent, conformism to the ideals of "true Islam" proposed by the radical group is compulsory for everyone.

Conservative hardliners were always there in other religions too. Neocon Christians in USA, the conservative hardliner Jews in Isreal supported by groups in USA and other parts of the world, the supporters of Hindu rashtra in India, the Buddhist supporters of Singhalese forces against the Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka, the examples don't lack. Conservatives of other religions were always there.

I don't know if the expansion of conservative hardliners in other religions can be attributed only to rise of conservative Islam. However, whatever, other reasons are there, the rise of conservative Islamic groups is going to strengthen this tendency.

What answers can we give?

I believe that we need to have robust examples of different models of religious co-existence. We need to show that conflict is not the only way and that new humanism of religious co-existence can be a better alternative for future of mankind.

The societies that are truely multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious, especially India, need to support all progressive forces from different religions, in presenting alternative models of religious co-existence.

If we look back in history to the periods when conservatives of a religion dominated and influenced the whole world, probably we can look at the rise of orthdox Christianity in the period called as "the dark ages". It stopped human and scientific progress for hundreds of years and led to tragedies of inquisitions, crusades, annihilation of millions of indigenous people in different parts of the world.

The rise of orthodoxy and conservatives, would have an equally damaging impact on human rights, science and progress of millions who live in these countries and their impact will be felt in the remaining world. In the present age of information technology and globalization, how many decades or centuries would these theocracies last, who can tell?

John Butt, an Islamic scholar, in his article "A passage to secularism" in Hindustan Times of 27 January 2011, had written:

The havens of Islamic learning in India are still intact. They are vibrant, not politicised or radicalised. Some of them are admirably progressive, shunning the traditional abhorrence of secular subjects and incorporating them into their curriculum. Not only would students from Afghanistan be exposed to a progressive strain of Islamic learning if they were allowed to come to India for their religious studies, but they would also see religious education as it once was: learning not to fulfil any political agenda but for the sake of learning itself.

I have many Muslim friends from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who believe in progress and human rights, but I am afraid that in the coming future, their voices are going to be increasingly marginalized and it is going to be increasingly dangerous for them to speak of peace and co-existence with other religions, and to safeguard the human rights and civil liberties of many groups, especially women.

If these lead to reactions of more conservatism from other religions, we are also going to see even more conflicts.

Only India can have that strength with its 900 million Hindus, 120 million Muslims, 30 million Christians and millions of followers of almost every world religion, to oppose such a model of radical and conservative religions, with an example of progress, liberty and peaceful co-existence of different strands of religions, with equal dignity to other religions. But for this India needs to oppose the strengthening of conservative voices, and is that really feasible in the present political scenario?

M. K. Bhadra Kumar, scholar of political Islam, on Indian Punchline  had written about the controversy related to Ghulam Mohammed Vastnavi from Deoband:

How nice if Pakistani madrassas had Vastanvis! Iranian madrassas are full of Vastanvis. How nice if madrassas taught management sciences and the scholars in Deoband ‘googled’ after their evening prayer and supper in the seclusion of their chambers in search of the mysteries of biochemistry... It is atrocious that Vastanvi has no defenders among our national leaders. We shouldn’t repeat the mistake that Pakistan made - remaining silent when we ought to speak. That the Muslims of India do not remain the pocket borough of self-seeking men and politicians and instead move forward is also a national issue. The onus is particularly on our secular political parties to help Deoband move forward with the times.

Given the situation of politics, probably we can't expect our politicians to take sensible action and a stand on progressive ideals. With the vote-bank politics that dominates India, it is going to be impossible to expect India's political leadership to show the required maturity. They have always bowed in front of conservative orthodoxies. This puts a special onus on civil society.

Civil society in India and other multi-religious countries, need to look for ways that show that different religions are not monoliths, but are full of diversity and different ways of interpreting the faith, are all equally important and legitimate. They have to fight against conservatives and hardliners of different religions.

It is only people and civil society that can find a way to ensure that rich diversity, millenniums-old Indian traditions of giving refuge to world's persecuted religions and its history of living together of different religions, can be safeguarded and shown to the world as an example of building new societies. Doing this is imperative to future of India. It will also be important to show to the rest of the world, that an alternative way of co-existence is possible.

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Ancient world history in Indian scriptures - Historical events

This is the third (last) part of an essay on depiction of world and Indian histories in the famous Hindi writer Acharya Chatur Sen’s book Vayam Rakshamah. The first part of this essay introduced the figure of Chatur Sen and his works. The second part of the essay explained the broad context of Chatur Sen’s writings.

All the descriptions given here are from Acharya Sen's work, based upon decades of studies of ancient Hindu sacred books.

Knowledge of the world in ancient India

Ancient people living in different parts of the world had knowledge of different groups of persons living in different parts of the world, and had visits and communications among them, according to Sen. Some of the geographical areas mentioned in the book and their old Indian names in ancient Hindu sacred books are as follows:

Jambu dweep: Mainland Asia
Ang dweep: Sumatra
Java: Yav dweep
Malay dweep: Malaysia
Shankh dweep: Borneo
Kush dweep: Africa mainland
Varaha dweep: Madagascar
Swarn dweep: Sri Lanka
Andhralay: Australia
Kolavarah or Ketumaal dweep: Norway
Aryaviryan: Azerbaijan

Origin of Clans that peopled India

According to Sen, the stories of different clans that later peopled India cover the geographical areas that start from northern India in the east and goes up to Gulf of Persia and the coast of Caspian sea in the west. In fact all the important clans that peopled India and many other countries started somewhere near Caspian sea around 4 to 5 thousand BC. This same area, that is today constituted by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Persia, called Elam or Elavrat in ancient Hindu texts, continued to be important for the forefathers of the future Indians for about 1500-2000 years, that means till about 3000 BC. Even after this period, till today, the memories of those initial millenniums in Elam continue to be central in Hindu mythologies.

Many different clans of people who later grew as very different people, originated from the same groups of persons near the Caspian coast. Thus the three most important bloodlines that peopled India – Dev, Danav and Daitya, originated from the same family. Dev clans contributed to the Suryavanshi line of Aryans and Daitya clans contributed to the Chandravanshi line of Aryans. For the initial thousand or more years, there was constant inter-mixing between these three bloodlines, but later wars separated Dev group of people from the other two, who were jointly called “Asur” group of people.

There were other groups of people such as Garud and Naag near the Caspian coast and Pichash, Gandharav and Kinnar, in the northern part of mountainous India.

Original families near the Caspian coast and the first waves of emigration towards India

The story starts some where around 4 to 5 thousand years BC, at the beginning of Satyug, on the south coast of Caspian sea, the family of Swayambhu Manu. Manu had two sons, Priyavrata and Utanpaad. That land was divided into four areas – Sugd, Maru, Varvadhi and Nisha. Later on Harayu (Heart) and Vakrit (Kabul) also joined the western areas.

About 4000 years BC, Nabhi, grandson of Priyavrata moved east towards the area of Sapt Sandhu. Bharat, grandson of Nabhi, gave the name Bharat Varsh to that land. Descendents of Utanpaad also moved east towards Saptsandhu and later on, became the kings of this area, taking over from the descendents of Priyavrata.

Reverse emigration, back from Sapta Sindhu towards the Caspian sea

In a few generations, the families that had moved east lost contact with the families in the west. In any case, even in the west, families from the same forefathers, were fighting with each other for power and domination. Thus, children of Chakshuk Manu, a descendent of Uttanpaad line of family, with a kingdom in Sapt Sandhu, decided to go to the west and attack the kingdoms there. Five sons of Chakshak Manu - Atyarati, Jananpati, Manyu (Abhimanyu), Ur, Pur and Taporat, took part in the battle expedition to the west. One of the sons of Ur, called Angira, accompanied his father in the war. This expedition had success and they established kingdoms in different parts of the western lands.

Thus elder sons, Atyarati and Janapati settled in the central part. Ancient Persian history speaks of Manu as Manyu, while Greeks called him Maimnen. He built the city of Manyupuri or Susha. Ur dominated parts of Africa, Syria and Babylonia. Pur settled south of Caspian sea and gave his name to Persia. Taporat settled in Taporia region (Manjadiran). Angira went off in Africa.

Alborz mountain in Taporia region was considered as paradise. On the mountain lived Tapsi Vikuntha and his son Vaikuntha, and thus the area was known as Vaikunthadham in ancient Indian texts. The attack of the five brothers wreaked wide-spread destruction and the event is recorded in ancient Persian history as “destruction of paradise” and the five brothers were called Aahirman or Shaitan.

The big floods in the paradise

A few centuries later, about 3,200 BC, the big rivers in ancient Persia had huge floods, probably after the eruption of a volcano in the western coast of Caspian sea, near the city of Baku.

All the western part of Persia, and parts of Babylonia were submerged in water. Palestine, that is 6000 feet above sea level was also submerged. Only the high mountains reaching up to 18,000 feet were not submerged. These floods have been recorded in almost all the different ancient texts.

Accounts of Manu being saved by a Matasya (fish) in the ancient Hindu text Matasya-Puran, probably refer to saving of Dev clan persons by fishermen from the Caspian sea coast area.

Daughters of Daksha and their children

Shortly after the floods, important new clans were born that will have important impact on the whole region, from Africa in the west to India in the east. These clans came from the daughters of Daksha, from the clan of Swayambhu Manu.

Aditi, one the daughters of Daksha gave birth to 12 sons. Varun, the eldest son, established the Sumerian clan in Susha. In the lands laid dead by the floods, he built canals for draining the water and flattened the earth, making it fit for agriculture. All these works gave Varun the name of life giver or Brahma, as well as the lord of water. Varun's children took the name of Dev clan. They gave the name Ksheersagar to the bay to the south of their land (Bay of Persia).

Children of Vivaswan Surya, the youngest son of Aditi, established the Suryavanshi clan of Aryans, who occupied north India. Vivaswan Surya married Renu from the family of Bhrigu, son of his eldest brother Varun. Surya and Renu had five children - Vaivasvat manu, twins Yam and Yami, then, another pair of twins, Nasatya and Dasr (also known as Ashwini Kumars).

Growing up, Yam went to his uncle Varun, who made him king of land called Aavivard or Dozakh or Nark, a land that had been completely destroyed by the floods and thus, known as the "land of dead".

Other children of Aditi, such as Vasu, Maru, Bhanu. Ghosh, Sandhya, etc. gave rise to other clans. Rudra, an important figure in Hindu mythology in this line was born in the family of Vasu.

Another daughter of Daksha, Diti, gave birth to Daitya clan. A third daughter, Danu, gave rise to Danav clan. The society was matrilineal, that means only mothers name was important.

Initially all the clans were inter-marrying. But as time passed, the fights among different clans started, called Devasur wars.

Indra, born at the Caspian coast, slowly became friends with Varun and Dev clan. It was the time when writing of first Ved (Rigved) was starting. Varun's son Vashisht made some of the Richa (poems) for it. Indra asked his friend Narad, step brother of Vashista to make some richa about him. Later on other persons in the clans, when they heard the richa about Indra, asked for some richa in their names.

Chandra from the family of Bhrigu, fell in love with Tara, wife of Brihaspati, a priest of Dev clan and ran away with her. Brihaspati with help of other clans declared war on Dev clan, and Devs lost the war. Tara was sent back to Brihaspati, but she was pregnant with Chandra's son. When the child, Budh was born, Brihaspati refused to keep him and he was sent back to Chandra.

Migration of Aryas to India and attack on Sat Sindhu

Vaisvat Manu (eldest son of Vivaswan Surya) and Chandra, both decided to emigrate to the east, and together constituted the two main Arya clans in north India. Vaisvat Manu settled near Saryu river and started the suryavanshi clan of Aryans, while Chandra settled near the meeting place of the two rivers, Ganga and Yamuna and started the Chandravanshi clan of Aryans.

Some time later, Indra attacked Vritra, the king of Saptsandhu area from the Daitya clan. Though Vritra had good relationships with Dev clan, Dev clans chose not to interfere in Indra's attack. Vritra was killed by Indra, that led to the destruction of the major cities of Sapt Sindhu (the ruins of Harappa and Mohan Jo'daro).

A few centuries later, the main clans ruling in the western part in Elavrat, gradually became less important and were mixed up with other population groups.

Conclusions

This is just a simplified summary of Acharya Chatur Sen's theory of early settlements in ancient world and in ancient India, where waves of people came in from the west, spreading not just in India, but also inhabiting Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia on the east and Africa on the west. According to him, the different population groups such as Daitya, Danav, Naag, Kinoor, etc. all came from the same original families and separated after an initial period of inter-mixing lasting some millenniums.

Sen's history has three key events linked to India's inhabitation.

(1) The first settling of Sapt Sindhu, around 4,000 years BC and then, after some generations, return of some of these people back to west to the Caspian sea.
(2) The second is settling of Aryavrata in north India by Surya and Chandra clans around another 1000 years later.
(3) Some time later, there was the attack of people from the west on the kingdoms of Sapt Sindhu.

In Vayam Rakshamah, Sen also looks at the development of different clans of kings living in India, in Aryavrat and in the south in Dandkaranya and Dakshinaranya, that I have ignored in this article. For people interested in understanding more of Chatur Sen's theory of early settlements of people in what we know as India and middle east, read Vayam Rakshamah. It may not be a very interesting work of fiction, as far as the story of Polsatya Ravaan, but it does make for an interesting, if a little confused study on early Indian history according to the ancient Hindu books.

*** 

End of part 3. The first part of this essay introduced the figure of Chatur Sen and his works. The second part of the essay explained the broad context of Chatur Sen’s writings.

Ancient World history in Indian Scriptures - Context

This is part 2 of an article in three parts, about the ancient world and Indian history in ancient Hindu sacred books, based on the works of eminent Hindi writer, Acharya Chatur Sen. Part one of this article introduced the writings of Sen. This second part examines the context of writings by Sen. The third part presents the events described by Chatur Sen in his book, Vayam Rakshamah.

All writers need to do research, when they are writing about something with which they are not familiar. Thus, for all historical novels, writers need to research that particular historical period. Probably Acharya Chatur Sen started his research when he decided to write about "Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu", or perhaps the research was started for some other book, and then it led to writing of this book.

If there was ten years of research in the ancient Hindu sacred books, you don't really see it in "Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu", because the book is true to its fiction form. The result of the long studies is reflected in the background and characterization, but it is not flaunted.

Six years later, in 1955, when "Vayam Rakshamah" came out, the situation had changed. The book is presented as historical fiction about the life of Raavan, son of an Aryan, Polsatya muni, and a Daitya girl. Yet, after the initial chapters, the book forgets about Raavan and starts with other stories about origins of different clans and their movements in different parts of the world. Entire chapters are devoted to explanations that have nothing to do with Raavan's story. In that sense, the historical research is not just for bringing authenticity to a historical novel, but is an integral part of the narrative, making it a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I can't say if it was because the writer was not able to control himself or it was a deliberate attempt to mix what he perceived as "real history" with the fiction of the story, so that it is read by larger number of persons?

In fact, while reading Vayam Rakshamah, at times I was feeling a little disoriented at the sudden intrusion of long descriptions of different clans and who married whom, etc. Sen tries to explain the history of world, how ancient people spread out from central Asia to Indonesia, Australia, Norway and central America. Another proof of this mixture between historical research and fiction writing is the publication of the companion volume with explanations about the research, something unknown in fiction world of Hindi literature.

Sen did not limit himself to study of ancient Hindu books, but also looked at historical and archaeological publications of his time. In Vayam Rakshamah, he mentions about the findings and theories of eminent archaeologists and historians of his time like Dr D. Tera, Dr. Frankfort, D. Morgan, Dr. Landon, Sir John Marshall. Then he writes:

Now I am daring to contradict the theories of these archaeologists. I want to take the places described by these western experts such as Susha, Elam, Saptasindhu, Pralay and their descriptions of different groups of people living there, together I also want to take more disorderly descriptions in ancient books like Rigved, Brahman, Vishnu-Puran, Matasay-Puran, etc. Then on the basis of these considerations, I want to make some foggy word-pictures of pre-vedic times. I will describe these people who were living in those times, friendly or warring, their names, habitates and Jaati, as given in our Puran but that also find an echo in ancient histories of Persia, Arab, Africa, Misr (Egypt) and central Asia.

He links ancient Indian mythological stories such as that of Narsimha, Hiranyakashyap and Prahalad to the archaeological findings in Assyrians, that also talk of Narsimha, as shown in some images of engraved panels from Assyrian culture in the British Museum of London:

Some clarifications
Before proceeding to the descriptions of Sen's world history, it is necessary to make some clarifications. Acharya Chatur Sen was not a scientist or a historian, and the history he presents in Vayam Rakshamah has its share of contradictions, specially in terms of names of people and the timeline of when the events happened. This may be because the sources of his information are themselves contradictory.

Another problem is caused by persons of same name, who are apparently alive after events that must have taken centuries to unfold. This could be because they are using clan names, where same name continues though it refers to different persons.

Understanding the relationships between people is very difficult and Sen explains this a result of possibility of getting married or having children among different family members, including sons with their mothers or brothers with sisters. For example, Varun, the eldest son of Aditi is both, Surya's elder brother as well as his uncle (father's elder brother). The initial societies are described as matrilineal.

Timeline itself is a problem and Sen recognises it by saying that the times described in Puran are exaggerated hundreds or thousands of times. He has resolved this issue by estimating the time of events described in different Puran during the first six generations of Manvanter (children of Manu, who had some kind of leadership role), and using that as a yardstick for calculating times of all other events. In this way, the period of what ancient Hindu books call "Satyug", is about 1300 years.

Sen has given names of different places that he talks about, asserting that similar names still exist in those regions but through Google map, I was unable to find those places. For example, Atri river in Aryaviryan (Azerbaijan) near Kashyap sea (Caspian sea) described by Sen is supposed to have given the name Atraman to that region, but I couldn't find any such river or place in Azerbaijan. This could be because Sen is taking names from Arabic or Persian sources while the names in English or other local languages of these countries may be different.

In the book Sen presents all the characters as ordinary living beings, though many of them are today known as religious characters or gods in Hindu mythologies such as Varun, Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, Narad, etc. Basing himself on ancient descriptions in the Hindu sacred literature, some of his characters seem to be in contradiction with their present images. For example, Indra and to a lesser degree, Vishnu, are both presented as clever and ruthless persons, who are willing to adopt any means to gain power and wealth. This could have another reason, why Sen was worried that some persons may not like his depiction of Hinduism in this book.

One final point about calling the texts consulted by Acharya Chatur Sen as "ancient Hindu texts". This is because these are part of Puran, Brahman, Upanishad and Ved, etc. the texts safeguarded by Hindu Brahmin traditions, though they actually talk of periods centuries before the establishment of "Hindu" traditions, in much later Aryan and Anaryan people in what came to be called Bharat Varsh.

He locates the origin of different groups of persons living in India to the region south of Kashyap sagar (Caspian sea), where he identifies geographical places that are part of Hindu mythology such as Ksheersagar and Vaikunthdham. He also explains the ruins of Harappa and Mohan Jo'daro as ruins from attacks of Indra on the kingdom of Vritra. The images below showing the seals from Harappa and Mohan Jo'daro are from British Museum in London:

With this background, now we are ready to move into the actual, though grossly simplified, descriptions of the world history and more specifically Indian history in Acharya Chatur Sen’s writings.

*** 

 End of part 2 - Part one of this article introduced the writings of Sen.  The third part presents the events described by Chatur Sen in his book, Vayam Rakshamah.

Ancient world history in Indian scriptures - Introduction

This is first part of an article in 3 parts on ancient World History and Indian history. It looks at the ancient history of world and India, given in Hindu sacred books including Veda, Puran and Brahman stories, based upon the works of an eminent Hindi writer, Acharya Chatur Sen (1891-1960). Part 2 explains the context of writings by Sen, while part 3 presents the main ideas of world history in Sen's work.

Introduction to some works of Acharya Chatur Sen

Acharya Chatur Sen, a trained Ayurvedic doctor, was a prolific Hindi writer and published 186 books including 32 novels, more than 450 short stories, and many non-fiction books on themes as diverse as politics, history and Ayurveda. Apart from a strong interest in ancient Hindu sacred books, he also wrote about history of Islam in India.

I have read two of his works related to ancient India -

(a) Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu (वैशाली की नगरवधु, The courtesan of Vaishali, first published in 1949 by J. S. Sant Singh and Sons Delhi for Hindi Vishwabharati) about a courtesan called Ambapali during the time of Gautama Buddha, a few centuries before Jesus.

(b) Vayam Rakshamah (वयं रक्षामः, We are Raksha, first published in 1955; from the edition published by Rajpal and Sons, Delhi 2009) about Raavan, the mythological king from Ramayana.

Each of these books carries a long list of ancient texts that were consulted by Chatur Sen for writing that book. Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu, the first book in this series, was dedicated to Jawaharlal Nehru and in preface of this book Chatur Sen had explained that though a work of fiction, the book was attempt to remove the "black curtain that has hidden the defeat of religion, literature, royal governance and culture of Aryas, and the win of progressive cultures of mixed races, during thousands of years, that have not been tackled by historians." He had also explained that writing that book had taken "ten years of research in the cultures of Aryas, Boddh, Jain and Hindus".

By the time, "Vayam Rakshamah" came out in 1955, Chatur Sen was 63 years old and not keeping very well. In the dramatic preface of this book, Sen declared that "he had put in all the learnings and knowledge, both emotional from his heart and logical, from his brain, into writing this book and he had no more left to contribute." About his own mental condition he had written, that like horses, bulls and donkeys, who can die while pulling heavy burdens, he might also die because of burden of writing this book."

At that time, he was also worried that his depiction of ancient history of Aryas and other races may not be accepted easily as it touched on areas that can be seen as obscene. At the same time, he felt that he had to speak the truth as he had understood it from the studies of the ancient Hindu books:

In this book, I have presented the forgotten word-pictures of different human clans such as Nar, Naag, Dev, Daitya, Danav, Arya, Anarya, etc. from pre-vedic times, who had been seen through the coloured lenses of religion and mythologised into gods of the heavens. I have the courage to present them as human beings. "Vayam Rakshamah" is certainly a work of fiction, but at the same time it is the result of deep study of Ved, Puran, philosophy and foreign texts ... it the summary of my life's work.

This book was accompanied by an accompanying explanatory book, to justify and reference whatever he had written in the book, with notes from different sources that Sen had studied.

Upinder Singh in "A history of ancient and early medieval India" (Dorling Kindersley India, 2008) had written, "History is not one but many stories, only a few of which have yet been written. ... there are two parallel images of ancient South Asia - one based on literary sources, the other on archeology." About the ancient texts, Singh wrote, "Ancient texts are much older than their surviving scripts, and have a life of their own. They have grown and changed over time, and this process of growth and change - the period of composition - could in some cases have lasted for hundred of years before they were compiled or given a more or less final shape."

The descriptions of ancient Indian and world histories, from analysis of ancient Indian texts, have been attempted many times, by scholars from different disciplines, from India and many other countries. Continuing archaeological excavations as well as new technologies such as satellite mapping imaging, have provided new corroborative evidences to the the different theories.

Still I think that it could be interesting to look at the conclusions about the ancient world events during prehistorical times, at which Acharya Chatur Sen had arrived through his decades long studies. I don't think that people have seriously taken a systematic look at the literary works of Indian authors writing in Hindi or other Indian languages, in terms of analysing their ideas and their implications.

This article is mainly based on the descriptions in Sen's book, "Vayam Rakshamah".

End of part one of a three parts article. Part 2 explains the context of writings by Chatur Sen, while part 3 presents the main ideas of world history in Chatur Sen's work.

Note: Special thanks to Sanjay Bengani and Sameer Lal for the image of Acharya Chatur Sen!

Progressive Muslims in Pakistan and India

As we approach the Republic day, the long article of Ramnath Guha in the new issue of Outlook makes for sombre reading about threats to "Idea of India" and the state of India's nationhood. Guha always makes for very interesting reading, and though he seems to end on an optimistic note, I don't know how India can find a solution before the damage to its social and enviornmental fibre won't be irriversible.

However, it was something in the two articles related to Muslims in India and Pakistan that caught my attention, and is the focus of this post's question.

Mariana Baabar, in her article "The Flickering Flame" on the fear in liberal Pakistani society following the assassination of Salman Taseer, has written:

This question has again become a subject of fervent debate from the time Punjab governor Salman Taseer was gunned down and the shocking feting of his assassin, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, who was outraged by his victim’s support for amending the blasphemy law. For someone to be killed for an opinion, an idea, has jolted Pakistanis into reflecting over their journey backward—from liberating progressivism to stifling conservatism. Recalls journalist Adnan Rehmat, “In the ’60s and ’70s, you could even eat at restaurants during Ramadan and see women in saris and bell-bottoms in the bazaars. Burqas and beards were a rare sight.” The socio-cultural transformation has prompted many Pakistanis to think of emigrating. This sentiment was articulated last week in the Dairy of a Social Butterfly, a popular satirical column of the Friday Times. The Butterfly’s husband, Janoo, tells her why they should quit the country, “Tomorrow, someone could pass a fatwa against you for not covering your head. And when a grinning bearded murderer guns you down, lawyers will come and shower him with rose petals.”

In another opinion article on the website of Outlook, Yoginder Sikand writes in "Beyond Sachar" about the role of Muslim religious and civil-political leaders in the state of Muslims in India, a role that he feels was not sufficiently explored in the Sachar report, and writes:

In the wake of Partition of India, a large section of the then Indian Muslim leadership, consisting mainly of the landed aristocracy as well as the middle class intelligentsia, particularly in north India, where the bulk of the Muslim population was concentrated, migrated to Pakistan. The Muslims who remained behind were largely poor and illiterate, the vast majority of who belonged to the so-called ajlaf, descendants of ‘low’ caste converts, whose economic, social and educational conditions had not changed appreciably despite their conversion to Islam. With their political influence, financial resources and access to new forms of knowledge, the landed aristocracy and, especially, the modern-educated intelligentsia could otherwise have been expected to play a key role in promoting internal social reform among the Muslims, as some of them indeed had in the years before Partition. But with their migration to Pakistan, this was rendered impossible. The leadership vacuum created by their departure was soon filled by a different class of men—mullahs, representing a variety of rival Muslim sects, educated in traditionalist madrasas. Many of them, particularly of the Deobandi variety, had been close allies of the Congress party. Today, the vast majority of Muslim organizations that claim to speak for Islam and for the entire Muslim community are led and dominated by mullahs belonging to various sectarian groups—the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, the All-India Milli Council, the two or more factions of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, the Jamaat-e Islami, the Jamiat-e Ahl-e Hadith and so on.

Thus Sikand identifies, one of the reasons of the backwardness of Muslim leadership in India and its lack of sufficient social reforms, in the migration of more educated and liberals Muslims to Pakistan. Yet as Baabar's article points out, this did not help Pakistan to create a more reformed and progressive society. Why and how did that happen?

I feel that the problem could have been also in the decisions of the progressive and liberal Muslims to leave for Pakistan, because it underlined that their progressiveness and liberalism were less stronger than the idea that religion is more important in a society.

Once you choose religion over other human values, you lay the foundations of a society that is unable to rise above religion? What do you think?

Circle of history

A few days ago, there was an editorial in the French newspaper, Le Monde, that talked about exodus of christians from different countries dominated by Muslims. This editorial started from the news of an attack on a church in Baghdad, during which 50 people had died, most of them women and children, and it lamented the flight of christians from the very places where christianity had started.

About 50% of Iraqi christians have left the country in the last 20 years. According to Samir Khalil Samir, a gesuit priest from Egypt, in the last century, christians in Turkey have gone down from 20% of the population to 0.2% of the population, and globally in middle east, they have reduced from 15% to 6%.

Apart from the on-going conflicts in many countries of this region, the spread of more intolerant forms of Islam have contributed to this decline.

Religion, especially a conservative version of Islam, has become a key factor of conflicts in countries like Sudan and Nigeria. In most of these countries, the conservatives have occupied the centre-stage and speak more loudly, while the space occupied by moderates and liberals seems to have diminished.

There have been similar changes in Pakistan and Bangladesh. I remember reading a discussion among bloggers from Bangladesh, who recognized that Durga Puja celebrations in their countries have become rarer and more problematic as their societies are increasingly dominated by conservatives.

It also made me think of the on-going conflict in Kashmir, and the recent controversy surrounding the speech of Arundhati Roy.

I admire Arundhati Roy and I think that it is important that persons have the freedom to talk about uncomfortable truths, that we would rather forget or not see. In this sense, I share her anguish about the continuing lack of civil liberties in Kashmir, about the military rule that does not need to give any explanation or justify its brutality.

I think that power, that does not need to justify itself against people who have no way to raise up their voices or protest, invariably leads to abuse, repression and brutality. The examples of abuses by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan recently exposed on Wikileaks confirm this. Not just military, even children growing up in institutions in different cultures and religions know this very well, that pious and apparently kind persons governing them can also abuse their power. So it is easy to understand that the more violent components of military get an opportunity to express worst parts of themselves, protected by laws and their power.

However, I am not sure about the idea of "azaadi" in Kashmir if it means that the area will be ruled by more conservative and fundamentalist forces. How do you reconcile the contradiction between two ideals - the ideal of living with liberty and the right to self-determination on one hand; and the right to live in a country where people are free to wear what they want, for women to go to school and work, the issue of human rights as enshrined in universal declaration and that seem impossible in societies dominated by fundamentalists?

I raised this doubt to Dilip D'Souza, who answered that:

The point about freedom yearned for is that you can't second guess what might happen there afterwards. After all, Churchill believed that Britain would turn India over to half-men if they gave us Independence. White South Africa believed Mandela was a terrorist and there'd be widespread black revenge on the whites if they ended apartheid.

I agree with the examples given by Dilip, but it doesn't answer all my doubts. I think that he ignores the issue of religious conservatives holding power. As I understand it, Kashmir valley that is asking for azaadi, is a small place. I don't know if it is bigger or smaller than Bhutan.

I also agree that Kashmir valley needs freedom from the special laws that guarantee impunity to military, Kashmiris need azaadi from the omnipresent "occupying forces", but how do you make sure that they are not taken over by jehaadis and conservatives? How do you make sure that it does not become another Afghanistan or Baluchistan? Or we say, it doesn't matter to us, they asked for it, let them get out of it?

I think sooner or later, history will turn a full circle and more moderate and illuminated ideals of Islam will come back. The middle ages were dominated by fundamentalist christians who launched crusades, conquest of americas and inquisitions, but eventually rennaisance did win and in todays' world, conservative christians do not have that kind of influence or power. Similarly, one day this domination of fundamentalist islam will give way to liberal islam like the ones that continue to flourish in countries like India and Indonesia.

But till the circle of history completes this passage, how do you deal with regimes that restrict their people's lives? Do you just wait and watch? I am quite sure that the Western answers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the right answers, also because they are tainted with self-interest of power, control and resources.

But is there another way, and should others intervene and how?

The cost of silence

Certain areas of our history have become taboo. For different reasons we prefer to not to talk about them. Instead, only certain conservative groups and political parties can speak about those parts of our histories. But are there other costs to the society because of this silence?

Amitabh Bacchan and the Somnath ad

The angry reactions about it on facebook and blogs alerted me about the Somnath advertisement video of Gujarat Tourism. They also made me curious about the ad. So I watched it on Youtube and was wondering about the reasons that had provoked the angry reactions. I think that the reactions were not about what is said or not said in this ad, they were mainly about the motives behind it.

At one level, this ad can be compared to Obama talking about loss of American jobs due to outsourcing to India or China. Or it can be compared to the Italian northern league party that uses rhetoric and demagogy about “emigrants” to create fear about criminality and national identity. It reminds people about the threats faced by the Somnath temple some centuries ago.

At another level, the ad is a subtle threat, hidden behind nice words and glossy images. That threat is serious, if we look at the history of using such arguments and how such ideas have been used to justify events like the Gujarat carnage in 2002.

I can imagine the marketing managers and ad agency of Gujarat tourism, all very pleased with themselves. Their message is being spread by persons who like it and also by those who hate it. They must be hoping that in the end people will forget the controversy and remember some of those wonderful images of Somnath temple and more tourists will visit the state. Or they have done it on purpose to stir passions and make electoral gains.

Wider issues of discussion on history: However, I think that this episode points to wider issues of different links between history, politics and religion in India, that are not being debated very often.

Can we talk, discuss and argue about historical events including religious conflicts and understand their significance in India, without making it an accusation against one group of our people?

Language in pre-independent and post independent India

In the pre-independence era and even up to 1950s and 1960s, it was still possible to talk about historical events, without worrying if that was going to offend certain groups of population. Perhaps, it was because that people were clear in their minds that they were talking about historical events, things that had happened hundreds of years ago and these were not judgements about persons of specific religious groups today?

For example Jawaharlal Nehru in his "Discovery of India", first published in 1946 wrote:

About 1000 AC Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni in Afghanistan, a Turk who had risen to power in central Asia, began his raids into India. There were many such raids and they were bloody and ruthless, and on every occasion Mahmud carried with him a vast quantity of treasure. A scholar contemporary, Alberuni, of Khiva, describes these raids: "The Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions and like a tale of old in the mouths of people. Their scattered remains cherish of course the most inveterate aversion towards all Moslems." ... He met with a severe defeat also in the Rajputana desert regions on his way back from Somnath in Kathiawar.

Socialist leader, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia in his article "Hindu and Muslim" (Hindu aur Musalman, 3 October 1963 published by Ram Manohar Lohia Samta Nyas, 1993) had written (my translation from Hindi):

A common misunderstanding in the minds of both Hindus and Muslims is that Hindus think that for the last 700-800 years Muslims have ruled us, they have been cruel and despotic, and Muslims think that, even if those who may be poorest of the poor, for 700-800 years we had ruled and now our bad days have come. .. the truth is Muslims have killed Muslims. Killed, not in spiritual terms but in physical sense. When Tamur came and killed 4-5 lakh persons, among them 3 lakh were Muslims, Pathan Muslims who were killed. The killer was a Mughal Muslim. ... I want that everyone, Hindus and Muslims, we should learn to say that Ghazni, Gauri and Babar were bandits, who attacked us.

Not just about past history, even for more recent events like India's partition, and Kashmir issue, till seventies, there are countless examples of leaders, writers, thinkers from different sides of political spectrum, who expressed themselves in words that, if used today, would immediately provoke unease and sometimes even accusations of being a part of "fundamentalists" or "saffron brigade", because now those areas of our history have become "sensitive" or even "taboo".

Changing context and changing language

I don’t think that anyone would tell the Jews not to talk about holocaust or to the persons of African descent in the Americas, not to talk about slavery.

The medieval period has been an era of Christian fundamentalism. Think of crusades. Think of genocide of natives in Americas, think of Aztec and Inca empires completely demolished and destroyed. Think of “holy” inquisition in southern Europe, where Muslims and Jews were persecuted, tortured and killed, converted by force, their books and knowledge burnt, their temples and mosques razed to ground.

While it all happened in Europe and middle east, it was more or less the same time when Ghazni or other Turkish/Afghani invaders were raiding India, burning, looting, killing people and also destroying Indian temples.

On one hand, it is perfectly legitimate to talk about what happened in crusades, what happened to natives in Americas and about the tortures of inquisition in Europe. There are countless recent books and articles about it and if you talk about it, no one would dare say that you are anti-Christian or a Muslim/Jew bigot. But if you talk of what happened to temples, you could be looked at with suspicion. Why is that?

When and why this change?

All languages change with time and our way of talking about things changes. The fights for civil rights by the blacks in America and South Africa, the continuing fights for dignity by groups such as women and homosexuals and transgender persons, have all focused on words used to talk about them. The "illuminism" of concepts and ideas of human rights following the second world war, have all impacted on what we talk about and in which terms.

Thus, it is perfectly understandable that today anyone talking about groups of persons like women/blacks/gypsies/asians in an inappropriate language is seen with suspicion or distaste. It is perfectly understandable that persons using terms like niggers or cripples are told off clearly to mind their language. Thus, ways of expression that sounded perfectly reasonable thirty/fifty years ago, may be seen as problematic today.

But the change in India in not talking about certain parts of historical events, does not seem to be an issue of language. It is something else.

Thinking back of the events of the past thirty forty years, I think that part of the change may have come from the Khalistan movement in Punjab. It underlined the fact that India could fragment and get divided.

In his "Idea of India", Sunil Khilnani had written of the apparent conviction of the British and many other parts of the world that post-independence, India would break up in different states. However, till the Khalistan issue came up, while there were wars with Pakistan on Kashmir issue, and there were religious riots every now and then in different parts of India, I think that till that time, there were no real fears among Indians about a break-up of India, and it was the Khalistan movement that brought out this fear in to open.

The demotion of Babri masjid in 1992 and the subsequent bomb blasts in Mumbai, followed by more religious riots probably affected the nation's psyche more fundamentally. The Gujarat killings of 2002 with its state sponsored violence, were the final shock that told India that it was moving towards its doom. In this changed scenario, anything that puts into danger the unity of India has gradually become a taboo area, to be avoided at all costs. Thus, all violent traumas of our recent history are to be swept under the carpet, to be hidden away.

Religions and Indian thinkers

I have a feeling that the thinkers and philosophers in today's India would prefer not to talk about religions at all. For them religion and faith is a non issue, or at the most a private issue. Their distaste towards the more conservative religious believers of different religions is clear, though they are more controlled in denouncing the conservative groups among the minorities and much more vocal in expressing their indignation at Hindu conservatives. I remember an article of Ram Nath Guha in Outlook some years ago in this sense, asking us to be more aware and careful of fears of the minorities.

At the same time, past decades have seen increasing violence of certain conservative groups and the state seems unable to do anything to stop them. Thus persons burn libraries because someone has dared to write something about Shivaji or hound persons like Hussein for having dared to paint a naked Saraswati or in the name of Islam, MLAs threaten to kill Taslima on TV. Try to discuss multiple versions of Ramayana and people pounce on you for denigerating their religious feelings. Try to make a film about conditions of widows in early twentieth century and mobs will chase you away. Pose a question about a person called Mohammed in a question paper and they will cut off your hand and university will suspend you for hurting people's religious feelings. Have a negative Sikh character in a film and sikhs will protest. Talk about illicit relationships of a priest and church will protest.

The end result of both things is silence. You can't discuss anything that touches on religions. From the thinkers and philosophers, because they fear it will hurt the sentiments of minorities. From the conservatives, who have their versions of their religions and they dare anyone else to challenge those views.

Impact of this situation

Political incorrectness issue is especially serious in terms of Hindus and Muslims. Today it is politically incorrect to talk about Muslim invaders from Ghazni to Mughals. We can talk about persons like Akbar, if it is about Hindu Muslim unity, but it is better to avoid talking of Aurangzeb, and if you do it, it should be preferably in terms of “he was really not so fundamentalist as he is painted out to be, he was actually helping some temples”. And if we show Muslims killing Hindus and Sikhs in a film or a play, you should balance it by showing that Hindus and Sikhs were also killing Muslims at the same time.

To a lesser extent, similar problem applies to relations with other religions - especially Christians.

Thus, certain aspects of history have become personal property of Saffron brigade or radical Islamic groups – only VHP, RSS, some Maulanas/clerics or others of their side can speak about it and if you talk about it, you are naturally part of some fundamentalists.

Why is that? Why can’t we differentiate between the past and present? Talking about what had happened 400 years ago, doesn’t mean that as Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian communities of today we are responsible of that past. In the history, terrible wars have been fought, terrible things have been done in the name of religion, but as human beings we are capable of changing, and today we can dialogue and reflect about such things without it necessarily reflecting on who we are today and what our religions are?

I also think that it is unfair to lot of persons, who are religious, but are not conservatives or fundamentalist in their thinking, who believe in multi-cultural India and have respect for all religions. Why should they be seen only as part of saffron brigade or Islamic conservatives?

I do believe that majority of people in India, be they Hindus, or Muslims or Christians or whatever religion, are sane persons, who believe in their faiths, but they also respect others, they also bow their head when they pass in front of another’s prayer place. It is a pity that they only have political parties to represent them who are either representing extremists of their religions or those who call themselves seculars but who do not understand or acknowledge anything related to their faiths.

At the same time, I think that cordoning off certain parts of our history, whether it is arrival or Aryans in ancient India or Muslim invasions of medieval India or partition of India in 1947 or killings of Sikhs in 1984 or killings of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 or killings of Christians in Kandhamal a couple of years ago, does not help us. Silence does not help us.

Reality is never black or white. Reality is not made of one simple story of one killer and one oppressed. It has multiple stories, where religion is just one part but there are many other parts. If we can't talk about them, we are closing off our possibility to understand what happened and why it happened and how can we make sure that it does not happen again.

***

God of Goldilocks

This week's Astrophysics journal has the story of a planet going around a red dwarf star, 20 light-years away from the earth.The planet has been given the name "Gliese 581g", and someone with lot of imagination, has converted the final and unimaginative "g" of the name into "Goldilocks".

It seems that Goldilocks can be a planet suitable for life similar to our earth, "the right size and location for life". May be all those scientists can take a break and need not worry about finding proofs of life on Goldilocks, I can already confirm it. There is life and there is God on Goldilocks, I know it.

Let me try to explain my view.

Scientists have already found that all matter is made of sub-atomic particles, that are in constant motion. Between our world as we see it and the sub-atomic world, there is such an immense distance that human imagination is not enough to understand it. In CERN near Geneva in Switzerland, scientists are trying to break down the sub-atomic particles to find out their compositions. I believe that sub-atmoic particles are made of ultra-sub-atomic particles, and distance of proportions between two groups of particles is as big or may be bigger than the distances between our world and that of sub-atomic particles.

In the same way, I believe that we are the sub-atomic particles of the universe, and may be our universe is sub-atomic particle for other bigger universes. For me, life is the constant motion of the sub-atomic particles, that is such that according to quantum physics it can be in more than one place at the same time. This life force joins all of us, humans, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, oceans, space, planets, galaxies into one. This super-consciousness is God.

It is for this reason that I like the ancient human's ideas of gods like mythical creatures, humans and demons and animals all combined like the mythical creatures on the Buddhist temples in Vietnam, like Ganesh in India, because these give an idea of unity of life beyond the apparent differences in our forms.

Scientists say that all our cells change, some die and others are born every minute, every day. Every time we breath, new atomic particles enter our bodies, mix with particles that make our body and some go out with our breath. We are being renewed all the time. Think of a being on Goldilocks, millions of years ago - its atomic particles mixed and travelled in space and have arrived on earth and have entered your breath. Goldilocks is here, inside you, inside us.

Children of mixed gods

Yesterday, I was at the presentation of Fatima Ahmad's new book "Aukui". Fatima's mother was half Indian and half Vietnamese, her father was Somali. Fatima was born in Cambodia, where she lived for the first 21 years of her life, till the war broke out and they were forced to migrate to Somalia.

In Somalia, Fatima faced the more orthodox side of her religion. She was not supposed to go out, not to talk to men. It was different to grow up as a Msulim in Cambodia, a predominently Buddhist country than in Somalia. After three years in Somalia, Fatima moved to Italy. (In the picture below, during a reading from her book - Fatima is in the middle)

"Aukui" means "black devil" in Cambodian and refers to the difficulties she faced in Cambodia because of her skin colour. She also had to overcome barriers created around her disability. She said that she has written this book to tell her story to her younger brothers and sisters, who were born later and do not know about their roots. About her religious beliefs, Fatima said that she takes what she likes from Islam, Buddhism and Catholicism.

Discussions about mixing of faiths and religions immediately resonate in me. In my family, we have three religions - Hinduism, Catholicism and Sikhism.

I think that with globalisation, with people moving from one country to another, there will be even more opportunities for people of different religions to meet, fall in love and make families. I also think that today, with greater awareness about ideas of human rights and religious liberalism, there are greater opportunities for people in mixed families like ours to maintain our distinct religious identities and yet be all together in harmony.

A couple of months ago, I was in Vietnam and one evening, I had a discussion with a friend, who is Buddhist and has married to a Catholic. They are planning to shift to Italy in a couple of years. "I continue to be Buddhist", she had said. I had thought that in her words, there was an unexpressed anxiety about shifting to a predominently Catholic country and yet, continuing to be a Buddhist.

"And the children of such mixed families, what about their religion?", sometimes people ask me. I don't know how did others deal with this, I can only share how we dealt with it. For us, all children have a right to their family traditions from both the sides, mothers' and fathers' sides. This means that children should be able to feel at home in all their family religions, should participate in all their religious traditions and rites. We had had a church wedding and a hindu wedding, our son had his baptism and his mundan.

It is true that sometimes religions have prayers that talk about supremacy of their god and being the only true religion, but I think that if children can understand that their parents are in peace with each other, they grow up with their own understanding of their religions.

I feel that these children growing with shared understanding and beliefs of different religions, will be the new citizens of the world. I also feel this understanding is precious and should be valued and nurtured.

In India, because we grow up with different religions around us, over the centuries we have developed so many examples of mixing up of religions and traditions. Between Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, etc.

Once I had read about one of the first Indian censuses done during British times and how people had difficulty in telling their religions, they were not sure if they should call themselves sikhs or hindus, and were forced to decide. Over the past decades, growing ideas of religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism among all the different relgions, seem to strengthen the differences, the divisions and the boundaries between religions and beliefs.

We, the children of mixed gods need to counter this and ask for respect of our religions, our mixed religions.

I have been reading debates about Indian census and if we it should ask questions about the castes or not. I wish that Indian census would also ask about religions of persons and give them the possibility of giving multiple answers - we can also be Hindus and Muslims at the same time, Sikhs and Jains at the same time, Hindus and Sikhs and Parsi at the same time. I wish there is a question that asks, how many believe that there is just one god for all human beings not withstanding their different religions? and how many of us also pray in religious places of other religions?

Calling names

This reflection about names of places and countries started from the book "Empires of the Indus" written by Alice Albinia.

Indus is the mighty river that starts from high mountains in Kashmir and goes to end in the Indian ocean through a wide delta in Sindh region of Pakistan. All the other important rivers on the western parts of India (Satluj, Ravi & Beas), Pakistan (Jhelum & Chenab) and eastern part of Afghanistan (Kabul), end in Indus. It is this river that gave India its name, though today most of it belongs to Pakistan.

Albinia writes that when India was divided, and Pakistan chose its new name, Jinah was expecting India to take the official name of Bharat and was aghast when it decided to keep India as its name, the name of the undivided country. It meant that India could claim the heritage and history of the past associated with the name "India", while Pakistan had to invent a new history for itself.

However, this reflection about Indus and India took me into another direction of thoughts. The Indian name for Indus river is Sindhu.

Rajesh Kochhar in his book "The Vedic People - their history and geography", makes an interesting point about development of languages in western part of the Indian subcontinent. His story starts with persons from central Asia. They moved into Afghanistan and then some of them migrated towards Sindhu river (Rigvedic people, as they wrote Rigveda) and others went towards Persia/Iran (Avestan people, as they wrote their sacred book Avesta). Later, as iron became available and thick jungles in the gangetic plains could be cut, the Rigvedic people migrated deeper into India.

Kochhar says that Avestans, used "H" more commonly in their language while Rigvedic people used more "S" in their language. Thus, Rigvedic group had names of many places and rivers starting with "S", including Sindhu river, while Avestan group had the same names starting with "H". So that for the Avestan group, Sindhu became Hindu.

Among other things, Kochhar proposes that Rigveda is mainly about three thousand years BC, when these persons were living in what is today called Afghanistan. To support this theory he explains the lack of references to Ganga river (Ganges) in Rigveda. Thus, he says that Sarayu river of Rigveda is not the present Sarayu in Uttar Pradesh, but is actually Haroyu (present name Hari Rud) of Afghanistan; in the same way, he arguments that Rigvedic Sarasawati river was actually the mighty Afghani river, Harahvaiti.

That is how, persons living on banks of Sindhu river were called Hindu and their religion became Hinduism. Come to think of it, Rigveda also does not mention any religion called "Hindu".

And, where did the word Indus came from? I guess, it came from Latin, the language of Roman empire and the lingua franca of the classical Europe, where "H" is silent and rarely used. For example, in Italian, Hinduism is called "Induismo" and Himalaya becomes "Imalaia". Therefore, the name of Indus river and country's name, India, both probably come from Latin.

All these reflections about names of places and country, worry me a little.

Thinking of all the campaigns for reclaiming our roots through name changes (Mumbai, Bengalaru, Chennai, etc.), perhaps one day there will be a campaign to change India's name to Sindhia and Hindus can call themselves Sindhus, and Hindi can become Sindhi?

That obviously raises another question - how are Sindhis going to call themselves?

Kurbaan and the Muslim Reality

I was determined to see at least one Hindi film in a proper cinema hall. The last film I had seen at a cinema hall was Jodha Akbar. In Italy, where I live, Bollywood films are not released and I have to wait to come to India to see them in a cinema hall. Last week I was in Bangalore for work and one evening, after the work finished, I walked into the theater and I saw Kurbaan.

Even though I had read in some newspaper that this film has flopped, at least that particular day when I went to see it, the hall in Forum mall of Bangalore, was quite full. Perhaps it was a hit in Bangalore?

Film: Given a chance, I wouldn’t like to see Kurbaan again, even though it did have lot of plus points, especially in terms of acting from the main actors. I liked all of them, especially Kareena Kapoor. She looks good and is great overall, even more in the emotional scenes. Saif, Vivek and veterans like Om Puri and Kirron Kher, all give credible performances.

The plot of the film is tight, it is fast-paced, so the time does run very quickly. The music and the background score are lovely. "Shukran allah" song is my faviourite. Cinematography is wonderful and shots of the explosions and shootings are done like in Hollywood films.

I had read about some debate about the explicit sexual scenes between Saif and Kareena, and indeed there is one such sequence. I think that it is great that Kareena had the strength to do this scene, since in India, all things related to sexuality are usually shrouded in hypocracy. With a clever use of “Rasiya” song in the background, the scene communicates an underlying sense of danger and pathos, even while stretching the limits of sexual moments shown in Indian films.

At the end of the film, from so many scenes, the images of Kareena remain with me. Like the closing image of the film with the unshed tears in her eyes!

Loops in screenplay: Yet there were times, that I felt like laughing in the film, because of its screenplay - it was all a bit childish and unbelievable. Like the reporter deciding to become a part of the terrorist group or the way American policemen were so easily outsmarted by a lone terrorist or the way FBI is shown  as clueless, running in circles.

After watching scores of Hollywood dramas about the global reach of American secret services, it does seem different to see them as bumbling idiots. The terrorist can run away from scenes of shootings, even with a bullet in his chest, without the police being able to do anything. May be, as a sign of Indo-American friendship, we can send some sniffer dogs from India to the New York Police department.

Avantika (Kareen Kapoor), the Hindu ladylove of the terrorist, wakes up night to call the reporter, but when she goes to a supermarket with her Appa, why she can’t stop a policeman or a security service person to say that the lady accompanying her is her jailor? And when the old lady is whisked away, she can run to the reporter to cry and plead to him for saving her, but can’t just walk away? Or, even when she knows that men are carrying bombs (while she is unaware that her own bag has one bomb), why can’t she talk to persons in the train or security at train station? If at least they had shown that Appa was carrying a gun and had threatened to kill her, her silence could have looked more believable (Appa does carry a gun but Avantika does not know about it).

So while the film looks and sounds good, if you think about the story, it does seem full of loopholes and not very credible.

Film’s message about Muslims: I had read in some reviews that the film tries to be neutral and explain both the sides, and the reasons of anger among Muslims. However, I found the film’s depiction of Muslims a bit problematic. I felt that the film explains the apparent reasons given by fundamentalists to justify themselves, but it ignores the point of view of the silent majority of Muslims.

Almost all Muslims in the film are shown to be sympathatic towards terrorism and justify it by the American and European greed and barbarism. The only “good” Muslim in the film is the reporter Riyaaz Masud (Vivek Oberoi) along with his girl friend, but even he can’t articulate himself when his father talks about the superiority of religion. His fight seems more motivated by feelings of personal revenge because of death of his lady love in a bomb explosion, rather than from his beliefs.

Reporter’s father (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) clarifies that “for Muslims religion comes first” and the terrorist mastermind (Om Puri) says, “No American is ready to sacrifice himself for his God, as Muslims can do”.

It is true that the Muslim characters shown in the film are limited and the film does not really show the views of other Muslims, who do not believe in terrorism. But, in my opinion, it would have helped to show some Muslims who could articulate that religion is not more important than their country and that no matter what, killing innocents can’t be ever justifed.

Thus the film is a story of a few persons, and can’t be generalised to all Muslims. But at the same time, the film’s take-home message seems to be: you can’t really rely on Muslims. Here some examples of how this message is given in the film:

One of the women in the house is murdered at home and her body is still lying in the basement. Her husband complains about the bad smell, but other ladies in the house can’t smell it and go on with their daily khanas and teas. The message is that Muslim women are all afraid and submissive or die-hard fanatics themselves.

There is a university professor, who helps to get a job as a university professor to a Pakistani terrorist in St. Stephen’s college in Delhi. This same kindly looking professor, who likes to spend hours playing chess in the teachers’ room in the college, happily goes to guard an old man in his house to help the terrorists and smiling threatens to “take care of him”. The message is that even cultured and peaceful persons, are in reality hidden terrorists.

And the Pakistani terrorist, is himself talking about the peace messages in holy Kuraan and about promoting a dialogue among university students about Islam. At the same time, he happily shoots American Policemen and unarmed civilians in his free time. He doesn’t feel pain and can stitch the wound on his chest without fainting. But The brutal assassin has a saving grace, in spite of himself, he is in love with his Hindu wife and in the end, he forgets his bombing mission and kurbaans (sacrifices) himself for his love.

There is the elderly woman (Kiran Kher), wife of the terrorist mastermind. She does not have any qualms in putting a gun on the head of pregnant woman who calls her Appa (elder sister) and who has been living in her care for some days, because “no one is really innocent” and “it is all justified by the American bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq”. Why couldn’t she carry the purse with the bomb herself, you may ask, it would have achieved the same end, without risking to have it on a person who is likely to run if she gets a chance?

When the film finished, I felt that its over-riding message was that no Muslim can be really against terrorism, that you can’t even believe those Muslims who talk about peace and against terrorism. It is great pity that the film gives such a message.

The unrepresented Muslim: On yesterday’s International Herald Tribune, there was an article of Tariq Ahmed, a doctor of Pakistani origin, working in Brigham (USA) titled “The price of being born a Muslim”, where he has written:

The reality is that the vast majority of Muslims are secular. We do not pray five times a day, do not read Koran and have not spent much time inside a mosque. We only turn to Islam when a child is born, someone gets married or someone dies. ... We certainly have no interest in participating in civilizational battles. We are in fact loathed by religious minority. And yet we have no clear voice, no representation and no one in the Western world appears to be aware of our existence. Every time a terrorist attack occurs, we suffer the most.

I feel that there is need to represent these persons in film and to help express their point of view.

For majority of people in the world, it does not matter if they are Hindus, Christians, Jews or Muslims, religions and religious books are important in certain moments of their lives, but their lives are not limited by what these books say or do not say. They do not follow everything said by those who claim to be their religious leaders. Kurbaan does not say much on behalf of these persons.