Snakes, Merchants & Emigrants - Gun Island

Finally, I have read Amitabh Ghosh’s latest book “Gun Island” (Penguin, 2019). This book can be looked at different levels – as the exploration of an old Bengali fable, as a modern fable on emigration, as a cry of alarm about the looming environmental catastrophe, as an understanding of ancient links between India and Venice/Venetian republic in northern Italy, as a book about books, and probably many more.

For me personally, this book’s theme has a special resonance because it touches on the worlds which I inhabit – that of India, from where I come, and of Venice, where I live; and those of emigrants and refugees, especially those coming here from the Indian subcontinent, with whom I identify and sometimes work as a volunteer.

At one level, I was a little disappointed while reading this book because it lacked the immersive imagined worlds which Ghosh can create with his words. It is a fable and thus, chance, destiny and miracles play a disproportionate role in moving and shaping the story and these elements do not need to be always plausible. At another level, I was fascinated by its complexity in bringing together so many themes, and now after finishing reading it, I keep on thinking about them and discovering new angles and inter-connections to them.

Themes of the Book

Its themes are like rivers, sometimes flowing in parallel, sometimes inter-mixing and sometimes changing their course as the story moves, from Sundarbans in India, to Venice and then finally to Sicily. Some of them take centre-stage for some time, only to go underground for long tracts, waiting for another opportunity to emerge. The book has a big canvass but most of the time, it skims on its surface and does not delve deeper.

The book is equally divided into 2 parts - the first part is based inIndia, in Kolkata and the second, in Italy and mostly in Venice.

Book summary: Dinanath Dutta or Dino, as his Italian friend Cinta (Giacinta) calls him, is a solitary ageing dealer of rare books from USA and is the narrator of the book. Back to his home-town Kolkata for a holiday, he encounters people from “The hungry Tide”, Ghosh’s book about river dolphins in Sundarbans, which had come out 16 years ago in 2004. Piya, the young Indo-American researcher working on the river-dolphins from that book, is now older but still single and the love-story between DN and Piya is a tiny river in the book, which emerges in the beginning and then disappears, only to re-emerge and conclude happily at the end.

Apart from “The hungry tide”, the book also makes some references to the slave trade ships and the ship-journeys of indentured workers from India, the subject of Ghosh’s recent Ibis trilogy, starting with “The Sea of Poppies”.

The book also makes different references to other authors and their books, especially to the literary world of Italian author Emilio Salgari, known for his books about exotic India of thugs, princesses and pirates, some of which were centred around Sundarbans and were used for creating some TV serials such as Sandokan in the 1970s. Today Salgari is not very popular among children in Italy, but his books were a major influence till about 30-40 years ago, in shaping popular ideas in about India.

The legend of “Banduki Saudagar” linked with a shrine in Sundarbans, is the seed of the book, which guides the whole story. It brings out surprising connections between India and the merchants of the Venetian republic in 17th-18th centuries. The same legend brings DN to Venice, the Banduki (gun) island, where he fortuitously meets the friends he had met in Sundarbans – Tipu, the son of the boatman from “The Hungry Tide” and Rafi, the son of the care-taker of the shrine in the Sundarbans, along with other emigrants from Bangladesh.

The final part of the book, where Ghosh gives a historical overview of peoples’ movements across the world, starting from the millions of persons from villages and towns taken by the colonial masters and transplanted in far-away lands, and links it with today’s emigrants who start similar life-threatening journeys in search for a better life, is my favourite part of this book. Let me quote a few brief passages from this part: 

Yet there was a vital difference – the system of indentured labour, like chattel slavery before it, had always been managed and controlled by European imperial powers. The coolies often had no idea of where they were going or of the conditions that awaited them there; nor did they know much about the laws and regulations that governed their destiny. ...But all of that was now completely reversed.Rafi, Tipu and their fellow migrants had launched their own journeys, just as I had, long before them; as with me, their travels had been enabled by their own networks, and they, like me, were completely conversant with the laws and regulations of the countries they were heading to. Instead, it was the countries of the West that now knew very little about the people who were flocking towards them. ...I saw now why the angry young men on the boats around us were so afraid of that derelict refugee boat: that tiny vessel represented the overturning of a centuries-old project that had been essential to the shaping of Europe. Beginning with the early days of chattel slavery, the European imperial powers had launched upon the greatest and most cruel experiment in planetary remaking that history has ever known: in the service of commerce they had transported people between continents on an almost unimaginable scale, ultimately changing the demographic profile of the entire planet. But even as they were repopulating other continents they had always tried to preserve the whiteness of their own metropolitan territories in Europe.

Few Comments: Ghosh is very eloquent in this part in presenting today's emigration as a kind of retribution of the colonial plundering of the world. However, I am not sure if real-life works like that. Italy was not much of an imperial power, except for a brief spell in Abyssinia (today's Ethiopia-Eritrea). I believe that "Preservation of Whiteness" is not enough to explain the fear of immigrants among the young men in Italy as proposed by Ghosh in his book, it is much more complex and has also to do with religion, culture, language and social norms.

I also think that it is not the young men, as the main demographic group, who are afraid of emigrants. Young people mix much more with persons of other cultures. Instead, it is the older-age groups including the elderly persons, who are more afraid of emigrants and of the changing landscapes of their towns and squares. 

Different episodes of the book ask you to believe in supernatural forces shaping the world, including the old fable of Banduki Saudagar inter-mixed with the Manasa Devi legend from north-east of India. At times, I found that a bit jarring.

The final conclusion of the book seems to be written for a Hollywood film with an Ethiopian woman standing tall in a little boat full of a ragtag bunch of emigrants, lit by a green fluorescence, with dancing dolphins and whales and a sky full of thousands of migrating birds.

Thunderstorms, islands getting submerged in the sea, tropical spiders in Venetian homes and shipworms eating the wooden base on which Venice is standing, strange and extreme weather events including the high tides which drown Venice frequently, dying dolphins and whales, sea-monsters in the Venice lagoon, all make an appearance in the book to underline the dangers of climate change.

Other Aspects of Illegal Emigration

The book touches on some uncomfortable aspects of illegal emigration, including the links with different branches of mafia of different countries which controls this traffic, but mostly it glosses over these aspects. The network which facilitates this traffic and lures unsuspecting young men (and some women, mainly from Africa) full of dreams, who take loans and sell their properties, to embark on a journey that takes years of their lives, often including passages during which they are forced into slave labour or even sexual labour and sometimes ends in drugs, alcoholism or prisons, is seen only in brief glimpses.

"Without the guys from Bangladesh, Venice won’t survive, because they do everything which local Italians don’t do", the book explains. The other side of this story is that emigrants can be asked to work with one third of the minimum salary, without a proper social security cover and to do long shifts, all conditions which locals do not accept and emigrants are too weak to resist.

Often the families of these immigrants think that they are living in Europe and imagine the European lives they see on TV and films, and keep on asking for money and other things from their sons and brothers. A few of them do find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but for almost all of them, the dream of that pot of gold extracts a heavy price, as shown through the words of "Palash" in this book, who hides behind a pseudonym in the book:

It’s impossible for me to go back now. My family still does not know that I dropped out of university and am now scraping by on the streets. My parents would not be able to imagine that a son of theirs was doing that kind of work. They think I’m still a student going to lectures and writing papers, at my university. If I tell them the truth now I would have to admit that I had been lying all along; that they were right to tell me not to go abroad; that I had made a terrible mistake and would have done better to listen to their advice. I would have to acknowledge that in chasing a dream I destroyed my life.
There is another dimension of emigration which is mostly left untouched in the book – it is that of a conservative version of Islam among a percentage of emigrants and the backlash that it provokes, especially in small towns and communities in Europe and its perceived links with radical Islam. Ghosh touches on it only briefly through a clumsy air-travel scene, where DN's agitation due to vision of snakes and the accidental switching on of an “Allah” song sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan leads to panic among the passengers, thinking that he is a terrorist.

Conclusions

Quality of Story Telling in Gun Island: I think that this book Gun Island is substantially different from Ghosh’s earlier works. He has a way with his words, and this book also gives him plenty of opportunities to show-off those word-building skills, to weave unexpected inter-connections. However, that pleasure of reading is hampered by feelings of disbelief because of too many coincidences, convenient dreams and visions and some cheesy miracles which dot the whole book. While reading it, I wondered if he has become lazier as a writer or does he let himself be guided too much by his concerns and activism for the climate?

Books' Characters: Compared to his earlier books, especially the ones from the Ibis trilogy, which had a whole bunch of characters that I had liked, I did not find any such character in this book. For me, both DN and Piya were kind of colourless persons. Tipu and Rafi were a bit more alive, but were difficult to identify with. Even the character of Cinta was, at times, a bit of a caricature.

I know that Ghosh has been campaigning over the past few years for greater awareness and action on the issue of climate change. Even in this book, climate change is a key force shaping the events. Yet, I felt that by bringing in the fables, supernatural forces and miracles, he seems to be saying that we don’t need to worry about the climate change and the earth or the nature will do something to right this situation – I am not sure if he actually wanted to give this message.

To conclude, for me Ghosh is one of the best story-tellers of our times. With that kind of placement on a high pedestal, for me reading this book was not as fulfilling as his previous works.

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Secularism & Inter-Religious Harmony

A few months ago, I was in Kochi in south India, where I met a guy involved in a project of cultural mapping of Fort Kochi, which looked at how people from different parts of India, as well as persons coming from other countries had settled here over a period of centuries. It mapped their residential areas, heritage sites and worship places. It was a very interesting discussion.

Afterwards, thinking about that discussion made me ask myself – 

(1) What kind of norms and rules they had in ancient India which guided the settling-down of different outside communities, to ensure harmony with the pre-existing communities already living there?

(2) Another question in my mind was – how were those old Indian norms and rules different from the ideas of secularism today?

My questions reflected the situation in Europe, where we are seeing a kind of popular backlash against immigrants and refugees. Thus, I was asking myself, can there be something we can learn from the experiences of inter-religious harmony in India?

This post is a reflection on the theme of secularism and inter-religious harmony.

Ideas of Inter-Religious Harmony & Secularism

There are some fundamental differences between the concepts of inter-religious harmony and secularism. Inter-religious harmony is about how different groups live together while secularism is a state policy. However, the two concepts are inter-related and influence each other.

Experiences of inter-religious harmony depend upon how the different groups co-exist together in the community. The old proverb, "Live in Rome like the Romans do", indicated the ideals about inter-religious harmony in the west. We don't have similar proverbs in India, becaue it was and is guided by philosophies that accepts a diversity of beliefs.

The western ideas of secularism were defined at the time of theocratic state, when the Christian church held both the state and the religious powers. Secularism's goal was to separate the religious powers from the state powers. However, today most discussions about secularism are about how the Governments deal with and treat persons of different cultures & religions among their populations. These ideas developed in the West, are today seen as universal by a lot of persons, also in India.

I feel that these two ways of thinking, the traditional ideas in India and pagan cultures about inter-religious harmony and those of the secularism, are different though we do not have a clear understanding about those differences. For example, I think that the ideas of secularism are idealistic, they are about how progressive persons would like to see multi-religious societies and are focused more on safeguarding the rights of minorities, which are seen as weak and oppressed. On the other hand, the ideas of inter-religious harmony are more pragmatic and focus on a balance of powers between the groups, in which the majorities often dominate but are respectful of the minorities.

I also think that today most well-educated persons including academics, thinkers, writers and progressives, look at events in our societies mainly through the prism of secularism. On the other hand, most ordinary persons, continue to use the lens of inter-religious harmony. In the communities, there can be a mismatch between the two.

Understanding the Norms of Inter-Religious Harmony in India

The first Christian and Jew Communities came and settled near the coastal areas of south India about 2000 years ago. When Islam arrived in the middle-east, other migrants like Parsi, Baha'i and Armenians arrived in India. Over the centuries, different waves of immigrants from India and abroad also arrived and settled here. Most of these communities prospered and with time, their numbers increased. Till a couple of decades ago, this was a dominant narrative about India, which accepted that the Indic religions were open to people of other religions and welcomed them.

During the recent years, gradually the openess and welcoming of Indic religions has been replaced with dominent narratives about "militant and violent Hinduism", especially in relation to the relations with Muslims. I think that this change in narratives does not express a real change about the way Indic religions look at different religions but has other origins.

I believe that it will be useful to understand the different ways in which the Indic religions dealt with refugees arriving in India, who belonged to other religions.

For example - what kind of rules were made by the local kings to accept the persons belonging to different cultural and religious communities, to ensure religious harmony? What do accounts of foreign visitors to India over the centuries tell us about this theme?

How are those older norms and rules, similar to and different from the ideas of secularism dominant today? I searched online but, apart from some generic mentions of Ashoka’s edict and Akbar’s rule, I could not find any academic papers or research work that looked at and analysed the older norms and rules to foster inter-religious harmony in India.

Learning from Personal Experiences of Religious Harmony

I grew up in a multi-religious environment with the idea that our religions were an opportunity to have fun and enjoy the different customs & festivals. On Eid day, our Muslim neighbours prepared sweet sewaiyan (vermicelli) and brought to us, just like on Deewali and Holi, we shared our sweets with them. On the Christmas eve, I accompanied a friend to the mid-night mass in the cathedral, while he was equally enthusiastic about playing with the colours of Holi. On the Gurupurab day, all of us woke up early to get a glass of Kachi lassi from the processions of the Sikhs.

From those experiences what lessons I can draw regarding inter-religious harmony? I think that the first lesson would be that we can have our own religious beliefs but we must have equal respect for other people to have different beliefs - thus reciprocal or mutual respect is fundamental in ensuring harmony. One sided respect, expecting others to respect your ideas and insisting that only your ideas are correct and must be applied universally does not lead to harmony. This mutual respect should be explicit - for example, it can be expressed by participating in each other's special moments such as festivals.

There are only a few countries in the world which have long histories of multi-religious societies. India is one of them where today the religious minorities are made of more than 150 million persons. Jerusalem is another city that comes to mind, which has a significant population of persons of different religions, though it has faced much greater religious strife.

The Ideas of Secularism

I think that secularism is interpreted very differently from the ideas of religious harmony that I had learned. Often, it means special protection of minorities.

I find some ideas of secularism a little problematic. For example, many believe that secularism means recognising that we all belong to different religions and we should take care to not to offend the persons of other religions by talking about our religious customs and festivals. So, you are not supposed to say “Happy Christmas” to non-Christians or “Eid Mubarak” to non-Muslims. You are not supposed to have Christmas trees in public places and are supposed to make only generic greetings like “Seasons’ greetings” to persons of other religions. I think that this way of thinking, it says that my religious identity is fragile and can be easily offended if any ideas of other religions come near me.

I think that a part of the populist backlash is because of the way some such secularist ideas have been perceived by people. Often when someone does not agree with any of these ideas, there are no spaces for dialogue and discussion as these persons insist that the only acceptable way to live is their way.

I don’t think that the cultural and religious majorities can be silenced by impositions, especially if they perceive them as unjust. Rather, it is a recipe for building rage, which can also explode in backlashes and violence. A process of open dialogue and debates around norms for inter-religious harmony are needed.

Personally, I also feel that we need to study the explicit and implicit traditional norms and rules of communities which govern co-existence of persons of different cultures and religions. It is possible that some of these norms and rules would be discriminatory, and there needs to be a discussion about them with communities. Using secularism as an ideology for protection of minorities can be imposed by law but it will not lead to inter-religious harmony.

Conclusions

I have to confess that my ideas on this subject are not very clear. This post is my way of starting a personal reflection on this theme. They are very much influenced by my growing up surrounded by persons of different religions in India, while the secular concerns dominating many of the discussions seem to me like playing games of identity-victimhood.

The ideas of secularism are relatively new while for centuries people of different cultures and religions have inter-mingled and lived together. India has many examples of inter-religious harmony going back to hundreds of years. We should not ignore the lessons from those experiences. Secularism should not become a way to protect the fundamentalist and ortodox ideas of some.

I believe that there is a need for serious studies to understand the kind of strategies used in different epochs in India and in other parts of the world, that allowed long periods of inter-religious harmony and compare them with the modern ideas of secularism, to look at their differences, similarities, challenges and advantages. Such a critical dialogue will be critical for mixing of people in the globalised world.

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Note: The pictures used with this post are from an exhibition of globes in old Jerusalem, a place where Jews, Christians, Muslims and Baha'i have their holy land and where inter-religious harmony faces a lot of challenges.

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#interreligiousharmony #secularism #india #jerusalem #secularism 

Religions and human rights

My question was: can the countries that place their highest value on sharing of common religious beliefs, create "just societies"? My conclusion is that countries that choose specific religious beliefs to guide their national laws are inherently unjust. Injustice is part of their DNA. Let me explain why.

Some years ago I had read an interview of American singer Maxwell, around the time when he had won a Grammy award for his album "Black Summers night". The interviewer had asked Maxwell about the influence of his heritage on his music. Maxwell, son of a Haitian mother and a Puerto Rican father, who had grown up singing in a church choir in New York, had answered, "Your heritage is your heritage, but your soul is truly what you are."

People, not just those who do not know us, but sometimes even our friends, tend to slot us into spaces on the basis of where we come from - our religion, our country of origin, our family, our education. Sometimes we also slot ourselves in those spaces, probably because it is convenient or just a habit. Sometimes we draw walls around our spaces, finding comfort in that which is familiar, and excluding the unfamiliar.

May be similar beliefs lead to creating countries only for those who share similar religions. They choose a specific religion in their constitutions. I reflected on this issue during my recent visit to Israel and Palestine.

The contradictions of Israeli state

The foundations of a Jewish state in Palestine were laid in the 19th century to escape persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia. Israel was created as a country in 1948 from what was the British colony of the "Mandatory Palestine". The holocaust under the Nazi Germany, during which millions of persons were killed, had created some international support for Jews to create their homeland. The creation of Israel had pushed communities of Palestinians living in that part of land, to the south.

Over the decades since its creation, Israel has gone through different wars, and has continued to push Palestinians in ever-decreasing pieces of lands, occupying them and controlling them.

Travelling in Israel-Palestine, it is not always easy to understand the boundaries of where one finishes and the other starts. I encountered different groups of Palestinians, each dealing with different levels of inequalities, barriers and difficulties under the Israeli occupation/control - the Arab-Israelis with Israeli passports, the Arab residents of Jerusalem, the Palestinians of West Bank and the worse affected, the Palestinians of Gaza Strip. I also talked to some persons working with Bedouins in Israel-Palestine.

I experienced some of these difficulties and humiliations that Palestinians experience when I crossed the Israeli check-points leading into Palestinian areas.

In many ways, Israel is a liberal society - groups that often face discrimination and exclusion in neighbouring countries including the women and the sexual minorities, seem to enjoy more liberties in Israel. Yet, at the same time, it is an unjust society in the way it treats Palestinians.

In the end, my conclusion was that one reason why Israel violates the dignity of every day lives of Palestinians is because it is a religious state. As long as Israel is a Jewish country, it will be unjust towards Palestinians and Bedouins, because injustice (giving preference to the Jewish people compared to persons of other religions) is part of its constitution that is guided by its fundamental idea of being a homeland for the Jews.

Example of Pakistan

I found an echo to my thoughts from an article by Kunwar K. Shahid in The Friday Times about the situation of minorities in Pakistan, another country created on the basis of religion:

It is very important for Pakistani Muslims (97 percent of the population) to differentiate themselves from Hindus. After all it’s precisely this difference that became our state’s raison d’etre in 1947. And differentiating is the first step en route to the development of hatred that eventually inflates into bigotry...

However, what needs to be understood and underscored here is that an Indian Hindu manifesting communal bigotry contradicts the ‘idea’ of India, while a Pakistani Muslim by doing so conforms to the ‘idea’ of Pakistan. Opposition to Hindus, and antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, form the founding principle of Pakistan...

Religions in the constitutions

Israel or Pakistan are not alone in having constitutions that justify and legalize discriminations - it is true for all countries that choose a specific religion to guide their laws. This is true for countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia where constitutions are based on Islam. It is true for countries like Russia, Uganda, South Sudan, and some countries of Latin America, where some laws such as those related to sexuality, marriage and abortion, are strongly influenced by Christian conservatives. In Myanmar and Sri Lanka, officially there is no state religion but the state shows preference for Buddhism and discriminates against persons of other religions.

In European countries like Italy and Ireland, though they are officially secular, in practice, many laws influencing daily lives continue to be influenced by Christian religious ideas. For example, the laws regarding abortion in Ireland. However, most European countries have lot of debates and more open discussions about the role of religions in societies and thus, laws that favour one religion, can be and are increasingly questioned. Thus, Spain, which also had laws strongly influenced by Christianity, has changed many of them.

It is true that culture, religion and traditions are all interlinked. Thus, it is not easy to separate them. For example, there have been discussions in UK about the Christmas lights and celebrations, as being signs of cultural domination of Christian ideas. Similarly there have been discussions in Italy about the presence of Christian crosses and the mandatory one hour for catholic religious classes in the government schools. Recently, during a visit in Cambridge, I was struck by the close links between the different university institutions and the Christian church.

However, such open discussions and acceptance of criticisms are exceptions because usually religions do not accept debate or dissent about what they consider as their fundamental principles.

Religions in the Indian constitution

In India, on the other hand, persons can choose between civil and religious laws. Paradoxically, any calls to end the discriminations and human rights violations inherent in the religious "personal" laws in India are considered as "communal" or against the rights of the religious minorities. Recently, the electoral victory of conservatives has provoked some debates about personal versus a common civil law.

For example, in a recent article, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, asked the new prime minister to ignore "the old and hackneyed demand for a Uniform Civil Code". He justified it by the argument that has been used often in India, that having one common law for all citizens will threaten the minorities.

However, the personal laws of different religions including Hindus, Muslims and Christians, do discriminate - for example, against women or sexual minorities. In another recent article, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, looking at the concepts of "federation of communities" and "zones of individual freedoms" feels that India by focusing on "federation of communities" where group identities are given more importance (through personal laws as well as many other practices), has moved away from the founding ideas of Indian constitution.

It is true that in India, people can choose the civil law but I think that such decisions are easier for educated and better off persons while, the socially disadvantaged groups find themselves mired in "personal" laws. Apart from "not hurting the feelings of the minorities", I have yet to read convincing arguments about how different religious-based laws for different groups of persons are more respectful of the human rights and equality of people.

Changing the world

When countries decide that their first criteria of belonging is going to be their religion, they do not see the diversities in their own religions. I do not know of any religion that is not divided into sects and where persons of different sects do not think that only they are the true followers of their religion. Invariably, some sects assume power and slowly over a period of time, start persecuting their coreligionists from other sects.

When we are part of a majority or powerful group, it is difficult for us to understand what does it mean to belong to a minority group. People from the minorities, especially the conservatives, also create their own power-bases in this system. Thus, changing the constitutions of countries based on religions is never easy.

In my opinion, the U.N. declaration of human rights sums up the best ideas of different religions. I feel that in today's world, the human rights declaration should be the guiding principle of all national constitutions. This is even more important in multi-religious countries like India, where periodically, conservatives of different religions take centre-stage and dictate conditions that go against the principles of human rights and equality of the citizens.

Conclusions

I consider myself as a deeply spiritual person. Growing up and living in an increasingly multi-religious family, it is easy for me to know and respect different religions. However, I feel that our religions belong to our personal spaces. I believe that imposing the ideas of any one religion on the societies through constitutions based on sacred books like Talmud, Koran, Granth sahib, Bible, Ramayan or Manu Smriti, leads to violations of our human rights and conflicts.

Going back to Maxwell's words I also believe that our heritage is just a heritage, but our souls are truly who we are. And, we can't let our souls be fenced in by religions dogmas - at least not in our constitutions. Let religions remain personal choices.

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The lakeside in Geneva (Switzerland) is a popular site for exhibitions on issues related to human rights. Here are some images from those exhibitions.

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Changing traditions

History, changing local contexts and forces of globalization impact on how we look at our traditions and how we decide to safeguard them. I am remembering some of my travels in different parts of the world to reflect on this theme. In the first part of this post, I had focused on "Theme-parkification", where traditions are becoming part of the new market culture, from a journey in China. This post focuses on my journeys in two Portuguese speaking countries - Brazil and Mozambique.

The Bahaiana culture

Bahia state in north-east of Brazil is known for its beautiful sea coast and relaxed fun-loving people. Bahia was one of the areas which received highest number of slaves brought from Africa. Those slaves had rebelled against the colonial masters and sown the seeds of Brazilian independence from Portugal.

I want to focus on some aspects of traditional culture in Bahia, which are interlinked. The first is about the particular traditional dresses worn by Bahia women, mainly of African origin. I think that these costumes are a synthesis of African and Colonial traditions, probably influenced by cultures of other Portuguese colonies such as those in Goa and Macao.

The picture below shows two young women wearing the traditional Bahaiana dresses in a restaurant of Salvador de Bahia, that makes traditional Bahia food. Thus, the Bahaiana traditional culture is used as hook to attract tourists and also to underline the specific food served in the restaurant.

However, the Bahaiana culture is very much alive, outside the tourist restaurants - if you take a walk along the sea coast, you can still women wearing their traditional attires, selling food and other goods along the roadside.

The next image has a group of kids from poor communities in Amazon region in Para state of Brazil, practicing Capoeira. They explain it as a martial art that traces its roots in Africa and came to Brazil with the slaves. However, I am not sure if in Africa today there is something similar to Capoeira.

Perhaps these were some kinds of dances for men that became more complicated and refined among the descendants of African slaves, in some way moulded by the colonizers?

The third image is from a lake park in Salvador de Bahia and has statues of Orisha deities that represents the syncretism between ancient Yoruban traditions of the slaves brought from West Africa and Christianity of the European colonizers.

The way these two traditions, Yoruban and Christian, have met to give rise to different new cultural and religious traditions in different parts of south and central America and Caribbean is fascinating and underlines the way different cultures meet and change each other over periods of hundreds or thousands of years. It certainly makes me wonder about the way our own traditions and religions are evolving through our encounters with others in the virtual spaces of internet.

Reclaiming dignity of native cultures

The next three images are also from Brazil, from a primary school in the old town of Goias Velho. Max, one of the key figures behind this school, believes that the culture of European colonizers along with the contemporary American pop culture today dominates among majority of Brazilians and it denigrates the indigenous people (Amerindians) and the descendants of former African slaves.

Thus, in the school, they have different activities for the children to know and value the traditions of Amerindians and black Africans. "Feel proud of the African and Amerindian bloods that we all carry, and keep alive that part of your culture", is the aim of such activities shown in these images.

With some differences, I think that the same arguments can be made for dominating and minority cultures and traditions in different parts of the world - between the Han and minority communities in China, between English speakers and Hindi speakers in India, between upper caste/class persons and dalit/tribal persons. Sometimes, while a group of persons is made to feel inferior, they themselves discriminate against others, as between Hindi speakers and Bhojpuri or Maithili speakers in north India.

Traditions of the colonized

The next two images are from Espungabeira from Manica province in Mozambique (Africa). A group of volunteer women working with persons infected with HIV (AIDS), some of them had HIV positive persons in their families, were dancing and then some of them, enacted a community-theatre piece for creating awareness about AIDS risks and treatment.

While watching them I was wondering how much of the traditions and cultures of their ancestors, before the Europeans had occupied their lands, changed their crops, clothes and religions, were still alive in their gestures and sounds.

People have already written about the "traditional clothes" worn by the women in Africa - a tradition that is not so old and has links with the colonial past, when clothes from Indian or Indonesian colonies were brought to the African continent.

Conclusions

I feel that colonization in the 17th-20th centuries  almost completely decimated native people of Americas but still some information about their precolonial cultures and traditions were documented and safeguarded.

In north Africa and Asia, in countries like Egypt, India, Indonesia and China, the people were too many and their cultures and traditions were more deeply rooted, and thus the impact of colonial rules was more limited. Therefore these cultures and traditions have survived almost intact though there were some colonial influences that have persisted.

On the other hand, it seems that in Africa the subjugation of peoples and obliteration of their traditions and cultures was more complete, perhaps because they were still largely oral. I got a similar feeling of a deeper destruction of ancient traditions and cultures even in the Philippines.

However, I also feel that compared to the past, the technological revolutions of this century with the spread of mall and brands culture spearheaded by industries, satellite TV and encounters in the virtual web-space, will have an even more pervasive impact on our traditions, cultures, food, languages, clothes and religions in the coming decades.

Let me conclude this reflection with an image of a folk-dancer from India, whose dance was not part of a cultural show for the tourists, but it was a part of a social-cultural event for the local community.

 I feel that increasingly in future, such opportunities of expressing traditions will become rarer, while tourist or commercial expression of cultures will take precedence, especially in the cities!

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Exotic tribals - Theme-parkification of traditions

As our cities become clones of other cities with similar looking sky-scrappers and malls, some times during our travels we look for "authentic experiences". This photo-essay is the first part of brief stories about the influences of a globalizing world on cultures. I feel that increasingly, we are making people a part of a "theme-park" experience, rather than engaging with them.

Introduction

The image above introduces some of the ideas that came to my mind when I started thinking about this subject. This picture was taken at Dilli Haat in Delhi (India), an "artificial village market" in the city. There you find city persons and tourists looking at the shops. And then you have crafts-persons from different parts of India who come here to exhibit and sell their work. You also have some persons who serve or entertain the visitors. Like those in the picture above, who wear "traditional" dresses and play "traditional" instruments.

They are acting a part that may not be completely false - those turbans, dresses, drums and been (the wind-instrument played by the "snake charmer"), may also be part of their "real" lives. These are only jazzed up with colours and accessories that highlight their exoticness.

Thus, Dilli Haat gives you an artificial "authentic" experience, in which make-believe and reality are mixed and stirred together. The aim of Dilli Haat is noble - to provide a market for humble crafts-persons. It markets this aim by making it a "village theme park" experience.

This is the area that I am exploring in this post by referring to some of my travel experiences about changing traditions and our search for our roots. I do not wish to give value judgements about this in terms of right or wrong. Rather, it is just a way of looking back at few episodes from my travels around the world. And I want to start this reflection with a travel experience from China in 2007.

Yunnan, China 2007

I went to Yunnan province in south-west part of China for the first time in 1989. At that time, Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, was a typical small provincial town with old houses, narrow streets and chaotic traffic, full of horse and cattle driven carriages. I don't remember seeing any tourists during that travel.

The last time when I was in Kunming in 2010, I was staying in a hotel room on the 24th floor in a city that seemed to have been made completely new. The roads were wide, the traffic smooth, the houses new. My friends had taken me around on a nostalgia trip to show me some of the old offices - the only problem was that those old places did not look like anything in my memories.

During 1960-80s, the national government in China frowned on any showing off of differences and traditions by the ethnic minorities. Thus, minority ethnic groups were supposed to dress and speak exactly like other Chinese. During the years of Mao's cultural revolution, often their traditional dresses, music instruments, temples, sculptures, etc. were taken away and destroyed.

During the 1990s, as China opened and its economy took off, slowly minority ethnic groups regained the freedom to express their specific cultures and traditions. To boost tourism, and probably to fill the void created by cultureless sameness, people were being dressed in ethnic costumes to add colours and folklore to places and events. Many of the old temples were reopened and their some times, their sculptures were found and replaced.

With this background information, now let me move to some of my experiences about traditions, changing cultures and authenticity, from that 2007 journey when, I had visited different small towns and many "minority areas". Yunnan is home to a big number of minority ethnic groups.

The next two images are from a restaurant in Kunming, where while you eat, there is a show of ethnic dances. This first image is of two young persons who were wearing traditional ethnic minority dresses and were standing outside the restaurant to attract tourists and to welcome the guests.

Often, persons wearing exotic dresses are used in this way in tourist places all over the world to attract and invite tourists. However, over the years, my impression in Yunnan has been that these persons seem to have become more self-confident. Probably for many of them this is a temporary work, and most of them are studying or working for better careers.

I think that most of them continue to have their roots in their original clans/groups in their villages. However, increasingly they are not wearing such exotic looking dresses in their daily lives, except for some special occasions. Thus, the image they present is for tourists and not the authentic representation of their lives in their ethnic groups.

The next picture is from one of the dances inside that restaurant. This dance had guys wearing cowboy hats from the American western movies.

Wearing cowboy hats is another sign of jazzing up the exoticness for tourists (mostly Chinese tourists). They are not worried about actual representation of traditions. Thus, new "traditions" may be made all the time. With time, I think that some such new "traditions" can grow roots and become more widespread in their communities.

***
The next image is from Dali, one of the minority ethnic area, not very far from the Chinese border with India. These women working at a souvenir shop, were going out for their lunch break. They were wearing their full traditional jackets and caps like a uniform, all in the same colours.Only the top part of their dresses was traditional, below they had the practical looking pants.

The next image is from Li-Jiang, not very far from Dali. In late 1990s, Li Jiang had a bad earthquake and the old part of the city was destroyed. During the reconstruction of the old city, an artificial Li-Jiang was built - a theme park, with restaurants, discotheques, souvenir and handicrafts shops for tourists. In this Li-Jiang, the local people dressed up in their ethnic dresses and made it an exotic tourist experience.

In Li Jiang, the impression of real-meets-artificial is very strong and their boundaries are completely blurred.

***
Late one night, we reached the city of Xu Chiong. I had visited it earlier in 1996. The doctor who had been my guide and had accompanied me at that time was now the governor of the city. He had treated me like some visiting royalty!

Like Kunming, Xu Chiong had also become unrecognizable - it seemed to be a brand new city made from scratch.

There was a huge square in front of the hotel. On my first night, from the window of my room, I saw a group of people playing traditional music and dancing in that square. Though I was very tired, I was very curious. So I went down to take a closer look at them.

This was not a show for tourists. Their dresses were very different and some people had no traditional costumes. They were not young persons, usually chosen for tourist shows. There was lot of clapping, shouting and some loud singing. Clearly they were having fun. I tried to ask questions through the gestures-language to find out if it was some traditional festival, but they did not understand me.

But they were very welcoming and I joined them and learned the simple steps of their dance. It was an exhilarating experience. The next two images are from that evening.

When I think of that evening, I feel that this was an authentic experience - of real people, rediscovering and celebrating something that they had lost.

***
However, Chu Xiong was also the place where I had another surreal experience in terms of ethnic minority traditions. Near the periphery of the city, a Li-Jiang like new tourist centre had been created, with designer tribal houses, Venice like canals, lights, shops and restaurants. One evening, the governor took me there for dinner. It was kitsch, gaudy, fun and completely artificial.

There I came across some persons who had rented traditional dresses and had portable microphones. Men and women were sitting on the two sides of a Venetian canal, and were singing traditional tribal songs about persons pining for their beloveds, separated from them by a mighty river.

When I asked, I was told that they were enacting an old tribal tragic love-story that was famous in that area. In that story, the boy from another village, sang songs for his beloved from the other side of a river. These persons had probably grown up listening to that story and were rediscovering that tradition in an "artificial" or make-believe version. The were having a lot of fun and could not stop laughing.

The whole episode left me feeling a little dizzy in terms of its meanings of traditions and authenticity!

***
In another small town called Yong Mou-lu near the border with Vietnam, one night, I found another group of ethnic minority persons, dancing for themselves in a small dark city square. The men had their old traditional music instruments and they knew how to play them.

This time, I had translator with me, who helped me to talk to them. They had managed to hide those instruments and saved them from the destruction of cultural revolution. Hidden away, somehow they had also managed to keep their skills of playing those instruments.

***
So then, how do we define authenticity and traditions? Actual tribals living in a remote mountain village, like the lady in the picture below, did not have the jewellery and the costume worn by persons who play tribals in the tourist centres. She is authentic.

As a tourist, if you are travelling, would you really want to visit these places where you will not have services and comforts, and people are not wearing exotic colourful costumes?

***
The last image from the 2007 Yunnan visit is of a newly married couple in Yuan Mou-Lu.

Except in the remote villages in the mountains, almost all the young people in China today get married in very Western looking dresses and ceremonies. Wearing traditional ethnic dresses for the marriage is looked down at.

While looking at them, I felt a little sad that they had lost those traditions. Yet, at the same time, not knowing the language and thus unable to communicate with them, I also felt that some of their traditions may still be alive today, in new forms, especially in their songs and dances.

Conclusions

Today the traditions and cultures are changing faster and at a bigger scale. The changes in the past were rare and slow because interactions with outsiders were few. Now the contexts around us and the historical events force us in different directions.

I think that some of the ethnic minority groups that I had met in south Yunnan, would also have parts of their clans in India and Vietnam across the borders. It could be interesting to look at those clans to see how they have changed in other contexts.

In these reflections, my focus was more on clothes and dances. Languages, customs, rites, religions can be other areas to look at, if we wish to think of traditions and authenticity!

***

Do films influence life?

I am a big fan of Kajol (though I was a greater fan of her mom Tanuja and her aunt, Nutan). Over the years she has given some wonderful performances. I wish she would do more films.

Recently while speaking at an event Kajol said that "If you say one gets influenced watching a character, I think it's foolish. Cinema reflects society, society rarely reflects cinema .. Movies show whatever happens in the society. For instance, if a hero smokes on the screen, it is because 90 percent of the country smokes and not the other way round. It's stupid to say one gets influenced by watching on the screen."

I don't know if the news correctly reported her words, but I do not agree with Kajol here. Perhaps she can't think objectively because she is from the film industry and has biased views.

Films do influence people

I think that films and famous film stars as celebrities are very good at influencing people. If that was not true, why would companies pay millions to make them as their brand ambassadors and even more specifically, pay to have their product placements in the films? Are all marketing persons in the big companies spending their money in films without being sure that their product in the films will not have any impact on public?

From Sadhana cut hair to Rajesh Khanna style kurta to the motorbikes used by the heroes and Shatrughan Sinha and Rajnikanth's way of flipping cigarettes, all have influenced millions of persons. If you have a child at home and you have seen her dancing with the suggestive gestures of a Chikni chameli or a Badnam munni, you know that films influence people and how much!

So how much can the films influence?

I am not saying that actors and films can change the society. If only it was so easy, films could have helped us to stop female infanticide, stop dowry deaths, increase literacy, stop child labour and stop violence against women. A society takes from films the things that fit that society's values, and if it does not agree with certain things, it may not take them.

Yet, even if certain values are not taken by large parts of society, they can still promote role models and give courage to individuals to fight with the system. That is how biopics like "Bhaag milkha bhaag" or films showing independent young women who fight for their rights, inspire young men and women.

Anti-smoking guidelines for films

Kajol's argument was motivated in part by the current national guidelines that impose putting up an anti-smoking warning over the smoking scenes in films. I agree that to see such warnings while you are watching a film is distracting and a little unpleasant.

Most Bollywood films are about unbelievable characters in unbelievable situations, so there getting an intrusive reality check does not make a big difference! But occasionally in a good film, the anti-smoking warning in the middle of the scene breaks the film's spell. It takes away from the film. And this rule shoould be changed.

However, having said that, I think that film fraternity from Bollywood needs to look inside its own soul and and ask itself some honest questions. The most important question that I would like them to ask themselves is - are some Indian film-makers taking money to show smoking scenes in our films? May be not directly but indirectly?

I am asking this question since big tobacco companies did pay film-makers and actors in Hollywood to smoke. A research article on this theme that appeared in British Medical Journal wrote:

"In all, almost 200 actors took part in the cigarette endorsements, including two thirds of the top 50 box office Hollywood stars from the late 1930s through to the 1940s. Among others, actors Clark Gable, Spencer Tracey, Joan Crawford, John Wayne, Bette Davis, Betty Grable and singer Al Jolson all appeared in endorsements for brands, such as Lucky Strike, Old Gold, Chesterfield, and Camel.American Tobacco alone paid the stars who endorsed Lucky Strike cigarettes US$ 218,750 in the late 1930s, equivalent to $3.2 million in today's money. Individual stars earned up to $5,000 per year, equivalent to around $75,000 in today's money...The authors say that smoking in movies is associated with teens and young adults starting to smoke themselves, but its persistent presence in mainstream films is rooted in the mutually beneficial deals between the film and tobacco industries in the 1930s and 1940s".

This image on the left shows models trying different poses of cigarette smoking in practice for a TV ad in 1953 (picture by Peter Stackpole ) because tobacco companies wanted to promote smoking as sexy and desirable for women.

Internet is full of reports explaining how tobacco companies have ruthlessly used marketing and paid "experts" to continue to sell their products that are marketed as "feel good, enjoy life" kind of products.

Over the last decade, slowly developed countries are making it difficult for tobacco companies to expand their markets and increase profits - in many countires, percentage of smokers is decreasing. Thus, these companies have increased their efforts in developing countries. In India, reports talk of more than 100% increase in smokers over the past decade.

If you think of tobacco companies trying all kind of tricks almost 100 years ago to influence Americans, I think that today they must be trying 100 times worse tricks to influence people in developing countries! 

Role of films in not encouraging smoking

Personally I feel that certain kinds of smoking must be completely stopped from showing in films - no young hero or heroine should be shown smoking as part of school life or college life or with friends or as young professionals, where the underlying message is "smoking is cool, it is ok to smoke for having a good time". I think that India's censor board should be really strict on this, because flashing warnings over such scenes are not enough discouragement.

On the other hand, in my opinion, film makers should have their creative liberty to show smoking if people are in older age groups, or are shown as addicts or having problems or as villains or underworld dons. I think that associating smoking with negative things in films will also discourage smoking among youngsters.

However, if films show the young hero or heroine smoking as has happened in some recent films, I don't think that film-makers can justify it by saying "this scene is essential to my story". Rather, I feel that such film-makers may be taking money from cigarette companies, to do their publicity and influence young people.

Conclusions

Contrary to what Kajol says, majority of Indians do not smoke - according to a World Health Organization survey in 2009, around 12% of Indian smoked. However, that still means a large number of illness and death associated with smoking in India.

And film-makers should work with Government to work in ways that do not promote smoking among young people. Smoking by young people shown in films as "feel good, enjoy" kind of activities must stop completely.

On the other hand, smoking is part of life, to ask film makers not to show any scene with smoking is not realistic. The Government needs to stop insisting that while watching the films we get anti-smoking warnings.

Smoking is not cool, it is dead-cool!

***

When Economic Bubbles Burst

Norwegian documentary film When Bubbles Burst (Når boblene brister) by director Hans Petter Moland is about a small town called Vik in Norway that loses its investments, and about their efforts to understand the workings of global economy that led to it. If you are a small investor or a person suffering the impact of global economic crisis, watch this film to understand the issues and to put pressure on your Governments to regulate the banking and financial sectors.

"When Bubbles Burst" will be a part of the International Documentary Film Festival "Mondovisioni" to be held at cinema Kinodromo in Bologna between January to April 2014.

Introduction

The global economic crisis has had a crippling impact on the world's economy since 2008. That crisis is not yet over. It has involved countries like Iceland, Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland. It has resulted in a prolonged period of recession with loss of jobs and closure of factories in different parts of the world.

This crisis was initiated by the crash of American banking systems due to accumulation of bad debts. At that time, there were talks of saving these banks since otherwise the bank-crash would have wiped out the savings of millions of small investors. At the same time, it was said that banking system was rotten with high level of financial speculation, risky investments, junk bonds, and billions of dollars siphoned off in bonuses to the bankers.

At the end Governments had paid millions of dollars' worth of aid to the banks. However, the proposed reforms of the banking system never took place and many of the major international banks continue to behave as if nothing has changed.

For ordinary persons, it is not easy to understand what had happened and what to expect in future. "When the Bubbles Burst" tries to take an in-depth look at the global economic mechanisms to explain this crisis and to pose some future scenarios, by talking to experts like Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Lewis, Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Carlota Perez.

Film

The film starts in the village of Vik in Norway, an idyllic rural community that dreams of building a tunnel and a road to connect to the nearby town. In 2007, the municipality of Vik had invested the funds for building the road and tunnel in Terra Securities, a "triple A guaranteed savings", through the American Citibank group. However, Terra Securities had turned out to be valueless junk bonds based on bad subprime loans and the municipality had lost all the money.

Two persons from Vik, involved in the investment, travel to USA to try to understand what had happened. The whole film is about their meetings with different experts who explain the why and how of the disconnect between the "financial economy" and "real economy", and how the technological progress has provided the foundation on which speculative financial markets can play "casino" with the banks and economies of the whole world. "Financial economy or the speculative investments are needed and necessary", they say, "because they provide the power to new innovations and development, but they have to be regulated. If financial economy becomes 50 to 70 times real economy, then it is not sustainable and leads to a crash."

They also visit and talk to persons crushed by the financial crisis. The house loans at very low interest rates were given to fuel the financial bubble but with the financial crisis, the value of those houses has decreased by 2/3rds, while people are forced to take loans to pay the bank interests.

They also visit Detroit, a symbol of the economic crisis with its closed and abandoned factories, decaying buildings with broken windows, an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Comments

The film provides an understanding about the diverse and complex factors that influence the creation of economic bubbles and their crashes. The economic crisis is not yet over - it will last another 7-10 years, one expert says. The closure of the crisis will also require regimentation of the financial sector that is resisting to be regulated in any way. Thus the situation may get even worse before a solution will be found, the film says.

One of the most interesting part of the film is the explanation by Carlota Perez about the cycles of expansion and crash of economic bubbles as essential part of our society. Thus economic crisis are "creative destruction", she says.

This is the fifth cycle of technological advancement and economic crisis in modern era, Perez explains. Each cycle takes us into a new golden age of progress. The first cycle was linked to industrial revolution around 1850. It was followed by progress-crisis cycles linked to railways and steam power development and then to the cheap steel linked development that had led to the wall street crash in 1929, followed by the golden age of progress due to constructions in the suburbs, cars, plastics, appliances and cheap oil after the second world war which led to the economic growth of 1960-80s. It had also led to dismantling of financial markets' regulations by persons like Reagan and Thatcher.

Perez explains that each cycle starts with an installation phase, where a new technology comes with the help of few small investors and slowly gathers steam to expand into a financial bubble, leading to the bubble crash and the crisis. This is followed by a golden age of development that requires use of that technology in transforming the society. Her hypothesis is that green economy could be the future for bringing the golden age following the present crisis. However, it would depend upon upon the initiatives of specific Governments to regulate financial economy and to provide support to the direction of the new developments through appropriate policies.

For the construction-car-oil-appliances cycle USA government under Roosevelt had taken lead by providing appropriate policies. For the new cycle of golden age, the experts seem doubtful if the appropriate policies can come from USA or will take place in another part of the world. Thus, the film ends on a hopeful note of a new and better future.

I found the film fascinating for explaining an area of life that I find difficult to understand and also for the way it explains the links between crisis and development.

***

Scam with a touch of humour

We are all familiar with the email based scams where they write to you saying that you have won some lottery or the rich widow is dying and has decided to leave you her inheritence. I sometimes stop to admire these emails - the sense of irony and humour they sometimes contain is absolutely marvellous. I Especially remember some of the emails originating in Nigeria!

Here is an example that I found in my mailbox today:

"Attn: Beneficiary,

I am John Dagogo Chairman Debt recovery and settlement mainly on lotto, inheritance and contract payments. The recent meeting of world economic leaders in Davos Switzerland agreed with African leaders present that there is need to pay compensation to the above category of victims in other to qualify African countries for debt forgiveness from the G20 and G8 countries,

The compensation is to be made by the Federal Government of Nigeria and some other bodies like the Nigeria National Petroleum Co-operation (NNPC), Dagote Group of Companies (DGC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Ministry of Finance, due to the scam the citizens of Nigeria and other West African countries has done on the internet.

The selection of the people to be compensated was made randomly via internet, so if you receive this mail that means you have been selected among the lucky ones to receive the sum of FIVE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS (US5,000,000.00).

Note that all necessary documentation to make the withdrawal of the fund legal and free from any breach of the law will be your responsibility. Kindly contact me with the following information for the claim of your fund.
<removed>

I will advise you make sure your fund gets to you through the normal process to avoid any problem in future, so please you have to abide to all information as directed.

Thanks

John Dagogo"

I love the references in this scam-email to Davos, G8, G20 and promises of debt forgiveness. And I really love the reference to compensation for the scams carried out by Nigerian citizens - it is a masterpiece! Is this email an example of a sense of self-deprecating humour or is a scammer from another country pulling the leg of his Nigerian brother/sister?

I really don't know who would believe such a letter but perhaps some of us do and immagining millions in our bank account, fall in this honey-trap. I do not believe in such messages and my recommendation is that when you receive such messages, cancel them straightaway and never write back.

However, at the same time I can smile and express my appreciation at the scammer's sense of humour!

***

Religions For The New Millennium

Do we really need a religion? If yes, what kind of future religions are being shaped by our societies? If we can study the birth and development of religions in the past, can that help in understanding what kind of religions will come in future?

These are the questions I often ask my self, while thinking of the situation of religions today. On one hand, today we have more inter-religous dialogue and harmony among persons of different religions than ever before in history of mankind, and on the other hand, radicalized and exclusionist religious groups seem to be getting stronger, who insist, often with violence, that their way is the only acceptable way.

Is it feasible to think of possible future developments of religions? Let us start by going back in time to see what do we know about the development of religions in the human history.

Religions of the prehistorical humans

Our earliest progenitor, Homo habilis, who used stone tools, came out more than 2 million years ago, but modern humans developed only around 50 thousand years ago. One of the earliest records of those first humans are the rock paintings, like the ones in El Castillo in Spain that are 40 thousand years old.

The El Castillo rock paintings mainly show animals on the cave walls. This was the Paleolithic (initial stone age) phase of human development. Thus at that time human beings were using simple stone tools, they did not have writing, yet they had good drawing abilities and had some spiritual understanding of their world.

Caves from Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain are between 15 to 10 thousand years old, from the early bronze period of human development. These also show mainly animal figures and tracings of human hands. Any human figures in these images are mostly schematic, that means stick like figures, different from the more natural looking animal figures.

More recent cave paintings, around 3 to 8 thousand years old, showing animals and hunting scenes are found in many different parts of the world such as the San cave paintings in South Africa.

All these rock paintings point towards the religious or spiritual ideas of humans who lived as hunter-gatherers. They lived in small groups and travelled from one place to another. Usually men were hunters, while women specialized in gathering seeds and plants.

Animal rock paintings have been linked to influencing the spirits of animals, to facilitate their hunting. Thus, early humans thought of spirits in all the living things. It is also thought that lack of proper human figures in rock paintings is linked to taboos around drawing of human spirits.

Earliest evidence of agriculture, that means, domestication of plants and animals, comes from around 10 thousand years ago, from the neolithic period (new stone age), when better stone tools for agricultural and hunting use were made.

Another evidence of religious significance from the early humans are the Venus figurines showing female bodies. Some of these are more than 35 thousand years old. These statues are thought to be linked to spiritual view of nurturing role of mother nature and fertility rites.

Writing developed only 4 thousand years ago, around the time when the first cities were coming up. The earliest surviving tombs such as stone vaults (Hypogeums) and megalithic tombs are 4-5 thousand years old.

The prehistoric small human groups of hunter-gatherers were in competition with each other for survival. Not till the farming communities came up and then over the next thousands of years, first cities were established, there were incentives for human beings to collaborate and work together with other groups of human beings. Thus the initial 40-45 thousand years of human beings must have been marked by fights and wars between different groups.

Though the hunter-gatherers in different parts of the world had similar religious ideas about spirits of living beings, they probably identified with different animal totems as their protectors or symbols of their groups.

The different social roles of men and women were established during this long dawn of humanity lasting for 40-45 thousand years. Thus women mainly engaged in gathering plants and seeds, household work, and needed protection during pregnancy and growing years of their children. On the other hand, men engaged in hunting and wars. Violence, killing and rape of enemy groups' women as acceptable behaviour of the war, probably shaped the societies in this phase.

I think that though human socities have changed completely in the past few hundreds of years, our male and female social roles are still largely shaped by thousands of years of this early conditioning of human societies.

Religions at the beginning of historical era

The beginning of historical era, started around 4 to 5 thousand b.c. (6 to 7 thousand years ago), as the first cities and civilizations came up in different parts of the world including Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India and Greece.

At the beginning of historical era, majority of world population was engaged in agriculture and/or animal rearing. Some people continued to be hunter-gatherers but gradually they were becoming the minority. All the different world cultures at that time had started building specific praying places and all of them included a pantheon of gods.

How did the change from animal figures of cave paintings of early humans to the pantheon of gods of early historical period come about?

James A. Michener in his book "The source" (1965) traces the development of different religions in middle east, from the beginning of the historical era till today. In a fictionalized form, he explains the transformation from hunter-gatherer human societies to farming human societies:

.. for the first fifteen years of their married life, Ur's wife went out of the cave in all seasons trying fruitlessly to tame the wild wheat, but each year it was killed either by drought or flood or too much winter or by wild boars rampaging through the field ... Ur's son discovered that the springtime planting of wheat need not be left to the chance scatter of autumn grains. By holding back some of the harvest and keeping it dry in a pouch of deerskin, the grains could be planted purposefully in the spring and the wheat could be made to grow exactly where and when it was needed, and with this discovery the family of Ur moved to a self-sufficient society. They did not know it but if a food supply can be insured, the speed of change would be unbelievable: within a few thousand years cities would be feasible, civilizations too. Men would be able to plan ahead and allocate specialized jobs to each other. They would find it profitable to construct roads to speed the movement of food and to devise a money system for convenient payments.

Thus, farming societies were completely different from the earlier hunter-gatherer societies. Farming communities living in the villages were much more vulnerable to nature's forces such as rains, lightening, thunder storms and fires. These farming humans developed religions with pantheon of gods - a different god for each of the nature's forces that affected their lives. Thus in the pantheon of gods, those who controlled rain, fire and the thunder storms were more important for the farmers.

These gods were seen as temperamental beings who, if happy could give food, prosperity and security, and if angry, they could destroy everything, putting human survival into danger. Therefore, all the different cultures developed systems of prayers and sacrifices for "keeping the gods happy".

For example, India's first sacred book Rigveda, written around 1500 BC, puts into writing the oral traditions of religious prayers that had developed in this early historical period. The most powerful gods of Rigveda, to whom maximum number of prayer-hymns are devoted, are Indra, the god of rain, and Agni, the god of fire.

As human beings developed greater understanding and control of agriculture and they developed new technologies such as boats for sea-travel, new gods became more important and older gods were forgotten.

The mythical Indian story of fight between rain-god Indra and pastor-god Krishna, where Indra brought incessant rains and Krishna protected the pastors by raising up the Govardhan mountain on his hand, is one such example of changing religious ideas as small cities came up and needs of protection from gods changed.

Another Indian example of changes in preferences of gods is about worship of Sheetla mata, the goddess who is supposed to protect children from diseases like small pox and chicken pox. You can still find temples of Sheetla mata in poor slum areas where diseases like chicken pox and measles continue to be a life-threatening problem for poor children, but such temples are rare in urban and more developed areas of India.

The rise of monotheistic thought

The ideas of pantheon of gods who controlled different aspects of life on the earth and to whom prayers and sacrifices must be offered were in conflict with earlier ideas of common spirit underlying all the nature. Slow development of technology such as control of fire and shift from caves to man-made dwellings, also conflicted with ideas of powers of individuals gods.

Building of praying places and offering prayers, gifts and sacrifices also gave rise to development of priest classes, with possibilities of conflict between followers of different gods, and between priests and others. For example there is the story of Ikhnaton, the "heretic king" in ancient Egypt, who revolted against the domination of priests of Amon and decided to pray to the Aton (sun god), is one such example of religious conflicts.

In situations of conflict, religious reformers appeared in different parts of the world. Some of them proposed the vision of "one God", a supreme force that controlled life. The period around 500 BC to 500 AD was particularly fertile for these spiritual reformers, especially in two specific geographical areas of the world - the western part of middle-east and northern-part of Indian subcontinent. Those reformers were responsible for most of the religious ideas that dominate the world today.

The middle-east saw figures like Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, who expounded on ideas of the "one God". The stories of Moses are told in the Old Testament, and are linked to Judaism. The stories of Jesus are part of new testament, the sacred book of Christianity. The voice of Mohammed is in Koran, the sacred book of Islam.

In the Indian subcontinent, apart from figures of Mahavira and Buddha, that led to philosophies of Jainism and Buddhism, there were many other philosophers whose ideas formed the Upanishads of Hinduism. These also tend towards ideas of monotheism, though in a different way from the monotheistic ideas that developed in the middle east.

For example, the initial sholka (prayer) of Isavasya upanishad is an example of one common unifying cosmic consciousness that moves away from ideas of pantheon of gods:

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते!
(Om purnamadah puranamidam purnatpurnamudachyate)
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते॥
(Purnasya purnmaday purnamevavashishyate)

(It means: The whole is all that. The whole is all this. The whole was born of the whole. Taking the whole from the whole, what remains is the whole.) 

In each of these religious traditions, a cycle of periodic rise of new religious reformers started that continues till today. Sometimes, the reformers resulted in groups breaking off from the parent religions and becoming separate religions in their own right. Thus all the world religions are actually divided into different sub-groups. Some of the sub-groups, have developed into spearate religions including Baha'i and Sikhs.

At the same time, all over the world there continue to be small or large groups of persons who believe in older religious ideas of early farmers and pastors, such as fire-worshipers (Zoroastrians), nature worshipers, believers of the spirit worlds.

In terms of social roles of men and women, many of these religions have codified recommendations. Most of the time, these recommendations on different social roles of men and women, follow the earlier social roles of human groups from hunter-getherer period of humanity. This means, men are seen as superior, who make decisions and are the owners of the families. On the other hand, women are seen as home-makers and mothers, who need to protected, especially from other men.

The crisis of the religions

Humanity started changing around 4-5 hundred years ago at a greater pace, as cities became bigger and the technological innovations increased. Invention of printing press, colonization, slave trade, large scale immigration towards the "new world", scientific progress and industrial revolution gradually started challenging the existing religious ideas.

For example, in Europe, different developments such as discovery of fossils, Darwin's theory of evolution, Galileo's ideas of earth and planets circling the Sun, challenged some of the beliefs proposed by Christian theologians. These challenges resulted in ferocious religious backlash by Christian conservatives in Europe including centuries of brutal inquisition and religious crusades.

One of the most important change that is challenging traditional ideas of religions is the shift from rural to urban communities. This shift challenges the hold of religious, community and family leaders on individuals. Thus, in urbanized countries, earlier religious ideas and socially acceptable behaviours about everything including marriage, having children, sex (including same sex relationships), dresses and worship, have been overturned. The recommendations of the religious leaders are mostly ignored by large number of faithfuls, especially by younger generations.

Though this transition of old into new communities started in Europe more than 5 hundred years ago, it is still far from over. For example, Michael S. Kimmel discusses the challenges for men to understand the new roles of gender equity in his paper:

Indeed, the women’s movement is one of the great success stories of the twentieth century, perhaps of any century. It is the story of a monumental, revolutionary transformation of the lives of more than half the population. But what about the other half? Today, this movement for women’s equality remains stymied, stalled. Women continue to experience discrimination in the public sphere. They bump their heads on glass ceilings in the workplace, experience harassment and less-than fully welcoming environments in every institution in the public sphere, still must fight to control their own bodies, and to end their victimization through rape, domestic violence, and trafficking in women.

I believe the reason the movement for women’s equality remains only a partial victory has to do with men. In every arena—in politics, the military, the workplace, professions and education—the single greatest obstacle to women’s equality is the behaviors and attitudes of men. I believe that changes among men represent the next phase of the movement for women’s equality—that changes among men are vital if women are to achieve full equality. Men must come to see that gender equality is in their interest—as men.

If that is the situation in the developed world in Europe and America, what is happening in the rest of the world? The changes have become faster and even more radical over the past century, spreading over to all the different parts of the world. Improvements in health care and birth control, women going out of homes to work, access to education, international travel, globalization, information technology are some of these changes that lead to mixing of populations and ideas. These changes are challenging traditional ideas of different religions and the social roles of men and women.

Like the backlash of conservative christianity in Europe some centuries ago, these challenges to traditional ideas of other religions in different parts of the world have led to backlash of other conservative groups, sometimes equally ferocious and brutal in trying to repress these challenges. The rise of Wahabi Islam is one such example of religious backlash, but Islam is not alone in this - all religions are facing similar crisis.

In the remaining parts of the world, the transformation from rural to urban communities has started but would continue for the next fifty-hundred years. As the example of Europe shows, the change in mentalities may take centuries, and we can expect many more ferocious battles and backlashes from traditional religious and social leaders, who will fight to safeguard their powers and interests.

At the same time, there are already large groups of thinkers and activists in different parts of the world who agree with the need to challenge the status quo about the domination of socio-religious ideas and understand the need to define new rules to govern our social and public lives. Can we create national and trans-national communities that can make this trasition smoother and less conflictual? This is an issue that we need to address.

Religions for the future

Shall we really need religions in the future? I personally feel that as long as people will go through cycles of life and death, the questions such as what is life, what is death, is there an afterlife, are going to accompany us, and this will continue to create the space for religions.

There are many persons who do not believe in a spirit or a cosmic consciousness, who define themselves as atheists, but often even they have some doubts in explaining the godless accidental origin of life from a biochemical primordial soup.

Those of us who live in societies where technical progress safeguards us from the worst of nature's forces, people do not need to seek the protection of gods for their survival. Still illness, accidents, stresses of modern life, and relative poverty create fertile grous for prayers and religions.

Unless technological progress will lead to some kind of environmental disaster that may turn back the clock of human development, the change from rural farming and nomadic pastor communities to urban technological communities can not be reversed. This, in the medium and long term, will lead to new and different religious ideas.

Individuals living in resource and technology rich environments already often have religious ideas that have been called "New Age". An explanation of the "new age" philosophy is as follows:

To understand New Age philosophy it’s important to understand that the contemporary Cosmic Humanist movement has its roots in the Romantic poets of the 1800s, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. These men rejected the God of the Bible, instead writing at length about a transcendent quality of spirituality experienced purely through personal introspection. These ideas did not attract a broad audience until the 1960s, when popular recording artists, movie stars, and Eastern gurus began trumpeting their New Age views across the nation. More recently, well-known recording artists such as Madonna and Alanis Morissette have identified themselves with Hinduism, while popular personalities such as Tiger Woods, Phil Jackson, and Richard Gere openly embrace Zen Buddhism. Other luminaries, such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, express a belief in scientology. 

We don't know if future religions will be shaped by these "New Age" ideas or other different ideas. However, to be acceptable to majority of people, religions will have to take into account the needs of persons living in urban spaces as singles or as nuclear families. Thus the ancient ideas of women's and men's roles will have to change.

For example, in my opinion, religions asking for covering of women's bodies or not letting them go out to work or with rigid ideas about what kind of sexual lives people should lead, will not be accepted in future as socities will change and get used to living in urban spaces.

Personally, I also believe that future religions that do not take into account the principles of universal declaration of human rights, will be refused by majority of world population. Such conservative religious groups and sects may continue to flourish in small minority communities, but they will not become mainstream.

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