On Farmers

 

This book has been on my bucket list for a long time. In the midst of the ongoing farmer-agitation on the borders of Delhi, mainly by the farmers of Punjab and Haryana, a friend kept referring to this book, urging us to read it to understand better the dilemma being faced by the farmers.

The first thing that strikes you is that for a book written nearly 50 years ago, it continues to be quite relevant today. The poorest farmers in undeveloped countries continue to be exploited, countries continue to chase policies that prioritise cultivation and export of foods consumed by rich countries, leaving their own people to grow less for their own consumption, and a dependence on the  processed foods, which, in turn are produced by MNCs.

The question raised at the outset is this: 

"Why would the North concede anything when the Third World could make no credible threats and had little to do give in exchange except a clearer conscience?"

The book might be a bit dated but it presents a range of eye-opening examples - of how soyabeansOn came to dominate farms in Brazil; of how MNCs teamed up with Rockefeller and Ford Foundation to promote Green Revolution and build a market for their own fertiliser-pesticide-seed companies; of the opaque ways of Cargill, a family-held company that dominated the food value-chains;  of companies like Massey-Ferguson funded research studies on farm mechanisation while promoting their own tractors, and the ways in which USAs Food for Peace Law (PL 480) vastly increased US commercial markets for food abroad.

Susan George is quite scathing on the Green Revolution:

What is GR doing to research? Since most agronomic research takes place in the developed countries...an inordinate amount of research is devoted (a) to high carbohydrate HYVs, (b) to the climatic zones where they can be grown, and (c) to fertiliser-sensitise plants that can be protected from disease only by chemicals.

I was also struck by the description of some individuals - especially Frantz Fanon, the black psychiatrist and Matinique who put himself to the service of the Algerian freedom struggle.  Then there are stark facts - there are 80,000 known edible plant species - but a mere 50 of them provide 90 percent of our food. 

In the context of the ongoing farm protests in India, its interesting to know that George had warned - back in the 1970s! - about the implications of Punjabi farmers (among the 'small privileged stratum of larger landowners') shifting away from a wide range of crops to focus on wheat and rice. 

Now the Punjabi chickens have come home to roost. Grandchildren of the farmers who wholeheartedly accepted the changes brought in by the Green Revolution are now blocking the streets, demanding not only a continuation of government support and subsidies, but also a buyback at 'minimum support prices' that are way above the the global prices of foodgrains! 

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REFERENCES & LINKS:

* George, Susan (1976): HOW THE OTHER HALF DIES - The Real Reasons for World Hunger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Other_Half_Dies

Ten Fe Ciega - Have Blind Faith

The past can be confusing - especially if you are learning to express yourself in Spanish.

Confusing and frustrating if you are trying to navigate through the number ways in which you express the past in Español - preterito perfecto, preterito indefinido and preterito imperfecto.

Yet the learning process has its rewards. I was trying to figure out a fill-in-the-blanks which went with the title - "¿Conoce a Horacio Quiroga? Lea su biografía y escriba los verbos entre paréntesis en pretérito indefinido." (~ Do you know HQ? Read his biography and write the correct verb forms")

I had never heard of Horacio Quiroga. So, after getting most of my answers wrong, I switched windows, to read more about this poet, author, and maverick.  

And what an amazing, crazy life! Quiroga was born in Uruguay. He once shot dead his own best friend my mistake while helping him prepare for a duel, and after spending some time in prison, he got acquitted, and left for Argentina where he spent much of his life away from cities, in remote forested areas. He managed to persuade a young lady to marry him, and join his life in the forests, brought up his two children to survive the outdoors, with a deep love for nature. Along the way he published books and poems which continue to be popular today.

English translations of this works are, unfortunately, not available at my favourite Russian online repository. So I guess I'll have to get my preterito's sorted out before I can read his works in original Spanish!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

- https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/2020/02/19/horacio-quiroga-los-amores-la-locura-y-las-tragedias-que-marcaron-su-vida/

- https://www.wikiwand.com/es/Horacio_Quiroga

- https://horacioquiroga.org/galeria-de-imagenes/

Quotes

 "Ten fe ciega no en tu capacidad para el triunfo, sino en el ardor con que lo deseas." --- Have blind faith not in your capacity for success, but in the ardor with which you desire it.

"Culpar a los otros...es patrimonio specifico de las corazones inferiores." --- Blaming others... is the specific heritage of the small hearted.

Frankl's Search for Meaning

A random quote on social media leads you to a book, and then some thoughts in the book hit you deep inside. This happens to me quite often - the latest example comes from the book, "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

The Frankl quote in this case came from a TEDxGenoa video - "Everything can be taken from man but one thing. The last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.". 

Much of the book is focused on the author's experiences in Nazi Concentration Camps while describing his psychotherapeutic method (Logotherapy, where logo = meaning ), of identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, which then helps you survive the most difficult trails of life.

Towards the end of the book, while describing the various ways in which prisoners tried to keep up their hope through the months and years of being subjected to starvation, beatings, and torture amidst those who who were being taken away to the gas-chambers, he tells of a comrade who - 

"...on his arrival in the camp had tried to make a pact with Heaven that his suffering and death should save the human being he loved from a painful end. For this man, suffering and death were meaningful; his life was a sacrifice of the deepest significance"

This set me thinking about my father and my grandparents, who suffered prolonged confinements at hospitals before dying. It brought back memories of confusion, helplessness and despair; of constantly wondering why people who lead such gentle lives in the service of others, had to suffer so much in the end.

This book has many helpful pointers - 

"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life...it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us...Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct."

Where have I read this before..?  - The Gita? Teachings of the Buddha?

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Links and References:

* TEDx - Own Your Behaviours (Louise Evans) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BZuWrdC-9Q&list=PLJZfFMDhIj8x6c-zuDsF6Y6y2bx0geOal&index=60&t=0s

* Frankl, Viktor (1946): Man's Search for Meaning -  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4069.Man_s_Search_for_Meaning

Machuca

"Look at me!", screams 11-year-old Gonzalo. The soldier stops his pushing, shoving and shouting. Amidst the chaos of a military action on a city slum, he pauses as his eyes now notice that the kid he is just tied to detain happens to wear expensive sports shoes, jeans, a nice full shirt...he is also blonde and white. 

Gonzalo is allowed to run away even as his friends are being shot and detained.

Machuca (2004), a Chilean movie directed by Andrés Wood, living through the aftermath of General Pinochet's military coup in 1973. A dictatorship that lasted 17 years, leading to about 15,000 deaths and 2000 who just 'disappeared'.

In this film, I was struck by the role of Fr. McEnroe, of St. Patricks School. An elderly man who has the clarity of thought to foresee the dangers of a society in which there is a wide disparity in the distribution of wealth. In his predominantly White school, he persuades parents to allow poor, indigenous children to attend his school for free. The story revolves around a friendship that grows between a rich white kid, Gonzalo and Gonzalo, a poor, hardscrabble child from a local slum.

 The movie leaves you wondering what would have happened if people like Fr. McEnroe had indeed succeeded in their social integration projects, and if Chile had not suffered so much under dictators.

Kabul - A City Under Attack...Yet Again

 

Kabul has been on my mind all day today.

It started with a trickle, with a photos-app reminding me that exactly one year ago, I had taken some pics of an office commute that took me across a hill to Jamal Mena. The narrow road had snaked past a large fuel-storage facility, past water-tankers supplying houses tightly packed on the hillside, across the ridge to a lovely green cityscape that stretched from Kabul University to mountains of Paghman.

Towards noon, news of an attack on Kabul University starting appearing on Twitter. For the rest of the day I was checking on friends working and staying around Jamal Mena - they were all safe but by evening reports said, "At least 50 students including 5 professors, 4 members of Kabul University Police, including a policewoman killed."

Is there no end to the violence inflicted on Afghanistan? 

Perhaps the answer to this question lies outside Afghanistan because it has been decades since the Afghans had some real control over their own affairs. During the days of the "Great Game" the British said that the king must return, and so he returned to play the role of an unwilling puppet. A couple of centuries later a Pakistani General said "Kabul must burn!", and so not only Kabul but the whole country was burnt so that the Soviets could be forced out. 

"The Bear Trap", written by Mohammad Yousaf, a former IGI general,  in charge of ISIs Afghanistan operations, gives a detailed account of how a few individuals, backed a 'superpower' can destroy a country in a few years.  From 1984, through 1987, over 80,000 Mujahideen went through ISIs training camps, hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition were distributed for operations in all the 29 provinces in Afghanistan. These operations killed over 13,000 Soviet soldiers and wounded some 35,000. during nine years of bitter fighting.

As fighting raged in the countryside, Kabul's population shot up from 750,000 to over 2 million in 1985, most of whom were crammed into into tents on the outskirts of the city. 

Gen. Yousaf was quite clear that neither ISI nor his mujahids would have been able to sustain the fight if it did not have a steady flow of money and modern equipment:

As I was about to discover, nothing moves, in peace or war, without money. The Mujahideen could achieve nothing without financial support. No matter how brilliant my strategy might be, the implementation depended on the availability of a vast reservoir of cash with which to arm, train and move my forces. Almost half this money originated from the US taxpayer, with the remainder coming from the Saudi Arabian government or right Arab individuals.

As the Soviets started leaving Afghanistan, USA realised that a radical islamist government was not in its interest, so they kept the Taliban away from Kabul as long as they could.

Then came 9/11, Osama bin Laden, and the Americans returned to bomb the Taliban out of the country. Then then tried to force-feed democracy a country that has always been a diet of strict autocracy. The Taliban simply said, "You have the watches, but we have the time."   The waiting game seems to have ended this year. 

Over two decades of relative peace and quiet is now being lost again to the sounds of gunfire in universities, assassinations, and street bombings.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* Kabul University Attack 2020 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-university/death-toll-from-kabul-university-attack-rises-to-at-least-35-as-anger-grows-idUSKBN27J178?il=0

* Book - The Bear Trap -  https://www.amazon.in/Bear-Trap-Afghanistans-Untold-Story/dp/0850522676

Rupchanda

Fish-vendors in Noida stock a fish with a lovely name - Rupchanda. 

Over the past few weeks, I have been keeping an eye on it at the fish-vendors, but until last Friday I somehow could not muster the confidence to try a new unfamiliar fish over the tried and tested Pabda or Rohu. The fishes were always placed in ascending order of pricing - Pabdas cost INR 120/kg, the going rate for Rohus is INR 180/kg, and Rupdhanda was lined up in the middle at INR 160/kg.

True to its name Rupchanda does have a striking, beautiful form - flat like a pomfret but fleshier, with a larger mouth and a dash of pinkish red scales on its belly. Another prominent feature is its teeth, a fine set of incisors and grinders line up in its mouth, giving it an almost mammalian appearance.

I tried to look it up on the online stores, and was puzzled to find that this evidently popular best-seller was not available on FreshtoHome, Amazon, Licious, or IndiaMart. 

Why so?

Digging a little deeper I finally came across an article in the Hindu newspaper. Rupchanda is also called the Red-bellied Pacu or Piaractus brachypomus. It is an alien species that has not yet been approved for farming and sale in India because...its original home is in South America, and is closely related to...the Piranhas!

So my fish-vendor was selling me a banned fish with cousins that have a fearsome reputation of being 'extremely predatory...with a powerful and dangerous bite generated by large jaw muscles'. Its cousins may be dangerous and the Rupchanda too may be tearing apart the fisherman's nets...but its delicious!

Now those teeth make sense. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Sudhi, KS (2018), The Hindu: A delicious alien in Kerala Kitchens - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/south-americas-red-bellied-pacu-a-delicious-alien-in-kerala-kitchens/article24421299.ece

Tsuneno's World

 

Let us be upfront about two things about this book: first, its a fine piece of work, and second, it might look like a tome but its not - nearly half the book is notes, bibliography, references and the index!

Amy Stanley's "Stranger in the Shogun's City" is a labour of love spanning nearly two decades. It is the real life story of an ordinary girl named Tsuneno, daughter of a temple priest, who gets married at 12, lives through four divorces and many journeys through Japan before landing up as an impoverished migrant worker in the capital city of Edo, now Tokyo.

The book reconstructs her life from a vast collection of letters that Tsuneno sent to her brothers back home. Letters that were preserved at Risenji, a temple in Ishigami village for nearly 200 years before finding its way to the archives section of a library in Niigata Prefecture. 

Tsuneno's lifetime (1801-1853) covers one of the biggest inflection points in East Asian history - the colonial powers, the Dutch, England, France, and Americans are carving out their colonies in Asia, and the Japanese Shogunate is waking from its slumber to see the aftermath of gunboat 'diplomacy', the Opium Wars and the humiliation heaped on China. It is also a time of terrible deprivations - especially the Tempo Famine (1833-37), a period when -

 "...it was hard to say how many died of hunger and how many died of epidemic diseases - typhus and dysentery - the ravaged the weakened population...in the northeast, half the peasants in one domain had died of some of the survivors had resorted to cannibalism. Even reliable accounts described people reduced to eating grass and straw sandals, roadways strewn with emaciated corpses, and gravediggers too weak an exhausted to continue their work".

The book brings to life many familiar places in Tokyo - Chiyoda, Kanda, Tsukiji, Ginza - areas that are now teeming with skyscrapers, clean roads and manicured gardens. It is good to be reminded of the millions of hapless migrants like Tsuneno who did their bit to raise a grand city from dirt and squalor.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Stanley, Amy (2020): STRANGER IN THE SHOGUN'S CITY - A Japanese Woman and Her World, Scribner 2020

Drones Over the Black Garden

Last autumn, while serving on a UN assignment in Afghanistan, a Tanzanian colleague said something at floats up in my mind ever so often. He was telling us about a jihadist terrorist organisation in Central Africa that has killed thousands and displaced about 2.3 million people from their homes. "Boko Haram", he told us,  "simply means 'books are bad'" - all books, except, of course, the Holy Koran. 

Come to think of it, this is a recurring theme across the world - Khymer Rouge, The Great Leap Forward, the power of a radical ideology, encapsulated in a seemingly innocuous slogan, packaging an ideology that divides neighbours, drives ethnic cleansing, forced migrations, and wars.

Why do neighbours make the worst enemies? Is it the old adage 'familiarity breeds contempt' driven to extremes? 

Just as it is difficult for non-South Asians to differentiate between Indians and Pakistanis, it is not easy for us to figure out why the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis are at each others throats now. The news channels tells us that these two former Soviet states are fighting for an enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh or "Mountainous Black Garden" - itself a Russian-Turkic term, representing an amalgamation of cultures covering an undulating, fertile patch that lies at the tri-junction of three old empires - Russian, Ottoman and Persian. 

When you look at the map it seems like a puzzle at many levels: How did so many Christian Armenians end up in an enclave surrounded by Shia Muslims? How on earth did other large chunk of Azerbaijan - the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic - end up on the other side of Armenia, next to Iran and Turkey?

Then there is this ongoing spectacle of a real war being played out like video games. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have put up slick twitter handles that update the world on how efficiently they are now slaughtering each other. Images from kamikaze drones closing in on their targets - a tank, a truck, or a group of soldiers huddled in a corner - before obliterating them; images of a peaceful, tree-lined avenue disappearing in a haze of cluster bombs; long shots of artillery shells landing in cities, decorating it with plumes of smoke. Each side puts up daily scorecards of soldiers killed and military hardware destroyed or captured. 

People are getting killed in hundreds and yet it all seems like a video game being played by kids sitting sitting in front of computer consoles in Turkey or Russia. They are just following an example set by USA in Afghanistan and the Middle East. 

Wonder what point these gamers and their puppeteers conclude that have shifted one way or the other...  

Fighting on the Himalayan Ridges

Thousands of Indian soldiers are now perched on the freezing ridges of Ladakh. With China continuing with its expansionist "salami-slicing" of borderlands, lakes and islands, with no signs of letting up even in the midst of a pandemic, these soldiers are likely to stay put for the rest of the winter.

How do fighting units sustain themselves through some of the toughest physical terrains? How do they deal with the long stretches of silence and boredom? What keeps them going? I was looking for a book that would dwell on questions like these, and that is how I ended up with Sabastien Junger's "War".

It is a short, sharp book which reminds you that you should not judge a book by its cover. The book cover you see here is not the one favoured by the publishers which has a close-up shot of a single eye on an effeminate, clean-shaven face. I thought this one was more apt for the story of one platoon in one valley of southern Afghanistan.

This is the story of KOP - Korengal Outpost in Kunar Province. Its a place where the deep valleys and high mountains provide an ideal cover for Pakistan-trained Taliban to infiltrate into Afghanistan, and in 2007 Junger stays out there with a platoon that is trying to prevent this infiltration. 

This is a battlefield where codes of honour clash. When a US patrol gets ambushed one of the survivors, a soldier named Luttrel, staggers badly wounded into a mountain village with the Taliban at his heels. He survives because "The people of Sabray were obliged to protect Luttrell under an honor code called 'lokhay warkawal' (?), which holds that anyone who comes to your doorstep begging for help must be cared no matter that the cost to the community." 

The Taliban, on the other hand, know that battles can be won when the villagers are made to suffer at the hands of the "enemy", the "infidel". Their strategy is to lure NATO forces to accidentally killing so many civilians that they lose the fight for the human terrain. The physical terrain would inevitably follow.

There is irony in the imbalance of military hardware. The Americans can call in their Apache helicopter gunships with 30mm chain guns, their drones, 155mm howitzers and AC-130 gunships, but thermal signatures can be blurred by Taliban fighters wrapped in blankets on a warm rock, and a flock of crows can give away the position of US soldiers. 

This brings you to a glimpse of the cost of war - "A javelin shoulder-fired rocket costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes war seem winnable."

Then there is the X-Factor that motivates smaller fighting units - "Perfectly sane, good men have been drawn back to combat over and over again, and anyone interested in the idea of world peace would do well to know what they are looking for. Not killing, necessarily, but the other side of the equation: protecting. The defence of the tribe is an insanely compelling idea, and once you've been exposed to it, there is almost nothing else that you'd rather do."

"In a crude sense the job of the young men is to undertake the work that their fathers are too old for, and the current generation of American fathers has decided that a certain six-mile-long valley in Kumar province needs to be brought under military control. Nearly 50 US soldiers have died carrying out those orders. I'm not saying that's a lot or a little, but the cost does need to be acknowledged."

The situation in Ladakh now is of course vastly different - especially the human terrain. Unlike US troops in Afghanistan seeking legitimacy and acknowledgement from a wider world, this is a place where a conquered people - the Tibetans - are looking for ways to settle scores with the Communist Party of China. This will be a different kind of fight on the ridges.

Huitzilopochtli & Narcos

It is fascinating to see modern problems being framed through the lens of mythology. In the tele-series "Narcos" a drug lord invokes the patron god of the Mexica tribe to explain the war of succession in his smuggling cartel, "Even Huitzilopochtli had to kill his brothers to sustain the sun, and to save the world from darkness".

Much has been written about this tele-series but I found the first part (on Escobar and the Medellin Cartel) a lot better than the sequels. The story moves a good pace, and its fascinating to see how a petty smuggler of washing-machines takes to smuggling cocaine under trucks laden with Peruvian potatoes, and how it destroys country after country. 

The first part is also high on nuance. Not all drug-lords sell their souls for easy-money - some of them see it as a tool to improve lives of impoverished rural communities; US agents are not one insensitive, evil monolith - there are differences in priorities and objectives of DEA, CIA and the State Department - and each of them has no qualms about undercutting the other to claim that all-important visibility and increase in annual budget. Human relationships also matter - Escobar was ruthless but he was also gentle and loyal to his family, and his own father pitied and loathed him for all his bravado and brutality.

I don't know to what extent this series was short on location, in Columbia or Mexico it is nice to see so many different houses, surrounded by lush gardens, bathed in sunlight.

Neither did I know the difference between the drugs that are extracted from three different plant -  cannabis, coca and poppy.  Now it is clear from the Cannabis you get marijuana, hashish and hashish oil; from Poppy you get morphine, codeine, heroin and oxycodone, and finally, from Coca, you get cocaine.

While working in Afghanistan, I had learnt how poppy fits neatly into the socio-economic gaps of demands and supply. The crop thrives in the most drought prone areas, gives the farmers some form of dependable revenue to feed their families, but it also fuels the internecine wars with a good chunk of 'export' earnings going for buying weapons. And yet, the money made by the Taliban on afghan poppy is not a patch on the empires built by the South American drug cartels. A conservative estimate is that USD 100 billion worth of drugs flows into USA and just Columbia earns about USD 30 billion from its illegal exports. 

As the Narcos series moves from Escobar to the exploits of DEA agent Kiki Camarera, his brutal torture, killing and subsequent retribution; the rise of the Cali Cartel and the rise of the Mexican cartels, all the way to El Chapo, you can clearly see a drop in quality. Story-lines stretch, actors appear wooden, dialogues stilted and cliched. I had to stop watching after two episodes of El Chapo. My patience and capacity for binge-watching had run out - thus far and no further!

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* Illegal Drug Trade - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade

* DEA Museum - Coca, Cannabis and Poppy - https://www.deamuseum.org 

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu%C4%ABtzil%C5%8Dp%C5%8Dchtli

* Narcos Mexico -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcos:_Mexico

Casio G-Shock - Seeing through the Hype

Casio spends serious money in building its G-Shock brand of digital wrist-watches. Even during the ongoing pandemic, you can see them displayed prominently on billboards, SM advertisements,  exclusive brand-stores, and in almost every watch store worth its salt.

Does the brand actually live up to its claims? Is it worth the premium it charges for durability? I got my answer last month - an unequivocal 'No!'.

I had been taking my G-Shock to the local Casio Service Centre ever since I purchased it. Last month, when the screen went suddenly blank I once again to CSS-Noida thinking its battery had run out. No such luck. Instead, an elderly technician who had taken my watch in for a check-up came out with the air of a doctor announcing the death of a loved on - "There is no hope", he shrugged, "It has got completely rotten from inside".

This is how the watch looked - 

The "stainless steel" back was all rusted. Ditto for the the four screws that held it in place. A watch which claimed to be "Water Resist 20 Bar" had been a complete let down.

So if you are planning to buy a G-Shock please beware. For the price you will be forking out for a watch that looks durable, you will be shocked to know how fragile it really is!

The problem with digital watches is that once you get used to one it's difficult to switch completely to analogue/quartz watches. I always prefer to wear a digi for everyday use and set aside the needle-watches for formal occassions.

My hunt for an alternative to G-shock took me to Timex (the Expedition series), back to Casio (for the non GShock series) and to Decathlon.  

The Timex looked good but the leather straps put me off. Experience tells me that these straps do not survive two monsoon seasons. Also the very idea of having a tiny strip of "Indiglo" digital on a predominantly analogue watch did seem to make sense.

The Casio "normal" digi's seemed like an attractive option - they are way cheaper (starting at INR 870)  but the displays seemed too cluttered -- too much of unnecessary information staring at you at all times, when you don't really need them.

Finally I have settled for a watch from Decathlon - the W500+M

At INR 1299 this provides what we could perhaps call the best value for money. I like the uncluttered,  large that tells you only what you want to see all the time. The navigation is simple and intuitive and despite the large face this watch feels quite light on your wrist. I also love the fact that the straps can be changed easily ( a nightmare with Casio) - you just have to slide them off (no screws and pins) and they are available for just INR 250. 

Caveat: The plastic case is flimsier than expected and scratches easily. Also, please don't be fooled by the display pics - the display digits on black background have much less contrast compared to what you see on the smart packaging. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES:

Decathlon online - a good option in these pandemic-times - https://www.decathlon.in/electronics/sport-watch-15077

 

On Broken Buddhas

Among the many disturbing videos that turned up on twitter last week, there was one from North West Pakistan.

At first glance it looks a benign video of rural development - on what seems like the the outskirts of a village, a few villagers are laying a pathway through the hills. In their effort to remove some obstruction on the ground, a man is seen smashing a sledge hammer on an oblong piece of stone. The camera then pans closer to show us that this is not ordinary stone that his being smashed. It was a 1700 year old statue of the Buddha. You recoil with shock, memories of the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas with tanks and artillery comes to mind.

The place where this happened in called Takht-e-Bahi. When I looked this up on the web, interesting details emerged - this place is about 15km from the town of Mardan in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and is famous for the ruins of an "exceptionally well preserved" Buddhist Monastery. Exceptional perhaps because hardly any archeological site older than a 1000 years has survived in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Conjectural restoration of the Monastery

However, I was in for a surprise and my shallow assumptions were soon busted. The Buddhist monastery here was built in the 1st century CE and thrived through the centuries under the Kushans and the Parthians, but it is under the Huns - especially Toramana and his son, Mihirakula - that this area witnessed genocides and wholesale destruction of Bushiest monasteries. In other words, the Takht-e-Bahi monastery was destroyed long before Mohammad was born and Islam as a religion was even conceived!

So who were the Huns? Why did the father-and-son duo of Toramana (493-518 CE) and Mihirakula (515-540 CE) get so upset with the Buddhists? According to a version recorded by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim-monk Xuangzang (Hsuan Tsang):

"...initially Mihirakula was interested in learning about Buddhism, and asked the monks to send him a teacher; the monks insulted him by recommending a servant of his own householder for the purpose. This incident is said to have turned Mihirakula virulently anti-Buddhist. Xuangzang states that he destroyed 1,600 monasteries in Gandhara and had 9,000 men killed or sold into slavery on the banks of the Indus."

Further, according to the historian DN Jha (1998) -

"The Huna king Toramana had Vaishnavite association but was converted to Jainism and this tyrant son Mihirakula, ruling from Shakala (modern Sialkot), was a devout Shaiva who founded the temple of Mihireshvara. He persecuted the Buddhists as was later sone by Shashanka, a fanatic ruler of Bengal"

It is almost a relief to be reminded that destruction of temples was not the monopoly of Islamic fanatics, zealots and conquerers.

At the same time it is ironic that the descendents of the people who suffered the most under the waves of conquests, today consider themselves so far removed from their own roots that they consider it an honor to destroy, in the name of religion, the very things that they ought to proudly display, in their own museums!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jH0AnRXCzI
* The past is a different country (FT 2014)- https://www.thefridaytimes.com/the-past-is-a-different-country/
* http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Ancient-statue-of-Buddha-destroyed-as-un-Islamic-50623.html
* Jha DN (1998): Against Communalising History, Social Scientist, Vol 26 (on JSTOR) - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3517941?read-now=1&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents

* A Neelakantan (2018) - https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/why-d-n-jhas-claim-that-ancient-hindus-were-given-to-violence-is-far-from-the-truth
* Pinterest - Takht-e-Bahi Gandhara sculptures -https://www.pinterest.com/sophialiu0808/takht-e-bhai-gandhara/

A Teeny Army of Teachers

Today evening I found myself in Varadero, Cuba. 

Ever since the Covid-19 lockdowns started, I had picked up the habit of walking up and down the terrace after sunset, listening to music, podcasts or, sometimes, just checking the never-ending backlog of messages on social media. Today's special was a podcast -  a remarkable Duolingo episode titled "Una maestra en botas" (A teacher in army boots).

This Spanish-English bilingual podcast was a first-person account of a 73-year-old Afro-Cuban lady named Norma Guillard. Born and brought up in one of the poorest provinces of Cuba she was about 14 when Fidel Castro  took over the country and brought in the revolution. One of his top priorities was to raise the level of education in Cuba

1961 was declared the "Year of Education", and paradoxically, a full school-year was cancelled! Approximately 300,000 school-going teenagers like Norma were asked to volunteer one year for teaching a family in the countryside not only how to read, but also to teach them how to prevent common diseases like TB and Leprosy. In return the government gave them scholarships to pursue higher education.

So an army of teenagers, armed with textbooks, notepads and pencils, went through a brief training course and then out into remote rural areas, to spread education. Not everything, of course, went off as planned: Norma's first host-family was racist - they did not want a black teacher; the second one kept her away because they suspected her of having contracted leprosy.  In the midst of of this came the US "Bay of Pigs" invasion. She was finally able to settle down and teach a family of six how to read.

One of the thoughtful elements of Castro's plan was the rule that the eldest member of each household had to be taught first, so that they could read, understand and sign official papers. Later, this was dovetailed into the national land re-distribution campaign.

Given the background it is hardly surprising that during the current pandemic, Cuba won international praise for sending no less than 28,000 doctors to 59 countries to to help them fight Covid-19!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* Duolingo - Episode 51 - "Una maestra en botas" - https://podcast.duolingo.com/episode-51-una-maestra-en-botas-a-teacher-in-army-boots
* Cuban Literacy Campaign - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Literacy_Campaign
* The Worlds Most Ambitious Literacy Campaign - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/latin-lessons-what-can-we-learn-from-the-worldrsquos-most-ambitious-literacy-campaign-2124433.html
* 28,000 docs in 59 countries - https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/kerala-and-cuba-how-left-cousins-won-praise-for-covid-19-fight-70834

Swartz and the Free Internet

Until today I had not heard of the name Aaron Swartz. A dive down one twitter rabbit-hole led me to this documentary and I was quite amazed to learn about this child prodigy, this teenager who was one of the founders of Reddit, an architect of Creative Commons, the slayer of draconian legislations that restricted internet freedom, and conscientious young man who was driven to kill himself by MIT and the Obama administration. 

As if all these were not achievements enough for a lifetime, Swartz also gets the credit to enabling the discovery of a test that leads to the early detection of pancreatic cancer!

A friend who studied at MIT thought there was nothing new or shocking about MITs role in making a scapegoat out of Swartz. "It is difficult to admire MIT if you're a thinking person", he said, "Most of the research there is centred on war weapons and the best way to kill". So it may not be surprising that the Obama government wanted to make an example of a man whose principal crime was to get past the JSTOR paywall and download years of public-funded research papers.

Until last year I would have thought such a move went against the very grain of USAs self-proclaimed   position as a 'land of the free'. The aggressive rise of China, the Covid-19 pandemic, Galwan, and the nine-dash-line leads me to a more hardline position against authoritarian regimes who are trying to turn this freedom into some kind of liability.

If internet freedom and free access of research from US universities only leads to a one-way flow of information and technology, it may not be a bad idea to temper the zeal of youngsters, who, for all their deep knowledge, are unable to see the big picture of global geo-politics.

Power, Prosperity and Poverty

This one is was long overdue. I have been meaning to put down my thoughts about this much-recommended book for a few weeks now. "Why Nations Fail - The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty", was first published more than eight years ago but I managed to finish it only during this ongoing Covid-19 lockdown.

The book covers a broad sweep of history and geography to make its central point -  the importance of institutions. Starting with Nogales a city that sits astride on the border between USA and Mexico the authors point out to the stark difference in levels of development (the average US citizen is 7x more prosperous) The Mexican side apparently is stuck with the extractive, authoritarian institutions inherited from the Spanish while the North American side developed inclusive, democratic institutions , which, in the long run, have clearly made up for the lack of gold and silver mines.

We are shown similar patterns in the rest of South America, Europe (England vs. France), Russia, Africa (Congo, Ghana and Ethiopia), Turkey, the Koreas and China. The amazing extent to Spanish exploitation ("Economienda") in South America came as a revelation. I never knew, for instance, about the extent to which the indigenous people were forced out of their towns and villages into "Reducciones" to serve Spain's greed for silver and gold.

It seems an Inca labour institution called "Mit'a" ('a turn' in Quechua) was revived to cover about 200,000 miles wherein 1/7th of male populations from the Reductions were required to work in the mines at Potosi. On top of the "Repartimiento" system for distribution of goods involved forced sale of goods to locals at prices determined by the Spaniards, and under "Trajin" (the burden), indigenous people were forced to substitute for pack animals, for carrying goods within the country.

While stressing on the importance of inclusive institutions, the authors admit that "No two societies create the same institutions; they will have distinct custom, different systems of property rights and different ways of sharing wealth."

You also realise that much has changed since the time this book was conceived. Under Donald Trump USA is no longer the inclusive, equitable country it used to be. And then we have a completely new set of unknown thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic and mass surveillance programs. Perhaps it is time to revisit the arguments presented in "Why Nations Fail".

A Company and its Loot

Four soldiers in four different uniforms. Look closely and you may find that it is the same soldier, standing ramrod erect, is serving as a model for different sets of coats, caps and trousers. In all probability he was from a village in present day Tamil Nadu, Telengana or Kerala, who was drilled and trained in Madras, and sent to fight battles at Plassey, Buxar, Pathargarh or Assey.

What did he do with all the money he earned from the British East India Company (EIC)? What stories did he tell his grandchildren of his long marches and battles across north India? Of cavalry charges blown to smithereens, of cities raped and plundered for his EIC officers? We may never get to know stories of the men who actually transformed India but William Dalrymple's latest book will certainly change the way you've understood Indian history from school textbooks and Amar Chitra Kathas.

The Anarchy is about the "Relentless Rise of the East India Company". It is also about bursting myths  and stereotypes; looking at the larger picture on the chessboard of Indian political economy, and reminding ourselves about the price we paid for our insular stupidity and internecine conflicts for  about two centuries.

The numbers are staggering. In 1500s India had a population of just 150 million (less than that of just Uttar Pradesh today!) - a fifth of the world's total -- and it was an industrial powerhouse, a world leader in manufactured textiles. In the early 1600s India was creating 22.5% of world GDP. England then had just 5% of India's population and was producing just under 3% of world's manufactured goods. Between 1586 and 1605, European silver flowed into the Mughal heartland at the rate of 18 metric tons a year!

And then wealth - gold, silver, youth, talent - started flowing in the opposite direction, gradually increasing pace over a century until the whole county had been reduced to a basket-case by 1947.

We may never get to know about the life and times of the farmers, weavers and foot-soldiers on whose backs the British looted India, but life of the 16th Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II gives us an idea of the chaos and turmoil that transformed the country into a basket case -

"He was now in his seventy-seventh year. As a boy he had seen Nader Shah ride into Delhi, and leave carrying away the Peacock Throne, into which was embedded the great Koh-i-Noor diamond. He had escaped Imad-ul-Mulk's attempt to assassinate him and survived repeated battles with Clive. He had fought the Company at Patna and Buxar, awarded the Diwani to Robert Clive at Allahabad and defied the Company with his cross-country trek back to Delhi. There, with Mirza Najaf Khan, against all the odds he had nearly succeeded in rebuilding the empire of this ancestors; only to see it vanish like a mirage after the premature death of the last great Mughal general. Finally, at his lowest point, the Emperor had been assaulted and blinded by his psychotic former favourite, Ghulam Qadir (Rohilla)."

While this book takes us through the changing fortunes of individuals and nations, I found a few things really remarkable -

* Maratha Resilience: The fighting units created by Shivaji perhaps stood the best chance of taking over the mantle of the Mughals - especially after having quickly dominated much of North and East India. Despite the terrible defeat at the Third Battle of Panipat (~36,000 dead in one day!) they bounced back to defeat the Jats, Rajputs and Rohillas, and yet , when it really mattered, the Peshwas, Holkars and Scindia's kept squabbling amongst themselves and failed to unite against a common enemy.

* Forts and Battles: Many of the key battles were won by a whisker - especially the historic ones at Plassey and Buxar. But there were many others that barely find mention in our history books, especially -

• The Battle of Udhwa Nala (1763) where Mir Qasim tried to take a stand against EIC, and the capture of a PoW from a raiding party led to a surprise counter-attack...and the slaughter of over 15,000 defenders.
• The Battle of Pathargarh (1772): 10 years after the Rohillas ditched the Marathas and sided with the Afghan invader, Admed Shah Abdali at the Third Battle of Panipat, the Marathas took their revenge at the Pathargarh Fort. Its amazing to know that among the captives at this fort were Maratha women captured a decade later at Panipat!
• Battle of Talegaon (1779) - EICs first major defeat against the Marathas which led to the humiliating Treaty of Wadgaon.
• Seige of Aligarh (1803) - EIC against Marathas and Rajputs who had been sold out by their own mercenary French commanders.
• Battle of Assaye (1803) - The last of the great decisive battles between the Marathas and the EIC

* Naga Ascetic Warriors: It is surprising to know that more than 6000 naked Naga ascetics fought for the Nawab of Avadh as shock troopers!

* Mercenaries: There were scores of French mercenaries who helped modernise rival armies in India, from Tipu's Mysore to Madhaji Scindia's Marathas, but the most ruthless of them all was perhaps the Germany mercenary, Walter Reinhardt Sombre, the general who deftly shifted loyalties to the highest bidders. His widow, Begum Sumru, too carried on the game of switching loyalties from Mir Qasim to Shah Alam, from Marathas to the British.

* Moneylenders: If it were not for the Marwari moneylenders, and their networks, led by the Jagat Seths the Company simply would not have been in a position to afford the wars. With each small victory in the battlefield and the display of European armament technology and discipline, the Seths abandoned the local kings for the foreign merchants who had a better repayment record.

Ultimately its money that did the talking!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* ToI (2011) on Pathargarh Fort - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/HiddenHeritage/when-monuments-go-missing/

* Shejwalkar, TJ (1946): PANIPAT, 1761 - http://library.bjp.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/2488/1/Panipat-1761.pdf

* Najib Ud-Daula - The Rohilla chieftan who allied with Ahmed Shah Abdali to defeat the Marathas at Panipat (1761) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najib_ad-Dawlah

The Green Energy Scam

"Green energy is not what it's made out to be."

In his latest documentary, Michael Moore holds out a mirror for us. For all the talk about GEF, Climate Change and Carbon Footprints it turns out that a lot of it is just hogwash, or even worse - a massive PR exercise by the very same conglomerates that are destroying our natural resources.

The whole video is still out there, free and accessible for all those want to get try and extricate their heads that are still buried in the sand. This post is just a collection of screenshots that I felt demolished conventional wisdom about "green" energy.

Much of non-conventional energy is useful only when it can be stored, and the global capacity for such storage is still very, very small.

The so-called pioneer of green energy - Germany - is just like the fabled Emperor Without Clothes. Beyond Germany, it seems the global renewable energy scenario looks like this -



Solar and wind energy is dwarfed by Biomass, which seems like a renewable resource and a lot better than coal and  petroleum -- until you get to know that most of the biomass energy plants feed on wood chips which again is extracted from forests that are being cut down in developing countries!

Meanwhile there has been a sharp drop in global marine fish production as well as a steady decline in the availability of agricultural land..

And all this can be attributed to a single factor -- the steep rise in human population over the past 200 years. 

Unless we focus our attention on this cliff nothing is going to come from any amount of money being thrown at "Green Energy".

The full documentary -

Think Ink

Do we really need to consume so much? 
Can we reduce out trips to the market? 
How can we reduce wastage?

Over the past two months of the Covid-19 lockdown, we have all been asking ourselves questions. Among the many things that have been dusted out from storage and rescued from a careless toss into the garbage bin are these little 60 ml bottles of ink.

Apart from saving us a few hundred rupees in the new fangled use-and-throw gel pens, these ink bottles also tell us about changing company fortunes, inflation, shelf-life and even consistency in product design.

I had purchased the 60ml bottle of 'Permanent Black' Camel black ink (yellow pack) in 2005 for INR 12.00. Fifteen years later, I got a similar bottle of 'Royal Blue' ink for INR 20.00. At a time when disposable gel pens costing about INR 10.00 get jammed if you don't use them for a few months it is quite amazing to see how you can just refill and start using a fountain pen with ink purchased more than a decade ago!

The smell of fountain pen ink is bound to revive old memories -  of stained hands, spilled bottles and frayed nibs; Of that flick of the wrist which would send a lovely arc of droplets across a wall or a school uniform, and, for folks from Trivandrum, a tiny shop called the "Pen Hospital" which specialised in repairing fountain pens.

On the face of it you might also think that the ink bottle has remained more or less unchanged over the years, but look closer and you see subtle differences: "Camel" has changed to "Camlin". The tiny camel that was walking towards the lettering is now going in the opposite direction. Ink which was packed in a heavy glass bottle with a metal cap now comes in a light, cheap, all plastic bottle. The company too has been taken over (2012) by a Japanese conglomerate and is now called Kokuyo Camlin Ltd.

At a time when all the stationery shops are closed, it is quite amazing to think of the number of ballpoint, gel and roller refills we use every year, and to realise just how many of these can be replaced by a simple, 60ml bottle of fountain pen ink!

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LINKS & REFERENCES:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuyo_Camlin
* (2013) - https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/japan-s-kokuyo-to-buy-majority-stake-in-camlin-111050200075_1.html
* https://penhouse.in/
* About Ink Refills - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whBNxSXm-EE
* Difference between ballpoint, gel and roller-point - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQR8TqLJCs

A Birdsong for Tunnel-rats

"Letting a canary go free in a tunnel is an automatic court-martial"

This is perhaps the only reference to a bird in the much acclaimed book, Birdsong by Sabastien Faulks.

The book is a love story woven into the horrors of tunnel and trench warfare in central France during World War-I. It takes you to places that sound distant and vaguely familiar - Amiens, Vimy, Messines and Ypres. Distant frontlines in a distant war which claimed more than 62,000 Indian lives. There is, of course, no reference to Indian fighting units in this book, or of Expeditionary Force A on the Ypres salient. It is mostly about British miners who had been brought in to support the infantry units by building trenches and tunnels, and to set off explosions which aimed to push back the Germans.

Along the way you learn about the Camouflet - "an artificial tavern created underground by an explosion...it was originally used by a fort's defenders to prevent undermining of a fortress wall during a siege". In a cat-and-mouse game taking place some thirty feet underground, defenders would dig a tunnel under the attackers' tunnel. An explosive charge would be detonated to create a camouflet that would collapse the attackers' tunnel. The fate of those unlucky enough to survive such explosions in narrow tunnels, can only be imagined.

With so many human lives at stake you are left wondering why on earth were soldiers getting court-martialled for losing canaries in such tunnels?

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References & Links
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdsong_(novel)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_La_Bass%C3%A9e

Hava Hava, Sucu Sucu

Catchy tunes have a way of traveling around the world.

Recently I was quite amazed to know that the famous Hindi song, "Hava Hava" was actually a copy of a copy! The original was a 1970s song from Iran which was copied by a Pakistani Singer, and then by Bollywood.

Havar Havar (Persian original) - Kouroush Yaghmei, 1978


Hava Hava (Pakistani copy) - Hassan Jehangir - https://youtu.be/lrusoeIvetQ
Hava Hava (Coke Studio Pakistan re-make) - 2018 - https://youtu.be/w3s8cjG2WYY

Hava Hava (Hindi copy) - Movie "Mubarakan" (2017)




Then there is a Spanish song "Suku Suku" by the Bolivian singer, Tarateño Rojas in the 1960s. This particular tune went on to be adapted or copied into no less than 19 languages, including a Japanese version, Furimukanaide - Sucu Sucu (The Peanuts, 1960s) 

Suku Suku (Spanish) - Original by Tarateño Rojas


Bollywood was quick to copy this number and make it part of the Hindi movie "Junglee" in 1961. The film went on to be a big hit.

Suku Suku (Hindi) - Movie "Junglee" (1961)

Watching Trees Grow

The world may have come to a standstill because of the Covid-19 virus but life goes on.

On 23 March 2020, a day after the "Janata Curfew" and a day before the nationwide "Total Lockdown" enforced by the government, I had gone to buy vegetables from the local Mother Dairy F&V Outlet. It was a bright beautiful day but the parks we already beginning to look eerily empty - there were no children playing on the swings, the usually raucous volleyball court was empty and so was the open-air gym.

Yet there was something beautiful about the silence, the rustle of fallen leaves underfoot, and the sharp calls of the ashy prinia's hiding in the bushes. As I cut across the park and walked towards the booth, I noticed something unusual.

An elderly couple stood under a pilkhan tree (Ficus virens)giving directions to a little boy perched in the barren branches. He was plucking and tossing down the bright pink shoots which were being diligently piled under the tree.

What was this for? 

The old man, a villager from Bihar, was not very forthcoming but his wife cheerily said that you could sauté these shoots turn them into a delicious dish.  Cooking shoots of the pilkan tree just like the bamboo shoots? I had never heard of such a thing before! 

Ten days later, when I went to replenish our stock of veggies the street looks so different. The pilkhan trees that had been bright green on one side of the road had all turned pink from the thousands of new shoots, while the one that one tree which had been the early bird in once sense had now turned completely green with a fresh set of leaves.

Clearly the little boy has plenty of new trees to climb and at least one family needs to buy fewer vegetables from the vendors during this lockdown.

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NOTES -

* It seem pilkhan leaves have long been a popular ingredient for the Thai curry phak lueat - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_curry

Espiritrompa!

Q: What is this kid so angry about? At whom is he grimacing, hurling stones and abuses?
A: His favourite teacher, Don Gregorio.

In between this question and its unlikely answer lies a story that has been poignantly told in Spanish movie "La lengua de las mariposas". Directed by José Luis Cuerda this 1999 movie is about a shy, asthmatic child named Moncho, growing up in a Gallician town in the 1930s.

This is a little town like any other, closely knit and insular and yet full of people with divergent political opinions. Moncho's own family is represents these different views - his mother is deeply religious and conservative while the father, a tailor, has leftist leanings. In the normal course this would have been just fine but these are fraught times, Spain is in turmoil and the country is about to plunge into a bloody civil war.

Moncho hates going to school. He hates being taunted for his clunky breathing apparatus, he is unable to make friends and prefers being alone. On his first day at school he gets upset about being called a 'sparrow' by his teacher, Don Gergorio, and runs away to the woods.

Gradually he warms up to the elderly Don's gentle humorous ways, his love for nature and learning. Even as young Moncho is learning about far away places in Australia, and of butterflies extract nectar from flowers with their spring-like proboscis - the espiritrompa.  Political disagreements are turning into something nastier.

The Republicans are on the ascendant and they have decided to get rid of the Nationalists. People are being hauled out of homes in the middle of the night, and Moncho's mother have come to realise that the only way to survive and hold the family together is to put up a display of support for the Republicans, even if it means that they have to betray friends.

As things come to a head the whole town assembles to condemn the Nationalists as they are being arrested and taken away. Don Gregorio is among them. The mother joins the chorus of abusers and urges her husband and children too to join the mob. The last scene has Moncho running after the truck carrying the prisoners, hurling stones and expletives - "Traitors! Communists! Espiritrompa!"

This film makes you wonder how many times such dilemmas would have played out in history - in Catholic Europe, amongst Zoroastrians in Persia conquered by the Arabs, in Nazi Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, and in pre-partition India...

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LINKS

* Preview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYNyrPVTbIk
* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly%27s_Tongue

Plundering the Plunderers

How did Jammu & Kashmir end up with a Hindu ruler?

It is often said that the root of the so called Kashmir Problem lies in the fact that a muslim-majority state was ruled by a Hindu king - the Dogras - who decided to accede the state to India, instead of going to Pakistan.

If we set aside the ancient history of J&K, long list of ancient kings listed in the Rajatarangini, the Fourth Buddhist Council held in the valley, the life and times described in Kshemendra's amazing Samaya-Matrika,  and fast forward to the recent past when most of the population had already been forced to convert to Islam, we find a phase that has not received the attention it deserves. You could call this the Sikh phase of Indian history.

If there were a roll call of kingdoms in North India, Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Punjab was perhaps be the last king standing when the British had, by hook or crook, by using the latest European weaponry available, colonised much of India. A recent book by Sarbpreet Singh titled, "The Caravan Merchant of Philadelphia" provides a wonderful glimpse in to the life and times of this amazing, one-eyed king.

Ranjit Singh owes his rise to a series of foreign invasions that followed the collapse of the Mughal empire. It started in 1731 when Nadir Shah of Persia began enlisting Abdali tribesmen from Herat into his army to take advantage of the chaos that was building up in Delhi. The Shah plundered so much wealth from India that he did not have to tax his countrymen for a few years that followed.

Following Nadir Shah's assassination in 1747, one of his Abdali protege's took over. Ahmad Shah Abdali was based out of Kandahar and during his rule (1747 to 1773), he crossed the Indus River more than eight times to invade and plunder North India. In 1756, during his fourth invasion he  took control of Delhi, deposed Alamgir-II, killed about 10,000 residents of Delhi in one single day, and headed back home with booty laden on 28,000 elephants, camels, bullocks and mules, followed by 8000 soldiers on horse and foot who carried their own spoils.

A few years later, in 1761, during his  fifth invasion, a decisive victory was won over the Marathas at the Third Battle of Panipat (1761).  By now he had also renamed himself  'Dur-i-Durran' or 'Pearl of the Pearls', and from then on the Abdalis became better known as the Durranis.

Each time time the Durrani's made his journey back to Khandahar with his caravans laden with loot, the Sikhs of Punjab made habit of plundering the plunderers. Hit-and-run tactics evolved into decisive battles after Rajit Singh took over leadership of the Sikh confederacy. In a few decades Ranjit Singh's empire stretched all the way from Kabul and Hazara to Kashmir. It is during this period that the Dogras became powerful in Ranjit Singh's court.

At the turn of the century, after the death of Ranjit Singh, the British started pushing further eastwards. Following the Battle of Sabraon (1846), the final battle of the First Anglo-Sikh War, the Treaty of Lahore ensured the end of the Sikh kingdom:

The Jalandhar Doab region was annexed and the Sikh Army was reduced to 20,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry...and a war indemnity of 15 million rupees was imposed and because of its inability to pay, the regions between the Beas and the Indus, including Kashmir and Hazara were seized. Most of the seized territory was sold to Raja Gulab Singh Dogra for 7.5 million rupees and he was declared the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.

So, far from being the 'original' rulers of Jammu and Kashmir, the Dogras essentially purchased a kingdom for themselves, and remained at the mercy of the British until India was partitioned in 1947.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Singh, Sarbpreet (2019): THE CAMEL MERCHANT OF PHILADELPHIA - Stories from the Court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Tranquebar / Westland Publications PL
* Review - https://caravanmagazine.in/bookshelf/camel-merchant-philadelphia