A Disjointed War

 

A few years ago, an old Afghan friend turned up and Delhi and we decided to meet at Lajpat Nagar. "This is AK", he said introducing a compatriot, "He is a Tajik but we are still good friends." 

I knew that my friend was a Pathan but the introduction left me baffled. There I was, a South Indian, born and brought up in the north, sitting in a bustling market built from scratch by punjabis displaced by the partition...but I just could not imagine introducing a friend from UP, Mizoram or Gujarat, or anywhere else in India, in this way.

It is only later, after serving two UN assignments in Afghanistan that I began to understand that the caveat 'still good friends' was actually an achievement in itself. In Kabul I had found a city that was struggling to recover from years of war and strife, a city divided along ethnic lines, where communities sought the safety of numbers.

Once while driving from Jemal Mena and Kabul University towards Sevom Aqrab, we got stuck in a traffic jam. A colleague pointed to the traffic junction and reminisced, "When I was in school this was a dangerous crossing...on this side were the Tajiks, on the other, the Uzbeks and across the road, the Hazaras...all suspicious of each other, trying to keep the Taliban out of their neighbourhoods...there were dead bodies all over the place...you could get killed simply for responding to a casual greeting with the wrong accent of Dari or Pashto.."

It is a difficult world to explain or understand. Steve Coll's latest book, "Directorate S", tries to give you a bird-eye (or blimp) view of the other side of the story. One that enfolds after 9/11 and the arrival of USA into this tinderbox, seeking Al Qaida, Osama bin Laden, and revenge for the attack on USA. 

An ultimatum was given to Mulla Omar and the Taliban leadership - surrender your guests OBL, and his AQ minions, or else. Bound a code of honour, and, perhaps, by naiveté, they refused and opted for the 'or else'. That autumn US-led coalition dropped about 12,000 bombs on Afghanistan...about 40% were "dumb", unguided resulting in thousands of civilian deaths. 

The Soviet invasion of 1989 had claimed an estimated one to two million lives, or up to 10% of the population. This US invasion also caused about 140,000 deaths directly by the end of NATOs formal combat role in 2014. While the US-led allies spent about $60 billion a year in men, materials and 'humanitarian aid' in Afghanistan, the Taliban found refuge in Pakistan and managed with an estimated budget o $100 million annually. from Arab donations, drug dealing, protection rackets, local taxation, extortion and kidnapping.

Now what about the title of the book, 'Directorate S'? Well the author does not have much to offer other than patchy details about ISI and its machinations. The focus of the book is on allied generals, ambassadors, assorted dictators, dubiously 'elected' leaders and diplomats. 

Steve Coll's latest book reads like a thriller but it leaves you disappointed because the book is essentially about short-sighted Americans, not the Afghans, ISI or a way out of this mess. It describes two decades of disjointed war which has turned out to be as effective as most of the allied bombs - dumb.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Coll, Steve (2018): DIRECTORATE S - The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Kabul's All Seeing Blimps - https://www.wired.com/2011/01/all-seeing-blimp/

Spin and Wobble vs. Space and Time

 Today is the winter equinox - one of the few festivals days linked to the solar calendar India. In the north - especially in Punjab the day is celebrated as Lohri, a harvest festival, while in the south and east it is Makara Shankranti.  

In the zodiac, Makara (crocodile), coincides with Capricon (sea-goat), and so this day marks the farthest movement of the sun on horizon, the longest night and shortest day of the year. From here on, as the sun moves further into Makara/Capricon, the days get longer, and winter is giving way to spring.

Indian astronomy is something I always wanted to understand better. No festival or ceremony - birth, marriage, death - is complete without a precise reference to the Hindu almanac which seemed like a complicated triangulation of the position of the stars, constellations, the sun and the moon. This is also the reason why most of us celebrate two birthdays every year - the constant solar calendar date, and the luni-solar date which changes each year.

It is only recently that I came across a video that explains some of these things clearly - a lecture by Prof. Raj Vedam titled, "Indian Civilization - The Untold Story". It is a long lecture (1:37 hrs) but what fascinated me is the explanation on astro-archeology. In this the author uses references to the luni-solar dates in the ancient epics and poems to determine when these works were composed.

First a bit of background. What is the Indian astronomical model? 

The main elements of the traditional astronomy are the Nakshatras and Rashis. The night sky was divided into 13&1/3 segments (Nakshatra s) and each was named after the brightest stars in that section. The 27 Nakshatras  covers the space around earth (27 * 13 1/3 = 360 degrees).

Next this was combined with the location of the full moon. So the sky was also divided into 30 degree segments called the Rashi -(30*12 = 360).

Now consider Kalidasa's epic poem, "Meghadoota" (The Cloud Messenger) which is said to have been composed in the 4th or 5th century CE. The story refers to a time when "the rainy season (Varsha Ritu) began in Ashada Masa". This means that at this time, the full moon was above Ashadha nakshatra (~Sagittarius constellation), and from here it follows that that the sun, 360 deg opposite, was in Punarvasu nakshatra (castor-pullox of Gemini).

At present the rainy starts when the sun is in MrigaShirsha nakshatra (Orion constellation). There is only one logical way to explain this discrepancy - precession of equinox.

What exactly is precession? It is the wobble of a spinning top. As the earth spins on its axis (once every 24 hours), it also wobbles slowly, making the axis turn a full circle in 25,771 years. Thanks to this wobble our view of the stars also changes as time goes by. Today Polaris is the pole-star (Dhruva today); in 3000 BC it was Thuban, and in 14000 AD it will be Vega (Abhijit).

So, coming back to Kalidasa's poem, it is precession that explains a two nakshatra difference between the observation of the start of the rainy season. Precession of equinox happens at the rate of 960 years per nakshatra. Hence the event being described by Kalidasa happened 1920 years ago (960 * 2), around ~100 CE about 400 years before the commonly accepted date of the composition!

This makes you wonder about conventional wisdom, most of which is based on the observations of Western scholars. Which are the other dates waiting to be revised in our textbooks? 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* "Indian Civilization - The Untold Story" by Prof. Raj Vedam - https://youtu.be/RGyjvyXEKdc

* List of Nakshatras - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nakshatras

Slavery - Not So Long Ago

 I got my first introduction to the concept of Slavery a few decades ago,  from Alex Haley's book, "Roots". 

This book not only left a lasting impression about this dehumanised life of Kunta Kinte, but also a notion that slavery was something that was the white man created to obtain cheap labour for his plantations in the New World - a rather naive view in which slaves were snatched from Africa, packed like sardines into ships, and sold to sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas.

I did come across other references to slavery in the distant past. The history of Islamic invasions across the Indus River, the enslavement of 'infidels' in their thousands by the Ghaznivid and Ghorid sultanates, as a result of which an entire mountain range got the name Hindu-kush, or 'killer of Hindus', because a large number of Indian slaves had perished while being driven across the central Afghan mountains, to the slave supermarkets of Central Asia. 

That was, of course, the distant past. The most recent news of slavery came from the Middle East with reports of what ISIS or Al Qaida had been doing to the Yazidis and other ethic minorities in Iraq and Syria. Except for this aberration of sorts, my rather simplistic view has been overturned by the book - "Slavery in South Asia" by Richard Eaton and Indrani Chatterjee.

This book is a compilation of essays focusing on different parts of India across the ages.  It now turns out that far from being a rarity, slavery has always been an integral part of empire building in India. 

If the ISIS enslavement of Yazidi women is shocking, you should read about what the Cholas did with captured women for centuries. They developed military slavery to such an institution that captured women were systematically organised into "Velam s", to serve as breeding machines for future soldiers. A practice that has been meticulously recorded in temple inscriptions both by the victors and the vanquished - especially the Pandas and Chalukyas.

Another surprise was the extent to which foreign slaves were brought into India. Mongol invasions (starting 1222 CE) had destroyed the social and economic fabric of the area around the Caspian Sea, and children were being traded for a pittance. So Central Asian raiders to India had entire battalions made of such slaves, and trusted them more than their own sons. Some of these slave-boys went on to become Sultans themselves, starting with Qutub-al-Din Aybak, Iltutmish and Balban, all of whom were slaves of Turkish origin.

Religious sanction, of course, provided just the impetus for a practice that would surely have been hard to accept morally. The Koran was - and is - quite unambiguous - 

"When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until ye have made a great slaughter among them; and bind them in bonds; ad wither give them a free discussion afterwards, or extract a ransom; until the war shall have laid down its arms. -- Sura 47:4-5 in The Koran

"Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi" gives the standard value of a 'working girl' as fixed between 5 and 12 tankas, a singing girl between 20-40 tankas...a handsome slave-boy between 20-30 tankas, a working man between 10-15 while "ill-favoured" boys were priced at 7-8 tankas.

Alauddin Khilji had a slave general with a name that combined his price-tag - Malik Kafur Hazar Dinari. He had been captured during a raid into Gujarat and went on to become an army commander who not only stopped the Mongol invasions in the early 1300s but also plundered the kingdoms of deep south - the Kakatiyas, Hoysalas and Pandyas.

Each time there was a successful raid into India, so many people were enslaved and taken away that prices nosedived, and the slave markets collapsed. Ibn Battuta was quite pleased at the bargain rates for which he got slave boys and girls in Delhi; All the Mughals traded Indian slaves for horses from Uzbekistan; Nadir Shah took so many slaves and wealth back to Persia that he did have to tax his countrymen for a few years.

Then we have the amazing Ethiopian slaves, purchased from African kings and Arabs in exchange for Indian textiles. These "Habshis" and "Sidis" formed military backbone of the Deccan Sultanates. So much so that one of them - Malik Ambar - became the de facto king of Ahmednagar and employed among his many Maratha commanders, the father of a boy who was to become Chattrapati Shivaji!

Did the practice of slavery end after the British took over India? Not quite. A British monarch himself requisitioned for "two pairs of slave dwarfs" from India for his entertainment. In the North East of India the practice of slavery continued to the basis for recruiting soldiers into the British Indian Army. 

During the 1800s, more than four rounds of severe famines had ensured that thousands of men, women and children were forced to become slaves under the "Chawmman" system wherein they owed their chiefs for payments for board, or price of food. So when the British wanted cannon-fodder for the trench-wars in Europe, these men were readily signed up by their village chiefs. 

It was only after the First World War that the 1919 Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye affirmed international desire to secure complete suppression of slavery. This was lated taken affirmed by the League of Nations and then, the United Nations.

This book is a sobering reminder that the dreadful past is a lot more recent that we imagine.

Alwar and Sariska

This was a New Year trip to remember.

Our road trip to Alwar and the Sariska Tiger Reserve was just meant to be a break - from the dreariness of Covid Lockdowns and the usual overcast gloominess of peak-winter in Delhi. The expectations were rather low - we had not spotted a tiger during our trip to Ranthambore, so in our calculus, Sariska, with less than half the number, did not stand much of a chance. I had not heard much about sightseeing in Alwar, and the hotel too did not seem remarkable.

As a fallback option, I had armed myself with a nice fat book to cope with the anticipated ennui - "Slavery and South Asian History", a compilation of essays by Indrani Chatterji and Richard M. Eaton.

Four days later I am looking back with wonder and amazement over the fact that Alwar does not attract even a fraction of the tourist traffic that throngs the so -called Golden Triangle of Delhi-Jaipur-Agra.

It is a lovely getaway. Alwar is a plain little town that hides its treasures very well, and Sariska Tiger Reserve has the feel of a Jurassic Park biding its time, waiting for the world to wake up to its potential.

We started out road trip on 30 Dec., 2020, half expecting the roads to be blocked by agitating farmers. The journey was smooth - except for the switchover from National Highway 8 to the State Highway. The junction at Bhiwadi is a pot-holed mess and for a few dozen kilometres the SH has a nasty collection of unmarked speed-breakers. Once you get past these, the driving is smooth as can be.

Hotel Alwar Bagh Aamod is about midway between Alwar and Sariska. It covers a large area alongside the Aravali hills, with lawns, orchards and gardens. The rooms are so-so. Many of the facilities it promises on its website are not available (space observatory, table-tennis), while some of the 'sports facilities' are downright pathetic - especially indoor games like snookers, darts and carroms. The hotel blames this on cutbacks linked to the the C19 lockdowns. However, it does have a bunch of really helpful and proactive staff. The obstacle course is particularly good, and is staffed by an able Lucky-ji. They also offer a decent buffet spread for breakfast and dinner as a part of the package.

The drive from Aamod to Sariska is quite interesting. The gentle Aravali hills seem to grow higher and broader, you drive past an unmarked fort surrounded by jagged rock formations, past the buffer area of the park until you reach the main entrance which seems to sit at the centre of a massive U-shaped valley. 

I was surprised to learn that this park covers 881 sq.km which is more than double the size of the Ranthambore reserve. It has lovely scrub forests and valleys filled with dhok trees, plenty of deer (Sambhar, spotted and Neelgai) and birds. We hired a jeep and drove around route-2 for more than two hours, enjoying the pin-drop silence broken only by occasional animal calls, and the low rumble of the vehicle. One obvious flaw of this park is that it allows private vehicles owned by local villagers, unfettered access right through the park. No wonder the tiger population here fails to grow here -- the domestic cows and buffaloes that roam around in the park are clearly not bothered by the tigers. 

The park has a ticket counter but it is better to make online bookings at Sariska Tiger Reserve site. It is better to choose the open jeeps over the noisy canters at about INR 800 pax.

The park does gives you a sense of how this area would have looked for thousands of years. Alwar district located along one of the old trade routes to the Arabian Sea, so it is not surprising that it has a long history. During the Vedic era and the Mahabharata wars (~4000 BCE?), this area was ruled by the Matsyas. An Ashoka edict in nearby Viratnagar (Bairat) dates back to 300 BCE but  the structures that stand today are the palaces, tanks and forts built by the local Rajput clans.

Alwar's medieval palace now functions as a dreary government secretariat but three things here a strong impression -- Musi Rani ki Chattri (a mausoleum), the terraced water-tank, and the government museum. At the mausoleum a board tells you that it was built in the memory of Raja Bhaktavar Singh and his wife, Musi, who committed "sati" on his funeral pyre. 

The truth is a bit more complicated. According to the book on Slavery, Musi was actually war booty - a slave girl snatched from the Meo tribe defeated by the Rajputs. 

The museum here is a bolt out of the blue - neat, well organised with excellent displays of paintings, artefacts and weapons. Some of the collections here surpass the National Museum in New Delhi!

It would be wonderful to see the rest of the Alwar palace, and the water-tank restored to its former glory. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- Sariska Tiger Reserve - http://www.tourism.rajasthan.gov.in/content/rajasthan-tourism/en/tourist-destinations/sariska-tiger-reserve.html

- Dhok Trees - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/dhok-the-purple-heart-warrior-of-the-aravallis/article28295083.ece

- Rajasthan Tourism - http://rtdc.tourism.rajasthan.gov.in/

- Alwar Bagh Aamodh Hotel, Sariska - https://www.aamod.in/sariska/ -- note - photos and details here are completely out of date.