Were Authors of Rig-Veda in India and Avesta in Iran Same People, Why Do Some People Never Get COVID; PTSD, Bipolar Disorder and Rana Ayyub’s 2012 Account of Why Karnataka Is Burning With Hate
Ustad Bismillah Khan, Wordle, Hijab and a poem from People's Poet 'Vidrohi'
The composition of Vedic corpus (or the Vedas) is earlier than that of the epics or the Puranas, and the language was a more archaic form of Sanskrit that is now called Old Indo-Aryan. This differentiated it from the later form of Sanskrit referred to as Classical Sanskrit. European scholars of Sanskrit had recognised that the old form of Sanskrit was related in structure and sound to Greek and Latin. Indo-European and Indo-Aryan are language labels, but in the nineteenth century these were also incorrectly used as racial labels and this confusion persist. The correct usage should be ‘Indo-European-speaking people’ and ‘Indo-Aryan-speaking people’, but the shortened labels, Indo-European and Indo-Aryan or Aryan, are commonly used. […] Indo-European is a reconstructed language, working back from cognate languages, and its speakers had central Asia as their original habitat. Gradually, over many centuries, they branched out and as pastoralists spread far afield in search of fresh pastures. They also worked as carriers of goods intended for exchange. Some migrated to Anatolia, others to Iran, and some among the latter, it is thought, migrated to India. In the texts composed by them, such as Avesta in Iran and the Rig-Veda in India, they refer to themselves as airiia and arya, hence the European term, Aryan. [..] The beginning of Indian history were associated with the coming of the ‘Aryans’, some time in the second millennium BC.
But this picture of the past was again to be disturbed in the twentieth century. In the 1920s archaeology revealed the existence of urban civilization, dating to a period prior to the Rig-Veda, in the north-west of India: the Indus civilization or the Harappa culture. This discovery took the formative period of civilization back to the third millennium BC. Archaeology has provided evidence on the evolution of cultures from pre-Harappan societies, and this goes back still further in time. The Harappa culture provides no clues to the rule of Manus, nor does the Vedic corpus. […] The theory of an Aryan invasion no longer has credence. The Rig-Veda refers to skirmishes between groups, some among those who identify themselves as aryas and some between the aryas and dasas. The more acceptable theory is that groups of Indo-Aryan speakers gradually migrated from the Indo-Iranian borderlands and Afghanistan to northern India, where they introduced the language. The impetus to migrate was a search for better pastures, for arable land and some advantage from an exchange of goods. […] There is also the argument that these were dissident groups that had broken away from the speakers of Old Iranian, whose language and ideas came to be encapsulated in the Avesta. There is a significant reversal of meaning in concepts common to both the Avesta and the Rig-Veda.
[…] The cities of the Indus civilization had declined by the mid-second millennium BC […] It was probably around this period that the Indo-Aryan speakers entered the north-west of India from the Indo-Iranian borderlands, migrating in small numbers through the passes in the noth-western mountains to settle in northern India. Small scale migrations have the advantage of not being dramatically disruptive and these could have registered only after the decline of Harappan cities. [..] The search was for pastures and some arable land, as they were mainly a cattle-keeping people. Myths in Avesta refer to repeated migrations from Inran to the Indus area.
The earliest dated evidence of a form of Indo-Aryan, which, although not identical to Rig-Vedic Sanskrit is nevertheless close to it, comes not from India but from northern Syria. The evidence is brief and scattered and consists of names and words that are in a form of Indo-Aryan. A treaty between the Hittites and the Mitannis dating to the fourteenth century BC calls upon certain gods as witnesses and among these are Indara/Indra, Mitras(il)/Mitra, Nasatianna/Nasatya, and Uruvanass(il)/Varuna, known to the Rig-Veda and the Avesta. Curiously, there is no reference to the dominant deities of the Rig-Veda — Agni and Soma.
[…] The connections between Iran and North India on the other hand are close. The language of the Avesta and Indo-Aryan were cognates, descended from the same ancestral language. The date of the Avesta — the text of Zoroastrianism — has been controversial, but a mid-second millennium date is now being accepted. The linguistic relationship between the two includes not just words but also concepts. The interchangeability between ‘h’ and ‘s’ is one of the differences, but there is a consistency in this change such as haoma, daha, hepta hindu, Ahura in Avestan, and soma, dasa, sapta sindhu, asura in Rig-Vedic Sanskrit. In terms of religious concepts, the attributes of gods are often reversed. Thus Indra is demonic in the Avesta, as are the daevas (devas or gods in Sanskrit) and Ahura/asura emerges as the highest deity. This has led to the theory that originally the Old Iranian and Indo-Aryan speakers were a single group but dissensions led to their splitting up. It was then that the Indo-Aryan speakers living in the Indo- Iranian borderlands and the Haraxvati (Sarasvati) area of Afghanistan gradually migrated to the Indus plain, bringing with them their language, rituals and social customs, to settle as agro-pastoralists in the sapta-sindhu area, as described in the Rig-Veda, later merging with the local population. This reconstruction tallies up to a point with the archaeological evidence.
[…] There is no familiarity from mythology with the notion of an animal such as the uniform, mythical as it was, nor even its supposed approximation in the rhinoceros, the most frequently depicted animal on the Harappan seals. The animal central to the Rig-Veda, the horse, is absent on Harappan seals. There is no mention of seals or a script in the Rig-Veda. Sculptured representations of the human body seem unknown. The geography of the Rig-Veda is limited to the northerly Indus plain — the sapta-sindhu area — and is unfamiliar with lower Sind, Kutch and Gujarat, and with the ports and hinterlands along the Persian Gulf that were significant to Harappan maritime trade.
That’s from Romila Thapar’s Early India. The summary of what she’s saying is that the authors of Rig-Veda were not indigenous to India. They came from Iran, Syria and other parts of the upper Indus plains. They migrated during the time when Indus or Harappan civilization was on the decline. That is, if one thinks through all this, there were indigenous people to this region (with their own history, culture and architecture) here prior to the migration (not invasion) of Rig-Vedic people. Also, since many of us have this bad habit of travelling into past glory and such and indulging in the hate of people of the present over some atrocity (many a time imagined atrocity) committed by people who walked this earth thousands of years ago, this reading among other things should at least make you realise that the people asking you to resort to violence against others, people distributing certificate of nationalism and who is Indian and who is not, these very people were not even original inhabitants of these lands. They travelled here, migrated to this part of the world looking for arable land and green pasture.
And now I want to watch The Devil Wears Prada after watching this clip.
Based on a bestselling novel by the same name, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) stars Meryl Streep (Miranda Priestly) and Anne Hathaway (Andy Sachs) in lead roles.
Why Do Some People Never Get Covid?
Two people go out to dinner and have the same meal; one ends up in the emergency room with food poisoning, but the other does not. The seasonal flu runs through an entire family, except for one individual who remains healthy. A case of mono can be a bad memory for one person and turn into a death sentence for another. Doctors look for the vulnerabilities that we can see to explain these outcomes, like age, vaccination status and underlying conditions, but we are often left without answers.
The unpredictability of the coronavirus has made clear just how much we don’t know. Standing at the bedside in the Covid intensive care unit during the first wave, I wondered why young men without identifiable risk factors had become critically ill while their spouses and children were able to manage their symptoms at home. More recently, Omicron has swept through cities, infecting people at a far greater rate than before, and yet some continued to test negative — even if a roommate was positive.
Now physicians and researchers throughout the globe are asking, and attempting to answer, similar questions. Dr. Mayana Zatz was taking her usual stroll near her home in São Paulo, Brazil, when she realized she hadn’t seen one of her neighbors for several weeks. When she ran into his wife, Dr. Zatz learned that he had been sick at home with a high fever, a cough and flulike symptoms. Even then, in February 2020, these were telltale signs of Covid. The woman was caring for him by herself, without a mask, and though she had expected to fall ill, too, she was feeling just fine.
Dr Zatz couldn’t stop thinking about her neighbours. Her neighbours took antibody tests later on and as expected the man showed prior infection while the woman did not. This intrigued Dr Zatz further making her appear on television and showing her interest in knowing about people who cared and lived with infected but were themselves spared from it. She was inundated with thousands of emails. Her neighbours weren’t so of an anomaly. You may read the entire New York Times piece here.
Not So Pretty Numbers
According to data from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) for the period of 2016-2017, almost 70 per cent of the loans under the Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme for Education Loans (CGFSEL) have been granted to students from the General Category. In comparison, the percentage of beneficiaries from SC, ST and OBC communities is dismal, being as low as 7 per cent for Scheduled Castes and 3 per cent for Scheduled Tribes. — Himal South Asean
Tamil Nadu MP Kanimozhi criticized the union government in Parliament for only earmarking Rs 59 crore for the Southern Railway in the Union Budget 2022 while earmarking Rs 13,200 crore for Northern Railways. That's a 220% difference. This is when most revenue that India earns comes from the southern states.
Gautam Adani, the Gujarati businessman whose rise in fortunes parallels Narendra Modi’s political rise, added $49 billion last year to his wealth, which surged 153% to $81 billion. The increase of Rs 6,000 crore every week in 2021, was the highest in the world and more than the net addition of wealth by the top three global billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault, the 2022 M3M Hurun Global Rich List finds. Mukesh Ambani remains the richest Indian with $103 billion, a 24% rise year on year. In the last 10 years, Ambani’s wealth has grown 400%, while Adani has seen a 1,830% increase. India ranks third on the list based on its billionaire count and the number of billionaires who have added at least a billion to their wealth last year. While their fortunes rose, a record number of people, 230 million according to one study, slipped back into poverty.
PTSD, Bipolar Disorder and a Curious Case of a Simple Salt
It used to be thought that forgetting anything — from minor things like the name of a casual acquaintance to the more painful loss of cherished memories experienced by my patients — was caused, to varying degrees, by a failure of the brain’s memory mechanisms. But new developments in neuroscience over the past decade or so refute this simple idea. […] Neurons contain what are sometimes called nanomachines that are dedicated to the construction of new memories. But scientists have recently discovered that neurons are also endowed with a completely different set of nanomachines designed for the opposite purpose: to carefully disassemble — and thus forget — components of our stored memories. […] In light of this new and growing body of research, normal everyday forgetting can no longer be thought of as a malfunction of our memory machinery; instead, it should be considered a healthy and adaptive part of our brain’s normal functioning. Memory and forgetting work in unison. We depend on our memory to record, to learn and to recall, and we depend on forgetting to countervail, to sculpt and to squelch our memories. This balancing act is, as it turns out, vital for our cognitive functioning, creativity and mental health. Of course, there are unhealthy kinds of forgetting. Alzheimer’s disease, for one, targets memory mechanisms and causes them to fail. But in other disorders, it appears that the brain’s forgetting mechanisms break down. The psychological condition that perhaps best exemplifies what can happen when people don’t forget properly is — Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event.
It is natural to feel afraid during and after a traumatic situation. Fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to help defend against danger or to avoid it. This “fight-or-flight” response is a typical reaction meant to protect a person from harm. Nearly everyone will experience a range of reactions after trauma, yet most people recover from initial symptoms naturally. Those who continue to experience problems may be diagnosed with PTSD. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened, even when they are not in danger.
While it is often beneficial to remember the facts of a traumatic experience, sometimes even in pointillist detail, it is equally — if not more — important to the healing process to let the emotional valence of it fade. If we don’t, we can get stuck in a total emotional recall, reviving our distress in perpetuity. Forgetting protects us from this debilitating anxiety not by deleting memories but by quieting our emotional scream. The same is true for more run-of-the-mill emotions. Intuitively, it makes sense that we sometimes need to “let go” of hurt and resentment to preserve close friendships and that we need to forget in order to forgive. “Letting go” is just one of the many colloquialisms that implicitly nod in recognition and gratitude toward our brain’s forgetting mechanisms. In patients with PTSD, the area of the brain that stores fear memories is highly active, suggesting that the individual cannot properly engage the brain’s fear forgetting system and therefore cannot let go of the high anxiety associated with the memory of the traumatic event.
Complex disorders should not be oversimplified, but it is possible to think about PTSD as a disorder stemming from too much memory, caused by an inability to forget a traumatic experience in a healthy way.
Turning down activity in this brain region effectively induces a healthy ability to forget feelings of fear. Drugs like MDMA do just that and are being tested as a treatment for PTSD. Some couples therapists have even used MDMA to accelerate the “forgetting and forgiving” process in their patients. From the testimonials of recreational users, quieting fear-related memories is apparently so potent in its “prosocial” effects — making people friendlier, more compassionate, even more loving — that it underscores how unchecked fear memories can make people antisocial and miserable.
You might be wondering why you’re reading about PTSD now. Well, I’m diving into it now.
The MDMA that’s used to treat PTSD is not a simple element but a complex molecular structure with molecular formula C11H15NO2 (C-eleven-H-fifteen-N-O-two). And you kind of expect such complex chemical compounds as drugs for the treatment of diseases (or disorders). But do you know what treats Bipolar Disorder?
Bipolar disorder (formerly called manic-depressive illness or manic depression) is a mental disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks.
People with bipolar disorder experience periods of unusually intense emotion, changes in sleep patterns and activity levels, and uncharacteristic behaviors—often without recognizing their likely harmful or undesirable effects.
Radiolab’s Elements podcast in one section discusses the case of Jamie Lowe who at one point believed that she was going to interview George W Bush and Fidel Castro on MTV. And 20 minutes of this absurd conversation with her colleague, she asks him to come with her to the roof of their office where he’s invited to Valentine’s day party at the roof of World Trade Center where she says she will ask him out for marriage.
That's when it hit me that there was no way that any of this reflects what she would actually want. I don't know if delusional is a kind word here, and if it's not I apologize, but if she is delusional enough to think that we should get married is she delusional enough to think she can fly? Will she be distraught when I say, "No." Would she jump? So I lowered the camera, and I said, "I'm afraid of heights and I want to go downstairs immediately." I felt, for the first time, just fear. I believe I called her mother first, Leanne, and I just said, "My name is Mike. I'm a friend of Jamie's and I think she may be going through something, and I don't know what I'm dealing with. I'm in over my head here."
Jamie ended up being diagnosed as a ‘classic case of Bipolar’ and was treated at Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA by psychiatrist Dr Mark D'Antonio. He said she was in a very acute, manic psychotic state.
What she was treated with, that, that’s what all this rambling is about. Lithium. It’s not even a drug, but just this salt.
Lithium is a chemical element with symbol Li and atomic number 3. Classified as an alkali metal, Lithium is a solid at room temperature.
It’s fascinating. That a single atom can change what we think of who we are. I mean it's not even ... Not just an atom, it's atom number three. It's the third element in the table.
Yep! Just a simple element on the periodic table. Forget being complex, it’s not even a mix of two elements, just one single atom. And this single atom, simple salt, acts as a mood-stabilizing agent which has been extensively used for the treatment of mania for more than 50 years now.
The other thing I know about Lithium that is profoundly weird is that you're not just saying "My mind, my personality, is being changed by an atom." It's being changed by an atom that was created directly in the big bang itself. So you have this atom formed in the big bang, goes through whatever it does, winding path to come onto the Earth. Gets dug up, turned into a pill, given to someone, and that changes their affect in the world. That, to me, is just ... It's this profound reminder that the forces that shape everything in the universe are the same as the forces that are shaping who we are and what we do, and what our identity is.
[…] the Texas study, which is astonishing, also shows that the towns that have the highest Lithium level have lower felonies, thefts, rapes. And these are reputable published studies.
All that is from this wonderful podcast on three elements by Radiolab. Do give it a listen when you can.
Wordle 274 5/6 ⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨 ⬛🟨🟨🟩⬛ 🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛ 🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Do you play Wordle?
Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, knew his partner loved word games, so he created a guessing game for just the two of them. As a play on his last name, he named it Wordle.
But after the couple played for months, and after it rapidly became an obsession in his family’s WhatsApp group once he introduced it to relatives, Mr. Wardle thought he might be on to something and released it to the rest of the world in October.
On Nov. 1, 90 people played.
On Sunday, just over two months later, more than 300,000 people played.
It’s been a meteoric rise for the once-a-day game, which invites players to guess a five-letter word in a similar manner as the guess-the-color game Mastermind. After guessing a five-letter word, the game tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place. You have six tries to get it right.
Few such popular corners of the internet are as low-frills as the website, which Mr. Wardle built himself as a side project. There are no ads or flashing banners; no windows pop up or ask for money. There is merely the game on a black background.
— Wordle Is a Love Story
The Indian army has created a new human rights cell led by a major general for “greater transparency and probity”.
Here’s your guide to India’s Military Justice System - all illustrated.
I stand in the court of the Simon Commission let mother earth and humanity be my witness from there I speak where the burnt body of a woman lies right there, on the last step of the tank at Mohenjo Daro inside it, scattered bones of humanity scorched corpses of women you’ll find in Babylon bones of humanity you’ll find scattered in Mesopotamia over and over I think to remember— at the estuaries of many an ancient civilization lies the scorched corpse of a woman and scattered bones of humanity from the spurs of Syria to the plains of Bengal this story travels and spans the jungles at Kanha and the woodlands of the Savanna. a woman who could have been a mother sister daughter wife I tell you, go away from me my blood boils, my heart smolders, my body, a fiery ember it is my mother, it is my wife, it is my sister, it is my daughter they have killed, they have burnt their souls resound in the heavens above and on that scorched corpse of the woman I would have banged my head until I died if I didn’t have a daughter of my own! yet this daughter of mine says— “Papa, you worry unnecessarily about us We girls are just firewood to be tossed in the cooking hearth” and these scattered bones of humans they could have been slaves from Rome or Julahes from Bengal or even Vietnamese, Palestinian children empires are empires after all, be Roman be British or the ultramodern American empire the destiny of all empires to scatter bones of humanity over mountains and plains, by river and sea they claim their right over history with just these three decrees that we packed this Earth with embers that we engulfed this Earth in flames that we littered this Earth with human bones! but, as the heir of humanity I avow even as I live go and tell Caesar’s slaves we shall meet as one and one day march on Rome! — Vidrohi Translated from Hindi by Rashmi Gajare and Patricio Ferrari
The Hijab controversy which has now engulfed the whole of India first originated in Karnataka. But that’s not all. Karnataka has been home to attacks on churches, the desecration of mosques and other colourful things all of which now put to shame even the famed (?) state of Uttar Pradesh. This has somehow surprised many well-meaning people and has compelled them to ask - what exactly is happening in Karnataka (the home to the Indian IT industry) and why suddenly now? Well, it turns out, nothing is new. Karnataka has been the boiling pot or Hindutva lab at least since 2012 when Rana Ayyub wrote this piece in Tehelka — Hindutva Lab 2.0 — Gujarat being the first lab.
Two weeks ago, the so-called ‘porngate’ controversy rattled the country, when three BJP ministers were caught in the Assembly watching a pornographic clip — later explained as the recording of a woman being raped — while the House was in session and discussing poverty. While that controversy claimed the headlines, it also forced the RSS and its affiliates in the state to hurriedly cancel plans of the extended session of the Hindu Shakti Sangama. A Hindu show of strength, as the name implies, the Sangama was supposed to be held across the state after the opening convention in Hubli. Chief Minister DV Sadananda Gowda turned up in Hubli, wearing the RSS trademark khaki shorts — perhaps the first time a chief minister has been seen thus clad at a public event. If pictures tell a story, this one spoke volumes of the saffronisation of Karnataka.
[…] On 22 January, there was uproar in Uppanangadi, a hamlet near Mangalore. Kalladka Prabhakar Bhatt, a senior RSS leader known for his proximity to Sadananda Gowda and his predecessor BS Yeddyurappa, was addressing a crowd and resorted to extreme and undignified imagery. “Lift the veils of Muslim women,” Bhatt told the throng, “and glimpse what they have to offer.” His listeners cheered; policemen listened too, but strolled casually, as if nothing were happening.
Soon after, the local minorities — a mix of Muslim and Catholic organisations — approached the police, which reluctantly filed an FIR against Bhatt. Yet it refused to arrest him, arguing there was no basis for taking him into custody. Rather, as if to compensate, the local police then filed an FIR against the president of the Muslim Central Committee, Mohammad Masood, under Section 153(a) of the Indian Penal Code — “Promoting communal enmity between classes” — as well as Section 505(2) — “Making statements that create or promote communal enmity”.
What was Masood’s fault? He had called a press conference to condemn Bhatt’s despicable one-liner. When contacted, Mangalore SP Abhishek Goyal suggested that there were “grey areas” and the police would certainly “study” the case. While the police was still studying the footage of Bhatt’s public meeting, the man himself inaugurated the new building of the Mangalore Police Commissionerate! Sitting with him in the VIP row was none other than the chief minister.
It was the sort of moment and photo-op the media just waits for. Yet the presence of Bhatt so soon after the unseemly incident found no mention in the media coverage of the inauguration of the new building. It was almost as if there was a conspiracy of silence. Only one plucky local newspaper broke the Omerta: Karavali Ale.
At one time, Karavali Ale was Karnataka’s most popular newspaper. Part of the reason it is not any longer may have to do with the stance of its editor, BV Sitaram, who has been one of the few voices in the state warning against the rising tide of religious bigotry. For two decades, he has documented each and every communal incident, big and small, in the state — and has suffered for it.
In 2009, Sitaram was arrested when a case was filed against him for defamation. Twenty-five policemen turned up and surrounded him. “It seemed like they had come to arrest a terrorist,” he exclaims. His fault was he had written about the exploits of a local Bajrang Dal leader.
Sitaram points to the newspapers stacked in his office. Picking up some of them at random, from the previous month’s pile, almost every day one finds mention of an attack on Muslims and Christians, on churches and mosques. Sitaram is distraught: “They go around shouting ‘Pehle qasaai, phir Isaai’ — First butchers (Muslims), then Christians.” According to official figures, a church has been attacked almost once every 10 days in the past three years. In some cases, the very presence of a Muslim boy with a Hindu girl has caused a riot.
The opposition to Hindu girl-Muslim boy romance is part of a peculiar phenomenon that the Sangh Parivar labels “love jihad”. This paranoia began in Kerala and alleges that Muslim men are being trained to woo and then indoctrinate Hindu girls, to win converts to Islam.
Bhatt is an exponent of theories of love jihad. In December 2011, the Hindu Nagarika Samiti held a massive protest meeting in Sullia, where Bhatt attacked the police for its supposed anti-Hindu sentiment and spoke of how love jihad, terrorism and cow slaughter were rampant in the state.
He was joined by others, notably Satyajit Suratkal, regional convener of the Hindu Jagran Vedike, who said: “Whenever the Muslims provoked us, we have given a suitable response. If they want more, then there might be a recurrence of earlier happenings. If the police join hands with traitors we will teach them a lesson too.”
Rana Ayyub then goes into other instances of violence and many more reasons why Karnataka is seeing a rise in saffronisation of its politics and life. It is a great read, especially since this piece was written way back in 2012 and yet each line from it reads as if she is commenting on the current happenings in the southern state. There is continuity to the current madness. Take some time and do give this one a read.
Rana Ayyub is on Substack, do consider subscribing to her.
When the Hijab controversy started, many including myself took to social media to vent their thoughts and anger at the state of affairs in the state. What a friend of mine, Swagath Deepu wrote in his Instagram story has stayed and resonated with me in a big way.
Dear Karnataka,
So you didn't see this coming? Like, really? All those who intellectualized a moron and gave birth to a monster! All of you Vokkaligas, Lingayaths, Bunts, Billavas, 1A/2A/SC/ST "Hindus" who chose to sign your allegiance to culture of Uttar Pradesh and Saffron Raj from Nagpur RSS headquarters. All those who became modern and upper caste Vaishnavas from backward and lower caste Shaivas in search of much more colorful and chauvinistic gods. All of you who turned into Aryas from Dasas post 2014. All those who moved to '99 variety dosas' from Mysore Masala 'Dose'. All those who went from Mysore Peta and Arundhati Nakshatra to Haldi and Sangeet. All those who moved from TN Seethatam's Mayamruga, Manvantara, Muktha Muktha on ETV to Aryavrata seeking Zee, Colors, Star Plus's cacophonical regressive bullshit. All of you choosers of nostalgic Kannada cinema, now to the beggars of 'pan India movies'.All of you my fucktard close friends! You've done all the damage. You utilized the social justice fabric and vibrant politics of the past. You thrived on the so called "Christian", "Congress", "Secular" and "Liberal" convent and government eduction. Made merry on the foundation and infrastructure built from Vijayanagara rulers to Tippus to Wodeyars all inclusive of Islam, its culture and its influence in our society. Now you got Jai Shri Ram?? Who is it?? Neither our Rama was masculine women heckler, nor our Hanuma was an angry cartoon. There's no reference of Rama or Ramayana in South India before 'Kavirajamarga' by Nripatunga in the 9th century. Our Rama has evolved as an heroic 'Mardaya Purushotham' figure from Chavundaraya to Kuvempu's literary genius of Sri Ramayana Darshanam but not a blood curdling savage as practiced by the ilk of Nincompoop Gowalkars, Savarkars, to Santa Claus Modis.
'HIJAB' IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE. It's only an opportunity to disrupt and polarize society. There is a space to make way from the regressive practices in religions. Religion is what we have and it is what we can make better or make do of or better off in an educated exercise of thoughts by deriving and getting inspired from the ideas of Buddha, Basavanna and Ambedkar. That space for Renaissance of religion can only be created when people become equals, you can't force a social change in Islam with your Brahminical ulterior motive, keeping them oppressed and denying them education. If you think I'm being idealistic, there's history from Vijayanagara to Shishunala Sharifa to Tippu Sultan to Mirza Ismail. If you're ignorant, I've three words for you, Go Fucking Read! No Thanks, I'm talking to you, my close friends!
That’s it for this one. I will only say this much in the end - find reasons to love not hate. If you went looking, you'll find reasons to do both. And there are enough people on both spectrums. What do you look at, what do you internalise, what choices do you make is all up to you. I for one will be on the side of love and mutual harmony for I know that's the right thing to do and also, that's what keeps me elated and looking forward to the future. I don't want to stare at the future looking for blood. Neither do I want you to bloody your thoughts.
Look after yourself and those close to you. Take a step back when you come across a story or video that triggers you emotionally or teaches you to hate someone because of their colour, race or any other social differentiator. People who send or write those stories want you to turn you into their soldier of hate, a robot that can do their political bidding.
Here’s the legendary Ustad Bismillah Khan to warm and mend our broken hearts and spirit.
Good-bye and stay hydrated. And do share this newsletter with your friends and network. Thanks again for reading so far.