Living in the Past

The Just Individual - v

2012-02-12T00:24:00.002+05:30

As I discussed previously, morality's basic block is empathy which originates from 'self pity'[ii]. Since the mechanism of empathy requires few traits and faculties[iii], this empathy and in turn morality need not be unique to human beings. There are studies that have observed empathy and/or morality in other animals too[i].

I have also observed that, in some situations, empathy can turn to oneself when the empathy to others results in loss to self[iv]. Then the person considers the greater morality in his/her self-preservation as the self-pity to himself/herself masks everything else. Therefore, morality has its limitations because of its underlying empathy mechanism. However, some of the religions have adopted morality of this nature as a noble way.

The famous story of Jesus rescuing a woman from an angry mob by invoking self-pity of people for their own sins and making them feel guilty for not empathizing with the woman is a wellknown case here. Even though not a rational way, it's still acceptable since it rescued a non-criminal powerless woman from a certain death. However, even today, many, even among rationalists, unquestioningly, take this story as a guiding force of morality.

Just the other day, I read a journalist deriding the movement against corruption as one set of corrupts fighting other set of corrupts. He makes a fundamental mistake that politicians or bureaucrats are as powerless or non-criminal as the woman in Jesus's story. More importantly, it's also lost to the journalist that it's a ploy to rescue a woman who was obviously not guilty. However, the story is lost but contextless generalization of one sinner condemning the other is left.

In another development, I read a person invoking 'cast the first stone' in a discussion related to the news that ministers in Karnataka were caught watching porn in Legislative Assembly. The self-pity gets so strong here that the legality aspect of watching porn in restricted areas gets lost.

Thus I believe morality is a primitive trait. It anyway doesn't set us apart from other animals (Why do we have to bother about that point anyway?) and it also has its limitations. Therefore, logically, if humans want to really make themselves unique then they should be just. Justice cannot be decided by individuals because the morality of an individual for the self overrides it. Justice is a communal morality. It directs rightful empathy towards an individual even if it meant displeasing the morality of communities. So, it's a communal morality for the sake of an individual.

An individual is a just person if s/he subscribes to this communal morality and ready to condemn herself/himself in certain situations.

The Dubious Term Called Westernization - VI

2012-02-07T00:52:00.002+05:30

Gandhi over enthusiastically embraced some of the Europeans' views on national identity , vegetarian fadism and non-violence to further his own notion of Indian identity. One such view was from Chesterton.

When I see... the views of Indian nationalists, I get bored and feel dubious about them. What they want is not very Indian and not very national... Suppose an Indian said: 'I wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Everythign has its own faults and we perfer our own.. I prefer dying in battle to dying in [a Western] hospital.. If you (the British) do not like our way of living, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it.'
Supposing an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian nationalist. He would be an authentic Indian... But the Indian nationalists whose works I have read and go on saying: 'Give me a ballot box. Give me the judge's wig. I have a natural right or be Prime Minister. My soul is starved if I am excluded from the editorship of the Daily Mail.' Even the most sympathetic person may say in reply: 'What you say is very fine, my good Indian, but it is we who invented these things.'

The problem with Gandhi and Chesterton was that both make a fundamental mistake of creating a national homogenous identities bordering on racial identity. This identity has its own unique characteristics. This is absurd. In this case ,Gandhi's intellectualism doesn't look better than Anna Hazare's.

The 'we' in Chesterton's doesn't even apply to all people that he would identify with. If the inventions are so unique then they don't even have to bother about others claiming it because the others would have natural disability to own them. Now, since that is not the case, it is obvious that the ideas can spread across human groups. And we also can see that the dominant cultural strain can suppress these ideas in certain regions. However, it would be fallacy that few people in other region would not have thought about those 'inventions' in the first place.

So, Gandhi's quest for an Indian identity was flawed from the beginning.

Reference:
1. Mohandas, by Rajmohan Gandhi

The Moral Individual - iv

2012-01-22T14:46:00.007+05:30

As an individual progresses in life, there would be many instances where s/he finds her/himself guilty of harm to another person or a group of persons (and vice versa but focus is on the morality of the individual here). This harm was not initiated by the person him/herself but because of cultural norms was part of the life. The perpetrator and the victim both were unaware of this relationship and the perpetrator always imagined a noble ring or a mutually enjoyable act in the way s/he associated with the other person.

The perpetrator realizes this(harm) as s/he acquires greater knowledge about the long term implications in the form of emotional or physical or one feeding the other harms to the other person. Let us consider this person has developed empathy because of self-pity. How would s/he respond to this situation?

Let's consider the worst case scenario, where the perceived normal relationship has been highly beneficial to his/her emotional or physical needs. In this case, a radical change in the relationship is difficult. In this situation, the crystal clear knowledge of the harm s/he has caused or s/he is going to cause in the long term gets blurred. S/he develops a new self-pity in the eventuality of conceding his/her fault.

A new self-pity on his/her perceived struggle without the psychological or physical fulfillment of his/her needs would make him/her to go slow on his/her own determination to change. It also develops a cynical rationalization that the permanent harm could have been done already before s/he acquired the knowledge of it and any change on his/her part would anyway make no difference.

A society with the burden of many cultural and ritualized practices which deny human rights to individuals or ask them to perform acts with a self-serving reason that those are 'common', cannot hope to correct itself by individuals' goodness. The individual goodness is strongly dependent on the empathy based on the self-pity and the self-pity can develop with the loss of privilege which in turn redirects the empathy requirement on the perpetrators themselves. In such cases, a non-individualistic action called justice which only seeks to correct the wrong done on individuals disregarding perpetrator individual empathy is the only true morality.

Random Thoughts - Love_Lust

2012-01-17T23:59:00.003+05:30

This article on Asexuals is inline with the previous findings that love and lust are mutually independent feelings. According them, asexuals can be divided into 'romantic asexuals' and 'aromantic asexuals'. An asexual can fall in love with other person.

As implied, sexuals are defined by the presence of 'lust' and asexuals by the lack of it, not only that, both sexuals and asexuals can be defined by the presence or absence of 'love'.

So, humans can be;
- Sexually romantics
- Asexually romantics
- Sexually aromantics
- Asexually aromantics

However, a sexual individual's orientation could be any of these combinations based on the person s/he meets.

If I think about it there could be persons who lack the feeling 'love' completely just as some people lack 'lust'. I think these people are yet to 'come home'. So, when I talked about presence or absence of love in the beginning it's about mutual phenomenon. But lack of love can be a self phenomenon just like lack of lust.

Communism and Kerala - VI

2012-01-02T23:11:00.012+05:30

I'm reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I have finished around 150 pages and I find it difficult to read further. The initial excitement at his description of a totalitarian system has been vaporized by a colligated romantic story.

It could be said that even in his imagination of a totalitarian society he had been helped by the existing systems elsewhere and had taken it to the logical conclusion. However, it was his female characters that one would feel a total letdown.

I'm not mixing my thoughts here. A totalitarian society is created by a collection of people. Females are individuals. One can stereotype a totalitarian society and still get it right because it is not individualistic. However, a person's experience of females cannot be stereotyped because at the end of the day he's dealing with any female as an individual. Here I found Orwell had caricatured females.

Both Katherine and Julia are stereotyped females. One has obedience in her bones; the other has rebellion. I get the feeling that neither of them grew into their selves with some kind of irrational or rational logic. They just happened to be like that. On the other hand, Winston is trying to piece together the situation rationally.

He pities himself for his physical limitations. However, the character is confident of its intellectual capabilities. Altogether, I get an impression of an intelligent rational with masochistic tendencies. That makes neither of the females as his equals. It's beyond comprehension how self pity reduces Winston to Julia's equal. George Orwell could be limited in his imagination of a rational woman.

However, that is not the reason I started writing this entry. I wanted to discuss 'newspeak' that he describes. Newspeak is a short hand language with no antonyms and no words for many concepts which are deemed anti-establishment. It's a way to make people think in a very restricted way thus eliminating any thoughts of rebellion from their mind. Eliminate the words that articulate the opposition to the establishment thus eliminate the opposition itself.

Anyway, many Indians can intuitively identify 'newspeak' with 'castespeak'. The Indian languages were/are vehicles of castiest and slavish mentality. However, somehow communism in Kerala has been able to turn Malayalam, the worst castespeak, as a revolutionary tongue. It has achieved it by bringing Sanskritized Malayalam to common people.

My Malayalam(the Kasaragod variant) has a very limited number of Sanskrit words (probably the percentage of Prakrit words could be higher). At family level conversation this has been sufficient as far as I could see. I find it difficult to follow Sanskritized Malayalam of my relatives (with humble background). Sometimes I find it difficult to believe they can utter those words with a straight face. I'm fairly aware of many Sanskrit words, since I studied in Kannada medium. Still I find it difficult to follow some of the known words used by native Malayalis. Probably because they take some of the obscure meanings (or the meanings which aren't dominant in Kannada literature). In any case, if I use some "grand" Sanskrit words while speaking in Kannada, I could become a laughing stock."Sakhav" (comrade in Malayalam) type of words can only be used in Yakshagana in Karnataka. I feel Malayalis are immune to such thinking.

Sometime back I mentioned about a study that found that among the students completing their primary education, Kerala students had the best grasp of Malayalam, whereas, Kannada and Tamil students had the least of their mother-tongues. I wonder whether the communist movement enabled common people to get used to a vast vocabulary in Sanskrit to express many concepts which in turn helped their children to grasp the language better. The school books would invariably use Sanskrit words in vernacular languages to express many concepts.

Movements and ideologies - Secular Enemies

2011-12-25T23:50:00.006+05:30

With the fall of the feudal system (not really true in many parts of India), there are no true secular enemies to fight against. Corrupts, the present day enemies, pose a grey are for the general population. Because when it comes to money, many people have ambiguous attitude even though majority of them will never get a chance to commit corruption.

In such a situation, it becomes imperative that we change our definitions of right versus wrong. A person's integrity is irrelevant in the fight against corruption. The necessary thing is whether s/he accepts the view that an uncorrupt society is better for all and in fact can improve his/her financial status in the long run (which can be better or equal to benefits from the corrupt self). I think this attitude is better than hoping to have pure leaders to lead us in the fight against corruption. Following an ideal leader itself is self-debasing.

But the alternative of course requires our vision of future society where we can create jobs for everyone and distribute wealth justly. There are many countries with low corruption indices and which are highly successful. However, many of them have been colonial powers and others have benefited from these colonial powers. So those are not true models for a country like India. We need a model which is neither dependent upon colonies nor dependent upon exports oriented economy.

Update: 26-12-2011
There is no central point in this piece but there are some good observations along the way. The ones I'm quoting below are not.

When you're inside a myth it looks like fact, and for those who were inside the myth of the end of history it seems to have given a kind of peace of mind.

Surely we would be better off if we put an end to our obsession with endings.

It appears some Europeans are losing big picture in their economic turmoil. Let's see the other side. Or the present society. A recent study sums up the situation quite beautifully.

Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in -- a government, company, or marriage -- even when anyone else can see it is failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is corrupt or unjust?

When we feel we can't escape a system, we adapt. That includes feeling okay about things we might otherwise consider undesirable.

The point of concern is not whether utopians really seek for a peaceful ending but the common people feeling that the present situation as the best of all endings.

Random Thoughts - XI_a

2011-12-25T22:53:00.003+05:30

Taking my previous post further and considering normal human behaviours (in contrast to different behaviours discussed in psychiatry), I would think it's impossible to find a general truth. We can certainly find individual truths but the summation or the averaging does not give a common truth. This might be obvious, but the disappointing point would be even if one finds an individual truth there is no guarantee that one can create an ideal society for that individual to live in. That kind of society is when obviously impossible in a herd society, it's also not feasible in an individualistic society.

This doesn't mean that an ideal society for an individual is utopian. The word itself is highly limited in its understanding and myopic in its meaning. The present day society is obviously a utopian dream for the past societies. It's a word used by reactionaries who undoubtedly in every barbaric societies of the past, with their position secured, would have justified it with similar vocabulary. These sophists would find true communism existing in the USA when its economy struggled.

The concept of global village or nation without boundaries, even when it comes to fruition, will not create an individual's ideal society. We may need to create nations of ideologies. I don't think there are many ideologies. We need to create only two societies. One is based on lust, where inviting for a cup of coffee is a civilized way of expressing sexual desire. The other is based on love, where any euphemism or physical hints for sex is unacceptable and one can only profess love. The lust is expressed not from words but hinted from the physical presence in lust spaces.

Thoughts - XI

2011-12-20T19:42:00.002+05:30

If humans are born as mere FPTAs, I think the quest for self-discovery is absurd.
...
I wrote that and then started searching for information on self-discovery and discovered Thomas Szasz.

I did think earlier that Psychiatry should replace religion without thinking much about implications.

Movements and Ideologies : Berber-Arab Spring

2011-12-17T22:39:00.004+05:30

In the relative success of "Berber Spring" and "Arab Spring", it was heartening to see that non-fundamentalist Muslims also have guts to oppose authoritarian regimes or Muslims do have courage without religious brainwashing. The corruption and humiliation felt with the rule of single families perhaps was too strong that it could mask the fear of Islamic take over. But I believe if democracy prevails, the political system could be better than that of Iran. In any case, the so-called secular regimes in these regions didn't do anything to further the cause of secularism among common people(with few exceptions). They just controlled the fundamentalists through force.

But this makes me wonder whether the secular support of the Iraq war even with the argument for democracy is valid or not. Perhaps it was just a matter of time before even Iraqis rebelled against the regime. Maybe secularists thought Muslim Berbers and Arabs were completely hopeless to bring about any change in their society.

Anyway, non-Muslim world is still few years away from becoming completely comfortable with the Muslim Berber-Arab world.

Update: 23-12-2011
A related article in the BBC magazine

According to the historian Eric Hobsbawm:
About the traditional Left;

The traditional left was geared to a kind of society that is no longer in existence or is going out of business. It believed very largely in the mass labour movement as the carrier of the future. Well, we've been de-industrialised, so that's no longer possible.

The most effective mass mobilisations today are those which start from a new modernised middle class, and particularly the enormously swollen body of students.

About Iranian model repeating itself;

The people who had made concessions to Islam, but were not Islamists themselves, were marginalised. And that included reformers, liberals, communists.

What emerges as the mass ideology is not the ideology of those that started off the demonstrations.

Idea of a Nation - v

2011-12-17T20:16:00.016+05:30

I have argued before that India satisfies the requirements of a true nation because it doesn’t have a ‘soul’ of its own to irritate, subjugate or compromise one or the other ‘souls’. But this argument shouldn’t overlook the creation of nation-state India.

When India was created the idea of faceless India was not there. It was a collection of regions where the Muslims were not in majority. The implication of that was;

- The upper class Muslims, who were the most privileged class until the British took over the country, clubbed the faceless castes with no say in politics and social aspects of the country until then with the privileged castes

- According to the privileged castes it was the caste identity (euphemistically known as Hinduism) that has given India the common identity in retrospect

We see mockery of the faceless castes in either of these scenarios. The humiliation of the faceless castes implicit in the partition of the country has been mitigated by the “secular” identity of the country. Thus the secular India gives dignity and equal claim to not only religious minorities but also to the faceless castes that anyway form majority within the castes.

Now the question is whether we can compromise with secularism and allow a region to secede based on the two nation theory. But I believe there is a greater question than this. Are we insecure with our near perfect definition of nation-state in the definition of India?

Unfortunately, the idea of secular India was a work of few brilliant minds. The majority castes or Muslims have no idea about it. The castes within their caste framework and Indian Muslims(which includes Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) within their religious identity are some of the most barbaric people on earth. Ambedkar had remarked that the caste system never had an intrinsic virtue to liberate itself, which appears to be true for Muslims too. But of course, isolated religious identity or the caste identities are no longer practical in the present world.

Now the question is whether we are withholding our trust in the definition of India because there are people with no idea of secularism and who merely see it a Hindu-Muslim issue. I believe the nation-state India should show faith in itself and experiment.

With this background, in my view we should take the following steps for the Kashmir issue;

Ask Pakistan to change the name to ‘Islamic Republic of India’ from the present ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan'

of course, incomplete without Bangladesh but so is the name Pakistan which is prior to the creation of Bangladesh
This request is not a prior requirement for the points 2-4
This requirement is not binding on Pakistan

Hold referendum in Kashmir with two options. Join ‘Secular Republic of India’ or ‘Islamic Republic of India’ (No independence)
Referendum should include separate ballots of Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Ahmadiyas, Buddhists and the castes .

There must be an initial ballot to decide whether Shias, Ahmadiyas would be part of Sunni Muslims or would like to have a separate electorate

If non-Muslims or non Sunni Muslims don’t approve joining the Islamic Republic of India with a simple majority then the valley should be divided and there should be complete population exchange.

Rise of Patriarchal Society - VIII

2011-11-28T00:04:00.010+05:30

In Part -V of this series, I discussed how the conservative view of male preeminence was borne out of misunderstanding of the sexual reproduction. In this view, women have no part in creation of life apart from acting as incubators. The life is complete in male 'seed'.

This was the prevalent view in many patriarchal societies, which also led to lower respect for females. I would argue the logical result was that the intercourse itself was an act between two unequals thus a low activity. The most respectful man in some of the said societies was the one who had taken the vow of celibacy.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum? How do libertines consider females and the sexual activity based on their interpretation of creation?

I couldn't get much information on the net whether the dynamics of fertilization was known during Marquis de Sade's time or in the 18th century.However, his libertine novel 'Philosophy in the Bedroom' has a character, Madame de Saint-Ange, explaining foetus as a fusion of male and female seeds. But she continues that the foetus owes its existence completely to sperm. The female seed doesn't create but only furthers the creation. Another character Dolmance expands on this and says we owe absolutely nothing to our mothers as we are completely formed of our sire's blood.
This libertine philosophy shows at the end of the day it has to twist sexual reproduction in such a way that women don't have any respect in the act. Is this really required for a libertine? We need to observe the respect mothers get in conservative societies.

Many conservative societies are known to respect mothers in a way that mask their womanhood. One cannot ascribe any sexuality to her as that would immediately make her lower. But the founding fathers of these philosophies lived hundreds of years before the advancements of bio sciences. It's interesting to see, libertines of a more enlightened era had to take refuge of the same philosophy to support their sexual libertinism. They had used the same 'male is the true creator' argument to denigrate women in a way that mask their motherhood.

This example shows, sexual abstinence and sexual libertinism, even though sound opposite, were, in fact, born out of the same ignorance. Both are attributes of pure patriarchal thought. However, the comparison is not strictly true as the influence of these two interpretations are not the same. While conservatism has been ritualized and legalized (and slowly being corrected in the modern era), libertinism has remained individualistic.

Reference:
1. Philosophy in the Bedroom, by Marquis de Sade

The Moral Individual - iii

2011-11-25T00:53:00.004+05:30

I have discussed innate morality of human beings in this series of blog posts. I had come to a conclusion that there is no innate morality and it's just a result of feedback loop in humans based on experience of pain. Let us examine the steps involved in this.

- Feeling of pain - a trait
- Keeping memory of pain - a trait
- Observation (of another suffering) - a trait
- feedback - a faculty
      - perception of another suffering - a basic trait
      - matching perception with memory - maybe a basic trait
- Resultant empathy - a character

I would define,
a character is a combination of traits and faculties resulting in a meaningful behaviour where,
a trait is determined by genes,
a faculty is a latent phenomenon determined by traits

So, basically babies are field programmable trait arrays (FPTA) for a character. I suppose, even 'speech' is a character because it also requires some of the basic traits and feedback faculties.

Random Thoughts - X

2011-11-09T23:36:00.001+05:30

I used to wonder why skin colour has not homogenized among castes in South India. I suppose the reason could be that cousin marriages didn't allow such a phenomenon. The mixing of light or dark skinned persons need not be on regular basis and the change in one generation was masked by endogamy of successive generations within the family. With cross cousin marriages losing favour, I suppose the indisputable dark skin colour will become ubiquitous in future.

Origins of Indians: Vesion 8.4.3

2011-11-06T23:26:00.001+05:30

According to Pontus Skoglunda and Mattias Jakobssona, in their paper Archaic human ancestry in East Asia;

The genetic difference between Neandertals and Denisovans is roughly as great as the maximal level of variation among us modern humans.

I suppose that further supports the opinion that the Denisovan remains found was actually predominantly Neanderthal.

Via Science Daily

Battle of the Sexes - ix_a

2011-11-06T23:14:00.000+05:30

It seems the mystic questions in the previous post were the outcome of my inability to grasp the knowledge or plain misunderstanding. I said;

Men trying to match up is understandable but why do women try to match down? What are those restrictions at cell level?

Based on the information in the article;

Men must increase gene expression on their lone X-chromosome to match the two X's possessed by women. A new study explains just how men manage to do that.

In mammals, cells therefore work to emphasize, or "upregulate," the lone X-chromosome in males and de-emphasize, or "downregulate," the extra X-chromosome in females.

However, it appears the both male and female X-chromosomes are upregulated (male X-> 2X and females 2X->4X). But females downregulate their upregulaged X-chromosomes (thus 2X same as males). From the new study;

Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y. The lack of a 'back up' copy of the X chromosome in males contributes to many disorders that have long been observed to occur more often in males, such as hemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and certain types of color blindness. Having only one copy of X and two copies of every other chromosome also creates a more fundamental problem -- with any other chromosome, the gene number imbalance resulting from having only one copy would be lethal. How can males survive with only one X?
Biologists have been debating how organisms and cells manage the imbalance between X and other chromosomes for years, with the dominant theory being that both sexes up-regulate the expression of X-linked genes, essentially doubling their expression to "2X" in males and "4X" in females. Then, to correct the imbalance that now appears in females (since they have the equivalent of "4" Xs now and 2 of every other chromosome), females then 'turn off' one of the hyperactive X chromosomes, resulting in a balanced "2X" expression of those genes across both sexes.

That doesn't lead to philosophical pondeings over the implications. Science sometimes acts as a dampener to imaginatively inclined imbecile.

Via Science Daily

Origins of Indians: Version 8.4.2

2011-09-22T23:44:00.000+05:30

Coastal Migration Theory and I:
A new paper by Reich et al. (2011) has made the following conclusions:

Denisovans interbred with modern humans in Southeast Asia at least 44,000 years ago before the time of the separation of the Australians and New Guineans.
Southeast Asia was first colonized by modern humans unrelated to present-day Chinese and Indonesians, and that these and other East Asians arrived in later migrations. This "southern route" hypothesis has previously been supported by archaeological evidence, but has never had strong genetic support.

According to them Denisovans were spread from Siberia to S E Asia until 30000 years ago. As of now, this is an unbelievable idea considering;
- Until now Denisovans remains were found in Siberia only
- All remains that were found in East Asia and SE Asia belonged H.erectus branches.
- A recent study has calculated that all these erectus branches were vanished from East Asia long before modern Humans moved to those lands

As we can see from the above points, we have a situation where archeologists could find remains of older hominins that perished around 400k years ago and probably more restricted East Asian regions but not those of Denisovans spread even wider area and lived at least until 40k years ago.

According to the article:

Their analysis shows that, in addition to New Guineans, Denisovans contributed genetic material to Australian aborigines, a Philippine "Negrito" group called Mamanwa, and several other populations in eastern Southeast Asia and Oceania. However, groups in the west or northwest, including other Negrito groups such as the Onge in the Andaman Islands and the Jehai in Malaysia, as well as mainland East Asians, did not interbreed with Denisovans.

I think Y-Haplogroup lines C2, C4 and C6 ( in fact their female counter parts of a human tribe with node haplogroup line of these) could have mated with Denisovans in north-western East Asia and moved to SE Asia.

Via Science Daily

Lineage and Language - 0.2

2011-09-16T09:49:00.002+05:30

Previously, when I made a random comparison between uni-parental lineage distribution and the language families I found majority were associated with male lineages. Exceptions were Dravdian, Basque, Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages.

There is a new study that discusses about this phenomenon and also thinks languages were spread patrilineally. Anyway, I would think the process would involve some women too.

Even if the invading or immigrating males formed the majority, without few women among them, there wouldn't be any societal setup for the language survive. I would say, those few women would have formed a societal core in the foreign lands around which out married males propagated their language to the new lands. Had it been only males the chances are remote that they would have been able to create the societal core and more likely they would have taken up the local languages.

Even in Dravidian lands, we don't find corresponding female lines for the male lines. That probably shows migrants were almost completely males.

If we go by this logic, the idea of 'mother tongue' still holds good because at the end of the day it's the societal core setup by the minority females in the foreign lands that propagated the language.

Random Thoughts - IX_c

2011-09-06T19:09:00.001+05:30

Even though majority middle class Indians have remained loyal to their 10-20% corrupt self and didn't take part in the movement against corruption recently, there was a tiny fraction who did take part considering their greater uncorrupt self. I wonder whether it's a hypocrisy or what. I'm not sure.

What these fake billers or tax evaders are protesting probably is the lack of human decency in direct interactions. Evading tax probably doesn't come across as villainy as that villainy in a way self directed and also requires a broader view of the society.

The interactions with a policeman or government officials in charge of licensing or a railway ticket collector is not something that one looks forward to. We would meet these people with power expecting them to demean their propriety. It disgusts us how people can be so nonchalant and ask money directly or indirectly. It humiliates us that people in the mainstream society indulge in the loot of our natural resources or misappropriate the money we give as tax.

It is as if without any personal animosity, people have decided to debase themselves and spoil the well defined personal interactions. We have to face the unpleasantness of these interactions which has nothing to do with our fault but just because some people want to make undeserved extra money.

If anything, corruption has killed justice and respect in man to man interactions. This has added bitterness in our sense of civilized human beings. It's not the money but likely, this loss of decency when it comes to personal interactions and loss of trust with people who misappropriate money, that demoralizes people.

I guess many people were not protesting against corruption but fighting to reinstate propriety and trust in our society.

Buddhism and Jainism in South India - 8

2011-09-04T23:36:00.002+05:30

I am writing this post by considering non-violence as the core concept of Buddhism and Jinaism. Sometime back I read a 9th century Kannada Jain work 'Vaddaradhane' (Filial Piety). What really struck me was the kind of barbaric death that the people had to experience to attain Nirvana. Some were killed by wild beasts in a revolting fashion or some were killed in grotesque accidents (sucked into a machine and cut into pieces).

These interpretations of non-violence or violence directed inwards ( and Gandhi was inspired by this and not by Jesus... where he merely found his backing) makes me think that Buddhism and Jinaism were completely misinterpreted schools of thoughts when it comes to non-violence.

The way to understand the non-violence aspect of Buddhism and Jinaism is to look at the background of people who espoused these two religions. They all came from warrior classes. For these people, violence was a way of life. It's the truth. So, it makes sense for thinkers among them to dwell into non-violence. I guess this is the same reason Stoicism looks good on Marcus Aurelius and not on me, a self-styled stoic. I never had power.

But does that justify the kind of inwardly directed violence that these Jain texts extol as a way to Nirvana? I suppose these thoughts infested Jinaism after it was taken over by non-warrior classes. These classes have blindly taken up non-violence and have taken it to the extreme. Since violence of battles or wars was never part of their life, they felt the need to direct violence against themselves so as to give validity to their non-violent way of life.

How can non-warrior classes then apply Buddhism or Jinaism to their life? I suppose they need to look into their way of life and humanize it. Let us consider a merchant. Should he be disgusted with money making (I suppose few Jains renounce wealth at some point in their life as a meaningless thing) or money making through dubious means?

Let's consider a warrior in this case. Should he be ashamed of defending his country? I think not. I would think he should be if he is attacking other countries out of greed thus being responsible for too much grief. The famous story of Ashoka has found this situation as a true reason to embrace the idea of non-violence.

Logically, a merchant, for whom non-violence is a way of life, should make the dichotomy between money making through dubious means and money making through straight means if he follows Buddhism or Jinaism. But India's past history doesn't give any such ideas. At present, these religions are just fads.

Rise of patriarchal society - VII_a

2011-07-14T10:47:00.002+05:30

I have discussed how matrifocal tradition viewed semen as nurture and equated it with the rain. This idea was in contrast to patrifocal idea of the womb as nurture and its identification with the earth. As an example for matrifocal ideas getting mixed with patriarchal gods, I had talked about northern Indian tradition of women stripping to please the rain god, Indra.

Now, it appears this tradition could be found in Dravidian lands too. I wonder whether the idea was again a syncretization of the older matrifocal world view with the later partrifocal ideas independently in South or it came to South because of the northern migrations.

The article doesn't say who the aroused rain god is. Most likely Indra and not Varuna.

Newspaper article h/t: Nirmuka Facebook page.

Origins of Indians: Version 8.4.1

2011-07-12T10:14:00.002+05:30

Coastal Migration Theory and I:
In my previous post on the subject, I discussed how a new finding of admixture between Homo Sapiens and the Denisovans in Siberia bolster my claims of the northern route (that didn't touch India) of early Homo Sapiens. A new study has now completely discarded the idea of Modern Humans mating with an Erectus branch in SE Asia thus further strengthening the fact that all admixture in Melanesians can only be attributed to their Neanderthal infested northern route than to the Erectus infested southern route.

From the study:

Homo erectus went extinct in Africa and much of Asia by about 500,000 years ago, but appeared to have survived in Indonesia until about 35,000 to 50,000 years ago at the site of Ngandong on the Solo River. These late members of Homo erectus would have shared the environment with early members of our own species, Homo sapiens, who arrived in Indonesia by about 40,000 years ago.

The existence of the two species simultaneously has important implications for models about the origins of modern humans. One of the models, the Out of Africa or replacement model, predicts such overlap. However, another, the multiregional model, which posits that modern humans originated as a result of genetic contributions from hominin populations all around the Old World (Africa, Asia, Europe), does not. The late survival of Homo erectus in Indonesia has been used as one line of support for the Out of Africa model.

However, findings by the SoRT Project show that Homo erectus' time in the region ended before modern humans arrived there. The analyses suggest that Homo erectus was gone by at least 143,000 years ago -- and likely by more than 550,000 years ago. This means the demise of Homo erectus occurred long before the arrival of Homo sapiens.

"Thus, Homo erectus probably did not share habitats with modern humans," said Indriati.

Original Father of Dravidian Speakers - Va

2011-07-05T14:59:00.001+05:30

I don't think 'appe' and 'appUppa' has anything to do with matrilineal bond between Tuluvas and Malayalis. Since the word 'abbe' is also observed in literary Kannada (mostly Jain) and in the personal names of many Kannada Jain queens, that shows Jain influence in Kannada, Tulu and Malayala regions. Since Tulu region was under Jain rulers until 20th century, 'appe' probaby became a common term. Whereas, in Kannada region by 12th century all Jain ruling classes have vanished thus the elite word 'abbe' didn't become part of common parlance. I don't think there were any Jain rulers in Kerala region (not sure of the Tamil kings of the past), however, the influence could have been there as merchant classes generally patronized Jinaism.

Original Father of Dravidian Speakers - V

2011-07-04T21:47:00.002+05:30

Now my daughter calls her maternal grandfather 'appa' as she can't pronounce 'appUppa.. The word appuppa literally means father's father thus I guess the usage for a mother's father is strange. Another intriguing factor we need to observe is the structure of the terms used for maternal grandparents.

mother's father -> appUppa
mother's mother -> ammUmma
Compare them with paternal grandparents
father's father -> achchachcha
father's mother -> achchamma

If maternal grandparents followed the similar structure as that of paternal grandparents then,
mother's father should have been ammappa
mother's mother -> ammamma

So, it clearly shows that pre-words appa and amma in maternal grandparents didn't mean post-words appa and amma. We probably need to hark back on the Tulu-Malayali shared cultural background to understand this.

In Tulu (as I have discussed elsewhere), the word for mother is 'appe' and father 'amme'. Thus it's very clear that maternally Tuluva-s and Malayali-s were connected before, thus the antique word for mother has been retained in Malayalam as 'appUppa'. What about the second word which obviously meant 'father' as in many Dravidian languages. It's still a mystery why appa is father in other Dravidian languages and mother in Tulu. The difference is in parallel to matrilineal and patrilineal distinctions of Tuluva-Malayalis on the one hand and the rest of the Dravidians on the other.

Whatever be the reasons behind appe-amme dichotomy between partilineal and matrilineal Dravidians, we can confidently say that appUppa is a throwback to Tuluva-Malayali shared history (observed in many cultural aspects even today) of the past. That still leaves me to explain the construction appe+appa.

In my opinion, 'appa' came to Malayali society as a honorific (just like achcha) likely from Tamil region. We need to note that 'ajja', Kannada equivalent of 'achcha', is a term for grandfather in Karnataka. It is possible that both 'appa' and 'achcha' that came as honorifics in Dravidian society replaced the original term for father in Dravidian lands.

I suppose the original maternal grandfather and grandmother
appe+appa -> appEppa -> appUppa
appe+amma -> appEmma -> ammUmma ( a case of over correction in later centuries)

Random Thoughts - IX_b

2011-06-02T22:34:00.001+05:30

I suppose some people need to have this self-satisfaction of being corrupts in their small way as it shields them from the reality of humiliation of being looted. I don't understand the smugness of all these fake-billers when they anyway pay the bulk of their IT and pay taxes in multiple ways. Of course, respect to people who skip paying taxes completely. But again what about our natural resources?

Communism and Kerala - V

2011-05-29T20:55:00.002+05:30

The biggest drawback of communism is that when it helps working class people to become middle class it loses its ideological foundation. Or in an actual situation when feudal slaves become independent and start moving up the ladder, then the subsequent generations don't have any affiliations to the communist ideology. Realistically, the success of non-communist countries in the world as thriving, egalitarian nations with open societies make communism almost irrelevant. But this is the reality of communism as an economic model. How about the social model?

If we observe non-communist countries that became successful, they already had liberated serfs and opened the door of universal education centuries ago. Almost all of them were homogenous societies with respect to language and religion. Autocratic communist nations tried to promote a common language but for few feeble attempts never really tried to eliminate the religions.

In Indian context, the communists didn't face linguistic divisions as they ruled linguistically homogenous Kerala and West Bengal. However, the divisions because of caste and religion were always there and never blurred and always remained mainstream.

Unlike poverty and discrimination, the effect of religion or caste is not perpetual for a big chunk of population. Even though, the caste system was responsible for perpetual misery to a great number of population, those caste ideals have been made illegal. However, the remaining aspects of the caste system or all aspects of religion are perpetually repressing for individuals. But these individuals are never organized and in many cases (eg. women) are unsure of social security -that these organized groups offer- if they dessent. In the case of communities too the differences in identities would lead to catastrophe in the form of communal or caste violence. However, even these do not happen regularly, and don't touch the elite classes in most cases, thus a movement against religious or caste divisions is never possible.

With this background, I believe theoretically the communists of Kerala should disband themselves. Now their existence in Kerala society owe much to the communal and caste divisions than to their ideological positions. This is rather a disgraceful situation. Since they have already made efforts to bring market economy to the state, it no longer makes sense that they should remain in the politics as these could be also done by other parties. They don't have any differentiators now. Even though, their ideology has elements that can bring societal change, I don't think they will get any support from the castes or the religionists if they make that as a poll plank. Corruption becoming an agenda of a single party is dangerous to the country as it diminishes the scrutiny against other parties.