Border crisis ends: Why China picked a fight with India

by Praveen Swami May 6, 2013

From 264BCE to 146BCE, the greatest war the world had until then known raged across the Mediterranean rim, as the imperial armies of Rome and Carthage battled for supremacy. Flanked by the sea and the Alps, Liguria resisted Rome’s legions—protected, the chronicler Julius Frontinus recorded, “not only by its location and siege-works, but also by the superiority of its defenders”. Faced with this insurmountable challenge, the Roman commander took to “marching frequently round the walls with all his forces, and then back to camp”.

His actions were a ruse. “When the townspeople had been induced by this routine to believe that the Roman commander did this for the purpose of drill,” Frontius wrote, “he transformed this practice of parading into a sudden attack, and gaining possession of the walls, forced the inhabitants to surrender.”

Liguria’s fateful deception casts light on the dilemmas that confront India’s strategic establishment, as it debates the lessons of the face-off on Daulat Beg Oldi. The crisis ended on Sunday evening, as suddenly as it had begun, with troops from both countries agreeing to fall back to the positions they earlier held. National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon argues that the genesis of the crisis lies in India’s display of muscle: new fortifications, border airstrips and force-expansion. India’s military insists China’s own growth has left it no choice.

China’s People’s Liberation Army has sent out a simple message by its occupation of territory lying inside India: in return for quiet on the border, it wants India to back off its ongoing borders build-up. India fears the quiet could precede an unpleasant awakening. There’s no actual evidence, muttering notwithstanding, that a deal on this larger question defused the Daulat Beg Oldi crisis. There’s no doubt, either, that the question will acquire a key role inChina-India talks to come.

India’s fundamental problem is this: ever since 1997, China’s military modernisation has been dramatic, with budgets increasing over 10% year-on-year. Last year, the New Delhi-based Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis’ Namrata Goswami flagged the PLA’s growing rapid-deployment capacities in Tibet. She noted new airfields had been built, and $325 billion invested in roads.

This is just part of China’s growing capacities. In the 1990s, China’s indigenous defence industry consistently produced low-quality equipment technologically 15-20 years behind the state-of-the-art. Now, China’s military industries produces the J10 fighter, similar or superior to the United States-made F-16C/D; the Yuan-class diesel-electric submarine, the Type-052C destroyer—all pretty much in the same quality bracket as similar western equipment. Perhaps China’s most impressive achievement has been the Dong Feng-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, which threatens the United States’ historic supremacy in the Western Pacific.

Even for the United States, these are significant challenges. In its latest annual report on China’s naval capacities, the Congressional Research Service notes that the United States’ 2014-2043 plans do “not include enough ships to fully support all elements of the Navy’s 306-ship goal”. This, it observes, could “make it harder for the United States to defend its interests in the region”.

This said, it’s important to keep Chinese military modernisation in perspective. The United States estimates barely 25 percent of the PLA’s fighter aircraft, 25 percent of its surface combatants, 40 percent of its surface-to- air missiles, and 55 percent of its submarines are modern. Even the J-10 fighter jet or the Yuan-class submarines represent 1980s technologies. PLA ground forces are still equipped with old or obsolete weaponry; only about a third of its 7,500 main battle tanks, for example, are relatively modern Type-96s and Type-99s. Expert Richard Blitzinger notes China still possesses “western armaments producers continue to outpace China”.

In the grand scheme of things, moreover, United States still remains the world’s military powerhouse. China’s budget is a small fraction of the superpower’s spending, hovering moreover at just over 2 percent of GDP. The United States has spent higher than 4 percent of GDP for the past five years. China’s fears of India also seem overblown. India’s military expenditure has grown, but, it spent just $44.28 billion in 2011-2012, against China’s $129.27 billion. India’s military expenditure has actually declined from a peak of 3.1 percent of GDP in 1999, to 2.7 percent in 2010.

Making sense of this spending needs understanding of what’s actually driving it. There’s one strategic reason China arming itself, and it isn’t love of mountain air. China’s self-sufficiency in oil ended back in 1993, and the country relies on imports for 50 percent of its needs. In 2015, that figure will be 60-70 percent.

Like all great powers, China fears other great powers—and is preparing itself for the prospect it might have to fight them for its share. Energy analyst Chris Nedler recently warned that the “net energy available to society has been declining radically”. For years now, China used national oil companies to stitch up oil reserves where it can find them—and each of those assets, along with the routes linking them to China’s ports, may need defending. Even thoughexperts like John Lee have argued global commodities markets can serve China’s energy security ends better than geostrategic coercion, paranoia drives nations just as it does individuals.

China sees India as a competitor for oil, and a potential ally of other adversaries, like the United States, Japan and Australia. Though war doesn’t serve China’s economic interests, any more than it does India, its growing western neighbour is thus part of a nightmare mosaic.

Is the nightmare likely? In a seminal lecture delivered in 2011, the scholar Kanti Bajpai suggested this military competition wouldn’t end in war. He pointed to the difficulties in destroying the Indian air force, necessary to secure China’s logistics; the robust defensive positions occupied by India’s army in the Himalayas; China’s limited naval capacities; its internal conflicts—and, above all, the risk of a nuclear conflagration. Bajpai concluded by asserting that war “is not very likely unless one or the other engages in highly provocative, ill-judged behaviour”.

There’s no doubt, though that ill-judged provocation does happen—and that’s just what China, India, and every other country on the planet has militaries for.

Ever since 2010, when former Army Chief Deepak Kapoor spoke of preparing for a potential two-front war, the question is just what the likely contours of a conflict might be. Last year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute stated that India had become the world’s largest importer of arms in 2007-2011; China held top position in 2002-2006. Military strategists argue that armies need to prepare for possible wars, not just predictable ones. This proposition isn’t as robust as it seems: no nation has infinite resources—and almost any kind of war is imaginable.

In 266 BCE, the armies of Emperor Antigonus II Gonatas laid siege to Megara, hoping to seize the small, but wealthy, city’s harbours. The contest was, at first glance, hopeless: Antigonus’s armies were much larger and backed, moreover, by phalanxes of battle-elephants. Faced with certain defeat, the ancient historian Polyaenus recorded, the Megarans hit upon a tactic of considerable genius. The city’s pigs were doused in resin and set on fire as they were pushed out of the gates. Panicked by the sight of the burning, squealing pigs, the elephants broke ranks and fled, trampling many of Antigonus’ army. The lesson is simple: in war, the big guy doesn’t always win.

The challenge for India today is to find ways to fight smart, faced as it is with an enemy with more battle elephants that it can conceivably outnumber. Rolling belly-up in surrender won’t cut it—but neither will bombast, or mindless belligerence.

http://www.firstpost.com/world/border-crisis-ends-why-china-picked-a-fight-with-india-755605.html

UPA: Stooping to succumb
by Sandhya Jain on 07 May 2013 1 Comment


A Defence Minister who cannot read a hospital register recording the date of birth of his Chief of Army Staff can hardly be expected to read a map and discern Chinese inroads to the extent of an admitted 19-kms (some say 30-kms). So it was no surprise that Mr. AK Anthony remained near-invisible after Beijing’s latest land grab became public, though protection of our borders is his foremost duty.

A look at the map shows that the strategic Siachen Glacier is virtually all that separates China-grabbed Aksai Chin (which Jawaharlal Nehru yielded lamely) and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (which Nehru surrendered by taking the issue to the United Nations).

This suggests that all Track II diplomacy to de-militarise the glacier could have had a hidden China hand, with Beijing rather than Islamabad likely to grab the strategic heights to link up with POK via the Shaksgam valley illegally ceded by Pakistan, and deny India access to the only terrain from which it can monitor POK, the Karakoram Highway, and Aksai Chin.

The pincer is clearly in place. Hence it stands to reason that Beijing’s May 5 decision to fold its tents and recall troops to pre-April 15 position is dictated only by concern that the new Chinese Premier Li Keqiang should not lose face by being made to postpone/cancel his India visit on May 20. That visit would have to be called off if public anger forced External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to cancel his May 9 visit to Beijing, which he was desperate not to compromise.

Hence the nation’s legitimate concern is to know what demands India ceded to clinch the withdrawal. Could a Minister signing MOUs in Tehran have seriously convinced the Chinese to retreat? Why has India withdrawn troops from its own area? Why is India hiding the specifics of concessions made; wasn’t it in the larger national interest to cancel the Khurshid-Keqiang visits, take opposition parties into confidence, and out-stare the intruders?

China has moved methodically in pursuit of its territorial agenda. In 1955, it built a road through Aksai Chin to connect its garrisons in Xinjiang to Tibet. Despite warnings from Intelligence Bureau director BN Mullick and others, India did not protest until 1958 and was dismissed with contempt. In 1962, Beijing occupied Aksai Chin and enhanced its infrastructure there. Since then, it has been nibbling at Indian territory in various sectors.

Regardless of whether the danger emanates from Beijing or Islamabad, it is shameful that New Delhi devoted decades discussing the strategic Siachen Glacier at all. Hopefully, all talk on this issue will now end. Perhaps Washington, apprehensive of a rampaging imperialist dragon, will stop pushing New Delhi in this regard.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police detected the intrusion on the intervening night of April 15-16 and pushed the soldiers back across Rakhi Nallah. But New Delhi failed to deploy the Army immediately and soon five Chinese tents (with armed troops and fierce Molosser dogs) came up at Daulat Beg Oldi, Depsang Valley, in the western sector of Ladakh bordering Xinjiang Autonomous Region. For three weeks, New Delhi was clueless how to respond. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid volubly downplayed the issue so as to carry on with his trip to Beijing and host premier Keqiang later in the month.

In 1986, a PLA unit marched seven kilometres inside the Line of Actual Control at Somdurong Chu, Arunachal Pradesh. General K Sundarji airlifted troops and surrounded their camp; placed artillery on nearby heights and asked a unit to erect tents just 10 metres away. The Chinese withdrew; they respond to big sticks, not big words. General Bikram Singh could have similarly handled matters at his own level at little cost; deferring to New Delhi was a mistake. Briefing the Cabinet Committee on Security some days ago, the General reportedly suggested cutting off the supply lines of the Chinese troops at Rakhi Nallah, something he should have done himself.

At the flag meetings, China reportedly demanded de-activation of two advance landing grounds (ALGs) at Daulat Beg Oldi and Fukche which the Indian Air Force reactivated in 2008 to enhance its ability to deploy forces faster towards Siachen Glacier or Karakoram and Aksai Chin. The IAF wanted to open another forward airstrip at Chushul; this must now be expedited. Currently, India is developing Nyoma in Ladakh, close to the LAC, as a forward base. China is insistent that India dismantle the Chumar observation post in eastern Ladakh, from where its troop movements can be detected.

Activity in the contentious region over the next few weeks will reveal if New Delhi blinked and agreed to scale down infrastructure which Beijing claims is “too close” to the LAC. After the intrusion was detected, a pusillanimous Centre had directed the Army to stop work on additional bunkers in Daulat Beg Oldi. China now wants an end to bunkers in Fukche and Chumar regions, and New Delhi is reluctant to share details of what transpired in the talks that allegedly resulted in de-escalation of border tensions. This seems to leave the door open for the People’s Republic to come back later, build roads and all-weather bunkers, and add the terrain to the ‘palm’ and ‘fingers’ it claims as its own.

New Delhi has long hidden behind the excuse that the border with China is un-demarcated. That is no excuse for not defining its version of what the border is/should be, and protecting the frontier on that basis until final negotiations. Worst is the scandalous manner in which it has washed its hands off territory that was part of the erstwhile kingdom of Jammu & Kashmir that acceded to the Union in 1947. Merely passing resolutions in Parliament only make us the laughing stock of the world.

Smaller nations like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, do not cover before China. Vietnam gave Beijing a bloody nose in 1979. In contrast, New Delhi withdrew its legitimate investment in Vietnamese offshore oilfields after Beijing objected to its presence in the South China Sea; this doubtless encouraged the current adventure.

Tibetans, despite their geographical isolation which makes it difficult to deflect Chinese domination, particularly because of a weak Nepal and indifferent India, show their hatred of Han domination by gruesome immolations by monks.

As China struggles with recession and unrest among its people, New Delhi should hit Beijing where it hurts – in the bilateral trade that currently stands at a staggering US$66 billion per annum. We must also build bunkers at the exact spot where China pitched its tents at Daulat Beg Oldi. Power is first and foremost about self-assertion.
User Comments Post a Comment
Official Spokesperson's response to a query on situation on Line of Actual Control between India and China

May 06, 2013


NO PULL-OUT? In response to a query on situation on Line of Actual Control between India and China, the Official Spokesperson said:
"The Governments of India and China have agreed to restore status quo ante along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Western Sector of the India-China boundary as it existed prior to 15 April,2013. Flag meetings have been held to work out the modalities and to confirm the arrangements."
So what is the Truth?


Satya Prakash
26 Minutes ago

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=2791

No, Prime Minister

A scam-ridden decade in office has tarred the clean image of Manmohan Singh. But is the PM a victim of circumstance or has he mastered the art of staying in power without accountability? Shoma Chaudhury tracks his legacy

SHOMA CHAUDHURY
11-05-2013, Issue 19 Volume 10 Print & EmailCommentShareMore by the author >

Illustrations: Sudeep Chaudhuri

History will judge him harshly for betraying faith; for failing the chance it gave him. It is not everybody who gets two shots at being the prime minister of the most populous democracy in the world. To get to be so as its unelected head is even rarer. Unfortunately for Dr Manmohan Singh, so stark and unexpected have the betrayals been, history has begun to train its lens on him even before his term is done.

For most of the nine years so far in his miracle position, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been uniquely protected by an adjectival fortress. Even as his government has steadily imploded into darker and darker scams, even as the economy has slid into seemingly terminal decline, even as, shamefully, the 15th Lok Sabha has clocked the least number of hours in its history, even as the country feels completely adrift and leaderless, Singh personally has remained curiously firewalled behind the idea of him being a decent, upright and erudite man.

That fortress of goodwill has been fraying for a while. Events this week prove, finally, it is just not tenable any longer. It is time, in fact, for a complete reassessment of who Singh is and what his tenure as PM has meant for India.

Over the past nine years, Singh has often cited “coalition pressures” for stands not taken, decisions not made, scams not averted. This time, he has no such alibi. The CBI’s investigation into the coal scam was being monitored by the Supreme Court. Both as PM — which makes him the head of the council of ministers and responsible for all his colleagues’ actions — and as coal minister for three of the five years under scrutiny, Singh is himself a subject of the inquiry. The Supreme Court had explicitly asked the investigating agency not to share its report with the political executive. But not only did the law minister and officials from the coal ministry and his own office vet the report, they were complicit with three of the highest officers of the land — the Attorney General, Additional Solicitor General and CBI director — committing perjury in the Supreme Court. This is a scandal of unprecedented proportion. The court has made scathing statements about “erosion of trust” and how the entire “process of investigation has been shaken”. But how does the PM react? He asserts there is no reason for the law minister to resign and defers taking any decisions till the Court should force his hand.

This absence of propriety — this chronic timidity in taking a stand — has been a key signature of Singh’s tenure as PM. Leader of Opposition, Arun Jaitley, who has long been a strident critic of Singh, has often exhorted him both within and outside Parliament to behave like the head of the country and not merely a civil servant or party marionette. “The trouble with the prime minister,” he says, “is that he is completely ideology-less. He does not act like a leader; he does what a cabinet secretary should do.”

There was a time when only critics held this dim view of the PM. Increasingly now, even his well-wishers are voicing similar misgivings. Sanjaya Baru, who was Singh’s media adviser, says, “For the first five years of his tenure, he was seen as a puppet PM, a nominee of the Congress President Sonia Gandhi. In 2009, had he stood for Lok Sabha elections, it would have been his mandate. Those 60 extra seats they got were earned on his goodwill and performance. But he could not bring himself to claim that mandate.”

The second thing Baru faults him for is to not have had the spine to assert himself when corruption charges began to emerge in UPA 2. “He should have gone to the party and said, I refuse to carry the can, but he did not do that. Being the prime minister is no ordinary position. You are the symbol of the entire country. There is no position more powerful than that. Even the president cannot make a speech in Parliament unless it is cleared by the prime minister, but he never assumed that authority.”

There is a sort of reductive irony about a good man in a big chair who insists on behaving small. Baru encapsulates that with a joke doing the rounds in Delhi’s power circles. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the PM, people used to say the real prime minister was his national security adviser and principal secretary Brajesh Mishra. Now that Manmohan Singh is the PM, they joke that he is the principal secretary. Baru says he shared this crack with the PM; Singh had the magnanimity to laugh. But clearly, he did not draw on its lessons.

This talk of Singh’s proclivity to behave like a bureaucrat — an employee dependent on some higher political authority — rather than as the country’s foremost leader is no ordinary criticism. In fact, its damaging impacts cannot be emphasised enough. It has resulted in an unparalleled power vacuum; a loss of morale; stagnant decision-making; a log-jammed Parliament; zero public messaging; a crippling absence of vision. And a country lurching from crisis to crisis.


In fact, the dismaying truth about Prime Minister Singh is that his positive attributes may only be a shallow cover for darker ones: cowardice, complicity, an inordinate attachment to power and a constant abdication of responsibility. In effect, this has hollowed out the very institution of the prime minister’s office, leaching it of authority, making it the butt of jokes. Ironically, in the process, Singh has even made the idea of decency, erudition and honesty — genuine calling cards he had to begin with — seem effete and irrelevant to public life.

So far, Singh has evaded scrutiny despite an epic season of scams. But how much longer can he? The blueprint of this scandal stretches disturbingly, much further back into his tenure. The patterns make for dismal reading.

Singh’s most severe critics — Supreme Court lawyer and Aam Admi Party leader Prashant Bhushan, for instance — would concede one thing about him: he is not in the clumsy business of greed and kickbacks. His failing is subtler but, in the long run, far more corrosive. His failure is that he has allowed chaos and corruption to balloon around him. The charitable view on this would be that he has been helpless, or “out of depth” as one sympathetic officer in government put it. (The riposte to this would be that such naivete then has no business being in such a complex chair.) More clear-eyed analysis would say when push came to shove, he’s always deliberately looked the other way — or knowingly allowed things to happen — so he could stay in his seat and his government could run. A couple of such incidents could pass as oversight. When it becomes a habitual way of being, it can only count as corruption.

The current crisis with the country’s law officers is extremely telling. As Supreme Court lawyer Kamini Jaiswal says, “This government has ravaged every institution in the country. The scandal of GE Vahanvati and Harin Raval lying in court is the saddest day for India. Vahanvati’s convenient opinions have lowered the office of the Attorney General. These officers are meant to have the same moral stature as the judges of Supreme Court; they are meant to give sound legal advice to the government, they are meant to uphold the law, not become errand boys.”

What makes this doubly dark is that the perjury is not an isolated incident. As Gopal Subramaniam, former Solicitor General who resigned over a moral disagreement with the government over a representation in the 2G case, says, “The UPA government led by PM Manmohan Singh has shown very little regard for constitutional values and the rule of law. They have no legal ideology. This is the deepest faultline of this government.”

The gravity of this charge tops the Richter. It suggests that the UPA has been willing to subvert due process whenever convenient, even though, as Subramaniam puts it, “due process of law” is the very heart of fundamental rights and parliamentary democracy.

Another lawyer who declined to go on record said, “There’s no point blaming Vahanvati. If the PM or his law minister had wanted higher standards from him, he was perfectly capable of delivering on them. But they only wanted the shortcuts and the getaway strategies.”

As political nominees, the quality of its law officers is indeed directly reflective of the government. In that light, Vahanvati’s track record is not a flattering one. On 27 February this year, in an infamous first for an Attorney General, Vahanvati deposed as a witness in Judge OP Saini’s court examining the 2G scam. Former telecom minister A Raja has vociferously maintained that both the prime minister and Vahanvati (who was the Solicitor General at the time of the scam) were completely aware of all the decisions for which he was jailed. In an outburst in court one day he shouted pointing at Vahanvati, “He gets promoted from SG to AG and I am jailed. Is this justice?”

Raja stands on some valid ground. In a cover story last year, former TEHELKA Investigations Editor Ashish Khetan had detailed why jailing Raja and exonerating Vahanvati was legally untenable. In a nutshell, the argument goes like this: The brunt of the accusation against Raja in the 2G scam is 1) that pricing for the spectrum had not been raised to accommodate new market conditions; 2) that he arbitrarily advanced the cut-off date for applications, thereby disqualifying almost 60 percent of the applicants and favouring a few; and 3) that he subverted the terms of the first-come-first-served policy.

On 10 January 2008, Raja issued a press release that outlined the contours of all these decisions. This is deemed to be the heart of the scam: D-Day. The then law minister HR Bhardwaj had wanted this referred to an empowered group of ministers for further deliberations, but Raja by-passed him and sent a draft of the press release to Vahanvati for legal clearance, along with a comprehensive file. Vahanvati, who had been appearing for the government in several telecom-dispute related cases and was presumably very familiar with the policy issues involved, wrote in the file, “I have seen the notes” and declared it “fair and reasonable” and “transparent”.



When the scandal broke in 2011, both Prashant Bhushan and BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, who was heading the Public Accounts Committee, raised questions about Vahanvati’s role in the 2G scam, but the CBI submitted a detailed affidavit defending him on flimsy grounds. They argued that Vahanvati was not culpable because Raja had changed the press release after the AG’s clearance. In truth, Raja had merely dropped a paragraph that had absolutely no bearing on the case.

But till date, Vahanvati has escaped all culpability for this. In the witness box this February, he argued rather incredulously that he had not seen the rest of the file, did not know about the advancement of date or that the policy had been subverted.

Most of Raja’s exertions in the 2G case seem to have been to favour the Anil Ambani group and Unitech. What makes this saga even darker is that Vahanvati himself is seen as being close to Anil Ambani.

In two other instances related to Ambani, he gave extremely dubious advice. In January 2009, the Department of Telecom had wanted the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to look into Swan Telecom’s ownership pattern, which was deemed to be a front company for Ambani and seemed to violate some eligibility clauses for spectrum. In March 2009, however, Vahanvati ruled out any need to investigate this further. Later, of course, Swan was one of the companies that lay in the eye of the 2G storm.

In 2011 again, the CAG report on coal flagged that Anil Ambani had been given three cheap captive coal blocks to service his ultra mega power project in Sasan in Madhya Pradesh. However, soon after, on Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s request to the PM, he had been allowed to divert excess coal from these blocks to service another plant in Chitrangi. CAG calculated that this concession would earn Ambani Rs 29,000 crore over 20 years. The Tatas, who had also been in the fray for the Sasan plant, complained about this unfair concession. Both coal and power ministry officials wanted the decision cancelled, but Vahanvati and Pranab Mukherjee, then finance minister, overruled them.

The point in detailing these disparate cases is that even if one supposes the PM was not directly issuing instructions to Vahanvati to take a certain line, surely he could not have been unaware of the AG’s nepotistic interest in the Anil Ambani group or his dubious positions on the 2G policy? Why did he not flag any discomfort with the situation? Instead, the government’s relationship with Vahanvati has only continued to deepen while other law officers like Gopal Subramaniam and Rohinton Nariman, who held their ground at different junctures, were made to leave precipitously.

The PM’s own tacit complicity in the 2G scam is itself hard to deny. On 26 December 2007, Raja had sent a letter to the PM with a memo, explaining the process of spectrum allocation as he envisioned it. On 29 December, Singh had asked for this to be “urgently examined”. His officers in the PMO — Pulok Chatterjee and his then principal secretary TKA Nair — did a detailed analysis through a “comparative chart” on 6 January 2008.


About a week later, Pulok wanted to share the PMO’s broad agreement on the policy with the telecom secretary, but the PM’s Personal Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam sent the now famous note that said, “The PM wants this informally shared, does not want any formal communication and wants the PMO to remain at arm’s length please”.

The PMO has subsequently clarified that the PM’s desire to “remain at arm’s length” was to enable the telecom ministry to apply its mind on the merits of the issue and not feel bound by a directive from the PM. However, the whole sequence shows the PM in very painful light.

When he was finally cornered into making a statement in Parliament, contrary to the paper trails detailed above, Singh categorically washed his hands of the issue saying the Cabinet decision of 2003 had specifically left the issue to be determined by the Ministries of Finance and Telecom.

But that is not where it ends. As an aide who once worked closely with the PM says, “It’s never the scam per se that is the problem; the real problem begins with the cover-ups.”

Even after the scam was exposed, Singh refused to claim the high ground by initiating any clean-up himself. He has of course consistently refused to appear both before the JPC and the PAC, rendering both mechanisms toothless. In a clear violation of just and fair process, Raja too has not been allowed to testify before the JPC. An official with the CBI says on condition of anonymity that the investigation into the 2G scam has itself been a scandal, with its illogical and selective arrests: some corporate chieftains, but not others; some ministers, not others; some bureaucrats not others.

Three circumstances have defined Singh’s tenure as a prime minister. First, as an unelected prime minister he has been perceived to be a nominee of Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi rather than a natural leader. Two, he has had to balance the unruly demands of coalition partners, often in contradiction to his own temperament. And three, he’s been part of what veteran columnist and journalist Prem Shankar Jha calls a “very complex diarchy”: an asymmetrical division of power between Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and himself.

There are two schools of thought on this. One school, represented by people like Sanjaya Baru, believes there is tremendous interference from the Gandhis in the choices Singh is allowed to make. He is neither allowed to choose his ministers nor his key officers; often the grey area compulsions that dictate his actions are communicated to him through informal channels. He is merely the titular face of decisions that are taken elsewhere.

“He should never have agreed to these terms of employment,” says Baru. “He could have become a very tall leader in his own right, especially after 2009. But he is driven by a sense of loyalty. He believes he owes his job only to the Gandhis.”

There is another school of thought, however, which asserts that the Gandhis almost never interfere with the actual workings of the government and are very mindful of the PM’s dignity. If Sonia claimed any space at all on the policies of the government, it was through the mechanism of the National Advisory Council in UPA-I. Other than that, they believe, she leaves Singh to take his own decisions.

One officer from the foreign services, now retired, hazards a third framework. “The truth is Sonia rarely intervenes, but because he’s always looking over his shoulder and there are indeed two clear centres of power, it leaves a lot of space for people in the middle to whisper innuendoes and orders in her name. There’s no way of crosschecking whether they are speaking on authority or not. This creates a lot of confusion and second-guessing.”

All three scenarios are in the realm of conjecture. But they have one common riposte: no matter what the circumstance, he is the man who has had the chair. What has he made of it? If indeed he’s been cornered into too many positions not of his liking, why has he not protested and risked his job to get the right thing done? On what does his reputation for integrity and decency lie? What is his legacy going to be?

In February 2012, while cancelling 122 2G licences, in a scathing indictment, the Supreme Court criticised the “arbitrary and capricious” way in which a precious natural resource like spectrum had been given out — “contrary to public interest and violative of the doctrine of equality”.


Before economist Raghuram Rajan joined the government as economic adviser to the PM, he spoke of how crony capitalism was destroying democracy; of how 80 percent of India’s new billionaires had made their “wealth through stealth”; through proximity to government rather than through innovation and genuine entrepreneurship.

For the man billed as India’s most revered “reform architect”, nothing could be a worse report card. Be it spectrum or coal then, quite apart from the specific instances of corruption, even at a policy level, Singh has been unable to acquit himself in his area of core competence: economy and governance. He has proved unable — or disinclined — to leave a robust legacy and regulatory framework on how natural resources should be transparently and judiciously used. In January 2011, aware of the growing crisis around him, Singh even set up a highpowered committee under former finance secretary Ashok Chawla to create this framework. But inexplicably, two years later, he has not even begun to act on the recommendations.

The same apathy and weakness marked his run-up to the coal scam. With coal secretary PC Parakh constantly raising flags by his side, Singh announced in 2004 that auction was the most transparent and preferred option for allocating coal blocks, but he did not operationalise this till 2010. The intervening six years saw a mad, cross-party scramble for coal blocks handed out to favourites and pressure groups. Both as coal minister for three years and, of course, as PM, Singh presided unblinkingly over that unseemly chaos without doing a thing to either streamline the ad hoc largesse of the screening committee or order and audit of the functioning of the blocks that had been given.

In a bitter irony for Singh, therefore, there is now a new reading of him doing the rounds. As Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar says, “People now say maybe he’s an overrated economist but an underrated politician. The presence of the PMO,” he continues, “in many visible instances of corruption — be it CWG, Coalgate, 2G, or CBI investigations — is very disconcerting. The PM and his team are supposed to reflect the moral attributes we expect of our leaders and not become the emblematic symbol of what’s wrong with governance.”

A Congress member of the Union Council of Ministers puts it more bluntly, “Don’t underestimate the PM. The Congress president may have made him the PM, but he has started enjoying power. He will not fade into oblivion quietly.”

Over the past few years, the media has indeed been rife with speculation about the internecine power struggle between Singh, P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee.

Jaitley has a similar prognosis. “Singh,” he says, “has learnt the art of staying in power without doing anything.” Even coming from a political adversary, it seems a fair assessment. Singh’s instinct has been to isolate himself from the underbelly of politics. Yet he is quite comfortable to let others do his dirty work for him. In some sense, in his desire to maintain his own clean image while enjoying the fruits of power, he seems to have outsourced the very process of decision-making. While Pranab Mukherjee was in the Cabinet, there were 27 Groups of Ministers — popularly called GOMs — meant to review thorny issues and decisions. Mukherjee headed 12. Above this, there were 12 EGOMs (empowered group of ministers) with even more powers. Mukherjee headed them all.

Currently, there are six EGOMs, four headed by AK Antony; one each by Sharad Pawar and Chidambaram. Of the GOMs, 10 are headed by Chidambaram, five by Antony and six by Sharad Pawar. Under the circumstance, if any area of decision- making gets sticky, the “arm’s length” distance can be invoked in an instant.

Singh, however, is clearly not above getting his way. Party insiders remember the 15th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt in 2009. India and Pakistan had met on the sidelines of the summit and issued a joint statement in which Balochistan was officially mentioned for the first time as an area of concern in bilateral relations. This created a furore back in India. The Opposition, media, policy wonks and some within the Congress party itself were very perturbed by what they felt was a foreign policy gaffe. Sources say Singh’s own national security adviser MK Narayanan had a difference of opinion with him on this. This did not please Singh. To Narayanan’s utter surprise, Singh took him out of his powerful post and booted him up as Governor of Bengal soon after.

The only time Singh has played the self-assertion really high, however, is over the Indo-US nuclear deal in July 2008. Despite deep opposition from Sonia Gandhi and sections of the Congress, despite the risk of losing Left support and, in turn, the government itself, he stood firm. It was either the deal or him, he told Sonia.

The subsequent events are too well known to merit a revisit. Those who were close to the PM at the time say Singh had been told by John Kerry, now US Secretary of State, that if the deal was not done before George W Bush’s tenure ended, India would not get another shot at it. Singh was convinced India needed this deal. He went for broke.

But what makes Singh’s gauntlet then so interesting is a corollary question: why has he never felt so strongly about anything before or since? Certainly, no crucial governance or constitutional issues seem to have ever caught his passionate attention. The current CBI flashpoint is a good test case.

If Singh had wholly deserved his reputation for being a man of great integrity and probity, the intensely compromised state of the CBI should have been at least one equivalent concern. The misuse of the CBI is not a new phenomenon. When CBI chief Ranjit Sinha says now that the agency is not an autonomous body, he is articulating a truism many exasperated CBI bosses have echoed before him.

In another TEHELKA cover story last year (Leave the Sleuths Alone; by Ashish Khetan, 14 January 2012), several CBI chiefs have spelled out how successive governments have interfered in the investigation of the Taj Corridor Case involving Mayawati; the fodder scam involving Laloo Yadav; the Jain hawala case and many more. Each of them has outlined the myriad ways in which government control has crippled and compromised them. Some solutions already exist in the Supreme Court’s Vineet Narain judgement of 1997.

If Singh had been serious about leaving a luminous legacy history would remember, he would have deemed this a “wakeup call”. This is one vexed question he could have tried to answer: how do you make the CBI truly independent?

But in a typical pattern of abdication, Singh has done absolutely nothing since the scandal broke. Not expressed a word of dismay; not promised an iota of action. Instead he’s been quite happy to let the courts dictate how the agency can be resurrected. The talk, in fact, is that Singh has decided to hold on to law minister Ashwani Kumar — seen to be close to him — despite the embarrassment, so some assurance could be brokered that if Kumar was sacrificed, Singh would not be next.

The apprehension is real. In the past, when the need has arisen, Singh has stooped to conquer. For instance, the CBI investigation into Mulayam Singh’s disproportionate assets is a red button the government clearly switches on and off at will. Even a cursory look at it makes for a dizzying story.

This was particularly evident after the trust vote over the nuclear deal. Interestingly, Vahanvati, once again, had a major role. The sequence of events is pretty damning. Responding to a PIL in March 2007, the Supreme Court had directed the CBI to start a Preliminary Enquiry on Mulayam and his family’s assets. The CBI filed its report and requested the court to order the case to be registered. Inexplicably, the court failed to do so. In July 2008, the SP supported the UPA on the trust vote. A few months later, in November 2008, Vahanvati appeared for the CBI and said the application to proceed with the investigation was being withdrawn because it was improper of the CBI to include the assets of the kids unless it could be proved they were being held for Mulayam to avoid detection. Without allowing an investigation, it was impossible to prove this.

In January 2009, in a bizarre twist, Vahanvati again appeared before the Supreme Court and trashed his own opinion in the case as ‘no longer relevant’ and requested that investigations be opened. In March 2009, as a pre-poll alliance with the SP went cold, the CBI further stepped up its investigations. In February 2011, Vahanvati appeared yet again and argued that the case should be withdrawn because no “fundamental right had been violated”. An exasperated court told Mulayam’s lawyers, “He is supporting you. He has argued for you.”

In November 2012, Vishwanath Chaturvedi, the original litigant, wanted to have Vahanvati charged for “criminal conspiracy”. It is impossible to imagine that PM Manmohan Singh has been oblivious to all of this: the backroom machinery that has kept his government in place — almost to a full term now — despite scams and alienated coalition partners.

The only other times Prime Minister Singh has even come close to something akin to public noise has been over the POSCO, Niyamgiri and Lavasa projects and his spat with Jairam Ramesh over the “go-and no-go areas” in allocation of coal mines. His other strident position has been on the tribal unrest and Maoist insurgency in central India. Singh famously called it the “biggest internal security threat in the country”, not out of a moment of conscience, not because the most dispossessed of India’s citizens had reached a point of desperation, but because the conflict was holding up mining leases and spoiling the “investment climate” in India.

Prashant Bhushan offers two clues into understanding Singh’s mindset. Singh’s PhD thesis in Oxford University, says Bhushan, was titled “India’s Export Performance, 1952-62”. In this Singh argued that India’s export had not grown sufficiently because it had failed to export its minerals. “He does not grasp the idea of a ‘resource curse’,” says Bhushan. “He does not understand that even domestic consumption is a curse, but to export a country’s mineral resources is completely a colonial mentality. His thinking is completely captured by foreign investments and GDP growth.” Joblessness, human development index, nutrition, education — these, says Bhushan, seem to hover very far on Singh’s peripheral vision.

The other clue to Singh’s mental landscape, feels Bhushan, is a detail in Apila-Chapila, Ashok Mitra’s autobiography. Mitra writes in his book that when Narasimha Rao took over as PM in 1991, India had only two weeks of foreign reserves left. The country was desperate for a loan from the IMF. The terms of the loan were one, that India would make the necessary structural adjustments to its policies, and two, that the finance minister would be chosen in consultation with the IMF and US government. It is in these circumstances that Manmohan Singh was made finance minister in 1991.

“He has been faithfully implementing their policies ever since,” says Bhushan.

Baru, though, scorns such easy binaries. “He’s the last guy you can accuse of being a neo-liberal,” he says.

Either way, on the economic front — be it on high GDP growth or the human development index — as the last year of his term creeps up on him, Singh has some hard problem solving to do. One only has to recall the euphoric “Singh is King!” jingles with which the media welcomed him back for his second term in 2009, to get a full sense of the travesty now.

India is seeing its worst GDP figures, inflation is high, joblessness is rampant, growth has outstripped infrastructure, the trade deficit is huge, the rupee has crashed, investments are fleeing and 10 million youngsters are joining the work force each year with nowhere to go. Economists complain that interest rates are too high. Food is rotting in granaries. There is little transparency, speed, cohesion or stability in decision-making. Infrastructure projects are stalled. India’s policies on forest, land usage and mining remain unclear and full of loopholes for industry to exploit. Consumer spending is down. Education, health indices, skill development and water management is in a mess.

The cacophanic list of woes goes on. But, chillingly, all it is met with is silence. That is the one thing India can no longer afford now.

Manmohan Singh lost his mother at childbirth in Gah, a little village in Rawalpindi. His father was never home. Singh was brought up by his grandmother. He walked to an adjacent village to go to school. His home had no access to electricity or drinking water. His aunt fed him selectively, he was bone thin. From there, Singh came to Amritsar and further to Cambridge and Oxford. He’s been RBI governor, Planning Commission head, chief economic adviser, finance secretary, leader of Opposition and now PM for 10 years. He’s lived every part of the Indian narrative: he could embody its best dream.

Unfortunately though, right now, he feels only like a slow fall nightmare.

— With inputs from Shaili Chopra, Brijesh Pandey, Ashhar Khan and G Vishnu

shoma@tehelka.com


Shoma Chaudhury More by the author >
153 97 1 Tumblr1 0 1
Tags: 2 G scam, CBI, coal scam, Coalgate, corruption, CWG scam, GE Vahanvati, Prashant Bhushan, Prime minister Manmohan Singh, Shoma Chaudhury, United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Volume 10 Issue 19
ALSO READ
PM comes to Law Minister Ashwani Kumar’s defence Law Minister says he has done no wrong, govt rules out his resignation

Is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh actually a very astute politician? More than the exit of Pranab, it is the freedom from Mamata that lends the prime minister some hope


9 Comments

Manav May 2, 2013 18:22
You people are more to blame for the absolute mess in the country as you had overexpectations from him relating to reforms like 1991 although he never had innovative ideas or personality to carry that nation forward and after that you were enjoying the perks and pampering that govt does of mediapersons by flying them in special aircraft of PM thus in a way bribing them to write flattering articles about govt so media can’t absolve itself from its duties as you are also hypocrites you favour corrupt and at election time you would show some sort of majority for Congress at the time of elections in opinion polls thus making mess of democracy

REPLY

Vasudeva May 2, 2013 18:30
Why were you so much excited about schemes like NREGA, Aadhar or cash transfers that govt was coming up with and also GDP figures before collapse of 2008 without realising that it was for short term so in a way you were also working in collusion with this govt and after elections both will keep their jobs in one form or the other at the expense of common man as corporates, media persons and industrialists tend to get away with any crime

REPLY

Raman May 3, 2013 08:52
Very well written. The country is frustrated with Congress and MMS. However, I would like to blame the corruption ridden political parties on whose support the UPA is riding for the mess the country is in today. The lack of accountability comes from the support of the corrupt, by the corrupt and for the corrupt members of our Parliament.

REPLY

Dinesh May 3, 2013 09:20
This vaccum in the governance has been deliberately created by the Sonia so that no strong leader can emerge, and Rahul can step in anytime he pleases and take over the post of PM. Unfortunately, our media is also corrupt, and in collusion with Congress never brings this truth to the notice of its readers.

REPLY

S T May 3, 2013 15:37
The people get the PM they deserve. This is what India voted for in 2004 and 2009 and this is what they got. They have been cheated by the corrupt congress and the top authority Sonia Gandhi. But, it the people who allowed themselves to be cheated. Who can you blame except the people of India.
The democracy is thwarted with this strange arrangement – the person in the position of power has no mind of his own, is not taking any decisions or stands, does not communicate with his country even when earth-shattering events are taking right here – like the Chinese intrusion or Sarbjit’s death.
And the real powerful person has no responsibility towards anyone – she also does not take any decisions or stands and does not communicate anything to the people. Overall, the country is like a rudderless ship stuck in the middle of a a wild sea. Where is the vision, mission and values for those who are supposed o be in charge? Where will it go? Will we survive as a nation at all? What kind of existence will it be – humiliating from all neighbors and territory being lost bit by bit, internally cracking under the divisions of caste/religion/region. The future is bleak.

REPLY

mahesh May 4, 2013 14:50
Being a great scholar and good accountant does not qualify anyone to become a good leader. Leadership requires taking a stance and influencing others to follow your beliefs. MMS is a classic example of technocrat who shamelessly wants to cling to the glory of being a national leader while taking no accountability for his actions.
A mute Dhristrahsta of our times might be the most apt description for this (gentle?)man.

REPLY

Pandyaji May 5, 2013 07:55
“The trouble with the prime minister,” he says, “is that he is completely ideology-less. He does not act like a leader; he does what a cabinet secretary should do.”
——

The trouble with PM is that he is an idiot

REPLY

mehyer May 6, 2013 13:32
brilliant shoma. It’s an eye opener for all those who feel MMS is great. watching silently when things are crumbling around us is more disgusting than actually involving in a scam. One of you should do a sting on the high profile match fixing in IPL.

REPLY

Sanjay May 6, 2013 19:55
Why blame opposition for stalling parliament? Just look at the track record of this congress govt even in this parliament session. The session started with scandal on JPC of 2G corruption, in middle of the session whole thing moved into CBI affidavit on coal gate scandal, then moved to finance minister’s wife’s involvement with chit fund scandal and now during the last week a new corruption scandal of Railway Minister comes into picture. Why should this corrupt govt be allowed to attend

- See more at: http://tehelka.com/no-prime-minister/?singlepage=1#sthash.fkbb0Vm2.dpuf

http://tehelka.com/no-prime-minister/?singlepage=1

GOLD DRIVES OUR TRADITIONAL ECONOMY, MUST NOT BE CURBED

See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/a-threat-to-food-security-s-gurumurthy.html A threat to food security -- S. Gurumurthy.

Stuck record: Why Amartya Sen is wrong on food security again
by R Jagannathan 25 mins ago

It is becoming increasingly difficult to retain respect for Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. He seems to surface in the media every time the UPA government is about to legislate its pet follies, providing intellectual succour to mindless spending and corruption wrapped up in the package of anti-poverty schemes.

Yesterday, Sen bobbed up just when the UPA – under siege for every known scam in India – tried to start discussions on the Food Security Bill in order to divert attention from scams. Sure enough, Sen was at hand to defend it, never mind the economic consequences.

Consider his statements – against the backdrop of larger realities and facts.

First, he said that politicians who disrupt parliament should be confronted with “estimated numbers of deaths” caused by delaying the Food Security Bill.

Is that so? The BJP surely needs to be hauled over the coals for continuing its disruptions, but the Bill was moved for passing just yesterday, when the Congress was caught in a political jam. Sen should tell us how many deaths were caused since yesterday. For a UPA that has been in power for nine years, one wonders why the Food Bill needed to be brought just before the elections, and why it needed to be discussed just when corruption scandals are boiling over.

The right calculations to make, Dr Sen, are the ones put out by Sunil Jain in The Financial Express yesterday. According to Jain, nearly 40-50 percent of the food passing through the public distribution system goes to the wrong people. “If implementing the bill is to cost Rs 6 lakh crore over a three-year period, as the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) reckons, that’s a huge Rs 3 lakh crore to be siphoned off by various middlemen along the way.”

Amartya Sen is welcome to calculate the Rs 3 lakh crore that will not go to the poor. He should first calculate the deaths caused by social spending that does not go to the real poor before talking about deaths allegedly caused by disruptions and delays in parliament – however repugnant they are.

Next, he made silly claims about Manmohan Singh‘s eyesight. According to The Economic Times, Sen said that “there is no evidence that he (Manmohan) cannot see” the number of likely deaths of women and children triggered by non-legislation of the bill by parliament.

Sen’s ophthalmological qualifications are suspect. Manmohan Singh has been unable to “see” the scams in his own backyard – from 2G to CWG to Coalgate – and his ministers and officials are busy lying to the Supreme Court on his behalf to save his bacon. So the PM’s ability to “see” anything beyond his own political future is in doubt. The deaths of women and children due to non-passage of the Bill are secondary.

Sen is also quoted as saying: “To capture people’s attention, you have to have a number. There is something clearly wrong.” Again, of course, the reference is to deaths due to delay in the Bill.

Dr Sen, how is it you cannot “see” even bigger numbers than the ones you want parliamentarians to see? How about Rs 1,76,000 crore (2G)? That’s a number bigger than the Food Security Bill. How about Rs 1,86,000 crore (Coalgate)? Still unimpressed? If you look at either of these scam numbers, and there are scores like these, the Food Security Bill could have been easily financed for free – even assuming the Food Bill is really a good idea (which it is not).

The Economic Times also quotes Sen as reviving the growth versus social spending debate. He said, not unreasonably, that the growth story of Asia has been led by investment in education and health. “Instead of thinking about whether you are growth or anti-growth we should think about what will lead to sustained economic growth and the big story of Asian economic development. That has (also) been the story of Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and now China in a big way.”

What Sen forgets is that all these Asian social sector success stories were achieved in monocultural societies, and which were all non-democracies (except Japan) at the time of their major social investments. In India’s diverse and democratic polity, where consensus is always difficult, we privileged state investments in public sector enterprises (most of which are draining money now) over social spending all the way through 1947-1991. It was only when we went for growth that we managed to reduce poverty.

If he is not convinced, he can read Swaminathan Aiyar on this here. He can also read this writer’s summation of Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya’s book on how the Gujarat growth model and the Kerala social model are actually driven by the same thing: growth and private spending.

It is also worth reminding Sen about his Annie Hall moment of 2005. In February 2005, Sen had extolled the China model in a speech in Hong Kong, only to be corrected on it by someone who had to face the brunt of the Communist dictatorship.

A report in The Wall Street Journal at that time reports what happened at that meeting. Sen was waxing eloquent about how China had made great strides in state-led healthcare under Mao’s cultural revolution. He criticised private healthcare that a modernising China had begun to opt for.

He was stopped in his tracks by an eyewitness to Mao’s follies right there. According to the Journal, Weijian Shan, who was one of Mao’s “barefoot” doctors, set the record straight. “I observed with my own eyes the total absence of medicine in some parts of China. The system was totally unsustainable. We used to admire India.” Shan added: “If they had made the system optional, nobody would have opted for it.”

That, Dr Sen, is the reality – whether you talk about Food Security or Universal Healthcare. While the state has the clear role as facilitator, people want a choice.

The Right to Food is not any more important than the Right to Choice. To force an economically unsustainable Food Security Bill, which is going to cost Rs 6,00,000 crore over three years, down the throats of two-thirds of the population is not a sign of great humanity. It is the exact opposite. It will eat away through inflation and whatever is gained in terms of cheap food delivered through a leaky system that swallows up half the grains meant for the poor.

Over the last nine years, the UPA’s misguided interventions in social spending – whether it is NREGA or loan waivers for farmers – have more or less halted the India growth story. The only thing high state spending has achieved is bankruptcy and corruption.

This is not to deny that there are stil huge pockets of malnutrition and hunger in India. But it is surely not 65 percent of the population – which is what the Food Security Bill is trying to target.

There is a story from my school days that Sen would do well to read. It seems a King of yore did not want to get his feet dirty. In order to achieve this, he ordered that his entire kingdom should be carpeted with leather. A wise man intervened to avert this stupidity and pointed out that the king could keep his feet clean by wearing shoes.

This is the underlying message. To end poverty and hunger and malnutrition, you don’t need a universal Food Security Bill. You don’t need to carpet two-thirds of India with cheap food. Food security should be focused on identified pockets of high poverty and malnutrition. The rest of India can take care of itself, if the growth story is restarted.

Dr Sen, maybe you don’t understand politics and are unaware of the Congress’ game. The Food Security Bill is not about ending malnutrition and hunger; it is about addressing Sonia Gandhi and the Congress’ hunger for power, and their political insecurity.

PS: Dr Sen, just in case you are interested, the BJP is not disrupting parliament just to jettison the Food Security Bill. Bad ideas have universal acceptance among politicians.

http://www.firstpost.com/economy/stuck-record-why-amartya-sen-is-wrong-on-food-security-again-757879.html

The New York Times Erases Islam from Existence

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On May 3, 2013 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 48 Comments

The media coverage of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has one theme and one tack. Like 30 of the 31 men on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, they were terrorists who just happened to be Muslim.

While the New York Times dispatched its best and brightest lackeys to Boston to write sensitive pieces on how hard it was for the two Tsarnaevs to fit in, it fell to a UK tabloids like The Sun to conduct an interview with the ex-girlfriend of the lead terrorist and learn that he wanted her to hate America and beat her because she wouldn’t wear a Hijab.

There are all sorts of jobs that Americans won’t do. Like pick lettuce, bomb the Boston Marathon and report honestly on the motives of the bombers. The only news network that operates outside the media consensus is owned by an Australian mogul who also owns The Sun.

Americans like to think of their press as freer, but it’s only free in the sense that it voluntarily puts on its own muzzle. European tabloids get into bloody brawls with regulators. American newspapers have nothing to brawl about. They will gleefully report anything that undermines national security at the drop of a hat, knowing that they won’t be touched, but there is a long list of subjects that they won’t touch with a million-mile pole.

In Europe, editors risked their lives to publish the Mohammed cartoons. In America, on the rare occasion that they were depicted, they were usually censored. CNN, which could show Kathy Griffin trying to molest Anderson Cooper, without the benefit of pixelation or a suicide button, blurred out Mohammed’s face; assuming that Muslims would appreciate the sensitivity of treating their prophet’s face like an obscene object.

The American media does not need to be censored. It censors itself.

Did the New York Times really fail to come across Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ex-girlfriend while they were busily interviewing every single person in Boston who ever ran into the future terrorists? The New York Times may be incompetent, but it isn’t that incompetent. If it could track down Tamerlan’s old coach, it could track down his old girlfriend. It chose not to.

So did every other paper.

Either The Sun is staffed with crack journalists who could do what no American newspaper, news channel and network news program could, or The Sun got the scoop on Nadine Ascencao because no newspaper on this side of the ocean wanted to touch it. And it’s easy to see why.

Nadine talks about being beaten in the name of Islam, forced to memorize Koran verses and being taught to hate America. Most journalists on this side of the ocean want quotes on what nice boys the two Tsarnaevs were and how, in true liberal fashion, no one could have expected them to do something like this.

Every background story on them is filled with the same pabulum, because the endless march of “We couldn’t have known” quotes provides the government-media complex with the plausible deniability it needs to continue doing the same thing all over again. If the people couldn’t have known, then it stands to reason that their government or their media couldn’t have known either.

The only newspaper besides The Sun to do an interview with Nadine Ascencao was the Wall Street Journal; which just happens to be owned by the same tabloid mogul. But there is an interesting difference between The Sun and the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ piece doesn’t mention Hijabs, Koran verses or hating America. It doesn’t mention Islam at all.

Co-written by a Pakistani journalist, it emphasizes only that Tamerlan was a bully of no particular religion. That reporter’s twitter feed features a retweet from another Muslim WSJ reporter who broadcasts that the plans of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to head to Times Square amounted to nothing. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Instead of wasting time on a dead end like Islam, the media has spent its time chasing down every other possible angle.

Did Tamerlan turn terrorist because he took too many blows to the head while boxing? Could the Boston Marathon bombing have been prevented if only we had let him win?

The New York Times assembled a touching story of an aspiring immigrant boxer radicalized by the petty restrictions of a government that wouldn’t let him apply for citizenship because of his history of domestic violence and appearance on a terrorist watch list. But how does that jibe with the Tamerlan from five years earlier who beat up a boy that his sister was dating because he wasn’t Muslim?

When the media must deal with Tamerlan’s theology, it keeps him in the category of the troubled man who turned to some wacky extremist version of Islam propounded by a YouTube convert. The man who beat his sister’s boyfriend because he wasn’t a Muslim and beat his ex-girlfriend because she wouldn’t wear a Hijab wasn’t some brainwashed drone who had his mind stolen by YouTube videos. He was a Muslim.

That angle is the most terrifying one that the media can think of. If they have to mention the “I” word, they will sandwich it between “extremist” and “radicalization.” But it’s not Tamerlan who was the radical extremist. Among Muslims, his views were mainstream. The Wahhabis are in ascendance in most parts of the world, including the United States. Islamist parties roundly won the Arab Spring.

What was the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any of the Syrian Jihadists held up by the media as the epitome of courage and bravery? What is the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Hamas and Fatah terrorists that the media peevishly contends Israel must make peace with? What is the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any of the tens of thousands of Muslim terrorists fighting in conflicts around the world?

While the European media, for all its faults, occasionally grapples with the incompatibility of liberal values and Muslim values; on this side of the ocean the topic is all but untouchable.

A story about a future Muslim terrorist beating his girlfriend because she wouldn’t wear a Hijab creates a sneaking suspicion that Muslim multiculturalism is incompatible with liberal values. The incompatible Muslims, like Mohammed’s face, have been pixelated out of existence in the reports on terrorist attacks by disgruntled boxers, doctors and perfume salesmen who just happen to be Muslim.

These are the Muslims that the media doesn’t see. And it is doing everything possible to make sure that we don’t see them either.

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.
Login
Follow the discussion
Comments (48)
Sort by: Date Rating Last Activity
+43
truebearing · 4 days ago
Excellent post. Excellent points, all, but what drives this ultimately self-destructive idiocy? What do they have to gain by covering for, and thereby empowering, a cult who would gladly kill them too? Radical Muslims aren't known for their respect for journalists -- and just this once I agree with the Islamists -- so why do these liberal poseurs continue to suppress the truth about Islam? Is Political Correctness so corrosive to the mind of the gullible that it annihilates even the survival instinct? Apparently.

This idea of a self-censoring media is insightful and disturbing. It is the journalistic equivalent of suicide bombing. Anyone in the media who goes along with self-censoring immediately dies as a journalist and is reincarnated as a goose stepping propagandist, complicit in every evil they hide or refuse to report..
Report
Reply8 replies · active 3 days ago
+31
hank rearden · 4 days ago
Jeff Bauman is the fellow in the wheelchair being helped by the guy in the cowboy hat. The picture that was published by AP and used by the media was cropped at the knee, where Bauman's legs are still intact. Take a look at the full picture:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/first-photo...

Scroll down to Picture 38. There is nothing but the exposed bone on his left leg. The image will stay with you and keep this atrocity in its full force. Bauman lost both legs and so far is also deafened. We can hope that his hearing, or some of it, will return over time but who knows at this point?

Look at that picture. These guys set out with malice aforethought to do as much damage in as grotesque a manner as possible. This reflects the value of militant Islam - to terrorize infidels into submission. Islam is not a religion of peace; it is a religion of war, moreover a religion that makes war on civilians, on women and children.

Not only should we visit retribution on the surviving brother for the maimed - "wounded" is not a sufficient word - but for our own self-respect. Do we have the stones to defend ourselves, our countrymen and our society, or have we become so "tolerant" that nothing is important, including our children?
Report
Reply4 replies · active 3 days ago
+21
AdinaK99p · 4 days ago
The left's media organs - fronted by the "paper of record" - are directly responsible for Boston's jihad, and all ensuing jihads to come. Why? Because they aid and abet Islamic jihad - http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/12/30/u-s-leftist-m...

So whether they act as the lapdogs to gut the Constitution, or to whitewash Islamic jihad, well, the results are the same - more dead Americans!

Adina kutnicki, Israel http://adinakutnicki.com/about/
Report
Reply
+25
Nanis · 4 days ago
I say it again.... They should condemn the wife and friends of the muslim terrorists for treason. Because they failed to help their country unless they were in the same page as the muslim terrorist....

The wife had to hate America, convert to muslim just so she could be the woman of the terrorist tamerlan it's no different than what he wanted Nadine to do.......
Report
Reply
+15
Michael Copeland · 4 days ago
The mainstream media are prolonging the " Religion-of-Peace-that-has-been-hi-jacked" narrative - you know, the deception supplied to George W. Bush by CAIR in the mosque after 9/11. Have reporters and editors been told "bad things will happen" if they stray from it?

See: "Moderate" Islam "Hi-jacked" - A Mistake and a Deception, www.LibertyGB.org.uk 2 May 2013
Report
Reply
+22
Mladen Andrijasevic · 4 days ago
I find it appalling that an average New Yorker today is less informed about what is transpiring in the world around than were Soviet citizens in 1970s under the Soviet regime. At least the Russians understood that the their press was garbage and sought to get vital info from the VOA, the BBC (at that time the BBC was not what it has become today), Radio Free Europe or Samizdat publications. We in Israel should start screaming about these ignorant fools in the US endangering not only their own lives, but endangering much our lives in Israel with their PC and in their refusal to face the problem of jihadism.

Bombs away! Caroline Glick vs. Alan Dershowitz on Iran http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/bombs...
Report
Reply1 reply · active 3 days ago
+4
Anamah · 4 days ago
And worst. Some time I think if the American naiveté is not already an addiction or even a handicap.
Report
Reply
+9
Jaladhi · 4 days ago
What else can you say the American media, press are all liars, cheats, dishonest, connivers, and anything else but a straight truth telling journalists. They are practicing taqiyya in true Islamic style. Maybe they have all converted to Islam and have become Muslims.

Truly despicable bunch of people they are who cannot and would not tell the truth. They go to great lengths to manufacure lies to hide the hide of Muslims/Islam. They are the lowest of the lows and I have no respect for them. But who will be able save the country when the media lies like the old Pravda and Izvestia in Soviet Union.
Report
Reply
+7
Hotdigittydog · 4 days ago
Now we know why the NYT is so preferred by pet shop owners, it already comes pretreated with the "stuff" they are trying to catch.
Report
Reply1 reply · active 3 days ago
+5
DPBF · 4 days ago
Truebearing: Wow! By far the most insightful and articulate comment I think I've seen on any news item anywhere -- and I'm a professional writer!
Report
Reply
+10
Michael Copeland · 4 days ago
“Radicalized” muslim or “ordinary” muslim? How are they to be distinguished?

The “RADICALIZED” muslim is one who is putting into effect the instructions in the Koran which the easy-going, “moderate”, muslims are NOT (yet).

The “Moderates-to-the-Rescue” camp assert that the individual muslim can “interpret” his religion in his own peaceful moderate way. This is not borne out by the mosques, none of which support Zuhdi Jasser, proponent of the Moderate Islam assertion. Hear Dr. Salah al-Sawy:

“the Ummah [muslim people] possesses no power except to acknowledge and obey”,

Dr. al-Sawy is the Secretary-General of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), 28 March 2011: www.translatingjihad.com 2011/03/30. His statement rests on Koran 33:36:

"It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision."

To deny any verse in the Koran is a capital offence (Manual of Islamic Law o8.7(7)). There are over a hundred verses of violence against non-muslims, like Koran 9: 5: “Kill unbelievers wherever you find them”. The muslim who is not doing so cannot argue that he has a choice. The duty awaits him. Jihad, “to war against non-Muslims” (Manual o9.0), is a “communal obligation” (o9.1). Failure to do the Jihad makes him eligible to be killed as a “hypocrite”, an apostate.

An individual who has been “radicalized” is one who has been made aware, through his own researches or with the help of others, of the root doctrines (Latin radix, “root”) of the ideology, and is setting about putting them into effect. The difference is as that between an explosive WITH a detonator fitted, and one WITHOUT.
Report
Reply1 reply · active 3 days ago
+4
Rahul · 3 days ago
Really shameful to realize. Very revealing post and an eye opener. Comparison with European Press only tells us how bad American press has been on this aspect.
Report
Reply
+9
Softly Bob · 3 days ago
THE NEW YORK TIMES ERASES ISLAM FROM EXISTENCE

The title of this article is misleading. I was disappointed when I found it wasn't true. I only wish they really had erased Islam from existence, as the World would be a much better place.
Report
Reply1 reply · active 3 days ago
+11
Alvaro · 3 days ago
I think it is about time with a new round of Mohammad drawings.
Report
Reply
+8
BigJulie · 3 days ago
The only "peaceful" Muslims are the ones who have not got their Jihad plans in action-ready order yet! For those of us who have uncovered what they are really about, and talk about it, we are branded as racist kooks who just hate brown people by Muslim mouthpiece organizations like the NYT and WaPo.
Report
Reply
+3
Beth88p · 3 days ago
"blurred out Mohammed’s face...... of treating their prophet’s face like an obscene object."

lols. I never looked at it that way before.

The truth is the truth is the truth is the truth is the...... Unless the words of the koran can be changed, the day will come when people will look back and just shake their heads in amazement at todays media. And I don't think that day is too far off. More and more people are waking up to the truth about the actual teachings of the koran. Enough people already hate them because they have seen the truth for themselves (no thanks to the media) - but those are the inquisitive ones, who are not spiteful and violent. For now, the spiteful ones love the media. And maybe that's a part of their problem. The media giants of yesterday have become cowards today. And by tomorrow - may be running for their lives - for deceiving the spiteful ones.

I am amused at the thought of that.
Report
Reply
+6
RiverFred · 3 days ago
THE WHITE HOUSE/OBAMA IS PROTECTING MUSLIM TERRORIST. ALL U.S. AGENCIES ARE FORBIDDEN TO RECOGNIZE ISLAMIC TERRORISM. ANY REFERENCE TO ISLAMIC TERRORISM WAS REMOVED FROM ALL MANUALS AND NO ONE IN U.S. AGENCIES ARE ALLOWED TO MENTION ISLAMIC TERRORIM. NO DISCUSSIONS OF ISLAMIC TERRORISM ARE ALLOWED REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES.__Remember the Fort Hood Muslim terrorist – work place violence per the White House, an absolute outright lie.__ MUST WATCH VIDEO: http://youtu.be/VKuRBPY9TCo
Report
Reply
+4
Cathy · 3 days ago
Media Bias? Case Closed!

CBS political director urges Obama to 'go for the throat' of GOP to cement legacy
Published January 21, 2013

A column published on Slate.com over the weekend urged President Obama to "pulverize" and destroy his Republican opponents -- even "go for the throat" -- in order to "cement his legacy."

The words of advice, though, didn't come from a Democratic strategist or a former member of the president's inner circle.

The nearly 2,000-word playbook came from CBS News' political director John Dickerson.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/21/cbs-po...
Report
Reply1 reply · active 3 days ago
+3
Herb Benty · 3 days ago
WHY does the AMERICAN free press run cover for Islamic terrorism that kills AMERICANS???
Report
Reply
+3
Dave · 3 days ago
Well, according to Emily Kubler Ross, denial is the first stage. Let's hope the Lamestream Media gets to stage 5 before we're all forced to convert or die.
Report
Reply
+5
Jay · 3 days ago
Daniel

NYT does more than erase Islam. It categorically denies it even when the Muslim says they did it for Islam. They rejected Tsarnaev's own answer that he did it for Islam and came up with their own excuse that fits their politics and narrative.

"....Then, according to most accounts, Tamerlan found God and renounced boxing as an offense against Islam. But this leaves a puzzle: How can a man blow up innocent people in the name of a religion which, by his own reckoning, forbids punching them? [clueless MSM - anyone who understands what Islam is not what MSM pretends it is would not find this a puzzle]

This weekend’s stories point to two possible answers. One comes from the Los Angeles Times: In 2009, Tamerlan told his parents that the Quran “prohibits beating people in the face." That’s a more specific description of his objection than has previously been reported. Presumably he reached this conclusion sometime after slapping his girlfriend. It’s possible that Tamerlan interpreted this injunction quite literally: You mustn’t hit people in the face, but it’s OK to shred their legs with a bomb. [closer to the truth but not quite - boxing for commercial sport is haram, but killing and terrorizing infidels is halal.]

The New York Times suggests a different answer: Tamerlan’s explanation of why he quit boxing is false. He didn’t do it for Islam. He did it because his lack of U.S. citizenship blocked his eligibility to compete in tournaments and build a career in the sport. He just used Islam as an excuse, a story to tell others...." http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/f...
Report
Reply
-1
@cuagoducduong · 3 days ago
Truebearing: Wow! By far the most insightful and articulate comment I think I've seen on any news item anywhere -- and I'm a professional writer!
Report
Reply
+1
Mladen Andrijasevic · 3 days ago
The purpose of Newspeak: To make all other modes of thought impossible. http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/the-p...
Report
Reply
+5
Soloview · 2 days ago
See no Islam, hear no Islam !
Report
Reply
+4
Poverty · 2 days ago
Funny you never hear the old "poverty creates terrorists/extremism" excuse anymore.
Report


http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-new-york-times-erases-islam-from-existence/

http://tinyurl.com/dy7l5d3Click here to go to the graphic and listen to the words discussed in the article.

Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’

Graphic: Hear and see the pronunciation of words from their ancient language families

By David Brown, Tuesday, May 7, 12:30 AM

You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!

It’s an odd little speech. But if you went back 15,000 years and spoke these words to hunter-gatherers in Asia in any one of hundreds of modern languages, there is a chance they would understand at least some of what you were saying.

That’s because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then.

The traditional view is that words can’t survive for more than 8,000 to 9,000 years. Evolution, linguistic “weathering” and the adoption of replacements from other languages eventually drive ancient words to extinction, just like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era.

A new study, however, suggests that’s not always true.

A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.”

The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.

“We’ve never heard this language, and it’s not written down anywhere,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England who headed the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “But this ancestral language was spoken and heard. People sitting around campfires used it to talk to each other.”

In all, “proto-Eurasiatic” gave birth to seven language families. Several of the world’s important language families, however, fall outside that lineage, such as the one that includes Chinese and Tibetan; several African language families, and those of American Indians and Australian aborigines.

That a spoken sound carrying a specific meaning could remain unchanged over 15,000 years is a controversial idea for most historical linguists.

“Their general view is pessimistic,” said William Croft, a professor of linguistics at the University of New Mexico who studies the evolution of language and was not involved in the study. “They basically think there’s too little evidence to even propose a family like Eurasiatic.” In Croft’s view, however, the new study supports the plausibility of an ancestral language whose audible relics cross tongues today.

Pagel and three collaborators studied “cognates,” which are words that have the same meaning and a similar sound in different languages. Father (English), padre (Italian), pere (French), pater (Latin) and pitar (Sanskrit) are cognates. Those words, however, are from languages in one family, the Indo-European. The researchers looked much further afield, examining seven language families in all.
In addition to Indo-European, the language families included Altaic (whose modern members include Turkish, Uzbek and Mongolian); Chukchi-Kamchatkan (languages of far northeastern Siberia); Dravidian (languages of south India); Inuit-Yupik (Arctic languages); Kartvelian (Georgian and three related languages) and Uralic (Finnish, Hungarian and a few others).

They make up a diverse group. Some don’t use the Roman alphabet. Some had no written form until modern times. They sound different to the untrained ear. Their speakers live thousands of miles apart. In short, they seem unlikely candidates to share cognates.

More health and science news
FDA proposes stricter regulations for tanning beds

Brady Dennis 4:15 AM ET
Changes would address health and safety risks, including skin cancer.
While most ancient words have gone the way of the dinosaurs, a few live on

David Brown 12:30 AM ET
Researchers identify two dozen words whose sound and meaning have survived the past 15,000 years.
With so much obesity, what’s the best way to get people to eat healthfully?

Jessica Hamzelou 12:15 AM ET
Some health insurers and employers are offering positive incentives. But might taxes work?

Pagel’s team used as its starting material 200 words that linguists know to be the core vocabulary of all languages.

Other researchers had searched for cognates of those words in members of each of the seven Eurasiatic language families. They looked, for example, for similar-sounding words for “fish” or “to drink” in the Altaic family of languages or in the Indo-European languages. When they found cognates, they constructed what they imagined were the cognates’ ancestral words — a task that requires knowing how sounds change between languages, such as “f” in Germanic languages becoming “p” in Romance languages.

Those made-up words are called “proto-words.” Pagel’s team compared them among language families. They made thousands of comparisons, asking such questions as: Do the proto-word for “hand” in the Inuit-Yupik language family and the proto-word for “hand” in the Indo-European language family sound similar?

Surprisingly, the answer to that question and many others was yes.

The 23 entries on the list of ultraconserved words are cognates in four or more language families. Could they sound the same purely by chance? Pagel and his colleagues think not.

Linguists have calculated the rate at which words are replaced in a language. Common ones disappear the slowest. It’s those words that Pagel’s team found were most likely to have cognates among the seven families.

In fact, they calculated that words uttered at least 16 times per day by an average speaker had the greatest chance of being cognates in at least three language families. If chance had been the explanation, some rarely used words would have ended up on the list. But they didn’t.

As a group, the ultraconserved words give a hint of what has been important to people over the millennia.

“I was really delighted to see ‘to give’ there,” Pagel said. “Human society is characterized by a degree of cooperation and reciprocity that you simply don’t see in any other animal. Verbs tend to change fairly quickly, but that one hasn’t.”

Of course, one has to explain the presence of “bark.”

“I have spoken to some anthropologists about that, and they say that bark played a very significant role in the lives of forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers,” Pagel said. Bark was woven into baskets, stripped and braided into rope, burned as fuel, stuffed in empty spaces for insulation and consumed as medicine.

“To spit” is also a surprising survivor. It may be that the sound of that word is just so expressive of the sound of the activity — what linguists call “onomatopoeia” — that it simply couldn’t be improved on over 15,000 years.

As to the origin of the sound of the other ultraconserved words, and who made them up, that’s a question best left to the poets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/linguists-identify-15000-year-old-ultraconserved-words/2013/05/06/a02e3a14-b427-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html?tid=ts_carousel

Words that last

By Wilson Andrews and David Brown, Published: May 6, 2013

A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years. Words that sound and mean the same thing in different languages are called “cognates”. These are five words that have cognates in at least four of the seven Eurasiatic language families. Those languages, about 700 in all, are spoken in an area extending from the British Isles to western China and from the Arctic to southern India. Only one word, “thou” (the singular form of “you”), has a cognate in all seven families.


Voiced by Rebecca Béatrice Grollemund, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Reading.


All 23 “ultraconserved words”
Listed by the number of language families in which they have cognates. Click here to learn more about this research.
7 - thou
6 - I
5 - not, that, we, to give, who
4 - this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire ,to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/words-that-last/

279
Comments


NullPointer
1:23 AM GMT+0530
That sentence is so simple even a caveman can understand it.

Splunge
2:17 AM GMT+0530
You win.

Rush_Limbaughs_Forehead
4:00 AM GMT+0530
Huh? How can this be possible? The creationists told me the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Sarpedon
6:45 PM GMT+0530
This article is very confused and misleading. As someone else wrote:

"the authors are reporting the results of an experiment with a statistical algorithm. They are not making any assertions about what actually happened in deep prehistory, just a way of making predictions about what may have happened."

This is correct, and the underlying assumption--that "words will evolve in other language families at rates similar to those found in the Indo-European languages, with frequency of word-use acting as the common causal factor..." is a hypothesis that has been kicking around for about 70 years (the technical term is "glottochronology", associated with the linguist Morris Swadesh) but is still controversial for a number of reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Swadesh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

dfoster2
6:39 PM GMT+0530
Caveman F-bomb found yet?
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

exmptle
6:35 PM GMT+0530
When I was in high school, the wiseguys would integrate the word B-S with a muffled sneeze. It was the first thing that popped into my mind after reading this article. These people need to do something more useful. Why not add some more words to the Klingon language?
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

gspanos441
6:11 PM GMT+0530
Interesting that 'I' is on the list because the Chinese word 'wo' falls outside the proposed proto-Euroasiatic family and sounds a lot like the Greek 'ego,' the Italian 'io,' the Spanish 'yo,' and, of course, the English 'I.'
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

OldDad
6:05 PM GMT+0530
"Mama" "Dada" "Nana/Oma" "because I said so" and "turn it off!"

Like · Reply · Share · Flag

LaylaS03
5:50 PM GMT+0530
Awesome, dude.
LikeLiked by 1 reader · Reply · Share · Flag

LouisianaVirginian
5:49 PM GMT+0530
I can think of quite a number of "modern" words to describe this effort at understanding ancient and modern language. The "results" and conclusions drawn from this study remind me of the archaeologist that finds a single brown pot shard and from that piece of pottery can conceive of an entire scene of early humans...complete with facial expressions, hair styles, clothing adornment, shelter construction and ornamentation, children playing with pets and toys, and even the weather...you can see their artistic output in any museum. This is nothing more than the multi-year product of over-funded project by a group of hyper-stimulated imaginers pushing out some "result" to maintain funding for their future pipe dreams.

And further...sound recording is about 100 years old (think Thomas Edison here)...and sound "printing" and analysis are less than 50 years old. Where, oh where, is the baseline sound information on a word theoretically spoken 15,000 years ago. One would need the baseline recording to make any meaningful judgment as to the similarities...or dissimilarities...in any oral pronounciation.

Here's a word for the scientists...HOGWASH...and the concept it conveys is common across the face of the planet...and it has many derivatives and synonymns...but I won't type them here so as to not offend any readers.
LikeLiked by 3 readers · Reply · Share · Flag

LaylaS03
5:51 PM GMT+0530
You're a linguist, I assume, so you've studied this? No, you're an anti-science Republican who believes the Earth is 5,000 years old.
LikeLiked by 5 readers · Flag

Sarpedon
6:16 PM GMT+0530
No need for creationist "science" here. Linguists who have studied this come to the same conclusion: hogwash.
LikeLiked by 1 reader · Flag

exmptle
6:42 PM GMT+0530
Well said L-V!! I'm baffled at how Layla and the "likes" can turn your comments into a religious/political issue.
Like · Flag


Darkmirror
5:41 PM GMT+0530
We can't assume more than what's been observed: for example, maybe there was no difference then between nouns and verbs. So "bark" might refer to how dogs seem to speak, as in "hear the bark" or "it barks," rather than to trees. At least this is how phenomenology might approach this discovery.
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

PeterDM
5:35 PM GMT+0530
From ancient Nordic languages, we get the phrase, "Kiww the wabbit!"
LikeLiked by 3 readers · Reply · Share · Flag

LarsX
5:29 PM GMT+0530
A very interesting article on lingusitics. Now let's see how many people can work an attack on Obama into their responses.
LikeLiked by 6 readers · Reply · Share · Flag

NumeroUnoHombre
5:49 PM GMT+0530
Awesome! Made me smile. The rabid right doth froth at the mouth. But I also have to point out that you brought the subject of Mr. President up!
LikeLiked by 2 readers · Flag

Geezer4
6:07 PM GMT+0530
Hombre, It's more a comment on the ways of the Commentariat. Instead of Obama, they could have scribbled Liberals, Tea-Partiers, Marxists or any number of other off the subject and off-the-wall projections of their personal warps.
Like · Flag


PeterDM
5:27 PM GMT+0530
The article mentioned how the F in Germanic words gets changed to P in Romance langages... People in the Philipines often pronounce the F as P. Surely this must be significant.
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

Sarpedon
6:26 PM GMT+0530
It was the other way around. Proto-Indo-European /p/, reflected in Latin pater and its Romance offshoots, Greek pater, and other languages, changed to /f/ in the Germanic languages in certain situations. This unique development of the Germanic languages is part of the series of sound changes that are known as "Grimm's Law", after one of the Grimm brothers (of fairy tale fame), who was among the first to figure it out. Both /p/ and /f/ are labial consonants, i.e., they are articulated with the lip. In a language such as Tagalog with no /f/ sound, /f/ in foreign words tends to be assimilated to the nearest sound in the language, which would be /p/.
Like · Flag


deeman
5:20 PM GMT+0530
I bet the words "gov't stupidity" outlast them all.
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

rjb52b
5:14 PM GMT+0530
There is one phrase that has endured for eons with no mention in the article. It is quite familar and universal to all around the world. It is the reference to ones middle finger. I'm sure there are many recordings of it going back to the dawn of man.
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

edbaker2
5:09 PM GMT+0530
AHHH !!! I just read those "words" written on Neolithics' cave dwelling walls 35,000 years ago.

our computer/scientific Modern Ways sure do dumb-things-down.... I bet some grad students
will do their thesis's on this theoretical, accidental, conjunctive "stuff" ...
and
OF CORSE Cavemen communicated with each other.... just look at Tarzan ... he knew pretty quickly the basic words and gestures to "get Jane" ...
Like · Reply · Share · Flag

vzepijdu
6:23 PM GMT+0530
Ug Un gowa
Like · Flag


meadowrock
4:43 PM GMT+0530
Verbs tend to fade out. The verb 'to give' has remained. With the Tea Party around today, the verb 'to give' may be on the way out. Hopefully, the Tea Party is on the way out instead, with the verb 'to take'.

Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia
Mark Pagela,b,1, Quentin D. Atkinsonc, Andreea S. Caluded, and Andrew Meadea
Author Affiliations

Edited* by Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and approved April 15, 2013 (received for review October 31, 2012)

Abstract
The search for ever deeper relationships among the World’s languages is bedeviled by the fact that most words evolve too rapidly to preserve evidence of their ancestry beyond 5,000 to 9,000 y. On the other hand, quantitative modeling indicates that some “ultraconserved” words exist that might be used to find evidence for deep linguistic relationships beyond that time barrier. Here we use a statistical model, which takes into account the frequency with which words are used in common everyday speech, to predict the existence of a set of such highly conserved words among seven language families of Eurasia postulated to form a linguistic superfamily that evolved from a common ancestor around 15,000 y ago. We derive a dated phylogenetic tree of this proposed superfamily with a time-depth of ∼14,450 y, implying that some frequently used words have been retained in related forms since the end of the last ice age. Words used more than once per 1,000 in everyday speech were 7- to 10-times more likely to show deep ancestry on this tree. Our results suggest a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and give theoretical justification to the search for features of language that might be preserved across wide spans of time and geography.

cultural evolution phylogeny historical linguistics
Footnotes
1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: m.pagel@reading.ac.uk.
Author contributions: M.P., Q.D.A., A.S.C., and A.M. performed research; M.P. and A.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; M.P., Q.D.A., A.S.C., and A.M. analyzed data; and M.P., Q.D.A., and A.S.C. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1218726110/-/DCSupplemental.

Published online before print May 6, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1218726110
PNAS May 6, 2013

Full text (pdf)

Full Text + SI (Combined PDF)

Supporting Information

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110
Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia
Supporting Information
Files in this Data Supplement:

Download Supporting Information (PDF)
Download Table_S01 (DOCX)
Download Table_S02 (DOCX)

http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/05/01/1218726110.DCSupplemental

Amartya Sen, jholawalas, and the wrongs of rights-based laws
by Seetha May 7, 2013
That Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has once again thrown his weight behind the Food Security Bill, lambasting the opposition for not allowing Parliament to pass the legislation, isn’t surprising. The venerable economist has been a champion of the rights-based entitlements approach for long.

This piece is not going to get into whether Sen is right or wrong about the National Food Security Bill 2011. This article, which links to other articles on the subject, effectively demolishes his argument.

The rights-based approach was discussed at the recent annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Greater Noida, where an ADB policy report, Empowerment and Public Service Delivery in Developing Asia and the Pacific, was released. Sen was part of the panel that discussed this report, which admits that its basic foundation is his “influential work on freedom, participation and agency”.

The report makes the point that despite tremendous economic progress made by Asian countries, they haven’t done very much in reducing poverty, malnutrition, improving health and education indices, among other things. This, it says, is largely because of inefficient delivery of public services. There’s little to dispute in these purely factual statements.

So how is this to be addressed? Being heavily influenced by Sen’s work, the report naturally tends to lean towards the rights-based approach to empowering people to demand better public services. But it also discusses community participation in service delivery, participatory monitoring of service providers (social audits, citizen’s report cards, grievance redressal mechanisms etc) and public-private partnerships.

Fortunately, it also highlights the problem with a rights-based approach, which Sen and other defenders of this approach almost never seem to talk about.

One, there’s the problem of resources. Two, the lack of institutional channels to enable citizens to claim their rights. Indeed, there’s little point in saying I am entitled to 100 days of work, or education for my child, or a certain quantity of foodgrain, or basic housing (another right that’s in the works) without adequate systems to ensure that I get them. Saying that these are justiciable rights also doesn’t mean much when I don’t have the time or resources to knock on the doors of overcrowded courts manned by overburdened judges.

Take the flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). According to the latest Comptroller and Auditor General’s report on the scheme, employment was not provided to job seekers within 15 days of their requesting it. Yet, they were not paid an unemployment dole, which they should have been.

That is the basic flaw in any rights-based approach to welfare entitlements – their implementation is hugely problematic. Pic:Firstpost/Sandip Roy

Or take the Right to Education Act, which has come into force since 2010. Can the government really claim that this has been a resounding success? Far from improving access of children to schools, the Act actually runs the danger of reducing access by laying down a slew of impractical stipulations that even low-cost private schools have to comply with or face closure.

That is the basic flaw in any rights-based approach to welfare entitlements – their implementation is hugely problematic.

Assuming, for argument’s sake, that this is a good approach, why not, then, use this to enforce existing Fundamental Rights in the Constitution? Why not ensure the right to “practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business” as enshrined in Article 19 (g)?

Why are self-employed people like street vendors, hawkers, rickshaw pullers and the like subject to a plethora of restrictions that make it near-impossible for them to earn a decent living and perhaps move up beyond the poverty line?

A cap on the number of cycle-rickshaws in Delhi has made rickshaw-pullers (for whom there is great demand in the suburbs) vulnerable to not just rapacious owners of rickshaws but also policemen and transport department officials. Street vendors too have their goods being routinely confiscated. If these people are freed from the licence-permit raj, there would probably be no need for NREGA or a Food Security Act in their present form. That will make for a truly inclusive growth model (unlike the cronyism that we are seeing currently, which merely benefit a few corporate fat cats).

Similarly, if low-cost private schools were allowed to function freely, the problem of access to schooling at least in urban areas will be solved to a large extent.

Why not also restore the right to property as a fundamental right? This will allow poor people who may have land to use it as an income generating resource in whatever way they deem fit.

Let us also concede, again for argument’s sake, that the state alone will – and can – provide essential services to the poor. The record of its doing so is, well, poor. Ration shops routinely claim they haven’t got supplies, making a mockery of the public distribution system. Government hospitals claim they don’t have medicines. Teacher absenteeism in government schools is high.

If, as the report says, the government has to be made accountable, legislating a right to education, or food, or health is not going to solve the problem. As the report itself concedes, this has to be accompanied by changes in the way the government machinery works. Only one right is necessary to ensure that – the Right to Information (RTI).

The RTI movement in India gathered steam after it was used in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to successfully get details about the working of fair price shops. If a below poverty line ration card holder can use RTI to find out why he hasn’t been getting his monthly quota of rice, wheat and sugar, that will do far more to make the system accountable than any food security legislation can. Because as the working of the NREGA shows, the mere enactment of an Act will not ensure that a poor person does get 100 days of work or 25 kg of foodgrain. It is an RTI which will tell him why he hasn’t. The RTI Act is already in place, but its implementation is patchy and there are constant attempts to dilute it.

Sen and his band of jholawallas would be better advised to focus on ensuring that rights like those to livelihood or information are enforced and implemented properly, than insisting that a plethora of meaningless rights are legislated.

Seetha is a senior journalist and author

http://www.firstpost.com/india/amartya-sen-jholawalas-and-the-wrongs-of-rights-based-laws-758731.html

10 reasons why Amartya Sen is wrong about food security bill
by Vivek Kaul May 7, 2013

Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, in 1998, has been a big votary of the Food Security Bill being passed. “The case for passing this Bill is overwhelming…I would prefer this Bill to not having a Bill at all,” Sen said at a press conference yesterday.

The bill envisages to distribute highly subsidised rice and wheat to almost two-thirds of India’s population of 1.2 billion. In terms of its sheer size, this would be perhaps the biggest ever programme to distribute subsidised food grain to citizens of any country. And given this it is more than likely to have consequences, which the government of the day is either not thinking about or is simply not bothered about.

Given these consequences, Sen’s support for the Bill seems more ideological than logical. This conclusion can be easily drawn after a quick reading of a report titled National Food Security Bill: Challenges and Options authored by Ashok Gulati, Jyoti Gujral and T Nandakumar (with Surbhi Jain, Sourabh Anand, Siddharth Rath, and Piyush Joshi) belonging to the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which is a part of the Ministry of Agriculture. This report was released in December 2012.

Amartya Sen
The report highlights many reasons on why the Bill in its current form is a recipe for sheer disaster and is not desirable at all, and should be junked at the earliest opportunity.

1. The expenditure behind the food security bill is stated to be at Rs 1,20,000 crore. But this the CACP report feels is just the tip of the iceberg. This expenditure does not take into account “additional expenditure (that) is needed for the envisaged administrative set up, scaling up of operations, enhancement of production, investments for storage, movement, processing and market infrastructure etc.”

So what is the likely cost of the food security bill going to be? “The total financial expenditure entailed will be around Rs 682,163 crore over a three year period,” the report estimates. This is much higher than the Rs 1,20,000 crore per year estimate being made by the government. The question is where is this money going to come from? The government is already reeling under a very high fiscal deficit and is under pressure from international rating agencies to cut down on flab. A high fiscal deficit also means higher interest rates as the government will have to borrow more. It will also lead to higher inflation.

2. Estimates made by CACP suggest that over the next three years the cost of distributing rice and wheat at a subsidised price is going to come to Rs 5,12,428 crore. This calculation does not include other costs of creating the required infrastructure to run the scheme. Of this, the leakage is expected to be at 40.4 percent. So, nearly Rs 2,07,000 crore will be siphoned off by middlemen.

What is ironical is that the government wants to introduce the right to food security through its public distribution network rather than use a cash transfer system like Aadhar, which it has been creating parallely. The government’s public distribution system is perhaps the biggest distribution system of its kind in the world. But it has virtually collapsed in several states leading to huge leakages.

“It may be noted that this Bill is being brought in Parliament to enact an Act when internationally, conditional cash transfers (CCTs), rather than physical distribution of subsidized food, have been found to be more efficient in achieving food and nutritional security,” the report points out.

3. The Food Security Bill in its current forms works with the assumption that cereals like rice and wheat are central to the issue of food security. Rice and wheat will be made available at extremely subsidised prices as a part of right to food security. But the irony is that more and more Indians have moved away from cereals towards a protein based diet in the recent years.

As the report points out “As economic growth picks up, it is common to observe a change in dietary patterns wherein people substitute cereals with high-value food…Share of expenditure on cereals in total food expenditure has declined from 41 percent in 1987-88 to 29.1 percent in 2009-10 in rural areas and from 26.5 percent in 1987-88 to 22.4 percent in 2009-10 in urban areas. The Bill’s focus on rice and wheat goes against the trend for many Indians who are gradually diversifying their diet to protein-rich foods such as dairy, eggs and poultry, as well as fruit and vegetables. There is a need for a more nuanced food security strategy which is not obsessed with macro-level food-grain availability.”

4. A nuanced strategy is also needed because the right to food security also aims at improving the nutritional status of the population especially of women and children. But just ensuring that women and children have access to subsidised wheat and rice is not going to take care of this. As the report points out “Women’s education, access to clean drinking water, availability of hygienic sanitation facilities are the prime prerequisites for improved nutrition. It needs to be recognised that malnutrition is a multi-dimensional problem and needs a multi-pronged strategy.”

5. The right to food security creates a legal obligation for the government to distribute rice and wheat to those who are entitled. In order to fulfil this obligation the government will have to procure rice and wheat from the farmers. It currently does that through the Food Corporation of India(FCI) at a minimum support price(MSP). The MSP is declared in advance and the farmer knows what price he is going to get for the rice and wheat that he sells to the government.

The way the current system works is that FCI is obligated to buy all the rice or wheat that the farmer wants to sell as long as a certain quality standard is met. This has led to a situation where farmers find it favourable to produce rice and wheat because they have a ready buyer for all their produce, at a price they know in advance.

This has led to a severe imbalance in the production of oil seeds as well as pulses. As the report points out “India imported a whopping US$ 9.7 billion (Rs 46,242 crore) worth of edible oils in 2011-12 – a 47.5 percent jump from last year and pulses worth US$ 1.8 billion (Rs 8767 crore) during 2011-12- an increase of 16.4 percent as compared to last year.”

To distribute rice and wheat under the right to food security the government will continue using FCI and keep declaring a minimum support price.
This means farmers will continue to get assured procurement when it comes to wheat and rice. And this will have several consequences. As the report points out “Assured procurement gives an incentive for farmers to produce cereals rather than diversify the production-basket…Vegetable production too may be affected – pushing food inflation further.”

6. Indian agriculture is still highly dependent on rainfall with 50 percent of area under cultivation still at the mercy of good monsoons. Irrigation wherever its available is also dependent on rainfall. So what happens in a situation of drought? As the report points out “A case in point is the drought year 2002-03 where the production of wheat and rice fell by 28.5 million tonnes over the previous year (overall foodgrain production dropped by 38 million tonnes). It took 3 years to make up and it was only in 2006-07 that the production exceeded the 2001-02 level.”

If a drought situation crops up, will the government resort to imports? Is it a feasible option? Turns out it is not. “Rice is a very thinly traded commodity, with only about 7 percent of world production being traded and five countries cornering three-fourths of the rice exports. The thinness and concentration of world rice markets imply that changes in production or consumption in major rice-trading countries have an amplified effect on world prices..This is especially true in the case of rice, as global markets are much smaller. India’s entry into the international market as a large buyer could exert significant upward pressure on prices,” the CACP report points out. Hence, any shortage of rice in India, is going to send world prices of rice through the roof. Also if the government continues procuring as much in a drought year as it has in previous years, it will leave very little of rice and wheat available for the open market, sending their prices through the roof.

7. The right to food security will mean that the government will use its public distribution system to distribute rice and wheat throughout the country. The trouble is that FCI, currently procures a major portion of rice and wheat from a few selective states. “70% of rice procurement is done from Punjab, AP, Chhattisgarh and UP while 80% of wheat procurement is done from Punjab, Haryana and MP alone,” the report points out. This will need infrastructure to be created and that will cost money.

As the report points out “From a logistics point of view it could be cheaper to procure foodgrains from states like MP, Bihar, Gujarat etc and deliver the food-grains to neighbouring deficit states in central, eastern and western India rather than procure from a handful of surplus states in North and South and distribute food-grains across the deficit states in India. But such a system would need ramping up of procurement efforts in emerging surplus or self-sufficient states in cereals, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, and Orissa.” And that is easier said than done.

8. In many such states where the operations of FCI are huge, the government has become the number one procurer of rice and wheat. With right to food security coming in, this procurement is only going to go up. And that will create its own share of problems. “In several states like Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, one observes that the state is overwhelmingly dominant in procuring rice and/or wheat, leading to almost a situation of monopsony. Any further increase in procurement by the state would crowd out private sector operations with an adverse effect on overall efficiency of procurement and storage operations, as well as on magnitude of food subsidies and open market prices,” the CACP report points out.

9. What has also been observed that FCI does not have economies of scale. As it procures more, its cost of procurement goes up. As the CACP report points out “The economic cost of procurement to Food Corporation of India (FCI) has been increasing over time with rising procurement levels – demonstrating that it suffers from diseconomies of scale with increasing levels of procurement26. Currently, the economic cost of FCI for acquiring, storing and distributing foodgrains is about 40 percent more than the procurement price.” If right to food security becomes an Act, FCI’s procurement of rice and wheat will go up, and so will its cost of procurement. This will mean a higher expenditure on part of the government.

10. The government will also have to keep increasing the MSP it offers on rice and wheat. This will have to be done to incentivise farmers to produce more rice and wheat to help the government distribute it to the entitled beneficiaries. The farm labour costs have been on their way up. As the report points out “There is an acute shortage of labour in agriculture that has suddenly cropped up in these three years. In some states, labour costs have gone up by more than 100% over the same period. Due to these rising costs, the margins of production for farmers have been declining both for paddy and wheat . Therefore, the government may have to raise procurement prices for rice and wheat to encourage farmers to increase production of these staples. As the cost of production of crops is rising, MSP can’t be kept frozen.” This means that the government expenditure on right to food subsidy will keep going up.

To conclude, its time Amartya Sen read this report and made himself aware of the problems the right to food security can create for India.

Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek

http://www.firstpost.com/economy/10-reasons-why-amartya-sen-is-wrong-about-food-security-bill-760033.html

Boston Bombings and Islam

BY KALAVAI VENKAT / MAY 7, 2013

Two Muslim brothers mercilessly placed a bomb at a marathon finish line in Boston recently, killing innocent bystanders. The victims included an eight year old child, who was waiting at the finish line to greet his father participating in the marathon. The Muslim terrorists were educated American citizens who had lived in the USA for several years. The mother of these terrorists reportedly discussed jihad with her sons and thus paved the path for their self-destruction. At the same time, she also denied that anyone had died and claimed that red paint was sprayed on the scene of bombing to falsely implicate her sons. This mother’s behavior follows a recognizable pattern whereby Muslims on the one hand support jihad and on the other attempt to exonerate Islam by blaming the victims whenever terrorists strike. She did not display the ability to critically examine the teachings of Islam to determine whether they are dangerous and destructive. In this regard, she represents an overwhelming majority of Muslims.

Why are Muslims unable to examine Islamic teachings rationally?

In Why I am Not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq points out that Islam is a totalitarian religion that penetrates and controls every aspect of a Muslim’s life. The infallibility of consensus (arrived at by the early Muslim jurists), called ‘ijma,’ is a foundation of Islamic Sharia. A Muslim is expected to unquestioningly submit to the quranic injunctions. Blasphemy toward Allah and the prophet Muhammad and apostasy are punishable by death (Quran 4:89). As a result, a Muslim is discouraged from examining Islamic teachings rationally. On the other hand, an unquestioning submission is rewarded. Islamic teachings bestow a sense of entitlement in the minds of Muslims with the promise that Allah would never let the kafir (infidel) triumph over the Muslim (Quran 4:141). A Muslim, by his submission to the mandate of Islam, attains force and power (Quran 63:8).

The totalitarian nature of Islam is best expressed through the advocacy of jihad. A Muslim cannot shirk his duty of participating in jihad. One attains the greatest glory and heavenly rewards by dying while taking part in jihad. Allah will instill terror in the heart of the kafir. Muslims fulfill an important religious duty by killing the infidel (Quran 2:256, 4:74-76, 8:12, 15-16, 39-42, 9:5-6, 39).

The researches of the psychologist Bob Altemeyer shed light on a phenomenon called authoritarianism, which is characterized by submission to authorities. Totalitarian religious belief is the most lasting form of authoritarianism. An authoritarian follower such as a religious Muslim submits to religious authorities (Muhammad and the mullahs) and teachings (the Quran, Hadiths and the Sharia). Since these authorities and teachings portray infidels negatively, and advocate jihad, Muslims unquestioningly internalize such portrayals. Altemeyer shows that a belief that one’s religious teachings are fundamentally correct, essential and inerrant results in bigotry in the minds of the believers toward non-believers. As a result, authoritarian Muslim followers can be easily manipulated into justifying jihad because it is directed at infidels.

Authoritarianism, claims of quranic infallibility, demands for unquestioning submission to the teachings of Islam and the bestowing of a sense of entitlement in the minds of Muslims warp the Muslim worldview. Having been conditioned from childhood to accept Islam as divine revelation, they cannot bring themselves to examine it rationally. A kafir, in the warped worldview of a Muslim, is harming society. Setting off a bomb to kill such an infidel is seen (though not publicly admitted) as a fulfillment of religious duty. It never occurs to a Muslim that Islamic teachings could be depraved.

I would argue that a instead of vilifying a Muslim one should understand that a Muslim is first and foremost a victim of Islam.

This inference is supported by the fact that Muslims, by their adherence to Islam, harm not only the kafir but their own children as well. The cruel practice of clitoridectomy and infibulations testifies to this. In The Caged Virgin – an Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali points out that this horrible custom is followed by the Muslims residing in thirty countries. A female child’s clitoris and the outer and inner labia are cut away with a sharp object such as a fragment of glass, a razor blade, or a potato knife. The inside of the walls of the vagina of the girl child are also scraped. Then the girl’s legs are bound together so that the walls of the vagina can grow together. This is followed by infibulations, i.e., stitching up the labia majora.

What is the origin of this terrible practice?

It did not originate with Islam. It is known to be an older tribal practice. The Quran has no reference to it. However, in one of the Hadiths, Muhammad supports a limited form of female genital mutilation. It has been used to justify the mutilation of millions of Muslim girls and to deny them sexual pleasure. The practice is of misogynistic origins. A woman’s sexuality was feared and had to be suppressed. Islam requires a woman to be submissive to her husband and guard her chastity for him. A man can beat a rebellious wife (Quran 4:34). A woman is very much a commodity. A woman has to veil herself so as to appear undesirable to all but her husband (Quran 33:32-33, 53, 59).

Islam never respected a woman’s sexual needs or independence. She should be ready to submit to her husband’s sexual desires anytime and anywhere. If her husband is satisfied with her, she will go to paradise, or else to hell. Islam teaches that women’s ways are capricious and that they should be prevented from learning to read and write. It is better for a woman not to leave her home at all because a woman who goes out might meet another man and get attracted to him. Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, declared, “The entire woman is an evil and what is worse is that it is a necessary evil” and “Even the most virtuous among women is of easy virtue and the most corrupt are whores. Old age does not spare them of their vices.”

This misogynistic attitude resulted in the dehumanizing of Muslim women. Even a peripheral scriptural support for mutilating her genitals was readily accepted because it was consonant with the rest of the Islamic teachings calling for the suppression of her sexual urges. Tragically, since Muslims are authoritarian followers of a totalitarian religious ideology, they rarely rely upon reason to examine whether obeying their religious teachings denies their own daughters the pleasures of normal sex.

So, jihad, oppression of Muslim women and the hostility toward the kafir are all the products of the warped Islamic worldview. These outcomes will not change so long as the Muslims continue to remain authoritarian followers. Only when they begin to examine Islam rationally can one reasonably expect changes to follow. However, that would not be easy either. Researches in cognitive sciences show that persuasability declines beyond the age of eight. Since a Muslim child is well indoctrinated by parents before that age, it is hard to wean the child away from Islam later on. In other words, a vast majority among the present generation of Muslims is unlikely to examine Islam critically.

However, everything is not lost. New researches in cognitive sciences give us cause for hope. Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, as well a 2011 Harvard study, demonstrate that teaching children to think critically (vis-à-vis intuitively) increases the likelihood that they will abandon their belief in god. Scientific research informs us that parenting has little or no influence in determining the religiosity of the individual in the long term. Any influence of parents largely disappears during a person’s transition from adolescence to adulthood. However, the influence of the environment, known as the non-shared memeplex, often ensures that the religious belief acquired before the age of eight is sustained. In the case of Islam, the non-shared memeplex is made up of congregations, peer groups, madrassas and social conformance rules. This non-shared memeplex preserves a believer’s Islamic beliefs, prevents a critical examination of those beliefs and ensures that the believer remains an authoritarian follower.

If we are serious about ending jihad and other depravations that result from Islamic teachings, we should focus on ushering in critical thinking on a societal level. We must ensure that the non-shared memeplex compels a child to examine Islam critically. This would facilitate the next generation of Muslims to abandon Islam. We must rely upon unfettered free speech to achieve this end. In the long run, free speech will facilitate critical thinking to pervade the non-shared memeplex and weaken Islam. This is the only realistic approach to prevent jihadi strikes and the oppression of Muslim women in the future. It is not a simple solution but a complex problem cannot be solved by simplistic advocacies.

References:

Warraq, Ibn: Why I am Not a Muslim, pp. 163, 166, 176, 217-218, 298-299
Altemeyer, Bob: The Authoritarian Specter, p. 100
Altemeyer, Bob: Why Do Religious Fundamentalists Tend to be Prejudiced?
The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2003, 13, 1, pp. 17–28
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi: The Caged Virgin – an Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, pp. 15-16
Petty, Richard and Cacioppo, John: Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary Approaches, pp. 72-80
How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God, Scientific American, July 2012, pp. 26-27
Koenig, L. B., McGue, M., Kruger, R. F., Bouchard, T. J.: Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religiousness – Findings for Retrospective and Current Religiousness Ratings, Journal of Personality, 73, pp. 471-488
Vance, T., Maes, H., Kendler, K. S.: Genetic and Environmental Influences on Multiple Dimensions of Religiosity – A Twin Study, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 198, pp. 755-761
http://centreright.in/2013/05/boston-bombings-and-islam/#.UYmI1aL-Gvf

ANTI-SETHU STIR SPLITS KARUNA CLAN

Wednesday, 08 May 2013 | Kumar Chellappan | CHENNAI

The DMK’s proposed agitation on May 15 to demolish the Ram Sethu, a stone structure in the Palk Bay held in veneration by the Hindus, has claimed its first casualty; the unity in the clan of the party chief M Karunanidhi. It has also brought out yet another doublespeak by the former Chief Minister.

Karunanidhi has been writing through Murasoli, the DMK mouthpiece, that there never existed any Ram Sethu. “Ambika Soni, the Union Culture Minister, had told Parliament that there was no archaeological evidence of a bridge,” said Karunanidhi in his article. But he was silent about the revelations in the book Marvels of The South Indian Railway published by Southern Railway in which a whole chapter has been devoted to the Ram Sethu.

In what could be a major embarrassment to the DMK chief, Historical Rama a well researched book authored by DK Hari and Hema Hari has quoted from The Gazetteer of Ramanathapuram district published in the year 1972. The Gazetteer has devoted three pages to Ram Sethu and says that the Adam’s Bridge is Ram Sethu or Thiruvanai (Tamil for sacred dam).

“It is also called Ramar Palam (Tamil for bridge) because it was built by the “Kuranguppadai (Vaanar Sena), the army of Vanara and it was in use till 1480 AD when it was washed away in a strom,” says The Gazetteer. Interestingly, the foreword to The Gazetteer was written on June 14, 1972 by the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M Karunanidhi.

“The information given in The Gazetteer is considered to be authentic and reliable, compiled as an encyclopaedic reference material for researchers as declared and signed by none less than the Chief Minister of the State in the foreword to The Gazetteer,” write the authors.

S Kalyanaraman, in his book The Indian Ocean Community has brought out references about Ram Sethu in Skanda Purana, Vishnu Purana, Agni Purana, Brahma Purana, Kurma Purana and Garuda Purana.

The DMK patriarch, who does not waste a single opportunity to make fun of Ramayana and Mahabharath, once asked during a public speech that in which engineering college did Ram study. Though no one gave him the answer, Karunanidhi fell ill the next day and was admitted to Sri Ramachandra Hospital in Chennai. The nonagenarian leader has not stood on his legs afterwards and moves around in a hi-tech wheel chair.

MK Alagiri, the Madurai strongman and Karunanidhi’s elder son, has been kept out of the Statewide agitation which has shocked the party cadre in the southern districts. With Karunanidhi sending a message to party office-bearers to bring the State to a standstill on May 15, those loyal to Alagiri has made it known that without Anja Nenjan (the Tamil word for brave heart, as Alagiri is addressed by his acolytes) nothing would move in Southern Tamil Nadu.

Party insiders said that Alagiri has been humiliated by Karunanidhi at the instance of Stalin, his younger son who is the heir apparent of the party. The pride of place for the May 15 agitation has been given to old time family loyalists TR Baalu and Durai Murugan. Even Kanimozhi has been relegated as a speaker to an innocuous district, reportedly at the instance of Durga, Stalin’s wife. “Durga does not like Kanimozhi stealing the limelight since she is a far better public speaker than Stalin who is yet to develop his own style of public speaking,” said a senior DMK leader.

Former Union Ministers Napoleon and Palani Manickam have cast their lots with Alagiri. In an interesting development, Kanimozhi crossed over to the Alagiri camp because of the indifference shown to her by younger brother Stalin. In the month of April, Stalin got cancelled a public meeting which was to be addressed by Kanimozhi. “She went to Karunanidhi and burst into tears. The old man sat in silence as Kanimozhi wept and lamented about the hardships faced by her for the party,” said the DMK leader who is upset over the renewed group war and shadow boxing in the party.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/nation/anti-sethu-stir-splits-karuna-clan.html

The rare manuscripts found in Addanki in Prakasam district. | Express photo

Rare manuscripts unearthed

Author: S Guru Srikanth | ENS

Published Date: May 7, 2013 8:06 AM
Last Updated: May 7, 2013 1:07 PM
Four rare palm leaf manuscripts, that could give more insight into the 13th century Telugu Chodas and their Yadhava chieftains in Nellore region, were found in Addanki in Prakasam district on Sunday.

Jyothi Chandra Mouli, a retired Telugu pundit and local historian from Addanki, obtained these manuscripts from a family of Suddula Gollalu who have been preserving them for five generations.

Suddula Gollalu are dependents of Yadavas and engage in Katha Ganam (singing ballads, mostly of Yadhavas and their heroics).

Even today, the families follow the same with passion and dedication. They could be found performing at folk festivals like Ganga Tirunala or celebrations of Yadhavas.

The 200-year-old manuscripts obtained by Chandra Mouli contain four of the 22 stories written in verse form and they are sung by the Suddula Gollas of Kanigiri region, once ruled by Yadhava chieftains under the Telugu Choda kings in the 13th century.

“They are part of the famous Katamaraju Kathalu, which tell the historic tale of the feud between Nellore king Manmuasiddhi and Yerragaddapadu Yadhava chieftain Katamaraju in Kanigiri area. The famous story of Kahadga Tikkanna, the army general of Manumasiddi, is also part of that tale,’’ explained Chandra Mouli. Chandra Mouli along with the Hyderabad Central University professor Jayadheer Tirumala Rao had visited the house of Kadiyam Brahmaiah in Adanki about a month ago, on coming to know that Brahamaiah, a Suddula Golla has some manuscripts of the stories of Katamaraju Kathalu.

‘’After a lot of persuasion, I could finally convince Brahamaiah to part with the manuscripts, which were in his family’s possession for several generations and considered a family treasure. Those palm leaf manuscripts were in a bad shape with pests infecting them,’’ Chandra Mouli said adding that the process of preserving those manuscripts will be taken up shortly.

The four manuscripts are of four stories - ‘Dannala Kondallo Bongaralata’ (A part of the history that happened in Donnakonda of present Prakasam district, in the 13th century), ‘Kari Avulu Rajula Katha’, ‘Phoola Raju Katha’ and ‘Nallamala Advulalu Avula Mandha’.

Chandra Mouli is also an amateur archeologist who has not only written articles on inscriptions found at different temples in the region, but also played a key role in finding of the Chalukyan Era inscriptions of 7th century AD in the ruins of some temples in Nagalapadu village of Addanki mandal and other nearby villages.

Recently, archeology experts from Chennai came all the way to Aadanki mandal to make copies of the inscriptions to study further.

‘’Protecting the past, be it in form of manuscripts or inscriptions should be the duty of all, since they not only give valuable information of our history, culture and traditions, but also help in setting the course right for the future,’’ said the local historian, who has donated six palm leaf manuscripts of Palanati Katha, that were with his family for generations to the AP Oriental Manuscripts Library.

http://newindianexpress.com/states/andhra_pradesh/Rare-manuscripts-unearthed/2013/05/07/article1578602.ece

Published: May 7, 2013 16:55 IST | Updated: May 7, 2013 18:59 IST
SURVIVORS OF TIME
A leaf from the past

Anusha Parthasarathy

The Hindu Archives Manuscripts at the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library in Madras.

The Hindu Curator Chnadramohan with Manuscripts at Govt. Oriental Manuscripts Library. Photo: R. Ragu

The Hindu Curator Chnadramohan with Manuscripts at Govt. Oriental Manuscripts Library. Photo: R. Ragu
Anusha Parthasarathy sifts through treasured palm leaves and copper plates at the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Centre

Even inside the Madras University campus, no one seems to know about the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Centre. But behind the tall façade of the University library, between mounds of sand and construction material is a sign that points to an arch and from there on, up the stairs is a library that began in 1869 mainly out of the private collections of three men.

Teakwood cabinets, card drawers, tall arches and wooden-glass doors with brass handles — the library wears its history on its sleeve. Right next to the curator R. Chandramohan’s office is a Pandit’s Room, a reminder of a time when the staff who worked at the library were scholars or pandits. The storage facility has rows and rows of teakwood planks with dark manuscripts inside.

Colonel Colin Mackenzie came to India in 1783 as a part of the Cadet of Engineers that the East India Company in Madras recruited. An ardent interest in mathematics and languages led him to collect a large number of manuscripts, coins, maps, inscriptions and so on. These described in great detail the culture, behaviour, history, customs and religion of that time.

“He was appointed as the Surveyor-General of the company as well,” says Chandramohan. “He got some of his staff to travel all over the country, especially the south, to gather these scripts. And when he moved to Calcutta, he took his collection along with him.” Mackenzie collected manuscripts until he died in 1821.

This collection was purchased by the East India Company in 1821 for 10,000 pounds. “It was divided into three parts. One was retained in London, another was sent to the National Library in Calcutta and one was sent to Madras,” says Chandramohan.

Apart from Mackenzie’s books were Dr. Lyden’s (he was a linguist and traveller) collection of manuscripts in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada and C.P. Brown’s collection of paper manuscripts in Sanskrit and Telugu which were brought here in 1855. The library, an amalgamation of these collections began as a part of the Presidency College, Madras. In 1870, a certain Pickford was asked to create a catalogue for them. “You could call him the first librarian,” says Chandramohan. He worked in the college as a Professor of Sanskrit. He was even asked to add to the collection and purchase scripts whenever he came across them. Hence, the collection grew.

Importance of manuscripts

“For a long time people didn’t understand the importance of these manuscripts,” says Chandramohan “The library didn’t have a permanent address and kept shifting, from the Secretariat to the Museum until it came to the Madras University campus in 1936. In 1942, during World War II, the scripts were transferred to Tirupati as there was an imminent danger of bombing. When the war was over, they were brought back here.”

Now, the library has about 72,315 manuscripts, most of them written on palm leaf but some on copper plates, Kadidam, barks of Bhurja tree, leather and other material as well. Of these about 49,000 manuscripts are in Sanskrit, while Tamil manuscripts number close to 16,000. Other languages include Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu and Persian. The library also has about 22,887 books for reference.

“During the formation of states after Independence, about 7,000 manuscripts in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam were moved from here to their respective states,” Chandramohan adds. “Now, this library is a research-oriented one. A lot of PhD students and foreigners studying languages come here for reference. We don’t lend any of our material because they’re too valuable.”

The oldest manuscript in the library is the 450-year-old medicinal book, Agathiyam. There are some shaped as lingams too. The library even has a script that has remained unidentified since its discovery. “A lot of the works here are primary sources of information and are unpublished. We have manuscripts across 19 subjects like literature, drama, poetry, Siddha, Unani, Ayurveda, architecture and more,” he says.

The library also preserves its collection through chemical and manual methods. “The life of a manuscript is anywhere between 200 to 300 years after which it begins to decay. These scripts we have are copies of originals that were written more than 1,000 years ago. Scribes would copy down texts so that the information isn’t destroyed,” says Chandramohan.

Digitisation plans

The Government has now granted the library Rs. 5 crore for modernisation and digitisation of content. “We’ve already digitised 1,862 Siddha manuscripts and are working on the rest,” he says. On whether the collection of manuscripts has grown in recent times, Chandramohan shakes his head. “There are individuals with their private collections who consider it a treasure and do not want to part with it. What we ask of them is to allow us to train them in matters of conservation and restoration of these manuscripts so that they don’t decay and the information is not lost.”

If you are in the possession of an old manuscript that you’d like to conserve or restore, you can contact the library at 044 25365130.

http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-culture/a-leaf-from-the-past/article4692523.ece?homepage=true&css=print

See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/linguists-identify-15000-year-old.htmlLinguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’ -- David Brown The word for bark in Indo-European: kir

European and Asian languages traced back to single mother tongue
Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form 'superfamily' with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim

Ian Sample, science correspondent

The Guardian, Monday 6 May 2013 20.00 BST

The words for bark in at least four of the languages studied were found to have a common root. Photograph: Alamy

Languages spoken by billions of people across Europe and Asia are descended from an ancient tongue uttered in southern Europe at the end of the last ice age, according to research.

The claim, by scientists in Britain, points to a common origin for vocabularies as varied as English and Urdu, Japanese and Itelmen, a language spoken along the north-eastern edge of Russia.

The ancestral language, spoken at least 15,000 years ago, gave rise to seven more that formed an ancient Eurasiatic "superfamily", the researchers say. These in turn split into languages now spoken all over Eurasia, from Portugal to Siberia.

"Everybody in Eurasia can trace their linguistic ancestry back to a group, or groups, of people living around 15,000 years ago, probably in southern Europe, as the ice sheets were retreating," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University.

Linguists have long debated the idea of an ancient Eurasiatic superfamily of languages. The idea is controversial because many words evolve too rapidly to preserve their ancestry. Most words have a 50% chance of being replaced by an unrelated term every 2,000-4,000 years.

But some words last much longer. In a previous study, Pagel's team showed that certain words – among them frequently used pronouns, numbers and adverbs – survived for tens of thousands of years before other words replaced them.

For their latest study, Pagel used a computer model to predict words that changed so rarely that they should sound the same in the different Eurasiatic languages. They then checked their list against a database of early words reconstructed by linguists. "Sure enough," said Pagel, "the words we predicted would be similar, were similar."

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors list 23 words found in at least four of the proposed Eurasiatic languages. Most of the words are frequently used ones, such as the pronouns for "I" and "we", and the nouns, "man" and "mother". But the survival of other terms was more baffling. The verb "to spit", and the nouns "bark" and "worm" all had lengthy histories.

"Bark was really important to early people," said Pagel. "They used it as insulation, to start fires, and they made fibres from it. But I couldn't say I expected "to spit" to be there. I have no idea why. I have to throw my hands up."

Only a handful of verbs appear on the list, but Pagel points out "to give", which appeared in similar form in five of the Eurasiatic languages. "This is what marks out human society, this hyper-co-operation that we do," he said.

From their findings, the scientists drew up a family tree of the seven languages. All emerged from a common tongue around 15,000 years ago, and split off into separate languages over the next 5,000 years.

"The very fact that we can identify these words that retain traces of their deep ancestry tells us something fundamental about our language faculties. It tells us we have this ability to transmit highly complicated and precise information from mouth to ear over tens of thousands of years," said Pagel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/06/european-asian-language-tongue-superfamily?INTCMP=SRCH

Published On:Tuesday, May 7, 2013Posted by Sri Lanka Guardian
New Jihadi Magazine In English Focuses On South Asia, Including Afghanistan & India
| by B.Raman

( May 7, 2013, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) SITE, an Internet monitoring group, has drawn attention to a new web-based jihadi magazine in English called “Azan”.

According to SITE, the magazine is believed to have been started by jihadis in Afghanistan and Pakistan and its first web issue appeared on May 5,2013.

The English jihadi magazine, which is apparently meant to cater to English-literate Muslims in South Asia, including Afghanistan, is similar to “Inspire”. the English jihadi magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula operating from Yemen, which has a readership among the Muslims of South India. Some Muslims arrested by the Bengaluru police last year were alleged by the Police to have been motivated by the articles carried by “Inspire”

It is not yet clear who has started “Azan”. One suspect is the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is the Pakistani Taliban. The other suspect is Al Qaeda headquarters in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan.

An article attacks the Pakistan Army for turning its back on traditional enemy India to fight in the tribal areas. It appeals to young Pakistani soldiers to turn away from the military. “Azan” says it considers the entire Pakistani state apparatus – from the army to police to intelligence agencies – as the enemy. It also carries an article on the evils of democracy.

It appeals to Muslims around the world to come up with technology to hack into or manipulate Drones. It said the Drones were affecting the jihad in the Waziristan area of Pakistan and represented a challenge to the Ummah.

It says: “With the death of so many Muslim assets, this is one of the utmost important issues that the Ummah must unite and come up with an answer to. Any opinions, thoughts, ideas and practical implementations to defeat this Drone technology must be communicated to us as early as possible because these would aid the Ummah greatly in its war against the Crusader-Zionist enemy.”

The magazine carries extracts from past speeches of the late Osama bin Laden and Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Afghan Taliban, and carries articles on the state of the jihad in Syria, Mali and other places.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. Twitter: @SORBONNE75)
About the Author

Posted by Sri Lanka Guardian on 08:55. Filed under B.Raman, Terrorism, worldview . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Feel free to leave a response

http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2013/05/new-jihadi-magazine-in-english-focuses.html

Rethinking "Out of Africa"

Christopher Stringer [11.12.11]

Topic: LIFE Intro By: John Brockman

I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don’t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa.


CHRISTOPHER STRINGER is one of the world's foremost paleoanthropologists. He is a founder and most powerful advocate of the leading theory concerning our evolution: Recent African Origin or "Out of Africa". He has worked at The Natural History Museum, London since 1973, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and currently leads the large and successful Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB), His most recent book is The Origin of Our Species (titled Lone Survivors in the US).

Christopher Stringer's Edge Bio Page



Rethinking "Out of Africa"
[CHRISTOPHER STRINGER:] At the moment, I'm looking again at the whole question of a recent African origin for modern humans—the leading idea over the last 20 years. This argues that we had a recent African origin, that we came out of Africa, and that we replaced all of the other human forms that were outside of Africa. But we're having to re-evaluate that now because genetic data suggest that the modern humans who came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago probably interbred with Neanderthals, first of all, and then some of them later on interbred with another group of people called the Denisovans, over in south eastern Asia.

If this is so, then we are not purely of recent African origin. We're mostly of recent African origin, but there was contact with these other so-called species. We're having to re-evaluate the Out-of-Africa theory, and we're having to re-evaluate the species concepts we apply, because in one view of thinking, species should be self-contained units. They don't interbreed with other species. However, for me, the whole idea of Neanderthals as a different species is really a recognition of their separate evolutionary history—the fact that we can show that they evolved through time in a particular direction, distinct from modern humans, and they separated maybe 400,000 years ago from our lineage. And morphologically we can distinguish a relatively complete Neanderthal fossil from any recent human.

You could argue that they're an extreme variant of Homo sapiens, but a very different 'race' from anyone alive today, or, as I prefer to argue, they're a separate species, with a separate evolutionary history. But I've never actually said that that meant they were completely reproductively isolated from us. We know that many closely related species in primates, for example, can interbreed. Various species of monkey can interbreed and have fertile offspring, and so can our closest living relatives, Bonobos and common chimpanzees.

In my view the Neanderthals were closely related and probably potentially able to interbreed with modern humans, but until recently I considered that while there could have been interbreeding forty or fifty thousand years ago, it was on such a small scale that all trace of it vanished in the intervening years. But it now seems from Neanderthal genome studies that that was not so. We do have a bit of Neanderthal in us, you and I—it's a small amount, but certainly not negligible..

Does that mean Neanderthals are a different species or does it mean we should include them in Homo sapiens? Well, they are still only a small part of our makeup now, reflecting something like a 2.5% input of their DNA. Physically, however, they went extinct about 30,000 years ago. They had distinct behavior and they evolved under different conditions from us, so I still think it's useful to keep them as a separate species, even if we remember that that doesn't necessarily preclude interbreeding.

Then there are these enigmatic people called the Denisovans, who we only know about because of DNA work that's gone on in the site of Denisova Cave in Siberia. The site has been known for a long time. There were some very fragmentary human fossils from there, a finger bone; a couple of teeth, a foot bone, and each of them have yielded significant DNA. The surprise was that while the foot bone DNA turned out to be Neanderthal, at the eastern limit of their known range, the other fossils had DNA that was quite distinct: it wasn't clearly Neanderthal, it wasn't modern human. It was something different.

Svante Pääbo and his colleagues have dubbed these people the Denisovans. So we have this site in Siberia with Denisovans, and it looks like it was occupied in quite a short period of time by the Denisovans, by Neanderthals, and finally by modern humans. It's a remarkable site with three different kinds of humans living there in close proximity in time and space. However, the exact dating of these different occupations is still unclear.

Thus the Denisovans are only known from this one site, genetically. The fossils are too incomplete to tell us what these people were really like, except they've got big teeth. However, there are lots of ancient fossils from China, and one from India. We've known about the people in China for a long time, ones who didn't look Neanderthal, and didn't look modern human either. Fossils like from the ones from Dali, Jinniushan, Maba might well be Denisovans, but unfortunately we don't have DNA from them at the moment, and we have to hope that the DNA work will move on, and eventually we can unite the Denisovan DNA with more complete fossils, and say physically what these people looked like.

A further big surprise was that not only were there distinct humans in Siberia maybe 50,000 years ago, but when whole genome scans were done against modern humans, it turned out that there was one group of living humans that seemed to be related to the Denisovans, that had Denisovan DNA in them, and these people are down in Australasia. They're in New Guinea, Australia, and some neighbouring islands, so that's also very unexpected.

The Denisovans are only known from their DNA in Siberia. Down in New Guinea and Australia, there is Denisovan DNA in living people. The best way to explain this at the moment is that modern humans were dispersing through southern Asia towards Australia and New Guinea, and Denisovans must also have been living in that region. So they weren't just in Siberia, they were actually right across eastern Asia and down into Southeast Asia, where there was another interbreeding with people whose descendants ended up in New Guinea and Australia. So those people have got a double archaic dose, if you like: they've got a bit of Neanderthal DNA that their ancestors picked up maybe in western Asia from encounters with some Neanderthals, and then coming through southeast Asia, they picked up some Denisovan DNA, and that gets added to the mix.

We end up with a pretty complicated story of the interweaving of these lineages, which were separate for hundreds of thousands of years, but then when they overlapped, they exchanged genes. We don't know the circumstances of the interbreeding—we don't know if these were groups that came together peacefully, or maybe some modern humans were lacking mates and decided to capture some from a neighboring group. It can't have been that common a behavior, or there would be a lot more DNA from these archaic people. And it can't even have been a common behavior with the Neanderthals, because of course, if modern humans came out of Africa and spread gradually across Europe, we would expect if there was continuing interbreeding with Neanderthals, then Europeans would actually have a lot more Neanderthal DNA than someone in China or someone in New Guinea.

The extraordinary thing is the level of DNA is about the same in a modern European, a modern Chinese and a modern New Guinean. One possibility is that an interbreeding event happened early on in southwest Asia. As modern humans first emerged from Africa, they met some Neanderthals—maybe only 25 Neanderthals and 1,000 modern humans. That would be enough. And then that DNA gets carried with those modern humans as they spread out from that area and diversify.

Another possibility, which Mathias Currat and Laurent Excoffier have recently argued, is that the low level of interbreeding between Neanderthals and moderns was actually due to the unsuccessful nature of most of the interbreeding events. That actually the level of interbreeding in separate events was a measure of the low viability of those interbreeding events— which is why there isn't more Neanderthal DNA in people outside of Africa.

I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don’t think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa.

We can see the focus, the center of evolution, for modern humans in Africa apparently moving around from one place to another, driven by climate changes. 110,000 years ago the Sahara was not desert, it was well-watered, with extensive lakes and rivers. And we see evidence of human occupation in the form of stone tools right across the region. At other times those populations completely vanished, and we pick up the evidence of evolving modern humans in East Africa, or down in the south instead. And we have to remember that there are large parts of Africa where we have stone tools, but no fossil record to show us who was making those tools. We've got no ancient human fossils from central Africa or West Africa, none at all. So we have to bear in mind that our picture is still limited in terms of the sites that have been excavated and the information we've got from them.

So for me, the exact processes involved in our African origin are still unclear. We don't know exactly when it happened, we don't know exactly where it happened. We have modern human fossils from Ethiopia at 160,000 years at Herto and 195,000 years from Omo Kibish. These do look physically like a more robust version of people today, but I think we're also learning that alongside those modern-looking people were surviving forms of more archaic humans, at sites like Omo Kibish, Ngaloba, Singa and Eyasi.

And there were further surprises from a specimen that I and collaborators published on a few months ago. It's the oldest fossil from Nigeria, from a site called Iwo Eleru. It's about 13,000 years old, and yet if you look at it, you would say from its shape that it's more than 100,000 years old. This reminds us that we have a very biased picture of African evolution, with many unknown areas, and there could be relics of human evolution hanging on not only outside of Africa in the form of the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, and over in Flores, this strange creature nicknamed the 'Hobbit'. In Africa itself, archaic humans could have lingered in parts of the continent as well. From some recent genetic analyses, there is evidence of an input of archaic DNA into some modern African populations as recently as 35,000 years ago. So even in Africa, the process was more complicated than we thought.

In terms of modern humans, this means that in a sense some modern humans have got more archaic genes than others. That does seem to be so. So it leads us on to ask again: what is a modern human? Some of the most fascinating ongoing research topics in the next year or two will be homing in on the DNA that some of us have acquired from Neanderthals, that some people have acquired from the Denisovans, and that some African people have acquired, perhaps even from Homo heidelbergensis.

Scientists will look at that DNA and ask, is it functional? Is it actually doing something in the bodies of those people? Is it affecting brains, anatomy, physiology, and so on? That's going to be a huge focus of research for the next few years because on the one hand, looking at these genes will help to really tell us what makes a Neanderthal a Neanderthal, what makes a modern human a modern human, what makes a Denisovan a Denisovan. But it might possibly also show that, as multiregionalists have argued in the past, robust fossils in regions like Australia could be a reflection of archaic gene flow.

We can say that the shared (specific) features of Homo sapiens (e.g. globular braincase, small brows, chin) evolved first, in Africa, while most of our regional ('racial') traits were added on to that modern template through the action of natural selection, sexual selection, founder effect and drift, as modern humans spread out to the regions where they are found today. But could archaic genes be responsible for some of them, at least?

Darwin was puzzled, of course, by the evolution of those features. If we read The Descent of Man, his favoured view for the evolution of many of the regional features was that they were sexually selected or, we might say, culturally selected. I think he was probably right, in some cases at least. We can see that skin colour generally has a relationship with ultraviolet light, with getting a balance between having enough UV getting into your skin to produce Vitamin D, but not too much of it that it will damage the skin or destroy folic acid. So there's a balancing act in the amount of skin pigmentation, and there's no doubt natural selection is at work on this. But even here, sexual selection in terms of mating preferences for lighter or darker skin could be playing a part. And when we look at other features such as, say, oriental eyes or the kind of hair we've got, Darwin may be have been right, and sexual selection is at work there. As populations spread out in small numbers, cultural preferences for attractiveness might have driven some of those differences. Not much DNA is involved, and some striking-looking differences between populations could have evolved quite rapidly.

There have been some remarkable advances in the time that I've been researching human evolution, which is 40-odd years now. When I began my PhD in 1970 and went on my doctoral research trip in 1971, the technology was very primitive. Basically, I went around Europe with a suitcase full of measuring instruments: calipers, tapes, protractors. I applied these to the fossil skulls of Neanderthals and modern humans that I was studying, spending four months doing that. It took half a day to study a single skull and collect that data, all put down by hand onto a paper sheet that couldn’t be backed up. There were not even any photocopy machines around so I could have lost all of my data quite easily. There were no pocket calculators, there were no photocopy machines—it was entirely non-digital recording.

When I got back to Bristol, I had to laboriously transcribe all of those measurements by hand onto punch cards, which were then fed into the massive mainframe computer for the whole of Bristol University. It was probably about four times the size of this room, but with less processing power than the digital watch that I'm wearing now. A day later I would come back and get the results of that particular analysis. Or if it didn't work because of some minor error in one of cards, I'd have to put them all in again, which happened often.

Things were laboriously slow. It took me four months on that trip to gather the data. It took me another 18 months to analyze those data, to get the results for my PhD. But my conclusions were clear enough. I had cranial samples of modern humans from different regions, and they grouped with each other in cranial shape, rather than with their local predecessors. And the Neanderthals rarely fell into an intermediate position between ancient fossils and recent humans—they seemed to be heading off in their own evolutionary direction through time, rather than gradually approaching a modern cranial shape.

Now, of course, with the advent of scanning and digital technology, a good graduate student sitting at a computer console here or in Europe or the USA could conjure up an equivalent amount of data that I gathered, in fact probably more data than I gathered, on a series of skulls in a week or two, And they could do a more thorough computational analysis of that data than I managed, in a couple of weeks more. So what effectively took me nearly four years could be accomplished by a good student now in a few weeks!

Advances like CT technology give you access to far more, and far richer, data. I was limited to the craniometric points on skulls where I could put my measuring instruments. But with CT, you can capture the whole shape of a specimen, of course. You can look at the internal cranial morphology, the sinuses, the inner ear bones of Neanderthals, which we now know are differently shaped from our own. We only learned that through CT technology, so all of that has made a huge difference to what we can get out of our fossils.

In one way I'm jealous of the new generation that can come in and do all of this in such a short period of time. On the other hand, by going around Europe for four months, I actually held the Neanderthal skull from Germany in my hands, and the Cro-Magnon skulls from France, and it was wonderful to have a hands-on approach to these important relics. So with only virtual access to the fossils, I think the people doing the digital stuff on their consoles are missing that special and even emotional contact with the actual fossils.

When I began my work in 1970, it's fair to say that people who believed in evolutionary continuity between Neanderthals and modern humans dominated the field. There was Loring Brace at Michigan, who certainly influenced me in my early studies. Loring firmly believed that human evolution passed through a Neanderthal stage all over the world. Everywhere we looked in the middle Pleistocene, there were 'Neanderthaloid' people, and these were the ancestors of modern humans in each region. Thus if we had a complete fossil record, we would see a gradual transition in each region through Neanderthal-like forms to modern humans. Around 1970, that was probably the dominant view.

Milford Wolpoff was one of Loring Brace's students and he came out of that tradition, but with collaborators he developed his own variant by going back to the views of Franz Weidenreich, the German anatomist. Weidenreich had developed a theory which is now known as Multiregional Evolution. In 1984 Milford, Alan Thorne and Wu Xinzhi published a paper that argued for multiregional evolution from fossil, archaeological and genetic data. Homo erectus, when it spread out around the Old World, started to evolve towards modern humans in each region. But these lines didn't diverge—they were glued together by gene flow. The populations were breeding with each other across the whole range of humans at the time, and so there was no single place where modern humans evolved. Basically modern humans evolved everywhere where ancient humans lived. Thus every fossil could potentially be placed in a lineage leading through to modern humans. And in one of the clearest distinctions from a Recent African Origin model, the establishment of regional features would often have preceded, rather than succeeded, the appearance of shared modern ones.

However there were also people who weren't part of the framework of regional continuity. For example there was William Howells from Harvard, who I spent a lot of time with in the 1970s. Bill was someone who didn't think the Neanderthals were our ancestors, and he exerted an increasing influence on my thinking. We didn't know where modern humans had evolved, but we both felt that it wasn't from the Neanderthals. But if not the Neanderthals, where were those ancestors? Were they in the Far East? Were they in Africa? In the 1970s, we couldn't say. However I followed Bill in arguing that there was probably a single center for modern human origins, given the similarities among humans all over the world, physically and genetically.

During the 1980s, data started to build up that the African record was significant. In terms of both morphology and archaeology, Africa wasn't the rather backward place it was often thought to be. First, modern humans and advanced tools were shown to be there as early as anywhere else in the world. Then as the data grew, it seemed that modern humans were indeed there earlier than they were anywhere else. This was the beginning, in the 1980s, of what we call "Out of Africa".

On the archeological side, Desmond Clark, was also very strong in that view. He had links with Tim White, and Desmond and Tim were people who went out in the field to find the fossils we needed to test our models. I haven't been so lucky on the excavations I've been on in places like Gibraltar, tending to find lots of archeology and fauna, but not the human fossils. But people like Desmond, Tim, Ofer Bar Yosef and Bernard Vandermeersch have invested many years in field work and were rewarded in finding those fossils. Clark Howell was another big influence on me, having written influential papers on Neanderthals during the 1950s and 1960s, and he was a pioneer of field work in many regions. He was someone who was meticulous in the anatomical details that he looked at in fossils and he taught me a lot about how to look at the morphology of fossils. And closer to home I learnt a lot from my Museum colleague Peter Andrews, who helped to sharpen my thoughts about an African origin for modern humans, co-authoring our influential 1988 paper in Science.

The preceding year of 1987 was a real watershed, with the publication of the 'Mitochondrial Eve' paper in Nature by Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking and Allan Wilson. A few of us had been advocating a recent African origin for modern humans before then, but it wasn't until '87 that this topic suddenly made the front pages of journals and newspapers. Suddenly modern human origins became very sexy, and more money became available for research and for field work on recent human evolution.

Before that, the sexy areas for human evolution were in the much older African record. People working in the Rift Valley and in South Africa were the focus of attention and funding. But after 1987, people started to pick up on the evolution of modern humans as a significant topic, and we started to get more conferences, more fieldwork, and more public interest in our own evolution. Of course I was delighted to ride on that wave of increasing public interest in modern human origins.

Until 2004, we thought that only modern humans had got across the Wallace line. The Wallace line was named after the zoologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who recognised significant changes in the fauna and flora in Southeast Asia as we move from places like Java across into the islands leading to New Guinea and Australia. The view was that ancient humans like Homo erectus got as far as Java, but they didn't get any further—the assumption was that only modern humans with boats were able to get onto the islands leading to New Guinea and Australia.

Then the find known as Homo floresiensis was made in Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores, and was quickly nicknamed "The Hobbit," because the Lord of the Rings films were popular at that time. The excavators who described this material argued that they had found a new species of human, small-bodied at about a meter tall, with primitive features in the skeleton, and a brain the size of that of a chimpanzee. And this creature was living on the island of Flores, way over the Wallace Line, five-hundred kilometers beyond Java. Not only that, it was still around 17,000 years ago, long after the Neanderthals had died out. It was an extraordinary claim from a partial skeleton and some more fragmentary material dug up from just this one site on Flores.

I was at the Nature press conference where these findings were announced, and commentated on the discovery, which did impress me. I took this seriously as a distinct human-like species, which had somehow got to Flores and had evolved separately in isolation for a long period of time. The leading view in 2004 was that this creature represented a dwarf form of Homo erectus. Homo erectus had somehow headed eastwards, arrived on Flores, and under the conditions of this relatively small island, the species had dwarfed down in size (a process called insular dwarfism, which happens to medium-to-large-sized mammals on islands with reduced resources, when evolution favors a reduced body size). The argument was that this was a dwarfed Homo erectus, explaining the smaller body and brain size.

However, some researchers refused to accept that. They felt that this was such a bizarre find, under bizarre circumstances, and they actually favored the view that they were some kind of pathological modern human, perhaps suffering from cretinism, microcephaly or something called Laron Syndrome. These conditions can produce small brains and small bodies in modern humans, so some people have argued that these findings are not a distinct species at all.

That view is a minority view, but it continues up to this day. However I'm not convinced by these counter-arguments. We've got now over 100 fossils from Liang Bua, not just that one skeleton—there are a number of other individuals. There's a second jaw bone, which to me looks every bit as primitive and archaic as the first jaw bone that's with the skeleton. And there are two sets of primitive-looking wrist bones. These finds were made in levels from about 17,000 right down to about 90,000 years in the cave, and there's archeology right through those levels, archaeology which in some respects resembles much older stone tools found elsewhere on the island.

So for me, it remains a convincing distinct form of human, and one that may be even more primitive than was originally considered because recent research on the material, more detailed research, has found a number of features that seem to be more primitive than even the ones we find in Homo erectus. The suggestion is now that this might represent an even earlier stage of human evolution, one that's closer to Homo habilis or even to Australopithecus, creatures that lived two million years ago or more in Africa. Although we've got no evidence of it happening yet, the argument is that one of those more primitive forms got out of Africa more than two million years ago, somehow found its way over to southeast Asia, and survived in isolation on the island of Flores until 17,000 years ago, when it went extinct. That would be an even more extraordinary story than a Homo erectus getting there and dwarfing, that you've actually got a relic of an earlier stage of human evolution that got all the way over there.

Lots of questions arise from this very challenging find in explaining where it came from and what happened to it. Did it die out because of the impact of modern humans, which is an argument that's been used for the extinction of Neanderthals? Well, according to the excavators on Flores, there's no evidence of modern humans there 17,000 years ago. Supposedly the modern humans came later. But there is evidence of a massive volcanic eruption about 17,000 years ago, which produced very thick ash in the Liang Bua cave and elsewhere on the island. It may well be that this eruption was so enormous that it devastated the vegetation on the island and led to the extinction of the hobbit, which would be a very sad end after maybe two million years of evolution in a remote region, at the edge of the inhabited world at that time.

Where did it come from? Well, that's also still a mystery. On the one hand, was it from Homo erectus? Mike Morwood has recently argued that it's more likely that the ancestors of the Hobbits came from the north, because the currents of water in that region actually run from Sulawesi southwards, down to places like Timor, and then westwards. That's the opposite direction from a transit from Java to Flores. So Morwood argues that the Hobbit's ancestors will be found further north. Remarkably, he and his colleagues have found stone tools on Flores that are a million years old, which might have been made by the ancestors of the Hobbit. Reportedy he's even found tools which are a million years old on the island of Sulawesi, and that island is also over the Wallace Line. So there may actually be many more populations related to the hobbit waiting to be found on the islands of the region.

We've got a whole unknown history there for the hobbit, just as we've got an unknown history for the Denisovans in East Asia.

Changing topics, I think one of the most remarkable recent finds is the material from the site of Malapa in South Africa. This is material that's been found in the last few years, and we've seen a series of papers published in Science in the last few months. This is a species of Australopithecus called Australopithecus sediba, and it's clearly related to the previously known and possibly ancestral species Australopithecus africanus. The Taung specimen and the 'Mrs Ples' fossil are two famous examples of Australopithecus africanus, a species that lived in South Africa more than two million years ago.

It's true to say that for most experts, the South African australopithecines have been side-lined from the mainstream of human evolution. The mainstream view has been that East Africa was where the first humans evolved, with Homo habilis coming out of a species like Lucy’s, Australopithecus afarensis. From there, in turn, the species Homo erectus supposedly evolved about 1.8 million years ago.

What’s new is that sediba is close to two million years old and has many more human features than Australopithecus africanus. So we've got these strange fossil skeletons of sediba down in South Africa, on the one hand looking like Australopithecus africanus, but with more human features in the teeth, pelvis, legs and hands. This suggests for people like Lee Berger (the discoverer of sediba), that the transition to Homo occurred in South Africa, not east Africa. You could then turn things around and sideline all of those east African fossil.

I tend to the view that it will be more complex than that. We know there were australopithecines living in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi, down into South Africa about 2.5 million years ago. Then if in a number of areas we get parallel evolution in adapting to environmental change, these different species start to use tools to an increasing extent, they start to eat meat to an increasing extent, they start to travel longer distances on two legs to get their food, this could have driven parallel human-like changes in the body, the hands, the brain, even. That is maybe what we're seeing in both East Africa and South Africa. And an even more radical possibility is that hybridization events which we can now map from ancient and modern DNA were also occurring in Africa two million years ago and might have produced some of the mosaic morphologies that we observe there. So which area will eventually turn out to be the place of origin of the genus Homo is still an open question, but sediba reminds us that South Africa could be part of that story, and that perhaps Australopithecus africanus didn't die out. Maybe it carried on evolving, and even started to evolve some human-like features. So this material is important in evolutionary terms, but also important because of the completeness of the several skeletons discovered so far.

Published so far are two fairly complete skeletons of what are probably a boy, perhaps nine or ten when he died, and an adult female. Still unpublished are at least three more individuals, all from this one site. It looks like these individuals fell one after another into a death trap. They may have fallen into anoxic water, where there was very slow decay of the tissue, and they were mummified before they were fossilized, with even the possibility, according to Lee Berger, of soft tissue preservation. Between the bones and the sediments around them there could be layers of fossilized skin that might have preservation of skin, pores, hair and even pigments. Even more extraordinary if that's true. But just for their completeness, these are really important specimens.

The impact of genetic work on our field is enormous, and growing. When you think back to 1997, a tiny bit of mitochondrial DNA was recovered from the original Neanderthal skeleton found in Germany. I was at the press conference with Svante Pääbo, and it was undoubtedly a pioneering achievement, and a breakthrough. But no one could have believed that ten years later, we'd be talking about most of a genome of a Neanderthal being reconstructed. So the technical and computational advances have been huge.

The ability to recover the DNA, massive computing power, huge databases of comparative DNA samples have allowed us to map most of the genome of a Neanderthal, in fact several Neanderthals, and also recover the DNA of these enigmatic people called the Denisovans. I think wherever there are suitably cold conditions, and just as importantly, where it was predominantly cold in the past there should be good DNA preservation. So in northern Asia and Europe and in sites at high altitude outside of those areas, there should be more DNA to come from the fossils, and we will see increasing amounts from modern human fossils as well, which has been slow to come through because of the problems of contamination. We may find there are other people than the Denisovans and the Neanderthals to be recognized from their DNA in these regions— there may well be more surprises to come. For example there is evidence both from fossils and recent DNA that even Africa had an overlap of modern and archaic humans, with the possibility in a continent so large that there were other descendants of heidelbergensis living there alongside Homo sapiens. These populations could have exchanged DNA too, evidence of which might be found in the genomes of living Africans. We will also get the first good look at functional DNA in the genomes of ancient individuals. For the first time, we can make a comparison, not just between the chimp genome and the modern human genome, but we can now add in the Neanderthal genome and the Denisovan genome. We can start to see what unites those three human genomes compared with the chimpanzees. What evolved along the modern human line to make us what we are? And then individually, what made the Neanderthals what they were? What made the Denisovans what they were? This will have an impact, of course, on our own nature, what makes a modern human a modern human. Already a number of bits of DNA have been identified that are distinct among humans, where the Neanderthals are like chimpanzees. Some of these are concerned with the brain, some are concerned with the skin and physiology, some are concerned with how the skeleton grows, and some are concerned with things like the motility of sperm. These things really are going to help us tell what makes a Neanderthal, what makes a Denisovan, and what makes a modern human. Equally we will see studies of the function of Neanderthal-derived and Denisovan-derived DNA in the modern populations that show this from previous interbreeding. So we will find out whether we picked up short or longer-term advantages from those interbreeding events in terms of local adaptation, resistance to new pathogens etc.

Here's a somewhat simple representation of my current thinking now about human evolution over the last two million years:

We've got the lineage of the hobbit, 'Homo floresiensis' (in quotation marks because its human status in not yet clear), perhaps diverging more than two million years ago, evolving in isolation in southeast Asia, and apparently going extinct about 17,000 years ago.

We've got Homo erectus, most likely originating in Africa, giving rise to lineages which continue in the Far East in China and Java, but which eventually go extinct. In Europe, it perhaps gave rise to the species Homo antecessor, "Pioneer Man," known from the site of Atapuerca in Spain. Again, going extinct.

In the western part of the Old World, we get the development of a new species, Homo heidelbergensis, present in Europe, Asia and Africa. We knew heidelbergensis had gone two ways, to modern humans and the Neanderthals. But we now know because of the Denisovans that actually heidelbergensis went three ways—in fact the Denisovans seem to represent an off-shoot of the Neanderthal lineage.

North of the Mediterranean, heidelbergensis gave rise to the Neanderthals, over in the Far East, it gave rise to the Denisovans. In Africa heidelbergensis evolved into modern humans, who eventually spread from Africa about 60,000 years ago, but as I mentioned, there's evidence that heidelbergensis populations carried on in Africa for a period of time. But we now know that the Neanderthals and the Denisovans did not go genetically extinct. They went physically extinct, but their genes were input into modern humans, perhaps in western Asia in the case of the Neanderthals. And then a smaller group of modern humans picked up DNA from the Denisovans in south east Asia.

We end up with quite a complex story, with even some of this ancient DNA coming back into modern humans within Africa. So our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin.




http://www.edge.org/conversation/rethinking-out-of-africa

Rgvedam bhagavodhyemi yajurvedam samavedamātharvaṇam caturthamitihāsapurāṇam pancamam vedānām vedam pitrya rāśim deivamnidhim vākovākyamekāyanam devavidyā brahmavidyām bhutavidyāmnakṣatravidyāmsarpadevajanavidyāmetadbhagavodhyemi (Ch.Up.7.1.2)

Trans.
‘Sir, I know the Rig-veda, the Yajur-veda, the Sama-veda, Atharvana the fourth Veda, as the fifth the Itihasa-Purana, the Veda of the Vedas, the rites of the fathers, Mathematics, the science of portents, the science of Time, Logic, Ethics and Politics, Etymology, the science of the Veda, the science of the Elementals, the science of War, Astronomy, the science of Snake-charming and the fine arts. All this, I know, Sir.’ (p.164)

Source: Chandogya Upanishad and Sri Sankara’s commentary, Trans. By Ganganath Jha, 1923, Madras, the India Printing works
http://archive.org/stream/ChandogyaUpanishadWithShankaraBhashya-EnglishTranslationPart2/04ChandogyaUpanishadWithSankaraBhashya-English-Part2#page/n0/mode/2up

Narada says, adhyemi, 'I study' and lists the disciplines etad bhagavo adhyemi, 'All this I study':

rgveda
yajurveda
samaveda
ātharvaṇa
itihāsapurāṇa (pancamam vedānām
veda ‘grammar’
pitrya ‘science of śrāddha for pitṛ’
rāśi ‘mathematics’
deiva ‘science of portents’
nidhi ‘astronomy (time); science of treasures as propounded by Mahākāla and others’
vākovākya ‘logic’
ekāyana ‘ethics, worldly wisdom’
devavidyā ‘Nirukta (etymology/philology)’
brahmavidyā ‘śikṣā (phonetics), kalpa (rituals), chandas (prosody)’
bhutavidyā ‘science of material substances, physical science’
nakṣatravidyā ‘astronomy (stars and planets); may include kṣatravidyā ‘science of war’ (commentary)
sarpavidyā ‘snake poisons and their antidotes, as propounded by Garuḍa’ (commentary)
devajanavidyā ‘arts developed by celestials, such as music, dance, perfumery, arts and crafts’

Thus, there are two references to astronomy: nidhi (time) and nakṣatra (stars and planets -- in constellation). nakṣatram नक्षत्रम् [न क्षरति; cf. Uṇ.3.15 also] 1 A star in general.-2 A constellation, an asterism in the moon's path, lunar mansion; नक्षत्राणामहं शशी Bg.1.21. नक्षत्र-ताराग्रहसंकुलापि R.6.22; (they are twenty-seven). (Apte lexicon) Note the phrase: ताराग्रहसंकुला that is both stars and planets.

The lost honour of India studies (May 8, 2013)
Reconceptualizing India Studies
Balagangadhara
OUP India
288 pages | 215x140mm
978-0-19-808296-5 | Hardback | 06 September 2012

Author information

Balagangadhara, Professor and Director, Research Centre, Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Department of Comparative Science of Cultures, Ghent University, Belgium

S.N. Balagangadhara is Professor and Director Research Centre, Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Department of Comparative Science of Cultures, Ghent University, Belgium.

About the book

Re-examines postcolonial studies and modern India as a domain of study.
Provides new perspective on Hinduism, caste system, and secularism.
Discusses foremost contemporary thinkers like Edward Said, Karl Popper, and Amartya Sen.

This book asserts that postcolonial studies and modern India studies are in need of theoretical rejuvenation. Post Said's Orientalism, postcolonialism, as a discipline, has drifted into the realm of paralysing self-reflection and impenetrable jargon. This volume addresses the original concerns of postcolonial studies and the central problems of modern India studies, and points out a potential direction for the social-scientific study of the Indian culture at a time when it is being challenged from all sides. Stressing the need for an alternative understanding of the Western culture, Balagangadhara argues that Hinduism, caste system, and secularism are not colonial constructs but entities within the Western cultural experience. He believes that the so-called facts about India and her traditions are a result of colonial consciousness. To answer the questions about Indian traditions, we need to understand the Western culture.

This book will be of considerable interest to all those interested in understanding Indian society, culture, and traditions. Scholars and students of history, philosophy, sociology, and postcolonial studies will also find this very useful.
Readership: This book will be of considerable interest to all those interested in understanding Indian society, culture, and traditions. Scholars and students of history, philosophy, sociology, and postcolonial studies will also find this very useful.
Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1: 'Culture' and the 'Cultural': Problems, Pitfalls and a Proposal
2: The Future of the Present: Rethinking the Post-colonial Project
3: Comparative Science of Cultures: A Methodological Reflection
4: Colonialism and Colonial Consciousness
5: India and Her Traditions: An Open Letter to Jeffrey Kripal
6: Are Dialogues an Antidote to Violence?
7: Intercultural Encounters, Reasonable Dialogues, and Normative Political Theory
8: The Secular State and the Religious Conflict
Bibliography
Index

S.N. Balagangadhara, better known as Balu, is Professor of Comparative Culture Studies in Ghent University, Belgium. Balu is a Kannadiga Brahmin by birth, a former Marxist, and his discourse has a very in-your-face quality. http://www.hinduhistory.info/the-lost-honour-of-india-studies/


The lost honour of India studies

S.N. Balagangadhara, better known as Balu, is Professor of Comparative Culture Studies in Ghent University, Belgium. Balu is a Kannadiga Brahmin by birth, a former Marxist, and his discourse has a very in-your-face quality. In his latest book, Reconceptualizing India Studies (Oxford University Press 2012), the attentive reader will see a critique of the Indological establishment in the West and the political and cultural establishment in India. Like Rajiv Malhotra’s recent works, it questions their legitimacy. The reigning Indologists and India-watchers would do well to read it.

Orientalism

Two of the eight papers that make up the book deal with Edward Said’s influential book Orientalism (1977). Although Balu was very critical of Said in an article reacting to his uncritical obituaries, here he is quite generous with his praise: “He has provided us with the ‘Archimedean point’ to move the world.” (p.48) Not a word about the books refuting Said on numerous points of fact and on his interpretative framework, which has the character of a conspiracy theory: all those scholars were only pretending their many viewpoints (often identifying with the culture studied) and were in fact agents of colonialism.

Anyway, to the extent that Said is right, and that the colonial-age Orientalists were being unfair to Asia, we must see the mental constraints on all scholars of that period. The Orientalists were determined by the thinking of their societies: “Consider the possibility of Albert Einstein’s being born as a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas’s. Would he have been able to formulate the theory of relativity? Given what we know about human knowledge today, our answer can only be in the negative: he would not have had access to the experimental data and the theoretical concepts required to frame his theories. In this sense, even a genius is limited by his time.” (p.46)


Orientalism is a useful notion at least in analyzing Western attitudes to India and Indians in the present. Analyzing the examples of Jeffrey Kripal’s and P.B. Courtright’s writings on the Hindu saint Ramakrishna and on the Hindu deity Ganesha, he shows how Western scholarship is marked by fundamental logical and conceptual flaws (such as circular reasoning, proving what has first been assumed) and by the tendency to talk about rather than with Indians. Their trivializing theses are characterized as “violence” (p.135) and “blind” (p.139). Scholarship should advance knowledge, but these academics are only fostering colonial-originated prejudices.

The concept of Orientalism has two roots, one of which was important to understand Said’s personal stake in it, the other to appreciate the concept’s enormous popularity. Like all Middle-Eastern Christians, he was wary of the imperialist designs of Latin Christianity, which he saw as the origin of its secularized expression, the science of Orientalism (which did indeed start with the late-medieval outreach of Rome to the Middle-Eastern Christians). At the same time, his strongly pro-Muslim sympathy, which took the form of culpabilizing any scholarly critique of Islam as a Western imperialist project, was due to the Christians’ centuries of living as Dhimmi-s (“charter people”, protected ones), used to bending before and singing the praises of Islam. Said’s defence of Islam, over 90% of his book and the topic of several other publications of his, together with his sowing suspicions against Western scholarship, were exactly what trendy Western and westernized intellectuals needed, and what the Islamic world has gainfully instrumentalized since.

Balu does not go into the autonomous precolonial imperialism of Islam, a factor of religious riots in South Asia quite independent of colonial rule and its heir, the secular state. But in several other chapters, he identifies a more contemporary factor: the worldview underlying that same “secular” state.

Secularism

Look at the secularists, who for decades now have gone gaga over Said’s concept of Orientalism: “Orientalism is reproduced in the name of a critique of Orientalism. It is completely irrelevant whether one uses a Marx, a Weber or a Max Müller to do so. (…) the result is the same: uninteresting trivia, as far as the growth of human knowledge is concerned; but pernicious in its effect as far as Indian intellectuals are concerned.” (p.47) India has produced intellectual giants like (limiting ourselves to the 20th century:) R.C. Majumdar, P.V. Kane or A.K. Coomaraswamy, but the Indian secularists are intellectually very poor copies of their Western role models.

The most acute case of “Orientalism” in the Saidian sense in precisely Nehruvian secularism, the consensus viewpoint shared by most established academics and media. Thus, about caste, “Nehru used Orientalist descriptions of the Indian society of his day and made their facts his own.” (p.74) Citing as example a Western India-watcher, Balu notes that the latter “is not accounting for the Indian caste system by using the notion of fossilized coalitions in India; he is trying to establish the truth of Nehru’s observations (that is, the truth of the Orientalist descriptions of India)”, because the social sciences “where uncontested, (…) presuppose the truth of the Orientalist descriptions of non-Western cultures.” (p.74) That is the problem of the existing “South Asia Studies” in a nutshell. It underscores the need for more serious comparative studies, a field in which Balu has been a pioneer.

This critique applies especially to the dominant treatment of India’s “communal” problem: “When Indian intellectuals use existing theories about religion and its history – for example, to analyse ‘Hindu-Muslim’ strife – they reproduce, both directly and indirectly, what the West has been saying so far. (…) the ‘secularist’ discourse about this issue can hardly be distinguished – both in terms of the contents or the vocabulary – from Orientalist writings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” (p.47) Secularism is the direct heir of the colonial dispensation.

Balu’s explanation of intercommunal relations in India and the state’s role therein is original and clear. In his opinion, the secular state is not there to curb religious violence, but is in fact the cause of this violence. He focuses on its position in the question of religious conversion, which is forbidden in some neighbouring countries and demanded to be forbidden by many Hindus (both Mahatma Gandhi and the Hindu nationalists). But it is upheld as a right by the Muslims and especially by the Christian missionaries — and by the “secular” state. The latter clearly takes a partisan stand in doing so; and it would also be partisan if it did the opposite. It is impossible to be impartisan.

The whole “secular” discourse on “religion” and intercommunal relations is borrowed from Christianity. The basic framework to think about religion is informed by Western experiences and fails to see the radical difference between these and the native traditions: “the secular state assumes that the Semitic religions and the Hindu traditions are instances of the same kind” (p.203). In realities, Hindus and Parsis don’t missionize and refrain from basing their religions on a defining truth claim. By contrast, Christianity and Islam believe they offer the truth, and consequently want everyone to accept it.

Secularists decry as cheap Hindu propaganda the assertion that Hinduism is naturally pluralistic and innocent of religious strife and exclusivism, which is considered to be typical of the converting religions. But in fact, Christian missionaries and Muslim observers noted the absence of sectarian violence among the Hindus: “The famous Muslim traveler to India, Alberuni, also noted the absence of religious rivalry among the Hindus”. (p.205) This Hindu phenomenon even affects Alberuni’s own community: there is much more violence between rivaling Muslim sects in Islamic Pakistan than in Hindu-populated India. If the secularists want to promote religious harmony, as they claim, they had better promote traditional Indian values rather than side with Christianity and Islam.

Conclusion

Balu’s theses are uncomfortable and sure to provoke debate. So far, the attitude of the India-watching class and of the elites in India has been to ignore any criticism of their worldview. But this man’s stature as a leading professor who heads a very active research department in a major secularist university in the West will make many of them sit up and notice.

On the whole, Balu’s thesis is optimistic. He offers solutions to the problems he analyzes, mostly solutions that he himself has already worked or has been practicing for years. It is not as if any fate condemns Indian policy and academic India-watching to their present prejudices. He also believes in the promise of the age of globalization, and thinks Indians and Europeans genuinely have something to offer each other.

Koenraad Elst, May 8, 2013

See also:

Origins of Anti-Brahminism (April 25, 2013)

The true prophets of the anti-Brahmin message were no doubt the Christian missionaries. In the sixteenth century, Francis Xavier wrote that Hindus were under the spell of the Brahmanas, who were in league with evil spirits, and that the elimination of Brahminism was the first priority in the large operation of bringing Salvation to the wretched Pagans of India. In this endeavour, he strongly advocated and practiced the use of force. Unfortunately for him, the Portuguese government could not always spare the troops which he so passionately asked for. Still, the destruction wrought by Francis Xavier was impressive, and he has described the joy he felt on seeing idols being smashed and temples demolished.

http://www.hinduhistory.info/origins-of-anti-brahminism/

Live: Govt to tell SC how it will ensure CBI’s freedom by 10 July
by Arun George 34 mins ago

5:05 pm: Court tells CBI not to share report with anyone apart from probe team, director

The apex court bench has told the CBI that it cannot share the report with anyone other than its 33-member probe team and Director.

4: 55 pm: Next hearing of case on July 10

The next hearing of the case will now be on July 10 by which time the government will have to submit in an affidavit how it will ensure the independence of the CBI in the future.

Meanwhile, CNN-IBN reports that PMO sources have said that despite the scathing opinion of the apex court there is no need to take any action for now since these are not the final orders.

So would these mean that both Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and the two bureaucrats concerned are just going to take it easy? Looks like it.

4:45 pm: Congress says it has taken note of Supreme Court’s suggestions

Congress spokersperson Renuka Chowdhury said that the government will react to the observations made by the Supreme Court but said there was nothing wrong with the meetings held between the CBI and the Law Minister and bureaucrats.

“We have taken note of the various suggestions and inputs that the Supreme Court has given. It will go a long way in streamlining future investigations,” she said.

We will ensure parameters are maintained during the act of governance, Chowdhury said.

“I don’t think the Prime Minister is culpable,” she said.

4:30 pm: CBI promises thorough probe

Following the tongue lashing by the apex court the CBI has said it will follow directions of Supreme Court in letter and spirit.

The apex court has assured the Supreme Court of a thorough and qualitative investigation into the Coalgate issue.

4:20 pm: SC asks if CBI needs more technical expertise and if retired judge should head probe

Given the CBI’s statement that it had not been able to investigate the coal block allocation probe due to its technical nature, the apex court has reportedly asked the agency if it needs the court to provide with the required technical expertise, reports Times Now.

The court has also asked if a retired judge should be appointed to head the probe, the channel reported.

4:15 pm: Petitioner in case says there has been no improvement in CBI

Vineet Narain, who became a party to the Coalgate petition said that the court has again reiterated that it had laid down conditions in the 1993 Jain Hawala case that have not been followed.

“The matter will come up for hearing after the court’s vacation where the government will have to state what steps it has taken to make the agency independent,” Narain said.

We are back to square one when it comes to investigating agencies like CBI, he said.

4:10 pm: CBI can’t interact with government without court’s permission

The apex court has laid down strict conditions and said that the government will have to take its permission before it interacts with the CBI, reported Times Now.

No interaction is allowed with permission of the court, the Supreme Court has observed.

3:55 pm: SC reinstates original investigating officer

The Supreme Court has also reinstated the original investigating official in the case Ravi Kant, who had been transferred out of the CBI to the intelligence bureau, reported CNN-IBN.

3:50 pm: The BJP says the Law Minister should resign immediately

“Law Minister should go forthwith. He should resign immediately or sacked,” BJP leader Venkiah Naidu said.

We will go from the Parliament to the people, the BJP leader said, adding that it was high time that the government goes.

Meanwhile, BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy has pressed for the resignation of the Prime Minister. Will either resign? Watch this space.

3:40 pm: SC debunks CBI chief’s affidavit, says heart of report changed

The apex court has debunked the CBI chief’s affidavit saying that no major changes were made in the agency’s probe report by the government.

“The heart of the report was changed on the suggestions of government officials,” said the apex court.

3:37 pm: You must know how to stand up against pressure, SC tells CBI

CBI must know how to stand up against all pulls and pressures by government and its officials, the apex court tells the agency.

Meanwhile, CNN-IBN reports that Law Minister Ashwani Kumar might resign as early as this evening. Also the two bureaucrats pulled up by the apex court, from the PMO and Coal Ministry, are likely to be transferred, the channel reported quoting sources.

Meanwhile on Times Now, Lord Meghnad Desai believes the upset over the apex court’s observations the Prime Minister will quit as an honourable man. Well even the channel’s anchor looks rather skeptical about that one.

3:35 pm: SC tells CBI that it has made no progress in probe

No substantial progress has been made in the coal scam probe after registration of the case, the apex court has told the CBI.

The court also told the agency that the probe report is not a progress report to be shared with government and its officials.

3:25 pm: SC says CBI is like sand

The Supreme Court is continuing with its strong criticism of the agency

Court gave you strength 15 years ago to be like rock but you are like sand, the apex court reportedly observed, said Times Now.

The court has also said that it wants proper investigations in the case, the channel reported.

The CBI has been pulled up and said the court observed that just the agency’s word of mouth would not be enough in the matter, the channel reported.

3:20 pm: Sushma Swaraj reiterates demand for resignation of minister

Sushma: ASG blamed Attorney General. Now Attorney General blames Law Minister. The fact is all three of them have misconducted themselves.

3: 15 pm: CBI says they didn’t weren’t well versed, SC asks why it didn’t admit to this earlier

The CBI attempted to tell the court that it had consulted with the bureaucrats because it was not well versed with investigations of a technical nature.

However, the court has reportedly countered that the CBI could have told them this at the inception of the investigation so that the court could have deputed experts to aid them.

3:10 pm: Court asks how many people are investigating Coalgate scandal

Continuing its scathing criticism of the CBI and the government, the apex court has reportedly questioned how many investigators were investigating the case given that Joint Secretaries were interacting with the CBI, reports Times Now.

What business do they (joint secretaries) have to go to the CBI office and perusing the report, the court reportedly observed.

2:55 pm: CBI’s job is to interrogate and not interact

The apex court has pulled up Joint Secretaries of PMO and Coal Ministry for meeting CBI officials and suggesting changes in the draft report.

“CBI’s job is to interrogate and not interact to find the truth,” the court reportedly observed said Times Now.

The court has questioned why officials who were subjects of the probe by the CBI were interacting with the investigating agency on two occasions and suggesting changes.

Probe report is not a progress report to be shared with government and its officials, court observes.

2:50 pm: Attorney General defends himself

Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati has defended himself and said that he never called for the final report of the CBI.

“ I have neither asked nor got CBI’s probe report in coal scam,” the lawyer reportedly said.

My meeting with CBI officials took place only on suggestions of the Law Minister, Vahanvati told the court.

However, the court has said that he could have revealed more details during the past hearings on this, reported Times Now.

2:45 pm: Supreme Court says a minister cannot interfere in investigations

The Supreme Court bench has reportedly observed that the Law Minister “could ask for status of investigation but cannot interfere”, reported Times Now.

The court also observed that the minister went beyond just asking for status report.

Is this the beginning of end for Law Minister Ashwani Kumar?

2:35 pm: SC says CBI is a caged parrot

“We want to know about the independence of the CBI,” the court observed, reported Times Now.

“CBI has become a caged parrot speaking in master’s voice”, the court has reportedly observed, adding that the CBI chief’s affidavit showed that it had many political masters.

“It’s a sordid saga that there are many masters and one parrot,” the court said.

The court has questioned whether it should undertake the exercise itself or whether the Attorney General can ensure that a law can be passed to ensure the independence of the agency.

2:30 pm: Court says it needs to act within boundaries of law

Hearing the petitioner’s plea the apex court had observed that generalities like ‘remove the PM’ can’t be dealt with by the court, reported Times Now

Every word stated must be within four corners of the law, the court observed.

2:25 pm: Petitioner wants complaint filed against Attorney General and Additional Solicitor General

The petitioner in the case before the Supreme Court has reportedly sought that a complaint be filed before a magistrate against Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati and Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Harin Raval for their role in the CBI report being vetted by the Law Minister, reports Times Now.

Prashant Bhushan, who is also a party to the case, has said that there is evidence that the government has interfered with the probe and cannot be trusted, the channel reported.

2:00 pm: Ashwani Kumar to go after SC hearing?

CNN-IBN quoted sources in the Congress as saying that Ministers Pawan Kumar Bansal and Ashwani Kumar could be asked to step down once the hearing in the Supreme Court is over.

1:45 pm: Shukla says no reason for Ashwani Kumar to resign

Congress’ Rajiv Shukla says there are many people who believe that Law Minister Ashwani Kumar is not guilty of any impropriety and didn’t have to vacate his post. At least not until 2:30 pm when the court starts the hearing in the case.

“Government’s job is to interpret the court’s observations and after that a decision will be taken,” Shukla told Times Now.

Supreme Court of India. Reuters
1:30 pm: Countdown to Supreme Court hearing on CBI chief’s affidavit

The Supreme Court will today examine CBI’s nine-page affidavit on the coal scam. The affidavit has caused trouble for Law Minister Ashwani Kumar as the investigating agency has stated that the Minister made some changes to the first draft report on the coal block allocation.

It is likely that the apex court will pose some tough questions to the Centre following CBI Director’s affidavit that the Law Minister and senior officials of the PMO and Coal Ministry had made significant changes in the probe report.

Since the filing of the affidavit, Ashwani Kumar is under attack from the opposition which is demanding his resignation over the issue, and the situation could worsen for him if if adverse remarks are made against him by the apex court.

A three judge bench headed by Justice R M Lodha, which had pulled up the CBI for keeping it in the dark about the sharing of status report with government, will go through a second affidavit filed by Sinha giving details of the changes made and at whose instance these were done.

Sinha in his affidavit said that the minister made “certain changes” in the agency’s draft probe report on

Coalgate and gave details of series of meetings with Kumar, Vahanvati, Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval and Shatrughna Singh and A K Bhalla, joint secretaries of the PMO and the Coal Ministry during which changes in the probe reports were suggested and made by them.

The CBI version contradicts reports of Kumar’s account that he was not involved in drafting the changes.

http://www.firstpost.com/india/live-sc-to-hear-cbi-chiefs-affidavit-ashwani-to-go-after-that-763157.html


CBI is a caged parrot: Supreme Court

By Niticentral Staff on May 8, 2013

5:23 pm: SC to consider various aspects including setting up of SIT to look after the probe into coal blocks allocation scam.


5:22 pm: SC to CBI- Does it not subvert integrity of investigation if changes are brought in status report on suggestion of Law Minister and Government officers?



5:21 pm: SC wants to know can Law Minister ask CBI to show details of probe or status report in a case involving people of other Ministries and PMO.



5:20 pm: SC- CBI Director, investigating team should have stood up and denied any access to two joint secretaries to draft status report.



5:19 pm: SC- Status report on probe in Coalgate shall not be provided to special CBI court where FIR was registered.



5:15 pm: Supreme Court tells CBI chief to ensure no access to any person, including Law Minister, other Union Ministers, law officers, CBI counsel and Department of Prosecution of CBI to probe in coal block scam.

5:12 pm: Supreme Court- Immediate steps be taken by Centre & CBI to repatriate DIG Ravi Kant Mishra who was investigating officer in coal block case and transfer to IB.



5:11 pm: SC asks Centre to come out with a law before July 10 to insulate CBI from external influence
and intrusion.



5:10 pm: SC directs CBI not to share progress of probe or any report or material with anybody other than its 33-member team and Director.
5:07 pm: SC asks CBI to file status report on Coalgate by July 3



5:02 pm: Government will have to file an affidavit in the Supreme Court on how it will ensure the independence of the CBI.

4:59 pm: Supreme Court adjourns the Coalgate case, next hearing will be held on July 10.



4:50 pm: SC verdict on CBI affidavit to come out anytime now.

4:43 pm: Ravi Shankar Prasad, BJP leader -SC's order to the CBI on the Coalgate scam has given teeth to our demand for PM's resignation.



4:39 pm: Ravi Shankar Prasad- Prime Minister would have to be held accountable for what ever happened with the CBI's draft report. Would the PM now own up for what happened in the Coalgate scam?

4:36 pm: CBI says it will follow directions of Supreme Court in letter and spirit.



4:29 pm: Prakash Javadekar BJP- No shield can shield the PM anymore.



4:28 pm: D Raja CP(I)- This is an indictment of the PM and the PMO.

4:25 pm: Sc asks 3 questions - Should a retired judge supervise the investigations? Whether CBI has the expertise to investigate? Whether the CBI is competent to conduct this investigation on its own?



4:13 pm: Now the CBI will have to seek permission from the Apex Court before interacting with anyone in the Government - SC



3:53 pm: Venkaiah Naidu- CBI acting for the corrupt and this can not go one.
3:41 pm: SC- CBI must know how to stand up against all pulls and pressures by Government and its officials.



3:39 pm: How can you give a justification instead of accepting your mistakes: Apex Court to CBI



3:39 pm: SC tells CBI- No substantial progress has been made in the coal scam probe after registration of the case.



3:38 pm: SC- Probe report is not a progress report to be shared with Government and its officials.

3:37 pm: SC- We want a thorough and qualitative investigation in the coal scam case.



3:34 pm: SC to CBI- We gave you the power to be like a rock 15 years back, now you are like sand.



3:33 pm: CBI's investigative ablilities questioned in the SC, seeks specific assurances from the counsel.



3:29 pm: BJP leader Sushma Swaraj on Twitter- ASG blamed Attorney General. Now Attorney General blames Law Minister. The fact is all three of them have misconducted themselves.
ASG has resigned. Attorney General and Law Minister should also resign forthwith.



3:17 pm: CBI officials are not well versed on crimes of a technical nature and you could have asked us to provide more experts with you rather than going to the Ministry: SC

3:14 pm: Supreme Court- How can the officials under scanner interfere in probe?



3:14 pm: Supreme Court- It seems that the heart of the CBI report has been changed.



3:08 pm: AG Wahanwati tells SC- I have neither asked nor got CBI's probe report in Coalgate.



3:05 pm: AG tells SC- My meeting with CBI officials took place only on suggestions of the Law Minister.



3:05 pm: SC- Job of CBI is not to interact with Government officials but to interrogate to find the truth. What business did the two AG's had to visit CBI's office?



3:03 pm: AG to Supreme Court on Coalgate- I did not have a copy, didn't see the same and didn't ask for a copy.

2:59 pm: SC pulls up Joint Secretaries of PMO and Coal Ministry for meeting CBI officials and suggesting changes in the draft report.



2:56 pm: Supreme Court- Will intervene if no law is made to make CBI independent.



2:55 pm: It's a sordid saga that there are many masters and one parrot, SC says after going through CBI Director's affidavit on coal scam probe.



2:55 pm: CBI has become a caged parrot speaking in master's voice, says Supreme Court.



2:55 pm: SC expresses concern over Centre's interference in CBI probe in coal scam and other cases.


Hearing the CBI’s second affidavit on its probe into Coalgate scam, the Supreme Court on Wednesday observed that the investigative agency has reduced to a ‘caged parrot’.

The Apex Court in its hearing expressed serious concerns over Centre’s blatant interference in CBI probe into Coalgate scam. “It’s a sordid saga that there are many masters and one parrot,” the Apex Court said in a stinging observation after examining the agency’s affidavit on Coalgate. The verdict has questioned CBI’s investigative ability and posed many tough questions for the Government.

The CBI told the Supreme Court that on March 6 two joint secretaries of PMO and Coal Ministry visited its CBI office. On March 07 changes were made in the draft report on Coalgate probe, it said.

The Supreme Court pulled up the two Joint Secretaries of PMO and Coal Ministry for meeting CBI officials and suggesting changes in the draft report. “What business do the two Joint Secretaries have to visit the CBI office,” the Supreme Court said.

“How can you give a justification instead of accepting your mistakes?” the Supreme Court asked the premier investigative agency of the country.

The Supreme Court asked three questions to the CBI.

1. Should a retired judge supervise the investigations?

2. Whether CBI has the expertise to investigate?

3. Whether the CBI is competent to conduct this investigation on its own?

Law Minister Ashwani Kumar, who is under attack from the Opposition which is demanding his resignation over the issue, now finds himself on a more sticky wicket after adverse remarks made against him by the Apex Court.

Attorney General GE Vahanvati may find it difficult to justify his earlier claim made in the Apex Court that he was not aware about the contents of the status report, a statement belied by the CBI Director Ranjit Sinha’s affidavit saying that AG had glanced through the report and changes were made in it on his suggestion.

A day ahead of the crucial hearing in the Supreme Court, the Government roped in senior constitutional lawyer TR Andhyarujina to assist the team of lawyers in the Supreme Court.

The CBI in its nine-page affidavit had admitted before the Supreme Court that substantial changes were made in the draft report of its probe into Coalgate as suggested by Law Minister Ashwani Kumar, Attorney General GE Vanahvati and the officials of PMO and Coal Ministry.

The three judge bench headed by Justice RM Lodha in its earlier hearing had pulled up the CBI for keeping it in the dark about the sharing of status report with Government, will go through the second affidavit filed by the CBI giving details of the changes made in the CBI’s status report on its probe into Coalgate and at whose instance these were done.

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/05/08/cbi-is-a-caged-parrot-supreme-court-75238.html

Published: May 6, 2013 12:41 IST | Updated: May 7, 2013 03:57 IST
Ashwani Kumar changed scope of coal enquiry: CBI

J. Venkatesan

Affidavit details meetings among CBI officials and officials in PMO and law ministry, which discussed changes in status report

CBI Director Ranjit Sinha on Monday told Supreme Court that Law Minister Ashwani Kumar made changes in the agency’s draft status report (DSR) on the coal scam case. Mr. Kumar, he said, deleted a sentence that included the legality of coal allocations in the scope of the CBI’s enquiry.

The case comes up for further hearing on Wednesday before a three-judge Bench headed by Justice R. M. Lodha.

In a fresh affidavit, Mr. Sinha claimed that the Minister only saw the DSR on the preliminary enquiry (PE2 that dealt with allocations between 2006 and 2OO9). Mr. Kumar deleted from the draft report a finding about the screening committee not preparing any chart about the coal block applicants and a sentence about the “scope of enquiry with respect to legality of allocations while amendments in law were in process.”

The nine-page affidavit gave details of the meetings which took place among the CBI officials, the Law Minister, the Attorney-General, the then Additional Solicitor General, Harin Raval, and officials of PMO and the Coal Ministry. Mr. Sinha’s submission contradicts the stand taken by the Minister and the AG, who had refuted the allegation that they had suggested changes in the draft report.

It also said “the tentative finding about the non-existence of a system regarding allocation of specific weightage/points was deleted at the instance of the officials of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Ministry of Coal.” Also, at the instance of the officials of the PMO and Ministry of coal, a sentence describing the non-availability of approved guidelines for coal block allocation was included in the final status report pertaining to PE4.

Attorney General G. E. Vahanvati too asked for changes.

The CBI Director submitted in a sealed cover the changes made in the DSRs but said “it is difficult at this stage to attribute each change to a particular person with certainty.” It said that most of the changes were done to refine the reports in consultation with Mr. Harin Raval, the then Additional Solicitor General who resigned recently. On Mr. Raval’s submission in the court on March 12 that “the status report dated March 8 has not been shared with anyone and it is meant only for the court,” the affidavit said the submission was not made as per CBI instructions and the ASG had made the statement on his own.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ashwani-kumar-changed-scope-of-coal-enquiry-cbi/article4688639.ece

Job of CBI not to interact with Govt, but find truth: SC

The Hindu The job of the CBI is not to interact with government officials but to interrogate to find the truth, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.

Reacting to the court observation, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said the Law Minister and the Attorney General should resign immediately

Expressing concern over Centre’s interference in CBI probe in coal scam and other cases, the Supreme Court on Wednesday pulled up the Joint Secretaries of PMO and Coal Ministry for meeting CBI officials and suggesting changes in the draft report.

"It’s a sordid saga that there are many masters and one parrot," the apex court said after going through CBI Director’s affidavit on coal scam probe.

The court also criticised the CBI for becoming "a caged parrot speaking in master’s voice" and said the job of the CBI is not to interact with government officials but to interrogate to find the truth. It said the CBI must know how to stand up against all pulls and pressures by government and its officials.

On his part the Attorney General said he neither asked nor got CBI’s probe report in coal scam.

He said his meeting with CBI officials took place only on suggestions of the Law Minister.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/job-of-cbi-not-to-interact-with-govt-but-find-truth-sc/article4695390.ece?homepage=true

Published: April 23, 2013 12:35 IST | Updated: April 23, 2013 15:32 IST
Coalgate issue rocks Parliament

PTI
BJP demand for the Prime Minister's resignation over coal block allocations and a host of other issues on Tuesday stalled Parliament proceedings, leading to the abrupt adjournment of the Lok Sabha without transacting any business.

Proceedings were also disrupted with Samajwadi Party slamming the government over Chinese incursions in Ladakh and Trinamool Congress accusing the Centre of treating West Bengal in a step-motherly manner.

Rajya Sabha witnessed two adjournments till 2 PM, while the Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day due to unabated slogan-shouting by protesting members in the Well.

While BJP also sought sacking of Law Minister Ashwani Kumar alleging his interference in preparation of CBI report to the Supreme Court on the coal scam, DMK sought resignation of P C Chacko as the Chairman of Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into the 2G scam.

At one point, Yashwant Sinha of the BJP walked up to DMK leader T R Baalu and had some discussion.

As Lok Sabha reassembled at noon after the first adjournment, members of BJP, Trinamool Congress, SP and Left parties trooped into the Well raising slogans on their respective demands.

A group of Congress members raised vociferous slogans and waved placards demanding a separate Telangana state. A TDP member was also in the Well with a similar placard.

Left members raised slogans against "state-sponsored violence" in Mamata Banerjee-ruled West Bengal.

Slogan-shouting DMK members were also in the Well as former Telecom Minister A Raja was seen standing in the aisle and Baalu seeking to raise the Telecom issue in the din.

As the din continued, AIADMK leader M Thambidurai who was in the Chair, adjourned the House for the day.

Similar scenes were witnessed in the Rajya Sabha with slogan shouting BJP members trooping into the Well demanding Prime Minister's resignation, forcing its adjournment first till noon and later till 2 PM.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/coalgate-issue-rocks-parliament/article4646657.ece?css=print

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

May 7, 2013, 1:51 pm 1 Comment
Video of Imran Khan’s Fall at Election Rally in Pakistan
By ROBERT MACKEY

http://vimeo.com/65647621
Video from Pakistan’s Express Tribune showed the former cricketer Imran Khan falling at an election rally in Lahore on Tuesday.

Last Updated, 2:36 p.m. Imran Khan, a former cricket superstar who has been drawing huge crowds to campaign rallies in Pakistan ahead of Saturday’s election, was rushed to a hospital in Lahore on Tuesday after he was knocked off a forklift at the edge of a stage and fell headfirst to the ground, nearly 15 feet below.

As video of the incident posted on Vimeo by Karachi’s Express Tribune showed, Mr. Khan was being lifted up to the stage when a security man clambered on to the forklift causing the candidate and two other men to lose their footing. According to initial reports from Pakistani journalists and bloggers, Mr. Khan was in stable condition.

 

Footage of the accident broadcast by Pakistan’s Geo TV also showed Mr. Khan being rushed from the scene after the fall, with blood on his face.

 

 

According to updates on his condition posted on the official Twitter feed of his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the 60-year-old suffered “a minor fracture” and was “stable, alert, awake and conscious” after getting 12 stitches.

Mr. Khan’s former wife, the British writer and socialite Jemima Khan, also confirmed that he was conscious, and praying aloud, as he was rushed to the hospital, according to a family member.

Pakistani commentators — including Umar Cheema, Nadeem Paracha, Beena Sarwar and the blogger who writes as Raza Rumi — noted with relief that rival politicians, bloggers and activists mostly paused the often-fractious debate about the nation’s problems online and on the campaign trail in sympathy with Mr. Khan.

Before being taken seriously as a politician, Mr. Khan was perhaps best known as a member of the international jet set. His former wife was close friends with Princess Diana, who helped Mr. Khan raise funds for Lahore’sShaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, which he founded in memory of his late mother. On Tuesday night, Mr. Khan was being treated there.

Late Tuesday, Mr. Khan was well enough to resume campaigning in a television interview from his hospital bed with Pakistan’s Dunya News channel.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/video-of-imran-khans-fall-at-election-rally-in-pakistan/