Genetic study on Aryan non-Invasion!

The following link provides a concise view on the genetic studies conducted by 9 different groups of eminent scientists in the past decade.

All these studies invariably dispute the Aryan Invasion theory.

These studies establish that India provided a common gene pool that was ancestral to all the diverse maternal European and American lineages.

It seems India has served as an incubator for further spread of human race.

The Indian gene pool traces its origin in Africa as early as 50,000 years ago and from this gene pool only, further migrations have happened to the rest of the places in Europe.

Within the Indian gene pool, there is no difference in terms of Y chromosome, between tribes and castes and communities. There is no difference regionally and linguistically.

Details of the studies and results can be read here.

http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/Genetics_and_the_Aryan_Debate.pdf

--> The findings are in tandem with what is being repeatedly written in this blog.
The Indian land mass originally called as Aryavartha or Jambhoodweepa was huge and spread in the southern part of the equator. Daksha prajapathy was the ruler of this place according to puranas. The previous manvanthra had happened in that region. Any manvanthra stretches to 30 crore years. The present manvanthra (7^th manvanthra in which we are in the 28^th Chathur maha yuga) started 11 crore years ago. This means the present type of human evolution started 11 crore years ago.

At that time the entire land mass of Jambhoodweepa had been one with Australia, Africa and Indonesia. The Caucasian origin is noted in Africa in the genetic studies. This tallies with beings such as Kubera and daithyas who lived in Kusha dweepa which is the present day Africa (there is an archeological evidence of Kuber, city of gold in Africa). Along with them had existed the Negroids.

The types of people has been mentioned by Bhaskara II, in Siddhantha Shiromani. He says that there were 4 races of people, devas, asuras, manushyas and daityas.

He quotes this from much earlier texts which had become extinct even by his times.

The asuras were dark in colour and daithyas were fair in complexion.

In addition there had been Danavas who were asuras with fair complexion. Maya was a Danava.

Like this different types of races had existed in this southern land.

But the archeologically proven volcanic eruption in Indonesia around 80,000 years ago and the continuing movement of the Lemuria towards north (this started 80 lakh years ago) accompanied with earthquakes etc resulted in fissures in the land.

The land had moved north, along with the people who once shared their land with those in Africa and Australia.

That is how the origins can be traced to Africa.

I do not think a 'migration' from Africa happened. I wonder why there was a need for migration at a time when land forms were close and non-ripped. People existed in the vast land mass and had easily moved throughout. Here we should not think of the land mass of the present day. Today the Indian sub continent is moving northward at the rate of 9 metres per century. Just imagine where it would have been some 50 or 80,000 years ago.

At a time of 80k years ago the rate of movement must have been even more. At present, the movement is too restricted and slowed down due to the already – reached limits of pushing the Russian plate. This land mass south of the Himalayas which contained Kumari must have been the jambhoo dweepa (naavalam theevu) , now known as a mythical Lemuria.


From Sangam texts we know that India was spread far down the south. The civilization that dominated the south then must have continued but faced threats when the seas rose due to Ice age coming to an end. This is mentioned as the first deluge in Tamil texts.

Sangam texts also reveal that the Bay of Bengal was a ‘dug-out-sea’. This sea in the east is known in Tamil texts as ‘Thodu kadal’ It means “thOndappatta kadal” or ‘the sea that is dug’. It was dug by the sons of sagara which came to be filled by the Ganges.


This takes us to look at the time of Ganges. Ganges came down in the times of Bhageeratha which was some 1000 years before Rama. Astronomically Rama’s time has been dated around 7000 BC. So Ganges came at around 8000 BC.
It was only with the coming of the Ganges, the Ganga sagar or Bay of Bengal was carved out on the landmass (refer my posts on Ram sethu)

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Related posts:-

http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2008/04/from-genetic-studies-to-literary.html

http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2008/06/first-man-originated-in-manaali-hp.html

Naming your child.

Today no one asks what is in a name or why not any name, while naming one's child.

Lot of thinking goes into finding a name for the child.

Concepts such as energy and vibration of the name

and what the name conveys are given due consideration while choosing the name.

Sanatanic system of thought also followed certain concepts

while deciding the name for the new-born.

'Nama-karma' – naming the child –

is one of the main samskaras to be done by the parents,

irrespective of the varna or caste to which they belong.

And this naming was guided by certain rules.

The child must be given 3 names.

They are 'maasa naama' – name based on the month of birth,

'Nakshathra naama' – name based on the birth star and

'vyavahaara naama' – name for daily usage.

The sankalpa manthra for the naming ceremony as told in Dharma Sindhu is

"mama kumarasya aayushyabhi vrudhyartham,

sabha sthala sat-purushE madhyE, naama prakatana siddhyartham,

maasa naamna, nakshathra naamna, vyavahara naamaacha

samskarishyaa vahe"

(For the sake of longevity of my child, let me announce in the midst of this group of great persons, the month-name, star-name and usage name of my child.)

This format has been in vogue for all these years till, say,

a couple of generations ago, in many families.

This format was followed for some important reasons.

The most important name is the naama nakshathra.

Jyothisha which is considered as the eye of the Veda Purusha says

that the star in which a person is born rules the mind and thoughts of the person.

The birth star is no accident of life!

A person is destined to born at a specific time in the specific star

so that his life's journey is fulfilled as planned by Kaala purusha.

Every star has some vibration that tallies with a specific akshara (letters)

Akshara is that which never declines or decays or dies.

It stays on.

Rig Jyothisha of Lagadha indicates stars by specific aksharas.

For instance Ashwini is known as 'jou' in Rig jyothisha.

If it is said 'dra', it indicates Arudra.

Like this,

'Gaha' for Poorva phalguni,

'hi' for poorva bhadrapada,

'shya' for pushya,

'haa' for hastha,

'je' for jyeshta,

'shta' for dhanishta,

'moo' for moola,

'nye' for bharaNi,

'kru' for Kritthika.

'ro' for rohini,

'dha' for Anuradha and so on.

These aksharas carry the entire tattawa or vibration of the star.

A person born in a star is said to possess this tattwa or vibration.

As such, a group of aksharas is indicated for each star.

A person born in a star is supposed to get his name beginning with that akshara!

This concept of Naama nakshathra had been in vogue from time immemorial.

Just by knowing one's name, an intelligent person will be able to say what his nature is, by linking the first letter of his name to the star it denotes.

This was very useful at many places.

All of us have to interact with each other and

it would be useful if we can know the nature of the other person just by his name.

Naama nakshathra is useful in everything in mundane life,

from deciding the house or plot you want to buy for occupation

to deciding your fortunes at any given moment (through prashna sastra).

Nama naskhathra was also used in poetry in olden Tamil texts,

wherein the name of the person or king or God praised in the song

is cleverly indicated in the very first word of the first verse.

In this way we can find out the god indicated by

Thiruvalluvar in Thirukkural as Sri Rama. (*)

The month name is also necessary for ascertaining the nature of events in one's life.

If the star is about the moon's position at the time of birth,

the month indicates sun's position at the time of birth.

The sun and the moon are regarded as the breath (swaasam) of a person.

They represent the two naadis of the breath,

the surya nadi (in the right nostril) and chandra naadi (in the left nostril).

The text 'Shiva swarodhayam' details this.

The mastery over these two are supposed to make one the Seer of

past, present and future.

This mastery is regarded as one among the 64 arts.

These two naadis of the sun and the moon decide the longevity of the person.

When one of them malfunctions, diseases occur.

If the malfunction prolongs, death occurs.

In this way, the sun and the moon

or in other words, the month and the star in which a person is born

become indicative of his / her life and longevity.

The third name is of course, the general name by which a person is called.

But for all practical purposes, the star name is necessary.

Some tips from rishis:-

Ashvalayana:- The surname of a brahmin is Sharma,

that of kshathriya
is Varma.

The vaishya has Gupta and

the fourth caste has Dasa as its
surname.


Manu:- Girls should be given names that are easily pronounced and are
not harsh sounding. The name should have clear meaning, should be
attractive and auspicious. The names should end in Aa (long aa) or
(˜ or Ÿ ) and should signify blessedness. The boys should have
names with even number of letters - e.g. Rama, shiva [izv] . Girls
should have names with odd number of letters- e.g. Yashod˜, Bhav˜nŸ.

(*) The God indicated by Thiruvalluvar.

From

http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2008/04/thiruvalluvar-aandu-what-karunanidhi.html

We come across norms in Choodamani nigandu, given as sutras

and if we apply these rules to Thirukkural,

we come to know that

Thiruvalluvar indeed had followed these ancient norms

and had indicated his Lord, his Ishta devatha as Rama!!

One will be surprised to know that these norms were in tandem

with certain rules of astrology, meant for longevity and greatness!

In 12-31 ("I-vagai sthaanam for seyyuL") of Choodamani nigandu is like this.

This is about the sthanas.

A person is said to undergo 5 stages of life, such as

Bala (infant)

Kaumara (boyhood)

Youvana (youth)

Vriddha (old age) and

Marana (death)

These are known as 5 sthaanas.

In astrology, each house / rasi (constellation) is divided

into these 5 sthanas also known as avasthas

and predictions depend on the position of a planet in the sthana

Even is a planet is exalted, if it is placed on, say, marana sthana / avastha

(the degrees indicating death), the planet can not bestow the results of its exaltation.

That planet is as good as dead.

That is the implication and interpretation.

Therefore this sthana-bala was given prime importance by ancients,

even in poetry.

Their rule of poetry is that the lord / god of the Poet

must be indicated in the first verse.

But that indication must happen in the favorable sthaana or position.

Of the 5 sthaanas, the first 3 are about growth, a period of happiness.

So the norm was that the name of the Lord must be indicated in the first 3 sthanas.

If indicated in the last 2 sthanas (of old age and death)

the poet's work would not stand long in spreading the name of his lord.

The Sutra in Choodamani nigandu says

that the poet must indicate the first letter of his lord

in the first 3 letters of the first verse of the poem.

But it must be given as the shortened one, if the letter has deergha swara.

That is if the letter is 'nedil', its complimentary 'kuril' must be used.

"baalanE kumaran mannan padu muthir kizhavan saavu

kOlundhan pEr ezhutthu kuritthadu mudalaaga-k-koLga

yElu mun ezhutthu moondrum inbham pin-irandum theedhaam

saalu moovagai seer thane saatriya kavidahikki inbham."

(bala, kumara, mannan (king), old man and death.

Fix the first letter of your lord as a shortened swara (kuril- ezhutthu) in these.

The first 3 are good. The last 2 are bad.

Fixing the letter in the first 3 is a happy beginning for the poem)

Applying this to the first verse of Thirukkural,

Agara mudhala –

we have to look into

'agara' only, that has three letters, a, ga, ra.

All these are 'kuril' only.

The Lord of Thiruvalluvar must begin with any of these 3 only

and that letter could also be 'aa', 'gaa' and 'raa',

reduced into 'kuril'.

Now the next rule is given in 12-102 of Choodamanu nigandu

as "seyyuLukkuriya nakshathram". (the star of the poem)

"thanadu naaLil pinnaLum saarnthiru naalum aarum

vinaviya ettu vonbaanum viruttham vondrillai thanaaL

iNaiya moondrudan aindhaa naaL yEzhaa naaL ivai porundhaa

ninaiyum im-moondru vonbhan yErpadu moondru vattam".

As per this rule, the poet must indicate the letters of those stars

which are 2^nd, 4^th, 6^th, 8^th and 9^th from the birth star of the lord

counted in 3 rounds of 9 stars for all the 27 stars.

The 1^st, 3^rd, 5^th and 7 th stars from the birth star of the lord are not advised.

This means the poet must begin the poem with the letter that are indicated for the stars

that are 2 nd, 4^th, 6^th, 8^th and 9^th from the birth star of the Lord.

In Vedanga Jyothisha, each star is assigned some letters

which one can refer from the almanacs.

The poem must start with the letter of those stars that are 2^nd, 4^th, 6^th , 8^th or 9^th from the

birth star of the Lord, counted in groups of 3 covering all 27 stars.

The Kural begins with 'a'.

"a" is the letter for the star krittika.

If we look at probable stars that come in that order mentioned above,

we get Punarpoosam (punarvasu) as the star of the Lord.

Krittika is the 6^th star from Punarvasu in the 3^rd round of 9 stars.

Punarvasu is the birth star of Sri Rama.

The 'ra' in agara is the 3^rd letter which is the kuril of 'raa' of Rama.

This is place at "maanan" sthaana as per the Sutra of Nigandu.

This also stands for Youvana – youth immortalized in verses.

This means the poetic work as well as the Lord of the poet

will live for ever.

The second rule is to start the poem with letter of the star of Rama's star group.

It is done.

The poem starts with 'a', the star of krittika

which is 6^th in the 3^rd round from Punarvasu.

Thiruvalluvar has followed this ancient rule of poetry writing

and has succinctly indicated his Ishta devata as Rama.

Needless to say

he went on to incorporate the Brahma-tattva

in the very first verse itself

in akkaraantha Brahman and Bhagavan.

The only other god that he has mentioned in his work

is Lord Vamana (in Madiyinmai adhikaram)

The Economics of Satyamisation.

The following article by Jayati Gosh explains the Phenomenon of Satyamisation – of 'Control Fraud', that is a fact of the capitalistic economy with less or ineffective regulations, as excerpted from Mr William Black's book.

The Indian scene offers two pictures in contrast of the now surfaced 'Satyamisation'.

On the one side, the question looming large in our minds is whether Satyam is a lone aberration? With corruption having come to stay in endemic and epidemic proportions, can we say that one is honest only as long as he is not caught? If we start looking at other major business houses, will there be anyone left to throw the first stone at the offender as Lord Buddha told? The phenomenon of "control fraud", eclipsing modern business practices lends credence to this question.

On the other side, we have corruption of mammoth proportions of the politically powerful. The 8,000 crore Satyam scam pales into insignificance, in the face of 80,000 crore Spectrum scam. Atleast in the case of Satyam, there is some solace that it was a by-product of a business, where the money had gone into growing business, in generating employment and revenue. But where has the Spectrum scam money gone? How many jobs it generated? How much revenue it brought for the country? And there is another question, are we living in a world of two types of corruption, positive corruption of the Satyam kind (of Business class) and negative corruption of the Spectrum kind (of Political class)? Should we not ask these questions too??

-jayasree

Related post on horoscope of Ramalinga Raju:-

http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2009/01/ramalinga-raju-what-his-horoscope-says.html

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Markets don't regulate, they abet 'control fraud' by

Jayati Ghosh

http://www.dc-epaper.com/DC/DCC/2009/01/27/ArticleHtmls/27_01_2009_009_007.shtml?Mode=0#

THE SATYAM saga gets more and more amazing by the day, with extraordinary revelations about the extent to which the Raju family was apparently able to siphon money out of the company they controlled. As the murky details emerge, it is tempting to bemoan the poor state of industry supervision in the Indian corporate sector and see this case as an example of how Indian regulatory standards are not yet up to the standards set in the West. Indeed, that is how several analysts, both in India and abroad, have interpreted it.

But the truth is that instances like Satyam are neither new nor unique to India. Similar — and even more extreme — cases of corporate malfeasance abounded in the past decade, across all the major capitalist economies, especially in the US. And these were not aberrations, rather typical features of deregulated capitalist markets.

Furthermore, there is also quite detailed knowledge about the nature of such criminal tendencies within what are supposedly orderly capitalist markets. Four years ago, at a conference in New Delhi, the American academic William R. Black spoke of how financial crime is pervasive under capitalism. He knew what he was talking about: as an interesting combination of lawyer, criminolo gist and economist, he recently authored a bestselling book on the role of organised financial crime within big businesses.

This book — The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How corporate executives and politicians looted the S&L industry — is a brilliant exposé of the savings and loan scandal in the US in the early 1980s. It received rave reviews, with the Nobel prize-winning economist George Akerlof calling it a modern classic and praise came from all quarters including the then chairman of the US federal reserve, Paul Volcker.

In his book, Mr Black developed the concept of "control fraud" — frauds in which the CEO of a firm uses the firm itself, and his/her ability to control it, as an instrument for private aggrandisement. According to Mr Black, control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined and effectively kill and maim thousands.

Control fraud is greatly abetted by the incentives thrown up by modern executive compensation systems which allow corporate managers to suborn internal controls. As a result, the organisation becomes the vehicle for perpetrating crime against itself.

This was the underlying reality in the savings and loan scandal of the early 1980s that Mr Black used to illustrate the arguments in his book. But it has been equally true of subsequent financial scams that have rocked the US and Europe — from the scandal around the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) in the UK in 1991, to the Enron, Adelphia, Tyco International, Global Crossing and other scandals in the early part of this decade, to the Parmalat Spa financial mess in Europe, to the recent revelations around accounting practices of banks and mortgage providers in the US in the current financial crisis.

The point is that such dubious practices, which amount to financial crime, flourish during booms, when everyone's guard is down and financial discrepancies can be more easily disguised. This environment also creates pressures for CEOs and other corporate leaders to show, and keep showing, good results so as to keep share prices high and rising. The need arises to maximise accounting income and so private "market discipline" actually operates to increase incentives to engage in accounting fraud.

This intense pressure to emulate peers in a bull market, and deliver "good" results even if they are fake, is a well-known feature of financial markets which intensifies extant problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. According to Mr Black, "This environment creates a 'Gresham's Law' dynamic in which perverse incentives drive good underwriting out of circulation".

Mr Black further argues that the tendency for such control fraud has greatly increased because of neoliberal policies that have reduced the capacity for effective regulation. According to him, this operates in four ways: "First, the policies limit the number and quality of regulators. Second, the policies limit the power of regulators. It is common for the profits of control fraud to greatly exceed the maximum allowable penalties. Third, it is common to choose lead regulators that do not believe in regulation (Harvey Pitt as chairman of the SEC and, more generally, President Reagan's assertion that 'government is the problem'). Fourth, it is common to choose, or retain, corrupt regulatory leaders. Privatisation, for example, creates ample opportunities, resources, and incentive to corrupt regulators".

"Neo-classical economic policy further aggravates systems capacity problems by advising that the deregulation, desupervision and privatisation take place very rapidly and be radical. These recommendations guarantee that even honest, competent regulators will be overwhelmed. Overall, the invariable result is a self-fulfilling policy — regulation will fail. Discrediting regulation may be part of the plan, or the result may be perverse unintended consequences." "Neo-classical policies also act perversely by easing neutralisation. Looting control frauds are guaranteed to produce large, fictional profits. Neo-classical proponents invariably cite these profits as proof that the 'reforms' are working and praise the 'entrepreneurs' that produced the profits. Simultaneously, there is a rise in 'social Darwinism'.

The frauds claim that the profits prove their moral superiority and the necessity of not using public funds to keep inefficient workers employed. The frauds become the most famous and envied members of high society and use the company's funds to make political and charitable contributions (and conspicuous consumption) to make them dominant." "In sum, in every way possible, neo-classical policies, when they are adopted wholesale, sow the seeds of their own destruction by bringing about a wave of control fraud. Control frauds are a disaster on many different levels. They produce enormous losses that society (already poor in many instances) must bear. They corrupt the government and discredit it. They inherently distort the market and make it less efficient.

When they produce bubbles they drive the market into deep inefficiency and can produce economic stagnation once the bubble collapses. They eat away at trust." Mr Black's analysis is extremely relevant for India today. Not only because it shows how widespread the problem has been in other countries, but also because it suggests that it could be much more widespread even in India than is currently even being hinted at. It is also very important because it shows how much of the problem is essentially due to policies of deregulating financial practices and implicitly encouraging lax supervision, often as part of the mistaken belief that markets are good at self-regulation and can control the ever-present instincts of greed and the desire for individual enrichment at the cost of wider social loss.

Slumdogs or Indian dogs?

A shocking defense of Slumdog Millionare

by Mr Rahul Singh, the former editor of the Reader's Digest and Indian Express,

is given below.

I have no credentials –either journalistic or intellectual – to comment on his article.

But my citizenship of this country is a sufficient credential by itself,

to allow me call his article as rubbish and the mind behind it as mean.

Looking from his own logic,

the film Gandhi was a hit with the West,

that made many foreigners visit India –

to see India that produced Gandhi and

to see the places that have been sanctified by Gandhi.

But now with Slumdog success,

we can expect foreigners to visit our slums and

even wish to see the country toilet,

in which the hero (as a boy) jumped in order to rush to see Amitabh Bachchan!

Does Mr Rahul Singh take pride in promotion of such 'slum-tourism' for foreigners??

The irony is that this film does not offer anything other than this.

This is in stark contrast to Gandhi,

that attracted tourists and earned a good name for India abroad.

Now look at his second admission.

But for the support of the then Prime Minister Smt Indira Gandhi,

Attenbourough's Gandhi could not have seen the light of the day.

Can he say or can anyone say that

Indira Gandhi would have given her support to Slumdog had she been with us now?

NEVER.

She could not have given any support for a film like this,

nor even allowed the film crew inside our India.

The MOST OBJECTIONABLE DAILOGUE of this movie says it all.

While accompanying a foreigner as a guide in the Taj Mahal,

the young Jamal is assaulted by a police man.

The young boy, quite hurt and outraged by the police man beating him up,

tells his visitors –

'you wanted to see the Real India? See this. (policeman beating him up)

This is the real India.'

This dialogue is highly objectionable

because this movie, created by the foreigners is meant for the foreign audience.

When we make a film with such scenes, to be screened for our audience,

we can call it realism and even hope to shape or shake the conscience of our people

by such depictions and dialogues.

But when a foreign director picks up such selective ones (throughput the film),

it must make us sit up and ask why this is being done.

But what follows this dialogue is the mother of all objectionable ones.

Seeing the young chap scream like this,

the foreign woman shields him from the police lathi (its natural, I don't object to this)

but says – 'now I will show you what the Real America is' –

and hands over some dollars to him.

Hearing this dialogue, every American viewer would nod his head

– yes we will do, we will help this kid -

but it must put every Indian viewer hang his head in shame.

But that it did not is the way the so-called Intellectualism is shaping in this country

-calling it a reality and patting ourselves for the mature response!!!

Just imagine the impact this picture – or even this particular dialogue –

on the Western audience.

This makes them feel good about their sensibilities,

their sense of human rights and humanitarianism

But at what cost?

Should they get it at our expense?

At the expense of Indian sensibilities and Indian humanitarianism?

At the expense of 'reality' of our country and our 'maturity' in accepting it?

Are we non-humanitarian after all?

Does the film give any indication about our humanitarian side?

Even the anchor person of the Crorepathy show is shown in a bad light.

I think Amitabh can sue the director for the autograph scene and

the Anil kapoor depiction .

Amitabh was right in his comment that such ills of the slum are there

in the most developed nations too

-America not excluding.

But would any American dare to depict their other side

and show case in a selective way to satisfy the Third world countries?

This question must be answered.

The attention that AR Rahman is getting at the international arena

perhaps has blunted our sensibilities of self esteem and pride.

But a film that is cleverly made with a 'compare and contrast' depiction

to satisfy the ego of the Westerner,

deserves to be censured.

Its imperative that the Indian Public does not behave like the young Jamal

in jumping into the toilet-pool to score a satisfaction that we indeed had been noted!!

The elation that is witnessed now at the Slumdog success is in no way different from

the 'achievement' of young Jamaal in getting Bachchan signature on his photo.

That photo was lost for a few paise in the movie.

So too the Indian pride!

-jayasree

Related post:-

http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-slumdog-millionaire-clicked-in-west.html

Touchy India grows up, embraces Slumdog

by

Rahul Singh (Former editor of the Reader's Digest and Indian Express)

http://www.dc-epaper.com/DC/DCC/2009/01/27/ArticleHtmls/27_01_2009_009_008.shtml?Mode=0#

INDIANS — AND I daresay Pakistanis as well — are touchy about foreigners commenting on them or their country, whether it is in the form of a film or a book.

Ironically, however, many of these very films or books have actually benefited India. I shall mention some (there are many) here to make my point.

The first is Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, a magnificent film now recognised as a classic, on the founder and moving spirit of the Indian nation, the saintly Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. It was a huge critical and box-office success, winning several Academy Awards, including best actor for Ben Kingsley's riveting performance as Mahatma Gandhi. It was also a great propaganda for India (a film was also made on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, with the same intention, but it was not as successful).

On my travels I have met many people whose main knowledge about India and Gandhi is through Attenborough's iconic film. And there are others who have come to India only because they liked the film. So, India should be thankful to Attenborough. No such luck. Believe it or not, Attenborough almost never made the film, such was the opposition in India to a "foreigner" depicting Gandhi on the screen. It was only Indira Gandhi's support for Attenborough's venture that saw the film through.

Ditto with Freedom at Midnight, a stirring account of how India got its Independence, co-authored by a Frenchman, Dominique Lapierre, and an American, Larry Collins. How dare a Frenchman and an American write such a book, said Indian "nationalist" critics, while picking all kinds of imaginary holes in the narrative. One reviewer even questioned the authenticity of the account in the book of how Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse, slept with the airhostess whom he met on his flight to Delhi — until Lapierre pointed out that this was based on a report by the Indian police which Indian historians themselves had not bothered to read! The book sold millions of copies, was translated into several languages and brought tens of thousands of curious foreign tourists to India. If anything, the co-authors should have been honoured by the Indian government. Another book by Lapierre on Kolkata, City of God, got such a hostile reception from some Bengalis that it was almost banned, despite the writer having dedicated his royalties to help the city's poor.

We Indians — and I suspect Pakistanis too — are pretty ungracious and thin-skinned when it comes to outsiders depicting us, even sympathetically. Which brings me to the most recent controversy surrounding the film, Slumdog Millionaire. It is the biggest thing to happen to India since Gandhi won 10 Oscar nominations. Though the film's director is British, its subject is very much Indian: the country's financial capital and the recent victim of a terror attack, Mumbai. More specifically, it is Dharavi, the city's — in fact, Asia's — largest slum, a cesspool of poverty and crime, but also a beacon of hope for some.

Slumdog Millionaire, based on a book, Q&A, by Vikas Swarup, a diplomat who is currently India's high commissioner in South Africa, revolves around the popular TV show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It tells the rags-toriches story of a poor slumdweller Jamal Malik (played by UK-born actor Dev Patel) who overcomes adversity to become the winner of the quiz show. The female lead is Freida Pinto, a Mumbai-based model.

Apart from the film itself, it's the music that has created the most waves. The composer is the painfully-shy 38-year-old A.R. Rahman, whom Time magazine once dubbed as "the Mozart of Madras". His is a remarkable story. Born Dileep Kumar, his father, a film music composer, died when Dileep was only 11. The family was thrown into dire poverty, son and mother trying to eke out a living and Dileep dropping out of school. Then, a Sufi pir visited the family and their fortunes changed for the better.

When he was 21, Dileep and his family converted to Islam, he taking the name Allah Rakha Rahman. The same year, director Mani Ratnam commissioned him to write the score for his film, Roja. The music, with its magical blend of various influences (a major one being that of the late Pakistani singer and composer, Nusrat Fateh Ali) stunned Indians. A succession of successful scores followed. Today, Rahman is widely considered the best film composer the country has ever produced. More significantly perhaps, his music, with elements of pop, blues, African beats, jazz, Indian classical, hip-hop, rap, opera, sufi, Arabian sounds and folk, transcends national boundaries, making him universal. That is his true genius.

But there always has to be a spoiler in India and it came in the form of icon Amitabh Bachchan. In his blog, he said, "Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a Third World, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots", while adding, self-righteously, "Let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations".

Bachchan has since then backtracked, saying rather defensively that his words were "misinterpreted" and blown out of proportion. Even more surprisingly, very few Indians have supported Bachchan, an icon otherwise. I find that to be a positive sign that India is changing for the better. Some years back, the film would have been widely condemned, perhaps even banned in India. Today it is cause for celebration, "dirty underbelly" notwithstanding. Perhaps India has finally begun to mature.

P.Chidambaram on Slumdog success!

 

 

It made a mockery of moral sensibilities and self-esteem, to see our Home Minister Mr P.Chidambaram, getting carried away by the success of Slumdog Millionaire in the West, and to have advised the Financial institutions to focus their attention on the prospective business people from there. It reminds us of his earlier advice as Finance minister when he just stopped short of asking vegetable vendors to reduce the prices of vegetables to sell more as a way to tackle the slowing down economy!

 

The pathetic condition of the sprawling slums is a proof of deficiency of the Government.

What the slum kids need very badly are the safety of a home, good education and good food. The government is bound to give these basic facilities to these kids. Without realizing his responsibility in this matter, Mr Chidambram goes on preaching others what they must do where they can not do anything!

 

It is a shame that he could not understand the price India is paying to the Western world,  in the success of this film. The film has nothing to gloat about. It has only stripped the Nation naked on every conceivable sphere of activity. This film is fit to be banned!

 

 

-jayasree

 

 

**********************

 

 

Take cue from Slumdog: PC

 

 

http://www.dc-epaper.com/DC/DCC/2009/01/25/ArticleHtmls/25_01_2009_001_016.shtml?Mode=0

 

Union home minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday urged bankers to take inspiration from the movie Slumdog Millionaire and provide loans to budding entrepreneurs from slums, which were humming with business ideas.

Speaking at the launch of the International Financial Corporation-Venture East Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (an NGO) sponsored fund to promote grassroots entrepreneurship, the minister cited the movie portraying the rags to riches story of a boy from Mumbai slum as an example to show that young boys and girls from slums were not lagging behind corporate India. "Please watch the movie, which has fetched the Golden Globe award for musician A R Rahman and won 10 Oscar nominations, after its release," he said. Recalling the success story of girl from a slum in Delhi who had set up a beauty saloon with a government loan, Mr Chidambaram said, "Today, most residents in that slum are her clients and she earns Rs. 5000 a month." "A slum like Dharavi in Mumbai is humming with business ideas and innovations and we have to reach out to such people also," he said and urged government and private lending organisations to help such people.

"A lot of young men and women in slums have the necessary qualities of being innovative and are willing to take risk to carry out a business venture," he said.

The minister said the Indian economy was experiencing a slowdown, not recession.

 

 

Some reviews on Slumdog Millionare.

 

Excerpts from Alice Miles' review in The Times (UK): Shocked by Slumdog's poverty porn

Like the bestselling novel by the Americanised Afghan Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Slumdog Millionaire is not a million miles away from a form of pornographic voyeurism. A Thousand Splendid Suns is obsessed with rape and violence against women, the reader asked to pore over every last horrible detail. Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn.

Here is the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) summary of the film. It judged it suitable for viewers aged 15 or over (I would add another ten to that): "Strong violence is seen in a scene where a group of Muslims are attacked and killed in the street - together with general chaos and beatings, there are some stronger and more explicit moments, such as the deliberate setting of a man on fire… We also later see strong violence that includes a knife held to a woman's throat as she's forcibly snatched off the street, an impressionistic blinding of a young beggar boy, and torture by electricity in a police station. The BBFC has placed this work in the COMEDY genre."

Comedy? So maybe that's it: I just didn't get the joke.

I wonder if India will, or whether, as with Aravind Adiga's Man Booker prize-winning novel, The White Tiger, people will feel more ambivalent than in the West. An editorial in dnaindia.com, a Mumbai-based online newspaper, read: "The miserable existence of the average slum dweller, which we in India know so well, is novel to the Western viewer… The awarding of the Booker Prize to The White Tiger shows that the seamier side of the Indian dream continues to have a resonance in Western sensibilities. The White Tiger's victory left many Indians underwhelmed; who is to say that when Indian audiences finally see Slumdog they will not be equally put off?"

As a review on the same website by Vrinda Nabar, an Indian professor at a US university, put it: "Slumdog's eventual victory comes at a price. When the selective manipulation of Third World squalor can make for a feel-good movie in a dismal year, the global village has a long way to go."

Quite. The Mumbai Mirror dubbed it "Slum Chic", and notes that the term "slumdog" is not widely recognised in India: "It appears to be a British invention to describe a poor Dharavi kid in a derogatory way."

…When we are suckered into enjoying scenes of absolute horror among children in slums on the other side of the world, even dubbing them comedy, we ought to question where our moral compass is pointing. Boyle's most subversive achievement may lie not in revealing the dark underbelly of India - but in revealing ours.

 

 

 

Excerpts from

http://satyameva-jayate.org/2009/01/22/on-slumdog-millionnaire-prejudices-guest-post-by-saurav-basu/#comment-20429

by Saurav Basu

 

 

Back in the good old days when Satyajit Ray often made the most sublime neo-realistic cinema, one Ms. Nargis Dutt caustically charged him with selling Indian poverty abroad. Yet, Satyajit Ray"s films did not feature Calcutta"s slums but the villages of Bengal. There was an undercurrent of poverty in his major films like Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Pratidwandhi but there was human irony. No romanticizing poverty yet ultimately a resounding affirmation of human dignity.

        But contemporary film making seems to have appreciated little of these ground realities; instead we find a rehash of the old and improbable rags to riches story in an ultra-regressive style. A magnificent Mumbai slum, two Muslim brothers, a Hindu mob killing innocent Muslim women, criminally amputated children singing Surdas"s songs, Hindu policemen torturing an innocent Muslim boy and a diabolic Hindu game-show host who hands his Muslim contestant to his Hindu police which hates the Amnesty international, and voila, you have all the ingredients for a "secular" potboiler which is on the road to the Oscars! You might argue that it"s not realistic but only fantasy since there is greater probability of winning the jackpot on a lottery ticket without being abused by the police than winning the top prize on a quiz show with 15 unique questions.

        But then you can be kidding with the graphic depiction of blood curdling anti Muslim riot in which a Hindu mob slits the children"s mother, the Indian policeman electrocuting the Muslim suspect or the gory scene of the amputation of the street children by the mafia who are then forced to sing Surdas"s bhajans. The book by Vikas Swarup has the main protagonist named as Ram Mohammad Thomas who was conveniently transformed into a Muslim boy, Jamal Malik who lost his mother to a Hindu mob to make it sound in the author"s own confession more "politically correct."

        When was the last time in Indian History when an unprovoked Hindu population took to violence? For the record the Mumbai riots were incited by fanatical Muslim mobs in the face of the Baburi Masjid demolition. Moreover, it beats me how the consequent Mumbai bomb blasts triggered by local Muslim gangs can be disassociated from the Mumbai riots? And the much maligned Bombay Police recently lost sixteen of its bravest men while defending the city"s freedom of speech and expression against Islamist zealots who wanted to replicate in India, a 7th century Arabia.

        More disturbingly, you have the depiction of the blue bodied Rama whom Hindus consider as Maryada Puroshottam [the best among men] threatening to terminate the existence of the innocent Muslim children. To a question on with which weapons is Lord Rama depicted with in popular iconography, Jamal Malik the protagonist does not remember the grand Ram Lilas which happen across the country or Ram Kathas on televisions. Instead, a Hindu kid dressed like immaculately like Lord Rama stand in the mid of a slum in a threatening pose. And one cannot miss the hatred being portrayed in the face and looks of that young Hindu kid, younger than even Jamaal. Even a 5 year old Hindu kid is a communal bigot and Rama is responsible for all the communal crap. Muslims are seculars and victims by definition. And we need one white director to tell these things to the whole world. Not only this we have forcibly amputated children singing Surdas"s bhajan pining for a glimpse of illusory Krishna?

        This insensitive jaundiced anti Hindu view is reminiscent of Indian leftist cinema where Hindu male characters are black and Muslims white! Remember, Mr and Mrs Iyer where a Hindu mob was searching for circumcised dicks and didn"t even spare a Jew in true Nazi fashion! Never mind that in world history, Hindus are the only people who don"t carry an atom of anti-Semitism, but the director"s flight of "secularist" fancy won critical acclaim. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in his film Uttara shows a band of Hindu goons burning a Christian church made in service of the lord"s lepers and raping an orphan girl in the process. Expectedly, this rather original gruesome way of story-telling won him the national awards! In the Tamil hit, Dasavathaaram, we find an anti-historical situation fantasizing Shaivite intolerance against Vaishnavs where Ramanujam"s disciple is shown fighting Kulothunga Chola. Based on a solitary description of Chola antagonism in Ramanujam"s writings, we discover the Chola fanatic stealing the idol of Vishnu from Srirangam, ironically the same temple complex which was plundered at least five times by Islamic armies. Similarly, Kamal Hassan in his movie "Anbe Sivam", shows a pious Shiva devotee injuring the hero who is rescued by a group of benevolent Christian nuns. Previously, in the 70s when anti-Brahmana movement in Tamil Nadu was at its peak, we had Brahmana priests routinely paraded as rascals in Tamil movies.

        "Islamic" sensitivities have extracted book bans from both British and Congress governments. Girja Kumar in his "Book on Trial" has reproduced dozens of cases where Hindu books critical of Islam or the Prophet were banned, and the authors faced arrest or were killed. Salman Rushdie"s flight and Taslima Nasrin"s plight is well known. Lajja almost faced a ban because she had exposed the genocide against Hindus in Bangladesh. Movies on the state of Kashmiri pundits, victims of Islamic genocide against Hindus of Bangladeshis, the Hindu victims of the North East against Christian separatism and also the historical crimes by the armies of Islam and inquisitory Christianity are taboo in a "secular country" They cannot see the light of the day because they are inimical to communal harmony and hurt minority sentiments.

        This ostentatious display of anti Hindu sentiment is of course lost on the jingoists or those ABCDs who go gaga over such pernicious cinema. Sincere critics questioning the dumb plot where a slum boy grows up into a sophisticated leftist JNU product with a flawless English accent are censured by appealing to the authority of the Golden globe awards. They keenly forget the film was precisely designed for that, appeal to the racial sensitivities of those who really matter! Therefore, even the liberation of Jamal is not through out of any indigenous worth, but through an internationally funded poverty alleviation game show [Kaun Banega Crorepati recedes into its international avatar, Who wants to become a millionaire].

 

 

 

From

http://dailypioneer.com/152164/Slumdog-is-about-defaming-Hindus.html

Slumdog is about defaming Hindus

by
Kanchan Gupta (Pioneer, Sunday, January 25, 2009)

In keeping with American politics of the times, Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated for as many as 10 Oscars and our deracinated media, which constantly looks for inspirational 'good news' stories that invariably revolve around Western appreciation of 'truthful' portrayal of the Indian 'reality', has gone into a tizzy. Saturday's edition of a newspaper published from New Delhi had a blurb on the front page that read, "The Slumdog story: How 'Danny uncle' and his 'moral compass' created the biggest 'Indian' blockbuster — and why you should watch it." Predictably, the chattering classes, who had been blissfully ignorant of Vikas Swarup's Q and A (as they had been of Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger till its perverse denigration of India and all things Indian wowed the judges of last year's Man Booker prize) are now making a beeline for the nearest bookshop for a copy of the novel, whose title has been suitably changed to Slumdog Millionaire so that the book and the film are eponymous and both publisher and producer can encash the extraordinary hype that has been generated. Late last year, there was similar hoopla over AR Rahman getting the Golden Globe award for the music he has scored for Slumdog Millionaire. An approving pat on the back by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it would seem, is the most important marker in an artiste's career. Those Indian musicians who haven't got the Golden Globe are not worthy of honour at home just as Sahitya Akademi award winners are not worthy of finding space on our bookshelves, leave alone feature on news pages or news bulletins.

The larger point is not really about going gaga over an American award or a British prize, but how they are seen as India being admitted into the charmed circle whose membership is strictly controlled and is by invitation only. That invitation invariably follows a certain pattern; it's not merely the keepers of the gate chanting, "Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers let him go…" Apart from the fact that the 'tigers' in this case are not hollering but salivating at the prospect of seeing themselves clutching a handful of trophies on Oscar night, the nomination process is far more rigorous than we would think, with filters to keep out those films and books that do not serve the judges' purpose or pander to their fanciful notions — in this case, of India. Aravind Adiga crafted his novel in a manner that it could not but impress the Man Booker judges who see India as a seething mass of unwashed hordes which worship pagan gods, are trapped in caste-based prejudices, indulge in abominable practices like untouchability, and are not worthy of being considered as an emerging power, never mind economic growth and knowledge excellence. Similarly, Danny Boyle has made a film that portrays every possible bias against India and structured it within the matrix of Western lib-left perceptions of the Indian 'reality' which have little or nothing in common with the real India in which we live.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Boyle's film is about a slum where extreme social exclusion, political suppression and economic deprivation define the lives of its inhabitants. He has made every effort to shock and awe the film's audience by taking recourse to graphic and gory portrayal of bloodthirsty Hindu mobs on the rampage — the idiom that defines India as it is imagined by the lib-left Western mind — laying to waste Muslim lives (a Hindu is shown slitting a Muslim woman's throat in an almost frame-by-frame remake of the videotape that was released by the killers of Daniel Pearl) and property. There's more that makes you want to throw up the last meal you had: Hindu policemen torturing Muslims by giving them 'electric shock therapy', street children being physically disfigured and then forced to beg, and such other scenes of a medieval society where rule of law does not exist and every Hindu is a rapacious monster eager to make a feast of helpless Muslims.

Nor is it surprising that Boyle should have cunningly changed the name of the film's — as also the book's — protagonist from Vikas Swarup's Ram Mohammad Thomas (a sort of tribute to the Amar Akbar Antony brand of 'secularism' which was fashionable in the 1970s) to Jamal Malik. The name implies a Kashmiri connection, and we can't put it beyond Boyle suggesting a link between Jamal's travails — it is his mother whose throat is shown as being slit by a Hindu — and the imagined victimhood of Kashmir's Muslims who, the lib-left intelligentsia in the West insists, are 'persecuted by Hindu India'. Asked about the protagonist's name being changed, Swarup is believed to have said that it was done to "make it sound more politically correct". There is a second hidden message: The Hindu quizmaster on the 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' show has doubts about Jamal, who gets all the questions right, not because he is a 'slumdog' but because he is a Muslim; so he sets India's Hindu police on the hapless boy. Swarup did not quite put it that way in his book, but the film does so, and understandably the critics in Hollywood who sport Obama buttons are impressed.

The last time depravity was portrayed as the Indian 'reality' was when Roland Joffé did a cinematic version of Dominique Lapierre's City of Joy. In that film, the Missionaries of Charity were shown as the saviours of an India trapped in filth, squalor, poverty and Hindu superstition. Some two decades later, Boyle has rediscovered Joffé's India and made appropriate changes to fit his film into the Hindu-bad-Muslim-good mould so that it has a resonance in today's America where it is now fashionable to look at the world through the eyes of Barack Hussein Obama.

In her review of the film, "Shocked by Slumdog's poverty porn", Alice Miles writes in The Times: "Like the bestselling novel by the Americanised Afghan Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Slumdog Millionaire is not a million miles away from a form of pornographic voyeurism. Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn." Commenting on the BBFC's decision to "place this work in the comedy genre", she says, "Comedy? So maybe that's it: I just didn't get the joke." It's doubtful whether most Indians, Hindus and Muslims, would get it either if they were to watch Slumdog Millionaire.

kanchangupta@rocketmail.com

 

From

 

http://rdfan.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/movie-review-slumdog-millionaire-is-good-but/

 

by Sanjay Mehta.

 

 

All in all, all these make for a fascinating story, and an enjoyable 2.5 hours in the seat.

But…

Yeah, there is always a 'but'!

But…

• The expectations that I carried were more than a good story, well rendered. I was looking for exceptional scenes, exceptional acting, inspirational ideas. I did not really see them.
• I was looking for some incredible music compositions for warranting 3 Oscar nominations for A R Rahman. Well, there was good music, but I have obviously heard so much better stuff from A R Rahman.
• I was looking for material justifying TEN Oscar nominations. No, I really did not find that here.
• Acting of Anil Kapoor, Madhur Mittal has clear flaws. Dev Patel's is also a good debut, but that's it. I presume Danny Boyle might have also set out to make a 'good movie' and may not have had any pretensions of the kind of fame that the film has ultimately got. If he had any clue that he was working with Oscar-level material, he would have gone for a better actor than Anil Kapoor, or at least take few more takes from him, till he got it right!
• Some of the characters could have been developed a bit more. We see the pain in Freida's eyes at the end. But we do not get much of a glimpse into her mind. Anil Kapoor's character has his sense of jealousy with respect to a chai-wala going on to win so much, in his game. He is sarcastic, and even goes to the point of misleading him. Why does he do that? Why is he carrying such a strong feeling against the hero? That's left to our imagination. Wish some of these could have been developed a wee bit.

So why did the film receive the extent of acclaim that it has done? My takes are:

• That it was probably a very ordinary year for Hollywood, otherwise. Maybe there was no exceptional cinema (or not much, anyway) that came out this year. And so, one likes the few that make the basic cut. And Slumdog did that. For example, if I glance over some previous Best Film winning movies, I cannot see Slumdog having much of a chance, as a comparable film also, against the likes of Million Dollar Baby, Chicago, Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Titanic, The Last Emperor, Gandhi, etc.
• That western audiences have about had it, with the sci-fi, fantasy bits, pedalled about, for long, as good cinema. I have never been fascinated by the utter make believe in the name of science fiction. And I have questioned whether writers have completely run out of story ideas that come from real life, the kind that we can identify with, and understand? Well, Slumdog offers that kind of a story, and perhaps people want those back now!
• That India remains the flavor of the day. Where earlier, the snake charmers and the elephants are what the western world knew India as, today, with the increasing relevance of India in the global economy, there is a curiosity in the western world, about "what the real India is like"? And surely, it could not have become as good as a western country ('it has not'!) in terms of lifestyle and all that jazz. So what is that real India like? Danny Boyle gives it to them, and the curiosity of the western audience ensures large success.

All this of course, is my speculation, as I try to understand the success of Slumdog Millionaire, and specifically, the EXTENT of success, what with 10 Oscar nominations and all that!

Well, some people struggle for success, others have success thrust down their throats

Sorry, I am being uncharitable. At least I can say that Slumdog Millionaire was lucky to be in the right place at the right time!! JAI HO… !!