Abhaya: A Fearless First Indian Novel

This post is simply a description of my personal experiences reading 'Abhaya', Saiswaroopa Iyer's first novel, which I've quickly penned down in no particular order.

I got the Kindle edition at Amazon.com, and began to read immediately, and did not put it down, finishing the novel in one go. From a Rasika's perspective, the characters in the book and the situations cover all nine Rasas. We'll look at just two examples here: the Hasya of Krishna's predicament reminded me just a bit of Kapil Sharma's comical situation in the movie 'Kis Kis to Pyar Karoon'. And the Veera Rasa the reader experiences when we read about Princess Abhaya's courage as she fights against all odds for the cause of Bharatavarsha is a highlight. I'm sure readers who are keyed into social media will want to know about the 'Swachch Bharat' lady of Varanasi in the novel. Read and find out! 

Some of the pages, along with the vivid descriptions, appear to leap right out of old Amar Chitra Katha and Chandamama stories that we all loved to read and re-read before the advent of 24-7 TV. The Shringara Rasa is also on view, some of which I'd personally rate as 'U/A', making the content suitable for young adults. There are excellent and lucid discussions centered on dharma and duty which are suitable and perfect for any age. The dilemmas and challenges that Abhaya and other characters face, and the dharma ethics that is evident in the subsequent decisions they take was brilliant to read.

Saiswaroopa employs several Sanskrit non-translatables, and the author must be commended for this. This is a daunting task, and the author's Shraddha in the sensitive but frank handling of native Indian traditions is evident. There is little or no spoon-feeding of poor approximations of key Sanskrit terms in order to cater to the westernized reader. For example, the meaning of 'dharma' is contextual, and is used as is, and is not mistranslated as 'religion' etc. Also the accurate term 'Arya' is used in the novel, although the dreaded 'Aryan' did appear once, perhaps inadvertently. Hope this gets fixed in the next cycle of edits. There is some emphasis on 'faith' toward the end, which caused me some confusion. I personally chose to interpret 'faith' as 'Bhakti derived from a deep Anubhava' rather than as a dogmatic belief in a purely external force that is highly unlikely to bear fruit no matter how long, and how much 'hope' and 'faith' one has. On the other hand, the dharmic discussions toward the end were both moving and riveting. Yes, this is a work of fiction, but it also full of truth.

Despite being a fictional novel, it is quite clear and impressive that the author has taken pains to ensure an accurate portrayal of dharma traditions. And to be able to do so honestly, and without compromising on the readability and the smooth progress of a fairly intricate plot surely requires a high degree of skill, and fearlessness. This is a lesson, and a benchmark for every budding Indian writer. How many times have we have seen Indian and Western authors compose grandiose works and dramatizations set in a dharmic context, but approach the work purely intellectually and without the requisite Shraddha or Anubhava. They write from a "outsider" perspective, and without any adhyatmic insight, inevitably end up mangling dharmic concepts and the deep civilizational ideas. In direct contrast, this author's writing appears to be grounded in her dharma, and for me, this is the fundamental reason for the success of this work.

Finally, some brief notes on the writing style and some memorable characters. The first thing that came to mind when Krishna enters the story is Sri SL Bhyrappa's epic 'Parva'. Abhaya's Krishna will be loved by everybody. Full of wit, compassion, courage, mischief, love, understanding, and wisdom. Abhaya's lead character is smart, resourceful, cool, beautiful, and thoughtful. The quintessential Indian woman. There were some places where the turn of phrase employed pleased the Ganitha/analytics professional in me. Cool! The author seems to have a natural story telling ability, and she does so with a brisk and clear style.  I'm quite convinced this is the first of many books we will get to read and enjoy.

Abhaya is an authentic Indian work that has something positive for everybody.  Those who have grown up reading stories from Indian Itihasa will be able to relate to this book. I highly recommend it.

A Tale of Two Pilots

The stories go roughly like this.

An aircraft carrier is out in enemy waters, locked in a grim do or die battle. Most of its aircraft have been sent out on a patrol when a squadron of enemy bombers is sighted. Only two fighter planes are available to defend the ship, our pilot and his wingman. The wingman's guns jam, and it is just the pilot in between the bombers and the lives of hundreds of sailors. In a desperate battle, he shoots down three of them before running out of ammo, but causes sufficient mayhem that the remaining bombers miss their target. He wins his nation's highest battle honor. He dies in battle a year later.

----

An airfield in a strategic border location is facing a surprise attack by enemy fighter-bomber jets. Again, it's just our pilot and his wingman who barely manage to take off even as the bombs fall on the runway. It's down to these two to defend an very important airfield. The wingman loses visual contact and is out of the fight for a bit, leaving our pilot in what looks like a hopeless 1 against 4 dogfight. Undaunted, he dives into battle and fights them off to the very end, taking at least two of them before he is shot down. The remaining enemy aircraft head home. The pilot wins his nation's highest battle honor.

The first pilot is Lt. Commander 'Butch' O'Hare, who was awarded the US medal of honor for his action on February 20, 1942, saving the USS Lexington. The O'Hare legend was part of my daughter's elementary school homework. A grateful nation gave his name to Chicago's international airport, among the busiest. and most famous airports in the US and the world. If i recall, you can see a replica of O'Hare's wildcat plane when you walk from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2.

The second pilot is Flying Officer Nirmaljit Singh Sekhon, who was awarded the Param Vir Chakra for his heroism on 14 December, 1971, giving up his life defending the skies of Srinagar. There is no major, possibly even a minor airport in India, named after its most revered air-force hero.

This also tells a tale about the narratives of two nations.

Dharmic Clock Running Out

A quick back-of-the-envelope 5-minute 'ball-park' estimate of the 'market share' of dharmic people in undivided India.

Please feel free to post corrections if the numbers are way off, so that readers may benefit.

The following three rows display a recent population estimate by country (in millions), and the approximate percentage of Hindus (dharmics) in that national population.


India: 1230M (78.5%)
Pakistan: 192M (1.85%)
Bangladesh: 158M (8%)

total share of dharmics
= (1230*0.785+192*0.0185+158*0.08)/(1230+192+158)
~ 62%

I recall reading somewhere that the percentage of Hindus in
1947 undivided India was 66% (link needed). If true, this means, from 947CE to 1947, dharmic share dropped from 100% to 66%. This gives us a decline rate of  34/1000, or about 3.4 percentage points every hundred years, on average. During this period, the Abrahamic invaders of India perpetrated the biggest holocaust in the history of mankind, dwarfing both the massive genocide of native Americans by Euro-Christian invaders, and the mass-murder of millions of Jews during WW2 by the Nazis. Most native populations around the world crumbled under such continuous onslaught, but dharma stood its ground.

Yet, post independence, in just 67 yrs since 1947, the dharmic share appears to have dropped 4 percentage points. This despite enjoying more than 3/4 majority in India and having the freedom to chart their own prosperous future, and the luxury of having no organized Abrahamic genocidal opposition to fight. Today's Hindus, in far, far more benign times, appear to be losing demographic share at roughly twice the rate at which their heroic ancestors lost ground in the previous thousand years. Instead of the decline being arrested and reversed, it appears to have accelerated. Why? There are likely to be many reasons, both internal and external. Let's look at one internal picture.

Lack of dharmic grounding?
In this era when Tamas rules Hindu minds, when educated Indians recklessly brand and market themselves using "center right wing" or "center left wing" or "regional" or "world citizen" or some other gibberish label, and some its intellectuals cumulatively devote precious man-months to intellectual gymnastic dogfights over Vimanas, this should not come as a surprise. We see respected thinkers continue to fund and celebrate the suicidal process of outsourcing the R&D of key strategic knowledge areas (which should've been their core dharma) to Hinduphobic academics in India and the west, and mock native attempts. This is not merely a sign of intellectual bankruptcy, but utter adhyatmic bankruptcy. IQ, and not dharmic quotient is revered today, and consequently, almost all of India's thought leaders have lost their dharmic compass, and it does not seem to worry them in the least.  

If Moron Smriti continues to reign, then simple math sends a message: for the first time in many thousand years, dharma will no longer be the majority in a little more than 200 years from now in its own sacred geography. That's just a few rebirths away.

Tejpal and Secularism: A Symbiotic Relationship

The original Indian way of understanding the cosmos is to get to the very essence. This process of discovery was developed and refined by our Rishis to try and comprehend the ultimate truth that is Satya, by transcending sensory limitations. If the language of this discovery was Sanskrit, and Sanskriti, this culture of discovery, then the Sanskrit word 'dharma' that robustly sustains and upholds is the essential. On the other hand, one has English, the vehicle of synthesized science, in which this blog is written in, that can, at best, convey an limited understanding of Satya and Mitya, invariably leaving the remainder as 'an exercise to the reader's imagination'. It is this colonial inheritance that India's post-colonial intellectuals have chosen as their vehicle for propagating their half-baked theories. And this is exactly what Indian secularism is: a slogan of half-truth of, by, and for half-wits.

Rajiv Malhotra's path-breaking book 'Being Different' encourages us to rediscover for ourselves the Sanskrit way of getting to the essential and then contrast it with the synthesized approximations employed in the west. The essence of 'secularism' that can be obtained by doing a rigorous 'Purva Paksha', is summarized in his tweet:
"Secularism is dharma-nirapeksha (without dharma), leading to corruption. We need a dharma-sapeksha society & governance".

Secularism, as distilled above, is at best a band-aid, a temporary ceasefire that can hardly be expected to sustain a nation of 1.2 Billion people. The situation has reached such a farcical level that even as Indian secularism 1.0 (1947-2014) is being exposed on various fronts (e.g., read "Breaking India'), a Hassan Suroor, while being totally ignorant about dharma, challenges the so-called "right wing Indians" on:
(a) their weak intellectual roots unlike their western counterparts, and
(b) their disloyalty to this west-imported secularism.
The world of post-colonialists involves a rite of passage to peer-recognition and reward that requires Indians to first repudiate their Sanskriti and profound dharmic thought systems. Thereafter, rather than gazing at themselves and/or reversing the gaze at the west from such refreshing dharmic points of view, Indians are required to compete on how well one has internalized and is able to regurgitate and apply relatively stale, largely irrelevant, and homogeneous "modern" and "post-modern" techniques to solve a variety of India's problems. Such cookie-cutter models, when taken out of their western context and force-fitted into adharmic "idea of India", virtually guarantee findings that have a very poor signal-to-noise ratio, leading to all kinds of erroneous conclusions and poor approximations of reality that cause Himsa when applied - they harm far more than they help. Thus, 'dharma-sapeksha' is replaced with a far weaker band-aid of secularism that at least made temporary sense in the western world of organized religion. Such a secularism is practically silly in the Indian context at best, and downright harmful, at worst. Tragic too is the terminological violence employed by this self-serving ecosystem of post-colonialists, and the browbeating of the Indian public and the force-feeding of this secular diet. A wanton cultural genocide of a pluralistic, dharmic India.

"Secularism leads to corruption". A Tejpal is not using secularism as a last resort. That charge is quite absurd. A rejection of secularism, and adherence to dharma would have saved him and his victims. No, secularism has always been his willing and faithful companion and accompanied him in every 'penance' he has performed. Tejpal's track record based on his Tehelka and Thinkfest activities shows his devotion to secularism. Secularism's track record shows its devotion to Tejpal. He, who served secularism loyally, anticipates nothing more and nothing less than for secularism to bail him out in this hour of need. To the bitter end, Tejpal was faithful only to Secularism and it is precisely his successful internalization of secularism that has lead him to this state.

Secularism, Tejpal's accomplice in his every act, gave him remarkable wealth and power, but also corrupted him, just as it has corrupted the hundreds of so-called Indian intellectuals haunting the humanities departments around the world. His plea in the name of secularism has resonated with some of these intellects, while the more pragmatic ones in India who do not have ready access to western funds, have since deserted this sinking ship to find new shores. Some even exhort people to ignore the adharma in Goa, and instead look at the abstract principles that they claim is what really matters in the long run. This is a classic leftist three-card trick: get you to ignore both the trees and the forest, and focus instead on the mirage of a theoretical, feel-good idea - secularism in this case, that the linked article claims, is causing a "remarkable awakening in India towards crimes against women". Ground reality in India suggests the opposite is more likely to be true, and this should not be surprising. Genuine mutual respect between man and woman can be expected in a dharma-sapeksha society, and has not and cannot emerge from some dharma-nirpeksha secularism that offers the truce of tolerance at best. Men and women internalizing such artifacts are stuck in the infinite loop of a porcupine's dilemma, and thus you can see their feminists barely tolerating men, and their Tejpals contemptuously tolerating their own women.

Do dharma a service. When Secularism 1.0 is digging its own grave, lend a helping hand, and then prepare for v2.0.

The Merchant of Surat

I briefly met a merchant from Surat who was visiting New Jersey this weekend. It was quite a chance meeting. I did not find anything remarkable about his appearance - aside from his thoroughly Indian-Hindu visage and that Gujarati courteousness that disarms you immediately. He personally cooked food for a bunch of Indian start-up techies who were there to meet him the previous day.  I later learned this:

He was born in poverty, and studied in a Swaminarayan-trust run school, by availing of a 50% discount in fees that you could get by writing "Jai Swaminarayan" a million times over. With his limited education, he used to walk from school to school selling ball-point pens. He later branched off into trading a bunch of other things. At some point, during a visit to Antwerp, he figured out an ingenious way to cut small diamonds in Surat and essentially take over this European area of expertise to dominate their market. The rest is history. Today he's given employment to half-a-million Indians who swear by him. He wakes up early every morning and meditates, the Hindu way. He is aghast at the sight of smart and well-educated Indians - who are far more learned than he ever was, flock sheep-like, to dead-end white-collar jobs, accepting salaries and wages from corporations to turn the proverbial nut and bolt from 9-5, instead of being entrepreneurs who create more jobs, the Indian way.  As he moves into semi-retirement, he plans to open up a thousand schools in India that will run on original Indian moral values.

This is how India flourishes. India remains, as always, the land of opportunity, if we manage to throw away those colonial western shackles that enslave our minds, and rediscover Dharmic India.

History Centrism: Contradiction Networks

What is a contradiction network? Google generates a limited number of results for this phrase, none of which match how we plan to use this fairly simple concept in the latest installment of our ongoing research into the effects of History Centrism, a definitive phrase introduced by Rajiv Malhotra in his recent book "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism".  First, we provide a brief recap of the work done so far (feel free to endorse or challenge/improve this work by providing substantiated corrections via counter-examples, etc, to help take this research forward).

Recap
We present a deterministic analytical model of a History-Centric Thought System (HCTS) that among other things, stipulates membership and non-membership criteria (Part 1). This model also helps in making a statement about the stability of membership (Part 2) as well as predict how the duality implied by HCTS drives its interaction with non-members, including non HC groups and alternative HC groups (Part 3). We then comment on how the Western HCTS shapes the overall 'master narrative', i.e. the monoculture of Western Universalism (Part 4). 

We now analyze how and why the membership based on a HCTS protects the claims listed in its historical prior P. To motivate this, we present another implication of the Separation Theorem stated in Part-1.

Implication: A HCTS is a closed and static system
Proof: Given the unique and non-reproducible historical claims of the prior, it follows that no (extraneous) event or discovery at any point in time can dynamically induce an amendment in the definition and rules of membership since doing so would result in a new HCTS that invalidates prior P.

What are the consequences of this implication? 
a. Since the HTCS was non-existent before time(s) T, the unique point(s) on the time-axis at which the event(s) cited in prior P occurred, any event in the universe that occurred prior to T that contradicts the claims of P is deemed not to occurred and hence ignored.

b. Any scientific theory proposed after time T that if accepted would contradict prior P, is rejected. Such rejection proactively applies to any such future discovery. If a theory is confirmed (and becomes a 'law') via newly observed data, thereby rendering parts of P fictitious, then such implications are ignored. This includes any future scientific evidence that uncover past facts (via carbon dating, archeology, etc).

In general, empirical and scientific contradictions that result from prior P are not resolved but ignored (by resorting to self-referential justifications based on the prior P if necessary).

Contradiction Networks

Over a period of time, such a response by the HCTS results in an accumulation of contradictions leading to many members disowning membership. Such a situation can be conceptually represented by a contradiction network or a contradiction graph, a construct for systematically identifying the sequence of implications underlying a mass of contradictions. Mounting scientific evidence that contradicts prior P results in this contradiction network becoming both denser and larger. Consequently, rather than trying to improve the quality of life of its adherents, the HCTS management is forced to spend a large proportion of its time and resources trying to decipher and defend this maze of contradictions. This may lead to:

- defending against criminal and civil lawsuits around the world,

- proposing and funding support for literature that promotes prior-friendly alternatives and pseudo-scientific theories to refute contradicting claims,

- penalizing members, and in general discouraging dissent by stipulating an infinite posterior penalty for infringements (e.g. "eternal hell")

- silencing opposition via:
   i)  counter-claims of contradiction against competing HCTS,
   ii) reflect back claims of human right violations, superstition, and discrimination against non HCTS, and
  iii) penalties against wavering members.

- obfuscating (but not eliminating) the duality implied by the core HC model by adding additional unverifiable layers of HC thought as well as useful metaphysics and practical methods derived from the inner sciences digested from non-HCTS systems. We elaborate on this particular aspect in the next post.

Monoculture: A cultural outcome of History-Centrism

History-Centrism is a phrase coined by Rajiv Malhotra to describe the thought system associated with religions like Judeo-Christianity. The members subscribe to a belief in a unique, non-reproducible historical prior event and Monotheism is the corresponding theology, i.e.
History-centrism + Divinity ⇒ Monotheism

In this post, we examine the impact of History-Centrism on the dominant contemporary cultural narrative. In this context, a phrase that is becoming popular is monoculture. This term assumes a special significance in the context of agriculture where it describes the planting of a single crop over a large land area. Vandana Shiva argues that such a practice (foisted upon India by the West) has had a devastating impact on Indian agriculture and is non-robust and hence non-sustainable. Just like having a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds affords better protection against market volatility, maintaining biodiversity tends to have a similar positive effect on ecology. In the human world, cultural diversity works much the same way in maximizing the chances of finding alternative working solutions to contemporary world problems.

A good description of monoculture in recent times is given by F. S. Michaels in her recent book "Monoculture: How One Story Is Changing Everything and is neatly summarized here: "The governing pattern a culture obeys is a master story– one narrative in society that takes over the others, shrinking diversity and forming a monoculture. When you’re inside a master story at a particular time in history, you tend to accept its definition of reality. You unconsciously believe and act on certain things, and disbelieve and fail to act on other things. That’s the power of the monoculture; it’s able to direct us without us knowing too much about it.”

Note the key-phrases: 'history', 'master story', 'unconscious acceptance of a definition of reality', 'acting on this unconsciously, but disbelieving and not acting on that'. 

We postulate that:
History-centrism + Culture ⇒ Monoculture

What is root cause of monoculture? Where is/was it more prevalent? Where is it not?

Apparently, a culture that is fundamentally rooted in history-centrism is more likely to produce monoculture that issues unwritten and written guidelines on the correct way to dress, how you should be eating your food, how you should raise your kids, ... In short, there is one "best" way of doing things, and if you don't conform, your life can quickly become difficult. The world is split into those who cave in to the master narrative and those who don't. There are no wholly acceptable alternative cultures. This is duality at its best - the same duality that (we argued a few posts ago) is guaranteed by History-Centrism.

So what is the most dominant monoculture (MC) in the world? F. S. Micheals argues that monotheist religion was the dominant MC a long time ago, followed by a MC of science that relegated art and religion, leading to today's MC of economic value. However, the author herself has failed to note that she used 'world' often while implicitly assuming that if a MC holds true for the 'west', then it holds true for the world.

In other words, the truly dominant monoculture in the world is really the Western way of thought and action, of which economic value is just a component. Western Universalism. Today's de-facto global finishing school. Western universalism appears to be what the world (and i mean the world) unconsciously considers to be the standard to live up to in virtually every aspect, without giving his much critical thought. This is precisely one of the themes that Rajiv Malhotra appears to be opposing and presents his counter-arguments in his latest book: "Being Different: An Indian challenge to Western Universalism". Why Indian? India probably had/has the longest continuous cultural diversity on the planet. This is not by accident and is an designed outcome of the pioneering discoveries of Indian Rishis in the world of inner sciences that lead to several co-existing non-dual schools of philosophy (all Dharmic) that has defined Indian thought. Non-duality and monoculture do not go together. Dharmic thought systems look inward and focus on self-realization and has little time to waste on conforming to or prescribing master narratives. Historically, there has always been a healthy and peaceful exchange of ideas and cross-pollination of Indian sub-cultures for a very, very long time. For example, this picture (thanks to @brainpicker) shows the linguistic diversity of India (~1992). The various language labels used are probably West-given and may be inaccurate.

This co-existence based approach of the Dharmic thought system has preserved the authenticity of experience by preventing the sub-cultures from getting digested by a 'superior monoculture' and excreted (which is how history-centric duality works in practice). And it is no accident that Vandana Shiva is from India and is leading the fight against agricultural monoculture.

Is it then any surprise that this western monoculture appropriates and de-contextualizes a Yoga from such a peaceful Dharmic thought system, strips it of its non-dual Sanskrit, turns into a patentable calisthenics-market that spawns patent lawsuits, then proceeds to tie itself up in a pretzel-asana and complains that Yoga is a dangerous practice, and inevitably ends up in a good old dualistic tussle between Yoga and non-Yoga followers, and Yoga-A and Yoga-B followers ....