Tipu Sultan, Paper Tiger

Update: My Amazon.com review of the kindle book.

I just finished a first reading the Amazon Kindle edition of Indian scholar Sandeep Balakrishna's new historical book 'Tipu Sultan: The Tyrant of Mysore', published by RarePublications. The chapters in the book are covered in about 200 pages - relatively short in comparison with the bloated 'epics' written by India's eminent historians, but the beauty about simply stating the facts is that it does not require lengthy justification. It is what it is. The book is very economically priced, and is a steal for the treasure trove of data it provides us about the political and social landscape of 18th century South India. 'Tyrant of Mysore' is also available in hardcopy edition and the Android-compatible digital format via Google Play.  I found the Kindle edition more convenient since one can read it using a dedicated Kindle reader, or simply using Amazon's Kindle-app or their cloud reader on a web-browser, in large font.

Note: This post is simply a collage of thoughts after an initial reading of the book, jotted down in no strict order.


Take a few seconds to examine the book cover. It has a popular portrait of Tipu, captioned using an Arabic-like font, a blood-tipped sword in the darkness, and a leg in weighed-down chains. A first glimpse of the person hidden behind the fabrication.

A forceful and insightful foreword by Shatavadhani Dr. R. Ganesh sets the stage for Sandeep to let us rediscover for ourselves, the events that occurred more than two hundred years ago in South India, and comprehend the magnitude of the disaster that befell the dharmic peoples who came under Tipu's demonic shadow. The real story of Tipu was one waiting to be told. Indeed, as Sandeep himself says, there are plenty of primary sources that talk about the real Tipu, yet it is curious that no 'big' Indian historian has come forward to do the job of stating the facts for what it is. The reasons for this situation become apparent when we read about how SL Bhyrappa was sidelined by Government officials in India's education department for wanting to simply state the facts about other despots of India like Aurangazeb (the person who murdered at least 4.6 Million Hindus: New York Times). The book exposes prior fictional works, notably Bhagwan Gidwani's 'Sword of Tipu Sultan', and Girish Karnad's 'Dreams of Tipu Sultan', for what they self-admittedly are: commercial scripts of fiction, which have little correlation with the actual events that transpired. Rather, these works come across as using the standard "secularist" template adopted by Indian Marxist intellectuals ("Sepoys" as Rajiv Malhotra so aptly describes them) to create a false equivalence in the Indian discourse. Luckily for us, Sandeep has no agenda, and simply presents the facts tracked down meticulously from multiple primary sources, including the English translations of Tipu's own Farsi words; the letters he wrote, the orders he gave, the places his armies travelled to, the kings he fought, the deals he struck, the administrative methods he used - all speak clearly of a person who is entirely different from that manufactured in the aforementioned dramatizations.

Tipu's story starts with his father Hyder Ali, an opportunist soldier of fortune,  who rode his luck to become the ruler of Mysore. In this path, one finds violence and death - the description of the decimation of Chitradurga stands out. Hyder Ali who also gets to bask in Tipu's halo in popular dramatizations turns out to nothing more than a bandit who had the will and the luck to take advantage of political chaos to achieve his ends. As the reign of Hyder Ali comes to an end, we see a young and frightened Tipu, running away from battle, and being flogged by his dad. Evidence suggests that Hyder understood his son's incompetent, and somewhat unhinged personality quite early, and never entrusted him with serious responsibility. In reality, there seem to be few, if any, redeeming qualities in Tipu's personality - quite the opposite of what you get to read in his Wikipedia entry. Here, we read of a Tipu with a zeal for Islam, and his self-expressed need to impose it on a land that he considered to be full of infidels. The British soldiers were clearly referred to as 'Christians', and towards the end of his reign, the French soliders were also characterized in the same way in his letters. It is crystal clear in Tipu's mind at least that his fight was for his prophet and his exclusive brand of monotheism, not for liberty or as a dharma-yudh. It mattered little who his foes were. Brave opponents who offered heroic resistance were treated most cruelly. Gruesome torture, as one can expect, was used routinely to keep the civilian population frozen in terror.  The mass slaughter, the genital mutilation and conversions, and savage violence in the Malabar, and in the Coorg area, is a pattern that we find being repeated wherever Tipu goes. 8000 temples destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Hindus were converted, maimed or killed. All this in just seventeen years.  A small sample of the facts from the book encapsulated in tweets:

Large sections of the book are in the form of an annotated bibliography of primary sources (and their English translations), where you have Tipu pretty much tell his own story: he was neither freedom fighter nor secular hero; neither a brave 'tiger', nor a lover of languages and literature (it is heartbreaking to read how he burnt the entire collection of rare and precious Indian manuscripts and inscriptions in the Mysore palace library as fuel to boil gram for his horses). Some of his bizarre actions bear resemblance to another crazy despot - Mohammed Bin Tuglaq. In short, Tipu's fanatical loyalty was to his religion (as inscribed on his tombstone). He fought the British, but also many Indian kings and rulers, to gain more territory, slay the unbelievers or convert them, and of course, for loot. As you read through the book, the reader may be tempted to root for the armies of the despicable East India Company that finally put him out of his misery, such was the savagery of Tipu.  Near Bengaluru in Nandidurga (Nandi Hills), you can find this place depicted below, known as Tipu's drop. He followed a barbaric practice of having enemies thrown off the precipice. Tipu's real legacy, set in stone.

(http://dreamerz.co.in/nandi_hills.html)

Tipu only brought ruin to the region he ruled. After knowing these facts, it is quite unlikely that any sensible Indian citizen today, of any religion, will relate to, or even care to associate with Tipu's fanaticism and violent methods. Now that would be a true and lasting victory for India's 'secularism'.

The Land of Zero

Purab aur Paschim is a 1970 Hindi movie that can be seen as a dramatized commentary on the tragic deracination of Indians post their political independence (1947). It's an eerie prophecy come true - colonized Indian minds dumping the dharmic thought system and the scientific (yogic) approach to life postulated by its Rishis and Gurus for myopic western models; swapping out India's integral unity for the superficial synthetic unity of the west. This has resulted in perhaps the largest human mercenary population that is ignorant of its own heritage, anywhere and any time in the history of the world. The sum of the violence during the often savage foreign occupation over the last 800 years has caused the psychological equivalent of a nuclear holocaust within the Indian psyche, but that can't be an excuse anymore in this 21st century era of 'big data'. It's time to be informed and factual. It's time to get rid of the 'moron Smriti'. This classic song of the movie is a popular marker used by many Indians to recall this movie that pleads with India to recall its contributions to mankind since ancient times (lyrics).



Records indicate that Rahul Gandhi was born in 1970. Eerie.

p.s. Would a game of checkers played between Rahul Gandhi and Kapil Sibal be a "zero sum game" ?

On why Multiculturalism usually doesn't work - Part 1

We kick off the next series of articles that explore the contrasting effects of the 'Synthetic Unity' that defines the west and the 'Integral Unity' that defines India, as discussed in Chapter 3 of the book 'Being Different' (BD) by Rajiv Malhotra. The first three posts in this series serve to motivate and provide contemporary real-world examples that highlight the importance of these concepts by building upon an article "A Working Model for Multiculturalism" that is linked in the articles section of 'Being Different' website.

The author of that post primarily analyzes multiculturalism in a localized office workspace scenario and presents two main arguments:

a. 'Zero' tolerance (or mere tolerance) policy of a company is at best a necessary condition for establishing a multicultural workplace, but one that in itself is insufficient.

b. Mutual respect is a necessary and sufficient condition for achieving a stable, working multicultural solution.

Our post attempts to use these two findings as a starting point and extend them as follows:

1. Apply the idea of 'mutual respect' to a more general setting that goes beyond a local workplace where everybody is typically bound legally by a strict corporate policy.

2. The paradox of sameness.

3. Examine alternative theories developed in the West and contrast it with BD's mutual respect

In the west, multiculturalism experiments have invariably failed because of the lack of mutual respect, which if present, actually encourages multiculturalism and diversity. The United States fares a little better due to the combination of the bill of rights, Abraham Lincoln's legacy, and crucially, the Dharmic Gandhi inspired civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, but it is not a done deal yet.

Multiculturalism Works When There is Mutual Respect
Rajiv Malhotra in his book 'Being Different' highlights the importance of mutual respect (MR). MR possesses what can be called a multi-layered meaning. The first level is pretty straight forward: you respect me, I respect you, and we get along. Even at this macro-level, MR is superior to tolerance that says: either one or both of us tolerate each other, and we somehow get along. However, MR does not just stop there. Tolerance implies either a single unidirectional relationship (I'm superior and tolerate you) or two one-way relationships filled with anxiety (I tolerate you, and you tolerate me). MR implies a single bi-directional bond based on permanent equality, i.e. our respect for each other must be mutual or not at all, unlike tolerance that is characterized by one or more one-way relationships based on the (seemingly paradoxical) centrifugal notion of sameness. Let's apply these implications of tolerance and MR to a multicultural situation:

Scenario1. In Europe, many leaders have accepted that multiculturalism has either failed or doomed to fail. Why? Our argument: because it is based on tolerance. Both parties want sameness, but the question then is which party must transform to achieve this objective? This requires that either Islamic immigrants adopt the Judeo-Christian/Atheist west's norm, or the West embraces dogmatic Islam. In other words, one of the parties must be digested by the other, but given the irreconcilable differences in the predominantly history-centric thought systems (Islam, Judeo-Christianity, Atheism: see previous blog posts for a detailed discussion of our history-centric modeling approach) neither of these options are really realizable. Instead, the Western governments have set up policies that aim to superficially placate Islam to an extent, and in response, the immigrants have likewise compromised cosmetically to tolerate Western 'decadence'. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a stalemate characterized by a permanent state of difference anxiety, which can lead to occasional bouts of extreme violence from both parties. Our most recent post on the Virginia Tech and Oikos University shootings argues that the root cause was difference anxiety.

Scenario2. In contrast, look at India prior to Islamic invasions, a subcontinent where multiculturalism is not just an option, there is really no option but multiculturalism. It worked remarkably well for a couple of thousand years until about 800 years of barbaric foreign occupation that only ended 65 years ago. The key reason was that the prevailing Dharmic thought system strongly emphasized mutual respect. Every cultural variation was deemed equally valid, regardless of its geography (North v South or East v West), or it's sub-Dharmic category (Buddhism, Jainism, or Hinduism) and diversity was embraced as a manifestation of the divine (A beautiful article here explains that in a Dharmic thought system, the question was not whether there was one or many gods, because there is only god !!). In game theoretic terms, multiculturalism based on tolerance in Europe veers toward a zero-sum game with each party waiting to see who blinks first, whereas in ancient India, multiculturalism based on mutual respect resulted in a stable and peaceful non-zero sum outcome, where ideas were challenged extremely vociferously but scientifically and rationally via Purva-Paksha debates, obviating the need for state-sponsored bans or violent crusades. Incredibly, a large portion of that Dharma-generated mutual respect still remains intact in contemporary India, and is perhaps the only reason why a hugely diverse India has thrived whereas a monotheistic and apparently homogenous Pakistan has not. However, as non-Dharmic thought systems gain strength (fed by foreign-sponsors and their Indian supporters), we are beginning to see a breakdown of this stable multiculturalism in peacetime India, and one can discern a switch in the language that, increasingly like Europe, talks of compromise and tolerance rather than genuine mutual respect. The outcome of a continued breakdown is not hard to predict.

Why was the outcome of scenario-1, despite the unity via their common Abrahamic ancestry, an unstable stalemate, whereas the result in scenario-2, characterized by amazingly diverse groups of people, mutually beneficial stability? Why does the former produce and rely on mere tolerance and the latter, mutual respect? Part of the answer lies in the contrast between synthetic unity and integral unity, which we will explore in the next post by examining, what we propose and coin, the paradox of sameness.

As always, this blog is a work in progress and is intended to be used as a resource and reference. Updated text, corrections, and new links will show up as time progresses.

Analysis of History-Centrism - Part 3

Part-A: Duality Induced Conflict

Summary of arguments in Part-1 and Part-2
A belief in an unique historical prior is both necessary and sufficient to qualify for membership associated with a History-centric thought system (HCTS), terminology that was introduced by Rajiv Malhotra. HCTS guarantee the bifurcation of space and time into two distinct and mutually exclusive zones, i.e. duality, which among other things implies human centrism. Furthermore, the non-repeatability of the prior over time induces a net outflow of members and a non-trivial stable equilibrium is never achievable. All other things being maintained equal, the membership of a fully decentralized HCTS is probabilistically depleting over time. In other words, any HCTS faces a perennial and self-induced existential question, even in the absence of competition (i.e. even if the HCTS has a local monopoly) from an alternative HCTS.

When a HCTS is faced with such an existential question, it is almost certain that a subset of the membership will erect barriers to exit (e.g. blasphemy laws) and/or provide incentives for entry and re-entry. Regions that are characterized by strong socioeconomic variations ("third world") represent the best (in terms of per-capita success per dollar invested) candidates to compensate for a loss in membership in the more prosperous areas. A penalty for non-entry is also common (e.g. Jeziya tax or religious discrimination) and has been prevalent in every major instance of HCTS the world has seen in history.

Active and Passive Duality
This constant need for a HCTS to answer such an self-induced existential question leads to the notion of a 'strong duality' or 'active duality', as compared to the 'nominal duality' or 'passive duality' that is guaranteed in every HCTS. Passive duality is a situation where a group simply differentiates between an 'us' and a 'them', those 'within' and those without. However, it does not automatically imply hostility and a call to arms or to discriminate. Tolerance is a typical example of such a state of mind. However, such a state is most likely to be a transitional and short-lived given that the constant depletion in membership can only be made up in the long run by gaining or regaining market-share.

Active duality is a situation where a HCTS group will almost surely regard any non-member as an adversarial competitor. Such a competitor need not be from another HCTS and only needs to be a non-subscriber to the necessary conditions for membership. For example, it could be a person from a Dharmic thought system (DTS), atheism, or modern science, all of which are non HCTS since they are not defined based on a belief in an unique prior. Active duality involves hostile competition with non-members for increasing market share. Note that such an active duality implies an objective of increasing membership size relative to its competitors at any given location, the mechanics of which are better understood using game theoretic arguments. If the adversary does not respond or is even unaware that it is being targeted, it gets digested, i.e., its most useful ideas and applications are appropriated in a manner that is consistent with the necessary condition for membership (e.g. conquest of Arabic Pagans and Persia). We now present the game theoretic aspects of active duality.

Effect of Active Duality: Zero Sum Game
Postulate: A two-person competition between memberships of two thought systems:
a) where participants subscribe to conflicting HCTS, can be represented as a zero-sum game
b) exactly one participant subscribes to an HCTS, can be modeled an symmetric or asymmetric zero-sum game
c) both participants subscribe to non-dual thought systems, can be modeled as a non zero-sum game

Outline of Proof: Based on the stable-membership theorem (postulate), HCTS based membership size will never achieve stable equilibrium. If it stops growing via extraneous methods, it diminishes. Consequently, from a HCTS perspective, such competition necessarily focuses on the payoff achieved by increasing its market-share at the expense of a competitor. If the participant subscribes to a hostile HCTS, then the membership gained by one HCTS is deemed as lost by the other and thus represents a classic zero-sum game. On the other hand, if a non-HCTS participant does not attach value to increasing market-share, it injects asymmetry into the payoff structure. In fact, unless the non-HCTS participant attaches a suitable payoff value toward (at least) maintaining current market share, it will be at an overwhelming disadvantage under the skewed and asymmetrical payoff structure. In contrast, non-adversarial competition that involves non-dual schools of thought would focus on decentralized inward-looking themes that are not mutually exclusive and win-win situations are not only possible, but also practically achievable and sustainable.

The crusade is the best example of an active-duality induced zero-sum game. The extermination of the Aborigines in Australia and the conquest of Buddhism in India are examples of outcomes of an asymmetric zero-sum game. A good example of a non zero sum game involved the Hindu and Buddhist schools in ancient India where the debates that centered on conflicting metaphysical truth claims were intellectual (it certainly did not involve any systematical discriminatory practices) and required a profound understanding of the opponent's point-of-view, and represents a form of cooperative competition that resulted in amazing progress in science and philosophy that benefited both sides and remains one of humanity's truly divine achievements. For example, it is well known that several Hindu kings made generous endowments to the Nalanda University that was primarily Buddhist-oriented. It is not surprising that Nalanda was annihilated by members of a HCTS in a never-ending quest for market share.

As we can see above such conflicts caused by duality lead the participants (both willing and the unwilling) to constantly re-examine their tactics as well as long-term strategy. In part-B of this post, we analyze the nature of the choices available to participants in this regard.




Part-B: Participant response in Duality-Driven Conflicts

The Yogi's Dilemma
A beautiful Dharmic idea for case (b) is presented by Rajiv Malhotra where one participant is Dharmic ("Yogi archetype") and the other is History-Centric ("Gladiator archetype"), which fits well with the underlying game-theoretic model. As we observed before, the Dharmic participant is not prone to violence, but may have to fight back or get either annihilated or digested. However, by fighting back he/she runs the serious risk of turning into a gladiator himself/herself, i.e win a 'historic personal victory' that potentially becomes a focal 'faith' point for future followers, thereby injecting a degree of history-centrism into a previously non-dual system. This is the Yogi's dilemma associated with such a asymmetrical zero sum game. Per Rajiv Malhotra, the Yogi has two ways of resisting while continuing to remain a Yogi after the struggle. Either adopt a Gandhian non-violent approach and hopefully shame the other into withdrawing. The alternative is to first attempt the Ahimsa method and if that fails, follow the Bhagavad Gita and fight the gladiator with violence but without any self-interest whatsoever. Both are incredibly difficult to achieve because of human ego.

The Porcupine's Dilemma

Consider two clashing HCTS attempting to come to a truce or understanding as a temporary solution to the zero-sum game they are playing. How would such a relationship play out?

Step 1: They recognize their considerable similarities (monotheism, male God, history-centrism, and duality-driven beliefs). These act as centripetal forces that brings them closer.

Step 2: When they get close enough and understood the similarities, they recognize the key history-centric differences that are absolutely irreconcilable with respect to each of their chosen historical priors P1 and P2, which causes them to drift apart, thereby resuming their war of attrition.

After a period of time, as a consequence of certain events, they cycle through Steps 1 and 2, resembling two porcupines who would like to be friends but are unable to get too close because of their sharp quills. The conclusion from this is that nations driven by differing HCTS are unlikely to become permanent friends.

The Prisoner's Dilemma
This is a popular concept in game theory. Its general usage indicates situations where two opposing forces have to decide if it is a better strategy to cooperate rather than fight it out despite having the same objective in mind. In particular, we apply this to the situation where we have two different thought systems trying to capture market share from within a local population.

Example 1: In India, the last Mughal rulers in the 18th and 19th century did not appear to cooperate with the British [to be verified].

Example 2: On the other hand, we have a current situation in India where an atheistic thought system (Indian Communists) that was opposed to theistic groups in the past, appears to have decided that its best strategy is to cooperate with HCTS groups (evangelists and mullahs) even as these parties seeking to entice members away from the predominantly Dharmic thought system into their fold. See this interesting roadside poster in Kerala, India [from the Deccan Chronicle newspaper, 2011]:

It is possible that a similar situation may be prevailing in Europe as well with atheistic groups (left liberals) cooperating with mullahs to score over the established Christian thought system.

Update: April 28, 2012
Below is a "histomap" (courtest Maria Popova) that depicts a western-centric view of the ebbs and flows of world powers over four thousand years. It is apparent that this domination is measured largely in terms of military power, given that culturally and economically, Dharmic thought system based India / Hindus/Buddhists/Jains had a pretty large market share along these dimensions for quite a while prior to the Islamic invasion.