Chemistry of Love

Here is a story which may or may not be true, but it captures the essence of what is called the magic or mystery of love. The story goes that a college student falls madly in love with his classmate who is hardly aware of being loved. The boy thinks that he can attract her attention for a romantic relationship if they are together for some time and undergo some novel experience. He read in a book that novel experiences will raise levels of dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter that is central to the feeling of romantic love. He offers her to have rikshaw ride in the city. After the ride which both immensely enjoyed, she tells him 'Wasn’t the rikshaw driver handsome?’ 

The story is a slightly modified version of the one narrated by Helen Fisher, a noted anthropologist at Rutgers University, New Jersey, who studies the evolution of human love, sex, marriage and gender differences. Living in a culture steeped in mythical stories of erotic relationships, Indians are not wholly unfamiliar with the mystery of romantic love and sex, though we may not be well-versed in their chemistry and biology. The story of Radha and Krishna, for example, is the story of a passionate relationship elevated into an eternal metaphor of intense love and passion, longing for reunion and agony and pain caused by the absence of the loved one. In this story, there is no submission as both Radha and Krishna are not constrained by the hierarchy involved in a man-woman relationship in marriage.

Despite this rich legacy of erotic and love stories in mythology that defy social restrictions, we are largely loath to any open-minded discussion of love, passion and sex. No wonder, arranged marriages are still the most favoured mode of nuptial knot in the country, though the number of women joining the workforce and thus being empowered has increased manifold over the past few decades. It is a puzzle, to say the least, because the Indian culture is traditionally not negative to sex, unlike the Western Christian culture where sex is basically sin. Kamasutra, written in the 2^nd century BCE is one of the best sex manuals ever written. It dwells on sexual positions and techniques for maximising sexual pleasure.

Philosophical and scientific discourse of human sexuality in Europe and the U.S. began in the 19^th century known for its largely repressive norms of sexuality. The best philosophical discourse on love and sex I have come across during my recent quest for literary and scientific discussions of human sexual behaviour is French writer Stendhal’s De l’amour (On Love), published in 1822. His avant-garde ideas of love in its different forms are not without prejudices such as this observation: “In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.” He delineates different phases of romantic love from mere admiration to what he calls `crystallisation’: “that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.” A person madly in love with another person starts seeing new ‘meaning’ in everything associated with the latter. Fisher quotes a truck driver as having said: “The world has a new centre and that centre is Maryanne (the woman he loves).”

A Darwinian explanation of how evolution has shaped human mind and affected love and sex sheds light on what has remained a mystery. Men and women have gender differences that have evolved over evolutionary time. They are not just arbitrary social construct, a line of argument favoured by some scientists fearing backlash from politically correct intellectual circles that believe that evolutionary explanation will only strengthen gender stereotypes. British philosopher of science Helen Cronin, who is co-director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics, debunks the social construct argument:

The fashion for denying biological sex differences stems, I believe, from good intentions. There is a fear that if sex differences are “in the genes,” then a just and fair society, women and men having equal status, is unattainable; instead, both sexes will be inexorably condemned to what is “natural”—women minding babies and kitchen sinks, men striding forth into the world to run it; and thus “socially constructed gender” is the only safe sex. Well, the intentions are good; but the science is bad.

Cronin traces the gender differences to the divergence of sex organisms between sperm-bearers competing for mates and egg-bearers caring for offspring. She observes:  “In human beings the divergence is more modest. But it nevertheless cleaves our species into two. For, although the differences originate in reproductive strategies, they permeate our psychology—our priorities, emotions, hopes, and desires.”

Empirical researches by Fisher have also confirmed that there are gender differences. She put people who were madly in love into a brain scanner to see if she could identify which parts of the brain are active when someone experiences romantic love. Her finding is this: “Men tended to show more activity in brain regions associated with the integration of visual stimuli, and with penile erection. Women tended, instead, to show more activity in regions associated with emotion, attention and recalling memories.” These gender differences make perfect Darwinian sense, according to Fisher, as our male ancestors “needed to see if a woman showed visual signs of youth and health, signs that she would bear him healthy babies” while the “ancestral woman needed to remember all the things a mating partner had done for her, what he had given her and what he had promised.”

George Bernard Shaw’s characteristically witty observation that love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another unwittingly reflects the male proclivity for ‘sizing up’ women. There is also another interesting story that also apparently reinforces the idea of the male ‘advantage’ in matters sexual: the U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were on a tour of government farms one day. When the First Lady passed the chicken coops where a rooster was vigorously copulating with a hen, she asked an aide how often the rooster performed this duty. The guide answered: `Dozens of times a day’. Then she told the aide: ‘Make sure you mention this to the President’. When the President was told about the rooster’s performance, he asked the aide: ‘Always with the same hen?’ When the aide replied ‘Oh, no, always a different hen’, the President asked the aide: ‘Make sure you mention that to Mrs. Coolidge.’

But it is easy to question the stereotype idea that men are more adulterous than women. Who are these aduterous men sleeping with? As Robert Smith, who edited Sperm Competition and the Evolution of Mating Systems (1984) observes: “...males could not have been selected for promiscuity if historically females had always denied them opportunity for expression of the trait.”

Fisher is addicted to the theme of love, if the four books she has authored are anything to go by. Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (2004) and The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing (2000) are her widely discussed books. She is trying to make an evolutionary sense of the mystery of love to find answers to questions 'What is love?’ and 'Why do we love?’ Why We Love, Richard Dawkins says, “will entice you, charm away your resistance to its thesis, seduce you into accepting it. It is poetic, sexy, beguiling and, all at the same time, scientific.” She describes sex drive, romantic love and feeling of attachment as three brain systems or circuits human beings have evolved for mating and reproduction.

 

Her central theme of the book is that romantic love is more powerful than sex drive. People live for love, kill for love, die for love, have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings and myths. The sex drive has evolved to allow the human being to look for a whole range of partners, the romantic love to allow him or her to focus on one individual and the attachment to enable the partners to tolerate each other at least long enough to raise children together as a team.

The three brain systems are interconnected in Fisher’s view. Dopamine, the chemical associated with romance, can enhance levels of testosterone, the hormone of sexual drive and elevated levels of testosterone can increase levels of dopamine. The chemistry involved in attachment can generally suppress passion of romantic love, a fact that explains why couples find it hard to keep their passion alive when their relationship settles into a long-term and stable one.

 

Evolutionary analysis of love and sex does not do away with the mystery involved in them even as it seeks to unravel the enigma that we have traditionally attached to them. Science has not worked for the college student the way he has thought it will. Maybe the girl’s dopamine has been driven up by the rikshaw driver’s 'feats’ of driving. Why you love a person rather than another person may be a mystery still. But Darwinian explanation can throw light on the chemistry and biology of love. 

Sainthood miracles

Science and its quest for objective truth appear to have no place in the midst of media-driven frenzy in India over the canonisation of Sister Alphonsa at the Vatican. We are told that the people of India (Kerala, to be specific) are watching a landmark moment when its daughter who died at the age of 36 in 1946 is being conferred the sainthood. Watching and reading the media coverage on the canonisation of the first India woman (she hailed from Bharananganam in Kottayam district in Kerala), I have felt that I am living in an Age of Unreason. No question has been raised about the miracles supposed to have been caused by her as the excitement, sustained by the media, is still strong.

We are told that Sister Alphonsa, who was born Anna, has been put on the high road to sainthood when believers who prayed at her tomb experienced miraculous cures or favours. One of these ‘miracles’, prominently highlighted in the media, is the healing of a club-footed boy named Jinil. The miracle story runs like this: when he was just one year, he was taken to the tomb for prayers by his parents. His congenital problem was cured the same day. Let me recall here Carl Sagan’s oft-quoted plea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. But proofs are the last thing that people are concerned about when it comes to religious faith. Cure of a deformity after prayers at the tomb of a dead person is a scientific question. But unfortunately, faith is not interested in scientific questions and the miracles are always on a higher spiritual pedestal so that science and reason cannot put them to test and falsify them. 

Belief in miracles is nothing new since every known religion has its own sets of miracles. Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea, Jesus turned water into wine and Mohammad made a night journey to Jerusalem and ascension to the heavens, to mention a few from the collection of miracle stories from the three Semitic religions. But the concept of miracle is institutionalised in Christianity, especially in the Catholic Church. Full-fledged sainthood in the Catholic Church is accorded to a person posthumously after a bureaucratic process that involves various stages. Prelude to canonisation is beatification when a member of the clergy is declared venerable. A person’s eligibility to sainthood depends on the Catholic establishment’s assessment of his or her miracles cures. The Vatican sets up a Tribunal to examine the application for somebody’s sainthood and analyse cases of miracle healing caused by the person. A nun or priest cannot qualify for beatification if he/she does not have at least one case of miracle cure. Canonisation follows when one or more miracle cure is `proved’ before the tribunal. We are told that in the case of Sister Alphonsa the process of examining the claim for her candidature started in 1953, the tribunal examined scores of witnesses.

Now we will go back to the beatification of another nun whose `miracles’ have also occurred in India. Agnes Bojaxhiu, an Albanian nun who is better known Mother Teresa who died in 1997. What is her miracle? On her first death anniversary, two nuns in a village of Raigunj in West Bengal claim to have strapped an aluminium medal of the deceased nun to the abdomen of Monica Besra said to be suffering from a large tumour in her uterus. She was said to have been completely cured that day. But the Superintendent of the local hospital, Dr. Manju Murshed, and his colleague gynaecologist Dr. Ranjan Mustafi disclosed that Mrs. Besra had been suffering from tuberculosis and an ovarian growth and that she had been successfully treated for both ailments. Her husband Selku Murmu acknowledged that his wife had been treated and cured by doctors.

We may soon witness elaborate ceremony in the Vatican accompanied by media hype, such as the one we witnessed in connection with the conferring of sainthood on Sister Alphonsa, when the Catholic church decides to canonise Mother Teresa. The voices of Dr. Mursheds and Dr. Mustafis are all likely to be drowned in the sound bytes of those for whom the world of reason is only a side show which they can afford to watch and enjoy for their own convenience. 

The God Thing

ONE

Eratosthenes worked out the circumference of our planet 2200 years ago. The polymath who lived in classical Alexandria was not equipped with state-of-the-art instruments of the time to do that measurement. Armed with simple sticks, his imagination and his experimental skills, he did a simple experiment to observe whether his vertical sticks cast shadows in his ancient metropolis at noon on June 21, the longest day in a year, after he read that in the ancient Egyptian city of Syene in the south the temple columns cast no shadows on the summer solstice because the Sun would appear directly overhead. When his experimental sticks in Alexandria cast shadows, he realised that the Earth was not flat. From the shadow length in Alexandria, he found that the distance between the two cities is one-fiftieth of the total circumference of the planet. The real distance between Alexandrian and Syene being 800 kms, he deduced that the Earth’s circumference was 40,000 kms. His measurement was incredibly accurate with an error of a few per cent.
Eratosthenes was not unlike all those great geniuses whose experiments driven by their quest for truth have unravelled great mysteries of our universe. Despite their tremendous contributions to humanity, religions and their holy books claim to hold keys to unlock the mysteries, a claim which we uncritically allow them to pass on. Religious faith is always given the privilege of being at a safe distance from the arms of reason and scientific inquiry. We conveniently forget that a religion is a set of ideas and therefore open to critical and scientific examination. If the holy book says that the world has been created in six days, it is definitely a scientific question, unless you believe that it is only an origin myth. If you confront the faithful with the proposition that religious beliefs should be subjected to the test of scientific inquiry, you will be handed out an argument that religion and science are two separate arenas serving different purposes: the one catering to the spiritual needs of human beings and the other trying to explain the physical reality of the universe.
This is an excuse that religious apologists cannot be expected to make if a scientific discovery gives credence to the biblical story of the world's creation in six days. They will be the first to shout from the rooftops that science has validated religion. Since religion rides on the back of people’s credulity, we hardly raise our voice to highlight that religious doctrine and dogmas stand in the way of scientific pursuit. The religions and their practitioners know this well and they always insist (for their convenience, of course) that science and faith are different ways of seeking truth, while the fact is that religion does not seek truth at all but enforce dogma. The advocates of the distinct and mutually exclusive functions of religion and science also conveniently overlook the fact that great scientific inventions that have brought progress and happiness in human life and alleviated pain and suffering have not been inspired by religious faiths. True, individual scientists may have professed their faith in their private life, but their scientific breakthroughs cannot be linked with their religions or scriptures. Human inventions and innovations are always independent of those religious dogmas that forcefully, aggressively and at times violently enfoces their message of one absolute truth or another.
Assuming that there is religion in general, we may be tempted to ask the question what exactly is religion and what its functions are. You can expect a flood of answers to these questions and you can also find people believing in religion because they are satisfied with one or more of these answers. To large number of church-going or mosque-going people, religion and faith in their god is a way of protecting themselves from hell-fire in the afterlife. Faith appeals to the primeval human fear of death and destruction. Religion only maximises this fear psychosis in the faithful. Perhaps a more honest argument is that religion gives a sense of community life. This community identity might have been useful in the past when human life was understood in terms of tribal bond and affinity. In today’s world of freedom and democracy where each individual has his or her rights, this community framework of religion often assumes a tyrannical character and this tyranny is sustained through indoctrination. Every organised religion has its own system of indoctrination of young children. Terming this as child abuse, Richard Dawkins, in his persuasive rebuttal of religion in The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006) says consciousness-raising is a powerful weapon to fight indoctrination.

TWO

Central to the tyranny of religion is the God Hypothesis which Prof. Dawkins demolishes in his book that sold over 1.5 million copies around the world. According to him, since it is impossible to disprove the hypothesis, it does not necessarily mean that there is a 50 per cent probability of god’s existence.

“None of us feels an obligation to disprove any of the millions of far-fetched things that a fertile or facetious imagination might dream up. I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon, Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.” (p. 53)

All these ancient gods have vanished from the face of the earth and no one believes in these gods any longer. So, a devout Muslim who believes only in Allah is an atheist about these deities. Islam, in fact, says that THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD. It is also likely that early Jews, Christians and Muslims were called atheists by their contemporaries because the idea of god each of those monotheistic religions propagated was a total denial of the gods worshipped by the respective societies from which these religions arose. Large majority of believers are also atheists to the extent that they do not, in their daily life, strictly adhere to what their holy scriptures want them to follow. This useful rejection of religion in our personal and professional activities makes us all practical atheists. Majority of people pay no heed to injunctions in their holy scriptures that ask them to kill those who do not believe in their god or those who are apostates. When it concerns practical life, we apply rational thinking to religious doctrines. We reason that killing people for their belief or non-belief is incompatible with the idea of democracy and tolerance and that it will lead to social chaos that hampers our efforts to improve our sense of well-being and happiness. Majority of human beings will be satisfied only with rational explanation in our daily life. If a friend of you tells you that it was revealed to him by an angel that your colleague is trying to do harm to you, you will normally see signs of deep psychological disorder in your friend.
The faithful, however, take the God Hypothesis for granted and excludes it from all rational and scientific inquiry. Prof. Dawkins also shows how the hypothesis suffers from a logical flaw:

“If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.” (p. 75)

He uses Darwin’s theory of natural selection to knock down the idea of god as a creator of the complex universe. Though a dragonfly’s wing or an eagle’s eye look apparently designed because of its complexity, it is the end-product of an extended sequence of natural causes. If there is an intelligent designer who has designed this complex universe, the designer should be equally complex and leaves the question `Who designed the designer?’ As Prof. Dawkins says, it is naïve to think that complicated things in nature are like complicated man-made objects like a watch made by a watch-maker.
If god has really created this universe and living beings, he is definitely a poor designer. Examination of fossils and the findings of molecular biology has showed that 98 per cent of all the species that have ever lived on the planet have been extinct. We the human beings, created in god’s image as Judaeo-Christian scriptures say, are vulnerable to the threats from lethal germs and bacteria, also god’s creations. An apparently complicated human eye is not at all a perfectly designed eye because it is susceptible to blindness. There are ‘lowly’ creatures whose eyes are more powerful than the human eye. There are people who argue that the symmetry of the solar system shows the hand of a designer. But the idea of the symmetry ignores the instability of the solar system. Christopher Hitchens, in his hard-hitting assault on religion God Is Not Great (London: Atlantic Books, 2007), exposes this fallacy:

“It is, indeed, only because of the frightening emptiness elsewhere that we are bound to be impressed by the apparently unique and beautiful conditions that have allowed intelligent life to occur on earth. But then, vain as we are, we would be impressed, wouldn’t we? This vanity allows us to overlook the implacable fact that, of the other bodies in our own solar system alone, the rest are all either far too cold to support anything recognizable as life, or far too hot. The same, as it happens, is true of our own blue and rounded planetary home, where heat contends with cold to make large tracts of it into useless wasteland, and where we have come to learn that we live, as have always lived, on a climatic knife edge. Meanwhile, the sun is getting ready to explode and devour its dependent planets like some jealous chief or tribal deity. Some design!” (p. 80)

Stumped by these arguments, the religious advocates seek to defend religion by claiming that it is religion which teaches us what is good and evil unlike science which has nothing to say about values and morality. Let us assume that religion is full of prescriptions asking people to do good things. But if I do not kill lest I will face god’s wrath and go to hell in the afterlife, that is no morality at all. I am just refraining from killing because of the divine gift that awaits me. Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith (2004), says that what is good and what is evil is like what is food and poison. There is no such thing as perfect food, according to Sam Harris.
In our day-to-day life we do not derive our moral principles from religion. As Dawkins shows, there can be Darwinian reasons for individuals to be moral, altruistic and generous towards each other. Altruism may be a misfiring of our genetic disposition to be kind to our kin. Extension of this kin altruism of our ancestors towards members in our clan, community, neighbourhood or society is a misfiring in Darwinian sense, just as sexual desire for itself is a misfiring or by-product of the Darwinian sexual urge for procreation.

THREE

“How do you know your husband loves you? Is there a rational way of understanding that he loves you? Is it not a case of belief where you believe that your husband loves you?” Questions like these are part of another line of argument in defence of faith in religion. The argument is that much of human experience is not rational. It is true that much of our emotional experience is not based on reasoning and scientific inquiry. There may not be a scientific way of proving that your husband loves you. Even in our intellectual experiences, belief has its role. Certain things you believe to be true. You believe that you can finish your professional assignment without any obstacle. I believe that I can write this article against the irrationality of belief in god.
However, our sense of certainty in our non-rational belief in matters involving our intellectual and emotional life is always dependent on our reasoning, which sometimes may be based on false premises. You may be wrong in your belief that your husband loves you, but your belief is by no means totally irrational and you will admit that you will not develop this belief if you are not sure about a higher degree of certainty about your husband’s love. In the case of love, certainty is based on all those little gestures showing intimacy and attachment between lovers. Suppose, the person who loves you says he will love you more if you kill someone to propitiate a divine power that inspires love, you will stop being completely overwhelmed by your belief in his love. You will not do what she wants you to do if you are a rational person. So the point is that we may be non-rational in much of our personal experiences, but we are not irrational. Belief in god is irrational because it is not based on a rationally verifiable degree of certainty. Even people believing in god always apply this certainty principle in their daily life. Even they will be prone to be rationally sceptical to someone who claims to have seen god.
The religious apologists often argue that belief in god gives consolation. Religion and belief in god may console you, but what gives you consolation may not be true. If the function of religion is to offer consolation, the concept of hellfire and punishment begs the question what kind of consolation is on offer to the believers. If the consolation involves a believer’s feeling that he or she is fully insulated against the inferno because of his or her faith in god is false consolation. It is false because the consolation is derived from unfounded beliefs. I can believe that some supernatural forces will intervene in my life and make things better and that may give me consolation. But that does not make my belief true. If we can believe in religion based on ideas that are immune to rational and scientific inquiry just because the belief gives you solace, why can’t you believe in witchcraft? There is no intelligent distinction between religion and witchcraft. If someone believes that some kind of supernatural force exists, it is a matter for scientific inquiry. But believers always insulate their belief from rationality mainly because their belief is basically an irrational conviction they have acquired through childhood indoctrination and not through any rational inquiry.

FOUR

Religion is inculcated in children through chilling images of eternal damnation invoked by priests in their hell-fire sermons and religious classes. The notion of god is always formed in infancy. Some people say that secular humanism is itself a religion without god. The argument is that principles of secularism have to be cultivated through disciplines of mind and heart. This is far from true. Secular humanism or atheism cannot be likened to a religion primarily because it is not a dogmatic creed, much less an ideology. To be a secular humanist or atheist, one requires no greater disciplining of mind and heart than what a person who does not believe in astrology or witchcraft requires. Faith in astrology or sorcery demands no less mental and emotional discipline than what one’s belief in god equipped with supernatural powers to intervene in human affairs calls for. Secular humanism or atheism is not a dogma but a stance against all dogmas.
Karen Armstrong, British author on religions, seeks to differentiate belief in god from dogmatism or fundamentalism as if the idea of god has always existed independent of religions. Her book A History of God (London: Vintage, 1999) tells the story of the idea and experience of god, the way men and women have perceived god from Abraham to the present day. Former nun, she examines the idea of god in three monotheistic religions and finds that there is not an objective view of god as each generation has created its own image of god.

“…there is not one unchanging idea contained in the word ‘God’ but the word contains a whole spectrum of meanings, some of which are contradictory or even mutually exclusive. Had the notion of God not had this flexibility, it would not have survived to become one of the great human ideas. When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is anti-historical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today.” (p.5)

It is a good idea that the idea of god has undergone Darwinian evolution over the centuries. Of course, history is also a burial ground of discarded and fossilised gods such as the ancient pagan gods mentioned above. But the concept of Abrahamic god who takes keen interest in human affairs and punishes human beings for their deviations remains fundamentally unchanged though that conception of god has lost its meaning and relevance today as it is incompatible with the spirit of modern democracy and humanism. Yahweh of the Old Testament may be crueller than the god of the New Testament and the god of Islam may be a blend of both the Old and New Testament notions of god. And all these three religions carry the influence of monotheistic Zoroastrian religion. But basically the character of the monotheistic god remains the same.

FIVE

Religion has so far escaped the scrutiny of science because of the privilege it has enjoyed owing to its unfounded claims to morality and virtue, even as human history is replete with blood-curdling stories of violence perpetrated in the name of god. Abrahamic god is a jealous god. For religions worshipping this demanding god, life is a daily moral battleground between good and evil. The self-indulgent god tells Abraham that "I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless." We cannot expect love of life in these religions in which the purpose of life is preparation for death and the Day of Judgment. Religion has no respect for life. Moses under instruction from god ordered the killing of 3000 Israelites, his own people, for no other crime than worshipping the golden calf. It was believed to be monotheism's first massacre. Islam has its share of cruelties. Muhammad ordered the butchering of 700 to 900 men of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza in Medina. Monotheism creates a false impression in its practitioners that they are the god’s chosen people. The battle for Jerusalem, which is still going on, shows the scars of the belief that god is on your side in the battle against your enemy. Pagans for their part are also not free from their share of brutalities. The Aztecs of Mexico carried out human sacrifices on an industrial scale and they built their pyramids over bodies of human beings sacrificially killed to propitiate their deity. The cruelty of Hinduism is most explicit in its caste system, the effects of which are visible even today in India.
We have no quarrel with people who believe in god as long as it is their private affair. But religion and its god business have entered the public arena and are posing grave threat to people who mind their own businesses. Its supposedly sacred messages often inspire some of its followers to carry out violent attacks. Images of two planes hitting the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 and countless other images of bloodletting violence in the name of god call for fresh look at religion. We should identify the problem for what it really is. 'The problem's name', as Salman Rushdie wrote in his 2002 article on Gujarat violence, 'is God.'

Valley on the boil

I

In the mythical past, the valley was once a beautiful lake inhabited by Nagas, the snake people, living in fear of the demon Jaladeo. Their guardian Nila Naga beseeched his father, the sage Kashyap, for the deliverance of the Nagas from the demon. Lord Shiva left his abode on Mount Kailash and hurled his trident into the mountains to rip open a hole for draining the lake of its water. Then Lakshmi, assuming the form of a myna bird, dropped a pebble on Jaladeo from a great height. The pebble embedded in the demon’s flesh grew to a hill known as Hari Parbat. The valley was named Kashyapamar in gratitude to the sage. It is easy for the word Kashyapamar to gradually get abridged into Kashmir in a couple of mythical epochs, the span of which we are not supposed to know.
The reality of recent turmoil in the land that is bogged down by the baggage of history is a far cry from the simplicity of the myth. There is no shortage of myth-makers, however, who will have us believe that the destinies of the people of our sub-continent are linked with that baggage which we are bound to carry we do not know how long. In fact, India needs no Kashmir to prove that Muhammad Ali Jinnah has been wrong in advocating his crazy idea that Muslims and Hindus in the sub-continent are two separate nations. History of the sub-continent over the past six decades has rubbished that idea. Bangladesh would not have broken away from Pakistan if the two-nation theory had not been a crazy proposal. The question is whether India needs Kashmir to prove to ourselves the validity of the great ideas of secularism it has been founded upon.
The latest turbulence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) over the Amarnath shrine board land issue has as much to do with communal polarisation that has been building up there over the years, as with the whole gamut of issues that have been left unresolved by history because of political exigencies and strategic compulsions. Political follies, intentional and unintentional, have only added up to the confusion and havoc where a sense of imagined and real alienation of the people is easily exploited by divisive forces on either side of the psychological divide. Use of force is often sought to be the only option of the government to quell recurrent outbursts. Are there other options and which is the most viable option?
These question have been asked time and again and will continue to be asked till J&K remains a thorn in India’s side. The baggage of history may perhaps also help us understand the problem and provide some clues that offer a starting point for resolving what now seems to be an irresolvable issue. As long as it is allowed to be a chip on our shoulder, we cannot open-mindedly talk about it and express our views without risking the hazard of being dubbed anti-national and unpatriotic. Writers like Arundhati Roy, Vir Sanghvi and Swaminathan S.A. Aiyer have already come out to face the risk.

II

Jammu and Kashmir was priced Rs. 75 lakh after the Sikhs suffered defeat at the hands of the East India Company in the first Sikh War. The territories were not on sale, nor were there more buyers. The British wanted to transfer the area to Gulab Singh, a Dogra chief and loyalist, and make him its independent ruler under a treaty signed in Amritsar on March 16, 1846.
Buddhist and Hindu dynasties had ruled Kashmir till 14 th century, when a Muslim dynasty started ruling it until it was invaded by Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1587. After two hundred years of Mughal rule, Kashmir had come under the control of Pathans loyal to Kabul in 1752 till Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the great Sikh ruler, conquered it. Ranjit Singh had bestowed the estate of Jammu with the hereditary title of `Rajah’ on Gulab Singh as a reward for his services. After the death of Ranjit Singh, the Dogra chief had switched his loyalty to the British who fought the Sikhs.
The Treaty of Amritsar was the East India’s Company’s reward to him for his shifting of loyalty. But it also marked the beginning of J&K as a political entity. Hari Singh, who ascended the throne in 1925, was Gulab Singh’s fourth and last descendant. The All-Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (later renamed National Conference) was formed in 1932, with Sheikh Abdullah as its leader, to fight for the rights of the Muslim community as there were complaints of discrimination against Muslims under the Dogra rule.
The Quit Kashmir campaign launched by the Conference in 1946 sought an end to the feudal rule of Hari Singh. After Lord Mountbatten announced on June 3, 1947 the British plan to relinquish power to two domains - India and Pakistan - Hari Singh was evasive about accession to either, despite Mountbatten’s suggestion to him that Kashmir could accede to Pakistan considering the composition of the population. V.P. Menon, secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of States who worked in close association with Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel and was privy to the developments during the days before and after Independence, gives a sympathetic description of the Maharajah’s procrastination: “…situated as he was, it was not easy for him to come to a decision. If he acceded to Pakistan, the non-Muslims of Jammu and Ladakh as well as considerable sections of Muslims led by the National Conference would definitely have resented such action.” (Integration of Indian States, Orient Longman, 1956, p. 452).
Despite the Standstill Agreement Hari Singh signed with Pakistan, frontier tribesmen backed by Pakistan army started their incursion into Kashmir on October 22, 1947. Two days later, they captured Mahura Power Station and cut off power to Srinagar. Menon flew to Srinagar the next day. He recounts his advice to Hari Singh to leave for Jammu for safety and his hectic parleys in Srinagar and Delhi:

“We left Srinagar in the first light of the morning of 26 October and immediately on my arrival in Delhi I went straight to a meeting of the Defence Committee…Lord Mountbatten said that it would be improper to move Indian troops into what was at the moment an independent country as Kashmir had not yet decided to accede to either India or Pakistan…This [accession of J & K] was the only basis on which Indian troops could be sent to the rescue of the State from further pillaging by the aggressors. He further expressed the strong opinion that, in view of the composition of the population, accession should be conditional on the will of the people being ascertained by a plebiscite after the raiders had been driven out of the State and law and order had been restored. This was readily agreed to by Nehru and other ministers.” (Integration of Indian States pp. 457-458).

The same day Menon flew to Jammu to get the Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharaja. The proviso of a future plebiscite was acceptable to Sheikh Abdullah who believed that accession should be on the basis of the will of the people. Jinnah was against the idea of plebiscite because he knew that with the Sheikh at the helm as their leader, the people would accept the accession to India.
The signing of the accession agreement was followed by a massive operation of airlifting of Indian troops to Srinagar. As per the terms of the accession, Sheikh Abdullah was sworn in as Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir on October 31. The Indian troops pushed back the raiders and re-captured Baramulla, Uri and other areas. When the cease-fire was signed between India and Pakistan 14 months later, the latter was left with a portion of the State.

III

In a famous speech on May 15, 1946 at the height of the Quit Kashmir agitation, Sheikh Abdullah said that the `time has come to tear up the Treaty of Amritsar…Sovereignty is not the birthright of Maharaja Hari Singh.’ When he was arrested by Hari Singh’s government citing this speech, Nehru announced that he would personally head a team of lawyers to defend the Sheikh. Nehru left for Srinagar on June 15 but he was stopped by Hari Singh’s forces before he reached the capital the next day. Nehru was adamant that he would leave Kashmir only after meeting the Sheikh in jail. However, under pressure from the Congress Party, Nehru left Kashmir only to visit again to watch the trial proceedings against the Sheikh later.
The Sheikh was sentenced to imprisonment for three years. Gandhiji himself left for Kashmir on July 30 and met Begum Abdullah to convey the Congress’ support to the jailed leader. By the end of September, the Kashmiri leader was released under pressure from the government of independent India. In his first speech on October 4 after the release, he repudiated the two-nation theory: “We want people’s raj in Kashmir. It will not be a government of any particular community but of all – Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.”
Prime Minister Nehru was vocally committed to his promise that the people of Kashmir would be given the chance to decide their future under the supervision of the U.N. The Indian Constitution awarded J&K a `special status’ through Article 370. The 1951 election to the Constituent Assembly of the State left no one in doubt about the popularity of Sheikh Abdullah and the cause he espoused. The results showed the people’s rejection of Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir. The National Conference (NC) was opposed in only two out of 45 constituencies in the Valley and Ladakh. Nehru himself went to Srinagar to celebrate the victory. It is alleged that the Sheikh had ensured the rejection of nomination of rival candidates and that Nehru himself was complicit in this unethical act.
The Kashmiri leader, however, started showing some ambivalence and toying with the idea of independence or some sort of confederation of India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Predictably, his ambivalence was made best use of by Hindu organisations such as Jana Sangh formed by Shyma Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS and the Jammu Praja Parishad as well as the Akali Dal. Journalist and author M.J. Akbar sums up the Sheikh’s ambivalence in his brilliant book India Under Siege (Lotus Rolli, 2003):

“Part of the reason for the Sheikh’s worry was that India might not always be ruled by a Nehru – indeed, the signs of Hindu bigotry were already visible in the government; partly it was the old ambition to remain independent; and party such thoughts were helped along by the Americans and the British who could recognize the strategic importance of the extraordinary geographical situation of Kashmir, in the centre of five ambitious, substantial powers. The Sheikh now began to talk about a withdrawal of Pakistani troops from Kashmir, Indian demilitarization and then the promised plebiscite conducted by the U N.” (p. 243)

Akbar is among the authors who try to absolve Nehru of any involvement in shaping the plot to remove the Sheikh from power and install Bakshi Gulam Mohammad. But there are disclosures proving that the Prime Minister was not completely oblivious to the moves to dismiss Sheikh Abdullah. A.G. Noorani in his essay, `The Legacy of 1953’, refuses to give a clean chit to Nehru. The Sheikh turned a Thomas Becket to Nehru’s Henry II, he says and shows how Nehru himself had changed:

“The change came, not in the Sheikh, but in his friend, Prime Minister Jawaharlar Nehru, who personally gave the orders for his friend’s dismissal to [Intelligence Bureau Director B.N.] Mullik and his own secretary M.O. Mathai, both on July 31.”

Noorani says that there was a reversal in Nehru’s stand on the question of the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly’s intention to ratify the accession. While Sheikh Abdullah preferred it to plebiscite in October 1951, Nehru opposed it because it would be an embarrassment for the country before the UN. A few months later, Nehru reversed his stand and wanted Kashmir to `finalise’ its relationship to India. Years later, in his speech at the second session of the J&K State People’s Convention on June 8, 1970, Sheikh Abdullah said:

“The final break in our relations came in 1953 when Pandit Jawaharlal suggested that I should get the accession ratified by the Kashmir Constituent Assembly. This change in his attitude baffled me for he had himself opposed it in the past…I strongly advised him against such a step. This led to my removal from the premiership of the State and long imprisonment without trial.” (quoted in A.G. Noorani’s essay `Brought to Heel’)

IV

The plot was thickening against the Sheikh and the efforts of his enemies to unseat him gathered momentum following the death of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. The Jana Sangh leader had gone to Jammu in June 1953 to lead the agitation against the Sheikh Abdullah’s government. He had been placed under arrest and he died of heart attack in jail. The Sheikh also was vitriolic while attacking his enemies. On August 9, 1953, he was dismissed and arrested along with his colleagues. A new government headed by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad was sworn in. The authorities planted a story that he had been arrested just before crossing over to Pakistan. He was in jail till his release on January 8, 1958. During his term in jail, the J&K Constituent Assembly had ratified the accession.
Sheikh Abdullah’s take was that the accession should not be considered final just because it was confirmed by the Assembly which had lost its democratic character. He called for a fresh election demanding that Kashmiris should be given the right to determine their future. Again charged with treason, he was re-arrested on April 30, 1958. By then, the question of plebiscite was no longer in India’s agenda because the Government realised that after the dismissal and arrest of the Sheikh, the Muslims of Kashmir would rebuff the idea of joining India.
After his release six years later, the Sheikh again seriously proposed his idea of confederation. Nehru’s death on May 27, 1964 marked the beginning of a new era of relationship between Indian establishment and Kashmir. The G.M. Sadiq government then in power changed the special nomenclatures of designations Sadr-i-Riyasat (or President) and Prime Minister of Kashmir into Governor and Chief Minister respectively. Some of the Sheikh’s activities helped the establishment demonise him. His meeting with the Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai in Algiers in March 1965 was the trigger. He was arrested when he came back and kept in house arrest in Ootty and Kodaikanal for another 30 months. Jayaprakash Narayan’s letter to Mrs. Indira Gandhi on June 23, 1966 shows the outrage some of the prominent national leaders felt at the Kashmiri leader’s continued detention. “The problem exists not because Pakistan wants to grab Kashmir, but because there is deep and widespread political discontent among the people”, JP wrote.
The discontent among the people in the Valley erupts whenever there is a spark, imaginary or real. The transfer of land to the Amarnath shrine board for setting up facilities for pilgrims to the shrine was just that spark. Pro-Pakistan outbursts of protests by Kashmiri Muslims following an economic blockade by Sangh Parivar-backed groups in Jammu protesting against the revocation of the transfer of land showed the seriousness of that discontent.
Three years after his release from jail, a war broke out between India and Pakistan. The 1971 war crashed all remaining hopes of a solution to the Kashmir issue. India pulled off a decisive victory in December 1971. Kashmir was for all intents and purposes partitioned by the Shimla Agreement signed between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The cease-fire Line of Control has been the de facto border that divides the two parts of the State since then.
Prolonged negotiations that followed led to what is known as the Kashmir Accord of February 1975 between Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Abdullah. The accord gave finality to the accession and the question of any kind of independent status to the State was out of the table. The Sheikh was sworn in as Chief Minister under the accord and fresh elections were held in July 1977. Earlier in March, the Congress, which lost Delhi to Janata Party, had withdrawn support to the Sheikh. The Kashmiri leader proved his mass popularity in the State once again and the Congress won not a single seat in the State election. The State saw stability for the next five years when Sheikh Abdullah remained on the gaddi till his death on September 8, 1982.

V

The recent protest marches in Kashmir, clamping of curfew and police firing to quell the pro-azadi protest were a throwback to the turmoil that the Valley had witnessed in 1984 after the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi dismissed the NC government in the State headed by Dr. Farooq Abdullah, who came to power with a landslide victory in the election held in 1983. The protestors had waved green flags of Pakistan then as they did recently when Kashmir was on the boil. It was true that Dr. Abdullah who had been groomed by his father as his political heir was sworn in as Chief Minister with the Centre’s approval in 1982. In the election, the NC secured 38 per cent of votes in Jammu where Indira Gandhi launched an aggressive campaign against the former. She was accused of appealing to Hindu majoritarianism in Jammu during the poll campaign. And her mobilisation of Hindu sentiments worked in Jammu where the Congress pocketed 23 of 32 Assembly seats, while its performance in the Valley was dismal as it won only two seats. Pro-Pakistan Jamat-e-Islami, which fielded 35 candidates, was completely routed.
But the Congress leadership at the Centre had an axe to grind. The Congress orchestrated defection in the NC to remove Dr. Abdullah and install his arch-rival and brother-in-law G.M. Shah on July 2, 1984. All democratic niceties were thrown to the winds that day. The coup de grace evoked memories the 1953 dismissal of the Sheikh. Special forces were flown to Srinagar surreptitiously the night before the coup to repress any protests. The dismissal of the Farooq Abdullah government was a huge blow to democracy and sparked nation-wide protests by opposition parties. There was a widespread feeling that the dismissal was in retaliation for Dr. Abdullah’s presence at a meeting of opposition leaders convened by N.T. Rama Rao in Vijayavada on May 28, 1982.
The Congress government at the Centre in those years always treated Kashmiri politicians as pawns. After the death of Indira Gandhi, on October 31, 1984, Dr. Abdullah chose a reconciliatory path. The G.M. Shah government, installed undemocratically by Delhi was dismissed by Governor Jagmohan in 1986 citing breakdown of law and order. The Congress this time forged an alliance with Dr. Abdullah who was re-installed ahead of the Assembly elections held in March 1987.
The election saw the emergence of Islamist movement in Kashmir under the umbrella of the Muslim United Front backed by Jamat-e-Islami. The MUF appealed to the resentment of the people and appeared to be a formidable front against the National Conference-Congress alliance. The alliance, however, pulled off a remarkable victory by winning 66 of the total 76 seats. The outcome raised widespread allegations of election rigging and misuse of power. The disillusionment of the people, especially the youth, following that controversial election made Kashmir a fertile ground for secessionist Islamist outfits trained from across the border to start armed militant movements.

VI

“Muslims Awake! Do not barter away your honour and the Kashmir cause by voting. Do not forget the sacrifices of your brothers and sons”, proclaimed a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen poster that appeared in Kashmir during the election campaign in 2002. It warned that “All those who will vote will be shot.” But voters braved the threat and cast their votes. Though the average voter turnout was 44 per cent, the elections were held in a free and fair manner. There were no allegations of rigging and coercion. The National Conference was voted out and the People’s Democratic Party and the Congress joined hands and formed a coalition government.
That election brought new hopes as it brought to an end the government led by Dr. Farooq Abdullah who had already been discredited in the eyes of the people after the controversial 1987 election. He had resigned three years later as the State saw the rise of armed insurgency. The years that followed saw assassinations of pro-accession leaders and government officials, mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, boycott of polls by separatist groups under the umbrella of All Party Hurriyat Conference started in 1993, the army crackdown, the election of Dr. Farooq Abdullah in the 1996 Assembly polls that raised the allegations of soldiers coercing ordinary people into casting their votes and the Vajpayee government’s initiatives to start dialogue with all parties in the State including the separatists.
All those hopes after the 2002 elections have crashed as Jammu and Kashmir regions plunged into turmoil over the Amarnath land transfer issue. The Congress Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned in June 2008 after the PDP withdrew its support in the wake of the mass protests in the Valley over the issue. Pro-azadi slogans were again shouted during massive protest marches in Kashmir and communal passions were stoked by Sangh Parivar outfits in Jammu. Things are now apparently back to the square one.
Perhaps, there will be another spell of lull after the latest outbreak of trouble in the State over the land transfer issue. But it may not be long before there is another issue that comes handy for the people of Kashmir to raise pro-Pakistani or pro-azadi slogans. Plebiscite is no longer seen as a good option today primarily because of the hardening of positions on Kashmir in the rest of the country. An independent Kashmir will give ammunition to the Sangh Parivar to vitiate the situation in the country. The best available option is autonomy. Recommendations of the committee on autonomy constituted by the J&K government in 1996 which envisage the return of Kashmir to pre-1953 status with the Centre’s control over the State limited to defence, foreign affairs and communication may be a good starting point. Of course, there was a vociferous hue and cry when the State Assembly passed a resolution on June 26, 2000 urging the State and Central governments to implement the committee’s report. The resolution adopted with the support of the NC government headed by Dr. Abdullah whipped up passions, with the Sangh Parivar alleging that it was nothing short of treason.
A positive aspect of the whole issue is the refusal of Muslims in the rest of India to express solidarity with separatist demands of Muslim fundamentalist outfits in Kashmir. They know that their interests are best served in secular India and that democracy gives them opportunity to voice their grievances and concerns. In India, Sunnis, Shia Muslims and disparate sects and groups among them are treated with equal respect, something that is unknown in many Islamic countries.
It is time we started a dispassionate and democratic debate on the question of autonomy to Kashmir. A sage-saviour to be approached for deliverance from the demon (Indian state for Kashmiris and Pakistan-aided separatists for us Indians) exists only in the realm of myths.

Winds of Change

There was a time when I used to be furious about religious restrictions (and there are many in the religion of my birth). For me, all debates over whether this or that injunction by bearded clergymen (there are many in the religion of my birth and they are powerful) complies with modernity are over. I have managed to come out of the herd I was born in and am utterly convinced that religion is an obstacle to individual freedom. It is naïve to believe that there are good things in religion.
Although religion is no longer my concern, I still feel deeply disturbed whenever I witness some sadist moulavi or priest shoves his dangerous retrograde, male chauvinist and gender-discriminatory views down the throats of his oddly hapless and sheepish flock. I am disturbed not so much by what the bearded or gowned guy was farting about as by the amazing level of acceptance often shown even by supposedly intelligent people in the herd.
A few days ago, I was a witness to an outrageous restriction imposed by a moulavi at a nikah ceremony held in a hall in my town. Men and women invited to the marriage solemnising ceremony was clearly segregated by a partition that sliced the hall into two mutually irreconcilable zones. But the mulla did not come on stage to officiate the nikah till the women zone was completely enveloped inside their portion of the hall so that they could not see the ceremony. Barring a few private murmurings, there was hardly any voice of protest from either of the zones. An `outsider’ in the herd, I showed my protest by not entering the hall when the ceremony was going on. My daughter just walked out of the hall in protest and strolled outside till the male-dominated ritual was over.
Such depressing experiences are enough to ward off any hopes about possible winds of change in religion. An incorrigible optimist I am not, but a news item that was carried by most of the newspapers on August 13 has at least soothes me out of my depression and pessimistic feelings. Dr. Sayeda Hamid, a member of the Planning Commission and an Islamic scholar flew down from New Delhi to Lucknow on August 12 to perform what had been a monopoly of male priests. Dr. Hamid solemnised the marriage of Naeesh Hasan, an activist fighting for women’s rights, and Imran Ali, a PhD scholar from Aligarh Muslim University. The bride (not her father as is the practice) and the bridegroom were present as Dr. Hamid played the role of a `qazi’ and performed their wedding. All the four witnesses were also women.
That is refreshing news. Now I am not sure whether I should remain serene when all kinds of idiotic things are happening in the name of religion. It is time we brought Dr. Hamids, Hasans and Alis on the centre stage of our debates. They revive hopes of reforming religion.

Dalrymple's Journey in the shadow of Byzantium

The journey that starts from the Monastery of Iviron, Mount Athos in Greece, on June 29, 1994 ends in the Great Kharga Oasis in Egypt on December 20 that year. It traces the twilight of Eastern Christianity in a vast expanse of land that was once Byzantine Empire, eastern part of the Roman Empire, that broke away from the western empire in the fifth century common era (CE) with Constantinople as its capital.
William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain (Penguin, 1997) is not a just a travelogue that narrates his experiences during his journey from one end of the eastern empire to its other end. It rather encapsulates the divisions, disturbances and growing tension that define contemporary life of people in areas that once formed part of the eastern Christendom, which has ceased to exist since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, an event that culminated the expansion of Islam started in the seventh century.
Dalrymple starts his journey in the footsteps of the great Byzantine traveller-monk John Moschos who narrated his journey in The Spiritual Meadows that he compiled at the end of his life in Constantinople in the sixth century. It is a collection of memories, events and anecdotes the monk had witnessed during his journey with his young friend Sophronius from one end of the Byzantine Empire to the other. Dalrymple’s journey, however, is essentially from the classical Christian past of the Levant to its Islamic present.

“Christianity is an Eastern religion which grew firmly rooted in the intellectual ferment of the Middle East. John Moschos saw that plant begin to wither in the hot winds of change that scoured the Levant of his day. On my journey in his footsteps I have seen the very last stalks in the process of being uprooted. It has been a continuous process, lasting nearly one and a half millennia. Moschos saw its beginnings. I have seen the beginning of its end.” (pp 453-454)

When he reaches Istanbul, which was “once home to an inspirational ferment of different ethnicities”, he finds that the city is now mono-ethnic with Turks forming 99 per cent of its population. Half of the population of what was once the capital of Eastern Christendom was Christian at the end of the 19 th century. What sealed the fate of Christians (Greek Orthodox and Armenians) was the victory of the Turks in the 1922 Greeco-Turkish war following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks expelled the Greeks from Anatolia (Asian part of Turkey) in retaliation for the mass eviction of the Turks from northern Greece. There were still Greeks in Istanbul as the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 allowed 400,00 Greeks to remain there.

“All this changed in 1955 when Istanbul played host to the worst race riot in Europe since Kristallnacht. In a single night…thousands of hired thugs descended on the city’s Hellenic ghettos. Almost every Greek shop in the city had its window broken; cemeteries were desecrated; the Tombs of the Patriarchs were destroyed; seventy-three Orthodox churches were gutted.” (P 30).

Today this ancient Byzantine capital is said to have only five thousand Greeks and the rise of Islamic Right has made things worse for them. Dalrymple says that the city, which once had 500 churches and monasteries, now has hardly 30, most of them rebuilt and converted into mosques, including Hagia Sophia, the supreme masterpiece of Byzantine architecture, built in 530 CE. Perhaps the history of the region would have been different had the embattled Byzantine Emperor Manuel II secured the support of the Catholic Church to defend Constantinople under threat from the Ottomans. He went to the West and acceded to many of the religious demands of the Catholic Church. But the latter still refused to come to the rescue of the Christian empire. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks 50 years later in 1453.
The story of Antioch and Edessa (now Antakya and Urfa) is no different. While Byzantine Antioch is “now just a city of memory”, Edessa has no Christian communities since the First World War. The Byzantine university town of Edessa, located at the “philosophical faultline that ran between the Eastern and Western worlds”, was once the breeding ground of heretic sects such as Carpocratians who thought that true freedom can be achieved by believers by ignoring the distinction between what is good and what is evil. Armenians in the city were marched out and murdered by the Turks after the end of the First World War.
The author visits Saffron Monastery (Deir el-Zaferan) in Mardin in Turkey. The monastery was the headquarters of Syrian Orthodox church, the ancient Church of Antioch. The Syrian Orthodox Church, also known as Suriani church, broke away from the mainstream Greek Orthodox Church of Byzantium in 451. The Surianis were also deported and massacred by the Turks at the height of the post-First World War Turkish nationalism. From 200,000 in the 19 th century, the size of the community came down to 70,000 in 1920 and barely 4000 in 1990s.
Dalrymple finds Christians comfortable in Syria after he crossed the Turkish-Syrian border and reaches the ancient Byzantine city of Aleppo.

“I have always loved the fact that in Syria you can still walk on Roman roads that have not been resurfaced since the time of Diocletian, or stand on castle walls that have not been restored since Saladin stormed them. In the Same way, perhaps I should be pleased that in the [Hotel] Baron you can sleep in sheets that have not been washed since T.E. Lawrence slept there, and even be bitten by the same colonies of bedbugs that once nibbled the great Ataturk.” (p. 135)

Aleppo has been a place of refuge for the Armenians, Surianis and Greeks driven out of Anatolia. After the First World War, Syria was under the French Mandate. The author witnesses religious harmony still existing in Syria. In the convent of Seidnaya, the most important of the three Byzantine monasteries still functioning in Syria, he watches Muslim women praying there for babies.
There are occasions when Dalrymple witnesses fluidity of religions during his travels. He tells the story of the fish ponds of Abraham in a remote part of Turkey. They are a relic of one of the most ancient fertility cults in the Middle East. They later became a Christian shrine and now they are sacred to Muslims. Throughout his narrative, there is an underlying feeling that this fluidity of faiths is now extremely vulnerable to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
The conflicts among faiths are nowhere clearer than in Lebanon. Dalrymple meets Robert Fisk, reputed British journalist settled in Beirut for nearly three decades. According to Fisk, Maronite Christians of Lebanon are themselves to blame for the Lebanese civil war. The francophone Maronites always wanted to dominate Lebanon. Dalrymple visits the Maronite town of Bsharre in Lebanon which was the birth place of Maronite poet Khalil Gibran. On his death bed, Gibran left Bsharre all the royalities from The Prophet running $ 1 million annually. “The town was plunged into its own miniature civil war” between two Maronite clans over the division of the money.”
The author’s next destination is Jerusalem where he visits the Armenian quarter of the city.

“The Jerusalem Armenians became adept at living under foreign rule. In the eighth century, when Jerusalem was ruled by the Arab Abbasid dynasty, the Armenians managed to arrange it so that two of the Caliphs had Armenian mothers; in 1099, when the Crusaders captured the town, the first two queens of Jerusalem were also Aremenain. Later, when Saladin reconquered the city for Islam, the Armenians played their cards with such skill that they were the only Christians who avoided being expelled or carried off into slavery.” (p. 310)

Jewish colonisation of Jerusalem has changed the character of the Holy City. Non-Jews have been excluded from the Jewish quarter of the city. The book gives details about the colonisation of the city by Jews. As many as 134 buildings in the Muslim quarter of the city have been bulldozed and 650 Palestinian who lived there have been expelled from their home after the 1967 war. While all the 2000 Jews who had lost property there in 1948 had their land restored, 30,000 Palestinians evicted from the Christian suburbs of West Jerusalem in 1948 were not allowed to return to their old homes.
In 1948, following withdrawal of the British troops, some 55,000 Palestinian Christians fled or were driven out from their homes along with 650,000 Muslim Palestinians. Between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and 1992, around 40 per cent of Christians living in the Occupied Territories (19,000) left their homes to live elsewhere.

“Within ten years of the Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem, 37,065 acres of Arab land had been confiscated and settled; today only 13.5 per cent of East Jerusalem remains in Palestinian hands.” (p 318).

He is surprised to see that there is hardly anything of Byzantine architecture left in Jerusalem, which was a Byzantine city.

“Ironically, the great Byzantine building left in the city is a mosque – the Dome of the rock – decorated by Byzantine craftsmen for the new Muslim conquerors in the late seventh century, shortly after the fall of the eastern half of the Empire.” (327-328).

The Byzantine city of Alexandria in Egypt has also undergone changes as it is no longer a Greek-dominated city founded by a Greek. It was deserted by the Greeks as well as by Jews and Armenians after Egyptian President Nasser nationalised banks and businesses owned by the Greeks in the 1950s.

“Under the city’s cheap hotels and bare-shelved shops, its brothels and seedy restaurants, lie many of the greatest buildings of antiquity; the Caesarium, where Cleopatra committed suicide; the Pharos lighthouse (one of the Seven Wonders of the World); the Great Alexandrian library with its seven hundred thousand scrolls; the Mouseion; the Seraphium; the tomb of Alexander. All have disappeared, utterly and completely…" (p. 383).

Alexandria used to be the target of attack by fanatical Coptic monks in the past. The author finally visits the Great Oasis, modern Kharg in Upper Egypt, the very last outpost of Christendom visited by Moschos and Sophronius.
The Eastern Mediterranean region had been almost a Christian world for over three centuries since the era of Constantine in the early fourth century till the advent of Islam in the early seventh century. Dalrymple travels across this erstwhile heartland of Christianity, starting from Athos, circling the Levant and finally visiting Coptic monasteries of Upper Egypt. As he says, his purpose of the travel is “to witness what was in effect the last ebbing twilight of Byzantium.”
What is most striking about the book is absence of any trace of what can be construed as a display of victimhood even when Dalrymple, who is a Christian, narrates his experiences in places where Christians are living under the shadow of an imminent `withering' of their communities in lands which were once theirs.

End of a marriage of convenience

Will the UPA government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh survive or will it not? That is the question everybody has in mind as the government is going to face a confidence vote on July 22. The Left’s withdrawal of support to the government over the government’s decision to go ahead with the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear deal may have precipitated the present crisis, but the UPA dispensation is bound to experience this stalemate at any time during the remaining year of its tenure because the UPA-Left alliance forged for preventing the Sangh Parivar from coming to power was a marriage of convenience that was not meant to last. Why should we shed tears over predicted and predictable end of the wedlock that had never been smooth?
It would have been a surprise if comrades led by Prakash Karat had continued to support the UPA government even after it announced its commitment to the deal, because anti-Americanism is a sort of religion for communists of all hues in the country. Policies of the U.S. administration around the world give credence to general apprehension that U.S. hegemony is not just a fantasy of a paranoiac mind. If you think it is, just turn your eyes to the Middle East. Yes, the comrades are not entirely wrong. They have gone wrong when they have conjured up an ideal fantasy world where there are good guys like them fighting bad guys like Bush. They don’t see gray areas in this neat black and white world that exists in their imagination.
In the annals of history, these comrades who are now fretting and fuming about the American imperialism are not always seen siding with good guys. They are not known to have been outraged when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in August 1978. They are not known to have condemned when the erstwhile Soviet Union sent over 150,000 troops and 2,500 tanks to Hungary in 1956 after Hungarians revolted against the Soviet-installed communist regime. The invaders replaced reformist Prime Minister Imre Nagy with a pro-Soviet stooge. Nagy, a democratic-minded leader with a huge popular support and not a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussain, was among those executed in the purge that followed. Twelve years later, the Soviet troops drove their tanks into Czechoslovakia to replace the Prague Spring of Alexander Dubcek with the wintry chill of communist dictatorship. It was not known to have sparked protests among the communists in the country. When the Soviet Union carried out its brand of imperialism, our comrades refused to see it.
Without going into the nitty-gritty of the nuclear deal, one can see that the Left’s opposition to it has been driven by anti-Americanism. But we must also thank the Left parties for kicking off a nation-wide debate on the deal. They say that the deal is against India’s vital interests, that it will hamper the country’s independent foreign policy and restrict our strategic autonomy, that it is harmful for the nation’s sovereignty and that it symbolises India’s embracing of a strategic alliance with the U.S.
The country’s post-Independence history belies all these fears. India has always put its foot down on issues that concern its vital interests, right or wrong. The technological apartheid following the Pokaran-1 in 1974 did not prevent the nation from carrying out Pokaran-2 in 1998. Ironically, the Left that is now very vocal about the country’s strategic autonomy with regard to future nuclear tests campaigned against nuclear weapons in India following the Vajpayee government's nuclear tests in 1998. The Left predicted doomed future when India’s economy was liberalised and it termed globalisation as enforcement of U.S. hegemony through backdoor. You may, like me, be no ardent admirer of globalisation, but you can easily see how wrong the comrades were. India’s phenomenal economic and technological growth is a testimony to its strength in the face of difficulties.
There was a time (not long back) when the country was not allowed to import a supercomputer. Today, it is an exporter of supercomputers and a leader in the IT sector. Despite sanctions, our space programme now works for its planned mission to moon. Its progress in biotechnology and nanotechnology sectors matches only with its leap in the IT field.
The problem with the comrades is that they are living in their fossilised Cold War world where good and bad are drawn in black and white colours. The mindset of the communists has its roots in their disconnect with the freedom struggle in the wake of their opposition to the Quit India Movement in 1942. That pro-British stance was taken after the Soviet Union was attacked by Hitler and thus became an ally of Britain. The communists in the country proclaimed that India's Independence was a sham. The disconnect was complete by then and the communists' sense of isolation from the Indian mainstream is reflected in their opposition to the nuclear deal.
But I really pity the comrades who have found themselves in an unenviable situation because of their adventurism. I pity them more because of their predicament of having to vote with the BJP against the UPA government and to announce in advance that they would support the Congress-led UPA if that would stave off the Sangh Parivar after the next election. Funny, isn't it. But that is Indian politics.

('Marriage de convenance', a painting by Sir William Quiller Orchardson 1835-1910)

Saving Democracy

Patriotism has never been something that sweeps me off my feet. But I like one thing about the country of my birth: its inclusiveness and resilience. If I were an Israeli citizen, I would certainly be looking for an excuse to escape the collective guilt of having carved out a nation through annexation and colonisation of another people’s land. If I were a Turk, I would be struggling to live with the bloodied history of officially sanctioned expulsion and genocide of Armenians at the birth of modern Turkey. India, for that matter, has no history of ethnic cleansing though millions died in the sectarian violence during the Partition. While Pakistan was conceived as an Islamic nation, India remained a secular and democratic country thanks to its inclusiveness and resilience.
But are we becoming growingly sceptical of democracy? It may be difficult to answer, but I feel that a significant number of people don’t care a hoot about democracy, not because they are anti-democratic in their attitude. If you talk to them, you can measure their inner sense of disconnect with institutions that make democracy what it is.
We see democracy-sceptics among people from all walks of life. When I went to my favourite grocery shop yesterday, I hit upon the topic of price rise while I chatted with the shop assistant. He said that the common man like him was bearing the brunt when politicians were fighting out within and without legislatures. “What is the use of squandering crores of rupees for holding elections to the assembly and Parliament just for allowing political parties to wage battles?” I retorted that democracy was costly but worthy. “Are we not lucky that we are not citizens of Pakistan or North Korea or Zimbabwe or some other countries ruled by tin pot dictators?” I voiced them as rhetorical questions just to convey my uneasiness about the people’s tendency to spit on democracy when they are enjoying its fruits.
The shop assistant is a semi-literate guy whose idea about democracy is not as erudite as that we expected of people like us, the educated. It is rather disconcerting to know that there are strong democracy-sceptics among us as well. Recently, a senior university Professor told me that she had been astonished by many of her students airing their view that democracy was useless in the country. She said she was perturbed enough to visualise a time when we would all wake up one day to realise that we were no longer living in democracy. If the university campuses were not the places that could stimulate the spirit of dissent and democracy, we were facing real danger, I told her by way of sharing her concern.
I think a major factor that is driving people to be skeptical of democracy and democratic institutions is the feeling that people have no direct involvement in democratic process other than the right to cast their votes. The political parties and organisations have been allowed to hijack all public spheres and they are seen as sole beneficiaries of all fruits of democracy. Unless this is reversed and citizens are brought back to the centre of democratic process, we will witness what the Professor has chillingly visualised. I think we have not yet run out of time and are still able to lock the stable door before the horse has bolted.

Friendship

Our friend's
h(OM)e is where we all gather ocassionally for our soirees. It is a place for indolence, a rendezvous for dissolving (post-traumatic) stress disorders that our hectic life has brought on us. We hit the bottles there though she hardly tastes it and if she does she treats drinks as the most obnoxious invention of wo/man.
A public function organised for felicitating the makers of a film that won the national award for the best film the other day was the raison d'etre for our last gathering and it went off well with discussions, gossips and quarrels on issues and non-issues. Ours is a close-knit company having opinions on everything under the sky. It is a rarity at a time when people find themselves confined to their jobs, families and creeds. They hardly recognise the importance of enjoying life's beauties.
A colleague of mine told me the other day that he was having sleep disorders. He practised Yoga, went to Ayurveda and then Homoeopathy practitioners even as he was taking some sleeping pills without doctor's prescription. I advised him to go to a sleep therapist and undergo tests in a sleep lab in Chennai. I also asked him to make behavioural changes. Behavioural changes? He could not see any behavioural problem to be corrected. But later he admitted that he would loose his temper easily. Our problem is we don't ask why we are easily prone to anger. I asked this colleague to observe his anger the next time he is furious to his wife and ask why to himself. Anger, I told him, was a symptom of some deeper trouble involving relationship, work and colleagues etc. He likes company but he doesn't join because his wife does not want him to be with any company. I can only pity him.
Look at our our gang of friends. I sometimes wonder how the friendship has emerged. It has just happened and every member of the group wants it, come what may. We, the members, have become gang-junkies, and every time we meet we plan our next meeting. At our next meeting, there will be Champagne. We will just pop the cork and give a toast.

(This is a photo taken during my visit to Stuttgart in Germany in June 2002)

Of Love

What if you meet up with an old flame of yours? That will definitely spark old memories of smooching and hugging in shady corners of your campus, under the shade of verdant woods in the nearby grove or on a palm-fringed beach with shallow waters. To be frank, I can only imagine such an encounter because I have no experience of having fallen in love with a girl during my college days. I was kissed off by love early in life and I have never dared to venture into any adventure of love. I may be accused of having made virtue out of my weakness. But I have reconciled myself with the fact that there are haves and havenots in the world controlled by Cupid.
Let me tell you an interesting anecdot to explain this. That happened when I was doing my MA in English Literature way back in the late 80s. A close friend of mine in the college (please don't press me to reveal his name because he is still my close friend and probably one of the very few who pretend to read my blog) gave me real surprise when I saw him bluntly, mercilessly returning a flower given to him by a girl in another class on the same campus. Though she pretended that it was a funny gesture, she - I felt so - was showing her personal intimacy towards him which may evolve into a romantic affair. Had she given me that flower, I would have readily accepted it and reciprocated appropriately (Aside: This girl was in the province of my imagination in those days). What on earth prompted my friend to refuse to accept that flower continued to be a mystery till, months after competitng the course, I came to know that he was deeply but discreetly in love with a classmate of ours. That was a different story.
What is love, essentially? Where does this feeling of interpersonal attachment and intimacy driven by strong desire come from? Is there a scientific explanation of love? These are questions that came to my mind after reading three love notes excavated by my friend from her archival collections of photographs and letters.
There is no doubt that love is rooted in evolutionary biology because at the level of genes, the principal job of a living creature is to conceive offspring to ensure that our genes survive. Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, says that humans, like all other animals, are machines created by our genes. In his 1993 article called `Viruses of the mind', Prof. Dawkins makes comparison between falling in love and religion when he says that the symptoms of a person infected by religion may be `reminiscent' of symptoms usually associated with sexual love. When he says that religion could be a by-product of `irrationality mechanisms' that were built into the brain by Darwinian natural selection, what he means is that falling in love is one of those mechanisms that evolved for the survival of the gene machine. Evolutionary explanation is that sexual attraction and pleasure are what draw people to mate and reproduce for the genes to survive. Isn't it somewhat irking to say that lovers exchange flowers, write poetry and meet because they are driven by their selfish genes and have a single objective of ensuring that a sperm meets an egg? What about the transcendent feeling that the lovers experience? What makes people go crazy over love?
Each of us has emotional experiences such as love, intimacy, sense of loss, sadness and they are subjects of scientific enquiry for scientists. I recently watched a programme on love presenting the findings of Dr. Thomas Lewis of California University who has authored A General Theory of Love. He also gives an evolutionary explanation to the feeling of love:

"When mammals showed up on the planet, their method of reproduction was different. Unlike reptiles, they gave birth to live helpless young that had to be nurtured or wouldn’t survive. The parent had to monitor the physiology of the baby. This lead to the development of a part of the brain called the Great Limbic Lobe, which we share with all mammals."

According to Dr. Lewis, all of us are bigger infants badly in need of some regulatory influence. The limbic brain of the mammal specialises in detecting and analysing just one part of the physical world: the internal state of other mammals and he calls this capacity limbic resonance, a mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals are tuned to each other's inner states:

"Limbic resonance is what makes looking into face of another emotionally responsive creature a multi-layered experience."

Going further, he says that relationships have a kind of grammar to them and what happens to two people in a relationship has a regularity in it that is discoverable. The brain of a child, for example, studies the relationships that are going around him/her and pull out the regularities and learns those regularities and rules, Dr. Lewis argues.
These are interesting ideas about love and affection and affinity and attachment. These ideas certainly are relevant when I try to make scientific sense of these emotions. I am an outsider in the world of love. So I can afford to be scientific. Cupid, for me, is as blind as a religious fanatic. The lover is no better than a believer in god. Both believe that there is something that cannot be defined and explained.
(The painting pasted above is The Kiss, a wellknown work of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt)