Are Indians Peace Mongers?

Satyagraha won India it's independence from the British. I noticed that based on this, we tend to conclude that Indians have a predisposition for peace. On reading about relatively high incidence of communal violence, caste politics and associated killings, rapes, and gang violence in major cities, I disagree with this conclusion. However, like the majority, I too believe that Gandhi was a true lover of peace, and was a great leader. Here is my point.

Historically, when Moguls came to India, we didn't just hand them over our kingdoms (out of our peaceful nature) in a silver platter - we fought (rightfully so), lost, and let them have their way, as we had no choice. Now, hypothetically, let us say that in the midst of our independence struggle, Germany offered Indian National Congress some powerful weapons that our Sepoys could have used to annihilate the British army. Would we have used them against British? May be, or may be not. Would we have taken these weapons to the bargaining table with the British to tell them "leave, or you will be toast"? Very likely, but we can't be 100% sure.

When we were fighting British, fighting peacefully was our only choice. They had guns and tanks, and we didn't. Also, they had superior generals and negotiators who managed to divide us and rule. Whereas our Rajahs and Mantris were mostly failures (for their inability to plan long term, and see what was coming). Basically, we had a lemon, and Gandhi made one hell of a lemonade.

We can truly claim that we are peace seekers, when we have multiple options for winning quickly, but we choose a non-violent option knowing fully well that it would be a lot tougher path. We knew that we were too weak to fight British. It is not that we could have fought a war and won - they would have royally kicked our butts if we had decided to fight with aggression. Also, if we are peace mongers, why didn't we try Satyagraha with China, Pakistan, and at Babri masjid?

After British invasion, our situation was analogous to a lone unarmed man coming across a grizzly bear in the wild. He knows that he stands no chance if he confronts the bear. He would shoot it if he had a gun. But for now, playing dead would be a safe bet, as this would offer him some chance for survival. We did the exact same thing with the British. Our strategy was, sooner or later, they will get tired of kicking our butts and they would leave. Our strategy worked like a charm. They sure got tired and left, after kicking our butts for 90 years:-)

During independence struggle, Satyagraha was our only choice. Credit goes to Gandhi, but not necessarily to the janata in general. Let us not try to glorify our inability to envision and stop British invasion, by falsely claiming that we allowed invasions because we love peace; because, our so called peaceful nature has not been consistent.

On a side note, I wonder why didn't this idea of Satyagraha occur to Lord Krishna prior to Kurukshetra war? I mean, instead of telling Arjuna "they are bad guys, they took your land, kill them, and take your land back", why didn't He suggest Pandavas to demonstrate Stayagraha? May be because His diplomatic efforts have failed, and the Lord knew that Kauravas wouldn't change their mind.

The Curse of 9?

Eliot Spitzer, a Harvard Law School graduate, the current Governor of New York, once known as The Sheriff of Wall Street, was recently exposed as Client 9 in an an international prostitution ring. I read that like Clinton, he did many good things - unfortunately, all it takes is just one weakness, to write off a life time of good deeds. Now, his hours in the office are numbered.

Though unrelated, Client 9 reminded me of Curse of the ninth:

According to Schoenberg, this superstition began with Gustav Mahler, who, after writing his Eighth Symphony, wrote Das Lied von der Erde: Eine Symphonie für Tenor-Stimme, Contralt -Stimme und große Orchester (nach Hans Bethges "Die chinesische Flöte"). Then he wrote his Symphony No. 9 and thought he had beaten the curse, but died with his Tenth Symphony incomplete.

After Mahler, some composers used as examples of the curse include: Kurt Atterberg, Alfred Schnittke, Roger Sessions, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Egon Wellesz and Malcolm Arnold. Schnittke wrote his Ninth and last symphony with his left hand while virtually paralysed and unable to speak due to a series of strokes; the authenticity of the work finally performed as an interpretation of his manuscript is problematic.

This of course was a superstition, as they found many exceptions to this loose rule.

Lo$$ From Daylight Saving Time (DST)?

After losing* sleep over Spring forward, I came across an interesting perspective about the DST on The Wall Street Journal. To begin with, the DST was made into law mainly to save energy. The logic is, say, normally we deal with four hours of darkness after coming from work at 6 PM (assume that it gets dark at 6 PM) and go to bed at 10 PM. If we push our clocks forward in Spring by an hour, we will deal with only 3 hours of darkness; from 7 PM to 10 PM. So, on having sunlight between 6 PM and 7 PM, many of us would feel like staying outdoors, and this reduces the use of TVs, lights, etc. Also, less movement in darkness means less crime and less accidents. Good, at least in theory.

However, Mr. Kotchen of UC-Santa Barbara conducted research on this matter and found that:

...an extra hour of daylight in the evenings may mean less electricity is spent on lights, it also means that houses are warmer in the summer when people come home from work. Conversely, during daylight-saving time's cooler months, people may crank up the thermostats more in the morning.

His argument is, if it is warmer than normal when we come home from work, we will crank up our air conditioners and this will cost us more. Similarly, by getting up earlier on colder mornings, we will likely turn up the heat, spending more energy on heating (i.e., if not for the DST, we would be fast asleep, and will not bother to get up to turn up the thermostat**).

It doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong. I think it is good to research on things like this as "energy saved = energy produced". Also, it is the small leaks that sink big ships!

*on going to bed at 11 PM and waking up at 5 PM, and getting only 5 hours of sleep:-(

** I think, by not cranking up thermostat, we will lose more body heat (than normal), compensate for by eating more, offsetting the savings on heating bills - the law of conservation of energy:-)

Nouveau "Ultra" Riche - March 2008

After being the richest person in the world for 13 years, Bill Gates slipped to the third spot in the list of world's richest.

As the major world media noted, we did very well on the Forbes list. Even though Indians are only (!) about 17.5% of the world population, 40% of the ten richest people in the world are Indians! Just noticed that the combined net worth of these 4 Desis (USD 160 billion) is more that the projected revenue of the Indian Government (~USD 149 billion) for year 2008-2009!

Feuer frei!

I love Rammstein for their music (of course) and the passion they pack into it. Here are three of the songs I like, among many. I owe it to my nephew Chandu for making me a Rammstein fan a few years ago.





This one, I think Dish Network can use it in their ads (urging us to own a Dish!)

Is Gita Saying "What Really Matters is Antimatter"?

On blogging an article from Parade on Dark Energy, and soon after reading Is Dark Matter the Formless Brahmn?, I came across a couple of interesting slokas, verses 4 and 5 in Chapter 7 (Jnana Vignana Yoga) of Bhagavad Gita (see below, Telugu version). Are these slokas referring to antimatter? I don't jump to conclusions easily in topics of this nature, but I thought it was pretty intriguing.

Pl. see below for the same slokas from a copy of condensed భగవద్గీత (different publisher) gifted to me by my మామయ్య on November17, 1990.