Rigveda: Celebration of life, Pursuit of excellence

Rigveda: Celebration of life, Pursuit of excellence

इयं विसृष्टिर्यत आबभूव यदि वा दधे यदि वा न ।

यो अस्याध्यक्षः परमे व्योमन्त्सो अङ्ग वेद यदि वा न वेद ॥७॥ (nasdia sukta -Rigveda)

 “he is a wise man , he has read the Vedas”, it was one of those lines by my grandfather in appreciation of someone very learned that put the desire in me probably for the first time to read and understand the Vedas. Years later when I first took a Hindi translation of the book(rig veda) various thoughts passed my mind; I had some kind of imagery in my mind about the Vedas. What lied in Vedas was a mystery, Vedas have been the source of wisdom for ages; they are the foundation of India’s spiritual wealth throughout millennia’s. Right from Indian gurus like Vivekananda, Aurobindo or dayand Sarasvati in recent times to religious text like Gita , Ramayana and Upanishads all have their roots in the Vedas. It was therefore an assumption before picking up the text that it would be a fountain of spiritualism, just like Gita which in a breath establishes the principal of karma without worrying for the results there was one big message that I was looking in the Vedas. To prepare the ground I did read some of the commentaries by Aurobindo where he attempts to find higher philosophical and spiritual meanings in the hymns of the Vedas or Tilak who tries to find out geographical origins of the Aryan people who composed Rigveda. There were other questions in my mind the answers to which I was looking ahead to find in the Vedas questions regarding the origins of the trinity of the Hindu pantheon ,regarding the mention of animals , geography ,rivers, castes , tribes , kind of spiritualism ( idol worship , nature worship , dualism etc. etc.).

The journey of reading the book continued for almost 4-5 months, though it is not that voluminous however with the limited time I used to get, the numerous stories with each passing hymn and the thoughts that the book used to leave me throughout the day it was worth to go slow and ruminate on each thought invoked by the RigVeda. The book started with invoking the Agni and then story of Indra and vriata started. It took me a couple of hundred pages to realize that the most talked about god in Rigveda was not going to be lord Vishnu or Shiva but it was rather Indra. It has since then puzzled me why and how Indra lost the place he had in Rigveda’s to the trinity of brahma Vishnu and Mahesh.

The conundrum

As I progressed on my reading I must accept I rather started growing a bit uncomfortable .Vedas presented a challenge before me ,some may think it might have been the complexity of Vedas which challenged me unfortunately that was not the case it was rather the simplicity of the text which took me by surprise. The most important text of Hinduism didn’t talk the language of asceticism renunciation and spiritualism that I had grown up hearing. It rather talked of such simple things of life that it made me uneasy if it was indeed simple or was I missing something. To find the answers I went back to Aurobindo and he started making more sense. He had put it precisely what I was going through in my mind. In the opening remarks of his book “The secret of vedas” he starts with the following

“Is THERE at all or is there still a secret of the Veda? According to current conceptions the heart of that ancient mystery has been plucked out and revealed to the gaze of all, or rather no real secret ever existed. The hymns of the Veda are the sacrificial compositions of a primitive and still barbarous race written around a system of ceremonial and propitiatory

rites, addressed to personified Powers of Nature and replete with a confused mass of half-formed myth and crude astronomical allegories yet in the making. Only in the later hymns

do we perceive the first appearance of deeper psychological and

moral ideas”

It was the kungfu panda moment for me, where the secret recipe was actually no secret at all. I went back to Aurobindo and it made a little more sense, that the cows and horses ghrat (ghee) described in a text described almost 5000 years ago just did not literally meant objects as we know now but they had rather philosophical meaning. It took me some more distance ahead with my reading but the doubt remained. However it comforted me that I was not the only one challenged by the simplicity of the Vedas but the Vedas have always presented this challenge to everyone who has tried to peek into the wisdom from antiquity. It is no surprise that the earliest translations of RigVeda done by Sayana in around 1300 where the interpretation of Vedas were done with more inclination towards the ceremonial aspects, centuries later Aurobindo while he appreciated the efforts of sayana to preserve the text he strongly criticized him for the literal, incoherent translation and the narrow sense to which he had reduced the Vedas

 “..the central defect of Sayana’s system that he is obsessed always by the ritualistic formula and seeks continually to force the sense of the Veda into that narrow mould. So he loses many clues of the greatest suggestiveness and importance for the external sense of the ancient Scripture,—a problem quite as interesting as its internal sense. The outcome is a representation of the Rishis, their thoughts, their culture, their aspirations, so narrow and poverty-stricken that, if accepted, it renders the ancient reverence for the Veda, its sacred authority, its divine reputation quite incomprehensible to the reason or only explicable as a blind and unquestioning tradition of faith starting from an original error.”

Aurobindo criticized the philosophical meanings which sayana took away from his translation even though Sayana admitted that earlier such meanings existed (“multi-significance of roots ) and gave multiple interpretations of the same hymns in his original composition, however if we go deep Aurobindo rather seemed to be uncomfortable with the materialistic aspect of the Vedas  presented by Sayana. As he puts down at another place

“But if we accept the current interpretations, whether Sayana’s or the modern theory(translations by European scholars), the whole of this sublime and sacred reputation is a colossal fiction. The hymns are, on the contrary, nothing more than the naive superstitious fancies of untaught and materialistic barbarians concerned only with the most external gains and enjoyments and ignorant of all but the most elementary moral notions or religious aspirations.”

Aurobindo interpretation were much nearer to Swami dayanad Sarasvati however even they differed considerably in their interpretations of the Vedas.He puts it down eloquently

“Dayananda’s interpretation of the hymns is governed by the idea that the Vedas are a plenary revelation of religious, ethical and scientific truth. Its religious teaching is monotheistic and the

Vedic gods are different descriptive names of the one Deity; they are at the same time indications of His powers as we see them working in Nature and by a true understanding of the sense of the Vedas we could arrive at all the scientific truths which have been discovered by modern research. Such a theory is, obviously, difficult to establish. The Rigveda itself, indeed, asserts that the gods are only different names and expressions of one universal Being who in His own reality transcends the universe; but from the language of the hymns we are compelled to perceive in the gods not only different names, but also different forms, powers and personalities of the one Deva. The monotheism of the Veda includes in itself also the monistic, pantheistic and even polytheistic views of the cosmos and is by no means the trenchant and simple creed of modern Theism. It is only by a violent struggle with the text that we can

force on it a less complex aspect.

While Aurobindo had his points, Aurobindo’s argument that everything in Vedas is just limited to spirituality was again reducing Rigveda’s to just one sense. In fact Aurobindo criticism of sayana is not entirely correct. Sayana’s commentary on Vedas is not just the only complete work of translation of Rigveda but also Sayana identified the multiple roots of words and also provided multiple inferences of the same hymns (gothic, spiritual etc) wherever he could identify. However on the other side Rigveda does not even seems to be rooted in ritualistic formula and ceremonies as emphasized by Sayana.

The revelation

It started to puzzle me why did the interpretation of Vedas were so different by different people. Why did sages who wrote hymns on creation of universe, cosmology (e.g. nasdia sukta) and spirituality in the later part of Rigveda which leaves the reader mesmerized were so simple in their composition towards the start of the Vedas. Was it the result of chronology where the hymns with more thoughts were created later but even if it was true why was it allowed to stay a part of the whole work for thousands of years, what was the message that the sages wanted to pass to the generations who may be reading it many thousand years after they composed them? Did that happened by chance?

Quite unlikely, as the bus I used to take for office passed through the snow laden roads and as winter slowly started to make way for summer my mind started wondering if it was intentional. Any interpretation of Vedas will always have this battle of taking the literal meaning against taking the philosophical and spiritual meaning. If we take it literally then Rigveda mention some of the most amazing technological and medical science advancements which sweep the readers off his feet. If however we derive a spiritual and philosophical meaning then it destroys the argument that it was primitive or ritualistic, it starts to makes more sense .However going one way to read it does not hold well enough for the whole text. I therefore decided to read it as it is mentioned, try to look for an inference with much more sophisticated thoughts but if I can’t find one read it as it is. Somehow just like all others before me who arrived at a meaning which had a lot of commonality yet they held different meanings I too arrived at a sense of Rigveda’s which had something from everyone before me who had written their commentary on it and yet it contained a message so fresh and so contemporary it left me wiser.

Celebration of life

It was the celebration of life Hymns after hymns that started making a connect with me , the emphasis on rationality ,the culture of questioning ,the focus on scientific temper and the pride it took in the accomplishments of the human race.

सोमानं सवरणं कर्णुहि बरह्मणस पते | कक्षीवन्तं याुशिजः || 

O BRAHMANAPSATI, make him who presses Soma glorious,

Like Kaksivan Ausija.

यो रेवान यो अमीवहा वसुवित पुष्टिवर्धनः | स नः सिषक्तु यस्तुरः || 

2 The rich, the healer of disease, who giveth wealth, increaseth store,

The prompt,-may he be with us still.

मा नः शंसो अररुषो धूर्तिः परणं मर्त्यस्य | रक्षा णो बरह्मणस पते || 

3 Let not the foeman's curse, let not a mortal's onslaught fall on us

Preserve us, Brahmanaspati. (Hymn 18)

तद राधो अद्य सवितुर्वरेण्यं वयं देवस्य परसवे मनामहे | 
अस्मभ्यं दयावाप्र्थिवी सुचेतुना रयिं धत्तं वसुमन्तं शतग्विनम ||

5 This is to-day the goodliest gift of Savitar: this thought we have when now the God is furthering us.On us with loving-kindness Heaven and Earth bestow riches and various wealth and treasure hundredfold! (Hymn 159)

Such thoughts mentioned above where rishis made prayers for wellbeing are not few in fact Rigveda is replete with such hymns. The same hymns which initially looked primitive started to make connect with me. It was the desire of life the desire to live happily the desire to be safe , the desire to grow, the desire to progress, the desire to earn wealth, the desire to be healthy that made a connect with me. It is written in a language so simple and yet does not bind itself to one fixed meaning. Rigveda did not romanticize poverty though it urged you to help others. It touch every aspect of human life and the rishis take pride in their accomplishments and how those accomplishments ,discoveries or inventions made life easy for them at that time. From hyms on gravity and speed of light to hyms on how the sun has kept the earth and other planets of the solar system Rigveda touched every aspect of life at that time from the cycle of birth and death, cosmology, science, governance, astronomy, creation of universe, gods, medical science, married life, human relationships etc. If Rigveda would have been written today it definitely would had mentioned the great achievements we have made in the field of science, space, nuclear, digital, and cloning and other areas.

Achievements of the Ashvinikumars

युवं चयवानमश्विना जरन्तं पुनर्युवानं चक्रथुः शचीभिः | युवो रथं दुहिता सूर्यस्य सह शरिया नासत्याव्र्णीत || 

13 Ye with the aid of your great powers, O Asvins, restored to youth the ancient man

Cyavana.The Daughter of the Sun with all her glory, O ye Nasatyas, chose your car to bear her.(hymn 117)

जुजुरुषो नासत्योत वव्रिं परामुञ्चतं दरापिमिव चयवानात | 
परातिरतं जहितस्यायुर्दस्रादित पतिमक्र्णुतं कनीनाम || 

10 Ye from the old Cyavana, O Nasatyas, stripped, as 'twere mail, the skin upon

his body,Lengthened his life(restored to youth the ancient man) when all had left him helpless, Dasras! and made him lord of youthful maidens.

अजोहवीन नासत्या करा वां महे यामन पुरुभुजा पुरन्धिः | 
शरुतं तच्छासुरिव वध्रिमत्या हिरण्यहस्तमश्विनावदत्तम || 

13 In the great rite the wise dame called, Nasatyas, you, Lords of many treasures, to assist

her.Ye heard the weakling's wife, as 'twere an order, and gave to her a son Hiranyahasta.

आस्नो वर्कस्य वर्तिकामभीके युवं नरा नासत्यामुमुक्तम | 
उतो कविं पुरुभुजा युवं ह कर्पमाणमक्र्णुतं विचक्षे || 

14 Ye from the wolf's jaws, as ye stood together, set free the quail, O Heroes, O

Nasatyas.Ye, Lords of many treasures, gave the poet his perfect vision as he mourned his trouble.

चरित्रं हि वेरिवाछेदि पर्णमाजा खेलस्य परितक्म्यायाम | 
सद्यो जङघामायसीं विश्पलायै धने हिते सर्तवेप्रत्यधत्तम || 

15 When in the time of night, in Khela's battle, a leg was severed like a wild bird's pinion,

Straight ye gave Vispali a leg of iron that she might move what time the conflict opened.

शतं मेषान वर्क्ये चक्षदानं रज्राश्वं तं पितान्धंचकार | 
तस्मा अक्षी नासत्या विचक्ष आधत्तं दस्रा भिषजावनर्वन || 

16 His father robbed Rjrasva of his eyesight who for the she-wolf slew a hundred

wethers.Ye gave him eyes, Nasatyas, Wonder-Workers, Physicians, that he saw with sight

uninjured. (hymn 116)

It is interesting to see how “ Ashvinikumars” one of the most revered figures are described in Rigveda. Their achievements on creating artificial limbs, restoring youth, curing blindness and many more such hymns symbolize the focus Vedic times had on the pursuit of human excellence, though they (ashvinis) can also be symbolized as the shining of sunrise and sunset (and that’s the challenge as when do we take the literal sense and when do we switch to the symbolic and the philosophical/spiritual meaning).

Spirit of skeptical inquiry, rationality and a contemporary world

We have often heard that religion encourages blind faith and discourages the spirit of reasoning questioning and critical analysis and somewhere I thought that this view had a valid point. But this whole thought of mine was bulldozed and I was left speechless by the famous nasdiya sukta, while the scholars from the world over have been spellbound by the way the creation of the universe has been defined in this was so exact in description to the famous big bang theory I was amazed what it said in the end. I am putting here its first two lines where it starts to delve the creation of the universe but it is the last para which left me spellbound.

First two lines

नासदासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं नासीद्रजो नो व्योमा परो यत् ।

किमावरीवः कुह कस्य शर्मन्नम्भः किमासीद्गहनं गभीरम् ॥ १॥

Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,

There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.

What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?

Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?

Last para

को अद्धा वेद क इह प्र वोचत्कुत आजाता कुत इयं विसृष्टिः ।

अर्वाग्देवा अस्य विसर्जनेनाथा को वेद यत आबभूव ॥६॥

But, after all, who knows, and who can say

Whence it all came, and how creation happened?

the gods themselves are later than creation,

so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

इयं विसृष्टिर्यत आबभूव यदि वा दधे यदि वा न ।

यो अस्याध्यक्षः परमे व्योमन्त्सो अङ्ग वेद यदि वा न वेद ॥७॥

Whence all creation had its origin,

he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,

he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,

he knows - or maybe even he does not know.[9]

The nature of the skeptical inquiry and questioning that we witness here in the last two lines where the

Rishis even raise doubts on whether even the gods know or not know all the answers were simply just too overwhelming for me but it was not the only place in Rigveda where even gods are put under the boundaries of reasoning and questioning. It has since then liberated me and propelled me to think that there are no limits to the horizon of the human thoughts and accomplishments and human race is meant to go on conquer as far and wide as we allow us to think and the fountain of highest thoughts in hindu religion does not put any chains in that instead it facilitates it. The Rigveda breaks all conventional thoughts which we usually associate with the religion, from women rishis who have composed different hymns in Rigveda to the equality of women in education, their right to choose their groom for marriage (swamwar) ,widow remarriage , the composition of hymn by a supposedly rishi belonging to shudra caste , the election of the president by people, the majority of thoughts mentioned in rigveda are far more superior to the contemporary world we live in.

The question is whether this very contemporary interpretation of Rigveda is correct on my behalf. Because it was exactly this what Aurobindo resented and yet I did not find it objectionable in any manner. Why should life not be celebrated? Why should be leading a happy and prosperous life be a taboo for god. I did not saw any of those objections in Rigveda. But it is also true that your meaning from Rigveda’s can be very different from mine ,as the rishis have said “it reveals itself to the seeker “. But as I look closer I find more and more evidence on what I have felt. I see the same fundamental message when I look at the stories of Krishna and his message of karma where the focus was on man and his actions and not of some divine help and see the same celebration of life in colors of holi and lights of deepawali. Was this one of the reasons for the fall of Indra as somewhere Indra has become a symbol of divine intervention and symbolic of rituals and traditions something which was corrected by internal corrective mechanism of the religion in the story of goverdhan and Krishna where Krishna discards old tradition of offerings to Indra. The same message was repeated when Krishna does not fights Mahabharata on his own but just act as a guiding force. And same was his message to Bhsima and Drona who continued to stay stuck with traditions even when confronted with choice between dharma and adharma. As someone said “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.” The yogis understood it long back and left us a treasure where freedom was not limited to just physical occupation but where freedom was meant to liberate you of any limitations in thoughts as well as in being. And they wrote a text which was relevant in their times but still open enough to be interpreted and reinterpreted again and again and in that effort they made it immortal.

Nirbhaya... Lets relive her a thousand times

BBC documentary on nirbhaya has divided the opinions sharply across the nation and I must say that both the sides in favor of the ban and against the ban have in no way the intention to show women in derogatory way or to show India in bad light or any intention to give the rapist a platform to give a hate speech and just like the divided opinions across nation I have myself walked from one viewpoint to another thinking various point of view in last 2 days … but since the ban was hardly of any use as the material was available on internet outside India as well as in India easily I did watch the program and I must say that it was worth watching …”I am sorry mummy , I gave you so much trouble” these were the last words of that girl seconds before she breathed her last , you cannot stop tears rolling down your eyes thinking of those moments and you don’t need to be a parent to relate what would have the parents of nirbhaya gone through… I mean how can any parent bring  up a child fighting all the odds in life to be left down on roads dying with her intestines and every organ pulled away from her body because someone thought it unworthy of a girl going out at night.

However to my own surprise the maximum amount of disgust and repulsion I got watching that episode went to some rather unusual candidates and they were the defense lawyers of those rapists. I could still understand the background from which those rapist came from and the reason they thought what they thought but my head hung in shame hearing what the defense lawyers said. And it was then I realized why it is important for this episode to be telecasted across India. Because What they said was no different than what we hear sometimes from people of various religious organizations across different religions, sometimes openly and brazenly by head of police departments across different states, sometimes by head of village panchayats, sometimes by some sitting judges and MLA’s and MP’s, sometimes we see these same biases in the dictats of Khaps and sometimes we see these biases in the skewed sex ratios in states like Haryana, sometimes we see this dirt in the human trafficking resultant of a skewed sex ratio in different parts of the country, sometimes we see this in the growing number of illegal abortions clinics running in every corner of this country, sometimes we see this in the dowry system prevalent in almost every household of this country, sometimes we hear that in our own circle as we move in different sections of society from a normal hairdresser in a hair salon to a vendor in vegetable market and we have heard that all sometimes said openly and sometimes from the most educated and literate people not so openly but with an undertone where the logic of their arguments try to color the  truth of the bias we have against women.

And it is to fight and confront this ugly truth of our society that we need to watch this program. It tell us how in so many ways we all carry or become the carrier of some of the same thoughts and same biases in our society. And this is not a small battle which can be won overnight, it’s a battle of beliefs so deeply ingrained in our society that it takes decades to fight it through. But not to take away any credit from what our society has achieved in last century is no less a feat in its own. It is not as we are not fighting it or trying to change but the pace at which things have changed over past few decades that the desire of the evolution of our beliefs have not travelled at the same pace. And it is this haft hearted attempt that is the biggest threat to our society. That people who believe in equality still don’t believe it fully, that time has come when this halfhearted effort won’t do us any good anymore.

But what about the other view which is in no way against any of what I have written above but has some legitimate concerns regarding the image on the country taking a beating due to such news broadcasted across the world. They are questioning us just as we are proclaiming it is right to understand a rapist’s mindset will tomorrow we will have to hear a hate speech to understand the mindset of rioter. Probably it was the thought that whether this program is giving the rapist a platform to set a misogynist agenda across the nation was what forced the govt to seek a ban to this documentary. However complicating this question any further is not helping us anymore. A country’s image is not just formed or broken by a documentary, neither does it give any kind of satisfaction to find solace in the number of rape cases in other western democracies. Ultimately it is the question of more than 600 million women who have given birth to every man present in this country. And the welfare of these 600 million women goes to add to the welfare and the image of this country. A century back women were burned on pyre of husbands, banning news or film on that would not have served us any purpose, it was the collective effort of the govt and people which took us out of that abuse. Today we are again reminded by this program how deep in our mind are biases against women. And it is not impossible to fight it out, a well-intentioned effort by all sections of society can actually see us winning through this within few decades. Also another important point is that while a few may understand that such a program may bring bad name to the country but does the youth of the country which is 18,19,20 really cares about that? Is he/she really ready to buy this argument of country’s prestige coming in the path of the fight against overcoming these biases? Is politics not about doing the art of what people really aspire to achieve or are we ready to do a politics in a vacuum of our own imaginations? The truth is that what happened with Nirbhaya should not happen with anyone else, Let this one story be played again and again and let us relive that horror a thousand times so it doesn’t take us millions of nirbhaya to recognize that we have a problem which needs to be addressed. 

Budget 2015: Looking ahead

A budget with its feet firmly on ground and eyes on future, a budget which is pragmatic but has lots of ambitions... a budget which builds the ground for a strong and prosperous India ..a budget which is path breaking because of the basic structural changes it brought about the philosophy of how the distribution of wealth has to be done , an amazing budget for the futuristic thought of building a social net of pensions and insurance for all but that coming not as freebies but coming as an instrument of savings which will fuel further growth and will at the same time secure the lives of 100's of millions which will start aging in coming decades... a pro enterprise budget where the impetus of building a new India lies with 57 million entrepreneurs and not in the hands of few corporates.

Understanding the challenges?

Coming down to specifics the union budget had some basic challenges to go for the big bang reforms. Some of the big reform ideas that were looked in the budget by different sections of society could be broadly divided as following

Corporate Angle: The corporates were looking on how the government will go ahead for implementation of GST, labor reforms which improve the ease of doing business and how govt would go for kick starting private investment in infrastructure projects

Electoral Angle: politically the budget would have to be viewed on some of the promises that Modi Sarkar made during the elections which were around the issue of black money

Common Man- Middle class: From the perspective of common man the budget would have been looked on how much does the finance minister leaves in the hand of middle class. How the FM would go about creating an environment where more jobs can be created and entrepreneurship is encouraged.

Poor and Labor class :  This part of society had apprehensions if the govt would move away from the subsidy and dole raj which the earlier regimes had built and if that taken away immediately would have had a catastrophic impact on their livelihood

How the govt did?

So let’s evaluate how did the government did on all these aspects and did the govt made any progress on any of them or showed the intent with a roadmap to address each one of them.

Spending on Infrastructure

In the early months after taking up charge in May 2014 the Modi Sarkar moved away from an era of policy paralysis and swiftly gave clearance to projects worth billions of dollars. However years of paralysis had made most of companies invested in infrastructure projects sick. So when things started moving in May 2014 it was a welcome change but it came a little too late. More was needed to bring back life to economy. It was a realization that private investment will not come in the immediate future to bail out Indian economy, the only option left was government spending on infra projects till the time the investment climate in country improves and brings down rate of interests when private companies can get a breather and the investment cycle can begin.

It is in this context that the 70,000 crores on infra projects by the govt will be a great push which will act as a catalyst for reaching near the goals of trillion dollar investment on infrastructure.

Ease of doing business – GST, Labor reforms

Labor reforms and GST will be the pillars on which ease of doing business can be improved in India. However both are easy said than done. GST would require the economy moving to an indirect way of taxation rather than the current way to direct taxes which covers a very small percentage of Indian population. It requires a lot of talking to the states and convincing them of the share of revenues that states get will not get affected even when GST is in place. It is in this context that the increase of net proceed of states to 62 percent should be looked upon. If the states are convinced of their fair share in taxes the opposition to GST will go away. The increase of service tax to 14 percent is also a step in that direction where the govt is slowly preparing to reach to an indirect tax level which may be near to the GST tax levels.

Labor reforms is another tricky subject which may create the same amount of opposition that the land ordinance bill is doing now. The trick therefore is to prepare the ground for labor reforms, it is here where the creation of national pension scheme will play its role.

Reducing corporate taxes, moving away from an era of corporate exemptions which will make the domestic industry competitive against global industries, easy of filing bankruptcy are another few important steps that the govt has taken to kick start the domestic manufacturing and other industries.

The implementation of GST and labor reforms therefore all look to be in the budget of 2016, ground has been prepared for that.

Black Money

Bringing back Black money has been a huge issue politically and BJP has delivered on this front. Right from setting up of SIT on the first day of govt to bringing back up to 20000 crores till this date has been good moves. What was pending was making this a prosecutable offence which will make getting up black money information from other countries easier. The govt has lived up to its promise on this which was a big political promise they had done. In coming future we will start seeing the benefits out of these steps.

The salaried class

First in the interim budget and now in the current budget the FM has given huge tax savings to the salaried middle class by first increasing tax slabs from 2 lakh to 2.5 lakhs and now giving further tax saving tools in pension, higher health care deductions and conveyance allowance. Just in this budget a total of Rs 14338 is saved in taxes by the salaried class if they opt for the various tax saving schemes the govt has provided.

The poor

As I mentioned earlier there were apprehensions on one side by the poor and expectations on the other side by the economists on the direction that the Modi govt will take on the subsidies. Taking away the subsidies would have had a catastrophic impact on the rural farm wages. The Modi govt has however played a masterstroke in this field. By achieving a target of 12.5 crores bank account in the Jan dhan yojna the govt has ensured that every penny of subsidy it provides reaches to the actual beneficiary. Therefore without increasing in actual terms the subsidy amount the govt has continued with the same allocation. In coming few years with an improving economic scenario the amount spent on subsides will come to a realistic level. The govt has therefore acted pragmatic and has shown off its pro – poor side even when its share of funds had reduced drastically after increased share of the states.

There are other good news where the govt has put a lot of focus like innovation, electronics industry , creating an startup fund and making it much more accessible to entrepreneurs , creating 6 crore toilets taking up preventive health and swach bharat seriously. It is now left to implementation of these ideas, there is another hint that this govt keeps giving is the thought that not all actions will come in budgets which are often highlighted events. In coming months we will slowly and gradually see India moving to the blueprint given by the Modi Sarkar ..ache din are a work in progress and India has exciting time ahead in coming days 

De-Mystifying the Aryans Arctic Connect

Mahabharata is back on television, story starts with Bhīshma … makes me nostalgic reminds me the story of his sacrifice. How Bhīshma kept lying on a bed of arrows pierced through his body .Finally breathes his last when Hastinapur gets safe into the hands of Yudhistra and sun set for utarayana. When I had seen this for the first time it had puzzled why did he wait till utarayana for his death?

Discovery of Saraswati

Meanwhile in India at the start of 19^th century John Marshall discovers the ruins of an ancient civilization around the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, Later it is identified as the Mohenjo-Daro - Indus valley civilization. Along with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one of three early civilizations of the Old World, and of the three the most widespread. It flourished in the basins of the Indus River, one of the major rivers of Asia, and the Ghaggar-Hakra River, which once coursed through northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

The find of the civilization grew from around 40 sites in 1947 located mostly in Pakistan’s Punjab province to thousands of sites now (around 3700 sites ) located across  India’s province of Punjab , Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The area covered by this civilization was around 800000 kms. While the civilization was named after the first location it was discovered recent excavations point out that the name does not describes the geographical extent of the civilization. With thousands of sites found around the dry bed of a river which has now been identified as the Vedic river Saraswati and more evidence coming from satellite imageries and research’s it proves that once there flowed a river around which the civilization of Harappa flourished .Looking at the amount of sites found around this river it becomes more appropriate if this is called by the name Indus-Saraswati civilization.

For years Saraswati was considered as a mythical river though the river was mentioned in Rig Veda as many as 72 times in 45 hymns and has been described as the mother of all rivers. Evidences now point to an indeed an existence of such a river flowing much before 3500 BC up to 2100 BC which due to seismic activities or other geological activities ceased to be a mighty river and disappears around 1700 BC.

Aryan invasion Theory

The discovery and disappearance of the river saraswati and few other discoveries like (lost city of dwarka re-discovered) however has a huge impact on a different debate and that   is the Aryan invasion theory long ago put by Max Muller who proposed that Vedas were composed by invading Aryans around 1200 BC. However with Vedas describing saraswati as a flowing river which ceased to exist long before the dates given by Muller for Aryan invasion it is now clear that Vedas were composed much earlier when saraswati was flowing. Also there is no evidence of any kind of invasion on ground as suggested by Muller. In fact in his book “the lost river” author Michel danino gives an account of how from mehrgrah which is an site from the Indus-saraswati  civilization around 7000 BC to the modern India there is continuity in the traditions , religion , gods ,rituals common local weights etc. Thus the debate is more or less getting settled that Aryans or the early inhabitants of Indus-saraswati were indeed local indigenous population and there was a flourishing civilization between river Indus and saraswati around the end of last glacial age. This also brings us to the conclusion that Harappa /Indus-Saraswati civilization was the Vedic Civilization.

Arctic characteristic of some Hymns in Vedas

However there are some interesting evidences which still leaves few questions unanswered. One of them is rooted in Vedas and was proposed by none other than Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a great scholar of Vedas himself. Though Tilak did not had the benefit of the recent discoveries of thousands of sites along the dry bed of river saraswati we can still take his work which points out to the arctic connections to early Aryans. Tilak in his work “The Arctic Home in the Vedas” point out to hymns in Vedas which are characteristic of someone located in arctic while composing the Vedas.

 For e.g. If an observer is stationed at the North Pole,the sun will rise there only once a year, — it will be constantly visible for 6 months and then there will be a continuous night of 6 months.6 months of night may make us feel that the place is inhospitable but the night of 6 months may not be completely dark as Tilak explains how in nights there will be the electric discharges, known as Aurora Borealis, filling the polar night with their charming glories, and relieving its darkness to a great extent. Then we have the moon, which, in her monthly revolution, will be above the polar horizon for a continuous fortnight, displaying her changing phases, without intermission, to the polar observer. But the chief cause, which alleviates the darkness of the polar night, is the twilight before the rising and after the setting of the sun. With us in the tropical or the temperate zone, this twilight, whether of morning or evening, lasts only for an hour or two; but at the Pole this state of things is completely altered, and the twilight of the annual morning and evening is each visible for several days. The exact duration of this morning or evening twilight is, however, still a matter of uncertainty. Some authorities fix the period at 45 days, while others make it last for full two months.

The Polar climate is at present extremely cold; but in the Interglacial epoch or just before the last ice age it was different, and thus must have been capable of supporting humans. The Avesta which is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, and is composed in the Avestan language also contains of passages which very clearly mentions of things characteristic of arctic.

 So Did in Mahabharata when Bhīshma waited for utarayana he was actually waiting for the day to set in the northern hemisphere which must have been a tradition followed by his ancestors long ago who may have waited for day to set out before they cremated their dead and the same tradition must still have had left its traces.Tilak suggests that It seems,  very probable that the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna originally represented a two-fold division of the year, one of continuous light and the other of continuous darkness as at the North Pole; and that though it was not suited to the later home of the Vedic people it was retained, because it was an established and recognized fact in the language, like the seven suns, or the seven horses of a single sun.

Another interesting point if that at the Pole the twilight of the yearly morning and evening lingers on for several days. The sun, in his course through the ecliptic, would take more than a month to reach the horizon from this point; and during all this time a perpetual twilight will prevail at the Pole. Long dawn and long evening twilight are, therefore, the principal factors in shortening the darkness of the Polar night and if we deduct these days from the duration of the night, the period of darkness is reduced from six to two, or at the most, to two-and-half-months.

A close examination of the dawn-hymns in the Rig-Veda finds out the  fact that Ushas, or the deity presiding over the dawn, is often addressed in the plural number in the Vedic hymns, and that this could be accounted for only on the supposition that the Vedic dawns were a closely connected band of many dawns-a supposition, which was found to be fully borne out by express passages in the Vedic literature, stating, in unambiguous terms, that the Vedic dawns were 30 in number and that in ancient times a period of several days elapsed between the first appearance of light on the horizon and the rising of the sun. We have also found that the dawn is expressly described in the Rig-Veda as moving round like a wheel, a characteristic, which is the true only in the case of the Polar dawn.

Avesta

There are more details which Tilak take us in Avesta and in Veda but the question is if we take further this theory where does all this leaves us, did Aryans originally inhabited the arctic and later moved from arctic to Iran to India? The evidence on ground however does not suggest any such movement but then how do we explain the arctic characteristics of some hymns in Vedas. In this regard a recent discovery of arkain in Russia needs to be mentioned

Swastika City of Russia

Constructed on a circular principle around a central square, with about sixty semi-dugout houses built within its ramparts, the settlement was situated in the southern Urals, near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. It was defended by two concentric ramparts of clay and adobe blocks on a wooden frame, and could only be entered via four intricately constructed passageways that would have made the entrance of enemies extremely difficult. The inhabitants and the common central square were thus well protected by Arkaim’s defensive, inward-turned ground plan. The town was found to be closely aligned to several celestial reference points, and is therefore believed to have been an observatory as well as a fortress, an administrative and a religious centre.

In order to gain publicity, the early investigators described Arkaim as "Swastika City", "Mandala City", and "the ancient capital of early Aryan civilization, as described in the Avesta and Vedas". The swastika description refers to the floor plan of the site, which (with some imagination) may appear similar to the swastika symbol, albeit with rounded arms (similar to the lauburu) attached to a central ring instead of a cross.

According to many experts, the Arkaim and related sites could be created by ancient Indo-Iranians long before their separation, relocations over the Eurasian steppe and traffic corridor to the south of Iran and India.Some of the scientists have drawn parallels between the circular fortified settlements such Arkaima and the city of the legendary king Yima reproduces the model of the universe and described in “Avesta” – the sacred book of the ancient Iranians.

However some scientist believes Arkaim was an ancient observatory, somewhere I too get inclined to this idea... the architecture of the city and the small population it supported makes you pick it up as an observatory rather than a town in thick of trade and investment. It also has remarkable similarity to Stonehenge in UK.

Where does it leave us?

The question comes back to the same place did Aryans moved from arctic to India , a century has been spent working on this idea it does not however gives you sufficient evidence as nothing on ground shows a population movement from arctic to India. However what if we invert the prism and see the other way round things start to make sense. Aryans were extremely exploratory in nature and had satellite colonies and towns established in ancient world across different civilizations like the Egypt and Mesopotamia.As the author of “the lost river” Michel danino puts “it is fascinating to note that essentially no material remains have been found in an Indus setting with certain Mesopotamian origin. Why do Indus artifacts appear in Mesopotamia, but not vice-versa? " The best explanation to date is that the Indus peoples traded for perishable materials. But it is still not completely convincing. It is therefore not impossible that Aryans while prospering along the bank of river saraswati set out observatories in arctic which they used to study the sun and its movement? The findings of those observatories have been reflected in Vedas. There was never a movement of complete towns and cities but a small set of population could be travelling to gather the findings across the globe. We do this these days by setting up observatories in Antarctica or other places, did the ancient Indians did the same .With around a couple of site across the globe and around 3700 sited of Indus-Saraswati civilization situated around the length of now dry river saraswati this does looks possible but only more research on this can prove it beyond doubt.

Taken from a range of work you can access it here

Peshawar Attack: Nothing will change

As 3 days of mourning gets over in Pakistan so will be the hopes that this tragedy is going change anything in Pakistan or will this change anything for the sympathizers of terrorism across the world. The ranting will go on and the lovers of jihad in the name of religion will find new reasons to kill and spread mayhem. And for them they will keep finding some reasons to keep going, sometimes the reason will be Iraq, sometimes Israel, and sometimes Kashmir, gujrat etc. That Pakistan will now be using terror victim card more than ever and will play politics over these dead kids is no guess. The narrative will change but not the agenda. For distortion is so deep into their psyche and hatred so rooted in their thoughts that no less than a messiah will be needed cleanse that. But even a messiah needs someone's call and no one is complaining here, it will be business as usual. This was coming and will keep coming in the coming years for when a nation names its missiles as gauri and ghaznavi they forget that the piece of land they live on was tyrannized by same ghauri and ghaznavi's. That when a nation on the banks of Indus tries to find out its root in the invaders coming from foreign land who plundered their land you don't know to laugh on them or cry for them. For who will stand against the terrorists when the nation is ferried in special run trains to hear Hafez saeed.

16th Dec was no ordinary day. On this day in 1971 it became clear that east Pakistan would become a new nation , After millions of rapes and massacre Bangladesh was born, if they didn't learn then what they will learn now.  They choose to believe in conspiracy theories then and even now it will be easier to live in denial because truth has the tendency to ask difficult questions. Taliban says we did this because you killed our families, isn’t this the same reason they give to support terrorism in India to kill innocents. Is it not the same poisonous theory they used to feed in the minds of their kids? Today that same poison has taken them away. Did they had any sympathy for the yazdis that were massacred in Iraq, were they not children of anyone were they not innocent, were the 166 people killed in Mumbai not innocent. They will have many more of such uncomfortable questions, and to arrive at an answer they will have to answer each one of them, it will therefore be better to live in denial. People had warned them that when you keep snakes in your backyard one day they do come to bite you but who cares. The army owns the nation and the nation do not seem to care, who are we then to reason them? When even a hockey match win is celebrated as a war between civilizations and when no reason is a reason enough then what happens is a tragedy.

And back home in India there were candle light vigils against Israel earlier but then now against whom those candle light vigils will be taken up ... Taliban, Pakistan, ISI or terrorism in name of religion. But let’s not worry they will find out an answer to this also. An attempt will be made by the so called secularists to draw a line between Good Taliban -bad Taliban, Pakistan and terrorism and blur the line between freedom of speech and freedom to spread the agenda of hatred. Men from congress were crying for the rights of free speech of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, they will have more job at hand.

The question is should we sympathize with them when they themselves don't sympathize with themselves, well we can't avoid we want to live for hope, we want to stand with them in this hour of grief, we don't want to pose these uncomfortable questions at this moment, we don't want them to answer this to the world but then they do need to ask these questions to themselves and get a clear answer in their hearts because only that could be a true tribute to the innocents who never lived long enough .And somewhere in our hearts we want to believe that things will change , it’s our dream but before we start believing in our own dreams that this will change something and waste too much of time on that lets make our border stronger because the moment the mourning will be over the firing on the borders will start.

Some experiments on road worth doing

For 3 years every time I drove in Hyderabad from Miyapur where I lived to Hi-tech city where I worked I had just one question in my mind, why is there so much traffic even though the roads are so wide. Yes it is true, after staying in Bangalore for years when I came to Hyderabad the roads looked amazingly wide and yet the traffic did not seem to move. However my recent stay in US gave me some clue as how could we look to solve some traffic problem in India. Another realization I had is that most of the solutions to traffic problem in India does not need extremely costly solutions. Hardly 10-15 percent of extra investment on our roads can make our roads extremely safe and can substantially increase the average speed of the traffic. Coming down to specifics below are some of the points I felt we can introduce in our roads to make them world class.

Issuing of Driver licenses

Yes this should be the number one issue which we should address. The whole system of awarding a driver’s license is flawed in India and it urgently needs radical overhaul.

Comprehensive booklet/CDs/Recorder

What is needed is a small but comprehensive guide/booklet (50-60 pages at most) with all the traffic signs and rules compiled in it. Recently a video went viral on Facebook where vehicles were seen not giving way to an ambulance, while people’s apathy is one reason for that behavior a more important reason for such behavior is ignorance. Most drivers in India will fail to answer the question as to which side should they move the vehicle in case they hear an ambulance siren behind them. And the reason behind that are the poor training programs when they were granted the license. We must therefore strengthen our program and fix the knowledge gap among drivers. A well-documented book with all the rules and signs , with rules telling where to park , what do in case of hearing an emergency vehicle or an ambulance behind you , who has the first right to take a left turn or a right turn, how to merge on a highway , what to do in case of a crash or break down, what to do when you see a school bus  and numerous such issues will go a long way to make the driver well informed about the decision he is taking on road and will also increase the general safety and speed of all vehicles. Once the temporary license exam is fixed next we need to go ahead and fix the way permanent licenses are awarded. While like in US in India also we have the two level exams where we first get a temporary license and then get a permanent license the way it is implemented on ground leaves a lot more to be desired.

Temporary License

The first level of temporary exam should be made a comprehensive knowledge test of all the rules, regulations, signs etc. all of which should be addressed in the driver’s guide/booklet. The test can be conducted online on various private authorized prometric centers. The govt should simply move out from the business of conducting exams so that no one in the country gets a license based on influence. However conducting such a test in India throws lot of challenges, a lot of our population is uneducated and therefore online written objective type tests may not be suitable for all. However for such candidates the govt can come up with visual CD’s and recorders in all regional languages which the candidate can listen at home and then come prepared for the exam which can again be a computer based test but where the candidate listen to the questions and then an interactive computer program can help the candidate to find out the correct answer.

Permanent License

What I admired in US was the way they take the permanent license exam. In a two-step process the candidate is required to either clear a maneuverability test or a parallel parking test (both these require extensive practice with parking cones and by the time the candidate learns to do these he/she actually gets a very good grip of the handling the car in both forward and reverse directions). In the second part of the test the instructor asks the candidate to drive on road where instructor observes the candidate if he is following the rules or not. On successful completion of both these steps the candidate is cleared to drive independently on road. Getting a license in US or any other developed country is a moment to cherish, we get it after a lot of hard work and the strong training programs before getting the license is one of the reasons we see such a disciplined traffic in developed countries.

STOP sign and Speed Limits

Signs, signs and signs … signs are key for smooth movement of traffic and some signs like the STOP sign have immense value. Accordingly to me it is one of the most important signs when on road. Initially I didn’t recognized the value of this sign and it rather looked insignificant, it was only when I started driving on US roads I realized that how this sign helps to regulate traffic. You can find this sign in every street. When an incoming traffic sees this sign it comes to a complete halt, looks around and then move again when safe. This sign is therefore very useful when we are coming from a street to the main roads or at crossings with no signals. What it does is it forces the traffic to stop and then look around and then move when it is safe. It therefore reduces the chances for an accident due to blind spots on the roads, most of which happens in our streets because the incoming vehicle could not see a vehicle coming from another side as none of them stopped to observe the traffic. The placement of this sign is also extremely significant, I don’t see this sign usually on the main streets rather I see them on lanes which are coming and merging to the main street. It therefore allows the traffic on the main street to continue with their speed and at the same time forces the merging traffic from narrow lanes to look around and merge to the main street traffic or take a turn only when it is safe.

Another important thing is the very clear speed limit signs placed right at regular intervals on streets and highways. So when the driver is moving within populated areas the speed limit comes down from 45-70 miles on highways to 25-35 miles.

Lane driving

Center Lanes

Also on roads with traffic in both direction and without a divider there is usually a center lane where the traffic which needs to take a turn (left in case of US) can wait for clear road on the other side of the road. This is exclusive for such purpose and it saves so much on traffic jams as it keeps traffic running on both sides of the road. Such a small thing but such a big impact. Even on the remotest of places we will find proper markings done for driving on both sides with a distinct divider lines.

   

Highways – Exit Ramps

Till now we discussed some ideas which were relevant to streets , coming to highways even they need lots of design considerations to avoid congestion during peak hours, or to be able to provide free flow of traffic at the maximum permitted speed. If we look at the picture below we can see how an exit ramp is designed in US and other parts of the world. Instead of signals managing the traffic, the place where vehicles need to take exit an exit ramp is provided. Much before the ramp sign boards indicate that an exit is coming and any vehicle looking to take that exit move to that lane. It is also to be noted in picture below how when an exit approach an extra lane is provided exclusive for the exit ramp. There are then signs that tell the traffic at what speed should they take turn on the ramp. Similar ramps or merge lanes approach is used to merge vehicles coming on the highway using. Again this is not an extremely costly solution , India for last few years is building huge network of roads , what we need is just application of mind thinking for every inch of road that is built thinking of all possible scenarios.

Fencing the highways

All of us must have sometime in our lives faced the scenario when a cattle jumped in front of our vehicle while we were at high speed on the highway. To avoid such a scenario it is extremely important to fence the highways. With a high density of population staying next to the highways govt can even plan to make sound walls which can both act as protection against some intrusive element on the road and provide a peaceful life for the people staying around the highways.

Mannerisms on road – awareness campaigns

Last but not the least are the mannerisms we follow on road. After all the techniques and methods the truth is that every part of the world is facing traffic jams during peak traffic hours. And here the role of good mannerisms make such a significant impact that it is difficult to explain till the time we have not experienced it ourselves. Every day In US I face huge traffic jams during peak hours, much worse than I saw in Hyderabad but due to good traffic mannerisms the traffic jams never results in deadlocks. People give you space to change lanes when you need to do so, people do not honk at each other, people move to the exit lanes much in advance so that they do not obstruct the traffic going beyond that exit point, if an accident happens the individuals involved in accident immediately move their vehicles on the shoulder lanes and allow others to move, If someone gives you space to move between the lanes you wave off as a mark of thanks, such small gestures but they leave you with a much better driving experience and far less stressed than what we face on Indian roads. Govt can look to run awareness campaigns to achieve the same. With a dynamic PM like Mr. Modi such a task is more doable than any other time in recent history. Social media can be used effectively to spread such awareness.

I have often heard expatriates/foreigners describing the cultural shock when they visit India, frankly speaking the filth in our cities and the madness on our roads are what people call as cultural shock. With Swach bharat and safe roads we can just not make traffic move smoothly we can also make India a better place to live in. Not all ideas that we see elsewhere in other countries may work for us but then these are some of the points I think are worth trying on Indian roads.