India in the British Period

It is not easy to comprehend that two hundred years of British rule could manage to destroy two thousand years years on Indian culture transforming it in its sociology, relationships, education, language, manners and conduct.  The only good part is that old India could survive in the villages through old traditions but mired in poverty, insecurity and arbitrary fatalistic hopefulness.  The indigenous people in the hills did rise up and fought out the British but the latter maneuvered with the help of the urban elite, who at times became partners in the exploitation.

The story of the British in India is a drama of human deceitfulness achieved in concert with land usurpers, money lenders and small time speculators employed by the East India Company.  How did a parasite moneyed class develop that could be used to torture and exploit the farmers is a larger story of understanding human character under intimidation and insecurity.  The Moghuls had started creating a zamindar, subedar and a hierarchical class, that found its culmination under the patronage of British.  The latter managed to change the education system in the country to foster this new class of privileged "officials" who looked down upon the old Indian values in many possible ways.

The Moghuls had instituted heavy punishment system to disrupt the society, but they did succeed in maintaining the economy and food-supply by bringing new land under cultivation.  Though there was religious bigotry, there was market supply of food grains as a part of the administration policy.  The East India Company had a tack of exporting food out of India to support their own homeland and support the large number of colonies they had created.  In addition to exporting the food out, they coerced the farmers to convert grain-producing fertile lands to the cultivation of cash crops like indigo for export.  When synthetic indigo became available in Europe, the Indian farmer was stuck with land that had no crop value neither any cash value.

The irresponsible food exports and lack of facilities to reach out to the interior caused back to back famines for several years in the 1860's  The British administration completely failed in reaching out to the famine stricken areas.  There was massive corruption and artificial market pricing by the food retailers.  The administration operated on bribery and patronage.  There was horrendous loss of lives, in some of the areas one third of the population perished. Cholera and dehydration became rampant.  It became obvious that the British was engaged to destroy India than give her governance as they had been claiming.

A little something good happened through this catastrophe in waking up a few individuals to think that the inertia of inaction among the middle class must be broken.  Such awakening happened in Bengal which also had taken the lead in instituting the British rule through their own participation in exploitation.  There was perception that the new education system was inadequate to fully exploit the student's intelligence and diligence.  The British had succeeded in denying any position of privilege to the new college educated Indians claiming that they were of inferior intellect.

The Islamic people succeeded to create their own educational system with a view to create new leaders in industry and to foster business.   An Indian physician helped establish a scientific institution to encourage research and free thinking.   More institutions followed around the country and many "clerks" of Indian origin did get respite by doing scientific work during the evenings after completing their daily office work.  Politically, the British allowed assembly of Indian National Congress to give an opportunity for the activists to present populist causes to the Crown.

The rest part of the story is the arrival of Gandhi and the strategy for self-rule.  We will take up the details in our seminar on November 30.  Please do join by registering at
https://www.indiadiscoverycenter.org

India’s Cultural Evolution – What do we find?

For almost seven years now, about a dozen of us have been meeting bi-weekly to reflect and analyze our own personalities in the large mosaic of India’s traditions and culture.   It is a difficult exercise since the elements of it require us to objectively analyze our own conduct.  But at the same time, it has its own value since we don’t observe others but probe our own conduct in the process of analysis.  We become our own subject of study.  Both men and women participated in the group.  The ages ranged from mid-thirties to seventies. 

Our goal is to create an educational document communicable to our children and the future youth on behalf of us.  Being immigrants in the US, we feel that the parents would be the major resource for cultural education, so we undertake the exercise.  We have studied India’s culture from the available sources from the early times up to 1800AD.  I take the opportunity to summarize the chronology and the salient features in the evolution as we observed.

 (1) Community settlements in India began about seventy thousand years ago and multiple influx of people has happened.  Archaeological evidence of population migration is sketchy.

(2) India has been a land of fertility and good climate.  Various techniques of agriculture were invented and applied by people. Domestication of many crops happened in the land.  India remained as the food basket for the world during the known history up to 1700AD.

(3) Self-sufficiency in food enabled people to engage in creative arts and philosophical reflections.  No early written document has been discovered except the seals in the Indus period.  We conjecture popularity of massive oral literature in native languages in different regions.  Dramatic productions and wooden engineering structures were apparently quite common.

(4) Agricultural productivity brought in an empirical cause and effect relationship, alluding to the notion of a cosmic cause to drive the universe.  We hold the opinion that all native philosophy developed empirically through years of observations and collective analysis.  While the philosophical speculations brewed in people, the documentation came later.

(5) Poetic renderings of empirical findings and beliefs became the Vedas.  There was a rift between the literary poets and the dynamic farmers.  It possibly took millennia for the two groups to merge and create a unified social structure based on aptitude of different groups of people.

(6) The new social structure was effective in streamlining trade and commerce.  The excess produce helped bring wealth to the country.  India’s prosperity continued to ascend until 1700AD while it has been estimated to be contributing 25% of the gross GDP of the world.

(7) The prosperity and stability brought in new thoughts and further progress in analytic literature.  Scientific analysis of language, speech, music, drama and economics was achieved.  Observational astronomy and mathematics developed independently.  Massive literary explosion created masterpieces in world literature.  Discovery of iron technology and metallurgy paved way for rock carving, scripting and sculpting.

(8)  Analytic reasoning that each individual life is free led to explosive spurt in creativity developing new creations in the art, painting, music, dance, poetry and the sciences.  India became a land of opulence.  Trade and commerce flourished.  Indian goods became popular worldwide.

(9)  Prosperity created complacency and idleness.  Internal rivalry developed among different regions and divisive tendencies were triggered through Islamic invasions.  Gradually India was occupied piece by piece from the north.  The new rulers mobilized people in large scale construction projects but gradually weakened the economy through massive taxation.

(10) Some rebellions erupted but died down. The British took advantage of the weakness in the country and occupied as the new rulers. We will explore the British period in our next seminar.

The following is a summary of our own findings through our studies:

(a)    Indian culture in indigenous, empirical and distinctive.  Self-sufficiency in food and ease in agricultural production helped create a culture of caring of the planet and of each other.

(b)   The stated wisdom that “World is one family” was empirically deduced through farming and food production.

(c)    Indian civilization is just the human path of development where human beings are provided with natural abundance thus having time to reflect and explore individual creativity with freedom of expression. India has been lucky geographically to have this privilege.

(d)   Philosophically India champions personal freedom and mutual existence.

We have a number of unsolved issues that we would try to address as we wrap up the series.  The important among them is the class hierarchy that got built into the society.  Class hierarchy did produce economic disparity and strong social divisions.  The latter was exploited by the invaders and the situation did aggravate. The middlemen developed to maintain the society in an economic model have institutionalized themselves with the help of the royal and official patronage.

The second point that we don't understand is the massive degradation in a short period of time after 1700AD.  Starvation, disease and famines have occurred.  The question is if India can reconstitute an operational model where her population can be well protected in food and sustenance such that she can flourish with new contributions like that happened in the first fifteen hundred years of the present era. 

Our next seminar on the British-Sikh period 1800AD-1947 AD is scheduled for Saturday, November 2, 2019, at Bemis Hall in Lincoln, MA.  All are invited to join.

Nature of Man - India's Discovery

Man has an innate curiosity to know.  Man discriminates information, organizes, and decides on an action.  Man innovates and man adapts to the environment.  Man realizes that the nature is a benefactor and life has value.  Man understands that there is a difference between happiness and unhappiness and also that happiness is a function of one's own interactions.  Man discovers that respecting another life is the key to human happiness!

The above is a sum total of India's story as people created habitat on India's soil.  The discovery need not be unique to India, but because of her location and plentiful food supply, India had the privilege of retaining people who came to live.  India became a living civilization where the man evolves than escapes.  India discovered that each man is inherently creative and the creativity is an endowment that must be explored and manifested.

Some people ascribe the name "God" to the endowment of creativity forgetting that creativity is natural and built-in.  Lack of food, disease or distress can be impediments on human creativity.  Creativity is a mental function and it operates when the body functions are sound and normal.  India had the privilege of resources to offer health to her people such that they can maintain a creative life.  Good health is a function of good water, good air and clean environment.  Cleanliness became the cardinal principle of living in Indian eco-system.

The discovery that Man is free is a deduction, but is never fully realized.  We form a society when our own freedom does not clash with another's freedom.  The universe is large enough and can hold us all endowing each our own freedom.  We accept than we encroach.  We exist and allow all to exist.  We consume what we need not because we can.  While such practice might appear logical, its development in human society took thousands of years. It survived in India in its grass-root level.

What does the Man do?  Man takes care of the universe.  Man offers his services for the betterment of others who might be handicapped, who cannot move or who might be weak.  These others could be trees, animals, birds, sick people or people in old age.  Man does not start the day in search of personal survival, but Man feels secure that his sustenance is available to him at home.  He uses his skills to create new products, produce new composition, generate new literature or think of engineering methods for the betterment of the health and happiness in the universe.

This tranquil philosophy of a cultivated view of life was marred by Islamic invaders to India, who
were wanderers and were looking for easy access to food.  In search of Man, India had forgotten the enormous task of defending herself against intrusion.  Man also can betray in the threat of life and family to turn against each others.  While the initial invaders came to plunder and go away, the later ones thought to occupy and stay.  Thousands of people were butchered, many more were converted to Islam under the threat of death. 

Defiance did develop, but was sporadic and slow.  The Maratha Shivaji built up his own militia to fight against the intruders.  The Islamic Army was harassed through guerrilla warfare, militia hiding in the hills and the jungles.  The local people eventually gained advantage but Shivaji did not live through to enjoy it.  The Mughal Empire eventually collapsed and the Marthas did rule a major part of the country.

The period 1500AD to 1800AD is the period of faith and perseverance in India.  India survived through the atrocities.  It became richer in culture through adopting the new traits of splendor and grandiosity, but it became weaker as a nation, loose among its people.  While art, architecture, music, dance and literature thrived in various regions, the Indian nation looked insecure and unstable.  There were too many middle men, too many small kings, there was little national defense.

These topics would be our points of discussion our next seminar entitled "The Study of Mughal-Maratha Period, 1500AD-1800AD" on Saturday, May 4, 2019 at Bemis Hall in Lincoln.  I take the
opportunity to invite you all to join,  Please register at https://www.indiadiscoverycenter.org

The Story of India upto 1500AD

The goal is India Discovery Center is to map the distinction and identity of a person of
Indian descent as we witness through the evolution in history.  All of the India's history through millennia is not fully documented, much has been extrapolated.  One has to sieve through the literature to check what we can identify as a trait that can be taken as the base.  All human beings need survival, but the conduct is produced through habitat and security.  Ours is an exploration
to help the future generations to research more and understand the growth of human civilization.

India has been privileged in one particular sense because of her fertile land and ample supply of water.  Agriculture was natural and food production was easy.  We believe this was the key to the
original flourishing Indus Period civilization.  Through thousands of years, people had developed
the understanding of crop production through the use of irrigation.  Gradually the Indus area
used the surplus grains for trade and produced items of interest using raw materials obtained
from the foreign lands.  Other areas in the world also became trade centers, but the surplus of
agricultural production gave longevity and spread to the Indus civilization.  The compete story of Indus still remains to be fully told because of the inability to decipher the Indus script.

The technology of Indus civilization did not appear to transfer to the Vedas, which seem to have
been well preserved through oral recitation and transmission. The Vedic compositions are poetic
and seem to develop a faith-based society.  The agriculture and agricultural technology possibly
did move to the middle India, which also had developed crop production as a staple earlier.  It
appears that the Vedas used the language used in the middle India and developed it to make
communication in context.  The original language was most likely purely object-based and used
without the sense of time.  But the principles of living as the freedom of existence, concept of righteousness, and the character of truth are most likely old empirical concepts, and not poetic.

The Vedic hymns did teach the value of human possessions and the creation of wealth.  Though conduct and character were also part of the teachings, the pursuit of wealth did cause misery and wars.  This led to reflection and introspection.  The period 700BC to 200BC called the Classical
Period saw enormous strides in human knowledge by dissecting the Vedic literature.  India discovered grammar, mathematics and music.  Dramatics and human psychology were encoded
along with the nutrition and health principles.  New religions in the forms of alternative
faiths showed up enriching the India's landscape.  An economist Chanakya formulated a capitalist
economy that thrived in India for fifteen hundred years.  The Kings did appear but they were
by definition were in State to serve the people.  India was opulent through production and political
stability.

Opulence added freedom of thinking and creative literature developed in the form of epics.  Philosophical debates were popular and analysis of life through mathematics and astronomy
took a scientific turn.  The functioning of human mind was explored through possible physical
experiment and the techniques of restraint, mindfulness and yoga became the part of average
life.  Sophistication in art, language, dress, ornamentation, aesthetics, and human conduct
labeled the period 200BC - 500 AD as Golden in history.  The regimentation of the Vedas was reduced through the establishment of educational institutions and education through books and written texts,  Monks from China were attracted to learn and helped propagate Buddhism in
China and the Far East.

Technological discovery and the production of iron helped change the Indian landscape into
massive structures and monuments.  The period 500AD to 1500AD saw large scale expansion of trade producing increase in wealth in local regions.  The centrality of India's administration was reduced with the development of local economy fueled by maritime trade.  Regional languages
developed which propelled regional literature.  Further sophistication and creativity occurred
in food, dress, art, music and dance.  While the diversity blossomed in the country the apparent
non-centrality weakened the nation making it easy for the invaders to break in and plunder.
Though some resistance was offered, an artistic nation could not defend itself against the
brutal terrorists who were looking for food and shelter using force and sword!   

So is the story of India upto 1500AD.  Please join us in a survey seminar at Lexington Public
Library on Sunday, March 31, at 2 PM.  Let us discuss the story at length!

IDC Spring 2019 Seminars

Our goal in India Discovery Center has been to understand the distinction or difference a person of Indian origin might bring to a table of nations.  All human beings have general needs of food, housing and survival.  What does India offer if any to the world civilization?  I want to summarize
our findings so far.

Through our studies and observations, we have come to believe that besides survival, the human
being is also creative.  Creativity lives in the brain and operates through imagination and intelligence.  It is a process through which we adapt to the environment in stead of breaking it down.  We understand that the natural resources are helpful to us and we learn to economize.  We appreciate the role of sun and water.  We appreciate co-existence and harmony.  We understand the power of the society and its constraints.  We understand that we don't live by ourselves but we live with the help of nature and the grace of the universe.

The above is not a profound revelation but is not realized unless one reflects on life for a long time. Any reflection needs security of food.  This is where India as a land has been blessed by nature.  Whenever the first man arrived in India, he discovered that he does not have to explore any further.  Food, water and good climate were all there.  India became a base for all people who arrived.  They all adopted the empirical principle of respecting the nature since they appreciated the landscape and realized that the nature was providing the nourishment.  Later they discovered that nature also healed. Food hygiene was declared claiming that longevity was a human right!

Security of food and good health propelled people to devote time into music, dance and art.  People had time to create elaborate social festivals and spend long hours in preparing for artistic productions. A grass-root culture developed based on artistic expressions, fashion and design.  It went to the extent that the performing arts were coded and put together for people to learn and be trained. The code became the only resource of its kind in the world.  People discovered the play of the mind and the role of speech.  The study of speech and articulation became an obsession among the Indian people.  Analysis of speech led to better communication and precision in messaging.  The latter helped in creating better quality of life. All productions took a stamp of finer aspects of expression.

India produced the first and the only grammar book in the world and empowered people to express freely.  Freedom of expression led to massive literature in all subjects.  They become the glory of India two thousand years ago.  Gradually literature became more focused, lyrical and musical.  Technology developed to depict the finer aspects visually through paintings or carvings.  The regimentation of religion was removed to allow individual freedom which engineered further creativity in food, textiles, individual makeup, living style and faith.  India became a dynamic country throbbing with creativity building massive temples, elaborate frescoes, intricate designs which
made the country the most opulent nation in the world.

We have come so far in our studies.  We will offer our observations in a survey seminar on March 31,
Sunday, afternoon 2 PM at Lexington Public Library. We will cover the five periods: Indus, Vedic, Classical, Golden and Hindu in twenty-minute segments.  We will have a Q&A session.  We will make this free survey seminar educational for all. The siting in the Library large meeting room is restricted to eighty people.  Please register by sending mail to indidiscoverycenterusa@gmail.com to reserve your seat.  Please visit http://www.indiadiscoverycenter.org to learn more.

Then we will continue on our exploration to go further.  India would be occupied and would be ruled by various foreign elements.  We will explore the splendor of the Mughals and the resistance of the Marathas in our series seminar VI at Bemis Hall in Lincoln on May 4.  We will announce further next month.

Where are we in the journey?

I had started this blog to write end of 2016 about my wanderings, but got occupied in taking the journey.  Most material on India has been written by individuals who never belonged to the land.  Most dates are conjectures and most materials are simple extrapolations.  The lack of analytical material was itself a revelation and it was difficult to handle the sloppy work.  We took upon ourselves to go through the original texts as much as possible to help recreate the texture of life.  

We developed our own thinking as we progressed.  Much new material evolved through group discussion and self-reflection that we reported in our seminars.  I would not go into all details, but express my delight on the period that we just completed.

We labeled the period as Hindu Period spanning from 500AD to 1500AD.  This was the fifth period in our seminar roster, earlier ones being the Indus Period, the Vedic Period, the Classical Period

(700BC-200BC) and the Golden Period (200BC-500AD).  These adjectives were adopted from the

earlier classification, giving the impression that India was at its peak in wealth and well-being around 400AD.  What we discovered was that the period did extend much longer and India was a land of style, fashion and creativity till people lost their homes and their lands to arbitrary taxation. 

While the process of terror and insecurity would be the topic in our next seminar, I wish to express my delight to invite you to walk on the streets of Ujjain, or Kashi or Puri or Madurai in 1100AD.

You would see well-dressed people walking, ladies with style and sophistication going their way, the stores selling design textiles and art objects, and artists singing or dancing in various city theaters.  There is no competition, each person feels secure and free.  In the corner, poets have assembled and they are reciting their compositions.  The language of conversation is rich, the contents of the conversation is technical.  Then there are number wizards who are setting up their instruments to measure the shadow to measure time and are predicting the future events in the sky.  So is the observation by AlBiruni, the Arab historian who happened to accompany Mohammed Ghori and stayed back to study India.

The Golden period did not end, it became a Platinum Period.  The prosperity reached people and everyone became creative and artistic.  We see art in clay, stone., metals, gold, gems, textiles, food, cooking and in personal habits.  The God was not out there in the heavens, but it was in one's work, in the person's tools, it expressed through the person's hands.  Literature itself became an art.  The God came in human voice and people felt the cosmos through their music.  The harmony and the aesthetics became the ruling principle.  Each one is free and independent, but each action fits to an undefined whole which gets created by the group through collaboration and constructive energy.  The power of seeing the harmony was God, who would guide if one went beyond one's self and tried to see the whole.

India exported materials, traded with various countries, settled in the Far East, propagated religious ideas in China, Tibet and Cambodia.  They built temples at home and built temples abroad.  Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam accepted Indian thoughts and adopted Indian languages.

Engineering techniques on metallurgy, stone carving and construction projects were mastered.  Artists enjoyed to produce new work, The tradition of good work ran in the families.  Nutrition and fresh food were important and people maintained excellent health.  There was food for all.  Nobody went hungry. 

I can continue for pages, but shall stop here.  I will analyze various contributions that made India

prosperous in the future blog posts.  Presently I am curious to know how we lost it all.  We have 

some understanding, but I wish to come to a firm conclusion.  I will write gradually.       

Why India Discovery Center?

As the year of 2016 comes to a close, I wish to reflect on our journey with the concept that makes India Discovery Center.  

"India" in the title is a place holder.  It is not a political unit, but a knowledge unit.  In the early days, the entire subcontinent from Iran to Thailand could have been known as a unit. While we don't think that the man originated in this span of the earth, but we have reason to believe that human beings inhabited this area very early in the history of civilization.  On the trail from Africa, human beings also settled in many other areas, but the longest continuous evolution of culture happened in this piece of land on the planet.  It is likely that the first structured literary expression blossomed in India leading to a reflective view of life of survival, fellowship and harmony.  With the river-fed fertile land and a host of vegetation and wild life, the Indian society evolved to define structures in living, invent techniques of enterprise and over all created organizational methods in order to pursue knowledge. Independent thinking and structured living of men and women in India five thousand years ago would be the envy of people in any age.

Then we come to "Discovery."  Among the most fundamental thoughts that developed in India in her early history was the assertion that the human voice was a map of the universe and could enable us to communicate with any object in the universe through proper simulation.  The analytic thinking behind such assertion leads to enunciate that the human voice is not confined to the audible speech, but goes to a deeper comprehension and understanding of an object in one's mental faculty.  That the humans are blessed with a "mind" that can imagine physical objects and create impressions in the brain is the basis of Indian cosmology.  No object or no space is too far for the mind.  While we know of these assertions and enunciation, we do not know how such a thought shaped itself.  We also do not know who the people were and how they lived their life.  Much of the old literature is still not fully studied, many are yet to be uncovered.  Sanskrit language though reviving, was put in the cold for several centuries under the colonial rule. Without proper investigation, we are led to the phrases like "revelation" which have no sustained comprehension.  

The declaration that the entire universe could be a homogeneous unit led to a greater opportunity of thinking in numbers and organizing in sets.  Organizing objects in groups led to organizing thoughts in mind, which eventually gave rise to a distinct grammar, scientific measurement of time and the tools of communication using language.  Naming of objects has been the most mysterious exercise for the human civilization. Object names have moved on to all parts of the world modified through accent and tonality.  Sanskrit language still uses the science of naming, while the world languages memorize words.  Object comprehension than object tabulation has been the most important contribution of the Indian mind.  As we said before, comprehension can lead to simulation and in a deeper sense guide to actualization. This process has been called yoga, a concept totally foreign to the rest of the world.  India taught to the world that a human has the potential to mirror the universe in himself or herself, but we do not know how such a teaching was enabled and by what schooling.  Such empowerment is lately covered in a phrase called "will-power", which is a trait and not an endowment.

We have to come to many more areas of discovery in the fields of music, sciences, technology, engineering, textiles, materials and metallurgy.  But I want to conclude this segment with the third word in the tile, which is "Center".  We envision building a Center where we can learn the evolution of civilization through exhibits and hands-on activities.  We wish to create a laboratory of human curiosity in order to understand how we think and how we organize.  We research and display historical facts to understand where human beings excelled and where they failed.  We celebrate freedom but we understand occupation. India is a living replica of human civilization.  We create a Center to understand India such that we may understand the humanity and the human civilization.  We hope the Center would come to life by 2021.

Please join us in our seminar "Study of the Vedic Period" scheduled for January 21, 2017, in Lincoln, MA.  Please visit our website at http://www.indiadiscoverycenter,org for registration and participation.