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Pixel Pioneers: A Brief History of Graphics, Part One
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Noted scholar and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Professor M.S.S. Pandian, considered an authority on the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, passed away on 10th November 14, following a cardiac arrest. Pandian, 57, died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, where he was rushed following a cardiac arrest. He is survived by his wife S. Anandhi and a daughter.
by Aakshi Magazine
For those of us who were taught by him, MSS Pandian left an indelible mark, and his sudden death is hard to process.
There was nothing intimidating about Pandian, despite his scholarship. He was that rare academic whose academics was never isolated from his politics, it actually stemmed from it. He brought his politics to the classroom, which made his classes unique.
His work on caste in Tamil politics ( Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political), and the lens with which he looked at history and politics, is subversive in a society (and academia) where caste is always masked and never discussed directly for what it is. So was his non-nationalistic worldview. This could not have been easy to do. Apart from being a supporter of the Tamil Eelam struggle, in recent years, he also became a keen follower and supporter of the Kashmir struggle for azadi. Pandian could take these stands and discuss them with students, and not be worried that he was being “simplistic” as academics tend to be. For him, complexity of ideas did not mean cynicism, especially towards movements for justice and equality. Yet his academics was never activist jargon either.
I was taught by him during my Master’s degree in JNU. He had also joined the same year, and his two classes in which he taught us the ideas of Phule, Periyar, Ambedkar as well as Nationalism and Regional movements, were revelatory. He made us question and think, and made History relevant in a way nothing else did. During my Master’s I questioned a lot of things about academics, and it was Pandian’s classes which made me feel understood, even as they taught me so much.
It wasn’t just what he taught, but also how he taught, and I think we should talk about this so that we do not forget it. Pandian never intimidated anyone and made academic ideas accessible. No jargon, so much depth, but also respecting the fact that each student’s intelligence (and interest) is different. We had to write a seminar paper in our final semester and I remember how tense he was because all of us were struggling with writing a long paper for the first time. I remember one particular discussion in which a very unsure and nervous student told Pandian what his seminar paper would be on. Pandian was gentle with him, asking him questions in accordance with his idea, which helped make his paper clearer. By the end of the semester, his seminar paper had grown and developed, but in his own way. I don’t think any other teacher would have had this patience, or this understanding. This was his gift. I know of a friend who he mentored and guided through her M.Phil thesis even though he had never even met her then, nor was she even from the University where he taught. I know there must be more stories like this.
To me too, he has been a mentor. He was always helpful and encouraging, writing recommendations when I needed them, helping me get an internship, or even helping in “breaking” a news story. He edited the draft of my PhD proposal with keen interest, and was always an email away even though we had never actually met again since my Master’s 3 years ago. I also remember a draft of a work on films that he had once talked about and then shared with me, and also mentioned something on Kashmir, work which we would not get to see.
Sometimes, Pandian would send out emails about his daughter to his students, and we could sense he was perhaps alone staying in Delhi. It must have been hard for him. The last email he sent was about a drawing his daughter had made in class about equality and justice. There were parts of his personality which perhaps we will never understand. There was a phase when he would write un-thought out comments on student’s walls on facebook, which he would later apologize for.
Once when I hadn’t got admission to a PhD programme I had applied to, he wrote- “some we win, most we lose”. For us shocked by his sudden death, perhaps he would say- “take it easy”. My thoughts are with his wife and his daughter. Maybe knowing so many mourn with them will give them strength.
The author is a research scholar at University of St Andrews, Scotland and independent film critic.
Photo: Carol Mitchell
Caste hierarchy is the major obstacle to the goal of social justice and it continues to be a major obstacle to social progress even today. There are many a theories, which have tried to understand its origin. The latest in the series is the attempt of RSS to show its genesis due to invasion of Muslim kings. Three books written by RSS ideologues argue that Islamic atrocities during medieval period resulted in emergence of untouchables and low castes. The books are “Hindu Charmakar Jati”, “Hindu Khatik Jati” and “Hindu Valmiki Jati”.
The Sangh leaders claimed that these castes had come into existence due to atrocities by foreign invaders and did not exist in Hindu religion earlier. According to Bhaiyyaji Joshi, number two in RSS hierarchy, ’shudras’ were never untouchables in Hindu scriptures. ’Islamic atrocities’ during the medieval age resulted in the emergence of untouchables, Dalits. Joshi further elaborated, “To violate Hindu swabhiman (dignity) of Chanwarvanshiya Kshatriyas, foreign invaders from Arab, Muslim rulers and beef-eaters, forced them to do abominable works like killing cows, skinning them and throwing their carcasses in deserted places. Foreign invaders thus created a caste of charma-karma (dealing with skin) by giving such works as punishment to proud Hindu prisoners.”
The truth is contrary to this. The foundations of the caste system are very old and untouchability came as an accompaniment of the caste system. The Aryans considered themselves superior, they called non-Aryans krshna varnya (dark skinned), anasa (those with no nose), and since non-Aryans worshipped the phallus, they were considered non-human or amanushya. (Rig Veda: X.22.9) There are quotes in the Rig Veda and Manusmriti to show that low castes were prohibited from coming close to the high castes and they were to live outside the village. While this does not imply that a full-fledged caste system had come into being in Rig Vedic times, the four-fold division of society into varnas did exist, which became a fairly rigid caste system by the time of the Manusmriti.
Untouchability became the accompaniment of the caste system sometime around the first century ad. The Manusmriti, written in the second–third centuries ad, codifies the existing practices which show with utmost clarity the type of despicable social practices that the oppressor castes were imposing upon the oppressed castes. The first major incursions of Muslim invaders into India began around the eleventh century ad, and the European conquests of India began in the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries.
Over time, the caste system became hereditary. The rules for social intercourse as well as establishing marriage relations were laid down by the caste system. Caste hierarchies also became rigid over time. The shudras began to be excluded from caste society, and ‘upper’ castes were barred from inter-dining or inter-marrying with them. Notions of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ were enforced strictly to maintain caste boundaries. Shudras became ‘untouchables’. It is this rigid social division that Manu’s Manav Dharmashastra (Human Law Code) codified.
Golwalkar, the major ideologue of RSS ideology defended it in a different way, ‘If a developed society realizes that the existing differences are due to the scientific social structure and that they indicate the different limbs of body social, the diversity (i.e. caste system, added) would not be construed as a blemish.’ (Organiser, 1 December 1952, p. 7) Deendayal Upadhyaya, another major ideologue of Sangh Parivar stated, ‘In our concept of four castes (varnas), they are thought of as different limbs of virat purush (the primeval man)… These limbs are not only complimentary to one another but even further there is individuality, unity. There is a complete identity of interests, identity, belonging… If this idea is not kept alive, the caste; instead of being complimentary can produce conflict. But then that is a distortion.’ (D. Upadhyaya, Integral Humanism, New Delhi, Bharatiya Jansangh, 1965, p. 43)
Social struggles to oppose this system and the struggles to escape the tyrannies of caste system are presented by Ambedkar as revolution and counter-revolution. He divides the ‘pre-Muslim’ period into three stages: (a) Brahmanism (the Vedic period); (b) Buddhism, connected with rise of first Magadh-Maurya states and representing the revolutionary denial of caste inequalities; and (c) ‘Hinduism’, or the counter revolution which consolidated brahman dominance and the caste hierarchy.
Much before the invasion of Muslim kings, shudras were treated as untouchables and were the most oppressed and exploited sections of society. The rigidity and cruelty of the caste system and untouchability became very intense from the post-Vedic to Gupta period. Later, new social movements like Bhakti, directly, and Sufi, indirectly, partly reduced the intensity of the caste oppression and untouchability. This doctoring of the history by Sangh ideologues is motivated by their political agenda and tries to hide the truth.
by Praful Bidwai
When Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani said of the Indian media during the Emergency that “when asked to bend, they crawled”, he received widespread praise from the intelligentsia and even from people opposed to the BJP’s ideology – because he spoke the truth.
Today, not just the media, but leaders from the fields of education, culture, healthcare and law, are crawling before the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh without even being asked to bend. They include the University Grants Commission chairman, Delhi University vice-chancellor, All-India Institute of Medical Sciences director, and numerous serving and former bureaucrats.
These were among the 60 luminaries who met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat over lunch in Delhi on October 12 at his invitation. Although many of them said they went “only to listen”, media reports suggest that some were ingratiating themselves to the unelected head of an organisation which spawned the BJP – an act unworthy of their positions and democratic propriety.
This is happening when the RSS, BJP and their affiliates have declared their intention to radically reorganise educational curricula along Hindutva lines, including the purging of textbooks of secularist ‘misrepresentations’. Parveen Sinclair, the upright director of the National Council for Educational Research and Training, was forced to resign.
Delhi University’s Sanskrit department, which has no expertise in history, has begun a campaign demanding that history textbooks show that the Aryans were indigenous to India, and not migrants, as most historians believe.
Articles are appearing in the mainstream media glorifying a fiction called ‘Vedic mathematics”’, based on a 1965 book by Bharati Krishna Tirtha, which fails to provide evidence that the sutras (formulas/algorithms) he cites exist in the Vedas. (For a scientific refutation of these claims, see http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/nothing-vedic-in-vedic-maths/article6373689.ece)
Meanwhile, calls for banning/burning books that advance non-Hindutva views have become strident. Fanatics are rampaging through colleges, bookshops, theatres, art galleries and cinema-halls, baying for punishment to dissidents. Everything from political belief, cultural identity to personal morality is being targeted in hysterical campaigns demanding conformity; dissenters are branded ‘un-Indian’.
Intolerance for the right to dissent, palpable in all regions, is now backed by the BJP. This is not to exonerate other parties, including the Congress, regional outfits, or even the Left, which too don’t fully respect the right to dissent.
However, they are not as instinctively, viscerally, and viciously anti-dissent as the BJP/Sangh Parivar, which regards dissent as ‘betrayal’ which must be snuffed out. This is in keeping with the profoundly undemocratic culture of the RSS, which long ago dispensed with the “cumbersome clap-trap of internal democracy” and opted for Ek-Chalak-Anuvartitva (unquestioningly following a single leader, or the Fuehrer Principle).
Yet, the right to differ, dissent, and express dissenting views is at the core not just of democracy – without which it would be impoverished into a majoritarian despotic system – but of knowledge production itself. Without the right to dissent, there can be no progress in the sciences, whether natural or social, and no generation of new knowledge and its dissemination in society through education, dialogue and public debate.
This is a theme that Professor Romila Thapar, one of India’s greatest historians and internationally respected scholars, emphasised in her Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture on October 26 in Delhi. This was the third lecture in the series: the others were delivered by economist-philosopher Amartya Sen and eminent British historian EJ Hobsbawm.
The theme of dissent couldn’t have been more appropriate for the memorial lecture. Chakravartty was a doyen among India’s post-Independence journalists, who edited the weekly Mainstream. He was for long a member of the Communist Party of India. Yet, he sharply criticised the Emergency – which the CPI then backed – and had to shut down the publication temporarily.
Thapar’s lecture was a tour de force covering many epochs and continents. It was at once a rigorous, scholarly analysis of the evolution of critical intellectual traditions over more than 2,000 years, and a passionate appeal to reason, scepticism and the spirit of questioning authority.
Thapar traced the relationship between dissidence and science from Socrates and Galileo in the west to the Buddha and Charvaka schools in India, and showed that certain principles, precepts and methods of science were common to all civilisations, from Athens and Arabia, to India and China. In our part of the world, we had the Buddha espousing agnosticism, and many materialist schools of thought which questioned karma, afterlife and the immortality of the atman (soul), and spurned various Vedic rituals.
If Aryabhatta hadn’t opposed contemporary royal astrologers, he wouldn’t have been able to show – a thousand years before Galileo – that the earth goes around the Sun. The key to this lay in the primacy he gave to logic and rationality, as distinct from faith and religious dogma. The method was to postulate a hypothesis linking observed phenomena to their causes, and test it through experiments; the results would be tested against future observations and refined till a scientific law was established.
Through her panoramic survey Professor Thapar showed the continuity of rational thinking and logical explanation across different countries and periods, which was invariably opposed by religious orthodoxy. Buddhist ideas were described in Brahminical orthodoxy as “delusional”, and a range of different schools like Charvakas, Ajivikas, atheists, materialists and rationalists, were all lumped into “one category – nastikas”, because they questioned the Vedas as “divinely revealed”.
Thapar says this reminds her of “the Hindutvavadis of today for whom anyone and everyone who does not support them, are Marxists!”
Numerous streams of thought coexisted in ancient and medieval India. Some “questioned beliefs and practices upheld by religious authorities”. Among them were women, such as “Andal, Akka Mahadevi and Mira, flouting caste norms, who were listened to attentively by people at large…” Amir Khusro is best known as a poet and composer, but he also studied astronomy; his heliocentric universe “distanced him from orthodox Islam”.
Later came social reformers like Ram Mohun Roy, Phule, Periyar, Shahu Maharaj, Syed Ahmed Khan and Ambedkar, who developed modern-liberal progressive values. Indian society has since been undergoing major changes, which need “insightful ways of understanding” so that social and economic conditions can be related to culture, politics and other phenomena. Public intellectuals are needed to explore these connections and “to articulate the traditions of rational thought in our intellectual heritage.”
As Thapar reminds us, there are “many specialists in various professions, but many among them are unconcerned with the world beyond their own specialisation.” These professionals are not identical with public intellectuals. “There are many more academics, for instance, than existed before. But it seems that most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thought.”
Public intellectuals must take positions fiercely independent of those in power, must be seen as autonomous, and question received wisdom. In addition to possessing an acknowledged professional status, they must have a concern for “what constitute the rights of citizens” and particularly “issues of social justice”; and must be ready “to raise these matters as public policy”.
Thapar ends with an analysis of why public intellectuals are in decline in India and what they can do to become more assertive and effective. She didn’t speak a day too soon. (A recording of her talk is available for non-commercial use at http://sacw.net/article9874.html)
The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi.
by Pheroze L. Vincent, The Hindu
Historian Romila Thapar asked a full house of Delhi’s intelligentsia on Sunday why changes in syllabi and objections to books were not being challenged.
Prof. Thapar was delivering the third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture here on Sunday, titled ‘To Question or not to Question: That is the Question.”
“There are more academics in existence than ever before but most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed or because they are ready to discard knowledge, should authority require them to do so,” the eminent historian asked.
Tracing the lineage of the modern public intellectual to Shamanic philosophers of ancient India, Prof. Thapar said the non-Brahminical thinkers of ancient India were branded as Nastikas or non-believers. “I am reminded of the present day where if you don’t accept what Hindutva teaches, you’re all branded together as Marxists,” she added.
“Public intellectuals, playing a discernible role, are needed for such explorations as also to articulate the traditions of rational thought in our intellectual heritage. This is currently being systematically eroded,” she explained.
Prof. Thapar stressed that intellectuals were especially needed to speak out against the denial of civil rights and the events of genocide. “The combination of drawing upon wide professional respect, together with concern for society can sometimes establish the moral authority of a person and ensure public support.”
However she said academics and experts shied away from questioning the powers of the day.
Why no reaction?
“This is evident from the ease with which books are banned and pulped or demands made that they be burned and syllabi changed under religious and political pressure or the intervention of the state. Why do such actions provoke so little reaction from academics, professionals and others among us who are interested in the outcome of these actions? The obvious answer is the fear of the instigators — who are persons with the backing of political authority,” Prof. Thapar said.
“When it comes to religious identities and their politics, we witness hate campaigns based on absurd fantasies about specific religions and we no longer confront them frontally. Such questioning means being critical of organisations and institutions that claim a religious intention but use their authority for non-religious purposes,” she said.
Prof. Thapar rued the fact that not only were public intellectuals missing from the front lines of defending liberal values, but also alleged a deliberate conspiracy to enforce what she termed a “Lowest Common Denominator” education.
“It is not that we are bereft of people who can think autonomously and ask relevant questions. But frequently where there should be voices, there is silence. Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming,” she asked.
This is the full audio of the Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial lecture delivered by Professor Romila Thapar. This audio recording was made in public interest by South Asia Citizens Web and may be used freely for non commercial use.
– by Fidel Castro
Absolutely no one has the right to destroy cities; murder children; pulverize homes; sow terror, hunger and death anywhere.
If today it is possible to prolong life, health and the productive time of persons, if it is perfectly possible to plan the development of the population in accordance with growing productivity, culture and development of human values, what are they waiting for to do so?
Global society has known no peace in recent years, particularly since the European Economic Community, under the absolute, inflexible direction of the United States, decided that the time had come to settle accounts with what remained of two great nations which, inspired by the ideas of Marx, had achieved the great feat of ending the imperialist colonial order imposed on the world by Europe and the United States.
In former Russia, a revolution erupted which moved the world.
It was expected that the first great socialist revolution would take place in the most industrialized countries of Europe, such as England, France, Germany or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This revolution, however, took place in Russia, whose territory extended into Asia, from northern Europe to southern Alaska – which had been Czarist territory, sold for a few dollars to the country which would later be the most interested in attacking and destroying the revolution and the country where it occurred.
The greatest accomplishment of the new state was the creation of a union capable of bringing together its resources and sharing its technology with a large number of weak, less developed nations, unwilling victims of colonial exploitation. Would a true society of nations be convenient or not, in the current world, one in which respect is shown for rights, beliefs, culture, technologies and resources in accessible places around the world, which so many human beings would like to visit and know? And wouldn’t the world be much more just today—when in fractions of a second anyone can communicate with the other side of the planet—if people saw in others a friend or brother, and not an enemy disposed to kill, with weapons which human knowledge has been capable of creating?
Believing that human beings could be capable of having such objectives, I think that absolutely no one has the right to destroy cities; murder children; pulverize homes; sow terror, hunger and death anywhere. In what corner of the world can such acts be justified? If it is remembered that, when the last global conflict’s killing ended, the world placed its hopes in the creation of the United Nations, it is because a large part of humanity imagined it with such a perspective, although its objectives were not fully defined. A colossal fraud is what is seen today, as problems emerge which suggest the possible eruption of a war, with the use of weapons, which could mean the end of human existence.
There are unscrupulous actors, apparently more than a few, which consider meritorious their willingness to die, but above all to kill in defense of their indecent privileges.
Many are surprised to hear the statements made by some European NATO spokespeople, expressed in the style and look of the Nazi SS. On occasion, they even wear dark suits, in the middle of summer.
We have a powerful enough adversary, our closest neighbor: the United States. We warned them that we would withstand the blockade, although this would imply a very high cost for our country. There is no greater price than capitulating to an enemy, which for no reason, or right, attacks you. This was the sentiment of a small, isolated people. The rest of the hemisphere’s governments, with a few exceptions, went along with the powerful, influential empire. This was not a personal attitude on our part, but rather the sentiment of a small nation which had been not only the political, but also the economic property of the U.S. since the beginning of the century. Spain had ceded us to this country, after we had suffered almost five centuries of colonialism, and innumerable deaths and material losses in our struggle for independence.
The empire reserved the right to intervene militarily in Cuba, on the basis of a constitutional amendment imposed on an impotent Congress, incapable of resisting. Besides being owners of almost all of Cuba, vast land holdings, the largest sugar mills, mines, and banks – with even the prerogative of printing our currency – they did not allow us to produce enough grain to feed the population.
When the USSR collapsed, and the socialist camp disappeared as well, we continued resisting. Together, the revolutionary state and people continued our independent march.
I do not wish, nevertheless, to dramatize our modest history. I prefer rather to emphasize that the empire’s policy is so dramatically ludicrous that its relegation to the dustbin of history will not long be delayed. Adolph Hitler’s empire, inspired by greed, went down in history with no more glory than that of the encouragement given to aggressive bourgeois governments of NATO, which became the laughing stock of Europe and the world, with their euro, which along with the dollar, will soon become wet paper, and they will be required to depend on the yen, and rubles as well, given the emerging Chinese economy, closely linked to Russia’s enormous economic and technical potential.
Cynicism is something which has become symbolic of imperial policy.
As is known, John McCain was the Republican candidate in the 2008 elections. This individual came into the public light as a pilot who was shot down while his plane bombed the populous city of Hanoi. A Vietnamese missile hit the aircraft in action, and the plane and pilot fell into a lake located close to capital, on the city’s outskirts.
Upon seeing the airplane crash and a wounded pilot attempting to save himself, a retired Vietnamese soldier who was making his living in the area came to his aid. As the old soldier offered his help, a group of Hanoi residents who had suffered the aerial attacks, came running to settle accounts with the murderer. The soldier himself persuaded his neighbors not to do so, since the man was taken prisoner and his life must be respected. Yankee authorities themselves communicated with the government, begging that no action be taken against the pilot.
In addition to the Vietnamese government’s policy of respecting prisoners, the pilot was the son a U.S. Navy Admiral who had played an outstanding role in WWII, and was still holding an important position.
The Vietnamese had captured a big fish in that bombing, and, of course, thinking about the eventual peace talks which would put an end to the unjust war unleashed on them, they developed a friendship with McCain, who was very happy to take advantage of the opportunity provided by that adventure. No Vietnamese, of course, recounted any of this to me, nor would I have ever asked anyone to do so. I have read about it, and it coincides completely with a few details I learned later. I also read one day that Mr. McCain had written that when he was a prisoner in Vietnam, while he was tortured, he heard voices in Spanish advising the torturers as to what they should do and how. They were Cuban voices, according to McCain. Cuba never had advisors in Vietnam. The military there knew very well how to conduct their war.
General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible. With these launchers, they fired from such a close point that it was impossible to neutralize them, without affecting the invaders as well. Other pertinent measures, all difficult and complex, were utilized to impose a shameful surrender on the surrounded European forces.
The fox McCain took as much advantage as possible of the yankee and European invaders’ military defeats. Nixon could not persuade his National Security Council advisor Henry Kissinger to accept the idea suggested by the President himself, who in a relaxed moment said: Why don’t we drop one of those little bombs, Henry? The true little bomb dropped when the President’s men attempted to spy on their adversaries in the opposing party. This surely couldn’t be tolerated!
Despite this, Mr. McCain’s most cynical behavior has been in the Near East. Senator McCain is Israel’s most unconditional ally in Mossad’s machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq, as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations. This state already has a multi-million dollar income, and threatens Saudi Arabia and other nations in this complex region which supplies the greatest part of the world’s oil.
Would it not be preferable to struggle to produce food and industrial products; build hospitals and schools for billions of human beings who desperately need them; promote art and culture; struggle against epidemics which lead to the death of half of the sick, health workers and technicians, as can be seen; or finally eliminate illnesses like cancer, Ebola, malaria, dengue, chikungunya, diabetes and others which affect the vital systems of human beings?
If today it is possible to prolong life, health and the productive time of persons, if it is perfectly possible to plan the development of the population in accordance with growing productivity, culture and development of human values, what are they waiting for to do so? Just ideas will triumph, or disaster will triumph.
