Saturday, March 16, 2013

His father's son: Rahul echoes Rajiv's words on party, govt, education...

 
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Blame it on the static nature of Indian politics whose context remains unchanged for decades or attribute it to father-son bonding. As he sets out to "transform" the system in India, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is drawing words, ideas, beliefs and even phraseology from his late father Rajiv Gandhi's speeches.

Even as Rajiv's famous 1985 US Congress address about the dreams of a "young" and "impatient" India has been the leitmotif of Rahul's political action plan, the latter's statement last week in the Parliament Central Hall about his belief in Nishkama Karma of the Gita echoed Rajiv's remarks in 1987 about how his late mother Indira Gandhi "never hesitated to do what she thought was right in the spirit of Nishkama Karma".
This was only the latest evidence of how the young scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family continues to seek intellectual inspiration from his father.

Interacting with students in Srinagar in 2008, Rahul had sought to differentiate between the education systems of India and abroad saying, "We don't ask people (students) to ask questions. When I was studying at St Stephen's College, asking a question was not (perceived to be) good in our class. You were looked down upon if you asked too many questions."

While this had caused outrage at his alma mater, forcing him to later visit the campus to clarify his remarks, it turns out that he was only echoing his father's views on the issue. "In education, our school system does not instill the inquiring spirit in the minds of our children. A questioning mind is not developed. We are taught by rote. We are taught that the teacher is always right and correct. We are taught never to question the teacher," said Rajiv at the Indian Science Congress in Bangalore in 1987.

After presenting the National Youth Awards 1985 in New Delhi, Rajiv had said: "I know from travelling around the country that there is a tremendous amount of excellence available in our people, but the system does not allow it to rise to the top; it suffocates, it stifles, and keeps mediocrity at the top." In another speech on responsive administration a few months later, the then prime minister observed, "Too often, I find that the bureaucracy is closed up into its own little boxes."

In January 2013, in his address at the Congress session in Jaipur, Rahul re-phrased this, observing how people's lives are decided by "people behind closed doors". "It has become a system that robs people of their voice. Every single day, I meet people who have tremendous understanding, deep insight and no voice. They are kept outside our systems. All our public systems are closed systems. Their designs promote mediocrity and mediocrity dominates discussion," said Rahul.

At the Congress centenary session in Mumbai in 1985, Rajiv had lambasted the party system. "Corruption is not only tolerated but even regarded as the hallmark of leadership. Flagrant contradiction between what we say and what we do has become our way of life. At every step, our aims and actions conflict," he had said.
Twenty-eight years later, Rahul echoed the same in Jaipur. "Every single day we are faced with the hypocrisy of the system. People who are corrupt stand up and talk about eradicating corruption and people who disrespect women everyday talk about women's rights," he said.

Replying to the debate on the President's Address in the Lok Sabha in 1987, Rajiv had stated: "Today, when India speaks, it is not the India of 1979 where nobody even bothered to listen to us. Today, when India speaks, India is listened to. It is heard, India counts."

At the Jaipur session, Rahul said: "Today India is not like it was in 1984. We are no longer seen as worthless. Today the entire world is courting us. Today we are the future."

After becoming party vice-president, Rahul has been lamenting the absence of rules and discipline in the party, an issue forcefully raised by Rajiv when he was Congress president. Like his father, Rahul has also been talking about changes in electoral laws and political funding.

Incidentally, Rajiv liked to recount his conversations with his mother. He had told Congressmen during the Bombay session how his late mother Indira Gandhi had borne with stoic fortitude the irreparable loss of a son (Sanjay Gandhi). "She gave me no directions, no formulate, no prescriptions. She just said, 'Understand the real India, its people'," he said.

Decades later, newly-appointed Congress vice-president Rahul told partymen about his mother's late night power-is-poison advice, bringing tears to many eyes.

Congress leaders believe that repetition of Rajiv's ideas reflects Rahul's determination to carry out what was left unfinished due to his father's untimely death. "Every son looks up to his father for inspiration. When Soniaji had become Congress president, she was also taken through extracts of Nehru's and Indiraji's speeches," a senior Congress leader told The Sunday Express.

Monday, March 04, 2013

PAST IMPERFECT


March 1, 2013

The True-Life Horror that Inspired Moby-Dick



Herman Melville, circa 1860. Photo: Wikipedia

In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales. That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod. Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined.

And on his last day on Nantucket he met the broken-down 60-year-old man who had captained the Essex, the ship that had been attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in an 1820 incident that had inspired Melville’s novel. Captain George Pollard Jr. was just 29 years old when the Essex went down, and he survived and returned to Nantucket to captain a second whaling ship, Two Brothers. But when that ship wrecked on a coral reef two years later, the captain was marked as unlucky at sea—a “Jonah”—and no owner would trust a ship to him again. Pollard lived out his remaining years on land, as the village night watchman.


Herman Melville drew inspiration for Moby-Dick from the 1820 whale attack on the Essex. Photo: Wikipedia

Melville had written about Pollard briefly in Moby-Dick, and only with regard to the whale sinking his ship. During his visit, Melville later wrote, the two merely “exchanged some words.” But Melville knew Pollard’s ordeal at sea did not end with the sinking of the Essex, and he was not about to evoke the horrific memories that the captain surely carried with him. “To the islanders he was a nobody,” Melville wrote, “to me, the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble—that I ever encountered.”

Pollard had told the full story to fellow captains over a dinner shortly after his rescue from the Essex ordeal, and to a missionary named George Bennet. To Bennet, the tale was like a confession. Certainly, it was grim: 92 days and sleepless nights at sea in a leaking boat with no food, his surviving crew going mad beneath the unforgiving sun, eventual cannibalism and the harrowing fate of two teenage boys, including Pollard’s first cousin, Owen Coffin. “But I can tell you no more—my head is on fire at the recollection,” Pollard told the missionary. “I hardly know what I say.”

The trouble for Essex began, as Melville knew, on August 14, 1819, just two days after it left Nantucket on a whaling voyage that was supposed to last two and a half years. The 87-foot-long ship was hit by a squall that destroyed its topgallant sail and nearly sank it. Still, Pollard continued, making it to Cape Horn five weeks later. But the 20-man crew found the waters off South America nearly fished out, so they decided to sail for distant whaling grounds in the South Pacific, far from any shores.

To restock, the Essex anchored at Charles Island in the Galapagos, where the crew collected sixty 100-pound tortoises. As a prank, one of the crew set a fire, which, in the dry season, quickly spread. Pollard’s men barely escaped, having to run through flames, and a day after they set sail, they could still see smoke from the burning island. Pollard was furious, and swore vengeance on whoever set the fire. Many years later Charles Island was still a blackened wasteland, and the fire was believed to have caused the extinction of both the Floreana Tortoise and the Floreana Mockingbird.


Essex First Mate Owen Chase, later in life. Photo: Wikipedia

By November of 1820, after months of a prosperous voyage and a thousand miles from the nearest land, whaleboats from the Essex had harpooned whales that dragged them out toward the horizon in what the crew called “Nantucket sleigh rides.” Owen Chase, the 23-year-old first mate, had stayed aboard the Essex to make repairs while Pollard went whaling. It was Chase who spotted a very big whale—85 feet in length, he estimated—lying quietly in the distance, its head facing the ship. Then, after two or three spouts, the giant made straight for the Essex, “coming down for us at great celerity,” Chase would recall—at about three knots. The whale smashed head-on into the ship with “such an appalling and tremendous jar, as nearly threw us all on our faces.”

The whale passed underneath the ship and began thrashing in the water. “I could distinctly see him smite his jaws together, as if distracted with rage and fury,” Chase recalled. Then the whale disappeared. The crew was addressing the hole in the ship and getting the pumps working when one man cried out, “Here he is—he is making for us again.” Chase spotted the whale, his head half out of water, bearing down at great speed—this time at six knots, Chase thought. This time it hit the bow directly under the cathead and disappeared for good.

The water rushed into the ship so fast, the only thing the crew could do was lower the boats and try fill them with navigational instruments, bread, water and supplies before the Essex turned over on its side.
Pollard saw his ship in distress from a distance, then returned to see the Essex in ruin. Dumbfounded, he asked, “My God, Mr. Chase, what is the matter?”

“We have been stove by a whale,” his first mate answered.

Another boat returned, and the men sat in silence, their captain still pale and speechless. Some, Chase observed, “had no idea of the extent of their deplorable situation.”

The men were unwilling to leave the doomed Essex as it slowly foundered, and Pollard tried to come up with a plan. In all, there were three boats and 20 men. They calculated that the closest land was the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands, and Pollard wanted to set off for them—but in one of the most ironic decisions in nautical history, Chase and the crew convinced him that those islands were peopled with cannibals and that the crew’s best chance for survival would be to sail south. The distance to land would be far greater, but they might catch the trade winds or be spotted by another whaling ship. Only Pollard seemed to understand the implications of steering clear of the islands. (According to Nathaniel Philbrick, in his book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, although rumors of cannibalism persisted, traders had been visiting the islands without incident.)

Thus they left the Essex aboard their 20-foot boats. They were challenged almost from the start. Saltwater saturated the bread, and the men began to dehydrate as they ate their daily rations. The sun was ravaging. Pollard’s boat was attacked by a killer whale. They spotted land—Henderson Island—two weeks later, but it was barren. After another week the men began to run out of supplies. Still, three of them decided they’d rather take their chances on land than climb back into a boat. No one could blame them. And besides, it would stretch the provisions for the men in the boats.


The whaleship Essex, “stove by a whale” in 1821. Photo: Wikipedia

By mid-December, after weeks at sea, the boats began to take on water, more whales menaced the men at night, and by January, the paltry rations began to take their toll.  On Chase’s boat, one man went mad, stood up and demanded a dinner napkin and water, then fell into “most horrid and frightful convulsions” before perishing the next morning. “Humanity must shudder at the dreadful recital” of what came next, Chase wrote. The crew “separated limbs from his body, and cut all the flesh from the bones; after which, we opened the body, took out the heart, and then closed it again—sewed it up as decently as we could, and committed it to the sea.”  They then roasted the man’s organs on a flat stone and ate them.

Over the coming week, three more sailors died, and their bodies were cooked and eaten. One boat disappeared, and then Chase’s and Pollard’s boats lost sight of each other. The rations of human flesh did not last long, and the more the survivors ate, the hungrier they felt. On both boats the men became too weak to talk. The four men on Pollard’s boat reasoned that without more food, they would die. On February 6, 1821—nine weeks after they’d bidden farewell to the Essex—Charles Ramsdell, a teenager, proposed they draw lots to determine who would be eaten next. It was the custom of the sea, dating back, at least in recorded instance, to the first half of the 17th century. The men in Pollard’s boat accepted Ramsdell’s suggestion, and the lot fell to young Owen Coffin, the captain’s first cousin.

Pollard had promised the boy’s mother he’d look out for him. “My lad, my lad!” the captain now shouted, “if you don’t like your lot, I’ll shoot the first man that touches you.” Pollard even offered to step in for the boy, but Coffin would have none of it. “I like it as well as any other,” he said.

Ramsdell drew the lot that required him to shoot his friend. He paused a long time. But then Coffin rested his head on the boat’s gunwale and Ramsdell pulled the trigger.

“He was soon dispatched,” Pollard would say, “and nothing of him left.”

By February 18, after 89 days at sea, the last three men on Chase’s boat spotted a sail in the distance. After a frantic chase, they managed to catch the English ship Indian and were rescued.

Three hundred miles away, Pollard’s boat carried only its captain and Charles Ramsdell. They had only the bones of the last crewmen to perish, which they smashed on the bottom of the boat so that they could eat the marrow. As the days passed the two men obsessed over the bones scattered on the boat’s floor. Almost a week after Chase and his men had been rescued, a crewman aboard the American ship Dauphin spotted Pollard’s boat. Wretched and confused, Pollard and Ramsdell did not rejoice at their rescue, but simply turned to the bottom of their boat and stuffed bones into their pockets. Safely aboard the Dauphin, the two delirious men were seen “sucking the bones of their dead mess mates, which they were loath to part with.”
The five Essex survivors were reunited in Valparaiso, where they recuperated before sailing back for Nantucket. As Philbrick writes,  Pollard had recovered enough to join several captains for dinner, and he told them the entire story of the Essex wreck and his three harrowing months at sea. One of the captains present returned to his room and wrote everything down, calling Pollard’s account “the most distressing narrative that ever came to my knowledge.”

Years later, the third boat was discovered on Ducie Island; three skeletons were aboard. Miraculously, the three men who chose to stay on Henderson Island survived for nearly four months, mostly on shellfish and bird eggs, until an Australian ship rescued them.

Once they arrived in Nantucket, the surviving crewmen of the Essex were welcomed, largely without judgment. Cannibalism in the most dire of circumstances, it was reasoned, was a custom of the sea. (In similar incidents, survivors declined to eat the flesh of the dead but used it as bait for fish. But Philbrick notes that the men of the Essex were in waters largely devoid of marine life at the surface.)

Captain Pollard, however, was not as easily forgiven, because he had eaten his cousin. (One scholar later referred to the act as “gastronomic incest.”) Owen Coffin’s mother could not abide being in the captain’s presence. Once his days at sea were over, Pollard spent the rest of his life in Nantucket. Once a year, on the anniversary of the wreck of the Essex, he was said to have locked himself in his room and fasted in honor of his lost crewmen.

By 1852, Melville and Moby-Dick had begun their own slide into obscurity. Despite the author’s hopes, his book sold but a few thousand copies in his lifetime, and Melville, after a few more failed attempts at novels, settled into a reclusive life and spent 19 years as a customs inspector in New York City. He drank and suffered the death of his two sons. Depressed, he abandoned novels for poetry. But George Pollard’s fate was never far from his mind. In his poem Clarel he writes of

A night patrolman on the quay
Watching the bales till morning hour
Through fair and foul. Never he smiled;
Call him, and he would come; not sour
In spirit, but meek and reconciled:
Patient he was, he none withstood;
Oft on some secret thing would brood.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

 

God on the Hill, Goddess on the Plain, and the Space In-Between: Tirupati, South India

 


[జాయ్స్ ఫ్లూకిగర్ (Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger) అట్లాంటా లోని ఎమరీ యూనివర్సిటీ, మతధర్మశాస్త్ర విభాగంలో ఆచార్యులుగా పనిచేస్తున్నారు. బాల్యం అంతా ఇండియాలో గడిపిన ఫ్లూకిగర్, 18వ యేట అమెరికాకు తిరిగి వచ్చి, విస్కాన్సిన్ యూనివర్సిటీ నుండి దక్షిణ భారత ప్రాంత అధ్యయనంలో పిహెచ్.డీ పొందారు. మౌఖిక సాహిత్యం మీద, సమాజంలో స్త్రీల పాత్ర, జాతరలలో ప్రదర్శించే కళల పుట్టుపూర్వోత్తరాలు, తదితర అంశాల మీద పరిశోధనలు చేసి పుస్తకాలు వ్రాశారు. 2013లో ప్రచురించబడబోయే వీరి పుస్తకం When the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddessలో గంగమ్మ జాతర గురించి వ్రాసిన అధ్యాయం నుంచి ఈమాట ప్రత్యేక సంచికలో ప్రచురణకై ఈ వ్యాసం పంపించారు.]

V. Narayana Rao first introduced me to Tirupati in 1992, when he invited me to attend the annual jātara of the downhill grāmadevata Gangamma with him, David Shulman, and Don Handelman. I later returned several times for long- and short-term fieldwork with Gangamma and her devotees. Narayana Rao frequently suggested to me that there was a left-hand caste ethos that crossed the seemingly disparate worlds of the goddess and her sisters downhill and that of the god uphill. This essay explores some images of these connections between uphill and down.


Panoramic Tirupati mountain

The south Indian pilgrimage town of Tirupati is best-known for the wealthy temple (said to be the wealthiest religious institution in the world) and pilgrimage site of the God of the Seven Hills, Venkatesvara. His temple is nestled at the far end of a series of koṇḍas–often translated as ‘hills,’ but which visually, from the plains below, is a mountain with a dramatic rock face overlooking the town. The god draws up to 750,000 pilgrims a day[1]. Locally, the Tirumala temple complex on the mountain is most often referred to in English as ‘uphill,’ a designation that implies a relationship with ‘downhill’, the plains below (Telugu: koṇḍa mīda and koṇḍa kinda.) During the year I conducted research there, Tirupati residents often asked me if I’d gone uphill on a particular day, not “did you go to Tirumala” or “did you take darśan of the god,” or some other direct reference to the god or his temple[2].

Venkatesvara’s wife Padmavati–locally known as Alamelumanga–does not reside with him at the mountaintop, but in a temple on the plains—which the god visits every night. And so, too, Venkatesvara’s brother, Govinda Raja Swamy—his temple with its large gopuram anchors the center of the bustling pilgrimage town downhill, near the railway and bus stations. Venkatesvara is also said to be the brother of the plains-residing village goddess (grāmadevata) Gangamma, to whom he sends an auspicious gift for her annual festival. There is lots of coming and going—literal and imaginative, narratively and ritually–between mountain and plains—the most tangible of which is the footpath up the mountain that many pilgrims walk up instead of taking the more recently available buses and taxis.


Tāllapāka Gangamma

In this essay, I focus on the literal space and movement between uphill and down–as well as some of the ritual and narrative traditions that tie the two together–rather than the journey from home places that pilgrims may take[3][4]. I am also referring to a specific geographic site and the deity who takes up residence uphill in Tirumala, not the multiple temples in which Venkatesvara also resides, including in the diaspora—which is a different form of movement. (It is significant that not all deities have this kind of mobility within or outside of India, such as grāmadevatas who don’t cross the seven seas, so to speak, or even regional boundaries within India; and thus the character of the God of the Seven Hills shifts, when he is removed from the local Tirupati landscape and its constellation of deities.)

This essay draws an imaginaire of spatial, ritual, kinship, and narrative relationships between mountain and plains and their respective divine and human inhabitants—particularly for local residents who live under the shadow of the mountain. I ask what is created imaginatively and performatively by this movement between hills and plains—and what it implies about the nature of the god. That the God of the Seven Hills and his grāmadevata sister inhabit an overlapping imaginaire for Tirupati residents belies the ways in which puranic deities and grāmadevatas have often been analyzed in academic circles as discrete, bounded traditions.

The mountain as anchor

Let’s begin with the physical mountain itself. Coming into Tirupati by train or bus from the east, the land begins to swell from the paddy fields, and travelers know they’re close to the town that is anchored by the mountain range on which the great god lives. The mountain range is called Saptagiri—literally, Seven Hills–which reaches to a height of 1104 meters; god lives on the seventh range, Venkatagiri[5]. The train a pilgrim to Tirupati is riding may be one that is named after one of the ranges–Narayanadri or Venkatadri—and the mountain may have already entered his/her imagination when boarding the train in Hyderabad.

Rising dramatically from the plains, the front range of the Saptagiri anchors and gives identity to Tirupati’s physical and imaginative landscape. Its sheer rock face catches the shifting light throughout the day in a kaleidoscope of colors and shadows; the rock face changes with the seasons when it becomes a resting stop for monsoon clouds or reflects the sizzling hot season heat back onto the town. Although the god actually lives in the interior of the mountain ranges, when Tirupati residents and pilgrims look up at the rock face towering above the town, they see god—the mountain and god are synonymous. And thus the common expression to refer to Venkatesvara’s temple complex of Tirumala: uphill.


Tāllapāka Gangamma

I’ve proposed in my forthcoming book[6] on the plains grāmadevata goddess Gangamma that the mountain and its deity quite literally anchor her in place, too. She and her sisters (the Seven Sisters associated with hot season poxes and rashes) are characterized in both narrative and ritual as moving/fluid goddesses. They traditionally live on village boundaries; and even as villages and towns have expanded and grown up around them, many of these Sisters have not permitted temples to be built over them[7]. There are numerous oral accounts of efforts of worshipers of particular grāmadevatas trying to build permanent shrines that would cover their heads, and the constructions continually falling down or illnesses striking the community until efforts to enclose them were suspended. The goddesses want to be free to move. However, in Tirupati, there are several permanent temples to these Sisters (particularly the Tattāyagunta and Tāllapāka temples); perhaps the sisters permit these anchoring enclosures, in part, because of their relationship to the god on the mountain who is their brother. Conceptually, this stability has opened up devotional relationships with Gangamma that are not characteristic of her worship in surrounding villages—she’s now stable enough, in one place long enough, to permit this kind of personal relationship with her.

The mobile god, between mountain and plains

In contrast to the moving/fluid goddess Gangamma, who I suggest is stabilized in Tirupati by the mountain and its god, the presumably stable god himself also moves, outside of his temple complex and up and down between the mountain on which he lives and the plains below.

Venkatesvara is said to walk downhill every night to visit his wife Alamelumanga. She lives independently of her husband, in a temple downhill in Tiruchanur, four kilometers outside of Tirupati—a living situation that is an extremely rare, if not unique, phenomenon for consort-goddess temples[8]. (Of course, as is typical of Hindu traditions, imaginatively she is multiple: she simultaneously resides downhill and on her husband’s stone chest of his temple form, for example; so what I am talking about here is specifically her independent temple.) I heard several different explanations for this separate living arrangement[9], including Alamelumanga’s jealousy over the god letting Lakshmi (a goddess both distinct from and identified with Alamelumanga) reside along with her on his chest. Another story tells of Alamelumanga’s jealousy over Venkatesvara’s relationship with a Muslim concubine named Bibi Nanchari (said to be a reincarnation of Bhu Devi), and this is why, it is said, she refuses to live uphill with her husband. Still another oral tradition recounts Venkatesvara’s impatience with his wife after their wedding, when she kept forgetting one thing or another as he waited for her to walk with him to his residence on top of the mountain. In exasperation, he told her that he was going to spit on the ground and that she should return before the spit dried up. Insulted by this ultimatum, Alamelumanga told her husband that she was going to stay downhill, and that if he wanted to meet her, he would have to come to her[10].


Feet of the God

Whatever the reason for separate residences, it is said that it incumbent on Venkatesvara to come down to visit his wife every night, rather than her going uphill; and all the walking up and down wears out his sandals, which have to be replaced daily. At the bottom of the footpath going uphill is a temple whose main image is the feet of the god. Pilgrims here place a pair of brass sandals on their heads as they circumambulate the god’s feet, showing humility towards the god as well as embodying a reminder of the distance covered nightly by the god, as he visits his wife.

The god also has other relatives who live on the plains. Most important of these is his brother Govinda Raja Swamy, whose temple gopuram dominates the skyline of the town below. The story is told that when Venkatesvara wanted to get married, he needed to borrow money for his wedding from his brother Govinda Raja Swamy. He is still paying interest on that loan even today, and pilgrims’ gifts placed in the temple huṇḍī (cash box) are said to be applied towards interest on that loan[11]. Huṇḍī cash contents are conspicuously counted in public at the end of every day, visible to pilgrims on their way out of the temple complex after having taken darśan of the indebted god. On his part, Govinda Raja Swamy downhill is a reclining image that rests its head on a vessel he has used to measure the cash interest he’s been paid by Venkatesvara; he’s tired out from expending so much energy on this task. In contrast to his moving brother, Govinda Raja Swamy seems rather sedentary and doesn’t leave his temple.

Venkatesvara’s mother, Vakulamatha, also lives downhill (and then again up), atop a small hill facing Tirupati in Perurbanda village, 15 kilometers from Tirupati. When a devotee proposed in 2007 to fund renovation of what had become a rather dilapidated temple—and illegal quarrying was posing a threat to Vakulamata Devi Temple–the Devasthanam responsible for Tirumala (TTD) decided to build the temple closer to Tirumala, with the intention to help support building temples for Vakulamata at all sites where there is a Venkatesvara temple. Significantly, their proposal was not to build the Tirupati Vakulamatha temple uphill, but at the base of the hill, at Alipiri, where the footpath up the mountain begins. However, this proposed juxtaposition of mother to son raised problems. Tirumala priests and BJP leaders opposed this site “on the grounds that it would go against the Hindu dharma to place the mother at the feet of her son and the idea was dropped.”[12] Several Tirupati residents told me that “in the old days,” pilgrims used to (and still should) visit all Venkatesvara’s family members downhill (wife, brother, sister, and mother), even though their primary purpose is to take darśan of the God of the Seven Hills—an injunction that is being lost on many contemporary pilgrims who are rushing up and downhill under the pressures of modern-day schedules.


Gangamma in one of her jātara forms,
a coconut head (center), and Venkatesvara
in a Gangamma devotee household shrine

Locally, Venkatesvara is known to be a brother of the grāmadevata Gangamma, and he sends bride’s gifts of a sari and pasupu-kumkuma (turmeric-vermilion) to his sister downhill on the first day of her annual festival (jātara)—delivered downhill atop an elephant (protected by a large parasol) to her Tattayagunta temple. While the god himself does not attend the jātara, his gifting is another means of enacting the important links between uphill and down. The association is also performed on the domestic pūjā shelves–where both Venkatesvara and Gangamma have been installed and are worshiped daily–of the families who are key ritual actors in Gangamma’s jātara. One of these families, the Kaikalas, has the mirāsi (rights and responsibilities) to both take the perambulating veṣams (forms) of Gangamma during her jātara and to unlock the temple of Venkatesvara’s brother, Govinda Raja Swamy, every morning. The Kaikalas perform their mirāsi tasks for both Gangamma and Venkatesvara’s brother as integrated ritual systems.


Dicing scene on hillside outside
Hathi Ramji Matham uphill

We return now to other circumstances under which the god moves–when he leaves his temple to visit or give darśan to his devotees. We have two starkly contrasting examples.The first is the story of the god visiting his devotee Hathi Ramji, a north Indian devotee who built a maṭham facing the Tirumala temple. Because of Hathi Ramji’s great devotion, Venkatesvara is said to have visited the former’s maṭham to play dice with him every evening. This story is part of the dominant mythology of the temple, and an image of the two playing dice is engraved on the silver door to the garbhagṛham (inner shrine room) of Venkatesvara’s Tirumala temple. A larger-than-life-size plaster image of the two dicing friends has been built on the hillside of the maṭham that faces the temple’s outer courtyard, visible to all pilgrims standing in darśan lines (the pushing and shoving at the doorway to the garbhagṛham is such that they may well miss the image on the silver door of the garbhagṛham).


Image of prostrating devotee

A second example of the god willingly leaving his temple for the sake of his devotees is less talked about, for reasons that will become clear. In this case, the god is said to walk downhill to the base of the mountain, which, in earlier days, was the closest one of his untouchable devotees was allowed to come. (Some say this is the cobbler who daily made a new pair of sandals for the god.) Since the devotee was not allowed uphill, god himself walked down daily to give him his darśan. A poignant image has been created in cement at the base of the footpath (the image is likely much newer than the narrative)—the male devotee lying prostrate towards the mountain, covered in turmeric and vermillion. Smaller images to his right are identified as his wife and children. Many pilgrims prostrate next to this figure before they begin their journey up the footpath; those whom I asked did not know the story or identity of the prostrate figure, but thought that the image was a sign of humility that they should emulate.


A prostrating devotee

The mobile god Venkatesvara and his independently residing wife Alamelumanga provide us with traces of the cultural ethos of the rising 15th century cash economy of the region and the left-hand caste Vijayanagara kings who began the transformation of Venkatesvara’s temple into the center of ritual and economic power that it has become today[13]. Left-hand caste communities are associated with cash and mobility: traders, herders, artisans, and leather workers. Women of these castes have traditionally had more mobility and independence than women of the right-hand castes associated with the land, who are (ideally) protected by males and their mobility restricted, like the land itself[14][15][16]. Another trace of the left-hand-caste associations with the Tirumala temple is also indicated in the practice of first morning darśan of the god being given to representatives of a Golla (left-hand, herding-caste) family.

Footpath: the space between


Footpath to Tirumala

Before the car road was constructed and hundreds of buses and taxis began to transport pilgrims, they walked uphill. And today hundreds of pilgrims continue to do so, believing that to walk up the mountain brings more merit than riding a motorized conveyance[17]. The footpath begins at the base of the Seven Hills at a place called Alipiri[18]. The path is 9-11 kilometers long; I’ve walked the path several times, but had no way to mark the distance and have found conflicting information on exactly how long it is. These days a series of cement steps numbering 3350 are built into the path, having been constructed by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD); much of the path is covered by galvanized-tin roofing to provide shade and cover from rains. Depending on their health and the rituals they perform on the way, most pilgrims reach the top of the hill in three to four hours.


Pilgrims with Sandals

The start of the path is indicated by a white-washed gopuram—the first in a series that mark for the foot-travelers the beginning of each of the seven mountain ranges, all the way up to the highest Venkatagiri. Immediately in front of the first gopuram, towards the plains side, is the previously mentioned temple dedicated to Venkatesvara’s feet, the Pādāla temple. Here the story of Venkatesvara wearing out his sandals going uphill and down is visually performed when pilgrims circumambulate the feet of god three times while carrying a set of brass sandals on their heads (these sandals are available for use with a Rs. 5 donation to the temple). Wealthy devotees may bring with them an offering to the god of new brass or silver sandals. When, in 2005, a devotee presented a pair of gold sandals weighing 32 grams, it was an event marked by a ritual abhiṣekam (anointing of the feet) with 100 litres of milk and widely reported in local newspapers[19].


Pasupu-kumkuma vow ritual
on footpath going uphill

Each of the 3350 cement steps on the footpath is covered with ritual applications of turmeric and vermillion (pasupu-kumkuma), the result of individual back-breaking vows by female pilgrims[20]. The visual contrast of looking at the steps going up or going down is dramatic—the vertical portion of each step brightly colored on the way up and the horizontal portion of the steps visible on the way down a somber gray.


Cradles tied for fertility

I spoke with several women about the kinds of vows they were taking or fulfilling—and they were happy to take a break from their rigorous task to talk with me. One young woman was accompanied by her brother, who rather sheepishly looked on as his sister explained that she’d taken a vow that if he were accepted into engineering school, she would fulfill the vow of marking every step on the footpath with pasupu-kumkuma. Another woman was performing the ritual-marking vow prior to its fulfillment, asking the god for fertility. The pasupu-kumkuma-marking ritual is the most visible, common ritual along the path, but a spectrum of other vow-making rituals adhere to the path, as well—including stacking small rocks and tying ‘cradles’ (for fertility) on low-hanging tree branches. The footpath rituals provide opportunity for fulfillment of individual vows and other rituals without dependence on any intermediaries, characteristic of rituals performed in the temple precincts uphill.


Seven Sister shrine on
Tirumala footpath

The TTD has recently built along the path 10-foot images of each of the ten avatāras of Visnu; and pilgrims also pass numerous more traditional shrines, including one to the Seven Sisters in a cave on the side of the mountain where the footpath and car road intersect. There is a wildlife park fenced off along one part of the path. And of course, the periodic, welcomed tea stall, where merchants have also set up small stalls of both religious and non-religious trinkets. But finally, very few on the footpath choose to walk for the entertainment of it all or as a trek (as has become a tradition at several Himalayan pilgrimage sites); walking up the footpath is itself powerful ritual, giving devotees bodily knowledge of and intimate access to the mountain on which the god dwells.

Vignettes of intersecting worlds

Two vignettes illustrate other kinds of fluid ritual associations between the God of the Seven Hills and the plains goddess Gangamma. My fieldwork associate and I had stopped at Hathi Ramji Matham (site of the north Indian religious order of Hathi Ramji, which had earlier administered the Venkatesvara temple uphill) to ask why the maṭham was one of the three sites where, during her jātara perambulations, the tongue of Gangamma (in her form of a veṣam taken on by a Kaikala-caste male) was pierced with a tiny silver trident. Having been directed by a sadhu sitting on the maṭham verandah into a large office, we were warmly greeted by a Brahmin man whom we came to know as Srinivasan, a ’superintendent’ at the maṭham who works with legal affairs and land registration. He answered our questions about the tongue-piercing rather cryptically, and then surprised us by saying (speaking in English): “Madam, you would be interested to know that I’ve taken stri veṣam [female guise] every year for 35 years.” He was referring to the jātara ritual of male participants taking on stri veṣam (saris, braids, breasts) in fulfillment of vows they (or their mothers on their behalf) have made to the goddess.

For several years prior, I had been saying, in talks I had given on Gangamma jātara, that Brahmins do not participate in the jātara except indirectly (perhaps sending pŏṅgal or bali to the goddess through the hands of a non-Brahmin servant). But now, here was a Brahmin who had participated in the jātara for 35 years by taking stri veṣam; and he spoke of this ritual as something quite ordinary, not exceptional for him as a Brahmin. Srinivasan explained that he had been sickly as a child and that his mother had made a vow (mŏkku) to Gangamma that if he regained full strength and health, he would take stri veṣam. At the urging of his grandmother, however, he said he had kept up the tradition for many years following fulfillment of the initial mŏkku. His grandmother had told him (again, reported in English), “Taking veṣam, just once a year, you can get a corner on women’s śakti.” He lives both in the worlds of the God uphill and the closely associated maṭham and the grāmadevata sister downhill with seemingly no sense of disjuncture.

The second vignette draws upon my encounter with an elderly Mudaliar-caste widow who had entered a ritual relationship with Gangamma by exchanging wedding pendants (tālis) with the goddess. She wore a large, dark-red pasupu bŏṭṭu and had matted hair that, she explained, was a sign of the presence of the goddess. Gangamma and devotee had, she reported, argued back and forth when the woman tried to shave off the matted hair and it continued to grow back. Once, she reported, the matted hair took the form of a snake’s hood, and she asked the goddess why this shape. Gangamma replied, “This is Venkatesvara’s jaḍa [braid; matted hair].” The presence of the grāmadevata goddess was revealed through a form of the god uphill. The kinship and ritual associations between the god on the mountain and Gangamma downhill remind us of the integrated worldview in which Tirupati residents live, incorporating both puranic and village deities, narratives, and rituals.

Conclusion


A View of the Tirumala Peak

In the local Tirupati imagination, the mountain and the plains below–and the deities that inhabit them—are part of a singular landscape with relationships and rituals that intersect and connect uphill and down. While the mountain anchors the landscape and stabilizes the traditionally moving, fluid Seven Sister goddesses, the god on the mountain–whose stability is performed as he gives darśan to thousands of pilgrims daily–also moves.

There are, of course, other deities who move out of their temples or other dwellings: for example, the river goddess Ganga Devi as she moves from her site of origin up in the high Himalayas (Gangotri) through the north Indian plains (Rishikesh, Varanasi, Allahabad) to the Bay of Bengal; Siva in Kedarnath as he descends in a dramatic procession from his Himalayan mountaintop to take up residence in the valley below for the winter season[21]; and much shorter temple processions of utsava murtis (festival, moveable images) for which the god leaves his temple during annual festivals, such as Jagannath’s Rath Yatra in Orissa, London, and Atlanta. What these movements signify and create varies with the specific contexts of each moving deity. Here in Tirupati, I suggest the god’s movement both reflects and creates a left-hand caste ethos; his movement also sustains/embodies his relationship with both the goddess on the plains and his devotees who live under the shadow of his dramatic mountain.

Interestingly, while the mountain looms large over the imaginative and physical landscape of Tirupati, the great 15th century poet Annamaya who sang daily to the god uphill for many decades (composing up to 13,000 padams) rarely mentions the mountain landscape in which Venkatesvara lives, except in the poet’s choice of name of address to the god—God on the hill[22]. Most of his padams are intimate love songs that look inward, not to the external physical landscape that may invoke in other contexts stirrings of passion. But I close with one padam that is particularly evocative of the “space in-between” that is traversed to create relationship between god and lover/devotee—here imaged by distant rivers reaching the sea; we could imagine a similar padam being composed around the image of the footpath between Tirupati’s mountaintop and plain below:

Distant Rivers Reach the Sea*
Tell him this one thing.
Distant rivers always reach the sea.
Being far is just like being near.
Would I think of him if I were far?
The sun in the sky is very far from the lotus.
From a distance, friendship is intense.
Distant rivers reach the sea.
The moment he looks at me, I look back at him
My face is turned only toward him.
Clouds are in the sky, the peacock in the forest.
Longing is in the look that connects.
Distant rivers reach the sea.
To speak of desire is as good as coming close.
Haven’t I come close to him?
The god on the hill is on the hill,
And where am I?
Look, we made love.
Miracles do happen.
Distant rivers reach the sea.

*(Translated by V. Narayana Rao and David Shulman[13])

Read this and other articles at  http://eemaata.com/em/

Sunday, February 10, 2013

AKKANNA AND MADANNA OF GOLCONDA

AKKANNA AND MADANNA OF GOLCONDA WERE VICTIMS OF HINDU HATRED By AURANGZEB

Prof Dr Colonel K Prabhakar Rao (Retired)

Akkanna and Madanna were brothers and the sons of Bhanoji Pant an official at Hanmakonda in Golconda kingdom in the bye gone days ( 16 and 17 century). There is also a dispute that they were not real brothers and also were not Telugus and had Maharashtrian origin (1). Their lives were of importance as Madanna rose to become the Hindu Prime minister of Golconda State during the reign of Last ruler Abul Hassan Kutubshah ( tanasha .. meaning good king). Madanna entered the service of Syed Muzaffar Army Chief of Golconda State and by hard work rose to the rank of Mir Jumla with a title Surya Prakash Rao. There are stories that he betrayed his master Mir jumla and these can not be believed as most of historians were Hindu haters and Muslim abettors.

There is also a story that sultan Tanasha who was much impressed by Madanna and made him the Mir jumla. As per the story, once the Sultan received a letter from Emperor Aurangzeb and when it was opened nothing was found written on the scroll and the King was much puzzled. No one could answer him. When the Sultan declared that he would reward any one who could read some thing from the letter, Madanna revealed the secret of the letter by using onion juice that produces Ammonia gas. Under the effect of Juice, black letters were found in the letter and it was read by Madanna. At request of the Sultan, Madanna wrote a letter in similar way to the emperor. The Sultan was greatly impressed and made Madanna the Mir Jumla. The story is very interesting . However it is known that Syed Muzaffar who was the Mir Jumla became arrogant and was showing insubordination to the king. In fact Syed Muzaffar played key role along with Madanna in the struggle for succession after the death of Abdullah Kutubshah the 6 th king of Golconda. As a matter of fact the eldest son in law Nizamuddin of Abdullah kutubshah made all plans to become Sultan and Syed Muzaffar soon took over control of the palace and important installations being the commander in Chief of Golconda Army (2). He ensured that Abul Hasan became the Sultan after the death of Abdullah Kutubsha. Syed Nizamuddin the eldest son in law of the late king was put to death and queens of late king were put behind bars who withered away soon. In gratitude king Abul Hasan made Syed Muzaffar as Mir Jumla. But soon he became headstrong and this forced the Sultan to ease him out of the top post and he made Madanna as Mir Jumla with title Surya Prakash Rao. Akkanna his elder brother was made as army commander (3).

Madanna proved himself as an efficient administrator and Golconda state flourished under his authority and this was very much resented by many Muslim nobles. Aurangzeb at Delhi was a Suni Muslim and he hated Shiite Kutubshahi kings and always looked for some reason to attack and annex the Deccani kingdom. Shivaji the great Maratha king also visited Hyderabad during the times of Madanna and stayed for a month as a royal guest. A treaty for mutual support and help was drafted and was signed by both the rulers and this was very much resented by the emperor. Madanna developed strong Foreign Policy and stabilized the kingdom (4).Kutubshahi kings and Adilshai kings of Bijapur realized the danger from Mughals and signed treaties of cooperation and also this was strengthened by matrimonial relations. These developments automatically angered Mughals and they always planned to attack these kingdoms. Madanna in 1677 proceeded with 20000 troops to help Bijapur sultan against Mughal invasion. However he returned after he was persuaded by Bahadurshah the Mughal commander. Madanna political adjustments and policies made Golconda a prosperous state and this was the greatest eye sore to Mughals. In Golconda too they has natural enemies who could not digest rise of Hindu nobles. It was natural in those days of Muslim rule and Hindu subjugation by the Muslims. There were pressing demands from emperor Aurangzeb to remove Akkanna and Madanna as important officials in the state and the king of Golconda was very reluctant as he knew their worth. But palace conspiracies were growing.

Madanna knew about the impending attack on Golconda and advised the Sultan to take shelter at a far off strong fort such as Konda palli or Warangal. But the sultan with his queen s and others took refuge in the Golconda fort and was soon to be trapped by the invading Mughal troops. Certain queens of past king Abdulla Kutub shah were angry that the troubles faced by the state from Mughals were the result of presence of the brothers at the helm of affairs in the kingdom. They planned for their elimination. There are also arguments that the king had hand in their elimination, But this can not be believed. Some say their elimination was with full knowledge of the Sultan. On March 16, 1686, Akkanna and Madanna were returning from the palace after seeing the king and paying respects to the goddess in Golconda fort. They had no clue that their death was waiting for them. Their guards and escorts were already bribed and bought by the conspirators. At appropriate moment the killers led by Habshi Ghulam attacked the brothers while the escort and guards looked other way. Akkanna an Madanna were dragged out of their palanquins and brutally done to death. Their bodies were dragged on the streets of Golconda and their heads were cut off and were sent to the Mughal prince who inurn sent them to the emperor who was at Ahmednagar. He was much pleased and in the presence of his troops the heads were crushed under elephant legs (5). Thus ended the glorious power of the brothers who were the only Hindu nobles who rose to such positions in a Muslim rule.( Raja kishan Prashad was the prime minister to the Nizam 6 in 20 th century at a much later date in Hyderabad state under Asifjahis rule ). Akkanna Madanna perished in very sad manner because they did not build any military support for themselves and did not have their own troops for support. They were just helpless officials depending on the security provided by the state. Their security was very easily breached by the conspirators. Once the brothers were killed the attackers fell o the homes of Hindus and killed Rustom Rao a brave commander and sister’s son of Madanna. Scores of Hindu homes were looted and burnt to ashes. Their women were carried away by attackers. Many women died jumping in wells. n hearing the news it is believed that the Sultan became very much upset and lost stability of mind for some time. Such narrations indicate that the Sultan was never a co conspirator.

Soon the Mughal forces invaded Golconda and encircled the fort. But the administration well built by the brothers took charge of the fort and could withstand for nearly a year. The defense of the fort was impregnable and the emperor was getting impatient. Famine struck the area and many troops died due to sickness and famine. Aurangzeb paid no heed to his religious advisers who were very much against the persecution of co Muslim rulers. He was very adamant. Military victory over Golconda appeared remote to Mughals. His efforts to bribe Abdul Razak Lari the Commander of Golconda forces were fruitless. But Mughals succeeded in bribing a junior commander Abdulla Pani who opened a small window in the walls of Golconda on night of 21 September 1686. Some of the selected Mughal troops entered the fort at middle of night and made their way to the main gate killing the resisting men. Soon the main gate Fateh darwaza ( Victory gate) was opened and the Mughal troops triumphatantly entered beating drums. Abdul Razak lari on hearing the commotion along with few followers rushed on horse devoid of armor and fought tooth and nail with Mughal troops. He received multiple wounds and the horse carried him away to Nageena Bagh in the fort and dropped him there before it fell dead. The unconscious hero was rescued by the Mughals and was treated by the Mughal physicians to health. The much pleased Emperor was highly impressed with Razak lari and offered him service in his court that he politely refused and preferred to live retire life. Some claim that he took service with the emperor for some time and later retired. The sultan Abul Hasan was taken captive by the Mughal commanders an was taken to the emperor with due honors. The emperor welcomed him with respect and he was sent to Daulatabad Fort in present Maharashtra where he was interned at a palace. The captive Sultan stayed in captivity and died later on. Kutub Shahi dynasty was thus extinguished. It was annexed to Mughal empire as a province. Aurangzeb died after few years of his death and victor and vanquished were buried close to each other. That is the ultimate truth. Aurangzeb destroyed south Indian kingdoms but could not take a fistful of the soil with him when he died. He died broken, worried, and with humiliation at his inability to subdue Marathas in Deccan. His policies destroyed Mughal dynasty and empire.

Akkanna and Madanna rose to the highest level by their sheer hard work and efficiency. The courtiers who were mostly Afghans, Persians and Turks could not tolerate their rise and a section of them abetted their murders. Aurangzeb could not tolerate a Hindu noble to command the position of a Prime Minister. He probably engineered their murder through the palace at Golconda. The brothers although were wise could not defend themselves became easy targets to the killers. The saddest part is that the present government has not recognized their contribution to the state and the memory of these brothers are left to winds (6) (7). There is no monument for them. Not even a street has been named after them in Hyderabad state. There are two villages Akkanna Pet and Madanna Pet around Charminar that have become part of the city. On Tank Bund scores of statues are erected. In the city on various roads and in parks numerous statues of politicians stand to day collecting dust. But there is no place for these brothers. What apathy indeed! Is it because their origins as Telugus are doubted. Or is it due to false allegations against tem by the shady and biased Muslim historians. The main allegations leveled against madanna by the pseudo Muslim historians are many. These are Corruption, Insulting army, Killing of women of harem, persecution of employees, support to Sambhaji, negligence of defense of state and betrayal of sultan etc. these are false allegations and can not stand ground. On the whole Andhrites are ungrateful to the memory of Akkanna and Madanna.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Centenary of first Andhra conference to be held in Bapatla


Members at the First Andhra Conference pose in front of the Town Hall.
Members at the First Andhra Conference pose in front of the Town Hall. 

Demand for separate Andhra state on linguistic basis was first raised at the meet
The historical town is in the cusp of another milestone as it is gearing up to celebrate the centenary of the First Andhra Conference held in 1913. It was in this conference that the demand to create a separate province for Telugu speaking people on linguistic basis was first announced. The conference was held on the premises of Edward VII Coronation Memorial Town on May 26, 1913. 

The conference was attended by about 800 delegates and 3,000 visitors from the Telugu speaking districts of Madras Presidency. Eminent leaders including, Desabhakta Konda Venkatappaiah, Bogaraju Pattabhi Seetharamaiah, Mutnuri Krishnarao and Pingali Venkaiah, were present at the conference. B.N. Sarma, the then member of the Legislative Council of Madras, took the lead in organising the conference, which saw a vociferous appeal by the members to create a separate state for Telugu speaking people. Leaders like Nyayapathi Subba Rao Pantulu, M. Adinarayanaiah and Mocherla Ramachandra Rao wanted the conference to tread cautiously on the issue, but Vemavarapu Ramadas Pantulu moved a resolution at the open session in favour of a separate state. 

Emotional speeches
The emotional speeches stirred up the feelings of the members to put up a united fight to achieve the goal.

They argued that though Telugu districts accounted for 40 per cent of the people and 58 per cent of the Madras Presidency, Andhras had no effective voice in the politics of the region and were treated as second class citizens in the composite province. “With considerable effort and after going through excerpts of the struggle in various books, we managed to bring a book on the conference. We are also planning to celebrate the centenary in a big way and release a commemorative stamp to mark the occasion,’’ said convenor of Forum for Better Bapatla P.C Saibabu. 

Friday, January 18, 2013

It is very probable that the Hindu philosophy had some influence on the Stoic philosophy of the Greeks through the Alexandrians. There is some suspicion of Pythagoras' being influenced by the Samkhya thought.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Gene flow from India to Australia about 4,000 years ago


Long before Europeans settled in Australia humans had migrated from the Indian subcontinent to Australia and mixed with Australian aborigines

This press release is available in German.
IMAGE: Four-thousand years ago, Australia was no longer connected to the mainland as it had been during the ice age. The immigrants thus crossed the ocean, arriving by boat.

Click here for more information.
Australia is thought to have remained largely isolated between its initial colonization around 40,000 years ago and the arrival of Europeans in the late 1800s. A study led by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, now finds evidence of substantial gene flow between Indian populations and Australia about 4,000 years ago. In addition, the researchers found a common origin for Australian, New Guinean and the Philippine Mamanwa populations. These populations followed an early southern migration route out of Africa, while other populations settled in the region only at a later date.
Australia holds some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the presence of modern humans outside Africa, with the earliest sites dated to at least 45,000 years ago, making Australian aboriginals one of the oldest continuous populations outside Africa. It is commonly assumed that following the initial dispersal of people into Sahul (joint Australia-New Guinea landmass) and until the arrival of the Europeans late in the 18th Century, there was no contact between Australia and the rest of the world.
Researcher Irina Pugach and colleagues now analysed genetic variation from across the genome from aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, island Southeast Asians, and Indians. Their findings suggest substantial gene flow from India to Australia 4,230 years ago, i.e. during the Holocene and well before European contact. "Interestingly," says Pugach, "this date also coincides with many changes in the archaeological record of Australia, which include a sudden change in plant processing and stone tool technologies, with microliths appearing for the first time, and the first appearance of the dingo in the fossil record. Since we detect inflow of genes from India into Australia at around the same time, it is likely that these changes were related to this migration."
IMAGE: This shows Max Planck researcher Irina Pugach at work in the laboratory.

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Their analyses also reveal a common origin for populations from Australia, New Guinea and the Mamanwa – a Negrito group from the Philippines – and they estimated that these groups split from each other about 36,000 years ago. Mark Stoneking says: "This finding supports the view that these populations represent the descendants of an early 'southern route' migration out of Africa, while other populations in the region arrived later by a separate dispersal." This also indicates that Australians and New Guineans diverged early in the history of Sahul, and not when the lands were separated by rising sea waters around 8,000 years ago.
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Original publication:
Irina Pugach, Frederick Delfin, Ellen Gunnarsdóttir, Manfred Kayser, Mark Stoneking Genome-wide data substantiates Holocene gene flow from India to Australia PNAS, Online Early Edition, January 2013