Rama's Real – Don't dare dredge his bridge!

Byoliveridley

satview.gifJust suspend the two officials who had the temerity to say that “religious texts were not evidence that Lord Ram ever existed” I could not have said it better myself, but hey, this is India, where an allegorical tale about a king who is the paragon of virtue and fights a big battle with the evil king of Sri Lanka to reclaim his abducted wife Sita is now the rallying point for a religion not known for its rallying.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Offer to quit in India gods row:

Officials had presented the argument in court to support construction plans for an area devotees believe has remnants of a bridge built by the Hindu god Ram.

Minister Ambika Soni said she would quit if asked to by the prime minister.

She also confirmed that two directors of the Archaeological Survey of India, which prepared the court affidavit, had been suspended.

In the course of Rama’s battles, he enlists an army of “monkeys” in South India to help him build a bridge between the Southern tip of India and Sri Lanka.

Firstly, this whole army of monkeys thing screams of race differences (Macaca, anyone?). Southern Indians tend to be darker than their Northern brethren thanks to fewer Central Asian influences. There were also quite a few dark tribes in the South. So, if Rama indeed came that far South, it’s likely he enlisted local help from us darkie southerners. Yeah, call us monkeys, will ya!

Secondly, Rama is the least Hindu of all gods. He is a one-dimensional uber god with no faults, vices or weaknesses. He rescues his wife from the clutches of the evil Lankan king, only to make her walk through fire to prove her chastity. She passes this fire test rather easily, after some divine intervention, only to to be summarily banished to the forest (while pregnant, mind you) when aspersions are cast about her chastity by a snarky subject.

Yes, paragon of every patriarchal, women as helpless property loving, godly virtue is our Lord Ram. Hinduism is filled with interesting goddesses and gods, and is replete with tales of cheating gods, philandering goddesses, short tempered goddesses, could these folks not have picked a cool goddess such as Kali, or Durga (ha, same person!)? I guess the reason Rama was picked by the Sangh Parvivar (Parivar means family in Hindi, so saying Sangh Parivar is kinda like saying Corleone family) because he’s a nice stick figure paragon of male virtue that makes for a simplistic and easy rallying cry.

Well, in the classic inverse-inverse pyramid style of blogging, one long rant about Hindu fundamentalism aside, what is all the fuss about? Well, there’s a project to dredge some of the sand bars just off the South Indian coast to open up some shipping lanes and save some time. I had blogged about it quite a while back, there are definitely some environmental concerns. But Rama’s bridge, c’mon!

Similar Posts

  • | |

    Water Find to End Darfur War – Well, not so fast!

    Byoliveridley

    Beware the dangers of the overhyped press release machine (or sciencedaily, pick your poison). All Farouk El-Baz saw when he did the radar study was a giant depression. It is TBD whether there’s water in them thar holes!’

    BBC NEWS | Africa | Ancient Darfur lake is dried up

    Alain Gachet, who used satellite images and radar in his research, said the area received too little rain and had the wrong rock types for water storage. But the French geologist said there was enough water elsewhere in Darfur to end the fighting and rebuild the economy.

    On Wednesday, Boston Universitys Farouk El-Baz said he had received the backing of Sudans government to begin drilling for water in the newly-discovered lake, in North Darfur.

    No wonder they say that water is the 21st century oil. This guy’s going to be drilling for water (also known as well digging!).

  • |

    Friedman, India and Development

    Byoliveridley

    Where Thomas Friedman of the New York Times echoes a blog post of mine from a few months back about cheap cars, development models and India.

    We have no right to tell Indians what cars to make or drive. But we can urge them to think hard about following our model, without a real mass transit alternative in place. Cheap conventional four-wheel cars, which would encourage millions of Indians to give up their two-wheel motor scooters and three-wheel motorized rickshaws, could overwhelm India’s already strained road system, increase its dependence on imported oil and gridlock the country’s megacities.

    No, No, No, Don’t Follow Us – New York Times

    Here’s what I had to say…

    Is it necessary that India and China tread the same path as the U.S and Europe? Does India have to make and use cars that are built using technology developed prior to our knowledge of global warming? The same company that gets cautious praise from the Union of Concerned Scientists for its “leadership” role in global warming will turn around and build factories in India that carry the status quo forward for another 30 years. When you’re starting from the foundation, and you know that the plans provided to you will lead to your house crumbling in 20 years, would you use the plans anyway because your contractor provides you with no alternative? The logical answer seems to be no, but is this process logic driven, or enforced by the existing power structure?

    The answer should be “NO!!”. But Friedman goes ahead and offers some sensible suggestions via the very excellent Sunita Narain.

    Charge high prices for parking, charge a proper road tax for driving, deploy free air-conditioned buses that reach every corner of the city, expand the existing beautiful Delhi subway system, “and then let the market work,” she added.

    Good idea. Now, will Friedman turn around and offer the same prescription for the US? Apparently not. If the US cannot kick the car habit, or show other people how to, this kind of lecturing is pointless.

    Blogged with Flock

  • | |

    India announces Panel to "study" global warming

    Byoliveridley

    The Hindu News Update Service

    Warning that the threat of climate change was real, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said future of people will be at peril if they do not change their lifestyles.

    Singh’s warning came on a day when he constituted a high level advisory group to help the government take pro-active measures to deal with global warming.

    “The threat of climate change is real and unless we alter our lifestyles and pursue a sustainable model of development, our future will be at peril”, he said in a message on the occasion of World Environment Day.

    So, what exactly is the Indian position on climate change, something that threatens its coastlines, will put entire villages under water in the Ganga delta, screw around with the monsoon, and accelerate glacier melting in the Himalayas (among many other effects?)

    Here’s India’s position from the talks with Brazil last week…

    “We are willing to work in partnership in this process to cut emissions but we cannot accept equal responsibility (for the global mess caused by the industrialised nations),” an Indian official said.

    The country’s top environmental official, Pradipto Ghosh, said yesterday that “legally mandated measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have significant adverse effects on the GDP growth of developing countries, including India”.

    Yes, obviously. The world is in desperate need of a framework to make development and poverty alleviation happen without burning too much coal. But, as long as the leader of the free world vacillates, obfuscates and procrastinates, not much will happen.

  • |

    One Person's Carbon Offset – Another's Child labor?

    Byoliveridley

    The ‘carbon offset’ child labourers – Times Online

    “Pumping furiously on a foot treadle in the afternoon heat, six-year-old Sarju Ram is irrigating her impoverished family’s field, improving the crop and – without knowing it – helping environmentally sensitive holiday-makers assuage their guilt over long-haul flights to dream destinations.

    But Sarju and her four brothers and sisters working flat out in a clump of trees that provide scant shelter from the sun illustrate a growing argument over claims that British environmentalists’ efforts to curb greenhouse emissions are inadvertently fuelling an increase in child labour.”

    Carbon Offsets are a pricing mechanism setup where people can sign up to pay various companies to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by funding mitigation projects, such as planting trees, funding renewable energy projects, and in this case, paying money to farmers (and their families) to pump their water using a foot pump. Terrapass is one such well known company and there are many others.

    I am not so sure I would characterize this as exploitative child labor. There’s plenty of that going around in conventional manufacturing in Asia, not to mention children being used to kill. Compared to this general egregiousness, the prospect of a farmer’s kid, who would be working on the farm anyway, biking away for half an hour so his family can get some extra money does not sound all that bad. Yes, the colonialistic aspects of the story hit me in the face and makes me want to condemn a practice where a rich Westerner pays a poor farmer to pedal away for hours so she can fly to the Galapagos for a eco-vacation.

    But, in the end, these offsets do something. No, they will not do anything to slow (well, maybe a little, imperceptibly, perhaps?) CO2 emissions. Obviously, there’s no substitute to comprehensive worldwide carbon reduction strategy which prices carbon correctly, does not put barriers on technology transfer, and does not transfer greenhouse emissions from the US to Western Europe to China and India in the name of efficiency while doing nothing to ensure that that this manufacturing uses clean technology. Offsets make people aware of their actions, and choices they can make. This makes them (I hope) more likely to support major climate change legislation. It is more about attitudinal change than major change. But calling this child labor and exploitation is, I think, unwarranted.

  • Who is to blame for Rising Corn Prices in Mexico?

    Byoliveridley

    Andrew Leonard of How the World Works makes an interesting argument about corn tortilla prices in Mexico. (If you did not know already, corn prices have been rising steeply in Mexico) Most of the initial blame has been on the diversion of corn to ethanol production, but Leonard fingers a deeper problem.

    Much Ado about tortillas and ethanol

    Quintana said that when tortilla prices rose in January, the government blamed ethanol. But there were other factors, including an increasing demand for grain by livestock owners, increases in gasoline and electricity prices, and the dominant role in the corn marketplace enjoyed by the American agribusinesses Cargill and Archer-Daniels-Midland, which owns a big stake in Mexico’s biggest tortilla maker, Gruma. As an example, Quintana asserted that Cargill and Gruma had sold 98 million tons of white corn originally intended for human consumption as livestock feed. The diversion of that corn played a critical role in pumping up tortilla prices.

    Just a reminder, it takes 25 pounds of corn to make one pound of beef (Yes, It’s what’s for dinner!)

    “Just to give you an idea, for each 30-ton container of corn that Cargill imports to Mexico we send back two undocumented migrants from the countryside.”

    Interesting point, lost to most American policy makers who rail against immigration, I presume. That’s the beauty of “Free Trade”. The word “free” masks all kinds of inequalities, because “free” can’t be bad, right? The opposite of “free” is “enslaved”, that’s got to be bad, right? How can you be against “free” trade? What, do you support slavery?

  • | |

    Bhutan to pay for others climate sins

    Byoliveridley

    Bhutan is a small country nestled in the Himalayas, breathtakingly beautiful and “quaint”. Unfortunately, it’s about to be hit by a truck!

    Reuters AlertNet – FEATURE-Bhutan to pay for others climate sins

    The retreat of Bhutan’s glaciers presents an even more formidable and fundamental challenge to a nation of around 600,000 people, nearly 80 percent of whom live by farming.

    Bhutan’s rivers sustain not only the country’s farmers, but also the country’s main industry and export earner — hydro-electric power, mostly sold to neighbouring India.

    For a few years, Bhutan’s farmers and its hydro power plants might have more summer melt water than they can use. One day, though, the glaciers may be gone, and the “white gold” upon which the economy depends may dry up.

    The threat led the government’s National Environment Commission to a stark conclusion.

    “Not only human lives and livelihoods are at risk, but the very backbone of the nation’s economy is at the mercy of climate change hazards,” it wrote in a recent report.

    Scientists admit they have little solid data on how Bhutan’s climate is already changing, but say weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable.

    Well, as I keep saying, Americans and Europeans will be incovenienced by global climate change, Asians and Africans will die. I don’t have an answer, though, which is depressing on this gray and cloudy Friday morning…

One Comment

  1. I hadn’t thought about the racial overtones of using “monkey” workers. I had assumed it was related to Hanuman. But this is a much better hypothesis. I hope we get the chance to talk about this more further.

Comments are closed.