ODIYAN

our valluvanad was one of the final frontiers of western civilization.a land of immense beauty lived upon by mysterious people with strange  traditions and practices . where kalari was a way of life for the menfolk and their women the most liberated of their contemporaries . that world which existed till forty years ago now lives in the stories that grand mothers tell kids , many of them renegated as fables.

odiyans were the assassins of the time. they were hired by the nairs of rival families , mainly hailing from panar,pulayar and choklear communities, were feared for their extreme physical stamina and powers which could be matched only by mantrikans(powerful magicians).

the powers

the odiyans used to apply an oil obtained from the a killed human fetus  on their ear and assume shapes that they desired. they never changed into that object but the person seeing them had such a perception. they would assume shapes of bulls , cats , even rocks and when their victim approaches he would be killed instantly. but here there was a problem, if they took the shape of an animal like a bull ,the bull  appeared three-legged or tailless so that a person who is careful could understand what he was seeing and act accordingly. there is a story about a mantrikan who once returning home at night saw two bulls,he soon realized the trap and tied the two together and took them to a riverine and washed their ears  . the next second he saw two naked men standing in front of him.

the oil

the oil the odiyans used was made from unborn fetuses. their targets were women in their first pregnancy.during the day they would give some signs while working in the houses of their victims and in the night these women would walk unconscious in their sleep to the odiyans , who would split them open with sharpened knifes made of bamboo and took the fetus out. the women walked back home as  nothing happened only to die in their bed. in the morning everyone would assume the cause of death to be natural as the wounds in the belly would have gone by then. the fetus was hung from a pole so that a special fluid would be drained from it.the amount was so small that it would last only for a handfull of odi tricks.

what happened to them

with the modern education, the western lifestyle and more importantly the emancipation of panars and pulayars there were no takers for this tradition.so it died out without revealing many of its secrets like many other Indian traditions.

RE EVALUATING INDIAN HISTORY

sixty years have passed since india gained independence . a lot is changed now , we as people are more united than ever before , as a country we are starting to assert ourself in the world stage and more importantly we are deciding our history for the first time in centuries . but as a people we still find it  hard to accept our history or even to see it in a fresh light.

history gives identity to people . it has the power to drive millions at will , hence a nuclear bomb in dangerous hands . we as people have thrived for millenia , from times when every other country except a few were still far away from civilisation. even today a newborn indian inherits many practises which could be traced to that period. indians never saw history as a distinct branch of academia here it was always mixed with fables and super natural to be made into something that was far from real. the arab invasion brought historical recording to india , but it was restricted more to the ruling elite of the time and they never found interest in the history of the years before them . during the islamic rule it was always the us and them view. the rulers being muslims were least  interested in the idolatry populace and the populace were suspicious of their rulers . this period saw the indian civilisation coming of age , till then mostly an indigenous culture it started adopting things from the outsiders whom they despised for centuries.we as a country became cosmopolitan .

then came the british rule . the white man saw india as an exotic land – the land of superlatives . the renaissance  injected a sense of  superiority in their mind which made them to view others through those glasses .

the problem with indian history is that written text of non religious content is minimal and  archaeologically the remains are few . so we have no pyramids or Colosseum to tell our tale. this made the british to frame the indian history with respect to that of the other regions. one of the mistakes they did was to conclude that all the indian scriptures were fables, so our history came to be based on what others told about us rather than what we knew about us. these foreign authors knew little about the people or the culture of the time and never cared to take it seriously , so we have megasthenese who speak of strange humans and animals , the chinese records which were purely buddhist .  they talked only about the Buddhists and Buddha who by the way never became a large majority here.

constructing our history in this manner made large holes in some cases of many centuries which remain dark. so there are Mauryans and guptans and a patchy history in between.similarly we are taught about Vedic people worshipping Indra and then suddenly were hear Asoka being a Saivite or Vedic people suddenly becoming vegetarian by early centuries of christian era.

then there is the chronological mess. no one really knows when Asoka lived or is he really the piyadassi told in the edicts. the Alexander’s brief  stint into india acts as an anchor in this context. the small greek enclave in Gandhara was told to be expelled by a sandrakodos who came to be called Chandragupta Maurya . so piyadassi becomes Asoka, here comes the problem we have two historical figures similar in nature to the piyadassi -  vikramaditya and Asoka. both were great warriors, both of them united india and both became preachers of non violence later. so why can’t sandrakkodos be Chandra Gupta – the first Gupta king.

then comes the Shankaracharya question and the revival of hinduism. the date given is around 1000 AD .this process must not have completed itself in a single century or so when Islam knocked on our doors.

these descripencies are always overlooked , it is high time that we review our history and find it our own without being interpreted by overlords from across the sea,

VALLUVANAD DISTRICT

valluvanad was one of the early administrative divisions of the Chera kingdom.it once stretched from the Arabian sea to the attapadi hills and from nila up to melattur.the area passed through various hands including samuthiri and tippu sultan,intermingled with years of self-rule. under the british most of the region came under valluvanad taluk of madras state.post independence and with the creation of the malappuram district the region was split up among the palakkad,malappuram and thrissur districts.

a new district of valluvanad could be carved out of these district owing to the following reasons:

1 the immense size of palakkad district.to get to palakkad one have to travel nearly 70km from the western most parts of the ottapalam taluk

2 nearly 36 lakh population of malappuram district

3 cultural similarity of ottapalam,perinthalmanna and mannarkkad taluks and their differences with the rest of palakkad district.

4 ottapalam taluk in itself has a population higher than wayanad district,and the fact that nearly 40% of palakkad district resides there . but this region is far away from the district hq

the district of valluvanad will be composed of as i said earlier – ottapalam,perinthalmanna and mannarkkad taluks, together with parts of talapally taluk and parts of ponnani taluk. the proposed district will have a population of over 20 lakhs and will be financially viable as the region has many important towns like

ottapalam(pop 50,000)

shornur(pop 45,000)

perinthalmana(44,000)

which are municipalities

and others like

mannarkad(pop 44,000)

cherpulassery(pop 30,000)

pattambi(pop 24,000)

the district headquarters could be either at perinnthalmanna or ottapalam ,though ottapalam have better infrastructure including a kendriya vidyalaya.

the mannarkkad taluk must be partitioned so that attapady region remains with the palakkad district and the subsequent creation of an attapadi taluk, can bring about development to the region.the border regions of talapally taluk like thiruvilluwamala and cheruthuruthy  could be added to the district .this is mainly because of the cultural affliction of these areas to the erstwhile valluvanad.

the bifurcation of malappuram and palakkad districts is the only way forward as malappuram’s population explodes and palakkad remains far away from its most populous taluk.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND INDIA

some hackers who hacked into the university of east Anglia have brought forth emails which shows that the theory  human made climate change is fake.the emails reveal that scientists tried to suppress data showing the reversal of trends in global climate pattern,and that earth was actually cooling.this new revelations have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Copenhagen talks.

whatever the truth behind the emails may be ,we indians must go forward with the development of alternate fuel sources.this can make us less dependent on the volatile gulf sates and the us oil mafia. we must switch over to solar and wind power and rely less on diesel and coal, we must produce more of  hybrid and electric  cars .this way india can be a world power in the field of renewable energy. being a huge country with billion plus population the emphasis we give on public transport must remain in place so that the roads become less crowded, a clean and efficient public transport system can ensure the development of people of all strata.

so lets just don’t care about what happens in Copenhagen and move forward with our plans on self-reliance in energy.

NATIONAL LANGUAGE

the topic of national language have always been a raging topic especially here in south for the past century or so.the imposition of an alien language or a culture is always detested by those on whom it is imposed . the world outside the hindi heart land is no exception. hindi which is our national language is spoken by 40% of the population,which again is of different dialects and sub languages.hindi in its present form is one of the youngest languages and in literary content one of the least developed,but many of the regional languages like Tamil or Bengali is rich both historically and in language.even the youngest of the regional languages – Malayalam had evolved into its standard form centuries before Devanagari was adopted for Urdu. the imposition of such a language over these well established ones was one of the greatest mistakes done by the post independent india.hindi after splitting from Urdu started to adopt words from Sanskrit so that it can mask its persianness .but the hindi used in daily life was more or less same as Urdu which is alien to most parts of the country.

english on the other hand is the language of the world.every one needs to study that to succeed in life,its like the modern persian. but the adoption of english as the national language will affect india’s future position as a global power. our use of english as a medium can only make us inferior to the Anglo saxon power block. their  attitude towards india is more evident in the british media and legalization of english can only legitimize their colonial mentality.

in this scenario i would like to propose the use of Sanskrit as the link language between the indian populace .it is the bed rock of all languages including the three of the four southern languages.moreover every one need to learn a second language and there will be a level playing field for all.even tamil have 20-30% of its words from Sanskrit.the use of an indigenous language can act as an advantage when india develops and can act as its soft power as english is doing for america.the use of sanskrit can decrease the fear of extinction or inferiority that may languages face as they can flourish in their own ways.

the religious tone of Sanskrit is the main disadvantage of the language. this can be overcome by developing the language in the secular front , new secular literature can be written in Sanskrit or many of the best secular literature of other languages could be translated to it. this can give an added advantage as people in different parts of the country can get to know about each other. think about this – parts of thirukural being studied in a school in Punjab  or geetanjali taught in Kerala, that too  in Sanskrit.

there will be oppositions to my view but adoption of english can only make us colonial puppets and that of hindi will be a crime done to other  languages which have a huge literary history.

TIMES NOW-LETS MAKE IT RESPONSIBLE

TIMES NOW represents what is wrong with the urban middle class India today-the new post liberalization world where morality and integrity have been sacrificed for wealth and power.

times now started late but soon came to the fore front by a simple trick ‘sensationalism’.the channel is known to see everything with suspicion.even the minutest detail how irrelevant is scrutinized and made into a big issue of mammoth proportion.the anti Pakistan rhetoric  that is visible all the time is the major example for its sensational nature.though mumbai attacks were tragic, a war with Pakistan would have been many times a disaster.all the anti china war cry so often heard in it was actually responsible for creating anxiety among Indians in the past few months.

so today on 3rd dec 2009 lets start ‘CLEAN UP TIMES NOW’ (CTN)movement.this is not a movement against times now but against the modern indian mindset.lets all take an effort to bring back the indianness that we have lost.