Biased historians
Iravatham Mahadevan, in his masterly analysis lays bare many misconceptions about and gives new insight into one the biggest conundrums of our history (“The Indus ‘non-script’ is a non-issue”, May 3). The ‘non –acceptance’ of the Indus ‘script’ lies not so much on the so-called lack of sufficient evidence as due to the ‘bias’ among the historiographers. The issue of Indus Valley script is a vexed one and will no doubt remain so as long as historians worldwide do not shed their preconceived notions and diffidence.
Prof. Anil K. Joshi,
Head, Dept. of History,
Kumaun University, Nainital
The illuminating article is an appropriate response to the doubters of literate Indus Valley people. Denying the existence of the Indus script before its decipherment sounds immature. The endeavours of scholars like Hunter, Asko Parpola, Iravatham Mahadevan, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov and Walter Fairservis are commendable. Further archaelogical explorations and excavations may yield sufficient material to solve this riddle. Till then the Indus script remains a script and an issue.
Shivakumar Pawate
Bangalore
Motivated propaganda?
I write to you as an apolitical, informed, educated, concerned citizen of India.
The compilation “From India Shining to India was Shining” (Magazine, May 3) appears to have been put together by an amateur, ill-informed writer. It is surprising that your Magazine section had to stoop to this level and publish this piece at all. I am searching for answers to the following queries:
1. Why has the paper been discreet about the compiler and the “eminent historians” referred therein?
2. If this was meant as a political exercise, there has been no attempt at even political correctness.
3. Any such article should have focused on the facts of the subject matter rather than the person or the party affiliations.
4. Not one of the “brief comments” from “eminent historians” holds water.
I wish that my newspaper remained a daily, sought after for the quality of its contents rather than for including content motivated by political shades, hues, tints and dyes.
R. Swarnalatha
New Delhi
It was dismaying to read the rebuttal offered by “eminent historians” to Murali Manohar Joshi’s viewpoints. As a practising surgeon, with no political axe to grind, I choose only to comment on one of their statements, that India had no practice of plastic surgery until modern times.
It is a well established medical historical fact that Sushruta (600 BC), the father of Indian Surgery, made dramatic contributions to both plastic surgery and cataract surgery. Indeed he is extolled world wide as the innovator of the Rhinoplasty technique (reconstruction of the nose).
The Susruta Samhita, a compilation of his works in Sanskrit, was translated into Arabic during the Abbasid Caliphate (750 AD) and later found its way to Europe. There is specific evidence of this in Italian surgical literature. Much later in the day, British doctors witnessed traditional Rhinoplasty in India and published this in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1794. In 1816, Joseph Constantine Carpue, an English surgeon performed the first Rhinoplasty, having spent 20 years in India. The Indian reconstruction technique of using a flap of skin from the forehead, became Carpue’s operation.
If the eminent historians are unaware of such basic surgical history, the perceptive reader is left to wonder about their eminence.
Dr. Uma Krishnaswamy
Chennai
A master at work
The article on Bhimsen Joshi brings out the main aspects of his life and music well (“The importance of being Bhimsen”, Magazine, May 3). He has been a master of badhat, the slow note-by-note development of the edifice of the raga, for which his gharana is known. On the other hand, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan of Patiala gharana did not believe in such an approach and preferred to go into the heart of the raga right at the beginning. Each style has its own attractions. Another notable feature of the Kirana gharana is the relatively lower emphasis on the cheez (chiza) or sahitya. The articulation of words is generally not taken seriously by the musicians. This may be shocking to the aficionados of Carnatic music for whom the kriti or sahitya is sacrosanct as it defines the raga. There is a well-known story about Bhimsen forgetting the text of the antara of a khayal in a performance. With his presence of mind he sang his home address in Pune! None except a few cognoscenti noticed it! Bhimsen has popularised bhajans. His contemporary classmate at Sawai Gandharva’s school, Gangubai Hangal, does not sing bhajans.
A. Seshan
Mumbai
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