Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In an earlier blog , we saw how a coin tester was responsible for the “discovery” of Ashoka. The story we know today goes like this. Conquers Kalinga in a brutal war. Experiences extreme remorse. Converts to Buddhism. Spends the rest of his rule in positive acts of governance.   But is that what really happened? Devansh Malik explores the question. One , Ashoka lived 2,300 years ago and there are very few sources of info. Two , those famous inscriptions on rocks and pillars, well, Ashoka got them done, so can we be sure that they weren’t just “ancient press releases - public messages carefully crafted to shape his image”? Three , Buddhist descriptions of him were written centuries later, so how accurate were they?   To make matters worse, the different sources don’t always agree. In fact, they often flat out contradict each other! One thing they do agree on is that as a prince, Ashoka was very capable at administration and at military strategy. But he wasn’t the favou...

It was a British coin tester who found out that the emperor Ashoka even existed! His name was James Princep, writes Devansh Malik. Before 1837, sure, there were references to Ashoka in some Buddhist texts, but were they historical fact? Or just stories? “There was no historical proof, no documented history, nothing.”   Princep was born to rich parents and seemingly destined to be an architect in Britain. Then, at age 20, a severe eye infection struck damaging his eyes so badly that architecture was no longer an option. His father used his wealth and connections to get James the job of testing coins in Calcutta. It was at the Calcutta mint that Princep met Horace Wilson, a Sanskrit scholar who had translated the Rig Veda. “Through Wilson, James developed a deep fascination with Indian history and culture.”   When he moved to the mint in Varanasi, Princep began to notice something about the older coins of India. First came the punch-marked coins (any odd shape, but ...

K N Hari Kumar, a former editor of Deccan Herald wrote 3 articles on how/why India has manged to stay a democracy. Take all our neighbours, he says – Nepal’s Gen Z triggered overthrow of the government, Bangladesh ousting Sheikh Hasina, Pakistan in eternal army rule mode, the meltdown of the Sri Lankan government, and Myanmar always under military rule – and you see why the question of the stability of Indian democracy arises.   He then turns to the US. The very man who refused to accept an electoral defeat, initiated riots, came back to become President again 4 years later. So much for a “centuries-old, stable democracy”. And everything the man is doing now disproves the idea that “the advanced Western nations were immune to the kind of instability and radical transformations”.   Sure, he acknowledges, there has been a lot of “democratic backsliding” in India in recent times – Ram Mandir, lynchings of Muslims, CAA act, the purge of “urban Naxals”, removing Article 37...

Why did humans develop hierarchies? Why couldn’t everyone stay equal to everyone else in the group? Brian Klass looks into the commonly accepted theories on the topic in his book, Corruptible .   The first theory is the one most of us are familiar with. Once humans discovered agriculture, they began to have surpluses. By definition, some people had more surplus than others – inequality had gotten started. Further, agricultural surpluses in turn required storage systems, accounting systems (to maintain records of who had how much excess), and protection systems (to protect the surplus) all of which led to specialists in different roles – hierarchies had begun. Klass calls this the “peas theory” (pun intended) – it all began with agriculture.   The other theory is more nuanced. Assume two groups of hunter-gatherers. One lived in the Amazon basin where food was plentiful in all directions. If someone forced you off your land, no big deal – you just moved somewhere else an...

Brian Klass’ book, Corruptible , has many interesting and, at times, counter-intuitive points on the fact that people in power seem to be (become?) corrupt.   For one, he says people in power often have to make repeated decisions in scenarios where there are no good choices. But if all choices are bad, how does one make a decision, and not let the bad aspect of the decision not haunt one? “(One way is to) disregard compassion and focus on hard-nosed costs and benefits.” Here’s Klass point with all this. Does power attract people who have that mindset to begin with? Do kinder folks avoid power since they don’t have the stomach to pick from among a list of “unbearable moral choices”?   Two, he says, enforcement matters. The same set of people behave differently when the enforcement is strict v/s lax. Think of how the same Indian can behave when in Singapore v/s India.   Three, the system in which the person operates matters: “A decent person inheriting a b...

America’s erratic actions and constant policy shifts make a lot more sense when viewed from the lens of what Noah Millman calls the “Thucydides trap”. “(It refers to) a situation where a rising power and an established power facing a possible power transition each make moves that, while individually rational, ultimately lead to a catastrophic war that proves ruinous to both powers’ fortunes.”   With Obama, America tried a “pivot to Asia” approach to counter China, i.e., increase the focus on China and its neighbouring countries, reduce the focus elsewhere (The pivot to Asia is why the US didn’t do much/anything when Russia invaded Crimea in 2016; why Obama signed the nuclear deal with Iran). Obama was being pragmatic – it was clear that the assumption that the only road to economic prosperity went hand in hand with democracy and other Western systems was not true. China was prospering without democracy; and showing signs of not wanting to be part of a system dominated by the...