Eco-friendly power is now readily available

This article is based on the following observations:

 

Wave energy. The forward motion of a wave represents its kinetic energy, and many devices have been proposed for the capture of this energy. The vertical distance between the crest and valley of a wave represents the wave’s potential energy. A simple device for exploiting this potential energy consists of an air-filled floating tank, open at the bottom and attached at the top to an air-driven turbine. As the air in the tank is compressed by a wave, the air is forced through the turbine, producing power. As the wave falls, the pressure within the tank drops, the turbine valve closes and air is then readmitted into the tank through another valve. In spite of the large amount of energy available in waves, no device has yet proved to be economically feasible.

 

And you would never have to look further than your very own bedroom …

 

Though everyone might not be able to produce their own electricity. A few might be more than willing to share with their neighbours !!!

 

Let me introduce you to this new untapped eco-friendly energy source:

 

Bed energy. The pulsating motion of a copulating couple, represents – kinetic energy, and no known devices have been proposed for the capture of this eco-friendly energy source. The vertical distance between the apex and base of a thrust represents the bed’s potential energy. A simple device for exploiting this potential energy consists of a waterbed, which is coupled to a hydro-turbine at the head of the bed, discharging into a reservoir tank underneath and returned by suction to the foot of bed. As the water in the bed is compressed by a thrust the water is forced through the turbine, producing power. As the water level falls, the pressure within the bed drops, the turbine valve closes and water is then readmitted from the reservoir into the bed through another valve. This action is reciprocating, until enough energy is produced - rhythmic action is essential.

 

Although it might be sporadic at time, such as sleeping at the most crucial time.

 

Though in spite of the large amount of energy available in beds, no device has yet proved to be economically feasible or reliable – mainly due to headaches.

 

Three- or four-some’s could supply energy for their neighbourhood. Whereas groupies would be used for the supply of energy to the aged or handicapped homes, hospitals and other emergency services. Red light ladies could sell take-out packages in the form of batteries.

 

Always take the necessary precautions, or you might throw a spanner, by confining the works.

 

Remember, if it’s Cooking, Ironing or Washing that needs to be done … there is always Bed Energy!

 

Detailed updates to follow, as soon as they become available …

 

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Related articles: WHAT IF, ENERGY, ECO-FRIENDLY, WATERBEDS, TURBINES, POWER, ELECTRICITY

HESIOD (8th century BC).

WORDPLAY

Hesiod: Greek Poet

 

Except for the works of Homer, the epics of Hesiod are the earliest Greek writings to come down to the present. His ‘Theogony’ relates the myths about the gods, and ‘Works and Days’ is a book of wisdom literature that traces the decline of humanity from an early golden age.

 

Hesiod was a native of the village of Ascra in Boeotia, a district in central Greece. Little is known of his life except what he tells in ‘Works and Days’, in which he criticizes his brother Perses for having made off with the bulk of their inheritance. The poet travelled once to Chalcis on the island of Euboea for a contest of poets. Legend says he was a shepherd until the Muses, inspirers of poetry, endowed him with talent and commanded him to “sing of the race of the blessed gods immortal.”

 

‘Theogony’ is the earlier of his two books. It relates the history of the gods and of creation, culminating with the triumph of Zeus as the supreme god. ‘Works and Days’ is a more personal narrative. It is addressed to his greedy brother in an attempt to make him change his ways. Hesiod tells of the need for honesty and hard work by using two myths. The first is the story of Pandora, who opened a jar to unleash evils on humanity. Next he traces the decline from a golden age through the silver, bronze, and heroic periods down to his own time.

 

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INDIA (Part 1 of 4)

WORDPLAY

India

1. region in S Asia, south of the Himalayas, including a large peninsula between the Arabian Sea & the Bay of Bengal: it contains India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, & Bhutan
2. republic in central & S India: established by Act of British Parliament (1947), became a republic (1950): member of the Commonwealth: 1,269,000 sq. mi. (3,287,590 sq. km); pop. 783,940,000 (circa 1995); cap. New Delhi

 

FAST FACTS

Ajanta, India, village in Maharashtra state; noted for fresco-decorated cave dwellings and halls, dating back to 200 BC; pop.

Aryan, one of the peoples believed to have migrated into Europe and India from central Asia; parent stock of the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Latins, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, etc.

Bengali language, modern dialect of India, akin to Uriya, Assamese, Bihari, and Hindustani; word of English origin, derived from Bengal in which province it is spoken; makes free use of Sanskrit words; literature known in Western world through works of Tagore

Bhopal, India, capital of Madhya Pradesh state; formerly a Muslim state; ruled 1844-1926 by women (begums, or princesses); Sultan Jahan Begum (1858-1930) did much to advance position of women, education, and medical aid; in 1926 abdicated in favour of son; state acceded to India 1947; disaster in 1984 caused by leak of deadly gas from Union Carbide Corp. plant; pop. 309,285

Candra Gupta I (about 4th century AD), ruler of India, founder of the Gupta Dynasty

Caste, hereditary division of society according to family, religion, wealth, occupation, etc.

Charan Singh, (1902-87), prime minister of India July 28-Aug. 20, 1979

China (or People’s Republic of China), country in e. Asia; area 3,692,000 sq mi (9,561,000 sq km); cap. Beijing; pop. 1,165,888,000

Green Revolution, spectacular world development, largely since World War II, in producing high-yielding strains of wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, and other crops

Hyderabad, former state of India; area 82,168 sq mi (212,814 sq km)

Morarji Desai, (born 1896), Indian political leader, born in Gujarat; prime minister 1977-79

Myanmar (originally Burma, officially Union of Myanmar), republic in north west. Indochina, on e. side of Bay of Bengal; 261,228 sq mi (676,577 sq km); cap. Rangoon; pop. 43,466,000

Punjab (or Land of the Five Rivers Sutlej, Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, and Ravi), agricultural and industrial region; wheat, textiles; formerly a province of north west. British India; in 1947 divided, on religious lines, between Pakistan and India

Punjab, state in north west. India, formed from e. part of former province of Punjab, India; area about 20,000 sq mi (51,800 sq km); cap. Chandigarh; wheat, cotton; pop. 13,551,060

Rajiv Gandhi, (1944-91), Indian public official, born in Bombay; son of Indira Gandhi; persuaded by his mother to leave jet pilot career to enter politics; became representative from Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh in special elections 1981; became 1 of Congress party’s 4 general secretaries 1983; installed as party leader and prime minister after his mother’s assassination 1984; praised for liberal economic programs, but later accused of government corruption; lost re-election 1989; assassinated at climax of campaign to regain prime minister position 1991

Rama, one of incarnations of Vishnu in Hindu mythology; hero of Hindu epic ‘Ramayana’

Reincarnation, belief that souls of the dead return to Earth in another form or body, especially in a new human body

Sanskrit, ancient sacred and literary language of India, first found in Veda religious texts; Indo-Aryan language; because it is so regular, some think it was never a language of the common people

Satyajit Ray, (1921-92), Indian film director (‘Charulata’; ‘Jana Aranya’)

Sharecropping (or tenant farming), the operation of a farm in exchange for a share of the crop; in U.S., sharecropping arose after Civil War in the South

Stafford Cripps, (1889-1952), British lawyer and statesman; ambassador to U.S.S.R. 1940-42; lord privy seal and leader of House of Commons 1942; minister of aircraft production 1942-45; president of Board of Trade 1945-47; minister of economic affairs 1947; chancellor of exchequer 1947-50

Stupa, Buddhist temple, cylindrical mound made of earth, brick, or stone and containing relics of Buddha; sometimes carved elaborately

Thar Desert (or Great Indian Desert), divided between Sind region, Pakistan, and Rajasthan State, India; yields salt and gypsum

Union Carbide Corporation, third largest U.S. chemical firm; producer of first dry cell battery and originator of Eveready trademark; founded 1886; dry cell battery marketed 1890; one of first industrial research laboratories established 1894; name Union Carbide adopted 1898; consumer products include Prestone antifreeze, Glad Wrap, Simoniz car wax, as well as batteries; most products sold to industry; became a multinational conglomerate after 1950; massive industrial accident at Bhopal, India, in Dec. 1984 killed about 2,500 people, seriously damaged company reputation, and brought massive litigation problems

Vishwanath Pratap Singh, (born 1931), prime minister of India, elected in 1989; previously defence minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet; has a reputation as an honest man determined to rid India of corruption

Yamuna River (or Jumna River), tributary of the Ganges River, n. India; rises in Himalayas, flows 860 mi (1,385 km) s. and s.e. to Ganges River

 

Nearly one sixth of all the human beings on Earth live in India, the world’s most populous democracy. Its borders encompass a vast variety of peoples, practicing most of the world’s major religions, speaking scores of different languages, divided into thousands of socially exclusive castes, and combining the physical traits of several major racial groups. A civilized, urban society has existed in India for well over 4,000 years, and there have been periods when its culture was as brilliant and creative as any in history.

 

India’s leaders have played a prominent role in world affairs since the country became independent in 1947. Nevertheless, the standard of living of most of its citizens is low. The huge population strains the nation’s limited resources. Fertile, cultivable land is scarce, yet more than two thirds of the people depend directly on agriculture for their livelihood. Many millions of Indians are inadequately nourished, poorly housed, and lacking in basic educational, medical, and sanitary services.

 

The modern nation of India (also known by its ancient Hindi name, Bharat) is smaller than the Indian Empire formerly ruled by Britain. Burma (now Myanmar), a mainly Buddhist country lying to the east, was administratively detached from India in 1937. Ten years later, when Britain granted independence to the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, two regions with Muslim majorities a large one in the northwest (West Pakistan) and a smaller one in the northeast (East Pakistan) were partitioned from the predominantly Hindu areas and became the separate nation of Pakistan. East Pakistan broke away from Pakistan in 1971 to form the independent nation of Bangladesh. Also bordering India on its long northern frontier are the People’s Republic of China and the relatively small kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan. The island republic of Sri Lanka lies just off India’s southern tip.

 

LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES

 

Much of India’s area of almost 1.3 million square miles (3.3 million square kilometres including the Pakistani-held part of Jammu and Kashmir) is a peninsula jutting into the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea on the west and the Bay of Bengal on the east. There are three distinct physiographic regions. In the north the high peaks of the Himalayas lie partly in India but mostly just beyond its borders in Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. South of the mountains, the low-lying Indo-Gangetic Plain, shared with Pakistan and Bangladesh, extends more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. Finally, the peninsular tableland, largely the Deccan, together with its adjacent coastal plains, makes up more than half of the nation’s area.

 

The Himalayas. The northern mountain wall consists of three parallel ranges. The highest of these ranges is the Greater Himalayas, which include several peaks that rise above 25,000 feet (7,600 meters). Even the passes through these mountains are farther above sea level than the highest summits of the Alps. India has the world’s largest area under snow and glaciers outside the Polar Regions.

 

Lower mountain ranges branch off from both ends of the Himalayan system, running along the border with Myanmar toward the Bay of Bengal in the east and mainly through Pakistan toward the Arabian Sea in the west. Thus, the low-lying country to the south is relatively isolated from the rest of Asia. This accounts for its recognition as a subcontinent.

 

The Indo-Gangetic Plain. The Indo-Gangetic Plain, with an area of about 270,000 square miles (700,000 square kilometres), varies in width by several hundred miles. It is the world’s most extensive tract of uninterrupted alluvium. These deep, river-deposited sediments give rise to fertile soils. In addition, they are rich in groundwater for well irrigation. The flat terrain also makes the area ideal for canal irrigation.

 

The greater part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain is drained by the Ganges River, which rises in the southern Himalayas and flows in a generally south to southeast direction to the Bay of Bengal. Its principal tributary, the Yamuna, or Jumna, flows past New Delhi, the capital of India, to join the Ganges near Allahabad. North of Goalundo Ghat in Bangladesh, the Ganges is joined by the Brahmaputra. The Indus and its tributaries drain the western and south western parts of the plain. The northern part of this area, now divided between India and Pakistan, is traditionally known as the Punjab, or Land of the Five Rivers, for the five major tributaries of the Indus the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. Also on the India-Pakistan border and considered part of the plain is the arid Thar, or Great Indian, Desert.

 

The Deccan. The so-called tableland of India is actually a more complex landform region than that word suggests. Most of the 735,000 square miles (1.9 million square kilometres) of the Deccan are relatively flat, with elevations ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 feet (300 to 600 meters) above sea level. However, the terrain also includes numerous ranges of hills, as well as several long, prominent escarpments. Anai Mudi (8,842 feet, 2,695 meters), in the Southern Ghats, is the highest peak in peninsular India.

 

The coastal plains flanking the Deccan are relatively narrow, ranging from 6 to 80 miles (10 to 130 kilometres). The eastern plain is drained by several large deltas, including, from north to south, those of the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri rivers.

 

India is rich in non energy mineral resources and moderately well endowed with coal, but it is poor in proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The principal mineral deposits lie south of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Foremost among mineral-rich regions is the Chota Nagpur Plateau. This area contains India’s main coal deposits as well as large quantities of high-grade iron ore, copper, bauxite, limestone, mica, and chromite. At more than 100 billion tons, the country’s coal reserves are the fifth largest in the world. However, most of the coal is of poor quality because of its high ash and moisture content. Proven on-land petroleum reserves are insufficient to meet current demand. There has been some success with offshore exploration. Many of India’s rivers are potential sources of hydroelectric power.

 

CLIMATE, VEGETATION, ANIMAL LIFE

 

In general, India’s climate is governed by the monsoon, or seasonal, rain-bearing wind. Most of the country has three seasons: hot, wet, and cool. During the hot season, which usually lasts from early March to mid-June, very high temperatures are accompanied by intermittent winds and occasional dust storms.

 

Strong, humid winds from the southwest and south usually bringing very heavy rains that fall almost daily in the middle or late afternoon the “burst of the monsoon” herald the start of the wet season. It may begin as early as late May in the south. Eventually, the rains taper off, and by late October cool, dry, northerly air has replaced the humid marine air over all of India except the south eastern third of the peninsula. This “retreat of the monsoon” marks the start of the cool season.

 

Average annual precipitation varies widely. Cherrapunji in the Shillong Plateau just north of Bangladesh receives 450 inches (1,143 centimetres), making it the second rainiest place on Earth, after Mount Waialeale in Hawaii (460 inches, 1,168 centimetres). At the other extreme, the western Thar Desert averages only 4 inches (10 centimetres). In the driest parts of India, however, the rainfall is highly variable.

 

Temperature varies as does rainfall in different parts of India. Hill stations in the Himalayan region, such as Darjeeling and Simla, record the lowest temperatures, with annual averages of between about 54°  and 57°  F (12°  and 14°  C). In the Indo-Gangetic Plain, Delhi and Allahabad register an average of 79°  F (26°  C).

 

Plant and Animal Life

Most of the far northeast (north and east of Bangladesh), northern West Bengal, and the west coast from Cochin to somewhat north of Bombay get more than 80 inches (200 centimetres) of rainfall annually. This is usually enough to keep the soil moist throughout the year. The natural vegetation associated with these regions is an exceedingly varied, broadleaf, evergreen rain forest, typically tall and dense. Much of the rain forest, however, is in hilly regions that have been repeatedly burned over and cleared for slash-and-burn agriculture, a type of farming particularly associated with India’s tribal population. As a result, the soil has become less fertile. Where the forest has grown again, it is generally lower and less open than the original vegetation.

 

Areas with from 40 to 80 inches (100 to 200 centimetres) of rainfall (enough to grow at least one crop of rice) include almost the whole north eastern peninsular region, the eastern Gangetic Plain, a narrow belt on the plains and hills just south of the Himalayas as far west as Kashmir, another belt just east of the crest of the Western Ghats, and most of the south eastern, or Coromandel, coast. In these areas, as average rainfall declines the forests become progressively shorter, less dense, and less varied.

 

In addition, as rainfall declines from 80 to 60 inches (200 to 150 centimetres) evergreens gradually give way to deciduous species, which in these regions lose their leaves during the cool, dry season. Where government protection from slash-and-burn agriculture has kept forests intact, they include good stands of teak, sal, and other excellent timber species.

 

Most of the rest of India averages from 20 to 40 inches (50 to 100 centimetres), enough to grow one crop of grain other than rice. The natural vegetation consists of low, open forests, intermixed with thorny shrubs and grasses. Little of the original vegetative cover remains.

 

A wide variety of distinctive vegetation types occur as a result of special ecological conditions. Tall grass savannas, with scattered acacias, grow on the moist soils of the Terai, the fringe of plains bordering the northern mountains. Mangrove forests are found in the brackish deltas of the east coast, and many types of palms grow in sandy or salty soils. Often impenetrable stands of bamboo sprout up in fields formerly given over to slash-and-burn cultivation.

 

The alterations in India’s vegetation over the centuries have brought about many changes in the animal life. Today the dominant forms are cattle, goats, buffalo, sheep, and, in the drier regions, camels. While cattle are essential to the nation’s economy, there is a religious taboo against their slaughter.

 

In the forests and the high, rugged areas where wild species are still dominant, the array of animals remains rich. Among large mammals are the Indian elephant, still regularly rounded up and domesticated in several areas; the rhinoceros, living almost exclusively in game sanctuaries; over a dozen species of deer and antelope; and wild cattle, sheep, goats, and boars.

 

Carnivores, or meat eaters, include tigers and leopards; lions, once wide-ranging but now confined to the Gir Forest on the Kathiawar Peninsula; the nearly extinct cheetah; and a variety of bears. Monkeys, especially langurs and rhesuses, are common even in cities. The cobra is the best-known reptile. Three species of crocodiles are found. There are about 1,200 species of birds, among them vultures, parrots, mynas, quail, and bustards.

 

PEOPLE AND CULTURE

 

It is not certain which racial group first occupied India. The assumption is often made that the first inhabitants had characteristics in common with the small-stature, dark, aboriginal population of Australia, as well as with other tribal groups still found in isolated, forested regions of Southeast Asia. Therefore, the term proto-Australoid has been applied to the racial type represented by a number of tribes still living in India, mainly in the states of Bihar, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh. Other early arrivals were the ancestors of the peoples, now living mainly in southern India, who speak languages of the Dravidian family. The Mongoloid peoples have also been in India a long time. Their present-day descendants include several tribal groups living along the frontiers with Myanmar, China (Tibet), Bhutan, and Nepal.

 

Not later than the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, a wave of migrants of inner Eurasian origin began to filter into India through passes on the north western frontier of the country. These invaders, known as Aryans, had relatively light skin and spoke languages of the Indo-European family.

 

Throughout recorded history new groups have continued to penetrate India, mainly from the northwest: Persians, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Afghans, and, since the 16th century, small numbers of Western Europeans. Over the millennia all these peoples have interbred in varying degrees. The resulting mixture is so highly complex that it is virtually impossible to draw clear racial distinctions among the people of India today.

 

Continuing … ‘INDIA (Part 2 of 4)’

 

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INDIA (Part 2 of 4)

Language

Linguistic differences are much clearer than those of racial groupings. Two linguistic groups, the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian, account for all but a tiny proportion of the population. Of the Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi, the official national language, is the most important. In its standard form and its many dialects, it is spoken by about 43 percent of the population and is understood by a large number of others. It is predominant in the northern and central regions. Included among the Hindi variations is Urdu, referred to until 1947 as Hindustani or Khari Boli, which is recognized as a separate “official” language in the Indian constitution. Urdu is also the official language of Pakistan and is spoken by most Indian Muslims (except in the far south and east).

 

Other important Indo-Aryan languages are Bengali (the official language of the state of West Bengal and also of Bangladesh), Panjabi (the official language of the state of Punjab and the most widely spoken language of Pakistan), and Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Assamese, and Kashmiri (respectively, the official languages of the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Orissa, Assam, and Jammu and Kashmir). Two other languages of the Indo-Aryan family are among the 15 regarded as official languages by the constitution: Sanskrit, a classical literary language, and Sindhi, spoken largely in the Sind province of Pakistan and also by Hindu refugees who came to India after partition in 1947. The list of official languages includes four Dravidian tongues: Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada, which predominate, respectively, in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka.

 

English is understood by most educated persons. While it is not one of the 15 languages, it is officially recognized and is used, for example, for correspondence between Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi-speaking states. It is also the language shared by the Dravidian-speaking south and the Hindi-speaking north. Of the scores of languages not officially recognized, many are spoken almost exclusively by tribal peoples, known collectively as Adibasis.

 

Hinduism

Though a number of religions flourish in India’s tolerant social climate, four fifths of the people are Hindus. Hinduism evolved from Vedism, the religion of the early Aryan invaders. While it recognizes innumerable gods, they are widely regarded as diverse manifestations of one great universal spirit. Hinduism has no standard orthodox form. It is, in effect, what people who call themselves Hindus do in carrying out their dharma, or religious obligations. This varies considerably from one region and social group to another.

 

Caste

The social groups with which Hindus identify most strongly are their jatis, or castes. A caste is a hereditary group whose members intermarry only among themselves. Each has its own origin myth, traditional occupation, rules relating to kinship, diet, and various forms of behaviour. Castes are graded in a social and ritual hierarchy in which each expects respect from inferior groups and gives respect to superior ones. While obviously creating disparities, the caste system is not regarded by most Hindus as unjust. According to generally accepted beliefs associated with reincarnation, or rebirth after death, the caste into which one is born depends on one’s karma that is, one’s accumulated good and bad deeds in previous existences. The way to achieve higher status in future incarnations is to accept one’s station in life and live accordingly. This is the path that may eventually lead to salvation, called moksha, freedom from the continuous round of rebirths.

 

There are thousands of jatis, but most may be grouped into four great social classes called varnas. The highest are the Brahmans, the priestly castes that traditionally dominated the learned professions and still wield great influence. Next are the Kshatriyas, traditionally warriors, rulers, and large landowners. Third are the Vaishyas, once mainly farmers but now chiefly associated with commerce. Lowest are the Shudras, who today constitute the mass of India’s artisans and labourers.

 

Below the Shudras are a number of castes with no Varna designation. Traditionally these outcastes were regarded as “Untouchables” because their association with unclean occupations, such as scavenging and leatherworking, made them ritually impure and able to convey pollution to others. These groups have always been subject to considerable prejudice. The nationalist leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, who tried to ensure that they were treated humanely, bestowed on them the name Harijan, or children of God, by which they are now popularly known.

 

Officially they are recognized as “scheduled castes.” The Indian constitution, which outlaws un-touch ability, requires that a “schedule” of such groups be prepared in every state as an aid to providing them with special benefits. The aim is to help them overcome their disadvantaged position. Thus, they are guaranteed seats in the national and state parliaments, at least in proportion to their 15 percent of the population, as well as minimum quotas for placement in universities and government, and various other benefits. Similarly, the tribal peoples, 7.5 percent of the population, are designated as “scheduled tribes” and given corresponding benefits.

 

Islam

Muslims, who constitute 11 percent of the population, are the largest religious minority. Many of these followers of the monotheistic faith of Islam are descendants of invaders from the Middle East and Central Asia who began entering the subcontinent as early as the 8th century. Most, however, are descendants of converts from Hinduism and other faiths. The majority belong to the Sunnah branch of Islam, though the Shiah sect is well represented among Muslim trading groups of Gujarat.

 

Although Islam, unlike Hinduism, stresses the equality of people, the institution of caste is so strong in the subcontinent that it has affected the communities professing Islam and most other faiths. Thus, most Indian Muslims intermarry within graded, caste like groups, many of which have traditional occupations. Muslims form a majority of the population in Jammu and Kashmir and substantial minorities in the states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, and Kerala.

 

Other Religious Minorities

Sikhs, with 2.6 percent of the population, are predominant in the state of Punjab. Their faith, which dates from the early 16th century, combines aspects of Hinduism, such as belief in reincarnation, with ideas borrowed from Islam, in particular strict belief in only one God. A militant brotherhood, they are recognizable by their distinctive beards and turbans. Sikhs form a prominent part of India’s army and are influential in many professions and in government.

 

Two ancient and related faiths, Buddhism and Jainism, each have several million followers in India. Though Buddhism originated in India, it became virtually extinct there and remained so until 1956, when a renowned leader of the scheduled castes, B. R. Ambedkar, converted to it. Millions of his followers subsequently followed suit. Jainism, never very popular, has contributed enormously to Indian art, architecture, and religious thought. For centuries the small Jaina community has been especially prominent in commerce. Both Jainas and Buddhists practice ahimsa, or non-violence, one of many religious beliefs they share with the Hindus. The Zoroastrians, known as Parsis, form another small (barely 100,000) but highly educated and influential religious community. Members of a religion founded in the 6th century BC by the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, they are descendants of Zoroastrians who fled to India from the 10th century onward to escape Muslim persecution.

 

Christianity claims to date back to AD 52, when St. Thomas, one of the 12 apostles, is said to have landed on the west coast of India. He is recognized as the founder of the Syrian Christians. Roman Catholics, including many descendants of 16th-century converts, are the most numerous Christian groups, especially on the west coast and in the far south. During the last two centuries, Protestant missionaries have been especially successful among tribal and scheduled caste groups. Collectively, Christians make up nearly 3 percent of India’s population. A small percentage follows Judaism, which was introduced by early Jewish traders who established settlements in coastal towns, notably Cochin.

 

Recent Indian censuses have reported only a few million of India’s large tribal population as practicing animistic religions. Nevertheless, there is a strong element of spirit worship in the religious practices of most of India’s tribes, blended in varying degrees with forms borrowed from Hinduism.

 

Ways of Life

Three fourths of India’s people live in villages. These settlements may contain a thousand or more households, but one hundred to several hundred families is typical. In north western India villages tend to have an almost urban appearance, with tightly clustered dwellings that often form parts of high-walled compounds with few windows facing the street. In the eastern and southern regions the villages are less cramped. The various castes within a village are residentially segregated. The higher and more powerful castes generally have their homes near the centre of the village, while the scheduled castes and Muslims, if any, live on its outskirts. In southern India scheduled-caste hamlets half a mile or more from the main village are not uncommon.

 

In much of India the typical village dwelling is a modest one-story mud hut of one or several rooms. Roofs are generally flat in the dry regions and peaked in areas of heavier rainfall. Most houses have no windows, but many have a shaded veranda where social activities take place. A cubicle or a corner of the yard is set aside for the kitchen hearth, normally containing an earth stove fuelled by cow dung or firewood. Furniture is scarce, indoor plumbing is virtually unknown, and electricity is uncommon. Water, brought home from wells, is stored in large clay jars, which are also used to keep perishable foods.

 

The family. Households often consist of more than one married couple. These joint families are usually headed by a senior male, whose wife, mother, or another related senior female assigns domestic chores to the women and girls. Generally the extended family may include his unmarried children, his younger brothers and their wives and unmarried children, his unmarried sisters, and his married sons and grandsons and their wives and unmarried children. In practice, however, brothers commonly separate and form new households soon after the death of their father.

 

Over most of India (though not in the south or northeast), a girl marries outside her village, usually while still in her teens. Even where a female marries within the village, she moves to the husband’s household. Widow remarriage is frowned upon. Married couples display a marked preference for male children. Boys are desired not only because of their anticipated contribution to the family income but also because sons are needed to perform certain rites at a parent’s cremation. Girls, on the other hand, are seen as a liability because they require expensive dowries when they are married. Various state governments have tried to discourage this practice, but often families still go into debt to provide dowries; a family with several daughters and no sons may face financial disaster. Boys are expected to help in the fields and girls in the home. The freedom that girls enjoy is restricted after they reach the age of puberty; in northern India, even among the Hindus, female seclusion is common.

 

The village economy. Most villagers are farmers. The majority own some land, usually in scattered parcels, but a substantial number must rent all or part of the land they farm, either for cash or for an agreed-upon share of the harvest. The amount depends on whether the cultivator or the property owner pays for seed and irrigation water, and on who provides the animals for ploughing. Shares typically range from one third to one half the harvest. Many families, especially among the scheduled castes, have no land at all, and both adults and children must sell their labour to the larger farmers.

 

The simple tools used by most Indian farmers are generally made in the villages. Ploughs are wooden, with short iron tips. They furrow but do not turn the soil. Draft animals are mainly oxen in the drier regions and water buffalo in the wetter, rice-growing areas. Both cattle and water buffalo are milked, but yields are low. Transport is still largely by oxcart or buffalo cart, though the use of trucks is gaining as a result of road improvement. Tractor cultivation is rare except in Haryana and the Punjab.

 

Goods and services that are not available locally are obtained from nearby villages, at weekly outdoor markets, in towns and cities, and at fairs, usually held in connection with religious holidays. Payment for goods and services provided within the village may be either in cash or in kind. The latter type of payment, usually a portion of grain at the time of harvest, used to be the customary rule. Most specialized-caste families catered to a particular set of patron families, known as jajmans, with whom they were linked by hereditary ties. This jajmani system is breaking down over most of India, but patron-client alliances among various castes remain a common feature of village life.

 

Most villages have at least a primary school offering up to six years of instruction. Some also offer adult education classes in the evening. While few villages can support a well-trained doctor, many have practitioners of traditional medicine. Government-aided dispensaries are increasingly common.

 

For entertainment men join their fellow caste members or those from castes at levels close to their own to pass the evening hours smoking and chatting. Women and girls talk at the village well and may join groups to sing religious songs. Male youths sometimes form sports clubs or drama groups. Village-owned radios set up in public spaces are common, but television is rare. Travelling storytellers, musicians, acrobats, and snake charmers relieve the drabness of life, as do weddings, religious celebrations, and trips to local fairs, and occasional religious pilgrimages.

 

Local government. Village government is in the hands of a democratically elected council, known as a panchayat, presided over by a village headman. In former days virtually all panchayat members were men of the upper castes, usually those who owned the most land. Now many states require that a certain number of women and members of scheduled castes be included. Increasingly, elections are held by secret ballot. The panchayats are expected to work closely with the government-sponsored Community Development Program, which has divided the entire country into community development blocks, averaging about a hundred villages each. Village-level workers within each block are the chief links between the government and the villagers. They bring news to the villagers of developments that might benefit them and report back the sentiments of the people.

 

Urban life. Approximately one fourth of all Indians live in urban places. Of these, more than half live in settlements of more than 100,000 people, officially defined as cities. The 1981 census listed 11 cities with over one million people. The three largest Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi (including the capital, New Delhi) had populations of more than five million each.

 

Indian cities are generally poorly planned and are much more crowded than those of Europe or North America. Streets are narrow, the number of people in residential dwellings is high, and buildings with more than two stories are relatively scarce. The principal activity is retail trade, mainly carried out in small shops in specialized bazaar streets. Many shops combine a handicraft activity, often in a back room, and a sales outlet. The family of the shopkeeper normally lives just behind or above the shop.

 

Open spaces within larger cities and on their outskirts are likely to contain makeshift squatter settlements, occupied by recent immigrants from the countryside who have come to the city in search of employment. Many people lack any shelter at all and simply resort to sleeping in the streets, especially near railway stations where temporary day labourers are recruited each morning.

 

In the last few generations, many cities have spawned satellites located a considerable distance away from the densely settled cores. Some housed members of the civil administration during the period of British rule and are still known as civil lines. Others, designated as cantonments, included residences and special areas such as parade grounds set aside for the army. Since India achieved independence, many planned modern suburbs have sprung up. Modern factories, sometimes grouped in government-sponsored industrial estates, have increasingly been located outside the cities.

 

Like cities everywhere, those of India are centres of education, cultural activities, political ferment, and social change. In the urban setting, the caste and religious barriers that loom so large in the villages are considerably relaxed. Thus, there is somewhat more opportunity for talented individuals to rise in government, modern business, factories, and universities.

 

Art and Literature

The artistic and literary heritage of India is exceptionally rich. Probably most renowned are the country’s architectural masterpieces. These date from many different ages. The ancient Buddhist domed stupa, or shrine, at Sanchi was probably begun by the emperor Asoka in the mid-3rd century BC. The Kailasa Temple at Ellora was carved out of solid rock in the 8th century. The enormous, elaborately sculptured Sun Temple at Konarak dates from the 13th century, and the Minakshi Temple in Madurai, with its striking outer towers and inner Hall of 1,000 Pillars, from the 16th century. The sublime Taj Mahal at Agra was built in the 17th century by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favourite wife. Every major region and religious group of India has produced works of extraordinary merit. Hindu and Jaina temples are usually richly embellished by sculpture. Because of the Islamic opposition to representative art, mosques are comparatively austere and rely for adornment largely on inlaid stonework, decorative tiles, geometric designs in stone, plaster, or wood, and ornate calligraphy.

 

Painting is relatively less developed, and much of the work of the past has fallen victim to weather. However, the well-preserved, sensuous cave paintings at Ajanta, dating from the 1st century BC to the 7th century AD, demonstrate great technical proficiency at an early date. Altogether different is the lyric and romantic style of the various schools of miniature painting that flourished in the courts of the Mughals and the Rajput princes in the 16th and subsequent centuries. Modern painting, inspired by both European and Far Eastern models, has had several internationally recognized exponents.

 

Classical Indian music, dance, and drama are closely linked. Their roots go back nearly 2,000 years. Their mastery calls for great discipline and intensive practice. Each has a conventionalized “language” that demands considerable sophistication on the part of the audience. As with architecture, a number of regional styles have developed. Folk music and dance also show wide regional variations.

 

The literature of India covers many fields of knowledge, but religious and philosophical texts are particularly numerous. The oldest religious texts, the Vedas (beginning with the ‘Rig-Veda’ around 1500 BC, were transmitted only by word of mouth for many centuries before being committed to writing. For most Hindus the two best-known texts are the great epics, the ‘Ramayana’ and the ‘Mahabharata’, composed roughly 2,000 years ago. The former recounts the adventures of the god-king Rama and provides models of proper conduct for both men and women. The latter, the longest poem ever written, relates a great mythical war involving all the peoples of ancient India. The most important portion of that epic, the ‘Bhagavadgita’, is the principal Hindu tract on morality and ethics.

 

Indian Muslim literature covers a wide range of practical subjects. However, the authority of the Koran, Islam’s holy book, leaves little room for religious speculation. Poetry is particularly admired.

 

Education

Although India can boast the world’s third largest pool of scientifically and technically trained persons, the majority of its people 64 percent of the total population is still illiterate. The literacy rate for females (25 percent) is much lower than for males (47 percent), but the gap between the sexes is being reduced steadily. Similarly, the rural literacy rate is considerably lower than that for urban areas. The central and state governments are attempting to eradicate illiteracy. Thanks to a recent rapid increase in the number of schools, especially in the villages, around five sixths of the children aged 6-11 are now enrolled. However, the proportion falls to roughly two fifths for the 11-14 age group and only one fifth for those aged 14-17.

 

India’s first three universities, at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, were chartered only in 1857. By independence the number of universities in what is now India had risen to 20, and today there are well over 100 with a combined student body of more than 3 million. Most universities have affiliated colleges scattered over a rather wide area. There are few towns of more than 20,000 population that do not have at least one such college.

 

The colleges have shown a gradual shift toward instruction in the official state languages. This makes higher education accessible to many more people, but it has also meant a decline of proficiency in English. Since postgraduate education is almost entirely in English, this may present a major problem in the future. Another problem, already serious, is the large number of graduates who are unemployed because college and university education has expanded much more rapidly than the economy.

 

Continuing … ‘INDIA (Part 3 of 4)’

 

To view the ‘Table of Content’ of this and other Featured Articles, Click here.

 

Related articles: RELIGIOUS INSIGHT, AHMADABAD, AKBAR, ASOKA, AURANGZEB, BABER or BABUR, BANGALORE, BANGLADESH, BOMBAY, BUDDHISM, CALCUTTA, DELHI, GANGES RIVER, GUPTA DYNASTY, HINDUISM, HYDERABAD, INDIA, INDIAN LITERATURE, Indira GANDHI, INDUS RIVER, INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION, ISLAM, JAINISM, JAMMU AND KASHMIR, Jawaharlal NEHRU, LUCKNOW, MADRAS, Mahatma GANDHI, MAURYA EMPIRE, Mohammed Ali JINNAH, MONGOL EMPIRE, MUGHAL EMPIRE, Robert CLIVE, SHAH JAHAN, SRI LANKA, Warren HASTINGS, ZOROASTRIANISM AND PARSIISM

INDIA (Part 3 of 4)

Health

In general, the level of health among the Indian population is far from good. Because of impure drinking water and lack of public sanitation, diseases such as dysentery and typhoid are fairly common. Cholera, malaria, filariasis, and other illnesses associated with wet, tropical climates are serious problems. Although few people now starve to death in times of scarcity, many millions are improperly nourished and afflicted by various deficiency diseases.

 

The government is making considerable efforts to meet the health needs of the people. Thus, the average life expectancy at birth rose from around 32 years in 1951 to 53 years in 1981 and to 58 years in 1991. Immunization programs have greatly reduced the incidence of certain diseases, and smallpox, once a major killer, has been eradicated. A vigorous anti-mosquito campaign came close to wiping out malaria as well, but with the emergence of DDT-resistant strains of mosquito’s, the spread of malaria has continued virtually unabated.

 

The number of government-paid doctors in the countryside has increased substantially, and a network of rural primary-health-care centres is being established. These centres are staffed by “multipurpose health workers” who have taken a short medical course, enabling them to treat many common health problems that do not really need a doctor’s attention. Throughout India there are also practitioners of traditional Indian systems of medicine that are reasonably effective for a number of ailments.

 

Apart from treating illnesses, the medical profession has been called on to play a major role in implementing India’s family planning program. This involves giving advice to women or married couples who wish to practice birth control and performing sterilization operations on willing men and women. However, a controversial effort to enforce compulsory sterilization in the mid-1970s failed, and the Indian public has been slow to accept the desirability of limiting family size. While the birth rate has fallen significantly in recent decades, it is still dangerously high. At the current growth rate of approximately 2 percent per year, the population of India could double every 35 years.

 

THE ECONOMY

 

Because of low levels of productivity, both per worker and per acre of agricultural land, average incomes in India are among the lowest in the world. Almost all production must go to meet the subsistence needs of the population, and savings and investment are difficult to promote. Hence, the nation finds it difficult to escape from a vicious cycle of poverty. Nevertheless, by a combination of careful economic planning and foreign economic aid India has managed to make remarkable progress since independence. Major sources of aid have been the United States, the Soviet Union, and the World Bank and other international agencies. Because the growth rate of agricultural production has substantially exceeded that of the population, acute famine no longer appears to be a serious threat. Growth in manufacturing has been impressive, and India now ranks among the world’s ten largest industrial nations.

 

Agriculture

Crops. The pattern of Indian agriculture varies greatly from one region to another. Almost everywhere, grains form the principal crop: rice in the wetter portions of the east and south, wheat in the north and northwest, sorghum and millets over much of the peninsular interior. Leguminous crops such as gram, often grown with grain, are also widely cultivated, as are various oil seeds. Sugarcane is a highly profitable crop where modern crushing plants are accessible. Certain fruits, especially mangoes, are exceedingly abundant in season. Nevertheless, the total area given over to fruits and vegetables is insufficient to provide most Indians with a balanced diet.

 

Since the late 1800s Indian agriculture has become much more intensive as efforts were made to obtain the best yield from every piece of land. The first major changes resulted from the development of giant canal irrigation projects, especially in the western Indo-Gangetic Plain and on the Indus Plain, which now is largely in Pakistan. Following independence the government of India accelerated this effort. Multipurpose river basin development projects were established in all parts of the country. As the opportunities for additional surface water projects became limited, the emphasis shifted to irrigation from groundwater, usually by means of deep, cement-lined, power-driven tube wells.

 

The Green Revolution. Another major change has been the spread of new, high-yielding varieties of hybrid seeds. In some areas use of these seeds has multiplied wheat yields several-fold. There have also been impressive gains in rice production. However, these varieties require large inputs of fertilizers, irrigation water, and pesticides. Thus, a whole new technology, popularly called the Green Revolution, is needed. States such as Punjab and Haryana, where the new methods have been practiced on a large scale, have prospered greatly. Other states that have been unable to adapt them are still struggling.

 

Traditional Indian agriculture was overwhelmingly for subsistence, but from the 19th century onward there has been a great increase in commercial farming. Chief among the cash crops is cotton, which is grown mainly on the black lava soils of the Deccan. Jute, grown for fibre, is important in the Ganges delta area of West Bengal. Plantation crops include tea, grown in the highlands of the far south and northeast; coffee, a southern highland crop; and rubber and coconuts, produced mainly along the south western coast. Important specialty crops include tobacco, chillies, various spices, cashew nuts, and betel leaf (pan).

 

Livestock. Because of the scarcity of land and the widely held taboos against eating meat, especially beef and pork, little livestock is raised for slaughter. Mutton from sheep and goats is widely consumed, however, as are poultry and eggs. Animals are economically important for ploughing and transportation; for milk and milk products; for leather, skins, and wool; and as sources of dung for fuel and fertilizer.

 

Fishing and Forestry

There are some taboos against eating fish, but they are less prevalent than those against meat. Hence, fishing at sea and in rivers provides a modest supplement to a diet generally poor in protein. Increasingly, rice paddies are being stocked with carp and other fishes. Shrimp have become a significant export.

 

Forestry is not well developed. Most of the nation’s forests about 23 percent of the total area are owned and managed by the state governments. Commercial exploitation is generally carried out by licensed companies. The principal timber species are sal and teak. However, much of the legal cutting and considerable poaching is for firewood and the manufacture of charcoal. Other forest products include wood for pulp, panelling, and matches; aromatic sandalwood; bamboo canes; medicinal plants; lac, which is used in shellac; resins; and tanning and dyeing materials. In a country where paper is scarce, leaves often serve as wrappers.

 

Mining

A great variety of minerals are mined and quarried. Foremost in importance and in value of production is coal, which is mined at many sites but chiefly in the Chota Nagpur Plateau. Coal supplies more than half of India’s energy needs. Petroleum production, from small fields in Assam and Gujarat and the promising offshore Bombay High field, is expanding fairly rapidly, but domestic production meets only a third of the demand for petroleum products. Hydroelectricity, an important supplementary source of energy, provides nearly two fifths of the nation’s electrical power requirements. India is a major producer and exporter of iron ore. It also produces several important minerals used in ferroalloys, such as manganese and chromite. Other metals include copper, gold, zinc, lead, bauxite, and silver. Limestone, phosphorite, dolomite, and gypsum are used in the manufacture of cement, fertilizers, and other products. High-quality building stones, gems, mica, and kaolin, or china clay, are produced in significant quantities.

 

Manufacturing

Indian handicraft industries, especially those producing textiles, have been renowned for centuries. Before the Industrial Revolution the products of these industries were avidly sought for European markets. Subsequently, however, millions of artisans in India found it virtually impossible to compete with the cheap products of British mills and lost their traditional forms of livelihood. Before independence attempts were made to boycott British imports, as advocated by Mohandas K. Gandhi. This, together with official support for small-scale industry after 1947, led to some resurgence of handicrafts. In India as elsewhere, however, the economic advantages of large-scale production have forced ever greater reliance on factory production.

 

The oldest factory industry and the most important as a source of employment is the manufacture of cotton textiles. Though mills are found in most parts of the country, they are concentrated along the west coast, from Bombay north to Ahmadabad. India ranks among the world’s principal manufacturers and exporters of cottons. Other textile industries include the manufacture of jute for burlap bags and other uses, concentrated in cities on the Hooghly River north of Calcutta; woollens, in Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Amritsar (Punjab), and Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir); and rayon. In the widespread leather industry, as with textiles, modern factories offer severe competition to traditional artisans. In general, modern food industries are poorly developed, mainly because low incomes limit effective demand for their products. Among the exceptions are sugar refining and the processing of vegetable oils, tea, and coffee.

 

India’s modern metallurgical industry got its start in 1907, when the Tata Iron and Steel Company was established at Jamshedpur (Bihar) on the Chota Nagpur Plateau. In addition to steel, India produces aluminium and copper for further processing. Other major products include machine tools, automobiles, motorcycles, bicycles, railway cars, diesel engines, pumps, and sewing machines, many of them produced for export. The country’s electrical and chemical industries are expanding rapidly.

 

Transportation and Communication

India’s railway system, begun in the mid-19th century, is an important inheritance from the period of British rule. With approximately 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometres), the government-owned network is the fourth largest in the world. Although the volume of freight carried is not impressive, the number of passenger-miles per year in the late 1980s was surpassed only by those of the Soviet Union and Japan. Trains on main lines offer frequent and efficient service. Few places are more than a day’s walk from a railroad line.

 

Since independence there has been a great spurt of road building. By the early 1990s the road network had grown to approximately 1,250,000 miles (2,000,000 kilometres), about 42 percent of which was surfaced. Most villages can now be reached by automobile, at least in the dry season. The use of motor vehicles rose correspondingly, but the total was still small: 1,433,000 trucks and buses, 2,284,000 private cars, and more than 12 million motorcycles.

 

India has the largest merchant shipping fleet among the world’s less developed countries. In the early 1990s it totalled 10.5 million gross registered tons and operated out of ten major and 170 minor ports. Companies engaged in overseas and coastal trade are both publicly and privately owned. Inland water traffic on the several thousand miles of navigable rivers and canals is no longer very important.

 

Air India, the government-owned international airline, flies to many parts of the world from Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. The Indian Airlines Corporation, also a state monopoly, serves virtually all the nation’s cities. For most Indians, however, air travel is no more than a distant dream. A typical family is happy to own a single bicycle. In the countryside, transportation of goods by cart and pack animals is still the general rule. Human porters are common in the cities, where every conceivable mode of ground transport exists on the crowded streets.

 

The communications system of India is not well developed. Postal and telegraphic services reach all parts of the country, but service is slow. The telephone system is overburdened and inefficient. The main radio and television services are government operated and non-commercial. Service to the cities is generally adequate, but many villages do not have a single radio. Television is virtually unknown in rural areas, except in the vicinity of a few major cities. Plans are under way, however, for satellite transmission that will reach more parts of the country.

 

Motion pictures are an especially powerful and popular communications medium. Open-air cinemas are features of fairs, and no town of any size is without a movie house. In some years India is the world’s leading film producer. Several hundred feature films are released annually in a variety of regional languages. Most are escapist adventures and love stories, in colour, with a number of dance and song sequences. However, some Indian filmmakers, like Satyajit Ray, have achieved international acclaim.

 

The vigorous Indian press provides about 16,000 newspapers, including more than 2,000 dailies. The English-language press is still the most prestigious and influential, but newspapers in Indian languages have been gaining rapidly in readership.

 

GOVERNMENT

 

India’s present constitution went into effect on Jan. 26, 1950. At that time, the nation changed its status from a dominion to a federal republic, though it remained within the Commonwealth. The governor-general, appointed by the British Crown, was replaced by a president, chosen by an electoral college. The president is the official chief of state, but the office is largely ceremonial.

 

Laws are enacted by a Parliament consisting of two chambers the popularly elected Lok Sabha, or House of the People, with not more than 545 members and the Rajya Sabha, or Council of States, with not more than 250 indirectly elected members. The prime minister is elected by the majority party or coalition in Parliament and then formally appointed by the president. Executive power is exercised by the appointed Council of Ministers, or cabinet, under the leadership of the prime minister. Elections to the Lok Sabha are held at least every five years; if there is a vote of no-confidence in the prime minister’s government, the president must call for new elections. The Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of federal laws, handles disputes between the central government and the states or between the states themselves, and judges appeals from lower courts.

 

India consists of 25 states and seven union territories. The governments of the states are organized in much the same way as the central government. The federal constitution gives the states control over certain issues, such as agriculture, and retains control over almost 100 others, such as foreign affairs. There is a third list of subjects, such as price control, on which both the central and state governments may pass laws. The union territories are controlled directly by the central government. The most important of these territories is Delhi, which includes the capital, New Delhi, and the rest of the Delhi metropolis.

 

The federal constitution includes a lengthy list of fundamental rights. It guarantees freedom of speech and religion, among many other rights, and abolishes un-touchability. It also specifies a set of Directive Principles of State Policy, designed to guide the government in the interests of the people. In periods of national emergency, which only the president can declare, the government may legally suspend certain rights for a limited period. Such an emergency was in force in India from June 1975 to March 1977.

 

Party politics are energetically pursued at both the national and state levels. There are many parties, and their orientations are diverse. The Indian National Congress, or its dominant faction, has governed India since independence except for the three years from 1977 to 1980. It has been committed to a form of democratic socialism, with a mixture of private and state enterprise. Several other Socialist and Communist parties are ideologically to the left of Congress, while other parties are to its right. In addition, there are a number of parties that represent the interests of particular regions, language groups, and religions. With so many parties contesting Parliamentary elections, independent candidates have a fairly good chance of being elected. Despite the high level of illiteracy, voter turnouts in Indian elections are normally large.

 

In foreign affairs India tried to maintain a policy of nonalignment in the political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It supported independence movements in areas subject to colonial rule, opposed racism in South Africa and elsewhere, and championed the nations of the Third World in their economic dealings with the affluent countries of Europe, North America, and Japan. India has played a prominent role in the United Nations and in many of its specialized agencies.

 

HISTORY

 

Archaeological excavations at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (both in Pakistan) reveal the existence of a civilization in the Indus Valley as long ago as about 2500 BC. The remains show that an urban manner of living had developed in which the people had wells, bathrooms, drainage systems, handsome jewellery, and well-made household utensils and copper weapons. The Rig Veda, composed in about 1400 BC, tells of the struggle between the Aryan invaders and the prior occupants of the land. By the 6th century BC at least 16 Aryan states had been established south of the Himalayas, and Brahmanism was flourishing.

 

In 326 BC the armies of Alexander the Great reached the Hydaspes River, the modern Jhelum. Soon after Alexander’s death in Babylon in 323, Candragupta founded the Maurya Empire. His grandson Asoka adopted Buddhism, then a relatively small sect, and energetically promoted that faith. Under Asoka the Maurya Empire extended over all India except the extreme south, but it began to break up shortly after his death. Candra Gupta I, who reigned from AD 320 to 330, was the founder of the imperial dynasty of the Guptas, which flourished until the mid-6th century. The Gupta Dynasty marked the peak of classical Indian civilization.

 

A succession of invaders, notably the Kushans, Sakas, and Ephthalites, or White Huns, penetrated the subcontinent during these centuries. Mongol forces of Genghis Khan made raids into Punjab in the 1200s, and in 1399 Timur Lenk’s hordes poured in. In 1526 Baber, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur Lenk, came through the northwest passes from Afghanistan and seized the throne of Delhi, establishing the great Mughal Empire. This remained almost continuously powerful until the early 1700s. The south of India was never completely conquered, but the empire of the north, under such rulers as Akbar and Shah Jahan, was among the most brilliant in the history of the Orient. During the reign of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughals, from 1618 to 1707, the Marathas of the Deccan undermined the Mughal Empire.

 

Continuing … ‘INDIA (Part 4 of 4)’

 

To view the ‘Table of Content’ of this and other Featured Articles, Click here.

 

Related articles: RELIGIOUS INSIGHT, AHMADABAD, AKBAR, ASOKA, AURANGZEB, BABER or BABUR, BANGALORE, BANGLADESH, BOMBAY, BUDDHISM, CALCUTTA, DELHI, GANGES RIVER, GUPTA DYNASTY, HINDUISM, HYDERABAD, INDIA, INDIAN LITERATURE, Indira GANDHI, INDUS RIVER, INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION, ISLAM, JAINISM, JAMMU AND KASHMIR, Jawaharlal NEHRU, LUCKNOW, MADRAS, Mahatma GANDHI, MAURYA EMPIRE, Mohammed Ali JINNAH, MONGOL EMPIRE, MUGHAL EMPIRE, Robert CLIVE, SHAH JAHAN, SRI LANKA, Warren HASTINGS, ZOROASTRIANISM AND PARSIISM

INDIA (Part 4 of 4)

Arrival of the Europeans

Meanwhile, the struggle between European powers for dominance in Indian affairs had begun. In 1498 Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator, discovered the ocean route around the Cape of Good Hope, and by the early 17th century the Dutch, British, and French began to challenge the Portuguese for the Indian trade. In 1600 the British East India Company was chartered, and within a century it had trading posts at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta (then called Fort William). The French organized local troops, and their role in the quarrels of Indian rulers brought much of the Deccan under French influence by 1751.

 

British presence in India was threatened with extinction, but the genius of Robert Clive turned the tables. His storming and subsequent defence of Arcot in 1751 and his victory at Plassey in 1757 overthrew the French power and laid the foundations of the rule of the British East India Company. Later, trading rights gradually grew into political rule. It was a strange conquest, in which a private trading company conquered an empire chiefly through the use of soldiers (Sepoys) raised in the land itself. Warren Hastings, who became governor-general for the East India Company in 1774, built upon the foundation Clive had laid. By 1849 the rule of the company had been extended over virtually the whole of the subcontinent by conquest or treaties.

 

Certain high-handed methods used by the British company, as well as the teachings of missionaries and the introduction of European customs, now stirred a great wave of unrest. In 1857 a rumour was circulated among the company’s Indian soldiers that the cartridge papers they had to tear with their teeth were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The cow is sacred to Hindus, and the pig is abhorred by Muslims. This rumour started the great Sepoy Revolt, or Indian Mutiny, of 1857. The outbreak, though crushed, ended the powers of the East India Company. In 1858 the administration was transferred to the British Crown. In 1876 the British Parliament ruled that India should be designated an empire. The next year Queen Victoria was crowned empress of India.

 

The Indian Empire

The viceroy of India, appointed by the crown, ruled directly only in the provinces of British India. Hindu and Muslim princes continued to govern almost 600 native, or princely, states. These were nominally autonomous, but they were forbidden to make war on one another, and the viceroy kept an agent at each court to advise the ruler.

 

British rule brought internal peace and some economic development. The British built roads and railways, canals, irrigation works, and mills and factories. They introduced Western law and police systems, modernized cities, and built schools. Most British civil service personnel were able, though their aloofness aroused resentment. Indian intellectuals, many of them educated in England, began to dream of a free India. In 1885 they founded the Indian National Congress to further the participation of Indians in their own government.

 

The Struggle for Independence

During World War I Indian troops served the British loyally, but nationalist agitation increased afterward. The British Parliament passed a reform act in 1919, providing for provincial councils of Indians with some powers of supervision over agriculture, education, and public health. Far from satisfied, the extreme nationalists, led by Mohandas K. Gandhi, gained control of the Congress. Gandhi preached resistance to the British by “non cooperation”. Hundreds of thousands joined his civil disobedience campaigns. The Congress party quickly gained a mass following.

 

Rioting broke out when Parliament placed no Indians on the Simon Commission, appointed in 1927 to investigate the government of India. The British imprisoned Gandhi and his associates. In 1929 Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the Congress. Like Gandhi, Nehru was passionately devoted to the cause of freedom. He had absorbed Western ideas at Harrow and Cambridge, however, and, unlike Gandhi, wanted to bring modern technology and industrialization to India.

 

After three “round-table” conferences in London had considered the commission’s report, Parliament passed a new Government of India Act in 1935. It provided for elected legislatures in the provinces, but property and educational requirements restricted the number of voters to about 14 percent of the population. To protect the interests of minorities, voting was by communal groups. Upper-caste Hindus, Untouchables, Muslims, Sikhs, and others voted for their own candidates. The system perpetuated religious strife. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, charged that Congress ministries mistreated their Muslim minorities. He agitated for the separation of the Muslim provinces from India and the creation of a state called Pakistan, which means “country of the pure.”

 

When World War II broke out, the Congress demanded complete and immediate freedom for India as the price for India’s active participation. In 1942 Sir Stafford Cripps went to India with a plan for granting dominion status after the war, but Indian leaders could not agree on the terms. The Congress insisted on a unified India. The Muslim League demanded a separate Pakistan. The princes were determined to preserve their states.

 

The Japanese invaded northeast India from Burma with a small force in the spring of 1944. It was quickly driven out. In spite of opposition to British rule, India raised a volunteer army of nearly 2.5 million. Its industries expanded greatly to supply arms and other goods for the war effort.

 

Birth of the New Nations

In February 1947 the British government announced that it would leave India not later than June 1948. Muslim threats of civil war then forced the Hindu leaders to agree to the establishment of the separate state of Pakistan. The British Parliament rushed through the Indian Independence Act in July. On Aug. 15, 1947, the Indian Empire came to an end.

 

The two new dominions India and Pakistan had complete self-rule. Though they remained in the Commonwealth, they were free to withdraw. India took over the Indian Empire’s membership in the United Nations. Jinnah became the first governor-general of Pakistan. Nehru, a moderate socialist, took office as India’s first prime minister.

 

The boundaries between India and Pakistan were drawn so as to separate Muslims from Hindus and Sikhs. The Punjab, Bengal, and Assam were split in two. Yet some 38 million Muslims remained in India and about 19 million Hindus and more than 1.5 million Sikhs were left in Pakistan. Rioting broke out. Millions poured across the borders to the country of their own faith. Hundreds of thousands were massacred or died of other causes while migrating. Hundreds of villages were burned in communal strife.

 

On Jan. 30, 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by a fanatical member of a militant Hindu group that disapproved of his efforts toward reconciliation. Hindus and Muslims alike mourned his death. The Indian government immediately acted against the extremist group, and violence subsided. In 1950 the two nations agreed to protect their religious minorities. By 1951 about 7.2 million Hindus and Sikhs had fled from Pakistan into India and 7.4 million Indian Muslims had entered Pakistan. Additional millions crossed later. Religious strife and violence persisted for decades, however, in spite of these migrations.

 

Status of Princely States and Foreign Areas

The Indian Independence Act applied only to the provinces of British India. The 562 native states were left outside both dominions. A few joined Pakistan. The rest were brought into India. Hyderabad, the largest princely state, insisted on remaining independent. India sent in troops, and in November 1948 it became a part of India.

 

Both India and Pakistan coveted Jammu and Kashmir, a large princely state in the far north. When troops entered the state from Pakistan, the ruler of Kashmir joined his state to India and asked for India’s help. For 14 months the two countries waged an undeclared war in Kashmir. The fighting ended on Jan. 1, 1949, when both agreed to permit the United Nations to hold a plebiscite in the state. It was never held. India and Kashmir announced in 1957 that Kashmir’s accession to India was permanent, but it was not recognized by the United Nations. Part of it remains occupied by Pakistan.

 

When Britain withdrew from India, Portugal ruled Goa and several other territories on India’s west coast with a total area of 1,472 square miles (3,813 square kilometres). France held Pondicherry and a number of other small areas totalling 196 square miles (508 square kilometres). Between 1950 and 1954 France’s colonies were merged with India. The Portuguese possessions were seized by India in 1961.

 

India Under Nehru

In 1949 India adopted a new constitution. It became effective on Jan. 26, 1950. India then became a republic, though it remained in the Commonwealth. Nehru, the best-known leader of the independence movement next to Gandhi, served as prime minister until his death in 1964. During that time he succeeded in putting his imprint on the new nation. His guiding principles in domestic affairs were democracy, socialism, unity, and secularism. In foreign policy, he attempted to steer a non aligned course between the Communist and the non-Communist powers, hoping to maintain peaceful relations with all nations. Unlike Gandhi, Nehru favoured industrialization, and under his leadership India made substantial progress. Under the first two five-year plans (1951 to 1956 and 1956 to 1961) national income rose 42 percent. Great strides were made in the steel, electric power, cement, and fertilizer industries.

 

As the vehicle of independence, the Congress party enjoyed great prestige, and throughout this period it maintained a firm grasp on the national government. As the state boundaries were redrawn to accommodate various language groups, however, parties emphasizing local and regional issues assumed increasing importance in state governments. In 1957 a Communist government took office in Kerala. Internationally, Nehru’s efforts to maintain India’s non aligned course were made difficult by the Cold War between the Eastern and Western power blocs and by the continuing dispute with Pakistan. In 1962 a border dispute with China erupted into deep thrusts by Chinese troops into the Ladakh region of Kashmir and the North East Frontier Agency (now the union territory of Arunachal Pradesh). However, the Chinese subsequently withdrew to the areas they had controlled before the conflict.

 

Nehru’s last years were marked by failing health. At the same time, the economy was losing momentum, and the Chinese incursion had wounded Indian pride. Nehru died in May 1964.

 

Rule of Indira Gandhi

Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded Nehru as prime minister. In 1965 the quarrel with Pakistan over Kashmir flared into heavy fighting. After three weeks United Nations intervention brought about a cease-fire. On Jan. 10, 1966, the heads of the two nations signed a pact aimed at a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The following day Shastri died. He was succeeded as prime minister by Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter.

 

In 1967 and 1969 the Congress party suffered serious election losses, and in 1969 it split. However, the Congress (Ruling) party, led by Prime Minister Gandhi, captured two thirds of the seats in the Lok Sabha in 1971. Gandhi’s popularity reached a peak in December 1971 when India won a brief war with Pakistan, fought in support of East Pakistan’s struggle for independence. Afterward, she was accused of despotic behaviour, and in 1975 the courts voided her 1971 election to the Lok Sabha because of improper procedures in her campaign and barred her from holding elective office. She responded by declaring a national state of emergency. The harsh measures carried out under it, together with a controversial mass sterilization program, contributed to her defeat at the polls in 1977. In late 1978 she was expelled from Parliament and was briefly imprisoned.

 

The victorious Janata (People’s) party, actually a coalition of non-Communist parties, had difficulty governing. Prime Minister Morarji Desai resigned in July 1979. A month later his successor, Charan Singh, also resigned, and the president called for new elections. In January 1980 Gandhi, leading a new faction called the Congress (I) the “I” for Indira won a remarkable victory and returned to power.

 

A continuing domestic problem was the resistance of the tribal peoples to central government rule. Resentment in Assam against Bengali refugees who had settled there over several decades led to a massacre in 1983 in which more than 1,000 people were killed.

 

Also in 1983 the government took direct control of Punjab, where militant Sikhs repeatedly clashed with Hindus. To fight the movement for an independent Sikh nation, Gandhi sent troops into Punjab in June 1984. They invaded the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, and killed more than 400 Sikhs. On Oct. 31, 1984, two Sikh guards shot and killed Gandhi in revenge as she left her home in New Delhi. Her surviving son, Rajiv Gandhi, was chosen as prime minister. General elections in November 1989 brought the defeat of Rajiv Gandhi. Officials in his government were accused of taking kickbacks from the Bofors Company of Sweden in a purchase of guns for the army. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, leader of the Janata Dal party, was sworn in as prime minister on Dec. 2, 1989. Earlier in the year the voting age had been lowered from 21 to 18, thus enlarging the electorate by about 50 million. In March 1990 India withdrew the last of its 50,000 troops from Sri Lanka. The peacekeeping force failed in its three-year effort to reconcile the Tamils with the majority Sinhalese. Chandra Shekhar replaced Singh in November 1990 but resigned four months later. Campaigning to return to office, Gandhi was killed by a bomb blast on May 21, 1991.

 

In the worst industrial accident in history, a highly toxic chemical escaped from a plant in Bhopal in December 1984. More than 3,300 people were killed. In 1989 the plant’s owner, Union Carbide Corporation, paid 470 million dollars in relief to the victims, under the order of the Indian Supreme Court.

 

India Fact Summary

Official Name. Republic of India.

Capital. New Delhi.

India. Indus, from Sanskrit Sindhu referring to Indus River.

National Emblem. Adapted from Sarnath Lion Capital of Asoka in 1950. Four lions (one of which is hidden from view) standing back to back with wheel in the centre of the abacus; a bull on the right, a horse on the left, and the outlines of the other wheels on the extreme right and left. The words Satyameva jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs) are inscribed below the wheel in the Devanagari script.

Anthem. ‘Jana Gana Mana’ (Lord of the People, of Society, and of the Mind).

 

NATURAL FEATURES

 

Borders. Coast, 3,533 miles (5,686 kilometres); land frontier, 9,425 miles (15,168 kilometres).

Natural Regions. Himalaya; Indo-Gangetic Plain; Deccan.

Major Ranges. Himalayas, Karakoram, Vindbya, Aravalli, Satpura, Western and Eastern Ghats.

Major Peaks. Nanda Devi, 25,646 feet (7,817 meters); Kamet, 25,447 feet (7,756 meters); Anai Mudi, 8,842 feet (2,695 meters).

Major Rivers. Ganges, Yamuna (Jumna), Brahmaputra, Narbada, Mahanadi, Godavari, Kaveri.

Notable Lake. Wular.

Major Islands. Andaman, Nicobar, Lakshadweep.

Climate. Three seasons for most of the country cold season from November to February; hot season from March to June; rainy season from June to October.

 

THE PEOPLE

 

Population (1991 provisional census). 843,930,861; 689 persons per square mile (267 persons per square kilometre); 27.5 percent urban, 72.5 percent rural.

Vital Statistics (estimated rate per 1,000 population). Births, 30.9; deaths, 10.8.

Life Expectancy (at birth). Males, 58.1 years; females, 59.1.

Major Languages. Hindi, English, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese.

Major Religions. Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism.

 

MAJOR CITIES (1981 census, metropolitan areas)

 

Calcutta (9,165,650). Major port and largest city in India, capital of West Bengal state; cultural, commercial, religious, educational, and political centre.

Bombay (8,227,332). Major port and financial and commercial centre of India; capital of Maharashtra state; well known for cotton-textile, film, and printing industry; Victoria Gardens, Brabourne Stadium, and Marine Drive.

Delhi (5,350,928). Capital of India; political, educational, cultural, and transportation centre; Red Fort, Central Secretariat, Parliament House, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Qutab Minar, and the National Gallery of Modern Art.

Madras (3,266,034). Major port and capital of Tamil Nadu state; educational, transportation, cultural and traditional handicraft centre; the Indian Institute of Technology, University of Madras, the Madras Government Museum, Napier Park, Marina beach, and the Corporation Stadium.

Bangalore (2,913,537). Capital of Karnataka state; leading cultural, educational, industrial, publishing, and transportation centre of south India; Vidhana Saudha, Mysore Government Museum, Lal Bagh, and Hesaraghatta Lake.

Hyderabad (2,528,198). Capital of Andhra Pradesh state; educational, cultural, industrial, commercial, and handicraft centre; the Char Minar, Mecca Masjid, Salar Jung Museum, and racecourse.

Ahmadabad (2,515,195). Industrial, commercial, financial, and educational city; major cotton-textile centre, Lake Kankaria, Gandhi Ashram, Jama Masjid, Tin Darwaza (Three Gates), and the Tomb of Ahmad Shah.

Kanpur (1,688,242). Industrial and commercial city; rail and lead junction; Kanpur University, the Indian Institute of Technology, and a Hindu glass temple, cantonment, and Sati Chaura.

Pune (1,685,300). Educational, cultural, commercial, and industrial centre; Empress Gardens, Wellesley Bridge, Deccan College, Statue of Shivaji, and Shanwar Wada (Saturday Palace).

Nagpur (1,297,977). Transportation, industrial, educational, agricultural, and cultural centre; British Fort, Ambajheri Tank, Bhonsla Palace, Kasturchand Park, and Secretariat.

Lucknow (1,006,538). Capital of Uttar Pradesh state; transportation, commercial, educational, cultural, and handicraft centre; Hazratganj, Great Imambara, Rumi Darwaza, Residency, botanical and zoological gardens.

 

ECONOMY

 

Chief Agricultural Products. Crops sugarcane, rice, wheat, sorghum, millet, mangoes, corn (maize), and peanuts. Livestock cattle, buffalo, goats, camels, sheep, poultry.

Chief Mined Products. Coal, iron ore, crude petroleum, bauxite, manganese ore, copper, lead and zinc, gold, asbestos, gypsum, limestone, magnesite, mica, sulphur.

Chief Manufactured Products. Petroleum products, cement, crude steel, sugar, jute, paper and paperboard, cotton yarn, sulphuric acid, woven cotton fabrics, electric fans, bicycles.

Foreign Trade. Imports 59 percent, exports 41 percent.

Chief Imports. Fuel oil and refined petroleum products, chemicals, fertilizers, iron and steel, machinery, vegetable oils, rough diamonds, transport equipment, electrical machinery, foodstuffs.

Chief Exports. Handicrafts, engineering goods, tea, fish, fruits and vegetables, coffee, textile yarn and fabrics, clothing, leather, precious and semiprecious stones, iron ore, road motor vehicles, works of art, tobacco, iron and steel.

Chief Trading Partners. United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia.

Monetary Unit. 1 rupee = 100 paisa.

 

EDUCATION

 

Public Schools. Lower primary (age 6-11) is free throughout India; upper primary (age 11-14) is free in most areas.

Compulsory School Age. From 6 to 14 in all states except Nagaland and Himachal Pradesh.

Literacy. 52 percent.

Leading Universities. More than 100; Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Allahabad, Banaras Hindu, Mysore, Patna, Osmania.

Notable Libraries. Central Secretariat Library, New Delhi; National Library, Calcutta; Indian Council of World Affairs Library, New Delhi, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna.

Notable Museums and Art Galleries. Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Bombay; Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, Calcutta; Indian Museum, Calcutta; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Government Museum and National Art Gallery, Madras.

 

GOVERNMENT

 

Form of Government. Republic.

Constitution. Effective Jan. 26, 1950.

Chief of State. President; elected by Electoral College, 5-year term.

Head of Government. Prime minister.

Legislature. Parliament: Council of States (Rajya Sabha) consists of not more than 250 members elected for 6 years; House of the People (Lok Sabha) consists of not more than 545 members elected for 6 years.

Executive. President, vice-president, and Council of Ministers headed by the prime minister to advise the president; supreme command of the defence forces is vested in the president.

Judiciary. Supreme Court; final authority subject to the provisions of the constitution; a chief justice and not more than 17 other judges appointed by the president; members hold office until age 65. Others High Courts, Courts of Session, Courts of Magistrates.

Political Divisions. 25 states; 7 union territories.

Voting Qualification. 21 years of age.

 

PLACES OF INTEREST

 

Agra. Historic city; location of 17th-century Taj Mahal; Agra Fort; Akbar’s Tomb (Sikandara); Dayal Bagh; Jami Masjid (mosque); Tomb of Itmad-ud-Daulah.

Ajanta.  Complex of about 30 rock-cut cave temples and monasteries dating back to 200 BC; one of the noblest memorials of Buddhism in India.

Ajmer. Religious city; site of a most revered Muslim shrine, Khwaja Muin-ud Din Chishti’s Dargah (burial place); Arhai-din-ka jhonpara (mosque); Palace of Akbar.

Amritsar. Religious city; site of the most revered Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple with a gold-foil-covered dome; a national monument dedicated to people killed in the Amritsar Massacre (1919).

Asansol. Industrial city; centre of the Kulti-Burnpur complex of iron and steel, and textile factories.

Bhakra Dam. One of the biggest of India, 725 feet (221 meters) high. Part of multipurpose hydroelectric project.

Buddh Gaya. One of the holiest of Buddhist sites where Lord Buddha attained enlightenment; a shrine of Buddha dating back to 300 BC; Magadh University.

Chandigarh. Joint capital of Punjab and Haryana states; modern planned city designed by Swiss architect Le Corbusier; it is divided into 36 rectangular sections.

Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC). A multipurpose project with four dams and one barrage, covers about 7,000 square miles (18,130 square kilometres).

Darjeeling. Summer resort in the Himalayas; noted for its tea plantations; Lloyd Botanical Garden; Institute of Mountaineering, Mahakal Temple.

Ganges River. Great river of the plains of North India; held sacred by Hindus; rising from Himalayas, itscourse is about 1,557 miles (2,506 kilometres) long.

Goa. Natural harbour and tourist resort with a unique Portuguese colonial heritage; 16th-century Basilica Bom Jesus; Se Cathedral; shrine of St. Francis Xavier.

Khajuraho. Historical site having a complex of 20 surviving temples of Siva, Visnu, and Jain patriarchs, dating back to AD 1000.

Ootacamund. Called Queen of Indian Hill Stations; situated at about 7,500 feet (2,300 meters) in Nilgiri Hills; tea processing; Botanical Garden; Fern Hill Palace; race course; golf courses.

Pondicherry. Religious place; Ashram (retreat) of Sir Aurobindo Ghose, noted Indian philosopher and poet; international study centre; Auroville, new universal (international) township.

Puri. Hindu pilgrimage centre; site of the 12th-century Jagannath (Krsna) Temple; annual Chariot Festival.

Sanchi. Historic site having best-preserved group of Buddhist monuments, dating back to 300 BC; Great Stupa (shrine).

Srinagar. Internationally famous tourist place in the Vale of Kashmir; seven wooden bridges on Jhelum River; Shalimar and Nishat gardens; Dal Lake; Hazratbal Mosque.

Tirupati. One of the richest temples in India; believed to be the abode of god Venkateswara; centre of Hindu pilgrimage and a fine example of Dravidian art; Sir Venkateswara University.

Varanasi. Commonly known as Kashi; the most holy place for Hindus; principal Hindu religious centre since prehistoric times; complex of about 1,500 temples headed by the Kashi Vishwanath Temple; Benares Hindu University; handicrafts, perfumes, and silk and muslin textiles.

 

Assisted by Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Professor and Chairman, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, and Editor of ‘A Historical Atlas of South Asia’.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR INDIA

 

Ashton, Stephen. The British in India (Batsford, 1988).

Caldwell, J.C. India (Chelsea House, 1990).

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India (Harcourt, 1984).

Jaffrey, Madhur. Seasons of Splendour: Tales, Myths and Legends from India (Puffin Books, 1987).

Karan, P.P., ed. India in the Global Community (Gateway, 1988).

Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Book (Viking Kestrel, 1987).

Kipling, Rudyard. Kim (Penguin, 1987).

Lerner Publications Company, Department of Geography Staff, ed. India in Pictures (Lerner, 1989).

Mason, Philip. The Men Who Ruled India (Norton, 1985).

Ogle, Carol and Ogle, John. People at Work in India (Batsford, 1988)

Scholberg, Henry. The Encyclopedias of India (Promilla, 1986).

Thapar, Romila. A History of India (Penguin, 1985).

Traub, James. India: The Challenge of Change, rev. ed. (Messner, 1985).

Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1989).

 

CIRCA 1995

 

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HINDUISM

WORDPLAY

Hinduism the religion and social system of the Hindus, developed from Brahmanism with elements from Buddhism, Jainism, etc. added

 

FAST FACTS

Reincarnation, belief that souls of the dead return to Earth in another form or body, especially in a new human body

Caste, hereditary division of society according to family, religion, wealth, occupation, etc.

Aryan, one of the peoples believed to have migrated into Europe and India from central Asia; parent stock of the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Latins, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, etc.

Heaven, in religion, the place or state of righteous souls after death

Rama, one of incarnations of Vishnu in Hindu mythology; hero of Hindu epic ‘Ramayana’

Puranas, collection of 18 books mainly in Sanskrit verse, expounding ancient Indian lore-mythology, history, religious beliefs, philosophy, social and political thought; also legends, old songs, and fables

Suttee, in Hinduism, the custom of a widow willingly being cremated on the funeral pyre of her husband as an indication of her devotion to him

Asceticism, practice of self-denial; with Greeks meant discipline practiced by athletes; with early Christians and other religionists meant extreme self-denial and fasting to gain spiritual strength

Sankara (700-750), Indian philosopher and theologian, most renowned exponent of the Advaita Vedanta school of philosophy

Vedanta, a Hindu philosophy founded on Upanishads, parts of Veda; treats soul and universe in relation to Supreme Spirit

Basava (fl. mid-12th century), Indian Hindu religious reformer, teacher, and theologian

Kabir (1440-1518), Indian mystic and poet who tried to bridge or unite Hindu and Islamic thought and preached the essential unity of all religions and the equality of all people

Nanak (1469-1539), Indian spiritual leader; first guru of the Sikhs

Ramakrishna Mission, religious society seeking to spread the teachings of Vedanta; founded by Vivekananda in Calcutta, India, in 1897

Ganesha (lord of the host, also called Ganesa or Ganapati), elephant-headed Hindu god of wisdom and remover of obstacles; chief of the minor deities who attend the god Siva

Diwali, one of the major religious festivals of Hinduism; marks the beginning of the New Year according to the Vikrama calendar

 

The major religion of the Indian subcontinent is Hinduism. The word derives from an ancient Sanskrit term meaning “dwellers by the Indus River,” a reference to the location of India’s earliest known civilization in what is now Pakistan. Apart from animism, from which it may have partly derived, Hinduism is the oldest of the world’s religions. It dates back more than 3,000 years, though its present forms are of more recent origin. Today more than 90 percent of the world’s Hindus live in India. Significant minorities may be found in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and smaller numbers live in Myanmar, South Africa, Trinidad, Europe, and the United States.

 

Hinduism is so unlike any other religion that it is difficult to define with any precision. It has no founder. Its origins are lost in a very distant past. It does not have one holy book but several. There is no single body of doctrine. Instead there is a great diversity of belief and practice. Many doctrines would be at odds with each other in any other religion. Hinduism, however, has always tended to be inclusive rather than exclusive. There are many sects, cults, theologies, and schools of philosophy, and all of them find a home within Hinduism without persecuting each other or accusing each other of heresy. It is a religion that worships many gods. Yet it also adheres to the view that there is only one God, called Brahman. All other divinities are aspects of the one absolute and unknowable Brahman.

 

Another distinctive feature of Hinduism is belief in the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation. Associated with this belief is the conviction that all living things are part of the same essence. Individuals pass through cycles of birth and death. This means that an individual soul may return many times in human, animal, or even vegetable form. What a person does in the present life will affect the next life. This is the doctrine of Karman, the law of cause and effect. The goal of the individual is to escape this cycle, or wheel of birth and rebirth, so that the individual soul, Atman, may eventually become part of the absolute soul, or Brahman.

 

The caste system of India is another historic characteristic of Hinduism. In its most ancient period Indian society was divided into four classes: priests (or Brahmins), warriors, merchants, and servants. These classes, or castes, have since been subdivided into thousands of sub castes, ranging from the Brahmins at the top to the Untouchables at the bottom. These groups have traditionally been hereditary and have married only among themselves.

 

Origins

The precise origins of Hinduism have so far eluded scholars and other investigators. It is known for certain that there was, from about 2300 to 1500 BC, a highly developed civilization in the Indus Valley and beyond. This civilization had its own religion, which may not have been uniform throughout the extensive land area it covered. Around 1500 BC the Indus Valley was invaded byan Indo-European people called Aryans. They almost totally transformed Indian civilization, and in so doing they imposed new forms of religion.

 

The problem in understanding the development of Hinduism is disentangling what may have preceded the Aryan invasion from the religion that was superimposed after 1500 BC. It is probable that much of the Indus Valley religion moved away from Aryan population centres and survived in the countryside. It may have eventually become interwoven with Aryan beliefs and practices to produce historic Hinduism.

 

The religion of the Aryans was similar in many respects to that of other Indo-European groups. It was a religion of the household, of veneration for ancestors, and of devotion to the world spirit (Brahman). The Aryans had numerous gods, nearly all of who were male. But the Aryans made no images or pictures of their gods as later Hinduism has done.

 

Aryan worship was centred around the sacrificial fire at home, while later Hinduism worshiped in temples. The complex ceremony of the Aryans involved ritual sacrifice of animals and the drinking of an inebriating liquor. Hymns were composed for these rituals, and it is in the collections of the hymns, along with incantations and sacrificial formulas, that the nature of the early religion was spelled out. The collections of these are called the Vedas, and it was under their influence that the earliest Hinduism developed.

 

Vedic Period

Sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC, the period of Aryan conquest and consolidation, the Rig Veda was composed. It is the oldest religious scripture in the world. The Rig Veda is a collection of 1,028 hymns to the gods. Three other collections the Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda were added later. These were all composed over a period of several centuries and collected in their present form sometime during the 1st millennium BC.

 

Between 800 and 600 BC a body of prose writings called the Brahmanas was attached to the Vedas. These contain explanations of the ceremonies mentioned in the Vedas. Even later additions, called the Aranyakas and the Upanishads, presumably written between 600 and 300 BC, were added to this body of literature. All of these texts, along with some later books, became the sacred scripture of Hinduism as it evolved in the second half of the 1st millennium. Of them the Rig Veda is the most revered, though its contents are not much known by most Hindus today.

 

From 700 BC to AD 800

The writers of the Vedic hymns seem to have believed in a heaven and hell to which the dead pass, depending on the quality of their earthly lives. Sometime after 600 BC, however, the belief in reincarnation appeared. Although at first confined to small groups of ascetics, it soon spread rapidly throughout India. The doctrine was first expounded in written form in a body of literature called the Upanishads, a term that means “sitting at the foot of a teacher.” The purpose of these works is the gaining of a mystical form of knowledge that allows the individual to escape the cycle of rebirths. The Upanishads represent the beginnings of philosophy in India. They are the last stage of interpretation of the Vedas. The Upanishads developed the concept of a single supreme being, Brahman, and they investigated the nature of all reality.

 

By the time the Buddha appeared in the 6th century BC, the belief in reincarnation was firmly established. From that time Hinduism’s main concern became release from the cycle of birth and death instead of making offerings to please or pacify the gods. Sacrifice became infrequent because of an unwillingness to destroy living things. This doctrine of reverence for life, called ahimsa, became one of the chief teachings in Jainism.

 

At this same time the primary older gods of the Vedas named Brahma (not to be confused with Brahman), Indra, Agni, and Varuna were slowly displaced by newer deities primarily Vishnu, Shiva, and Shakti who still have millions of devotees. Many of the earlier gods were absorbed by these three. The Hindu teaching on divine incarnation (gods becoming flesh) made it possible for the older gods to be accepted as incarnate in the newer ones. The religious development of this period is reflected in two great literary works, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

 

The Mahabharata, or Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty, is the world’s longest poem. It is a mass of legendary material about the struggles for power between two families. It is also an extensive code of conduct (dharma) to guide those seeking release from the birth-death cycle. Within the narrative is one of the most famous literary works in the world, the Bhagavadgita, or “The Lord’s Song.” The book is written in the form of a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and his charioteer, Krishna an incarnation of Vishnu. The Ramayana, also an epic poem, is about 24,000 couplets long. Its theme is the life of Prince Rama andhis adventures.

 

A few centuries later (perhaps as late as the 10th century AD) another collection of literature, the Puranas, began appearing. These were written in simple poetry, obviously designed for the ordinary reader. They became the scriptures of the common man. Although the Puranas contain a great variety of legendary material, their main purpose was glorifying the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma. Of the 18 principal Puranas that survive, the most popular is the Bhagavata-Purana on the early life of Krishna.

 

In the early part of this era, the Hindus generally worshiped without the aids of statues or other images of the gods. By AD 300-650, however, the worship of images in stone temples was firmly established. The worship of female divinities had also become common. The Mother Goddess, most commonly called Shakti, was worshiped in various forms and under differing names. She was the subject of another body of literature called the Tantras. Some animal and human sacrifices were revived by the end of this era, as was the practice of suttee, the burning of a widow on the funeral pyre of her dead husband.

 

In the period immediately after 550 BC, Buddhism and Jainism emerged, religions centred on the monastic life. A strong emphasis on the ascetic life in these religions had a profound influence on Hinduism. Asceticism was unknown to the religion of the Vedas, and the priestly class of Brahmins looked down upon it. However, more and more young men became ascetic and gave up the worldly life to become wandering hermits and beggars. Asceticism grew rapidly and has remained a prominent feature of Hinduism.

 

From AD 800 to 1800

This 1,000-year era was noted for the division of Hinduism into sects and schools of philosophy, the writing of devotional hymns to the gods, and the influence of Islam in India. By this time the creative vitality of Hinduism had moved to southern India, home of several of the devotional movements collectively called bhakti.

 

Six schools of philosophy emerged during this time. The two most significant were based on the teachings of Sankara and Ramanuja. Sankara was the chief exponent of the Vedanta school of philosophy, from which most of the main currents of modern Hinduism derive. The several schools of Vedanta all believe in the transmigration of souls, the authority of the Vedas, Brahman as the creator of the world, and the responsibility of the individual for his actions.

 

Sankara taught a doctrine called monism, which means that all things God, the world, and the individual soul are basically one in spite of appearances. Ramanuja, the single most influential thinker for devotional Hinduism, was also of the Vedanta school. His teaching differed, however, from Sankara. He believed that God, the soul, and matter are three separate realities. The goal of the soul is to serve God, just as the body is meant to serve the soul. The goal of meditation is the contemplation of God.

 

An unusual school was founded in the 12th century by Basava. It rejected all forms of image worship, the Vedas, and all caste distinctions. It is probable that Basava’s teachings were influenced by Islam.

 

A similar doctrine was taught by Kabir in the 15th century. He denied image worship, the castes, asceticism, sacred texts, and pilgrimages. He accepted the doctrine of reincarnation. His God was called Rama, though he accepted the minor gods of Hinduism as having some reality. He was also a hymn writer.

 

More significant than Hindu schools influenced by Islam was the emergence of Sikhism. It was founded by Kabir’s disciple Nanak. Sikhism’s theology is basically Hindu, but it took over a number of elements from both Islam and Christianity. It, too, denies the use of images, and it has a form of baptism and a communion meal. In the long run Hinduism probably had a more powerful influence on Muslims living in India than Muslims did on Hinduism.

 

Hindu devotional literature and hymns honouring Vishnu and Shiva were first written in the Tamil language. Collections appeared as early as the 7th century. The composition of similar hymns in northern languages did not begin for several centuries. By the end of the 17th century, the writing of hymns had ceased, and there were no advances in Hindu thought during the next century. By the time Europeans arrived in large numbers in India, they found a conservative religion steeped in tradition. The chief aim was preserving a rigid social order by means of complex rituals and regulations.

 

Modern Hinduism

British colonialism and the arrival of Christian missionaries were the primary influences on Hinduism from the early 19th century. Because of both, Hinduism underwent a revival. By the 20th century it had become so intertwined with the movement for independence that Hinduism and Indian nationalism became virtually synonymous.

 

While rejecting the doctrines of Christianity, Hinduism was strongly influenced by its social consciousness. A number of influential men launched reform movements that took what was beneficial from the West without compromising basic Hinduism. Rammohan Ray promoted education patterned after that of England, and he called for the prohibition of widow-burning. Dayananda Sarasvati rejected idol worship and the caste system and urged India to adopt Western technology. Narendranath Datta, under the name Vivekananda, founded the Ramakrishna Mission to send out monks to do good works and to promote scholarship. He also carried the message of Hinduism around the world. In the 20th century the major figure in Hindu nationalism was Mahatma Gandhi, who strove successfully to end British colonialism.

 

Gods of Modern Hinduism

Although many divinities may be worshiped, modern Hindus are generally divided into followers of Vishnu, Shiva, or Shakti. Nearly all Hindus look upon one of these as an expression of the ultimate being, the one in charge of the destiny of the universe.

 

Each group of followers holds the Vedas in high regard, but each also has its own scriptures. In the Bhagavadgita, for example, Vishnu is honoured in his incarnation Krishna. Another incarnation, Rama, is the hero of the Ramayana. Vishnu is the protector and preserver of the world, and he is worshiped by many cults in various forms besides Krishna and Rama. The worship of the god is called Vaisnavism. The beginnings of this cult were about the 7th century BC.

 

Shiva, a Sanskrit word meaning “auspicious one,” is a more remote god than Vishnu. His worship is called Shivaism. Shiva is a more difficult god to understand than is Vishnu. He is regarded as both destroyer and restorer. Doctrines about Shiva may have merged roles that were once assigned to various earlier gods.

 

Shiva has a female consort who goes under several names. He is occasionally paired with Shakti, the mother goddess. They and their sons Skanda and Ganesa live on top of Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas. He is depicted in a number of forms such as a wandering beggar, half man and half female, or a dancer.

 

Shakti is the mother goddess. Like Shiva, she can be either beneficial or fierce, depending on her form. As Parvati she is depicted as a beautiful woman in middle age. As Kali she is a giantess with black skin, a blood-red tongue, and large tusks.

 

Kali carries an assortment of weapons and wears a garland of human skulls around her neck. The mother goddess thus stands for all aspects of nature from birth to death.

 

In addition to the three primary deities, there are several others who are still worshiped. Ganesa, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Shakti, is prayed to before all undertakings. Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, is patroness of wealth. Sarasvati is the goddess of learning and the arts. Hanuman is the monkey-god associated with the adventures of Rama. He appears as the personification of the power of God on Earth. Manasa, the goddess of snakes, is worshiped by peasants in some areas.

 

Many animals and plants are also regarded as sacred. Most notable is the cow. All cattle are protected, and even among castes that are not vegetarian, beef is not eaten. Monkeys, tree squirrels, and some snakes are also considered holy. Among sacred trees are the banyan and the tulsi. All rivers are considered somewhat holy, but the Ganges in the north of India is the holiest of rivers because it supposedly flows from the head of Shiva. It is the focus of pilgrimage for millions.

 

People are also sacred according to their station in life. Thus parents are holy to their children and teachers to their students.

 

Festivals and Pilgrimages

Temples of any significance hold a festival at least once a year. Festivals are combinations of religious ceremonies, processions of the locally favoured god, music, dances, and other forms of celebration. Most festivals are related to the cycles of nature. The New Year celebration, Diwali, takes place with exchanges of gifts, lighting of ceremonial lamps, gambling (a ritual designed to gain luck for the coming year), and fireworks to frighten away spirits of the dead.

 

Pilgrimages to holy places have been common since the Vedic period. Certain places are considered sacred because of a specific historical event, connection with a legendary figure, the appearance of a god, or location on the bank of a holy river.

 

Visits to sacred places are supposed to confer some benefit upon the pilgrim frequently the healing of a dread disease. People who travel to Varanasi (Benares) when death is near hope to be released from the birth-death cycle by dying near the Ganges River. Many shrines organize annual gatherings that are partly religious and partly local fairs.

 

Temple Worship

Temples range in size from small village shrines with crude statues to huge complexes almost small cities with walls and monumental gates enclosing courtyards, pools for ceremonial bathing, schools, hospitals, and monasteries. Services are not carried out at fixed times as they are in Western religions.

 

The worship itself is an act of calling forth the god’s presence and entertaining the deity as a royal guest. The first act is opening the temple door. For worshipers of Vishnu this symbolizes opening the gates of heaven. For Shiva worshipers it secures the building’s protection. Temple visitors may take part in chanting or listening to doctrinal expositions. Images of the gods are honoured with gifts of flowers, fruit, or perfumes, and visiting worshipers are given small portions of consecrated food.

 

In addition to temple worship, there are daily household rites, including an offering of food, often fruit, or flowers to the gods and recitation of the Vedas. Household worship focuses on the transitions in a person’s life, such as the rite of passage from childhood to adult responsibility, marriage, or childbirth. Wedding ceremonies are the major household rites, and they have remained quite elaborate, lasting usually up to three days. The traditional funeral method is cremation. Part of the funeral rite is a gift of food to the Brahmins (the priestly class) for the benefit of the deceased.

 

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ROMULUS AND REMUS

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Romulus Rom. Myth.  a son of Mars and founder and first king of Rome, deified as Quirinus: he and his twin brother Remus, left as infants to die in the Tiber, are suckled by a she-wolf

Remus Rom. Myth.  the twin brother of Romulus

 

The legendary founders of the city of Rome were Romulus and Remus. They were said to be the twin sons of Mars, the god of war, and Rhea Silvia, the daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa. Rhea had been forced to become a vestal virgin by her uncle, Amulius, who had deposed Numitor. When Rhea gave birth, Amulius imprisoned Rhea Silvia and ordered servants to cast the infants adrift on the Tiber River. The Tiber was in flood, and the high waters safely carried the twins’ basket to the riverbank, where they were deposited under a fig tree. There a she-wolf and a woodpecker, animals sacred to Mars, found the boys. The animals nursed, fed, and cared for them until they were found by Faustulus, the king’s herdsman. He and his wife reared the twins.

 

When Romulus and Remus grew to manhood, they killed Amulius and restored Numitor as king. The twins then determined to build a city on the Tiber. Remus selected Aventine Hill as the site; Romulus insisted on Palatine Hill. Remus was killed in the quarrel that followed, and Romulus was declared king.

 

To hasten the city’s growth, Romulus made Rome a refuge for outcasts and fugitives. Because there were no women, he persuaded the Romans to lure the neighbouring Sabines to a festival and to kidnap the women. A war was averted when the women said they would stay with the Romans. After about 40 years of rule, Romulus was miraculously taken to Mount Olympus to become a god and to dwell with his father. The ancient Romans then worshiped Romulus under the name of Quirinus.

 

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SCIENCE FICTION

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science fiction fiction of a highly imaginative or fantastic kind, typically involving some actual or projected scientific phenomenon

 

FAST FACTS

Orson Welles, (George Orson Welles) (1915-85), U.S. actor, writer, and producer for radio, stage, and screen, born in Kenosha, Wis.; at age of 22 founded Mercury Theater, New York City, and directed and produced modernized version of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’; wrote, directed, produced, and acted in ‘Citizen Kane’; known for 1938 broadcast of ‘The War of the Worlds’ Martian invasion

Anti science fiction, novels that are very pessimistic about human nature or the future

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, (1797-1851), English author, 2nd wife of the poet Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; author of ‘Frankenstein’

Yevgeny Zamyatin, (1884-1937), Russian novelist, born in Lebedian, Russia

Karel Capek, (1890-1938), Czech writer, born in Bohemia; wrote satirical and expressionistic dramas and short stories (‘R.U.R.’; ‘The Robber’; ‘The World We Live In’, with his brother Josef; ‘War with the Newts’)

William Olaf Stapledon, (1886-1950), British philosopher and writer, born near Oxford, England

Aldous Leonard Huxley, (1894-1963), British writer, born in Godalming, England; grandson of Thomas H., brother of Julian, nephew of Mrs. Humphry Ward, grandnephew of Matthew Arnold; earlier works brilliantly satirical, later ones show mystical trend; wrote novels (‘Antic Hay’; ‘Point Counter Point’; ‘Brave New World’; ‘Eyeless in Gaza’; ‘Time Must Have a Stop’; ‘Brave New World Revisited’); essays (‘On the Margin’; ‘Jesting Pilate’; ‘Themes and Variations’); and poems (‘Leda’); ‘Literature and Science’; in U.S. after 1937

Pulp magazine, inexpensive 7 x 10 in. (18 x 25 cm) publication made from chemically treated wood pulp; popular from 1920s to 1950s; catered to newly literate working-class Americans; mostly fiction, with emphasis on adventure, fantasy, romance, and heroism; often had bright, outlandish covers; 100 to 200 pages long, selling for between 10 and 25 cents; had coarse, sharp-smelling paper that yellowed quickly; began with Frank Munsey’s ‘Argosy’ in 1896; main source of early science fiction, especially in works of Hugo Gernsback; introduced notables such as Jack London and Edgar Rice Burroughs, though literary reputation was generally poor

Tarzan, hero of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, created 1914; English baby raised by apes in African jungle;adventures later adapted for movies and comics

Hugo Award, literary award for the best in science fiction; named after Hugo Gernsback, American inventor and publisher who is largely responsible for establishing science fiction as a separate literary form

Brian Aldiss, (born 1925), British writer, born in East Dereham, England

Ray Douglas Bradbury, (born 1920), U.S. author, born in Waukegan, Ill.; science fiction and fantasy short stories (‘The Martian Chronicles’, short stories; ‘Fahrenheit 451′, novel)

Walter M. Miller, (born 1922), U.S. writer, born in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.

 

On Oct. 30, 1938, the night before Halloween, Orson Welles performed a dramatization of H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel, ‘The War of the Worlds’, on his Mercury Theatre on the Air. Although it was announced at the beginning and middle of the radio program that the Martian invasion of New Jersey was only fiction, thousands of listeners panicked. They believed the “news bulletins” that reported a “monster” attack on the north-eastern United States.

 

It is doubtful that a similar program, whether on radio or television, would have such an effect today. Science and technology in 1938 had not yet caught up with science fiction a fairly new but rapidly growing kind of literature. Today the ability to put people on the moon is no longer a futuristic fantasy; unmanned spacecraft are being propelled beyond the planets of the solar system; and satellites circle the Earth.

 

Science fiction was made possible by the notable advances in the sciences especially astronomy and physics that began in the Renaissance. Fantasy literature about life on Earth had existed for many centuries. New and powerful telescopes made it possible for humanity to look to the heavens and speculate on other possible worlds and different civilizations.

 

It was fitting that the Mercury Theatre broadcast of 1938 should have selected an H.G. Wells novel. Wells is the pivotal figure in the history of science fiction. He did not invent the type, but he charted the course that science fiction has taken. Wells wrote two kinds of science-fiction stories. In ‘The Time Machine’, ‘War of the Worlds’, ‘The First Men on the Moon’, and othershe dealt with the future possibilities of technological wizardry. In ‘When the Sleeper Awakes’, ‘The Food of the Gods’, ‘In the Days of the Comet’, and ‘The War in the Air’, however, his aim was social criticism. Few kinds of literature are as useful for criticizing human nature and institutions as is science fiction. Writers in what were once Communist countries Stanislaw Lem of Poland is an outstanding example have managed to use science fiction to write brilliant denunciations of totalitarianism. Other writers have created an anti science fiction in novels that are very pessimistic about human nature or the future. Examples are Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, Arthur Clarke’s ‘Childhood’s End’, C.S. Lewis’ ‘Out of the Silent Planet’, and George Orwell’s ‘1984′.

 

Early science fiction.  There had been science-fiction elements in some 18th-century books. Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, published in 1726, had strange alien creatures, and Voltaire’s ‘Micromegas’ (1752) imagined a trip to the moon. But the first book that merits being called a science-fiction work is ‘Frankenstein’ (1817) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The story has been turned into a horror classic by motion pictures, but the novel itself is about the ability of science to do what seemed impossible when the novel was written create a new species of life.

 

In the decades after ‘Frankenstein’ several authors wrote stories that were at least partly science fiction. Among them were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville in the United States; Honore de Balzac in France; and Samuel Butler and Edward Bulwer-Lytton in England. Of these, Poe was the most influential on future developments in such stories as “MS. Found in a Bottle” (1832), “Mellonta Tauta” (1849), and a novel, ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’ (1838).

 

Later in the 19th century Jules Verne raised science fiction to new heights and paved the way for the more innovative writings of H.G. Wells. Verne focused on technological marvels in his ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ (1864), ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ (1865), and ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ (1870).

 

20th century.  The novels of H.G. Wells were published between 1895 and 1908. After this time science fiction went in two directions until the late 1930s. In Europe the genre was taken up by a few authors of exceptional creativity who produced classics still read today. In the United States most science fiction was published in cheap pulp magazines and written by dozens of hack writers for large audiences. Europe produced a more pessimistic science fiction because it had just gone through the tragedy of World War I. The United States, relatively untouched by the war, was more open to optimistic fantasy stories not unlike the popular Westerns in plot.

 

Three of the leading European authors were Yevgeny Zamyatin in Russia, Karel Capek in Czechoslovakia, and William Olaf Stapledon in England. Zamyatin was an engineer who had been imprisoned for his political views. His anti-utopian ‘We’ (1924), its publication forbidden in the Soviet Union, was a forerunner of Orwell’s horrifying vision of the future in ‘1984′.

 

Capek wrote several novels and plays, but he will be remembered mostly for the play ‘R.U.R.’ (Rossum’s Universal Robots, 1921). It was Capek who (through his brother Josef’s suggestion) gave English the word robot. In the play the human-appearing robots learn enough from people to seek power for themselves at the expense of humanity.

 

Stapledon was not uncritical of human nature, but his fiction was more optimistic than that of Zamyatin or Capek. His novels included ‘Last and First Men’ (1930), ‘Last Men in London’ (1932), and ‘Odd John’ (1934). Writing at the same time as Stapledon, fellow Englishman Aldous Huxley produced one of the great anti-utopian novels, ‘Brave New World’ (1932).

 

In the United States the development of science fiction as a literary type was left mostly to pulp magazines so called because of the cheap quality of their paper. There were many such magazines, but two editors made significant contributions in promoting science fiction: Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, Jr. Gernsback was an immigrant from Luxembourg who in 1926 founded Amazing Stories magazine, devoted to what he called scientifiction. The stories were at the time not viewed as serious literature, but as sensationalism. One of the popular authors published by Gernsback was Edgar Rice Burroughs. In addition to his Tarzan stories, Burroughs wrote numerous science-fiction pieces. This was also the era of the Buck Rogers comic strip.

 

Astounding Stories magazine had been founded in 1930. Campbell became its editor in 1937. By 1939 he was publishing stories by such newcomers as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, and with their appearance the move to science fiction as a serious genre of literature began in the United States. By the late 1940s the pulp magazines had been superseded by better monthlies. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was founded in 1949 and Galaxy Science Fiction in 1950.

 

The end of World War II inaugurated the atomic age, and the space age was shortly to follow. Science fiction burgeoned as literature and soon found its way into movies and television. The television series Star Trek attracted a large following. The Star Wars series of motion pictures gained huge audiences.

 

Science-fiction clubs had emerged in the 1930s and the first “world” convention was held in 1939. By the 1980s the World Science Fiction Conventions were drawing thousands of people yearly. Literary awards are given annually for the best science-fiction works. The Hugo award, named after Hugo Gernsback, was established in 1953 and the Nebula award in 1965.

 

Some Modern Science Fiction Writers

Some prominent persons are not included below because they are covered in another section of the blog.

 

Aldiss, Brian (born 1925). ‘Enemies of the System’ (1978), ‘Moreau’s Other Island’ (1981), ‘The Helliconica Trilogy’ (1985).

Anderson, Poul (born 1926). ‘Broken Sword’ (1954), ‘Tau Zero’ (1970), ‘The Game of Empire’ (1985).

Bishop, Michael (born 1945). ‘Stolen Faces’ (1977), ‘No Enemy But Time’ (1982), ‘Ancient of Days’ (1985).

Bradbury, Ray (born 1920). ‘The Martian Chronicles’ (1950), ‘Fahrenheit 451′ (1953), ‘Dinosaur Tales’ (1983).

Ellison, Harlan (born 1934). ‘The Man With Nine Lives’ (1960), ‘Phoenix Without Ashes’ (1978).

Herbert, Frank (1920-86). ‘Dune’ (1965) and its sequels.

Le Guin, Ursula (born 1929). ‘Rocannon’s World’ (1966), ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ (1972), ‘The Eye of the Heron’ (1983).

Lem, Stanislaw (born 1921). ‘The Astronauts’ (1951), ‘The Magellan Nebula’ (1955), ‘The Cyberiad’(1967), ‘The Futurological Congress’ (1971), ‘The Chain of Chance’ (1976), ‘Fiasco’ (1987).

Miller, Walter M. (born 1922). ‘A Canticle for Liebowitz’ (1960), ‘The Darfstellar and Other Stories’ (1982).

Niven, Larry (born 1938). ‘Ringworld’ (1970), ‘A World Out of Time’ (1977), ‘The Integral Trees’ (1984), ‘The Smoke Ring’ (1987).

Pohl, Frederick (born 1919). ‘Jem: The Making of a Utopia’ (1979), ‘Starburst’ (1982), ‘Black Star Rising’ (1985).

Silverberg, Robert (born 1935). ‘The 13th Immortal’ (1957), ‘The Planet Killers’ (1959), ‘The World Inside’ (1971), ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (1985).

Zelazny, Roger (born 1937). ‘The Immortal’ (1966), ‘Damnation Alley’ (1969), ‘Trumps of Doom’ (1985).

 

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Related articles: FEATURED ARTICLES, SCIENCE FICTION, H.G WELLS, Edgar Allan POE, Jules VERNE, ROBOT, Isaac ASIMOV, Robert A. HEINLEIN

WESTERN

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1. in, of, to, toward, or facing the west
2. from the west [a western  wind]
3. of or characteristic of the West
4. of the Western Church

WESTERNER

1. a movie, book, etc. having a setting in the western U.S., esp. during the 19th-cent. period of development and expansion of the frontier

 

FAST FACTS

Karl May, (1842-1912), German author; adventure and travel; stories often dealt with American Indians in the West

James Kirke Paulding, (1778-1860), U.S. author and Navy official, born in what is now Putnam County, N.Y.; friend of Washington Irving; best novels about Dutch life, but satirical writings in reply to British criticism of the U.S. won him Navy posts, finally secretaryship 1837

Edward Zane Carroll Judson, (pen name Ned Buntline) (1823-86), U.S. author and adventurer; originator of the dime or pulp novel

Owen Wister, (1860-1938), U.S. novelist, born in Philadelphia, Pa.; well known for ‘The Virginian’, about Wyoming cowpunchers of 1870s and 1880s (‘Lady Baltimore’, ‘Philosophy 4′)

Zane Grey, (1872-1939), U.S. novelist, born in Zanesville, Ohio; stories of life in w. United States (‘Desert Gold’; ‘Riders of the Purple Sage’; ‘Lone Star Ranger’)

Gene Autry, (born 1907), U.S. musician, actor, and business executive, born in Tioga, Tex.; learned guitar while working as a railroad telegraph operator in Oklahoma; discovered by Will Rogers and became a “singing cowboy”; recorded first hit, ‘That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine’, in 1931; had own radio program on WLS in Chicago 1931-34; became a popular film star after his first movie, ‘In Old Santa Fe’ (1934); continued recording songs, such as ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’, ‘Frosty the Snow Man’, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’, and ‘You are My Sunshine’; created Melody Ranch radio show; founded California Angels baseball team in 1962

Tex Ritter, (Maurice Woodward Ritter) (1905-74), U.S. cowboy singer and actor, born near Murvaul, Tex.; developed interest in Western folklore and music while at Univ. of Tex.; in Houston had first cowboy music radio program; in Broadway musicals ‘The New Moon’, ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’, and others; cowboy show on radio in New York; began recording 1932; first of more than 70 movies, ‘Song of the Gringo’, 1936; country music TV show, Town Hall Party, 1950s; 1953 Academy award for theme song of film ‘High Noon’; travelled with his road show, The Western Review; Country Music Hall of Fame 1964; joined Grand Ole Opry in 1965; various TV appearances; well-known songs ‘Jealous Heart’, ‘The Wayward Wind’, and ‘I Dreamed of a Hill-Billy Heaven’; son, John Ritter, a successful actor

Roy Rogers, (Leonard Slye) (born 1912), U.S. actor and singer, born in Cincinnati, Ohio; organized and appeared with musical group Sons of the Pioneers 1932-48; noted as cowboy star of motion pictures, radio, and television, often with wife, Dale Evans Rogers (born 1912), actress and singer, born in Uvalde, Tex.; author of ‘Angel Unaware’ and ‘My Spiritual Diary’

 

“We go westward as into the future,” said Henry David Thoreau. Many millions of Americans and immigrants did just that until the frontier ended about 1890. Since then the American reading public, and much of the rest of the world, have gone westward into the past by means of cowboy and frontier fiction. Stories of the Old West are not generally great literature, but they have the romance, gunfights, cowboys, Indians, lawmen, and bandits that have attracted huge audiences for books and movies. The United States was neither the first nor the only nation to have a frontier, but no other country brought forth so popular a literature to acclaim its frontier past as a golden age of heroes and villains.

 

The myth and mystique of the American Old West has fans in all parts of the world. Germany and France have their cowboy and Indian clubs. Western novels and short stories are written by authors in Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and England. Karl May, who never visited the West, was a German writer who published several Westerns: ‘Beyond the Rocky Mountains’ (1879), ‘Winnetou’ (l893), and ‘Winnetou’s Heritage’ (l910) were among his best. In the 1970s Englishman Terry Harknett writing as George G. Gilman produced a series of novels, beginning with ‘The Loner’ in 1972. In the 1960s Italian moviemaker Sergio Leone produced several “spaghetti Westerns.” One of the earliest was ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (1964), which helped make Clint Eastwood an international celebrity.

 

The Changing West

Before there was an Old West there was an even older East. The first frontier was but a few miles from the Atlantic coast. By the end of the American Revolution, it was in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. As the frontier moved and changed, the literature depicting it and later films and television shows changed as well. The early frontier was celebrated in poems such as Daniel Bryan’s ‘The Mountain Muse’ (1813) and James Kirk Paulding’s ‘The Backwoodsman’ (1818). These were soon followed by the well-known Leatherstocking tales of James Fenimore Cooper, including ‘The Pioneers’ (1823), ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ (1826), and ‘The Deerslayer’ (1841).

 

As the frontier moved westward there were stories about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and other explorers. The battle of the Alamo in Texas brought forth a surge of stories. In 1849 Emerson Bennett’s ‘The Prairie Flower’ made a hero of Kit Carson, mountain man and explorer. In 1927 Norwegian immigrant writer Ole Rolvaag wrote of pioneer days in South Dakota in a trilogy, beginning with his classic ‘Giants in the Earth’. Mark Twain’s ‘Roughing It’ (1872) celebrated the Far West, as did Bret Harte’s short story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868).

 

Not only did the West change geographically, but the themes about it changed as well. Some of the literature emphasized the frontier as a pioneering experience, but, once the frontier crossed the Mississippi, there were several emphases. There was the West of the lawman versus outlaws, of the white man versus Indians, of the cowboy and the range, of the Indian as Noble Savage, and of legendary heroes and villains.

 

Later there were stories that either satirized the West or treated it with more realism. Of the satires, probably the best known were ‘The Ballad of Cat Ballou’ (1956) by Roy Chanslor, ‘True Grit’ (1968) by Charles Portis, and ‘Blazing Saddles’ (1974) by Andrew Bergman. These were all made into successful motion pictures.

 

Realism, whether actual or contrived, was portrayed by Edward Abbey in ‘The Brave Cowboy’ (1957), Larry McMurtry in ‘Horseman, Pass By’ (1961), and Max Evans in ‘The Rounders’ (1968). All of these presented the cowboy as a loser, as a loner ill-equipped for modern life, or as a violent, antisocial individual.

 

From Pulp to Paperback Original

In 1869 the author-adventurer Edward Zane Carroll Judson visited Nebraska. At Fort McPherson he met the frontier scout William Cody. Judson, who wrote under the name Ned Buntline, dubbed the frontiersman Buffalo Bill and thereby created a legend. Cody became the hero for many short novels by Buntline, published as dime, or pulp, novels so-called because of the cheap quality of their paper. The pulp novels maintained a readership until the 1960s. Thousands of them were published by hundreds of authors.

 

Buntline was not the first of the pulp novelists. The earliest successful line of stories was published by a New York firm, the House of Beadle and Adams, founded in 1858 by Erastus Beadle, his brother Irwin, and Robert Adams. Its first complete dime novel was ‘Malaeska: the Indian Wife of the White Hunter’ (1860), which sold 60,000 copies within a year.

 

The popularity of Westerns encouraged the emergence of similar publishing firms, and decades later they attracted the attention of such magazines as Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Evening Post, and Collier’s. The appeal of the Western dime novel was in its relentless action and in its clear-cut distinction between the good guys and the villains.

 

The stories were mostly American morality plays that depicted a society of traditional values and definite standards of right and wrong. Occasionally, however, the heroes were outlaws, as in the Edward L. Wheeler series of “Deadwood Dick” stories. Other criminal-hero types were the real-life Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid. Joseph E. Badger, Jr., wrote of the California outlaw Joaquin Murietta in several novels.

 

By the 20th century Westerns were so widely read that, along with magazine serialization, they could be published as books. One of the earliest authors to achieve success was Owen Wister, who introduced the cowboy into Westerns. Previous stories described explorers, lawmen and outlaws, frontier heroes, and Indians. The cowboy arrived fairly late on the frontier: the great cattle ranges of the West did not flourish until after the Civil War. Wister’s stories were serialized in Harper’s Weekly, and his ‘The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains’ came out in book form in 1902.

 

Two of the best-known and most prolific authors of Westerns in the early 20th century were Zane Grey and Max Brand. Grey, an Ohio dentist, published more than 80 books. The most popular was ‘Riders of the Purple Sage’ (1912), now considered a classic. Brand, whose real name was Frederick S. Faust, wrote under several pen names. He was a heavy contributor to pulp magazines, with more than 800 instalments appearing in Western Story alone. As Brand he wrote about 120 novels and a vast number of short stories. The earliest novel was ‘The Untamed’ (1920) and the last, ‘Storm on the Range’ (1972), not published until 28 years after his death in 1944.

 

Paperback books were launched in England by Allen Lane in 1935 with the Penguin series. Paperbacks began making their appearance in the United States during World War II, and by the war’s end they were firmly established. At the same time pulp magazines began a decline in readership. Most Westerns, not regarded as quality literature, were published first in paperback form rather than in hardcover editions.

 

Some Western authors, by virtue of the quality of their work, moved from paperback first editions to hard covers. Louis L’Amour, who published more than 80 novels, was such a writer. Larry McMurtry revitalized Westerns with satire and the disorder of modern life. Among his best-known novels were: ‘The Last Picture Show’ (1966) and its sequel ‘Texasville’ (1987); the Pulitzer prize-winning ‘Lonesome Dove’ (1985), later a television miniseries; ‘Some Can Whistle’ (1989); ‘Buffalo Girls’ (1990); and ‘The Streets of Laredo’ (1993), the sequel to ‘Lonesome Dove’.

 

Cowboys of the Silver Screen and Television

Westerns in the form of motion pictures have displayed the whole range of themes present in the literature from romantic fiction to realism and satire. The movie industry was in its youth when the first Westerns were made. ‘Kit Carson’ and ‘The Great Train Robbery’ both came out in 1903. The first realistic film, ‘The Bank Robbery’ (1908), did badly at the box office. Until the 1960s audiences preferred romance and gunplay. Some of the actors who were early favourites were Tom Mix, William S. Hart, G.M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson, Buck Jones, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), and Harry Carey.

 

From the late 1920s through the early 1940s, most Westerns were low-budget films. They are largely forgotten now, but many actors who later became stars got their start in them, including Gary Cooper, John Wayne, James Stewart, Walter Huston, Randolph Scott, and many more.

 

The character known as the singing cowboy arrived on the silver screen in the mid-1930s. One of the first was Dick Foran, but the three who are best remembered are Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers. Autry first starred in ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds’ in 1935; Ritter appeared in ‘Sing, Cowboy, Sing’ (1937); and Rogers’s first leading role was in ‘Under Western Stars’ (1938).

 

As the years passed, the Hollywood Western became more sophisticated, with more complex story lines and less well-defined good- and bad-guy characters. John Ford’s production of ‘Stagecoach’ (1939) was the first of the outstanding dramatic Westerns. It was followed by such classics as ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ (1943), ‘Duel in the Sun’ (1946, the most commercially successful), ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ (1948), ‘Broken Arrow’ (1950), ‘High Noon’ (1952, considered by many to be the best), ‘Shane’ and ‘Hondo’ (1953), ‘Rio Bravo’ (1959), ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (1960), ‘How the West Was Won’ (1962), ‘True Grit’ (1969), ‘Little Big Man’ (1970), and ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ (1976).

 

Westerns on television had an unusual history. They rode the crest of their motion picture popularity into the earliest days of television. They endured until about 1975, when they disappeared from the airwaves except in reruns. Their heyday was from 1955 until 1965. At the height of their popularity from 1959 to 1961 there were 30 separate series on the air.

 

Westerns as morality plays were well represented on radio by The Lone Ranger, which made an easy transition to television along with such movie cowboys as Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. These catered mainly to young audiences. The adult Western made its appearance in 1955 with Cheyenne, Gunsmoke (the longest-running series), and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. The Virginian, based on Owen Wister’s novel, began in 1962 and lasted ten seasons. Bonanza (1959-73) was the last of the long-running popular Westerns. Other notable adult Westerns were Death Valley Days; Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater; Maverick; Bat Masterson; Wanted: Dead or Alive; The Rifleman; Have Gun, Will Travel; Rawhide; Wagon Train; and Tales of Wells Fargo.

 

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Related articles: FEATURED ARTICLES, WESTERN, FRONTIER, Kit CARSON, BUFFALO BILL, Louis L’AMOUR