The bullsh!t about Aryan invasion

If you were a student in the 1980s in any school in India, you will remember a chapter about the Aryan invasion theory that was taught as gospel truth to you (surprisingly under the ‘history’ subject). After reading you may (if you were a racist pig) remember sneaking an arrogant peek at a south Indian class mate after having just learned that your great grandfather had kicked his great grandfathers arse all the way from Iran (ok, atleast from the now infamous Af-Pak border) to the very bottom end of the Indian peninsula. Then, on having learned of how you were somehow related to Germans with the gora skin, the racist in you must have positively gloated over the discovery (no matter the Jerrys actually lost both wars). If any such feelings of superiority have came over you then I will not blame you entirely, because you have just been punked by an old British tactic that exploited the inherent need in human beings to see themselves as 'above' someone else. It is this weakness that allows white-black-any other colour racism to persist. It is this weakness that results in one religion proclaiming itself to be the only way to  God. It is this weakness that allows the strong to prey on the weak, one language to pick on another, the republicans to beat up the democrats...oh well…the examples are endless…but you get the general idea.

If you are someone who has enjoyed this sense of false superiority since then, I am going to have to bust your bubble here. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is just that…a theory…and a wrong one at that. I also apologise to all those who consider themselves as Dravidians and love to wallow in the grief that was allegedly heaped on you in 1500 B.C. (which of course you don’t actually remember) and have wanted to be ‘different’ from the rest of us. Err…you aren’t. And that’s a fact.

Before I go on, let me recapitulate the AIT itself. I am going to exaggerate here so bear with me. In its simplest form it states that India was populated by a peace loving, intelligent people who called themselves the Dravidians. The Dravidians were a weak race that was short in stature and dark skinned. Then the fair-skinned, strong Aryans came from Europe and thus began the biggest massacre that no one has ever seen, read or heard of (surprising in itself). The Dravidians ran away en masse (a distance of over 1500 miles, they must have been distance runners) till for some mysterious reason the Aryans suddenly stopped killing them at the border of the region now known as Karnataka State.

The date of this alleged invasion, around 1500 B.C. also has an interesting origin (well as per David Frawley anyway). When the British ruled India it was already well known that the Vedas pre-dated Christ, since they definitely pre-dated the Buddha who died sometime between 400-500 B.C. Also, these paragons of science were sure that the world was created in 4000 B.C., based on the irrefutable scientific evidence of the Bible saying so. They also knew that Noah’s flood took place in 2,500 B.C. (again on the “book says so” proof that we all so completely agree with). So the Aryan invasion must have taken place between 2,500 BC and 500 B.C. the only window being 1,500 B.C. as per these scientists (also being suspiciously the average of 2500 and 500, not saying that this is how the date was arrived at of course).

Ok, I have read several pieces online about how there is not a shred of evidence (physical or documentary) that any such vast movement of people happened from Europe to India (or from North India to South India). There is not a shred of evidence that any mass killing and exodus of Dravidians took place. Also, if I am an Aryan whose army has just killed, plundered and looted a few thousand Dravidians and sent them packing, would I not want to maintain a record boasting of my achievement? Yes, you say (especially after reading the brutal records kept by Arab invaders about their conquests)?  Well…the answer is no…there is not a single stanza in the Vedas about any such mass killing. Hang on, what if the Vedas were actually written by the Dravidians? Well…if I am a nice, peace-loving, intelligent Dravidian, whose kingdom has been plundered and many of his innocent subjects, men, women and children, have been killed, would I not maintain a written record or even a verbally passed down account of this cruelty? Yes, you say again?…you are incorrigible aren’t you? Well…the answer is no, again. For some reason, one of the biggest exodus of humans and animals through years of wanton killing and genocide has gone unrecorded in text, through speech, or folk songs or even cave drawings for that matter…by both, the victor and the vanquished.

Now I am aware that I haven’t read the Vedas and this contention about there being no recorded history may be false. But, if it was, there is yet no rebuttal from the left leaning historians, of whom India has no dearth. 

So instead of relying on documentary or archaeological evidence, or any corroborative evidence that AIT is a LIE, let’s look at some conclusive stuff, genetic evidence. This is the stuff that is considered good enough to send people to the gallows, the stuff that makes you one-in-seven-billion and lastly this is the stuff that even ND Tiwari is scared of. It is that accurate.

I am not a biologist but have done my best to understand this study within given time constraints. I will also try to link the DNA report and if anyone can improve on the explanation within the comments section, it will be much appreciated. The study was carried out in 2006 by a bunch of scientists from the National DNA Analysis Center, Kolkata, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Estonian Biocentre, Estonia and National Institute of Biologicals, Nodia. As you can see there is enough gora influence here for those Indians who need that sort of a thing to make anything credible. The link to the report is this:http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/843.full.pdf

The scientists used something called as ‘Haplogroups’ to track the origins of the population. I understand (from Wikipedia, of course) that a Haplogroup is a bunch of different genetic types that share a common ancestor. In human genetics, haplogroups are broken up into Y-chromosomes (Y-DNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Y-DNA is part of the genetic material that comes down from the fathers’ side while mtDNA is that from the mothers’ side. The haplogroups are named after the alphabet…like A, B, C etc with numbers added for refinement (A1, B1 etc). The basic premise of this exercise is that, if all Indians are genetically similar, then the question of another race migrating to India does not arise at all. And since there are no two races in India (ie most Indians are from the same ancestors), the AIT is automatically proven false.

To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India were studied. Sounds pretty comprehensive to me.

Now the report specifically tackles the Indo-Aryan migration thesis in the following words:

“Indo-Aryan migration scenario advocated in ref. 19 rested on the suggestion that all Indian caste groups are similar to each other while being significantly different from the tribes. Using a much more representative data set, numerically, geographically, and definitively, it was not possible to confirm any of the purported differentiations between the caste and tribal pools.”

Then it adds another nail to the proverbial coffin of the (deliberately?) ill-informed AIT expounder:

“Although it is arguable that assimilation of tribal populations into the caste system could skew distributions in any particular region, it cannot explain the persistence and prevalence of those lineages put forward as being typical of incoming Indo-Europeans (J2, R1a, R2, and L) among many of those populations who are still designated as tribals…”

…and finally in the reports conclusion (also the bit that tells me that though I haven’t understood the full report, what I have understood is not incorrect)

“It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny”

There was another study that used the matrilineal side of the genetic equation to arrive at similar conclusions. The report is at the following location:

http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild1999a.pdf

I haven’t read it, but the conclusion is

“A commonly held hypothesis, albeit not the only one, suggests a massive Indo-Aryan invasion to India some 4,000 years ago [1]. Recent limited analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of Indian populations has been interpreted as supporting this concept [2,3]. Here, this interpretation is questioned. We found an extensive deep late Pleistocene genetic link between contemporary Europeans and Indians, provided by the mtDNA haplogroup U, which encompasses roughly a fifth of mtDNA lineages of both populations. Our estimate for this split is close to the suggested time for the peopling of Asia and the first expansion of anatomically modern humans in Eurasia [4–8] and likely pre-dates their spread to Europe. Only a small fraction of the ‘Caucasoid-specific’ mtDNA lineages found in Indian populations can be ascribed to a relatively recent admixture.”

In conclusion, the concept of AIT was another tool to rule India. They divided us based on caste, colour, religion, region and language. Why not, they must have thought, divide Indians on race as well. Let’s make some of them Aryans, people that are closer to us, and then watch them bicker over non-existent differences. Some idiots still believe in this today! The DMK, the political party in Tamil Nadu, most notorious for its corrupt and immoral practices is a proponent of the Dravidian cause. It uses it to divide rather than unite the country. For a long time the DMK idolised Ravan, the antagonist (I can’t call him a villain) in the Ramayana, it was after several years that these brilliant people realised that Ravan was a Brahmin and a knower of the Vedas…in other words…a (fictional) Aryan, exactly the sort of the guys Dravidians are supposed to hate. Imagine that! I can only appeal to the good sense of Indians to get rid of this Aryan- Dravidian mindset and stop being caught in either superiority or a persecution complex.

Another advantage of the AIT was that this false divide gave some moral support to the British conquering India, since their ancestors (the fictional Aryans) had done the same thing anyway. It also allowed for the idea to take hold that India had nothing to offer of its own and its Vedas and everything that this culture gave to the world (yoga, non-violence, advaita philosophy, the Gita, ayurveda, mathematics, astrology, astronomy etc) was actually derived from the Aryans, who were Europeans. The religion of India also become closely related to the middle-east by the claim that what we know basically came from the Greeks. It furthered the servitude mentality of the Indians, something which was necessary to control our huge land mass. In light of the DNA evidence (which not an opinion, but more a conclusion), I believe anyone believing in the AIT is either a deliberately trying to keep the country divided on false racial grounds or is him/herself completely bereft of self-respect. 

The absence of free will and astrology

Another bit that has been doing the rounds in my head that is more a question, a thought experiment, rather than a conclusion.

Sometime ago, I wondered if ‘free will’ existed at all and the answer veered more towards to ‘No’ rather than the ‘Yes’. But, what about the choices that we make? I decided to do computer engineering rather than mechanical, or I decided to buy this stock, versus that, or I decided to play cricket versus football etc. These were some of the most intellectual examples of the presence of choice (and hence free will) that were offered to me. But the lack of apparent sophistication of this justification cannot hide its inherent elegance, its simplicity, in convincing us that ‘we’ are in control.

My own logic for arguing otherwise (i.e. choice being an illusion) is even more simpler and thus (in my view, anyway) elegant in its own right: Our decisions/ choice/ will is based on our past experiences, since our past experiences aren’t in our control, the choice we make based off them can hardly be called ‘free’. Yes we are ‘free’ to choose to study computer engineering, but if you were born in the 1960-70s in India, chances are you were so exposed to the wealth and power of the young computer wizards everywhere (not the mention a fast track to the coveted green card), that when the time came to chose, if you had the necessary qualification, the choice was basically already made.

In my reading of some of Swami Vivekananda’s works (this is one person I greatly admire and hope to share more about some day), I came across his observations that were in the ball park of: In this universe of time, space and causality free will doesn’t exist. He went on to elaborate on this, but currently locked out of my house and access to my books (and not possessing a photographic memory) I will refrain on commenting further on Swami Vivekananda’s thoughts on this issue. But the gist as I remember is this, every action in this universe bound by space and time is the result of a previous action usually in the past and the cause for further action sometime in the future. As such, there is very little chance of any act in itself to be independent, hence free.

This line of thought, finds resonance in the Bhagwad Gita (another topic on which I would love to comment, but when I know enough). The Gita begins with Arjuna, the warrior, refusing to do battle against his kith and kin. To convince him of the need to do his duty without worrying about the results, his friend, philosopher and guide (…and God, for those given to simple terms) first rebukes him, taunts him, dares him, tells him of the benefits of winning but finding Arjuna obstinate the discussions go deeper and deeper into the nature of reality. At the first glance, this appears as a discussion that can go either way, Arjuna has a choice: he can either fight or flee and he and Krishna are out there on the battlefield (which also I find symbolic, that your biggest questions about the nature of truth will not necessarily come while meditating peacefully in a beautiful forest or in an Ashram, they will come when it is their time to come and you must be prepared to still your mind for them) debating the pros and cons of each option. My line of thought was different…if Arjuna had a choice (i.e. to fight or not) why don’t his enemies? Did they not have a choice, especially when I knew that some of them did not want this fight? This apparent injustice was sorted out for me towards the end of the Gita (when Arjuna is convinced to fight and takes up arms) when Krishna tells him that he was always destined to fight this war and win it, but he was also destined to have doubts which would result in Krishna delving into the nature of reality that is the Gita. So basically, no one in this story had a choice at all, which brings me again to the question, that existence of free will is not a ‘given’.

While I agree that basing this alone on what is given by religious thinkers is not the proof one would like, I am not a physicist to come up with the proof. I do have my logic for questioning the existence of ‘free will’ which I outline before commenting on Swami Vivekananda and the Gita.

An interesting off shoot of this ‘logic’, is then if there is no free will, then is it possible to predict the future with stunning accuracy? Leaving all vestiges of logic completely, I think yes. Having personally witnessed some really good astrologers at work has increased my interest in that science or art or whatever. Again, I am only stating my thoughts here, as uninformed as they are: The emotive classification of planets and constellations as they are nowadays done in Vedic astrology as ‘good’ or ‘harmful’ is in my view wrong. The sages who gave us astrology recognised the ‘’inevitability’ in the universe and created astrology to predict where it would go. After all, they may have reasoned, if a comet’s path, time of re-appearing etc can be determined with pinpoint accuracy why cant human lives be so predicted as well?

In my thought experiment I imagine the universe as a big mechanical structure where every object that moves has a constant, cyclical relation with every other object in the universe. So the rishis that invested astrological charts decided to find out where the universe was going, How did they do that, by using markers. The markers where the nine biggest things they could see in the sky for most of the year. They could have done it with one object but then the predictions would not have been very accurate as that one object would have varying relations with varying other objects (but a constant, cyclical relation with each of them). Having nine markers improves the ‘hit rate’. So Saturn is not ‘bad’ as is thought of in India today, but only a marker. If the planet were to be replaced by a large enough stone to be a marker, the prediction would not change. It is where the universe is going, if that is a tough place for some people, so be it! Which is also why I find astrologers who keep harping on how the moon affects tides on Earth as ‘proof’ of the effectiveness of astrology, stupid. They clearly don’t know the logic of their work in the first place. In any case the obvious disconnect of a physical effect versus predictive quality is clearly lost on these village idiots.

There have been thinkers like Krishna Murti who have devised the Krishnamurti Paddhati (K.P.) for even more accurate chart and predictions. But overall, if what I say were to be correct, astrologers can incorporate more markers, with super computers today, they can possibly use like a million markers rather than nine to make birth charts deadly accurate in forecasting. Unfortunately, apart from some like K.P. today’s astrologers may lack the understanding of the impact of where the universe is moving to improve on their craft. They have become mere repeaters, and mediocre ones at that

The Peace about War

War is an ugly word and conjures up disgusting images. Not because any of us has seen the horrors of war, but because Steven Spielberg tells us so. I am in no way defending or advocating war or war crimes here but asking what I think is a pertinent question, is war a necessary evil?

A short, un-researched opinion is yes, war, or more specifically a credible threat of imminent conflict gives us a lot of intangible benefits that can only be perceived in their absence. Let me put it this way, in a world that saw war as ‘acceptable’, (say 100 years back) India and Pakistan would have gone to a bloody war, several casualties on either side, one of the sides would have won, captured the losing ruler and his/her family and had them drawn and quartered. The existence of this threat to life, made the rulers throne a difficult chair to sit upon. It is not out of nothing that the saying “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” took hold.

In this scenario it is in the rulers interest that the population remains loyal to him, remains physically and mentally fit, becomes aware of ground realities and most importantly doesn’t turn cynical about who rules the country. This meant the ruler would provide for good education, a relatively corruption free structure and generally treat the population as family and not as someone who puts him in power to do what he likes for five years. He could not afford to be a bad ruler as that would weaken his kingdom and encourage attacks from other rulers which his population had become too cynical/ weak to defend. The result: not good for the ruler’s health.

What has happened today is the bogey of war as being pure evil raised by ‘intellectuals’ has taken the risk out of being a ruler. Merely to give an example, assume Pakistan attacks India and wins the war, is the PM (and allegedly super PM) going to face any threat to their lives? No. They will negotiate a treaty and continue to rule the country at best or move to Switzerland with a generous privy purse at worst. So, why should the current political system be interested in having a strong army and a fit and aware population? In fact quite the opposite is in their interest i.e. the population becomes so cynical that it never votes the incumbents out of power (isn’t that India today?). In short, the removal of war and the removal of this threat to life has resulted in the ‘politician’ taking over the ‘leadership’ role as there is no downside associated with being a bad ruler. The leader is concerned about what is best for his people, the politician is concerned about staying in power to milk the system. In fact, it is in the current system’s interest that ‘war’ remains a bad word and that it is considered glorious and not cowardly to be afraid of it. They want us to fear a war because they don’t have the physical or the mental capacity to fight it and face the consequences. It is a vicious cycle really, no threat of war, politicians become rulers, no incentive to have a strong population, results in a weak, amoral, emasculated populace, makes it easier to create fear and hatred for war, weaker people provide a good crop for politicians to select jokers (usually from within their family) to keep the farce going for another generation.

Unless the system evolves in some way to bring back some credible threat (war-like, not necessarily war) to the ruling classes and again make the ‘chair’ something that a weak person doesn’t aspire to be on, the present rot will continue. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons have made the threat of war negligible. Nukes are probably the only weapons that will never be used, but by their presence will ensure that a cathartic war never takes places. The small time conflict that we see in Kashmir etc will remain and in the longer run cause more damage than a war (even a nuclear war) can. Lets face it, the only reason that India will not attack Pakistan is because it doesn’t want to risk some mad mullah pulling the nuke trigger. This allows Pakistan to continue to kill Indian soldiers and civilians with impunity in the name of religion.

While not an elite-ist argument, this fictional conversation between Jim Hacker and his scientific advisor, in the BBC series (Yes, Prime Minister) is one of the most sophisticated discourses on how nuclear weapons are not really a deterrent as they will never be used. The only thing that they do deter is not war, but only a nuclear conflict (if that). They also prevent the system for cleaning itself up, the way nature would have wanted it.

After all I don’t think Thomas Jefferson was an idiot when he said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

yoga logic, the way I perceived it then...

This is an extract of an email I sent to a good friend from Finland on the logic of 'yoga'. There probably is nothing 'logical' about it and even if there is, I am probably the least qualified to discuss it. But I think, for me, this was a good point to begin my personal, insignificant inquiry into the nature of reality. This was in response to her email asking me about my first kriya yoga class that I had attended...

It was good. Very tiring. The first day was a three hour orientation session, the next day was about 11 hours of discussions and teaching of a few yoga postures both physical and breathing. The last day was a marathon 13 hour session of putting together what we have learned. 

We used to start every day with the prayer:

Asatoma sadhgamaya,

tamasoma jyotirgamaya,

mrityorma amritamgamaya.

It means:

From untruth, take me to the truth,

From darkness, take me to light,

From death, take me to immortality.

I quite like the prayer as it is not to any specific third person and is so fundamental to what we all want but not selfish at the same time, since it is not asking for something that we do not already possess.

I cannot teach you the practice since you need to learn from a qualified source. But I can give you the underlying logic which will follow. I have added what I have learned from my study of scriptures earlier as the condensed version of the ast 27 hours will not give you a full picture.

The underlying truth espoused in Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas is that everything that exists is made of a single matter (its called Akasha in the scriptures). In fact it asks the question “what is that by knowing which we can know everything?” and then goes on to answer it. The idea is that the same matter vibrating at different frequencies creates the world around us. In that, the world is considered to be false and the underlying matter is the one and only truth. This matter is the Creator in that sense, but is devoid of all attributes such as sex, emotion and even sin and virtue. Hence evil, as much as good, is its creation. That is the ultimate reality. Hence the duality between good and bad, night and day, this object and that object, even the difference you and me, for example, is falsehood and is referred to as “maya”.

By means of clarification (and not related to the current email), all the other Gods and saints whose worship is prevalent, are actually beings who have come closest to this realisation and thus exert a higher extent of command over the nature we see around us. This would be the equivalent of a Christ or a Ahura Mazda or Allah or Brahma or Vishnu or Mahesh. So prayers are addressed to these secondary beings as the real “God” is quality-less. So to ask it for money (e.g.) when no difference between rich and poor exists for it, is meaningless.

An interesting offshoot of this logic is that morality appears to be a cheap, unsophisticated substitute for consciousness. To explain, instead of one saying I should not hurt you or steal from you because its ‘bad’ or a higher being doesn’t want me to, does indeed appear unsophisticated in front of a much more elegant and yet simple logic: Do not hurt anyone else, because there is no “anyone else” it is all just you. Hence if you hurt someone else, you are actually hurting yourself…therein lies the law of karma. An action comes back upon you later or even in the next lifetime (or the next, or the next…) not through some mystical means but because you have inflicted it upon yourself. 

Yoga literally means anything that takes you to a higher plane of realisation. To take an extreme example, lets say you committed a sin…but the realisation of that sin took you to a higher plane of realisation, then that sin along with its realisation will be considered as yoga. In fact, in the Gita, a warrior (Arjun) refuses to fight on a battlefield overcome with grief that he would be killing his family members. To counter this, Krishna recites the Gita. While a warrior hesitating to battle is considered to be extremely sinful, Arjun’s reluctance is classified as yoga by the Gita itself. Since the reluctance led to the Gita and that led to Arjun seeing what reality is.

The course talked about how a layperson goes about realising the truth. The guru said, we have four things at our disposal: a body, a mind (intellect), emotions and prana (force that powers this body). My understanding of prana is ‘kinetic’ to put it in modern physical terms. The scriptures say that it is prana that modifies Akasha to create duality or this illusory world. It makes sense from logic…if there is matter, which when vibrated, leads to this creation…then obviously kinetic energy is involved here. So force acting on matter creates stuff.

With four things at our disposal, we can see the truth only with these. Hence the Gita prescribes four ways to achieve realisation: Karma yoga (yoga of work) for the body, Gyana yoga (yoga of intellect) for the brain (recommended for atheists), bhakti yoga (yoga of devotion) for emotions and kriya yoga (yoga of energy) to harness each persons ‘force’. Though, no one is all body or all brain hence everyone has a combination of two or more of these methods. I, for example, am not a man of faith hence I am naturally drawn to read the scriptures to see if they make any sense (gyana yoga). Along with this I have now learned kriya yoga. So a combination of atleast two yogas is seen here.

Now the course was on kriya yoga conducted by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev who runs the Isha Yoga Centre (you can look it up it probably has a branch in UAE or Finland). The particular process he taught is Shambhavi Kriya (it literally means technique of the twilight). 

 

Indian state declares war against mathematics

In a fiery press conference, the U.P. Chief Minister came down hard on mathematics as being party to a Brahmanical conspiracy. Welfare of the backward classes has been the cornerstone of her victories in six consecutive state elections. While an average of 57% of the state budget goes into construction of Mayawati statues and landmarks dedicated to her (the remaining 43% going towards funding the states’ massive civil service force) her popularity stems from steadily increasing the reservation levels for the backward classes. 
 
With reservations in all sectors having reached the apparently logical limit of 100% in the state, sources closed to the C.M. informed fakingnews of her grave disappointment of pursuing her agenda further. Mayawati put down the limitation of 100% of an ages old brahmanical conspiracy to limit the growth of Dalit power. In her press conference she cited the presence of two units of zero, which was invented by a Brahmin centuries ago, in 100%, as definitive proof of this artificial limitation. She has called for a nationwide stir to protest her inability to reserve more than a 100% of seats in the police, army, the judiciary, private and public jobs and in schools and colleges.
 
While some civil servants privately questioned the logic of the stir which could only lead to rioting they fear making public their view on this issue. Opposition politicians have been gobsmacked with the choice between making reservations that are beyond 100% or then appearing to be anti-backward class. But the C.M. has no dearth of followers with politicians in Delhi echoing her decision. Sonia Gandhi, after a long silence has come out in favour of this move saying “This is exactly the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that will take our country forward after the precipitous fall in the GDP over the last decade”. Her son, who is also the Prime Minister, also supported the move saying that this was a subject that he has often discussed with the poor dalits at whose homes he spent several nights in when he was a youth leader.
 
Intellectuals have also supported this move with Arundhati Roy joining issue on the concept on brahmanical conspiracy and cited everything from movies, to cricket, to the butterfly style of swimming as other examples of this wide-spread threat.  Most members of the so-called upper classes that are now living in abject poverty in India or affluent lives abroad were indifferent to the outcome of the controversy.
 
In the meanwhile, we hear that the issue of reserving over 100% has now become a hot potato that is being passed between the Department of Science and technology, Department of Personnel, the Law Department and the PMO amongst others on its implementation.

Nature magazine to study Digvijay Singh’s digestive system

Digvijay Singh’s amazing ability to excrete simultaneously through the oral as well as the anal cavity has finally caught the attention of the international scientific community. The 141 year old venerable scientific journal, Nature, deputed Dr. Ottavio Maino to investigate Mr. Singh’s anatomy to fully explain what the journal called one of the ‘missing links’ in human evolution. A release from Nature’s offices in London explained the interest that the scientific community has in this matter: 

“Put simply, the human digestive system consists of the esophagus, stomach, small intestine and the large intestine through which food passes sequentially before solid waste is stored in the rectum until excretion via the anus. Mr. Singh seems to have a unique network of internal pipes and trapdoors that somehow links the excreta storage area back near the trachea. This causes Mr. Singh to push his faeces in both directions when customary pressure is applied and on which he has no control. As the trachea opens immediately below the larynx, which is the voice box, many a times Mr. Singh’s verbal diarrhoea is confused for speech. Also, as a consequence of this reverse movement; Mr. Singh’s digestive system is considerably longer than the usual nine meters resulting in faeces taking up to two years to reach the mouth instead of the usual 24-72 hour excretion via the anal opening. This causes his facial excretions to be particularly putrid with high levels of toxicity. In this Mr. Singh bears a close resemblance to the Hydra, which is a multi-headed, underwater parasite that also excretes through its mouth. While humans have evolved much beyond the tiny hydra, Digvijay Singh is its closest relative and may be a goldmine of information for evolutionary biologists.” 

This news has caught the buzz of the nation with the Congress President honouring Mr. Singh with the Bharat Ratna for putting India on the world’s scientific map. Mr. Singh however remained humble as ever and said that this was not new and he has always maintained that he can excrete from his mouth for the past several years. He even claimed to have proof of the same though none seems to be needed with his nearest aides vouching his constitution. Journalists however are faced with the biggest quandary as they will have to distinguish between his statements (as the Congress general secretary) and his excretions. Mr. Singh seemed unperturbed that a section of the media has been unable to distinguish between the two for the past 40 years that he has been in public life. Digvijay Singh has also reportedly refused to undertake treatment for his condition if any is discovered during the course of the study saying that he is perfectly happy with shitting from his mouth.

Congress faces a bigger gas crisis

In what would have been dismissed as being at worst a mildly humorous situation has rapidly escalated into what a senior Congressman described as “a hundred times worse than the Bhopal incident”. The incident occurred during a post rally meeting during which Rahul Gandhi (fondly known as Rahul-baba by his admirers) was scheduled to mingle with students of an up-market city college. 

Matters went south when what sources present describe as a sour, foul smell permeated the room. The smell, allegedly of a fart, overpowered many-a-resolve in the crowded room, causing a young girl to faint and a journalist to throw up. Matters got out of hand when a student afterwards suggested that it was Rahul Gandhi himself who was the perpetrator as “he seemed to actually enjoy the smell”. 

This unplanned development completely threw the State and Central Congress machinery out of gear with six different members (including one ex-minister who was not present at the time of the incident) accepting responsibility for the smell. Abhishek Manu Singhvi alleged in a late-night call to NDTV that it was actually the BJP who was responsible for the smell and threatened a defamation case against the student who has wrongly accused Rahul-baba. Jayanthi Natrajan categorically denied Rahul-baba’s involvement stating that he seldom farts and when he does “it smells of jasmines”. “He has excellent bowel movements”, Jayanthi stressed before calling a close to hastily called press meet. Digvijay Singh put the blame squarely on Arjun Singh though it is felt that this was an error caused due to his frantic attempts to regain the trust of his party’s leadership. 

The seemingly conflicting and at times bizarre statements from various leaders to protect Rahul have attracted media attention the world over resulting in the chief whip issuing a gag order on this issue. “All queries will be addressed directly to the PMO and speaking out of turn on this issue will be dealt with severely”, he added. Dr. Manmohan Singh has reportedly lost sleep worrying about this issue.