The Peninsula Foundation

Tag: Civilisation

  • Liquid globalization and inter-civilizational Dialogue

    Liquid globalization and inter-civilizational Dialogue

    The Western world is not only in relative decline, but also faces the inevitable ‘rise of the rest’ (Zakaria), as well as an increasing level of instability and unruliness in many parts of the world. Although there has already been a lot of research in post-colonial studies and intercultural communication, the binary code between the imaginary West and the multiplicity of non-Western approaches was yet to be resolved. Given the relative decline of the West, the dissolution of identities throughout the world, and the rise of the newly industrialized nations, there is an imminent urgency to address and overcome this binary code because it is not only situated in discourses but also manifested itself in all our living environment and within ourselves.

    This approach is based on the assumption that the West, as well as the non-Western world, have their shares of dark sides in history. When it comes to the Western world, we cannot deny brutal colonialism, the religious wars, the two world wars, Auschwitz, and the sheer luck of averted atomic world war, which would have destroyed all living being. On the other side, there is often an unbearable degree of intra-societal violence in the Non-Western World. – peoples in a lot of countries face a living hell. For them, hell is not an afterlife. They experience it already in their own life.

    As we are all living on one planet featuring more connectivity, we become more and more aware that there cannot be any more islands of prosperity, peace and well-being within a sea of violence, hatred, extreme poverty, and the dissolution of the fabric of societies. In some parts of the world, they experience something very close to the Hobbesian war of all against all, or Carl Schmitt’s never-ending civil wars between communities.

    In order to cope with these developments, a dialogue about the civilization foundations of our world society is needed. I explicitly use the concept of civilization in the footsteps of Karl Jaspers, Shmuel Eisenstadt and Peter J. Katzenstein, because civilizations are much more inclusive than religions. This is particularly clear with civilizations that descended from religions. In my view, the contrast is based on that of the Western billiard game model versus the model of concentric circles. Of course, we can easily differentiate these models. For example, when the balls in the billiard game attract each other, we are in the theoretical domain of idealism and cooperation; if they push off each other we are in the realm of competition, conflict and war. And, of course, if the balls cooperate, we are in the realm of all kinds of institutionalism. But the main concept in this model is the importance of rule and methods. The model of concentric circles on the other side can be distinguished by the relation of centre, semi-centre, semi-periphery and periphery (by slight modification of proximity and distance to the centre). In case that we have a transfer of goods, people, ideas, raw materials from the periphery to the centre we label this imperialism, the other way round, from the centre to the periphery I’m tempted to judge this as a form of civilization.

    Traditional forms of societies can be explained by overlapping circles of politics, societal relations, economy, economy and the environment:

     

     

    In such a traditional society there is a great correspondence and overlapping of the different spheres – identity is based on an ostensible core and seems to be related to culturally determined values that were handed over from generation to generation.

    A “modern” society (first modernity, Ulrich Beck) to the contrary can be characterized by the assumption that the different circles are much lesser overlapping, they are forming different spheres which have their laws and logics – we may label this a kind of functional differentiation (Niklas Luhmann) and it could either be characterized by the interaction and different functions of the organs of a body or the Olympic Rings.

    The spheres in which these rings are overlapping are the institutions in modern societies like the state, the political system, law and the judicial system, the church as an institution, labour unions and civil society.

    In liquid globalization and as a result of military interventions, civil wars, these rings of political, social, economic, and cultural and security spheres are separated from one another and could no longer be held together by a core identity.

     

    Within this model, there is a sphere that remains blank and could be characterized as a kind of emptiness. In such an understanding the social fabric is increasingly dissolved and especially the young generation is set free from all social norms. This concept is able to overcome the binary alternative which characterizes the discussion about the causes of terrorism, whether these actions are either related to an aggressive ideology or the social disintegration in societies and failed states, as in the ring of fire around Europe, mainly in the Arab-Islamic states, but also in Africa as a whole. It also explains why identity and recognition count so much in a lot of conflicts throughout the world.

    Based on this concept it becomes obvious that this emptiness can be filled with different content, for example with radical ideologies, private enrichments, drug, weapons and human trafficking, but also with the recourse to ethnic and even tribal identities, masculinity and patriarchy and finally violence itself which gives the excluded, superfluous (population growth) and uprooted young generation in these countries and regions the feeling not to be absolute powerless but all-powerful.

    The rise of the others in a globalized world is inevitable (Zakaria) – our task is to develop forms of recognition that centre on the civilizational foundations of Islam, Buddhism/Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity and Hinduism and African kinds of solidarity.

    The alternative to such a violent filling of the emptiness caused by liquid globalization is the mutual recognition of the civilizations of the earth. The rise of the others in a globalized world is inevitable (Zakaria) – our task is to develop forms of recognition that centre on the civilizational foundations of Islam, Buddhism/Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity and Hinduism and African kinds of solidarity. Only by recognizing their civilizational achievements, the uprooted, excluded and superfluous people of the world, which are the vast majority of mankind, can build an identity by their own in fluid globalization.

    Assuming that we all are already living in such spheres which are not overlapping, producing a kind of emptiness, the two different solutions might be to solve this problem by constructing a core as identity, which leads to thinking in categories of we against the rest of the far-right, whereas a different attempt would be to develop a discourse in which identity is constructed as a kind of floating (Clausewitz) and progressing (Hegel) balance or harmony (Confucius), understood as unity with difference and difference with unity.

  • Tamil Civilisation and the Lost Land of Lemuria/Kumari Kandam

    Tamil Civilisation and the Lost Land of Lemuria/Kumari Kandam

    Lemuria came to be identified as Kumari Kandam, the ancestral homeland of the Tamils, lost to the ravaging ocean in the distant past, due to what is called “Kadal Kol” in Tamil.

    The concept of the lost land of Lemuria hitherto a talking point in the west finds a new focus and interest in the study of the origins of Tamil Civilisation at the beginning of the 20th century. This was a direct result of the new consciousness of the ethnic and linguistic identity that emerged in Tamil speaking regions of South India. By the Tamil enthuse Lemuria came to be recast as the birthplace of the Tamil civilization. It came to be identified as Kumari Kandam, the ancestral homeland of the Tamils, lost to the ravaging ocean in the distant past, due to what is called “Kadal Kol” in Tamil.

    Tamil Nadu Government, during January 1981 at the Fifth International Conference of Tamil Studies held in Madurai, screened a documentary named “Kumari Kandam” both in Tamil and English. The documentary, produced with the financial support of the Tamil Nadu Government,  traced the roots of Tamil, its literature and culture, to the very beginning of time in Lemuria otherwise known as Kumari Kandam in Tamil. In this documentary, the Paleo history of the world is anchored around Tamil land and language. Thus Sclater’s[1] lost land of Lemuria was re-established in the timeless collective consciousness as a catastrophic loss of prelapsarian Tamil past. Even earlier to this, in 1879 Geological Survey of India brought out in the manual of GRGl, a discussion on the Mesozoic land bridge between Southern India and Africa. Dr.D.N. Wadia, a famed Professor of Geology, mentioned in 1990 “The evidence from which the above conclusion regarding an Indo-African land connection is drawn, is so strong and so many-sided that the differences of opinion that exist among geologists appertain to the main conclusion being accepted as one of the settled facts in the geography of this part of the world.[2]

    E.M. Forster in his famed novel ” A Passage to India “ (1984) begins his stunning stanza line “The Ganges, though flowing from the foot of Vishnu through, Siva’s hair, is not an ancient stream. Geology, looking further than religion, knows of a time when neither the river nor the Himalayas that nourished it existed, and an ocean flowed over the holy places of Hindustan. The mountains rose, their debris silted up the ocean, the gods took their seats on them and contrived the river, and the India we call immemorial came into being. But India is far older than anything in the world”.[3]

    In the ethnology chapter of the Manual, Maclean brought the findings of Ernest Haeckel about Lemuria as a primeval home of man. Maclean also draws a further conclusion from the German Biologist’s theory of the origin of various traces of mankind on the submerged Lemuria continent and reiterated that it was the primaeval home of the ancestors of India and Ceylon.

    Thus the fabled Kumari Kandam, which was based on Tamil Literary tradition, so far can receive immediate credibility through western studies. The foundation for this claim was laid by Charles D. Maclean Book “The Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency” published in 1835” Mr Maclean was an Officer of Indian Civil Services. In the ethnology chapter of the Manual, Maclean brought the findings of Ernest Haeckel about Lemuria as a primeval home of man. Maclean also draws a further conclusion from the German Biologist’s theory of the origin of various traces of mankind on the submerged Lemuria continent and reiterated that it was the primaeval home of the ancestors of India and Ceylon.[4] He suggested that Southern India was once the passage ground by which the ancient progenitors of northern and Mediterranean races proceeded to the parts of the globe which they now inhabit from Lemuria.[5]

    However, there is a distinct difference in perception of the Lemuria inhabitants from the point of view of Western Scholars and the Tamil enthuse. According to Western Scholars, the primitive inhabitants of Lemuria are barely human and do not represent the trace of civilization. However, the Tamil scholars hold Lemuria or Kumari Kantam as the birthplace of the Tamil Language and cradle of Tamil Civilisation. The antiquity of the Tamil language got a boost with the publication of Campbell’s Book “The competitive grammar of Dravidian Langauge”. J. Nellai swami Pillai wrote in the journal “The Light of Truth” or “Siddantha Deepika” that if you can believe in the tradition of there having been a vast continent south of Cape Comorin, all humanity and civilization flowed east and west and north, then there can be nothing strange in our regarding the Tamilians as the remnants of a pre-diluvian race. Even the existing works in Tamil speak of three separate floods which completely swamped the extreme southern shores and carried off with them all its literary treasures of ages.[6]

    Nella Swami Pillai gives a cautious conclusion that his theory stands on no serious historical or scientific evidence. The same was enthusiastically taken up fully by a well-known Tamil scholar Maraimalai Adigal.

    Though the name Lemuria came into the Tamil world only in 1903, it started gaining significance among the Tamil populous. Shri V.G.Suryanarayana Sastri started using the name Kumarinadu in his book “Tamilmoliyin varalaru. Thiru T.V.Kalyanasundaram the famous Congress Nationlist, and a noted Tamil scholar wrote emphatically that the Lemuria of “Western Scholars” like Ernst Haeckel and Scott Elliot was none other than the Kumarinadu of Tamil literature”.[7]

    The very name Kumari is suggestive of the pristine chastity and everlasting youth of the Tamil land. Later the legends linked the Devi Temple at Kanyakumari to Kumari Kantam or Kumar Nadu. The Kumari Kantam as mentioned in the old Tamil classics, has no reference to the Mesozoic continent of the Indian ocean. There is no reference to the old boundaries of Asiatic tablelands. The Tamil literature speaks of them as the original inhabitants of the great territory opened by two seas on the East and West, by Venkata hills and submerged rivers Pakruli and Kumari on the South.[8] Scholars like Somasundara Bharathi and others also invented hackers’ concept of Lemuria being the cradle of mankind, which implies that the ancient Tamil region is the birthplace of human beings and the Tamils were the first humans.

    Kumari Kantam was having a breadth of 700 kavatam south of Cape Cameron containing 49 principalities, 2 rivers called Pakruli and Kumari flowed there and it also had a hill called Kumari Koodu. The major cities in Kumari Kantam were Thenmadurai and Kapatapuram.

    The features of Kumari Kantam were referred to by Adiyarku Nallar, the commenter of Silapathikaram. Kumari Kantam was having a breadth of 700 kavatam south of Cape Cameron containing 49 principalities, 2 rivers called Pakruli and Kumari flowed there and it also had a hill called Kumari Koodu. The major cities in Kumari Kantam were Thenmadurai and Kapatapuram. This is also referred to in Tholkappia Orrai of Ilam Pooranar Nachinarkku Iniyan Perasiriyar.

    The Tamil Scholars, V.G. Suryanaryana Sastri and Abraham Pandithar lament the loss of works such as Mudunarai, Mudukurugu, etc, which had been swallowed by the ocean. These are derived from the fact that several poems in the Sangam anthology of later age refer to oceanic threat and consequent loss of lands and lives.

    The Tamil Scholar K.Anna Poorni delineates the extent of Kumari Kantam as she concludes in Tamilagham “ Today, the Tamilnadu that we inhabit consists of 12 districts within its limits. A few centuries ago. Cranach and a part of the Telugu land were part of Tamilnadu. Some thousands of years ago, the northern limit of Tamilnadu extended to the Vindhya mountain and the southern limit extended 700 Kavatam to the south of Cape Kumari which included regions such as Panainatu, mountains such as Kumari Kotu and Mani Malai, cities such as Muttur and Kapatapuram and rivers such as Pahruli. All these were seized by the ocean, so say scholars. That today’s the Indian Ocean was once upon a time a vast landmass and that that is where the man first appears has been stated by several scholars such as Ernst Haeckel and Scott Elliot in their books, History of Creation and Lost Lemuria. The landmass called Lemuria is what Tamilians call Kumarinadu. That which is remaining after this ancient landmass was seized by the ocean is the Tamil Motherland in which we reside today with pride.

     

    References

    [1] Philip Lutley Sclater was a zoologist and naturalist who studied extensively the presence of fauna and other species in different regions. He found that more than 30 species of Lemur monkeys inhabited Madagascar while they were hardly to be found in Africa but were seen in lesser number of species in India. Explaining the anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar, Sclater propounded that the Lemurs must have inhabited a lost continent in the Indian Ocean. Termed ‘Lemuria, this continent must have extended across the Indian Ocean and the Indian Peninsula to the further side of the Bay of Bengal and over the great islands of the Indian Archipelago. David Bressan, ‘A Geologists’ Dream: The lost continent of Lemuria’ in www.blogs.thescientificamerican.com

    [2] Wadia D.N. 1919, Geology of India for students, London: Macmillan – 1939, Geology of India, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.

    [3] E.M.Forster, “A passage to India”: Harcourt Brace, New York 1984, pp 135-136.

    [4] Maclean Charles. D. “The Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency”, Vol.I, Asian Educational Publication, pp-33-43.

    [5] Ibid 111.

    [6] Nella Swami Pillai. J, “Ancient Tamil Civilisation in the light of truth” or Siddhanta Deepika. No. 5, pp 109-113.

    [7] T.V.Kalyanasundaram, “Indiyavum viduthalaiyum”, Charu Printing Press, Madras, P 106.

    [8] Sesha Iyengar K.G. Chera King of the Sangam Period, 1937, pp 658.