Uncovered: Pandyas-Romans trade link

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/archaeological-excavation-in-sivaganga-uncovers-pandyaroman-trade-links/article7328683.ece

An excavation in Keezhadi, Sivaganga district, has thrown up a wealth of information on the floruishing Pandya trade with the west.

An ongoing excavation of a Sangam period habitation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is poised to throw more light on the flourishing trade of the Pandyas with the west and their rich culture, which was the envy of the Romans.

The Bengaluru-based Excavation Branch VI of the ASI has taken up the excavation at Keezhadi village, 12 km south east of Madurai, in Sivaganga district.

Into the third month, the exercise has already thrown up very interesting antiquities – glass/pearl/terracotta beads; terracotta figurines; grooved roof tiles and early historic pottery.

“This is the ASI’s major excavation in Tamil Nadu after Adichanallur,” says K. Amarnath Ramakrishnan, Superintending Archaeologist and director of the current excavation.

It was found to possess archaeological wealth “that may provide crucial evidence to understand the missing links of Iron Age to early historic period and subsequent cultural developments.”

The excavation area, a mound, referred to as ‘Pallichandai Thidal,’ has a circumference of 3.5 km and spans 80 acres. It is contiguous to ancient settlements like Konthagai and Manalur. “We chose the mound raising about one to 2.5 metres above the ground level as it is relatively undisturbed,” says Mr. Amarnath. “We have found the finest variety of black and red ware bowls at the site,” says M. Rajesh, assistant archaeologist.

The most interesting findings in the 32 quadrants dug up so far are the damaged brick structures, including walls. The bricks are unique to early historic period and they measure 33 cm in length, 21 cm in breadth and five cm in height.

Noted epigraphist and domain expert for the excavation, V. Vedachalam, attributes the age of the remains to third century BCE to third CE. “The earthenware contains Tamil Brahmi script. The black and red pottery belongs to the Sangam period. The bricks belong to early historic period and similar ones were found in Kaviripoompattinam, Woriyur, Alagankulam and Korkai,” he says.

The Roman ware found at the site supplement the historical references to a flourishing trade between the Pandya kingdom and the Roman Empire. Historically, these settlements would have been part of Kuntidevi Chaturvedimangalam, named after a Pandya queen.

The first major excavation of a habitation undertaken by the ASI in south Tamil Nadu will go into 2016. “The Director (Exploration and Excavation), ASI, Syed Jamal Hasan, who visited the site on May 15, was impressed with the findings,” says Mr. Amarnath.

The ASI is likely to extend the period of excavation by a year. The final report will be released after corroborating the antiquities with existing evidence and conducting various scientific analyses.

Research scholars from the University of Madras and Government Arts College, Krishnagiri, assist the ASI team in the excavation.

Aspirational parents and the harm they do - GEORGE MONBIOT

Perhaps because the alternative is too hideous to contemplate, we persuade ourselves that those who wield power know what they are doing. The belief in a guiding intelligence is hard to shake.

We know that our conditions of life are deteriorating. Most young people have little prospect of owning a home, or even of renting a decent one. Interesting jobs are sliced up into portions of meaningless drudgery.

The political system that delivers these outcomes is sustained by aspiration: the faith that if we try hard enough we could join the elite, even as living standards decline and social immobility becomes set almost in stone. But to what are we aspiring? A life that is better than our own, or worse?

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/aspirational-parents-and-the-harm-they-do/article7303414.ece

Last week a note from an analyst at Barclays’ Global Power and Utilities group in New York was leaked. It addressed students about to begin a summer internship, and offered a glimpse of the toxic culture into which they are inducted.

“I wanted to introduce you to the 10 Power Commandments … For nine weeks you will live and die by these … We expect you to be the last ones to leave every night, no matter what … I recommend bringing a pillow to the office. It makes sleeping under your desk a lot more comfortable … the internship really is a nine-week commitment at the desk … an intern asked our staffer for a weekend off for a family reunion – he was told he could go. He was also asked to hand in his BlackBerry and pack up his desk … Play time is over and it’s time to buckle up.”

Play time is over, but did it ever begin? If these students have the kind of parents featured in the Financial Times last month, perhaps not. It spoke of parents who had already decided that their six-month-old son would go to Cambridge then Deutsche Bank, or whose two-year-old daughter “had a tutor for two afternoons a week (to keep on top of maths and literacy) as well as weekly phonics and reading classes, drama, piano, beginner French and swimming. They were considering adding Mandarin and Spanish. ‘The little girl was so exhausted and on edge she was terrified of opening her mouth.’”

In New York, play date coaches charging $450 an hour train small children in the social skills that might help secure their admission to the most prestigious private schools. They are taught to hide traits that could suggest they’re on the autistic spectrum, which might reduce their chances of selection.

From infancy to employment, this is a life-denying, love-denying mindset, informed not by joy or contentment, but by an ambition that is both desperate and pointless, for it cannot compensate for what it displaces: childhood, family life, the joys of summer, meaningful and productive work, a sense of arrival, living in the moment.

Governments used to survey the prevalence of children’s mental health issues every five years, but this ended in 2004. Imagine publishing no figures since 2004 on, say, childhood cancer, and you begin to understand the extent to which successive governments have chosen to avoid this issue. If aspirational pressure is not enhancing our wellbeing but damaging it, those in power don’t want to know.

But there are hints. Mental health beds for children in England increased by 50 per cent between 1999 and 2014, but still failed to meet demand. The number of children admitted to hospital because of self-harm has risen by 68 per cent in 10 years, while the number of young patients with eating disorders has almost doubled in three years. Without good data, we don’t have a clear picture of what the causes might be, but it’s worth noting that in the past year, according to the charity, Young Minds, the number of children receiving counselling for exam stress has tripled.

In the cause of self-advancement, we are urged to sacrifice our leisure, our pleasures and our time with partners and children, to climb over the bodies of our rivals and to set ourselves against the common interests of humankind. And then? We discover that we have achieved no greater satisfaction than that with which we began.

In 1653, Izaak Walton described in The Compleat Angler the fate of “poor-rich men”, who “spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busie or discontented”. Today this fate is confused with salvation.

Finish your homework, pass your exams, spend your 20s avoiding daylight, and you too could live like the elite. But who in their right mind would want to? —© Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015

TECHNOLOGY vis-a-vis PRODUCTIVITY

Technology  does not  guarantee efficiency in productivity, ie Productivity Increase

Technology  dulls human capacity for creative work,  it  increases wastage  and in overall terms it  decreases  productivity.

Technology  certainly helps in the concentration of economic wealth, at the cost of many !!!!!

Gandhian Economic Thinking is  evergreen !!!.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-big-meh/article7253081.ece

The big meh

• PAUL KRUGMAN

Remember Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ? It began with some technology snark, dismissing Earth as a planet whose life-forms “are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” But that was then, in the early stages of the information technology revolution.

Since then we’ve moved on to much more significant things, so much so that the big technology idea of 2015, so far, is a digital watch. But this one tells you to stand up if you’ve been sitting too long!

OK, I’m snarking, too. But there is a real question here. Everyone knows that we live in an era of incredibly rapid technological change, which is changing everything. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? And I’m not being wildly contrarian here. A growing number of economists, looking at the data on productivity and incomes, are wondering if the technological revolution has been greatly overhyped — and some technologists share their concern.

We’ve been here before. The Hitchhiker’s Guide was published during the era of the “productivity paradox,” a two-decade-long period during which technology seemed to be advancing rapidly — personal computing, cell phones, local area networks and the early stages of the Internet — yet economic growth was sluggish and incomes stagnant. Many hypotheses were advanced to explain that paradox, with the most popular probably being that inventing a technology and learning to use it effectively aren’t the same thing. Give it time, said economic historians, and computers will eventually deliver the goods (and services).

This optimism seemed vindicated when productivity growth finally took off circa 1995. Progress was back — and so was America, which seemed to be at the cutting edge of the revolution.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the techno-revolution. We did not, it turned out, get a sustained return to rapid economic progress. Instead, it was more of a one-time spurt, which sputtered out around a decade ago. Since then, we’ve been living in an era of iPhones and iPads and iDontKnows, but even if you adjust for the effects of financial crisis, growth and trends in income have reverted to the sluggishness that characterised the 1970s and 1980s.

In other words, at this point, the whole digital era, spanning more than four decades, is looking like a disappointment. New technologies have yielded great headlines, but modest economic results. Why?

One possibility is that the numbers are missing the reality, especially the benefits of new products and services. I get a lot of pleasure from technology that lets me watch streamed performances by my favourite musicians, but that doesn’t get counted in GDP. Still, new technology is supposed to serve businesses as well as consumers, and should be boosting the production of traditional as well as new goods. The big productivity gains of the period from 1995 to 2005 came largely in things like inventory control, and showed up as much or more in nontechnology businesses like retail as in high-technology industries themselves. Nothing like that is happening now.

Another possibility is that new technologies are more fun than fundamental. Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, famously remarked that we wanted flying cars but got 140 characters instead. And he’s not alone in suggesting that information technology that excites the Twittering classes may not be a big deal for the economy as a whole.

So what do I think is going on with technology? The answer is that I don’t know — but neither does anyone else. Maybe my friends at Google are right, and Big Data will soon transform everything. Maybe 3-D printing will bring the information revolution into the material world. Or maybe we’re on track for another big meh.

What I’m pretty sure about, however, is that we ought to scale back the hype.

You see, writing and talking breathlessly about how technology changes everything might seem harmless, but, in practice, it acts as a distraction from more mundane issues — and an excuse for handling those issues badly. If you go back to the 1930s, you find many influential people saying the same kinds of things such people say nowadays: This isn’t really about the business cycle, never mind debates about macroeconomic policy; it’s about radical technological change and a workforce that lacks the skills to deal with the new era.

And then, thanks to World War II, we finally got the demand boost we needed, and all those supposedly unqualified workers — not to mention Rosie the Riveter — turned out to be quite useful in the modern economy, if given a chance.

Of course, there I go, invoking history. Don’t I understand that everything is different now? Well, I understand why people like to say that. But that doesn’t make it true. — © New York Times News Service


The digital era, spanning more than four decades, looks disappointing. New technologies have yielded great headlines, but modest economic results

Humanities vis-a-vis Science Subjects !!??

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/starving-for-wisdom/article7110924.ece

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”

That epigram from E.O. Wilson captures the dilemma of our era. Yet the solution of some folks is to disdain wisdom.

“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?” Rick Scott, the Florida governor, once asked. A leader of a prominent Internet company once told me that the firm regards admission to Harvard as a useful heuristic of talent, but a college education itself as useless.

Parents and students themselves are acting on these principles, retreating from the humanities. Among college graduates in 1971, there were about two business majors for each English major. Now there are seven times as many.

I’ve been thinking about this after reading Fareed Zakaria’s smart new book, In Defense of a Liberal Education . Like Mr. Zakaria, I think that the liberal arts teach critical thinking (not to mention nifty words like “heuristic”).

So, to answer the sceptics, here are my three reasons the humanities enrich our souls and sometimes even our pocketbooks as well.

First, liberal arts equip students with communications and interpersonal skills that are valuable and genuinely rewarded in the labour force, especially when accompanied by technical abilities.

“A broad liberal arts education is a key pathway to success in the 21st-century economy,” says Lawrence Katz, a labour economist at Harvard. Professor Katz says that the economic return to pure technical skills has flattened, and the highest return now goes to those who combine soft skills — excellence at communicating and working with people — with technical skills.

“So I think a humanities major who also did a lot of computer science, economics, psychology, or other sciences can be quite valuable and have great career flexibility,” he said. “But you need both, in my view, to maximize your potential. And an economics major or computer science major or biology or engineering or physics major who takes serious courses in the humanities and history also will be a much more valuable scientist, financial professional, economist or entrepreneur.”

My second reason: We need people conversant with the humanities to help reach wise public policy decisions, even about the sciences. Technology companies must constantly weigh ethical decisions: Where should Facebook set its privacy defaults, and should it tolerate glimpses of nudity? Should Twitter close accounts that seem sympathetic to terrorists? How should Google handle sex and violence, or defamatory articles?

In the policy realm, one of the most important decisions we humans will have to make is whether to allow germline gene modification. This might eliminate certain diseases, ease suffering, make our offspring smarter and more beautiful. But it would also change our species. It would enable the wealthy to concoct superchildren. It’s exhilarating and terrifying.

To weigh these issues, regulators should be informed by first-rate science, but also by first-rate humanism. After all, Homer addressed similar issues three millenniums ago. In The Odyssey , the beautiful nymph Calypso offers immortality to Odysseus if he will stay on her island. After a fling with her, Odysseus ultimately rejects the offer because he misses his wife, Penelope. He turns down godlike immortality to embrace suffering and death that are essential to the human condition.

Likewise, when the President’s Council on Bioethics issued its report in 2002, “Human Cloning and Human Dignity,” it cited scientific journals but also Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Even science depends upon the humanities to shape judgments about ethics, limits and values.

Third, wherever our careers lie, much of our happiness depends upon our interactions with those around us, and there’s some evidence that literature nurtures a richer emotional intelligence.

Science magazine published five studies indicating that research subjects who read literary fiction did better at assessing the feelings of a person in a photo than those who read nonfiction or popular fiction. Literature seems to offer lessons in human nature that help us decode the world around us and be better friends. Literature also builds bridges of understanding. Toni Morrison has helped all America understand African-American life. Jhumpa Lahiri illuminated immigrant contradictions. Khaled Hosseini opened windows on Afghanistan.

In short, it makes eminent sense to study coding and statistics today, but also history and literature.

John Adams had it right when he wrote to his wife, Abigail, in 1780: “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History and Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” — © New York Times News Service

It makes eminent sense to study coding and statistics today, but also history

and literature

MORE IN: OPINION | Today's Paper

Technology -Bane of Mankind ?

When  corporations  become too powerful and can challenge any State !!!??http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/lets-challenge-google-while-we-still-can/article7115178.ece

Let’s challenge Google while we still can

Typing “Google antitrust” into your browser this week yields some very interesting results — but it’s wholly possible your results will be delivered to you through Google search, into a browser made by Google, on to a phone or computer running Google’s very own operating system. Such is the scale of the modern Internet giant.

Comfortingly, the company has made no effort to hide this particular story from its own search results: currently the first result you will see is that Google is facing a huge and likely years-long legal battle with the EU competition commission over how it presents some of its search results.

Google is such a fixture of any Internet user’s life, it’s easy to forget how quickly it has grown, how dominant it has become, and how strange a company on that scale in the “real” world would seem.

Google has, by some measures, almost 90 per cent of the global search engine market — a service used by billions of people daily — while its nearest rival, Bing, has less than 5 per cent; Gmail is the second most-used e-mail service after Hotmail; its mobile software, Android, has 76 per cent of the smartphone market; and Google-owned YouTube is the overwhelming leader in online video, dwarfing Netflix.

In virtually any major online activity, Google is either the number two or number one player, often commandingly so — and that’s before we consider it has photographed the streets of many of the world’s cities, is building self-drive cars, and — before we forget — takes tens of billions of revenue each year by being the world’s largest online ad seller by far.

Compared with the scale of Google’s reach, the EU’s challenge seems almost trivial: it centres on whether Google’s presentation of e-commerce search results favours its own shopping service over rivals. A second mooted investigation would be somewhat wider, focusing on Android.

The spotlight might be on small parts of Google’s empire, but the fight is a deadly serious one: EU authorities have the power to levy fines of up to 10 per cent of Google’s revenues, which topped $45 billion in 2014, and to order the search giant to change its behaviour, including, in theory, changing how some of its results are presented.

Google has made clear that it intends to contest the charges, vigorously. The fight will likely be long, bloody and entertaining for those who like that sort of thing. But it also highlights some of the stark realities of the Internet era.

Perhaps the most pressing is that in reality there are very few government bodies in the world with the scale to truly hold the largest Internet giants to account — perhaps only the U.S. and the EU. The companies can move their servers, their regional offices and their headquarters with relative ease. It’s only those places with enough customers to be irresistible that can try to enforce a rule book.

Second, there’s no indication that the EU will win: given the relative stakes, and budgets, there’s every chance that Google will out-lawyer the regulators. The EU’s combative approach comes from its new commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, who has ripped up a putative settlement negotiated by her predecessor that would have staved off further legal battle. Regulators across the world will be watching to see whether the new high-stakes approach pays off. If Google wins here, others may be deterred.

The main significance of the battle is as a scene-setter: Google is just the start, as the business models of the Internet lend themselves to monopoly. Such is the nature of feedback loops: get enough users searching and clicking each day, and you have an incredible source of information of what people are really looking for, which you can use to make your search better. That’s hard to compete with.

In social networks and messaging apps, the effect is even stronger. These services work out for users only if lots of people they know are on them. Get big enough — like Facebook — and a rival has to do something spectacular to have a chance of beating you.

We are entering an era of near-stateless global giants, several of which will gain the power to act as a monopoly. The world’s legal systems are not ready for such a thing: philosophically, different countries have different levels of concern. Traditionally, U.S. regulators have been relaxed about companies gaining large market share provided they don’t use their market power to get advantages in other sectors. European regulators have generally stepped in earlier, capping share.

For all their promise of openness and equality, the technologies of the Internet also promote the creation of giant companies. The question facing us as a society is what trade-offs we make: does the bigger danger lie in allowing the creation of unalloyed corporate power, or in curbing technology’s potential to prevent it?

The question could become moot: in practical terms, if Google trounces the EU on all counts after several years, few other competition authorities will want to take on the company, and they may even be deterred from pursuing other Internet behemoths. A decade or so without a challenge may make a new normal near irreversible.

Technology has made the Internet the ultimate monopoly machine. It’s up to those who make and enforce the law to decide what they want to do about it. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015

The Internet giant is growing so fast that if the EU fails to tackle its monopoly status now, in a decade or so Google might be too big to be held to account

MORE IN: OPINION | Today's Paper

NO BIG BANG - Western Methods of "gaining knowledge" is completely inferior to Indian time tested method !!!

Modern Western science is fickle. Never bet your life on it !!!!!

How one may gain knowledge is given in detail in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. (In Chapter 1 itself !!)

No Big Bang, the universe was there all along: studies

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sci-tech-and-agri/no-big-bang-the-universe-was-there-all-along-studies/article6960677.ece

It is widely-believed that the universe is 13.8 billion years old.— photo: AFP

One of the most popular concepts in physics is that of the Big Bang — the point when the universe as we know it came into being.

Now a theory challenges this whole picture. According to this theory, there was no Big Bang and the universe existed all along, without beginning or end.

Moreover, the theory also attempts to give an explanation of Dark Matter and Dark Energy — two phenomena that scientists are struggling to understand.

It is widely believed that the universe originated some 13.8 billion years ago and the bursting forth of this monstrous entity from a single point is termed the Big Bang.

The Big Bang appears as a singular point (Hawking-Penrose singularity) in the mathematical equations that define general theory of relativity. The laws of physics break down at this point and nothing can be known about what happened before this. In other words, it marks the point of birth of the universe.

Now, three scientists have come up with an alternative theory. In their theory, the universe may have existed all along, perhaps with no “beginning” as dramatic as a Big Bang.

Saurya Das, professor of physics at University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, was fascinated by the Raychaudhuri equation (RE), which is an important step in deriving the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. The equation is attributed to Amal K Raychaudhuri who used to teach at Presidency College, Kolkata. When it is treated in a classical formalism, the equation leads to the singularity. But the singularity vanishes when the particles are treated as quantum particles and the fields are treated as classical. This leads to a solution which is the everlasting universe which was not born in a Big Bang. This was work published by Dr. Das in Physical Review D.

“This is unlike the steady state theory, according to which matter is constantly being generated to keep the universe steady,” Dr. Das said in an email to this Correspondent.

In the case of Dark Matter, he and his collaborators showed that it arises naturally. In a paper published recently in Physics Letters B, they showed that in the quantum corrected Raychaudhuri equation, one set of corrections can be interpreted as giving rise to Dark Matter, while the other term was instrumental in preventing the Big Bang-like scenario and giving infinite life to the universe.

The explanation for Dark Energy comes from the term that prevents the Big Bang-like scenario.

It must be mentioned that there are a few other approaches that have argued that there was no Big Bang.

CASTE & MOVIES

CASTE IS A GREAT AND EFFECTIVE INSTITUTION.  Must the majority of Indians give up their caste and community leanings for the sake of just 16% of the Dalit population. !!!????
It is really absurd !!!!


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/films-caste-and-violence/article7052278.ece#comments

Pro-Dalit parties call for a ban on 'Komban' ahead of its release on Thursday, alleging that it is glorifying a particular community. The issue brings to fore issues of freedom of speech and censorship

It’s happening again. Actor Karthi’s Komban, due for release this week, is in the eye of the storm after K. Krishnasamy, leader of the pro-Dalit party, Puthiya Thamilagam, demanded a ban on the film saying that it would incite violence in the State.

The call for a ban has stemmed from the fear that the film could be glorifying the Thevar community, dominant in Tamil Nadu’s southern districts. This has triggered yet another debate on censorship and relevance of censor board in Tamil Nadu.

While freedom of speech and expression must be defended, one must also be empathetic and create space for those who disagree with the film, say intellectuals and filmmakers.

Post-Censor Censorship

Thevar Magan

Tamil and Dalit intellectuals have criticised the film for glorifying the Thevar community, a politically and socially dominant community in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu

Sundarapandian

Filmmaker Prabhakaran's Sundarapandian, featuring actor Sasi Kumar in the lead role, was accused of sensationalising caste pride and honour killing in the opening sequences of the film.

Kutti Puli

The director of Komban, M. Muthaiah's earlier film was also hauled up for its pro-Thevar tilt. The film was accused of glorifying the dominant caste group in southern districts and endorsing anti-Dalit views.

Nattamai

The adoption of market economy coincided with the nation-wide mobilisation of dominant backward castes in India, which had its impact on cinema as well. Other egs: Chinna Gounder, Ejaman

Ravikumar, a Tamil intellectual and member of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, said there is a difference between freedom of speech and freedom to spew hate. “The former must be defended, while the latter has to be condemned,” he said.

With southern districts of Tamil Nadu seeing a rise in caste-related violence in recent times, an artist must not just view cinema as commodity to be monetised but as cultural product that will have a social impact, he said.

“Just like cinema commodifies sex and violence, it has commodified hate as well. In a society where the message of equality is uncommon, an artist must challenge caste-pride and not normalise it,” he added.

Documentary filmmaker, R.P. Amudhan, who made a film on manual scavengers titled ‘Shit’, says he doesn’t believe in a ban, but calls for a no-holds-barred debate on the subject. “All films deserve severe criticism and anyone can raise a stink in the Assembly and approach the court. After all, in the so-called new wave cinema, the popular semi-urban Tamil films present an OBC-tilt and an anti-Dalit perspective, is it not?” he asks, adding, “We have to respond to it properly, be empathetic to protests and not dismiss them under the pretext of freedom of speech.”

S. Ve. Shekar, regional Chairman of Censor Board, says the CBFC was following the guidelines in certifying films, but the State government had every right to decide if it has to be screened or not. A former AIADMK MLA, Mr. Shekar said the CBFC was always “liberal” and society must be more tolerant.

A filmmaker, who has made films about caste and didn’t want to be named, clarified that a distinction must be made between films that extol the virtues of a caste society and those that criticise them.

“Only when you live in Ramanathapuram, you will understand the politics of it all. This kind of censorship cuts both ways. Look at what happened to Perumal Murugan who wrote about the practices of a dominant community.”

Panel to watch film, submit report

Mohamed Imranullah S. reports from Madurai

The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday constituted a 10-member committee headed by two retired judges of the court to watch the film in a private screening in Chennai on Tuesday and submit a report to the court on the claim that the movie had the potential to instigate caste clashes in southern districts.

Justices S. Tamilvanan and V.S. Ravi ordered that the committee’s report should be faxed by Tuesday evening since the court had to decide the issue expeditiously as the film is scheduled for release for Thursday. The orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by Puthiya Tamilagam president K. Krishnasamy.

Apart from the two former judges, K. Ravirajapandian and A.C. Arumugaperumal Adityan, the committee would comprise the petitioner and three of his lawyers besides the film producer and three of his advocates.

Arguing the case before the Bench, petitioner’s counsel W. Peter Ramesh Kumar contended that the film’s two-minute trailer, released on YouTube, shows that the story revolves around decades-old animosity between caste Hindus and Scheduled Castes in Ramanathapuram district, which has a chequered history of caste clashes.

He claimed that the protagonist of the movie was portrayed as a caste Hindu and the villains as belonging to Devendrakula Vellalar through subtle representations such as tying of red and green, colours of Puthiya Tamilagam flag, threads on their wrists. Such depictions would lead to unnecessary unrest among people, he argued.

Pointing out that nearly 100 murders with caste overtones had taken place in the southern districts in the last one year, counsel said: “Under such circumstances, there is every possibility of the film destroying the social fabric and promoting disharmony between communities, which are already not in a cordial relationship.”

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