Kohinoor, Kerala - Indian diversity on view

No, not the birthplace of the famed diamond. However this small town, home to the Calicut University Institute of Engineering is a microcosm of India.

Syrian Orthodox church in Kohinoor Kerala: There is a thriving Jacobite Syrian Orthodoxy in Kerala and the church even has its own saint Gheevargese Mar Gregorios of Parumala, Kerala. In Kohinoor there is a church named after him. He is the first canonized Christian saint from India in the Orthodox tradition. Legend has it the young saint's teacher Malpan became sick with smallpox. Throughout Malpan's sickness and death, Deacon Gheevarghese stayed with him. He soon became sick and during his illness, he saw a vision of Mary, coming down to him to comfort him. She told him to dedicate the rest of his life to the Lord. Soon after this experience, the deacon recovered. In 1865, the Deacon Gheevarghese was ordained as a priest at the age of 18.

A Raja Ravi Varma painting of the Saint

This is Indian diversity - a Syriac Othodox chruch, an Ayyappa temple, a Masjid and a St Thomas Aquinas Church right next to each other - throw in an Engineering college just so !

Nannambra - Pepper in centuries old wounds. A complex view of the Mappila legacy.

The history of the Mappila community in Kerala is long and controversial. This description of the early European interaction with them could easily be transported into 2014 with minor changes

"....Early modern Europeans had a complicated relationship with Muslims. On the one hand, they saw Muslims as dangerous threats to Christendom, from both political and religious points of view. Ottoman janissaries battled their way into the heart of Europe, almost reaching Vienna. Algerian and Tunisian corsairs patrolled and pillaged the Mediterranean and the north Atlantic. Islam attracted droves of Christian  renegades seeking wealth and power. Yet, western nations vied for trade advantages in Islamic lands".

A Mappila Family

The Mappilas are India’s first and oldest Islamic community, founded by Arab missionaries either during the Prophet Mohammed’s lifetime or shortly after his death in 632 AD. Before Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India in 1498, the Mappilas were principal players in a flourishing enterprise that involved the trade in spices, particularly black pepper, with a network of merchants from the Middle East and the eastern coasts of Africa. When western Christians followed Vasco da Gama’s footsteps to Malabar, they immediately placed
the Mappilas in the same category as their traditional Islamic antagonists — “Moors” and “Turks” — and began a campaign of oppression against the Mappilas. Europeans committed a commercial coup when they violently sabotaged and highjacked the Mappilas’ monopoly of the pepper trade in the Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea and when they forced many Mappilas to convert to Christianity. Since Mappilas did not own a great deal of land, they invested in the Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea trade networks and reaped significant profit.

This trade was the source of conflict with the European powers. Black pepper is indigenous to Malabar, and Malabari karimunda pepper was considered the best. Pepper was desired for its many uses: in cooking, for food preservation, as medicine, and even as money. In fifteenth-century Europe, prior to the pouring in of pepper from the East, pepper was so precious that it cost $50+  per pound. In addition it was a light cargo that would keep during long sea journeys. When Vasco Da Gama tried to buy pepper, he found he was unable to afford it with his decrepit goods from Portugal as barter. Eventually this trading tension led to their subjugation by the Portuguese and eventually the East India company.

The first Mappila Arakkal dynasty was matrilineal even though its founder was a hindu king who had traveled to Mecca - Cheruman Perumal. As the first king Adiraja transfigured into an Islamic AliRaja. Subsequently there were at least five Queens of Malabar (Bibis). These Bibis could be and often were Plyandrouns with multiple partners.

Today, while there is relative harmony between the Hindus, Mappila, Jews and Christians on the Malabar coast the historical simmering has never fully subsided. Nannambra is a small non descript village right on the prime meridian. In 1922 there was an alleged rape and conversion of a hindu leader's 18yo daughter by a group of Mappilas (Muslims) led by the watchman of the house.This atrocity is still discussed, argued about and used as the basis for fresh vendettas in the area.

Niramaruthur, the birthplace of the Star Spangled Banner - how the Indian rockets led to the bombardment of Baltimore

Off the Mangad bus stop in Niramaruthur, grab a cup of tea, maybe a dosa and take a long walk up a rural road. Over the course of my research into Tippu Sultan, I chanced upon an article related to the Congreve rocket.

The British army used this rocket to devastating effect against Boulogne, Copenhagen, Danzig and even Baltimore depicted vividly in the American national anthem as the "rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air." While William Congreve is accredited with the invention of the rocket, according to rocket historians including Willy Ley and F H Winter, the Congreve rocket was derived from the solid propelled rocket weapons of Hyder Ali, Tippu's father and ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, India. This war rocket was known as the Indian war rocket or Mysore rocket and was deployed against the British to devastating ends. One can still see a real version in the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich, England.

This is the accompanying verbiage: The motor casing of this rocket is made of steel with multi nozzle holes with the sword blade as the warhead. The propellant used was packed gunpowder. Weight of the rocket is about 2 kg. With about 1 kg of propellant, 50 mm in diameter about 250 mm length, the range performance is reported 900 metres to 1.5 km. Our designers analyzed and confirmed their performance. What a simple and elegant design effectively used in war!

Tippu held off the British over multiple wars but finally succumbed in Srirangapatnam.

Tipu Sultan, the appetizer before the beef Wellington

Take the Tippu Sultan road and jog inland a little bit when parallel to Tirur after Paravanna and you get to Niramaruthur. Tipu has quite a vampirish reputation here in Kerala.

WHAT IS THE CONNECTION?

There is an improbable connection her. Tipu Sultan was defeated in his last battle by none other than Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington at Srirangapatnam. The practice against Tipu must have come in useful in the milder climes of Waterloo 16 years later.

The Sultan was named after a saint Tipu Mastan Aulia and is rumored to be descended from the Arab Quraysh clan, the tribe of Mohammed himself. This seems to me to be an outright attempt to bask in reflected glory and reputation for Tipu was no saint nor prophet. Focusing just on his exploits or outrages in Kerala, opinion is divided as to whether he was a benevolent king or a religious fundamentalist tyrant. The neutral observers such as William Logan definitely assert that cruel military operations and Islamic atrocities of Tipu Sultan in Malabar were legion - forcible mass circumcision and conversion, large-scale killings, looting and destruction of hundreds of Hindu temples, and other barbarities. Nevertheless, he did build this road during the latter half of the 18th century and it has recently been rebuilt and once finished could rival the road to Hana as a tourist destination.

Paris on the banks of the Tirur

How could one ignore the Paris stop in Kuttayi, Kerala. Anything so deliciously contraposed had to be visited. I was conjuring up crepes on banana leafs !!

There was not a soul in sight. More than the belle epoque of Paris, it could pass as a sun baked Mexican town. The snoring of the septuagenarians under the thatch superimposed on the buzzing flies around the compost heap of discarded mango skins gives it its own somnambulistic march music.

Ponnani - Ghosts of Aryabhata

Ponnani is a verdant beachside town.

Looking inland from the vacant red-clay beach are regimented rows of palm trees studded with mobile towers and spires of ancient mosques - a harmonious juxtaposition of the modern and the ancient.

The beach, if situated in Europe would be overrun with sun worshippers of a different ilk but here it was just a taut prowed boat on the red sand contrasting vividly with the cerulean sky.

The port at the confluence of the Bharathapuzha River and the Arabian Sea is shaped like an appendix, bounded by the breakwater on one side and carved into the forest. Brightly painted Baghlahs, Dhangis, Ghanjahs, Jalibuts and other assorted dhows move languorously through the turgid water with human, animal and comestible cargo all mixed in.

Ponnani was the premier trading port on the Malabar coast. Trade with Arab lands flourished and is reflected today in a peaceful coexistence of Hindu and Muslim populations in Ponnani.

Most residents here do not know of or recognize the significance of Aryabhata's solar eclipse observations or indeed of his presence in any way.

Today, K. Chandra Hari postulates that this town could also have been the birthplace of Aryabhata. If this were true then Ponnani must occupy exalted status along with the Cambridge of Newton, the Pisa of Galileo and the Torun of Copernicus. He was long known by Arabic Muslim scholars as Arjabhad and later in Europe in the middle Ages by the Latinized name of Ardubarius.
For a comprehensive view of Aryabhata's life and work, please follow this link.
http://incredblindia.blogspot.com/2009/02/aryabhatta-and-evolution-of-zero.html

Leaving Ponnani by the Chamravattam bridge you chance upon a small but exquisite temple dedicated to Lord Ayyappa. This temple is said to have been built on the grounds sanctified by a sage called Sambaran.

Unlike other Hindu temples; the Sanctum sanctorum of the temple, where the idol of Lord Ayyappa is installed, is below the ground level and the idol is installed in sand; as if the temple was built around the idol which was already there. This idol is considered “Swayambhu”, meaning Self-manifested. I had heard of Shiva lingas having been Swayambhu but this is the first I have heard of Lord Ayyappa. More so, since this idol is swamped under 4ft of swamp during the monsoon seasons.

More detail on Ponnani can be found here: http://kallivalli.blogspot.com/2013/02/ponnani-old-and-then.html

The 1st Prime Meridian is on the banks of the Nila, not the Thames

August 11 AD519, a lone Dhoti clad, sunbrowned man is the only one on the beach overlooking the latticed well traveled shores of the Indian Ocean. Everyone else in the ancient port of Ponnani on the coast of Kerala were cowering in fear with palm shutters rolled down. The solar eclipse had just started and Aryabhata cast out into the ocean on a vallam, the Keralite boat. Legend has it that Aryabhata and his son Devarajan were both excommunicated from their caste for the double sin of going to sea and observing the eclipse. The prejudices of Europe echoed from Copernicus' Poland to the Malabar coast.

A millennium before Mercator drew his prime meridian through Fuerteventura, India had a prime meridian that formed the basis of trade in the Indian Ocean through to China. With the possible exception of Ptolemy's meridian through the Canary Islands this would likely be the first  multi-state sanctioned meridian. 

Ponnani as its southernmost point on the Indian subcontinent was a thriving port on the Malabar coast and is the oldest port continually in use in India. It is of supranational astronomical significance because in the words of CS Hari "Aryabhata's theory of Earth's rotation had its genesis in the experience of apparent motion of the shore during his sea voyage".

I have set out to trace the original prime meridian from Ponnani in Kerala up to the snow gnarled  mountains of Kashmir.