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Earth processes in wake of Gujarat earthquake reviewed from space

             Earth processes in wake of Gujarat earthquake 

                               reviewed from space

             Two years after a devastating earthquake in Gujarat, India, scientists from many disciplines met at an international workshop to share the latest knowledge about Earth system processes related to this natural disaster. The meeting particularly focused on the use of spaceborne technology to study the effects of lithosphere-atmosphere-ionosphere interaction prior to and following the earthquake. More than 80 of the participants were affiliated with research and academic institutions in India, and several scientists from the United States, Germany Russia, and China also participated.

            Soon after the earthquake on 26 January 2001, Indian scientists established a Global Positioning System (GPS) network to monitor crustal motion around the earthquake's epicenter in cooperation with scientists from Japan, Germany, and the United States. Observations made by routine GPS measurements in the past have shown that the Bhuj area has significantly shifted anti-clockwise. The leveling observations made by the Survey of India show that the Santal Pur Bhuj Block was uplifted up to 60 cm, while Bhuj, Bhachau, and Mundra subsided ∼60 cm. The need to establish a dense network of level lines and gravity stations in Kachchh was stressed at the meeting.

Ashis Nandy vs. the state of Gujarat

Ashis Nandy vs. the state of Gujarat: authoritarian developmentalism, democracy and the politics of Narendra Modi

             This article aims to unravel the rise of Gujarat's current Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his brand of personality politics that has dominated Gujarati politics in the past decade. It uses the legal battle between the eminent sociologist Ashis Nandy and the Government of Gujarat, that unfolded in 2008, as a case study to illustrate the dominant impulses of what has been termed ‘Moditva’ or the Modi model and its implications. The state-sanctioned prosecution of Ashis Nandy over a newspaper article that criticized the Gujarati middle classes was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court of India but the legal battle, and the public discourse around it, serves as a useful prism to understand the deeper processes at work within Moditva and the particular brand of authoritarian developmentalism it offers, with little scope for dissent. The legal battle erupted just a few months before a galaxy of India's top industrialists publicly backed Modi as a future prime minister, hailing his excellent developmental record post-2002 and the creation of an investment-friendly climate in Gujarat. At one level, the Nandy case can be read as a straight narrative of an iconic battle for freedom of speech, one in which Gujarat and its politics were once again at the centre of the debate. But the debate about Moditva is also a metaphor for alternative visions for India. Its future trajectory will be decisive not only for the future of Gujarat but equally for the future of the BJP and for the idea of India itself.

Late Cenozoic exhumation of the Cascadia accretionary wedge in the Olympic Mountains, northwest Washington State

Abstract

The apatite fission-track method is used to determine the exhumation history of the Olympic subduction complex, an uplifted part of the modern Cascadia accretionary wedge. Fission-track ages are reported for 35 sandstones from the Olympic subduction complex, and 7 sandstones and 1 diabase from the Coast Range terrane, which structurally overlies the Olympic subduction complex. Most sandstone samples give discordant results, which means that the variance in grains ages is much greater than would be expected for radioactive decay alone. Discordance in an unreset sample is caused by a mix of detrital ages, and in a reset sample is caused by a mix of annealing properties among the detrital apatites and perhaps by U loss from some apatites. Discordant grain-age distributions can be successfully interpreted by using the minimum age, which is the pooled age of the youngest group of concordant fission-track grain ages in a dated sample. The inference is that this fraction of apatites has the lowest thermal stability, and will be the first to reset on heating and the last to close on cooling. Comparison of the minimum age with depositional age provides a simple distinction between reset samples (minimum age younger than deposition) and unreset samples (minimum age older than deposition). The success of the minimum-age approach is demonstrated by its ability to resolve a well-defined age-elevation trend for reset samples from the Olympic subduction complex. Microprobe data suggest that the apatites that make up the minimum-age fraction are mostly fluorapatite, which has the lowest thermal stability for fission tracks among the common apatites.

Reset minimum ages are all younger than 15 Ma, and show a concentric age pattern; the youngest ages are centered on the central massif of the Olympic Mountains and progressively older ages in the surrounding lowlands. Unreset localities are generally found in coastal areas, indicating relatively little exhumation there. Using a stratigraphically coordinated suite of apatite fission-track ages, we estimate that prior to the start of exhumation, the base of the fluorapatite partial annealing zone was located at ∼100 °C and ∼4.7 km depth. The temperature gradient at that time was 19.6 ± 4.4 °C/km, similar to the modern gradient in adjacent parts of the Cascadia forearc high.

Apatite and previously published zircon fission-track data are used to determine the exhumation history of the central massif. Sedimentary rocks exposed there were initially accreted during late Oligocene and early Miocene time at depths of 12.1–14.5 km and temperatures of ∼242–289 °C. Exhumation began at ca. 18 Ma. A rock currently at the local mean elevation of the central massif (1204 m) would have moved through the alpha-damaged zircon closure temperature at about 13.7 Ma and ∼10.0 km depth, and through the fluorapatite closure temperature at about 6.7 Ma and ∼4.4 km depth. On the basis of age-elevation trends and paired cooling ages, we find that the exhumation rate in the central massif has remained fairly constant, ∼0.75 km/m.y., since at least 14 Ma. Apatite fission-track data are used to construct a contour map of long-term exhumation rates for the Olympic Peninsula. The average rate for the entire peninsula is ∼0.28 km/m.y., which is comparable with modern erosion rates (0.18 to 0.32 km/m.y.) estimated from sediment yield data for two major rivers of the Olympic Mountains.

We show that exhumation of this part of the Cascadia forearc high has been dominated by erosion and not by extensional faulting. Topography and erosion appear to have been sustained by continued accretion and thickening within the underlying Cascadia accretionary wedge. The rivers that drain the modern Olympic Mountains indicate that most of the eroded sediment is transported into the Pacific Ocean, where it is recycled back into the accretionary wedge, either by tectonic accretion or by sedimentary accumulation in shelf and slope basins. The influx of accreted sediments is shown to be similar to the outflux of eroded sediment, indicating that the Olympic segment of the Cascadia margin is currently close to a topographic steady state. The record provided by our fission-track data, of a steady exhumation rate for the central massif area since 14 Ma, suggests that this topographic steady state developed within several million years after initial emergence of the forearc high.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Few things seem to us as natural as the multiplicity of vernacular languages that different peoples use for making sense of life through texts, that is, for making literature. And few things seem as unnatural as their abandonment and gradual disappearance in the present. In fact, literary language loss is often viewed as part of a more general reduction of cultural diversity, one considered as dangerous as the reduction of biological diversity to which it is often compared. The homogenization of culture today, of which language loss is one aspect, seems without precedent in human history, at least for the scope, speed, and manner in which changes are taking place.

This commonsense view of the world needs two important qualifications. First, the vernacular ways of being that we see vanishing everywhere were themselves created over time. These are not primeval ways of autochthons, for autochthons (like the Spartoi of Thebes, "the sown people" born from the dragon teeth planted by Cadmus) do not exist outside their own mythical self-representation. Second, by the very fact of their creation, the new vernaculars replaced a range of much older cultural practices. These earlier practices, which seemed to belong to everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, affiliated their users to a larger world rather than a smaller place. They were, in a sense to be argued out in this essay, cosmopolitan practices. These great transformations in the course of the last two millennia -- from the old cosmopolitan to the vernacular, and from the vernacular to the new and disquieting cosmopolitan of today -- resulted from choices made by people at different times and places, for very complex reasons. Studying the history of such choices may have something important, perhaps even urgent, to tell us about choices available to us in the future.

In earlier work I have studied the period following the old cosmopolitan epoch, which I called thevernacular millennium. This began in southern Asia and western Europe with remarkable simultaneity in the early second millennium, and it developed with equally striking parallels over the following five centuries. I say "began" emphatically: vernacular literary cultures were initiated by the conscious decisions of writers to reshape the boundaries of their cultural universe by renouncing the larger world for the smaller place, and they did so in full awareness of the significance of their decision. New, local ways of making culture -- with their wholly historical and factitious local identities -- and, concomitantly, new ways of ordering society and polity came into being, replacing the older translocalism. These developments in culture and power are historically linked, at the very least by the fact that using a new language for communicating literarily to a community of readers and listeners can consolidate if not create that very community, as both a sociotextual and a political formation.

While the literary-cultural processes of this reshaping are remarkably similar in southern Asia and western Europe, the political logics they followed appear to have differed fundamentally. In Europe, vernacularization accompanied and enabled the production of the nation-state; in India, it accompanied and enabled the production of a political form we may neutrally call the vernacular polity, in order to signal its difference. In both worlds, however, vernacularization helped initiate an early-modern era, each again marked by its specific type of modernity. And it is only now for the first time, when this epoch seems to be drawing to a close as vernacular modes of cultural and political being are everywhere coming under powerful pressures from an altogether new universalizing order of culture-power (call it globalization, or liberalization, or Americanization), that we may begin to conceive of this past history as a whole and make some sense of it for cultural and political theory.

I would like here to elaborate on these earlier arguments by situating the vernacular millennium within a comparative-historical account of the cosmopolitanisms that preceded it. These, too, comprised forms of identity that reveal themselves as produced and entirely provisional; they are located securely in time and in the choices made by the producers of culture...

Voices of Hindutva: Creating and Exploiting Religious Binarie

Voices of Hindutva:
Creating and Exploiting Religious Binarie

This article is being published under a pseudonym, as the author fears that he would otherwise risk physical
injury. Though as a general policy the Journal of Inter­Religious Dialogue™ discourages the use of pseudonyms as
a potential hindrance to open and direct dialogue, it has made an exception due to the special circumstances of
the author and the desire to broaden the scope of dialogue to include more challenging topics to discuss.
Abstract
In 2002, Gujarat, India experienced a traumatizing episode of communal violence in which
Muslims, a religious minority, were actively targeted. It is widely believed that the state
government, run and influenced by extreme Hindu Nationalist (Hindutva) groups, may be
partly responsible for this. Although the extent of their logistical involvement is debated,
the rhetoric of many Hindutva organizations creates and demonizes a religious other. In
contrast to the majority of Hindus and the majority of Indians, leaders of a number of
Hindutva elements use language that creates pervasive religious binaries, which are
instrumental in the recurrence of violence. The political success of Hindutva groups in
Gujarat may therefore complicate peace‐building efforts, as illustrated by the dynamics of
responses by local non‐governmental organizations (NGO’s) to the violence.
On February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindutva volunteers caught fire in the town
of Godhra, killing 55‐60 pilgrims inside one coach. Although various reasons have been
cited, including arson by a Muslim mob, the cause of the fire is still debated. The very next
day, communal riots erupted in the city of Ahmedabad and in some villages around the
state. The United States Government estimates that by the end of the period of rioting,
2,000 people were killed and 100,000 were displaced and moved to relief camps
(“International Religious Freedom”). Humanitarian organizations claim that up to 2,500
were killed and 140,000 were displaced (Parker 2008). These riots have been called
“pogroms” by professionals from various fields, including scholars such as Steven
Wilkinson (2005, 3) and Paul Brass (2003, 390), because of the highly disproportionate
number of Muslim casualties.
Allegations of governmental involvement are directed at the Sangh Parivar, a closely
linked family of organizations that promotes an extreme Hindu nationalist ideology called
Hindutva. Through its many branches, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishva
Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the Bajrang Dal, Hindutva ideology plays a significant role in
arenas as diverse as politics, education, youth organization, social mobilization, and even
paramilitary training. However, it is crucial to distinguish between Hindutva and Hindu,
because only a minority of Hindus and a minority of Indians support the ideology itself.
This piece is not intended as a polemic against Hindus, the vast majority of whom embrace
peaceful and tolerant belief systems. Rather, it uses the 2002 Gujarat Riots as a case study
to show how a well‐organized group can systematically wield rhetoric and political power
to establish a religious “other” and, arguably, call for violence.
Few dispute that Hindu‐Muslim riots yield tangible political gains for these Sangh
Parivar organizations (Brass 2003, 6). Their repeated democratic election, both in and
beyond Gujarat, may be construed as evidence of the effectiveness of their incendiary
rhetoric. But the link between their rhetoric and recurring communal violence has yet to be
widely appreciated. Notwithstanding their exact level of involvement in the 2002 Riots,
which is still being examined and debated, the messages put forth by Hindutva leaders
exaggerate two binaries: Hinduism versus Islam, and Hindus versus Muslims. This paper
seeks to demonstrate that these reified categories are then exploited to issue calls for inter‐
religious violence.
The first binary reified by Hindutva organizations is that of Hinduism versus Islam.
In an interview, the notorious VHP leader, Praveen Togadia, described Islam as having an
“exclusively totalitarian system (“We, Hindus and…”).” With help from madrasas in
spreading its fundamentalist ideologies, Islam encourages violent jihad and the killing of
non‐Muslims. In contrast, Togadia proclaims that “Hinduism is synonymous with harmony
(Ibid).” After creating this binary, he calls Islam’s intolerant ideologies the root of the
problem (Ibid).  Praveen Togadia, having since been accused of participating in the riots
himself, is a high ranking official in the VHP, which the U.S. State Department cites as an
“extremist” organization that has instigated violence (Swami, “International Religious
Freedom,” Rajghatta).