Dwelling on Darwin
A radical insight into the ‘evolution’ of the man himself…

(column by Namit Sharma)

Few are the names that could stake a claim to being as universally illustrious in the history of biological science than Charles Robert Darwin. Fewer conjectures stand taller than the Theory of Evolution, textbook literature no student could deny having pored over in education, that remains to constitute fodder for thought and subject of controversy the world over even today, nearly a century and a half after its manifestation in Darwin’s legendary publication, The Origin of the Species. Cutting a swathe through cumbersome chronicles previously scripted on Darwin, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin is David Quammen’s succinct narrative of the self-educated scientist’s life and times, and events from the instant he trudged down the HMS Beagle, to his last breath in 1882. The upshot of his famed voyage to South America, the Pacific Islands and Australia was the ultimate anthology of species coupled with unparalleled insight into their variance by region, quite truly termed the classic building blocks for the building block that is life itself. And although the culmination of his epic journey infused within him the definitive conviction that it was indeed the process of transmutation (the nomenclature accorded to evolution during the period), which resulted in one species ‘transforming’ into another, Darwin let his beliefs lie dormant on the shelf for more than a decade for fear of being regarded as sacrilegious and shameful science, as the order prevailed back then.

Quammen clears the air on the very cradle of the theory of evolution, and reinforces the reality that Darwin was not, in fact, the first to hypothesise on this feasibility. Rather, this brilliant architect’s accomplishments leaned more towards fathoming the means enabling evolution, a channel better known as ‘natural selection,’ which implies greater probability of organisms with favourable traits surviving and developing, with passage of time leading to heritable elements of traits attaching themselves with the next generation and therefore, evolution. Imagine then, as the author reveals, Darwin’s fl abbergasted bearings when he learnt in 1858 that Alfred Russel Wallace, another autonomous researcher, had claimed to unlock similar keys to life’s secrets! Competitive spirit, as it emerges from The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, fuelled Darwin to cast away all reluctance and procrastination, as he swung into overdrive to publish his disclosures on mankind’s beginnings. Refreshing, coherent, dramatic in prose and not academic in style, in stark contrast to earlier works on the genius, Quammen also brings to ‘life’, so to speak, Darwin the individual, with all his weaknesses and conflicts.

We learn that the death of his ten-year old daughter was the final straw that broke his faith in God, and Darwin’s reclusive existence was not just because of scientific prototypicality but more perhaps, as the author explains, due to a bizarre syndrome that caused him to vomit excessively, more so in company. Far from being the blasphemous Satanlike fi gure or the patronising haranguer he is often perceived to be, Charles Darwin was, like the rest of us, merely mortal, and his ground-breaking revelations are marvellously paradoxical to his intensely chary deportment. A word of caution though; vivid and terse as the account may be, consummate it is not by any gauge, and several essentials of Darwin’s travails are conspicuous in their absence. Even so, as controversy on the birth of life rages till date with ‘evolutionists’ and ‘creationists’ contesting each other's trains of thought, and opinions within themselves to boot, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin is a befitting cenotaph to a legacy that will endure no matter the measure of evolution humanity finally achieves…

(End of Namit Sharma column)

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A few weeks of war & an eternity of hatred
US & Israel must abandon their rejectionist stance to make peace with Palestine

(column by Noam Chomsky, Professor, Massachusetts, Institute of Technology)

In Lebanon, a little-honoured truce remains in effect – yet another in a decades- long series of cease-fires between Israel and its adversaries in a cycle that, as if inevitably, returns to warfare, carnage and human misery. Let’s describe the current crisis for what it is: A US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with only a cynical pretense to legitimacy. Amidst all the charges and countercharges, the most immediate factor behind the assault is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is hardly the first time that Israel has invaded Lebanon to eliminate an alleged threat. The most important of the US-backed Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1982, was widely described in Israel as a war for the West Bank. It was undertaken to end the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s annoying calls for a diplomatic settlement. Despite many different circumstances, the July invasion falls into the same pattern. What would break the cycle? The basic outlines of a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict are familiar, and have been supported by a broad international consensus for 30 years: A two-state settlement on the international border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments.

The Arab states formally accepted this proposal in 2002, as the Palestinians had, long before. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that though this solution is not Hezbollah’s preference, they will not disrupt it. Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei recently reaffirmed that Iran, too, supports this settlement. Hamas has indicated clearly that it is prepared to negotiate for a settlement on these terms as well. The United States and Israel continue to block this political settlement, as they have done for 30 years, with brief and inconsequential exceptions. Denial may be preferred at home, but the victims do not enjoy that luxury. US-Israeli rejectionism is not only in words, but more important, in actions. With decisive US backing, Israel has been formalizing its program of annexation, dismemberment of shrinking Palestinian territories and imprisonment of what remains by taking over the Jordan Valley – the “convergence” program that is, astonishingly, called “courageous withdrawal” in the United States. As a consequence, the Palestinians are facing national destruction.

The most meaningful support for Palestinians is from Hezbollah, which was formed in reaction to the 1982 invasion. Hezbollah won considerable prestige by leading the effort to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Also, like other Islamic movements, including Hamas, Hezbollah has gained popular support by providing social services to the poor. To US and Israeli planners, it therefore follows that Hezbollah must be severely weakened or destroyed – just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hezbollah is so deeply embedded within Lebanese society that it cannot really be eradicated without destroying much of Lebanon as well – hence the scale of the attack on the country’s population and infrastructure. In keeping with a very familiar pattern, the aggression is sharply increasing the support for the Hezbollah, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds beyond, but also in Lebanon itself. Late last month, polls have revealed alarmingly that around 87% of the Lebanese support Hezbollah’s resistance against the invasion, including 80% of Christians and Druze.

Even the Maronite Catholic patriarch, the spiritual leader of the most pro-Western sector in Lebanon, joined the Sunni and Shiite religious leaders in a statement condemning the “aggression” and hailing “the resistance, mainly led by Hezbollah.” The poll also found that 90% of the Lebanese regard the United States as being “complicit in Israel’s war crimes against the Lebanese people.” Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Lebanon’s leading academic scholar on Hezbollah, observes that “these findings are all the more significant when compared to the results of a similar survey conducted just five months ago, which showed that only 58% of all Lebanese believed Hezbollah had the right to remain armed, and hence, continue its resistance activity.” The dynamics are pretty familiar. Rami G. Khouri, an editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, writes that “the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel’s persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services.”

Such popular parallel forces will only gain in power and become more extremist if the United States and Israel persist in demolishing any remaining hopes of Palestinian national rights, and in destroying Lebanon. In the current crisis, even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington’s oldest (and most important) ally in the region, was compelled to say, “If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.” It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hezbollah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did. Israeli writer Uri Avnery observed that Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, former air force commander, “views the world below through a bombsight.”

Much the same is true of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice and other top Bush administration planners. As history reveals, that view of the world is not at all uncommon among those powers who wield most of the means of violence. Saad-Ghorayeb describes the current in the Middle East as violence in “apocalyptic terms,” also warning that possibly “all hell would be let loose” if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which “the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer.” The core issue – the Israel-Palestine conflict – can be dealt with by diplomacy, if the United States and Israel endeavour to abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in “apocalyptic terms.”

(End of Noam Chomsky column)