Editor,
The unprovoked assault on innocent non-tribal persons in the heart of Shillong that too just opposite a police station speaks volume of the status of minority community in Meghalaya even after half century of its existence. The attack is nothing but an organized and pre- planned one just to convey the message that minorities have to bear such violence in the coming days as well. Legacy of such hate crimes is continuing for over forty years with the tacit support of the Police, administration and civil society. No doubt there will be feeble ‘strong condemnation’ from few persons and the Police will try to catch the ‘miscreants’ or ‘misguided youths’ without any result. I therefore, urge the minority populace of Meghalaya to reconcile to the fact that if they are to stay in Meghalaya they have to bear such assaults and violence at regular intervals as they have experienced all these years without any qualms and not to expect any justice from the administration or solidarity from the civil society.
Yours etc.,
D. Bhattacharjee
Shillong-1
Austrics migration- a scientific approach
Editor,
Apropos Gary Marbaniang’s “Case of illogical conclusions” (ST January 20, 2022), the question of localising the Austro-Asiatic (AA) homeland is a crucial and an increasingly topical one for scholars. Gary’s argument that there are no records or evidence of the migration of the Austro-Asiatic (Austrics) from China and the AA language family who are now settled in Meghalaya migrated from mainland India, is not based on available prehistoric, Linguistic and Biological evidence. Hence the veracity of this claim is in question.
The original homeland of the Austrics is taken by many scholars to be somewhere near about northern Indo-China near the Mekong River, while some locate it in Siberia. Since the 1990s there has been a resurgence of interest in AA linguistics and the homeland question. Linguistic, archaeological, and classical genetic marker studies suggested two possible routes of migration of the Austro-Asiatic into the Indian Subcontinent; the first, trace the migratory routes from Africa to India via Central Asia, while the second route is from Africa to Northeast Asia (China included in the region). Genetic markers seem to corroborate the aforesaid view. One of the Y-chromosome studies conducted by a researcher of Anthropology and Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata suggest that the sister-clade of haplogroup O-M175 i.e N-LLY22g is confined only to Northeast Asia including Russia and Siberia, and is absent or found in negligibly low frequency in Central, South and Southeast Asia. Presently, results of the genetic marker studies are widely received and accepted in tracing the origin and historic expansion of the Indian Austro-Asiatic group.
Looking forward, I wish that more research emerges from these dynamic research areas.
Yours etc.,
Dr Omarlin Kyndiah
Associate Professor, Biochemistry
St. Edmund’s College,
Shillong
Some facts about Covid 19
Editor,
We live in a world where – due to increasing censorship – the truth is hard to find. So here are some facts about this so-called “pandemic”:
First, the official Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of COVID-19 according to the United Kingdom government is 0,096 percent or if we round up, 0.1 percent. That means about 99.9 percent of people who get the virus survive! Most people who die from COVID-19 are over the age of 80 and would likely have died anyway from natural causes or another disease within a few months or years (that is a simple fact, though it might seem harsh).
Second, lockdowns were never tried before in human history because it was acknowledged the economic costs are too high. No scientific paper published between 1900 to 2019 recommended mass scale lockdowns. The published pandemic plans of the world’s major economies did not include anything about lockdowns for flu-like viruses. For example, the World Health Organisation in 2019 advised against lockdowns and border closures. That, of course, was before the corruption of science that has occurred in recent times.
Saving one grandma should not come at the expense of killing young people through lockdowns. Lockdowns have killed at least two million people globally. Professor Ramesh Thakur of Australian National University notes that lockdowns have probably killed more people than the virus. Lockdowns cause more COVID-19 deaths because they herd people indoors and thereby suppress their immune systems by preventing access to sunshine (vitamin D) and to exercise (by closing gyms). Look up Sweden or South Dakota – neither of which had lockdowns or mandatory masks – but are now outperforming other nearby jurisdictions with respect to COVID-19 deaths.
The fact that the Indian Government failed to provide enough hospital facilities for COVID-19 patients has made the virus seem worse than it is. Blame India’s pathetic government-run and funded healthcare system, not a mild virus. Nearly one million scientists have signed a petition called the Great Barrington Declaration, opposing pseudo-public health measures.
Yours etc.,
Sukrit Sabhlok
New South Wales, Australia