The Butterfly Effects behind some of the big events that have taken place in the history of mankind

In common parlance, the phenomenon of an insignificant change in something making a major shift in something else is known as “Butterfly Effect”.

For instance, though most of us are happy to know how to play chess; many others were not satisfied to simply know how to play chess. They also wanted to know who should have developed such a game and what should have motivated them to have developed such a royal game.

It makes an interesting study to find out that this game should have been invented by the kings who had been told by Lord Buddha that it would be better for them to live in peace rather than keep on fighting with swords on the battlefields resulting in so much bloodshed with so many casualties.

Actually, fighting with each other was a pastime for most of the kings, during those days.

Though they assured Lord Buddha that they would not fight with each other and they, even, stopped fighting on the regular elephants, regular horses and regular camels with real swords; they gave their real pastime of fighting the shape of a game that came to be known as “Chess”, eventually.

So we may call the evolution of the game “Chess” by the kings as the “Butterfly Effect” of having been advised to do not fight with each other.

Naturally, only kings could have evolved such a game as “Chess” — not the type of games the farmers or the bar-dancers would have evolved.

So, now, you know how the game of Chess should have been invented.

If Lord Buddha would not have asked them to stop fighting in the battlefields, perhaps, they would have never invented this game.

There are so many other big things that have happened on the Earth in the history of mankind which may be also labelled as “Butterfly Effects” of some very cute things — we may not be much aware of, though one has to go deep enough to dig out what may have been such cute things the way Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins the authors of the book “Freedom at Midnight” went through to have found that what happened on the day India got freedom, was simply a “Butterfly Effect” of some very insignificant things that should have happened in the past.

The cute things that had happened in the past, of which, the division of the pre-independence India is supposed to have been a “Butterfly Effect” according to the authors of “Freedom at Midnight”

It was the midnight of August 15, 1947, when twelve million people had to flee from their hometowns of Punjab (that had been earmarked to be named as “Pakistan”) and around two million of them had been mercilessly butchered by the same people who used to share their daily bread and ancestry with them until this gruesome day, when India got its freedom.

It was one of the bloodiest midnights in the world-history that should have occurred ever.

They traced back the link of the division of the country to the denial of the Hindu priests to allow Premjibhai Meghji Thakkar the grandfather of Muhammad Ali Jinnah to, once again, be considered as a “Hindu” after his having adopted Islam as his religion.

Though he was a staunch Hindu, belonging to Kathiawar (Gujarat), he had been ostracized from his vegetarian Lohana caste because he was in the “Fish Business” since their customs did not allow anybody to catch the fish for being sold in the market.

Though, he discontinued the fish business expecting their community would revoke his ostracism from the caste; he was not allowed to do so because of the huge egos of the self-proclaimed guardians of the Hindu religion.

Consequently, his son Punjalal Thakkar (the father of Jinnah) and his family embraced Islam as their religion.

This was not the first incident when the Hindu priests had disallowed a Hindu to revert his religion as in this case.

When Islamic invasion began in India in the 12th century, many Hindus who had been branded dharma-bhrashtas (who violated the tenets of the Hindu religion) and had been ostracized on such issues as drinking the water from the ponds in which Muslims used to take bath or for going to places outside India, had embraced Islam as their religion, just like them.

Though many Indian Muslims are aware that their ancestors were Hindus, they don’t want to accept their Hindu ancestry because of the humiliation faced by their predecessors at the hands of such priests.

If Jinnah’s grandfather would have been allowed to come back to his caste and religion, Jinnah would have remained a Hindu, and he won’t have used his genius in creating a new country for Muslims.

So according to them, the creation of a new country was a “Butterfly Effect” of the stubborn attitude of the Hindu priests.

Secondly, in 1929, Jinnah’s wife, Rattanbai Petit, died due to a digestive disorder. He was so devastated at her death that he moved to London where he tried to wash out his misery by moving to an extra-huge house, playing billiards and leading an extravagant life.

But things took a drastic turn when his arch-rival, Jawahar Lal Nehru passed a rude comment on him in a private dinner party that “He was finished”.

It hurt Jinnah so much that he packed up his baggage and headed back to India with the intent to “showdown Nehru”.

He firmed up the Muslim League and transformed it from a scattered band of eccentrics to the second most powerful political party of India.

According to them, if Nehru wouldn’t have passed such remark on him, Jinnah would have stayed in London, Muslim League won’t have become so powerful and India might have remained united as before the partition.

The firming up of the Muslim League is also regarded as a “Butterfly Effect” of the remark passed by the Nehru in the dinner party.

Just one year before the partition and the independence of India, Jinnah’s doctor, Dr J. A. L. Patel discovered something in the X-ray report of Jinnah which could have destroyed his gigantic efforts to create Pakistan.

Dr Patel discovered that Jinnah was suffering from Tuberculosis which left him only two or three years to live at most. He pushed Mountbatten for a speedy freedom and partition of India to make sure he made the mark in history before he died. The secret of Jinnah’s disease and imminent death stayed between him and his doctor, ensuring the bloody historical event.

That grey film had the secret that could have blocked the partition but it was stopped from coming out by a Hindu doctor who thought his professional ethics was more important than the lives of millions. Had this report become public knowledge, it could have upset the Indian political equation and would have almost changed the course of history.

Gandhi and Mountbatten might have delayed the independence of India to let the gentleman die and avoid the partition.

So they regard the partition of the country also as a “Butterfly Effect” of the nondisclosure of the disease by the doctor of Jinnah.

It reminds us of the dialogue “What we do in life, echoes in eternity” of the main character, Maximus in the blockbuster movie “Gladiator”.

We have no idea what eternal effect can come even from something very insignificant — we may be doing today.

Jinnah’s grandfather would have never thought that his decision to go into fish business would have impacted the lives of millions of people, a century onward.Top of Form

Next, let us look into the cute things that should have compelled the Brahmins of our country India) to have invented Astrology.

The Butterfly Effect behind the invention of Astrology

The butterfly effect that should have been behind the invention of astrology is the same as the butterfly effect behind the historians having named the emperor Jalaluddin Akbar as “Akbar the Great”.

They so named him out of the fear that they would be beheaded if they would not name him as “Akbar the Great”, even though he got more than a lac of the Hindus beheaded just because they declined to adopt Islam as their religion.

Astrology got developed, more or less, due to such fear only.

In the past, everybody thought of the Brahmins as the community that was so learned that they could tell anything they were asked by anyone.

So, whenever a prince was born in a royal family in India, they would call their Raj Purohit (the Brahmin engaged by the royal families during the days of yore for performing all spiritual rites in their kingdoms) to tell them what sort of events they could expect to happen in the life of their prince-children.

We may call such a thing like the proverbial lizard in the mouth they could have neither swallowed nor could have vomited in front of their Yajmans (the kings).

At the same time, they did not like that the public should have stripped them of the “prestige of being omniscient” by telling them that they couldn’t have told anything about the future life of the princes.

So, perforce, they had to develop some system to appease their lords out of the fear that if they declined — they could have punished them by ousting them from their kingdoms.

Surely, they would have never developed astrology if it should have not been necessary for them to save their skin.

The Butterfly Effect that forced the Brits to send Macaulay to India to study and propose the way of letting Indians start disparaging their precious legacy

Having realized that the Mughals had failed to impose their religion on the natives of India, they sent Thomas Babington Macaulay as their missionary to study why the Indians so adamantly adhered to their own culture and propose how they should have ensured that they started hating their own culture in favour of adopting Christianity as their staple religion.

The evolution of the concept that such a thing could be achieved only by shutting down all the Gurukul Schools where they taught Sanskrit and asking them to learn English by alluring them that if they learnt English, they would be given high posts at the administrative level (ICS) — a plan that got recognised as a masterstroke of Macaulay by the British Government.

Though the British Government thought that the changeover of the mode of education from Sanskrit to English as the “Butterfly Effect” of his plan; actually, we should regard the ability of the English language to have emerged as a link-language that keeps the people of all the states of the country, which have so diverse languages of their own — united, as the real “Butterfly Effect”.