twocodes.net

Method

How we tag, and how to hold us to it

This site argues a thesis — that India has run on two competing legal codes for the same society — but it tries to earn agreement rather than assert it. That only works if the standard of evidence is the same in every direction. This page is the standard. If we break it, this page is what you use against us.

The three credibility tags

Every historical or contested claim on the site carries one visible chip. The chip is a promise about where the claim comes from — not about whether we like it.

[Documented]
Supported by primary sources, court records, or scholarly consensus. Constitutional articles, statutes, and court holdings are always Documented and may be quoted verbatim — they are public record.
[Tradition]
Asserted by religious or community tradition, but not independently established. We report the assertion as a tradition, not as fact.
[Debated]
Genuinely contested among historians. We present the dispute, not a verdict. A Debated tag is not a hedge — it is an accurate description of the state of the evidence.

We never invent a verse number

The Manusmṛti and related Dharmaśāstra texts exist in several recensions and translations, and verse numbering varies between them. Where we describe an old-code provision but have not yet confirmed the exact verse against a scholarly translation — Bühler (1886, public domain) or Olivelle — we withhold the number and show a “citation pending verification” badge instead. The substance is documented; the precise reference is not yet locked. Every such item is listed in the build report so the owner can clear it. We would rather show you an honest gap than a confident fabrication.

Check it yourself

Don't take our word for any of it. Every old-code claim on this site is quoted from a public-domain translation that is free to read online — so you can look up the exact verse yourself and check that it says what we say it says. Here is where to read each source. If you find we have misquoted or misused one, tell us and we will fix it in public. That offer is the point: this site is built to be checked.

The falsifiability promise. If you look up any verse we cite and find we have misquoted it, bent its meaning, or given the wrong reference, that is a bug and we will correct it openly. We would rather be corrected than be wrong. The one thing we will not accept as a rebuttal is an attack on the translator or the historian instead of the text — read the verse, and argue with the verse.

A surname is not a caste

The wizard begins with a surname only because that is how people search — never because a name determines anything. The same surname appears across different communities by region and history; “Gupta” is a Vaishya (merchant) title, not a Brahmin one; “Naidu” spans more than one community. The surname caveat is permanent interface, shown at the disambiguation step and again on the result — not a footnote. The wizard never auto-assigns a caste from a name.

What we quote, and what we only point to

Constitutional text, statutes, court holdings, and public-domain translations (Bühler’s Manu, Raverty’s Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī, Gandhi’s Collected Works, the BAWS volumes) may be quoted. Copyrighted secondary works — Jha, Olivelle, Jaffrelot, Guha, Keer, Mukerjee and others — are listed on Sources and linked, but never reproduced. We paraphrase briefly and send you to the original. An activist poster is a claim-artifact, not a source: we may use it to know what people are saying, but we cite the actual words and the actual verified reference, never the poster.

Amendment is not disinformation

The Constitution is amendable by design (Article 368), and has been amended more than a hundred times. Lawful amendment is the system working, not sabotage — we keep it on a separate shelf from disinformation, which is our actual target: false claims about what the Constitution says or who wrote it. And we say plainly that some amendments are themselves genuinely contested — the 103rd (EWS) among them. That nuance is a myth-buster in its own right, not a weakness.

The genetics stance — three tracks, never one arrow

The three-track rule. Genes, language, and caste are three separate tracks. We never collapse them into one arrow. We say migration, not the colonial invasion. A Y-haplogroup is not a caste and not a race. Even where a statistical gradient exists — steppe ancestry runs somewhat higher in some upper-caste groups — a correlation is not an origin story.

And the irony sits at the centre of this site: Ambedkar himself rejected the Aryan-race theory of caste (Who Were the Shudras?, 1946). An Ambedkar-centred site that imported a “foreign invader = upper caste” genetic story would contradict its own protagonist. This note sits beside every genetics claim on Deep time.

We correct our own side too

A site that only corrects the myths it dislikes is itself a misinformation vector. Correcting our own side is what makes correcting the other side credible. So, one correction that cuts against this site’s likely sympathies:

[Debated]   “Nine million books were burned at Nalanda.”

Nalanda was a Buddhist mahavihara, and its destruction around 1193 CE is mainstream history, attributed to Bakhtiyar Khalji’s forces — that much is not a fabrication. But the “9 million manuscripts” figure is legendary and unverifiable, and circulates mainly in sensational retellings. We keep the documented event and drop the inflated number. Other examples we hold to the same standard: the wrong colonial-reform dates (Indian slavery abolished 1843, not 1807; child-marriage restraint is the Sarda Act 1929, not the 1891 consent act), the “all these castes were once untouchable” flattening, and the “DNA proves the upper castes are foreign invaders” overreach. See Record vs Rumor.

Every correction we hold ourselves to now lives in one open, dated ledger — the corrections log →

Tone

We state law and history. We do not editorialise about political parties, and we try never to tell you what to conclude. The record goes in the foreground; the verdict is yours. If a page reads like a verdict has been handed to you, that is a bug — report it.