The Future Is Another Country: 2050 And Beyond

Urstruly,

Please give straight answers to the questions provided and have the self respect to acknowledge the larger implications of your answers. You have not answered any of the questions posed to you in a straight manner, and instead have based them on premises that you have not yet proven.

Zahra left Chowk after your friend 12 Head wrote responded to one of her posts in a characteristically psychopathic manner. Perhaps you might remember that both you, Dost Mittar and Zafar expressed sympathy for her. Again, Zafar has always acted in a respectful and intelligent manner towards the women interactors. If he has been responding to the tenor of some of the hate posts that Afaqui and 12 Head have been posted, it is because all of us can only put up with so much garbage...I again reiterate that the Indian and Hindu interactors on Chowk have been generally quite pleasant, unlike certain Muslim Pakistani interactors. I would urge you to look carefully and seriously at some of the ways in which you write about Hindus on this website.

Ref Urstruly #: 407

[I dont know why I wrote this and spent 5 minutes for a aadha hindu like yourself who deserves a kick on the behind in fact, but I did. I do beleive that people who take pride in advance sciences like rocket propelled monkeys and medical sciences like elephant head tranplants are capable of better common sense. Or are they?]

Now what is your problem? Are you mad that the Americans sent a chimpanzee into space when you were available for the experiment?

Ref rsridhar #: 403

Not only Buddhism but Jainism was also prevalent in South India. Legend says that the Shaivite saint Appar cured a Pandya king of his incurable stomach ailment and converted him from Jainism back to Hinduism.

The fact that the Jain monks then were burnt alive in a kiln by the king for their false religion is a totally redundant corollary!

Ref Kim #: 418

[The Sooo nice Hindu who have no words like ``kulta`` Vaishya ,Whose RAM suspected his wife Sita to make her walk on Fire (agni Parikhsha)& Lakhsman REkha not to go beyond which Still not satified banned his pregnant wife who was taken care with his 2 sons by Valmiki ...]

What a pathetic idiot. If you read the Ramayan {and the Mahabharat) and try to understand the underlying messages, you will understand that these myths show what dilemmas human beings face and how they resolve them to the best of their abilities and not necessarily always in a manner that is perfect; that even gods have this problem and so the best one can do is to be as just as possible and get on with life.

As regards the ordeal by fire that Sita underwent after returning from Lanka, Ram asked her to undergo the ordeal to prove to the public that she was chaste. After all, she had been away from Ram for a long time and the citizens of Ayodhya could question her claim to become their queen.

The Lakshman Rekha, the line in the sand drawn by Ram, was for Sita`s protection. Chasing after the Golden Deer for Sita, Ram had left Lakshman behind to protect Sita. It was Lakshman, upon being urged by Sita to go look for Ram, who draws the line and asks Sita not to cross it. The story goes that Ravan was unable to cross that line himself and entices Sita out from protection by promising to take her to Ram.

Again, Sita`s exile to the forest is occasioned by a comment of a commoner who tells his wife that unlike Ram, he won`t take an unfaithful wife back into his home.

In all cases, you look at the impossible situation in which people are placed and see how they resolve it to the best of their ability in line with contemporaneous mores.

[Yes Samina shah you have to see real Hindu to know Misogyny ....christians of course invented all the perversions with women not passable by Chowk censor to mention.]

The fact that you say this means you merely justify the misogyny of Islam, enshrined in the Koran and practiced for the last 1400 years. Why do you need such a justification? Just go on being misogynistic. We can handle that. Anyway, I don`t think that the illiterate trader Muhammad, later to become your prophet-to-end-all-prophets, had read up on the Ramayan or the Bible to become misogynistic. He was a misogynist all on his own and did not need any outside help.

Mr. Aadh hindu

``Perhaps you should try another approach?``

And that approach definitely is not gonna be semantics. Whether one dog chases its tail or two chasing each others-it gets them nowhere.

Thank you.

Shammi

What is your pre-determined answer. I said I was all ears.

responses to pow@hindustantimes.com please

On January 26, Hindustan Times launched a six-week-long people`s campaign to lobby for the release of the 1971 Indian Prisoners of War in Pakistan.

During a meeting at our Delhi office recently, we had the opportunity to talk to the relatives of the missing soldiers. After hearing them, we could only wonder at the insensitivity of successive governments in deserting these soldiers, and leaving their dependents to continue the fight to free their kin from the enemy!

Mr BS Suri talked of his father RS Suri`s struggle to find his missing son: ``For 30 years my father climbed the steps of the Defence Ministry and the MEA to meet and press officials to take up his son Major AK Suri`s case. Many times he knocked on the doors of political leaders. He even made countless trips to the Indo-Pak border to meet the soldiers serving there... No avail. Last year, he died at the age of 85...hoping to the last for his son`s freedom.``

Mrs Damayanti Tambay - She had been married just over a year when her husband Flt Lt Vijay Vasant Tambay went to war. He never returned. Later, she read in a Pakistani newspaper that the enemy had taken him prisoner. Since then it has been an unrelenting fight to find and free her husband. She told one of our scribes: ``Tees saal se bas intezaar ki ladai lad rahin hun...! Kuch aasan nahi tha. Bhook mitane ke liye kaam bhi karna tha; swabhiman aur izzat se rehna tha...Sarkar ex-gratia dekar case band karana chahti thi...Mein nahin mani.`` (I have waited for 30 years! It`s not been easy... The government wanted to give an ex-gratia and close the case... I refused to give in.)

When we heard of her we realized what it is to be an Indian woman. Had it been any country other than India, a woman in a similar situation would have waited a year, found herself another man and set up a home with him. But there is Damayanti Tambay...a brave wife of an Indian soldier. (Indeed, when she came for the meeting, we had the honour of introducing her as an Indian woman.)

These and other such stories of fortitude fly in the face of a nation whose governments let down its soldiers. Indeed, these are the stories that give us reasons to be optimistic for this country, whose proud citizens we all are...

Dear surfer, as we set out on this campaign, we hope and trust that among the hundreds of hands that will join with us, and the thousands of voices that will speak with us, a strong hand and a firm voice will be your own.

Editor (News)

HindustanTimes.com

Reply Urstruly # 401….(yawn)

[``Another interesting thing, none of the Hindu, Christian or Ahmedis on Chowk revert to this kind of name calling of women...its actually amusing in a sad kind of way...``

``PS I thought you’d appreciate a bit of your own medicine. How do you like the taste? Delicious, na? Excellent, excellent…I knew you`d be a good sport, Mr aadha pig.``

“Which means that our altalib is neither hindu, nor, christian, nor ahmedi or at least I am not a women.“]

Actually, I am not a Hindu, a Christian or an Ahmedi. And you are not a woman. What exactly is your point? Are you confused?

“[Q.1 Do you or dont you support and endorse the murder and intimidation of kashmiris by Muslim Militants from Pakistan?

“Ans. I am clearly against state sponsored violence and repression against civillians. Once again, retaliatory violence, in my opinion, serves little purpose.”

“Q.2 Do you or dont you suport and endorse the rape of Kashmiri women by Muslim Militants from Pakistan?”

“Ans. Obviously rape is an unacceptable crime, whether it is part of state sponsored violence or the act of a depraved individual….So Mr. Aadha Hindu, do you see how ridiculous the answers look with the bullshit that saminashah hurld towards me. (the answers are cut and paste of her replies).”]

Actually, the answers say that violence against, and repression of, civilians (one example of which is rape), are not acceptable under any circumstances. Something any decent human being should be able to agree with. You shouldn’t cut and paste things which you don’t understand, it makes you look silly.

“Suppose, I am a foreign militant fighting alongwith local militants against an oppresive army and government. The things that I need most in my operation will be: food, hideout, guidance as for where the targets are and how to get away after a hit, intelligence to plan and execute an ambush etc. For that I would need full cooperation of the local population. And I cannot get that by raping my hosts daughters and by murdering his sons, or can I?”

You give me good reasons for the Indian Army to treat the local population well. Following your logic, should we assume that they do, since it would be counterproductive to do otherwise?

“I dont know why I wrote this and spent 5 minutes for a aadha hindu like yourself who deserves a kick on the behind in fact…”

Oh dear, now you’re cross. (Too bad it’s a website, no?)

“…, but I did. I do beleive that people who take pride in advance sciences like rocket propelled monkeys and medical sciences like elephant head tranplants are capable of better common sense. Or are they?”

Sorry Mr Pork Chop, but you have to be clever to successfully condescend. Perhaps you should try another approach?

Kim #418 Congratulations! You are the latest, and it appears also the dumbest, head sprouted by Mr. Hydra-Man.

PS Length does not make a post more sensible or informative, nor do miles of cut-and-paste.

Re: Urstruly

``...What is alternative point of view? That murder of minority civilian using state apparatus is a valid instrument of governance? and rape is just a casualty of war?...``

That is my point -- what you stated above is the `mainstream` view of the Kashmiri dissidents. It is NOT the alternative view. So, even as you ask the right question, you find a pre-determined answer.

#415

Could have been a good article, why the heck did he have to bring Musharraf into the mix?

Redskin

I start from my own home first. Check at Debates forrum. And BTW I wrote it before your chitaooni.

Shammi.

Oh really. What is alternative point of view? That murder of minority civilian using state apparatus is a valid instrument of governance? and rape is just a casualty of war?

Please show me the alternative point of view-I am all ears, even though terribly bored.

#395/396 whatever

Saminashah

If you like Hindu,Christian ,Ahmedi so much why call yourself muslim.There is no compulsion in religion & to you your belief to me mine .

The Sooo nice Hindu who have no words like ``kulta`` Vaishya ,Whose RAM suspected his wife Sita to make her walk on Fire (agni Parikhsha)& Lakhsman REkha not to go beyond which Still not satified banned his pregnant wife who was taken care with his 2 sons by Valmiki ...Yes Samina shah you have to see real Hindu to know Misogyny ....christians of course invented all the perversions with women not passable by Chowk censor to mention.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1903/19031200.htm



Volume 19 - Issue 03, Feb. 02 - 15, 2002

India`s National Magazine

from the publishers of THE HINDU

Table of Contents COLUMN

Nationalism gone berserk

Nationalism gone berserk

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1903/19031200.htm

The growing hubris-driven, illiberal, intolerant nationalism in India falsifies and glorifies the country`s ``Hindu`` past. It is viscerally hostile to Pakistan, but servile to the United States.

HAVE Indians reached such a point of moral degeneration and self-brutalisation that plotting to assassinate Pakistan`s leaders becomes the ultimate test of ``patriotism`` for the country`s youth? A terrible story from Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, not far from Gwalior, suggests that this may be actually happening. This is the story of two boys, Pinku (10) and Rinku (17), who wanted to become the ``heroes of the nation`` by avenging the December 13 attack on Parliament House - by assassinating Pervez Musharraf, no less.

Brought up on a daily diet of Bollywood-style ``patriotism``, and hero-worship of the Knights in Shining Armour who take on the mighty with their macho strength, Pinku and Rinku decided that India must wage war on Pakistan, or else they would become good ``patriotic`` terrorists, buy arms, smuggle themselves into Pakistan, and go and kill Musharraf.

On January 11, they kidnapped Shanu, the eight-year-old son of a businessman, for ransom, with which to procure the weapons for the Great and Holy Deed of killing Musharraf the Monster. Driven as they were by the role-models offered in films such as Gadar and Indian, and Fiza and Mission Kashmir, they hatched a plot to hold the boy, Shanu, hostage and collect the money they needed to execute their plan.

But once they abducted Shanu, they realised they could not really hide him anywhere. Nor could they invent credible alibis, nor even ways of collecting the ransom. They panicked and strangled him to death with a shoelace. According to The Telegraph (January 21), the boys confessed to their crime, but the district authorities believe that their motivation was indeed ``patriotic``.

It is tempting to discount this gory incident as a mere aberration, a rare case of ``juvenile delinquency`` coupled with ``misguided patriotism``, as exposure to ``too much Bollywood``, and so on. But it warrants serious, sober, reflection on the kind of values we are imparting to a whole generation of young people - through textbooks, through extremely competitive merit-ranking at school, through cinema and television, through accepted but aggressive patterns of behaviour in the street, and more generally, through our general social and political discourse.

These values have long glorified maleness, raw power, violence, aggression and war, and ``normalised`` or routinised cruelty. For years, India`s ``popular`` cinema and television have shamelessly promoted negative, hate-driven images of heroes as well as vamps and villains. This phenomenon has recently got even more perverse as the hero and the villain have merged, and the vamp has become the quintessential bride-dancer whom wedding parties emulate, especially in northern India. The cynical depiction of violence and aggressive behaviour has kept pace with sex and sleaze in the mass media.

Take education. Many of our schools, cast in the post-colonial ``nation-building`` tradition, valorise military-style discipline and a stressfully competitive view of ``achievement`` and excellence. The typical child grows up believing that hubris and pride in India`s ``inherent`` greatness and moral-cultural superiority is a ``normal`` characteristic of the good citizen. The tone and tenor of school and college debates has become increasingly raucous under the influence of the same kind of aggressive nationalism.

This nationalism is self-aggrandising. It pits itself against reason, logic and truth. It constructs indefinitely continuous communities (for example, ``Hindus``, from the Vedic period, followed by the rise of Buddhism, through the Brahminical-caste consolidation phase, and the Bhakti movement, to the late medieval period), where none existed. This nationalism validates aggressive and militarist notions of power relations as part of ``human nature``. Thus, India is ``naturally`` great. It has always been. Millions of Indians are being drilled and coached into believing `Mera Bharat Mahan`!

HUMAN Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and his people in the National Council for Educational Research and Training, and numerous other institutions, have added a particularly toxic ingredient to this already foul cocktail of values and prejudices by saffronising education and rewriting history. This enterprise, a veritable cultural counter-revolution in itself, has been subjected to so much incisive criticism that it is unnecessary to recall the factual inaccuracies, the lies and half-truths, the indelible ethnic-religious prejudices, and the sophistry and irrationality that suffuse it.

The larger, central, overwhelming, purpose of Joshi and Co`s project is to ``prove`` that India is the greatest civilisation and culture in world history, that virtually everything valuable in the ``ancient`` world was derived from India. This ``ancient`` periodisation can be arbitrarily stretched to the 10th or even the 13th century, as in the case of the Konark or Lingaraja temples of Orissa or the Nataraja temple of Chidambaram. Joshi claims that it is now ``proved`` that the river Saraswati actually existed. The other day he proudly announced the discovery of a 7,500 year-old ``civilisation`` in the Gulf of Cambay - a strange thing for a Minister to do in the absence of an academic paper, and when the ``finds`` there are still under interpretation and in need of corroboration.

The concept of nationalism involved here is ethnic-religious and cultural. It conceives of India as a quintessentially traditional society. It cannot accommodate modernist notions of universal values, political identity or citizenship. It demands total, blind, loyalty to the woolly concept of an ``Eternal India``, which is further mystified and deified as ``Bharat Mata``.

In this view, respect, or rather reverence, for the nation is based on unquestioning devotion to the abstract notion of India`s ``inherent`` greatness and its unique superiority, its spectacular, unmatched achievements in all fields. These are grossly exaggerated and mystified. (For instance, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan claimed in his last Vijayadashami address that an Indian had built and flown an airplane in Baroda years before the Wright Brothers did so - a ludicrous assertion!)

In this scheme, pride in one`s nation is premised upon disdain for, or hatred of, other nations or identities. Islam and Muslims have functioned as the Other longest of all within this ethnic-nationalist demonology. Everything that is ``Eastern``, but other than Indian, is trivialised, minimised, parodied or reviled. This could be Persian or Chinese, or from Sumer or Sri Lankan. These cultures are considered at best derivative (and unimportant) in relation to India. The ``true``, essential, authentic, subject of the Nation is one particular community. ``Others`` can be accommodated on its fringes. But that is because `We` are tolerant, not because India is plural.

In the contemporary context, this hatred of the Other gets focussed upon Pakistan, which is demonised as a country, society, state and regime which is inherently inimical to India and with which peaceful co-existence is virtually impossible. Pakistan is credited with virtually mystical powers to subvert and destabilise India and create havoc. As in the classical Savarkar formulation, Pakistan is the external manifestation of the eternal ``internal`` threat embodied by Muslims - just as Indian Muslims represent Pakistan`s Fifth Column.

India`s sheer size allows the votaries of this nationalism to look at our other neighbours (barring China) as dwarfs, midgets and non-entities compared to the Indian giant. India is unique, India is exceptional, India is unmatched, India is eternal. This is precisely the kind of nationalism that Rabindranath Tagore described as a ``great menace``. As he put it: ``It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India`s troubles``.

This toxic, aggressive, exclusive, competitive, belligerent nationalism is the very opposite of a relaxed, self-confident, inclusive view of the nation and the world. It binds and encloses. It does not liberate. In fact, it lacks a progressive character. It is not anti-imperialist. At least no longer. It does not question the skewed distribution of power in the world. It accepts the dominant-dominated duality as the ``natural`` order, but wants India to be the co ck of the walk.

This nationalism kowtows to the powerful, the dominant, the hegemonic. In its present form, it is servile to ``the West``, in particular to the United States, just as it is arrogant towards ``the East`` (minus India, of course, which being Aryan, ``really`` belongs to the West). Nothing illustrates this better than the Indian official reception to Musharraf`s landmark address of January 12, and the growing intimacy between the Vajpayee government and President George W. Bush, now leading to dangerous liaisons in intelligence-sharing and even ground-level operations.

MUSHARRAF in his speech set out to do something exceptionally bold: undermine a major part of the foundation of his own state (namely extremist political Islam). This is the sharpest and most comprehensive criticism of ethnic-religious fundamentalism voiced by the head of any South Asian state in the past half-century. Musharraf minced no words in laying out Pakistan`s pathology, marked by its mix of Islam and politics, the military and the mullahs, the Taliban and terrorism. He posed the choice for Pakistan clearly: between a ``theocratic state`` and a modern, moderate, liberal, tolerant society.

Musharraf also told jehadi militants not to mess around with other countries, whatever the offence to Islam there. Implicit here is the view that Pakistan has paid dearly by pandering to pan-Islamic ideas. Musharraf has since cracked down on jehadi militants, arresting 2,500 of them. He may have started cutting the umbilical cord between the Pakistani state and political Islam, and proceeded to dismantle communal electorates.

Musharraf has launched only ``half a revolution``. His reform agenda lacks a ``perspective from below``, one that arises from the struggles of the working people. It has no economic content worth the name. Musharraf`s chosen agency for his reform ``from above`` is none other than the Pakistani state, a thoroughly corrupt, compromised and unreliable entity. He may not succeed. Formidable forces are arrayed against him.

To point this out is one thing, to term his address an exercise in ``deception`` or ``doublespeak`` is quite another. This approach ridicules the very possibility of reform in Pakistan by declaring it irredeemable. Indian leaders have at best been grudging and mean-spirited in acknowledging that Musharraf has done something remarkable. Thus, L.K. Advani called the address ``path-breaking``, but only for its domestic agenda. Vajpayee only saw some ``positive elements`` in it.

This leaves one wondering if this parsimonious response has something to do with the Bharatiya Janata Party`s general fear of secularisation and modernisation - contrasted to its own agenda of turning India into a morass of obscurantism, superstition and communal prejudice.

Contrast this with the Vajpayee government`s kowtowing to the U.S. Never before has any Indian government so pusillanimously colluded with hegemonic U.S. moves in this region or actively invited American interference in its internal affairs. Vajpayee & Co not only uncritically supported the U.S. ``war on terrorism`` with all its excesses and its devious manipulation of the United Nations. They did not let out even a squeak of protest or concern at the U.S.` current construction of four military bases in Pakistan.

It allowed an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to visit Kolkata after the recent ``terrorist`` attack just as it welcomed a whole stream of FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), ``counter-terrorism`` and other officials. According to The Telegraph (January 21 and 22), it is about to launch joint operations along with U.S. agencies to stop possible terrorist infiltration and activities in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indo-U.S. Joint Working Group, which met in New Delhi in the third week of January, has announced a broad range of ``cooperative`` activities including ``political, diplomatic, military, intelligence and financial measures``.

India has ``welcomed`` a U.S. ``pilot project`` involving equipment and technology to strengthen ``border management and surveillance``. The two sides reportedly also discussed ``forensic cooperation`` and added aviation security to their agenda, and placed ``special stress`` on ways to beef up intelligence and investigative cooperation, including the possibility of access to each other`s databases on terrorists.

This goes far beyond ``intelligence sharing``, even ``cooperative monitoring`` through agencies such as the Sandia National Laboratories of New Mexico, a well-known U.S. weapons design and production facility. On the cards are ``joint operations`` on the ground, for which the way may have been paved by the visit of DIA chief Admiral Thomas Wilson to the Kashmir Valley, including to ``sensitive`` border areas. This spells serious interference in India`s affairs and erosion of its sovereignty, with potentially dangerous consequences.

Re: Urstruly

``...yeah I am a bad and conscienceless man...``

No -- that is not the point. You have simply not exposed yourself to alternative viewpoints enough to understand what they are saying. It is a very powerful tool -- to listen and to understand what the `opposition` is saying.

RE mad mullah various

Of how the tears pour out when it comes to kashmir. But where are those tears when turkey takes on its so-called ``mountain turks`` aka the hapless kurds who`re also on the receiving end from saddam and the iranians. And what about the treatment of the so-called ``marsh arabs`` those hapless Iraqi shias by el-saddam. Where is your righteous anger? What about the murder of islamists by the egyptian regime? Where is your sense of justice?

You sir, are a shameless hypocrite. You`re like the pot-bellied biryani eating mullah who eggs on his young followers to battle from the comfort of his home and while they die in pain for a worthless and questionable cause, you sit with your four young wives and procreate, as if making up for the loss of population.

Nationalism gone berserk

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1903/19031200.htm

The growing hubris-driven, illiberal, intolerant nationalism in India falsifies and glorifies the country`s ``Hindu`` past. It is viscerally hostile to Pakistan, but servile to the United States.

HAVE Indians reached such a point of moral degeneration and self-brutalisation that plotting to assassinate Pakistan`s leaders becomes the ultimate test of ``patriotism`` for the country`s youth? A terrible story from Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, not far from Gwalior, suggests that this may be actually happening. This is the story of two boys, Pinku (10) and Rinku (17), who wanted to become the ``heroes of the nation`` by avenging the December 13 attack on Parliament House - by assassinating Pervez Musharraf, no less.

Brought up on a daily diet of Bollywood-style ``patriotism``, and hero-worship of the Knights in Shining Armour who take on the mighty with their macho strength, Pinku and Rinku decided that India must wage war on Pakistan, or else they would become good ``patriotic`` terrorists, buy arms, smuggle themselves into Pakistan, and go and kill Musharraf.

On January 11, they kidnapped Shanu, the eight-year-old son of a businessman, for ransom, with which to procure the weapons for the Great and Holy Deed of killing Musharraf the Monster. Driven as they were by the role-models offered in films such as Gadar and Indian, and Fiza and Mission Kashmir, they hatched a plot to hold the boy, Shanu, hostage and collect the money they needed to execute their plan.

But once they abducted Shanu, they realised they could not really hide him anywhere. Nor could they invent credible alibis, nor even ways of collecting the ransom. They panicked and strangled him to death with a shoelace. According to The Telegraph (January 21), the boys confessed to their crime, but the district authorities believe that their motivation was indeed ``patriotic``.

It is tempting to discount this gory incident as a mere aberration, a rare case of ``juvenile delinquency`` coupled with ``misguided patriotism``, as exposure to ``too much Bollywood``, and so on. But it warrants serious, sober, reflection on the kind of values we are imparting to a whole generation of young people - through textbooks, through extremely competitive merit-ranking at school, through cinema and television, through accepted but aggressive patterns of behaviour in the street, and more generally, through our general social and political discourse.

These values have long glorified maleness, raw power, violence, aggression and war, and ``normalised`` or routinised cruelty. For years, India`s ``popular`` cinema and television have shamelessly promoted negative, hate-driven images of heroes as well as vamps and villains. This phenomenon has recently got even more perverse as the hero and the villain have merged, and the vamp has become the quintessential bride-dancer whom wedding parties emulate, especially in northern India. The cynical depiction of violence and aggressive behaviour has kept pace with sex and sleaze in the mass media.

Take education. Many of our schools, cast in the post-colonial ``nation-building`` tradition, valorise military-style discipline and a stressfully competitive view of ``achievement`` and excellence. The typical child grows up believing that hubris and pride in India`s ``inherent`` greatness and moral-cultural superiority is a ``normal`` characteristic of the good citizen. The tone and tenor of school and college debates has become increasingly raucous under the influence of the same kind of aggressive nationalism.

This nationalism is self-aggrandising. It pits itself against reason, logic and truth. It constructs indefinitely continuous communities (for example, ``Hindus``, from the Vedic period, followed by the rise of Buddhism, through the Brahminical-caste consolidation phase, and the Bhakti movement, to the late medieval period), where none existed. This nationalism validates aggressive and militarist notions of power relations as part of ``human nature``. Thus, India is ``naturally`` great. It has always been. Millions of Indians are being drilled and coached into believing `Mera Bharat Mahan`!

HUMAN Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and his people in the National Council for Educational Research and Training, and numerous other institutions, have added a particularly toxic ingredient to this already foul cocktail of values and prejudices by saffronising education and rewriting history. This enterprise, a veritable cultural counter-revolution in itself, has been subjected to so much incisive criticism that it is unnecessary to recall the factual inaccuracies, the lies and half-truths, the indelible ethnic-religious prejudices, and the sophistry and irrationality that suffuse it.

The larger, central, overwhelming, purpose of Joshi and Co`s project is to ``prove`` that India is the greatest civilisation and culture in world history, that virtually everything valuable in the ``ancient`` world was derived from India. This ``ancient`` periodisation can be arbitrarily stretched to the 10th or even the 13th century, as in the case of the Konark or Lingaraja temples of Orissa or the Nataraja temple of Chidambaram. Joshi claims that it is now ``proved`` that the river Saraswati actually existed. The other day he proudly announced the discovery of a 7,500 year-old ``civilisation`` in the Gulf of Cambay - a strange thing for a Minister to do in the absence of an academic paper, and when the ``finds`` there are still under interpretation and in need of corroboration.

The concept of nationalism involved here is ethnic-religious and cultural. It conceives of India as a quintessentially traditional society. It cannot accommodate modernist notions of universal values, political identity or citizenship. It demands total, blind, loyalty to the woolly concept of an ``Eternal India``, which is further mystified and deified as ``Bharat Mata``.

In this view, respect, or rather reverence, for the nation is based on unquestioning devotion to the abstract notion of India`s ``inherent`` greatness and its unique superiority, its spectacular, unmatched achievements in all fields. These are grossly exaggerated and mystified. (For instance, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan claimed in his last Vijayadashami address that an Indian had built and flown an airplane in Baroda years before the Wright Brothers did so - a ludicrous assertion!)

In this scheme, pride in one`s nation is premised upon disdain for, or hatred of, other nations or identities. Islam and Muslims have functioned as the Other longest of all within this ethnic-nationalist demonology. Everything that is ``Eastern``, but other than Indian, is trivialised, minimised, parodied or reviled. This could be Persian or Chinese, or from Sumer or Sri Lankan. These cultures are considered at best derivative (and unimportant) in relation to India. The ``true``, essential, authentic, subject of the Nation is one particular community. ``Others`` can be accommodated on its fringes. But that is because `We` are tolerant, not because India is plural.

In the contemporary context, this hatred of the Other gets focussed upon Pakistan, which is demonised as a country, society, state and regime which is inherently inimical to India and with which peaceful co-existence is virtually impossible. Pakistan is credited with virtually mystical powers to subvert and destabilise India and create havoc. As in the classical Savarkar formulation, Pakistan is the external manifestation of the eternal ``internal`` threat embodied by Muslims - just as Indian Muslims represent Pakistan`s Fifth Column.

India`s sheer size allows the votaries of this nationalism to look at our other neighbours (barring China) as dwarfs, midgets and non-entities compared to the Indian giant. India is unique, India is exceptional, India is unmatched, India is eternal. This is precisely the kind of nationalism that Rabindranath Tagore described as a ``great menace``. As he put it: ``It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India`s troubles``.

This toxic, aggressive, exclusive, competitive, belligerent nationalism is the very opposite of a relaxed, self-confident, inclusive view of the nation and the world. It binds and encloses. It does not liberate. In fact, it lacks a progressive character. It is not anti-imperialist. At least no longer. It does not question the skewed distribution of power in the world. It accepts the dominant-dominated duality as the ``natural`` order, but wants India to be the co ck of the walk.

This nationalism kowtows to the powerful, the dominant, the hegemonic. In its present form, it is servile to ``the West``, in particular to the United States, just as it is arrogant towards ``the East`` (minus India, of course, which being Aryan, ``really`` belongs to the West). Nothing illustrates this better than the Indian official reception to Musharraf`s landmark address of January 12, and the growing intimacy between the Vajpayee government and President George W. Bush, now leading to dangerous liaisons in intelligence-sharing and even ground-level operations.

MUSHARRAF in his speech set out to do something exceptionally bold: undermine a major part of the foundation of his own state (namely extremist political Islam). This is the sharpest and most comprehensive criticism of ethnic-religious fundamentalism voiced by the head of any South Asian state in the past half-century. Musharraf minced no words in laying out Pakistan`s pathology, marked by its mix of Islam and politics, the military and the mullahs, the Taliban and terrorism. He posed the choice for Pakistan clearly: between a ``theocratic state`` and a modern, moderate, liberal, tolerant society.

Musharraf also told jehadi militants not to mess around with other countries, whatever the offence to Islam there. Implicit here is the view that Pakistan has paid dearly by pandering to pan-Islamic ideas. Musharraf has since cracked down on jehadi militants, arresting 2,500 of them. He may have started cutting the umbilical cord between the Pakistani state and political Islam, and proceeded to dismantle communal electorates.

Musharraf has launched only ``half a revolution``. His reform agenda lacks a ``perspective from below``, one that arises from the struggles of the working people. It has no economic content worth the name. Musharraf`s chosen agency for his reform ``from above`` is none other than the Pakistani state, a thoroughly corrupt, compromised and unreliable entity. He may not succeed. Formidable forces are arrayed against him.

To point this out is one thing, to term his address an exercise in ``deception`` or ``doublespeak`` is quite another. This approach ridicules the very possibility of reform in Pakistan by declaring it irredeemable. Indian leaders have at best been grudging and mean-spirited in acknowledging that Musharraf has done something remarkable. Thus, L.K. Advani called the address ``path-breaking``, but only for its domestic agenda. Vajpayee only saw some ``positive elements`` in it.

This leaves one wondering if this parsimonious response has something to do with the Bharatiya Janata Party`s general fear of secularisation and modernisation - contrasted to its own agenda of turning India into a morass of obscurantism, superstition and communal prejudice.

Contrast this with the Vajpayee government`s kowtowing to the U.S. Never before has any Indian government so pusillanimously colluded with hegemonic U.S. moves in this region or actively invited American interference in its internal affairs. Vajpayee & Co not only uncritically supported the U.S. ``war on terrorism`` with all its excesses and its devious manipulation of the United Nations. They did not let out even a squeak of protest or concern at the U.S.` current construction of four military bases in Pakistan.

It allowed an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to visit Kolkata after the recent ``terrorist`` attack just as it welcomed a whole stream of FBI, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), ``counter-terrorism`` and other officials. According to The Telegraph (January 21 and 22), it is about to launch joint operations along with U.S. agencies to stop possible terrorist infiltration and activities in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indo-U.S. Joint Working Group, which met in New Delhi in the third week of January, has announced a broad range of ``cooperative`` activities including ``political, diplomatic, military, intelligence and financial measures``.

India has ``welcomed`` a U.S. ``pilot project`` involving equipment and technology to strengthen ``border management and surveillance``. The two sides reportedly also discussed ``forensic cooperation`` and added aviation security to their agenda, and placed ``special stress`` on ways to beef up intelligence and investigative cooperation, including the possibility of access to each other`s databases on terrorists.

This goes far beyond ``intelligence sharing``, even ``cooperative monitoring`` through agencies such as the Sandia National Laboratories of New Mexico, a well-known U.S. weapons design and production facility. On the cards are ``joint operations`` on the ground, for which the way may have been paved by the visit of DIA chief Admiral Thomas Wilson to the Kashmir Valley, including to ``sensitive`` border areas. This spells serious interference in India`s affairs and erosion of its sovereignty, with potentially dangerous consequences.

Shammi

yeah I am a bad and conscienceless man (and a really bored too). So sue me.