On Hate

Reply AAmir #272:

Your reply does a lot to redeem you. I am almost ashamed for sounding so shrill in my post. If your intentions are truly as you say they are, and I have no reason to doubt it, then your concern is welcome. Keep posting.

Stuka

I not interested in making meaningless statements about peace between Pakistan and Indina or Muslims and Hindus - Doesn`t mean I don`t want, but I tell it like it is - and that`s uncomfortable to people who will brook no criticism - well, that`s just too damn bad. Only Indians have been responsible for the break up of India - and among Indians, Hindus must own up to their responsibility in breaking up India. It is Hindus who want to fight the wars of history, it is Hindus who label Muslims, ``Invaders``, it is Hindus who are exclusionary - sound too tough - you are a service person - you judge whether it is truth or not - either way, all those Indians who wish to secure the territorial integrity of India, must be conscious that it`s not possible to secure this objective without the agreement of Muslims and Christians, who are also EQUAL claimants to India, To Life, to Liberty, to a safe present and future. I know most Indians on these boards will say this their dream, their vision - and then in the same breath take offence at criticism, in the same breath, defend the odious caste system, in the same breath, defend the most absurd notions of what pluralism, what tolerance and what secularism mean. Stuka, it is a time for reconing; a time to say ``let`s reevaluate our position``, ``let`s live up to what we think is best in us``.

If you should decide to go into defensive or offensive mode with persons such me - remember, While you are giving me huff, puff and bluster, and why you are angry about this or that - the country is disintegrating before your and my eyes. You want to impress me, you want me to take you seriously, own up to responsibility. I know you are from a military tradition, do they teach one to do an ostrich routine, or do they teach looking reality in the eyes, do they teach to cover up problems or solve them? Do they teach to fight an external war while also fighting an internal war? This Hindu/Muslim stuff for good or bad, depending on the choice one will make, will define India - and you do not realize this yet, but the seeds for an internal conflagration have been sown by Hindutva bigots and if a decision is made to ``weed`` out such seeds, it will be a long and violent process.

``The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Social Welfare Organization), which is the BJP`s parent body, demands that all Indians ``should be called Hindus.`` The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (Universal Hindu Society), with nearly 2 million members, warns that minority security depends on the majority`s goodwill. Both are urging Hindus to boycott Muslims economically.``

``Muslims are dangerously preparing to fight back, warns a senior Indian police official, Julio Ribeiro, a Catholic who has studied conditions in Gujarat. They have lost all faith in the administration and in their own moderate leaders, and have nowhere to run to.`` PLease do not blame Pakistan, Directorate of ISI or me, for Indian mismanagement, for choosing psychology over reason, for hiding reliogious bigotry in a veil of ``secularism``, Indians, and most especially Hindus, must accept responsibility for-whether they will will acept responsibility or play a blame game, the consequences of their choice will be there for them and the world to judge:

From International Herald Tribune:

Monday April 29, 2002

``A Hindu Laboratory” Frightens Muslims

Sunanda K.Datta-Rau

Calcutta When the British high commissioner, Sir Rob Young, reminded Indian television watchers that there are nearly 600,000 Gujaratis in Britain, it was seen as a warning of possible international legal action against Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, which has been convulsed by violence against Muslims for the last two months.

India has known hundreds of religious riots since independence in 1947, but never before has a government been accused, as Modi`s is, of what India`s press, social workers and human rights activists call a pogrom. Significantly, Gujarat is the only one of India`s 26 states to be ruled by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee`s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Hindu zealots call it the laboratory of the future, meaning the Hindu rashtra (state) of their dreams.

Officials say 840 people have been killed in retaliatory violence since Muslims burned alive 59 Hindu men, women and children on Feb. 27, but the Communist Party estimates more than 2,000 deaths. Modi defends the backlash by citing Newton`s third law - every action provokes a reaction.

Muslim homes and shops have been destroyed, women raped and shrines attacked. With an indifferent if not hostile police, the thousands of Muslims who have taken refuge in hastily constructed camps feel unsafe even there. Aggressive Hindus push back those who try to return to their old homes and businesses.

Vajpayee will not hear a word against his protégé Modi. He has given short shrift to opposition and media demands for the chief minister`s removal, and to respected organizations like India`s National Human Rights Commission and National Minorities Commission, which accuse the Modi government of encouraging violence. People fear a bloodbath if he gives in further to the chief minister and withdraws the army from Gujarat. Meanwhile, the psychological pressure is mounting. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Social Welfare Organization), which is the BJP`s parent body, demands that all Indians ``should be called Hindus.`` The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (Universal Hindu Society), with nearly 2 million members, warns that minority security depends on the majority`s goodwill. Both are urging Hindus to boycott Muslims economically. Several states have voted against the BJP and its allies since Vajpayee became prime minister in 1998. But party strategists say the BJP would win hands down if elections were held in today`s inflamed atmosphere. ``Kill Muslims and win the Hindu vote`` was a leftist intellectual`s despairing comment.

There is middle-class distaste for Hindu folk cults dominated by superstition, ritual and ``holy men`` with matted locks daubed in ash and vermilion that bear no relation to the profundity of the Vedas, the sacred hymns of Hinduism`s ancient Aryan founders. But the virus of cultural animosity is spreading. Many Hindus see Muslims as a pampered lot governed by their own divorce and inheritance laws and enjoying their own religious schools.

``Scratch a Muslim and find a Pakistani`` just about sums up the sentiment of many Hindus. Muslims are dangerously preparing to fight back, warns a senior Indian police official, Julio Ribeiro, a Catholic who has studied conditions in Gujarat. They have lost all faith in the administration and in their own moderate leaders, and have nowhere to run to. The murder of three British Muslims in Gujarat has incensed Indian Muslim settlers in Britain who are preparing to move the British courts, as well as the International Court of Justice at The Hague, against Modi. Hence New Delhi`s wrath against the British, Canadian, Finnish, Swiss and German governments and the European Union, which have deplored the Gujarat riots. India, like the United States, opposes the proposed International Criminal Court.

As it happens, the danger of serious religious carnage has surfaced in a state that gave birth in the eighth century to the Jain sect, which holds all life sacred and carries ahimsa (nonviolence) to the extent that Gujarati Jains wear gauze gags so that they do not inadvertently swallow even an insect.

The writer, a former editor of the Indian newspaper The Statesman, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.``

RE Zafar # 284

Well you did miss out on the national anthem -

Q. What is the national anthem of Khalistan?

A. Yeh bullet meri jaan manzilon ka nishan

For those not in the know, the above was a popular advertising jingle for Bullet motorcycles (and in this context a reference to the frequent killings carried out those days).

& then there are

Q. What is the Khalistan National Drink?

A. Sarbat Khalsa

btw the National Airlines is Itthe Pacific

Actually moving on how many of you out there are familiar with the Thak Thak jokes (desi Knock Knock). A few samples:

Thak Thak

Kaun Hai?

Mehmood

Mehmood Kaun?

Meh mood may nahi hoon.

Thak Thak

Kaun hai?

Hema Malini

Hema Malini kaun?

Hay ma mali nahi hoon

Thak Thak

Kaun hai?

Agarwal

Agarwal kaun?

Agar wall pay soo soo karoge to pakde jaoge

The one that I like, it was popular in Maharashtra when A.R Antulay was frequently embroiled in some court case or the other

Thak Thak

Kaun hai?

Antulay

Antulay kaun?

A(r)nt u late for court today?

Rajeev Gandhi ko bhi nahi chodte

Thak Thak

Kaun Hai?

Rajeev

Rajeev kaun?

Raj even today Gandhion ka hota hai.

There are soe more but lets hear them from others

-

Subroto

Folks
Whats all this?? Here is hobbyt expending blood and sweat trying to convince you to cultivate some humanity and here you are STILL vigorously arguing for the preservation of the caste system. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.


I haven`t been following this closely enough but hope you are anyways having fun travelling in tight circles on the circular logic express. One round trip takes about two days I observe:)

Whats your opinion of caste---- We condemn casteism----why so defensive, admit it and work for solutions----here are the solutions we are trying out----how can you ignore a problem, will it go awayif you ignore it----we aren`t ignoring it, we just told you about the solutions----why so defensive, it troubles me that you support and defend casteism like this----we condemn casteism----why so defensive, admit it and find solutions---etc-

Dost Mittar - anyone else who cares

Dost, the denial, the excuses, the obfuscation you to want to wallow in, is unworthy. You can achieve a breath through by admitting, first to yourself, that a great deal of the present discourse about secularism in India is a Sham - and in this sham, Caste and exclusivist Hindutva ideology has wormed its way into legitimacy.

In present day India when the word ``minority`` is used - what does it denote? Would it be unfair to say that it denotes Muslims or Christians? After all, are these Muslims and Christians significantly, if at all, ethnically different from the majority of Indians? The honest answer is, no, they are not. What manner of secularism is it when terms that denote ethnic groups in the rest of the world, are, in India, used to denote religious minorities?

The question of caste, secularism are ``uncomfortable`` questions - but they need not be - Why are you and Prem and most shocking for me, Shankar, defending the caste system? Seems to be you lot ought to have been in the forefront of being critical of this evil.

I want to point out to you how you are obfuscating - You argue, inspite of published report to the contrary, that there was no planning involved in the events of Gujrat - even though a report by British diplomats asserts that there was, even though the full scale of the violence began more than 24 hours after the train tragedy.

You say, ``The doubts I was raising were in relation to preplanning; there is a BIG difference between collusion and planning and I would not insult you by thinking that you did not understand that.`` OK, I`ll take you at your word that you did not mean an insult, perhaps you will explain the difference between ``Planning`` and ``preplanning``??

And you wish to libel me and charge me with ``spin``? - Just please explain, why are you defending this? Why are you not trying to find out what kinds of ideas in society are responsible for these events - If God forbid, these events occur else where in India - will you examine the role of caste, it`s relationship with making Hindutva legitimate? What explanation might you offer the dead, for your complacency in this matter?

``I have always been aware of the dangers of where some of the leaders of the Hindutva movement were taking it. I had and have no problems with the promotion of a benign cultural nationalism in India (or in Pakistan for that matter!) as long as it is inclusive and not exclusive.``

I can`t believe what I`m reading - and from a supposedly educated person such as yourself - There is no such a thing as an inclusive nationalism - it`s a bloody oxymoron - nationalism itself is exclusionary. Listen, Dost - just for a minute, think about the psychology that informs your statement - You knew the Hindutva to be an evil, but that was OK with you, as long as it met your needs. ``Benign``?? You have surrendered criticism on the altar of psychology - you even differentiate hate as inclusive and exclusive - I wish I could pick you up and shake you out of the trance you seem to be in - please, wake up! ``Cultural Nationalism`` ??- Please reconsider, reevaluate. Were the ideas of National Socialism in Germany also cultural nationalism?

``My disgust with the saffron brigade is precisely because their movement wishes to

exclude the many contributions of minority groups which makes India such a natural multicultural wonderland. I also have no problem with the Hindus having a greater sense of self-esteem as long as it doesn`t turn into a hatred and debasing the identity of the ``other`` (which, btw, is what YOUR posts are all about!).``

``Minority groups`` - you mean other religious groups? How does one reconcile the part about your disgust with your affinity with cultural nationalism? Is it OK to hate persons outside one`s nationalistic construct?

``Self - Esteem of Hindus``? Self-esteem? More psychology - Dost, it is an evil, sure and true; romanticism and violence are twins, Dost. I`m floored, I think I never realized the depth of attachment that so many, otherwise thinking persons - as in rational, reasoning - can have to ``feelings`` of internalized hate.

``Hatred and debasing the identity of the other`` - what my posts are about? Yet more psychology, no Sir, my posts are about criticism. You view them as hatred and debasement because of your construct of ``self-esteem.`` You have closed yourself to any criticism that conflicts with these notions of ``self-esteem.`` What cultural nationalism is open to criticism? Do you not seem that such attitudes are a danger to democracy and to secularism? Criticism is the most essential quality, the most essential requirement of liberty and democracy - I urge you to give this matter more thought - if one cannot be open to criticism, one is not in a position to make claims about pluralism or secularism - these exist because of and are sustained by criticism.

``Caste...it is not THE defining characteristic of Hinduism;`` give me a break, six, half dozen or the other. You admit it`s ``unique`` - and the use of ``THE`` in denoting the unique is appropriate - even though I did not use it, you did.

On the origins of caste system - it was Shankar who first educated me on this matter, and that it was, as are all the text of Hinduism, a temporal, human creation. You will never find me asserting that the structure of Hinduism is anything but unique, in relation to the structure of other religions. That Hinduism and caste have changed or evolved over the years is not in question - that caste serves to structure inequality in society is my contention - and on this issue, your excuses and explanation are singularly, unconvincing - indeed, you do not even tackle the issue, directly. You also do not acknowledge the role of Zaat/Jaat in justifying inequality - you do not deal with the fact this is a biological basis for discrimination.

If you do not find these supportable and do find these objectionable - why have you chosen to not support my contention, my condemnation of these?? More self-esteem? Dost, please do not engage in discussion where you point out that so and so is a Muslim, and so and so is Dalit - because it reveals the consciousness with regard to caste and ``minorities`` that most persons will find offensive. ``Some of my best friends are ...`` I realize that these may be part of the stock arguments in India, but in the real world, as you are discovering, claims of the lack of consciousness of caste are not justified by pointing to examples of just such a consciousness.

``The most important role the caste is still playing in people`s personal lives is its endogamous character.`` Absurd and unworthy of you - why do you suppose the ``endogamous`` character survives? What can we learn from the adherence to caste in society? - as Hinduism and Caste are evolving, clearly Hindus have and are as well, these are not points of contention. Remember the point is that caste does as it did in eons past, structure inequality in society based on biological basis. Caste still plays a major role in the lives of a majority of Hindus. Most Hindus still live in rural India, do not have a world view and familiarity with the world that the kinds of persons you describe do - is this an untrue statement? Are not newspaper regularly publishes outrages to conscience, related to caste??

``I do not believe that all Hindus hate Muslims. Some do just as much as You hate the Hindus.`` I hate caste and this threatens some who associate hating caste to be the same Hindus - this I cannot do anything about.

``Islam in India had no problem with the caste system and is probably one of the few aspect of the Hindu society that it has accepted. In fact, I have realised after being on Chowk for about four years that the ``caste``/race psyche is more firmly entrenched in Pakistan than in India.``

I, Hobbyty, am not Islam in India or in Pakistan - and to the degree that caste/race psyche is entrenched in Pakistan - it is with utmost shame and horror, that I approach it.

`` Their (those who hate) hatred is more because of the historical factors, including the

unfair burden imposed on India`s Muslims by the TNT and especially because of Islamists like yourself who insist that their belonging to the Muslim Umma somehow puts them in a special category of Indians.``

This your observation and like so much of your observation, is psychology. This is more of a charge, than anything else.

``And I also do not believe that the only alternative is to break-up India.`` Perhaps not ``the only alternative``, but it certainly is, one of many, won`t you agree?

``The problem of not respecting people`s human rights is not limited to Muslims, although they are certainly a major victim of such abuse. The answer lies in forming coalitions with the decent majority of all Indians and especially to convince India`s opinion makers that their country will never fulfil its promise unless it protects the life, property and dignity of all its citizens regardless of their caste, sex, ethnicity or religious beliefs.``

I agree with the general thrust of this statement. Now to specifics: it is not opinion makers but individuals to whom this appeal to reason must be directed. However; an argument or any case that does not admit, does not promote, that caste is inequality in society, is but hollow. Listen here, caste has got to be banished from the minds and hearts of men. It cannot be done by government fiat (it`s been outlawed - did law create it that it imagines it can destroy it)?, but by conscience. If one believes that all men are created, born, equal - is it not the obligation of one to DO their utmost to see that this truth, is made ``flesh,`` to use the language of the ``Good News`` ?? You, Prem and especially Shankar should be first in supporting my criticism of caste, instead of defending it as if you were defending Hinduism. If you find instances in which caste informs a particular practice of Hinduism, it`s your moral obligation to be publicly critical of it.

In a conversation with Zafar, the notion of ``Dignity Deficit`` was explored; I think your idea of ``self-esteem`` is related to exactly this notion of ``Dignity Deficit.`` You have said that hatred compels me, but I would like you to know what I think, compels me. I recognize that much about Islam has come to be distorted and I seek to inject into the discourse about Islam and Muslims, the element of criticism. Ijethad, Ijma and Shurra, I have written about repeatedly - I have also written about the direct relationship between Reason, Liberty, the freedom of conscience, the pluralism within and of religion and the pluralism of salvation. In other words, equality and freedom are synonymous with being a Muslim. This ethical, moral, intellectual and political view informs my attitude to caste, Alphanell had pointed out that this my intellectual bias, I readily admit and embrace this bias and invite you to discard any idea that to attack caste is to attack Hinduism - you yourself admit and agree that it is a construct that may have been relevant to the time and circumstances it was created in - clearly it is neither relevant nor appropriate to these times - why should want to defend it - if, as you admit and agree that Hinduism is changing, just what need does caste, cater to? Should we not distinguish between Psychology and Reason? Has caste not been responsible for inequality in society? How can it not be responsible when it argues that some persons are born to serve others? Is there any human construct more odious, more objectionable?

The ``Dignity Deficit`` both Indians and Pakistanis, regardless of ethnic or confessional affiliation suffer from is related to the lack of assertion in individual and public life that all men are equal, that they are made equal by their creator.

As to your assertion that ``Islamist like`` me wish only to break up India - psychology, your ``enemies`` have been identified, these enemies are not inequality or the lack of dignity, but the ``other`` - What I have repeated asked is for those Indians who argue that secularism (objective or subjective) is the cure for the ills, is to act on their convictions - there can be no secularism or democracy, when ideas such as caste that argue for inequality based on biology, are allowed public space. For once, imagine the shoe is on the other foot - reverse Hindu for Muslim in this narrative - tell me if you see fairness or equality? Tell me, if you were a Muslim, you would not consider a solution in which your life and property and future could be safe guarded? If anybody is responsible for the break up of India it has been and it will be, Indians and Hindus have been and will be in the forefront of responsibility. Everyone is forever acting on you guys - when you wake up to responsibility, You will find that it calls for sobriety, not bloody psychology - not ``self-esteem`` but a willingness to see and hear the other side of the argument, not as enemies, put as persons who have a valid point of view, who want fairness and equality.

Now, Hindutva - If secularism were a national ethic, could ideas such as Hindutva succeed? If ``Dignity`` were not in deficit, could Hindutva succeed? If equality of all men were an idea that is basic to the polity, would Hindutva ever succeed? - You say hatred and debasement is what I am about - your privilege to hold such an opinion of me - but I hope you will awaken to the fact that criticism can lead to solutions - that blaming smoke for the fire, can never lead to solutions.

re: saminashah # 299

Samina, the origins of that complex cuisine are well wrapped in mystery and mythology :)

But you know, when one gets as famished as I sometimes do, EVERYTHING tastes heavenly. In those hurried hungry moments, I could gratefully eat my utensils. Now, when not in such dire straits, I cook reasonably well; but I detest the very thought of doing dishes (even though that simply means placing those dirty dishes inside the dishwasher).

Caste is still a major problem for India, and for Hindus. It still excercises too much power at the social level. The one saving grace is that as an institution it is losing legitimacy. We are not STUCK with it. Widespread consensus is emerging among Hindus that caste is an obsolete and destructive institution that should no more hold the central place it once did, and that too, not very long ago.

Yet, it will take about four or five generations for the institution to really weaken. Ironically, a complicating factor has arisen direcly from the womb of Indian democracy - caste-politics. Such politics, in general, have a huge salutary effect: they empower the traditionally weaker sections, and have had positive effects in redistributing societal resources. The next Chief Minister of my state - UP - will most likely be, again, Mayawati - a dalit. Yet, such politics make it harder to do away with the institution of caste itself, by creating new vested interests around it. There too, democracy has thrown up some remarkable results. For example, caste-based parties have had to reach out to and include members of other castes and Muslims in order to win wider backing. So, there are some positive signs, but the challenge is huge too.

I sometimes envy Muslims - they probably have fewer problems to deal with. IMO they definitely began with a better system thirteen hundred years ago or so (?) than Hindus had at that point in time (is it the ``grass being greener on the other side`` syndrome? :)). But that dynamic is changing now. I guess having bigger problems makes one work harder to address them.

re: Hobbyty # 298

Quit that casteist (not racist) thinking. Your being an achhoot doesn`t necessarily make you incapable of rational thought.

But a serious word, hobbyty. If you present yourself as an achhoot (btw, as an update, achhoots proudly call themselves dalits now), you will find me and many other Hindus far more sympathetic and far more accommodating of your views. I personally never get into long arguments with dalits: we deprived them of their rights for too long for me to argue fine points of religion, ethics, and philosophy with them. They are my equals and I accord them that respect.

On the other hand, I do not bend over backwards with followers of other religions if they are not even Indians. You get a right to lecture us if you have anything to show for yourself. And there is nothing in your particular worldview, or concept of religion that one finds rational or appealing.

Later, dear friend. I will return to answer some of your issues. Keep safe.

Prem,

Per my understanding of history, I see secularism developing in homogenous Christian countries around the time of protestant reformation. Remember the phenomenon of reformation wasn`t seen at the time as `sharp religious difference` but a reform movement to reform catholicism and Papal christianity. Eventhough people argue Spanish inquisition, but they forget that spanish inquisition drove almost all the jews and muslims to other lands. Secularism resulted simply when individual christian states separated themselves from the Church in Rome/Vatican. However The two greatest examples of secularism didn`t even have the protestant catholic differences... US was most protestant when it was formed as a secular state.. and at the time of the French revolution, most of France was Catholic if I am not mistaken. Ofcourse there you have your `social dynamic` for homogenous states.

But lets talk about protestants and catholics and apply the same logic to the modern world.The divergence between protestants and catholics is roughly analogous to various sectarian differences in the Muslim community. Though shia sunni is tempting analogy.. the real analogy lies between the Modernists/rationalists (Afghani, Iqbal,Sir Syed, Ghulam Ahmed Parvez of the rationalists Idealogues of the Pakistan Movement) and traditionalists/literalists (Maudoodi, azad, religious parties of Pakistan etc)... so a relatively homogenous Muslim country with divergent religious beliefs (shias, sunnis, agha khanis, ahmadis, minority christians, minority hindus``) is roughly placed in the same place as the European states were in the protestant reformation.. In any event, such religious diversity is not analogous to say Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia (early in the 20th century), and India. In my opinion these are ALL artificial countries, even if they are one geographical unit.

State-secularism however is a very simple phenomenon.. which really is something useful for any society homogenous or multicultural.As per John Locke, the true end of government is to provide law and order and judge impartially between its subjects. It is not the duty of the state to enforce religion or religious interpretation. I would say my support for a secular order was an `efficiency` based for which I started using minorities as an excuse, but somewhere along the way, I realized the promises made to them, and the promises betrayed. Ofcourse then I saw Yohanna play for Pakistan in Australia, destroy Prasad`s bowling, score a match-saving half century and make a trinity while the commentator went excitedly `There is a christian on the Pakistani side`. Something about that just warmed me up to the `moral` justification for `secularism`. Then ofcourse I read Quaid`s speeches in the full, an opportunity most Pakistanis were denied atleast when I was there and I became determined.

Religion is not the only source of tension. As Pakistan has proved, ethnic divides are just as great... but impartial governance takes into account all such factors! Perhaps a new definition of secularism is in order.

-YLH

HobbyTy:

``I have in numerous post said that if Hindus cannot live in peace with Muslims in India and since Hindus are an overwhelming majority and that since Muslims number 120 million - these Muslims must have the option, as must the various Hindus, to form their own soverign states. You got a problem with that?``

Damn right we do. A Muslim state was formed back in 1947. End of story. So tell me, is Pakistan allowing Muslims form Gujarat to apply for refugee status?

Prem,

Ketchup with your tikiya? Is this a Hindustani-Amrika thing? :)

But, I have to admit, the idea of caste makes me uncomfortable as well. Looking forward to the discussion here.

Prem

Now you angry - and I asked you nicely, there is no need to get angry. You are suggesting that I am ignornant of Hinduism and how caste works. I say caste functions on the basis of biologically discriminating against other persons, justify this inequality in society by arguing some perons are born to serve that is their Zaat/jaat.

As i am ignorant can you please explain how caste sytem works in Hinduism. Can you also tell me if there are any other religions in the world that organize human society by discrimnating on a biological basis? Are ther any Hindu societies in Java or Kampuchea that also have caste? if not would it be wrong to say that caste system is unique and thus a defining feature of Hinduism in India?

Now you are saying that I have said that Hindus and Muslims cannot live togther - and you want me to justify this statment - of course I have made no such statement - but I did make the statement that Hindu ethos and Muslim ethos are different. Casye system is a unique and defining feature of Hinduism - it is designed to construct inequality in society. Muslim ethos is that all men are equal. I have in numerous post said that if Hindus cannot live in peace with Muslims in India and since Hindus are an overwhelming majority and that since Muslims number 120 million - these Muslims must have the option, as must the various Hindus, to form their own soverign states. You got a problem with that?

You have argued that Secularism can save both Muslims and Hindus in India - is it too much to say ``show me``, don`t just talk - as yet, certainly not you, but no Hindu has actually been able to stop the killing and burning - why not? if secularism is the answer, why does it not work? How many more must die before you begin to ask whether you should reevaluate Indian secularism? You seem to treat the idea of secularism not as a utility but as some idol before which you offer the lives of innocents. I find this unacceptable. But you are Brahmin and I am an achute Muslim - what do I know? I am ignorant of Hinduism and caste system.

Dost Mittar, Prem and any other defenders of caste system

Indian writer says events in Gujrat and the behavour of politicians in Indian worthy of comparison with Nazi-ism - says bigotry of Hindus comparable to apartheid - says theis is the future of India, if thinking Indians do not confront their ills. Quoting from the Sangh Parivar writers such as H.V. Seshadri and R C Majumdar, Lavakare argues that if the Indian ‘secularists’ want the Hindus of 2002 to accept those Sabarmati shibboleths of non-violence and amity with the Muslims at any cost, they ought to also demand that the red carpet be laid for Pakistan to just stride into Srinagar and all the way down into Sabarimalai (in Kerala) — via Sabarmati.

`` Hindu Rashtra’s Gujarat lab

S P Udayakumar’s Indian Press Review

When all is said and done, how will India with this type of ideology and futuristic programme look like? The simple and direct answer would be: Look at Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, the unfortunate land that also produced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

The recent Gujarat carnage is much more than the worst incident of communal rioting independent India has witnessed. Riots are often described and reported as a sort of ‘action-reaction’ type incidents in which the violence part gets highlighted and noticed. But two specific factors make the Gujarat pogrom quite different from the usual communal riots. The first is the accompaniment of a clear and vehement ideology; the second the envisioning of the future that the perpetrators want to see. In brief, the recent Gujarat genocide is a mini-lab that tests a bigoted ideology and prepares a blueprint.

The bigoted ideology is of course the Hindutva ideology of the Sangh Parivar that is dead set against the minorities in India. It is against the traditional Indian value of secularism. The future blueprint this ideology prepares is soaked in violence. This blueprint works on two different fronts. First, it tries to negate the long and rich Indian heritage of nonviolence that boasts of principles such as Ahimsa, Satyagraha and Sarvodaya. It seeks to hide the foreign policy principles such as Panchshila, and nuclear-free zones etc. Most importantly, it tries to dismiss the powerful nonviolence luminaries such as Buddha, Mahavir, Ashoka, Guru Nanak, Mahatma Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan, Mother Teresa and others as unimportant people in the history of India. Second, equipped with a bloody picture of India’s past, this Hindutva blueprint for India’s future envisions a Hindu Rashtra that will be soaked in revenge, remorse, retribution, retaliation, bigotry, blood and more blood.

Arvind Lavakare, a sympathizer of this ideology, explains it in his column in rediff.com, a popular webzine that has several editions in many different Indian languages (“Of Sabarmati secularism & non-violence,” April 16, 2002).

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India towards the end of 1914 and almost immediately plunged into the country’s public life by starting an ashram in Ahmedabad on the banks of the Sabarmati river, with ‘Truth’ and ‘Non-violence’ as his slogans. The recent fracas in that ashram entailing a physical attack on Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan by a group allegedly led by a BJP youth leader was grist to the mill of Indian ‘secularists.’

These ‘secularists,’ according to Lavakare, used the Sabarmati Ashram incident to rub salt into the wounded Hindu psyche by proclaiming the irony of sustained communal violence in Gandhi country. That derision provokes a retrospective look at Gandhi’s concept of Hindu-Muslim unity, religious tolerance and non-violence.

Lavakare starts with Gandhi’s role in the Khilafat Movement. That movement was sparked by Kemal Pasha’s decision at the end of the First World War to finish off the regime of the autocratic and dynastic Sultan of Turkey, who was titled the Caliph and was looked upon as the temporal representative of Allah as well as the religious head of the entire Islamic world.

Occupying the position of the “right hand and left hand” of Gandhi in his Khilafat agitation were two brothers: Maulana Mohammed Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali. As Gandhi himself explained, he was “seeking the friendship of good Mussalmans...to understand the Mussalman through contact with their purest and most patriotic representatives”. These Muslims were the ones who later wrote a letter to the Amir of Afghanistan inviting him to invade Bharat.

Although the Khilafat Movement fizzled out in 1921 itself, propaganda was set afloat among Kerala’s local Muslims—the Moplahs—that the British regime had ended and Khilafat had been reinstated. The time to eliminate all kafirs had come, they were told. The Moplahs followed it up by anointing one Mohommed Haji as their Caliph and proclaimed jihad—against the British first and, after being defeated by the colonialists, against the Hindus. According to the Report of the Enquiry Committee of the Servants of India Society, the number of Hindus murdered was 1,500, the number of those forcibly converted was 20,000 and property looted was assessed at about Rs 30 million, while the molestation and abduction of Hindu women was apparently endless.

Here’s another instance of Gandhi’s ‘logic’ in defence of his Mussalman. On December 23, 1926, Swami Shraddhananda, an eminent Congress as well as Arya Samaj leader who had launched a campaign to bring back the converted into the Hindu fold, was shot four times in his sick bed by a Muslim youth, Abdul Rashid. Although hanged for that crime, Rashid was treated by the Muslim community as some sort of martyr deserving of a special namaaz in the masjids and five complete recitations of the Koran. And in the Congress session in Guwahati, 1926, Gandhi himself said, “I have called Abdul Rashid a brother and I repeat it. I do not even regard him as guilty of Swami’s murder. Guilty indeed are those who excited feeling of hatred against one another.”

Quoting from the Sangh Parivar writers such as H.V. Seshadri and R C Majumdar, Lavakare argues that if the Indian ‘secularists’ want the Hindus of 2002 to accept those Sabarmati shibboleths of non-violence and amity with the Muslims at any cost, they ought to also demand that the red carpet be laid for Pakistan to just stride into Srinagar and all the way down into Sabarimalai (in Kerala) — via Sabarmati.

When this kind of bigoted ideology supported by a sectarian reading and interpretation of history gives rise to communal divide and violence, a certain type of future is bound to emerge. The desired Hindu Rashtra in this case will hide nonviolence and highlight violence. In order to see that future Hindutva India, it may be worthwhile to see how this ideology in action is viewed from around the world. Sultan Shahin explains (“Gujarat: Return to the Deadly Past,” Asia Times, 26 April 2002) in a recent column how Gujarat’s pogrom politics are destroying India’s image of a secular democracy in the community of nations.

Several Western governments have come out with reports condemning the continuing massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, where in the past two months more than 1,000 people have died and more than 100,000 rendered homeless, their businesses and houses destroyed, as well as their mosques, and other Muslim shrines destroyed or converted into Hindu temples.

The United States fired the first salvo. On April 10 in New Delhi, US Assistant Secretary of State, Christina Rocca, described the communal riots in Gujarat as “really horrible”. She then went on to add, “We are deeply saddened by them. We hope peace and stability soon returns to the state.” Rocca didn’t discuss Gujarat formally because she felt “internal situations are not discussed in bilateral meetings”.

However, the fact that Gujarat had attracted international attention was confirmed at the April 15 press briefing of the US State Department deputy spokesman, Phil Reeker. He said: “Our position on the communal violence that has occurred recently in Gujarat is clear. I can point out that one of the things Secretary Rocca talked about last week in New Delhi was condemnation for the horrible violence in Gujarat, urging all parties to seek a peaceful solution to their differences.”

Spain’s envoy to New Delhi reportedly described the Gujarat incidents as a “state gone berserk”. To the government’s great consternation, the British High Commission leaked to the Hindustan Times (April 15), north India’s largest circulated newspaper, the contents of its “secret” report to the British Foreign Office in London. Among other things, the British report made the following points: the continuing violence in Gujarat is aimed at removing Muslim influence from parts of the state; it placed the death toll at around 2,000; the post-Godhra (train-burning) violence was pre-planned; if the Sabarmati Express tragedy hadn’t happened, another flashpoint would have been created to justify pre-meditated violence as reaction; Muslim establishments and property were specially targeted by the rioting mobs in most places; it questioned the discrimination between the amount paid as compensation to victims/next of kin of the Godhra tragedy (Hindu) and the subsequent riots (Muslim); and conditions in relief camps.

The European Union’s (EU) leaked report (April 21, Indian Express) draws a parallel with apartheid and Nazis. In an even bigger setback to the image of Vajpayee’s government abroad, the EU said that “the carnage in Gujarat was a kind of apartheid...and has parallels with Germany of the 1930s”.

When all is said and done, how will India with this type of ideology and futuristic programme look like? The simple and direct answer would be: Look at Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, the unfortunate land that also produced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

The writer is a Chinnai-based analyst and political and human-rights activist``

Progressive, Prem, Dost

Request your comments on the artilce below:

``Reapportioning of religious and secular space

Ayesha Jalal

While British perceptions of Indian society as an aggregation of religious communities gave impetus to representations of identity in idioms emphasizing differences, not commonalities, that social engineering on its own cannot explain the intensity of the process marking Indian attempts to deploy the categories of the colonial state to their own social and political advantage

Unlike their Mughal predecessors, the British announced their religious neutrality in matters to do with the governance of India. They instead claimed to have demarcated a ‘secular’ public sphere which was to be regulated by them and kept separate from the private sphere where Indians were to be allowed a measure of autonomy in their religiously informed cultural beliefs and practices. The expressed disinterest of the colonial state in religion had less to do with the ‘secular’ ideal than with the imperatives of ruling a culturally alien society.

Far from desacralizing the political or separating politics from the realms of religion and culture, the colonial state did much in bringing these spheres closer than ever and reshaping them in the process. Indian society was seen as an aggregation of religious communities. The British decision to cap the welter of social identities constituting the colourful mosaic of India with the overarching category of religion had monumental consequences, creating notions of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ communities drawing equally upon a privileging of the religious distinction. Census enumeration based on religion ensured against any neat separation between the material and the spiritual domains. Demands for places in educational institutions, jobs in government and shares of representation all drew on the statistics compiled by colonial census enumerators.

British perceptions of Indian society as an aggregation of religious communities gave impetus to representations of identity in idioms emphasizing differences, not commonalities between those who among other things happened to be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. Yet, British social engineering on its own cannot explain the intensity of the process marking Indian attempts to deploy the categories of the colonial state to their own social and political advantage. Indian subjectivity, whether interpreted in its individual or communitarian colours, constituted an important dimension in the discourse on identity from the late nineteenth century. Frequently accorded the pejorative label of ‘communalism’ in an attempt to distinguish it from the lauded sentiment of ‘nationalism’, this was a subjectivity which drew upon religion as a signifier of cultural difference. If religion as faith was a matter of individual disposition, religion in the service of communitarian culture was as yet a stretch removed from its subsequent uses as political ideology. It is significant that the politically loaded term ‘communalism’ did not command the centre stage of the public discourse on Muslim identity until after the formal introduction in 1909 of separate or ‘communal’ electorates at all levels of representation.

The changes wrought by colonial rule proffered opportunities to Muslims like Sayyid Ahmad Khan who exhorted his co-religionists to take to Western secular learning and tried reinterpreting Islam in the light of modern ideas. Not a religious scholar by training, Sayyid Ahmad’s approach to Islamic theology and jurisprudence earned him the lacerating abuse of orthodox Muslim ulema affiliated with the theological seminary at Deoband, Farangi Mahal in Lucknow and also Barelvi. His promotion of ijtihad or independent reasoning and disapproval of taqlid or adherence to the four authoritative schools of Islamic jurisprudence set him, and the Aligarh school which he founded, at loggers’ head with the ulema who correctly saw in it a barely disguised assault on their preeminent status as the religious guardians of the Muslim community. For the ulema, reeling under the effects of colonial policies which had effectively stripped them from finding gainful employment in government, Sayyid Ahmad’s policy of collaboration with the British raj was adding insult to injury.

Resentments borne of temporal disabilities found the ulema and their disciples at madrassas and maktabs giving their emphatic support to the Indian National Congress’s anti-colonialism even while directing their emotive energies to the cause of the Islamic ummah. The irony of Muslim ulema shunning ‘secular’ modernists of Sayyid Ahmad’s ilk, who in their different ways continued making overtures to their religiously informed cultural identities, only to end up hitching their wagons to a party wedded to the ideals of Western secularism is writ large on the historical canvass of late colonial India.

The confounding of the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’, the temporal and the spiritual has made the politics of Muslim identity in South Asia somewhat confusing and confused. Even as individuals from the late nineteenth century sought to construct a coherent Muslim identity, the internal fissures within the community ensured that the narratives of communitarianism would draw more consistently on the theme of religion as a demarcator of social difference than on religion as faith, negating in the process Islam’s integrative world view. This is not deny that religion as faith informed the construction of individual Muslim narratives of identity. But the faith of a few articulate or prolific individuals cannot be a gauge for the religious temperament of an entire community, far less one confronting the challenge of secularization informed by Western colonialism and modernity.

And indeed until the turn of the twentieth century, the narratives of communitarian identity, whether projected in the political arenas of British India or by the press and publications market, emphasized religiously informed cultural difference without elucidating a coherent or distinctively Indian Muslim conception of ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ based on the principles of the Islamic faith. If anyone can be credited for bringing clarity, if not a dramatic shift, to Muslim conceptions of ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’, and in the process at least trying to bridge the gap separating religion as difference and religion as faith, it was the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. He may not have had the profound mystical insights of a Sirhandi or the Quranic knowledge of a Waliullah, men to whom he acknowledged his intellectual debt. But Iqbal was grounded in Western philosophy and had a grasp of Muslim history, philosophy and theology to attempt a reconstruction of Islamic thought that was unprecedented in his own time and remains unrivalled even in our own. As a member of the Muslim ‘minority’ community, Iqbal was irked by Congress’s appropriation of the colonial state’s questionable secular credentials. Claiming to speak on behalf of all Indians, Congress’s inclusionary nationalism was averse not only to claims of religiously informed cultural differences but to any political demands raised on behalf of specific religious communities which were pejoratively dismissed as ‘communal’ and, therefore, illegitimate. This was a perfectly reasonable stance for a party aiming to wrest power from the colonial state. But it clashed with Muslim demands in provinces where Muslims were in a majority that they be allowed to exercise power according to their numerical preponderance. Muslim dominance in Punjab and Bengal was unacceptable to non-Muslims living there. Most Punjabi and Bengali Muslims saw no reason to endorse a variant of nationalism which conferred upon them minority status with no prospect of relief in their regional majority. Inequality of representation was hardly a basis for equality of citizenship.

The nub of Iqbal’s critique of certain variants of western post-enlightenment philosophy and, by extension, of the Congress’s ideal of a secular nationalism was the denial that ‘all human life is spiritual’. The nature of any act, even if ‘secular in its import’ was ‘determined by the attitude of mind with which the agent does it’. Whether an action was inspired by religion or irreligious political motives depended on positionally specific observations since the secular in itself was ‘sacred in the roots of its being’. An act was temporal or profane if it was done in a ‘spirit of detachment from the infinite complexity of life’ and ‘spiritual if it is inspired by that complexity’. This was why the assimilation by the Turkish nationalists of the European idea of the separation of the church and state bordered on profanity. ‘Such a thing could never happen in Islam’, Iqbal asserted, ‘for Islam was from the very beginning a civil society, having received from the Quran a set of simple legal principles which, like the twelve tables of the Romans, carried...great potentialities of expansion and development by interpretation’. Ijtihad allowed Muslims to constantly adjust themselves to social change without abandoning the Islamic path. In contrast to the religious scholars, Iqbal believed that since the institution of the khalifa had ceased to exist the right of ijtihad should be vested in an elected Muslim assembly which ‘in view of the growth of opposing sects’ in Islam was the ‘only possible form Ijma can take in modern times’. In opting for the republican form of government and collective ijtihad by the Grand National Assembly, the Turks alone among the Muslims had asserted the right of intellectual freedom conferred by Islam. Yet in separating the state from religion, the Turks had gone too far.

Iqbal’s philosophical reconstructions of Islam underscore the tensions between a view of Indian nationalism based on keeping religion out of politics and the normative Muslim conception of treating the spiritual and temporal domains in non-oppositional terms. It was precisely because religion as a demarcator of difference was insufficient to sustain Islam as an ethical ideal that Iqbal rejected the possibility of Muslims agreeing to privatize their religiously informed cultural identities in the interest of being considered politically as part of the Indian nation. In the final year of his life he severely castigated Maulana Husain Ahmed Madni - the pro-Congress religious leader of the Jamiat-I-Ulema-I-Hind - for suggesting that Indian Muslims should embrace the vision of an inclusionary Indian nationalism in which they would have complete freedom with regard to their personal law and religious practices. Madni had maintained that the millat was something higher than the nation, likening the relationship to the cosmic one between heaven and earth. Yet in Iqbal’s opinion, the maulana had ‘left no place for millat by preaching to the eight crore Muslims to lose their identity in the country, and therefore in the majority, and to make nation a heaven...ignor[ing] the fact that Islam will thereby be reduced to the status of the earth’.

In Iqbal’s philosophical scheme, religion as social demarcator was an insufficient condition for the future of Muslims in India. Islam demanded the fashioning of a purely human consciousness and could not suffer being turned into pure earth in an artful separation of the temporal and the spiritual, the religious and the secular. If religion as social signifier does not make for religion as faith, then what was the precise role of religion in the politics of late colonial India and the communitarian holocaust of 1947?

Ayesha Jalal is a MacArthur Fellow and Professor History at Tufts University. Her most recent book is, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2001. This is the third of the four-article series on the religious and the secular in South Asia``

Prem

For your reading pleasure from the Daily Times:

``Indian troops suffer from impotence

NEW DELHI: Indian troops deployed in the world’s highest battlefield in Kashmir have to brave more than harsh weather and enemy fire — the brutal conditions also lead to impotence, a report said on Saturday.

Just 90 days in the most hostile of weather conditions on the Siachen glacier which is 20,000 feet above sea level leaves many soldiers impotent when they return home, the Hindustan Times reported. Temperatures on the Siachen fluctuate between minus 55 degrees Celsius in winter and minus 15 degrees Celsius in summer. However, the army’s research and referral hospital in New Delhi has found a solution to the problem — an inflatable organ implant which uses a bladder and a pump, the report said.

The cost of the implant is expensive at 250,000 rupees but is seen as an important step towards curing “mental stress”. —AFP

Pakistanis, start quaking in your shabby boots!

re: hobbyty # 293

You have avoided the question I repeated twice: what, in your view, are the deep and unbridgeable differences between the ``ethoses`` of Indian Islam (Pakistani Islam and any other variety) and Hinduism that you were telling Zafar bhai about?

It is fair to ask you to clarify the BASIC building blocks of your arguments, right?

What caste am I? I am not sure how that is relevant. I called you a Hindu (which you may or may not be) because you argued, with amazing ignorance, that Hindus were all those people living ``uss paar`` of Sindh.

That is a deliberately created historical and geographical falsehood, used to justify senseless and false ideologies. I pointed out to you that Hindus lived almost all over the land currently known as Pakistan and right upto Afghanistan. There are historical records as well as archeological evidences to back up that assertion, nothing to do with Indians who kept few records anyway.

You did not counter that either.

You boiled your answer down to asking me what my caste was? I am willing to tell you not only what my caste is but also what I eat or don`t, when we take up personal matters. In fact, I will tell you without that reciprocity: I just scrambled some eggs, added plenty of fried onions, green chillies, a bit of salt, and being hungry as hell, ate that up with ketchup, toasted bread, and coffee. Also, my parents are brahmins. I have never had to declare my caste, except under circumstances in which my being born a Brahmin might work to my disadvantage - such as to meet job reservation quotas legally and constitutionally designed to work in favor of the disadvantaged castes in India. When casteist people I don`t wish to offend ask me what my caste is, I tell them I am a brahmin. Otherwise I tell them to go to hell. Non casteists don`t ask each other`s castes. So, hobbyty, you can take your pick.

Again, although your concern for the creature comforts of Indian military is quite touching, we do need to understand the arguments you were making to Zafar.

What, in your view, are the deep and unbridgeable differences between the ``ethoses`` of Indian Islam (Pakistani Islam and any other variety) and Hinduism that you were telling Zafar bhai about?

AGAIN: An answer to this question is important because you suggested that these deep differences between ``Hindu ethos`` and ``Islamic ethos`` imply that the two can not live together (except in Pakistan, perhaps).

Is Islam an inherently, irredemably intolerant, bigoted religion that can not live with other religions?

Is Hinduism an inherently, irredemably intolerant, bigoted religion that can not live with other religions?

Are both inherently, irredemably intolerant, bigoted religions that can not live with other religions?

What, hobbyty, are the differences?

Prem

Please don`t take offence, simply explain your support of casteism. What caste are you? Seems the veneer of civil conviction on you is terribily thin and brittle, flakey really. Underneath is the anti-egalitarian ethos - am I mistaken?

``Hobbyty have to face the terrible fact that you are a Hindu.`` Not just a Hindu, but an Achute - I have no problem with the possibility or the fact that I had ancestors who were among other things, Hindus. Do you?

``These differences in ethoses can be expected to shape the current reality (as opposed to our ambition), right?`` Right! They can be expected to shape both reality and ambition.

``It is clear the hawks in the Indian government are having some effect on the hawk in Pakistani establishment.`` And on the Gujrati Muslims! Soon they may have an effect on other Indian Muslims. Live and learn, howeever; my expectation of you, in such an eventuality would be more of the same verbal condemnation, while you sit on your thumbs.

``Yes, it IS very expensive to keep the army ready to attack...``

The Indian armed forces in the desert are in a pitiable situation - these servie men do not even have field toilets, and clean drinking water is becoming highly prized, with the coming rainy season, their armour movement will be difficult if not impossible, the new aircraft do not have air to air missiles and only 30 aircraft have avionics required to target precision weapons, T72 tank that form the bulk of Indian armour is an international failure - and you want to convince us they are battle ready against Pakistani armed forces, instead of being sick of being stationed in a desert? Stick to what you know, caste - there are hundreds of millions of Indians you have yet to show ``their place`` in Indian society. By all means do try to show the armed forces of Pakistan, ``their place`` - The ``huff and I`ll puff`` bit is difficult to take seriously.

``In any case, please do tell us about the differences between the ``two ethoses`` as you see them.`` As you have suggested that I am ignorant of Hinduism, no need to take offence, just explain how you think the two ethoses are different? Why is the biological inequality of Zaat/Jaat, that you are so protective of, not function to structure inequality in society? What caste are you? Please explain.

Jay

``She had no difficulty in projecting the hatred for the hindu killers of gujarat on to the hindu, manoj, who happened to be infront of her. What she missed in that process is the profound insight. Her hatred should have reminded her of the hatred felt by the hindus when the news came that a few hundred were killed in a train set alight by the muslims. What is important is not the truth or otherwise of the incident, the news and the emptional out burst are the key.``

Jay, I haven`t interacted much with you, and when I have it is usually disagreements, but never mind..I think the above paragraph is perceptive in the extreme. Without getting in to the K for Kafir theme, whatever that means, I think hatred by association is a universal example. When AnNy put her post up, the irony was obvious to me right away. She kicked a friend out her house coz he was Hindu, a Hindu mob burns an individual alive because he is Muslim...it is the same anger. The only variance lies in the extent of self justification. I speak from experience when I say it is universal, not limited to Pakistan