Action To Support Displaced Community in Gujrat

Shades of the Urstruly`s quaint sort of colonial-racist anthropological view of `hindoos` are seen even in publically stated views of public figures and media in Pakistan. The degrees and details vary, thats all. Ms Shireen Mazari and Gauhar Ayub Khan(or do I mean Altaf Gauhar) both regularly published in the The News can teach even Urstruly and the other guy a thing or two about venom.

But as Busharraf rightly says such people are dimwitted and there is only so much to be gained by replying to them on their terms :)

---


Outlook Sept 2 issue(www.outlookindia.com) has a
book review of the book

`Urban violence in India, Identity Politics, `Mumbai` and the Postcolonial city`
by Thomas Blom Hansen.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?sid=1&fname=Booksa&fodname=20020902&secname=Books
A pathology of the Shiv Sena`s apocalyptic politics of self-esteem

Its a study of why and how the Shiv Sena was so successful. ``.. as Hansen reminds us, any such answer also throws light on the character of Indian society and politics, what it is and what it might become..``

``.. Hansen tells a graphic and compelling story about the rise of the Sena. The structural transformations in the political economy of Mumbai certainly gave the Sena an opening: the decline of traditional working class politics brought about by changes in the structure of industry; the inability of civic life as it existed in Bombay in the `60s and `70s to cater to the aspirations of the newly emerging classes and the unorganised sector; the incapacity of its cosmopolitan ethos to give full due to vernacular cultures and idioms; the general churning of society which would no longer accept the paternalism of the older Bombay; the competition over white collar jobs and the internal corrosion of public institutions.

But, as Hansen insists, the Sena`s success cannot be attributed simply to structural causes of social dynamics. Its success is largely political and can be attributed, in no small measure, to a repertoire of organisational and rhetorical inventions. In fact, Hansen argues, that rather than drawing upon pre-given identities like caste, or the Maratha regional identity, the Sena politically created these identities; its strategy is governed by a deliberate choice rather than a social logic.

Thus much of the study concentrates on the organisation, its rhetoric, mobilisational techniques and political strategy of the Sena. Hansen describes in vivid detail all the paradoxical elements that have made the Sena a success, an astonishing combination of bravado and opportunism, organisational hierarchy and local entrepreneurship,violent gestures and social service.

But in its essentials, the secret of the Sena`s and Thackeray`s success lies in the fact that it successfully deploys an apocalyptic politics of self-esteem. It gives young, powerless, insecure men seeking affirmation of their own moral worth an opportunity to view themselves as strong, powerful and capable of self-assertion. Association with the Sena allows them the license to become strongmen or dadas with a worthy cause. It gives them a manifest explanation of their sense of injury, by projecting it onto an alien other, and satisfies their desire for recognition. Although Hansen does not quite put it in these words, the Sena feeds on an urban experience that can be profoundly alienating. Old moral codes do not have the power to inspire, the aspiration to upward mobility is rarely, if ever, fulfilled, and is accompanied by an existential condition where one often needs to assert one`s will in order to feel alive. Hence the Sena emphasises not long-term social and institutional transformation, but violent, theatrical gestures and public performance. Hansen brilliantly analyses Thackeray`s intuitive grasp of this reality and the commanding and intimate way in which his homely idioms cater to it, the ways in which he endows `ordinary` existence with a modicum of worth.

More importantly, it throws light on the ways in which the excess, violence and essential vapidity of our politics is threatening to jeopardise the gains of democracy. If politics becomes a means, not of solving practical problems, but of feeling assertive and alive, it will consume us all in its wake...``

busharraf #139 Welcome to this really pathetic board! You are right on the mark in what you write about urstruly and tahafahim.

I also appreciate your kind references towards me, although living up to them is going to require some effort :-).

Dear Harpreet/122 aka Sajjid . . . one Sikh I researched left the service of the Mughal ARmy whent he Brits refused to trade with anybody who was not a Brahmin, and so he became a Christian and then walked all the way to China where on the way for some time he became a Buddhust, reaching Russia through Mongolia, he then became a Bolshie. Subsequetly, one branch of his family went to Italy, then to British Columbia (small error by travel agent, you see) and then down to the tip of Chile to a rockphos port where today he still keeps a really neat Babe da room and a wife from Moga.

I thought you should know.

Urstruly: Im not surprised that ur gonna revert back to ur old ways of ignoring me. I would apologize for cutting a thread with a sword, but u did say something quite STUPID, so my comments were accurate.

U think moral courage has something to do with sitting on a computer in detroit and ``condeming`` some people ull never see. And if i call u dumb, ur gonna get angry, lol.

As i said earlier, if ur gonna post online, be prepared to take both the good and bad. I still dont understand how calling u stupid is an insult. Its more a statement of fact based on what u wrote.

ana: I saw most of jogan. That was a good movie. It needs to be remade.

Samina: Yea for sure, but it seems like our brave mujahideen warrior is hiding under his keyboard. I wouldnt mind striking his pressure points with a knife. IM saying, he loves allah, why not let me make the intro?

ana

what pisses me off is not the sanctimonious crap that your ilk throws around, it is the cowardice. You have no problem mentioning Armenian genocide but you don`t have moral courage to write a sentence that uses the words ``hindu`` and ``genocide`` together.

Your post was not an answer to my questions. `Genocide is bad` is not enough-the topic under discussion is genocide in Gujrat by Hindu maniacs. That was my complaint all along that whenever your ilk condemns genocide in Gujrat it tries to tone its severity down by mentioning a genocide elsewhere. It means you are stealtly giving moral support to the perpetrators of a heinious crime like genocide.

About Drumz, I am acting on the advise of a wise man who once said that never try to argue with idiots, they will drag you down to their level and beat you at their game. Since according to Drumz everybody except him is either an idiot or a fool or a motherfukker I will not drag him down to my level and beat him at my game.

You on the other hand is a different character. I dont want to win an argument from you. I just want to know what set your tail on fire.

hmmmmmm........

First, to all intelligent and honorable chowk.com members who genuinely are trying to air and resolve the deep rooted differences between India and Pakistan, Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) and Islam. I would like to say the following:

I have been reading the recent posts on this board and am appalled to see the gutter level to which it has been reduced. For this I squarely lay the blame on urstruly and the self-proclaimed “mullah” tahafahim. These people are just troublemakers and are an utter disgrace to Pakistan and Islam. All what they have posted is unIslamic. It is pure hate and Islam does not stand for hate, at least the Islam I personally follow.

Tahafahim (#90) you are the not most despicable person I know (I have met, and continue to meet, even worse people that your self on day to day basis in my personal and work). Please know it that you are just a nondescript insect, or more appropriately a parasite on society. You feed of off society in the disguise of holy men. You are not a God fearing man, let alone a respectable mullah. You run your evil madrasahs and propagate violence and cannibalism! Which Imam taught you that personal value? If you cannot find Hindus you go after Christians, or some other minority. That is what is happening in Pakistan these days. Urstruly, you are a parasite too. You are an armchair terrorist whose ambition is to lead a fantasy jihad. Inshallah, You will accomplish neither!

Both Urstruly and your chela Tahafahim (or is it the other way around?) please know it that your tactics may work on 3-4 year old children. But it will not work on the intelligent people visiting Chowk.com. Most people here are honourable so if you cannot find the honour in your personal being, I suggest you go to the fields and scare the crows away. You are just scarecrows!! Just a facade with no substance.

I feel terrible that my religion has been so maligned on Chowk.com. I apologize to all members for the actions of Urstruly and Tahafahim. They will not do so personally because they are dull witted and do not even comprehend the evil they have vomited here. But I will apologize for their cowardly and terrorist acts. Please do not take them as an example of Islam, dear Chowk.com members from India. These people are the scum of our society. I would any day discard all the tahafahims and urstrulys of Pakistan for the company of just one rshridhar or tahmed321. These two are the undiscovered gems of Chowk.com and we should appreciate their presence and the way they show us by example on how to behave in a honourable manner.

To rsridhar, (Reply #: 116)

Your post on “Sanatana Dharma” is very nice. I have seen several of the quotes before and have read many of the original references you listed. I completely agree with you that one does not, and should not, have to degrade anyone`s religion to prove a point. No point can be proven by such logic. Religion, like people, should stand on their own merits. Sanatana Dharma is a beautiful and superior way of life. And I respect it for what it represents and teaches. During the past few days an evil depiction of Islam has been presented before you. Please do not accept that all Muslims are like that. Even though I was born into Islam, and I love it for its noble and humanitarian values, I would abandon it in an instant if the Islam of Tahafahim and Urstruly were ever proven as the true Islam. Believe me it is NOT! Yours and my friend, Janab Tahmed321, has previously eloquently attested to this fact, along with great people like Janab Ras Siddiqui.

I agree that there are many people in my country who hate Hindus and Christians, like a merchant lusts for money, or an uncouth lusts for a woman, or a glutton salivates for food. But ask them why they hold on to this hatred, and they cannot tell you why. There cannot be any justification for such insanity. These people only have a canned answer: “that they are infidels”; this has been tattooed onto their brains by their local mullahs and government schoolteachers. I apologize to you personally for these offensive and unIslamic remarks.

To Ana (on may recent posts):

This Tahafahim and Urstruly are cockroaches. Just brush them aside. They need to be swept back into the gutter from where they came. I know it is hard but the best way to deal with such people is to make them know that they are insignificant pests. These people should be ignored. Like they did in the days of old: Hukkha pani band!! That is what they deserve.

I have noticed that Janab Tahmed321, has take a statesman like stand in which he has merely confirmed another’s remark. He has a way with using just a few words to reach his objectives, and always knows the proper way to react. We can all learn a lot from people like him and rshridhar. Both appear to be scholars in their own right.

Ana, please do not leave the Chowk.com. At least, not because of Urstruly and Tahafahim. These are insignificant low life. I look forward to your comments and interesting opinions on this website.

Regards to all,

Shoaib

re: shammi

{Rsaxena, I am not worried. Amused is the right word.}

...that`s what everyone should be...but some people are trying, sincerely, to reason with mullahs urstooly & co....it`s like when some arabs jump around on the streets and declare ``death to america`` and blah blah blah...who really gives a $hit (no one)...it`s worth a good laugh, but that`s about it...

re: 786786/progressive

{The Genocide at Mazar e Sharif----The Organised Democracy of Criminals, the US, behind it.}

...here`s a martini toast hoping that the `organized democracy of criminals` gets you next...(but not before you get your free cruise to guantanamo bay)...

Sammi jaan,

[ana, Dont you DARE go anyplace, babe!]

--oh but babe, I must! Making the annual summer pilgrimage to ammi jaan`s...interestingly enough made it at approximately the same time last year, was there with her Sep. 11th and the aftermath..and am thankful I was with her `cause neither of us should have been alone in those dark days. different time zone, different atmosphere, no internet, and no Chowk *sigh * for approximately ten days. So I leave the chowkidaari of this place in your capable hands, as well as those of drumzy, anNy (when she`s around), fawad, harpreet (hai rabba), and I know I`m missing a few well-deserved peeps..khair...

just remember we`ve already been booted out of paradise, so let`s not do anything to get ourselves booted out of chowk hell. And as the sergeant says in Hill Street Blues, `Let`s be careful out there.` :-)

Complete text: missing from # 133

``When the Jackal`s end is near, it ventures towards the city---`or Afghanistan or Vietnam or`-------`` farsi proverb.

Afghanistan is on the brink of another disaster

Reported by: Robert Fisk

8/14/2002 (The Independent) :: The garden was overgrown, the roses scrawny after a day of Kandahar heat, the dust in our eyes, noses, mouth, fingernails. But the message was straightforward. ``This is a secret war,`` the Special Forces man told me. ``And this is a dirty war. You don`t know what is happening.`` And of course, we are not supposed to know. In a ``war against terror``, journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely on the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much about human rights.

How many human rights did the mass killers of 11 September allow their victims? You are either with us or against us. Whose side are you on? But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the ``coalition allies``, as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden. ``The Americans don`t know what to do here now,`` he went on. ``Their morale in Afghanistan is going downhill – though there`s no problem with the generals running things in Tampa. They`re still gung-ho. But here the soldiers know things haven`t gone right, that things aren`t working. Even their interrogations went wrong``. Brutally so, it seems.

In the early weeks of this year, the Americans raided two Afghan villages, killed 10 policemen belonging to the US-supported government of Hamid Karzai and started mistreating the survivors. American reporters – in a rare show of mouse-like courage amid the self-censorship of their usual reporting – quoted the prisoners as saying they had been beaten by US troops. According to Western officials in Kandahar, the US troops ``gave the prisoners a thrashing``.

Things have since changed. The American forces in Afghanistan, it seems, now leave the beatings to their Afghan allies, especially members of the so-called Afghan Special Forces, a Washington-supported group of thugs who are based in the former Khad secret police torture centre in Kabul. ``It`s the Afghan Special Forces who beat the Pashtun prisoners for information now – not the Americans,`` the Western military man told me. ``But the CIA are there during the beatings, so the Americans are culpable, they let it happen.``

This is just how the Americans began in Vietnam. They went in squeaky clean with advisers, there were some incidents of ``termination with extreme prejudice``, after which it was the Vietnamese intelligence boys who did the torture. The same with the Russians. When their soldiers poured across the border in 1979, they quickly left it to their Afghan allies in the Parcham and Khad secret police to carry out the ``serious`` interrogations. And if this is what the Americans are now up to in Afghanistan, what is happening to their prisoners at Guantanamo? Or, for that matter, at Bagram, the airbase north of Kabul to which all prisoners in Kandahar are now sent for investigation if local interrogators believe their captives have more to say.

Of course, it`s possible to take a step back from this dark and sinister corner of America`s Afghan adventure. In the aftermath of the Taliban`s defeat humanitarian workers have achieved some little miracles. Unicef reports 486 female teachers at work in the five south-western provinces of the country with 16,674 girls now at school. Only in Uruzgan, where the Taliban were strongest, has not a single female teacher been employed. UN officials can boast that in these same, poverty-belt provinces, polio has now been almost eradicated.

The UN was fighting polio before the Taliban collapsed, and the drugs whose production the Taliban banned are now back on the market. The poppy fields are growing in Helmand province again, and in Uruzgan local warlords are trying to avoid government control in order to cultivate their own new poppy production centres. In Kabul, where two government ministers have been murdered in seven months, President Karzai is now protected – at his own request – by American bodyguards. And you don`t have to be a political analyst to know what kind of message this sends to Afghans.

Kabul is alive with the kind of rumours that can never be substantiated but that stick in the mind, just as the dust of Kandahar stays in the throat and on the lips of all who go there. ``The British forces were right to leave,`` a British humanitarian worker announced over dinner in Kabul one night. ``They realised that the Americans had no real interest in returning this country to law and order. They knew that the Americans were going to fail. So they got out as soon as they could. The Americans say they want peace and stability. So why don`t they let Isaf (the international force in Kabul) move into the other big cities of Afghanistan? Why do they let their friendly warlords persecute the rest of the country?``

Far more disturbing are persistent reports from northern Afghanistan of the massacre of thousands of Pashtuns after the slaughter at General Dostum`s Qal-i-Jangi fort last November These mass murders, according to a humanitarian worker I have known for two decades – he played a brave role in preventing killings in Lebanon in 1982 – went on into December with the full knowledge of the Americans. But the US did nothing about it, any more than they did about the 600 Pakistani prisoners at Shirbagan, some of whom are still dying of starvation and ill-treatment at the hands of their Northern Alliance captors.

``There are mass graves all across the north, and the Americans, who know about this, have said nothing,`` my old friend said. ``The British intelligence people knew this, too. And the British have said nothing.``

There are those in Kabul who suspect that the Americans are now in Afghanistan for secondary reasons: to operate in and out of Pakistan, rather than in Afghanistan itself. ``They`ve had plenty of muck-ups in Afghanistan and they could not base thousands of their soldiers in Pakistan,`` a Western officer in Kabul said. ``They`re safer here, and now they can go in and out of Pakistan and keep the pressure on Musharraf from here – and on the Iranians too.``

Last week, The Independent revealed that FBI officers have been seizing Arabs from their homes in Pakistan and bringing them across the border to Afghanistan for interrogation at Bagram.

It was the Special Forces man in the south who saw things a little more globally. ``Perhaps the Americans can start withdrawing if there`s another war – if they go to war in Iraq. But the US can`t handle two wars at the same time. They would be overstretched.`` So to end America`s ``war against terror`` in Afghanistan – a war that has left the drug-dealers of the Northern Alliance in disproportionate control of the Afghan government, many al-Qa`ida men on the loose and absolutely no peace in the country – we have to have another war in Iraq.

As if the Israeli-Palestine conflict is not enough. But when Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of State, can identify only a ``so-called`` Israeli-occupied territory on the West Bank – the occupation troops there presumably being mistaken by the Pentagon as Swiss or Burmese soldiers – there`s not much point in taking a reality check in Washington.

The truth is that Afghanistan is on the brink of another disaster. Pakistan is now slipping into the very anarchy of which its opposition warned. And the Palestinian-Israeli war is now out of control. So we really need a war in Iraq, don`t we?

urstruly...

You should have already felt the shame in saying `fukk you too!` but I didn`t expect you to then, and I don`t expect you to now.

and I would ask you to stop acting like a bully lawyer..and I raise the objection to the judge (who is this case is the ooparwala) and say asked and answered, okay?!?????

Listen to me very carefully, and I will try to speak slowly, and softly (without the big stick of course)--in my humble opinion, genocide is morally wrong, anywhere on this earth that we have poisoned. Once I have said that, I feel I have no more need to answer your bullying questions, because I feel that genocide is carried out in many ways, e.g. by continually denying the Armenian genocide even now, the Turkish government and some of its people are committing the very same genocide over and over and over again.

I have never asked for your respect and truthfully I will not lose any sleep over the fact that you don`t respect me. It has already been made clear by numerous chowk `characters` just how little respect we have for each other and for humanity. I`m not going to stand on a soapbox here and plead that we show love for one another. . .people have got to know what love is before that can happen. So please, if I have failed to sound like G.W, and you don`t respect me. . . that`s fine with me.

As for your insinuation about my diplomas. . .hmmm...last I checked, my diplomas were not in a suitcase, they were dumped for the ridiculous piece of paper they are. Last I checked, I really didn`t need to have a diploma as you said to have moral courage, or to be sanctimonious. It`s really interesting how this adjective has been used here mainly to describe women interactors on chowk. I`ve never heard temporal described as sanctimonious..perhaps tahmed, and never never you, urstruly. I must do some further research on this. Khair, I would rather be described as sanctimonious, than a pseudo-intellectual, or an ignorant pissant, or even an intellectual. But I know from the spirit of your post that you consider me much less than that, so I actually feel rather complimented. You still want to say `fukk you`???? I say bless you, urstruly, bless you and the ground that you walk on!

Now why don`t you go on and answer DRUMZy`s questions to his satisfaction. I am an old tired sanctimonious and fukked individual who needs her rest.

ana,

Dont you DARE go anyplace, babe!

Drumz,

If you meet up with tawa, can I come along? I have a good right upper cut....

Urstruly,

Tsk tsk tsk....

Ana # 128

Moral courage is not a diploma like that of matric or FA, which sits in your suitcase for years – it is something that you have to show everyday, every minute to prove that you are morally courageous. This place is full of phokay patakhay, here you have to prove that you are not one of them – at least with your words.

The condemnation of all Hindus is bad – fine – point taken - but I did mention dodos and unicorns didn`t I? Now you are saying that these dodos and unicorns are real – well where the hell are they? I don’t see a single one on this forum. Are you referring to the author who is trying to stick a cardboard horn on his forehead to prove that he is a unicorn? Are they sitting in your suitcase along with your diplomas?

Again your post was anything but….., anything but………, anything but……….

Let me make it easy for you. You can reply the following either in `Yes` or `No` and you can also add your notes.

1. Do you or do you not condemn those Hindus who actually and physically carried out the genocide in Gujrat?

2. Do you or do you not condemn those Hindus who aided and abetted those who actually and physically carried out the genocide in Gujrat?

3. Do you or do you not condemn those Hindus who created and promoted an atmosphere of hatred, which eventually resulted in the genocide in Gujrat?

And yes I will keep on daring you to show your moral courage as long as you keep on giving me your sanctimonious pontifications. I need to know whether you are truthful enough to be worthy of my respect or not. I want to feel the shame which I should have felt when I wrote to you ``fukk you too``.

Urstruly: Im gonna ask u the same Q I ask all the fools. How old are u? More importantly, who the fukk do u think ur talking to??? Its one thing to convince urself of some bullsh1t, but to have the audacity to speak it to intelligent people...

``Therefore, a crime must be treated, investigated, and analyzed through the procedure of a criminal investigation and not just through our prejudices and political agendas.``

AND THE VERY PREVIOUS POST...

``The condemnations of the acts of genocide by Hindu religious nuts are not enough. You must also condemn the causes, which brought about such tragedy. And the main cause is the atmosphere of hate created by Hindu Hindus, Secular Hindus, and Atheist Hindus.``

So why not blame Muslims for creating the atmosphere for al qaeda to function? And what investigation have u done in Gujrat?

Tahafahim: Wussup mufukka. Please stop ignoring me, where do u live? Im sincerely interested in meeting u. If ur mouth in real life isnt as big as it is on chowk, im sure some fancy crowbar work will change that.

urstruly..

[Now let me see if you have moral courage to condemn them, the real freaks, the seculars, the democrat and the atheist Hindus; let me see what your principles of high moral values are; let me see that you can sacrifice your political agenda here for the sake of truth, honesty and justice. Can you do that? If you can`t then fukk you too.]

----You have no idea what you`re saying, do you? No, I really don`t think you do. You are not just saying that a group of Hindus was responsible for the carnage in Gujarat, but that all Hindus were responsible. You have no idea how irresponsible that statement is, the hate and the prejudice that exists in that even from a virtual character like you urstruly...real people read this and feel justifiably upset. You would be just as condoning and understanding if I had said something equally hateful about Muslims? And then said..guys it was an experiment. I don`t think so.

I`ve been told that I shouldn`t even be engaging in this dialogue with you..and I feel the same way. You needn`t taunt me childishly about whether I have moral courage or not, urstruly. I KNOW I do. I don`t have to defend myself to you about condemning the genocide in Gujarat, because I KNOW that it is morally wrong..and that steps must be taken, answers must be found, understanding MUST take place, so that we can say `never again.` When you were doing this experiment about prejudice, perhaps you should have done what Harimau did for you..it would have been much more well-rounded. And you still would have gotten a buttfull from both sides, because the bottom line is..your posts were irresponsible. Even IF people as you describe exist, to lump them altogether as you did will and has been perceived by quite a few, with the exception of your good maulana buddies, as nothing but a bunch of constipated malodorous crap which you couldn`t flush down yourself, so you had to expose it to the rest of us.

I`ve seen racism seminars where people are given a hypothetical situation, to test and see what the results are...you presented no such situation to us, until after the fact. What you did cannot be compared to those seminars. And even now, you defend what you said. Continue doing so, if that`s what your conscience tells you to do..but DO NOT expect me to be lacking in MORAL COURAGE because I will not make irresponsible statements like you, and lump all Hindus together...baat samajh main a`ayi ya nahin, bachche?

And one more thing.. telling me to go fukk myself doesn`t help your argument very well either.