Hey Ram, What Have You Done to My Religion?

Ref stuka #86

[Harimau:

``I have no doubts in my own mind that 99.99% of Indian Muslims feel this way. It is that remaining 0.01% that has been poisoned by false propaganda ``

You finally sound like Musharraf. Where did you get the percentages from? :) }

Why? Do you believe that Indian Muslims are less patriotic than other Indians?

#40 by dost-mittar

``Their leadership is now in the hands of bearded mullahs who look like they are coming out of the 18th century; they offer greater resistance to any reform than Bangladeshis or even the mullahs of Pakistan.....``

I hope that Muslim Indians throw the influence of bearded Mullas away for the common good of other Indians and also for the Muslim Ummah in general. I don`t know why but in whatever region Muslims have stuck to Mullas, they have failed to progress and develop. Iran may be an exception. The slow rate of development there under theocracy is attributable more to USA`s opposition and economic boycott rather than their own inefficiency. But Mullas of India and Pakistan are definitely incompetent for running the daily affairs of todays world.

Like you, I have high hopes from Muslim Indians if I take their success indicators in the USA. I see their next generation going into technical areas and being very successful. Also, I hope you don`t mind my sharing that, most popular Islamic Evangelist come from Muslim Indians stock. There are many examples.

harimau #79

`` Tut, tut, tut. While factually true and coldly clinical, that last sentence will tag you in the minds of Pakistanis as one of the billion Hindus wandering around with a machete in hand and killing and maiming any Muslims that you come across.

You must remember that Chowk is populated by military, political, religious, economic and sociological analysts who are as good at these things as the Pakistani military is.``

The reality is that most Indians are busy with economic survival to care about the nonsense from arm chair analysts.

Romair#71:
I do not think of myself as either Nehruite or Gandhian. I have an eclectic approach in these matters, based on an empirical analysis of `what works`.
I do believe that an individual`s human rights should supercede national sovereignty. Fortunately, the world also seems to be more accepting of this view. Even when nothing is done about what is happening in places like Congo and Liberia, the TV broadcastes of suffering, bleeding humans, does not let you swallow your food without a tinge of guilt.
I also believe that all groups have a right to maintain and nurture their distinctiveness. But I also believe in a stable world order and I do not believe that every disgruntled group has the right to build its own separate `dhayee eent kee masjid`.
With regard to the house analogy, it depends upon what you call a house. You think of Kahmir as a house, Indians think of Kashmir as part of their Indian house.

Urstruly:
Despite the title, I do not think that the Hindu religion, per se, is intolerant. Indeed, the worst of the fanatics, the shiv sainiks and the Bajrang Dalis, never quote any Hindu scripture to advance their agendas. Because they can`t. I am not aware of any Hindu religious or semi-religious texts, even the hated Manu Smriti, which can be quoted to incite hatred against people of a different faith.

Inquirer:
``Rather it REQUIRES a joint declaration of India and Pakistan to assure the protection and promotion of minorites in a just manner. The first thing that should be done is that India as well as Pakistan - largely Pakistan - should declare their error of injustice to minorities. ``
I also think that an apology by both govts. for the crimes perpetrated against the minorities will go some distance to heal the historical wounds.

tahmed, banjaara:
Thanks for your comments.

ferozk:
``India has no threat from Pakistan and those who think such, are delusion about the comparative reality between India and Pakistan. ``
I cannot fully agree with you on this. Pakistan does not accept the status-quo between the two countries and also considers it legitimate to use non-peaceful means to change the status quo in its favour. As long as this situation continues, this threat is not a delusion despite the millitary advantage India may have over Pakistan.
And while the safety and security of her Muslims is for Indians to ensure, it would be unrealistic to expect Pakistanis, even you, to be indifferent to their lot. However, the best approach for Pakistanis will be to adopt the attitude you have suggested. Any shedding of tears on behalf of India`s Muslims is likely to act as Juda`s kiss as far as this problem is concerned.

harimou#47
``Why do you all cry about the rise of Indian Nationalism?``
Me? Never!
``Why do you call it `Hindu` nationalism? Why is it not a secularist movement?``
Because Hindu nationalism and Indian nationalism is not the same thing. Please see my post to Madani.
``Do not people of all faiths in India want the country to progress?``
Where did you get that idea?
``Why is it that not a single person, Indian or Pakistani, has applauded the overthrow of the Sheikh Abdullah dynasty in Kashmir?``
I did! I dont blame you for not noticing it. Unfortunately, it is not mandatory for chowkies to read all posts of dost-mittar:-(.

veeresh#44
``What are your, and other inter-actor`s, views on the implementation of a common civil law regardless of religion, in India?``

I think that the framers of our constitution messed up big time on this issue. They should have implemented a civil code right then. And one should not blame Muslims for this. They were too shocked from the trauma of the partition and did not have the strength then to raise a protest on this issue. In any case, the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly that I have read show that this issue was discussed at length during its proceedings and that the representatives of the minorities actually supported a uniform our civil law. But Nehru (maybe under the influence of Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad) supported separate civil codes, perhaps in a misplaced attempt to provide a sense of security to the Muslims of India. I think he would have encountered less opposition to a uniform code from the Muslims at that time than he would have from the Hindus, whose civil code was revised more drastically.
But that was then. Now, I think this has become an issue of prestige among Muslims. I still believe in a uniform civil code but I also think that a lot of ground has to be prepared among the Muslims by their own progressive elements before it can be implemented without major opposition from the group which would be most affected by the changes.
Incidentally, people usually think of civil code in terms of polygamy and alomony, but it also affects other areas. Back in my civil service days, I realized that Muslim immigrants to Canada had a great difficulty sponsoring their adopted children to Canada. The Canadian High Commission in Delhi would not accept their claim as legitimate as they were not supposed to have adopted children under the Muslim Personal Law.

TAhmed: I had emailed you a week back or so. Didn`t you get it??

Harimau:

``I have no doubts in my own mind that 99.99% of Indian Muslims feel this way. It is that remaining 0.01% that has been poisoned by false propaganda ``

You finally sound like Musharraf. Where did you get the percentages from? :)

ahmadmadani:

I would agree with you if you call it an Indian ``Ummah`` rather than a Hindu Ummah. They celebrate equally the achievement of Muslims like AR Rehaman, Azim Premji, Sania Mirza or Kalam as they do of Hindus.
But there is also a sense of new awakening among Hindus. I do not think that even this is a bad thing if it remained a positive force; without this awakening there would have been no consensus about the removal of caste barriers to which even the BJP now subscribes. What follows is a personal, poorly informed, speculative opinion and hopefully, someone else will throw greater light on this:
I think that a thousand years of being ruled by non-hindus created a sort of defeatist, inferiority complex among the Hindus, especially in the North. Losing their land and their adherents to stronger, proselytising, agressively monotheistic religions of Islam and Christianity, Hindus themselves started to view their religion as weak and backward. Ironically, the reawakening was led by some Europeans who discovered rich philosophical thoughts in old Hindu texts. During the laissez-faire period of the British rule, there were Hindu renaissance movements like Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj which tried to ``modernise`` Hinduism. They argued that the multitudes of gods and goddesses in hinduism and the many rituals were, in fact, a facade and, that in its essence, Hinduism too believed in an abstract, almighty God, and was therefore at par with the Abrahamic religions. They did this by referring to the Vedas (which no one had read, anyway) which, according to them, empasised the unity of God.
Hindus are now beginning to shed this feeling of inferiority. They are realising that while their religion has shortcomings, others are not perfect either. They are prepared to deal with thir shortcomings but are not prepared to accept others as superiors. They are also concerned about the steady loss of their adherents to the proselytising religions and are not prepared to yield further ground without a fight; hence the more muscular form of the religion that we see today.
To the extent that this new awakening adds to people`s self-esteem and confidence, I am all for it. But I draw the line when this positive self-esteem turns into a negative one of hatred towards the others. This is what this article is about.
Hope you are enjoying the monsoons. I remember that when I was a child we would go out in the rain, singing ``raba, raba meenh vasa, saadi kothi daane paa!``. I pray for ``daane`` in everybody`s kothi.
And bon voyage! Hope there`s Internet wherever you are.

Can`t understand why the people of India and Pakistan think ``Islamic Invaders`` and ``Cunning Hindus`` are the villains of our history ... what about the Brits ??? (Only Nasah ever blames them here ... and right you are sir!)

17th century India was close to dominating World Trade through the most wonderful product of medieval India - it`s textiles ... and then the real villains, British Colonizers took India through force of arms and proceeded to exploit it ruthlessly (and destroy it`s industries) till it reduced one of the richest nations of the world to the grinding poverty we are still trying to climb out of today.

Compare to China and Japan, specially Japan who were able to keep the Europeans at arms length and simultaneously educate themselves about their society and technology, and to achieve their own industrial revolution and transition to representative government.

An Industrial Miracle in a Golden Age: The 17th-Century Cloth Exports of India
http://iref.homestead.com/Textile.html

excerpts ...
``What matters is the extraordinary situation that existed in the early 1680s when, as seems quite clear, a collection of simple and undernourished brown people in an exotic country managed to pull off an industrial miracle. They had already succeeded in eliminating most of the local textile industry in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Now they had come within an ace of displacing even the powerful and traditionally successful textile makers of Western Europe. They had in fact done something that had never been done before. For the first time in history, a manufactured non-luxury product made in a single country was on the verge of dominating the consumer markets of the entire world.``

``One could probably find still more explanations for the earlier industrial success of India: an outstandingly flexible financial system, organizational methods that involved a much greater rationalization of production than in Europe (where weavers as late as the 1700s often still spun their own yams, dyed their own cloth, and even made it up into tailored clothes), and entrepreneurial attitudes among the merchant classes which were at least as strongly developed as any such attitudes in Europe. However, I will not get into such topics here. It is enough to emphasize once again the extraordinary fact that India in the 17th century came very close to controlling most of the world`s textile markets, and that the explanation was by no means as simple as their embattled competitors claimed.``

``Would it not have been most logical to predict that free trade would eventually triumph, that the superbly efficient textile makers of India, in tandem with the heavily capitalized East India companies, would eventually overwhelm their European competitors, and that Indian capitalists would then mechanize their mills and move onward to the improvement of their (already highly regarded) iron and steel industry?``

``It is in fact one of the more tantalizing and least recognized might-have-beens of history. If things had worked out only slightly differently, the Industrial Revolution might have taken place in India. We could now be living in a world where Indian tourists complained constantly about the squalor of England and where Europe and North America would be underdeveloped quasi-colonies whose main function was providing raw materials for the insatiable factories of Bengal and Gujarat.``

``Among the reasons why this did not happen were the high quality of 18th- and 19th-century European armies (which eventually seized the main Indian textile-producing centers and thus found a noneconomic solution to the problem of unfair competition) and the surprisingly open attitude of European textile manufacturers. As pointed out earlier, these manufacturers had been thoroughly frightened back in the. 1670s and 1680s and so had lobbied hard for stringent controls on Indian imports. When they got the tariff protection they wanted, however, they seem not to have succumbed to the normal tendency to relax into old and inefficient ways. Instead, they initiated a major, long-term program of research and development.``

msouza:
``They are the Hindus who lost a lot…their plenty, almost everything.. lost their religion……these Hindus who are no more Hindus because of the outside religion, these Hindus who are now Muslims….they are the ones who lost the most but they are the ones who don’t hate the invaders … rather hate themselves(Hindus)…Not only they hate their previous Hindu selves but also defend and love the invaders who wronged them the most…for these very previous Hindus (I mean muslims) have become THEM for the current Hindus``

...But they do not consider it to be a loss, so this loss is okay with them if not with those whom they rejected.
In my opinion, while the quran does teach people to reject their parents` ``false`` beliefs and approvingly refers to the example of Prophet Abraham in this regard (a new religion can`t grow by saying ``hain aur bhi duniya mein mazhab bahut achhay!), it does not ask them to give up their cultural heritage. If you notice, neither Iran, nor Turkey nor Egypt gave up their cultures. The Indian converts, however, adopted their new rulers` culture for the same reason that Macaulay`s children adopted the English culture or the reason why many people, including some on chowk, equate modernisation with westernisation.

A few odd points:

Religion is a double-edged sword - In South Asia, it is used to cut throats and not fruit.

Therefore, it has to be pushed out of politics and back into the hearts, homes and temples/mosques.

There have been only two great Muslim Empires - The Ottomans and the Mughals. Both were secular.

As somebody has already said, it is the Saudi Oil money which spread the intolerant Islamic streaks like the Wahabi & Sulfi (Osama & Taliban`s) - in the impoverished Muslim countries through their charities to the Madressas.

Musharraf is a coward - He got against Taliban after the US hit him on the head. He banned Lashkar & Jaish after US hit him on the head. He reduced infiltration into Kashmir after US hit him on the head. He is now not taking any action against the Taliban in Pakistan who are causing trouble in Afghanisatan. He is waiting to be hit on the head.

He simply lacks the courage to do the right thing on his own at the right time.

Ref bbabu #66

[While the BJP has polarized some North Indian states the options to Indian Muslims are zero. They are too poor, fragmented and divided to revolt. Not to mention that their odds of getting slaughtered in a revolt are quite good.]

Tut, tut, tut. While factually true and coldly clinical, that last sentence will tag you in the minds of Pakistanis as one of the billion Hindus wandering around with a machete in hand and killing and maiming any Muslims that you come across.

You must remember that Chowk is populated by military, political, religious, economic and sociological analysts who are as good at these things as the Pakistani military is.

Ref Field Marshal Hotair #71

[I have no right in dumping my garbage on the street. But I do have a right to live in my house, without my neighbor coming in and occupying me. He has to let me live within my house, the way I want. That is my right, which my neighbor cannot violate. If he does not respect this right of mine, then how can he claim to be the defender of other people`s rights. This is the contradiction in your stance and the stance of other Nehru-ites, and that is why the BJP is winning out.]

You got that right this time. Indians have a right to do what they want in Kashmir and Pakistanis, in particular the Pakistani Army as well as your Laskar-e-Toyyiba types, should stay on your side of the border. If not, the BJP will continue winning.