Blasphemy

Mantolives

I didnt read your post because you are a tedious pedantic crybaby and I have nothing to add to my earlier posts and I always stay away from mad barking dogs because they are dangerous and often bite.

Punjabi Zulu,


I am rather disappointed by your deliberate usage of personal insults. I suppose when you have no argument this is what you stoop to.

In any event

1) I have read the article and the quote that you are putting up does not prove your assertion. It is because you are so obsessed with TNT that you are unable to see what I have been trying to say. Salman Rushdie doesn`t mention the TNT in any of his writings. His understanding of partition is roughly the same as Ayesha Jalal/Anil Seal which is also my understanding.


2) The quotes I posted directly from the book Shame in post 222 render your claim that the novel is a vicious attack on Pakistan fictitious.


{ 222 by Mantolives on April 30, 2004 10:51am PT


Salman Rushdie on Pakistan

In Shame on Page 266 Salman Rushdie writes:

``In Pakistan, fundamentalism doesn`t spring from the people.... Jamaat-e-Islami have their supporters among college students and so forth, but relatively few people have ever voted Jamaat in an election. Jinnah himself, the Founder or Quaid-i-Azam, doesn`t strike me as a particularly God-bothered type. Islam and the Muslim State were for him cultural ideas.... Theology was just not the point ``

Salman Rushdie also has a deep and emotional connection with Pakistan... his entire family lives in Pakistan in Karachi... at one he compares Pakistan to his sister:

``My sister is a Pakistani citizen. On my good days, I think of her as Pakistan, and then ... slices, the same way as I have learned my growing sister.`` Page 66 }



3) Salman Rushdie`s bit on Gandhi was to show simply what Rushdie`s view on partition is.



.... By deliberately ignoring the quotes that go against your assertions and stooping to personal insults you have only shown me that you are not capable of decent discourse. That whenever someone disagrees with you, much like Ballu and Alephnull , you take to personal insults.


Regards

YLH

Mantolives

Pop a valium you paranoid crybaby. You seem to be hunting demons that dont exist. I couldnt give a flying fook about what Rushdies views on Gandhi are. Someone disagrees with you and you say they havent read the books? I read them when you were in diapers.

Once again, read what Rushdie says:

~~I hate the way in which we, Indians and Pakistanis, have become each other`s others, each seeing the other as it were through a glass, darkly, each ascribing to the other the worst motives and the sneakiest natures. I hate it, but in the last analysis I`m on the Indian side.~~


http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,844620,00.html

Yes, he views the TNT as the inverse of the RSS nationalism he battles today. Deal with it and dont wet your pants about it.

Salman Rushdie on Pakistan


In Shame on Page 266 Salman Rushdie writes:


In Pakistan, fundamentalism doesn`t spring from the people.... Jamaat-e-Islami have their supporters among college students and so forth, but relatively few people have ever voted Jamaat in an election. Jinnah himself, the Founder or Quaid-i-Azam, doesn`t strike me as a particularly God-bothered type. Islam and the Muslim State were for him cultural ideas.... Theology was just not the point


Salman Rushdie also has a deep and emotional connection with Pakistan... his entire family lives in Pakistan in Karachi... at one he compares Pakistan to his sister:


My sister is a Pakistani citizen. On my good days, I think of her as Pakistan, and then ... slices, the same way as I have learned my growing sister. Page 66


How does it equate to his view of the Hindu nationalists in India... clearly Ballu Khan and Punjabi Zulu are superimposing their own views on Rushdie.



Punjabi Zulu

First of all ... there is absolutely no need to use personal insults just to prove a point. My reference is to the arrogant sarcastic tone you`ve used in your post. Why must every Indian stoop to this... I don`t think you are reading my posts ... You know what a strawman fallacy is ? That is exactly what you are doing to me. You deconstructing an argument I am just not putting up. Just like Ballu Khan is defending his poor thesis by calling me a TNT-Islamist (I am neither a tntist nor an Islamist) ... My view is that you haven`t read either of the two books (both of which I read as part of my seminar course in college) you are talking of or you are just being arrogant by assuming such arguments on my part... you can choose to interpret Rushdie`s view of Pakistan as you please... I quoted right out of the book itself unlike you... that doesn`t mean that what you are saying is necessarily untrue... but his understanding of partition is quite different from you are claiming... I didn`t write `Does India exist` Salman Rushdie did.... I didn`t write `Imagined Homelands` Salman Rushdie did. Salman Rushdie`s understanding of partition is not based on `deconstructing the two nation theory`.... I challenge you to bring up one piece of writing where he mentions the two nation theory. He understands partition as a product of political deadlock between two major political parties Congress and the League... in this he is clearly using the arguments used by the Cambridge Historians like Anil Seal and Ayesha Jalal, which is the argument I put up routinely here on chowk.


I quoted page 255 of the Alfred Knopf Publication of Shame ... though proudly identifying as an Indian, he clearly doesn`t seem to share your contempt for Pakistan.. his critique of Pakistan is more of a critique of Pakistan... similarly he blames partition on Gandhi .... and not on Jinnah whose actions he justifies on a number of occasions.


yet his failure to keep the Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah within the Indian National Congress`s fold led to the partition of the country. (For all his vaunted selflessness and modesty, he made no move to object when Jinnah was attacked during a Congress session for calling him ``Mr. Gandhi`` instead of ``Mahatma,`` and booed off the stage by Gandhi`s supporters. Later, his withdrawal, under pressure from Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, of a last-ditch offer to Jinnah of the prime ministership itself, ended the last faint chance of avoiding partition.)


http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/gandhi3.html

(Should I know say that you should read the time article to `learn a thing or two`?)

212

eloquent pettiness perhaps?

#218 by PunjabiZulu on April 28, 2004 9:12am PT
Agreed !

#219 by solitude on April 28, 2004 11:28am PT
Will do.

Ballu etc. thanks everyone for signing the petition :)

Here is the link again and please send it to your friends so they may participate too.

http://www.petitiononline.com/UN_FREE/petition.html

or click here

ballukhan

Rushdie is despised by many people simultaneously. He is despised by extremist Hindus for being a Muslim and not only being a Muslim but a Muslim that is deeply, hopelessly, helplessly infatuated and IN LOVE with India in all its diversity and textures. His work is suffused in Hindu tropes and mythology and archetypes and he considers these mythologies and archetypes to belong to him as much as they do to any Hindu. On the other hand, some Pakistanis view him as a Hindu house nigger, as they view any Muslim in India who does not slavishly follow their ideology: as a stupid idiot who has sold his soul to the kaffirs and is a mixture of savant and coward. These are the type that gloat at Gujarat and are happy that their ideology and predictions are fulfilled.

But Rushdie says: Screw them and screw the Hindutvadis. I will not give an inch in my right and identity as an Indian just because I happen to be a Muslim. As such his stance and work is a strong corrective to those two narratives that pull at the Muslim in India: The TNT and the RSS modes. He stands firm and proud and unapologetic, he asserts that the Indian essentialism is the miscegenation and tolerance and diversity of which he comes from, and he says that from the standpoint of a man whose family still lives in Pakistan and who has lived in Pakistan.

Rushdie holds a mirror up to India and does not flinch. He shows the ugliness, the fascism and pogrom and cruelty. But he does not bundle this into contempt for India, rather it is outrage at the abuse of the thing he loves.

Rushdie is unsettling for the reductive people who seek a polarisation of identities. He is a Muslim who reveres and loves the mythologies of Hinduism (for which a TNTist will call him, like he might call you, a “hindutvati house nigger”), he is a man sensitive to the heritage of Islam and its interweaving with the Indian texture (For whom Mr Naipaul and his sympathisers become grumpy), he has written about Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Sikhism and every manifestation and plural life and breath of India and all in all he is the insider-outsider who has chronicled India most truly for the last twenty five years.

Long may he live and write.

#214 by PunjabiZulu on April 27, 2004 12:09pm PT

``....they both assert that plurality is not possible within Indian society.``

That is exactly the basis of TNT. See, the logic that has been pushed in the past by ML and its leaders has been that there are ``irreconciable`` differences between the Muslims and Hindus in terms of culture, religious practices, language etc. etc. (That is why some moron wants to call it a minority movement).
But, anyone who has lived in India knows that the differences between the Kannadiga-Vokkaliga and Kannadiga-Ienger are as severe as the diffeences between Bihari Santhals and the AP Kammas. The differences between the Buddhists and the Kaul Shaivas are even more severe ``religious-wise``. Any body who has a good grasp of the sub-continent religions and its sub-religions and the linguistic entities can appreciate that they have differences which can be termed as severe or as trivial as any enterprising politician can make them out to be.
It was really unfortunate, that the enterprising ones in our community were able to sell this idea of ``irreconciable differences`` in various forums post 1940 - that these ``differences`` were severe enough to lead to a situation where the ``common-interests`` of the muslim community would be severely compromised and hence the need to segregate themselves from the non-muslims- the homeland was imaginary one , but the imagery used were historical, religious and real ones. Ask any Pakistani whether he is living in an imagined nationhood which arose out of the discourse of Jinnah and the ML- he would snub you!
Infact, I would gladly accept this position that the PAkistani nation was constructed in the discourses of Jinnah and ML. This makes it even easier for me to demolish TNT by simply de-constructing the ML discourse.
Anyone who understands the logic of communal, linguistic or other riots in India would clearly understand that the ``politics of polariztion`` and the old strategy of ``divide and rule`` is cleverly being worked by those who control such riots in the communities.
And after 50 years of partition the Pakistani elites are unhappy to see that their predictions of doomsday for IM is a clear refutation of their TNT. And everybody knows the reality of their jannat that they have created for themselves!!............Dil behlane ke liye bhi yeh khayal accha hai!!

214 by PunjabiZulu on April 27, 2004 12:09pm PT

``....they both assert that plurality is not possible within Indian society.``

Have you wondered why some Paki Elites have been so assured in their predictions about breakup of India??

It is this TNT again.

I entirely agree with Dr. Yunus and condemn the mulla gardi being purpetrated in the name of `Namoose Rasaalat` and thus blaspheme against the very concept of `Rehmatulaalimeen`to further their personal nefarious designs. I however wonder why people don`t understand that the Blasphemy law is only a milder manifestation of the lynch law laid down in some traditions and being practiced in violation of the law and the human rights, etc. Humanity is helpless against this Ilamdeeni culture which defies any law whatsoever when in the grip of fanaticism. I again reproduce a Hadees which is considered to be the basis of the B. L. though the Hadees itself is cosidered to be the supreme law by those who murder even those who are aquitted by the courts under the B.L.: -

Sunnan Abudawud
Book 38, Number 4348:
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Abbas:
A blind man had a slave-mother who used to abuse the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and disparage him. He forbade her but she did not stop. He rebuked her but she did not give up her habit. One night she began to slander the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and abuse him. So he took a dagger, placed it on her belly, pressed it, and killed her. A child who came between her legs was smeared with the blood that was there. When the morning came, the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) was informed about it.
He assembled the people and said: I adjure by Allah the man who has done this action and I adjure him by my right to him that he should stand up. Jumping over the necks of the people and trembling the man stood up.
He sat before the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and said: Apostle of Allah! I am her master; she used to abuse you and disparage you. I forbade her, but she did not stop, and I rebuked her, but she did not abandon her habit. I have two sons like pearls from her, and she was my companion. Last night she began to abuse and disparage you. So I took a dagger, put it on her belly and pressed it till I killed her.
Thereupon the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Oh be witness, no retaliation is payable for her blood.

So please ponder what you are up against. So B.L. or no B.L. people will continue to be lynched by the fanatics or pseudo fanatics in the name of `Namoose Rasaalat` and become heroes.

Mantolives

This is what Salman Rushdie himself says about where he belongs:

~~I hate the way in which we, Indians and Pakistanis, have become each other`s others, each seeing the other as it were through a glass, darkly, each ascribing to the other the worst motives and the sneakiest natures. I hate it, but in the last analysis I`m on the Indian side.~~


http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,844620,00.html


Mantolives, you really do not have a clue about Rushdies sensibility, do you? What are you talking about ``one nation`` theory?

He oppsoses the TNT for the same reason he opposes the Hindu Nationalism of today; because they both assert that plurality is not possible within Indian society.

Midnights Children is an affirmation of the idea of India, Shame is a corruscating satire on the feudal exclusivist soul of Pakistan.

Read the whole of the Guardian article, you might learn something.

Solitude:
Glad to see YLH and his family signing the petition finally after your intervention .

Manto #209, #210

So you claim that your positions have ‘evolved’ from your ylh days, do you? Your enduring core of intolerance, of absolute inability to brook disagreement, has not gone, has if anything only solidified. Behind a veneer of ‘education’, you are as incapable of handling those who blaspheme against your priceless religion and your precious prophet as the most fatwaholic mullah invoking gustakh-e-rasool. The superficials may differ, the essence is the same. Your pathetic excuse of ‘always reacting never initiating’ makes its appearance for the nth time and doesn’t impress me one iota. You were just the same three years ago and will not be permitted to live down your risible past record so easily. It’s easy to be suave when your most dearly held beliefs are not under attack. It’s how you behave when you encounter determined opposition that counts. Whining about ‘hate speech’, calling down the local equivalent of blasphemy on your adversaries, excoriating them with the choicest abuses, and then feigning Injured Innocence Unfairly Attacked, makes you cut a very sorry figure. You are a fine example indeed of Pakistani secularism and democracy in action.

And don’t give me that bilge about taking on arguments on merits. I’m only too aware of the limitations of your method and the way in which you run out of steam when those glowing personal testimonials or quotes from Wolpert, Bolitho, Dr. Ajit Javed Singh, Sarojini Naidu, Bandhopadhyaya, Khushwant Singh, Beverly Nichols(!), Churchill(!!), A.G. Noorani etc. etc. ad amusem fail to make any impression on those who question the fundamentals of TNT.

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