Intimacies Remapped

lest anyone has forgotten, the title of this piece is intimacies remapped. harish is talking about a journey, a journey along with his childhood intimates -- his friends. the arguments that are going on over here in my humble opinion are those that he will come to question in time as well. and he may agree with some of you, and disagree with some of you.

as some of us have already indicated, we can wait for the remaining installments to see this more fleshed out. . . and these arguments are not completely outside the scope of this article, but certain interactors want to place the cart before the horse so to speak. harking back to a past and holding various communities guilty is what contributes to a communal atmosphere, the fervor and desire to return to what was a glorious past. i don`t know that harish is necessarily unaware of history or politics. this is a personal recollection on his part. and one that i`m hoping he`ll continue before we jump to all the knee-jerk conclusions some of us appear to be jumping to.

Ballukhan`s very right in his post that nobody this day can be held guilty for events which happened centuries ago. We should stop considering all muslims to be the fifth columnists for Pakistan. By doing that we could end up driving even the sane and sensible people who are the majority towards the insane ones.

Another myth that needs to be debunked is that Middle/Lower Caste Hindus share a ommon cause with Muslims against the Upper Castes. Anybody familiar with North India know that Middle Caste Yadavs, Kurmis, Jatts (Jatts in India being mostly Hindu/Sikh) etc are the worst nightmares of Muslims in India. It is another matter that these middle castes usually do not vote for BJP.
There is one exception though: Gujrat.

Why should Hindutva be defended all the time? Pakistan and other Muslim countries being ``Islamic`` is not debated; it is a given. Then why should Hindutva be such a hard concept to sell? I vivdly remember something very peculiar: when the Hindutva movement was gathering momentum in the late 80s-early 90s, Shabana Azmi had said ``nowadays even young people are saying ``Garv Se Kahon Hum Hindu Hain````. As if there is something inherently wrong in being proud of one`s heritage. Nobody asks if Muslims are proud of their background. It is again a given. Then why should Hindus have to be apologetic?
Somebody mentioned ``denying basic human rights`` to minorities and dalits. That`s plain bull. Under Indian law, every citizen has equal rights. As a matter of fact, it can be argued that minorities enjoy more rights in certain sense. Yes, there are societal prejudices but that acts both ways. On the other hand, the second class citizenship of non-Muslims in Islamic countries is official. Nothing is left for imagination. This is what I like about Islam. There is no room for confusion. Everything has been clearly spelt out.
Anyways, people who consider Prithviraj Chauhan, Rana Pratap, Shivaji Maharaj, Maharaja Ranjit Singh as their heroes have nothing to fear from Hindutva. However, people who either associate with or rationalise the invasions of Bin-Qasim, Mahmud, Ghauri, Babar, Akbar and Aurangzeb have plenty to worry about from the Hindutva movement.

Re: # 30
Different people are threatened for different reasons.

Hindutvas clash with Muslims on several issues. They are of the opinion that Muslims have been appeased by the other parties and should not be given any favors. Their constant refrain is Shah Bano case where the gov. of the day overturned Supreme Court verdict. Also, the Haj subsidies. When even some Islamic states don`t provide subsidies to the Muslims why should GoI do that. To do a balancing act , the gov has now started supporting hindu pilgrimage too. Other issues are Uniform civil code, where H want one person, one law. But the muslims are adamant, they want to keep their personal laws. Then the contentious issues of Babri Masjid, the H parties ``allege`` that the masjid was built on the birth place of their god Ram, for them it is equivalent to Mecca, but the muslims give a damn about it. Similarly, throughout the history of Mualim rule there have been cases where masjids have been built on/near prominent hindu temples, which they consider as a symbol of muslim dominance over hindus. And want to ``correct`` the historical injustice. Distrust among muslims has just widened the gap. Muslim demand for their own homeland didn`t help much eg Pakistan and Kashmir. H regard india as a mother whereas they think for muslims allah is all that matters. Hence you see all kinds of friction.

Regarding the psedo-secularist and commies, its because of vote-bank politics. Muslims can alter the election results if they vote en-block. Commies are lackeys of Mao, Lenin, Marx. A current union minister(was a communist then) went on collecting funds for China during Indo-China conflict in 62. Commies believe in Utopia, not reality. THe current leadership of West Bengal came from Bangladesh during hindu-muslim riots. Yet they think according to Marx there can only be class struggle not religious.

Re: # 27

only muslims/psedo-secularists/commies regard that. No other community feels threatened by it.

So is it a threat to ``muslims/psedo-secularists/commies``; thats quite a number of ppl to be threatened isnt it?

Netizen ,

India`s forex reserves are worth $135 billion.

As far as FDI is concerned , this might interest you ,

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1020718.cms


``The most popular fable of the day is the race between the elephant and the dragon. The lumbering pachyderm is believed to stand no chance against the Middle Kingdom. Not so any more — such are the respective strengths and failings that in broad welfare terms they nullify each other. India is set to attract record foreign direct investment, narrowly defined, of $15 billion this fiscal, at least thrice the annual flows in post-reform years. Our FII flows are close to $10 billion, and with remittances set to cross $20 billion, our total foreign investment flows in 2004-05, defined in Chinese terms, will end up at about $50 billion. This is pretty close to China`s $60 billion inflows, whereas till only the other day our FDI flows seemed a fraction of China`s...``

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I liked the article - it was an honest effort from the writer and can only be applauded. But I don`t think this statement of his stands true to facts >>

``fallout of that horrific incident was that an entire state erupted into a revenge- killing spree that would shame India, and severely damage the country’s new found pace of economic development``

That is untrue. The hindu-muslim riots of Gujarat happened in the year 2002. Since then Indian economy has registered its best growth rates - including a high of 8.4% for the year 2003.

It is a self-serving myth propagated by the self-appointed conscience keepers of the society or the self-proclaimed `secularists` that the Gujarat riots affected the Gujarat economy and scared the foreign investor from India. But the opposite is true.Gujarat is booming. Forex reserves to India reached $135 billion recently. So things look good.

Investment is dictated by economic policies , infrastructure and quality/cost/quatity of labor. Muslims may no longer be safe in Gujarat , but investors get a huge return for their money. And thats good enough for them.

Re: # 24

I don`t think so, only muslims/psedo-secularists/commies regard that. No other community feels threatened by it. Hindutva still has its flaws though, it has not yet succeeded in demolishing the caste barriers within hinduism.

Re: # 19


``Modi has completely and singlehandedly transformed Gujarat`s economy and made Gujarat a truely modern state``
``Thanks to Modi`s tireless efforts , investments are flowing into Gujarat in billions of $ virtually every day - mostly from foreign investors. ``
``As India`s most visionary reformer , as somebody has transformed sleepy Gujarat into India`s industrially and financially most dynamic state ``

Gujarat is among those indian states who are doing much better in comparison to other states. But I don`t think all the credit should go to Modi. Modi has been CM only for 7-8 years now. Gujarat has been doing good for much more than that. There are many industries like chemical, grounnut oil, textiles, diamond, petrochemicals, pharmaceutical, ..... which have built a strong economy in that state. The facts that favor Modi are that he has preferred better economics rather than populism (eg. not bowing to the farmers demand), sound economic decisions (investing in oil-exploration and finding oil rich areas). But it wouldn`t be a justice to Gujarat and its hardworking economy savy people, to say that it was just a backwater before Modi came. In addition, I heard all that india could attract last year was 4 billion dollars as FDI, so how come Gujarat got billion $ FDI in a day? Nevertheless, Modi has provided good leadership in making Gujarat more prosperous and investor friendly. Some one made a remark that if Modi had not been a pracharak cum politician he would been a successful bussinessman.

I just heard that ``small hotels association in america`` are inviting Modi as a guest speaker, several muslim org (group against genocide) are lobbying to ban him from entering u.s.

I enjoyed reading your peice but have to say your writing tends to get a little wordy at times. Anyhow i am looking forward to the reading next part.

Re: # 4
``Hindutva is an ideology of hate. ``

I wonder what the Hindutva loving chowkies think of that? Please do comment!

HP #4,
I have to say that you don`t really know India. Like in the Gujarat riots most of the participants came from the lower classes including dalits. In many rural places dalits are the ones who often have more animosity towards muslims than others. The violence against Sikhs was a one-time exception. Christians have never been a target of major riots anywhere, even in states where their population is almost the same as of Hindus. That said, I am not condoning communalism. Communalism unfortunately exists, but it is far more complicated than the picture you have in mind.

Quite th amateurish piece of writing. Too much time wasted in description and background. I do hope the next pice is better.

Secondly a clarification, was it actually the muslim mob which burnt the train or was it some cooking incident inside the train. Do mention what has happened in the case in court.

Harish,

Am waiting for the next part. It is amazing how similar my childhood experiences, growing up in Hyderabad among multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual friends, are to the ones related in this article. And how ridiculous our reaction then to the Babri Masjid demolition seems now. As 7th grade students, we were just glad to get a whole week off as curfew was imposed in the city. My parents were worried sick and we couldnt understand why.

On a different note you write:

``Chachi, the wife of the man whose husband sold cigarettes and beedis, would give us the sweets made on Eid.``

The circumventing, unnecessarily complex language and sentence structure you used throughout the article was getting to me, but that sentence put me off for a while. You are a journalist, come on, you can do better.

regards,

Kabuli

harish:

nice to see this here...a pleasure to read it again...look forward to reading all of it here in time...will comment later after a few more instalments...hoping that the knee-jerker`s immediate reactions would have dissipated by that time

rgds

t