Is Secular India really Secular and Islamic Pakistan really Islamic?

some body asked dalit why most of the vilonce against dalits was from the Other Backward Castess. most students of indian society and history know that the caste system was a set of jealously guarded hierarchies, each rung though below the one above jealously guarded its priviliges by oppressing the one below. so the OBCss were the instruments of dalit oppression, just as the OBCs in turn were oppresed by the thakurs and banias.

the muslims continued to be oppresed because most of the converts in the gangetic heartland at least were from these lower castes, OBCs and dalits. they were and are also viewed as objects for retribution for historical rule done by other individuals who were unrelated except by religion. they

the more interesting question is how dalits have started taking part in anti muslim riots. in gujarat caste riots were not uncommon until the 1980s but it was observed in the late 60s and 7os as also early 80s caste riots would often be turned into anti muslim riots by turning the dalits onto them even though they were unrelated to the initial disturbance. this joint upper caste - dalit front was new.

Amartya Sen is not merely an economist, he is also one of the most erudite scholars of Indian history. I was fortunate to be at Delhi School of Economics when he started teaching there, as one of the ``three musketeers`` - Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati and Sukhmai Chakravarti who died at a young age. While his contributions as an economist are well known, his scholarship of ancient India is perhaps even more profound, as his most recent book, the ``Argumentative Indian`` shows. I have read the reviews and look forward to reading the book. Here are some excerpts from an article about him.
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/aug/06sen.htm

``When the Nobel Prize marked its centenary in 2001, the foundation asked a handful of laureates for two mementos each that might be included in an exhibit.

``They took away my bicycle, on which I had done a lot of field research on the famine and indeed later my research for gender inequality in Bengali villages,`` says Professor Amartya Sen.

``Also a modern print of Aryabhatta`s book on mathematics and astronomy. These were the two, to reflect my past.````

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``Indians like to argue, he said, pointing to what he calls the ``argumentative tradition``, an acceptance of plurality as the natural state of affairs, a long and robust tradition of heterodoxy, dissent, inquiry and analysis.``

``Speaking of his view of Indian history, he says, ``There was a great strength in the old Indian tradition, where you took plurality as the natural state of affairs. Ashoka in the 12th century BC mentions the fact that we have different beliefs, we should listen to each other, we must argue with each other. That was an acceptance of heterodoxy.``

In recent years, that tradition has been threatened: ``When we have a miniaturised view of Hinduism and of the Indian past, presented by the Hindutva parties, suddenly all that intellectual discourse disappears. We`re concentrating on where Rama was born, allegedly, with the holiness of the cow, the nastiness of Christian missionaries trying to convert us. It was the psychology of the loser -- if we can`t win the argument, we will eliminate the argument. That debate continues. But I hope that those who are in favour of a non-miniaturised view of India in which arguments of different quarters could be entertained continue to occupy a good position.``

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``To see the Muslim arrival in India as primarily destructive is to blind oneself to a big part of Indian history,`` he says, pointing to the interactions between Islamic and Hindu culture in art, in literature, in politics, and the encounter between Muslim Sufi and Hindu Bhakti thought between the 15th and 17th centuries.

We trace the history of Aryabhatta`s contribution to mathematics in the 5th century, the export of those ideas to Europe via the Arabs in the 11th century, the fallacy of the belief that democracy is strictly a Western invention, how you might explain the occasional but prevalent Indian suspicion of the outsider and of ``foreign thought`` through the parable about the Kupamandaka, the frog who can see nothing but the inside of his well.

``Our understanding of right and wrong is really dependent on our ability to listen to other arguments and think about it. To me, knowledge is post-interaction and post-openness, rather than pre-interaction and pre-openness. It`s not a question of winning the argument; it`s a question of making a perspective available that people can invoke later, even if at that time it doesn`t win the day.`` ``

Request to Indian interactors:

Please ignore Mr. hehehehe until he decides to engage in a meaningful dialogue. Thanks.

#57 by dost-mittar

``calling the BJP a religious party, while it is in fact, a secular party, although it has a strong communal bias. ``

It is a secular party….heheheh…..and communal too….heheheheheh some samples ....hehehehe...

http://bjp.org/philo.htm
``BJP Philosophy : Hindutva (Cultural Nationalism)

Hindutva or Cultural Nationalism presents the BJP`s conception of Indian nationhood, as explained in the following set of articles.

HINDUTVA: THE GREAT NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY
In the history of the world, the Hindu awakening of the late twentieth century will go down as one of the most monumental events in the history of the world. Never before has such demand for change come from so many people. Never before has Bharat, the ancient word for the motherland of Hindus - India, been confronted with such an impulse for change. This movement, Hindutva, is changing the very foundations of Bharat and Hindu society the world over.``

...still it is secular....heheheheh...but communal.....heheheheh....

#57 by dost-mittar

``BJP a religious party, while it is in fact, a secular party, although it has a strong communal bias. ``

heheheheh...just see the logic here...hehehehe.... it is secular party and it has a strong communal bias...heheheheh....cover up the stink....hehehehe...think of something better RSS henchman ...hehehehe...
It is secular party with a strong communal bias....... hehehehe....best defense BJP could ever had....hehehehehe....secular and communal....heheheheh....
secualr and communal...heheheheh....

#57 by dost-mittar
“BJP a religious party, while it is in fact, a secular party, although it has a strong communal bias.”

Hehehehhe….Hindu apologist…lying thru his teeth…BJP is a secular party …heheheh …hehehehehe…Controlled by parivar…both advani and Atul closely linked with RSS and almost all cadre from RSS and hehehehe…it is a secular party….hehehehe…lie about some thing people can stomach….hindu apologist….heheheheh


THE FASCIST AND NAZI ROOTS OF IDEOLOGY OF HATE:
The founder of modern India and its first Prime Minster, the great Jawaharlal Nehru identified the Sangh Parivar right from the beginning, and pointed out to these organizations as communalist and fascist. The scholar Marzia Casorali in her definitive study `Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s – Archival Evidence’ traced the movement’s inspiration to Benito Mussolini and to Adolf Hitler in the 1920s and subsequently. She writes: ``an accurate search … is bound to show the extent and importance of such organizations and Italian fascism. (They) not only adopted fascist ideas in a conscious way, but this also happened because of the direct contacts between their representatives of these organizations and fascist Italy.``

Casorali quotes from Mr. V Savarkar, Mr. BS Moonje, Mr. Golwalkar, the founders of the Hindutva ideology. In 1934 they said ``this ideal cannot be brought to effect unless we have our own swaraj with a Hindu as a dictator like Shiva ji of old or Mussolini or Hitler of the present day in Italy and Germany. The Savarkar-led Hindu Mahasabha in 1939 officially stated: Germany’s crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory.’ I need not go on quoting from archival research.

The same thesis is being taught in towns and villages, study camps and morning drills of the Sangh parivar today. The present leaders of th e scores of frontal organizations of the Sangh Parivar are on record mouthing similar imprecations as they demonise the Christian and Muslim communities for the ills of India, and speak of what anywhere else would be called ethnic cleansing. It does not s urprise me that the man Dara Singh, who led the mobs that burnt alive the Australian leprosy worker graham Stuart Staines, and his two children Timothy and Philip, in the forests of the state of Orissa in January 1999 is today sought to be deified as a D efender of the Faith, a God descended on earth. Millions of copies of his speech ``I Dara Speak`` have been published and circulated widely to rouse passions in India. It is in the tradition of the Sangh literature, which describes `Muslims, Christians and Communists as the main enemies of India.’

Muslims and Christians are the main targets of a very focused, deeply organized and well-funded hate campaign throughout India. Islam and Christianity are branded as alien religions, and Hindus and Buddhists are constantly exhorted to give a united `Asian’ challenge to these faiths. It is forgotten that both Islam and Christianity were born on the soil of Asia. The patriotism and loyalty to the motherland of minority groups is constantly being questione d. Muslims are branded as agents of Pakistan, a country with India has fought four wars since Independence. Their Babri mosque was demolished in 1992 in a symbolic gesture of `correcting historical wrongs’. The demolition has seared the psyche of the nati on, and brought death, destruction and pain in its aftermath. The wounds are yet to heal.

The hate campaign against Christians questions our roots, attacks the tenets of our faith, targets our priests and nuns, institutions and social work. Despite 20 centuries of Christianity in India, the Sangh Parivar pillories the commun ity as a remnant of the British colonial empire.

Senior members of the parivar, including some who are in the current Union government as Ministers or head various frontal organizations, mock Virgin Birth, blaspheme against the Resurrection. Official organs of the Sangh parivar, inclu ding the English language Organizer and the Hindi language journal Panchjanya, rail against the community and its faith on a regular basis. These journals are the basic literature used in the formation of the cadres of the Sangh Parivar.

The main charge is that Indian Christians use foreign funds to convert Hindus by force and fraud. Senior ministers have taken part in this campaign of falsehood. We have repeatedly asked the government to come up with figures of how muc h money is being received by various groups – Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and the government itself – from the US and other western or eastern nations, and how this money is being spent. Under India’s legal regulations on foreign remittances and donation s, the government of India has all this data. But it has refused to give the full list. Systematic leaks of partial information has been cunningly used to make it seem that all the money is coming to Christians and is being used by them for forcible conve rsions. In fact the very term missionary has been absurdly used to imply that there are tens of thousands of White Christian missionaries are work in India. Government’s own figures show that there are just over 1,000 foreigners, including priests and tea chers, in Christian institutions in India. Most of them are old, and have been living in India for decades. Their number is rapidly dwindling by death, and by the fact that the government has systematically denied extensions of their visas without giving any valid reason. Almost all Christian evangelist workers of all denominations are Indians, born and bred, Indian citizens and yet the image is created of a foreign army of missionaries converting innocent people.

The Indian National Commission for Minorities during the chairmanship of the jurist Mr. Tahir Mehmood, repeatedly urged Union and state governments to come up with official statistics on the number of forcible conversions, or conversion s by fraud and inducement, recorded in their states in recent years. Not one state could authenticate a single allegation of forced or induced conversion. Yet, the lie is perpetrated, and used to target the Christian community. Little wonder that when the Nuns were ganged raped in the forests of Jhabua, Mr. Baikunth Lal Sharma Prem, a leading light of the Bajrang Dal, said ``They deserved to be raped.``

Re: # 61

Arul Ganesh aka Dalit,

Yawn! Please respond to the questions that some of the people on interact have asked you.

Indian Secularism is a Fraud. India is not a secular state by any stretch of imagination. It is a Hindu state.

in the village of Manoharpur, India, a mob of Hindu supremacists burned to death Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two young sons.

This brand of religious revivalism – Hindutva as it is known – has the dimensions of a sustained movement with ambitions of political and cultural reform. Its rhetoric of Hindu supremacy, virulent with the demonization of minorities and exaggerated threats to national identity, resonates among many members of the conservative upper and middle classes. This growing grassroots support has emboldened the movement and placed its ideologies into public office, from local government to Parliament. Even Rabindra Pal (“Dara”) Singh, the man accused of organizing the Staines murder, is now considering a bid for public office.

Representatives of the movement offer little regret for the Staines murders or the other acts of religious hatred that have plagued the country. Instead of unequivocally condemning the violence, mouthpieces for outfits like the VHP indignantly retort that Christian missionaries are waging a campaign to deculturalize “Hindu” India by perpetrating “forced conversions” of its poorest, and most vulnerable, communities. VHP Vice President Giriraj Kishore, for example, has publicly maligned men like Staines as “traitors” and “desecrators of Hindu gods”, implying in essence that violence against them is an act of cultural self defense. In other words, they’re getting what they deserve.

Ultimately, it is in its definition of “enemy” versus “Indian” where Hindutva reveals its true colors, for at root is the assertion that the only “true” Indians are Hindus, while all others – particularly Muslims and Christians – are not. The latter religions, termed “semitic” according to the Hindutva theory of history, are alien faiths imposed from the outside on “Hindu India” by foreign aggressors. Such exclusionism makes Hindutva, at its philosophical core, not merely “nationalistic” but supremacist. And any ideology that defines nationhood – with the concomitant rights and enfranchisement that this implies – by membership in a privileged race, culture, or religion, is nothing less than fascist.

This label is not applied glibly. The philosophical parent of the Hindutva movement, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (“National Volunteers Union”), is an ideological organization that has an influence upon domestic conservative politics comparable to that of the U.S.’s Christian Coalition. The head of the RSS during the Gandhi era, Madhav Golwalkar, once famously praised Hitler for showing the world “how well nigh impossible” it is for different races and cultures, “having differences going to the root,” to be assimilated into a national whole. The purging by Germany of the “semitic Races,” Golwalkar goes on to say, is a “good lesson for us in Hindusthan [India] to learn and profit by.”

Such statements of course are not widely publicized, though Golwalkar is still highly respected in Hindutva circles. One need only read pro-Hindutva literature, however, to find that the spirit of his remarks is still alive and well. While downplaying the “petty differences” of creed and race on one hand, or claiming that only nationalism is the “religion” of Hindutva, the RSS for instance goes on to assert that in a “free and prosperous India” Muslims and Christians would “naturally return” to their “ancient faith and traditions.” The message is quite clear – in an India free of constitutional “appeasements” of religious minorities and vigilant in cleansing the nation of the polluting influences of foreign missionaries, converts to “alien” faiths will naturally recognize the superiority of Hinduism, and re-embrace it. Those without the wisdom to do so would be suspect, and thus worthy of second-class citizenship – or worse.

Ajay # 78

(I don`t understand why most Chowk articles on Pakistan by Pakistani authors, actually compare their country to India)

It is quite natural. It has nothing to do with big or small. Anyone who can read the map knows that there is no comparison.

It is more of invlovement rather than comparison. The words `India` and `Pakistan` are very recent. Pakistan has been a part of the big `Whole` for the last 5000 years.

Even if we try, we can not wish away the historical, social, linguistic and cultural links of many centuries.

Going a step further, Pakistan can not survive and exploit to its potential without a harmonious linkage with much bigger other part from the past.

On the other hand, India`s harmonious linkage with Pakistan can give it yet another filler and have a multi-pliar effect in its pursuits both regionally and globally.

India, now, with its enormous size and potential, exercises a political gravitational pull. So there is actually no need to fear and get uppety if states compare themselves to India. In fact, becoming a Datum, can be a source of pride.

At times, Veeresh and Satayamvada also feel that anyone comparing some aspect of India amounts to degrading India.

nhk

Re: # 14 Yes...but they are all so obsessed with Pakistan that they keep creeping out of their gutters like cockroaches to spew their slant eyed, poisonous, ``secular`` Hindutva agenda everywhere...don`t you guys have anything better to do, like try to alleviate the poverty, filth and bigotry in your country?

dost-mittar:
``everything repeatedly calling the BJP a religious party,``

DM sir, you know that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, i figure, the kind of prophecies certain prophets cant exist without. :-)

fuzair:

``When did Gandhi become secular?``

There is indeed a lot of confusion about terminology. People say ``secular`` when they mean tolerant, and they say ``religious`` when they mean communal. The concept of secular makes sense generally for state or, perhaps, political parties and organization; a person can be tolerant, bigoted, religious, irrelegious, agnostic or atheist in a secular society and even in Saudi Arabia as long as he or she keeps it a personal matter. This confusion results in even people who claim to know everything about everything repeatedly calling the BJP a religious party, while it is in fact, a secular party, although it has a strong communal bias.

why , should i be in the this pic?
or you think i should be in this pic?
but if you want to identify my face for whtever reason, that is not a very smart way to go abt it :)

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Re: 50 #This chap, Dawood Mamoon, is a doctoral student and a Royal Fellow? Gad but their standards must be low!

:)...yes if it can help you sleep better ....

Fuzair #50:`` if you don`t have mass appeal, you have zilch. You can score as many debating points as you want but that isn`t actually going to get you anywhere.``

Very valid point, from a political point of view. I think Chowk is quite the debating society also. We debate political issues, with very little understanding of what has mass appeal amngst Pakistanis......

I think ethnicity has a higher appeal amonst Pakistanis than religion. Pakistan`s mass scale violence has always been on ethnic lines. Not on religious lines. East Pakistan and West Pakistan being a prime example. Sindhi Muhajir being another. Ethnic parties, till the last election, always completely defeated religious parties, in elections. In Karachi MQM still beats JI. In NWFP ANP always completely defeated MMA. In Baluchistan, the nationalist Baluchi Sardars always beat MMA. In Punjab, MMA never had much of a hold, to begin with..........

This is why there have been ethnic pogroms in Pakistan (Sohrab Goth etc.) but not religious ones. I think mass appeal in Pakistan, on divisive lines, is along ethnicities. That is something that rarely gets debated here and should get debated. Shia Sunni and Hindu Sindhis all dislike Shia Sunni and Hindu Muhajirs and Shia Sunni and Hindu (if there are any) Punjabis............

Above all, though I think any group that can provide high economic growth in Pakistan, will get mass following. Regardless of ethnicity, religion or even democratic credentials..........