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Lighting The Nuclear Fire
M.I.T. simulated study of ``Bombay Bombing``by Dr.M.V.RAMANA
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The Rediff Interview/Dr M V Ramana
Physicist Dr M V Ramana works at the programme of science and global security at Princeton, and is the author of a unique study on the effects of a nuclear attack on a South Asian city like Mumbai. His paper, entitled `Bombing Bombay? Effects of
nuclear weapons and a case study of a hypothetical
explosion`, was researched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. The study concluded that a single nuclear bomb attack could result in up to 860,000 deaths.
In an interview with Shyam Bhatia, Dr Ramana says the conclusions he drew are as valid today as they were six years ago.
Why did you choose Mumbai for your study?
For two reasons. One is that I started looking at this as an exercise in a course I sat through given by Dr Ted Postol, professor of science, technology and national security policy at MIT, in 1996. He`s done similar work, for example on the mass fires started after a nuclear attack in the case of the US and the Soviet Union.
My initial expectation was that everyone knows nuclear weapons are very destructive, lots of people are going to die, and stuff like that. But what I found while doing this was that the graphic details were so graphic that it shook me up to know the exact ways by which people die.
So l thought it was important to write about it in detail and do this analysis in as much detail as possible.
Why did you base your study on the likely impact of a 15 kiloton explosion? Is that the size of the average Pakistani nuclear warhead?
I actually didn`t want to talk about whether the bomb would come from Pakistan or China, or any other place. What I thought I would use as my basis was the oldest and first bomb that was ever used, which was Hiroshima. One could assume that any modern weapon would be at least that much and probably larger.
The reason is that it was not actually the Pakistani bomb at the time, but this work was before much of the nuclear tests of 1998 and suddenly it became relevant. It was not something I had planned. The only thing that was in existence at that time in South Asia was the 1974 nuclear test by India and that was of a 12 kiloton weapon. They had talked a lot about weaponising it and there was talk about making it into a usable nuclear weapon.
Indeed when the later tests happened, the one test of what they called of a weaponising configuration was of the 12 kiloton weapon. It was the same order of magnitude as Hiroshima.
Could you list the causes of death caused by a nuclear attack?
The first thing you will experience is the light and heat that comes out of the fireball. When the bomb explodes, a huge amount of energy is created very locally and that heats up the air around the point of explosion so much that it starts radiating enormous amounts of heat and light. Your skin just starts to burn.
The fireball would be like a thousand suns. So what you would first experience is this very large amount of heat and light coming out of there, so people`s skin would burn, their clothes would catch fire.
The nuclear reaction that caused this energy to be produced also produces neutrons and gamma rays and these would emanate from the point of explosion, coming outwards. If you`re exposed to them and if you are not shielded you could get a lethal radiation dose. You would not die immediately from it, but it would start manifesting itself in a matter of a few days -- the vast majority of deaths happen within a few weeks.
It depends on the level of radiation dose that you get. At lower doses you get cancers, but what happens at high doses is that you start throwing up, there is body hemorrhage, bloody diarrhoea and so on. Essentially there is a complex of symptoms that goes under the name radiation sickness.
The third type of exposure from standing near the bomb is the blast, which is like from any explosion, like from a car bomb, for example. There is a small portion of the atmosphere that`s compressed and expands out from the point of explosion. Your lungs could collapse, your ears could collapse, you could be thrown against a wall, various objects that are in the region, a piece of furniture, could be picked up by the blast and could hit you.
A little later you get the start of delayed effects. The immense amount of heat will set many things on fire, like bits of paper, wood, anything that`s combustible. Initially there are only localised fires, but soon the fire region starts coalescing and you have this whole region on fire.
How hot does it get?
The temperatures that are generated go up 700 to 800 degrees. Anyone who is in that region will be trapped. It`s very difficult to run out of that part because what happens is that the heat is so high all the air starts to rise like from a chimney and then to replace the air, more air comes from the outside. It`s like a circle with wind coming from the outside everywhere, like a suction pump. When you try to leave the circle, you won`t be safe because there`s a very stiff wind and the wind blows at 50 to 60 kilometres per hour and you`re like trying to escape in the face of a cyclone or something like that.
In some of the pictures that one sees from Hamburg or Dresden or so on, people who are trying to leave essentially have to crawl out of the fire. You can`t walk because the wind is so intense and you can`t crawl very fast so you`re pretty much going to be caught there.
Finally, if the explosion happens sufficiently close to the earth then the initial fireball s *u *c *ks up huge amounts of soil, all kinds of things on the ground and these things mix with the radioactive materials created during the explosion and go up initially with the famous mushroom cloud, but eventually they come down to the ground.
This is all part of the radioactive fallout and exposure to that gives you a radiation dose. Depending on how much, the symptoms you will have range from radiation sickness mentioned earlier to an increased risk of cancer.
How long do the overall effects last?
The people who were exposed to the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of the survivors are still living. But among them you do see an increased incidence of cancer, especially leukaemia and various solid cancers. It essentially goes on for at least 50 years and then the area itself is contaminated. So to live there would be difficult unless you mount a vast clean-up operation. Finally, the nuclear radiation can cause genetic defects that go through generations. We have seen what happened after Chernobyl and at the old Soviet nuclear testing grounds in Kazakhstan. Even in India, for example, one sees evidence of genetic birth defects in high radiation areas like the uranium mining area of Jaduguda.
Has the international community learned any lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
I would say that we have seen how nuclear weapons are hugely destructive, they are nothing like what we have seen before. By no means should one think of them as glorified large firecrackers. Unfortunately, that`s the view many people have of these things. So I`m not sure that a lesson has been learned, but its certainly one that ought to be learned.
In terms of the damage that radiation causes to human health, the vast majority of our knowledge about what happens when people are exposed to radiation still comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and these include cancers, birth defects and so on. As for the physical effects, more of the knowledge comes from the tests that were conducted at Nevada and Kazakhstan. These were much more like well-studied experiments. The US actually built houses which they tried to knock down from a nuclear blast, just to see how far these effects go. A lot of technical knowledge came from that. But a lot of the knowledge about fires still comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Is there any conceivable protection from a nuclear attack?
Not really. There are three possible ways of protection. The first is prevention, to prevent the bomb from exploding by deploying ABM systems. Those things really don`t work. The other thing we know is that defence is much more expensive than offence.
Second, both the US and the Soviet Union did build a large number of bomb shelters. What these shelters could do -- provided you had sufficient warning -- is that they could protect you from the blast effect and they could prevent the initial radiation from hitting you. However, the shelters cannot withstand these mass fires. During the height of the Second World War in Germany the population of Hamburg and Dresden used to hide in bomb shelters, but after some of the mass fire attacks people just got charred inside. The temperatures inside were so high that they either asphyxiated to death or just got charred. It was like an oven. There was one memorable picture of how a bomb shelter was opened in Germany and all they found was ash on the ground.
Then again there is the whole question of what happens when you do come out. You`ll come out into extremely radioactive surroundings and you cannot escape that.
Finally, some people, including personnel at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay, have said they will distribute iodine tablets, which are supposed to protect your thyroid, but that`s such a small part of the damage that its ridiculous to think of that as a solution. It would be laughable if it were not so tragic. I don`t think there is any protection whatsoever.
Are buildings in Mumbai more vulnerable for some reason?
It`s not so much Mumbai that is unique as the typical South Asian city. The most important characteristic is high population density. Several million people in a hundred odd square kilometres. Any region that`s destroyed will kill a huge number of people. Then there are large number of shacks, gas cylinders, automobiles that will add to the fire.
Some parts of Mumbai have a large number of industries, for example the whole Chembur/Trombay area is home to a large number of chemical industries. Trombay has BARC, which is India`s nuclear weapons laboratory and a likely target and explosions could result in either toxic chemicals or radioactive material adding to the mixture.
In your study you estimate the number of deaths in Mumbai resulting from a nuclear attack at anything from 160,000 to 860,000. Isn`t that a huge number?
The initial comments I had from everyone was that this was too small and wasn`t I underestimating it. To some extent the answer is yes, because I wanted to be as conservative as possible. The larger figure is entirely possible because the population density in some parts of the city is so high. Think of the morning rush at Churchgate or Victoria terminus and you`ll see that if something goes off there it will instantly kill huge numbers of people.
Therefore, I have good reason to believe that the final count could be at the higher end of the estimates. But I also think there is no need to exaggerate. There`s no need to talk about millions dying, this is shocking enough as it is.
Do we assume that if there is a counter attack from India, the same devastation would be visited on Karachi or Lahore?
Right, although one of the reasons I used Mumbai is that it`s close enough to the border with Pakistan and it`s a city I am roughly familiar with, whereas I`m not so familiar with Calcutta or Lahore or Karachi. But I think Mumbai is fairy typical of a lot of cities on the subcontinent.
What would happen if the bomb were bigger than 15 kilotons? Does that mean the casualties in somewhere like Mumbai would be twice as large?
Yes, to give you a technical answer, the area that is exposed to the vast fires would be proportional to the size of the bomb. So if it`s a 150 kiloton bomb, the area affected increases by a factor of 10. That means if the population density was exactly the same it would mean that many more deaths. In a place like Mumbai that may not be the extent because it`s an area jutting out into the sea. So a lot of the area is sea and there probably wouldn`t be the number of deaths proportionally. But in a place like Delhi, for example, it would be the case.
From what you know is there any specialist medical training available in India for victims of a nuclear attack?
No, not to my knowledge. What you would probably require in the nuclear aftermath is the expertise to deal with the victims of fires, burn injuries and so on. Off the top of my head I don`t have the numbers, but I remember the number of fire beds in hospitals is less than one per 10,000 on average in India. In any area hit by the bomb you are already going to be destroying the hospitals, not to mention the transport infrastructure so that people can`t come in and go out so easily. It will be a big mess.
The one hospital that deals with radiation is the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, which is associated with the BARC. If it`s Mumbai that`s going to be hit that will also be ou
Posted by
Ashok
Jun 6, 2002 09:34 pm
M.I.T. simulated study of ``Bombay Bombing``by Dr.M.V.RAMANA
http://www.rediff.com/images/arrow.gif
The Rediff Interview/Dr M V Ramana
Physicist Dr M V Ramana works at the programme of science and global security at Princeton, and is the author of a unique study on the effects of a nuclear attack on a South Asian city like Mumbai. His paper, entitled `Bombing Bombay? Effects of
nuclear weapons and a case study of a hypothetical
explosion`, was researched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. The study concluded that a single nuclear bomb attack could result in up to 860,000 deaths.
In an interview with Shyam Bhatia, Dr Ramana says the conclusions he drew are as valid today as they were six years ago.
Why did you choose Mumbai for your study?
For two reasons. One is that I started looking at this as an exercise in a course I sat through given by Dr Ted Postol, professor of science, technology and national security policy at MIT, in 1996. He`s done similar work, for example on the mass fires started after a nuclear attack in the case of the US and the Soviet Union.
My initial expectation was that everyone knows nuclear weapons are very destructive, lots of people are going to die, and stuff like that. But what I found while doing this was that the graphic details were so graphic that it shook me up to know the exact ways by which people die.
So l thought it was important to write about it in detail and do this analysis in as much detail as possible.
Why did you base your study on the likely impact of a 15 kiloton explosion? Is that the size of the average Pakistani nuclear warhead?
I actually didn`t want to talk about whether the bomb would come from Pakistan or China, or any other place. What I thought I would use as my basis was the oldest and first bomb that was ever used, which was Hiroshima. One could assume that any modern weapon would be at least that much and probably larger.
The reason is that it was not actually the Pakistani bomb at the time, but this work was before much of the nuclear tests of 1998 and suddenly it became relevant. It was not something I had planned. The only thing that was in existence at that time in South Asia was the 1974 nuclear test by India and that was of a 12 kiloton weapon. They had talked a lot about weaponising it and there was talk about making it into a usable nuclear weapon.
Indeed when the later tests happened, the one test of what they called of a weaponising configuration was of the 12 kiloton weapon. It was the same order of magnitude as Hiroshima.
Could you list the causes of death caused by a nuclear attack?
The first thing you will experience is the light and heat that comes out of the fireball. When the bomb explodes, a huge amount of energy is created very locally and that heats up the air around the point of explosion so much that it starts radiating enormous amounts of heat and light. Your skin just starts to burn.
The fireball would be like a thousand suns. So what you would first experience is this very large amount of heat and light coming out of there, so people`s skin would burn, their clothes would catch fire.
The nuclear reaction that caused this energy to be produced also produces neutrons and gamma rays and these would emanate from the point of explosion, coming outwards. If you`re exposed to them and if you are not shielded you could get a lethal radiation dose. You would not die immediately from it, but it would start manifesting itself in a matter of a few days -- the vast majority of deaths happen within a few weeks.
It depends on the level of radiation dose that you get. At lower doses you get cancers, but what happens at high doses is that you start throwing up, there is body hemorrhage, bloody diarrhoea and so on. Essentially there is a complex of symptoms that goes under the name radiation sickness.
The third type of exposure from standing near the bomb is the blast, which is like from any explosion, like from a car bomb, for example. There is a small portion of the atmosphere that`s compressed and expands out from the point of explosion. Your lungs could collapse, your ears could collapse, you could be thrown against a wall, various objects that are in the region, a piece of furniture, could be picked up by the blast and could hit you.
A little later you get the start of delayed effects. The immense amount of heat will set many things on fire, like bits of paper, wood, anything that`s combustible. Initially there are only localised fires, but soon the fire region starts coalescing and you have this whole region on fire.
How hot does it get?
The temperatures that are generated go up 700 to 800 degrees. Anyone who is in that region will be trapped. It`s very difficult to run out of that part because what happens is that the heat is so high all the air starts to rise like from a chimney and then to replace the air, more air comes from the outside. It`s like a circle with wind coming from the outside everywhere, like a suction pump. When you try to leave the circle, you won`t be safe because there`s a very stiff wind and the wind blows at 50 to 60 kilometres per hour and you`re like trying to escape in the face of a cyclone or something like that.
In some of the pictures that one sees from Hamburg or Dresden or so on, people who are trying to leave essentially have to crawl out of the fire. You can`t walk because the wind is so intense and you can`t crawl very fast so you`re pretty much going to be caught there.
Finally, if the explosion happens sufficiently close to the earth then the initial fireball s *u *c *ks up huge amounts of soil, all kinds of things on the ground and these things mix with the radioactive materials created during the explosion and go up initially with the famous mushroom cloud, but eventually they come down to the ground.
This is all part of the radioactive fallout and exposure to that gives you a radiation dose. Depending on how much, the symptoms you will have range from radiation sickness mentioned earlier to an increased risk of cancer.
How long do the overall effects last?
The people who were exposed to the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of the survivors are still living. But among them you do see an increased incidence of cancer, especially leukaemia and various solid cancers. It essentially goes on for at least 50 years and then the area itself is contaminated. So to live there would be difficult unless you mount a vast clean-up operation. Finally, the nuclear radiation can cause genetic defects that go through generations. We have seen what happened after Chernobyl and at the old Soviet nuclear testing grounds in Kazakhstan. Even in India, for example, one sees evidence of genetic birth defects in high radiation areas like the uranium mining area of Jaduguda.
Has the international community learned any lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
I would say that we have seen how nuclear weapons are hugely destructive, they are nothing like what we have seen before. By no means should one think of them as glorified large firecrackers. Unfortunately, that`s the view many people have of these things. So I`m not sure that a lesson has been learned, but its certainly one that ought to be learned.
In terms of the damage that radiation causes to human health, the vast majority of our knowledge about what happens when people are exposed to radiation still comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and these include cancers, birth defects and so on. As for the physical effects, more of the knowledge comes from the tests that were conducted at Nevada and Kazakhstan. These were much more like well-studied experiments. The US actually built houses which they tried to knock down from a nuclear blast, just to see how far these effects go. A lot of technical knowledge came from that. But a lot of the knowledge about fires still comes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Is there any conceivable protection from a nuclear attack?
Not really. There are three possible ways of protection. The first is prevention, to prevent the bomb from exploding by deploying ABM systems. Those things really don`t work. The other thing we know is that defence is much more expensive than offence.
Second, both the US and the Soviet Union did build a large number of bomb shelters. What these shelters could do -- provided you had sufficient warning -- is that they could protect you from the blast effect and they could prevent the initial radiation from hitting you. However, the shelters cannot withstand these mass fires. During the height of the Second World War in Germany the population of Hamburg and Dresden used to hide in bomb shelters, but after some of the mass fire attacks people just got charred inside. The temperatures inside were so high that they either asphyxiated to death or just got charred. It was like an oven. There was one memorable picture of how a bomb shelter was opened in Germany and all they found was ash on the ground.
Then again there is the whole question of what happens when you do come out. You`ll come out into extremely radioactive surroundings and you cannot escape that.
Finally, some people, including personnel at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay, have said they will distribute iodine tablets, which are supposed to protect your thyroid, but that`s such a small part of the damage that its ridiculous to think of that as a solution. It would be laughable if it were not so tragic. I don`t think there is any protection whatsoever.
Are buildings in Mumbai more vulnerable for some reason?
It`s not so much Mumbai that is unique as the typical South Asian city. The most important characteristic is high population density. Several million people in a hundred odd square kilometres. Any region that`s destroyed will kill a huge number of people. Then there are large number of shacks, gas cylinders, automobiles that will add to the fire.
Some parts of Mumbai have a large number of industries, for example the whole Chembur/Trombay area is home to a large number of chemical industries. Trombay has BARC, which is India`s nuclear weapons laboratory and a likely target and explosions could result in either toxic chemicals or radioactive material adding to the mixture.
In your study you estimate the number of deaths in Mumbai resulting from a nuclear attack at anything from 160,000 to 860,000. Isn`t that a huge number?
The initial comments I had from everyone was that this was too small and wasn`t I underestimating it. To some extent the answer is yes, because I wanted to be as conservative as possible. The larger figure is entirely possible because the population density in some parts of the city is so high. Think of the morning rush at Churchgate or Victoria terminus and you`ll see that if something goes off there it will instantly kill huge numbers of people.
Therefore, I have good reason to believe that the final count could be at the higher end of the estimates. But I also think there is no need to exaggerate. There`s no need to talk about millions dying, this is shocking enough as it is.
Do we assume that if there is a counter attack from India, the same devastation would be visited on Karachi or Lahore?
Right, although one of the reasons I used Mumbai is that it`s close enough to the border with Pakistan and it`s a city I am roughly familiar with, whereas I`m not so familiar with Calcutta or Lahore or Karachi. But I think Mumbai is fairy typical of a lot of cities on the subcontinent.
What would happen if the bomb were bigger than 15 kilotons? Does that mean the casualties in somewhere like Mumbai would be twice as large?
Yes, to give you a technical answer, the area that is exposed to the vast fires would be proportional to the size of the bomb. So if it`s a 150 kiloton bomb, the area affected increases by a factor of 10. That means if the population density was exactly the same it would mean that many more deaths. In a place like Mumbai that may not be the extent because it`s an area jutting out into the sea. So a lot of the area is sea and there probably wouldn`t be the number of deaths proportionally. But in a place like Delhi, for example, it would be the case.
From what you know is there any specialist medical training available in India for victims of a nuclear attack?
No, not to my knowledge. What you would probably require in the nuclear aftermath is the expertise to deal with the victims of fires, burn injuries and so on. Off the top of my head I don`t have the numbers, but I remember the number of fire beds in hospitals is less than one per 10,000 on average in India. In any area hit by the bomb you are already going to be destroying the hospitals, not to mention the transport infrastructure so that people can`t come in and go out so easily. It will be a big mess.
The one hospital that deals with radiation is the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, which is associated with the BARC. If it`s Mumbai that`s going to be hit that will also be ou
Lighting The Nuclear Fire
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=massing
The Israel Lobby
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
by Michael Massing
n May 2 the Senate, in a vote of 94 to 2, and the House, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel in its recent military actions against the Palestinians. The resolutions were so strong that the Bush Administration--hardly a slouch when it comes to supporting Israel--attempted to soften its language so as to have more room in getting peace talks going. But its pleas were rejected, and members of Congress from Joe Lieberman to Tom DeLay competed to heap praise on Ariel Sharon and disdain on Yasir Arafat. Reporting on the vote, the New York Times noted that one of the few dissenters, Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, ``suggested that many senators were after campaign contributions.``
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Media Analysis
Aside from that brief reference, however, the Times made no mention of the role that money, or lobbying in general, may have played in the lopsided vote. More specifically, the Times made no mention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It`s a remarkable oversight. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is ``no daylight`` between the policies of Israel and of the United States.
So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it`s no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. The one account of any substance appeared in the Washington Post, in late April. Reporting on AIPAC`s annual conference, correspondent Mike Allen noted that the attendees included half the Senate, ninety members of the House and thirteen senior Administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who drew a standing ovation when he declared in Hebrew, ``The people of Israel live.`` Showing its ``clout,`` Allen wrote, AIPAC held ``a lively roll call of the hundreds of dignitaries, with individual cheers for each.`` Even this article, however, failed to probe beneath the surface and examine the lobbying and fundraising techniques AIPAC uses to lock up support in Congress.
AIPAC is not the only pro-Israel organization to escape scrutiny. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though little known to the general public, has tremendous influence in Washington, especially with the executive branch. Based in New York, the conference is supposed to give voice to the fifty-two Jewish organizations that sit on its board, but in reality it tends to reflect the views of its executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein. Hoenlein has long had close ties to Israel`s Likud Party. In the 1990s he helped raise money for settlers` groups on the West Bank, and today he regularly refers to that region as ``Judea and Samaria,`` a biblically inspired catch phrase used by conservatives to justify the presence of Jewish settlers there. A skilled and articulate operative, Hoenlein uses his access to the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council to push for a strong Israel. He`s so effective at it that the Jewish newspaper the Forward, in its annual list of the fifty most important American Jews, has ranked Hoenlein first.
Hoenlein showed his organizing skills in April, when he helped convene the large pro-Israel rally on Capitol Hill. While the event itself was widely covered, Hoenlein, and the conference, remained invisible. An informal survey of recent coverage turned up not a single in-depth piece about Hoenlein and how he has used the Presidents Conference to keep the Bush Administration from putting too much pressure on the Sharon government.
Why the blackout? For one thing, reporting on these groups is not easy. AIPAC`s power makes potential sources reluctant to discuss the organization on the record, and employees who leave it usually sign pledges of silence. AIPAC officials themselves rarely give interviews, and the organization even resists divulging its board of directors. Journalists, meanwhile, are often loath to write about the influence of organized Jewry. Throughout the Arab world, the ``Jewish lobby`` is seen as the root of all evil in the Middle East, and many reporters and editors--especially Jewish ones--worry about feeding such stereotypes.
In the end, though, the main obstacle to covering these groups is fear. Jewish organizations are quick to detect bias in the coverage of the Middle East, and quick to complain about it. That`s especially true of late. As the Forward observed in late April, ``rooting out perceived anti-Israel bias in the media has become for many American Jews the most direct and emotional outlet for connecting with the conflict 6,000 miles away.`` Recently, an estimated 1,000 subscribers to the Los Angeles Times suspended home delivery for a day to protest what they considered the paper`s pro-Palestinian coverage. The Chicago Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Miami Herald have all been hit by similar protests, and NPR has received thousands of e-mails complaining about its reports from the Middle East.
Do such protests have an effect? Consider the recent experience of the New York Times. On May 6 the paper ran two photographs of a pro-Israel parade in Manhattan. Both showed the parade in the background and anti-Israel protesters prominently in the foreground. The paper, which for weeks has been threatened with a boycott by Jewish readers, was deluged with protests. On May 7 the Times ran an abject apology. That caused much consternation in the newsroom, with some reporters and editors feeling that the paper had buckled before an influential constituency. ``It`s very intimidating,`` said a correspondent at another large daily who is familiar with the incident. Newspapers, he added, are ``afraid`` of organizations like AIPAC and the Presidents Conference. ``The pressure from these groups is relentless. Editors would just as soon not touch them.``
Needless to say, US support for Israel is the product of many factors--Israel`s status as the sole democracy in the Middle East, its value as a US strategic ally and widespread horror over Palestinian suicide bombers. But the power of the pro-Israel lobby is an important element as well. Indeed, it`s impossible to understand the Bush Administration`s tender treatment of the Sharon government without taking into account the influence of groups like AIPAC. Isn`t it time they were exposed to the daylight?
Posted by
Ashok
May 30, 2002 01:56 pm
| June 10, 2002 http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=massing
The Israel Lobby
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
by Michael Massing
n May 2 the Senate, in a vote of 94 to 2, and the House, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel in its recent military actions against the Palestinians. The resolutions were so strong that the Bush Administration--hardly a slouch when it comes to supporting Israel--attempted to soften its language so as to have more room in getting peace talks going. But its pleas were rejected, and members of Congress from Joe Lieberman to Tom DeLay competed to heap praise on Ariel Sharon and disdain on Yasir Arafat. Reporting on the vote, the New York Times noted that one of the few dissenters, Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, ``suggested that many senators were after campaign contributions.``
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Print this article
E-mail this article
Write to the editors
MORE ABOUT...
Michael Massing
Israel
Media Analysis
Aside from that brief reference, however, the Times made no mention of the role that money, or lobbying in general, may have played in the lopsided vote. More specifically, the Times made no mention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It`s a remarkable oversight. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is ``no daylight`` between the policies of Israel and of the United States.
So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it`s no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. The one account of any substance appeared in the Washington Post, in late April. Reporting on AIPAC`s annual conference, correspondent Mike Allen noted that the attendees included half the Senate, ninety members of the House and thirteen senior Administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who drew a standing ovation when he declared in Hebrew, ``The people of Israel live.`` Showing its ``clout,`` Allen wrote, AIPAC held ``a lively roll call of the hundreds of dignitaries, with individual cheers for each.`` Even this article, however, failed to probe beneath the surface and examine the lobbying and fundraising techniques AIPAC uses to lock up support in Congress.
AIPAC is not the only pro-Israel organization to escape scrutiny. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though little known to the general public, has tremendous influence in Washington, especially with the executive branch. Based in New York, the conference is supposed to give voice to the fifty-two Jewish organizations that sit on its board, but in reality it tends to reflect the views of its executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein. Hoenlein has long had close ties to Israel`s Likud Party. In the 1990s he helped raise money for settlers` groups on the West Bank, and today he regularly refers to that region as ``Judea and Samaria,`` a biblically inspired catch phrase used by conservatives to justify the presence of Jewish settlers there. A skilled and articulate operative, Hoenlein uses his access to the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council to push for a strong Israel. He`s so effective at it that the Jewish newspaper the Forward, in its annual list of the fifty most important American Jews, has ranked Hoenlein first.
Hoenlein showed his organizing skills in April, when he helped convene the large pro-Israel rally on Capitol Hill. While the event itself was widely covered, Hoenlein, and the conference, remained invisible. An informal survey of recent coverage turned up not a single in-depth piece about Hoenlein and how he has used the Presidents Conference to keep the Bush Administration from putting too much pressure on the Sharon government.
Why the blackout? For one thing, reporting on these groups is not easy. AIPAC`s power makes potential sources reluctant to discuss the organization on the record, and employees who leave it usually sign pledges of silence. AIPAC officials themselves rarely give interviews, and the organization even resists divulging its board of directors. Journalists, meanwhile, are often loath to write about the influence of organized Jewry. Throughout the Arab world, the ``Jewish lobby`` is seen as the root of all evil in the Middle East, and many reporters and editors--especially Jewish ones--worry about feeding such stereotypes.
In the end, though, the main obstacle to covering these groups is fear. Jewish organizations are quick to detect bias in the coverage of the Middle East, and quick to complain about it. That`s especially true of late. As the Forward observed in late April, ``rooting out perceived anti-Israel bias in the media has become for many American Jews the most direct and emotional outlet for connecting with the conflict 6,000 miles away.`` Recently, an estimated 1,000 subscribers to the Los Angeles Times suspended home delivery for a day to protest what they considered the paper`s pro-Palestinian coverage. The Chicago Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Miami Herald have all been hit by similar protests, and NPR has received thousands of e-mails complaining about its reports from the Middle East.
Do such protests have an effect? Consider the recent experience of the New York Times. On May 6 the paper ran two photographs of a pro-Israel parade in Manhattan. Both showed the parade in the background and anti-Israel protesters prominently in the foreground. The paper, which for weeks has been threatened with a boycott by Jewish readers, was deluged with protests. On May 7 the Times ran an abject apology. That caused much consternation in the newsroom, with some reporters and editors feeling that the paper had buckled before an influential constituency. ``It`s very intimidating,`` said a correspondent at another large daily who is familiar with the incident. Newspapers, he added, are ``afraid`` of organizations like AIPAC and the Presidents Conference. ``The pressure from these groups is relentless. Editors would just as soon not touch them.``
Needless to say, US support for Israel is the product of many factors--Israel`s status as the sole democracy in the Middle East, its value as a US strategic ally and widespread horror over Palestinian suicide bombers. But the power of the pro-Israel lobby is an important element as well. Indeed, it`s impossible to understand the Bush Administration`s tender treatment of the Sharon government without taking into account the influence of groups like AIPAC. Isn`t it time they were exposed to the daylight?
Lighting The Nuclear Fire
AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE PEOPLE
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=11451638
Will this déjà vu never end? asks Salman Rushdie
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2002 12:19:51 PM ]
NEW DELHI: Is the Pakistan President martyr material? Salman Rushdie does not think so. The real danger lies in the instability in Pakistan, says author Salman Rushdie in The New York Times.
The world is worried. ``Is it really likely, however, that Pakistan would, so to speak, strap a nuclear weapon to its belly, walk into the crowded bazaar that is India and turn itself into the biggest suicide bomber in history?`` asks noted British author Salman Rushdie in an article published in NYT on Thursday.
Rushdie says he doesn`t think President Pervez Musharraf ? rhetoric notwithstanding ? is ``martyr material``. But the real danger lies in the instability in Pakistan, thanks to the presence of Islamic hardliners, ``people for whom martyrdom is a higher goal than peace, people who value death more highly than life``.
And given India`s superiority in conventional warfare and the chance that Pakistan may lose a conventional conflict, hardliners in the country could get stronger, possibly even overthrowing Musharraf.
``The risk of a nuclear battle, however improbable, makes Kashmir everybody`s problem. Right now it`s the most dangerous place in the world,`` says the controversial author, who has been living in hiding under threat from Islamic fundamentalist.
Rushdie`s advice to world leaders is simple: Use your influence ? even force ? to pull the two countries apart, and soon: ``The `hands off Kashmir` solution will have to be externally imposed on the reluctant principals and will require that a large peacekeeping force be sent to the region to support Kashmir as an autonomous area,`` Rushdie writes in NYT.
But then who will pay for such a force? And is there an alternative?
The answers to these questions are questions. Says Rushdie: ``Will it take mushroom clouds over Delhi and Islamabad to make us give up our ingrained prejudices and try something that might actually work? In the immortal words of the Spice Girls, `Will this déjà vu never end?```
Comments on this article
Indiatimes Id: maniamanish
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 3:05:17 PM
Comment: it seems salman is little biased,nobody would be allowed to enter into the Kashm...
Indiatimes Id: wijay_godbole
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 2:35:59 PM
Comment: If you know there is a suicide bomber and also know who it is, will you wait for...
Indiatimes Id: yellowknife_11
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 2:01:39 PM
Comment: I fully agree with what Mr. Salman Rushdie has to say about the Indo-Pak Problem...
Indiatimes Id: mukeshagarwal99
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 1:56:59 PM
Comment: Rushdie is right that people who value myrtdom more than life can and will go to...
Indiatimes Id: patriotindia2002
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 1:48:43 PM
Comment: Eventhough Rushdie is a controversial writer and his views cannot be considered ...
More comments
Posted by
Ashok
May 30, 2002 01:56 pm
AS MANY OPINIONS AS THERE ARE PEOPLE
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=11451638
Will this déjà vu never end? asks Salman Rushdie
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2002 12:19:51 PM ]
NEW DELHI: Is the Pakistan President martyr material? Salman Rushdie does not think so. The real danger lies in the instability in Pakistan, says author Salman Rushdie in The New York Times.
The world is worried. ``Is it really likely, however, that Pakistan would, so to speak, strap a nuclear weapon to its belly, walk into the crowded bazaar that is India and turn itself into the biggest suicide bomber in history?`` asks noted British author Salman Rushdie in an article published in NYT on Thursday.
Rushdie says he doesn`t think President Pervez Musharraf ? rhetoric notwithstanding ? is ``martyr material``. But the real danger lies in the instability in Pakistan, thanks to the presence of Islamic hardliners, ``people for whom martyrdom is a higher goal than peace, people who value death more highly than life``.
And given India`s superiority in conventional warfare and the chance that Pakistan may lose a conventional conflict, hardliners in the country could get stronger, possibly even overthrowing Musharraf.
``The risk of a nuclear battle, however improbable, makes Kashmir everybody`s problem. Right now it`s the most dangerous place in the world,`` says the controversial author, who has been living in hiding under threat from Islamic fundamentalist.
Rushdie`s advice to world leaders is simple: Use your influence ? even force ? to pull the two countries apart, and soon: ``The `hands off Kashmir` solution will have to be externally imposed on the reluctant principals and will require that a large peacekeeping force be sent to the region to support Kashmir as an autonomous area,`` Rushdie writes in NYT.
But then who will pay for such a force? And is there an alternative?
The answers to these questions are questions. Says Rushdie: ``Will it take mushroom clouds over Delhi and Islamabad to make us give up our ingrained prejudices and try something that might actually work? In the immortal words of the Spice Girls, `Will this déjà vu never end?```
Comments on this article
Indiatimes Id: maniamanish
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 3:05:17 PM
Comment: it seems salman is little biased,nobody would be allowed to enter into the Kashm...
Indiatimes Id: wijay_godbole
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 2:35:59 PM
Comment: If you know there is a suicide bomber and also know who it is, will you wait for...
Indiatimes Id: yellowknife_11
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 2:01:39 PM
Comment: I fully agree with what Mr. Salman Rushdie has to say about the Indo-Pak Problem...
Indiatimes Id: mukeshagarwal99
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 1:56:59 PM
Comment: Rushdie is right that people who value myrtdom more than life can and will go to...
Indiatimes Id: patriotindia2002
Posted: Thursday, May 30, 2002 1:48:43 PM
Comment: Eventhough Rushdie is a controversial writer and his views cannot be considered ...
More comments
On Hate
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/30dilip.htm
Dilip D`Souza A Question of Hatreds
It`s not just in what drives a bloodthirsty mob to set a railway coach crammed with humans on fire. Nor is it just in what drives bloodthirsty mobs to drag other humans from their homes and burn them, or murder them in other grisly ways. The hatred is also in the viciousness that so many ordinary folks express. You can find it everywhere; from only the letters I have got in the last couple of weeks, here`s a sample. A man wrote to me that he ``would rather exterminate Muslims``. Another claimed he was a devout Jain, but ``I hate the Muslims like anything``. After accusing me of a variety of slimy things, a third dude pronounced me ``a shallow-minded m * * * * * * * * * * * who wears 55inch glasses``. And then there was the lady who was irate when I pointed out that the police had denied the story of girls abducted from the train in Godhra -- because hadn`t the rioting been ``instigated and sustained`` by this very story? (Note the remarkably credible logic at work here: the story triggered the rioting, she thinks; the story is shown up as the nonsense it is; the lady is upset that I say so, for now what will explain the rioting in her mind?) I`m left wondering: What will it take to find a way out of these hatreds? Especially when they twist minds so fantastically? Whatever it will take, we`ll have to find a way. Because the way things are going, the way these hatreds are stoked and acted on, the way everyone seems intent on pointing fingers around (me included), I can see only a frightful calamity ahead. One that will dwarf the calamities we have already suffered. So this column is my attempt to find a way. It`s addressed to you. I once listened as a journalist I know fielded questions from young journalism students. One asked: Isn`t it true that most of these so-called poor people enjoy being poor, so they can beg for money, avoid work and get all kinds of benefits free? The journalist took a deep breath, counted to ten, and replied: Would you enjoy being poor? Then why do you assume that others will? Please, I implore you, imbue the other guy with the same humanity you believe is in you. (I paraphrase both question and answer, but I assure you that at least two words above were actually said: ``enjoy`` and ``implore``.) So here`s principle #1 in my attempt, and it underlies everything else: imbue the other guy with humanity. I cannot accept that the ordinary Hindus I meet daily applaud the massacres across Gujarat -- the massacres revolted me, therefore I presume they revolted them. In turn, I expect people who disagree with me to believe that I did not applaud the Godhra atrocity -- it revolted them, therefore they must reasonably presume that it revolted me. (It did.) Whatever our political differences, let`s grant this much to each other. Where I sit, this means many things. Consider where one of them leads me. I have no use for temples and mosques, nor for questions of faith. Other, more tangible things are much more important to me. But just as that`s so, I must comprehend that faith and temples and mosques are profound issues to innumerable other people. Therefore, the demand for that Ram temple cannot be judged on historical evidence or by courts and legislatures. In the end, the demand is founded on faith. And it will be answered by assessing whether that faith outweighs other considerations. Take another. During the Bombay riots of 1992-93, I sat through one or two neighbourhood gatherings in which a retired army officer gave us tips about how we could protect ourselves if thugs flooded into our buildings. To me, it was clear: the thugs he meant were the Shiv Sena. Now I myself saw much evidence of Sena crimes during the riots. But no, they never did attack my building. Yet people like me lived in fear for days on end. In much the same way, there were Hindus who lived through days in terror, fearful that Muslims were about to assault them and their families. For several nights, they gathered weapons and sat on the beach at Dadar, ready to battle the invasion by sea-borne Muslims that was rumoured already to be on its way. People like me ridiculed that particular episode. But the fear those Hindus felt on the beach was no less real than the fear I felt for my home. Or: the terror on the other side is no less real for being on the other side. A subtle point, but one to make and understand nevertheless. Principle #2, which is related: Nothing is gained by thinking of the other guy as an ogre. It might help me vindicate my own beliefs, but it doesn`t help us find solutions. When the starting point in our debate is that you enjoy mass murder, the debate will never move beyond shouting: which is just what we see everywhere. For example: I don`t care for Varsha B`s take on the world we live in. I believe she is utterly wrong (which is what she thinks of me). But it serves nobody to also believe -- as people sometimes tell me I must, as people say of Arundhati Roy -- that VB is just ``seeking publicity``, or says what she does ``for the sake of saying something`` (whatever that means), or that she is a mindless, unfeeling creep. The easy thing to do is to think such things. Because it makes me feel good about myself in comparison. After all, I never seek publicity; everything I say comes out of serious deliberation; and I`m such a sensitive, thoughtful young man. Right? In contrast to that caricature of VB, of course I am. So I`m better than a caricature. Yippee! Now what? No, VB came to her beliefs, her view on the world, through much the same process of reasoning that brought me to my beliefs. Only, she ended up with radically different views. I have to understand, accept, both processes and views: partly because I will fight them every inch, partly because you have to recognize an opponent, understand her worth, before you fight her. After all, not even a Tendulkar goes into a Test believing he will have five-year-olds bowling lollipops at him. Principle #3 grows from there: compromise begins with examining which of my beliefs I am willing to give up. Then, and only then, can I demand the same of someone else. In November 2000, the then foreign minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, made a remarkable statement about his country. Criticizing a government document listing Palestinian crimes, he told his Cabinet colleagues: ``Accusations made by a well-established society about how a people it is oppressing is breaking rules to attain its rights do not have much credence.`` [Ha`aretz, November 28, 2000]. Think about this for a minute. This was the first time an Israeli leader acknowledged that his country was oppressing Palestinians, that they were a people fighting for their rights. What did it take for Ben-Ami to make such an admission, such a dramatic departure from everything Israel believes about their relationship with Palestinians? What were the prospects for peace his admission opened up? What is the price his country has paid by far greater oppression of Palestinians under Ariel Sharon? (March 28: Palestinian suicide bomber kills 20 in Netanya). For me: take my beliefs about the wrangle over Ayodhya. Some are: The BJP sees it as a purely political pack horse, to be ridden as long as it can travel political miles. A historical wrong from the 16th century is not righted by destruction today. The whole temple movement has little to do with history and faith anyway, and everything to do with showing Muslims they will never be equal Indian citizens. Which is why December 6, 1992, was a day of shame and tragedy for India. You get the picture. These have counters on the other side of the fence. I don`t like them, but they are there: That mosque was a sign of Hindu, and Indian, subjugation; that`s why it had to be removed. Many in the BJP believe so -- certainly many of its supporters do so -- and to them it is truly more than just a political bandwagon. To Hindus, that is sacred ground because Ram was born there. For these reasons, December 6, 1992, was a day of Hindu, and Indian, honour and redemption. A day of celebration. You get the picture again. Any solution to this Ayodhya mess will have to bridge the yawning gulf between these positions: find a compromise. No compromise is possible if I cling righteously to my views and expect you to throw away yours. So I am faced with the question: which of my beliefs am I willing to give up? Believe me, I think about this a lot. I have some ideas, though for now they will remain unshared. Meanwhile, which beliefs are you, are each of us, willing to give up? How many of us can find the courage Shlomo Ben-Ami did? Principle #4: Question everything. Everyone. Yes, me included, this column included. Your hatreds, my hatreds, definitely
Posted by
Ashok
Apr 15, 2002 02:19 am
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/30dilip.htm
Dilip D`Souza A Question of Hatreds
It`s not just in what drives a bloodthirsty mob to set a railway coach crammed with humans on fire. Nor is it just in what drives bloodthirsty mobs to drag other humans from their homes and burn them, or murder them in other grisly ways. The hatred is also in the viciousness that so many ordinary folks express. You can find it everywhere; from only the letters I have got in the last couple of weeks, here`s a sample. A man wrote to me that he ``would rather exterminate Muslims``. Another claimed he was a devout Jain, but ``I hate the Muslims like anything``. After accusing me of a variety of slimy things, a third dude pronounced me ``a shallow-minded m * * * * * * * * * * * who wears 55inch glasses``. And then there was the lady who was irate when I pointed out that the police had denied the story of girls abducted from the train in Godhra -- because hadn`t the rioting been ``instigated and sustained`` by this very story? (Note the remarkably credible logic at work here: the story triggered the rioting, she thinks; the story is shown up as the nonsense it is; the lady is upset that I say so, for now what will explain the rioting in her mind?) I`m left wondering: What will it take to find a way out of these hatreds? Especially when they twist minds so fantastically? Whatever it will take, we`ll have to find a way. Because the way things are going, the way these hatreds are stoked and acted on, the way everyone seems intent on pointing fingers around (me included), I can see only a frightful calamity ahead. One that will dwarf the calamities we have already suffered. So this column is my attempt to find a way. It`s addressed to you. I once listened as a journalist I know fielded questions from young journalism students. One asked: Isn`t it true that most of these so-called poor people enjoy being poor, so they can beg for money, avoid work and get all kinds of benefits free? The journalist took a deep breath, counted to ten, and replied: Would you enjoy being poor? Then why do you assume that others will? Please, I implore you, imbue the other guy with the same humanity you believe is in you. (I paraphrase both question and answer, but I assure you that at least two words above were actually said: ``enjoy`` and ``implore``.) So here`s principle #1 in my attempt, and it underlies everything else: imbue the other guy with humanity. I cannot accept that the ordinary Hindus I meet daily applaud the massacres across Gujarat -- the massacres revolted me, therefore I presume they revolted them. In turn, I expect people who disagree with me to believe that I did not applaud the Godhra atrocity -- it revolted them, therefore they must reasonably presume that it revolted me. (It did.) Whatever our political differences, let`s grant this much to each other. Where I sit, this means many things. Consider where one of them leads me. I have no use for temples and mosques, nor for questions of faith. Other, more tangible things are much more important to me. But just as that`s so, I must comprehend that faith and temples and mosques are profound issues to innumerable other people. Therefore, the demand for that Ram temple cannot be judged on historical evidence or by courts and legislatures. In the end, the demand is founded on faith. And it will be answered by assessing whether that faith outweighs other considerations. Take another. During the Bombay riots of 1992-93, I sat through one or two neighbourhood gatherings in which a retired army officer gave us tips about how we could protect ourselves if thugs flooded into our buildings. To me, it was clear: the thugs he meant were the Shiv Sena. Now I myself saw much evidence of Sena crimes during the riots. But no, they never did attack my building. Yet people like me lived in fear for days on end. In much the same way, there were Hindus who lived through days in terror, fearful that Muslims were about to assault them and their families. For several nights, they gathered weapons and sat on the beach at Dadar, ready to battle the invasion by sea-borne Muslims that was rumoured already to be on its way. People like me ridiculed that particular episode. But the fear those Hindus felt on the beach was no less real than the fear I felt for my home. Or: the terror on the other side is no less real for being on the other side. A subtle point, but one to make and understand nevertheless. Principle #2, which is related: Nothing is gained by thinking of the other guy as an ogre. It might help me vindicate my own beliefs, but it doesn`t help us find solutions. When the starting point in our debate is that you enjoy mass murder, the debate will never move beyond shouting: which is just what we see everywhere. For example: I don`t care for Varsha B`s take on the world we live in. I believe she is utterly wrong (which is what she thinks of me). But it serves nobody to also believe -- as people sometimes tell me I must, as people say of Arundhati Roy -- that VB is just ``seeking publicity``, or says what she does ``for the sake of saying something`` (whatever that means), or that she is a mindless, unfeeling creep. The easy thing to do is to think such things. Because it makes me feel good about myself in comparison. After all, I never seek publicity; everything I say comes out of serious deliberation; and I`m such a sensitive, thoughtful young man. Right? In contrast to that caricature of VB, of course I am. So I`m better than a caricature. Yippee! Now what? No, VB came to her beliefs, her view on the world, through much the same process of reasoning that brought me to my beliefs. Only, she ended up with radically different views. I have to understand, accept, both processes and views: partly because I will fight them every inch, partly because you have to recognize an opponent, understand her worth, before you fight her. After all, not even a Tendulkar goes into a Test believing he will have five-year-olds bowling lollipops at him. Principle #3 grows from there: compromise begins with examining which of my beliefs I am willing to give up. Then, and only then, can I demand the same of someone else. In November 2000, the then foreign minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, made a remarkable statement about his country. Criticizing a government document listing Palestinian crimes, he told his Cabinet colleagues: ``Accusations made by a well-established society about how a people it is oppressing is breaking rules to attain its rights do not have much credence.`` [Ha`aretz, November 28, 2000]. Think about this for a minute. This was the first time an Israeli leader acknowledged that his country was oppressing Palestinians, that they were a people fighting for their rights. What did it take for Ben-Ami to make such an admission, such a dramatic departure from everything Israel believes about their relationship with Palestinians? What were the prospects for peace his admission opened up? What is the price his country has paid by far greater oppression of Palestinians under Ariel Sharon? (March 28: Palestinian suicide bomber kills 20 in Netanya). For me: take my beliefs about the wrangle over Ayodhya. Some are: The BJP sees it as a purely political pack horse, to be ridden as long as it can travel political miles. A historical wrong from the 16th century is not righted by destruction today. The whole temple movement has little to do with history and faith anyway, and everything to do with showing Muslims they will never be equal Indian citizens. Which is why December 6, 1992, was a day of shame and tragedy for India. You get the picture. These have counters on the other side of the fence. I don`t like them, but they are there: That mosque was a sign of Hindu, and Indian, subjugation; that`s why it had to be removed. Many in the BJP believe so -- certainly many of its supporters do so -- and to them it is truly more than just a political bandwagon. To Hindus, that is sacred ground because Ram was born there. For these reasons, December 6, 1992, was a day of Hindu, and Indian, honour and redemption. A day of celebration. You get the picture again. Any solution to this Ayodhya mess will have to bridge the yawning gulf between these positions: find a compromise. No compromise is possible if I cling righteously to my views and expect you to throw away yours. So I am faced with the question: which of my beliefs am I willing to give up? Believe me, I think about this a lot. I have some ideas, though for now they will remain unshared. Meanwhile, which beliefs are you, are each of us, willing to give up? How many of us can find the courage Shlomo Ben-Ami did? Principle #4: Question everything. Everyone. Yes, me included, this column included. Your hatreds, my hatreds, definitely
The Great Illusion
Bill Gates ,Michael Cricheton,Allen of Apple computers are all voluntary college drop outs from Harvard.
If hindus think they are more educated they might be talking of millions of paper degrees granted by lakhs of universities & colleges ,its immaterial as long as they dont take any pakistanis job in pakistan what do you care .
Posted by
Ashok
Apr 13, 2002 05:27 pm
Indira ,Sanjay ,Rajiv Gandhis were not educated ...Bill Gates ,Michael Cricheton,Allen of Apple computers are all voluntary college drop outs from Harvard.
If hindus think they are more educated they might be talking of millions of paper degrees granted by lakhs of universities & colleges ,its immaterial as long as they dont take any pakistanis job in pakistan what do you care .
He Said, She Said
ATTENTION, ATTENTION, PAKISTANIS ...UPTO 200,000 OF YOU MIGHT BE LUCKY TO WIN THE LOTTERY OF VISA FOR INDIAN CITIZENSHIP!!
ONLY CONDITIONS ARE YOU MUST HAVE BEEN FROM IOK,& FLED TO pAKISTAN AFTER 1949 .YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO RETURN BACK TO INDIA & ENJOY BOLLYWOOD MOVIES,BASANT BAHAR,HOLI ETC. FEAR FREE.<
SETTLEMENT ACT SPARKS
FROM R. VENKATARAMAN New Delhi, April 5:
The Jammu and Kashmir resettlement Act once again surfaced in the Supreme Court today, triggering a debate on Centre-state relationship.
A division bench of Justices G.B. Pattanaik and Brijesh Kumar declined to vacate its earlier stay on the implementation of the Act and fixed April 19 for further hearings.
Under the Jammu and Kashmir Grant of Permission for Resettlement In (Or Permanent Return To) the State Act, 1982, anyone who had left the state for Pakistan or any other state after the 1947 Partition could come back and settle down permanently.
Panthers’ Party president Bhim Singh challenged the Act, contending that over 200,000 Pakistanis were set to come back to Kashmir and terrorists trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence could use the cover to penetrate the country. Two more petitions in the form of public interest litigations (PIL) also challenged the Act.
In an affidavit, the state government said the law was within its constitutional right. Jammu and Kashmir has a separate Constitution. If the legislature passes a Bill for the second time after it has been denied assent by the President or the Governor, it automatically becomes law. This is part of the partial autonomy granted to the state.
Farooq Abdullah had passed the Act in 1982 and the President’s reference of the Act to the apex court was sent back unanswered. In this light, Abdullah had last year announced that he would implement the law in letter and spirit. The BJP-led coalition at the Centre is understandably against it.
In its affidavit, the state’s advocate general, M.A. Goni, said that since the apex court had sent back the reference unanswered, the current petition had become “unmaintainable” and the “Bill had now become law”.
But Bhim Singh contended that the impugned Act, if allowed, would bring 200,000 Pakistanis to Jammu province alone, which would result in the eviction of nearly five lakh allottees from evacuee land. Evacuee lands are the ones left behind by those who migrated to Pakistan after Partition. These lands were allotted to local residents.
The Panthers’ Party chief argued that the re-settlers would disturb communal harmony and pose a threat to the country’s unity, security and sovereignty.
The case was adjourned for two weeks after solicitor general Harish Salve, who appeared for the Union government, sought the court’s permission to file a counter-affidavit.
Salve submitted that the “Union of India has a different perception on the said law than the state government”.
Posted by
Ashok
Apr 6, 2002 12:39 am
ATTENTION, ATTENTION, PAKISTANIS ...UPTO 200,000 OF YOU MIGHT BE LUCKY TO WIN THE LOTTERY OF VISA FOR INDIAN CITIZENSHIP!!
ONLY CONDITIONS ARE YOU MUST HAVE BEEN FROM IOK,& FLED TO pAKISTAN AFTER 1949 .YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO RETURN BACK TO INDIA & ENJOY BOLLYWOOD MOVIES,BASANT BAHAR,HOLI ETC. FEAR FREE.<
SETTLEMENT ACT SPARKS
FROM R. VENKATARAMAN New Delhi, April 5:
The Jammu and Kashmir resettlement Act once again surfaced in the Supreme Court today, triggering a debate on Centre-state relationship.
A division bench of Justices G.B. Pattanaik and Brijesh Kumar declined to vacate its earlier stay on the implementation of the Act and fixed April 19 for further hearings.
Under the Jammu and Kashmir Grant of Permission for Resettlement In (Or Permanent Return To) the State Act, 1982, anyone who had left the state for Pakistan or any other state after the 1947 Partition could come back and settle down permanently.
Panthers’ Party president Bhim Singh challenged the Act, contending that over 200,000 Pakistanis were set to come back to Kashmir and terrorists trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence could use the cover to penetrate the country. Two more petitions in the form of public interest litigations (PIL) also challenged the Act.
In an affidavit, the state government said the law was within its constitutional right. Jammu and Kashmir has a separate Constitution. If the legislature passes a Bill for the second time after it has been denied assent by the President or the Governor, it automatically becomes law. This is part of the partial autonomy granted to the state.
Farooq Abdullah had passed the Act in 1982 and the President’s reference of the Act to the apex court was sent back unanswered. In this light, Abdullah had last year announced that he would implement the law in letter and spirit. The BJP-led coalition at the Centre is understandably against it.
In its affidavit, the state’s advocate general, M.A. Goni, said that since the apex court had sent back the reference unanswered, the current petition had become “unmaintainable” and the “Bill had now become law”.
But Bhim Singh contended that the impugned Act, if allowed, would bring 200,000 Pakistanis to Jammu province alone, which would result in the eviction of nearly five lakh allottees from evacuee land. Evacuee lands are the ones left behind by those who migrated to Pakistan after Partition. These lands were allotted to local residents.
The Panthers’ Party chief argued that the re-settlers would disturb communal harmony and pose a threat to the country’s unity, security and sovereignty.
The case was adjourned for two weeks after solicitor general Harish Salve, who appeared for the Union government, sought the court’s permission to file a counter-affidavit.
Salve submitted that the “Union of India has a different perception on the said law than the state government”.
The Red Dress
Godot
Re: anNy, #5
``this was way too long and a bit tiring to read``
PS: at times you are just too funny!!! I love that trait in people, especially when they are as natural as you. Keep it up, girl!
Gosh
Stop acting like that with child 1/2 your age ..you pedophile
Posted by
Ashok
Apr 1, 2002 02:34 am
#: 10 Godot
Re: anNy, #5
``this was way too long and a bit tiring to read``
PS: at times you are just too funny!!! I love that trait in people, especially when they are as natural as you. Keep it up, girl!
Gosh
Stop acting like that with child 1/2 your age ..you pedophile
From Across The Border
When we talk from one particular perspective,no matter whether Indian or Pakistani ,we never speak for the whole country.India being almost 7 times more people & 7-10 times more area deffinitely has more variety ,shades & Diversity.
In India certain elements IMHO,are going to be more radically anti-islam,muslim & pakistan.Than there counterpart in Pakistan.They (hindutva)have nothing to lose so have no incentive to change .
Ironically it is the Indians who are likely to fight with Pakistan in war ,are the ones most interested in friendship too..the north Indians ,Punjabis ,Rajputs,Kashmiri hindu ,Dogra etc.
No doubt as Mr.Muzzafar stresses ,there are far more reasons to be atleast friendly terms with each other,independently in there stance yet not at each others throat.
Some of the animosity has been on purpose developed,nurtured & inculcated over centuries ,by brain washing with large volumes of ``hindu version of history `` with particular goal of vengeance ,eye to reversing the so called wrong done & letting it fall as burden on the future hindu children as duty to work towards that goal.How else could you see animosity towards Pakistan ,not far behind general missinterpretation of 10000 yrs of muslim history in India.From Kashmir to Ayodhya ....Mumbai to Gujrat riots are just symptoms of artificially introduced infection of communalism.
Posted by
Ashok
Mar 14, 2002 04:24 pm
bOTH pAKISTAN& iNDIA ARE NOT MONOLITHIC .When we talk from one particular perspective,no matter whether Indian or Pakistani ,we never speak for the whole country.India being almost 7 times more people & 7-10 times more area deffinitely has more variety ,shades & Diversity.
In India certain elements IMHO,are going to be more radically anti-islam,muslim & pakistan.Than there counterpart in Pakistan.They (hindutva)have nothing to lose so have no incentive to change .
Ironically it is the Indians who are likely to fight with Pakistan in war ,are the ones most interested in friendship too..the north Indians ,Punjabis ,Rajputs,Kashmiri hindu ,Dogra etc.
No doubt as Mr.Muzzafar stresses ,there are far more reasons to be atleast friendly terms with each other,independently in there stance yet not at each others throat.
Some of the animosity has been on purpose developed,nurtured & inculcated over centuries ,by brain washing with large volumes of ``hindu version of history `` with particular goal of vengeance ,eye to reversing the so called wrong done & letting it fall as burden on the future hindu children as duty to work towards that goal.How else could you see animosity towards Pakistan ,not far behind general missinterpretation of 10000 yrs of muslim history in India.From Kashmir to Ayodhya ....Mumbai to Gujrat riots are just symptoms of artificially introduced infection of communalism.
Whose Iqbal — Ours or Theirs?
http://www.ndtv.com/live/video.htm
IAF sacks Southern Command Chief
Wednesday, March 13, 2002 (New Delhi):
In a severe censure, Air Marshal M S Sekhon, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Southern Air Command was today asked to put in his papers in the wake of media reports that he had sought political help for a coveted posting.
The Air Marshal has evidently breached official guidelines by asking former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal for help in being posted as Commander-in-Chief of the Western Air Command, one of the most coveted posts in the Air Force.
The move comes a day after national dailies published a copy of a letter which the Air Marshal had written to the former chief minister. In the letter, Air Marshal Sekhon wrote: ``I request you, Sir, to speak with Hon`ble Prime Minister and get me posted to WAC (Western Air Command). With Akalpurukh`s blessings and your help, I can become the Chief of the Air Staff of Indian Air Force one day.``
By writing the letter, the Air Marshal violated basic service rules that which prohibit political intervention in the armed forces.
Ironically, Air Marshal Sekhon was heading the probe into the alleged air-space violation committed by the man whose job he wanted -- Air Marshal Vinod Bhatia, the commander of the Western Air Command.
On February 19, Air Marshal Bhatia had reportedly violated Pakistani airspace while attempting to land at Kargil airport, which is only 10 kilometres from the Line of Control. The status of that probe which has been submitted to the Air Force Headquarters remains unclear.
Though there have been sackings in the higher echelons of the Navy and Air Force, this is the first time that such a senior officer of the IAF has been so unceremoniously sacked. (With PTI inputs)
Top Stories
No puja in acquired land rules Supreme Court []
VHP slams SC verdict, vows satyagraha
Posted by
Ashok
Mar 14, 2002 03:27 am
CORRUPT INDIAN aIR FORCE CHIEF BIG SHOT .LOOTING MASSIVE DEFENCE BUDGET FIGHTING PAKISTANS PHANTOMhttp://www.ndtv.com/live/video.htm
IAF sacks Southern Command Chief
Wednesday, March 13, 2002 (New Delhi):
In a severe censure, Air Marshal M S Sekhon, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Southern Air Command was today asked to put in his papers in the wake of media reports that he had sought political help for a coveted posting.
The Air Marshal has evidently breached official guidelines by asking former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal for help in being posted as Commander-in-Chief of the Western Air Command, one of the most coveted posts in the Air Force.
The move comes a day after national dailies published a copy of a letter which the Air Marshal had written to the former chief minister. In the letter, Air Marshal Sekhon wrote: ``I request you, Sir, to speak with Hon`ble Prime Minister and get me posted to WAC (Western Air Command). With Akalpurukh`s blessings and your help, I can become the Chief of the Air Staff of Indian Air Force one day.``
By writing the letter, the Air Marshal violated basic service rules that which prohibit political intervention in the armed forces.
Ironically, Air Marshal Sekhon was heading the probe into the alleged air-space violation committed by the man whose job he wanted -- Air Marshal Vinod Bhatia, the commander of the Western Air Command.
On February 19, Air Marshal Bhatia had reportedly violated Pakistani airspace while attempting to land at Kargil airport, which is only 10 kilometres from the Line of Control. The status of that probe which has been submitted to the Air Force Headquarters remains unclear.
Though there have been sackings in the higher echelons of the Navy and Air Force, this is the first time that such a senior officer of the IAF has been so unceremoniously sacked. (With PTI inputs)
Top Stories
No puja in acquired land rules Supreme Court []
VHP slams SC verdict, vows satyagraha
Is Thackeray a Terrorist?
More than 200,000 Indians live illegaly in the US
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Press Trust of India
Washington, Jan 24: More than two lakh Indians reside illegally in the United States which, however, is a minuscule proportion of the total number of illegal migrants in the country. The US census bureau said that of the total 8,705,421 illegal residents in the country in the year 2000, 200,306 were Indians.
The number of illegals from Asia is put at 1,363,419. In addition to Indians, there were 40,000 from Pakistan, 114,818 from Arab countries, 30,823 from Iran and 226,886 China and Taiwan. North and central America account for 5,312,090, South America 624,419, Europe 1,113,683 and Africa 243,342.
Americans are now more concerned about immigrants following the September 11 terror strikes as all those who carried out the attacks were Middle Eastern Muslims. The government has already decided to expel 6,000 Arab Muslims.
This is the first time the bureau has given estimates of illegals by nationality. Because the underground population is difficult to count, census officials used an estimating technique that took the foreign-born population and removed legal immigrants, assumed deaths and emigrants to arrive at its figures.
Congressman Tom Tancredo, advocate of tighter immigration laws, said the findings are not surprising as the authorities do not enforce time limits on visas. The officials, he said, have also not decreased H1-B (temporary employment or training) visas while allowing illegals to obtain drivers` licences with little difficulty and more importantly, not deporting the 300,000 people who have been ordered deported.
Steven A Camarota, research director for the Centre for Immigration Studies, a group in Washington that has long pushed for reducing the number of immigrants, said while the majority of illegals from the Middle East are not terrorists, the fact that tens of thousands of people from that region and millions more from the rest of the world can settle in the US illegally means that terrorists who wish to do so face few obstacles. The Council of American-Islamic Relations said the government needs to enforce its immigration rules across the board, and not just as they relate to Muslims.
Posted by
Ashok
Jan 24, 2002 11:24 am
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=6782More than 200,000 Indians live illegaly in the US
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Press Trust of India
Washington, Jan 24: More than two lakh Indians reside illegally in the United States which, however, is a minuscule proportion of the total number of illegal migrants in the country. The US census bureau said that of the total 8,705,421 illegal residents in the country in the year 2000, 200,306 were Indians.
The number of illegals from Asia is put at 1,363,419. In addition to Indians, there were 40,000 from Pakistan, 114,818 from Arab countries, 30,823 from Iran and 226,886 China and Taiwan. North and central America account for 5,312,090, South America 624,419, Europe 1,113,683 and Africa 243,342.
Americans are now more concerned about immigrants following the September 11 terror strikes as all those who carried out the attacks were Middle Eastern Muslims. The government has already decided to expel 6,000 Arab Muslims.
This is the first time the bureau has given estimates of illegals by nationality. Because the underground population is difficult to count, census officials used an estimating technique that took the foreign-born population and removed legal immigrants, assumed deaths and emigrants to arrive at its figures.
Congressman Tom Tancredo, advocate of tighter immigration laws, said the findings are not surprising as the authorities do not enforce time limits on visas. The officials, he said, have also not decreased H1-B (temporary employment or training) visas while allowing illegals to obtain drivers` licences with little difficulty and more importantly, not deporting the 300,000 people who have been ordered deported.
Steven A Camarota, research director for the Centre for Immigration Studies, a group in Washington that has long pushed for reducing the number of immigrants, said while the majority of illegals from the Middle East are not terrorists, the fact that tens of thousands of people from that region and millions more from the rest of the world can settle in the US illegally means that terrorists who wish to do so face few obstacles. The Council of American-Islamic Relations said the government needs to enforce its immigration rules across the board, and not just as they relate to Muslims.
An Indian salute for President Musharraf
CommentIndia turned Kashmir into the bitter place it is now BJP Hindu nationalism has made the conflict more dangerousMartin Woollacott
GuardianFriday January 11, 2002When sections of the Kashmiri crowd booed the Indian side and waved flags similar to the Pakistani flag at a match between India and the West Indies in Srinagar in 1983, the reaction in government circles in Delhi was fury. The Kashmiris, or, rather, the Kashmiri government, by not preventing the outrage, had failed the sub-continental version of the cricket test. Not many months afterwards, after underhand manoeuvres, the then Kashmiri chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, was toppled. Recounting the story in his book on Kashmir, the distinguished Indian journalist MJ Akbar notes that there was at that time no serious Pakistani-supported subversion in Kashmir. Instead, there was an established pattern of Indian subversion of Kashmiri institutions and leaders. From the beginning, the Indians could not bring themselves to leave well enough alone in a state that had acceded to the Indian union - even in the Indian version of events - on the basis of a document which gave its government full powers except in foreign, defence and fiscal policy. The story of Indian-held Kashmir had, from 1948, been of efforts to wear down and abolish the Kashmiri difference. There were periods when saner policies prevailed. But usually New Delhi wanted a crude mastery in Kashmir and it wanted Kashmiri leaders, notably Sheikh Abdullah and his son Farooq, to be utterly compliant allies. In this, it ignored the fact that any successful Kashmiri leader had to reflect to some extent the ambivalent feelings of part of the Muslim majority toward the Indian connection. It undermined and detained leaders when they failed to be as loyal as expected, and replaced them with worse men. Mrs Gandhi wanted Farooq out because he would not go along with what amounted to a merger of Kashmir`s main party with Congress. The cricket incident was a useful tool in the campaign to unseat him. Rajiv Gandhi reinstated Farooq in 1987 but the rigged elections of that year reduced belief in the political dispensation in Kashmir, Islamic parties gained ground, the ranks of unemployed youth increased, and significant armed actions happened. New Delhi`s reaction was to send in disastrously hard-line administrators. One of them famously said: ``The bullet is the only solution for Kashmir.`` In the resulting campaign, with its reprisals, rapes, and killing of innocents, the insurgents were damaged, but the population of the Vale was comprehensively alienated. The consequence was that, as Victoria Schofield writes: ``No political leader prepared to voice the demands of Kashmiri activists and militants would be acceptable to Delhi; any leader of whom Delhi approved would be rejected by the militants.`` In her careful and even-handed account she shows how the first phase of this deterioration preceded serious Pakistani intervention. Once it was under way, Pakistan certainly seized on the opportunity it saw, in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, to follow a forward strategy which would supposedly enable it to counterbalance India`s much greater strength. But it was New Delhi which bore most responsibility for the dismal situation in Kashmir - first for the years in which normal politics in the state slipped into decline, and then for a counter-insurgency effort, which lacked the scrupulous care which alone brings a chance of true success in such campaigns. Indian governments later tried to repair the damage done in the early 1990s, even as Pakistani-supported subversion of a more Islamist character continued, with Afghan and foreign militants added to the mix. But the Bharatiya Janata party`s arrival in government brought new and dangerous uncertainties, something now often overlooked by an outside world inclined to see an end to Pakistani-supported cross-border terrorism as a dependable step toward a Kashmir solution. That is to forget that the BJP is not a normal political party, but the parliamentary wing of a Hindu nationalist movement that has already succeeded in radically changing Indian political culture for the worse. This is a party whose position on Kashmir has been not just that there can be no talks with Pakistan until cross-border terrorism ends, but that there can be no talks until Pakistan has handed over to India the part of Kashmir which it holds. This is the party dedicated to the proposition that Kashmir`s autonomous status, so often violated in practice, should be officially abolished. This is the party intent on getting rid of the separate civil code for Muslims. It is true that Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP leader, has postponed or temporarily amended such BJP objectives in the interests of building the coalitions at which he is so adept. Many say that Vajpayee possesses a particularly gentle and winning personality. He has made an ally of Farooq Abdullah, and he has met Pakistani leaders twice as prime minister. He has almost certainly explored, in behind-scenes diplomatic meetings with Americans and others, prospects for a settlement of the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Against this has to be laid the fact that BJP`s accession to power has made that conflict much more dangerous. This is the party that, enjoying the direct support of only a fifth of the voters, tested and deployed nuclear weapons, provoking Pakistan into acquiring nuclear weapons too. Some of its members have openly spoken of using those weapons against Pakistan in the event of a war over Kashmir, and some have called for the invasion and occupation of Pakistani-held Kashmir. Nowhere else in the world, as the leftwing analyst and journalist Aijaz Ahmad says, have nuclear threats been so lightly thrown around. This may be only foolish rhetoric. What is undeniable is that the BJP has changed the agenda of Indian politics, resulting in a situation in which the opposition often competes with the BJP in patriotic and anti-Pakistani statements, rather than providing a needed corrective. The way in which it has become generally accepted that India is a Hindu country with non-Hindu minorities, rather than a secular state of many faiths, is another example of the BJP effect. For a while there was an unhappy symmetry, with Pakistan and India veering toward their own forms of fundamentalism. Aijaz Ahmad suggests that it is worth remembering, as the outside world takes a new interest in the sub-continent`s problems, that it is Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan who broke that pattern. At least let it be understood that India bears more ultimate responsibility for the Kashmir troubles than Pakistan, and that the confrontation between India and Pakistan would be a far less dangerous thing had it not been for the BJP`s communal thrust at home and its attempt to turn India into a nuclear great power abroad. · Kashmir: Behind the Vale by MJ Akbar, published by Viking Penguin India. Kashmir in Conflict by Victoria Schofield, published by IB Tauris. Lineages of the Present by Aijaz Ahmad, published by Verso. m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Posted by
Ashok
Jan 14, 2002 11:20 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0%2C4273%2C4333236%2C00.htmlCommentIndia turned Kashmir into the bitter place it is now BJP Hindu nationalism has made the conflict more dangerousMartin Woollacott
GuardianFriday January 11, 2002When sections of the Kashmiri crowd booed the Indian side and waved flags similar to the Pakistani flag at a match between India and the West Indies in Srinagar in 1983, the reaction in government circles in Delhi was fury. The Kashmiris, or, rather, the Kashmiri government, by not preventing the outrage, had failed the sub-continental version of the cricket test. Not many months afterwards, after underhand manoeuvres, the then Kashmiri chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, was toppled. Recounting the story in his book on Kashmir, the distinguished Indian journalist MJ Akbar notes that there was at that time no serious Pakistani-supported subversion in Kashmir. Instead, there was an established pattern of Indian subversion of Kashmiri institutions and leaders. From the beginning, the Indians could not bring themselves to leave well enough alone in a state that had acceded to the Indian union - even in the Indian version of events - on the basis of a document which gave its government full powers except in foreign, defence and fiscal policy. The story of Indian-held Kashmir had, from 1948, been of efforts to wear down and abolish the Kashmiri difference. There were periods when saner policies prevailed. But usually New Delhi wanted a crude mastery in Kashmir and it wanted Kashmiri leaders, notably Sheikh Abdullah and his son Farooq, to be utterly compliant allies. In this, it ignored the fact that any successful Kashmiri leader had to reflect to some extent the ambivalent feelings of part of the Muslim majority toward the Indian connection. It undermined and detained leaders when they failed to be as loyal as expected, and replaced them with worse men. Mrs Gandhi wanted Farooq out because he would not go along with what amounted to a merger of Kashmir`s main party with Congress. The cricket incident was a useful tool in the campaign to unseat him. Rajiv Gandhi reinstated Farooq in 1987 but the rigged elections of that year reduced belief in the political dispensation in Kashmir, Islamic parties gained ground, the ranks of unemployed youth increased, and significant armed actions happened. New Delhi`s reaction was to send in disastrously hard-line administrators. One of them famously said: ``The bullet is the only solution for Kashmir.`` In the resulting campaign, with its reprisals, rapes, and killing of innocents, the insurgents were damaged, but the population of the Vale was comprehensively alienated. The consequence was that, as Victoria Schofield writes: ``No political leader prepared to voice the demands of Kashmiri activists and militants would be acceptable to Delhi; any leader of whom Delhi approved would be rejected by the militants.`` In her careful and even-handed account she shows how the first phase of this deterioration preceded serious Pakistani intervention. Once it was under way, Pakistan certainly seized on the opportunity it saw, in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, to follow a forward strategy which would supposedly enable it to counterbalance India`s much greater strength. But it was New Delhi which bore most responsibility for the dismal situation in Kashmir - first for the years in which normal politics in the state slipped into decline, and then for a counter-insurgency effort, which lacked the scrupulous care which alone brings a chance of true success in such campaigns. Indian governments later tried to repair the damage done in the early 1990s, even as Pakistani-supported subversion of a more Islamist character continued, with Afghan and foreign militants added to the mix. But the Bharatiya Janata party`s arrival in government brought new and dangerous uncertainties, something now often overlooked by an outside world inclined to see an end to Pakistani-supported cross-border terrorism as a dependable step toward a Kashmir solution. That is to forget that the BJP is not a normal political party, but the parliamentary wing of a Hindu nationalist movement that has already succeeded in radically changing Indian political culture for the worse. This is a party whose position on Kashmir has been not just that there can be no talks with Pakistan until cross-border terrorism ends, but that there can be no talks until Pakistan has handed over to India the part of Kashmir which it holds. This is the party dedicated to the proposition that Kashmir`s autonomous status, so often violated in practice, should be officially abolished. This is the party intent on getting rid of the separate civil code for Muslims. It is true that Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP leader, has postponed or temporarily amended such BJP objectives in the interests of building the coalitions at which he is so adept. Many say that Vajpayee possesses a particularly gentle and winning personality. He has made an ally of Farooq Abdullah, and he has met Pakistani leaders twice as prime minister. He has almost certainly explored, in behind-scenes diplomatic meetings with Americans and others, prospects for a settlement of the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Against this has to be laid the fact that BJP`s accession to power has made that conflict much more dangerous. This is the party that, enjoying the direct support of only a fifth of the voters, tested and deployed nuclear weapons, provoking Pakistan into acquiring nuclear weapons too. Some of its members have openly spoken of using those weapons against Pakistan in the event of a war over Kashmir, and some have called for the invasion and occupation of Pakistani-held Kashmir. Nowhere else in the world, as the leftwing analyst and journalist Aijaz Ahmad says, have nuclear threats been so lightly thrown around. This may be only foolish rhetoric. What is undeniable is that the BJP has changed the agenda of Indian politics, resulting in a situation in which the opposition often competes with the BJP in patriotic and anti-Pakistani statements, rather than providing a needed corrective. The way in which it has become generally accepted that India is a Hindu country with non-Hindu minorities, rather than a secular state of many faiths, is another example of the BJP effect. For a while there was an unhappy symmetry, with Pakistan and India veering toward their own forms of fundamentalism. Aijaz Ahmad suggests that it is worth remembering, as the outside world takes a new interest in the sub-continent`s problems, that it is Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan who broke that pattern. At least let it be understood that India bears more ultimate responsibility for the Kashmir troubles than Pakistan, and that the confrontation between India and Pakistan would be a far less dangerous thing had it not been for the BJP`s communal thrust at home and its attempt to turn India into a nuclear great power abroad. · Kashmir: Behind the Vale by MJ Akbar, published by Viking Penguin India. Kashmir in Conflict by Victoria Schofield, published by IB Tauris. Lineages of the Present by Aijaz Ahmad, published by Verso. m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
America’s Responsibility
CommentIndia turned Kashmir into the bitter place it is now BJP Hindu nationalism has made the conflict more dangerousMartin Woollacott
GuardianFriday January 11, 2002When sections of the Kashmiri crowd booed the Indian side and waved flags similar to the Pakistani flag at a match between India and the West Indies in Srinagar in 1983, the reaction in government circles in Delhi was fury. The Kashmiris, or, rather, the Kashmiri government, by not preventing the outrage, had failed the sub-continental version of the cricket test. Not many months afterwards, after underhand manoeuvres, the then Kashmiri chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, was toppled. Recounting the story in his book on Kashmir, the distinguished Indian journalist MJ Akbar notes that there was at that time no serious Pakistani-supported subversion in Kashmir. Instead, there was an established pattern of Indian subversion of Kashmiri institutions and leaders. From the beginning, the Indians could not bring themselves to leave well enough alone in a state that had acceded to the Indian union - even in the Indian version of events - on the basis of a document which gave its government full powers except in foreign, defence and fiscal policy. The story of Indian-held Kashmir had, from 1948, been of efforts to wear down and abolish the Kashmiri difference. There were periods when saner policies prevailed. But usually New Delhi wanted a crude mastery in Kashmir and it wanted Kashmiri leaders, notably Sheikh Abdullah and his son Farooq, to be utterly compliant allies. In this, it ignored the fact that any successful Kashmiri leader had to reflect to some extent the ambivalent feelings of part of the Muslim majority toward the Indian connection. It undermined and detained leaders when they failed to be as loyal as expected, and replaced them with worse men. Mrs Gandhi wanted Farooq out because he would not go along with what amounted to a merger of Kashmir`s main party with Congress. The cricket incident was a useful tool in the campaign to unseat him. Rajiv Gandhi reinstated Farooq in 1987 but the rigged elections of that year reduced belief in the political dispensation in Kashmir, Islamic parties gained ground, the ranks of unemployed youth increased, and significant armed actions happened. New Delhi`s reaction was to send in disastrously hard-line administrators. One of them famously said: ``The bullet is the only solution for Kashmir.`` In the resulting campaign, with its reprisals, rapes, and killing of innocents, the insurgents were damaged, but the population of the Vale was comprehensively alienated. The consequence was that, as Victoria Schofield writes: ``No political leader prepared to voice the demands of Kashmiri activists and militants would be acceptable to Delhi; any leader of whom Delhi approved would be rejected by the militants.`` In her careful and even-handed account she shows how the first phase of this deterioration preceded serious Pakistani intervention. Once it was under way, Pakistan certainly seized on the opportunity it saw, in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, to follow a forward strategy which would supposedly enable it to counterbalance India`s much greater strength. But it was New Delhi which bore most responsibility for the dismal situation in Kashmir - first for the years in which normal politics in the state slipped into decline, and then for a counter-insurgency effort, which lacked the scrupulous care which alone brings a chance of true success in such campaigns. Indian governments later tried to repair the damage done in the early 1990s, even as Pakistani-supported subversion of a more Islamist character continued, with Afghan and foreign militants added to the mix. But the Bharatiya Janata party`s arrival in government brought new and dangerous uncertainties, something now often overlooked by an outside world inclined to see an end to Pakistani-supported cross-border terrorism as a dependable step toward a Kashmir solution. That is to forget that the BJP is not a normal political party, but the parliamentary wing of a Hindu nationalist movement that has already succeeded in radically changing Indian political culture for the worse. This is a party whose position on Kashmir has been not just that there can be no talks with Pakistan until cross-border terrorism ends, but that there can be no talks until Pakistan has handed over to India the part of Kashmir which it holds. This is the party dedicated to the proposition that Kashmir`s autonomous status, so often violated in practice, should be officially abolished. This is the party intent on getting rid of the separate civil code for Muslims. It is true that Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP leader, has postponed or temporarily amended such BJP objectives in the interests of building the coalitions at which he is so adept. Many say that Vajpayee possesses a particularly gentle and winning personality. He has made an ally of Farooq Abdullah, and he has met Pakistani leaders twice as prime minister. He has almost certainly explored, in behind-scenes diplomatic meetings with Americans and others, prospects for a settlement of the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Against this has to be laid the fact that BJP`s accession to power has made that conflict much more dangerous. This is the party that, enjoying the direct support of only a fifth of the voters, tested and deployed nuclear weapons, provoking Pakistan into acquiring nuclear weapons too. Some of its members have openly spoken of using those weapons against Pakistan in the event of a war over Kashmir, and some have called for the invasion and occupation of Pakistani-held Kashmir. Nowhere else in the world, as the leftwing analyst and journalist Aijaz Ahmad says, have nuclear threats been so lightly thrown around. This may be only foolish rhetoric. What is undeniable is that the BJP has changed the agenda of Indian politics, resulting in a situation in which the opposition often competes with the BJP in patriotic and anti-Pakistani statements, rather than providing a needed corrective. The way in which it has become generally accepted that India is a Hindu country with non-Hindu minorities, rather than a secular state of many faiths, is another example of the BJP effect. For a while there was an unhappy symmetry, with Pakistan and India veering toward their own forms of fundamentalism. Aijaz Ahmad suggests that it is worth remembering, as the outside world takes a new interest in the sub-continent`s problems, that it is Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan who broke that pattern. At least let it be understood that India bears more ultimate responsibility for the Kashmir troubles than Pakistan, and that the confrontation between India and Pakistan would be a far less dangerous thing had it not been for the BJP`s communal thrust at home and its attempt to turn India into a nuclear great power abroad. · Kashmir: Behind the Vale by MJ Akbar, published by Viking Penguin India. Kashmir in Conflict by Victoria Schofield, published by IB Tauris. Lineages of the Present by Aijaz Ahmad, published by Verso. m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Posted by
Ashok
Jan 14, 2002 11:20 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0%2C4273%2C4333236%2C00.htmlCommentIndia turned Kashmir into the bitter place it is now BJP Hindu nationalism has made the conflict more dangerousMartin Woollacott
GuardianFriday January 11, 2002When sections of the Kashmiri crowd booed the Indian side and waved flags similar to the Pakistani flag at a match between India and the West Indies in Srinagar in 1983, the reaction in government circles in Delhi was fury. The Kashmiris, or, rather, the Kashmiri government, by not preventing the outrage, had failed the sub-continental version of the cricket test. Not many months afterwards, after underhand manoeuvres, the then Kashmiri chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, was toppled. Recounting the story in his book on Kashmir, the distinguished Indian journalist MJ Akbar notes that there was at that time no serious Pakistani-supported subversion in Kashmir. Instead, there was an established pattern of Indian subversion of Kashmiri institutions and leaders. From the beginning, the Indians could not bring themselves to leave well enough alone in a state that had acceded to the Indian union - even in the Indian version of events - on the basis of a document which gave its government full powers except in foreign, defence and fiscal policy. The story of Indian-held Kashmir had, from 1948, been of efforts to wear down and abolish the Kashmiri difference. There were periods when saner policies prevailed. But usually New Delhi wanted a crude mastery in Kashmir and it wanted Kashmiri leaders, notably Sheikh Abdullah and his son Farooq, to be utterly compliant allies. In this, it ignored the fact that any successful Kashmiri leader had to reflect to some extent the ambivalent feelings of part of the Muslim majority toward the Indian connection. It undermined and detained leaders when they failed to be as loyal as expected, and replaced them with worse men. Mrs Gandhi wanted Farooq out because he would not go along with what amounted to a merger of Kashmir`s main party with Congress. The cricket incident was a useful tool in the campaign to unseat him. Rajiv Gandhi reinstated Farooq in 1987 but the rigged elections of that year reduced belief in the political dispensation in Kashmir, Islamic parties gained ground, the ranks of unemployed youth increased, and significant armed actions happened. New Delhi`s reaction was to send in disastrously hard-line administrators. One of them famously said: ``The bullet is the only solution for Kashmir.`` In the resulting campaign, with its reprisals, rapes, and killing of innocents, the insurgents were damaged, but the population of the Vale was comprehensively alienated. The consequence was that, as Victoria Schofield writes: ``No political leader prepared to voice the demands of Kashmiri activists and militants would be acceptable to Delhi; any leader of whom Delhi approved would be rejected by the militants.`` In her careful and even-handed account she shows how the first phase of this deterioration preceded serious Pakistani intervention. Once it was under way, Pakistan certainly seized on the opportunity it saw, in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, to follow a forward strategy which would supposedly enable it to counterbalance India`s much greater strength. But it was New Delhi which bore most responsibility for the dismal situation in Kashmir - first for the years in which normal politics in the state slipped into decline, and then for a counter-insurgency effort, which lacked the scrupulous care which alone brings a chance of true success in such campaigns. Indian governments later tried to repair the damage done in the early 1990s, even as Pakistani-supported subversion of a more Islamist character continued, with Afghan and foreign militants added to the mix. But the Bharatiya Janata party`s arrival in government brought new and dangerous uncertainties, something now often overlooked by an outside world inclined to see an end to Pakistani-supported cross-border terrorism as a dependable step toward a Kashmir solution. That is to forget that the BJP is not a normal political party, but the parliamentary wing of a Hindu nationalist movement that has already succeeded in radically changing Indian political culture for the worse. This is a party whose position on Kashmir has been not just that there can be no talks with Pakistan until cross-border terrorism ends, but that there can be no talks until Pakistan has handed over to India the part of Kashmir which it holds. This is the party dedicated to the proposition that Kashmir`s autonomous status, so often violated in practice, should be officially abolished. This is the party intent on getting rid of the separate civil code for Muslims. It is true that Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP leader, has postponed or temporarily amended such BJP objectives in the interests of building the coalitions at which he is so adept. Many say that Vajpayee possesses a particularly gentle and winning personality. He has made an ally of Farooq Abdullah, and he has met Pakistani leaders twice as prime minister. He has almost certainly explored, in behind-scenes diplomatic meetings with Americans and others, prospects for a settlement of the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Against this has to be laid the fact that BJP`s accession to power has made that conflict much more dangerous. This is the party that, enjoying the direct support of only a fifth of the voters, tested and deployed nuclear weapons, provoking Pakistan into acquiring nuclear weapons too. Some of its members have openly spoken of using those weapons against Pakistan in the event of a war over Kashmir, and some have called for the invasion and occupation of Pakistani-held Kashmir. Nowhere else in the world, as the leftwing analyst and journalist Aijaz Ahmad says, have nuclear threats been so lightly thrown around. This may be only foolish rhetoric. What is undeniable is that the BJP has changed the agenda of Indian politics, resulting in a situation in which the opposition often competes with the BJP in patriotic and anti-Pakistani statements, rather than providing a needed corrective. The way in which it has become generally accepted that India is a Hindu country with non-Hindu minorities, rather than a secular state of many faiths, is another example of the BJP effect. For a while there was an unhappy symmetry, with Pakistan and India veering toward their own forms of fundamentalism. Aijaz Ahmad suggests that it is worth remembering, as the outside world takes a new interest in the sub-continent`s problems, that it is Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan who broke that pattern. At least let it be understood that India bears more ultimate responsibility for the Kashmir troubles than Pakistan, and that the confrontation between India and Pakistan would be a far less dangerous thing had it not been for the BJP`s communal thrust at home and its attempt to turn India into a nuclear great power abroad. · Kashmir: Behind the Vale by MJ Akbar, published by Viking Penguin India. Kashmir in Conflict by Victoria Schofield, published by IB Tauris. Lineages of the Present by Aijaz Ahmad, published by Verso. m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Indian Diplomacy : Time To Recheck
`India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
On the Hindutva version of Indian history - and
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
how India was never a Hindu rashtra.
Though extremely busy with a workshop on `education, equity and human security` in Calcutta, Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen still took time out to talk to Outlook, and articulate his views on the Hindutva version of Indian history. Sen had condemned the Babri Masjid demolition in `Threat To Secular India`, published in the New York Review shortly after the epoch-changing incident. Here he describes the Hindutva version of Indian history as sectarian and combative, and argues that India was never a Hindu rashtra. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Subhoranjan Dasgupta:
In your address to the Calcutta History Congress last year, you described the spirit and discipline of history as `capacious heterodoxy`. That`s a wonderful expression. Could you please elaborate on it?
Well, I`m glad you like the expression. What I intended to say by that is that in order to study history, we have to have a sense of space—that there could be different ways of looking at past events and in case there are differences, we should be able to argue it out. Heterodoxy is important because understanding history requires different approaches. Furthermore, heterodoxy itself is sometimes among the most interesting things to study in the history of a civilisation or a culture. So, for both these points of view—heterodoxy as a method and as well as a subject matter to be studied—history has to be deeply concerned, I believe, with it. If you want to know what exciting things are happening at a certain period in a certain country, you look not just at what the ongoing tradition is, but where people are disagreeing and in what way. I am not a historian but that is the way I tend to see history, a subject on which I occasionally try to write and which I greatly like reading.
If the study of Indian history is infused by this spirit, what sort of textbooks should our schoolgoers be reading? Because there is a current effort, for instance, to portray the Muslim period as an age of darkness.
Obviously blacking out the Muslim period—what you are describing as the ``Muslim period``—as an age of darkness would be just a gross mistake. Textbooks should contain truths rather than falsehoods. It`s not just a matter of understanding our past, but also our present. If you look at anything today—Indian painting, music, literature, philosophy, history itself as a discipline—the great contributions of Muslim scholars, intellectuals and artists are part and parcel of the richness of Indian civilisation. I think it`s also important to emphasise that we cannot talk about the history of this period as if it could be split into Muslim activities and Hindu activities. They were interactive. Really, in every branch of art or intellectual study, you will find Hindu and Muslim activists, artists and scholars working side by side and interacting with each other. So, there`s no way we can talk about the period without taking into account the massive contribution made in an interactive way by those who happened to be Muslims by religion as opposed to others who were Hindus or Sikhs or Parsis or Christians.
Your grandfather Kshitimohan Sen wrote the classic text Hinduism (Penguin Books, 1960). In what basic sense does his vision of Indian history and civilisation, or for that matter the vision of Rabindranath Tagore, differ from the saffron family`s version?
I shouldn`t really comment on this as I am not a great expert on Hindutva of any kind, and my role in my grandfather`s book on Hinduism was primarily that of a translator.I think the remarkable difference between the book and a sectarian view of Hindutva is that my grandfather`s as well as Tagore`s vision is not combative at all. They were both keen on seeing what different influences operated on Hinduism. Both authors locate themselves in an interactive environment. In The Religion of Man, the lectures that Tagore gave at Oxford, he mentions that his family was situated at the confluence of three sets of influences—Hindu, Muslim and European. The same would apply to my grandfather. As a Sanskritist, he was educated in Benares, in traditional centres of learning, which were, at that time, open and non-sectarian.
I should also mention that one of my grandfather`s books—which I don`t think is available in English, only in Bengali, called Hindu Musalmaner Jukta Sadhana (The Joint Work of Hindus and Muslims)—is quite a major work in the cultural history of India, showing that there is no substantial area of artistic or intellectual activity in which Hindus and Muslims have not worked together. You cannot think of Hindus and Muslims as somehow mechanically mixed together, rather than being chemically compounded in an integrated civilisation.
Isn`t there an affinity between the saffron version of Hindutva and Samuel Huntington`s categorisation of Indian civilisation as Hindu?
I think you are right there that Huntington`s description of Indian civilisation as Hindu civilisation almost seems to be taken out of the writings of the Hindutva champions. In Huntington`s case, the problem was that he wanted to classify the world according to one principle only and that was what he called `civilisation`, which in his case ended up being primarily religion. So he had to contrast Islamic civilisation with Western, Christian civilisation or Buddhist civilisation, etc. Then, well, how do I accommodate India? Since Islamic was already spoken for, he classified India as just a Hindu civilisation. Well, that`s a serious mis-description. India has more Muslims than any country in the world with the exception of Indonesia and marginally Pakistan. Also, the entire cultural and intellectual history of India has been an integrated one, as we just discussed.
Historian Romila Thapar has described Hindutva`s history as propaganda where the past is manipulated as political instrument. What is the political goal in question—a Hindu rashtra?
Well, I don`t really know what the political goal in question is. Romila Thapar, of course, is one of our leading historians. I haven`t seen this particular writing of hers, but I guess what she`s pointing out is that a lot of writing on history by people who are champions of Hindutva seems to have an underlying political agenda. Whether this is meant to be a preparation for a Hindu rashtra or whether it is just a misunderstanding of the nature of India, I don`t know. You have to ask them.
India was never a Hindu rashtra, even before Muslims came to India. In the first millennium BC as well as the millennium that followed, the Gupta period for example, India had a powerful presence of Buddhism along with Hinduism and Jainism. Christians came to India by the 4th century AD latest, and there were Christians here well before there was a single Christian in Britain. Similarly, Jews came to India very early. Parsis came when persecution began in Iran. Also, Muslims came first as traders across the Arabian Sea, well before the Muslim military conquests in the north. India has had a variety of religious influences all this time. Just to mention one thing—if you are thinking of the two greatest emperors of India, you would tend to think of Ashoka and Akbar. One was a Buddhist and the other a Muslim.
Must a `Hindutva` history necessarily depend on half-truths, lies and legends to sustain itself? For example, that ancient India revered the cow as `gomata` and did not consume beef; that Akbar was a foreigner, despot and sectarian?
Well, I think if one has a particular way of looking at the past and if there are uncomfortable facts which do not fit into that narrow way of looking, then the proponents of that way of looking would naturally tend to deny the facts.It`s fairly easy to point out that these are not half-truths; these are not truths at all. Actually, I can give you many other examples of this kind.
Could you give just one?
The introduction of European scholars to Hindu scriptures, in particular the Upanishads, was to a great extent based on the Persian translation of the Upanishads done by Dara Shikoh, the first-born son of Shah Jahan. Dara Shikoh was not a great Sanskrit scholar but he did work hard with the help of Hindu pundits to learn Sanskrit and he translated parts of the Upanishads into Persian. It is this translation that William Jones (pioneering Indologist) first read which attracted him to India and to the study of the Hindu religion. Quite a lot of the revival of our understanding of our Hindu past was based on Jones` efforts and those of others at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. I have not seen any mention in the Hindutva literature of the contribution of this Mughal prince to the spread of understanding of Hinduism at home and abroad.
The publication of the Towards Freedom volume edited by Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar has been thwarted by the ICHR, apparently because it exposes the `loyalist` role of the rss in the 1940s.
Well, I can`t comment on why the ICHR has held up the publication of this volume. It could well be that the rss figures in a rather negative light as a pro-British force in some of the documents. It could have been something else, I don`t know. I have also not read the introduction Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar have written. But I can definitely say that the two are not only among the top historians in India, they would be regarded as major historians anywhere in the world. I personally happen to know Sarkar very well and admire his writings as well as the quality of his mind tremendously. I find it impossible to think that the introduction could have been devoid of their serious professionalism. The episode is puzzling and deeply disturbing.
No one would claim that whatever the `secular` school of historians has done from Sushobhan Sarkar onwards is flawless. In fact, quite a few critiques have been levelled against secularism per se and you have examined them in your essay `Secularism and its Discontents`. But do these offer a better alternative in the Indian context?
I wouldn`t describe these historians as primarily `secular`. They are primarily probing and conscientious historians. The fact that they also happen to be secular is interesting, but I don`t believe that this dominates their writing of history. I can speak certainly about Professor Sushobhan Sarkar. He was a historian of impeccable scholarship, with great insistence on rigour and scrutiny. So I would describe him first as a terrific historian rather than as primarily a `secular historian`.
The second point is, as far as secularism itself is concerned, it is of course really a political belief and as such a subject matter of history, rather than a method of dealing with history. I think that if one has to look at India, one has to see the interactive presence of different religions as well as the presence of non-religious thoughts—sciences and mathematics for example. Aryabhatta, for instance, is quite sceptical of the received doctrines about eclipses and also about the belief that the sun goes round the earth. He didn`t think that eclipses were caused by Rahu but by the earth`s shadow over the moon and the moon obscuring the sun. He talked of the diurnal motion of the earth and the appearance of the sun going round us. So, a historian of Indian ideas has to look at non-religious thought as well as anti-religious thoughts like Charvaka and Lokayata. The subject matter of Indian history cannot be just Hinduism. The historian has to take note of different religious and non-(or-anti) religious ideas.Recognising these varieties does not require any special political belief in secularism.
It has been proposed that religious leaders, like sadhus and imams, should vet history texts so that unpalatable facts—that could injure impressionable minds and specific communities—can be carefully eliminated from textbooks?
I am appalled to hear about this proposal. I hope you don`t vet this interview by a sadhu or an imam!
HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has described those he calls `Marxist` historians, like Irfan Habib, Sumit Sarkar and liberals like Romila Thapar, as `worse than terrorists`...
If the report is correct, we must react with horror. First, there is what in philosophy is called a `category mistake` here in thinking that comparison with terrorists can be a cogent way of assessing historians. Second, the historians mentioned are, of course, leading historians, and so acknowledged across the world. It is difficult to think how anyone could have made a remark of that kind, least of all the minister in charge of education. I have to believe that he has been misreported and will no doubt issue a corrective.
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:`India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
: On the Hindutva version of Indian history - and how India was never a Hindu rashtra.
:
: Though extremely busy with a workshop on `education, equity and human security` in Calcutta, Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen still took time out to talk to Outlook, and articulate his views on the Hindutva version of Indian history. Sen had condemned the Babri Masjid demolition in `Threat To Secular India`, published in the New York Review shortly after the epoch-changing incident. Here he describes the Hindutva version of Indian history as sectarian and combative, and argues that India was never a Hindu rashtra. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Subhoranjan Dasgupta:
: In your address to the Calcutta History Congress last year, you described the spirit and discipline of history as `capacious heterodoxy`. That`s a wonderful expression. Could you please elaborate on it?
: Well, I`m glad you like the expression. What I intended to say by that is that in order to study history, we have to have a sense of space—that there could be different ways of looking at past events and in case there are differences, we should be able to argue it out. Heterodoxy is important because understanding history requires different approaches. Furthermore, heterodoxy itself is sometimes among the most interesting things to study in the history of a civilisation or a culture. So, for both these points of view—heterodoxy as a method and as well as a subject matter to be studied—history has to be deeply concerned, I believe, with it. If you want to know what exciting things are happening at a certain period in a certain country, you look not just at what the ongoing tradition is, but where people are disagreeing and in what way. I am not a historian but that is the way I tend to see history, a subject on which I occasionally try to write and which I greatly like reading.
: If the study of Indian history is infused by this spirit, what sort of textbooks should our schoolgoers be reading? Because there is a current effort, for instance, to portray the Muslim period as an age of darkness.
: Obviously blacking out the Muslim period—what you are describing as the ``Muslim period``—as an age of darkness would be just a gross mistake. Textbooks should contain truths rather than falsehoods. It`s not just a matter of understanding our past, but also our present. If you look at anything today—Indian painting, music, literature, philosophy, history itself as a discipline—the great contributions of Muslim scholars, intellectuals and artists are part and parcel of the richness of Indian civilisation. I think it`s also important to emphasise that we cannot talk about the history of this period as if it could be split into Muslim activities and Hindu activities. They were interactive. Really, in every branch of art or intellectual study, you will find Hindu and Muslim activists, artists and scholars working side by side and interacting with each other. So, there`s no way we can talk about the period without taking into account the massive contribution made in an interactive way by those who happened to be Muslims by religion as opposed to others who were Hindus or Sikhs or Parsis or Christians.
: Your grandfather Kshitimohan Sen wrote the classic text Hinduism (Penguin Books, 1960). In what basic sense does his vision of Indian history and civilisation, or for that matter the vision of Rabindranath Tagore, differ from the saffron family`s version?
: I shouldn`t really comment on this as I am not a great expert on Hindutva of any kind, and my role in my grandfather`s book on Hinduism was primarily that of a translator.I think the remarkable difference between the book and a sectarian view of Hindutva is that my grandfather`s as well as Tagore`s vision is not combative at all. They were both keen on seeing what different influences operated on Hinduism. Both authors locate themselves in an interactive environment. In The Religion of Man, the lectures that Tagore gave at Oxford, he mentions that his family was situated at the confluence of three sets of influences—Hindu, Muslim and European. The same would apply to my grandfather. As a Sanskritist, he was educated in Benares, in traditional centres of learning, which were, at that time, open and non-sectarian.
: I should also mention that one of my grandfather`s books—which I don`t think is available in English, only in Bengali, called Hindu Musalmaner Jukta Sadhana (The Joint Work of Hindus and Muslims)—is quite a major work in the cultural history of India, showing that there is no substantial area of artistic or intellectual activity in which Hindus and Muslims have not worked together. You cannot think of Hindus and Muslims as somehow mechanically mixed together, rather than being chemically compounded in an integrated civilisation.
: Isn`t there an affinity between the saffron version of Hindutva and Samuel Huntington`s categorisation of Indian civilisation as Hindu?
: I think you are right there that Huntington`s description of Indian civilisation as Hindu civilisation almost seems to be taken out of the writings of the Hindutva champions. In Huntington`s case, the problem was that he wanted to classify the world according to one principle only and that was what he called `civilisation`, which in his case ended up being primarily religion. So he had to contrast Islamic civilisation with Western, Christian civilisation or Buddhist civilisation, etc. Then, well, how do I accommodate India? Since Islamic was already spoken for, he classified India as just a Hindu civilisation. Well, that`s a serious mis-description. India has more Muslims than any country in the world with the exception of Indonesia and marginally Pakistan. Also, the entire cultural and intellectual history of India has been an integrated one, as we just discussed.
: Historian Romila Thapar has described Hindutva`s history as propaganda where the past is manipulated as political instrument. What is the political goal in question—a Hindu rashtra?
: Well, I don`t really know what the political goal in question is. Romila Thapar, of course, is one of our leading historians. I haven`t seen this particular writing of hers, but I guess what she`s pointing out is that a lot of writing on history by people who are champions of Hindutva seems to have an underlying political agenda. Whether this is meant to be a preparation for a Hindu rashtra or whether it is just a misunderstanding of the nature of India, I don`t know. You have to ask them.
: India was never a Hindu rashtra, even before Muslims came to India. In the first millennium BC as well as the millennium that followed, the Gupta period for example, India had a powerful presence of Buddhism along with Hinduism and Jainism. Christians came to India by the 4th century AD latest, and there were Christians here well before there was a single Christian in Britain. Similarly, Jews came to India very early. Parsis came when persecution began in Iran. Also, Muslims came first as traders across the Arabian Sea, well before the Muslim military conquests in the north. India has had a variety of religious influences all this time. Just to mention one thing—if you are thinking of the two greatest emperors of India, you would tend to think of Ashoka and Akbar. One was a Buddhist and the other a Muslim.
: Must a `Hindutva` history necessarily depend on half-truths, lies and legends to sustain itself? For example, that ancient India revered the cow as `gomata` and did not consume beef; that Akbar was a foreigner, despot and sectarian?
: Well, I think if one has a particular way of looking at the past and if there are uncomfortable facts which do not fit into that narrow way of looking, then the proponents of that way of looking would naturally tend to deny the facts.It`s fairly easy to point out that these are not half-truths; these are not truths at all. Actually, I can give you many other examples of this kind.
: Could you give just one?
: The introduction of European scholars to Hindu scriptures, in particular the Upanishads, was to a great extent based on the Persian translation of the Upanishads done by Dara Shikoh, the first-born son of Shah Jahan. Dara Shikoh was not a great Sanskrit scholar but he did work hard with the help of Hindu pundits to learn Sanskrit and he translated parts of the Upanishads into Persian. It is this translation that William Jones (pioneering Indologist) first read which attracted him to India and to the study of the Hindu religion. Quite a lot of the revival of our understanding of our Hindu past was based on Jones` efforts and those of others at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. I have not seen any mention in the Hindutva literature of the contribution of this Mughal prince to the spread of understanding of Hinduism at home and abroad.
: The publication of the Towards Freedom volume edited by Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar has been thwarted by the ICHR, apparently because it exposes the `loyalist` role of the rss in the 1940s.
: Well, I can`t comment on why the ICHR has held up the publication of this volume. It could well be that the rss figures in a rather negative light as a pro-British force in some of the documents. It could have been something else, I don`t know. I have also not read the introduction Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar have written. But I can definitely say that the two are not only among the top historians in India, they would be regarded as major historians anywhere in the world. I personally happen to know Sarkar very well and admire his writings as well as the quality of his mind tremendously. I find it impossible to think that the introduction could have been devoid of their serious professionalism. The episode is puzzling and deeply disturbing.
: No one would claim that whatever the `secular` school of historians has done from Sushobhan Sarkar onwards is flawless. In fact, quite a few critiques have been levelled against secularism per se and you have examined them in your essay `Secularism and its Discontents`. But do these offer a better alternative in the Indian context?
: I wouldn`t describe these historians as primarily `secular`. They are primarily probing and conscientious historians. The fact that they also happen to be secular is interesting, but I don`t believe that this dominates their writing of history. I can speak certainly about Professor Sushobhan Sarkar. He was a historian of impeccable scholarship, with great insistence on rigour and scrutiny. So I would describe him first as a terrific historian rather than as primarily a `secular historian`.
: The second point is, as far as secularism itself is concerned, it is of course really a political belief and as such a subject matter of history, rather than a method of dealing with history. I think that if one has to look at India, one has to see the interactive presence of different religions as well as the presence of non-religious thoughts—sciences and mathematics for example. Aryabhatta, for instance, is quite sceptical of the received doctrines about eclipses and also about the belief that the sun goes round the earth. He didn`t think that eclipses were caused by Rahu but by the earth`s shadow over the moon and the moon obscuring the sun. He talked of the diurnal motion of the earth and the appearance of the sun going round us. So, a historian of Indian ideas has to look at non-religious thought as well as anti-religious thoughts like Charvaka and Lokayata. The subject matter of Indian history cannot be just Hinduism. The historian has to take note of different religious and non-(or-anti) religious ideas.Recognising these varieties does not require any special political belief in secularism.
: It has been proposed that religious leaders, like sadhus and imams, should vet history texts so that unpalatable facts—that could injure impressionable minds and specific communities—can be carefully eliminated from textbooks?
: I am appalled to hear about this proposal. I hope you don`t vet this interview by a sadhu or an imam!
: HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has described those he calls `Marxist` historians, like Irfan Habib, Sumit Sarkar and liberals like Romila Thapar, as `worse than terrorists`...
: If the report is correct, we must react with horror. First, there is what in philosophy is called a `category mistake` here in thinking that comparison with terrorists can be a cogent way of assessing historians. Second, the historians mentioned are, of course, leading historians, and so acknowledged across the world. It is difficult to think how anyone could have made a remark of that kind, least of all the minister in charge of education. I have to believe that he has been misreported and will no doubt issue a corrective.
:
:
: # You may be missing other accompanying blurbs, related stories, graphics etc.
: Link to this story as it appears on the site :- `India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
: www.outlookindia.com
:
Posted by
Ashok
Jan 14, 2002 04:08 pm
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020121&fname=Amartya%20Sen%20(F)&sid=1`India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
On the Hindutva version of Indian history - and
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
how India was never a Hindu rashtra.
Though extremely busy with a workshop on `education, equity and human security` in Calcutta, Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen still took time out to talk to Outlook, and articulate his views on the Hindutva version of Indian history. Sen had condemned the Babri Masjid demolition in `Threat To Secular India`, published in the New York Review shortly after the epoch-changing incident. Here he describes the Hindutva version of Indian history as sectarian and combative, and argues that India was never a Hindu rashtra. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Subhoranjan Dasgupta:
In your address to the Calcutta History Congress last year, you described the spirit and discipline of history as `capacious heterodoxy`. That`s a wonderful expression. Could you please elaborate on it?
Well, I`m glad you like the expression. What I intended to say by that is that in order to study history, we have to have a sense of space—that there could be different ways of looking at past events and in case there are differences, we should be able to argue it out. Heterodoxy is important because understanding history requires different approaches. Furthermore, heterodoxy itself is sometimes among the most interesting things to study in the history of a civilisation or a culture. So, for both these points of view—heterodoxy as a method and as well as a subject matter to be studied—history has to be deeply concerned, I believe, with it. If you want to know what exciting things are happening at a certain period in a certain country, you look not just at what the ongoing tradition is, but where people are disagreeing and in what way. I am not a historian but that is the way I tend to see history, a subject on which I occasionally try to write and which I greatly like reading.
If the study of Indian history is infused by this spirit, what sort of textbooks should our schoolgoers be reading? Because there is a current effort, for instance, to portray the Muslim period as an age of darkness.
Obviously blacking out the Muslim period—what you are describing as the ``Muslim period``—as an age of darkness would be just a gross mistake. Textbooks should contain truths rather than falsehoods. It`s not just a matter of understanding our past, but also our present. If you look at anything today—Indian painting, music, literature, philosophy, history itself as a discipline—the great contributions of Muslim scholars, intellectuals and artists are part and parcel of the richness of Indian civilisation. I think it`s also important to emphasise that we cannot talk about the history of this period as if it could be split into Muslim activities and Hindu activities. They were interactive. Really, in every branch of art or intellectual study, you will find Hindu and Muslim activists, artists and scholars working side by side and interacting with each other. So, there`s no way we can talk about the period without taking into account the massive contribution made in an interactive way by those who happened to be Muslims by religion as opposed to others who were Hindus or Sikhs or Parsis or Christians.
Your grandfather Kshitimohan Sen wrote the classic text Hinduism (Penguin Books, 1960). In what basic sense does his vision of Indian history and civilisation, or for that matter the vision of Rabindranath Tagore, differ from the saffron family`s version?
I shouldn`t really comment on this as I am not a great expert on Hindutva of any kind, and my role in my grandfather`s book on Hinduism was primarily that of a translator.I think the remarkable difference between the book and a sectarian view of Hindutva is that my grandfather`s as well as Tagore`s vision is not combative at all. They were both keen on seeing what different influences operated on Hinduism. Both authors locate themselves in an interactive environment. In The Religion of Man, the lectures that Tagore gave at Oxford, he mentions that his family was situated at the confluence of three sets of influences—Hindu, Muslim and European. The same would apply to my grandfather. As a Sanskritist, he was educated in Benares, in traditional centres of learning, which were, at that time, open and non-sectarian.
I should also mention that one of my grandfather`s books—which I don`t think is available in English, only in Bengali, called Hindu Musalmaner Jukta Sadhana (The Joint Work of Hindus and Muslims)—is quite a major work in the cultural history of India, showing that there is no substantial area of artistic or intellectual activity in which Hindus and Muslims have not worked together. You cannot think of Hindus and Muslims as somehow mechanically mixed together, rather than being chemically compounded in an integrated civilisation.
Isn`t there an affinity between the saffron version of Hindutva and Samuel Huntington`s categorisation of Indian civilisation as Hindu?
I think you are right there that Huntington`s description of Indian civilisation as Hindu civilisation almost seems to be taken out of the writings of the Hindutva champions. In Huntington`s case, the problem was that he wanted to classify the world according to one principle only and that was what he called `civilisation`, which in his case ended up being primarily religion. So he had to contrast Islamic civilisation with Western, Christian civilisation or Buddhist civilisation, etc. Then, well, how do I accommodate India? Since Islamic was already spoken for, he classified India as just a Hindu civilisation. Well, that`s a serious mis-description. India has more Muslims than any country in the world with the exception of Indonesia and marginally Pakistan. Also, the entire cultural and intellectual history of India has been an integrated one, as we just discussed.
Historian Romila Thapar has described Hindutva`s history as propaganda where the past is manipulated as political instrument. What is the political goal in question—a Hindu rashtra?
Well, I don`t really know what the political goal in question is. Romila Thapar, of course, is one of our leading historians. I haven`t seen this particular writing of hers, but I guess what she`s pointing out is that a lot of writing on history by people who are champions of Hindutva seems to have an underlying political agenda. Whether this is meant to be a preparation for a Hindu rashtra or whether it is just a misunderstanding of the nature of India, I don`t know. You have to ask them.
India was never a Hindu rashtra, even before Muslims came to India. In the first millennium BC as well as the millennium that followed, the Gupta period for example, India had a powerful presence of Buddhism along with Hinduism and Jainism. Christians came to India by the 4th century AD latest, and there were Christians here well before there was a single Christian in Britain. Similarly, Jews came to India very early. Parsis came when persecution began in Iran. Also, Muslims came first as traders across the Arabian Sea, well before the Muslim military conquests in the north. India has had a variety of religious influences all this time. Just to mention one thing—if you are thinking of the two greatest emperors of India, you would tend to think of Ashoka and Akbar. One was a Buddhist and the other a Muslim.
Must a `Hindutva` history necessarily depend on half-truths, lies and legends to sustain itself? For example, that ancient India revered the cow as `gomata` and did not consume beef; that Akbar was a foreigner, despot and sectarian?
Well, I think if one has a particular way of looking at the past and if there are uncomfortable facts which do not fit into that narrow way of looking, then the proponents of that way of looking would naturally tend to deny the facts.It`s fairly easy to point out that these are not half-truths; these are not truths at all. Actually, I can give you many other examples of this kind.
Could you give just one?
The introduction of European scholars to Hindu scriptures, in particular the Upanishads, was to a great extent based on the Persian translation of the Upanishads done by Dara Shikoh, the first-born son of Shah Jahan. Dara Shikoh was not a great Sanskrit scholar but he did work hard with the help of Hindu pundits to learn Sanskrit and he translated parts of the Upanishads into Persian. It is this translation that William Jones (pioneering Indologist) first read which attracted him to India and to the study of the Hindu religion. Quite a lot of the revival of our understanding of our Hindu past was based on Jones` efforts and those of others at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. I have not seen any mention in the Hindutva literature of the contribution of this Mughal prince to the spread of understanding of Hinduism at home and abroad.
The publication of the Towards Freedom volume edited by Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar has been thwarted by the ICHR, apparently because it exposes the `loyalist` role of the rss in the 1940s.
Well, I can`t comment on why the ICHR has held up the publication of this volume. It could well be that the rss figures in a rather negative light as a pro-British force in some of the documents. It could have been something else, I don`t know. I have also not read the introduction Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar have written. But I can definitely say that the two are not only among the top historians in India, they would be regarded as major historians anywhere in the world. I personally happen to know Sarkar very well and admire his writings as well as the quality of his mind tremendously. I find it impossible to think that the introduction could have been devoid of their serious professionalism. The episode is puzzling and deeply disturbing.
No one would claim that whatever the `secular` school of historians has done from Sushobhan Sarkar onwards is flawless. In fact, quite a few critiques have been levelled against secularism per se and you have examined them in your essay `Secularism and its Discontents`. But do these offer a better alternative in the Indian context?
I wouldn`t describe these historians as primarily `secular`. They are primarily probing and conscientious historians. The fact that they also happen to be secular is interesting, but I don`t believe that this dominates their writing of history. I can speak certainly about Professor Sushobhan Sarkar. He was a historian of impeccable scholarship, with great insistence on rigour and scrutiny. So I would describe him first as a terrific historian rather than as primarily a `secular historian`.
The second point is, as far as secularism itself is concerned, it is of course really a political belief and as such a subject matter of history, rather than a method of dealing with history. I think that if one has to look at India, one has to see the interactive presence of different religions as well as the presence of non-religious thoughts—sciences and mathematics for example. Aryabhatta, for instance, is quite sceptical of the received doctrines about eclipses and also about the belief that the sun goes round the earth. He didn`t think that eclipses were caused by Rahu but by the earth`s shadow over the moon and the moon obscuring the sun. He talked of the diurnal motion of the earth and the appearance of the sun going round us. So, a historian of Indian ideas has to look at non-religious thought as well as anti-religious thoughts like Charvaka and Lokayata. The subject matter of Indian history cannot be just Hinduism. The historian has to take note of different religious and non-(or-anti) religious ideas.Recognising these varieties does not require any special political belief in secularism.
It has been proposed that religious leaders, like sadhus and imams, should vet history texts so that unpalatable facts—that could injure impressionable minds and specific communities—can be carefully eliminated from textbooks?
I am appalled to hear about this proposal. I hope you don`t vet this interview by a sadhu or an imam!
HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has described those he calls `Marxist` historians, like Irfan Habib, Sumit Sarkar and liberals like Romila Thapar, as `worse than terrorists`...
If the report is correct, we must react with horror. First, there is what in philosophy is called a `category mistake` here in thinking that comparison with terrorists can be a cogent way of assessing historians. Second, the historians mentioned are, of course, leading historians, and so acknowledged across the world. It is difficult to think how anyone could have made a remark of that kind, least of all the minister in charge of education. I have to believe that he has been misreported and will no doubt issue a corrective.
# You may be missing other accompanying blurbs, related stories, graphics etc.
Link to this story as it appears on the site :- `India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
www.outlookindia.com
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:`India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
: On the Hindutva version of Indian history - and how India was never a Hindu rashtra.
:
: Though extremely busy with a workshop on `education, equity and human security` in Calcutta, Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen still took time out to talk to Outlook, and articulate his views on the Hindutva version of Indian history. Sen had condemned the Babri Masjid demolition in `Threat To Secular India`, published in the New York Review shortly after the epoch-changing incident. Here he describes the Hindutva version of Indian history as sectarian and combative, and argues that India was never a Hindu rashtra. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Subhoranjan Dasgupta:
: In your address to the Calcutta History Congress last year, you described the spirit and discipline of history as `capacious heterodoxy`. That`s a wonderful expression. Could you please elaborate on it?
: Well, I`m glad you like the expression. What I intended to say by that is that in order to study history, we have to have a sense of space—that there could be different ways of looking at past events and in case there are differences, we should be able to argue it out. Heterodoxy is important because understanding history requires different approaches. Furthermore, heterodoxy itself is sometimes among the most interesting things to study in the history of a civilisation or a culture. So, for both these points of view—heterodoxy as a method and as well as a subject matter to be studied—history has to be deeply concerned, I believe, with it. If you want to know what exciting things are happening at a certain period in a certain country, you look not just at what the ongoing tradition is, but where people are disagreeing and in what way. I am not a historian but that is the way I tend to see history, a subject on which I occasionally try to write and which I greatly like reading.
: If the study of Indian history is infused by this spirit, what sort of textbooks should our schoolgoers be reading? Because there is a current effort, for instance, to portray the Muslim period as an age of darkness.
: Obviously blacking out the Muslim period—what you are describing as the ``Muslim period``—as an age of darkness would be just a gross mistake. Textbooks should contain truths rather than falsehoods. It`s not just a matter of understanding our past, but also our present. If you look at anything today—Indian painting, music, literature, philosophy, history itself as a discipline—the great contributions of Muslim scholars, intellectuals and artists are part and parcel of the richness of Indian civilisation. I think it`s also important to emphasise that we cannot talk about the history of this period as if it could be split into Muslim activities and Hindu activities. They were interactive. Really, in every branch of art or intellectual study, you will find Hindu and Muslim activists, artists and scholars working side by side and interacting with each other. So, there`s no way we can talk about the period without taking into account the massive contribution made in an interactive way by those who happened to be Muslims by religion as opposed to others who were Hindus or Sikhs or Parsis or Christians.
: Your grandfather Kshitimohan Sen wrote the classic text Hinduism (Penguin Books, 1960). In what basic sense does his vision of Indian history and civilisation, or for that matter the vision of Rabindranath Tagore, differ from the saffron family`s version?
: I shouldn`t really comment on this as I am not a great expert on Hindutva of any kind, and my role in my grandfather`s book on Hinduism was primarily that of a translator.I think the remarkable difference between the book and a sectarian view of Hindutva is that my grandfather`s as well as Tagore`s vision is not combative at all. They were both keen on seeing what different influences operated on Hinduism. Both authors locate themselves in an interactive environment. In The Religion of Man, the lectures that Tagore gave at Oxford, he mentions that his family was situated at the confluence of three sets of influences—Hindu, Muslim and European. The same would apply to my grandfather. As a Sanskritist, he was educated in Benares, in traditional centres of learning, which were, at that time, open and non-sectarian.
: I should also mention that one of my grandfather`s books—which I don`t think is available in English, only in Bengali, called Hindu Musalmaner Jukta Sadhana (The Joint Work of Hindus and Muslims)—is quite a major work in the cultural history of India, showing that there is no substantial area of artistic or intellectual activity in which Hindus and Muslims have not worked together. You cannot think of Hindus and Muslims as somehow mechanically mixed together, rather than being chemically compounded in an integrated civilisation.
: Isn`t there an affinity between the saffron version of Hindutva and Samuel Huntington`s categorisation of Indian civilisation as Hindu?
: I think you are right there that Huntington`s description of Indian civilisation as Hindu civilisation almost seems to be taken out of the writings of the Hindutva champions. In Huntington`s case, the problem was that he wanted to classify the world according to one principle only and that was what he called `civilisation`, which in his case ended up being primarily religion. So he had to contrast Islamic civilisation with Western, Christian civilisation or Buddhist civilisation, etc. Then, well, how do I accommodate India? Since Islamic was already spoken for, he classified India as just a Hindu civilisation. Well, that`s a serious mis-description. India has more Muslims than any country in the world with the exception of Indonesia and marginally Pakistan. Also, the entire cultural and intellectual history of India has been an integrated one, as we just discussed.
: Historian Romila Thapar has described Hindutva`s history as propaganda where the past is manipulated as political instrument. What is the political goal in question—a Hindu rashtra?
: Well, I don`t really know what the political goal in question is. Romila Thapar, of course, is one of our leading historians. I haven`t seen this particular writing of hers, but I guess what she`s pointing out is that a lot of writing on history by people who are champions of Hindutva seems to have an underlying political agenda. Whether this is meant to be a preparation for a Hindu rashtra or whether it is just a misunderstanding of the nature of India, I don`t know. You have to ask them.
: India was never a Hindu rashtra, even before Muslims came to India. In the first millennium BC as well as the millennium that followed, the Gupta period for example, India had a powerful presence of Buddhism along with Hinduism and Jainism. Christians came to India by the 4th century AD latest, and there were Christians here well before there was a single Christian in Britain. Similarly, Jews came to India very early. Parsis came when persecution began in Iran. Also, Muslims came first as traders across the Arabian Sea, well before the Muslim military conquests in the north. India has had a variety of religious influences all this time. Just to mention one thing—if you are thinking of the two greatest emperors of India, you would tend to think of Ashoka and Akbar. One was a Buddhist and the other a Muslim.
: Must a `Hindutva` history necessarily depend on half-truths, lies and legends to sustain itself? For example, that ancient India revered the cow as `gomata` and did not consume beef; that Akbar was a foreigner, despot and sectarian?
: Well, I think if one has a particular way of looking at the past and if there are uncomfortable facts which do not fit into that narrow way of looking, then the proponents of that way of looking would naturally tend to deny the facts.It`s fairly easy to point out that these are not half-truths; these are not truths at all. Actually, I can give you many other examples of this kind.
: Could you give just one?
: The introduction of European scholars to Hindu scriptures, in particular the Upanishads, was to a great extent based on the Persian translation of the Upanishads done by Dara Shikoh, the first-born son of Shah Jahan. Dara Shikoh was not a great Sanskrit scholar but he did work hard with the help of Hindu pundits to learn Sanskrit and he translated parts of the Upanishads into Persian. It is this translation that William Jones (pioneering Indologist) first read which attracted him to India and to the study of the Hindu religion. Quite a lot of the revival of our understanding of our Hindu past was based on Jones` efforts and those of others at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. I have not seen any mention in the Hindutva literature of the contribution of this Mughal prince to the spread of understanding of Hinduism at home and abroad.
: The publication of the Towards Freedom volume edited by Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar has been thwarted by the ICHR, apparently because it exposes the `loyalist` role of the rss in the 1940s.
: Well, I can`t comment on why the ICHR has held up the publication of this volume. It could well be that the rss figures in a rather negative light as a pro-British force in some of the documents. It could have been something else, I don`t know. I have also not read the introduction Sumit Sarkar and K.N. Panikkar have written. But I can definitely say that the two are not only among the top historians in India, they would be regarded as major historians anywhere in the world. I personally happen to know Sarkar very well and admire his writings as well as the quality of his mind tremendously. I find it impossible to think that the introduction could have been devoid of their serious professionalism. The episode is puzzling and deeply disturbing.
: No one would claim that whatever the `secular` school of historians has done from Sushobhan Sarkar onwards is flawless. In fact, quite a few critiques have been levelled against secularism per se and you have examined them in your essay `Secularism and its Discontents`. But do these offer a better alternative in the Indian context?
: I wouldn`t describe these historians as primarily `secular`. They are primarily probing and conscientious historians. The fact that they also happen to be secular is interesting, but I don`t believe that this dominates their writing of history. I can speak certainly about Professor Sushobhan Sarkar. He was a historian of impeccable scholarship, with great insistence on rigour and scrutiny. So I would describe him first as a terrific historian rather than as primarily a `secular historian`.
: The second point is, as far as secularism itself is concerned, it is of course really a political belief and as such a subject matter of history, rather than a method of dealing with history. I think that if one has to look at India, one has to see the interactive presence of different religions as well as the presence of non-religious thoughts—sciences and mathematics for example. Aryabhatta, for instance, is quite sceptical of the received doctrines about eclipses and also about the belief that the sun goes round the earth. He didn`t think that eclipses were caused by Rahu but by the earth`s shadow over the moon and the moon obscuring the sun. He talked of the diurnal motion of the earth and the appearance of the sun going round us. So, a historian of Indian ideas has to look at non-religious thought as well as anti-religious thoughts like Charvaka and Lokayata. The subject matter of Indian history cannot be just Hinduism. The historian has to take note of different religious and non-(or-anti) religious ideas.Recognising these varieties does not require any special political belief in secularism.
: It has been proposed that religious leaders, like sadhus and imams, should vet history texts so that unpalatable facts—that could injure impressionable minds and specific communities—can be carefully eliminated from textbooks?
: I am appalled to hear about this proposal. I hope you don`t vet this interview by a sadhu or an imam!
: HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has described those he calls `Marxist` historians, like Irfan Habib, Sumit Sarkar and liberals like Romila Thapar, as `worse than terrorists`...
: If the report is correct, we must react with horror. First, there is what in philosophy is called a `category mistake` here in thinking that comparison with terrorists can be a cogent way of assessing historians. Second, the historians mentioned are, of course, leading historians, and so acknowledged across the world. It is difficult to think how anyone could have made a remark of that kind, least of all the minister in charge of education. I have to believe that he has been misreported and will no doubt issue a corrective.
:
:
: # You may be missing other accompanying blurbs, related stories, graphics etc.
: Link to this story as it appears on the site :- `India`s Two Great Emperors Were Both Non-Hindu`
: www.outlookindia.com
:
America’s Responsibility
The same Hindians who were laughing at Musharaffs visit to China weeks ago ,Themselves offering there arse in competition.....
India to convey its concerns over terrorism to Zhu
India and China are likely to sign agreements for cooperation in space,
science and technology and some WTO trade-related issues during the
Chinese premier`s visit.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jan/12zhu.htm
Posted by
Ashok
Jan 13, 2002 02:09 am
The same Hindians who were laughing at Musharaffs visit to China weeks ago ,Themselves offering there arse in competition.....
India to convey its concerns over terrorism to Zhu
India and China are likely to sign agreements for cooperation in space,
science and technology and some WTO trade-related issues during the
Chinese premier`s visit.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jan/12zhu.htm
- Ashok
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