The Mahatma’s Progeny

Gandhi is a racist bigot ... and now it is proved.

.........venting of the spleen by another islamic fundamentlist.

an irrational. unfair article against a mn who was human and a humane being.

-gopalakrishna

http://www.himalmag.com/2002/may/essay.htm

Essay

The social engineering of Gujarat

The ongoing violence and its broadening social and geographical base in the state is a consequence of the political recasting of social identities.

by Hemant Babu

The winter moon had already risen over the Taranga hills, when a group of men and women stopped our vehicle on the road from Ambaji to Baroda in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The women were dressed in brightly coloured half sarees, worn in the typically western Indian tribal style. A man in the front was carrying a photograph of Hanuman, the monkey god and lieutenant of the Hindu deity Ram. The light of the full moon bathed the hills on both sides of the road, and the exchange that followed was as pleasant as the surroundings.

?Donate some money,? said a woman from the group. In the tribal districts of Gujarat it is customary to stop passing vehicles and collect money around the time of Holi and other festivals that western Indian tribals celebrate. Only, this was not the month of Holi, or of any other festivity. Queried about the purpose of the collection they replied, ?We are collecting money for the bhajan mandali? (the collective singing of hymns celebrating deities). The bright red image of Hanuman that they carried was most certainly not native to their original spiritual repertoire. Neither was the idea of the bhajan mandali, which is a characteristically Hindu institution. The image and the ritual had come from somewhere else. This was in early 1993 when several parts of India, including Gujarat, were burning in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. But, the violence had not yet touched the tribal belts of Gujarat.

A month ago, in the aftermath of the Godhra incident and the subsequent riots, a friend, who sports a vandyke beard, was accosted on the same road by a group of men who live on the gentle slopes of the Taranga hills. But, there was nothing gentle about these men. Armed to the teeth, they snatched his wallet and then grilled him about his religion. He was allowed to proceed unmolested only after he furnished proof of his Hindu bona fides. Newspapers the next morning reported the killing of Muslim highway travellers, who were perhaps fleeing the riots.

An end to the violence of the last two months is not in sight, and, the end of it will not be the last of it either. The first incident of 1993 was not the starting point of a process that culminated in this second incident, almost a decade later. Both events and all that happened in the interim are merely stages in the acceleration and amplification of a process that has been in the making for some decades. In Gujarat, where it is today imprudent to wear a beard and a misfortune to be a Muslim, a pervasive communalisation has been cultivated even among communities marginalised by Hindu society. The participation of tribals in the brutal enterprise of Hindutva is an index of this communalisation. The collection for the bhajan mandali was only the more benign aspect of a development whose logical intent was the killings on the road from Ambaji to Baroda and elsewhere.

The arrival of Hanuman in the Gujarat hills has a cultural and political significance. It is also a mytho-logical metaphor for the arrival of tribals in the militia of Hindutva. The military prominence of Hanuman and his army in the epic, Ramayan, has been understood to signify the martial services rendered by some forest dwellers for a Hindu purpose of the remote past. Likewise, the adoption of Hindu symbols and rituals by the tribals of Gujarat suggests their subordinated absorption, as a regiment of foot soldiers detailed by the Hinduised polity to kill on command its ?enemy? of the moment. And as in the mythology, all they get in real terms is an honourable mention for services rendered. In both the myth and the current reality (a distinction that often has no meaning in the recent politics of India), the labours of the aboriginal under-class are directed towards the almost exclusive benefit of the caste-Hindu leadership that commandeers it.

?Normalcy? in a normal state

Both the violence and its expanding social base have been commented on at length. What is forgotten in all the rhetoric for and against the politics that engineered it is the historical-political context in which this engineering took place. The context may not be the direct cause of the psyche that produces such extreme forms of violence but it nevertheless merits description, if only because it may help identify and explain the direct cause, besides dispelling misconceptions about both Gujarat and the riots that seem to have found purchase in the media.

Ever since the outbreak of violence, there have been frequent expressions of surprise that such events could ever happen in the ?land of Gandhi?, in a state that is the most industrialised after Maharashtra, in a society with such a ?strong mercantile mentality?, and in a polity that has seen such ?stable governments?. These vaunted attributes are not a necessary impediment to organised violence and in any case this is not the first, worst or longest riot recorded in the state. In fact, any or all of these factors could cohabit with or even produce such violence. Perhaps the idea of riots in Gujarat will be less bewildering if it is kept in mind that during a riot organised under an extremely stable government with resources garnered from industrial and mercantile sources among others, the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, no less, shut its gates and turned its back on Muslims fleeing certain death. If the political process can so easily erode the historical legacy of ahimsa in the ashram in which the concept was elaborated, optimistic assumptions about the restraining influence of Gandhi, commerce and industry do not place Gujarat under a special compulsion to be less violent than any other state in India?s degenerating polity. As Achyut Yagnik, the well-known social worker and researcher from Ahmedabad, notes: ?Gujarat is as normal as any other state.?

A sign of this normalcy is the number of incidents of communal violence in the state as recorded officially. Judicial commissions of inquiry, the Justice Reddy Commission and the Justice VS Dave Commission, were instituted after two major riots, of 1969 and 1985 respectively. Both commissions referred in some detail to Gujarat?s history of communal violence. The Justice Dave Commission traced the history of communal violence in Ahmedabad as far back as 1714 when a bloody riot was sparked off during the Holi celebrations. The city then was still under Mughal control. Subsequent riots broke out in 1715, 1716 and 1750. The Marathas, who succeeded the Mughals in Gujarat, were described by the Commission as being ?instrumental in creating a riot in Ahmedabad? after the city was occupied by them.

Hindu-Muslim violence continued in the centuries that followed, with the pace and intensity picking up in the second half of the twentieth century. When communal riots broke out in 1941, curfew had to be imposed for over two-and-a-half months. The Justice Reddy Commission identified as many as 2938 instances of communal violence in the state between 1960 and 1969, that is, an average of approximately three riots every four days during this ten-year period. It is perhaps more than just a coincidence that this was the period when the Jan Sangh, the first overtly political front of the Rashtrya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), and the organisational precursor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which by all accounts is responsible for sustaining the current riots, became active in the state. During this period, riots began to spread over a much wider geographical area of the sate, affecting towns like Veraval, Junagadh, Patan, Godhra, Palanpur, Anjar, Dalkhania, Kodinar and Deesa, all of which have been hit by the ongoing violence.

Immunity of social conscience

Violence of the communal variety staged in urban and semi-urban venues, besides rural violence directed against agricultural labourers, particularly dalits, was thus as routine an aspect of Gujarat as it is of most other states in the country. But violence of a different, more systematic and sustained order was inaugurated in 1969. The Hindu-Muslim riots of that year mark a major break with the hitherto prevalent pattern of steady if unspectacular social conflict. More than two years of hectic Muslim and Hindu fundamentalist activity preceded the outbreak of these riots. Communal violence in the state acquired a more organised form against the backdrop of the India-Pakistan war of 1965. The Jana Sangh stepped up the level of patriotic mobilisation and secured a toe-hold among the urban middle class. This mobilisation cashed in on the shelling of the area near the Dwarka temple in Gujarat by the Pakistan Navy, and the death of the incumbent Congress chief minister of the state, Balwantrai Mehta, when his plane was brought down by the Pakistan air force.

Muslim mobilisation too was simultaneously taking place. The Jamiyet-Ulema-e-Hind tried to rally Muslim support, perhaps with the tacit consent of the Congress Party, which was then going through a phase of organisational and political crisis. In June 1968, the national convention of the Jamiyet was organised in Ahmedabad. Though it professed to be a nationalist organisation which supported the Congress, the convention showed very clearly that the Jamiyet was drifting towards communal politics. Its firebrand leaders, Maulana Asad Maad and Yunus Salim delivered provocative speeches. A booklet called The communal riots and the harm that they have done to the country and Hindu religion, authored by the president of the Jamiyet, Maulana Aqualak Husain, was circulated during the convention. The booklet gave grossly exaggerated accounts of atrocities on Muslims in communal riots elsewhere in the country. This spurt of Islamic activity prompted the Jan Sangh to found the Hindu Dharma Raksha Samiti. It also brought the RSS chief MS Golwalkar to the city. At a rally in Ahmedabad in December 1968 Golwalkar attacked Muslims as invaders who the country could not tolerate for too long. The idea of Muslims as invaders has been repeatedly used by Hindu fundamentalists to a point where it has become the received wisdom, all cogent arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. The riots that ensued in 1969 left some 1500 people dead.

A riot of this magnitude, unprecedented in both scale and duration, had a foundational significance for the politics of the state and the techniques of mobilisation and orchestration that increasingly came into use. The discrete and scattered violence of the preceding period can be presumed to be manifestations of everyday class, caste and community struggles arising from socio-economic conflicts of a more or less local nature. To that extent, their individual histories and repercussions were confined to the respective localities of incidence. The 1969 riots had the critical mass that lent it state- and nation-wide visibility and gave it a prominent place in the historical inventory of community grievances. This riot could now be invoked at will, not just in Gujarat but wherever else tension had to be engineered. In effect, this was the first explicit politicisation of both communalism and public violence in the state.

Most importantly, the riots of 1969 took Gujarati society past the psychological threshold of normally tolerable public violence, and this not just of the communal variety. Once the barrier to the use of violence in inter-party conflicts was crossed, its repeated use acquired a tacit legitimacy as the social conscience became gradually more immune to the incremental doses of it that the polity administered. The two instances of extended public ferocity that Gujarat witnessed after these riots, the 1974 Nav Nirman movement, launched by the opposition parties to oust the Congress state government, and the 1981 riots against public policy designed to benefit lower castes, involved a high level of violence, including in the latter instance, the burning alive of dalits. Both these instances of extra-parliamentary ?politics? were remarkably successful in their objectives. Violent street politics had made an impressive debut in Gujarat and presented itself as a model worth investing in and emulating.

Making of a pattern

There were two aspects to these agitations that had long-term social and institutional consequences. One was the induction of middle class youths into a form of politics not normally associated with them. The other was the emergence of the incipient social and financial networks that sustain prolonged violence. The issues involved in both the 1974 movement and the 1981 riots, though they affected a much larger segment of the population, were articulated most vigorously by the middle class through its traditional channels. But the urgency of the objective, particularly in reversing affirmative state action in favour of the lower castes, caused dissent to spill out of the traditional channels. Middle class, upper caste youths played a leading role in the anti-reservation riots, and the focus of conflict here belonged solely to the matrix of Hindu social relations and its hierarchies of caste. A middle class, consisting predominantly of caste Hindus who saw themselves as the true repositories of merit, was defending its privileged access to professional education and government service. The high level of violence was justified as a legitimate expression of thwarted merit and one more barrier to muscular Hindu middle class street politics was crossed. The BJP was active in the 1981 riots as were its professional front organisations, notably the university and secondary school teachers associations. The classroom, the family and many other institutions which crucially shape social and political values had succumbed to the pressures of protecting the elite monopoly of state privileges and public resources.

The 1981 riots were replayed in a more drastic form in the 1985 anti-reservation movement. In many ways, this sequel marked the beginning of a new phase. Although it partook of features of all the antecedent riots, it also had a novel dimension. The roots of Gujarat?s radical communalism can be detected here. Methodical violence from now on became a more regular instrument and expression of electoral politics, recurring with increasing frequency and refinement of technique and exhibiting remarkable similarities of character. Soon after it commenced, the riot of 1985 was annexed to the exigencies of the BJP?s political constituency-building drill. The seemingly undirected ?riot from below? was given a purposeful leadership by the present dispensation in the state, notably the current Chief Minister Narendra Modi, acting then in his capacity as a senior functionary of the RSS. By 1985, the Hindutva cadres had acquired considerable experience in disruptive politics, many of its leaders having participated in the ?81 agitation.

The BJP?s active influence on the 1985 agitation explains many of its more curious features. The riots began on 19 March, the day after the newly-elected Congress government assumed office, and was directed against a policy measure declared more than two months prior. In January, the Congress government had announced an increase in the quota of jobs in government and seats in public educational institutions reserved for backward castes. The riots lasted six months, much after the policy had been revoked by the government. The fact that a riot could start two months after the cause that provoked it, and end as suddenly as it started, points to a high level of coordination by an existing command structure. It cannot be a mere accident that the violence extended beyond Ahmedabad to smaller towns and villages, particularly in those areas where the BJP had acquired influence, notably in central Gujarat and some tribal belts. South Gujarat, which had previously been unaffected, now found itself on the riot map of the state. The social base of the violence expanded to include gangsters, bootleggers and professional killers. Various reports of the period quote doctors who described the stab wounds they attended to as the work of trained hands. The agitation finally degenerated to a point where sections of the state constabulary abandoned their uniforms and relin-quished their responsibilities to join the riots.

The beginnings of social engineering

But there is another compelling aspect of this riot that overshadows all others. The 1981 riots sharpened the conflict within the ?Hindu? community, between the upper and lower castes, the victims being primarily dalits. By contrast the 1985 agitation, though initially directed against caste-based affirmative action, transformed itself very quickly into a gratuitous attack on the Muslim community, which had nothing to do with the reservation policy of the government. In the final reckoning, an extended riot led by upper caste Hindus that succeeded in revoking a policy that benefited lower caste Hindus eventually managed to inscribe itself into the social memory as one more gory episode in the deteriorating history of Hindu-Muslim relations. Perhaps the danger to a conceptual and potential ?Hindu? unity from a conflict internal to the community was being minimised by quietly diverting the focus of the agitation. If its similarities with the Sangh Parivar?s current modus operandi are anything to go by, then the 1985 riot was the real crucible of Hindutva politics in Gujarat. A kingpin of that agitation is the kingpin of the current spate of pogroms; the only difference is that today he officially rules the political roost with a popular mandate of 55 percent.

There are many crude calculations in the social engineering formulas of the RSS, but the last 15 years have proved that, given a polity degenerating in the appropriate manner, these calculations can yield the desired outcome. From 1990 on, Gujarat has witnessed riot after riot, varied in scale, but similar in character and equal in significance for the BJP?s rise to political power. The late 1980s witnessed an escalation in the tempo of the Ayodhya movement and this furnished the climate for the orchestration of events that would culminate in the party?s emphatic electoral victory in 1995.

The pattern of the first riot of 1990 is interesting, though not necessarily symptomatic. LK Advani?s rath yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh came in the immediate aftermath of widespread and violent upper caste agitations across north India against the affirmative action principles in favour of backward castes, adopted at the national level by the United Front in New Delhi. These agitations had intensified socio-economic conflict between upper and lower castes at a time when the plural constituency of a potential Hindutva was being assembled through the politicisation of Hindu symbols and myths. This was the period when imagined grievances, culled from an imagined history, were being assiduously broadcast, accompanied by the shrill denigration of parties which allegedly indulged Muslim treachery. The rath yatra did manage to rally large numbers, particularly from the lower castes, and the arrest of Advani en route to Ayodhya provoked riots in many states, including Gujarat.

Gujarat again witnessed riots in 1992 when the disputed Babri Masjid at Ayodhya was razed to the ground a few hours after kar sevaks stormed the monument. Surat experienced intermittent disturbances over a six-month period. In 1993, more riots followed, after the blasts in Bombay, allegedly masterminded by the Muslim underworld. Perhaps these riots were attempts at forging a Hindu unity that, on the face of it, seemed impossible. Whatever the intention, there is no denying that the rath yatra precipitated a political crisis in which the existing intra- and inter-party equations began to break down. And, there is no getting away from the fact that, though not uniformly successful across India, the BJP from the 1991 general elections has secured more than 50 percent of the votes cast in the state. Remarkably, for three years following its assumption of office in Gujarat in 1995, the state was free from communal riots. The BJP was clearly living up to its boast of ensuring a riot-free administration, prompting critics to cite this as proof of the party?s monopoly of organised public violence. At any rate, this peaceful interim was part of the established pattern of violence erupting and subsiding according to the clearly discernable designs of politics. The inference, therefore, that violence had become a crucial raw material of electoral politics controlled by a cartel is unavoidable.

New tribe of kar sevaks

The brief interlude of social peace came to an end in 1998, with the attacks on Christian missionaries and establishments in the Dangs, a forested tribal belt on the southern edge of Gujarat bordering Maharashtra. This was a new theatre of conflict in terms of both the region and community involved. This was the first instance of organised violence after the BJP came to power and the context once again is instructive. Cracks had developed in the carefully crafted socio-economic balance in the BJP soon after it came to power in the state. Hindutva once again confronted a crisis of caste. An influential segment of backward castes in the BJP legislature party had revolted against its upper caste leadership, on the lines of what was subsequently to happen in the Uttar Pradesh unit too. Social engineering had failed in the face of an old caste conflict and a substitute social group had to be found to take the place of the departing backward castes. Tribals make up 14 percent of the states population. Christians, who are largely concentrated in the tribal districts, add up to less than 1 percent of Gujarat?s population. Even in the Dangs, they do not exceed 5 percent.

On the night of 25 December, under the auspices of an RSS front organisation called the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM), churches, educational institutions and houses were attacked in Ahwa, Subir, Jamlapada, Gadvi, Divan Temrun, Madagkhadi and Padalkhadi. Over the next four days attacks spread to other tribal areas in Bharuch, Surat and Vyara districts of south Gujarat. This orchestration of violence by the HJM had been preceded by a decade-and-a-half of patient mobilisation by another RSS front organisation, the Samajik Samrasta Manch, founded in 1983 to assimilate those segments of society marginalised by Brahmanic Hinduism. Whatever else the RSS fronts have been doing, it is clear that within four years of those attacks, tribals from both north and south Gujarat have been recruited in large numbers as kar sevaks for both the construction of the Ram temple and the destruction of the Muslim community.

The similarities between the broad context of the riots is striking. Any crisis internal to Hindutva inevitably leads to violence against well-defined ?enemies?. If the 1998 violence was necessitated by the social crisis of Gujarati Hindutva, the present and continuing violence comes on the heels of a comprehensive political rout of the BJP across several states in India. Gujarat is its last bastion, and reports and analysis in the media indicated that defeat stared the party in the forthcoming elections in the state. The prominence of tribal participation is the common element between 1998 and the ongoing violence. Perhaps, in the social engineering calculus of the RSS, a fresh massacre of the old enemy by new recruits will add to the prowess of Hindutva, enrich its folklore, expand its social base and thereby forestall a defeat in the nursery of its politics. A tribal population of 14 percent is electorally significant enough to justify the slaughter of several hundred Muslims.

Secularism and silence

Clearly then, from the mid-1980s political violence in Gujarat had become more organised and more numer-ous, had increasingly begun to manufacture its own provocations, and was directed at minorities, particularly Muslims. This last development coincided with the BJP?s Hindutva agendas in a period when the party was systematically cultivating overarching Hindu nationalist sentiments. In 1985, the Congress party was at the peak of its electoral strength, enjoying the support of 55 percent of the electorate. By the 1991 general elections, the BJP had secured 55 percent of the vote and in 1995 rode to power in the state with an overwhelming majority. In this violent ten-year period the Congress Party, which ruled the state for most of the past four decades, had crumbled and out of the ruins of the existing polity the BJP had emerged triumphant.

There seems to be a prima facie correlation between the violent politics of the state and the BJP?s rise to power. Numerous studies, by the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, by the sociologist Ghanshyam Shah, the historian Jan Breman, the political scientist Atul Kohli and many others, have chronicled some of the micro-level processes in the party?s rise to power. But there has not been any real synthesis of explanation, based on these studies, that describes the precise mechanics at a state-wide level. Perhaps, that exercise is precluded by a lack of uniformity, and even an organic unity, in the strategies of the RSS and its offspring. The intricacies of refabricating a complex socio-economic demography may well require multiple, even mutually contradictory, local strategies within an overall climate of communal strife.

But even if there are not too many identifiable and overt statewide strategies, barring of course the assault on minorities, the BJP?s success has been statewide and not all of it can be attributed to just the ingenuity of the party?s political techniques. After all, identical experiments by the BJP in other states have not fetched the same dividends. It would seem therefore that conditions specific to Gujarat?s history, society and politics have facilitated the cultivation of Hindutva politics. These specific circumstances may help penetrate the air of inscrutability that surrounds the BJP?s covert strategies and successes, if only by questioning many well-meaning but untenable secular-ist assumptions about Gujarat and the riots, which actually impede an understanding of Hindutva?s politics in the state.

In the secular intelligentsia?s description of the gory events of the last two months, communal violence is the handiwork of a violent minority of fundamentalists. In this view, the secular majority is silent and can only watch helplessly as the state administration actively abets the Hindutva lumpens. This is not an entirely accurate description of the reality. True, there are many who have actually gone to the aid of the victims and prevented more unspeakable brutalities than have been committed. It is also true that there are many localities where irreproachable community relations, fostered by shared concerns of a more fundamental and material variety, have ensured that provocateurs have been unable to incite murderous passions. But it is equally true that there are many others who silently approve of the carnage. The violent minority and silent majority of Gujarat do not constitute separate and distinct social fragments. The silence of a sizeable part of the silent majority is not the speechless shock of numbed bystanders. It is the conspiratorial silence of willing spectators, remote witnesses to a Roman holiday, whose public silence is a private roar of approval that is clearly audible to the architects of the violence. There are those who cannot speak and those who will not speak.

How else are we to explain the seeming paradoxes of the riots in Ahmedabad? We have seen educated girls and boys from middle and upper middle class families who do not actually participate in the killings but follow in the wake to loot Muslim establishments. We have seen couples on two wheelers bring home consumer durables scavenged from the debris of retail outlets. The cell-phone wielding rioters are not isolated elements who have taken control in a social vacuum. They roam about so brazenly because they know they have a silent social mandate. This is the clear conspiracy of silence among many of the so-called silent majority and it has many manifestations ? the son of a bureaucrat who gets away with murder, a government official who demands bribe, the worker who looks at unions as an instrument of personal gain, the trader who cheats at one go the marginal producer and the small consumer. We have seen the faces of this silent majority at various places. Sometimes they are at a safe distance behind the rioting mob, sometimes they are in the air-conditioned cabins of newspaper offices. They are always there where it matters and they are always silent when it matters. We have seen them outside Gujarat too, in 1984 in Delhi when Sikhs were being butchered, in the 1992 Bombay riots, in the Dangs, in Orissa, in Madhya Pradesh, in Uttar Pradesh and many other places too numerous to be listed. And now we are told that the VHP in Ahmedabad has a team of 50 lawyers who will, without payment, legally defend the Hindutva rioters. Secular optimism should not blind us to the reality of communalism?s expanded social base.

Anatomy of a Hindu state

Gujarat is a visibly Hinduised state today, and not just because of the 55 percent that voted the BJP. Even if that 55 percent were to vote in other ways, the ideology of Hindutva that has sunk roots will continue to pervade society. What this means in effect is that even if the Congress were to return to power, it will have to mould itself more openly to the agendas of Hindu politics. In fact, it is more than likely that the state Congress unit has itself already been Hinduised. Reportedly, Congress-run municipalities have extended infrastruc-tural and other assistance to the rioters, particularly in destroying evidence of demolitions. Even casual observers of politics have noted that the Gujarat Congress has been less than tepid in its response to the riots, being more keen to defend Sonia Gandhi?s credentials than to protect Muslim lives. The state administration has been so extensively contaminated that even if a Congress government were to allow some residual secular instinct to surface, it is unlikely to get much support from the bureaucracy. This is the most impressive achievement of fundamentalist politics ? that it has recast even the opposition in its own image.

Some traces of how a caste-divided state can achieve an overarching Hindu unity, even if only briefly and at extraordinary moments of stress, are to be found in aspects of the state?s social, political and demographic history. Gujarat came into existence in 1960 after the States Reorganisation Act of 1957, which carved out states on a linguistic basis. Two broad regions ? mainland and peninsular Gujarat ? make up the territory of the state. Peninsular Gujarat consists of Kutch and Kathiawad, now known as Saurashtra. Prior to Indian independence, numerous kingdoms, principalities, and jagirs dotted the territorial landscape of present-day Gujarat. Saurashtra alone had 499 political units. Kutch was a princely state while parts of mainland Gujarat were directly administered British territory incorporated into the Bombay Presidency. In 1948, all these units were consolidated and Kutch, Saurashtra and the mainland were added to Bombay state in 1956, where they stayed until 1960 when, through linguistic division, the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were created.

This territorial consolidation gave the future politics of Gujarat several institutions, forms, values and characteristics that made it easier for Hindutva to take hold. Among the more useful heritages was the myth of the Somnath Temple. The temple complex is located in the port town of Veraval on the southern coast of Saurashtra just a little below Porbandar, were Gandhi was born. The myth of Somnath left Gandhi untouched. But it excited many others who formed the cream of the Congress leadership in Gujarat, mainly because in AD 1026, Mahmud of Ghazni (in Afghanistan) raided the temple of Somnath and broke the idol. The temple was situated inside a fortress in which wealth accumulated from the brisk maritime trade of ancient and medieval Saurashtra was stored. Before Mahmud?s raid, this amassed wealth had attracted the notice of many other rulers, some of whom, like the Chudasama, Ahiras and Yadhavas, had attempted to make off with it. But the attack of the Mahmud from Ghazni has been singled out for special attention and presented as proof of Muslim insolence.

Eminent historians like Romila Thapar have argued very eloquently against simplified narratives of the Somnath raid. But the matter long ago passed from the hands of professional historians and into the arsenal of practised politicians such as Rajendra Prasad, the president of India in the 1950s, Vallabhai Patel, the first union home minister, and KM Munshi, a senior minister in successive union cabinets. Among the Congress leadership, Somnath was a Gujarati preoccupation. It was only the objections of Jawaharlal Nehru and some of his secular colleagues that prevented the repair of the temple under state auspices, but that did not stop the president of India from participating in the ceremonies of the privately funded restoration.

Somnath was the Gujarat Congress Party?s gift to Hindutva and is an early example of the politicisation of temple related trauma. Such is the pedigree of the Somnath myth, and the extent of its popularity in Gujarat, that it was absorbed and given prominence in the politics of the Ayodhya myth. Thus it was that the rath yatra that symbolised the spiritual conquest of India by vaishnavite Hinduism began its journey from this shaivite monument.

Shackles of faith and caste

The appeal of such religious themes is not difficult to understand in a society permeated with strong orthodox vaishnavite traditions. The absence of a serious bhakti movement in Gujarat?s history is perhaps a reflection of and reason for this potent institutional vaishnavism. Mythological religiosity has been an integral part of Gujarat society and continues to be fostered by bardic performances. Kathakars, who recite stories from the Ramayan, have an important role in collective social life and in recent years have been active in the BJP?s political cause. According to Ghanshyam Shah, in the 1991 elections kathakars like Morari Bapu were involved in the party?s campaign and ?attracted a cross-section of society both in urban and rural areas?.

Mass politics right from the Gandhian phase has been unable or unwilling to break the shackles of this public religiosity. In fact, as the historian David Hardiman points out, Gandhi and his followers were themselves not above using the idioms of caste and religion in political mobilisation. As early as 1920, Gandhi was to appeal to fellow members of his bania caste to, as good ?vaishnavites?, abstain from courts and schools run by the British government, whose rule he likened to ravanraj. Patel, likewise, played on caste traditions, and laid stress on themes like kshatriya martial virtues. It is not surprising at all that Gandhi should have harped on ramrajya as a political ideal. Vaishnav, kshatriya, ravanraj, ramrajya, all popular currency in the BJP?s rhetoric, have a long and respectable history in the mass politics of Gujarat. The state did not really witness the emergence of a politics that seriously tried to purge the public arena of its religious inflections.

As is to be expected, orthodox faith and values were nurtured within the bounds of an entrenched caste system. The mass politics that emerged in Gujarat could not escape the dynamics of caste and so chose by and large to be confined within it. Although caste divisions did not fully coincide with class divisions in the state, socio-economic power was predominantly in the hands of a few castes, i.e. patidars, brahmins and baniyas ? and to a much lesser extent the kshatriyas. Caste associations, some of them active in party politics, are a common feature of Gujarat?s public life. They include the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabha and the Gujarat Kshatriya Sangh, the Patidar Yuvak Mandal, the Khedut Sangh and the Khedut Samaj, which are basically patidar organi-sations, the Prajapati Mandal and numerous others. These caste associations, besides undertaking welfare measures, function also as lobby groups seeking to influence politics in addition to manoeuvring for control of resources. Of these organised castes, the most powerful are the patidars, who in much of the state practically control the rural economy. Brahmins and baniyas, though insignificant as a proportion of the population, are economically and politically powerful by virtue of their dominance in professional services, industry and trade.

The politics of Gujarat has been based on the alliance between castes. The Congress party?s near monopoly of power was based on a patidar-brahmin-baniya leadership that brought together under a broad umbrella the dalit, tribal and Muslim electorate. The weak opposition in the state in the early period, the Swatantra Party, was primarily a kshatriya enterprise, allied to the leadership of dissenting patidar groups. Through the 1960s, the state legislature was dominated by a highly organised Congress party well-versed in the practice of an accommodative politics that did not fundamentally affect the socio-economic structure. As an efficient organisation that functioned both as a civic institution and a political machine, it perfected the technique of herding a large electoral constituency without altering the overall status quo. The patidars, brahmins and baniyas continued to dominate the economy while the dalits, tribals and Muslims continued to vote the Congress.

The moment of accommodation

In 1969, by the time the Swatantra Party was beginning to make inroads into the state legislature, the Indian National Congress experienced a nationwide split. The two groups that emerged were the Congress (Organisation), which inherited the party?s organisation, and Congress (Requisition), which had Indira Gandhi and a large part of the influential ?left-lean-ing? leadership of the parent party. A new political alli-ance slowly emerged, with the Swatantra Party and the Congress (O), both with orthodox social and economic programmes, align-ing with the Jan Sangh, which had no real policy to offer other than Hindu Rashtra. The split in the Congress is that moment when the public accommodation of Hindutva politics by the larger polity begins. The existing caste-political equations also began to break down. The two numeri-cally significant castes that were politically influential, the patidars and the kshatriyas became internally divided along political lines.

Over time, both the Swatantra Party and the Congress (O) disappeared, having merged, along with the Jan Sangh, into the Janata Party during the period of unstable politics that followed the split in the Congress. With the political opposition uniting against it and itself lacking any real organisation to combat the trend, the Congress, under Indira Gandhi, adopted a populist economic and political course. While that helped secure a wide base for the party at the electoral level, the lack of an organisation meant that the Congress was unable to deal with the growing forms of extra-parliamentary agitations that commenced with the Nav Nirman Movement of 1974. That movement unseated the Congress government and brought the combined opposition, including the Jan Sangh, to power. Hindu politics had tasted office for the first time in the country in the company of like-minded organisations.

The Congress returned to power after the Emergency of Indira Gandhi, once again without any real organisational structure, but with an infusion of new lumpen cadres. The caste-leadership of the post-Emergency Congress changed hands as the kshatriyas became more dominant. A peculiar aspect of kshatriya politics in Gujarat is that in the course of political mobilisation it redefined itself to include a large backward caste component, notably the kolis. This was to be of some significance in the nature of Congress politics, which in turn influenced to some extent the rise of Hindu politics. By the 1980s the Congress social alliance was based on what has come to be called the KHAM formula, ie an alliance of kshatriyas, harijans (dalits), adivasis (tribals) and Muslims. (see page 24) Through the period that the Congress held power this was the combination that gave Gujarat its gov-ernments. And through the period that these gov-ernments were in power the patidars, baniyas and brahmins continued to control the economy and some crucial nodes of the public sphere, such as the various levels of the state administration. And when the Congress, as part of its ?welfare populism? went through the motions of announ-cing measures that would benefit its socially and economically mar-ginalised constituency, the real managers of the economy and the public arena drifted towards an opposition that was gradually being dominated by

the BJP.

This was the period that the agitational politics mounted by social groups increasingly backed by the BJP, left the Congress governments in a state of political crisis. Organisational weakness obstructed substantive civic response on the part of the Congress to these agitations against benefits directed towards backward castes. As a consequence, the government simply retracted its policy measures. Welfare populism antagonised the elite. Its retraction and failure disillusioned the dispossessed. The Congress could not herd its own constituency. That constituency was now available to be politically recruited, at a time when the flavour of Hindutva was being systematically imparted to the society and polity by the hydra-headed Sangh Parivar, through its numerous organisations.

The Gujarat polity had been in an organisational vacuum from the time of the Congress split till the rise of the BJP. The seeming stability of Gujarati politics was to a large measure based on a stable sub-stratum of caste networks. That stable network which enabled the Congress Party to recruit its caste base also enabled the BJP to recruit its constituency. Welfare populism had given way to spiritual populism, the crucial difference being the latter?s level of organisational capacity. The BJP, through the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, had created a dense complex of agitprop organisations that could engage in sectional caste-specific propoganda and simultaneously season it with the larger Hindutva ideology of the caste-Hindu leadership of the RSS and the BJP. The process by which a tribal population of 14 percent is conscripted into Hindutva?s ranks also renders an 8 percent Muslim population completely dis-pensable to an electoral politics many of whose rules have been redrafted by a vaishnavite orthodoxy. When reluctant Hindus become majoritarian enthusiasts, minorities too large to be ignored and too small to make a difference have no place under the protective umbrella of competitive politics.

In the 50 years after Indian independence, Gujarat has been transformed. It has been the laboratory of Gandhian politics, of civic institutions, the cooperative movement and the Hindutva campaign. It has become more urbanised, more industrial, has seen more social mobil-ity, and become more prosperous. It has also seen the re-emergence of an organised mass politics. The earlier phase of that organised politics, under the Congress, consciously divided the polity of the state along caste lines. The second phase, under the BJP, consciously divided the polity along communal lines. A state predominantly of Hindus had become a state predominantly of Hindutva. In 50 years a ?Hindu unity? had been engineered in a caste-divided state, and Muslim life had become as dispensable as the Muslim vote. The map of Gujarat in 1947 and the map in 1991 tell a chilling story. The price, paid and yet to be paid, cannot be counted.

I am sorry, I really don`t have any answer to raw stupidity...

So you win.. Happy?

ylh #1015, #1016
Your sense of having won the argument is wholly your own, so you are welcome to savor it.
Your remark on `references to esoteric mythology`, is either an attempt to coverup your lack of reply to my point which is so simple and unesoteric that a child cannot miss it or a true disdain for anything even remotely Hindu. In either case, your (I am sure hasty) remark makes you look hilariously silly.

Can we cut down the esoteric references to Hindu mythology?

Chalo kuch to faida hua mera...

and I won the argument as well :)

ylh #1013
`` Chalo shukar hai Sadna has accepted that Gandhi was a Hindu fanatic! and Dr.Ambedkar was RIGHT!``

Hello, I thought we were done here?

Lets see now, what we agreed on was that

a. Ambedkar called Gandhi a Hindu fanatic.

To prove the very different statements
b. `Gandhi was a Hindu fanatic` and
c. `Dr. Ambedkar was right`,

you have to do more than repeat a.

Though I have offered many reasons to disbelieve b and c, all you keep doing is repeating a as evidence of b and c.

Your sole argument is like saying
a. `Ravana kidnapped Sita`

so it MUST follow that
b. Sita was never Rani of Kosala(Ram`s kingdom)
c. Luv and Kush were never born

When people point out the events which took place after Ravana kidnapped Sita, namely the war, the defeat of Ravana and the return to Ayodhya, which argue against b and c, to keep saying:

`No but you couldnot disprove a (Ravana kidnapped Sita), all your attempts to explain away `b` and `c` are patchy and unsuccessful, so shukr hai you accept b and c.`

Mere aage bolne se faida?

I donot agree that Ambedkar was right in calling Gandhi a Hindu fanatic in the context he did and I have given many and sufficient reasons why I donot agree. When you have something to refute those reasons (apart from repeating Ambedkar`s statement, that is), let me know.

PS: btw, I need to thank you, because of you, I got to read more of Ambedkar and Gandhi and I understand them better now than I did before.

Chalo shukar hai Sadna has accepted that Gandhi was a Hindu fanatic! and Dr.Ambedkar was RIGHT!

Exactly my point.. Ambedkar, the father of Indian constitution and opposition leader, had nothing but contempt for the half naked fakir...

As far as your pathetic attempt at humor.. ha and double ha.. khush?

ylh #1010
``AMBEDKAR called Gandhi a `HINDU FANATIC`.. please go deal with AMBEDKAR... howz that?``

Whats there to deal with? Ambedkar ended up being `father of the Indian Constitution` and Gandhi ended up being the `father of the nation`. Aren`t you being a bit of a `begaani shaadi mei`n Abdullah diwaana`.

Sadna,

Again you are wasting your breath... I am not interested in a loin cloth wearing half naked fakir... really...

AMBEDKAR called Gandhi a `HINDU FANATIC`.. please go deal with AMBEDKAR... howz that?

Here is what Ambedkar said:

``Mr Gandhi is no exception to this rule. He presents himself to the world as a liberal but his liberalism is only a very thin veneer which sits very lightly on him as dust does on one`s boots. You scratch him and you will find that underneath his liberalism he is a blue blooded Tory. He stands for the cursed caste. He is a fanatic Hindu upholding the Hindu religion``

I am sorry, none of your convoluted arguments can explain away this! Sorry..

Please don`t waste my time.

ylh #1008
``Ofcourse I have provided more than 1 quotes, but I didn`t expect you to acknowledge that.``

ylh, you have to think/understand aage-peeche of quotes, quotes cannot stand by themselves. And I am talking of the `Gandhi is a fanatic` quote.

``Ever here of a legal term called `Burden of proof`? The burden of proof is always on the defence.``

If we are talking of legal terms, its a clear mistrial when the prosecuter(or judge) keeps ignoring defense`s arguments or keeps using epithets like liar, hypocrite. I ain`t arguing for no kangaroo court..

But seriously, history is the real judge here.

Re separate electorates. They have proven to be a bad idea promoting isolation and stultification of communities. With separate electorates, Mayawati would not be getting sworn in as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister tomorrow as leader of BSP a Dalit-based party after winning the support of the so-called `upper-caste` BJP. With separate electorates Dalit leaders like her would have been limited to representing only their Dalit constituency in proportion to the Dalit population. It would have institutionalized the setting apart of Dalits.


Re Hindus rejecting the shastras wholesale, this wouldnot have worked either as a solution to the Dalit issue.

Even today Dalit activists like Gail Omvedt promote the `rubbishing` of Hindu scriptures in the collective national consciousness as a necessary requirement for social reform.

At a political level, this will only give rise to extremism. Adding to the discontent created by political parties playing one religious community against another is the current assumption among some schools of `secularists` that an implicit rejection of/deemphasis on religion by Hindus is a precondition for secularism to work in India(though strangely they donot insist on a similar deemphasis on religion in the other religious communities). Hindutva has capitalized on this discontent.

Now if Hindus had to explicitly disown the shastras completely and literally give up on Hinduism altogether as Ambedkar wanted, the bitterness and polarisations for politicians and extremists to take advantage of, would have been much greater.

As dost-mittar pointed out, there always has been a widespread consensus against caste/untouchability(Gandhi gets a lot of the credit for this). A consensus against Hinduism itself is much more difficult proposition and a foolhardy one.

Even on pure prinicple, Gandhi cannot be rightly termed a fanatic for opposing Ambedkar`s stances on separate electorates and rejection of Shastras. As practical solutions to the Dalit issue, history has shown these would have proved worse than useless.

Sadna,

That too is your active imagination... Ofcourse I have provided more than 1 quotes, but I didn`t expect you to acknowledge that. Typical of.. well do I need to say? .. In any event you don`t have a point, that I need to answer.

You are the one who didn`t have single answer to any of my points, except your constant defence of Gandhi`s goat...

-YLH

PS Ever here of a legal term called `Burden of proof`? The burden of proof is always on the defence.. and you were Gandhi`s defence and you did a patchy job.

ylh #1006
Well, a court of law would certainly notice like you havenot that you have no answer to any point except one quote. Best wishes.

Sadna

Your post once again doesn`t make sense. You know you have been trumped by my usage of Ambedkar, and his words. I could care less about Gandhi... Its when fools on this site mention him as some kind of a God that I feel like exposing some truths. To me anyone who goes to the extents that he did to preserve Hinduism (his treatment of ambedkar), his personal crusades against sex, and other things, and his `brahmacharya oaths` which he proved in many different ways, he was a fanatic. There is no question about it. On a political level, I believe even an Idiot can see the permanent damage that gandhi inflicted on polity of the subcontinent, by bringing in peers faqirs into Politics. My points are straight forward, they have been supported by proper quotes and sources, and nothing that you have quoted or said has been able to counter that.

Your abstractions (like the quote you love to quote from Pakistan or partition of India) are in no way conclusive or suggestive.. None of them have the final conviction of a statement like `Gandhi was a Hindu fanatic` by Ambedkar. So I am sorry, in the court of law you will be laughed out.

Hence your sorry claim `The references you yourself provided have enough material against your points of view as did my posts, too.` is an absolute nonsense.

Sincerely

YLH

tantra...: Why are u ignoring me? You talk it up with the ladies but are 2 shy to talk to a man? You`re a poster boy coward.

Ignorant fool, u fukked with the wrong person. Eventualy I will hunt u down. Sh1t is not over.

Does anyone know where this b1tch lives?

Samina: I find that cloves work for every illness. Good luck with urs.

Prem, anNy, Drumz,

Thanks for the shout out! Its nice to know you guys still care...(sniff) even tho I`ve been too busy to gupshup lately...Whats been going on? Papers up to my eyebrows-the next two weeks will be known from this point on as the Marathon Mile. (Can Saminashah produce 4 20 page papers in two weeks?) Have been wretchedly ill as well, and Ummi at a scientist`s conference, and her getting ill as well. Its hard when your parent is out of state, sick, and theres nothing you can do about it. Khair, she`s coming home tonight, so I`ve stocked the fridge with rice, bananas, yogurt, crackers, water and ginger ale. Luckily for me, my sweet husband`s been looking after me-so I`m surviving. Any suggestions on care food for a bad stomach? (No chillies, Prem!)

Also, Mr. S`s won a big writing comp. and is going to be reading at the 92nd st. Y soon...(lemme tell you how big time the 92nd is...), so add butterflies to the mix!

Still got my eye on Jenin, India and Iraq. More bad times ahead, brothers and sisters.

Ali1

Yes I do have something in my backpack, its called a smack upside your head...stop bothering us dude; its not like we even have the time nor inclination to respond....

Response to Prem #999

Prem says: ``Dude, that is an utterly despicable approach to take with any decent lady. I have no clue what you and saminashah have been disagreeing about, but NOTHING could justify the kind of expressions you have used for. Some of your other posts I have read have been pretty good. What the heck has gotten you to riled up?``

Dear Prem,

You are partially correct - civility in discussion is a value we must always aspire to and have as our ideal. Saminashah (the net persona), however, does not falls to the ranks of the ``decent,`` lady or not. She peddled a bald-faced lie, but when I brought it to her attention she coolly ignored it and began chewing on something else. I consider such people to be of the gutter, to not be worthy of basic courtesies, and would have ignored her had it not been for her own desire to keep `playing.`

tantralogician

tvarad, romair,

I read somewhere that Azim Premji was one of the few businessmen to condemn Gujarat. HDFC`s Parekh and the lady heading Thermax are some others. I have not come across the Khans or Dilip Kumar condemning it, though Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar have done so.

Dear Chowk Editors,

Please wake up and screen some of your posts.This boree bazaar language is making me gag !

Farzana ... Kudos to you, for remaining both eloquent and elegant amidst this. Dont how you do it, except that you are one heck of a strong and polite lady, and I do have a great deal of admiration both for your work and your personality.

take care,

love

sa:)

ylh #997
`` I would hardly characterize it as a `self goal`. Fanaticism, when done for right things isn`t bad.``

Actually, it IS a self-goal in more ways than one.

You are so set on your hatred of Gandhi, you don`t mind distorting/ignoring to the point of absurdity everything that speaks against it. The references you yourself provided have enough material against your points of view as did my posts, too.


You may keep kicking an idol, but unless you know the idea behind it, defacing or physically destroying the idol will do no good..

Its not enough to take cold quotes from 50-60 years ago `X said A` `Y said B`, one has to understand in ones turn what X meant when X said A and what Y meant when Y said B. Only then you can figure whether you agree with X and disagree with Y. Starting with the axioms that X is a hero whatever he says or does and Y is a villian whatever he says or does, is for enjoyment of comic books and Western movies, not for an understanding of history.

There is a major difference between conviction and fanaticism. Conviction, however firmly held, submits itself to tests of corroboration, challenges and possibility of not being entirely correct. Fanaticism on the other hand demands the blindness of mindless obedience. So fanaticism means losing your judgement of what is right, so it can only do harm.

Conviction can be grounded securely in a world which makes at least a little sense, fanaticism is by definition insecure, and the world which doesnot fall in step is always seen to be in a conspiracy against it, a very sad way to live.

Stop being a creature of your hatreds and fanaticisms, forget these guys, get a life and some perspective of your own, and then come back and make these personalities from the past serve YOU and the present instead of the reverse.

Tantralogician,

Dude, that is an utterly despicable approach to take with any decent lady. I have no clue what you and saminashah have been disagreeing about, but NOTHING could justify the kind of expressions you have used for. Some of your other posts I have read have been pretty good. What the heck has gotten you to riled up?

``Isn`t it time to take a break, Mr. Singhal ? ``

If any Muslims are looking for something to sacrifice for next Bakra Eid, feel free to take Mr Singhal..That mothafucka needs a kick in the nuts so bad...

Sadna,

I would hardly characterize it as a `self goal`. Fanaticism, when done for right things isn`t bad. You know I am a fanatic too, though not in a religious way.

The issue is with Gandhian ideals and not the intensity of them...

Sincerely

YLH

tantralogician: ``Stop making these passes at me, you old constipated hag. Find someone of your own 4-legged species.``

Typical desi. I notice how brown people talk all kinds of sh1t when they`re in groups or hiding behind a computer. In real life they`re quiet as a mouse.



Anyways, all I can ask for is one chance to meet u. Kid, Ima rip ur skin off just to get on ur nerves. And thats a promise.

Where do u live?

Samina

Excuse me for butting in but i dont understand why ure even dignifying with acknowledgement, an interactor like tranawhatever who doesnt have the decency to address women tameez sae, much less debate insaan kee tarah.

Allow him to wallow in his own bakwaas, quite alone...the more u try to get him to make sense, the more hysterical he will get for attention. Some people just arent worth the effort.

tc :)

anNy

Dear Saminashah the fluent liar,

You lied on CHOWK by falsely accusing me of comments I didn`t make. Now let`s see if you have the courage to admit to your mistakes without hiding behind your high-school girl prattle.

tantralogician<

If Shahnawaz Khan was a Pakistani then I am an Italian.

Why do Indians engage this immature, ignorant, rude joker in dialogue? He is less open to reason than a six month old puppy. In last one month I have seen him call every Indian names because he can not face being challenged on his laughable theories. Indians should boycott him.

PS Rsidhar for the record you are the one who started the namecalling between us by calling me an `immature twit`. I merely called you for what you are..

Rsidhar,

Unlike you Sadna is a fighter... Sadna has made that promise too many times only to break it again. But she will keep retaliating.. sadly, when clearly what I am saying is true. I am glad that you have admitted defeat (if not in so many words)... I think Sarwari has hit the nail on the head. Your disgusting post was a show of weakness and defeat not to mention frustration...

Jiyo.. you were never my match anyway.

-YLH

ylh #984
``But did you know Khomeini quoted extensively from Gandhi and Gita in his sermons?``

So what? Khomeini quoted extensively from the Quran too as does Osama. By your own logic of `guilt by association` then all Muslims are fanatics. You ought to think a little before hitting a self goal like this.

Unless you are arguing that any quoting from religious texts constitutes fanaticism. It doesnot.

www.m-w.com

fanatic : ``marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion ``

Khomieni`s(or anyone`s) fanaticism comes from what he said and did to those who criticised his beliefs, or disagreed with him.

Non Muslim support for the Pakistan Movement:

On the question of `minorities` supporting the Pakistan Movement... Christian Leader and MLA C E Gibbons from Punjab and Diwan Bahadur SP Singha both of them voted for Pakistan in the Punjab legislative assembley. As mentioned earlier Professor Dutta, a Hindu professor of F C College was a campaigner and pleader for Pakistan, and Justice Cornelius was a christian immigrant to Pakistan along with thousands of others, escaping the proespects of a Hindu raj.

-YLH

Isn`t it time to take a break, Mr. Singhal ?

by Amit Sengupta

Instead of a starting a bogus anti-Christ march from Goa, Mr. Ashok Singhal should take a break.

Every shrill word he utters, every grumpy gesture he makes, every sectarian cause he takes up with such diabolical passion, reminds the nation of only one thing - the VHP supremo needs a break.

Instead of the nafrat yatra, Mr. Singhal would do well to withdraw to a quieter beach at any extreme point of the ``free Goa`` map. And if he looks out at the horizon of the Arabian Sea, much to his surprise, he will bnot see any ominous Portuguese ship descending towards the Goan shores with an exclusive agenda of compulsory conversion and mass inquisition. This is because, and unlike what the warped Sangh historians might have told him, the inquisitions happened in the past, like the medieval crusades or Shankaracharya`s campaign against Buddhism or the fall of Constantinople.

That is why Mr. Singhal should stop lying and resurrecting phantoms from the past which are now dead and buried. The Christians of India are not responsible for the atrocities committed by Portuguese and British colonisers or their inheritors. Blaming them for the crimes of colonialism is not only racist, it is wrong history.

Certainly, the Muslims of contemporary India do not hold a brief for Mahmud of Ghazni or Taimur Lane who looted Mathura and Sarnath, and massacred Delhi. Why should Indian Muslims be held accountable for the actions of the barbarians from the past ?

In fact, before burning the churches, disrupting prayer meetings and desecrating the Bible in tribal interiors, before pushing a quiet community to the wall for no fault of theirs, the rabble rousers of the Sangh Parivar should rethink as to what compels the poor to adopt a new religion. The Dalits of Maharashtra adopted neo-Buddhism, because the varna vyavastha of the Hindu caste society had left no space for a basic reform. It was a protest against the stifling Brahminical-upper caste domination, a search for a new cultural, spiritual paradigm, which radical Buddhism provided.

If conversion and reconversion will rectify the distortions of social history, then why doesn`t Mr. Singhal talk of reconverting the Dalits from neo-Buddhism back to the caste society; or even the Sikhs, Muslims and Arya Samajis, large sections of whom collectively chose to shift precisely because they were low caste, humiliated and brutalised by the oppressive, top heavy, orthodox Hindu social system. A different religion gave them an egalitarian cultural space and a semblance of social respect, if not real and tangible economic and political freedom.

Today large sections of Dalits in Bihar have converted to militant Marxism-Leninism. The Dalits have chosen to block upper caste land, retaliate collectively and carve out their own liberated zones because in the changing landscape of post-colonialism, no community will take anything lying down. They will resist and fight back, like the workers resisted in Bombay and the peasants resisted in Chauri Chaura during the freedom movement, despite British might and despite Gandhi.

Why doesn`t Mr. Singhal take a padyatra to Laxmanpur Bathe or Haibaspur in Bihar where the Dalits were massacred and reconvert them to the virtues of caste society ? Is it because of the tacit alliance of the Ranbir Sena withthe BJP ? Every Dalit knows that the upper caste private army is partonised by the BJP (also RJD). Look at the caste division in the recent polls. The Bhumihars do not vote for the communists in Jehanabad or Dhanbad. They vote for BJP.

Mr. Singhal`s conspiracy theory of conversion is bunkum. No forcible mass conversion has taken place in the recent past either in Goa, in Keonjhar, in the Dangs, or in any part of India. And tribals are not Hindus. Mr. Singhal should take a relook at what Hindu `missionaries` have done with tribals in South Bihar. They have destroyed the tribal essence, turned them into `glorified` Dalits. But it does not mean that others should now go and ransack Hindu temples in Chotanagpur, or roast people alive or kill them in cold blood.

In the Dangs, the Sangh Parivar fronts actually want to increase their territorial influence by converting tribals into the caste society. The political against the missionary begins here. The conversion bogey against Christians is being used as a mass phobia to psychologically assimilate the conservative sections of upper caste Hindus and terrorise minorities. No government or media report has proved the existence of mass or partial conversion to Christianity in any of these hot beds of Right wing Hindutva activity.

That is why, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee backtracked after calling for a national debate on conversion when the attacks on Christians in Gujurat had intensified last year. That is why Mr. George Fernandes has chosen a tacit silence on the Wadhwa Commission report though he had earlier sniffing an ``international conspiracy`` behind the killings of Graham Staines and his children.

The Wadhwa Commission found no evidence of international conspiracy because there is no international conspiracy. The conspiracy is being hatched right here, under the nose of a government which has chosen to look the other way while Christians are being hounded, humiliated and attacked. This is the incipient Hindutva version of rabid Talibanisation.

The National Human Rights Commission has pointed out the political affiliation of Dara Singh. The Wadhwa Commission has said that Staines was not doing any conversion work. He was working with leprosy patients. Is it a crime to work with leprosy patients ?

The Srikrishna Commission has documented the deliberate role of the Shiv Sena and its chief in the Bombay pogrom against Muslims in 1992-3 under the then benign Congress regime. The report was dumped with the subtle support of the Vajpayee government. Indeed, will the new Congress-NCP `secular` government have the courage to book the killers ?

As for Mr. Asok Singhal, after he has exorcised the ghosts of the Portuguese, he should go to the condemned town of Tehri in the Garhwal hills of UP. There is an ancient Hindu temple here which will submerged, probably this November. There are several beautiful tempels in this Shiva-Ganga territory which will disappear under a white sheet of water due to the big dam. Why doesn`t Mr. Singhal march to save these temples from the contractor-politician nexus ? Why discriminate against Shiva in favour of Ram Lalla ? Why target the Pope, when the enemy lies within ? And ``within`` means within. In the Hindu sense of the word.

Amen.



There is a very good reason why the Hindutva Parivar is not bothered about the Shiva Temples that are being destroyed by the construction of dams. Indeed, several hundred Shaiva temples have been destroyed in Sri Lanka, yet the supposedly `Hindutva` government of India takes no notice of them. The reason is that the Hindutvadins are actually Vaishava fanatics; they don`t care if Shaiva temples are destroyed. The only ones who give some respect are the Advaitin Shankaracharyites, who however merely seek to destroy Shaivism by submerging it into a whole host of `astik` Brahmanic Gods. As long as Dravidian Shaivism remains a part of Hinduism, there is the very real threat that Shaivism shall go the way of Buddhism : to the dustbin of history. The only solution is the declare Shaivism a separate Dravidian religion !

Author : Deepti Hodlya

Dalitstan Journal,

Volume 1, Issue 3 (Dec. 1999)

__________________________________________________

CORRECTION:

The URL in the earlier posting is:

www.dalitstan.org/books/decline/decline01.html

Please Access it!

__________________________________________________

re:Reply #: 976

sarwari,

Since when has chowk`s clown been decent to others? This guy does not deserve any decency. Go over his recent posts directed at me in this forum and other forums.

There is no frustration involved here. Frustration aganist what? I am not even interacting with this joker and i have no intention of interacting with him. I am glad people like Sadna are feeling the same way.

Sridhar

Chapter 1

Decline and Fall of Buddhism

by

Dr. K. Jamanadas

Depicting Buddha as Hindu



For a last few years, Sangha activists are trying to depict to the international community, that they respect the Buddha. While doing that they use terminology depicting him as a Hindu. About Ambedkar also, similar thing is seen, books are written to show the work of Hegdewar and Ambedkar was same. We find Shankaracharyas garlanding the photo of Dr. Ambedkar. We find Brahmanic dignitaries like Sankaracharya paying a visit to Nagpur Diksha-bhoomi to pay tributes. And the recent incident is well known that RSS supremo Sudarshan garlanded the statue of Ambedkar - the maker of the Indian Constitution - on Deekshabhoomi at Nagpur, and the Ambedkarites have washed and ``purified`` the statue ``poluted`` by touch of someone who condemns the Constitution.

Declaring Buddha as an avatara of god was the beginning

They declared the Buddha as an avatara of Vishnu, some times around eighth century, as a verse to this effect from Matsya Purana is engraved in a monument at Mahabalipuram. The process seems to be completed by the time of Jaydeo writing ``Gita Govind`` in 12th century, including Buddha`s name in it as an ``Avatara``. We are also aware that an average Brahmin takes a great pride that Buddhism was driven away from this land by Adi- Sankara.

How a non-existent religion can die?

Declaring the Buddha as ninth avatara of Vishnu, L. M. Joshi observes, was a ``remarkable cultural feat``, achieved by the Brahmanic Puranas, which later caused confusion in the minds of people with the result that Buddhism came to be treated as a ``heretical`` and ``aesthetic`` branch of Brahmanism. The present scholars like P. V. Kane, Radhakrishnan and even Swami Vivekanand, have pushed this confusion further back to the time of origin of Buddhism, by saying that Upanishadas are the origin of Buddhist thought. To this list must be added the name of B. G. Tilak, who devoted a full chapter in ``Gita Rahashya`` to prove that Buddhism was an off-shoot of Hinduism, (and one more chapter for proving that Christianity arose from Buddhism and hence eventually from Hinduism). Commenting Swami Vivekanada`s statement that the Swami and other Hindus did not understand Buddha`s teachings to be an honest confession, Joshi observes:

``... Not only the ancient and medieval brahmin teachers did not understand Buddhism; modern scholars born into the Brahmanical tradition have not shown any better understanding. Shankara, Kumarila, Udayana, and Sayana- Madhava did not understand Buddhism. This is true also of Tagore, Gandhi, Coomaraswamy and Radhakrishnan. ...`` [L.M.Joshi:1973:12]

Showing a great surprise of Brahmanic scholars claiming both that Buddhism was just a refined ``Hinduism``, and also claiming with pride that Buddhism was driven away by the Brahmanas and it has died down, he sarcastically observes:

``... The causes of the decline of Buddhism in India are attributed either to Tantrika practices or to Muslim invasion, or to both. Nobody even imagines that if Buddhism were only a ``reformed`` or ``refined`` version of ``Hinduism`` how it could be said to have declined and died away while ``Hinduism`` is still flourishing and is the faith of majority of Indians. Buddhism can be said to have declined only when there was evidence for its existence at a certain period in Indian history apart from the existence of ``Hinduism``. If Buddhism did not exist apart from Brahmanism or ``Hinduism`` it did not die at all. A non-existent tradition or way of life does not die. The theory of decline of Buddhism, from the standpoint of ``traditional`` history is a false theory. On the other hand, if the decline of Buddhism in India was a historical fact, the theory of its origin as a ``reformed`` Brahmanism is a false one and must be discarded.`` [Ibid. p.14]

If Buddhism was a sect of ``Hinduism``, then one may well ask the proud supporters of Shankaracharya, what was that religion which was ``driven out by Adi Sankara``, as they claim? Was it also Hinduism?

Buddhism is not a sect of Hinduism

As Swami Dharmatirtha observed, in an answer to those writers, who have treated Buddhism as a sect of Hinduism, that we do not know of any Hinduism having existed before the Buddha and if Hinduism did not exist, Buddhism could not have been a sect of it. There was the Brahman religion of sacrifices, confined to a small Aryan community, and the common people had their ancient religion of some sort of hero worship and ancestor worship and images. Both these were domestic, neither the public yajnyas of Brahmins nor the temples of tribal Indians were in existance. Swamiji feels:

``... Buddhism was a revolt against both the prevailing systems. In fact it was the first organized religion in the modern sense of the term ``religion``. It succeeded in driving out the Brahman religion of sacrifices, but gradually succumbed to the influences of the popular religion. Its final absorption in the primitive religion was due to the fact that the Brahmans favoured the religion of gods and goddesses and rituals, and not the religion of righteousness. [Swami Dharmatirtha:1946:109]

Buddhism was the national Religion of India

Well, inspite of what these elitits say, decline of Buddhism is a historical fact, and was the cause of all ills, India had to face in the past. That the ills of common people of India today are due to the decline and fall of Buddhism in historical times, is not well understood by the masses, and how it affected the life of common people and what kind of miseries the subsequent generations had to suffer, is a subject which not many scholars have given much thought to.

The fact that at one time Buddhism was the national religion of India and was followed by the majority of population, is almost forgotten. There is a feeling in the minds of many, that India is and was a Hindu country having always had a majority of Hindus. This again is a misconception. In historical times the population of India never had majority of Hindus. Swami Vivekananda, estimated Buddhists to be two thirds of population [L.M.Joshi:1977:358] and Dr. Ambedkar says Buddhist were in majority. [W&S,vol.7,p.345] Then there were Jains and Veerashaivas and Tribal religions in addition to Muslims, Sikhs and Christians coming in the later times.

That Buddhism was not only the faith practiced by majority of people but had eclipsed Brahmanism to a great extent and the Brahmins had lost all the respect of masses as well as princely rulers. They were smarting under this defeat. [W&S,vol.7,p.346] They did everything in their power to finish off Buddhism and after Muslim invasion, succeeded in it. Thus Buddhism disappeared to a great extent from the land of its origin. Buddhism was the national religion of India, not only because the Buddha was an Indian, descended from an Indian king of the Sakya clan, but as observed by Swami Dharma Teertha:

``... because Buddhism was the source and inspiration of the national awakening witnessed in the Indian empires and kingdoms which controlled the destinies of the country for over a thousand years; because Buddhism, for the first time, united India in a common cultural synthesis and organization; because unlike Brahmanism, which was the religion of the privileged classes, Buddhism was the first religion of the common people, not forced on them, but accepted by their free will and pleasure; because Buddhism brought out in the fullest measure the immense potentialities of the nation in all its manifold aspects - science and art, literature and religion, commerce and industry, internal progress and international reputation; and lastly, because no other religion has till this day been able to make India a great nation as Buddhism did. [p.76]

Brahmins usurped Buddhism

Brahmans became the leaders of Buddhism because of their learning, and first disfigured it thoroughly with ritualism and images, and then destroyed its separate organization of monasteries and monks with the help of the foreign masters who came into power. But the Buddhism of Harsha and Nagarjuna did not disappear, it formed the nucleus of the later Hinduism, superadded with horrors of caste. To become the sole leaders of the country and to enforce their system of castes, has always been the prime motive of Brahmanism, and if Buddhist order of monks and monasteries had survived, the Brahmins could not have achieved this goal. So they completely destroyed the external institution of Buddhism, the monks and monasteries. Brahmins became the undisputed leaders, and a new popular religion, Hinduism, emerged with important aspect of caste, as Dharmatitha observed:

``... Caste is an entirely independent social order which was neither in the ancient Aryan religion nor in primitive Indian religion nor in Buddhism. It is the unique contribution of the Brahman priests, and none else ever wanted it, until the country lost its national religion and political freedom, and the Brahmans succeeded in imposing the system upon the people almost at the point of the bayonet with of alien masters. [p.110]

Brahmanism does not mean Brahmins alone

Lest there should be any misunderstanding about the term Brahmanism and other derivatives of it, it must be clearly understood, what is meant by this term. Swami Dharma Teertha made it clear:

``British Imperialism does not mean the British people; it symbolizes a vast system and has numerous votaries among Indians also. Brahmanism, similarly, does not signify the Brahmans exclusively, but an ancient order of things of which the Brahmans are the leaders and champions. It stands for the aggregate of ideals, institutions and past history of the socio-religious constitution of the Hindu society. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the fact that the cause we have to serve is the welfare of the entire nation and not the sentiment of separate classes or castes. If, therefore, some of us Brahmans, or Kshatriyas or others have to accept a larger share of the blame for the disaster which has befallen us all, we should not hesitate to welcome the opportunity. That circumstance should be an incentive to put forth still greater efforts to right the wrong we have done. It is the system which is throttling us all equally, it is that pernicious system that is the subject of our criticisms. [p.11]

A prominent thinker of Maharashtra, Raosaheb Kasbe, has elaborated the subject by saying that, Brahmins are fortunte that, ``Brahmin`` is a name of Caste as well as of a ``Varna``, thereby implying Class, this status being bestowed upon them by Smritis. As a class and as a power structure, Brahmins have developed vested interests. Dalit writers divide the history as Brahmin Vs. non-Brahmin, instead of Vedic Vs. non-Vedic, and when the words having Brahmin as one of their components are used by them to criticise these vested interests, the meaning implied is against the power structure and not agaist the caste. If this is a blameworthy mistake, the mistake is committed by the authors of Smritis, specially ``Yama smriti``, and they and the later authors desrve the blame. [Kasbe Raosaheb:1994:242]

Causes of fall of Buddhism

Before coming to the effects of fall of Buddhism, which is the main subject matter of this tract, we will briefly the discuss the various causes that led to this tragedy which befell on this country. As exclaimed by L. M. Joshi, this ``tragedy`` is mostly ``overlooked or confused``, [L.M.Joshi:1977:xvii] and ignored or distorted by the elite of this land for selfish caste motives.

M. M. Kane`s views

Maha Mahopadhyaya Dr. P. V. Kane summarizes the various reasons for the decline and ultimate fall of Buddhism from the land of its origin. Like all other Brahmanic scholars, he denies the Brahmanic crusade against Buddhism as the main cause. He mentions various reasons important being the following: [Kane:1980:400]

1. The debates in four Buddhist councils one after the other till Kaniska and the resultant differences of opinion within the Buddhist scholars.

2. End of royal patronage after the reign of Harshavardhana.

3. Important scholars of Buddhism left the country.

4. The high moral set up by the Buddha were found to be too cumbersome for the followers. The monasteries of bhikkus and bhikkunis became the places of laziness and immoral behaviour and lowly tantric practices. Sexual intercourse became the part of their `yoga saadhanaa`.

5. To oppose Buddhism and to popularize Hinduism, Brahmins had to make revolutionary changes in the nature and practices of their religion, in the early and later centuries...............

.........................................

__________________________________________________

Very juicy & Eye-opening information ahead.Read complete account,right from those who are the denizens of that NetherWorld called ``DALISTAN``.

Are these the rumblings of the TNT---Three Nation Theory?------Onwards!Onwards! Get the 5/95(The 5% Brahmins who wield 95% power)

www.dalitstan.org/journal/hindutwa/htv000/bgbrabrk.html

RE: Reply #: 981 ylh

``If there was one man who thought of his people as better than British it was Jinnah.. your goody goody nonsense about `equals of british and at the same intellectual level as the british` just doesn`t make sense for Gandhi.``

I am not surprised that you don`t understand this concept because all it takes for Pakistani leaders to bend over for the shaft is a glare from the West. Didn`t realize that it ran in some of it`s citizens too.

More of Sadna`s stupid arguments:

Sadna tells me Ambedkar didn`t mean it in the sense I am taking it..

Kindly explain how many senses one can take of the following statement?

``Mr Gandhi is no exception to this rule. He presents himself to the world as a liberal but his liberalism is only a very thin veneer which sits very lightly on him as dust does on one`s boots. You scratch him and you will find that underneath his liberalism he is a blue blooded Tory. He stands for the cursed caste. He is a fanatic Hindu upholding the Hindu religion``

Not many I am afraid.

Then she says: ``I posted answers to your earlier questions, all you could reply was with a brush off.``

Your replies were `I haven`t read the book`.. Please don`t lie.. I won`t take that as a proper reply.

``A fanatic would be Ayatollah Khomeini who issued a fatwa for the death of Rushdie for blaspheming the Prophet.``

I agree. But Did you know Khomeini quoted extensively from Gandhi and Gita in his sermons?

As for the rest of your bizarro post.. the question was not of Gandhi`s opinion of Ambedkar.. after all Ambedkar was an honest man.. but Ambedkar`s opinion of Gandhi ... remember?

``Even in a perfect world, both Gandhi and Ambedkar stand out as shining examples of how to disagree``

Well I agree about Ambedkar.. and it is like him that I wish to denigrate Gandhi.. you know:``He stands for the cursed caste. He is a fanatic Hindu upholding the Hindu religion`` My only regret is that Quaid e Azam actually called Gandhi a great man ...

Now coming to the `Dominion` point.. Once again.. I must explain it in clearer terms for a slow minded individual like yourself:

I spoke of Swaraj Bloc of Jinnah, Motilal Nehru, CR Das etc which was on the verge of attaining Dominion status in the 1920s.. Gandhi`s non-cooperation movement stopped that. My point predates the Muslim league/Congress Rivalry of the 1930s... Yes perhaps the Muslim League in the 1930s asked for complete independence... the question IS not about asking for `Complete Independence`... that was well and good..

My `Dominion` issue deals with early 1920s period, when Gandhi`s chaos blocked the way to dominion self government. It has nothing to do with Muslims` stance of complete independence, because, we are NOT arguing Hindu Muslim constructs of Independence movement, but rather Swaraj Bloc of Political Moderates in the Parliament, and the Khilafatists + non cooperation wallahs under Gandhi. Infact it is quite the opposite.. the Swaraj Bloc of Jinnah, Motilal Nehru and others was dominated by Hindus, while a majority of Muslims were agitating foolishly under the banner of the stupid Khilafat movement and its remnants... led by Gandhi.

So please educate yourself first and then speak. Thankyou very much...

-YLH

Response to saminashah #982

Saminashah falsely accused me of calling Ferzie ``unpatriotic`` and ``disloyal`` and when her lies were called she tried to deflect everyone`s attention by saying she is constipated. After advertising the hapless state of her colon the hag suddenly turned romantic and wanted to know my age! Alas, like her colon, none of her shenanigans has worked. Samina`s reputation as a liar remains as solidly instransigent as the debris wedged up her sphincter.

tantralogician

Tantrum,

This has been a particularly uninspired exchange; I give you credit for namecalling to the end-at least you`ve been consistant, if not enlightening. May I suggest that you stop hanging out with the grownups and sit at the children`s card table next time? And perhaps you should know better than to thana baazi with adults next time?

Chowk Editors,

Is there an age limit/range of the interactors allowed on this website? At least put up a kiddie`s corner board, so that our time is not wasted...

Tvarad,

You have again resorted to mythology and no real facts. Your understanding of partition history seems to based on your own 1+1 theories plus a few hagiographic biographies of Gandhi.

The fact is that the British were ready to give Dominion status in 1925 to India. Gandhi`s movement delayed independence since it disrupted the efforts of Swaraj bloc of Jinnah, Motilal and C R Das... Jinnah by all accounts was not a weathercock. It was after he saw no hope of compromise with the Hindus that he `jumped the ship`. Given that many in India felt that Jinnah was the only incorruptible politician in all of India.. destroys your theory.

If there was one man who thought of his people as better than British it was Jinnah.. your goody goody nonsense about `equals of british and at the same intellectual level as the british` just doesn`t make sense for Gandhi. Gandhi was prototype for the various religious spiritualists who ventured into and destroyed south asian politics for good.

I suggest you read some history instead of hagiography.

Sincerely

YLH

ylh #969
``Since you have only pathetically tried to defend one point about Gandhi`s hindu fanaticism, I will take it that you agree with the rest of the points I have put up...``

ylh, you cannot make sense on even one single point, what is the use of my debating your other points?

I posted answers to your earlier questions, all you could reply was with a brush off. Gandhi`s POVs about the type of Hindu-Muslim unity he wanted to see was covered in that post. (So are some Farzana`s points about Gandhi answered, but I think she is another person who either ignores counter arguments or replies only with more recrimination).

You can keep up this constant mindless recrimination, it doesnot matter to me. It makes no sense to me to debate with someone like you is not listening, much less registering what the other is saying and who keeps parrotting what he says again and again.

I certainly donot agree with your points and Ambedkar certainly makes the case that Hindus were for Dominion and Muslims were for independence. And I certainly donot agree Gandhi was a Hindu fanatic, nor did Ambedkar mean it in the sense you take it.
``fanatic : marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion``
A fanatic would be Ayatollah Khomeini who issued a fatwa for the death of Rushdie for blaspheming the Prophet. Here was Gandhi calmly arguing Ambedkar, PURELY ON MERITS and with no hint of the slightest outrage, on the need or otherwise for debunking all of the Hindus` holiest scriptures. He took Ambedkar`s arguments against the Vedas and Upanishads to be honest ones, not mischievously motivated ones, certainly not meant to disrespect cherished tradition. Absolutely never does Gandhi hold Ambedkar`s rancour for Hinduism against him, he considered it not rancour but justified anguish, nor did Ambedkar`s arguments however critical of Hindu tenets, ever make Gandhi consider Ambedkar to put himself(Ambedkar) `outside` the Hindu fold.

Gandhi didnot consider Ambedkar to be `delinquent` for his vehement opposition to Hinduism, and Ambedkars possible adoption of Buddhism was seen by Gandhi as Hindus` and Hinduism`s failure to correct Ambedkar`s injury, not an banishment/ estrangement deserved by Ambedkar for his opposition of the religion Gandhi held so dear. These are not stances of a fanatic, and by all indications Ambedkar knew this. Ambedkar was never so estranged from Hindus that he didnot give his best to what was called in his time Gandhi/Nehru`s India nor did he fail for example to present a fair case for the Hindus in his book Pakistan. Nor yet did he incite Dalits to destructive anger(as he had the power to do) inspite of his anger at Gandhi or inspite of suffering and being witness to the adverse circumstances which Dalits had to contend with.

We live in a world where the Pope is supposed to be `infallible` and the priest who says otherwise is excommunicated, Islamic scriptures are said to be `immutable`, various leaders are exiled outside their countries or jailed for life simply for political dissidence, and people find themselves on death row for only speaking about the Prophet`s parents and hair under the arms of 6th century Arabs. Even in a perfect world, both Gandhi and Ambedkar stand out as shining examples of how to disagree. Try such a debate between any other two influential national leaders anywhere on the basic fundamentals of some other religion, while they are both leading political movements contending for power and see what havoc ensues. Indians are blessed to have had Gandhi and Ambedkar and their sincerity of purpose, there is absolutely no doubt about this.

Thats my last on this, I have absolutely no interest in interacting with you further.

Some of Rsidhar`s respectable posts:

RSIDHAR`S OBSESSION WITH SODOMY: