Myths and Dreams: Hindutva Nationalism and the Indian Diaspora

#43 Saminasha

I challenge you to show a single message from an indian interactor that DENIES hindu extremism exists.

What a number of people are saying, including myself, is that there are a number of competing fundamentalisms in India: Christian, Islamic, Sikh, Hindu, Marxist etc. And that these groups compete with and copy each other. And we should address the central question and condemn all of them.

A discussion of hindu extremism in the ``abstract`` that does not mention the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri pandits or the Shah Bano legislation is one sided. A discussion of hindu extremism in India that does not discuss the fact that certain North-Eastern states went from 10% christian to 90% christian in 30 years is incomplete and misleading.

Here is a quiz for you: When was the VHP founded and why? Just maybe this will give you some insight into some of the ``reactive`` dynamics of ALL religious extremism in India.

re: dost-mittar

{Angana Chatterjis and Arundhati Roys may have fawning admirers in Pakistan; but I think that they have conveted more moderate Hindus into intolerant fanatics than the other way around. And that`s the bottom line. }

...you can say that again...they are more willing to listen to criticism from people like mj akbar than pscyhos like roy and vijay prasad....

re: saminasha #60

...bush has more important things to worry about like keeping armed mullahs away from baseball games and flights...

July 2003 Issue

Bush Ignores India`s Pogrom

by Amitabh Pal



I VISITED GANDHI`S HOME STATE OF GUJARAT in mid-December for my brother-in-law`s wedding. Coincidentally, it was the day of elections to decide the fate of a rightwing state government. According to Human Rights Watch, that government was complicit in the massacre of at least 2,000 Muslims early last year, the highest toll in Hindu-Muslim violence since India`s independence.

The election results caused my stomach to churn. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi returned to power. It successfully capitalized on Hindu animosity toward Muslims and harped on local pride, claiming to defend the honor of the state against attacks by secularist outsiders. Gandhi wouldn`t have been too happy.

The events in Gujarat are only the most obvious expression of how the growth of rightwing Hindu fundamentalism since the late 1980s has undermined Gandhi`s legacy. This trend is not just confined to Gandhi`s home state. A coalition headed by the BJP, the same party that governs Gujarat, currently governs all of India.

The United States has been, at best, equivocal in its response to the Gujarat anti-Muslim campaign. And it has been half-hearted in trying to stem the flow of funds from the United States to Hindu extremist groups in India.

The BJP`s militant, hard-line attitude apparently does not trouble the Bush Administration, which has drawn closer since September 11 to the Indian government (even while maintaining an alliance with the BJP`s bugbear, General Pervez Musharraf`s regime in Pakistan). The BJP has used the post-September 11 climate as a cover for harsh internal measures, such as passing stiff anti-terrorism laws and, as Gujarat shows, targeting Muslims. The Indian government has reciprocated U.S. friendship by strongly supporting the Bush Administration`s campaign in Afghanistan and by being reticent about the Iraq War.

According to The New York Times, the only public remarks about Gujarat that the U.S. ambassador, Robert Blackwill, made in the aftermath of the violence was: ``All our hearts go out to the people who were affected by this tragedy. I don`t have anything more to say than that.`` In contrast, after terrorists killed twenty-four Kashmiris in late March this year, Blackwill was quick to issue a statement condemning ``the ghastly murder of innocent men, women, and children.`` Blackwill did not even visit Gujarat subsequent to the pogrom.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was asked by The Hindu, a leading national paper, about ``why the United States has not been forthcoming in its criticism.`` She responded that the BJP ``government is leading India well, and it will do the right thing.``

Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca did term the events in Gujarat ``really horrible,`` but she neglected to assign any blame.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell visited India last July, he made no mention of Gujarat, as Mira Kamdar pointed out in World Policy Journal. The furthest that the Bush Administration went was to raise the matter privately with the Indian government, warning that it was harming India`s image, according to the Bombay-based Economic Times. By contrast, the European Union likened the Gujarat situation to apartheid and said that it had similarities with Nazi Germany of the 1930s.

Apparently, the U.S. government has deemed it more important to keep India on its side in the ``war on terrorism`` than to risk a row over even grotesque human rights violations.

The state-sponsored violence in Gujarat came in retaliation for the actions of a Muslim mob, which, on February 27 last year, burned alive nearly sixty Hindus on a train in the city of Godhra. The train was returning from Ayodhya in Northern India, where many of the train`s occupants had gone as part of a mobilization to build a temple to Lord Ram, a Hindu deity, on the site of a mosque. The retaliation against Muslims started the next morning, with the worst incidents happening over the next three days. In addition to those killed, the violence forced more than 100,000 Muslims into becoming refugees and destroyed 360 Muslim places of worship. Numerous women were raped, sometimes gang-raped. ``I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence as the recent barbarity in Gujarat,`` wrote Harsh Mander, a government official who resigned in disgust. ``This was not a riot,`` one senior police official told The New York Times. ``It was a state-sponsored pogrom.``

India`s National Human Rights Commission faulted the state government for ``failure of intelligence and action.`` The commission named senior BJP officials as among the accused. ``These are grave matters, indeed, that must not be allowed to be forgiven or forgotten,`` the commission said.

Human Rights Watch issued a report on the massacres, entitled ``We Have No Orders to Save You.`` It detailed the extensive complicity of the authorities in the violence. ``In many cases, the police led the charge, using gunfire to kill Muslims who got in the mobs` way,`` the report states. ``A key BJP state minister is reported to have taken over police control rooms in Ahmedabad on the first day of the carnage, issuing orders to disregard pleas for assistance from Muslims.`` Police also ``participated directly in the burning and looting of Muslim shops and homes and the killing and mutilation of Muslims. In many cases, under the guise of offering assistance, the police led the victims directly into the hands of their killers.``

Ahsan Jafri, a former member of parliament, lived in the Gulmarg Society neighborhood in -Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat and the site of the worst violence. Jafri tried to use his home as a shelter for Muslims. But then a Hindu mob approached his house.

``On February 28, we went to Ahsan Jafri`s home for safety,`` says Mehboob Mansoori, in testimony to Human Rights Watch. Jafri ``was holding the door closed. Then the door broke down. They pulled him out and hit him with a sword across the forehead, then across the stomach, then on his legs. . . . They then took him on the road, poured kerosene on him, and burned him. There was no police at all.``

Mansoori managed to survive. However, his family was all but wiped out. ``Eighteen people from my family died,`` he told Human Rights Watch. ``All the women died. My brother, my three sons, one girl, my wife`s mother, they all died. . . . Other girls were raped, cut, and burned. . . . Sixty-five to seventy people were killed inside.``

Jafri`s daughter, Nishrin Hussain, who lives in Delaware, remains outraged.

``It was prepared and preplanned with government blessing all along,`` she says. ``The police and the government connived with the rioters.``

After the riots, Nishrin returned to Gujarat to see what happened. She was not welcome. During her visit, people circulated posters that contained veiled threats on her life, she says. And when she went to one village, a mob told her if she dared to come back, she`d be killed.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a body set up by Congress, denounced the violence in Gujarat and has even named India as a ``country of particular concern,`` thus placing it in the company of such nations as China, Saudi Arabia, and Burma. Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the President is required to take diplomatic or economic actions against countries on the list.

Felice D. Gaer, chair of the commission, is critical of the Bush Administration`s response to the Gujarat violence. ``There`s been no public comment by the Administration on Gujarat other than in response to a direct question,`` Gaer says. ``The ambassador hasn`t visited the region. Senior officials are not interested in holding anyone responsible for the violence.``

Assistant Secretary of State Rocca claimed on March 22 at a Senate hearing on South Asia that ``much action`` has been taken by the Indian government. ``The legal system in India is agonizingly slow and that gives the impression that nothing is happening,`` she said. ``But the fact of the matter is that they did take action and they are continuing to take action,`` she said. The ``United States has spoken out loudly and often on the terrible events of Gujarat, and it did not in any way get a pass from anywhere in the world, much less from the Bush Administration.``

Sunil Lal, press officer at the Indian Embassy in Washington, is happy with the Bush Administration`s approach to Gujarat. ``The U.S. Administration is aware of the efforts made by the government of India, and you must have heard Christina Rocca`s recent testimony on this subject,`` he says.

Others rebut the State Department`s claims. As Smita Narula of Human Rights Watch pointed out in an op-ed in The Asian Wall Street Journal on the first anniversary of the pogrom, ``There have been no convictions of those responsible.`` In contrast, the government charged 131 Muslims under the harsh Prevention of Terrorism Act for the train burning. Between July and October, the government closed the Muslim refugee camps.

The response in the U.S. Congress was also, for the most part, mild. Jim McDermott, a liberal Democrat from Washington, spoke very carefully about Gujarat last April before an audience of Indian Americans in an event co-sponsored by the Overseas Friends of Bharatiya Janata Party. He said that while some members of Congress were concerned about the situation, he appreciated the Indian government`s response.

``Prime Minister Vajpayee has done a remarkable job in trying to balance the forces that make up a country as diverse as India,`` he said. McDermott was, however, more critical of the BJP in a phone interview, saying the party was ``wrong to inject religion into politics`` and that this ``just won`t work.``

The lack of a stronger response may be due to the increasing visibility and financial clout of the prosperous Indian American community, currently 1.7 million in number, with Gujaratis comprising 40 percent of the total. ``Intensive lobbying by members of the Indian American community prevented introduction of a resolution in the U.S. Congress condemning the violence,`` states Human Rights Watch. In the 2000 election cycle, Indian Americans contributed at least $13 million, according to Federal Election Commission data. Plus, growing U.S. business interests in India (notably in software, telemarketing, and the arms industry) have fostered a pro-India climate on the Hill. As a result, about 130 members of Congress are members of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans. McDermott is a past chair of the caucus. Congressmen Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey, and Gary Ackerman, Democrat of New York, both founders of the caucus, were last year awarded the Padma Bhushan, a top Indian civilian honor.

Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, and Senator Thomas Carper, Democrat of Delaware, have been more outspoken. They called up family members of the murdered ex-parliamentarian, Ahsan Jafri, to express their sympathy. Biden also addressed the issue publicly, saying that the killings were ``just plain wrong`` and that ``nothing justifies the slaughter of innocent women and children.`` ``About 2,000 people have been slaughtered in mob violence there, often--whether you like to hear it or not--with the collusion of local officials,`` he said at a conference hosted by an Indian business group.

But Biden took some heat for his stance from members of the Indian American community. ``The very next day, his office was bombarded with calls and e-mails saying, `You stay out of this; this is an internal Indian matter.` He backed off,`` says Najid Hussain, Jafri`s son-in-law.

Funds from charities in the United States flow to Hindu extremist groups in India, some of which may have been involved in the Gujarat violence. The Bush Administration has done little about this, in marked contrast to its vigorous attempts to investigate money allegedly going to Al Qaeda.

Vijay Prashad, author of The Karma of Brown Folk, a study of the Indian diaspora, estimates that Hindu extremist groups in this country raise at least $10 million a year, of which perhaps 10 percent goes to India.

One of the most notable Indian charitable organizations in the United States is the India Development and Relief Fund, which, according to The Financial Times, raised more than $10 million between 1997 and 2001 and sent $3.2 million to India between 1994 and 2000.

An ad hoc coalition of Indian Americans, the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, issued a report a few months ago alleging that the relief fund supports Hindu hate groups in India. One of these groups is the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (Tribals Welfare Organization), says Shalini Gera, a spokesperson for the campaign. The organization was involved in anti-Christian violence in the late 1990s in Gujarat, according to The Times of India, and in the anti-Muslim campaign, according to Frontline magazine. The Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad ``directed violence against Muslims`` during the Gujarat killings, reports Frontline. (Attempts to reach the organization for comment were unsuccessful.)

The Financial Times reports that the Justice Department may be investigating the fund. Vinod Prakash, the founder and president of the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), vehemently denies that his organization has received any sort of communication from the Bush Administration.

``It will prove to be an uphill battle for the U.S. to properly investigate and scrutinize these organizations because of their links to India`s ruling party, the BJP,`` says Narula of Human Rights Watch in The Financial Times. ``The U.S. needs India as an ally right now.``

Prakash also says that his organization doesn`t fund any Hindu rightwing groups, such as the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad. (The website of the group does name Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad among the list of ``IDRF-supported groups in Gujarat.``) He does not, however, deny ideological affiliations. ``I have every right as a person to be close to this or that organization,`` he says. ``But the IDRF has never discriminated. As a proud Hindu, I will never discriminate in my humanitarian service.``

By the time the Gujarat election results were announced, I had left the state. But I was appalled by the reaction I was hearing from Hindus in other parts of the country. While some opposed the Modi government, others were unabashedly supportive, and a whole lot of people were ambivalent. It is this reaction--both inside India and outside--that the BJP is counting on to forge ahead with its sectarian and violent agenda for the country.

``The Bush Administration and Congress should tell the Indian government that justice must be done,`` says Najid Hussain. ``The propagation of such an ideology has to stop.``

---

Amitabh Pal is Managing Editor of The Progressive.

NY Desis Protest Hindu Right

By Subuhi Jiwani

This piece originally appeared in Samar 15: Summer/Fall, 2002

Killers of Gandhi! Shame, shame!
Sadhvi Rithambara! Shame, shame!
Pandit Jasraj! Shame, shame!
Saffron Nazis! Shame, shame!


These were some of the slogans that could be heard outside the Ganesh Temple on Holly Avenue in Flushing where 60 to 70 Indians and Indian-Americans from the New York metro area, both Hindus and Muslims, were protesting the meeting and reception being held there for Sadhvi Rithambara on July 26, 2002. Sadhvi Rithambara, a Hindu religious figure is also a demagogue for the Sangh Parivar, the Hindu right-wing umbrella organization under which fall the ruling political party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and militant Hindu organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sabha (RSS) and the Bajrang Dal. Accompanying her speech was a performance by the classical Indian vocalist, Pandit Jasraj.

The groups protesting Rithambara`s visit included the International South Asia Forum (INSAF), Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), NRIs for a Secular and Harmonious India and Indian Muslim Action Network (IMAN). These groups contend that Rithambara`s visit to New York is aimed at collecting funds for her right-wing Hindu organizations back home that are directly responsible for the murder, rape and destruction unleashed against minority Muslims in Gujarat since February 27, 2002; a massacre funded, abetted and assisted by the BJP state government in Gujarat and the central government in New Delhi. They assert that not only is Rithambara responsible for spreading anti-Muslim hate speech, but also for advocating the torture, rape and murder of Muslim women, men and children.

On December 6, 1992, Rithambara incited armed, Hindu right-wing masses to break down the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, in violation of the order of the Indian Supreme Court. As a symbolic gesture to regain from ``Muslim invaders`` the lost Hindu Rashtra or nation, this act led to riots all over the nation which cost the lives of 3,000 people, mostly Muslim. Her visit to New York is an attempt to raise funds for what seem like innocuous Hindu cultural organizations in India, the groups state, and to funnel money collected from Indians in the US directly into violent activities of the Hindu Right.

Among the protestors was Aditi Desai, a sociologist and former UN consultant, who said, ``The bottom line of this event is to fundraise for the violent activities of the Hindu Right in India.`` Desai stated that Rithambara, who has a captive audience among the Hindu Indians in the US, manipulates Indian history in her speeches to reveal the dichotomies of good and evil. While the Hindu Indian is depicted as good, the Muslim Indian is depicted as the evil Other, therefore justifying and disseminating the ``Hindutva`` ideology of the BJP-led government and actively supporting anti-Muslim sentiment. She also stated that she was ashamed to be a Hindu in light of the massacres committed in the name of Hinduism in Gujarat in the months following February 27.

IMAN`s Shaik Ubaid handed out flyers that compared ``Hindutva-Fascism`` with Nazism. It stated: ``It is a matter of deep concern that the US administration as well as ordinary citizens are completely incognizant of Fascist fund-raising activities openly taking place in our midst. How would we have reacted if Joseph Goebbels had descended on New York to collect funds for the Holocaust?``

There seemed to be a consensus among the protestors that Hindus in the US were often ignorant of the egregious acts of violence being committed in the name of their religion in India. The Hindus, gathered to watch Rithambara speak, paid between one hundred and one thousand dollars for tickets.

An individual affiliated with the Hindu Right, who was attending the event, came out to speak to the protestors. When the protestors reminded him of the massacres of Gujarat, he reiterated the Newtonian discourses propagated by the chief minister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi. Modi stated after the first few days of the massacre that every action had an equal and opposite reaction. The individual pointed to the train burning at Godhra as an action that asked for the resultant Hindu backlash.

Chandana Mathur of INSAF and SAMAR refuted his argument by pointing to the mass scale of the massacre, something that India has not witnessed since partition and something that could not have been executed without the assistance of the government. When asked about the strategic importance of the protest, she said, `` I think the protest was useful because it has affected the cozy relationship between the Ganesh temple and the Sangh Parivar people. The head of the Ganesh Temple Society told a reporter that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America misled and manipulated them into holding the event, and that she`d never have agreed to it if she`d known that the Sadhvi was an RSS militant. By extension, other Hindu spaces in the US may begin to think twice before letting the Sangh Parivar hold events on their premises.``

Satish Kolluri, an avid fan of Pandit Jasraj exclaimed that his appearance at this event revealed his Hindu right-wing political stance. Gripped with an acute sense of betrayal, he shouted out, ``Pandit Jasraj, what are you doing here? How can you sing for the Sadhvi?`` The classical musician`s true colors had been revealed, he said, on his way home to dispose Jasraj`s CDs.

Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issaee . . . actually Buddhists?

Btw, Nussbaum`s essay is published in the book Nothing Sacred; Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror, edited by Betsy Reed.

Dost Mittar, Souza, Bbabu, rsax,

In her essay Religion, Culture, and Sex Equality: India and the United States, Martha Nussbaum writes:

``...Here are the three example of the dillemmna I have mentioned (1. 1983, Mary Roy challenges the Travancore Christian Act, ``under which daughters inherit only one fourth the share of the son``; 2. 1947, The Hindu Code bill, 3. 1978, the Shah Bano case) no different in degree, since the religions in India control so much of the legal system. On the other hand is the claim that of religious free exercise; on the other, women`s claims to various fundamental rights-including religious non discrimination. In the first case, women won a clear victory-interestingly, involving a small, politically powerless religion. In the second, women made some strides, but the increasing power of Hindu fundamentalism now threatens their situation. In the third, women suffered a painful and prominent defeat. Free exercise and sex equality appear, at least sometimes, to be on a collision course.

The theme of this volume is the relationship between women and fundamentalism. How does this theme bear on an argument that focuses on contemporary India? If by `fundamentalism` we mean a textually literalist strand in a religion. fundamentalism has little pertinence to the Indian debate about religion and its social role. Muslims in India have never been strongly influenced by Islamic fundamentalism, and there is no serious support for a return to the literal use of Islamic legal sources. What is problematic about the Muslim Personal Law Board is not its fundamentalism, but its entrenched conservatism and its nonrepresentative nature. It is a self perpetuating body of male clerics that nonetheless claim to speak for the entirety of a diverse community. BUT (emphasis mine) these properties are also found in a very similar form, in the Indian Christian community (composed of both Roman Catholics and Protestants) in which a small group of male clerics undertook, until very recently, to make laws for women without consulting them. Similarly, difficulties with Parsi religious law reform, which I shall not be discussing here, stem not from fundamentalism, which has no analogue in the Parsi religion, but from the political power of conservative old men.

Only in Hinduism does anything standardly called ``fundamentalism`` play a major political role; but the term `fundamentalism` is in many respects misleading as a name for the Hindu right. Hinduism has always been a loosely organised and regionally diverse religion, with different divinities assuming prominence in different regions, rather in the style of ancient Greek religion. Its texts are also plural and diverse: the ancient Vedic poems, highly obscure and susceptible of multiple interpretations, epics (the Mahabharata and Ramayana); ethical texts (e.g. Upanishads); law codes of later date (e.g. the Laws of Manu) and other sacred literature (e.g. the Kama Sutra). The Hindu right has suceeded in winning popularity for a politically constructed version of Hinduism, in which Rama is the central deity. Bu the fact that this is a politically constructed version of history rather than the ancient tradition is plain from recent attempts to muzzle and discredit (serious historians of the history of Hinduism (who, for example, point out that Hindus once ate beef). This version of Hinduism has been able to prevail to the extent that it has in part because of the disregard of the humanities as an essential part of education for citizenship, on the part of Nehru and his generation. Young University-educated people from the Hindu tradition were steered strongly towards science and technology, and rarely gained detailed knowledge of their own language and creation of alternatice visions of the Hindu past and future. (It is rather as if, in the US, Southern Baptists were the only people who read, knew, or cared about the Christian tradition)

.......we should remember that `Hindu fundamentalism` is a mixture of recent inventions with political aims in view...``(pp 218-220)


FYI: Nussbaum is an Ernst Freund Distinguished Professor of Law and Ethics at the U of Chicago, appointed in the Philosophy Dept., the Law School, the Divinity School, and theCollege. She is an associate in the Classics Dept., an affiliate of the Committee for South Asian Studies and a member of the board of the Committee on Gender Studies.

re: Dost-Mittar # 54

My comment was not so much about the merits or demerits of the article, as it was a question asking why Indians, generally, react in a negative sense to any criticism of India or themselves.

I agree with you said, but my question still remains. For example, Ironman has a view and s/he has labelled me as a ``fauji``. I have no objections to being called such even though it is far from the truth. On the other hand, M-Souza has said that fundlementalism exists both in India and Pakistan and compared to Hinduism, it is much more pronounced in Islam. I agree with that statement to an extent, but just because fundlementalism has a higher incidence in Islam than Hinduism is not an argument as much as it is an exuse to deny the obvious. Similarily, I can understand your point of view that intolerance encourages intolerance and extermism fuels extermism. I have no disagreements with that statement. My disagreement comes from the fact that I do not understand how does personalizing an issue solves the problem? Again, for example if Ironman calls me names, I have no objections but I fail to see how that can effectively address the problem and solve it nor do I understand how does that help Ironman, for example, in countering my arguments?

Ciao

ferozk#46
Writings such as this article have a purpose; the purpose of this article is to reduce the intolerance that is definitely creeping up among the Hindus. A very worthwhile purpose in itself. But this can only be done by being fair and balanced in one`s analysis. Otherwise, one is merely converting the converted.
One does not have to agree with the opponent`s viewpoint to acknowledge when the opponent`s point is valid. I take The Economist magazine as my idol in this respect, even though I frequently disagree with its philosophy. The Economist is an unabashed and unapologetic promoter of capitalism, free trade and gloablism. Yet, it always gives the devils -its opponents- their due whenever warranted. It thus probably has more influence on policies and policy makers than the CNNs and Fox`s of this world with a similar agenda.
I similarly consider myself to be an unabashed and unapologetic secularist, promoter of religious tolerance and defender of India`s Muslims and their rights. But I do and will acknowledge the opponents` points when I feel they are factually correct. In this way, I think I am more likely to win converts than merely parrottig one-sided diatribes. Angana Chatterjis and Arundhati Roys may have fawning admirers in Pakistan; but I think that they have conveted more moderate Hindus into intolerant fanatics than the other way around. And that`s the bottom line.

Nazar Hayat #37

It is not about this article where I totally agree with you as I usually do. It has more to do with your view which seems a continuation of some simplistic notions which stem from your article `transfer of power`...

All right minded historians here will agree that without taking into account the thesis `The Sole Spokesman` that Ayesha Jalal put up in 1985 much to the displeasure of the official Pakistani Ideologists, no analysis of Partition history is complete. I will let you read

I suggest you read Dr.Ayesha Jalal`s work, Dr. Ajeet Javed`s work, Dr. Anil Seal`s work, and Patrick French`s book on these topics... We can continue this discussion on your board if you want.

-Manto

re: Ironman # 51

Thank you for proving my point!

Ciao

#43 by Saminasha on August 26, 2003 7:17pm PT

The likes of Saminasha are just waiting for such articles to put India down. And the likes of chatterji are just ridiculous..(maybe she is married to a christian or a muslim)..they don`t speak the truth

Hindu fundamentalism exists or not is one issue..but Muslim fundamentalism is at its peak(or maybe not..the worst is yet to come? heh?)..so better look at your country first...and stop throwing bombs at Indians

If Hindus are turning towards fundamentalism at all, it is the result of muslim fundamentalism..as also the result of all that they have silently taken in their history..no they can`t take it anymore

#19 kaurasach has written the truth that the land belonging to India has been snatched by some `foreigners` and they call it Pakistan and these pakis now watch the tamasha ...

...kalia toh kehta tha ke do the...Yeh doosra kidar hai re???

Check out `few observations` by Fauji #2: (capped below for ur conv)


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
#46 by ferozk:

(1)
``The point of disagreement is not the ethnic or political background background of the author, but THE MESSAGE of the article.``

THE MESSAGE...and don`t you forget it.

(2)
It is truly sad that India, with a rich history of a civilization and with the potential of being a great nation, is so insecure that she has to lash out and verbally assult anyone who questions her perceptions about herself.

Indians should be rightfully proud of their history and the legacy they have given the world in so many fields of human endeavors and the contributions of India to the world has enriched our common history.

India and its people have survived for the last 10,000 years and more and they will survive in the future and for the Indians to react with such venom to any criticism of India suggests an insecurity of identity, which does not do justice to India, its people and history.



Wonders will never cease...First Romair, then Ferozk!

We`re being drowned in `love and respect`...halp! I caint swim!

re: saminasha

...if indians responded to garbage like this article, then blacks should be responding to louis farakhan and his cronies...

Saminasha#43

`` I cannot believe that there are Indian interactors on this board who deny that Hindu fundamentalism exists in the US...sigh...well, I suppose all Christian and Hindu orgs are just moral, God fearing folk...damn...show some courage and honesty here after your years of dishing it out to the Muslims...``

Define fundamentalism

BJP can be called nationalist, chavunist, communalist or even facist. By no means they are fundamentalist by my defintion.