Myths and Dreams: Hindutva Nationalism and the Indian Diaspora

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re: stuka

{..a typo..I am actually 24. }

...sure, and i`m lex lugar...

ok saxena -- my dear not-so-young man Stuka -- you surely cast a long net for the term left with the L word ......a new subcontinental dictionary?

``...stuka is a young man at 34???....damn.... ``

a typo..I am actually 24.

re: nasah #16

...stuka is a young man at 34???....damn....

``young man -- if left-to-leftists -- India-Pakistan will be like USA-CANADA -- it is the right`s right to DIVIDE -- that`s not right -- is the BIG problem...:-) ``

No Sir. If left to leftists, India-Pakistan will be like China and Mongolia. There will ofcourse be Hindu and Muslim unity. Both our skulls will be bleached in the sun a la Pol Pot. If we are lucky, we will share a bowl of gruel at a reducation camp for the middle class educated folks.

We may read about the right because it gets more publicity. But, in India, if you look at actual deaths and maimings, it is the Naxalites, the Maoists, People`s War Group etc that have claimed much more lives. The Leftist trail of blood starts in Eastern UP, goes to Bihar , Jharkhand, MP, Vidarbha, Parts of Andhra and is seeping through in Orissa. It is only in Bengal that a so called ``Communist`` government eradicated Naxalites by killing tens of thousands of young men in the countryside.

The Red Menace is alive and well in India. Unless free market reforms are undertaken on a war footing, and political and economic benefits start trickling down to the masses, India will face a danger that Nepal is facing right now.

``Maybe India and Pakistan can have Track 2 diplomacy to trade each others Leftists.``(STUKA)

young man -- if left-to-leftists -- India-Pakistan will be like USA-CANADA -- it is the right`s right to DIVIDE -- that`s not right -- is the BIG problem...:-)

``Seeing you conduct the Kashmir meeting recently in San Francisco I just wanted to

mention that you make many other South Asian`s proud. ``

:) This one makes Ras Siddiqui proud. La Roy makes Hamid Gul proud. What is it about leftists that they only make the other side proud? Maybe India and Pakistan can have Track 2 diplomacy to trade each others Leftists.

Dear Angana Chatterji,
I am very glad to find you writing here on CHOWK.

Seeing you conduct the Kashmir meeting recently in San Francisco I just wanted to

mention that you make many other South Asian`s proud.

Please continue to write here even though one feels that you have already been with us

for a while.


Ras

re: arjun-m # 150

Arjun, in the end we both agree that it is the ideals of terror, which are more dangerous than the acts of terror itself. Whether, they are taught in a madrassa or not, the problem is ideals and its indoctorination is more lethal than than the bombs or the killings.

Ciao

Ref Mantolives #121

[``The time has come to ban all conversions and start a re-conversion movement in India``

I like that about you Harimau. You don`t beat about the bush do you? Unlike your buddy P-mishra2 who tries to project himself as a liberal humanist... eventhough I suspect the dream of `reconversion` of Muslims and Christians is close his heart too...]

Well, we need our Bhangis in India. We can`t use our highly educated Christians for that purpose -- unlike you guys who have the household work assigned to the Masseys in Pakistan. So we need to re-convert the Muslims and assign them the job of carrying our excrement.

Love.

Harimau

Stuka #162 It applies to all of us (self included) of course, since actions speak louder than words. The difference is between those whose words reflect their actions (as in your case, and I hope in mine too), and those whose words do not (whether it is rsaxena or arjun singing about the joys of the Good Ship India that they jumped, or naqshbandi going on about the muslim ummah, having jumped the Good Ship Pakistan, or urstruly in Detroit).

Anyway, God bless these fakes for all the fun they provide on chowk.

re: tahmed #160

...well well if it isn`t the old man from DC who has been reduced to rubble by even the one-eyed pirate romair...

TAhmed

``these two (arjun, rsaxena) are in seventh heaven having escaped from india and made it to the usa. ``

Me too. I think that goes for the majority of Indians who have left India and live in the states.

Manto:
I dont get any Indian or Pakistani channels here and I watch very little TV anyway. What was it about anyway?
BTW someone mentioned you are from Sargodha. Mrs. Dost-Mittar would like to meet you and your parents some day:-)

saminasha #156 are you kidding? these two (arjun, rsaxena) are in seventh heaven having escaped from india and made it to the usa.

and, if they could stand their own kind, they would be on some hindutva board and not hanging around chowk trying to prove what a great country they escaped from.

re: saminasha

{Why dont you and arjun just handpick the Muslims you`d like to live in India? }

...i don`t need to...they will self select themselves and the rest like farzana will leave for the sands of arabia in due time....

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Dost Mittar,

Did you see a recent episode of `Question Time India` which was held at Srinagar...

Just wondering what you thought of it?

Rsax,

Why dont you and arjun just handpick the Muslims you`d like to live in India?

re: #153


{On CNN, there was this gentleman describing, in English, scenes of destruction near the Gateway. He was clearly alarmed, angry and Muslim. There were others interviewed who had Hindu or Christian-sounding names but in the papers this morning there was this senior police officer talking determinedly about finding the culprits and he had a Muslim name. There was that elderly Muslim gentleman in Zaveri Bazar, standing in the rubble, quietly sobbing, and the family of Muslims, who had lost loved ones, expressing disgust with all terrorists. And there was a distraught shop-owner, Tilak Raj, mourning the death of his Muslim employee, Abdul Mullah. }

...we need more coverage of stories like this...to balance the noise from the farzana versey-types...

arjun_m:
``And exactly which one of these things happened to the following people..

1. Mohd Atta
2. Osama Bin Laden
3. Khalid Sheikh Mohd
4. Hambali ``

Pray, when did I support these people?
I had said at the time of the Gujarat riots that I could understand the angry reaction of the Hindu mobs in Ahmedabad to the Godhra murders. It was the reaction of the police and the state administration which was totally unacceptable. Their job was to control the anger of the aroused mobs, not to feed it or to facilitate their ``work``.

Hot Piece of Coal


[ FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2003 12:01:06 AM ]

Islam, Honour and Democracy



WASHINGTON, DC: Why are Indian Muslims so different? No, that`s not my question. It`s being asked of me by a number of thoughtful people here as they watch and read of the happenings in Mumbai following the ghastly blasts last Monday. What they want to know is why Indian Muslims, at least those seen and quoted in the media here, sound so different from the radical Islamists in other countries who seem always ready to justify terrorism or those Islamic scholars who criticise terrorists mildly and add ``Yes, but``.



On CNN, there was this gentleman describing, in English, scenes of destruction near the Gateway. He was clearly alarmed, angry and Muslim. There were others interviewed who had Hindu or Christian-sounding names but in the papers this morning there was this senior police officer talking determinedly about finding the culprits and he had a Muslim name. There was that elderly Muslim gentleman in Zaveri Bazar, standing in the rubble, quietly sobbing, and the family of Muslims, who had lost loved ones, expressing disgust with all terrorists. And there was a distraught shop-owner, Tilak Raj, mourning the death of his Muslim employee, Abdul Mullah.



When someone asks ``Why are Indian Muslims different?`` I point to two remarkable successes of the Indian experiment. One is a sense of nationhood; the other is democracy. Nationhood does not mean any of that wild nationalism promoted by the hard right of Hindu fanatics and other extremists. It is a sense of belonging to a family full of diversity, where differences are not merely to be tolerated but actually to be celebrated. Not that it is a happy family all the time. Family members fight a lot among themselves. But it is held together by a sense of Indian-ness — nurtured by both ancient and modern culture, social customs, norms, music, food, a growing common market, and a body of legal remedies against disruption written in a constitution — that transcends other identities. That`s why an Indian Muslim is first an Indian and then a Muslim. Oh, sure there are crazies who are fanatically Muslim or Hindu first before they are Indian but such people remain a tiny minority. The rest of us prefer to vote, disagree and talk freely.



We can do that because we live in a democracy, with all its flaws, shortcomings and imperfections. If you hold deep religious views and want everyone to follow your faith, just go to your rooftop and shout. You can let off steam in a democracy. But allow me that glow of pride when Shabana Azmi comes on global television before a forest of mikes and appeals for calm in the wake of Monday`s blasts. The screen below her face doesn`t tout her for being a great actress or for being a renowned activist for civil rights. It just says: ``Member of Parliament``.



Unfortunately, you won`t see much of that in most Islamic countries. Why not? It`s a question that a few Islamic scholars are starting to ask. ``What is going wrong?`` asks Professor Akbar Ahmed, for instance, in a chapter heading of his new book Islam Under Siege (Polity Press, UK). A former Pakistani civil servant, Prof Ahmed holds the Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic Studies at American University here. He begins his book by quoting a clairvoyant assertion from the Prophet Mohammed.



``There will be a time,`` said the Prophet, ``when your religion will be like a hot piece of coal in the palm of your hand; you will not be able to hold it.`` When someone asked ``Would this mean there would be very few Muslims?`` he replied: ``No, they will be large in numbers, more than ever before, but powerless like the foam on the ocean waves.``



The Muslim community has been caught unawares by a world changing rapidly through globalisation, writes Prof Ahmed. It is a ``post-honour`` world, where traditional ideas of honour are either irrelevant or stand rejected. But Muslim political rhetoric and behaviour remain strongly influenced by a notion of honour under attack. ``A feeling of loss of honour is not new,`` says the author. ``What is new is the sense of apocalyptic destruction, which forces individuals to reconsider the interpretation of honour and invariably emphasise revenge as its simplest expression.``



Osama bin Laden seized upon this notion of honour in his effort to arouse Muslims. He blamed corrupt Muslim rulers, supported by the West, for robbing Muslims of honour and dignity. The solution, he believed, was to attack violently in revenge. The result, as we can all see, is an Islam under a lengthening shadow of suspicion the world over.



For Prof Ahmed, the solution is different. First, Muslims must ``stop seeing a global conspiracy all around them``.



Second, the Muslim world will need to institute and ensure the success of democracy. The rest of the world must help in this endeavour instead of supporting corrupt dictatorial regimes. With democracy will come a narrowing of the gap between the privileged and the deprived, a broadening of affordable education that will emphasise knowledge over dogma, a direly necessary improvement in the status of women, and a rebuilding of an idea of Islam that includes justice, tolerance, and the quest for knowledge. In other words, the kind of civilisation that once made Islam great.



Otherwise, Islam will be a hot piece of coal burning the palm of any hand that holds it.

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temporal: I see that sabroto caught you playing with words when asking how ``Yadav`` does it. this is very bad. There are underage children and also holy virgins on chowk, as you know, and this will lead them astray.

rsaxena#146:
Mufti is slowly healing the wounds of ordinary Kashmiris. He is thereby drying up the support base of terrorists, especially the ``Mehmaan`` types. As far as terrorists, I am all for using robust measures against them.

nasah#147
Right on target!

Subroto#148
I do believe that the Bombay blasts are a reaction to Gujarat. Indeed, if anyone remembers, this is precisely what I had predicted when the holocaust was taking place in Ahmedabad last year.

Re DM # 144 ``I use a simple rule in these matters - to ask myself how I would feel if I were in a similar situation. And when I put myself in the position of someone who has seen his entire family go up in flames and his sister and mother raped before his eyes while the police looked on, I know that my blood would boil too. ``

Now sir this is in a different context form what you said earlier i.e. ``youth who is discriminated, disaffected, alienated and insecure, unsafe, unwanted and unloved in his own country`` - now if you had said that this is in context to the Gujrat riots, then I don`t really have an answer for you. The rule of law broke down/was sabotaged in Gujrat. The perpetuators need to be bought to justice and unless that happens we will hang our heads in shame. Knowing the games played by the politicians (BJP had promised action against the perpetuators of the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi but nothing has really happened) and the slow Indian legal system this will probably take another twenty years.

But when you put ``discriminated, disaffected, alienated`` in the total Indian context then I am sorry but I do not agree wih you.

SHAME on those who call the profane Hindutva Fascism -- ``Hindu Nationalism`` --

Nationalism -- in the Subcontinental and Irish context -- is a sacred freedom word.... not a profanity

it is a gross INSULT to the word Nationalism --

not only that --

it`s even an INSULT to FASCISM -- because at least the real fascists had a swank Swastika to pledge allegiance to -- before committing their grand genocide..

what do the pathetic Hindutvas have -- except some cheap imitation of Islamist Extremism....

Heres what I love: people can reference African Americans but not make a single reference to any African American theorist/writer/economist/political scientist that a. proves their dubious position or b. challenges their dubious position. And some of us have learned how to say ``Uncle Tom`s Cabin`` without knowing who Harriet Beecher Stowe, Derrick Bell, Henry Louis Gates, Julius Irving, Patricia Williams, etc are...and yet they expect to be taken seriously. Esp. when stereotyping Indian Muslims.

re: dost-mittar

{Mufti has already shown in Kahmir how such a policy can work. }

...and how exactly has the policy worked?...terrorists are still running amock...

arjunm, subroto:
I use a simple rule in these matters - to ask myself how I would feel if I were in a similar situation. And when I put myself in the position of someone who has seen his entire family go up in flames and his sister and mother raped before his eyes while the police looked on, I know that my blood would boil too.
This does not mean that the society should condone terrorism, but it does mean that ruthless gunning down is not enough, it must also use some healing balm on the hurting wounds. Mufti has already shown in Kahmir how such a policy can work.

Re 142 temporal ``how did yadav do it in bihar? ``
Naughty, naughty t-bhai aisa sawaal kaise pooch liya aap nay?

But seriously I remember my mother teasing apna Bihari painter Zainuddin about his chief minister Lallo Prasad Yadav. His response was ``Laallo Parsad kay bare may mat boliye madam. Agar Laallo nahin hota to Advani ka rath humay kuchal kay chala jaata``.

stuka

...this will be interesting...keep us posted...wonder if the cops can use a state or federal law to prevent modi from coming...(of course they can always use the ruse that they cannot provide `adequote` security to modi;))...how did yadav do it in bihar?

...t

Aleph Null,

Actually, after a day of meetings, I decided that my typing and posting Nussbaum`s entire essay wasnt necessary, esp. for the benefit of someone who seems to know whats best for women, Jews and liberal arts intellectuals. Perhaps you could write to Oxford Press before they print her book on law, religion and gender. I`m sure they will take YOUR authority into consideration.

Two of my cousins were in the attacker house...

One of them was 1400 something ... and my other cousin was 1573 Attacker

wow....

1586 Tempest

But ... it was nothing like the good old days when I was going there...

Manto # 131

I just read your ILOG. Let us lighten the atmosphere. I did not know you were a Sargodhian. I an 449 - Attacker House.

#124 Dost-mittar

{{Do you know if this Mary Roy is the mother of Arundhati Roy?}}

Yes. She was Mary Isaac to begin with (Roy is of course a Bengali name). I am two degrees of separation from la Roy.

In regard to Professor Nussbaum, I have no quarrel at this point with her reputation as a legal philosopher or scholar of Classical/Hellenistic antiquity. Those seem to be her home fields. She is just an affiliate of the notorious Committee for ‘South Asia’ Studies at Chicago. I suggest that that is where her scholarship gets spread thinnest. Her account of the Roy case materially misrepresents motives – perhaps due to tainted sources rather than active malice on her part.

#123 SaminaShah

Please don’t post the relevant excerpts before you’ve looked at the Notre Dame lecture that I posted a link to – you may just be replicating the account found there, which gives me a very good idea of Professor Nussbaum’s expertise.

As far as elephants go, I am something of an outcaste from the herd – part happenstance, part choice. The real elephants living in their natural habitat would look down their long trunks at my deracination. But I understand enough of the elephant habitat and ethos to correct the ethology professor’s errors of fact. Consequently, I resent someone’s efforts to dress me up as a giraffe, or use bleached elephant tusks as pegs on which to hang their fashionable ideologies of the day. IOW, my beef with Nussbaum is not her race or gender but simply that she has her facts wrong.

Temporal: A new report worth looking at..I should also point out..typically Indians will respect the cop but not the leftists or leaders like Owaisi who are blatantly communal themselves..

Hyderabad police chief threatens to arrest Modi
Indo-Asian News Service
Hyderabad, August 28

Taking a tough stand against Narendra Modi`s proposed visit, city Police Commissioner MV Krishna Rao has vowed not to allow the Gujarat chief minister to enter Hyderabad and warned that he would not hesitate to arrest him.

``If he lands here we will keep ready his return ticket and send him back from the airport itself. If he resists we will not hesitate to arrest him,`` said the top police official on Wednesday, drawing a volley of protests from the leaders of Modi`s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP, an ally of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has urged the state government to immediately transfer the police chief for threatening to arrest a chief minister.

Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Samithi, which installs thousands of Ganesh idols in Hyderabad, has invited Modi to the massive immersion procession scheduled for September 9. The invitation has drawn protests from Muslims who consider Modi responsible for last year`s communal violence in Gujarat.

When asked how he could arrest a chief minister, Krishna Rao said he had the powers to do so. The police official made it clear that he would not allow any leader to vitiate the peaceful communal atmosphere in the state capital.

The commissioner said as Modi was perceived as being biased against a particular religious community, his visit might create law and order problems and disturb the peace and communal harmony in the city.

Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police SR Sukumara, however, said he had no information about Modi`s visit. Samithi leaders claimed that Modi had confirmed his participation in the procession.

Sukumara reportedly spoke to top police officials of Gujarat, who told him that Modi had not yet finalised his visit to Hyderabad.

Krishna Rao also expressed the hope that Modi would not come to Hyderabad. He pointed out that only one leader of the Samithi had invited Modi to the procession.

``Even Samithi leaders are against his visit, and only one leader has personally invited him,`` said the police commissioner.

Reacting strongly to the commissioner`s remarks, the BJP said Krishna Rao was ``unfit`` to hold the top post and demanded his immediate transfer.

BJP state vice-president SV Seshagiri Rao said the official`s statement was irresponsible.

``He has no right to take action against a chief minister,`` said the BJP leader.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is reportedly using his influence in New Delhi to stall Modi`s visit. TDP leaders have already requested state BJP leader and Minister of State for Railways Bandaru Dattatreya to ask his party`s central leadership to stop Modi from visiting Hyderabad.

Eight leftist parties have also urged the state government to ban Modi`s visit, saying the trip might create law and order problems in the city.

The Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), a political party that enjoys tremendous support among Muslims, was the first to demand ban on Modi`s visit.

Reacting to the police commissioner`s statement, MIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi said the statement should have come from Chandrababu Naidu.

He asked Naidu to show courage like Bihar leader Laloo Prasad Yadav, who did not allow Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia to enter Patna.

re: Stuka and Dost-Mittar

Thanks! It was really instrustive what both of you had to say. It confirmed what I had suspected for some time.

re: Arjun-M

Arjun, emotionalism aside, the root causes of terrorism have to addressed. If you want to kill those who kill, without understanding the reasons, which motivate them, you will be killing people for a long time. Also, when you kill, please do not blame the victim for resisting you and trying to kill you in return. What you have suggested is akin to pouring gasoline over fire and it will simply increase the spiral of violence. This is what is happening in the Middle East right now and it is sheer insanity.

I agree with you completely that terrorism and the killing of innocents will not solve the problems, but I do not agree with the solution you have offered as a means of settling the problem. If killing all the terrorists was a solution, why has it not worked in the past? The evil of terrorism is more sinister and simply erdicating it and killing is not the answer. The root of terrorism lies in its ideology and even if you kill all the terrorists in the world and you have left the ideology alone, what have you gained in the end? Terrorism and terrorists are not as much of a problem as the reason behind their actions, because they can be defeated, but how do you defeat an idea in a tangible sense?

Secondly, understanding the root causes of terrorism is not the same as appeasing it. Empathy does not always means justification of the act and the wrongness of one act can not be answered by the wrongness of another act.

Also, I agree with you (I think it was you, who said) that Pakistanis should not bring India into every second line of their arguments and this amounts to nothing more than whining. However, it is also whining when Indians keep comparing Pakistan with India in every second line of their interacts also! LOL

Ciao

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Re Dost Mitter # 126 ``By Umars, I do not mean members of SIMI but the youth who is discriminated, disaffected, alienated and insecure, unsafe, unwanted and unloved in his own country? ``
Dost Mitter sahib there are a lot of disaffected, alienated and insecure, unsafe, unwanted and unloved youths in our country and true to the secular ethos of our country they are in every community. Heck at any one moment in our lives we have been there too.
I can still remember the guy in college who took an overdose of sleeping pills just because he got ``only`` 85% marks in his board exams -hopelessness is not a disease that afflicts only the minority. There is one factor we cannot deny - the country is making progress and for those who want to there are opportunities available. Our drunken old dhobi`s son used to deliver clothes to our house, many years later the same son walked proudly into our drawing room as a young officer of the Indian army - if we keep crying about our lot without making an effort on our own then we probably deserve our wretched existence.

First line should read .. `Interested` instead of `interesting`

Nazar,

The theme is not mine, but Ayesha Jalal`s... the League originally was interesting in furthering the interests of the Muslims of the Hindu Majority provinces and had no interest in the Muslim Majority areas for the obvious reasons.

In 1937 Muslim League won a substantial number of Muslim seats in the Hindu Majority provinces, but nothing in the Muslim Majority provinces... Jinnah at this point asked Nehru to consider the League as a possible coalition partner... Nehru`s reply was sadly smacking of arrogance.. he said that yes league might be an important communal organization but that it was only one of the muslim organizations... Congress thus alienated the league by joining up with clerical organizations like JUH, and other muslim religious parties. Jinnah tried again to talk some sense to the Congress leadership but Nehru replied with the league should prove its `inherent strength`... Jinnah replied that he was disappointed by Nehru`s attitude and that from now on he would only depend on the `inherent strength` and not on the Congress Party.

After Nehru and the Congress abandoned the League in 1937 (remember league had an identical manifesto to the Congress) and encouraged the Religious parties and pathan leaders like A G Khan... Jinnah started the arduous process of building up the league in the Muslim Majority provinces.... he soon rallied popular leaders of those provinces behind him including Fazl ul Haq and Sikandar Hayat from Bengal and Punjab respectively. These two men were the ones who moved the Lahore Resolution on 23rd March 1940.

A Muslim majority state, an idea which was old and had been enunciated by the very Punjabi Allama Iqbal, was a convenient slogan to bring the Muslim Majority provinces into the fold of the Muslim League... even then however Jinnah rebuked any attempts to define such a state or associate the League with the creation of an `Islamic` state. I don`t like the incendiary vocabulary... it is not the question of blame or fault. Pakistan is the product of History... you and the Indian nationalists clearly seem to fault Jinnah, some in India blame Nehru, and others blame the British. I don`t think any of these approaches are correct...

Please also read `India wins freedom` by Maulana Azad ... and please read Ayesha Jalal`s book and you will realize that this view seems to be the most accurate one historically. That is why I have found ample support from Dost Mittar and other Indians... also read my post 135 on your board.

-Manto

``If they are rich, they are regarded as Uncle Toms...if they are part of the mainstream like the bombay cop guy, they are regarded as uncle toms... ``

Yup. Like blacks in the US. It seems to have some credibility as a black person you need to be from the ghetto and speak ebonics, preferably have a jail time on your record and have a strong sense of greivance against the ``white male establishment``.

My boss is an African American, an MBA from a top biz school and definitely not the black man the ACLU prefers. He is respected for his achievements and the color of his skin is irrelevent.

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Manto # 119

``and in order to rally the Muslim Majority provinces they had to give them a vague idea and slogan, and that slogan was Pakistan.``

`` the British called Jinnah`s bluff, by giving him Pakistan``.

This is a new angle. Not in our history books and never discussed openly as such. It means that it was the British fault that Pakistan was created and it was not actually an intention by Jinnah and the Muslim leaugue. Jinnah and Muslim Leaugue only used Pakistan & Islam to get votes from the Muslim voters.

Thanks for stating your position. We will continue with our discussion on the right or wrong of it in future as and when a new related article comes on Chowk.

(may be it is a good idea if you can write an article on this theme on the Chowk)

FerozeK:

``I have generally noticed that Indians are averse to criticism; even if it is constructive and tend to react defensively to any criticsm directed towards them or towards India. ``

I would disagree for the following reasons...

Every society and its sub group has its icons and inspirations. For post independence Iindia, it was Nnehru. And yet Nehru is crtiticized roundly by siginificant numbers of people today. This was an example of personalities being open to criticism.

From its inception, socialism was the Mantra of independent India. Yet socialism is criticized roundly as well. OTOH, There are still plenty of critics who give gaalis to Indians who are capitalist free marketeers. This was an example of Iindians criticizing the choices made in the past as well as in the present by India.

India also has been a secular nation. Yet, there are large numbers of Indians who criticize the way secularism has turned out. They want changes. OTOH, there are plenty of Indians who criticize those Indians who are critical of secularism. Again, all Indians, criticizing choices that have been made and will be made.

I agree that there is one ideological blindspot. Indians cannot listen to criticism from Pakistan when it comes to treatment of minorities. That point is valid. A Urstruly or a Romair advising Indians about treatment of minorities is simply wasting bandwidth.

My long winded point is that India is a complex country. Every fact you state about India, the opposite is equally true.

Scott#116
`` Problem is Muslims outside India refuse to accept people like police joint commissioner Ahmad Javed as representative of Indian Muslims, for the simple fact that the lies that they live with would come crumbling down. Far better to think of them in terms of Umer - keeps the myths and falsehood intact.``
Do you seriously doubt that there are many more Umars to any Javed in India? By Umars, I do not mean members of SIMI but the youth who is discriminated, disaffected, alienated and insecure, unsafe, unwanted and unloved in his own country?

ferozk#117
``I have generally noticed that Indians are averse to criticism; even if it is constructive and tend to react defensively to any criticsm directed towards them or towards India.``

I have seen as much crticism of Modis/Togadias/Advanis and even Nehru and Gandhis as I see of the faujis and mullas by my Pakistani friends. But if one doesn`t react to what one believes is faulty and unbalanced analysis, what the heck is one doing here?

Alephnull#118
Do you know if this Mary Roy is the mother of Arundhati Roy?

Seeing some of the excerpts from Ms. Nussbaum, it seems that the standards of academia in the US Asian Studies deptt. has gone down considerably. Prof. Elder of the University of Wisconsin in my time would have never shown such ignorance of his subject matter. Gosh, he even knew how to do a proper Wah, Wah in a Mushaayra!

Aleph Null Sahib,

I will post the appropriate paragraphs of Nussbaum essay- although we are again in the position of having to defend an academic`s reputation of a situation that as you admitted, has no immediate bearing on the issue of this piece.

Secondly, I encourage you to revel in your elephantine condition, to be grateful in the knowledge that someone who is not you or your race is more of an expert on you, your communities, your issues than you are. This state of being is something women on Chowk are well acquainted with. Enjoy!

PS that previous post should read `beat around the bush` and `close to his heart`...

Dear Harimau,

``The time has come to ban all conversions and start a re-conversion movement in India``

I like that about you Harimau. You don`t beat about the bush do you? Unlike your buddy P-mishra2 who tries to project himself as a liberal humanist... eventhough I suspect the dream of `reconversion` of Muslims and Christians is close his heart too...

-Manto

What absolute crap!

So it is all right for Jubilee Christian Fellowship of San Jose, California to raise money to convert the ``heathen nation`` of Hindus. It is okay for Saudi Arabia to offer a house in India and a job in Saudi Arabia to converts to Islam. But is NOT okay for Hindus to contribute money to social service organizations because they might be affiliated to ``Hindutva`` elements.

I am sorry if this doesn`t cut the mustard with me. I walk down the streets of Chennai and all of a sudden in the most expensive suburbs I find buildings for the Seventh Day Adventists, Assembly of God, Church of South India (a Protestant denomination), etc. Compared to this, the Catholic diocese doesn`t seem to have any funds from the Vatican for expansion and the Mar Thoma Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Malankara Church -- all native to India and have been in existence for about 1950 years -- are all stuck in Kerala with no possibility of expanding their flocks. Obviously, something is in the works.... and just because I am paranoid doesn`t mean people aren`t after me.

I think people like Angana Chatterji ought to convert to The True Faith and move to Kabul. And take FarceAnna Versey with her.

The time has come to ban all conversions and start a re-conversion movement in India.

Nazarhayat Khan 63

Dude, that is neither my position nor Ayesha Jalal`s. It helps if people like you who claim to be talking on the `academic level` etc should atleast research before you take irrevocable positions.

The Ayesha Jalal view is that Jinnah and the League were fighting for effective political safeguards within the Indian Union. To do this however they had to prove their representative status. In order to create the representative status, they had to rally the Muslim Majority provinces behind them, and in order to rally the Muslim Majority provinces they had to give them a vague idea and slogan, and that slogan was Pakistan. Hence 1947 the Muslim League`s strategy was defeated, and the British called Jinnah`s bluff, by giving him Pakistan. Now Pakistan exists and it will never be undone.This is also my view.

You say you are interested academic debates. I doubt it, because other than repeating one side of the story, and making overt generalizations about what people like me say, and an unfounded confidence in your own analysis, you haven`t contributed to the academic debate.

-Manto

#113 Samina Shah

{{ It would seem that not having read an essay in its entirety and yet commenting negatively on it is an academically dubious accomplishment. Nussbaum has written quite a bit on these cases in the essay, unfor.}}

Samina ji,

You may have spoken too soon.

Professor Nussbaum does indeed seem to have held forth quite a bit on the three cases listed. A lengthy version of her argument (delivered as an endowed annual lecture at the University of Notre Dame), can be found below (the link takes you a a PDF document):

Religion And Sex Equality

I gather on perusing the learned Frau Doktor’s essay that she has developed a theoretical framework in which to weigh the dilemma mentioned in the title. I am quite ready to read the entire essay closely and without prejudice in my copious spare time.

I have however looked in detail at the specific references in the paper to the legal case of Mrs. Mary Roy v. State of Kerala and Others, to the surrounding events, and to its societal ramifications (they may be found on pp. 2-3, p. 23 and pp. 44-45 of the lecture). I regret to have to inform you that the Professor Nussbaum has seriously misrepresented the reason for community opposition to specific features of the judgement. Most egregiously, what might charitably be called unfounded speculation on p. 3 has been used on pp. 44-45 as the non-existent pivot on which hinges Nussbaum’s application of her framework to this case. I will be quite happy to explain all this at length if you so desire (I desist from doing so immediately only becasue it may not be of general interest). For now, let if suffice to say that this was absolutely not a case of conflict between the fundamental rights of an individuals and the customary privileges of a religious community.

This may not invalidate Nussbaum’s theoretical arguments, but it makes their application to Syrian Christians completely moot. Perhaps Nussbaum was misled by her native informants - I have a pretty good idea who one of them might have been. I also note in passing some other obvious howlers in Nussbaum’s paper – such as dating the Mughals to the thirteenth century! This in addition to the other risible description of the Kama Sutra as a religious text. It may well be that Professor Nussbaum spreads her talents too thin.

As to academic reputations, I have enough of the academic in me to know how misleading those can be in regard to competence in specific situations. I most certainly am not prepared to defer to the Distinguished Professor’s factual misrepresentation of events and practices involving my ancestral community. That would be as ridiculous as requiring the elephant to attend lectures by the Professor of Zoology, taking diligent notes, in order to learn what his dietary, migratory and mating habits should be!

re: Stuka

I have no disagreements with you said. I am not interested in judging the worth of the article nor am I interested in judging the the replies, which the Indian interactors have posted in response to that article. My question was simple. I have generally noticed that Indians are averse to criticism; even if it is constructive and tend to react defensively to any criticsm directed towards them or towards India.

If, on the other hand, most Indians think of themselves and of India as being infalliable, then I can understand your, meaning Indian, reaction to any criticism.

Ciao

Problem is Muslims outside India refuse to accept people like police joint commissioner Ahmad Javed as representative of Indian Muslims, for the simple fact that the lies that they live with would come crumbling down. Far better to think of them in terms of Umer - keeps the myths and falsehood intact.

re:#112 by Saminasha
I felt sad reading that article. India is a geopolitical reality that came into being due to colonial rule. India as an idea preceded it. That India encompasses everyone regardless of religion, caste etc. If muslims do not feel part of that India, already the idea of India is under threat. India may cease to exist the day it ceases to be a secular country. I see it happening slowly.
Sridhar

I fail to understand the point of cutting and pasting articles on a Hindu Muslim divide in India. Nobody is denying that this gulf exists. Neither is the author of the above article being blamed for talking about communalism where none exists.

The author is being blamed by most Indian interactors for not giving the complete version of India`s communal problem and for being biased in her depiction of Hindu grassroot movements. To address any other issue would be a digression from the thrust of the criticism and would have no validity.

Aleph Null Sahib,

It would seem that not having read an essay in its entirety and yet commenting negatively on it is an academically dubious accomplishment. Nussbaum has written quite a bit on these cases in the essay, unfor. I have a bit of work to do and dont feel like typing an essay onto this board. There is this called a ``library`` however....

Great Divide
Mounting fury over religious discrimination by the Hindu majority is triggering an increasingly violent Muslim backlash
BY ALEX PERRY | BOMBAY

Surveying the sunset over Bombay`s southern coastline from the calm of his palatial first-floor office, police joint commissioner Ahmad Javed could scarcely look less like an outsider. His uniform is stiff with starch, his shoes impeccably shined, and when the 45-year-old smoothes his neatly clipped moustache, he does so with perfectly manicured fingers. On his polished wood desk, an In tray bulges with the responsibilities of the second-most-senior policeman in India`s biggest metropolis; meanwhile, outside a nervous line of saluting adjutants waits for signatures, permissions and orders in triplicate. When Javed speaks, it is with the erudite polish and faintly Victorian manner of India`s finest private school, St. Stephen`s College in New Delhi. The consummate insider, Javed is a man whose instincts and hopes—whose entire being—are governed by the system he serves. ``We have a saying in the service,`` he says. ``Once you don your khakis, they become your religion.``
Looking down at the same shoreline from the top floor of a nearby hotel, 44-year-old ``Umar`` is reflecting on a life spent almost entirely outside the Indian mainstream. Affable, neatly bearded and smartly dressed, Umar (a pseudonym given to him by TIME) holds the senior rank of ansar, or guide, in India`s loosely knit Muslim militant movement. In that capacity, he told Time, he has played a central role in a string of deadly bomb blasts that have rocked Bombay in the past eight months. Just last week, a bus was blown apart as it drove through eastern Bombay, killing three people and injuring 42. The police blame the attack on Umar`s organization, an unnamed fundamentalist group made up primarily of former members of the outlawed Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Umar and Javed, both Indian Muslims, began their careers simultaneously in the mid-`70s. But they could hardly have chosen more different paths. While the policeman was taking his civil-service exams, Umar was being admitted as a full-time activist in SIMI, a fundamentalist group formed in the late 1970s and banned by New Delhi after 9/11. Umar spends his life on the run, changing his appearance, identity and address every few months. But as a member of the ultra-orthodox Al-e-Hadeez Sunni sect, he maintains a semblance of a traditional Muslim family life with a wife and two children at a house in northern India. For most of his 28 years` service as an Indian jihadi, Umar`s specialty has been as a facilitator for foreign Islamic guerrillas from Pakistan, Afghanistan and even western China, providing them with safe houses, weapons and identities. (Among those he helped, claims Umar, were Muslim militants who attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on Dec. 13, 2001, killing 14 people.) Like Javed, Umar defines himself through his work. But as befits the man at the top of Javed`s most wanted list, in every other respect he is the policeman`s antithesis. ``This country doesn`t work for Muslims any more,`` he says. ``You can`t get a proper education. You can`t get a job. You`re not even safe.``
Here we have two Indian Muslims with two very different experiences of their homeland. But the truth is that Javed and Umar share a fundamental burden: in the eyes of many Hindus, no Muslim can ever truly belong in India. The origins of this antagonism are centuries old. In essence, hard-line Hindus regard as a national humiliation the Islamic influence that pervades India`s history, starting with the Mughal Renaissance in the 16th century, continuing with the birth of Islamic fundamentalism in Asia at Deoband in northern India in the 1860s (the same creed followed by the Taliban) and enduring even today in India`s national symbol, the Mughal mausoleum of the Taj Mahal. This distrust of Islam has only increased since independence in 1947: modern India was founded in the Muslim-Hindu bloodletting of partition of the subcontinent, in which a million people died, and since then tensions have boiled over into three wars against Islamic neighbor Pakistan. Today, much of the religious tension in the region stems from India`s rule over Muslim-dominated Kashmir in the face of strident Pakistani opposition. The war on terror and the 1998 election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on a Hindu-nationalist agenda, which focused debate on physically undoing the Mughal invasion by razing mosques built over Hindu temples, have lent a veil of legitimacy to India`s lurking anti-Muslim prejudice. ``Muslims are a despised minority, disliked by a large section of the majority,`` wrote Muslim commentator Firoz Bakht Ahmed in the Hindu newspaper last month.
Indian Muslims do have their high achievers: President Abdul Kalam; Wipro chairman and India`s richest man, Azim Premji, and a host of Bollywood stars (Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan). But for every President or Muslim tech entrepreneur or movie star or policeman, there are 1,000 others with tales of discrimination in the workplace or the education system, harassment by wayward police officers or segregation into ghettos by Hindu landlords. Whatever the causes, there is no disputing the fact that Indian Muslims today are less educated, poorer and live shorter, less secure and less healthy lives than their Hindu counterparts. Census figures paint a bleak picture of their plight. In rural India, 29% of Muslims earn less than $6 a month, compared with 26% of Hindus; in the cities (where a third of all Muslims live) the gap rises to 40% vs. 22%. Some 13% of India`s population is Muslim, yet Muslims account for just 3% of government employees, and an even smaller percentage are employed by private Hindu businesses. Meanwhile, in the cities, 30% of Muslims are illiterate, vs. 19% of Hindus. Nor are any of these indices improving.
India`s Muslims are also far more likely than Hindus to be victims of violent attacks. In all the communal riots since independence, official police records reveal that three-quarters of the lives lost and properties destroyed were Muslim, a figure that climbed to 85% during last year`s riots in Gujarat. The Gujarat authorities even went so far as to price Muslim lives below those of Hindus, offering $2,050 in state compensation for Muslims killed but double that for the riots` 58 Hindu victims. ``There is often a tendency in India to treat Muslims as them rather than us,`` says K.C. Tyagi, former leader of the moderate Hindu Samajwadi Party. ``And this tendency does have terrible manifestations. Even today, by and large, Muslims have not been admitted to what we call the Indian mainstream.`` The portion of the population affected by this systemic discrimination is staggering: India`s Muslim ``minority`` numbers 150 million people (vs. 850 million Hindus)—after Indonesia, the second-largest Islamic community in the world.
It`s little wonder that these inequalities have fueled a profound sense of alienation and resentment among many Muslims. In their eyes, what happened in Gujarat to people like Zaheera Sheikh was a brutal, watershed illustration of just how inhospitable India has become to Muslims. As Hindu mobs rampaged across the state in an orgy of violence that was to cost 2,000 Muslim lives, Sheikh hid on a rooftop in her hometown of Baroda, Gujarat, and watched a crowd of 100 pelting her family`s home and attached bakery with bricks and bags of gasoline. After an hour of this, she recalls, a Hindu police sergeant addressed the mob: ``He said, `You have to finish this tonight, to finish everyone off. This has to be over with by the morning.` And then he got back into his jeep and left.``
Nine people were burned alive or clubbed to death at the Sheikh family`s house and bakery that night, including her uncle Kauser Ali and her sister Sabira, as well as three Muslim neighbors and their four children who believed they would be safe inside the Sheikhs` concrete walls. When the rioters coaxed the survivors down from the roof the following morning with promises of safety, Sheikh and the others agreed. But the mob killed two Muslim men as they ran away and beat three Hindu bakery workers to the ground before disemboweling them, piling wood on top of them and setting them alight.
Sheikh`s experience of what University of Washington political scientist Paul Brass calls militant Hindus` ``institutionalized riot systems`` was all too common in Gujarat. But it is her tale of what followed that is now forcing the nation to examine how deeply anti-Muslim prejudice permeates the state. In the riots` aftermath, what set Sheikh apart from other victims was her steadfast refusal to recant her police statement identifying her attackers. ``My brother received threats on his mobile phone from politicians. They would say, `Do you value your life? Your family`s life? Tell your sister to change her testimony or we`ll kill you all.``` But Sheikh refused, exhorting her brother to remember the sight of their sister Sabira perishing in the flames. Finally, on May 17, Sheikh`s day in court came.
When she arrived at the courthouse steps, Sheikh says, local BJP leader Madhu Srivastava intercepted her and said ``you are not going to get justice.`` In addition, she claims, ``He asked me, `Is your life or the lives of your family not precious to you?``` (Confronted with Sheikh`s allegations, Srivastava told TIME, ``These Muslim women are lying. I have never threatened them. They have entered into a conspiracy with [the opposition] Congress Party to defame me and the nationalistic BJP. I am the most popular leader in my constituency. Otherwise I would not have been elected. The Congress [Party] is provoking Muslims to make false statements for its own political gains.``)
As Sheikh recalls it, the courtroom was packed with militant Hindus, staring at her and making threatening gestures. At this last moment, Sheikh`s nerve failed her. She told prosecutor Raghuvir Pandya that she hadn`t been able to see her attackers in the dark and smoke. Pandya, a BJP member who Sheikh says had not met his star witness before her court appearance, questioned her briefly, then let her go. ``I had two choices: to speak for my dead relatives or to keep quiet for my living ones,`` she says. ``I chose the latter.`` She was one of 41 witnesses who had changed their statements; soon afterwards, the case collapsed and all 21 accused walked free.
Moreover, Sheikh`s case is not even particularly unusual. Hindu riots in India over the past two decades have cost the lives of more than 6,000 people, yet only a handful of Hindus have been convicted. Justice is even rarer in a state where some public prosecutors owe their jobs to the BJP`s hard-line icon Narendra Modi, who did little to control the riots and was re-elected last December on a wave of Hindu nationalism, and where Pravin Togadia, the extremist general secretary of the BJP-allied Vishwa Hindu Parishad, has his main support base. (Togadia once informed TIME that a third of Indian Muslims were ``jihadis`` and that all jihadis—50 million people, by his math—should be ``executed.``) Indeed, an indication of which way the courts are leaning in three other Gujarat massacre cases—in which the death tolls were 89, 42 and 38—can be found in the release on bail of all but 10 of the 114 alleged murderers, rapists and arsonists.
Nonetheless, Sheikh says she retains her faith in the Indian justice system and in the humanity of most Hindus. ``I don`t believe Hindus everywhere are like this,`` she says, mentioning several Hindu friends and neighbors and even policemen who encouraged her to go to court. ``If there`s a divide here, it is between those who want to see justice done and those who don`t.``
But for terrorist Umar, Gujarat and the unabashed prejudice that followed was a breaking point. ``If the government continues on this path, we will go to any extreme,`` he warns. ``As they reach their peak, so will we.``
Indian politicians blamed Pakistan for last Monday`s Bombay bus explosion that killed 3 and injured 42 (bringing the toll from five blasts since December to 17 dead and hundreds injured). But the police in Bombay have little doubt that Umar`s organization was the real culprit. Javed notes that the attack occurred in Ghatkopar, an area of eastern Bombay that`s home to many migrant Gujaratis and that was also the place where Umar initiated his Bombay bombing campaign on Dec. 2, when an almost identical bus bomb killed two and hurt 28 others. Issuing a high alert across the city last week , Javed said the ``element of continuity`` from the previous blasts was undeniable. A senior officer from India`s intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), confirms that a hard core of fundamentalists drawn from SIMI`s ranks has switched from backroom support to frontline terror in the past few months; he also says they were responsible for the assassination of former Gujarat home minister Haren Pandya on March 26. The officer from raw adds, ``Let`s not have any doubts as to what caused this [Muslim backlash]. If I was a Muslim and people from my community were mowed down like they were in Gujarat, do you think I would stand by and do nothing?``
Umar, for one, has no intention of standing by and doing nothing. ``We will continue,`` he vows. ``There is no limit on our actions ... Even to kill children is good—you stop the generation there, at the beginning.``
For law enforcers like Javed, the worry is not so much the ruthless fury of an extremist like Umar as the extent to which such rage has spread within more respectable parts of the Muslim community. When Bombay suffered a series of Islamist bomb attacks in 1993, they were carried out by the city`s Muslim-dominated underworld, men who had long departed the mainstream and for whom violence was already a way of life. But Javed`s right-hand man, deputy police commissioner (and Hindu) Pradip Sawant, is finding today that even some whom he`d expect to be India`s least marginalized Muslims are heeding the call to jihad. ``Of the 21 we`ve caught and charged [over the recent Bombay bombings],`` says Sawant, ``two are doctors, six are computer specialists and two or three more are university graduates in other disciplines.`` Outside Bombay, too, the police have broken up terrorist cells in places like Bangalore, Kerala and New Delhi over the past six months and have been shocked to find that a high proportion of cell members were university graduates and professionals. ``It is a matter of serious concern,`` says Javed, ``when people who are so qualified choose a path which means throwing everything away. It tells us that there is a new sort of thinking circulating in the community.``
That new thinking was evident when Javed`s men descended upon the prosperous Muslim suburb of Borivili in April to arrest former SIMI national head Saqib Nachan, 44, as the suspected ground commander for the Bombay bombings. Javed`s officers were forced to withdraw by a crowd of 300 local residents who assembled outside their stucco mansions and barred the way. Later, after Nachan surrendered and confessed his role as a terrorist commander, the police announced the discovery of two AK-56s, four pistols, four revolvers and 250 homemade bombs hidden in the village well. Nasir Mullah, whose 26-year-old bank-manager son is a former SIMI member and was also arrested, says the weapons were to protect Borivili from a Hindu-dominated police force that has since been censured in an official state report for conducting ``ad hoc arrests of the innocent, torture and forced confessions`` there. ``Nachan and the other SIMI people are role models here,`` says the 55-year-old timber trader. ``People need to defend themselves.``
Although he, too, is angry about Gujarat, Javed refuses to concede any common bond with Umar. To Javed, there is no contradiction between his dismay over Gujarat and his job, which requires him to hunt down self-styled Muslim avengers. ``There`s a world of difference between being upset by Gujarat and being a committed militant,`` he says. Wrath is not the only emotion sweeping India`s Muslim community, he adds. Progressive Muslims like Javed are increasingly expressing alarm at the dangers of radicalization among both Hindus and Muslims. And in the past year, a growing number of such moderates have called for Muslims to modernize and show the flexibility needed to begin bridging India`s bitter division. In her steadfast refusal to see Hindus as the enemy, Sheikh personifies this progressive outlook. ``I just don`t understand these old hatreds,`` she says. ``I could never live like that.``
But with the rhetoric of intolerance likely to drown out moderation in the run-up to a general election as little as six months away, Javed and his officers see more bloodshed coming. ``I fear this is only the beginning,`` says deputy commissioner Sawant. Indeed, flushed with success, Umar has no intention of renouncing his terror campaign. ``We regret nothing,`` he says. ``We enjoy this work.``
Javed, meanwhile, scans the cityscape`s middle distance, as if for signs of his quarry. ``We will have more strife, and the situation will get more difficult,`` he predicts. He pauses. ``But there is hope for Muslims in India. There has to be. If Muslims lose hope, then what?`` Then Umar and his Hindu enemies will have won.

With reporting by S. Hussain Zaidi/Bombay and Sankarshan Thakur/New Delhi

Time Magazine (August 11, 2003)

re: this article
I did not want to comment on this article. This is obviously written by a commie from West Bengal. These guys are pseudo-intellectual retards. I ask the author: pray tell us what is going on in Bengal in the name of communist ideology? What has this ideology done for the average Bengali? Did not the Bengalis take to this ideology with the same fervour which you are accusing the Hindutva elements of doing today? What is the difference?
It is only an ideology. If ideology is popular, it becomes a movement and then parties and politicians get interested because they now see a way of getting votes and getting elected. The question to ask would be: what has made hindutva a popular movement today?
Rich Gujaratis may want to project their so called ``cultural nationalism`` in the way they want but what harm are they doing? How are the Adivasis or the muslims being affected? There are umpteen number of christian missionary schools but that has not been pointed out by the author. She picks up some schools run by RSS or the Sangh parivar. Pray tell us how these schools are doing harm.
Following is the article from The Hindu:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/08/22/stories/2003082201061000.htm

Excerpts:

``Mr. Inamdar has relied on the foolproof nature of the SSC Board results to convince his community that no examiner can deny a deserving Muslim student the marks due to him/her. The cycles gifted by the local Shiv Sena unit at special felicitation functions to toppers Zarine Ansari, Sadiqa Ansari, Bilal Mistry, Majida Roghangar and Wajeda are testimony to his belief.

Indeed, none of these students would have made it to the top had it not been for the contribution of Hindus. Mr. Inamdar makes it a point to declare that teachers from RSS-run schools have not only come whenever invited, as guest teachers for his special Merit List batch, but have also taught his students diligently. ``
Author may note that what looks like a hateful ideology may appeal to others. I personally find communism very distasteful but respect the wishes of Benagalees if they want to remain attached to this ideology.
Sridhar

``many people see the Kama Sutra as `sacred`.``
They Do???
Waah, god dammit why was I not raised in a more religious household? Yeh annyai hai Bhagwan.
Actually I thought the good guru had primarily written it as an exercise manual for courtesans of the day - well maybe religious to those who worship at that alter :-)

Unfortunately the problem with this board is that the rightist and the leftist are never going to agree leaving us ambidexterous people utterly frustrated.

Saminashah #88

{{ Provide the text that discredits Nussbaum.}}

Be careful what you ask for. You might get it …

Saminashah #56:

Posts an excerpt from an article by Martha Nussbaum, which begins:

{``...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…}

I have not yet had a chance to look at Nussbaum’s article and locate the context of the passage above. But the assertion that the three cases listed above are “no different in degree” is nonsensical on its face. Case 1 (Mary Roy successfully challenges Travancore Christian Act) and case 3 (Shah Bano case) are different not merely in outcome and degree but also in kind: case 3 (Shah Bano) clearly involved religious fundamentalism whereas case 1 absolutely did not.

The reason, briefly, is this. Until 1986, intestate inheritance for Mary Roy’s community (so-called ‘Syrian’ Christians of Kerala) was governed by the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 (and, I believe, a similar Cochin inheritance act of around the same time). These acts were, in turn, framed from the customary personal and family law for Syrian Christians (based on the long-standing usual practice of that community), where the governing principles for the inheritance of landed property were patriarchy, virilocality and male ultimogeniture, and the principal vehicle for conferring a share of parental property on daughters was a (typically very sizable) dowry. The prior laws were not based on or justified by canon or ecclesiastical law. The question of ‘religious free exercise’ or ‘fundamentalism’ therefore does not arise in this case. I might also add that - while Syrian Christians might be notorious for schisms in their churches and consequent interminable legal battles over church authority and church property – they are as a group emphatically not susceptible to fundamentalism or in the thrall of their mullahs. Further, on such measures as female education, and higher education, they have historically been miles ahead of the Indian norm (or even the Indian middle-class norm). As to “small, politically powerless religion”, that might be so of Christianity in the all-India context; but Syrian Christians are the most prosperous community in Kerala and hardly without political power there.

If Nussbaum is unaware of all this, I have to conclude that she simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

The contrast with the Shah Bano case could not be more marked. In that case, Shah Bano’s husband divorced her using the triple talaq formula sanctioned by Islamic canon law, and returned her mehr in accordance with the same body of law. The Indian Supreme Court, while awarding Shah Bano maintenance, specifically cited the Quran (2:241-242) in attempting to legitimate its decision. The ensuing debate was notorious for the claim advanced by Muslim traditionalists that the shariat was divinely inspired/revealed legislation and that its provisions were binding on Muslim men and women for all time to come. It was on the grounds of
``Islam khatre mein hai” that riots were threatened. In other words, this was a textbook case of fundamentalism in its most straightforward definition.

Had Nussbaum chosen to refer to the absence, until recently, of any provision for divorce in Christian personal law, she might have had some marginal credibility in pushing the case for fundamentalism (or religion, more generally) controlling lawmaking for Christians. But her invocation of the Mary Roy case is frankly ludicrous.

And I haven’t even gotten started on Nussbaum’s invocation of Hindu fundamentalism (the only politically important fundamentalism, according to her – another ludicrous claim) as a vehicle for suppressing women.

stuka:

kent state`s aftermath comes immediately to mind...but after the course was corrected it dissipated...am probing for a consistent thrust...an approach or movement that can effectively speak and guard the centre against the excesses of the left/right fringe…

…digression:

…it is sad to see that Congress that could fill such a role has been gheraoed and hijacked by her majesty’s loyal forces…

...sometimes I wonder if the voters….those who are the real supporters of the middle moderate majority…why don’t they throw out her majesty and her cohorts?… wonder if Rajesh pilot and that other young fellow (forget his name) could have led a young turk movement to get rid of this dinosaur around the moderate’s neck…even priyanka (rumoured to be groomed) cannot help Congress…why cannot the supporters/voters see this through?

If you`re in Boston, please walk for CRY (Child Relief and You) on Sept 13th ... registration is here

http://64.6.235.83/walk/boston/

They support Children pure and simple ... no saffron strings

---

Angana, (though no one here seems to be getting a response and sorry in advance for the typos etc. that will surely follow as I type this in the box)

1. Are NRI ``Hindutva`` supporters a proportionately larger slice of the community than Indian ``Hindutva`` supporters ?

2. Are NRI ``Hindutva`` supporters qualitatively different in their idea of India than Indian ``Hindutva`` supporters?

3. Is there a way to track donations to IDRF vs CRY, ASHA for education etc. how do we know that support for IDRF is increasing compared to other charities ?

4. Are there any secular organizations with no ``spiritual`` strings that are working for the upliftment of tribals in India while preserving their unique culture ? You say ``Hinduisation is a ruinous process of colonisation`` - would you also fair to say ``Christianisation/Islamisation is a ruinous process of colonisation`` ?

5. Is it any use talking to NRIs who have chosen ``cultural genocide`` in the american melting pot for their future generations as a trade off for a better life about ``cultural genocide`` of tribals by anyone offering them a better quality of life ?

6. If the Tatas or someone gave money to fund ISKON to evangelise the good news about Krishna to trailer park dwellers in the American South baited with suble offers of a better life (perhaps in ``Ten Commandment`` Alabama) how would right wing Americans react ? Do NRI`s have a better idea of missionary agendas through their experience of the religious right in the US than Indians?

7. Doesn`t every kind of American that came from somewhere have an ugly face in Diaspora that is regarded with trepidation by the mother country ? American Greeks setting up ghastly large statues in Greece that appall the natives, midwestern Americans of european descent touring France, England that are regarded as bumpkins by Europeans. Europeans claiming Americans of European descent are more right wing, religious and conservative than secular Europeans themselves.

8. Should not the ultimate safegaurd against *criminal* misuse of funds given by NRI`s to IDRF be through Indian Laws in India that regulate how these funds are used?

9.How come the many initiatives to give back to India by NRI`s such as in the article below that do not have a ``Hindu Rashtra`` outlook, don`t find a mention in your article ?

(from Silicon India)
ON PHILANTHROPY

By Kalpana Mohan
From educational trusts to cleanup crews, Indians abroad are doing their part.

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which, if acted on, would save one-half the wars of the world.” -Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to French philosopher Destutt de Tracy in 1820
Last December, B. V. Jagadeesh made a splash in Bangalore’s newspapers, by announcing a donation of $1 million to improve educational standards in the 133 municipal corporation schools of Bangalore. A trust administered by a member of his family in Bangalore works with World Bank executives to examine the state of the facilities in city-run schools and to decide how best the funds can be utilized. “If every one of us here in the Silicon Valley who hails from India can go back to our country of birth and help the school that he or she studied in by motivating students, by providing library facilities and by setting up labs, we will help build a better India for the next generation,” says Jagadeesh, co-founder and chief technology officer of Exodus Communications.

Builders of Nations

The recent spate of educational philanthropy has Indian institutions ecstatic about the munificence of their alumni. The upper crust of Silicon Valley’s own Tatas, an erstwhile bourgeoisie, is spawning a community of even more generous indigenous Birlas. This glut of success brings to mind Oscar Wilde’s statement: “Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

Gita Piramal, an eminent business historian and journalist, discusses India’s most intrepid and innovative businessmen in her book titled Business Legends. The book quotes Nani Palkhivala speaking about the late Kasturbhai Lalbhai, one of India’s most renowned industrialists: “Kasturbhai was among the small band of men who could be called the builders of nations – not merely builders of business or builders of industries.”

The new builders of India are a passionate coterie of well-educated engineers who have broken free from the fetters of the technical straightjacket and thundered into the corporate boardrooms of America. Their staggering wealth will ensure the good life for many generations to come, not just in their own lives, but also in the lives of others.

A Foundation for the Future

“The basic problem in India is illiteracy. Once people are educated, they’ll pick the right leaders,” remarks Prabhu Goel. In 1994, Goel started the Foundation for Excellence (FFE) to help needy students in India. His objective was to enable a meaningful transformation in the lives of bright students who were unable to continue their education due to financial hardships.

The Foundation for Excellence is a non-profit organization formed solely to identify and promote bright, underprivileged students in India. Scholarship candidates are chosen based solely on merit and on need. Since its inception in 1994, the FFE has provided the educational expenses for ,2000 children, from the eighth grade on to college, using a volunteer network. Kanwal Rekhi, who recently joined the FFE as a key sponsor, pledged another $5 million to the $10 million fund. His contribution will ensure scholarships for approximately 15,000 needy students irrespective of religion, gender or caste. “I want to make a positive difference in the lives of others and I want to leave the professional environment in a better state than it was in when I came into it,” says Goel.

Some of the Valley moguls who are now plowing money back into their country of birth are vocal in their denunciation of the political and economic state of affairs in their native land. Rekhi’s tirades against the Indian bureaucracy creates ripples in the Indian media every few weeks: “Indians are first-rate people in a third-rate country. We are able to beat the best and brightest individually but we lose collectively.”

Rekhi believes that successful entrepreneurship in India should strive to improve its business economy, bring infrastructure into India’s villages and cause technology to be used by the under-privileged masses. He is mobilizing forces in the Silicon Valley and in India to pay back to the country in cash and kind. “We need not just a handful of entrepreneurs. We need thousands of them!” asserts Rekhi. His generous donation of $2 million to IIT Bombay in 1999 has resulted in a spontaneous combustion of philanthropy from every quarter into the IITs and other universities. “I felt that IITs had stagnated as institutes. They have not done well in post-graduate work and research,” says Rekhi who insists that he is a “retired” man who is doing just his “little” bit.

Rekhi is setting up a trust which will help the IITs garner $500 million from their alumni, located all across the United States. The idea is to establish a fund-raising trust which will work towards raising the level of IITs to make them comparable with world-class institutes like Harvard and Stanford.

Vinod Gupta, founder of Nebraska-based database American Business Information, started a new trend when he offered $2 million to his alma mater proposing to build a school of management patterned after the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Called the Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur now has a business school which, according to Gupta, is an ideal extension, especially for engineering graduates with a few years of professional experience. Another Gupta is active in setting up a business school to open in 2001 in India, in conjunction with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. The pioneer for this effort is Rajat Gupta, the managing director of McKinsey & Co. The Indian School of Business (ISB) will be based in Hyderabad and international donors will fund its $100 million campus.

Paying Their Dues in Cash and Kind

In May 1999, co-founder of Exodus Communications K.B. Chandrasekhar established a research center — the AU-KBC Center for Internet and Telecom Technologies — in the Anna University at Chennai. The center plans to strengthen India’s technological base in information technology, and also has announced their intention of building a research, development and training center in the area of Internet and telecom technologies within a few years.

Chandrasekhar has started another ambitious venture at the Anna University. He has set up a remote education center whose resources will be available to everyone. The first such course goes online in July 2000; the correspondence course of yesteryears assumes new dimensions with the effective use of Internet technology. “Can you imagine the phenomenal implications for the schools of the future?” he asks. His endeavors have piqued the interest of the private engineering colleges in the area.

On his end, Jagadeesh has set up entrepreneurial contests in several universities where students are expected to come up with an original idea and translate it into a business plan. “I want to bring business and real life awareness at the student level, especially in the engineering colleges in India,” he says, who laments that college education in India primarily focuses on theoretical aspects of a discipline rather than on real life scenarios.

The M. S. University in Baroda is undergoing a major overhaul these days. Two distinguished alumni from the University, Amit Shah and Ajay Shah, have just dumped $5 million into its coffers. This windfall will contribute to the “cyberification” of the MSU campus. Project Net-Circle Baroda will provide a fiber-optic cable network across the university,