Dilip D’Souza’s methods strike me as strange. Do they stem from his ideological moorings? By his own admission, he’s not a Leftist, but a mere typist; so ideology is ruled out. Or is it a juvenile indulgence of swimming against the tide despite the dictates of commonsense?
Perhaps.
Case in point: Afzal.
In his Settle for less, Dilip makes the same point he made earlier: don’t hang the terrorist.
What, after all, should our response be to an egregious outrage like the attack on Parliament? To me, this is the fundamental question in the whole uproar about the death sentence awarded to Mohammed Afzal: just what should our response be? Should it be vengeance?
Commonsense response should be: punish the guilty. With death. But that’s not the point Dilip is getting at: his argument at least in this caes, can be summed thus: if you punish the guilty, you are extracting “vengeance.” Is it any wonder that in addition to the clueless UPA dolts, scribes like Dilip contribute to the world’s perception that India is still a cowardly soft state?
Dilip says further that we should,
…attempt to thoroughly investigate the crime and punish all the guilty, so it won’t happen again?
Agreed, but what guarantee can Dilip give us that if this happens, he won’t argue against the selfsame punishment on the ground that the state is extracting vengeance? And further that
The man will be hung and buried, and our collective consciences will be satisfied, and we will be nowhere closer to understanding what really happened that December day, to knowing who was responsible for the deaths of several brave men and women, to ensuring that their colleagues will not die in a future attack.
It only takes someone really dense to not know what happened on that fateful December day: Parliament was attacked, and Afzal was one of the perpetrators: as I have argued earlier, he should be summarily shot.
And here’s Dilip’s best:
I do not claim that Afzal is innocent of the charges against him…
Yes, yes, yes… but not so fast. Here’s what Dilip wrote about Afzal very recently:
Why should you care about Mohammad Afzal?
Because he did not kill anyone, he did not plan and direct the attack on Parliament. Because he was acquitted of charges of belonging to a terrorist organization by the Supreme Court (and other courts).
Dilip wrote the above on Oct 7, 2006, and his latest apology for Afzal on Oct 18, 2006. He has wondrously backtracked within about 10 days. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it? I’m not the one to argue that you shouldn’t alter your position if new facts surface. However, there exists such a thing called a minimum standard of integrity, which is often clouded–more so in today’s world–by deeper things. One of which is called the DAT, or Dilip’s Argumentative Techniques (TM).
The latest Afzal post is one of the better instances of DAT (TM): it’s so clever that it’s easy to completely miss it. In his earlier post, he argued against Afzal’s hanging from a positive/sympathetic ground and now, he argues for the same thing from a negative/opposite ground but the essence is the same: don’t hang a terrorist named Afzal.
Beat that!
Postscript:
- Dilip must have mastered Schopenhauer’s argumentative techniques.
- Apparently, I was wrong. Dilip has nothing to do with Schopenhauer. His inspiration is a celebrity Verbal Terrorist. Here.
If Afzal is hanged, we’ll never know the answer to the real question: Who attacked the Indian Parliament? Was it the Lashkar-e-Toiba? The Jaish-e-Mohammed? Or does the answer lie somewhere deep in the secret heart of this country that we all live in and love and hate in our own beautiful, intricate, various, and thorny ways? [..]
To hang Mohammed Afzal without knowing what really happened is a misdeed that will not easily be forgotten. Or forgiven. Nor should it be.
Reads eerily similiar, na?
On 10.26.06 Niketan says:
Sandeep
Returning to your blog after some time. Nice to see this entry. Honestly Dilip’s arguments have flummoxed me completely. I just wonder why does he not plainly say “Afzal must not hang because I say so”. That would be far better.
Secondly - why is the Other India portal being used for this discussion? The purpose of the other portal was to focus on those ‘wretched of the earth who have not benefitted from 15 years of liberalisation’?
How has the hanging of a convicted terrorist suddenly become the focus there?
After having followed this man’s writings for the past few years, it seems he just wants to swim against the tide. This is the way he can get his writings in the media. Whay else would rags like Hindu and Outlook publish him if he said like everyone else - ‘hang this terrorist’. When you give a contrarian view, there are many people especially from the secular media - also add to that the guilty happens to be a — let us leave it there, who will rush to hear you out. Never mind that common sense and logic go out of the room with such views.
Going by Dilip’s logic
Why should the perpetrators and instigators of the 1984 riots be punished? After all all of them did not do the actual killing. Only some of the rioters must have done the actual killings.
Why should Thackeray be punished for the 1992-93 Bombay riots? Even he did not kill anybody. Is it because the Srikrishna report says so?
Anyway when he presented Nandita Haksars argument - it has proven to be littered with sevaral falsehoods. One commenter has dissected the entire piece. As usual no replies to his comments from the usual suspects.
http://www.theotherindia.org/human-rights/why-care-about-a-man-called-afzal.html#comments
On 10.26.06 Sanjay Choudhry says:
There are quite a few Indian Muslims and Christians — Arundhati Roy, Shabana Azmi, Dilip D’souza, Javed Akhtar — who throw barbs at the Hindus from behind the shield of liberalism and secularism.
It is just a way to project their Hindu hatred by using the intellectual-sounding medium of leftism. But they can’t fool all the people all the time.
They are intellectually dishonest. This is the reason why their arguments are contrived and artificial and are easily countered by realists.
On 11.28.06 Policy | Yogacara Network says:
[...] Dilip’s Care Overfloweth Submitted by editor on Mon, 2006-10-23 07:37. Policy Dilip D’Souza’s methods strike me as strange. Do they stem from his ideological moorings? By his own admission, he’s not a Leftist, but a mere typist; so ideology is ruled out. Or is it a juvenile indulgence of swimming against the tide despite the dictates of commonsense? Perhaps. Case in point: Afzal. In his Settle for less, Dilip [...] » full article | source | add new comment | 4 reads [...]