My Op-Ed: A Lie Split Wide Open
Wednesday, 22. April 2009 - 1:47 PM
My piece on the SIT’s findings was published in the Pioneer today. Comments & criticism welcome as always.
A lie split wide open
Sandeep B
With every new finding on the post-Godhra riots exonerating the Modi Government and exposing the fabrications of Teesta Setalvad, the latter’s ‘fight for justice’ stands exposed
The news still hot from the oven is how the mass of wild accusations accompanied by shrill activism that Ms Teesta Setalvad hurled against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi came back and hit her after seven years. The biting happened in stages but with the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team tabling its report, the wound has been ‘officially’ exposed. Over the years, every new finding on the post-Godhra riots seems to be doing two things: Lessening the culpability of Mr Modi, and exposing the fabrications of activists like Ms Setalvad. But this is not all.
Indian public discourse typically suffers from a yawning lack of historical sense, which is a prerequisite to analyse any issue in proper perspective. This same historical sense has finally led to the unmasking of Ms Setalvad. She now stands as a solid specimen of the vilest form of profiteering from other people’s misery. If that is somehow a lesser form of vileness, there’s more to come.
The now-forgotten Zahira Sheikh represents in many ways a shocking turning point. She was Ms Setalvad’s star witness, carefully nurtured and protected. Until one day, Zahira turned around and did a volte-face. You can argue that Zahira turned hostile out of fear or greed. However, Mr S Gurumurthy factually demolishes this argument very convincingly (http://www.gurumurthy.net/articledisplay.pl?2004-11-09). Zahira’s U-turn made front page news for days in the media. Till then a very fiery and highly visible Ms Setalvad gradually evaporated. Her crusader image was suddenly dented in the most unprecedented manner.
However, the skeletons didn’t stop falling. In December 2008, her trusted aide, Mr Raees Khan defected. He revealed even fouler details, which included threats of physical harm. He also alleged that she took away some of his assets. Ms Setalvad’s pile of woes mounted higher when the Nanavati Commission submitted the first part of its report, which absolves Mr Narendra Modi of any complicity in the post-Godhra riots.
And now, the SIT report, which directly implicates her. Among other findings, former CBI director RK Raghavan, who heads the SIT, lists these:
- The horrendous allegations made (by Citizens for Justice & Peace) were false.
- Cyclostyled affidavits were supplied by a social activist and the allegations made in them were untrue.
- Witnesses were tutored to present false testimony to the court.
- Incidents that didn’t actually occur were manufactured — the alleged gang-rape of Kausar Banu and her foetus being ripped out, dead bodies being dumped by rioters in a well in Naroda Patiya, etc.
Recall how Ms Setalvad pursued Mr Modi with stubborn determination almost every single day for at least three years. A measure of success of her brazen activism is the Supreme Court’s premature pronouncement of Mr Modi as the “modern day Nero.” The SIT report now clearly shows some of the dubious and starkly illegal methods she followed in her quest for ‘justice’ (sic).
In other words, she didn’t have a case.
But she got away with it for some time because she was good at vocalising her brazenness. The secular media’s uncritical support provided additional ground for her efforts. However, as time has shown, she failed at sustaining the house she built using an edifice made of chaffs.
But Ms Setelvad’s spurious activism has done significant damage: It spawned an entire cottage industry built on the same false edifice. This cottage industry was awash with tonnes of funds because it was able to convince some rich people/institutions abroad that the ‘fight for justice’ was genuine. Some were well-intentioned, but several others espoused viciously anti-Hindu/India agendas. Mr Modi’s visa denial is an instructive example. It was primarily orchestrated by a very powerful Indian Christian lobby in the United States. While this lobby has demonstrated no real love for India or Hindus, it sabotaged his visit because it perceived a threat in Mr Modi as a very articulate Hindu leader with enormous goodwill (and fan base) in the US.
Meanwhile, it’s quite interesting to note that Ms Setelvad has won several awards for her fearless ‘quest for justice’. While we don’t attach too much importance to such awards, one specific award rankles as the unkindest cut: The Nani A Palkhivala Award. An award in the honourable memory of the most courageous defender of Indian democracy and public conscience now given to a person who has mocked both.
Important questions remain: Will all those who uncritically relied on Ms Stelvad’s words and activism now have the moral decency to apologise, withdraw their statements, and admit they are wrong? But we know the answer.
Tags: Commentary, Communal Politics, Gujarat Riots, India, Indian Politics, Indian Secularism, Pioneer, Politics, Pseudosecularism, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame
22. April 2009 - 2:12 PM
I hope you’ve read about the Fatwa issued by the Muslim religious leader in Bangalore against voting for the BJP. Similarly the Christian community too has issued communications urging the community to vote for ’secular’ parties. Would love to read your thoughts on this issue.
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/90827/karnataka-minorty-issue-fatwa-against-bjp.html
22. April 2009 - 7:51 PM
Hi Sandeep,
This is a very good post, as usual. But I’ve one very serious reservation which has nothing has nothing to do with exposing what Teesta and her likes do. We should do that. But, only targeting her would be to miss the forest for one tree.
Let us not forget that these Teesta or Shabanas are nothing without the ELM and that is what we should target. And this applies to everything the ELM has to say, be it smearing Modi or Varun. The ELM will pick up a trace of dirt any anti-Hindu bigot has to say and smear it all over the place – WITHOUT any verification. Remember constant clippings of Parzania before Gujarat elections? Or non-stop coverage of Varun speech? Only taking down the entire ELM can bring any change. Otherwise they will pick one Teesta, and when she falls they will jump to another Teesta before you can blink – and the rest of the country will live in the present while forgetting the past. Unfortunately, I don’t see many conservative bloggers/columnists doing that. May be its because this is election season.
22. April 2009 - 8:09 PM
Here is a rebuttal from one of the usual suspects
http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2009/04/about-warped-minds.html
22. April 2009 - 10:31 PM
Check this out Sandeep
Yoss,
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=954c5708-79ee-47d0-8272-795b79946cd5&Headline=Gujarat+riots+witnesses+not+tutored%3a+SIT
“The Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing major cases of 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat riots on Tuesday slammed reports that riots witnesses were tutored to give false evidence for exaggeration of the situation, by activists and organisations helping the victims.
The SIT rebuttal followed the alleged leak of its report recently, which was submitted to the Supreme Court in March. “The findings of the report have concentrated on the investigations into the cases and it was not our business to indulge in the blame game and level allegations,” a senior SIT official said. ”
Why this anger in case of this leak and not in so many leaks that happened during the Malegaon blast case.
23. April 2009 - 4:18 AM
As usual, the Secularist Asuras promote lies, are eventually caught in their lies, and then do their best to wiggle out of it by repetition and obfuscation ad nauseum.
The problem for them is that the Asura always loses.
23. April 2009 - 7:13 AM
Came across the report in Hindustan Times linked by Sudhir above on another blog. This was my comment-
Surprising that it took them one full week to cook up this.
First they lay the ground work by pasting this -
“The Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing major cases of 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat riots on Tuesday slammed reports that riots witnesses were tutored to give false evidence for exaggeration of the situation, by activists and organisations helping the victims. ”
1. The word they use is – “anti-Muslim Gujarat riots”.
How does then one account for the death of around 300 Hindus if riots were ‘anti-Muslim’ ?
2. Then ‘Gujarat riots’. Attempt to tie Gujarat to riots.
So a phrase ‘riots that occured in Gujarat in 2002‘ that would have conveyed the correct meaning was manipulated to “2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat riots ” to implant in the mind of the reader that –
(a) riots of 2002 were anti-Muslim.
(b) There was no ’cause’ to the riots. It spontaneously happened. No relation to Godhra incident.
(c) Gujarat and riots go together.
3. Next- ‘SIT… slammed reports…’
Whereas rest of the report show that SIT members have not denied what was reported earlier.
So ’slammed’ is meant to give a wrong impression that SIT themselves have denied what was reported earlier as findings of the team.
4. And they conclude with- “…by activists and organisations helping the victims. ”
Ya.
Whatever else you read, mind you, these activists and their organisations were helping the victims.
With this introductory paragraph implanting plenty of contrary-to-truth suggestions in the minds of the reader, they start their report.
Then comes – “The SIT rebuttal followed the alleged leak of its report recently, …”
5. The ‘SIT rebuttal’.
In case the ‘SIT …slammed reports…’ phrase of first para failed to make an impression on you, to reinforce it, is “SIT rebuttal”.
However, in the rest of the report one does not find SIT rebutting anything, only attempting to deflect the reporter.
6. Further, “alleged leak”.
It is only ‘alleged’, implying that truth is something different.
Second, ‘leak’. conveying the idea of untrustworthiness of source.
Thus the ‘reports’ in the first line becomes ‘alleged leaks’ in the second.
Next, this is the best that they could find among what SIT told them- ““The findings of the report have concentrated on the investigations into the cases and it was not our business to indulge in the blame game and level allegations,” a senior SIT official said.”
7. Far from denying what was reported earlier, far from ‘rebutting’, far from ’slamming’, SIT makes a neutral statement, indicating that it was not their business to blame anyone.
No negation of what was reported earlier as findings of the team.
This is what is trumpeted as ’slamming’ ‘rebuttal’ .
Next- “The SIT response to the reported leak came on a day, when the Supreme Court termed the leak as a “betrayal of the faith reposed in those to whom the report was allowed access”.”
So, that was not, after all, an ‘alleged’ or even a ‘reported’ leak.
For the Supreme Court to make such an observation, the leak had to be true.
8. So here we have these fellows attempting to suggest that the earlier report was not based on facts by adding ‘alleged’ and ‘reported’ to ‘leaks’ knowing fully well that the earlier report was based on authentic information.
9. Despite this, the next para tries again to cast aspersions on the veracity of the earlier report by using the words- ‘claimed’, ‘alleged’.
And then- “Asked about the leaked contents of the report, the SIT chief, R. K. Raghavan told Hindustan Times that he could not confirm whether the leaked contents were true.”
10. So where Court and SIT chief is involved, it is straight- the reports were based on leaked contents. not ‘allegedly’ , not ‘claimed’, not ‘reported’, but exactly on ‘leaked contents’.
11. This is the second quote from SIT that they have given which again does not deny the truth in the earlier report.
Is this what is trumpeted as ’slamming’, rebuttal’ ?
The third quote from SIT goes- ““I am answerable only to the Supreme Court. The alleged reported leaks appear to be inspired by dubious motives. I cannot confirm such claims. The act is highly condemnable,” Raghavan said. ”
Again, no denial of what was reported.
Further, by saying “I am answerable only to the Supreme Court.”, Raghavan tells the reporter that he is not intereseted in answering any question put by the reporter.
The rest of the quote reveals discontinuity, as when number of replies are clubbed together. It indicates the possibility that the quote is a contructed one from replies to different questions.
And then one more attempt to cast aspersion of the report-”The SIT sources said the alleged leaks appear to have been based on statements of state police officials and “cannot be termed as findings of the report.” ”
It is ‘SIT sources’ this time, not Raghavan. It could be anyone from the guy who supplied tea to the SIT to the sweeper who cleaned SIT office premises, since the ’source’ is able to only speculate that the ‘leaks appear to have been based on statements of police officials’.
And what all of this unequivocally confirms is that the earlier report was very much based on the SIT report.
Despite this and contrary to facts, the Hindustan Times headlines claim- “Gujarat riots witnesses not tutored: SIT”
When did SIT say that or anything at all to that effect ?
The intention behind this is that a person who casually glances through the news headlines will get the totally wrong impression that ‘Gujarat riots witnesses were not tutored’. And that SIT itself says so.
Next, if he glances at the first two paras, he will only reinforce this wrong impression.
The rest of the report is more of suggestions and insinuations rather than honest reporting.
As many people have the habit of glancing through the headlines, and maybe the first two paras, these tactics are very succesful in spreading misinformation and lies.
The headline, first para and the first line of the second para that cathces the eye of the casual glancer is carefully designed to mislead and misinform.
No wonder these master liars as are found in editorial dens indulge freely in such detestable tactics.
The question is, how does a newspaper such as this that has rather decent circulation get away with this kind of blatant deception ?
Don’t its subscribers deserve truthful reports ?
Why should the newspaper misinform its subscriber who pays him ?
Isn’t it akin to ‘biting the hand that feeds’ ?
Ok. Maybe, there is another ‘hand’ that is feeding these deceptive monsters more than what the subscribers can.
That would explain.
Nevertheless, there are sufficient grounds to file a case of ‘Cheating’ and make these monsters and the ‘hand’s behind them pay for their crimes.
23. April 2009 - 9:11 AM
It’s HT – they probably have a tie-up or business connection with Teesta and her Sabrang Communication. Seems like they were the only newspaper to have a very brief report on the SIT report a while ago, whereas rest all newspapers had more extensive report.
23. April 2009 - 11:22 AM
Where is our Arundathi Roy?
She went around the world screaming about Godhra incident. Where is she now?
23. April 2009 - 7:44 PM
Note D’Souza’s desperation. The name “D’Souza” wasn’t seen much on blogs other than his own these days, but after the Setalvad story broke, it is popping up all over the place. What gives?
The Gujarat fabricated atrocity stories are routinely used by many a Hindu-baiter to fake “outrage”. And faking “outrage” is vital to the Hindu-baiters’ “argument”, such as it is. When you question the fabrications, you-vile-justifier-of-atrocities-you-outrage-me! airs are assumed without a moment’s delay, implying that _you_ are responsible for their emotionally disturbed state of mind and the injury given to their innocence. Ergo, any attempt to separate them from their atrocity yarn would mean robbing them of their excuse to put on this act.
All of this makes me nostalgic. Happened to witness long ago, on this very blog, D’Souza’s disapproval of inaccurately counting the number of victims of Radhabai Chawl massacre. Expressing the said disapproval, he presented the picture of a man who was a stickler for accuracy when reciting riot stories (when they involved Hindu victims, that is). He was unhappy that the Radhabai number was stated as “many”, when “only” two families were set on fire. Never mind that the incident had its own elements of a foetus story: the victims included a crippled girl, who given her disability, couldn’t probably have done even that much that the others did in protecting themselves from the engulfing fire.
But I digress. The point is: nostalgia. The following comments on Sandeep’s blog from five years ago are well worth savoring again:
http://www.sandeepweb.com/2004/08/12/ignore-at-your-peril/
There’s a lot more to this debate, which I am not able to locate. Did the hacker delete it, Sandeep?
23. April 2009 - 8:53 PM
Ot,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilip_D%27Souza
Wikipedia page about dilip D’ Souza.
“Dilip D’Souza (born 1960) is a Mumbai-based writer and journalist. He writes about social and political causes, with a far-left perspective, as well as some travel and current affairs articles. His columns appear in The Sunday Observer, Rediff.com, Outlook and Mid-Day.”
23. April 2009 - 8:54 PM
Ot asked – “Did the hacker delete it, Sandeep?”
At the time of hacking, one ‘larissa’ had commented overwhelmingly on this blog, comments that were actually meaningless, but made with the intention of provoking replies, such as repeatedly calling David Frawley a hack and praising Max Mueller.
As soon as the site was de-hacked, ‘larissa’ also disappered.
I wonder, was all those apparently meaningless comments meant to get the IP adresses of those who replied ?
To what purpose ? Target those computers later ?
Where did the hacking come from ? within India or outside ?
24. April 2009 - 2:40 AM
David Frawley is a hack, reading his books it is a shame what scholarship has degenerated to and how anyone can write a book these days. Don’t see why I am called a hacker for this. It is usually incognitos who hack sites.— LARISSA.
24. April 2009 - 5:34 AM
And P.S. While Max Meuller was not right on everything and some of his views have been revised and added uopn, he was a pioneer in Indology. I have enjoyed many of his writings which are out of print and were in our college library and give us a glimpse of the real man. Frawley reminds me of a fake Swami–beard and all– he can fool some but not all– and I am not a leftist or a liberal or anti-Hindu or whatever incognito has been calling me—In fact, I believe I am far more conservative than even he is…
24. April 2009 - 7:02 AM
Now that ‘larissa’ is ‘back’, how long will it be before the blog is hacked again ?
24. April 2009 - 8:15 AM
“d P.S. While Max Meuller was not right on everything and some of his views have been revised and added uopn, he was a pioneer in Indology. I have enjoyed many of his writings which are out of print and were in our college library and give us a glimpse of the real man. Frawley reminds me of a fake Swami–beard and all– he can fool some but not all– and I am not a leftist or a liberal or anti-Hindu or whatever incognito has been calling me—In fact, I believe I am far more conservative than even he is…”
Max Mueller’s only use to indology was simple translation of words. Transliteration, gaining an actual understanding to the depth of the Veda, was not something he was able to do, as he was blinded by religious and racial bias. Thats not much of a contribution, given that actually understanding and conveying the intent behind the collection of words making the Veda, is far more important.
Any monkey can do simple translations.
24. April 2009 - 8:45 AM
@Sharada Prasad: Arundhati is busy writing her next fiction – on the disemboweling of muslim women or a treatise on how to coach “riot witnesses”. I bet it will be a bestseller!
24. April 2009 - 11:15 AM
Guys,
The hacker didn’t delete anything.
OT,
You posted an incorrect link. Here’s the nostalgic post: http://www.sandeepweb.com/2004/08/16/indebted-to-dilip-dsouza/
24. April 2009 - 12:15 PM
Wikipedia page about dilip D’ Souza.
“Dilip D’Souza (born 1960) is a Mumbai-based writer and journalist. He writes about social and political causes, with a far-left perspective, as well as some travel and current affairs articles. His columns appear in The Sunday Observer, Rediff.com, Outlook and Mid-Day.”
In India, many rabidly communal Christians and Muslims pretend to be “far left” as a way to carry out their anti-Hindu propaganda. Positioning themselves on the “far left,” they get a respectable forum from which to throw dung on Hinduism and Hindus. However, they never bother to show similar contempt and “deconstrution” for their own religions, which gives their game away. Many Muslims and Christians are doing this “far left” business in India.
24. April 2009 - 2:27 PM
http://renjithmn.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/general-election-2009-bjp-vs-congress/
24. April 2009 - 6:17 PM
well, the question is whether the SC is ready to eat its own words. This was hardly any ‘breaking news’ on any channel, which otherwise categorise a sneeze as such. Can anyone tell me why the media stinks of utter prejudice and doesnt report what is factually correct when it comes to Gujarat or anything Hindu?
24. April 2009 - 8:11 PM
@Krishna
“Any monkey can do simple translations.”
Oh yeah? Me thinks you should actually give it a try for I did for a while, although I changed my field of studies later. It is not easy to translate the Rig Veda due to the very archaic nature of the texts and due to the fact that Sankkrit has changed over the years. Meuller dedicated his life to these translations and most people still read his series. Until you come up with something better or you are a far greater man, it is worthless to call him a “monkey”–this is the problem with mass education–anyone thinks he is a scholar.
As for racial bias, many men wiritng in the time had biases. So what to do about it? I do not care for their personal biases but for what they have contributed to scholarship, and Max Meuller has contributed plenty. Most Indians I know are very racist themselves even today. So I fail to see your point of ad hominem remarks.
24. April 2009 - 8:15 PM
@Krishna
“Any monkey can do simple translations.”
And calling a first translation of the Rig Veda a “simple translation” displays your utter ignorance…it is useless to even descend to respond to such a level of intellect!
24. April 2009 - 8:36 PM
You guys are wasting your time arguing with the brown sepoy. Nobody is more loyal to Whites than Uncle Tom.
24. April 2009 - 9:55 PM
The blog is not hacked yet ?
Must commend you Sandeep, for putting up better defences this time.
24. April 2009 - 10:12 PM
“You guys are wasting your time arguing with the brown sepoy. Nobody is more loyal to Whites than Uncle Tom.”
I happen to know my history well indeed–it just does not come from sources like Frawley…I read and learn and discard parts that are irrelevant and am not obsessed with whining about colonial exploitation and am more concerned with India’s current shortcomings—it has been nearly 70 years since the British left–how about some serious introspection on our shortcomings apart from blaming others for our shortcomings?
Moreover I am proud of our Sankrit heritage and come from an orthodox Brahmin family and I am quite orthodox myself–. I read from whoever I can learn from–and Frawley is certainly not one such person…I do not see how can can be anti-Hindu is one refuses to learn from a fraud? There is a lot one can learn from Meuller if one reads him–does not mean I hold him as God on everything…And no I am not brown and I am not a sepoy. thank you.
24. April 2009 - 10:39 PM
“You guys are wasting your time arguing with the brown sepoy. Nobody is more loyal to Whites than Uncle Tom.”
Also quit your obsession with “whiteness”. Hindus are of all hue and color–I have several blue eyed members in my family who are fair skinned. They are Hindu like anyone else–some members from my husband’s side of the family are freckled faced and red haired as Kashmiris HIndus. They are no less Hindu than you. I find your obsession with colonial exploitation ridiculous–you go too far and discredit people who have dedicated their lives to serious scholarship–I am tired of having everything framed in the context of oppression by “whites”. Currently Hindus are their own worst enemies because they are not united on anything and only are capable of arguing amongst themselves…actually Krishna any monkey is capable of arguing not becoming a real scholar…it takes a man to put up a real fight…I do not mean violence but a real fight in terms of national excellence and dedication and sacrifice to the nation…liberty does not come free you have to fight for it…and being free entails responsibility…which is why democracy is a farce in India.
25. April 2009 - 3:53 AM
Sandeep,
Can you just go through this link and tell me why people like him get away with their farts?
http://specials.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/24slde8-narayana-murthy-interview-part-2.htm
25. April 2009 - 4:03 AM
Larissa,
Have you ever visited a rigvedic scholar to try to see what the direct descendants of the people who wrote Rigveda know about it?
25. April 2009 - 4:37 AM
“Have you ever visited a rigvedic scholar to try to see what the direct descendants of the people who wrote Rigveda know about it?”
My own grandfather knew Sanskrit well and he enjoyed reading Meuller–I remember during puja he used to correct the priests and get angry at them for reciting incorrectly and for carelessness. I do not see how being a “direct descendant” makes you understand it better–if there are any direct descendants of those that created Sanskrit the Kashmiri Brahmins would rank amongst the purest–but this has nothing do with understanding the Rig Vedic text…those understand it who have bothered to learn their history, have preserved their traditions in the home, and those who have bothered to learn Sanskrit. There is a lot of nonsense in the Vedas as well you know and there is a lot of corruption in the texts as they have been handed down…No sense in taking ethnic pride in the Sanskrit language when you do not properly understand your own heritage as is the case with most HIndus.
25. April 2009 - 4:43 AM
Larissa,
Is this some sort of a joke you are playing on us?
I don’t understand why you keep referring to Max Mueller as Max Meuller. And also, has it really been nearly 70 years since the British left; isn’t it nearly 65 rather than 70?
Are you sure the mental images that you have in your head about what you read and think about clear?
25. April 2009 - 5:28 AM
I doubt if Kashmiri Pandits are “pure” anything. Many of them have clear turick features. One of my Pandit colleagues here in US is frequently mistaken for a light skinned hispanic or a turk/middle eastern . Even with his fair skin the whites think he has “eastern” features.
Anyway Larrisa, I can understand your obsession with racial purity a result of poor breeding and culture, and your self identification with “whites” a result of immense inferirity complex, however do you really need to be this dishonest in the discussions?
Unless you have a very low IQ, you clearly understood what is usually meant by a “white” person.
“White” is how people of European descent describe themselves, and they do not consider all people with fair skin “white”, here is a book you might find interesting to read is “How the Irish became white”, the Irish, despite their celtic features were not consider white till recently in the US. And Arabs, Iranians and Turks are not considered white by any “white” man. The term “white” was clearly used in this sense by people in this thread. The whites (and some ABCDs) describe us folks from the subcontinent as “brown”, however fair your skin might be, you are still “brown”, unfortunately, and however dark a sicilian might be he is more “white” than you, such is life, and unfortunately Max Muller is also “white” and you grandpappy is not.
Now the way you twisted the argument, and in a very retarded fashion expressed outrage about white bashing shows you are not yet fit for debate, please work on making your dishonestly less transparent.
Now, please continue with the trolling.
25. April 2009 - 7:39 AM
@ Kedar,
Murthy is a Vyshya i.e., in him Vyshya charateristics are predominant.
He is good for creating wealth. He has developed those abilities well during the course of his life.
But original thinking, spiritual knowledge are beyond him at present.
The next level for him is that of Kshatriya. So he has interest in politics and considers certain politicians with admiration.
As a child takes baby steps when he starts to walk and holds on to the hands of the parent, Murthy too looks towards politicians that he can emulate as he enters political stage.
And thus MMS, a fellow Vyshya, is found to be admirable by Murthy as he appears to have made a transition from the Vyshya field to Kshatriya field of governance which Murthy himself looks to emulate.
It is noteworthy that Murthy, for reasons known best to himself, actually followed the ancient indian system of taking Vanaprastha when he handed over the reigns of his company to Nilkeni.
That was a very correct act on his part.
However, it would be incorrect if he now tries to wade into politics, for after Vanprastha comes Sanyasa, which means he should withdraw from active life and engage in spiritual pursuits.
His best and most productive years are behind him, and he can derive satisfaction that he accomplished a lot of things in his field.
At the stage of life that he is in now, it is best for him to continue to engage in mentoring other Vyshyas using the weath of experience that he has gained throughout his life in that field.
It would be a disaster if he tries to enter into active politics now. Equally bad would be if he considers himself qualified to influence public opinion in political matters except as related to the field of economy.
It is more appropriate if he approaches politics as a student.
Maybe that is his Karma-bhoomi in another life. But not this one.
Hopefully the wisdom that caused him to take Vanaprastha will guide him to take the next logical step of Sanyasa, which means dedicating himself to spiritual pursuits, in due course of time for his own good.
If he does that, he would be setting a most suitable example for most politicians including all the current PM aspirants who are all well past the age to take Sanyasa, but are not willing to even consider Vanaprastha.
25. April 2009 - 10:39 AM
@incognito
Murthy is a Madhwa Brahmin,if you mean to say that he is a Vyshya by action and thoughts then fine
@sandeep
Can you implement the nested comments feature so that discussions will be properly organised?
25. April 2009 - 4:13 PM
@ var
You haven’t understood the very first line ?
25. April 2009 - 4:21 PM
Larissa,
So you have not consulted any Rigvedic pandit or Rigveda ghanaapaati.
Thanks. Thats all I need.
Incognito,
As I had commented on rediff article:
“NRN is an extremely good businessman. But that doesnt mean his farts should smell like roses”.
Actually, its more like feudal system of the old–
“Whatever my landlord says must be right because he gave me employment. Unka namak khaayaa hai humne.” sorts…
25. April 2009 - 5:36 PM
Var,
This is a comment space, not a discussion forum to implement threaded discussions. Please stick to the discussion on hand than suggesting enhancements to my comment space. If there’s some glaring goof up, it’s nice to bring it to my attention but not otherwise.
Thanks for your patience.
25. April 2009 - 5:43 PM
“So you have not consulted any Rigvedic pandit or Rigveda ghanaapaati.”
Nehru once boasted, “I came to India through the West.” There are many Indians like him even today (Larissa, etc.). They will insist on learning everything about India not from Indians but from Westerners, and then curse other Indians who laugh at this.
Any idiot will tell you that Sanskrit scholars from Varanasi would be the best people to talk to and understand the Vedas because they have been maintaining an unbroken chain of Vedic scholarship since the last five thousand years.
But no, that is too much for these Larissa “brown sepoy” types. She will insist on learing Vedas from White Christians!! Truly, this poster is either a troll or a remarkable example of what damage low self-esteem can do to an Indian. She has placed her brain at the feet of the Whites and takes pride in it.
It is as absurd as Whites coming to India to learn the Bible from the Hindu professors of Delhi university.
25. April 2009 - 6:03 PM
Sanjay,
While you are true, I would refrain from name calling and analysing this early. That would give Ms.Larissa a reason for more rants and branch away into unnecessary digressions.
I want the topic to be well-bounded and well-defined and I want to be focussed on the very core issue here.
25. April 2009 - 8:08 PM
Actually, Kashmiri Pandits are good Sanskritists are are other Brahmins from the Himalayas–Kashmiris have contributed greatly to our Sanskrit literature, philosophy and religion–. And no my knowledge of India does not come from the West but because my family has preserved our religious traditions uninterrupted for thousands of years and they are orthodox in keeping traditions–I believe in keeping an open mind and not falling for frauds like Frawley–he is a confused hippee type Christian who is a Swami wannabee–can’t see how people lap up his pseudo hocus pocus…
As for Nehru, he was born in a rich family cut off from everyday India and hence has a very superficial understanding of India which can be observed from his Discovery of India.
I do not see why one cannot learn from others when they have especially something worthwhile to say–
Hinduism is in danger not because of Western misinterpretation of it, but because Hindus do not deserve it in the sense that that they do not fight for anything that is worth preserving these days. And modern India which produces very little greateness is different from the times when India had an original spark.
25. April 2009 - 8:42 PM
Sandeep,
You are doing very important work.I pray to Iswara to bless you in this all important work.I pray that Iswara brings more such people to this holy war to do ‘HIS’ work and He guides them all to work cohesively in the fight for Dharma.
26. April 2009 - 12:01 AM
Larissa,
Your argument seems to be that Westerners ‘also’ have something to contribute to Indology, and that there is ‘nothing wrong’ in learning about our past from them. You yourself are giving a secondary importance to learning about India from the west.
If thats the case, it makes sense to first look at what Indians have to offer as part of our traditional vedic scholarship–what vyaakhyaanas and bhaashyas have been written in the last 1000 years on Rigveda. There are many sanskrit books unattended to and uncared for in the library of Varanasi. Then there are living veda-pandits who know some of the rare works completely by heart and even now, they meet and discuss really complicated stuff thats completely unknown to the Indology department of Harvard.
Unless you have concluded that all those are sheer waste of time, I simply cannot understand how you came to conclude that there is a lot of nonsense in the Vedas and corruption in the texts.
You really need to justify your statement.
26. April 2009 - 9:57 AM
Vacuous assertion. Given that Sanskirt was the medium of communication among educated Indians for over a millenia, dozens of communites can justly make such claims.
No one here gives a fig about your family, its traditions,the color of your skin, the color of your husbands body hair, even if you love talking about them. You will be judged on the quality of your arguments.
Ad hominem attack with no facts to back them up, earlier you were upset about people being attacked for being white, and you attack someone for being a “hippie” and a “Swami wannabe”, even if Frawley is all what you allege him to be, that does not invalidate his arguments. You have to actually tell us where he is wrong if you want us to take you seriously.
Strawman. Again if you want to be taken seriously you have to tell us what “worthwhile” things have been said.
26. April 2009 - 6:39 PM
The Congress News Network (CNN-IBN) has this caption on their Advani feature: How a boy from an affluent Sindhi family became a hardliner
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/91135/kings-and-queens-the-making-of-lk-advani.html
It features largely negative testimonials from various media personalities.
Contrast this with today’s enhanced colour Hallmark video postcard type show on the current PM’s family, or the equally sycophantic show they did on Rahul Gandhi.
26. April 2009 - 9:16 PM
Vacuous assertion. Given that Sanskirt was the medium of communication among educated Indians for over a millenia, dozens of communites can justly make such claims.
Who said that other Brahmins have not made contributions? I am responding to the assertion by Sanjay that only Brahmins from Varanasi are the only ones who know Sanskrit. So you mean to say all others do not know their heritage? I know many Tamil Brahmins who are exceptionally smart.
No one here gives a fig about your family, its traditions,the color of your skin, the color of your husbands body hair, even if you love talking about them. You will be judged on the quality of your arguments.
I do not ask them to. But my knowledge of my own traditions clearly does not come from the WEST as some ignorant people here keep alleging. As for skin color of people, Indians are a varied lot. Brahmins are of different looks and especially in our areas range from very fair blue eyed to very dark, although the former is gradually disappearing quickly as of late through migrations to the plains and marriage to peoples from the plains. I am stating this in reference to those who say I only learn from whites. What is whiteness? It is very fluid concept. My husband’s grandfather was a six foot blue eyed very fair man, and an orthodox Brahmin as can be. But he is no less Hindu than the rest. I often wonder where Brahmins got such genes from? HIndus carry a lot of different genes. My family is proof enough of that and they range from red haired blue eyed to dark and they are all Brahmins. India has had a lot of migrations and the gene pools of different peoples have all contributed to Hindu civilization.
As for Frawley people can read who they like. Scholarship ranges from high quality to poor. But I think he is a fraud just as you think Max Meuller made no contribution to Indology although many read his Sacred Books of the East. As for myself I enjoyed reading the Oriental Series in several volumes by Max Meuller and could not bear to read hocus pocus of Frawley.
Also it is stupid to frame everything in the context of exploitation by whites. Why were Hindus able to be exploited? Perhaps something in their nature makes them easily defeated in history? Maybe they should introspect and come to a conclusion as to why they lacked the ability to defend themselves in history? Soon India’s population will reach 2 billion and people will still focus on exploitation by whites. India’s population has increased fourfold from the times of independence. Now tell me that this is also from exploitation of whites.
I remember there was a recent movie about Akbar. I could not even bear to sit through it and no one who knows about Akbar will be able to–while around me everyone ignorant of history was enjoying it unaware of the historical distortion.
It is high time, Indians quite speaking of colonial exploitation by whites. When India remains a poor country with a population that is fast approaching 2 billion, no one will take it seriously.
I doubt that debates about who migrated to India or not of any importance. I care very little whether our Vedas were recited by fair blue eyed Brahmins or dark ones. That they were recited by Brahmins is of importance to me, and most likely they were recited by both.
26. April 2009 - 9:28 PM
By the way, some of the oldest Sanskrit manuscripts are housed in Nepal and no one has even read them–the Sanskrit library was bombed by the Maoists recently because it was seen as the language of the King but thanks to the selfless efforts of a German team, they have been all digitalized. But no one has read them or commented on them.
How about some Sankkrit know it alls from here take a look at them and write about what they contain?
26. April 2009 - 9:29 PM
By oldest, I mean “surviving” manuscripts.
26. April 2009 - 10:12 PM
There are many Sanskrit books unattended to and uncared for in the library of Varanasi
There are a lot of uncared for texts everywhere–some of the oldest surviving Sanskrit manuscripts in Nepal would have been all blown to bits when the Maoists destroyed the Sanskrit library had not some Germans digitalized the texts so people can read them in the future. Is this too an instance of exploitation by whites?
Did Hindus ever think of restoring the very very Old Sun Martand Temple in Kashmir? It was an architectural materpiece and it took the Sultan serveral decades to destroy it. No, not even when Kashmir was under Dogra kings, did they take an interest one bit in such things. Often Hindus are their worst enemies not whites, from what I have observed. Which is why it is futile to blame others for our current problems.
It is just that when a nation becomes too poor and has an unending increase in population…after independence an almost fourfold increase in population…now look ahead fifty years from now when the population is 2 billion….Will India still be a country worth living in then? We cannot take such things for granted. I worry about such issues. Not the suff Frawley writes about.
26. April 2009 - 10:12 PM
Larissa,
You still havent told us why you think there is a lot of nonsense in the Vedas.
26. April 2009 - 10:52 PM
The Vedas might might have been original and very impressive for their time and they contain many insights when read as a whole, but read though some of the endless rituals of which there are many…there are many parts that will put you straight to sleep and I say this as a proud Hindu…The
excessive ritualism and rigid caste system is why we had a Buddha anyway.
26. April 2009 - 10:54 PM
The Vedas might might have been original and very impressive for their time and they contain many insights when read as a whole, but read though some of the endless rituals of which there are many…there are many parts that will put you straight to sleep and I say this as a proud Hindu…The
excessive ritualism and rigid caste system is why we had a Buddha anyway. I do not gain anything from those parts, although they had a function in the past. Do you mean to tell me that every word of the Vedas are the alpha and omega of wisdom?
26. April 2009 - 10:58 PM
The Vedas might might have been original and very impressive for their time and they contain many insights when read as a whole, but read though some of the endless rituals of which there are many…there are many parts that will put you straight to sleep and I say this as a proud Hindu…The
excessive ritualism and rigid caste system is why we had a Buddha anyway. I do not gain anything from those parts, although they had a function in the past. Do you mean to tell me that every word of the Vedas are the alpha and omega of wisdom? Oh and if anyone thinks every word in the Vedas are the alpha and omega of wisdom I did not intend to offend.
27. April 2009 - 12:39 AM
Ok.
Herr Max Mueller took immense pain in not just learning sanskrit language, offer simple translations of verses, or just quote from Saayana Bhaashya… he went to great lengths in exploring and assigning the right meaning to many of the words whose meaning isnt straightforward to guess even when you know sanskrit.
Now this can mean ONLY ONE of three things:
1) Either Mueller was so enamoured by Rigveda that he just could not stop himself going to extraordinary lengths to translate and analyse it. This means Rigveda is indeed much greater than what you make it out to be. But then, you say that Rigveda is full of “endless, excessive rituals”, “there are many parts in them that put you to sleep”, “you do not gain anything from Vedas”, and “that they are not the alpha and omega of wisdom” (all, your words).
2)Or he was just another evangelical white-skinned rasict European out here in the orient to convert the brown race to the only true religion that he knew. So he did all the work in the name of the One True God of his. And hence, Rigveda is, as you said, full of “endless, excessive rituals”, “there are many parts in them that put you to sleep”, “you do not gain anything from Vedas”, and “that they are not the alpha and omega of wisdom” (all, your words). but then, Herr Mueller was not racist or partisan and according to you, he actually contributed a lot to the subject of Indology.
3)There is a third possibility that Max Mueller was an inane fool to fall for this nonsense and Rigveda is indeed, as you said, full of “endless, excessive rituals”, “there are many parts in them that put you to sleep”, “you do not gain anything from Vedas”, and “that they are not the alpha and omega of wisdom” (all, your words). But your comments here have consistently showed that you think highly of Mueller.
Since you have consistently contradicted yourself, you need to tell us which of the possibilities is right according to you.
27. April 2009 - 2:08 AM
I did not say all of the Vedas are meaningless–parts in it are concerned with excesive rituals and I do not care for such parts–there are some good hymns etc. Why do you keep putting words in my mouth? I said I do not care for parts with too much rituals–the Buddha was a Buddha in his opposition to excessive rituals of the Vedas. Moreover, Hinduism is not a static religion and changes over the course of time from polytheism, to henotheism, to monotheism to the abstract concepts of the Upanishads. If you think Vedic rituals are great good for you. I don’t like to criticize peoples religious as they are beliefs…
Anyway, we have already beaten a dead horse enough–It is futile arguing with mono-minded people.
I enjoy reading Max Meuller and many intelligent people do. He might have has some prejudices but he was a great scholar and his translations are evidence of that.
Also the first recorded History of Kashmir in Sanskrit (actually the only book on Indian history in Sanskrit) was translated also by a dedicated Westerner–the Hungarian Aurel Stein who lost four toes due to frost bite to preserve how Buddhism spread to China. It is because of him that we know that the Diamond Sutra was the first recorded printed book, not the Bible. This is read dedication to scholarship. Don’t tell me that Aurel Steins was also a fool because he was Hungarian. This seems to be your logic.
27. April 2009 - 2:15 AM
Also regarding books you cannot control what people read and everyone will read according to his level. It is all the more confusing these days when anyone can peddle a book, and it takes quite a bit of education and self-research to discard the false from that which is worth reading.
27. April 2009 - 2:29 AM
Also Hindus can’t blame others for the fact that they were beaten in history by barbarians and then the British–they neglected their defenses and the result was that they were enslaved. Looking at India today, India has not learned a lesson from its history. Hindus have given up their traditional war like nature and become passive like sheep and are unable to mobilize in large numbers for the nation.
I blame HIndus for their problems. When a peoples cannot stick together and stand up for itself it is useless to blame others.
Nixon once called Indians a “defeated race”. I wonder if India will ever produce any greatness again. Looking at the moneyed elites in Bombay and Delhi, one can only be pessimistic.
27. April 2009 - 2:58 AM
Larissa,
Now thats twice you havent answered my questions, but kept branching away into other topics irrelevant to discussion.
1) You have furnished no proof regarding which suktas in which mandalas of Rigveda are exactly a part of nonsense (your word).
2) Which parts of rigveda, perhaps not in samhita, but in brahmana, aranyaka, upanishad reek of extreme, excessive rituals (your words).
3) Which part of Rigveda (or any part of other Vedas for that matter) “had a lot of corruption in the texts as they have been handed down” (your words, again)?
4) Which part of the Veda gave rise to Caste system (I expect an answer to atleast this question from you, quite famous this one)?
Now since I have even numbered the questions for your convenience, I request you to use this opportunity to phrase your reply.
27. April 2009 - 3:38 AM
When did I say Rig Veda gave rise to the caste system?
What is the point of your questions. Go through the pre-Upanishadic texts and tell me if a great deal are not concerned with very precise rituals?
There are many passages in the Rig Veda which are very difficult to translate. Many of the hymns are difficult to translate because of the archaic nature of the texts and language and there are variations of existing manuscripts–just like many Greek texts are also corrupted–Try translating ancient Greek texts which are in fragments…Sanskrit also undergoes changes in vocabulary so that just because you can read the ramayana does not mean you can read Vedic sanskrit which is very archaic…Which is why you need a different dictionary for Vedic Sanskrit which is more difficult to translate than a work such as the Ramayana composed in the Classical time.
When did I say Vedas gave rise to caste system? As for the Vedas, they were the monopoly of Brahmins. Sanskirt was their language. This is a fact. Caste system or not is irrelevant.
Do you mean to say that all Rig vedic texts in existence are the same and there are no variations when they were written down?
For a start Michael Witzel has some articles on the use of non-indoeuropean words in Rig Vedic Sanskrit. But he is reputed to be anti-Hindu so you might not want to check what he wrote as you do not read people who are reputed to be anti-Hindu without checking first and understanding what they wrote.
This discussion is getting ridiculous.
Tell me if I can give you a Rig Vedic text out of the blue can you translate it with the aid of a dictionary?
27. April 2009 - 3:51 AM
“Tell me if I can give you a Rig Vedic text out of the blue can you translate it with the aid of a dictionary?”
Who compiled that dictionary? Who created that Sanskrit-English dictionary and what is the authenticity of its many word translations?
There is an entire history behind that dictionary and how it got compiled in 19th century by a wily brahmin on the payrolls of the British.
27. April 2009 - 4:11 AM
There is an entire history behind that dictionary and how it got compiled in 19th century by a wily brahmin on the payrolls of the British.
Well if that is what you believe then you can learn your Sanskrit from HIndu Swami turned Frawley while I continue to use the Oxford Sanskrit dictionary. You can’t change people’s thinking. Everything is done by the whites to oppress Indians and that is why India is backward today!
I refuse to comment anymore on this.
27. April 2009 - 4:32 AM
Larissa,
I expected numbered replies to make it easier for me to respond. Alas!
Anyway,
1)”What is the point of your questions.”
The point, my dear, is simply that you have not given the name of a single text (either pre- or post-Upanishadic text, something, just anything) that certifies your allegations of Veda being nonsense, full of excessive, endless rituals, or sleep-inducing, or indicate a “lot of corruption in the texts before they were handed down”.
2) About Caste system, these are your very own words:
“…rigid caste system is why we had a Buddha anyway.”
And moreover, I asked what part of the ‘Veda’, not ‘Rigveda’ gave rise to Caste system.
So now you are really obliged to provide an explanation for that lil statement of yours.
3) You have now mentioned 2 foreigners, Germans to be precise– Herr Mueller and Herr Witzel (I believe he is German too, isnt he dear?), not to mention the German SWAT team that zoomed in on Katmandu and rescued the Sanskrit texts from Nepalese library just in time. But you have not mentioned the name of even one Indian Vedic scholar.
Now I am going to ask you a very simple pointed direct question and a simple YES or NO is enough:
Do you or do you not believe that there are vedic scholars in India who might know more than all of the mentioned people?
4) And finally, if you find that the Rigveda is difficult to translate, then there is an easier thing to do:
Dont Translate It.
Believe me, it works! Just dont translate it. I mean, I dont try to translate it. Thats why its easier for me, not to say that it is nonsense. I just leave it to those who have the qualifications to translate it. And I have seen them go about it in a thorough professional manner.
————————————-
To sum up, dear Larissa, this is what your reply ought to contain:
1) Names of some texts that show that Vedas are nonsense, soporific, corrupted, or havinv excessive rituals (now now, none of that throwing a fit, stamping your foot and marching away into your room, dear! You really did say all those things, so you have to give proof). Just some names.
2) Proof that connects Caste system to Vedas.
3) A YES/NO answer for whether you believe that there are Indian Vedic scholars who know more about Vedas than Westerners.
Right!
So, just do that and I will vanish from this discussion just like that Indian Vedic Scholar that you never met in your life.
27. April 2009 - 4:34 AM
Larissa,
You have written so many comments so far. But not a single comment contains any of the hymes from the vedas. Instead of beating around the bush by saying Frawley is a hack why can’t you just quote a few hymes from Veda and their meaning (as per you).
I have been anxiously waiting since this debate began as to you will actually qoute from the vedas and there will be debate on actual hymes. (I am pretty sure that people with knowledge of Vedas on this forum will put forward their interpretations). But instead you make random rhetorical statements like “parts in it are concerned with excesive rituals”. I am very interested to know which those parts are?
You also deviate from every question posed by other commentators moving from one topic to other. The debate started on Vedas and you ended up with why Indians were enslaved by British. You quote Nixon and blame “moneyed elites of Delhi and Bombay”. I fail to understand how it is related to the debate?
27. April 2009 - 4:43 AM
There is an entire history behind that dictionary and how it got compiled in 19th century by a wily brahmin on the payrolls of the British.
This resembles the argument of OBC’s that HInduism was created by Brahmins to oppress lower castes. You know your views are not much different from the leftists and liberals you so rail against. Seems to me the same side of the coin! Now you will go on about how wily Brahmins lead to India being backward today–most Indians just do not want to look at the stink in front of them–and dream of a long gone glorious past. I am telling you, unless a nation is capable of mobilizing, it is not capable of anything. India just has two extremes–now–those that think ancient India had flying machines and those who monkey the liberalism of the West. Calling people like Meuller a fool seems to stem from an inferiority complex…Just as my brother would tell me at his Computer Science Job interview some Indians would ask him questions to which they themselves did not have an adequate answer.
27. April 2009 - 4:51 AM
Larissa,
I don’t know why I am commenting but can you please tell me what was the purpose of your previous comment?
Are you trying to gag others in this forum by your directionless comments.
Eagerly waiting next comment (or should I say rant…)
27. April 2009 - 5:45 AM
This resembles the argument of OBC’s that HInduism was created by Brahmins to oppress lower castes.
This is not an “OBC” argument. This is a British colonial construct and a projection of Christian Imperialist history upon Indian society (ie AIT propaganda).
27. April 2009 - 6:05 AM
I rest my case.
Thanks for your patience fellows.
27. April 2009 - 11:26 AM
WTF is going on?
The comments bear no relation to the topic post.
27. April 2009 - 7:37 PM
Well it all started when a guy called incognito accused me of hacking this site–yes just because I happened to read Max Meuller and then people started to call me a brown sepoy for reading the works by Max Meuller and how all my knowkedge of India comes from the West.
You should see the torrent of attacks I got for reading this fellow and for thinking that he is someone worth reading. And people who have no achievements of their own started to call a scholar like Meuller “crazed fool” and what not.
Sorry for the digression but I did not start it and was defending my point of view.
27. April 2009 - 7:41 PM
And I hope their comments display their level of intellect and how ignorant they are. It is one thing to be patriotic–but such people go too far. Let them learn their Frawley in whatever unknown college he teaches at. It was my mistake to even bother to respond to such people full of conciet but no achievements.
27. April 2009 - 7:51 PM
And these people are very emotional–You mention anyone who they have heard is anti-Hindu without even bothering to read his works and they are quick to attack without even understanding what a man has written! Seems like some kind of thought police to me–the opposite side of the same coin of the liberal nonsense we read in the english newspapers–but what drives them is just the same narrowness of thinking as what drives the liberals they so deride!
27. April 2009 - 8:07 PM
@ larissa
“Sorry for the digression but I did not start it and was defending my point of view.”
What point of view ? What defence ?
You have managed to obscure both.
27. April 2009 - 8:18 PM
That just because one reads books written by westerners who might have not have fully appreciated India or might have said some negative things about India given the times in which they wrote, that does not mean one is deluded about India. I know very well what my heritage and my family has preserved that heritage as far back as we can remember and I hope my children preserve it as well.
So I don’t know what you mean by attacking people who read first before jumping and calling someone anti-Hindu.
27. April 2009 - 8:30 PM
Did anyone read this yet? It’s all over the news. Congress spokesman is demanding Modi’s resignation!! One of the headlines in rediff reads “Probe Modi’s role in Godhra riots: SC tells SIT”.
27. April 2009 - 8:31 PM
And why is it Indians cannot get rid of the colonial chip on the shoulder and focus on more important things at hand like overpopulation and defending borders? Why is everyting framed in the context of exploitation by whites? Look at how people are beginning to treat China although it is a dictatorship and started out way poorer than India. Respect comes to those who respect themselves first. And before harping on exploitation by whites Indians should just look around them–at their own urban elites in Bombay and Delhi. Does it not frighten you that India’s population was almost the same as that of Russia at the time of Independence and now it has grown fourfold and the country will then approach 2 billion in the next couple of decades? Why don’t Indians think of what went wrong and how to stop it?
27. April 2009 - 8:45 PM
He noted that the only way to remove Mr Modi was by imposing President’s Rule in Gujarat but the Congress “does not want to make a martyr of him.”
Now that is a scary thought. Was she also not accused of corruption big time? Who chose her as the President. Hand picked by the Congress leader I read in the newspaper. Perhaps people of similar caliber like each other. I remember when she went to Brazil, no one even was there at their Parliament to bother to hear her speak, which is an embarrassment to India. On the other hand, Abdul Kalam commanded audiences and the houses are always full when he speaks and he is always invited to speak everywhere.
28. April 2009 - 1:03 AM
A good summary of hoaxes and other Frawley like hocus pocus:
http://www.mail-archive.com/fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com/msg15883.html
28. April 2009 - 1:10 AM
I happen to be against all kinds of fake revisionism–that of the Thapar kind and that of the Rajaram kind. Why must the above resort to lies to prove their patriotism? Both kinds of extremes are dangerous to serious scholarship. I mean can’t Indians find a middle way between such nonsensical extremes?
28. April 2009 - 5:40 AM
A request to larissa:
Please do not make 3-4 consecutive short posts in a short span of time, it just litters up the thread. Please collect your thoughts and write one longish post.
28. April 2009 - 8:02 AM
@ ANON
>>>>”A request to larissa:…Please collect your thoughts and write one longish post”
Despite evidence to the contrary all over this blog, you appears to overestimate larissa’s abilities.
28. April 2009 - 9:07 AM
The SC is doing the hatchet job for Congress.India is doomed.When there are so many self loathing hindu baiting b****…,better start planning for the future.
At least a few states like Gujarat,Maharashtra,Karnataka better watch out.Otherwise these people might be crushed by fart bengalis,tamil chauvinists and christist crooks.
This is going to be a test case for the tamils.It is upto RK Raghavan to prove his loyalty to India.Damn PC,i have a feeling this iyengar close to NRam will turn out to be nasty.
28. April 2009 - 6:30 PM
larissa, it is easier for you, staying in vilayat, to say that Indians should forget about colonial oppression and look forward. IMO, you are being insensitive in suggesting we(Indians) should forget about millions who died during British christian tyranny. Should we also forget about the Jewish Holocaust?
28. April 2009 - 8:04 PM
Well I see the nastiness exhibited by Hindus to those who read westerners who have written about India, who they consider anti-Hindu without even really reading their complete works or understanding the times in which they wrote.
Many westerners have written about India–not just Indologists. I recently read a travelogue by a Frenchman writing about Kashmir in the early eithteen hundreds and you can see a lot of Kashmir of the times from the eyes of an outsider, and he writes highly of the people. Similarly, when I read Max Meuller I am able to discard the irrelevant parts and learn from the good parts of which they are many if you happen to read the complete works–most are out of print and were housed in our college library.
Who said forget about colonial oppression? Even before the British Indians were oppressed under Islam–this they forget all too easily. The British took advantage and exploited–but they also built infrastructure if it was only to benefit themselves. India has railways and infrastructure because of that. What did Muslims do? Not a single school or library, burn down the existing ones of the heathens and just built structures like the Taj Mahal and mosques and gardens for their benefit. The poverty of India really began with Islam in my opinion, and 8000 people from the Mughal court took more than 50% of the GDP which is more than the Mesopotanian and Egyptian theocracracies and the highest level of exploitation. But unfortunately our leftists are not able to understand their history and see why India began to decline after Islam. It was cut off from the West with the Muslim states in between in the Middle East, and the West knew of India only through the Arabs. This does not mean I disike Muslims, as no can can help being born into a religion. Understanding what Isalm did to India might help Hindus learn from their history.
I am not saying Indians should forget their past, just that India begins to decline well before the British and that Indians are prevented by the leftists who blame everything on the British from having a deeper understanding of their past. We need to move away from distortions both by the left and by people like Rajaram.
28. April 2009 - 8:04 PM
Well I see the nastiness exhibited by Hindus to those who read westerners who have written about India, who they consider anti-Hindu without even really reading their complete works or understanding the times in which they wrote.
Many westerners have written about India–not just Indologists. I recently read a travelogue by a Frenchman writing about Kashmir in the early eithteen hundreds and you can see a lot of Kashmir of the times from the eyes of an outsider, and he writes highly of the people. Similarly, when I read Max Meuller I am able to discard the irrelevant parts and learn from the good parts of which they are many if you happen to read the complete works–most are out of print and were housed in our college library.
Who said forget about colonial oppression? Even before the British Indians were oppressed under Islam–this they forget all too easily. The British took advantage and exploited–but they also built infrastructure if it was only to benefit themselves. India has railways and infrastructure because of that. What did Muslims do? Not a single school or library, burn down the existing ones of the heathens and just built structures like the Taj Mahal and mosques and gardens for their benefit. The poverty of India really began with Islam in my opinion, and 8000 people from the Mughal court took more than 50% of the GDP which is more than the Mesopotanian and Egyptian theocracracies and the highest level of exploitation. But unfortunately our leftists are not able to understand their history and see why India began to decline after Islam. It was cut off from the West with the Muslim states in between in the Middle East, and the West knew of India only through the Arabs. This does not mean I disike Muslims, as no can can help being born into a religion. Understanding what Isalm did to India might help Hindus learn from their history.
I am not saying Indians should forget their past, just that India begins to decline well before the British and that Indians are prevented by the leftists who blame everything on the British from having a deeper understanding of their past. We need to move away from distortions both by the left and by people like Rajaram.
28. April 2009 - 8:38 PM
And who said I do not appreciate Vedic scholars from India? There are several people who have dedicated their lives to scholarship in India–there are good scholars in India and those of not so good quality just as anywhere. Many people in India have a living understanding of thier religion, in the sense that they are part of the religion. I have been touched by the sight of poor Brahmins in impoverished conditions in villages still learning to recite the Vedas at 12 years of age. But I do not care for people like Rajaram and Frawley.
28. April 2009 - 8:41 PM
Well I see the anger exhibited by Hindus to those who read westerners who have written about India, who they consider anti-Hindu without even really reading their complete works or understanding the times in which they wrote.
Many westerners have written about India–not just Indologists. It is good to read outsiders because often it is hard to get outside of your own culture, and they have interesting things to say–whether you agree or not. You can only learn from keeping an open mind. I recently read a travelogue by a Frenchman writing about Kashmir in the early eithteen hundreds and you can see a lot of Kashmir of the times from the eyes of an outsider, and he writes highly of the people. Similarly, when I read Max Meuller I am able to discard the irrelevant parts and learn from the good parts of which they are many if you happen to read the complete works–most are out of print and were housed in our college library.
Who said forget about colonial oppression? Even before the British Indians were oppressed under Islam–this they forget all too easily. The British took advantage and exploited–but they also built infrastructure if it was only to benefit themselves. India has railways and infrastructure because of that. What did Muslims do? Not a single school or library, burn down the existing ones of the heathens and just built structures like the Taj Mahal and mosques and gardens for their benefit. The poverty of India really began with Islam in my opinion, and 8000 people from the Mughal court took more than 50% of the GDP which is more than the Mesopotanian and Egyptian theocracracies and the highest level of exploitation. But unfortunately our leftists are not able to understand their history and see why India began to decline after Islam. It was cut off from the West with the Muslim states in between in the Middle East, and the West knew of India only through the Arabs. This does not mean I disike Muslims, as no can can help being born into a religion. Understanding what Isalm did to India might help Hindus learn from their history.
I am not saying Indians should forget their past, just that India begins to decline well before the British and that Indians are prevented by the leftists who blame everything on the British from having a deeper understanding of their past. We need to move away from distortions both by the left and by people like Rajaram.
28. April 2009 - 8:42 PM
Well I see the anger exhibited by Hindus to those who read westerners who have written about India, who they consider anti-Hindu without even really reading their complete works or understanding the times in which they wrote.
Many westerners have written about India–not just Indologists. It is good to read outsiders because often it is hard to get outside of your own culture, and they have interesting things to say–whether you agree or not. You can only learn from keeping an open mind. I recently read a travelogue by a Frenchman writing about Kashmir in the early eithteen hundreds and you can see a lot of Kashmir of the times from the eyes of an outsider, and he writes highly of the people. Similarly, when I read Max Meuller I am able to discard the irrelevant parts and learn from the good parts of which they are many if you happen to read the complete works–most are out of print and were housed in our college library. (continued below)
28. April 2009 - 8:52 PM
IMO, you are being insensitive in suggesting we(Indians) should forget about millions who died during British christian tyranny. Should we also forget about the Jewish Holocaust?
Hey millions of Hindus died under Isalm as well–this dwarfs any holocaust anywhere in world history. Let our understanding of our history not start from the British colonial exploitation. Let us remember our history as a whole–Hindus have been oppressed long before the British.
29. April 2009 - 1:31 AM
All,
Troll Alert
I got it about who is larissa.She(he?)is a grad/phd student working under Herr witzel and team.
Who is the target no 1 ? Of course Rajaram and Frawley…
She is out here trolling for a purpose.
PS – I dont think she is an Indian let alone anything else.
but maybe its good for Sandeep’s Blog the comments nos are increasing.Most of larissa’s comments are far from the topic though.She only sermonises us by calling herself as ‘us’ people are so bad etc etc..
29. April 2009 - 8:20 AM
Hi All
Depressing post this.
I will just point out some issues covered in the post here.
Buddism : BUddhism in most Asian countries not only co-exists alongside local beliefs but also intermingle with local faiths. SO in Japan a person who goes to a Shinto shrine may find no difficultly in going to a Buddhist one. Similarly in China and rest of south east asia. Is there any particular reason to believe that it was any different in ancient India ? I think all evidence points to exactly this. I believe that people in general had freedom to follow multiple belief systems – as there was no categorization into different religions – which is a modern concept. One must understand here to religion is an english and specifically christian word that does not automatically translate into dharma or any other indic word except pantha – which would of course mean cult (refer S.N. Balagangadharan’s works). Hence the construction of Buddhism as a revolt against caste system by European historians is highly misleading – and a reflection of Europe’s own religious conflicts. Buddha’s disciples came from many castes but is there any reason to believe that other teachers of his time recruited solely from Brahmanas ? Buddhisms popularity and the eventual co-option of Buddha as an avatara of Vishnu, is in ways no different form the co-option of the Krishna and Rama cults. The point being that Vishnu is just a manifest name for the Brahman. From this viewpoint the inclusion of any great soul as being an avatara of Vishnu and by implication the Brahman is thoroughly logical and not in the least parochial, Is there any Buddhist text that condemns or criticises this apparent co-option ? How about the co-option of Hindu devi-devatas as a part of Buddhist tradition that we see in Mahayana forms from Tibet to Japan. In short there is far less cultural, theological and spiritual discontinuity between buddhism and hinduism than is alleged by our esteemed Indian and European historians and Indologists.
Caste System : This too is a construction of Europeans. As late as the 16th century – the son of a saltpetre merchant – Hemachandra alias Hemu raised an army to fight against the Mughal Akbar. Again when the British took over India it is said that nearly 75-80% of the Rajas were what would be described today as members of the lower caste OBCs (refer Dharampal’s works). Again from Dharampal’s own works – education was universal and available to members of all or almost all caste’s in pre-colonial India. Dharampal’s works were based solely on colonial British records and are therefore incontestably non-partisan. This does point to the construction and conception of caste as an identity very divorced from what it really was in pre-colonial (leave alone ancient) times. We seem to have no academically sound theories on developement of caste over time. Evidence of history suggests that Caste has been appropriated by ‘modern’ institutions as an instrument of governance. It has also been hopelessly mixed up with the Varna concept. Again an example here – the priest – who performs funerary rites is traditionally not considered much higher than the untouchable ; also barbers who are considered lower caste were accepted as rulers in Ancient India – like Nandas and the Naga rulers at the time of Alexanders putative invasion (refer to K.L. Sethna). Also how do we categorize the Mauryas ie Moriyas or peacock rearers who are presently a backward caste. How do we account for Vedic sages – some of who were fishermen or borne of fisherwomen. It would seem that untouchabiltiy and discrimination were late entrants into Hinduism – and were not as strict, or widespread as made out to be by the distorted lense of our western education.
Historical Studies : Personally the most depressing state of affairs is our historical studies. Western historiography has reduced Indian history to an incosequential adjunct of western history by means of fake concepts like aryan invasion/Migration etc and greek synchronicism by high priests like Jones, Max Muller, Hegels, MIlls, Marx and gang (read Trautman etc). Later this extended to denying archeological clues to India’s past by any means necessary (Wheeler and co). Our Marxist and modern western historians and linguists (Thapar,Jha, Panicker, Habib, Witzel, Erdosy,) are just an extension of this set. While Islamic invasion took a heavy toll of lives – which is still denied, this modern invasion is killing our identity and extinguishing our sense of history. There is a more than credible case for an Out of India theory (refer all 3 books by Talageri) going by the literary source of RgVeda and Avesta itself. A scholarly study of Puranas reveals that modern history has distorted traditional Indian historical timelines by more than thousand five hundred years. The traditional chronology would put Buddha in circa 1800 BC, Ashoka around 1300 BC, the imperial Guptas around 300 BC immediately following Alexander’s putative invasion. Too much emphasis is placed by our researchers on the arrival of this invader – although no mention in our historical texts. An interesting case if we considered he arrived at the time of Mauryas – there is no mention, though if we consider he arrived just before the Guptas -there is mention of invasion of the Vahalikas (refer K.D. Sethna). The Vaishnava movement and the Krishna cult belong would belong to around this period of the Guptas. So isn’t it intriguing that there is a Christ (Chrisn) in Israel with very similar mythology, lore and ritual just around this period.
29. April 2009 - 8:51 AM
Just thought I should provide a link to this discussion group by the emerging indegenious historians – which tells us why we should be very cautious about imbibing western ideas and believing euro centric scholarship
http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2088
29. April 2009 - 10:58 PM
I got it about who is larissa.She(he?)is a grad/phd student working under Herr witzel and team.
Who is the target no 1 ? Of course Rajaram and Frawley…
She is out here trolling for a purpose.
PS – I dont think she is an Indian let alone anything else.
but maybe its good for Sandeep’s Blog the comments nos are increasing.Most of larissa’s comments are far from the topic though.She only sermonises us by calling herself as ‘us’ people are so bad etc etc..
Hey I am a PHD student–thanks. No I am not. As for reading about stuff I read a lot on my own–glad to know someone thinks I am a PHD student under Witzel. What next are you going to come up with? There will be HIndus who bother to read and are not easily swayed by false arguments–Now I am a Witzel student. What next am I going to be? Useless to even argue with the likes of you. Can anyone see thought police in this?
29. April 2009 - 11:03 PM
Yes first I am accused of hacking the site then I am a Witzel student. What next. I am a HIndu Brahmin married to another Hindu Brahmin who is interested in our history and see serious scholarship being politicized. And as a Hindu Brahmin we have a duty to preserve our heritiage from being corrupted by hacks from both the left and right!
29. April 2009 - 11:10 PM
And for those who are interested in serious reading about our history, I recommend a guy call Andre Wink who has written about Isalm in India. He is not pro-Islam not anti-Islam. But he is not afraid to write facts from sources–from Hindu, Muslim and others. He writes analytically with no emotion and presents facts–We have obtained the books in three volumes–at rather hefty price–but perhaps some of you will find it in your libraries. I am not going to come to an opinion until I have finished reading all three volumes. We have only started reading and have not finished but this is clearly an alternative to Thapar–But so far we find his books full of information and there are detailed footnotes on each page so you can go to the original sources.
29. April 2009 - 11:15 PM
I dont think she is an Indian let alone anything else.
Does it surprise you that there are still Brahmin Hindus who read and are not easily fooled?
30. April 2009 - 3:00 AM
@larissa
I am no one to give you a certificate of authenticity but I have to admit your posts have been reasonably more sensible than those who parade Frawley. However, your indignance in clubbing all brown scholars together from C K Raju, a top mathematician to perhaps Talageri and even Elst speaks of a certain bias or complex for the arguments of the latter are much different from former. Elst and Talageri dismiss Rajaram as being ignorant of the very fundamentals of linguistics. So how can you club them together…
Frawley’s works on Ayurveda are impressive, and some of his arguments in the AIT/AMT debate are also commendable although he is liable to make mistakes. I have read Wink [i and ii], and he is very germane and almost an anthithesis against the likes of R S Sharma, if not Thapar. However, the critique of Indian feudalism by Sita Yadav is definitively more exhaustive than Wink who was relatively repulsed by Sharma’s new arguments [See, A study in feudalization, 2003 and also Indian feudalism, 3rd edition]
Also, Max Muller never visited India. He was also under obvious pressure of missionaries which made him write some very vitriolic anti-Hindu letters to his wife for their continued patronage and gratification. Although, his translations are riddled with mistakes and dont even have as much insight as they a 13th century indigenous translator like Sayana. He even translated Paramhansa as great swan!
I also totally agree that the multiple Hindu genocides by Islam has no parallel under British rule, for although the latter were racist they were not religious fanatics. But still we cannot condone the mass murders through British man made famines of 1770 and 1943 which killed more people combined than the Jewish holocaust. The benefits of british rule were incidental and not consequence of any benign benevolence
30. April 2009 - 6:14 AM
@ larissa
>>>>>”I am a HIndu Brahmin … ”
You are a liar
30. April 2009 - 9:28 AM
Sandeep, this is offtopic but relevant.
Gurumurthy’s article in Express is shockingly convincing.
http://expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Who+will+probe+first+family%E2%80%99s+billions?&artid=X2zQlPcQFAE=&SectionID=b7ziAYMenjw=&MainSectionID=b7ziAYMenjw=&SEO=Mrs+Antonia+Maino,+L+K+Advani,+Rajiv+Gandhi,+Ottav&SectionName=pWehHe7IsSU=
30. April 2009 - 7:59 PM
>>>>>”I am a HIndu Brahmin … ”
You are a liar
And pray what are you? Our ancestors once upon a time believed in discipline and excellence…What has become of those ideals? A liar? You who accused me of hacking the site are such as is clear to all.
30. April 2009 - 8:15 PM
I believe a lot of the stuff coming out the Hindutva people is reactionary which is why they are so agressive often and fixated on the idea of “us” against them–HIndus have been oppressed for one thousand years and India is in the process of forming a new kind of identity… Of course a Westerner will not completely understand Indian culture in the sense that he is not an insider and he will read Hindu history with no emotion whereas it will be painful for HIndus to read about their enslavement under the Muslims and painful to read about the exploitation under the British–but that does not mean that others might not have some interesting things to say about our religion and culture. Moreover, it is a good idea to understand why people say negative things about Hindus–it only deepens the understanding of your own culture to be able to confront criticism–and if the ideas are not true one can refute them through reasoned logic not emotion–I am not saying that one has to be swayed by those negatives–but I believe in keeping an open mind–culture is constantly in a process of change and constantly reinvents itself if it has not lost all creativity and become a static phenomenon. I am not saying to monkey the West but there is a lot that can be learned from it without giving up your own culture.
30. April 2009 - 8:20 PM
I think it is important for Hindus to understand their history properly and understand why they were so easily enslaved by Turkish tribals…to learn why they were weak and why they failed to defend themselves and why this weakness also lead the British to take advantage and exploit…this can perhaps help them have a united front against what is happening and not repeat their mistakes….
30. April 2009 - 11:05 PM
@ larissa
>>>>>> .. A liar?
Yes, a liar, one who claims to be Brahmin without knowledge of Brahma
30. April 2009 - 11:56 PM
Yes, a liar, one who claims to be Brahmin without knowledge of Brahma
And you are the know it all taught by Christian Hindu Swami wannabee Frawley. Waste arguing with mono-minded likes of you.
1. May 2009 - 12:00 AM
And everyone: despite the fact that colonialism is no more, we display our slavish natures by being under the yoke of a political dynasty. No educated Indians are fit to lead Congress? Are you telling me there is a want of educated people in India? The fact that democracy in India consists of a family running the show and a mass of illiterates voting shows that it is a farce.
1. May 2009 - 12:03 AM
We have only our own middle class apathy to blame if anything.
1. May 2009 - 12:40 AM
Check this out guys:appeared in the WSJ today–Our future looks grim:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124109098695372847.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
1. May 2009 - 1:26 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124109098695372847.html
When have we ever seen a Western newspaper criticizing the Congress party?
1. May 2009 - 1:33 AM
Text
By RAZEEN SALLY
Indians are going to the polls to elect a new government. The Congress party is standing on the record of the government it has led since 2004. But elections are taking place when the Indian economy has taken a sharp turn for the worse, in a climate of global economic crisis. This exposes the pathetic, do-nothing, zero-reform record of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government. More generally, it lays bare India’s huge reform gaps and its brittle, decaying institutions. Finally, it deflates the “India Hype” peddled by smooth-talking, upper-caste politicians, ambassadors, businessmen, management consultants and indeed some academics.
Reuters
A boy works inside a workshop of earthen lamps in Nalchar village, about 76 km south of Agartala, capital of India’s northeastern state of Tripura, April 13, 2009. (REUTERS/Jayanta Dey)
A word about India Hype. One aspect of it is the thesis that India is forging a separate successful path to development, in contrast to the traditional comparative-advantage-based development of China and the other East Asian Tigers. At its extreme, this argument holds that India’s growth engines are its high-end services, and now manufacturing sectors with their globalizing, world-beating companies.
This is a fundamental misdiagnosis. The vaunted successes in information technology-based services and in manufacturing niches are welcome. But they are a high-wage, capital- or skill-intensive drop in India’s low-wage, unskilled, labor-abundant ocean. India’s growth should be focused in the labor-intensive sectors, but it isn’t.
Agriculture is stagnant, hobbled not just by very high external protection but also by crazy subsidies captured by comparatively rich farmers and middlemen, absence of property rights, terrible rural irrigation and infrastructure, and draconian domestic restrictions that fragment the internal market. Nontradable services sectors—where potential employment generation is huge—are also crippled by domestic restrictions. Backbone services sectors (such as banking, insurance and retail) suffer from external protection as well.
Last, and crucially, India’s glaring development gap is in manufacturing, for all sorts of Union and state-level policies—on labor markets, infrastructure, power generation, subsidies, the public sector, repressed agriculture and services sectors, uncertain property rights, and remaining zones of protection against imports and inward investment—conspire to prevent labor-intensive industrial production. India needs its Industrial Revolution if it is to grow out of poverty. That means putting the impoverished in the countryside into (initially) low-wage work in mass manufacturing. That is what China and other parts of East Asia have done. But not India.
India Hype extends to “Chindia,” the notion that India plays in the same league as China as an emerging superpower. This is pure myth. China plays in a league of its own; India, Brazil and Russia play in a far inferior league. China’s economy is thrice the size of India’s; its goods exports are 10 times bigger; it is even ahead of India in the world services trade; it spends about 10% of GDP on infrastructure compared to about 5% in India; and its carbon emissions—a sure indicator of industrialization—are about four times higher.
Special Coverage: India Elections
See news, analysis and opinion from The Wall Street Journal on India’s elections.
Now turn to the Congress-led government. There have been practically no market reforms since it took office in 2004, save for the opening of domestic civil aviation. Nothing has moved on privatization, the reduction of government equity in banks and insurance companies, pensions, competition regulation and the administration of subsidies. Industrial tariffs have come down (as they were doing gradually pre-2004), but otherwise external protection has not been reduced. Indeed, export restrictions were slapped on in response to food inflation in 2008. India remains the most protectionist large emerging market.
Worse, there has been reform backsliding and reversal. Fiscal restraint, put in place by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act of 2003, has been thrown to the winds. Now, with an economic downturn, the consolidated government deficit is projected to rise above 10%. This is going to make private capital scarcer and more expensive. Funding for much-needed infrastructure projects will suffer. Administered pricing for petroleum products was reintroduced in 2008. Off-budget expenditure has increased significantly, especially through gimmicky, populist measures to support agriculture and rural employment, and to subsidize the state-owned energy sector when oil prices soared.
The government’s response to the present global economic crisis was to introduce further market-distorting restrictions, including higher tariffs, antidumping duties and assorted nontariff barriers to imports. And it is even more resistant to opening up the financial sector to competition. The result will be to entrench the power of inefficient state-owned banks and insurers, and cramp incentives to save and invest in the private sector. Finally, the Congress Party entered the general-election campaign with pledges to expand its hugely wasteful rural employment guarantee program and increase food subsidies.
This is an abysmal record. The government has squandered the boom years, left the country vulnerable to malign global economic conditions, and compromised prospects for a healthy recovery. But Mr. Singh and his “dream team” have been given an easy ride: they have escaped blame, especially in the eyes of the international commentariat. The conventional excuse is that their hands are tied by Sonia Gandhi and her Congress coterie, and by messy coalition politics.
This explanation just does not wash. Mr. Singh has impeccable academic credentials and is by all accounts incorruptible. He deserves credit for his performance as finance minister in the early and mid 1990s—though at least as much credit should go to the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who had to take the tough decisions. But Mr. Singh has proved a hopeless decision maker as prime minister.
He has lacked the political instinct and moral courage to take tough decisions, hiding behind the fig leaf of Mrs. Gandhi and the troublesome left-wing parties that propped up the government. The latter withdrew their support in mid-2008, and the government won a vote of no-confidence, yet—not surprisingly—market reforms did not materialize. Sadly, Mr. Singh proves the rule that academics should generally be “on tap” but not “on top.”
The whole reform program depends crucially on the prime minister himself. Mr. Rao and A.B. Vajpayee proved their mettle, despite heavy political constraints. Mr. Singh has failed; he should bear much of the blame. That blame must also be shared with the other sweet-talking, weathervane-members of his dream team. The Congress party does not deserve to be re-elected, and the dream team does not deserve to continue in office.
The question is whether an alternative Bharatiya Janata Party-led government would do any better. Yes, if it has a decisive leader with a core of able reformers. No, if its leader follows the dictates of short-term opportunism and inevitably messy coalition politics. The danger is that the election will create an even more fractured political landscape, with an even weaker, more unwieldy governing coalition. The nightmare scenario is of a new Union government held hostage by surging caste-based parties in north India and their corrupt leaders. That would scotch further major market reforms and deepen India’s institutional malaise.
Hence the failure of the Congress-led government should be put into a larger institutional context. The Indian state, led by a neanderthal and venal political-bureaucratic elite, remains unreformed. It comprises a bloated, corrupt, tyrannical and grossly incompetent army of 20 million bureaucrats and their minions. It works for the benefit of the well-off with political connections, but it is still a crushing burden on the one billion-plus Indians outside the charmed circle of the upper and upper-middle classes.
India optimists aver that “stealth reforms” have and will continue to take place outside the state, crowding it in and reducing its ability to do harm. This view is dangerously complacent. To begin with, state institutions—the political class, political parties, parliaments, the bureaucracy, the judiciary –have gotten worse at both Union and state levels.
Arun Shourie, the leading market reformer in the last BJP-led government and one of India’s leading intellectuals, argues that modern India has two races going on. One is a backward race of a state “hollowed out by termites”; the other a forward race of market reforms, modernization and globalization. The backward race is led by India’s unreconstructed political class. The forward race is led by urban professionals in the private sector. Mr. Shourie says that these two races are fundamentally incompatible. Either the backward race will be arrested by the reconstruction of the state, or it will drag the forward race backward. He notes one silver lining: policies, governance and economic performance have been improving in a minority of Indian states, roughly in an arc from the south to the west. These are the states where the forward race is fastest. They set positive examples for other states to emulate.
India Hype-peddlers neatly sweep the country’s institutional rot under the carpet. However, India cannot be expected to grow and prosper far and fast, not just now but for decades ahead, with such shaky foundations. The upshot is that much-needed market reforms cannot continue to skirt around the reform of the state itself. Politically, that is the hardest nut to crack.
—Mr. Sally is director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels and on the faculty of the London School of Economics.
This article first appeared on feer.com
1. May 2009 - 4:11 AM
Wow, quite an article. I am impressed. Keep writing.
Cheers,
Gayathri.
1. May 2009 - 5:29 AM
Larissa,
In your conclusion that we ourselves are to blame, I don’t think anyone here differs.
Similar sentiments expressed in this post
http://www.deeshaa.org/2009/04/28/just-deserts-india-deserves-the-congress/
On an another point, I must conclude after seeing your posts here that presently
1) You are obviously a closed minded person who keeps parroting his/her beliefs without engaging in a reasoned debate with alternate viewpoints
2) You are a racist to the core; your pronouncements on Muslims (you attack Muslims rather than Islam) in an earlier post is proof of that.
3) You probably intend wasting the productive time of the people here by making unsubstantiated claims (nowhere have you showed why Frawley is a hack- you show no arguments regarding what he said or did and the truth of these
If you really think you even grasp even bits of truths, then you are deluding yourself; your comments reflect that you are a closed minded person and a racist. And possibly an instigator. It is because of people like you that followers of anti human ideologies like Christianity, Islam, Communism can throw dirt on followers of Sanatana Dharma. And this goes back to the same conclusion that we have only ourselves (with people like you) to blame.
1. May 2009 - 6:07 PM
How am I a racist? I have not said anything against Muslims. However, there is whitewashing of our history with respect to our past and the exaggerated histories currently produced by extremists are reactionary to this fact–whether it be India’s history under Islam or the British. Understanding the history of Islam in India properly might enable Hindus to put things in a proper perspective without distortions by either the right or the left. People are generally born into a religion whether Hinduism or Islam– proper education means being able to think out of the box of your culture and seeing the larger picture–and it also means the ability to confront criticism about your culture in a rational manner, not emotional one.
1. May 2009 - 6:10 PM
And after all regarding who deserves what, a people deserves the government it elects.
1. May 2009 - 7:28 PM
@anup: In case you didn’t notice, I asked larissa why Frawley is a hack right when it was posted. Of course, I didn’t get one, except multiple reflections of the same line that Frawley is a hack.
So, my advice to you (and others interested in getting a reply) is that you are all wasting your time. This site is hacked/hijacked
1. May 2009 - 8:41 PM
Anup –
“2) You are a racist to the core; your pronouncements on Muslims (you attack Muslims rather than Islam) in an earlier post is proof of that.”
- How so? Why after all, does Islam deserve condemnation? It’s because of the perverted values it instills in Muslims and the fact that Muslims live by these values. So, Muslims, as the carriers and practitioners of these perversions, will bear contempt and condemnation too, in addition to Islam.
If point 2 is taken seriously, we will just have to condemn communism and not Stalin as such. More, any condemnation of the then Soviets by their critics, would be deemed racist!
1. May 2009 - 9:06 PM
OK guys if you like reading Frawley go ahead–there are many new age books that many people are drawn to–and books with a bit of yoga interspersed with doses of new age spirituality are quite common not only in India but also in the West with a certain kind of audience. But the problem only starts when people cannot distinguish between serious scholarship and such books–moreover it is fine for people to read Frawley if that is what they understand–not many will want to waste their time reading serious scholarship.
1. May 2009 - 9:37 PM
Larissa,
Let me try to simplify the request of other readers to you. People are asking as to what are the the proofs that makes you come to the conclusion that Frawley is a Hack. Quote his statement and why do you think he is wrong… Instead of writing 50 posts just one simple post with his philosophy and your argument would have been sufficient.
But you resort to polemics instead instead of logic. Your last post is typical example of this. You say
“OK guys if you like reading Frawley go ahead” – Emotional Atyachar
“there are many new age books that many people are drawn to–and books with a bit of yoga interspersed with doses of new age spirituality are quite common not only in India but also in the West with a certain kind of audience.” – Rhetorical statement without any backing
“But the problem only starts when people cannot distinguish between serious scholarship and such books-But the problem only starts when people cannot distinguish between serious scholarship and such books” – Judgemental about others. How can you be so sure that the books you read represent serious scholarship. If majority read something or believe something, does not make it right. You will prove that you have read “serious scholarship” only when you prove that by logical arguments.
I may be expecting too much from you but atleast in the next post can you quote from Frawley’s literature and argument on “THAT” literature and not these rants
1. May 2009 - 10:26 PM
Do I need to explain to you why the physicist does not take the astrologer seriously? The same reason why Frawley is not taught at University. If someone wants to study astrology instead of science, why must we explain to him why he ought to study science when he believes astrology to hold the keys? Similarly, be happy to read whatever you please. As long as such books are outside University that is fine, but when people confuse such things with scholarship then it can be annoying–but that has not happened. I believe India is a free country, so go ahead, read as you please–
1. May 2009 - 10:31 PM
There are a lot of such new age types anyway–and not only in HInduism. If his books might relax you, fine.
1. May 2009 - 10:57 PM
Rajiv, magnificient post. It is clear from your post that selectively attributing ‘fakeness’ to Indian traditions is a western and colonial attempt to problematize the “morality” of Indian traditions. But how can karma be faked? “Fake” experience is impossible.
3. May 2009 - 10:44 PM
“Black money BJP’s poll stunt; religion politics dangerous: PM”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/PM-slams-BJP-over-black-money-religion-politics/articleshow/4479402.cms
Saving Quattrocchi is not dangerous, Saving Afzal is not poll stunt?
Loosing sleep over Haneef’s issue is fine, but sleeping while terrorists attack the country is not dangerous?
Black money is Poll stunt, but lying about the state of our economy is not dangerous?
Religion Politics is dangerous, but caste/quota/afzal/shah bano politics is not dangerous?
Illegal Immigrants in Assam are not dangerous?
China’s growing interference around India is affecting us and your indifference is not dangerous?
And then they call all this an “election speech”
4. May 2009 - 3:26 PM
I was reading SK Lal’s “Indian Muslims, Who are they”:
“… the sword of Islam was blunted in India. Islam had spread in Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, North Africa and even parts of Europe with a bang. Within a hundred years of the death of the Prophet this spectacular success had been achieved through the instrument of Jihad. It appeared as if there was no stopping the Islamic avalanche on the Globe, both to the east and the west of the land of its birth – Arabia. But contrary to all hopes and expectations, Islam received a check in a most unexpected quarter – Hindustan, a country believed to be divided by caste, tom by dissensions and indifferent to conventionality in religious faith. Persistent efforts were made to Islamize India but to no avail”.
Imagine being a Hindu at the time of these barbarians running amock! Hats off to our ancestors. Without their grit and determination, not to mention blood, we’d have been those caged and fixated souls.
4. May 2009 - 6:01 PM
Persistent efforts were made to Islamize India but to no avail”.
Are you so sure of that? India has already lost parts in reality to it–i.e. Kashmir, Assam and now it is growing rapidly in Darjeeling. With their birth rates, the passivity of Hindus and their unconcern it is not an exaggeration to say that in the next few decades Lebanon to India might form a —stan. When that happens I no longer wish to be a part of that world.
4. May 2009 - 11:55 PM
@ larissa
>>>>>>>>”Persistent efforts were made to ………..
… I no longer wish to be a part of that world.”
Persistent efforts were made by you to divert issues here and mislead people.
So day the last sentance of your comment comes to pass would be one to look forward to.
Thank you
5. May 2009 - 9:17 AM
@ Larissa:
These comments are from a historical perspective. If you look at it objectively, you will find that India could have succumbed just like Middle East to Islamic barbarians. But it didn’t.
You are partially correct. There is a growing number of Muslims in India. But this is for multiple reasons. But even now, the number of Hindus in Kashmir (if you count Kashmiri pandit population across India) is still very significant (remember the latest Jammu – Srinagar standoff?). I do not know too much about other parts.
In Kashmir, the pandits desided to leave Muslim dominated regions because Muslims there took to the Mohd Ghouri style of Islamizaton: extortion, rape and killing of pandits. I do not know much about other parts other than news reports.
The news filtering out of Pakistan’s treatment of Minorities shows clearly what would have happened during the period from 1000 CE till 1857 CE.
I still do not understand why even in these mordern times don’t these Abrahamic religions let others be what they are; Evangelism, threats, killings… how long can this continue? And, why people view genuine survival struggle of Hinduism as fundamentalism?
5. May 2009 - 6:31 PM
Bhavananda, I agree about what you say. Larissa is a troll and is really only trying to get attention to herself. Furthermore, her comments and her lack of arguments indicate her bigotedness. If she bullshits from now on, I will not hesitate to show the bitch her place.
Palahalli,
When a patient is infected by a virus, you try to cure the disease by eliminating the virus and not by eliminating the patient.
People are not to be attacked; their ideologies and pronouncements are to be contested. Furthermore, you make a blanket assumption that all Muslims behave the same way. And that is simply not true.
You are doing either one or both of the two things which is logically and intellectually untenable.
1. Confusing the symptom (Muslims) for the problem (Islam) 2. Extrapolating the conclusions of your observations to a population(by referring to ‘all Muslims’ rather than maybe ‘most’ or ‘majority’ Muslims)
5. May 2009 - 7:45 PM
@Anup:My suggestion would to you, incognito and others would be to stop arguing with someone who sees no reason (instead of showing “the b***h her place”). I understood this after exactly 3 comments and stopped replying, although I don’t necessarily disagree with everything she said. But her anti-Frawley jihad is just tooooo much. So I suggest that if you could not extract an answer after 200+ replies, its just not going to happen. Just ignore and let her (or him) talk to a wall.
Regarding your comments to Palahalli on disease and patients, I fully agree. We should really look for a Geert Wilders, who has the conviction, courage, endurance and tenacity to remove the disease by keeping the patient alive. In fact, over the long run, I believe the future generation of these “patient’s” would be grateful for that.
6. May 2009 - 1:09 AM
Anup – Patients are treated variously including isolating them if the disease is serious. I’m not really sure how serious you think the Islam threat is. I’m certain it is very serious and has infected all or “most” or “majority” of Muslims. What exact percentage etc etc is reflective of that old hat debate of moderate and radical Islam. I’m not interested in it anymore.
Bhavananda speaks of Geert Wilders. Shri Wilders wants all Muslims out of Europe and further immigration from Muslim countries into Europe stopped. Furthermore he wants the dismantling of existing and stoppage of future construction of Mosques in Europe. Furthermore he wants Islam banned in Europe and the West in general.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/04/freedom-of-speech-text-of-geert-wilders-speech.html
This is what he prescribes as his solution to the Islam problem in the West. I happen to agree with him.
In India, our treatment will be different for the same disease. Muslims here have been with us for generations. They are not immigrants. But they carry the same virus.
My proposal is to let them have what they crave for. Shar’ia. Let us not protect them with civilized laws anymore and then give them an excuse to crib about not being able to practice Islam properly. I say junk the idea of a uniform civil code (stupid as it is)and insist that all Muslims follow the Shar’ia including the penal provisions. Which Muslim worth his salt will say no to that? Let them experience their laws to the fullest extent and when and if some Muslim cries out before his limbs are chopped off, give him the chance to convert out of Islam. That’s my solution. Let them know that practicing Islam comes with a heavy price. The one they set for themselves.
But then, how are you planning to treat this disease?
6. May 2009 - 8:57 AM
@Pallahalli: This is just not true that Mr. Wilders wants *all* muslims out of EU, without any distinctions. I’m a follower of him, and I’ve found him to be consistently against Islamic ideology, not against muslims. Yes, he wants to stop further immigration and deportation of non-citizens, but he’s not for the removal of current citizens. He’s against a’piss’ment, etc etc but he doesn’t preach hatred against *all* muslim human beings. Please show me wrong, and I’ll eat humble pie.
You are right to dismiss this whole moderate Islam thing. Me too. I think this “moderate Islam” is a guise and I always mention this in the blog – all they do is claim the terrorists are non-Muslims, distorting their religion and that Islam is innocent. That’s all they do. But, you need to start distinguishing Muslims from Islam. There are many who are simply born Muslims and don’t believe a word of Islam, moderate or radical. What do you suggest should happen to them?
6. May 2009 - 11:15 AM
I think when muslims talk about moderate islam, they are doing taqiya to deceive non muslims.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/T/taqiyya.html
6. May 2009 - 12:11 PM
Bhavananda – Please read. Let me know if you can anybody be more explicit than this. From the same link.
“We have to encourage the voluntary repatriation. We have to expel criminals. We have to expel criminals with dual nationality even if we have to de-naturalize them and send them back to their homelands. I think we need a European First Amendment to strengthen our freedom of speech.”
6. May 2009 - 12:13 PM
Errata – Let me know if you think anybody can be more explicit than this.
6. May 2009 - 4:55 PM
Palahalli,
“Of course, there are many moderate Muslims, but a moderate Islam does not exist.”
That’s proof for you that Geert Wilders makes the distinction between Islam and Muslims. But then because it is impractical for anyone to figure out whether one is a moderate or a true Muslim, he supports the ban of migration from Islamic countries. That is all.
And I don’t believe that you are actually copying pasting a phrase that refers to criminals and reading it as Muslims. That comment follows from his comment that 70% of crimes are committed by Muslims; and he is referring to those criminals who are Muslims and not those Muslims whose misfortune it is to be born as a Muslim.
Please understand this; the path to reconciliation in India with Muslims is not via the rabid thought process you display; at least not amongst educated people.
6. May 2009 - 6:52 PM
Anup:
Consider an average Abrahamist. Regardless of what kind of a person he/she is (moderate, extremist, etc), what do you think you can do, to make him/her realise that his/her Good Book is not just plain-wrong and bogus, but very dangerous to the country?
6. May 2009 - 7:46 PM
anup, incongnito and bhavananda remind me of the type of thinking that made Nirad Chaudhury write the “Continent of Circe”
6. May 2009 - 7:50 PM
As for Islam which Islamic country has a democracy? Can you name one which treats minorities with respect? It is not anti-Muslim to say that pockets of civilization remains in India largely due to Hindus and the other native religions of India, and because India has not turned into a Pakistan or Bangladesh.
6. May 2009 - 7:55 PM
Anup – You are contradicting yourself.
You say Wilders makes the distinction between Islam and Muslims, but then because it is difficult to decide who is moderate and the other, he wants a complete ban on immigration? So what does this tell you? Where do you see his distinction between Islam and Muslims? Geert is being practical. He’s looking at all Muslims, period.
As to the 70% Muslim originating crime rate, I’m certain he did not mean a specific human category of “That Muslim the Criminal”. Obviously he means crime is rampant and Muslims are more prone to it. Again, using the same sensible logic Wilders then says he is for de-nationalizing these people and deporting them to their countries of origin.It would be foolish to assume that after saying everything he did, Geert would now wait for a crime to be committed by a Muslim before deporting the fellow. Why keep him in an environment that would generate the criminal instinct and act? That Muslim would probably not commit the crime in an Islamic environment (?)
You said, “the path to reconciliation in India with Muslims..”
I ask “how?”
Please explain how my stance is rabid and yours not suicidal?
6. May 2009 - 8:25 PM
remember the latest Jammu – Srinagar standoff?)
I think the Jammu standoff was due to the Dogras, who are fierce spirited. Pandits just left as they were being constantly killed and were in small numbers. It is sad that they easily left like that because when you leave your land it is hard to be resettled there again… I think many manly Hindus would have become Sikhs in former lives…those people fought…and in the history Kashmir the Sikhs certainly kept rabid Islam in check for a while….
6. May 2009 - 8:32 PM
Kedar made a good point, i.e. if it’s possible distinguish between the moderate and the extremist, which is so difficult and why al-taqiya is so insidious. That said, there exists a lot of Muslims who are not al-taqiya (likes of Abdul Kalam to Azim Premji to Mukhtar Abbas Nakvi to many soldiers defending India on the borders).
My question to Palahalli is this: Do you make *any* distinction between Abdul Kalam and Javed Akhtar? Because there is a big difference. You can tell that a Javed Akhtar is the first person to say “Islam is innocent” after a bomb blast and then he justifies that on the basis of persecution by Hindu/Hindutva groups. The others don’t because they know that the problem cannot be solved by saying Islam is innocent. This is a big, BIG difference I hope you understand.
Palahalli also stated this on Wilders before – “Please read. Let me know if you can anybody be more explicit than this. From the same link – We have to encourage the voluntary repatriation. We have to expel criminals. We have to expel criminals with dual nationality even if we have to de-naturalize them and send them back to their homelands. I think we need a European First Amendment to strengthen our freedom of speech”
My response is that YES, one can be far more explicit. Listen to the mosques/madrassas from London to Pak to Bangladesh – all you hear is to kill he kaffirs. THAT is explicit. Pretty much any *true believer* is far more explicit than Wilders. Wilders has repeatedly stated that he’s not against Muslims who want to integrate – and I agree with him. Asking criminals to be deported is not the same as asking ALL Muslims to leave. Our fight should be against the Javed Akhtar, Shabana types of “moderate” Muslims as well as the extremist kinds like JKLF,MIM to IM or other terror groups. We have to identify the Anwar Seikhs, Wafa Sultan, Ayan Hirsi Alis in our society and promote them. We have to realize that it takes guts for a Sikander Bakht or Shahnawaz Hussain to stand up and join BJP/RSS. Ditto for people who are working with the Rashtriya Muslim Manch. It takes tremendous guts, and clubbing RSS muslims with Javed Akhtar is a BIG mistake.
6. May 2009 - 9:05 PM
Larissa,
I have to disregard your comments because each time you seem to be just dropping names of writers (Nirad Chaudhari now) and their opinions (or your opinion about them in the case of Mueller) without even caring to mention how those fit into the argument. And it’s not worthwhile engaging with you for precisely those reasons.
But I will name some countries for your reference; Iran in the pre Khomeini days and Turkey not in the distant past.
Palahalli,
You have just repeated what I mentioned in my earlier post but interpreted it in an illogical fashion. That Wilders is in against immigration from Muslim countries or is in favour of deporting Muslim criminals does not mean that he is anti Muslim; only that part of his anti Islam strategy is to play it safe when it comes to Muslims. And in doing so, he appears to be against all Muslims to some people such as yourself.
But then when he is clearly distinguishing wrt Islam and Muslims (as per the quote I shared earlier), you cannot put words into his mouth and say that he is anti Muslim. Either you seem to know more about what is Wilders thought process than himself or he is being dishonest.
As regards the criminals statement, it is quite clear that he is referring to those Muslims who are criminals and definitely not recommending a wholesale deportation of Muslims!!! Your statement saying that it would be foolish to wait until some Muslims have committed crimes and then deport them only reflects your paranoia about Muslims; which I dare say is understandable but is not the best way to deal with the problem.
Kedar/Palahalli, as regards the path to reconciliation with Muslims/Christians, I can only say that this war is be won by influencing public opinion favorably. And to be able to do so, the approach has to be at many levels. It simply cannot be a spectre of a constant clash of religions.
Look at the Western world, many of their people are breaking free of Christianity and are discovering Eastern philosophies. Having said that, a large number of people also fall into the Leftist trap and fail to distinguish between Abrahamic religions and Eastern philosophies and in the process condemn them both equally while declaring themselves to be Athiests/Secularists. And a lot of Indians themselves are behaving as in the latter case. And I think an approach has to be perfected to deal with this. But I don’t know exactly how.
6. May 2009 - 9:56 PM
But I will name some countries for your reference; Iran in the pre Khomeini days and Turkey not in the distant past.
Iran is an exception: I have many Iranian friends who believe that there is a problem with Islam and how it destroyed the original Persian culture and Iranians tend to be quite smart. However, look at it now who is in control there–? I was recently reading how the few Hindus in Iran who were traders had to wear badges in traditional times in Iran to distinguish themselves from the Muslims–reminds one of badges elsewhere does it not? And ask any Armenian Christian who lives there and they will tell you what they think…As for Turkey, with the exception of the Europeanized Turks rural Turkey is quite different…
6. May 2009 - 10:00 PM
I believe Muslim extremists will change the day they have no oil in the Middle East and will have to perish or modernize. I believe everyone sane is waiting for this.
6. May 2009 - 10:30 PM
Kedar/Palahalli, as regards the path to reconciliation with Muslims/Christians, I can only say that this war is be won by influencing public opinion favorably. And to be able to do so, the approach has to be at many levels. It simply cannot be a spectre of a constant clash of religions.
What kind of reconciliation do you suggest? When I look at the history of Kashmiri Pandits, I just see persecution and how they survived because they were very determined to survive even though their land became majority Muslim and they were constantly under pressure to convert. It is amazing how they survived despite being drowned in Dal Lake by the thousands over the centuries and being forced to convert via the sword. But this exodus is probably the last because a unique culture will not survive when there is home for it anyomore. There is not much trace of Hindu culture left in Kashmir valley anymore.
6. May 2009 - 10:31 PM
@ larissa
>>>>>>>>>>>.”I believe Muslim extremists will change….”
But you will never.
Your name is apt for you. Anagram for ‘liar ass’
6. May 2009 - 10:37 PM
Bhavananda – Quick answers to your questions.
1.”Abdul Kalam to Azim Premji to Mukhtar Abbas Nakvi to many soldiers defending India on the borders.”
- What are their views on Mohammed and the Qur’an? What are their views on Mohammed’s treatment of Kaffirs in his time? That’s the clinching argument.
2. On Wilders being explicit, I was referring to explicitness in the opposing anti-Islam camp. Muslims can never be accused of being not explicit. They are always very clear as to their stance.
3. I have already answered the question about Wilders on the “criminal” argument.
4. Again, who is this “Muslim” who wants to integrate? What is your test to identify that “Muslim”? What does integrate mean?
5. “Anwar Seikhs, Wafa Sultan, Ayan Hirsi Alis” – By what measure are they Muslim?
6. The BJP/RSS are no great shakes in the anti-Islam movement. In fact, they are very liberal and secular in their attitude. Scarcely can their stance be differentiated from the “pseudo-seculars” they abuse. The RMM is a huge mistake. It confuses Hindus and achieves less. Btw, does the RMM make it incumbent on members to disown Mohammed and his doings? If yes, how are they Muslim? If not, what is the purpose of this group apart from self-deception and dream mongering?
Anup –
1. Iran went down to Khomeini very quickly. Why? Who in Iran opposes Ahmedinejad’s basic premises today?
2. Turkey is facing an overdue Islamic backlash. Again, I see Erdogan as very popular in Turkey.
3. You say, “he appears to be against all Muslims to some people such as yourself.” Well, when you have decided to deport all Muslims to play safe, where is the need to split hairs? “Some” deported Muslims will surly not ponder…”aww…I’m the safe Muslim..but I guess the fella couldn’t tell me otherwise from my brother here..but that’s ok”
4. Wilders is not being dishonest. He is just not splitting hairs. He is instead, suggesting practical measures to contain the Islam threat. He is not saying…”hmm, let’s see, that’s a nice Muslim there waving the flag..I don’t think he likes the Shar’ia…hmm”.
5. Paranoia? After what we’ve seen going on all over the world? I wish you luck!
6. Please be more specific on the plan you have in mind. Some recognizable outline would do.
7. To my mind, the Westerner breaking free from Christianity is akin to our own culturally alienated Hindu. It is foolhardy to expect “Eastern” philosophies to fill in for Christianity. Our philosophies are not built for such missions. Nor is it desirable to do a Hindu “Macaulay” in the West. It fails and fails every time. All we will end up doing is make the West weaker and more susceptible to Islam. If anything, the West needs to rediscover its White Judeo-Christian roots, just like we need to rediscover our Sanatana Dharmic roots.
7. May 2009 - 1:14 AM
@Palahalli: Nice diversionary tactics. You still did not answer my explicit question. So let me repeat: BY YOUR DEFINITIONS, IS THERE **ANY** DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ABDUL KALAM AND A JAVED AKHTAR? If so WHICH CATEGORY OF MUSLIM (choose your definition) THEY FALL INTO? If you don’t care to differentiate an lump them with the usual jihadis, at least say that!
Honestly, I cannot care less which version of Islam they believe or whats their view on their books, prophet, etc. Savarkar didn’t believe in God and yet was one of the most dedicated proponent of Hinduism. Do we care for his views on God? or Prophet? I’ve read “the wings of fire” by Kalam (his autobiography) and I know by heart he’s the ideal type I want.
You ask regarding RMM members in question 6 “If yes, how are they Muslim?” – WE cannot impose who’s a Muslim and who’s not. If they disown something and still call them Muslims, its THEIR choice, not yours, not mine. Anyway, before saying more, I’ll wait for your reply.
7. May 2009 - 2:51 AM
Bhavananda – There is no diversion. You forget that I have no “category” of Muslim. To me, if they are Muslims, then they believe in certain basics, foremost amongst them being acceptance of Mohammed as the last and final Prophet. There cannot be a Muslim who does not believe in this tenet. If he does not, then he is not a Muslim, period.
I do not believe that the Jihadi is a different category of Muslim. There is no such thing as a Jihadi Muslim. Jihadis are simply Muslims motivated enough to kill themselves for the faith. They don’t pray to a different Allah nor do they read a different Qur’an.
What do you mean by “versions of Islam”? I don’t understand it.
I’m sorry but your reading of Savarkar is wrong. He was not an exponent of Hinduism. His Hindutva as he himself clearly stated in his definitive work “Hindutva”, has nothing to do with Hinduism per se and is vaster than Hinduism. Of course Savarkar called himself a Hindu because Hinduism or more accurately, his Hindutva, itself is not self limiting and exclusive. Hinduism or Hindutva is not Islam.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3250532/essentials-of-hindutva-by-veer-savarkar
Not many Muslims vouch for Kalam as one of theirs. He is a decent and quite man. He would probably not tell us what he thinks of Mohammed and his Qur’an.
Nice article. Please read closely and carefully. http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/28guest.htm
On the RMM, I agree Hindus have no right to dictate who is or is not a Muslim. Muslims themselves must choose whether they are Muslims or not. But if you think that a Muslim can remain a Muslim even though he disowns Mohammed, then I must say you have not understood Islam. And if this is the thinking with the Sangh folks in the RMM, then god help them and keep the rest of us away from their delusions.
7. May 2009 - 7:57 AM
Honestly, I cannot care less which version of Islam they believe or whats their view on their books, prophet, etc.
Good point, Bhavananda, and I agree. The best test lies in actions – Prithviraj Chauhan and Jaichand were both Hindus.
7. May 2009 - 8:17 AM
A thoughtful article on Islam here-
http://indianrealist.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/violence-fear-and-islam/
7. May 2009 - 12:45 PM
Sandeep, I posted a response to Bhavananda last night. Is that lost?
7. May 2009 - 12:47 PM
Sandeep, I had posted a response to Bhavananda last night. It contained two links that went for moderation. Is that post lost?
7. May 2009 - 2:04 PM
“Honestly, I cannot care less which version of Islam they believe or whats their view on their books, prophet, etc.”
- I’m in agreement here only in so far as the ideology of Islam does not dictate and guide the religion of Islam. This is because it is only the ideological goals of Islam that can cause harm to non-Muslims.
7. May 2009 - 6:30 PM
Palahalli,
I don’t quite know what to say about our disconnect regarding Muslims vs Islam, Geert Wilders’ speech and intentions, Paranoia and “suicidalness” etc. But that is not important when compared to a very basic understanding of how we should fight this war against the negative forces of Islam, Christianity and Communism; all totalitarian in nature though differing in degree as well as all being freedom hating ideologies.
But here’s a thought experiment for you so that you may respond with what is the best way to deal with the problem of Islam in India.
If you were a person of minority community and if a majority community had demonized your community, what would you feel about the majority community? Love, compassion, gratitude? Or the meaner emotions of hatred, self righteousness, survival and even revolt? Instead if you were told by an increasingly large number of people about the “untenableness” of your beliefs, how would you react? Let me provide a clue to this question. Look at the western world; unrelenting questioning of Biblical beliefs has led to educated people discarding their religious Christian identity which has a had a black history as well. Do you not think something similar can work in the case of Islam? And I am saying this in the context of discussions among educated elite.
And if in this process, the people make a transition via Left-Liberal views of rejecting tradition and religion, then that’s another challenge we can try to deal with using another strategy. Essentially, I am talking about horses for courses.
And when I see vitriol flowing forth from people like you & Larissa, I think it is very disappointing.
None of us here (except for Larissa whose motives for writing what she writes I think is suspect) believes that Islam, Christianity, Communism should triumph. But I can only say that we need to tread carefully about our treatment of people vs. ideologies, especially when the public opinion machinery is totally in control of these very forces we are trying to fight.
7. May 2009 - 7:08 PM
Regarding Islam and Indo-Pak conflicts I agree wholeheartedly with the premise of this beautiful essay.
The Root of India-Pakistan Conflicts
http://rajivmalhotra.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15:the-root-of-india-pakistan-conflicts&catid=14:india-pakistan&Itemid=28
7. May 2009 - 10:34 PM
‘liar ass’
I want to know what I lied about?
Did not realize that men could get emotional arguing like women!
None of us here (except for Larissa whose motives for writing what she writes I think is suspect) believes that Islam, Christianity, Communism should triumph
Now I am communist and working for the triumph of Islam as well. Let’s counte here, I am a hacker of this site, a student of Witzel, a Communist, and want Christianity and Islam to triumph.
I am getting amused with the epithets!
7. May 2009 - 11:17 PM
VoP
I think this article echoes what everyone knows: the problem with Pakistan is that they do not know who they are as a nation–hence their notion of how they have Arab blood or Persian blood and other such nonsense–they were just Indians who got converted for whatever reason.
I think the cause of fanatic Islam is very simple: with no more oil there will be nothing to fund it. In Kashmir, the Hindus were systematically persecuted and discriminated against amidst a majority Muslim population after the valley gradually became Muslim through conversion by force and through proselytizing after the fourteen hundreds: but they survived somehow until recently when they were ejected. I look around and do not see Islamic nations treating minorities with respect. Which Islamic nation has a democracy? This is what worries me. The problem might not be HIndus: the other native religions more or less co-exist in peace in India, despite occassional quarrels.
There is not much India can do. Ultimately population demographics will decide the fate of India I believe. The only thing India can do is to make sure it protects borders.
7. May 2009 - 11:41 PM
“I am getting amused with the epithets!”
Sure you are!
Wallowing in negativity, making spurious claims, goading unsuspecting commenters to reply to your insane logic, and generally trying to bring down everyone’s morale with your constant “india and hinduism are doomed” whining.
Enjoy yourself Larissa.
8. May 2009 - 12:46 AM
“Do you not think something similar can work in the case of Islam? And I am saying this in the context of discussions among educated elite.”
anup, I have a feeling behind closed doors with their non-Muslim friends, educated Muslims likely admit to the problems in Islam which they can’t/won’t admit in public – they’re not stupid that they don’t see these glaring and obvious issues. The problem is how to have public vocal and acceptable criticism within Islam, but that’s a logical doozy, given how the system is set up and the situation created in Indian society because of minority appeasement policy post-independence.
I also don’t know very well the history of reforms in Christianity, but I’ll be surprised if it didn’t meet stiff resistance from powers-that-be as well as moderate Christians. Sometimes, one just has to put one’s foot down and say “enough is enough” and let the other community change and adapt. After all, personal laws in Pakistan have been reformed with little to no resistance from Muslims (as far as I know), so why is it not possible in India which is relatively more free and democratic country?
It’s a two-way road, and I think we Hindus are so brain-washed into believing that it’s only one-way and only we Hindus have to adapt. Let the other community adapt for a change.
8. May 2009 - 12:59 AM
trying to bring down everyone’s morale with your constant “india and hinduism are doomed” whining.
I am not trying to bring down people’s morale. I am just saying that many Hindus are passive and largely unconcerned –I mean if there is a mass exodus of Hindus from Kashmir, then India is not a strong country because the militants there have won in a sense by cleansing it of Hindus. Remember these people will never be able to go back—-I am just looking at the realistic picture–demography is ultimately destiny.
8. May 2009 - 1:01 AM
@vop
I think this article echoes what everyone knows: the problem with Pakistan is that they do not know who they are as a nation–hence their notion of how they have Arab blood or Persian blood and other such nonsense–they were just Indians who got converted for whatever reason.
I think the cause of fanatic Islam is very simple: with no more oil there will be nothing to fund it. In Kashmir, the Hindus were systematically persecuted and discriminated against amidst a majority Muslim population after the valley gradually became Muslim through conversion by force and through proselytizing after the fourteen hundreds: but they survived somehow until recently when they were ejected. I look around and do not see Islamic nations treating minorities with respect. Which Islamic nation has a democracy? This is what worries me. The problem might not be HIndus: the other native religions more or less co-exist in peace in India, despite occassional quarrels.
There is not much India can do. Ultimately population demographics will decide the fate of India I believe. The only thing India can do is to make sure it protects borders.
8. May 2009 - 1:02 AM
making spurious claims
What’s the spurious claim I made?
8. May 2009 - 3:15 AM
“What’s the spurious claim I made?”
Here’s one right in your latest post: “I am not trying to bring down people’s morale.”
Arent’t you?
Almost every comment of yours thrives on perpetuating negativity and low self-esteem. This statement “then India is not a strong country because the militants there have won” serves your purpose.
Your doom and gloom scenarios sound monotonous to commenters who are wary of your motives, but the motive nonetheless is to put Indians and Hindus down. My sincere advice to you is to try a little bit of positive thinking.
8. May 2009 - 7:28 PM
You are very closed minded. I am able to see our faults–does not mean I have no self-esteem. But some people just might think that India is going in a great direction, nothing wrong with that, you can go on with your blindness. Your self esteem must be quite low then if you interpret my comments as an attack on Hindus.
Of course the militants have won in Kashmir–the fact that there are no HIndus there anymore proves this fact as they have been all driven out. Jammu is qutie a different place from Kashmir Valley.
Demographics is destiny. I just saying that if HIndus were serious they would wake up and start protecting borders, as there is not much else they can do.
I used to think that Nirad Chaudhury was a funny guy–now I can see why he would be propelled to write a book like Continent of Circe.
8. May 2009 - 7:32 PM
My husband tells me to stop following Indian poltics, as it ultimately dissappoints–but lets see–lets see who is placed into power by the electorate…in a few days…
8. May 2009 - 9:09 PM
“Of course the militants have won in Kashmir–the fact that there are no HIndus there anymore proves this fact as they have been all driven out.”
Of course they won you dimwit. Because of YOU. You claim to be a brahmin from Kashmir, yet your scaredy cowardly ass took the first flight out of there. And you have the gall to sit in a comfortable couch somewhere and pontificate on how India is not a strong nation. If you had the guts, why didn’t you stay there and fight? Why run away? You are a coward and it’s hilarious that while you blame India for being weak, it’s people like you who make it weak. Don’t worry, we’ll continue thriving despite pessimists like you.
Can’t imagine which slob married you, but he’s right. You better stop following Indian politics and leave it to people who can do something about it. You can continue your whining but I’m done replying to your b.s.
8. May 2009 - 9:25 PM
Anup – Let’s just focus on Islam. Frankly, I do not think Christianity or even Communism today has that kind of destructive potential left in them. Naxals are a different matter altogether.
I don’t believe anything similar to what happened with Christianity can be experienced within Islam. Islam is far too simple a religion qua ideology.
There is a fascinating theory about this. The theory says that more complex a religion is; more the chances for reform to succeed. Reform can succeed in any complex religion. Be it Christianity or any of the Indic paths. However, if a religion is too simple with total clarity and absolutely no scope for doubt or reflection on possible truths, then there is no room left to maneuver. Hence reform fails because to succeed in this scenario, one has to reject whole truths that are also established as truths. One has to convert out to escape.
My question to you is this. Do you want Muslims to become Hindus? If that is so, then we must be clear as to why we want this to happen. We cannot be clear so long as we keep pussy footing around facts.
But if you want Muslims to be lesser Muslims you must define what you mean by “lesser”.
In my opinion any kind of post-modernist argument again amounts to deluding ourselves.
Anup, if facts are vitriol, then so be it. I would like my facts to be countered by your facts. Not by your emotion or sentiments.
Let me know.
8. May 2009 - 10:11 PM
CC – I think Larissa is a lady who is very proud of her husband and heritage. She lives in the US but keeps in touch with Indian events. She has her likes and dislikes and is passionate about them.
The question you ask of Larissa can be put to any of the two odd lakh Hindus who left Kashmir. Were they all cowards? Or were any one of them a coward? How do unarmed Hindus put up a stand against armed killers? Our soldiers find it tough to keep things under control and they are heavily armed. But I think you said all this in some fit of anger.
Lastly and again, I felt it was ungentlemanly and uncouth, if you are a man, to have insulted Larissa’s relationship. And if you are a woman, then this was hardly an example of feminine grace.
8. May 2009 - 10:33 PM
Liar is one who claims to be Brahmin without realising Brahma.
Ass is one who does not realise that ‘liar ass’ is anagram of ‘larissa’ despite being told.
8. May 2009 - 11:16 PM
Palahalli, my comment was purely personal intended for none but larissa. No need to extrapolate it to anyone else. She needs to command respect, not demand it or expect decency when she doesn’t herself subsribe to it.
8. May 2009 - 11:50 PM
Liar is one who claims to be Brahmin without realising Brahma.
Being Brahmin is preserving our heritage of excellence and discipline and passing it down to our descendants. You sound like some new age guy. Perhaps you have been reading too much of Frawley, that you claim to know Brahman while claiming others do not. Your comments are comical. Which is why I disregard them.
9. May 2009 - 12:00 AM
Anyway a state which cannot protect its citizens from being killed and their culture wiped out and forced to live as refugees in other states is not a strong state by anyone’s definition. If the militants had not won in Kashmir valley, there would still be a large Hindu population there.
So I don’t see what you are talking about. Kashmir valley is a lost cause–there is no HIndu culture left there–it has been wiped out by Mulism estremists. The mass exodus of 400,000 people from there after living there for a continuous 3000 years is proof of that.
I have heard of how thousands died in the camps as they were unaccustomed to the heat of the plains, and how people lost everything–as their houses were burned down.
So please don’t bullshit about how the Indian state is strong.
9. May 2009 - 12:52 AM
The question you ask of Larissa can be put to any of the two odd lakh Hindus who left Kashmir. Were they all cowards? Or were any one of them a coward? How do unarmed Hindus put up a stand against armed killers? Our soldiers find it tough to keep things under control and they are heavily armed.
You do not seem to understand. The Indian State lost control…which is what happened. Even the State could not guarantee the safety of those HIndus that were there which is why people left as they were in small numbers and as you could be killed while walking or in your home or anytime. Being killed by Muslims is not new to Kashmiri Pandit history. The have known it for generations under Islamic rulers with little tolerance, but they resisted and refused to convert over the generations. But this exodus seems to be the last one because I do not see how people can be resettled there when the government cannot guarantee that they can be safe. You do not have to go back to Indian history to see what Islamic radicalism leads to–you have it right before you in Kashmir. And moreover, they were attacked by Islamic sepratists because they were seen as a threat for not converting to Islam despite the fact that after the 1400’s Kashmir was the last to be fully penetrated by Islam and despite pressures to convert which many did, many also did not.
What has the billions that the Indian government given to the region resulted in and where would the state be without billions in subsidies? Look at the Pakistani side of Kashmir and how underdeveloped it is. Subsidizing the state to keep people happy worked in places like Sikkim but not there. A poor citizen in Bihar recieved thousands less than what a citizen receives in Kashmir. But the result?
Anyway, although I am interested in seeing HIndus resettled there, it seems at the same time a lost cause.
9. May 2009 - 1:01 AM
Here is why they left:
- By Aditya Raj Kaul
Visit the Link – http://kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com/2009/01/19-years-to-19th-day-of-1990-exodus-of.html
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day
What hours, O what black hours we have spent…
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
19th January 1990. Kashmir was breathing still; Kashmiri Pandits lay hidden like frightened pigeons in their own nest. Today on behalf of my fellow brothers and sisters, I wish to revisit the pain of my separation from my own home 19 years ago, when the cruel hands of Allah-Wallahs butchered members of my community for being idol worshipers, for rejecting the call for unholy jihad and for siding with their own nation India. The Islamic murderers played dire warnings from their Mosques which pierced each nerve of anybody who held a Hindu name. As the sun turned pale, exhortations became louder, and three taped slogans repeatedly played their terror: ‘Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai’ (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah is great); ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What do we want here? Rule of Shariah); ‘Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san’ (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).
The roots of this unparalleled tragedy are immersed in 1986 with a well-planned strategy to execute Hindus from the valley. By 1990, the population saw their age old temples turned to ruins and lives at risk. As Pakistan stepped up their campaign against India, new Islamic terror outfits suddenly mushroomed in the state. As Jamait-e-Islami financed all madarsas to poison them against the minority Hindus and India, Pakistan further dictated youth to launch Jihad against India. A terror strike so meticulously planned that its unprecedented display was terrifying. As camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) began to provide training to innumerable Muslim men, India witnessed the emergence of the bloodiest Kalashnikov culture in the valley. The victims- innocent and non-violent minority- the Kashmiri Pandits.
The Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, abandoned his responsibilities and the administration, the state and people lay like cattle on an open road. The hidden fact of rigged elections in 1987 had by then become a lucid statement. Today 22 years later, Omar Abdullah takes position of the same majestic throne, though I wonder how efficiently he would carry forward the state of affairs. Will he like his father ruin the backbone of the state and leave the minority Hindus helpless as always, or will he rise above politics, religion to create space for Pandits in their valley? The unanswered question lingers on.
When Farooq Abdullah escaped underground, Jagmohan took reigns as the governor of the state. Though not very competent to handle an already ruined socio-political situation, he as a mark of remarkable leadership helped Kashmiri Pandits receive safe shelter. Jagmohan charted out an exceptional strategy to counter Islamic fanatics and also opened his Durbar (Office) to public irrespective of time. He visited families of the martyred Hindus. About one such meeting with the family of Satish Tickoo, murdered by communal JKLF goon Bitta Karate , he wrote an outstanding excerpt in his book, ‘My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir’- “In Habba-Kadal, except for the long row of our vehicles, nothing was seen on the streets. The afternoon rain appeared to have soaked the houses with depression. The few windows that were open were without even the usual dim light. The dark clouds overhead completed the picture of gloom… The house of Tickoo was like a shattered nest. Everything lay scattered. The grim atmosphere around told the tale more vividly…”
He further wrote, “As I was about to leave, Satish’s uncle who was a bit vociferous and assertive, insisted that I should go upstairs and see the family deity. I agreed. A calm majestic figure was soon visible. It looked so imposing even in the darkness… With tears in their eyes, the family members thanked me and the accompanying officers. We were all moved over the sad plight of the family”.
However one excerpt that mirrored my anxiety of 19 years was composed in words by Jagmohan, “Looking at the compact and enmeshed houses, and the by-lanes which acted like fine threads of a well-knit fabric, I wondered how these families, who had all their Gods and Goddesses here, and had deep roots in the soil, could leave and settle in distant and unfamiliar lands. Sometimes life is unaccountably cruel. And we human beings have, perhaps, no option but to suffer – suffer in silence, or wail”.
Satish Tickoo was not the lone martyr who fell to the bullets of so-called revolutionaries. Tika lal Taploo, Nilkanth Ganjoo, Sarla Bhat, and countless others followed the target list of JKLF and other Islamic Terror outfits backed by Pakistan financially, psychologically and politically. An absent government, collapsed administration, and a petrified community saw despondency set in. As the moonlight of January 19, 1990 wore itself out, despondency gave way to desperation. Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley decided to take an agonizing decision, to flee their homeland and save their lives and religion from rabid Jihadis…
…Thus took place a 20th century Exodus.
Pandits left the valley, with an approximate statistics of more than three lakh and fifty thousand. Almost a thousand Pandit men, women and children were slaughtered to death in 1990 alone by these revolutionaries of Islam. Surprisingly on paper, official figures clogged at only 209 killed! Alas! Soon the J&K government shall disown the whole Pandit community as aborigines of Kashmir.
In this 19th year, a few hundred frightened Pandits still live scattered across the valley in far flung areas hoping against hope for peace and their brethren to step on the snow once again.
This 19th year embarks upon a history of bullets to makeshift camps in Jammu with torturous summer heat to snake and scorpion bites and finally dreadful diseases. Seven camps in Jammu are an uninhabitable asylum for around 50,000 Kashmiri Pandits. The only perceptible change is an upgradation of some to permanent structures.
My heart bleeds when I watch communal turned pseudo-secular Kashmiri separatists grab the headlines while the plight of the Pandits remains a non-issue. It isn’t the so-called Azaadi that the people of Kashmir desire. They long for an immediate crackdown on terrorists, an end to the separatist elements and those unbearable puppets in the Valley- all for normalcy to return. Though sidelined for now, the political patronage they enjoy could soon take the voices from the Hurriyat and JKLF spreading propaganda of terror and hatred to the frontlines of politics.
An entire community uprooted from the land of their ancestors is today struggling for its identity. The weak-kneed Indian state shamelessly panders to Islamic terrorists and separatists who claim they are the final arbiters of Jammu and Kashmir’s destiny. A part of India’s cultural heritage is destroyed; a chapter of India’s civilization has been erased. And, our jhola-wallah brigade of ’secular’ activists unabashedly turns their back to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. To them I believe, ‘Hindu sorrow, inflicted by Islamic terror’ is a truth perhaps too harsh to accept. Thereby hangs a tragic tale that is completely wiped out from public memory.
I am reminded of a stanza by a Jewish poet: ‘…without identity in a street nameless to me, I am a stranger: I am longings, I am fears. I am child longing to belong to his lost childhood and not be outside the present, always withdrawn, apart…’
I’m as old as the terrorism in the Valley. In these 19 years, the only time I felt the breeze of my land was through the closed windows of my airplane. She beckons me and I am too desperate now to grab its serene quilt. My mother nature has summoned me, and I shall answer her call soon, very soon.
Till then, in this 19th year of exile like the unanswered questions of our human rights …my struggle for existence also continues.
9. May 2009 - 1:32 AM
Even Francois had an exhibition on this:
http://refugees-in-their-own-country.blogspot.com/
9. May 2009 - 1:41 AM
You claim to be a brahmin from Kashmir, yet your scaredy cowardly ass took the first flight out of there. And you have the gall to sit in a comfortable couch somewhere and pontificate on how India is not a strong nation
Sorry, but I am not Kashmiri. My husband is. Moreover, India is not a strong nation from what I have heard and seen from those people that were driven out, killed, whose houses were burnt and who lost everything.
9. May 2009 - 2:02 AM
Some more websites I found that contain some info as to why those people left:
http://www.panunkashmir.org/
http://www.iakf.org/main/
9. May 2009 - 4:57 AM
“Lastly and again, I felt it was ungentlemanly and uncouth, if you are a man, to have insulted Larissa’s relationship. And if you are a woman, then this was hardly an example of feminine grace.”
Btw, please don’t presume to impose your notions on how gentlemen and “graceful” women should behave.
9. May 2009 - 7:54 AM
>>>>>>>>>> Palahalli says: – CC – I think Larissa is a lady who is very proud of her husband and heritage. She lives in the US but keeps in touch with Indian events. She has her likes and dislikes and is passionate about them.
L— A– , your tactic is working.
Overwhelming intellect with deluge of propaganda, dominating space with large numbers (of mostly meaningless comments in the subject case), truth by repeated assertions are all well proven techniques.
Thing is, you do not end up achieveing anything of worth.
You may think otherwise, but what you chase is a mirage- a creation of mind.
In the process you waste a lot of things. Mainly your life. And opportunities to become a better person.
9. May 2009 - 1:06 PM
CC – There is no imposition but an expectation of higher standards of conversation. But if you insist on language that is uncouth and graceless (per me), then that’s your call.
Incognito – I have stated some pertinent facts. That’s all.
9. May 2009 - 9:45 PM
Is India weak because the state machinery allows terrorist attacks to happen? Or is it STRONG because its citizens made the supreme sacrifice? Am I ashamed to be an Indian because of Barkha dutt and Antulay or proud to be one because of Sandeep Unnikrishan and Tukaram Omble? It’s obvious the vile Liar here who indulges in rabid fear-mongering believes and intends to perpetuate the former.
It’s not going to work, so shove it.
9. May 2009 - 11:54 PM
Well it is obvious that some Indians like CC and incognito cannot take criticism at all of anything that concerns them and are burdened with the colonial complex in which they frame everything, and are very very touchy and have no sense of humor-this I have noticed in many which makes types like incognito and CC very boorish- which is why the best accounts of India have been from pessimists like Naipaul in modern times…
10. May 2009 - 12:07 AM
I recall a prominent American who worked with the Indian defense. He and his wife really like India and had many good things to say about it as they spent some time there. But one of the things he raised in his interview was that India has absolutely no strategy as defense was concerned. Now I think a guy like this is speaking the truth, but incognitos and CC’s who think India is perfect would pounce on him.
10. May 2009 - 12:28 AM
If anything, the West needs to rediscover its White Judeo-Christian roots, just like we need to rediscover our Sanatana Dharmic roots.
I agree with you but the heritage of the West is more the Greco-Roman civilization. Christianity was an import from the mideast and did not really originate in Europe although it influenced the spiritual heritage of the West and has been around there for the last 2000 years. The nouvel right in France were very interesting in recognizing this–that Europe’s proper heritage is Greco-Roman but that movement died down. But it is very interesting to read them as Benoist is a scholar of classical Greek. As for the Greco-Romans, they were tolerant in terms of religion and absorbed other cults just like Hindus and they never fought over religion, but over territory and empire.
10. May 2009 - 12:40 AM
Also the Greco-Romans were not conscious of superiority of race in the sense of modern day Westerners who largely got this idea of superiority from imperialism and colonialism. The Greco-Roman civilizations were syncretic –there was an interesting combine of Greco-Buddhist culture in the NorthWest for a while but this was put to an end by the Scythians and Huns. I often like to think it would have been an interesting culture if it had survived. When you read the invasions of Greeks of India, nowhere do you read Alexander referring to Indians as inferior in any way or as the Muslims referred to HIndus as inferior infidels. The Greeks while having a great deal ethnic pride, were very different from modern day Europeans in this respect–you just have to read Alexander to see he was just interested in conquest and land–the Greeks in this respect were different from later European colonizers…
10. May 2009 - 7:42 AM
Palahalli,
The comment was not addressed to you.
From the subsequent attempts at subversion that is seen here, it appears that the person whom it was addressed to is refusing to acknowledge its import.
L _ _ _ A _ _ _ ,
Suggest you -
a) change your ID and adopt a different method to indulge in your mission.
or
b) ask for somebody else to replace you.
Your tactics in the present form are definitely unsuccessful.
>>>>>>”As for the Greco-Romans, they were tolerant in terms of religion ”
And I thought it was these people who crucified Jesus.
Thanks for the info.
>>>>>>>”Also the Greco-Romans were not conscious of superiority of race ..”
It is wonderful that you know these things.
I was under the impression that they kept slaves.
>>>>>>”..modern day Westerners who largely got this idea of superiority from imperialism and colonialism.”
Good that you point out that the Westerners were as much victims of this thing called ‘Imperialism’ and ‘Colonialism’ that somehow caused them to have the idea of superiority which then caused them to subjugate others.
Your suggestions are very informative.
>>>>>>”..Greeks while having a great deal ethnic pride, were very different from modern day Europeans in this respect–you just have to read Alexander to see he was just interested in conquest and land-..”
Such a good fellow, just interested in conquest and land.
Thanks for explaining that.
Your comments are very informative ‘Liar Ass’, Thank you.
You took the trouble to explain to us that Max Mueller was great, David Frawley, the misguided soul who thinks ancient Indian culture is great shakes is at best ignorant, otherwise, in your words, a ‘hack’.
And now you have been kind enough to explain the weaknesses of Indians and the greatness of Greeks and Romans.
I look forward to more extolling of virtues of the Westerners and further denigration of Indians in you future comments, followed by advantages of converting to christianity, which I suppose will provide the converts with a rootless outlook and intellectual dependency on Westerners.
10. May 2009 - 8:09 AM
As expected the vile Liar confuses *strenght* with *perfection* and *optimism* with *jingoism*. Snake in the grass and dagger in the cloak, but I can see it.
10. May 2009 - 12:39 PM
Incognito/CC – A take it or leave it advise. You can engage Larissa intelligently or grumble about her presense on these forums.
What strikes me is that you guys have stooped to abuse. That’s usually a loser’s last stand.
Larissa, good points. In my opinion in all theoretical or quasi practical forum discussions,the aim would be to think of options for Hinduism to live on and thrive in it’s home. Can you offer such arguments? If the end point is it’s a hopeless situation, then there is no point in discussing anything..is there? Think about it.
10. May 2009 - 12:49 PM
Larissa, CC, Incognito,
Let me present my observations on some the subjects of your debate. I must state at the outset that I do not disagree with all the points you make, but there are some which I wish put on note. This is the first installment which contains my views on David Frawley, Max Muller et al.
David Frawley has been unjustly called a hack here. While he definitely and unapologetically calls himself a vedic astrologer – it must be understood that this is his profession – no different than countless pandits in India. He is said to have studied under an Indian guru – to become a vedacharya – something few of us Indians go into the trouble of doing nowadays. This is not suffecient reason for rejection of his arguments. Again Frawley himself admits to the popular rather than strictly academic nature of his texts. His works seek to popularize alternate scholarship on India – which has been long supressed by mainstream indology establishment. Blind belief in the impartiality of apparently mainstream scholarly studies is also misleading. Please read ‘Invading the Sacred’ for further insight into the subversion of scholarship, suppression of fact, misrepresentation, and outright lie resorted to by mainstream scholarship and western academia with regard to study of India in general and Hinduism in particular. Please present what arguments from Frawley or Rajaram are wrong. Frawley’s work on the the Indus Civilization-Aryan Literature paradox, on the Soma cult etc are highly illuminating and interesting works. Personally, his debates with Witzel (Hindu Open Page) was what finally convinced me of the genuiness of the case against AIT/AMT.
Max Muller’s own works are used by a number of scholars on both sides of the AIT debate. His works are not ‘popular’ but apparently ’scholarly’ and therefore more influential – more influential in moulding latter scholarly opinion. In light of his christian evangelical proclivities – evidenced in his letters to his wife – can we be sure that his work is as altruistic and impartial as some claim it to be ? Can it be read without evangelical and german-nationlist subtext – especially in light of his initially virulent proposition of AIT, and the aryan race – which he later substituted with the linguistic argument. Add to this the british colonial interests, racial prejudices, non-familiarity with India, her culture, hinduism etc, unavailability of insights from later archeological discoveries – and we find reasons to be cautious if not skeptical of Max Muller’s studies. In this regard it is my humble view that we should begin to treat his works in the same way as the works on indian history by James Mill – as a product of it’s time. His works should only be relevant to us if it satisfies scholarly rigour, and is supported by contemporary studies.
My problem with comparing Frawley and Max Muller is that while we expect scholarly rigour from a writer of popular books (Frawley) we shy away from applying the same yardstick to an apparent earlier scholar (Max Muller).
I shall try and present my views on islam, arab/turk invasion, greco-roman / western civilization hopefully soon.
10. May 2009 - 7:36 PM
Who says its a hopeless situation? I am just saying that Hindus seem to be sleeping most of the time! Why should I change my user name as incognito suggests? I have said nothing which is false.
10. May 2009 - 7:45 PM
I look forward to more extolling of virtues of the Westerners and further denigration of Indians in you future comments, followed by advantages of converting to christianity, which I suppose will provide the converts with a rootless outlook and intellectual dependency on Westerners.
What a narrow little mind you have. Mght as well learn nothing coming from the West including theoretical physics.
And I thought it was these people who crucified Jesus.
This is a different matter. I am saying that Romans did not wage wars in order to impose their religion on others. The religions in the ancient world were syncretic and the ancient romans gave and took. This can be seen in the popularity in several cults such as Orphism, the cult of Dionysus, and the cult of Mithras all of which came from the East.
“I was under the impression that they kept slaves.”
It is really futile to resond to your level of reasoning. Of course the Greeks and Romans kept slaves—but they were just conquered folk in war and often could be smarter than their masters–they did not keep slaves because a certain race was inferior, slaves were people conquered in war and could be the same race as the romans, so it is different from latter day slavery in which people were enslaved because of the color of their skin. Now do not make it as if I am extolling slavery because I am not. I am simply saying that modern conceptions of race is a very recent phenomenon that largely comes from imperialism and colonialism…Capische?
You should READ before jumping to attack people.
10. May 2009 - 9:29 PM
Pallahali
Some areas in which India is weak:
1)Lack of strategy for defense
2)Lack of protection of borders
3)Lack of strategic thinking and coherence in terms of national policy objectives
4)Overpopulation–
10. May 2009 - 10:01 PM
Palahalli, my friendly advice to you: Don’t presume to judge comments or commenters just by skimming them. If you had followed all the previous discussons (reams of them), you would know that almost every commenter here has put in sincere efforts to engage this Liar in an intelligent conversation.
The recurring theme is that any logical rebuttal to any of her statements results in the same reply. Which is that the Indian state has “failed”, is not strong, Westerners think Indians are weak, China and the chinese are superior, and Hinduism is doomed.
If someone (who is probably not even of Indian origin) constantly belittles a country and its people, then that is “abuse” in my book.
Another bit of advice regarding debating on any forum. You (in reference to a certain Liar here) cannot expect to hold onto your PoV adamantly, inflexibly and expect everyone to either agree or in turn be abused. I solemnly declare that I have previoulsy conceded PoVs to the liar, but like I said before, the gesture was not returned. It only begot more of the same whining.
So Palahalli, your holier than thou attitude is totally unwarranted. Lastly, I didn’t have to justify myself or my comments to you, but I make it a point to offer honest and reasoned replies atleast once. After that it’s give as good as you get.
10. May 2009 - 10:42 PM
any logical rebuttal to any of her statements
I did not realize a new branch of logical thinking has been established–the logic which you call logic. If so, I certainly did not encounter it in any of the Mathematics courses I took. Perhpas it was already contained in some ancient text which modern day ingoramus’ cannot fathom.
10. May 2009 - 11:25 PM
CC – I have been following this debate. I’m quite satisfied that Larissa is a person one can reason with. Of course, you may have different thoughts. I find she has points that are strong and honest too. Just because she likes Max M and detests Vamadeva S does not mean she’s dumb. I find her being hard on Hindus and not abusive of them.
Larissa –
Lack of strategy for defense – I would say, lack of a comprehensive self-reliant strategy. From where I sit, I see a heavy reliance of what the US does or does not do in “Afpak”.
Lack of protection of borders – Qualified agreement.We are obviously more watchful on our Western Front than on our Eastern. But I don’t think there is a deliberate attempt at sabotage except to an extent, on our Eastern borders.
Lack of strategic thinking and coherence in terms of national policy objectives – If you mean our government is not prepared to do BIG POWER thinking and projection, then yes, you are correct. However, there are plenty of Indian think tanks that are willing to support the right set of politicos if they are asked to. So, boils down to Will.
Over-population – I think the question is of how such a resource can be utilized constructively. I’m no big fan of coming in nature’s way. I’m not even a big fan of contraception in lieu “safe-sex” too. Can we think of ways such numbers may be mobilized?
Long back, in this very blog, I had spoken of compulsory conscription and public works. Let’s think about that.
10. May 2009 - 11:31 PM
Hmm.. so the root of all this ignorant babble is because of all those mathematics courses that you DIDN’T take. Whine on.
10. May 2009 - 11:36 PM
To chief whiner:
“The Power of Positive Thinking
by Remez Sasson
Positive thinking is a mental attitude that admits into the mind thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.
”
First link in a google search. Give positive thinking a try.
10. May 2009 - 11:40 PM
“I’m quite satisfied that Larissa is a person one can reason with.”
Palahalli, sincerely wishing you good luck and I will certainly enjoy what follows.
btw, “Just because she likes Max M and detests Vamadeva S does not mean she’s dumb.” was another extrapolation of something that I did not mean. I never meant dumb. No dumbness here… deliberate and dangerous misinformation and lies are being repeated ad-nauseum.
10. May 2009 - 11:46 PM
“deliberate and dangerous misinformation”?
Nevermind.
10. May 2009 - 11:48 PM
yep. This is not the only post that I have based my opinion on.
11. May 2009 - 12:22 AM
CC
Actually I am a very positive, person in the home and family so I am not in need of Deepak Chopra. It is due to positive thinking that I am interested in India and our Hindu culture.
Pallahali
I am not hard on Hindus. But if you have a realistic exposure to what is happening in places like Kashmir, it makes you more of a realist as to what is happening. My husdand’s family lost everything and their house was bruned down three times–as the first two times were not successul. They had to leave all their belongings there and leave. The borders there are not secure at all. Recently India wanted to have trade with Muzzafarabad although all the sepratists are pouring into India from there. It is not only in the north East.
As for population control, I remember relative of mine who had employed a person from Bihar who asked my relative, how many children do you have? My relative replied I have only one son. The man laughted at my relative and said: I have nine children and was very proud of this. I wonder if a two child policy can work in India? Or is population control too late? I remember Nehru was very foolish: back then the populaiton of India was 350 million and he would take pride in the fact that India had a lot of people. What happened in between? It is not a matter of people surviving but the quality of life they will be able to live…
“So, boils down to Will.”
Of course, there is not a lack of intelligent people in India. Yes, I have noticed that those nations are the most successful that are constantly prepared for self-defense and can mobilize in the event of war, this has always been the case in history. It is not about power projection–it is about a nation being able to mobilize its citizens…
“compulsory conscription and public works. Let’s think about that.”
You need a strong government at the center for this kind of thing, a government that is not supported by coalitions. One law for all can be only imposed by a strong government at the center… I find HIndus largely passive and India has not yet become like the Middle East, which is why it is not difficult to bring about changes for the better with the right leadership, which is why it is a real shame that India has to be the way it is…
11. May 2009 - 1:00 AM
Well, I guess the civilized world as a whole is stirring in it’s own soup. Where ever you find Liberal democracies, you find societies crumbling in many different ways. India has its life threatening challenges… so do the free nations of the West.
Most of these problems will be solved once people goad their governments on to the right path. But what will get people to start thinking..and acting? How much more suffering and decay?…Is the question.
11. May 2009 - 7:31 AM
Anagram of Liar Ass
>>>> I have said nothing which is false.
Goebbels too never accepted otherwise.
>>>>Mght as well learn nothing coming from the West including theoretical physics.
Yes Yes.
Everything came from the west.
Including Aryans.- The original inhabitants of India.
David Frawley has different ideas. So he is a hack.
Thank you
The people on this blog are so ignorant, you know.
Most of them have the funny idea that ancient indians were original inhabitants of this country. not invaders from the west.
Its good that good people like you occasionally visit blogs such as these and care to enlighten the ignorants through deluge of illuminating comments.
Most indebted.
>>>>>”“And I thought it was these people who crucified Jesus.” This is a different matter…”
Yes ?
>>>>>”..I am saying that Romans did not wage wars in order to impose their religion on others.”
Ever heard of Nero, Decius, Diocletian, Constantine I etc.
>>>> Of course the Greeks and Romans kept slaves—but they were just conquered folk in war
Elsewhere people volunteered to be slaves.
“just conquered folk in war”
Just so happened that some folks got conquered in war and the Romans and Greeks, the great people, were compelled to keep them as slaves, for the eventual betterment of those folks.
>>>>so it is different from latter day slavery in which people were enslaved because of the color of their skin.
Serfs were made because of color of skin ?
>>>> I am simply saying that modern conceptions of race is a very recent phenomenon that largely comes from imperialism and colonialism…
You must be referring to Goebbels’ conception of race.
You may be right. A follower would know best about herr master’s concepts.
And imperialism and colonialism got created on its own. Westerners had nothing to do with it.
>>>>You should READ before jumping to attack people.
We ignorants have only limited access to the propaganda material of the western world. So we may not be able to READ all of them like you are privileged to.
Please excuse us.
11. May 2009 - 9:00 AM
Guys,
Please stop this name calling. Larissa doesnt seem to answering the basic question as to Why David Frawely is a hack, but that doesnt warrant a name calling exercise.
What’s the difference between you guys and the secular historians then?
11. May 2009 - 12:35 PM
Harapriya, below is a quote VERBATIM from the person I consider to be a Liar.
“How do I love China? Indians are weak compared to the Chinese who are full of nationalism.”
The first response I had to that comment was WTF.
Q.E.D
11. May 2009 - 7:29 PM
Kaffir,
Why are you so quick to generalise? You say that “educated Muslims behind closed doors admit the problem in Islam”. How did you come to that conclusion? Even granting that it is a hunch you have, how can this be generalisable to all “educated Muslims”? Are you saying that by getting educated in the Indian educational system will lead the Muslims to understand the problems with Islam? Haven’t you heard of educated Muslims who are also terrorists?
This is a similar argument as made by Palahalli about Muslims as well as Islam should be attacked for their beliefs.
You say, referring to the reconciliation that I mentioned, that reconciliation is not a one way street and Hindus should not adapt. Sure; but that’s no reason to act like the Islamists do and hit out at everyone who is a Muslim.
Palahalli,
You are of the view that the West’s Judeo-Christian roots are something that are desirable to atheism. You even put Christianity in the same sentence as Indic religion when mentioning about their complexities unlike Islam which is not at all complex. Firstly, West’s roots (or for that matter Arabia’s) are paganism/pantheism or whatever you call it. Are you being deliberately blind to the destruction caused by West’s Christian roots of crusades and inquisitions? Secondly, if you think Christianity is in any way complex, then I suggest that you read (or re-read) Koenraad Elst’s discussion of the central truth claims of Christianity (& Islam) to see how complex is Christianity.
Frankly, I do not care about groups of people; whether they be Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists or whoever. And hence I don’t have an opinion of whether Muslims should become Hindus or lesser Muslims as long as they don’t go infecting others with the deadly Islam virus that leads to more sufferring all around.
As regards my judgment about your comments against Muslims being vitriolic, I have explained why I think so by pointing out that you should focus on the problem and not the symptom. There is absolutely no recourse to emotion at all as you seem to think. On the contrary, your soft corner for Christianity (similar to Islam) only firms up my hunch that you are highly prejudiced against Muslims and that you do not rely on facts as much as you think you do.
11. May 2009 - 7:53 PM
Daivd Frawley has been answered more than enough by Michael Witzel. No one believes that Indians were from the West! Not even Max Meuller! You make a cartoon of Indology. However India does not constitute of one race–many genepools have gone into India–the physical differences of Indians is evidence of that–the modern concept of race is a very recent one–brought out of modern European imperialism–
“ou must be referring to Goebbels’ conception of race.
You may be right. A follower would know best about herr master’s concepts.”
No I am not–the Mediterranean was composed of a wide variety of ethnic groups–ancient India also had a variety of peoples. This does not make them less Indian. No one believes in Aryan invasion theroty, but this does not mean that there have been migrations of various peoples into India–such as Huns, Scythians, Greeks, people from Central Asia etc. You seem to be a very complexed individual incognito. You make a farce of Roman history and your comments only exhibit gross ignorance to someone who has studied Greek and Latin for several years. It is ridiculous to answer to fools.
I do not need David Frawley to teach me about my history. I learn from better and more credible sources.
11. May 2009 - 8:02 PM
and incognito–my identity comes from my ancestors–they were all Brahmins–whatever I believe and know largely come from what my parents and grandparents have handed down to me–this goes for values and sense of who one is. If you are confused as to who your ancestors were, do not annoy people who know who are grounded in the traditions of their ancestors and continue their traditions unbroken. I do not need some new age person suc as Frawley to teach me about my heritage. Thank you. If you find wisdom in his books fine–I don’t.
11. May 2009 - 8:08 PM
“How do I love China? Indians are weak compared to the Chinese who are full of nationalism.”
Of course China is strong–mess with one inch of their territory and they are ready to go to war over it to defend it and whatever their form of system they might have which you do not like–they could care less for your opinions– the entire nation is able to be mobilized. But saying this makes me anti-Hindu. Whatever.
11. May 2009 - 8:26 PM
anup, my friend. You are quick to jump to conclusions – I know it’s a favorite hobby in Indian blogsphere to nitpick and to be argumentative just for the sake of it.
“Why are you so quick to generalise? You say that “educated Muslims behind closed doors admit the problem in Islam”. How did you come to that conclusion? Even granting that it is a hunch you have, how can this be generalisable to all “educated Muslims”? “
Did I generalize to all “educated Muslims” or did you? Please take responsibility for your own thoughts.
“Are you saying that by getting educated in the Indian educational system will lead the Muslims to understand the problems with Islam? Haven’t you heard of educated Muslims who are also terrorists?”
I’m not saying anything more than what I wrote in my earlier comment. Rest all are your extrapolations and inferences. Please re-read my comment carefully. And yes, I do know of educated Muslims who are terrorists. My reference was to educated, urban, “moderate” Muslims who work and socialize with non-Muslims and are open to discussing issues. I also used “likely” when making that statement, which does not have the same meaning as “certainly”. Please read carefully what others write – words have meanings and I try to choose my words carefully to reflect my thoughts and the extent of my knowledge.
“This is a similar argument as made by Palahalli about Muslims as well as Islam should be attacked for their beliefs.”
Take it up with Palahalli, and I didn’t say that Muslims and Islam should be “attacked” for its beliefs – I don’t command an army that can attack, I only speak my mind. I’m not responsible for your inferences and extrapolations.
“You say, referring to the reconciliation that I mentioned, that reconciliation is not a one way street and Hindus should not adapt. Sure; but that’s no reason to act like the Islamists do and hit out at everyone who is a Muslim. “
Did I say that we should act like the Islamists and hit out at everybody who is a Muslim? How did you arrive at that conclusion? And what exactly is this “acting out like Islamists”? Would voicing an opinion or voicing a criticism make someone “act out like Islamists”? And why do you disapprove of that action by Islamists? Are Islamists/Muslims less than humans to be not treated as equals? Are they not capable of engaging in a dialog with others? What are you trying to say here, anup?
11. May 2009 - 8:32 PM
And incognito–colonialism ended a long time ago–People in the West pursue their interests just as Indians pursue their interests. Why are you stuck on “us” against “them”? In this world, it is a matter of competition based on knowledge, whoever has the tools to survive in the modern world and adapt survives. It is as simple as that. No one is against anyone…There are a lot of Indians who write a lot of garbage about their history just as there are a lot of Westerners who do not understand India who are writing about India and get their books published– it’s not difficult to get published these days–Frawley is not taught in any University–Just as Deepak Chopra would not be included in the med-school curriculum of any univerity although some people might like his books…You can read as you please…that is why there are different levels of books and knowledge for different people based on their understanding…it has always been like that and will ever be…Which is why some people will be rigorous to study theoretical physics and some will be content to believe in astrology.
11. May 2009 - 9:24 PM
Larissa, answer one simple question:
What is your ethnicity… are you a native born Indian?
12. May 2009 - 12:09 AM
My family hails from the hills of Darjeeling. Where are you from?
12. May 2009 - 12:20 AM
the boarding school that my grandfather established in Kalingpong still is there–I would like to upgrade and give money to this school one day when I have more money and am more established in my career–I find the hilly areas like Darjeeling, Sikkim, Himanchal and even Kashmir very pleasant areas and the people there friendly–
12. May 2009 - 12:29 AM
As for my parents both are from the hills around Darjeeling –my husband’s family is from Srinagar–but we are both Brahmins altough speaking different dialects–this is my ethnicity. What is yours?
12. May 2009 - 12:35 AM
As for the name Larissa I just like to use it as it was something I randomly picked up without much thought–perhaps from my study of Greek (marble from Larissa)–it does not have any real association for me other than the fact that this is my username.
12. May 2009 - 2:19 AM
Interesting information! I’m from southern India. And I don’t believe in castes.
12. May 2009 - 3:35 AM
Neither do I in the sense of anyone being better than anyone else in terms of caste, but there are people who have preserved a long tradition and there is nothing wrong with preserving the traditions of your forefathers. It was by accident I met my husband –I just referred to caste because incognito was making absurd comments about how I was not HIndu etc. etc. Ultimately I believe that caste and such will become increasingly irrlevant as people marry from different regions. I mean once upon a time, Brahmins from one region did not even marry those from another region–but all that is changing fast as distance is becoming increasingly irrelevant and ethnic groups are not longer isolated as before.
12. May 2009 - 8:40 AM
Kaffir,
I agree that I jumped to conclusion. You did keep the focus on a subset of ‘educated Muslims who socialize with non Muslim friends’ among the sample of educated Indians under discussion. And I admit I did not read it as such and apologise for the latter inferences.
But then later in your post, you say this
“It’s a two-way road, and I think we Hindus are so brain-washed into believing that it’s only one-way and only we Hindus have to adapt. Let the other community adapt for a change.”
and I guess I was thrown off track with this “Hindus vs. Muslims” statement and the seemingly confrontationist and hardline picture you painted that got me to read into the post the way I did and hence the response for which I fully take on board your response. Even as I say that I understand what you are saying regarding the problems that the Muslims face in liberating themselves of the Islamic ideology.
My basic contention is that non Muslims have to be extremely mindful of what they speak when discussing Islam and have to keep the focus on the ideology and not on the group that follows the ideology lest this gives rise to a defensive reaction that will push the Muslims to seek refuge in numbers. The social and political discourse wrt discussion of Islam has to come about with a criticism of Islam and not by demonising Muslims. Non Muslims should focus on playing a supportive role to the Muslims for detoxifying themselves of the disease arising out of the Islamic virus.
And when I see some comments made by some people on a forum like this that fail to distinguish between Islam and Muslims, I cannot but think that this will only push Muslims to hold on to their identity even more tightly. And then I wonder if we can ever get the society rid of Islam.
12. May 2009 - 5:59 PM
Anup – Yes absolutely the West’s traditional Judeo-Christian roots are it’s lifeline. Definitely better than any belief system that rejects God.
Yes, Christianity has shown much greater complexity than has Islam. It’s historical development is testimony to it. The fact also, that secularism developed out of a Christian ethic proves my point. There is tremendous scope to reform Christianity more as Christians would deem fit.
I have not forgotten the “crusades and the inquisitions”. I am simply stating, again, a pertinent fact, that no one speaks that language anymore within Christianity. Of course fanatics are present. They remain exceptions. You may want to prove me otherwise.
Yes, if you boil down Christianity, you will find an Islamic style belief system. But “complexity” assumes the fact that stuff grows around that basic ingredient which lends enough strength and material to look at more options for reform. This is what has happened.
“Frankly, I do not care about groups of people; whether they be Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists or whoever.”
- I find this assertion astounding. Why do you not care? Why then are you bothered about what happens to Hindus and Hinduism?
“And hence I don’t have an opinion of whether Muslims should become Hindus or lesser Muslims as long as they don’t go infecting others with the deadly Islam virus that leads to more suffering all around.”
- I think this is the core issue. You don’t care about groups and yet you would like the most aggressive of these groups to not “infect” others. That’s a contradiction between what you want for results and what you don’t want to recognize as “groups” providing you cause to demand such results. I hope you understood me.
You say I do not rely on facts. Where have you seen this behavior? On the other hand, you want to believe Kalam and Premji are your examples of lesser Muslims without telling me how?
I feel you should rethink your stance more.
12. May 2009 - 8:05 PM
Palahalli,
I cannot fathom your defense of Christianity on the basis that a belief system accepts God is better than atheism. That means that Islamic belief system is better than atheism, is that not the logical inference? Furthermore, why should a “belief system” that accepts God be superior to any other ideology at all? Christianity and Islam stem from the same sort of a “belief system” and have uprooted many civilisations and it’s precisely their “belief system” that wreaked this havoc. One does not need to “believe” in God; one can logically deduce that there is God by reflecting and meditating on the Supreme (or first) cause without which there would have been no other causes eventually resulting in the world we see today. Vedic seers have also attested the truth of these by experience.
To my mind, saying secularism grew out of Christian ethos is a bit far fetches. The European Renaissance was what led to the separation of Church and the State (commonly referred to as Secularism). In contrast to Secularism evolving out of Christian ethos, it arose as a consequence of distancing the Church from the State. And this is also a consequence of a rise of Atheism or Agnostism that led to Secularism. To say that Secularism evolved from Christian ethos is twisting the facts owing from what I see is a soft corner in your heart towards Christianity.
Please do not forget it is Christianity that has contributed to the continuing destruction of cultures and civilisations in Africa, Australia and is doing so in India (coincidentally this is also the latest blog post here). Speaking of fanatics, do you think that the Pope is a benign character? Or for that matter Mother Theresa was one such benign character?
As regards my comment about not caring for groups of people, I wish to see human unity in ending suffering and not a constant confrontationist situation of “us vs them”. My sympathies do not lie with “Hinduism” and “Hindus” alone but also with others like the Aborgines in Australia who are fighting against predatory religions. The spiritual heritage of Aborgines in Australia has been almost wiped out by the benevolent influence of a Judeo-Christian heritage.
You can see my earlier post to understand my stance properly.
12. May 2009 - 10:22 PM
Anup – The fact is atheism or disbelief in God is not intrinsic to human beings. There is not a single comparable body of people who will collectively say..”I don’t believe in God”. Atheism can at best remain a limited intellectual elite luxury or an imposition by such an elite on masses as happened with communism.
Atheism needs to be taught. But man can naturally fathom God’s presence in his own way. He may not even call it God but reflects on the wonder of nature naturally and can feel it’s powerful presence. He calls the mover, God, that’s all.
So, any belief in God is better and more humane and natural than atheism.
Coming to Islam, it is not just that Islam also is “God-related” but it has it’s own baggage that is disagreeable to me. That baggage is carried by Muslims. Indeed, they cannot remain Muslims unless they carry that baggage. Without the baggage of Shar’ia, Islam would have been just another religion that people follow.
I do not deny Christianity’s past. Nor can anybody deny it’s numerous depredations. But I don’t see any sense in wishing for a return to aboriginal Australia or a tribal Africa or a Red-Indian United States. I am more interested in ensuring the past is not repeated anymore. I’m not even sure if the aborigines/Red Indians wish to administer Australia/USA on their own, themselves. There are natural constraints; lack of population etc. See the point? What better future does a tribal Africa have against a Christian one on merits? It’s all very well to cry for the past but that’s not going to do anything for us. What we must do is to protect what we have managed to preserve into the present. That, in the Indian scene, would amount to nurturing Hinduism in all it’s multifarious splendor.
On secularism, suffice to say that without a Christian situation and a Christian ethic in play, one would not have seen the rise of secularism. We do not see secularism in the Islamic environment. Nor do we see it in a Hindu environment. Whatever you see, is an imposition. Don’t you think there must be a reason for this?
13. May 2009 - 1:05 AM
The origins of Christianity are shrouded in mystery–one can see a clear development of Buddhism out of the philosophical schools of Hinduism, but the origins of Christianity is not clear. I think the answer lies in the mystery cults in the Greco_Roman worlds–the Greeks tire of sending everyone to Hades and become interested in the ideas of the after life, apotheosis, immortality etc. If Christianity had not come about religion in Greece would have developed along the lines Hinduism developed–from polytheism, to henotheism, to monotheism and to the later abstract concepts of the Upanishads. The recent discovery of the Orphic bible points toward this development. For after all, just like for Hindus, the Greeks and Romans had different levels of religious understanding–the lay people worshipped their gods and goddesses–going to temple was perhaps a community affair, while the smarts read their philosophers. This is why Julius Caesar could claim to be an atheist while at the same time participate in the rites as the priest of Jupiter.
The Greeks and Romans had philosophy and great learning, but they lived in an aristocratic culture–the slave was not considered fully human in that he had no political power (i.e. Aristotle Ethics). The slave could often be educated as they were often conquered folk, but insofar as they had no political power they did not count–Christianity brought in a revolution–all men were seen as the same in the “eyes of god” for Christians–So for the first time, even the slave had inherent worth and this was a social revolution. It is easy to see how Christianity created something like the first welfare state: the famous early Christians were widows, the poor, the orphaned, the shipwrecked in life, and it spread through public works and appealed to the poor. The early Christians worshipped underground–the Romans were against Christianity on the grounds that it was not Roman thinking and rightly so–It appears that Constantine converted as Rome was constantly disintegrating with barbarian attacks and he saw that Christianity could be a good unifying tool for the empire–Or it could be that he saw the victory against Barbarians as due to the Christian God, so being a pagan he wanted to revere it and thus wanted to allow this cult. I think that the Romans who were open to other religious cults did not properly understand how hostile Christianity was to the pagan way of thinking with “one book” and its “revealed truth”—What happened, however, was that Christianity wiped out the pagan culture of Greece and Rome–even to this day you can see a Church on top of a Mithraeum in Rome–science came to a halt and it was in the Renaissance you find that the western world connects again to its past Greco-Roman roots again–and rediscovers its greatness again through this process–you can see this in art history–after Christianity art seems to also stagnate until the Renaissance—
Christianity has been put under the scrutiny of science and now science checks it–I find that it has always been a graft on the Western world which is why among the educated it is not as appealing anymore–But after Christianity, the West basically lost touch with its pagan past, so Christianity is what it has as a spiritual heritage for the last 2000 years–without it most countries in the West have nothing, so I am in favor of religion, provided that they do not destroy other people’s religion. Christianity helped unify the ancient world after Rome was constantly disintegrating under barbarian attacks, it was a unifying tool for various parts of the West that came under the influence of Rome and parts of the Western world that had no culture of their own but borrwed from Greece and Rome.
In Iran, it is easy to see how Islam triumphed. The Romans and Persians had fought themselves to exhaustion and hence Persia was ripe for attack by those wanting to spread Islam. The defeat of Persia was also tragic and it took several decades,nearly a century, for Persia to be fully converted to Islam.
I have been always intrigued by how monasteries first arose in the Western world–you have nothing like in in Greece and Rome, whereas the Buddhist sanghas were in existence hundreds of years before Christianity. A theological student from Italy told me that there were many Buddhist monasteries in Syria–I find that were it not for the monotheisms of the Mid East like Christianity, Judiasm and Islam which are exclusivist, in between the West and further East, the Greco-Roman culture and that of Buddhism would have interacted in an interesting way…Moreover, the New Testament is so different in character from the old…it is easy to see influences from fruther east in the monastic tradition of Christianity etc.
13. May 2009 - 1:19 AM
Actually Buddhism also apread amongst peoples–compare the religion of Tibet before Buddhism to Buddhism–but the spread was clearly peaceful–Also in India you had the process of Sanskritization…. This is not necessarily bad–except in the case where it is forced perhaps.
22. May 2009 - 1:27 AM
@Krishna
“Any monkey can do simple translations.”
And calling a first translation of the Rig Veda a “simple translation” displays your utter ignorance…it is useless to even descend to respond to such a level of intellect!
wah wah. Stop crying about it. Mueller’s translation was without understanding of the context of the Veda, which was the Rishis describing their spiritual experiences in poetic imagery. But Mueller had no clue to this – he took what he read, that of Arya’s defeating Dasas (i.e light defeating darkness in a psychological sense) and interpreted it in a physical context – that of white skinned people defeating dark skinned people. Thus it is a ***simple*** translation, because it does not take into account the subjective context to what the Rishis experienced; your emotional attachment to him means you could not understand the context in which i used the word “simple”, just as the original Indologists themselves could not understand the real meaning of the Veda.
Larissa, I suggest you give up your attachment to Mueller, as just because someone does a translation of a work, does not make him “great.” Greatness, first of all, is an attribute better given to those that create works, for instance Shakespeare. Secondly, if we are to give it to someone for doing a translation, one would hope that their translation would give an accurate feel for the original work – better to read Sri Aurobindo’s translations on the Veda than Muellers. At best we can thank Mueller for starting the process of rediscovering the past – just a “simple” thank you is enough.
22. May 2009 - 1:30 AM
“The Vedas might might have been original and very impressive for their time and they contain many insights when read as a whole, but read though some of the endless rituals of which there are many…there are many parts that will put you straight to sleep and I say this as a proud Hind”
Larissa – what a display of – a lack – intellect. “Insights”??? The Veda was the luminous poetry of the Rishi, expressed through symbolic imagery, expressing the higher truths they experienced. You are focused on rituals but that is not the real truth of the Veda. I think your intellect is of need of some expansion.