Dear Selma-bai,
Thank you for responding to my posting. I apologise
for having selectively picked on you to make my
religious feelings felt. As I have mentioned before,
I believe in keeping religion a private matter and
not exhibitioning it on a public forum like this nor
am I terribly religious.
I normally delete all postings related to religion
without reading them ( obviously filtrating them
based on the title lines ). I only happened to come
across your message about the " hindu army "
in Goa because I was following the thread related to
Benazir Bhutto both due to my interest in politics and
because I had the opportunity to briefly make her
aquaintance in my professional capacity.
Taking Monteiro-bab's and your advice, I have
scanned through the archives and agree with
you both entirely that there are many messages
which are clearly hurtful to the Catholics on this
forum ( and I find them equally unsavoury )
I shall not hesitate to come out strongly against
these contributors if and when I come across any
future postings of a similar nature ( although I am
not trying to be the watchdog on this forum...the
moderators are much more knowledgable than me
....not to mention the fact that I am a novice to
Goanet unlike many who have enriched it for
years )
Just one final point I wish to make...I assume that
when you refer to " saffronites " I assume that you
refer to the BJP . It is a misconception that BJP
supporters are predominantly those who support
the political party because they are believers in
the " Hindutva " ideology. On the contrary ,the
overwhelming majority of these are " normal "
human beings like you and me. There is a hardcore
element in every religious and political ideological
group...but it extends across all of these groups
( some being more overt ,others hiding covertly
behind the shroud of pseudo-secularism )
I cannot talk about all of India....but I would be
very surprised indeed if a Catholic felt " unsafe "
in Goa....as I have mentioned before , I have many
a Catholic friend ( and some of them staunch
Congress supporters ) and I have never heard
this fear mentioned before.
And while I am on the topic of religion ( which it is
unlikely I will venture into too much while on this
forum), I think I will also refer to a posting by
Chinmay-bab regarding the mining agitation in
Colomb. He had brought up ( and argued very
eloquently throughout ) a very important issue
which does not detract from Sebastian-bab's
( and his fellow villagers' ) commendable efforts.
However, I feel he has been more than a trite
silly to bring up the issue of Ayodhya when he
sounds knowledgable enough to have several
other examples of people's movements in India.
In the context of how quickly this forum can
degenerate into a religious rivalry , he could well
have made us miss a chance to thrash out an
issue of grave importance to Goa and Goans.
And finally , in passing , with respect to Edward-bab's
note to me , I am at a loss for words as to how I
can carry any discussion forward ( without making
severe compromises to the quality of this forum )
I will leave it to more seasoned Goanetters to help
me in this quandary.
luv and regards,
anand
( Dr Anand Virgincar )
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