------------------------------------------------------------------------ * * * * * * * * * ANNUAL GOANETTERS MEET * * * * * * * * * ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Goanetters in Goa and visiting meet Jan 6, 2009 at 3.30 pm at Hotel Mandovi (prior to the Goa Sudharop event, which you're also welcome to). Join in for a Dutch dinner -- if we can agree on a venue after the meet. RSVP (confirmations only) 9822122436 or 2409490 or [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SKIN-DEEP UNDERSTANDING OF SECULARISM By Santosh A. Helekar Secularism as enshrined in the Indian constitution represents two principles: a) The idea that the state has no religion, and therefore the two must not interfere in each other's affairs, and b) Tolerance towards, and equality of, all religions and creeds. The recent column by Frederick Noronha entitled “Skin-deep Secularism” does not appear to have anything to do with secularism as understood above. Here is why. It claims to show that secular campaigners in Goa are biased along religious and casteist lines. But to do that correctly the author would have had to explain what the secular position on each of the issues he cites was, and then demonstrate how the secular Goans who participated in the debates on those issues deviated from that position. Having debated three of the issues he has used as examples, I can see that he has not even come close to doing so. Indeed, the article itself seems to suffer from a debilitating bias. It rests on the tacit presumption that the author, who himself was a participant in the debates, has a privileged secular vantage point, from where he can judge the secular worthiness of the lesser souls battling it out under him in Goan cyberspace. What is worse is that he does not reveal his own secular cards to the unsuspecting readers for independent evaluation. Perhaps, from his lofty skybox in the coliseum of common public discourse the author is unable to see the deeper non-secular issues that were being debated in the three examples that he cites, with which I am intimately familiar on account of my being in the arena down below. His treatment of the case that any secular issue was a point of contention in these examples is demonstrably superficial. It merely amounts to the coincidental similarity or dissimilarity of the religious identity of a few of the most vocal debaters, and that of the people that occupied the center stage in these examples. In short, if secularism here is skin-deep it is because Noronha made it so from whole cloth, and gave this issue superficial treatment from the journalistic standpoint. To see why this is so, I would like to focus on the Sonal Shah case first, to which I have devoted most time debating. Sonal Shah, a member of the Obama transition team was accused by a Marxist intellectual named Vijay Prashad on political grounds, which included claims that she was linked with the worst symbols of fraud and criminality in capitalism, and of violent intolerance in Hindu religious fundamentalism - the Enron debacle and the 2002 carnage against Muslims following the Godhra incident, respectively. Links such as these when made against another intellectual, Rashid Khalidi, one of Obama's Chicago acquaintances, Prashad himself had railed against as a smear in an article entitled "Smearing Rashid Khalidi" (http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad10302008.html). Prashad's claims were largely ignored in the American media, but were spread far and wide on the internet and Indian media, essentially wholesale without any independent fact-checking, and with speculative and tantalizing titles such as "Will Obama's top aide give Modi visa power?" in the Times of India (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Will_Sonal_Shah_give_Narendra_Modi_visa_powe\ r/rssarticleshow/3690558.cms). Many of us, including some respected journalists and eminent Indian personalities felt that this was a disingenuous and unfair smear campaign that achieved no higher purpose, not the least a secular one. It was taking for cheap political purposes the low road of tarnishing the good name of a highly accomplished Indian American who had already served with distinction and high level national security clearance in the highest echelons of the U. S. government. The fact that Noronha has no case here, not even a superficial one that he tried to present, is evident from the fact that neither Shah's accusers nor their detractors fell into two clear factions, neatly divided based on their nominal religious affiliations. Her principal accusers had Hindu names. Her defenders were of several different religious persuasions going simply by their appellations. In Goan cyberforums with predominantly Catholic memberships we saw that those debating on behalf of her accusers included 5 with Catholic names and 2 with Hindu names. On her side we had 6 with Catholic names and 4 with Hindu names. The debate was about the injustice and improbity of engaging in false innuendo such as non-existent links with Enron and Narendra Modi, and in guilt by association because of past cooperation with Hindu American charities in humanitarian causes and of parents who were overseas supporters of the BJP. It was never about any secular principle or religious identities. Guilt by association is a virus that penetrates the skin of all political campaigners, irrespective of their religious affiliations or secular credentials, as well as those of their targets. The skin of a superficial secularist is no barrier for it. When Noronha refers to the recent episodes of anti-Christian violence, by which he means the communal riots between Pannas and Kandhs in Orissa, he does a much greater disservice to his commitment to profundity and substance in reporting. By categorically stating without qualification or discussion that polarization was evident along religious lines during anti-Christian violence, misleads the readers into thinking that he is leveling a serious charge against non-Christians. One cannot do this lightly simply to create perceptions contorted to fit a narrative of skin-deep secularism. As one reader of his column wrote on the internet: "The reader is clearly given the impression that those debating with the 'truly' seculars like him were trying to justify and defend the Orissa violence..." The problem in the Kandhamal district in Orissa has long been known to be a multifaceted one with caste-based jealousies, economic disparities, land disputes, conversion/re-conversion activities, and murders by Hindu extremist and Maoist poachers making this area a hotbed of hatred and violent upheaval. The debate in predominantly Catholic Goan forums (if one can call an exchange of accusations and counter-accusations that) was centered around the presentation of it as a one-dimensional problem of the Hindu right carrying on a pogrom against Christians on a massive scale, and around some over-heated rhetoric and rumors misreported as facts in the service of this sensational punch line. Counting only those who shared original thoughts of their own on this matter, one nominal Hindu was on either side of the divide. Among Catholics two one-dimensional minds were pitted against one multi-dimensional one. Contrary to what one might have been led to believe by Noronha, most forwarded articles touting the one-dimensional pogrom narrative were written by people born into Hindu families. Two out of the three that presented a broader view were written by a Goan Catholic elder statesman and a prominent Catholic journalist. If there was a religious fault-line here, one would need an electron microscope to visualize it. And yet, Noronha spots it by a superficial examination. But the crowning achievement of Noronha's foray into journalistic dermatology was his declaration of the presence of a religious fracture in Goan cyberspace vis-a-vis the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The evidence indicates that these attacks were likely carried out by Pakistani Islamist terrorists. Their victims were Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Jewish from many countries. In Goan internet forums at present there is not a single person with a Muslim name or pseudonym. Yet, Noronha was able to invent a religious divide among the non-Muslims who were debating issues related to the culpability of these crimes. The points discussed in Goan cyberspace were about political posturing, obfuscation and speculation to look for historical justifications within India for attacks launched by a terrorist organization outside the country. They were also about mushrooming fantasies of world-wide conspiracies, involving the U.S., U.K., Israeli Mossad and Hindu extremists in India, as if making us share the blame for the murders with the murderers themselves was not enough. The authors of both blame-us and blame-the-world scenarios had Hindu first and last names such as Arundhati and Amaresh, and Roy and Misra. Their promoters and detractors were proportionally distributed among Hindus and Christians from the lopsided pool that the Goan forums offer. However, none of that prevented Noronha from pulling a rabbit out of his hat, and proclaiming that religious loyalty had won over secular principles in this example as well. What I have tried to show you in this rejoinder to Noronha's opinion column is that he is not telling us anything about secularism, skin-deep or intra-abdominal. What we are really seeing here is an all too common tactic of conjuring up a narrative first, and then looking for facts to fit it. If no malleable facts are found then any subjective feelings one might have about an event are dressed up to look like them. By reducing secularism down to the callowness of whether a Hindu sides with a Christian in a debate about such things as political smears, and ideological causes of communal riots and terrorism, Noronha is revealing neither its flesh nor its skin. He is parading a shabbily made carnival mask of this hallowed principle.
