2009/1/7 Cecil Pinto <[email protected]>: > Your allegation that Heble has 'Jan Singhi/RSS roots' is most > intriguing. If you have proof of this allegation please place it on > the table. Else I think you owe us an explanation and Sandeep an > apology.
Is "having Jan Sanghi/RSS roots" a cardinal sin :-) Pun intended! I think not! Vidyadhar Gadgil has himself been in the RSS for a year or two, if I recall rightly what he mentioned. For a (usually) "upper" caste Maharashtrian boy (and now, in many more parts of India) being in the RSS is simply like membership of a boys club, the Boy Scouts of the post-Empire just after the sun set on it, Mocidade Portuguesa in Salazar's Goa, or the Young Pioneers of the former Eastern Bloc countries. Then, we have all kinds of influences in our own lives. I myself was a rather conservative Catholic in my younger, early teen days, looking on with suspicion on the gods and beliefs of others! (This is not to suggest one doesn't carry biases or bigotry now, in different forms.) But, at the end of the day, our actions and attitudes TODAY matter more than the connections of the past. Gadgil is as secular as they come (a bit too much, if you ask me!) despite or because of his background. I know of some strident campaigners for secularism, the kind who might even alienate ordinary religious folk, in places like Delhi, who had their initial lessons in the RSS. Membership of organisations is one thing; current attitudes and values is another. The two may not be directly related too..... I know a lot of Congressmen who strike me as being pretty communal, casteist or sectarian at least. Ditto for politicians of other parties. Leftists who are unwilling to admit the politics of caste while talking exclusively about class. Feminists who might end up being chauvinists and inconsistent in a different sense. Secular campaigners who worship the gods of modernity, science, knowitallism or whatever,. At another level, one needs to remind oneself that the Jan Sangh (or the BJP in its post-"Gandhian" "socialism" avatar) is just another party for many Indians. Like how the Salcete (or other) Catholic would not believe there's anything particularly sectarian or communal in supporting the UGDP, Goa Congress or United Goans. It may be a tiny core that sets the agenda, and fuels communal attitudes of a party, but for most of the voters, a party is just that. A party, of the political kind. A choice to misrule and corruption. A "vote for change", as Obama promises half-the-world away. Of course, this is all in the spirit of engendering debate. I know that Hartman's comments were made in the heat of the moment, and Hartman thanks for showing magnamity in taking back unfair words said in haste and hurry :-) It's right to recognise that we all can also be wrong. FN
