Another article touching on some of the same themes, but with respect
to Muslim silence in the face of Muslim extremism:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/05/23/200608.php
The Myth of Muslim Silence
Written by Sean Aqui
Published May 23, 2007
That's the title of an interesting piece by
There's another response to said article here:
http://cynical-nerd.nationalinterest.in/?p=86
Deconstructing Martha Nussbaum: The Hindu Right Revisited
Posted on 05.23.07 by Jaffna @ 4:44 am
Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law, Religion and Philosophy at the
University of Chicago launches her
On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 05:57 +0530, shiv sastry wrote:
Martha Nussbaum wants to tell Americans about the Hindu right wing without
showing any inclination to say where being a normal Hindu ends and where a
right wing Hindutvadi begins.
she criticises things she says are right wing extremist
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Udhay Shankar N said the following on 21/05/2007 09:46:
Can be taken as meta-commentary on the current thread. :-)
Indeed.
So, can we summarise that the only possible thing worth working for is
to get rid of religion and state, self-organise into
On 5/21/07, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Can be taken as meta-commentary on the current thread. :-)
http://xkcd.com/c263.html
Nice comic! This one's interesting:
http://xkcd.com/c239.html
-- b
I dont get your point, simply because its possible to potray any
religion in a fanatical way, depending upon who you ask.
You seem to make it sound as if only hindus have been potrayed as fanatics...
Why do you feel so victimized ??
On 5/20/07, shiv sastry wrote:
So if fanatical is
On Sunday 20 May 2007 4:51 pm, ashok _ wrote:
I dont get your point, simply because its possible to potray any
religion in a fanatical way, depending upon who you ask.
You seem to make it sound as if only hindus have been potrayed as
fanatics...
Why do you feel so victimized ??
Hold your
shiv sastry wrote: [ on 05:59 PM 5/20/2007 ]
Do you agree with my characterization of Hindus or do you think it is
inaccurate?
It is not your charactierzation that is at issue here - though that
in itself is highly overdone and arguable. It is what you claim is
being done *to* Hindus. And
On 5/20/07, shiv sastry wrote:
Do you agree with my characterization of Hindus or do you think it is
inaccurate?
the description may be literally accurate, but whether it would
characterize fanaticism is really very subjective...
you said:
How much more difference could there be between
On Sunday 20 May 2007 6:50 pm, ashok _ wrote:
You make very many assumptions both in terms of how hinduism is
perceived and how someone else is interpreting it, and what a
civiilized and normal society is
Please educate me on these points. I am willing to learn and change my views.
How is
shiv sastry wrote: [ on 08:21 PM 5/20/2007 ]
Sorry - I don't understand what you are talking about wrt the martyrdom
business.
Will come back to this after my responses below.
You say they are highly overdone? I don't buy that. I have said it like it is
and will retract and apologize if
On Sunday 20 May 2007 10:30 pm, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:
...
to the extent that the majority of hindus avoid critical thinking, and
could thus be seen to be criticised by the author,
In fact it is the same lack of crticical thinking that I am bothered about
too.
Recall that I never said
My primary interest has been to define what it is that I find offensive about
the Martha Nussbaum article that was posted on here. I have tried to
concentrate on that and have not tried to be judgemental about individual or
collective opinions of members of silk list.
For that reason I am
Can be taken as meta-commentary on the current thread. :-)
http://xkcd.com/c263.html
Udhay (g,d,r)
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
While on this subject, this makes for an interesting read (but it's
wrong where it states that it was during the ascendancy of the BJP
while they were in a coalition government that the mosque was
demolished in Ayodhya.) :
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=t15b1l92nf46jb6sq8b82dpsct9f9003
On Saturday 19 May 2007 12:56 pm, Gautam John wrote:
Martha C. Nussbaum is a professor in the philosophy department, law
school, divinity school, and the college at the University of Chicago.
Her book The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's
Future will be published this
On Saturday 19 May 2007 12:56 pm, Gautam John wrote:
While on this subject, this makes for an interesting read (but it's
wrong where it states that it was during the ascendancy of the BJP
while they were in a coalition government that the mosque was
demolished in Ayodhya.) :
shiv sastry wrote:
There are some things about the article that hurt my Hindu sentiment and I
got
the impression that I must be ashamed for being Hindu. There is very little
Funny, that's just what Modi and the brown underpants types at the RSS
make me feel.
to read and therefore
On Saturday 19 May 2007 6:33 pm, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
Funny, that's just what Modi and the brown underpants types at the RSS
make me feel.
So they ARE Hindu then? You accept that.
If I'm Hindu, and you are Hindu and the Modi and the brown underpants types
at the RSS are Hindu, what
--- shiv sastry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There are some things about the article that
hurt my Hindu sentiment and I got
the impression that I must be ashamed for being
Hindu. There is very little
in the article that allows even a chink of
light to suggest that anything
connected with
In connection with some of Nishant's thoughts on 'shock' and 'art', thought I'd
post something I read on Australia today:
Brook Andrew, a young Aboriginal gay man living in Sydney, has constructed
artworks for the public arena with the intention of shocking, provoking, and
politicizing. In one
shiv sastry wrote: [ on 06:21 PM 5/19/2007 ]
There are some things about the article that hurt my Hindu sentiment
and I got
the impression that I must be ashamed for being Hindu.
It is not clear to me why you would get that impression.
'Ad Hominem' applies even to articles posted here. So,
The connection was merely limited to, what I assumed was, a link
between freedom of speech and expression as being fundamental aspects
of a functional democracy. And attacks on the former, that this thread
was discussing, essentially being attacks on the latter, which is
where I thought this
On Saturday 19 May 2007 7:44 pm, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
It is not clear to me why you would get that impression.
I re read the article.
I still find some odious references. It still hurts to see the skilful use of
sentences to put some statements next to each other to connect them in ways
At 2007-05-19 18:21:56 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Reading Nussbaum's book, one gets the impression that most Hindus in
India are fanatical.
Frankly, it's sometimes hard to escape that impression -- even though I
know it's not true -- without ever having heard of Nussbaum's book. The
vocal
On Saturday 19 May 2007 8:39 pm, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote:
Frankly, it's sometimes hard to escape that impression -- even though I
know it's not true -- without ever having heard of Nussbaum's book. The
vocal minority seems to enjoy a frightening amount of support from
ordinary people.
shiv sastry [19/05/07 19:09 +0530]:
Is it because you are not Gujarati? Or because you are not right wing? or
because you do not belong to the RSS? Or that you did not take part in any
atrocities?
Who is the author actually slamming? What is she getting at? I would welcome
your take.
The
shiv sastry [19/05/07 22:40 +0530]:
What I am getting at is that entities like the RSS and BJP are taking the rap
for sentiments that are more widespread than people will acknowledge. Since
Well, having abused a relative or two in quite unprintable terms when they
expressed similar sentiments
On Saturday 19 May 2007 11:00 pm, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote:
t 2007-05-19 22:40:55 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
My only disagreement with him is his statement even though I know
it's not true. It is unfortunately at least partially true.
Er, so you think the article sucks because it gives
Yet that doesn't seem to stop the current self-appointed moral police.
Where does their vision of Traditional Indian Culture come from?
Certainly not from any uncertainty, ambiguity, or possibility of
diversity.
Well, to quote Ranjit Hoskote http://www.artconcerns.com/html/baroda1.htm:
It
i don't recognise TLC either but the title credits say the
cinematography was done by the bedi brothers (naresh and rajesh),
producers of indian wildlife and other documentaries of some renown.
-rishab
On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 06:45 +0530, shiv sastry wrote:
The video is a documentary from a
The Learning Channel - http://tlc.discovery.com/
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:
i don't recognise TLC either but the title credits say the
cinematography was done by the bedi brothers (naresh and rajesh),
producers of indian wildlife and other documentaries of some renown.
On Fri, 2007-05-18 at
Democracy is a process, a process where dissent can be
voiced. It has been reduced to numbers. Beyond a
certain scale, democracy don't work.
Some friends and I used to carry out democracy
simulatins with small groups. Realized its a very very
tough process.
Zainab
--- Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL
On 5/18/07, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The Learning Channel - http://tlc.discovery.com/
It must be said that any learning that happens from watching this
channel is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Over 10-15 years
ago TLC had decent programming and low viewership.
On Friday 18 May 2007 6:40 pm, Zainab Bawa wrote:
Democracy is a process
Wise words. Words that are often forgotten in the widespread habit of
describing democracy as The US of A
shiv
there was this book published sometime back called Mohandas its
a biography
of Gandhi by his grandson its pretty interesting in that it
explores Gandhi's strong
desire to remarry after his wife's death and things like how he
strongly opposed the
wedding of his son to a south
On 5/17/07, Biju Chacko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
As with many of India's other problems, this can be traced to the fact
that the Indian political class is largely made up of 3rd rate
criminals.
What kind of society do I want to live in? One which is not like the
one I actually live in. :-(
I
Vinayak Hegde wrote [at 12:54 PM 5/17/2007] :
I am tempted to quote George Bernhard Shaw here:
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better
than we deserve.
Democracy is where everybody gets the government the majority deserve.
Udhay
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @
On 5/16/07, Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 08:16:51PM -0700, Thaths wrote:
Victorian English colonizers and Gandhi and his guilt about sex?
Gandhi had sex?
He did have children, you know. In _The story of my experiments with
truth_ he talks about how he was in
Isnt Ambaji the temple on top of a giant rock?
I remember going there as a kid...and there were pilgrims walking on the road
to this place, and they were all pushing small trolleys with models
of the temple...
some carried it up the steps barefoot...
On 5/16/07, Nishant Shah wrote:
Well
On 5/16/07, Aditya Chadha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
so, what happened? I keep thinking about this -- how did we go from
kama sutra - shiv sainiks beating up couples on Valentine's day for
holding hands?
I blame the Raj. Damn Victorians and their cultural imperialism.
-- Charles
On Thursday 17 May 2007 8:46 am, Thaths wrote:
Victorian English colonizers and Gandhi and his guilt about sex?
Interesting that you should mention the Victorian era English.
That in fact is the explanation given in the 300 MB video linked below - about
Indian temples.
Posting link FWIW
On 5/17/07, shiv sastry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
That in fact is the explanation given in the 300 MB video linked below - about
Indian temples.
Posting link FWIW
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5096103596865842301q=raja+raja+chola
Shiv, could you provide us a text summary of the
On 5/16/07, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
shiv sastry wrote: [ on 09:23 PM 5/16/2007 ]
Art can mean a lot of things, but a picture of Jesus Christ's dick
or the cunt
of a Hindu goddess is pushing the definition of art to areas where some
people may be a little unhappy.
So?
We're not all going to agree on morality and culture (and more
things, such as what it means to be XYZ). They mean different things
to different people. Small groups would likely be more in agreement
within themselves on these topics than larger groups. I'd rather not
have a majority opinion be
Chirayu wrote:
There may be many different majority beliefs and
morals and with a large enough group, you'll likely always be a part
of the majority for a bunch of beliefs/opinions and in the minority
for a bunch of others. How important is it that the whole group should
genuflect to the
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Shyam Visweswaran said the following on 17/05/2007 19:35:
What exactly are the confines of Indian culture?
Isn't India a Victorian construct? Even today, Indians identify
themselves primarily by smaller groupings, except when playing cricket
or
On 5/17/07, Ramakrishnan Sundaram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Isn't India a Victorian construct? Even today, Indians identify
themselves primarily by smaller groupings, except when playing cricket
or waging war.
What a simple, profound statement. To see the veracity of this, just
watch any two
i wonder why the goons aren't defacing the coimbatore temple pillars,
given the obscene blasphemies carved there that are not tolerated
nowadays... perhaps they never noticed them?
On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 07:43 +0530, shiv sastry wrote:
However, I was amazed by something that I saw. Every pillar
On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 08:49 +0400, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote:
He had children, certainly. Haven't you heard of Indira Gandhi and the
dynasty that he's supposed to have founded?
for the non-Indians on silk, whose legs ram is presumably trying to
pull, indira gandhi was the daughter of india's
On Thursday 17 May 2007 10:12 pm, Deepa Mohan wrote:
And...it was interesting to watch the White Man's Take of
...er...lost temples, shrouded in secrecy ...and realize that the
narrator is talking about Madurai and Thanjavur!
The video is a documentary from a channel that I don't recognise -
On Friday 18 May 2007 2:59 am, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:
i wonder why the goons aren't defacing the coimbatore temple pillars,
given the obscene blasphemies carved there that are not tolerated
nowadays... perhaps they never noticed them?
Have faith. They may still deface them.
I would be
Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: [ on 09:31 PM 5/17/2007 ]
Isn't India a Victorian construct? Even today, Indians identify
themselves primarily by smaller groupings, except when playing cricket
or waging war.
Not true, and has been discussed here before:
Shiv Shastry wrote:
In a sense the commentator is right and Deepa is wrong. The facts he speaks of
about the Tanjavur and Madurai temples are certainly lost and shrouded in
secrecy.
. Well, Shiv, what I disagree with in the video is the assumption that
if the facts are unkown to the West,
On 5/17/07, Shyam Visweswaran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
What exactly are the confines of Indian culture?
There is no ancient unified Indian arts,
architecture, literature or language that is
representative of the entire Indian subcontinent.
Indian is an abstraction that is too coarse to be
of
On 5/16/07, Deepa Mohan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Nishant wrote:
There is surely a difference between art that shocks and art that
sensationalises. Art should, per se, shock, inspire, inspire, leading
you to different paradigms of the sublime. It is about seeking the
most impossible, the
At 2007-05-16 08:58:21 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Despite the anger of Jain and his compatriots, there was no major
violence
I love this sentence.
-- ams
i was in gujarat for a week recently, i noticed a strange phenonmenon
of toy shops (i saw at least 4 different shops...) which exclusively
stock toy guns (nothing else, not even stuffed toys or rattles or toy
trains...), and most of these toy guns look frighteningly like the
real thing.
that
Sugar and fat.
Like Punjab, they have a fair amount of surplus dairy produce. And
butter/clarified butter ends up being used in copious quantities.
To wit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41twgG9M7lA
As for Punjab, they use cottage cheese (paneer) in everything! Really.
They do. In soups, in
ashok _ wrote:
expensive... I imagine the problems of the state probably stem from
prohibition... if people have nothing to do, they get drunk, in the
absence of such an avenue, they indulge in mindless violence...
Might not sex be a usable alternative?
Oh wait, a hindutva right wing
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote [at 03:36 PM 5/16/2007] :
expensive... I imagine the problems of the state probably stem from
prohibition... if people have nothing to do, they get drunk, in the
absence of such an avenue, they indulge in mindless violence...
Might not sex be a usable
Udhay Shankar N wrote:
INDIA TODAY-AC NIELSEN ORG-MARG SEX SURVEY: India's first ever,
comprehensive, all-female survey that looks at a woman's basic instincts
involved interviews with unmarried, married and separated women between
19 and 50 years of age from 10 cities. In Ahmedabad, women
Suresh wrote:
Oh I get it, expat Gujratis dont get surveyed?
Many Gujaratis don't get surveyed
All of the India Today surveys seem to be only urban surveys. The rest
of India...doesn't matter, apparently.
Deepa.
On 5/16/07, Suresh Ramasubramanian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Udhay Shankar
On Wednesday 16 May 2007 2:11 pm, Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote:
At 2007-05-16 08:58:21 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Despite the anger of Jain and his compatriots, there was no major
violence
I see a polarization of views here - which is partly the reason why I posted
it.
I saw a photo of
That was well-written Shivand I loved this line, in this context...
but common sense dicktates that an
artist should have some idea of the reactions his art will provoke.
So far, my favourite limerick has been this one:
There was a painter named Joseph
Who was both palsied and deaf;
When
I agree with Deepa that it was indeed very well written and I can see
your point that all form or artistic representation or even being is
offensive to at least somebody. For Modi, for instance, the very fact
that Muslims live in my city is an act of offense. Of course I am
generalising but it is
what i found most offensive was the status of toilets in most temples
across gujarat... it is as if people have forgotten that there is a hole in
the ground they have to aim for since in some cases the aim seemed
to by off by a couple of metres
i am sure it was one of these blind people
Well the gujarat tourism department has found a cure for that. In the
Ambaji temples that we stop at on the trip back from Mt. Abu, we now
have the pictures of gods over the pee-pans and the toilets. It is
quite an uncanny feeling to know that god is not only watching you but
that you are
At 2007-05-16 21:23:08 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I was just wondering if I painted a picture of a woman with a baby
emerging from her vagina and labelled it Arundhati Roy would it
perhaps have been taken in better spirit that labelling it Durga
mata?
I hope you realise that it's
At 2007-05-17 00:44:34 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I would just very briefly want to point out
:-)
Otherwise, at the end of the day, a musical composition is just a lot
of notes and my dear Dylan Thomas is just a series of words stringed
together.
Isn't that
Abhijit Menon-Sen wrote: [ on 06:35 AM 5/17/2007 ]
Otherwise, at the end of the day, a musical composition is just a lot
of notes and my dear Dylan Thomas is just a series of words stringed
together.
Isn't that exactly what they are?
You may have missed the just in the sentence above.
shiv sastry wrote: [ on 09:23 PM 5/16/2007 ]
I was just wondering if I painted a picture of a woman with a baby emerging
from her vagina and labelled it Arundhati Roy would it perhaps have been
taken in better spirit that labelling it Durga mata?
Art can mean a lot of things, but a picture of
On Thursday 17 May 2007 7:06 am, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
The point is that phrases like artistic value are extremely contextual.
Let me post, on this list, what I have posted in a couple of other places
because it deals with the interface between art, sexuality, propriety and
what is
There is great difference between what is tolerated nowadays and what was
perfectly Ok a few centuries ago.
so, what happened? I keep thinking about this -- how did we go from
kama sutra - shiv sainiks beating up couples on Valentine's day for
holding hands?
--
Aditya
On 5/16/07, Aditya Chadha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
so, what happened? I keep thinking about this -- how did we go from
kama sutra - shiv sainiks beating up couples on Valentine's day for
holding hands?
Victorian English colonizers and Gandhi and his guilt about sex?
Thaths
--
Homer: He has
On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 08:16:51PM -0700, Thaths wrote:
Victorian English colonizers and Gandhi and his guilt about sex?
Gandhi had sex?
On 5/17/07, Udhay Shankar N [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The real issue (to me, at least) is what kind of society do you want
to live in? One where any random goon's _current_, _public_
interpretation of morality and culture is what one has to
genuflect before? In this context (there's that word
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Eugen Leitl said the following on 17/05/2007 07:55:
On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 08:16:51PM -0700, Thaths wrote:
Gandhi had sex?
He had children, certainly. Haven't you heard of Indira Gandhi and the
dynasty that he's supposed to have founded?
More
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Eugen Leitl said the following on 17/05/2007 07:55:
On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 08:16:51PM -0700, Thaths wrote:
Gandhi had sex?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040813.html
Did Mahatma Gandhi sleep with virgins?
13-Aug-2004
Dear Cecil:
In his
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Biju Chacko said the following on 17/05/2007 08:48:
What kind of society do I want to live in? One which is not like the
one I actually live in. :-(
The question then is, what are we going to do about it?
My best guess is that we'll discuss it
great! wonderful!
obviously Neeraj Jain and his goons have their supporters, as Mr.
Ashok Malik so eloquently demonstrates.
obviuously the article glosses over multiple points: the fact that
this is happening in Narendra Modi's fascist state of Gujrat for
example.
where a political leader like
On 5/16/07, shiv sastry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnistfile_name=ashok%2Fashok77.txtwriter=ashok
Pioneer edit
For Left libertines, it's okay to malign Christ and Durga in 'art'
A large cross depicting Christ with his penis hanging
Frankly, I'd find this pretty distasteful [1]. This seems to be just
another example of the recent trend of shock art like the display of
dead bodies as art:
And here I was, thinking that the only good art it art that shocks
you. There is surely a difference between art that shocks and art that
Nishant wrote:
There is surely a difference between art that shocks and art that
sensationalises. Art should, per se, shock, inspire, inspire, leading
you to different paradigms of the sublime. It is about seeking the
most impossible, the improbable, and the disparate.
Nishant...I agree with
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