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 article may have been of interest.
The article certainly wasn't chosen on the basis of the author's biases. Something which I did not verify. On 5/19/07, shiv sastry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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.) : > > http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=t15b1l92nf46jb6sq8b82dpsct9f9003 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 Hindus can be good. I think at least some statements in that article are unfair, apart from being broadly critical of anything referred to as Hindu. So the article is hurtful to read and therefore irritates me because - to a small extent it attacks my identity and tells me that all I am is worthless because my kind are what are described in that article. I have reason to believe that such a characterization is far from the truth, but that is not the impression anyone reading the article/book by this American professor, and posted on silk within a day of its appearance is likely to feel. A short Google revealed all sorts of things, including the fact that Martha Nussbaum is no stranger to controversy, and some other academics from her school of divinity in Chicago have been criticized for their views on Hinduism. Here is one review: http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=091806022325 "As Nussbaum points out in chapter six: "the hate literature circulated in Gujarat portrays Muslim women as hypersexual, enjoying the penises of many men. That is not unusual; Muslim women have often been portrayed in this denigrating way. But it also introduces a new element: the desire that is imputed to them to be penetrated by an uncircumcised penis. Thus the Hindu male creates a pornographic fantasy with himself as its specific subject. In one way, these images show anxiety about virility, assuaging it by imagining the successful conquest of Muslim women." Obviously, Nussbaum has chosen to paint India and Hindus with too broad a brush. Since she has American readership in mind, and is ostensibly writing for an audience that has limited exposure to India and to what it means to be a "Hindu," she could have done more to separate Hinduism from the Hindu Right, which is a small but vocal minority. Reading Nussbaum's book, one gets the impression that most Hindus in India are fanatical." A bad article and I am hurt that Gautam John should have picked this one to post on the thread called "Art, or what". I am not sure what the connection was meant to be. shiv
