From: Bonobashi <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, 3 March, 2009 12:15:17 PM Subject: Re: [silk] Regarding complaints to the police
From: Kiran K Karthikeyan <[email protected]>To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, 3 March, 2009 6:20:09 AM Subject: Re: [silk] Regarding complaints to the police How is this different from the Islamic moral police who go about telling women that their ankles are visible and hence they are inappropriately dressed. If Taliban is considered a terrorist outfit, I don't see why organizations like Ram Sene who inflict such fear in our citizenry are not called terrorists. Is it because they are backed by the politicians? Or is it because they have not yet killed anybody? Mutalik was out on bail shortly after his arrest. And he is a suspect in other cases. Where is the logic? I tried to avoid this comparison in my mail as this opens a can of worms. Does that mean that the worms go away? Sooner or later, one has to acknowledge that they exist. But to be honest, I don't think Ram Sena or any other outfit in India will ever come close to what the Taliban is. I presume, since you claim honesty as an element in the formation of your opinion, that you are aware that the Taliban started in small ways, and did not commence actions with executions in broad daylight? You are aware, of course, that they began by insisting on superficial adherence to the decencies as they saw it, the wearing of long beards by men, for instance, the restrictions of women from certain locations (even, in one numbingly stupid instance in Swat, banning them from a cloth market), shutting down barber-shops, shops selling music and video and book-shops which sold English publications? You do know that like the first infant steps of the Ram Sene, and the Bajrang Dal before them, and the Shiv Sena in parallel with the Bajrang Dal, the Taliban too started with an assault on 'foreign' culture and the corruption of time-hallowed ways? You are also saying this, one presumes, bearing in mind that the precursor of the Ram Sene is the venerable gentleman of Shiv's acquaintance, grieved over a small minor cultural matter like women wearing flowers in their hair? Nothing harmful in these, is there? So, my question: what trajectory do you foresee for the Ram Sene? And what gives you the confidence that they won't land up burning a helpless man and his two infant sons as the Bajrang Dal did? Hinduism is a very personal religion (way of life), it is also very tolerant. I presume from that broad-brush statement, that you have never bothered with the liberal arts curriculum during your education, but have concentrated on the essentials. Do please give yourself some time to figure out what the rather violent references in the Vedas to the dealings of the tribes of the Vedas with the authochthones could have meant. Were those also personal, tolerant statements of intent, or depictions of what happened over something like two millennia of ethnic cleansing? Or will we be subjected to the line of argument that Shiv has skewered as 'My fly is open, but so is your shirt button', so if it appears that Hindus have been less than tolerant, somehow it is all right because Muslims and Christians are even less tolerant? If you reside in Bangalore, do ask yourself how the large community of Iyengars came into this state, and what impelled them? It might throw some light on the non-violence that you imagine was a hall-mark of Hindu society at all times. While on the subject of history, you might also like to figure out why the Saivite revival, in general, the Hindu revival of the fifth century onwards, and the subjugation of a large Buddhist population in the eastern part of India was so unpopular if Hinduism essentially was tolerant and accepting of pluralism. It is a telling commentary on the state of affairs that more than 80% of the local population in Bengal was converted to another religion by preachers without the backing of military might. Drawing an inference from this is not particularly difficult, unless one is determined not to see what happened. By its very nature and the way it has been practiced for millenia doesn't let it be twisted towards the narrow purpose of fundamentalists. I am a little confused at this point: is 'Bosh' or 'Balderdash' a more appropriate reaction at this point? You are referring to the same non-fundamentalist, broad religion where the Shankaracharya of Puri (one of the four genuine ones, not the fake) stopped a learned woman's recital from the Vedas in his honour at a public gathering, on the grounds that women are not permitted to read the Vedas? The RSS have been around long enough and even they haven't been able to gain significant ground. It won't happen. Right. I have recently come to the conclusion that I am the Queen of Siam. Pleased to meet you. Kneel, and you shall be knighted. With (please correct my count) five states: Gujarat, MP, Chhatisgarh, Uttaranchal and Karnataka, under their control, out of sixteen (if I remember correctly), what constitutes significant, in your judgement? Mutalik and his ilk are a passing phenomenon. He won't be able to carry this on for too long. And he will quit once he realizes he is not getting any political mileage out of this. And what happens to the collateral damage, to those who get hurt while we are waiting for him to run out of breath, while he realises that he is getting no mileage out of this? But of course, we can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, can we? The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed with the blood of patriots from time to time and all that, right? This temporary injury and disorder is justified because in the long run, the millennial scale, it will be all right, and if it isn't, it's too late to matter, if I understand the argument? I'm ignoring him, and also refuse to change the way I live to acquiesce to his demands. <sigh> I was afraid of this. Actually, something very funny exists, that needs a little diversion from the all-engrossing subject of my personal beliefs, and your personal beliefs, and the very interesting personal beliefs of each and every individual who chips in on this list. India has a constitution, and we did say somewhere - perhaps in an absent-minded moment that needs correction! - that we would run law and order under this constitution. That we would order our lives and our society, in cities and in villages, under this constitution. This is so important that the Supreme Court, many years ago, in the Keshavanand Bharati case, even said that the regular Parliament, sitting as Parliament, could not distort the fundamental architecture of the constitution. Only another constituent assembly could do that. Please try to get a grip on this. Unless we agree on this, we have no country left. Under this constitution, even if I, personally, loathe and dislike the beliefs and value systems of others, I am restricted by the laws of the land from doing anything that causes such people harm, or restricts their liberty of action beyond a certain point. Strangely, the stupid, intolerant, narrow-minded, Hindu-hating retards who wrote this constitution forgot to mention that any breaches of law and order, the law of the land that they were asking us to observe, were not to be abrogated on account of the faith of an individual. Meaning, I can't say that my faith forces me to break the law, and plead that as an excuse. The second thing that they were apparently ignorant about was statistics. They forgot to take into account that a certain percentage of deviations from the norm was to be expected, and that even in a six-sigma situation, there would be cases of default from the standards. In their simple-minded ignorance, they actually made laws that said that there were no exceptions, no number of cases when these aberrations could occur before the laws were to take effect. So I am forced to point out that the broad, tolerant view, that half-a-dozen cases or so of assault and battery, of public rioting, of disorderly conduct, should not be taken out of context, and should be tolerated under the general rubric of boys will be boys, is difficult to defend under the constitution. // Somebody just sent me a waspish text, saying two thousand doesn't constitute half a dozen. This is a pathetic quibble. What's a thousand or so ordinary, inconsequential persons matter between broad, tolerant friends? In any case, we have (let's split the difference) four thousand years of history to tell us that they must have died non-violent deaths. // But perhaps it doesn't matter any longer, as long as we manage to survive in our personal capacity, and the harm that overtakes others doesn't overtake us. Kiran Check out the all-new Messenger 9.0! Go to http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/ Explore your hobbies and interests. Go to http://in.promos.yahoo.com/groups/
