--- On Sun, 17/5/09, ss <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: ss <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [silk] Why have Indian exit polls been so off lately?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Sunday, 17 May, 2009, 7:33 PM
> On Sunday 17 May 2009 3:53:08 pm
> Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>
>
> > Are you joking? Or do you actually believe that?
>
> > Raising hindutva card - hell, any number of people
> will do that .. Shiv
> > will probably point you to a bunch of harmless people
> (and I have very dear
> > relatives who are card carrying bjp members). It
> takes a very special kind
> > of person indeed to countenance a pogrom. And that's
> what the gujarat riots
> > were, plain and simple.
>
>
> It is a political viewpoint that has existed at least from
> the time Gandhi was
> shot.
>
> Unfortunately in discussions such as these the expression
> "raising the
> Hindutva card" is used exacty in the sense of the act of
> raising a yellow
> card or a red card in a soccer match, after which the
> "marked" person who
> brings up the topic is branded an offender of a sort and a
> supporter of a
> murderer.
>
> For this reason, discussion progress no further in allowing
> someone (In this
> case Bharat Shetty) to put a viewpoint across. In
> other words, once a person
> is said to have "raised the Hindutva card" he must not be
> allowed to proceed
> further on pain of being dubbed a supporter of genocide and
> a cheerful
> bystander while pregnant Muslim women have their child
> ripped out of their
> belly by a frothing Hindu fanatic.
>
> All that this does is to stop the presenting of a
> viewpoint, but it does not
> alter the fact that there are, out in the community,
> certain people and
> certain red lines that cooperate to commit horrendous acts
> of murder and
> destruction. A frank exchange of views is avoided by the
> calling of the card.
>
> There are two aspects to Modi and he and his supporters
> lose no opportunity to
> thumb their noses at people who keep getting worked up
> about his continued
> success in Gujarat.
>
> What is missed in this rhetoric is the rubbish that the so
> called "secular
> parties" are up to when it comes to Muslims. Hindus who
> claim to be secular
> and pointedly shiver with horror at Modis communalism are
> no better at doing
> anything for Muslims in India than Hindutvadis - and may
> actually be a lot
> worse than Modi.
>
> Whatever problems the "community of Hindus" may have - an
> overly exaggerated
> horror at "Hindutva" represents only ignorant lip service
> to Muslims. All the
> secular parties treat Muslims as a bloc or as a vote bloc.
> They do not really
> spend as much thought or effort as they ought to in
> improving Muslim
> neighborhoods and genuinely believe that Muslims are happy
> in their
> madrassas.
>
> Check this article
> http://www.deccanherald.com/content/1496/muslims-entitled-full-fledged-schools.html
>
> > 'Muslims are entitled to full-fledged schools, not
> madarsas'
> > Saturday, May 09, 2009, 1:30 [IST]
> >
> >
> > Muslims are entitled to full-fledged schools, not
> Madarsas. The government
> > engages two teachers with minimum pay for Madarsas and
> claims that it has
> > taken care of minority children. But the government is
> doing it with a
> > purpose, as engaging Urdu teachers in full-fledged
> schools or setting up
> > more schools in Muslim-dominated areas will be far
> more expensive than just
> > doling out a few thousand rupees for the Madarsas. The
> government should
> > not spend a single penny for the madarsas and let them
> be as they are.
> > Instead there should be more schools where a Muslim
> boy can sit with his
> > Hindu classmate and learn what every other child of
> his age is learning
> > elsewhere. Only then this exclusion, this
> ghettoisation of the Muslims will
> > come to an end.
>
>
> "Secular" Hindus who huff and puff and rant in horror at
> Hindutva are as much
> of a problem as Hindutva when it comes to the status of
> Muslims in India. But
> they somehow seem to imagine that if they express their
> horror at Hindutva
> sufficiently vehemently they are absolved of all
> responsibility of
> understanding what is actually happening.
>
> That understanding often never comes when discussions are
> scotched with an
> outporing of the memories of horror of some event or the
> other in what I see
> as an exaggerated sense of Hindu embrarrassment and apology
> about an event
> that they were not personally responsible. This is the
> precise behavior which
> has been dubbed as "pseudo-secularism"
>
> Why not sit back and listen to a person expressing a
> viewpoint without making
> a vigorous attempt at connecting him with murder?
>
> shiv
Shiv,
Be aware that this may appear to be a drive-by pot-shot, because I am unable to
access the 'Net for very long hours; this means that after I sit down and think
of what I am trying to say and put it down and so on, it's time to move to the
next place I am due, and therefore brings in a delay of hours.
No discourtesy intended.
The disjointed nature of my response is also partly due to this; the other part
may be due to lack of the apparatus to take on a master polemicist such as
yourself, polemicising on your favourite topic.
The question of raising the 'Hindutva flag', for instance. This is a piece of
legerdemain on your part. Neither BS nor SRS - hey, I did no selection, it came
out the way it did - intended to use it in the sense of a third party accusing
someone; they used it in the sense of someone claiming affiliation to Hindutva
raising it as a token of this affiliation. So the analogy doesn't hold; my
raising a rifle and firing a fusillade in the sky in a feu de joie is certainly
not the same as your raising the same rifle and pointing it at my chest and
firing the same feu de joie.
Since the theme of flagging a person, or a group, and damning them thereby,
through a symbolical act that is understood widely in its semiotics to be a
magisterial act, above suspicion, is key to some of your following arguments, I
thought it useful to note that you turned it around exactly 180 degrees.
What was the point made forcefully, and driven home by the misuse of this
analogy? That a frank exchange of views is precluded by the using of this card.
In other words, some citizen wants to explain why murdering Muslims doesn't
really matter, against the greater good of the greater number, and other
citizens with a narrow mind call him or her a Hindutvabadi and shut off a
proper reasoned argument on why and under what circumstances murdering Muslims
should be permitted. After all, grading these instances is really rather
important, and applying a broad brush to all who murder minorities, Muslim,
Sikh or Christian, is not fair; their sub-types and the nuances of their
murderous impulses deserve exegesis.
Would you mind awfully if I point out that it was originally the Hindutvabadi
who wrapped himself in saffron, head to chaddi, and it was not somebody else
who singled him out? Under this circumstance, your argument doesn't hold, I
think. At least your premises do not support your conclusion.
If you wish to argue that in a broad sense, even taking into account that in
this individual case, your metaphor is misplaced, using 'Hindutvabadi' as a
pejorative epithet shuts off discussion, usually by shutting off
discrimination, I will willingly agree. Using it is counter-productive, and it
certainly is better to look at the facts rather than the epithets.
I will assume that you would wish to continue from this point, that assigning a
pre-determined position to somebody, and bathing him or her in the ordure
pre-determined to apply to somebody in that position, is as arbitrary a
condemnation of a position unheard and undefended as it can get. Please feel to
disagree with this if you wish, as this is only an assumption. It might be your
belief that assigning, for instance, a value system to the Congress, and to
pseudo-secularists of that ilk, is justifiable, and will follow you pitch torch
in hand to the foot of the stakes of these despicable wretches, who only asked
for what is coming to them.
--------------
> There are two aspects to Modi and he and his supporters
> lose no opportunity to
> thumb their noses at people who keep getting worked up
> about his continued
> success in Gujarat.
>
> What is missed in this rhetoric is the rubbish that the so
> called "secular
> parties" are up to when it comes to Muslims. Hindus who
> claim to be secular
> and pointedly shiver with horror at Modis communalism are
> no better at doing
> anything for Muslims in India than Hindutvadis - and may
> actually be a lot
> worse than Modi.
>
> Whatever problems the "community of Hindus" may have - an
> overly exaggerated
> horror at "Hindutva" represents only ignorant lip service
> to Muslims. All the
> secular parties treat Muslims as a bloc or as a vote bloc.
> They do not really
> spend as much thought or effort as they ought to in
> improving Muslim
> neighborhoods and genuinely believe that Muslims are happy
> in their
> madrassas.
---------------------
So we have Modi and his supporters with thumbs at nose, peace be unto them, in
their collective and individual avatars. So what? So nothing. So other pressing
problems need disposal, and we need to turn to those first.
Right.
From the passage that follows, it is gratifying to see that your frequent use
of the 'shirt-is-torn/fly-is-open' argument is not just intended to throw vials
of ridicule on those who don't 'get' it, it is apparently, in your little Red
Book, a legitimate battle-tactic.
This might lead to sarcasm, raising tempers all around and shutting off debate
as effectively as playing one or the other 'card'.
/sarcasm of an undesirable kind/
For instance, we find that stupid pseudos who screech on and on about murder
don't realise that they are themselves murderers - of the intellects and tender
growing minds of generations of Muslim youth. And heaven alone knows what
happens in the convent schools where they teach trusting and unwary Hindu youth
how to sing hymns. It is another matter that most don't, but the intention is,
shall we say, rampant?
I feel wretched in retrospect in not having realised how evil is this practice
of herding little children into Madrassas, and how, as a natural consequence,
the products can be nothing better than scum, who cannot be disposed of in any
civilised manner.
You will pardon me for using an often-discredited argument used, funnily
enough, by tea-shop owners, and one at which I have laughed grimly in the past.
Take it as a penitent's contribution, as a confession of past sins, when I say
that like the tea-shop owner arguing that if he didn't employ kids, they'd
starve, if there were no Madrassas, there would be neither education nor a
mid-day meal for these kids.
/sarcasm ends; i can be normal again, thank the cosmic dispensation equating to
god.
That doesn't mean an endorsement of Madrassas. It means that we are in such
grim shape after 61 years of polemic, composed by masters of the genre in the
Congress, in the Sangh Parivar, in the collection of self-seeking vampires that
we laughingly call the 'Left', that these do-it-yourself shops are the only
options that children have.
Please do not mistake the fact: what is going on is abominable, and points to a
signal failure of the state. Except, I regret to say, Kerala, no other state in
the Union has taken a grip on the situation. I regretted mentioning Kerala
because it then becomes easy to whip out the crypto-commie card, just like the
Hindutva card was or was not whipped out earlier. Suffice it to say that nobody
in his senses would subscribe to the rancid, putrefying mess of Stalinist
ideology that represents the Indian left today. Alas.
May we address the point of individual responsibility? Ultimately, I hope I may
carry you with me to the minimum reluctant stand that we stand or sink as
individuals. You have pointed out correctly in the past that there is no Hindu
opinion, instead that there are the opinions of a myriad Hindus, and if there
are common aspects to it, it is sometimes put into a dhobi-bag called Hindu
opinion. So, too, there is nothing called Muslim opinion, Christian opinion,
Buddhist opinion, Taoist opinion, Maoist opinion, or any other variety of
personified mass opinion. These personifications are all our mental constructs
which we use to avoid the burden of visualising what the collective thought of
850 million Hindus might seem to be.
In these conditions, we really need to stand by what we believe individually.
Quoting majority Hindutva opinion, for that matter, quoting majority civil
society opinion, is not sufficient to excuse lack of moral fibre.
Further, it is disingenuous to cite majority opinion as if we are unaware of
the criticism of such opinion, and the weaknesses in the arguments used.
But then, these are, as Shiv would argue, with complete authority, paper
quarrels, and none of these are translated into action. So these should be
given the moral authority and weight of such arguments, and not the respect due
to actual, effective action.
True. But the thought is father to the deed. We are further along with right
thinking than with wrong thinking, I dare say, but then at the end of the day,
we must all decide for ourselves individually. There is nothing in our
affiliations that needs to guide our decisions and actions; if we abdicate our
responsibility to think for ourselves, however, this becomes the closest straw
that we can clutch.
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