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The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 01-25-2006
Not sure where this link belongs..
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/foe/
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 01-27-2006
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivili...n/message/84824
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dear Rani,
Difficult question. Currently, we are working on answering it at
different levels.
1. The 'identity politics' in terms of 'religion' certainly is a
result of the workings of the secular state in India. The rise of the
Hindutva movement, for instance, can be traced as an effect of state
policy from the early stages of the colonial state to the latest phase
of Congress rule. In an article to be published later this year, Balu
and I show how the secular state in India provides a ready-made dress
which forces the traditions and communities in society to take a
particular form in order to defend their interests. All traditions
have to re-shape themselves as religious doctrines -- rivals of Islam
and Christianity.
The secular state treats any conflict between different groups as an
instance of religious rivalry; it assumes these conflicts revolve
around a rivalry over religious truth and then sees itself as rising
above that rivalry by taking a neutral position. It systematically
approaches all traditions as variants of the same phenomenon of
religion: e.g. it contrasts between Hindu religious law and Muslim
religious law and argues both should give way to a uniform civil code.
Thus, the secular state has compelled the Hindu traditions to react as
though they constitute one more religion, opposed to Islam and
Christianity.
2. The model of the liberal secular state has been inherited from the
Raj. Early in the nineteenth century, the policy of the colonials gave
rise to the 'religious identity' politics of Hindu movements. In
Bengal, for instance, there was a huge dispute about whether or not
sati was part of 'the Hindu religion and its sacred law'. The point
was that the practice would be tolerated by the colonial state only if
it was part of the Hindu religion. If it were a civil practice, it
would be outlawed. The same stance was taken towards many other
practices. Obviously, the 'orthodox' Hindu groups reacted by arguing
that all these practices were indeed part of the Hindu sacred doctrine
and that, therefore, they should not be touched.
So, in order to maintain their traditional practices, the Hindu
traditions were forced by colonial policies to present themselves as a
religious doctrine with its own orthodoxy and sacred authorities. In
1830, for instance, the Dharma Sabha--arguably the precursor of
today's Hindutva organisations--was established. "An appeal to the
orthodox Hindus on the necessity of establishing the Dhurma Subha" was
published in one of the Calcutta journals: "Through the absence of all
religious authority in this country, religion suffers great detriment.
It has therefore become necessary that the excellent and the noble
should unite and continually devise means for protecting our religion
and our excellent customs and usages...Though we are firmly
united...yet, because we do not meet together, we appear disunited,
and hence those of an opposite faith are constantly seeking to destroy
our religion." This reflects the experience of those who saw the need
to protect their traditions against the rivalry of Christianity and
Islam. The only way to do so, they felt, was by establishing a church
which could unite the Hindus into one religious authority.
3. Apart from 'religion', of course, there is the question of caste
identity politics in today's India. There I do not have much to tell
you, because our group's research on this theme has only started
recently in Karnataka. From what I have seen, caste politics appears
to be a peculiar mix of traditional jati stances, the colonial image
of the caste system and the logic of liberal democracy. But this is
about as good as saying nothing at all.
Yours,
Jakob<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 01-27-2006
A fascinating report from Jakob..
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheHeathenIn...ss/message/2113
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->*Report on the Conference "Dharma and Ethics: The Indian Traditions at
the Dawn of the 21st Century" at Kuvempu University, Shimoga, India on
December, 12th and 13th, 2005*
[Organised by the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap,
Ghent University and Centre for the Study of Local Culture, Kuvempu
University.]
On the yahoo-board some time back, there were questions about the
conference we organised at Kuvempu University in December. The
recordings are not easily available and would not be very useful at
this point. However, the proceedings of the conference are interesting
in a different way and therefore we decided to write this report.
1. The aim of the conference was originally stated as follows: "The
conference aims to address the following questions: Can the Indian
traditions and their reflections on dharma offer a fruitful answer to
the present crisis of ethical theory? Do they possess the conceptual
resources to develop a viable alternative to both the conception of
moral norms and virtue theory? Are the reflections on dharma rich
enough to clarify the complexity of ethical life? Are they able to
capture those attitudes and actions which we appreciate as exemplars
of the ethical? These questions will not be addressed merely from the
perspective of the modern intellectuals, who are trained in western
philosophy and the human sciences. Several representatives from the
Indian traditions will be invited. Both scholars and swamijis will
participate in the conference. The goal is not to have the swamijis
give standard speeches about their particular tradition's perspective
on dharma. Rather, it is to create a genuine forum for discussion
between these representatives of the Indian traditions and the invited
scholars through an exchange ofâand debate onâreflections on the
questions of dharma and ethics. This is the route towards closing the
gap between the modern intellectual world and the Indian traditions at
the dawn of the 21st century." Five questions were offered to the
participants in the concept note sent to them:
"1. Is western ethical theory able to capture the notion of dharma and
its role in the Indian traditions?
2. Can an ethical theory be developed within the framework of the
Indian traditions, which can compete withâor complementâthe various
forms of western ethical theory?
3. How central is the happiness or well-being of the individual to the
Indian traditions and to the notion of dharma?
4. How is individual happiness reconciled with the welfare of the
community in the Indian traditions and in western ethical theory?
5. What is the role of experience or anubhava in the Indian traditions
and in western ethical theory?"
The first thing to note is that the conference showed how difficult it
will be to realise the aim of breaking down the wall between the
Indian traditions and the modern intellectuals. This made it an
important experience, which has taught us several lessons for the
future planning of our yearly conferences at Kuvempu University.
Though roughly chronological, the report will not reflect the full
proceedings of the conference, but rather focus on some of the
problems we encountered and the proposals for next year.
2. The first problem we faced was to have swamijis attend the
conference. Due to several organisational difficulties and a
disinterest on their part, it turned out to be impossible to convince
even a small number of them to come. In the end, only one swamiji of
the Ramakrishna Mission of Karnataka agreed to attend. The first
disappointment was the behaviour of this swamiji. In contrast to the
plan explained in the concept note, he came (very late) for the
inaugural session, gave a typical speech about the great spiritual
truths and the force of dharma and left, not to be seen again. Still,
he said he believed this kind of debate between scholars and swamijis
was very important. His own contribution was the claim that the
collected works of Vivekananda contain the solutions to all problems
about dharma and ethics in contemporary India and the world at large.
The swamiji's general attitude was one of preaching down to an
audience of laymen, who are ignorant of the great spiritual truths.
The truths in his speech were the ones you can read in any booklet on
Indian spirituality. If anything, the swamiji's contribution was a
perfect illustration of the wall between the Indian traditions and the
modern intellectuals, which the conference intended to break down.
This first disappointment led to the decision not to invite swamijis
for next year's conference. We will first have to initiate a careful
process of selection through personal visits and conversations. Only
then shall we be able to undertake a next attempt to have a debate
between scholars and swamijis.
3. The conference started with a provocative presentation by Balu and
me, which put forward some of the pressing questions about Indian
ethics in our time and intended to define the focus of debate for the
next two days. It took part of the argument of Balu's colonial
consciousness paper (the part already present in the Sulekha piece `On
Colonial Experience and the Indian Renaissance') and showed how the
current understanding of Indian ethics is limited to (a) the claim
that Indians are either morally corrupt or moral cretins, because the
Indian social structure is itself immoral or (b) the gratuitous
proclamation that dharma is great and Indian ethics is far superior to
its western counterpart. Generally, the reactions to the argument were
rather confusing: people believed that Balu and I had argued that most
Indians and the Indian social structure were indeed corrupt. The
confusion was cleared out in the end, but this is a problem we have
faced in India before: people have difficulties to distinguish between
the argument of a speaker or a writer and his analysis of what others
have said or written. Interestingly, one of the participants suggested
that this problem is related to the way Indians usually discuss.
4. The first session consisted of presentations by Valerian Rodrigues,
a JNU secularist, and Ashok Chowgule, the national vice-president of
the VHP. The session and the reactions to it showed two things: (a)
Whatever the topic, Indian academics have a tendency to reduce all
debates to the classical opposition between Hindutva and secularism.
(b) In reality, Valerian's account showed striking similarities with
Ashok's. Valerian advocated dharma as an Indianised version of John
Rawls's political liberalism; while Ashok contrasted Hindu tolerance
to the interference of Christian religious conversion and the social
tension it causes in India. Still, the conceptual structure of `Hindu
tolerance' and Rawlsian political liberalism turned out to be almost
identical. To us, this confirmed that secularism and Hindutva become
two faces of the same coin, when viewed from the perspective of our
research programme. However, the discussion after the paper
presentations soon lost its focus and ended up in irrelevant and
rather aggressive charges against Ashok Chowgule's position. It was
clear that in the future we will have to find ways of retaining the
focus on a limited number of questions and problems. This was even
more obvious when later participants presented their papers: most of
them simply ignored the concept note and its five questions. The
interventions by members of the audience made the situation even
worse. The discussion often meandered into vague and fruitless directions.
5. A highlight of the conference consisted of two presentations in
Kannada by Sanskrit pundits from Mysore and Melkote. They dutifully
followed the concept note and gave the perspective of the classical
Sanskrit tradition on its five questions. One paper revolved mostly
around what the Manusmrti had to say about dharma and ethics. Both
presentations showed that the world of Sanskrit scholarship is sealed
tight from the world of the modern human sciences. No attempt at
comparison was made and it was almost as though these questions had
been asked at the time of Manu. Still, the pundits' contributions were
fascinating in terms of the earnestness with which they addressed the
questions. At one point, the younger of the two pundits admitted that
he did not have a clue about the modern western concepts of `liberty',
`ethics', `duty', etc. He added that he was willing to make a
comparison if we could explain these modern concepts to him. In the
end, this has led to an agreement that he will continue his PhD
studies within the framework of our research programme. Without doubt,
this is one of the major achievements of this year's conference.
6. Perhaps the most striking and disturbing aspect of the conference
was that the intellectually exciting encounters came at the end of
both days, when the planned schedule had ended. A group of
participants had gathered outside to have a last cup of tea. On both
evenings, a focused discussion emerged between Balu and Valerian
Rodrigues, the JNU professor of political science. These two
one-on-one discussions made it very clear that the secularist
programme does not have any answers to the challenges of our research
programme. The first consisted of a discussion on the concept of human
rights and its (in)compatibility with the Indian traditions: Rodrigues
claimed that Ambedkar was right in suggesting Buddhism as the apt
socio-political framework for India, because it has its own indigenous
conception of human rights. Balu showed how Buddhism *cannot* have a
conception of human rights and is in fact incompatible with the rights
concept, because the absence of a self leads to the absence of a
rights-bearer. Without a rights-bearer, the notion of human rights
does not make sense. The second discussion revolved around Rawls's
theories of justice and political liberalism. Balu revealed a basic
inconsistency in the theories of justice of western political thought.
To all present, these debates were of much greater interest than the
discussions that had taken place inside the conference room. Because
only two persons were involved, a sustained argument and
counter-argument could be developed. No irrelevant digressions were
possible; no ideological disputes took over; the argument reached its
conclusion.
7. Conclusions: The conference format is not helpful for our purposes.
Therefore, we have decided to organise workshops with a limited number
of active participants next year. The participants will not include
any swamijis this time, for the reasons mentioned above. However, the
debate with the Sanskrit pundits should continue and be extended. All
participants will have to read the texts we will discussâthese will be
distributed well in advance. The plan is to have several kinds of
workshops: (a) One-on-one debates: Here, we will distribute a text by
one of the people present at the conference. He or she will first
explain the thesis and the argument. Then, an `opponent' will present
a counter-argument, which reveals and analyses some of the problems in
the text. A debate between the two follows, which will at a later
stage involve the other participants. (b) Analysis and discussion of a
few central texts in small groups, e.g. Ambedkar's Annihilation of
Caste; one of B. K. Matilal or J. N. Mohanty's articles; one of
Balu's pieces; etc. © Sustained debates among a small group
regarding a problem or question which has been communicated well in
advance. (d) A few public sessions where the results of the workshops
can be shared and discussed with a larger audience.
The main success of this conference was that almost all participants
expressed a desire to be part of similar initiatives in the future.
The Delhi intellectuals want to travel to Kuvempu University in larger
numbers next year, so as to defend their positions. Several people
suggested other potential participants from different parts of India.
In this way, a core group of serious participants can be formed
gradually, who will read the required texts and prepare for the
workshops. The plan is to make the Kuvempu University conference into
a yearly encounter of this group and to have a similar international
conference once every few years.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 01-27-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Nationalism is our basic inspiration
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...owpage&pid=115&
page=10
By Arun Jaitley
The role of ideology in polity is paramount. Ideology is a representation of
one's conviction. It's a representation of your broad prospective on the
nation. Ideology determines priorities with regard to the direction in which
the country is to be taken. There may be many routine matters in public life
and in governance which are guided on the basis of principles of good
governance. Some of them may not link to ideology.
For any political party there are three distinct areas of priority, the
first is ideology, second values and the third relates to governance. As far as
ideology is concerned it governs your priorities. For example we in the BJP
are governed by a basic inspiration which is drawn from nationalism. The word
nationalism could be even substituted with Hindutva. It could also be
substituted for cultural nationalism. But if you see the common thread between
the three, it is a "India First Ideology" that we stand for, whatever that
suits my country.Â
Now, if in areas of ideology we chalk out our preference, the first priority
would be the security of the country. My country and its territories are
precious to me. Therefore anything that denudes alters or reduces theÂ
territorial sovereignty of my country is totally unacceptable.
If there is a refugee influx from Bangladesh which leads to subversive
activities, if there is an ISI
infiltration into the country which creates an element of subversion, if one
third of Kashmir is in possession of Pakistan, if there is any furtherÂ
threat to any territory of India, my nationalist priorities don't approve of it.Â
A weak nation, a diverse nation, a nation with divergent priorities will
never be able to hold together and therefore in those areas ideology plays a
prominent role.
Secondly, to preserve the pride of this country and to preserve the
sovereignty of the country what is it that holds my country together? It is not
merely love for a fellow citizen but has some larger relationship, a larger
binding force which emanates from the culture of my country. That is where the
ideology of Hindutva and cultural nationalism gain utmost priority.
There are symbols of my national pride. There are symbols of my country's
personality, which are represented in mythology, which are represented in
history, which are represented in our cultural religious and even nationalistic
priorities. Preservation of the identity of each one of these is important. Our
nationalistic priorities, our cultural roots give a complete freedom of
religion and allow an equal coexistence for all religions.
At the same time denigration in any form, of our cultural roots is derogatory
to the coexistence of all religions. So when Ayodhya is denigrated and not
given its pride of place in Indian life, how is it consistent with the ethos of
âSarvadharmasamabhav" and a peaceful coexistence of all religions?
When separate sub nationalism in terms of Article 370 is perceived of in
Kashmir how is the sub nationalism consistent with the national identity?
How in the absence of a Uniform Civil Code, separate Laws which are
discriminatory in character consistent with the
nationalistic priorities?Â
In routine governance it is idealism which has to dictate your priorities
and idealism requires the values of good governance.
Therefore, it is always in the country's interest that ideology in these
issues of nationhood takes a priority. A weak nation, a diverse nation, a
nation with divergent priorities will never be able to hold together and therefore
in those areas ideology plays a prominent role.Â
Secondly, the economic nationalism has to be the guiding milestone inÂ
management of the country's ideology. Economic nationalism entails that we
have to pursue that path of economy for development which suits the interest of
myÂ
nation. Today I believe for instance, economic nationalism requires that inÂ
dealing with the WTO we have to give priorities to those areas from which myÂ
country and its economy benefits. Where I benefit I can afford to be liberal,Â
where my country does not benefit, I have to be conservative. The guiding forceÂ
is again economic nationalism. In terms of management of the domestic
economy, again ideology is the governing force, because the path to rapid
development, equitable development is the route, I have to pursue. My growth
rates have to be higher. The benefits of the economic development have to percolate to the weaker sections. It is that path which I have to follow very clearly.
Anything that denudes, alters or reduces the territorial sovereignty of my
country is totally unacceptable.
Education is another area where ideology has to take a front seat. In
education some people have traditionally tried indoctrination against our
cultural roots. This can not be permitted. These are several areas of political
functioning where ideology always takes a front seat.
The second category that I mentioned are values that we practice and
profess. Here ethics and morality must govern us and these must be the same
irrespective of which ideological prospective you are governed by. Individual
honesty, organisational discipline and good values are role models. These are
our priorities today.
The third is routine areas of governance. There are several areas of
governance particularly in relation to finance, commerce, home ministry and
external affairs where ideology plays a role. In rural development, economic ideology plays a role. In routine governance it is idealism which has to dictate your
priorities and idealism requires that the values of good governance, proper
decisions are the ones which must guide your discipline.
We in the BJP are governed by a basic inspiration which is drawn from
nationalism.Â
When we discuss ideology, a large part moves around the true content andÂ
definition of secularism. I don't wish to avoid that debate. That debate isÂ
essential. But I think in the last fifteen years the real agenda of the debateÂ
has come to the centre-stage and the real agenda is the true content ofÂ
secularism. We in the BJP have a strong line against terrorism. We promulgatedÂ
an anti-terrorist law. Our opponents consider it as anti-secular. How can it beÂ
anti-secular? <b>It is against terrorists irrespective of religious denominations. </b>
<b>We want one common law for the whole country. How can this be anti-secular?
We want a pride of place for symbols of our cultural and religious nationalism
such as Ayodhya. That is consistent with peaceful coexistence with all
religions. IÂ think there is a difference between minoritism and secularism.
There is a difference between secularism and majority bashing. And this debate has
come to the centre-stage in the last fifteen years. And I think our view
point has become loud and clear and hugely accepted in the whole country. </b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 02-06-2006
Islam being targeted as religion of terrorism: Prince of Arcot
Staff Reporter
Appeals to youth to fight vested interests trying to divide nation
# Islam in Arabic means "Surrender to God," and Jihad means not taking bombs and bullets to kill people
# Secularism could be promoted by working through religion, with courage of conviction from religious leaders
CHENNAI: "No power on earth can tell the Muslims to go to Pakistan and the Christians to Vatican," said Mohammed Abdul Ali, Prince of Arcot, on Friday.
Inaugurating a symposium on Secularism â Issues and Prospects, organised to mark the golden jubilee of JBAS College, he said Islam was being targeted as a religion of terrorism by the western world. But Islam in Arabic means surrender to God. Jihad was the control of one's self from temptations and not taking to bombs and bullets to kill people.
He appealed to students and youth to fight vested interests trying to divide the country in the name of religion.
Haj subsidy
Pointing out that it was not proper to go for the Haj pilgrimage by accepting Government subsidy, he said the Government could, instead, spend that money to subsidise education and health facilities. This would be a more meaningful way of helping Muslims.
Extolling the leadership qualities of the college's founder, Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed, Mr. Abdul Ali said at the national or State level, Muslims did not have a leader to take their problems to the Centre and State Governments.
Fostering secularism
N. Ravi, Editor, The Hindu , spoke on the context and idea of secularism and the approaches to foster secularism and communal harmony. The immediate past was a time of rapid scientific advantages and developments in medicine. But the Ayodhya and Godhra incidents showed that the fabric of secularism was still fragile where communal tensions were kept alive.
<span style='color:blue'>
He said in India, there was a different interpretation of secularism. It was thought of as people living together and tolerance. Quoting national leaders, he said secularism could be based on citizenship and national boundaries as the organising principle provided by the Indian Constitution.
In the confusing interpretation of secularism, there were some core principles such as equal protection for all religions; the State not in any way supporting or opposing any particular religion; the strong element of protecting religions and cultural rights of groups and the fourth pillar of Indian secularism, namely the protection of minority rights.
</span>
He said secularism could be promoted by working through religion with the courage of conviction from religious leaders in restraining their followers from violence and confrontationist approaches.
<span style='color:red'>
The second approach could be based on multiple-identities that people have, such as State, family, city, profession or organisations to foster amity and harmony among people. The third approach could be based on the citizenship of the Constitution, which provided a strong foundation for keeping the country united, he said.
</span>
Salma Salahuddin, Principal, JBAS College for Women, said the college had 5,000 students in day and evening courses. It had received the Five Stars status from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and recently started the Centre for Women's Studies.
R. Pushpa, Head, Department of Political Science, said the College was set up 50 years ago with the aim of empowering women through higher education.
The department organised inter-collegiate oratorical, debate and quiz from February 1.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-06-2006
He want to preseve Caste and religion, so that they can extract maximum from stupid vote-bank politics of india.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-06-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Hijacking the nation</b>
Dina Nath Mishra
Sunday, February 05, 2006
The following symptoms compel us to consider if India is a "half sovereign" State? The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) sub-committee on Muslim reforms has demanded abolition of Article 44 of the Indian Constitution, which recommends a uniform civil code in the country.
It is non-enforceable directive principle of the State Policy strategy. The SC has time and again requested the Government of India to enact the law in this regard in the light of constitutional directive. Nearly 13 per cent of Muslims are still governed by Muslim Personal Law and majority of the population is governed by constitutional law.
Waqf Boards are the biggest landlords in urban India even today. The properties under their control were originally confiscated from Hindus during Muslim rule. These properties are beyond control of Indian Laws. Recently Muslim Organisations have presented a Memorandum to the Prime Minister suggesting that agricultural land under the control of Muslims should be brought within the purview of Shariat. Articles 29 and 30 are tilted towards Muslims at the cost of majority.
The UPA Government speeded up its old Muslim appeasement policy, reservations for Muslims in the jobs and educational institutions, special scholarships in higher studies including minority status for AMU and 50 per cent additional reservation for Muslims students.
Sovereignty as doctrine as developed in Europe to advance the cause of sovereign State against the chains of the Church. The concept of "half sovereign" State was first introduced by German Jurist Johann Jakob, an expert of European International Law, later developed by Hobbes, Bentham and Austin.
Nations found lacking in pre-requisite of sovereignty are said to be "half sovereign". Recounting the points narrated above, India fits the bill. There are number of symptoms indicating that Muslims are state by themselves. The AIMPLB wants removal of article 44 from the Constitution itself. On the other hand majority community suffer disadvantages. Their richest religious institutions and highest educational institutions are subjected to various Government control. Thirteen per cent Muslims of the country applies veto against the BJP when and where it is possible.
The recent change in the political scenario of Bangalore demonstrates it emphatically. The largest party, BJP was denied power for being a "communal party" read Nationalist Party, proud of civilisational assets and grand vision of India. The foundation of this was laid by the first Prime Minister of India in the first general elections itself. Responding to the first election manifesto of the Jan Sangh, Nehru equated it with communalism, revivalism, obscurantism and reactionism.
In Discovery of India, Nehru, under subheadings like Panorama of Indian past, the search for India and Bharat Mata wrote, "Yet I think that a country with a long cultural background and a common outlook on life develops a spirit that is peculiar to it and that is impressed on all its children, however much they may differ among themselves.
"It was this spirit of India that I was after, not through idle curiosity, though I was curious enough, but because I felt that it might give me some key to the understanding of my country and people, some guidance to thought and action. Politics and elections were today day-to-day affairs when we grew excited over trumpery matters. But if we were going to build the house of India's future, strong and secure and beautiful, we would have to dig deep for the foundations."
Noted historian Dr Makkhan Lal analysing it in his book the History of Bhartiya Jana Sangh wrote: "The catchword in the above quotation is 'trumpery' which the Chamber's 20th C Dictionary defines as "something showy but worthless: non-sense." "Alas! Jawaharlal Nehru, in order to remain in power and win elections, not only disowned all that he had written till a few years before the founding of Jana Sangh, but also resorted to 'trumpery' to win elections and create a vote bank for himself and is spineless followers. We need to look for an answer to the puzzle why an icon like Nehru stooped so low." The answer lies in the fact that "in the 1952 elections apparently Nehru feared the nationalistic and reactionary right more than the socialist and communist left."
This is how "communal" was politically re-discovered and exploited in politics for more than five decades and part of Indian nation's sovereignty hijacked. This is how Hindus have been orphaned politically and religiously. There has been complete ethnic cleansing in Pakistan. The same is going on in Bangladesh with increasing ferocity and in India too. Thanks to Nehru and the dynasty.
dailypioneer.com/columnis...ter=mishra<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-08-2006
Isaai hamara vote bank, unki raksha hamara raja dharm <!--emo&:omg--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/omg.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='omg.gif' /><!--endemo-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-08-2006
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1406490.cms
BJP demands MF Hussain's arrest
Muslims, COMMIES, Christians abusing HINDUS, HINDU GODS is SECULARISM
BJP talking about that is FUNDAMENTALISM
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-14-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Muslims must condemn Hussain
Sandhya JainÂ
Organiser
February 12, 2006
In its second major overture to Hindu opinion after CPM MP Brinda Karat publicly
targetted Ayurveda and yoga guru Swami Ramdev, the Nationalist Congress Party
(NCP) has booked the controversial artist, M.F. Hussain, for hurting the
sentiments of the people. The NCP action comes in the wake of pressure from
activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who managed to get Maharashtra Governor
S.M. Krishna to back out of a function on February 2, 2006, where he was slated
to be chief guest, in which Hussain was to be honoured for his oeuvre. Though
the organizers hastily dis-invited the artist in a bid to salvage the function,
the Governor refused to change his mind, resulting in its cancellation.
Now, in the wake of pressure from Hindus over Hussainââ¬â¢s continued offensive
against Hindu goddesses, an art gallery in Mumbai has withdrawn a picture
depicting a nude Bharat Mata. The picture was put up for auction for victims of
the Kashmir earthquake, and while auction organizer and Hinduââ¬âbaiter Nafisa Ali
said the controversy was because the Shiv Sena had no other issues, the gallery
owner said that devoted Hindus had expressed anguish over the picture. Hussain
later apologized and claimed that he had withdrawn the picture himself.
NCP has realized that it may be politically remunerative to honour Hindu
sentiments on issues that can excite and mobilize people. Maharashtra deputy
chief minister and home minister R.R. Patil ordered that a case be registered
against the painter on 4 February 2006. BJP state unit president Nitin Gadkari
has supported the demand for Hussain's arrest.
There are a number of lessons to be learnt from these two episodes. <b>The first is
that if Hindus take the trouble to raise their voices against all deliberate
insults to the community, they will be heard. What is more, the political class
will act with greater alacrity against issues of cultural assault against
Hindus. This was noticed in the case of the widespread and spontaneous public
anger when the popular Swami Ramdev was targetted by the CPM; </b>the party was
forced to beat a retreat as politicians across party lines did not dare incur
the wrath of the majority of their constituents by siding with the communists.
The second is the sheer hypocrisy of so-called secular Muslim intellectuals, who
routinely gang up against the Hindu community on a number of issues, but do not
dare or care to speak up against Hussainââ¬â¢s deliberate act of religious
disrespect to the Hindus. Yet in a refreshing contrast, believing Muslims like
actor Farooq Sheikh and AIMPLB member Kamal Faruqi condemned the nude Saraswati
saying that Saraswati was never depicted nude and that the picture shocked even
Muslims, so it certainly offended Hindu sentiments. Sheikh said artists have no
license to trample over peopleââ¬â¢s sentiments in the name of creativity. They were
reacting to worldwide Muslim anger over the blasphemous cartoons of Prophet
Mohammad, published in several European newspapers, at a programme on NDTV. It
is to be hoped that their attitude will have a salutary effect upon Hussainââ¬â¢s
proclivity to repeatedly show Hindu goddesses in demeaning postures.
      Indeed, orthodox and sensitive Muslims should come forward and
negotiate the thin line between tolerance and dissent on the issue of
portraiture by fellow Muslims. Islam, like Judaism, forbids portraiture, and
Muslims do not make portraits of the Prophet or Allah at all. This is
theoretically true of Christianity as well, and Christians do not draw
portraits of God, the Father, or the Holy Spirit. However, in order to extend
its appeal among the people, Christianity compromised early in its innings, and
idols of Christ and his mother, Mary, are an established part of Christian
reliquary. The Jews tolerated some amount of Christian depiction of their
Prophets.
      Some Indian writers have claimed that in previous centuries when
Islam had powerful empires, Turk rulers patronized art forms regarding the
Prophet that would be considered blasphemous today. I have no personal
knowledge on this score, but it is true that the Mughal Emperors encouraged
portraits of themselves and their royal consorts. In the contemporary world,
Muslim despots like Saddam Hussain have revelled in erecting huge statues of
themselves, while Muslims keep photographs of popular leaders like Yasser
Arafat, Osama bin Laden, Ayatollah Khomeini and so on. To that extent, Islam
has compromised on the issue of drawing the human likeness.
      In this context, Muslims must decide what is tolerable and what is
unacceptable, to themselves and to others. <b>They have called upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to condemn the caricatures of Prophet Mohammad in some European countries, and to recall the envoy to Denmark. Now they must make up for a two-decade long silence on the offensive portraitures by co-religionist M.F. Hussain. </b>Former MP Prafull Goradia has meticulously documented (Anti Hindus, Contemporary Targett, 2003) how Hussain always paints figures from monotheistic traditions with respect (eg Mother Teresa) and almost always singles out Hindus for demeaning portraitures of Durga, Saraswati, Sita. <b>Secular Muslim intellectuals are far too bigoted to care for Hindu sensitivities, but sensible and pious Muslims are beginning to understand and empathize with the Hindu sense of outrage. They must make themselves heard. There is no such thing as the freedom to offend. </b>
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The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-16-2006
Secular Indian Govt.'s exclusive website for Muslims
http://indianmuslim.gov.in/
Enjoy!
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-16-2006
From report
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Sailent Features & Recommendations
<b>The caste system is pervasive in India and it has become almost a feature of all the religious groups.
The Indian Muslims admit their social division</b>.
The Consititution sanctions that the state may take such steps as are needed to safeguard the interest of socially and educationally deprived groups such as SC, ST and other backward classes.
The muslims deprivation in Govt. and Semi- Govt jobs is more than 80%.Observe railway station, post office or any govt.depts or semi - govt. Institutions Muslim faces are rarely seen as employee.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
JOB QUOTA
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Survey covered 88% of the Muslims. <b>The average family size of Muslims is 5.89 </b>while others were 5.72, 4.84 and 5.93. Buddhists and Muslims have the highest rate of illiteracy as compared to other minorities.
Muslims have the lowest level of education after 7th standard and Christians have the highest. 76% of Muslims in the age group 14-16 years were not attending schools.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Family Planing (Nasbandi)
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-16-2006
<b>India has a sizable number of Muslims as its citizens. Due to historical reasons, there has been a division of the community in two major camps, that of Hindus and Muslims. In 1947, on the division of India a sizable number of Muslims went over the newly created country of Pakistan. There was major migration of population between the rest of India and Pakistan. Despite this migration, it was found that a vast majority of the Muslims who were resident of British India have chosen to continue in secular India rather than migrating to Pakistan. It was a major political blow to the proponents of the two nation theory.
Today the situation is that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world only after Indonesia. It is a matter of great national pride for Indians that members of all communities including Christians and Sikhs leave and work peacefully. In the past five and held decades of its existence communal peace has prevailed for at least 99 percent of the period.
There are religious fanatics in all the communities, and the Indian society is no exception. Another problem in India has been the exploitation of the minority community by the political parties and the politicians for their own narrow political games and interests. The present social and economic decline of the Muslim community in India is a direct result of this exploitation by the politicians. Another factor which has played a major part in contributing to the problems of the Muslim community in India has been the continued hostility and tension between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue. Pakistan and to some extent Bangladesh in the past have made use of the misguided elements from within the Muslim community in India to carry on subversive activities within the country. This has given the opportunity to the communal forces within the society to undermine the loyalty and image of an average Muslim citizen of India before the general public.
To free the Muslims and other minorities from the exploitive clutches of the politicians, it is necessary that the spread of education and other measures for their social and intellectual development needs to be accelerated. The reservation of seats in educational institutions or for jobs in the public sector is not a remedy to the problem. It is a fact of life that 22 percent of the Indians irrespective of their religion today remains below the poverty line. So the condition of the Muslims is nothing extraordinary .The measures that need to be taken to rectify the situation need not be on the basis of religion.</b>
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-17-2006
How other countries are treating Hindus who were one time in sizeable numbers? e.g Bangladesh, Pakistan.
Purpose of partiton failed, it was Muslim demand and weak Western educated Secular Indian leaders created another blunder for rest of Bharat history.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 02-19-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Apartheid against majority</b>
Editorial
Chandan Mitra
The Pioneer
February 19, 2006
For decades, we have been extolling the virtues of positive discrimination, arguing that it is the most effective method of assisting underprivileged sections of society attain a degree of equality in societies where they have been historically wronged. Blacks in the US, non-White immigrants to European countries and even natives of South Africa have benefited from this policy.
In India, we went many steps further by opting for the politically lucrative reservation route. While there is much to be said for job quotas for Dalits and Tribals who have been disprivileged for millennia, the grounds for extending the same prescription to other castes and communities remain dubious, if not outrightly opportunistic. I am referring specifically to the implementation of the Mandal Report and the sinister move to reserve jobs for Muslims in certain States. All these actions have been justified in the name of positive discrimination.
So far, so good. But in the last few months, the last seven days in particular, the UPA Government has gone on an overdrive. <b>Taken cumulatively with the measures it has taken or proposes to introduce, a clear signal has been sent out to the ordinary Indian, the average citizen of this country who does not belong to a minority or privileged caste</b>. It may surprise the Arjun Singhs, AR Antulays and even the Manmohan Singhs to know that there still exist a large number of common Indians who are, in fact, the majority in this country. <b>Thanks to this Government, they cannot run unaided educational institutions free of quotas. Thanks to this Government, it is a matter of time that minority quotas are introduced in recruiting youngsters to the Army. Thanks to this Government, illegal immigration from a neighbouring country (which has been called "external aggression" by the Supreme Court) will be immensely facilitated through an amendment to the Foreigners' Act. And, thanks to this Government, caste-based job quotas may soon be introduced even in the private sector.</b>
Clearly, the Government is telling the country's endangered majority: Aren't you ashamed to be the majority? <b>If you still aren't, just wait, we'll soon make it impossible for you to live here.</b> We will provide quotas for all available minorities everywhere and, wherever possible, divide the majority into mutually exclusive categories so that they cease to be the majority. <b>In other words, there will remain no Hindu Indian after we are through with our vivisection plans. There will only be minorities of various hues who will compete with one another for crumbs</b>. <b>We, the Congress and Left, will happily rule thereafter, employing the same policy the British did</b>. Positive discrimination is an old-fashioned, discarded practice. <b>The Government of India has unveiled a unique policy package called "Negative Discrimination". This involves looking at the country's majority negatively</b>. It is intended to eliminate their self-esteem, make them emotional and psychological wrecks and send them on a permanent guilt trip for having born into a "majority" family.
It is in pursuit of this diabolical policy of negative discrimination that the Government has sent out a questionnaire to the armed forces demanding a Muslim
head count. In fairness, the idea didn't emanate from Arjun Singh although he
is usually credited with all such diabolical plots. The head count demand is
part of an official committee's recommendation. And who heads this committee?
Ex-Justice Rajender Sachar, an infamous bleeding heart, part of the brigade
that would have been happy if we gifted Kashmir and Punjab away and gradually
self-destructed India itself. It might be argued by non-bleeding hearts, well-meaning people, what's wrong with a headcount? Shouldn't the Indian Army reflect the country's communal composition? But then, if we agree to a quota system, why stop at Muslims? Why not Christians, Buddhists, neo-Buddhists, Jains, Parsees, animists, atheists, agnostics, literates, neo-literates and various castes including "backward" Muslims and "Dalit" Christians?
Readers may wonder why I have not mentioned Sikhs so far. In order to accommodate so many other religious and social groups according to their numerical proportion, it would be necessary to throw out most of the Sikhs from the armed forces. This is because they are over represented, by virtue of their colonial classification as a martial race, like the Gurkhas. In the 70s, it was common to see a wall writing that posed: "Sikhs in Army 33 per cent to 12 per cent. Why?" Issued by one Bakshi Jagdev Singh (who, he?) this query made people aware how disproportionately Sikhs had been taken into the Army. And public opinion on that? A jolly good thing too. As sword-arm of the Indian people, ever since Guru Tegh Bahadur sacrificed his life to uphold the Hindu right to wear the janeu, Sikhs were rightly inducted into the Army. Does anybody dare evoke the quota argument here? <b>It would be interesting to know how Rajender Sachar whose heart once bled for the "misguided youth" of Punjab (read mercenaries on ISI's payroll) reacts to the likely termination of service of many Sikhs from the Army in order to implement the hidden agenda for a Muslim quota?</b>
The Government says it is distressed by the breakdown of the traditional national consensus on foreign policy. But the UPA regime has broken a much bigger consensus. That is not just on foreign policy but also on the national interest itself. The move to amend the Foreigners' Act to make it mandatory to give every illegal immigrant a "fair hearing" through a tribunal amounts to extending the disgraceful and legally invalid IMDT Act of Assam to the entire country. India is not Britain or France or even the US for that matter - developed countries that have to deal with just a few thousand people trying to sneak in by illegitimate means every year. India faces what the Supreme Court has correctly termed "external aggression" as a result of lakhs of Bangladeshis openly migrating to this country. They are provided ration cards, helped to grab land and jobs and also enlisted as voters. Estimates of such illegal infiltrators range from 1.5 crore to 4 crore. <b>The entire system has been manipulated by politicians, primarily the Congress and now the CPI(M). </b>The Congress enacted a ludicrous piece of legislation called the IMDT Act wherein the onus of proving the charge of being an illegal migrant rested on the accuser and not the accused! No wonder just about 700 persons were identified as illegal immigrants in 20 years.
Now, to assuage Muslim sentiment, apparently stung by the apex court's striking down of the Act, the Government proposes an even more pernicious piece of law that will make virtually impossible the admittedly difficult task of physically sending back even one Bangladeshi infiltrator. I do not believe a single Indian Muslim supports the idea of wholesale import of Bangladeshis to this country. No patriotic Indian would entertain such thoughts and Indian Muslims, barring a minuscule few, are genuine patriots. Therefore, wooing Indian Muslim sentiment by facilitating a free run of this country for illegal Bangladeshi aggressors is a non-starter. If anything, the backlash, if and when it comes, will unfortunately widen the gulf between communities. That is why it is a matter of concern that the Government is adding fuel to the simmering anger of the majority. <b>Once the majority is convinced that its own Government is purposefully discriminating against it, India might get engulfed in a devastating fire that those who are igniting it will fail to control.</b>
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The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 02-25-2006
SWAMI RAMDEV AND HINDU DISUNITY
http://www.francoisgautier.com/Written%20Material/ramdev.doc
When CPI leader Brinda Karad attacks Swami Ramdev, she is not attacking Ramdev in particular, she is attacking Hinduism in general. This guru or that guru, makes no difference to her, she is against all gurus. Other gurus might think that they are safe, that Ramdev committed some sin, for which he is paying. But one of them will be next in the line of fire! Hindu gurus are all vulnerable in todayâs India: the Shankacharya has already been hit, so has Satya Sai Baba, with accusations of paedophilia, Amrita Anandamayi has to live under the constant shadow of an hostile Kerala communist-dominated government, Dhirendra Brahmachari has been obliterated and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is periodically targeted as the âGuru of the richâ, the âglib Godmanâ etcâ¦
May I be forgiven my arrogance, but what Indian gurus have to understand is that for Indian communists, Hinduism is the N°1 enemy. Mao called religion âthe opium of the peopleâ. But for Indian communists, as for Britishers and Muslim invaders before them, what stands between their ambition for absolute power in India (and eventually a triumphant return of communism in the world â as Indian communists believe) is the hold that Hinduism has in the hearts of the rural people of India, who constitute 80% of this country. And still today, the humble farmer, from Uttar Pradesh to Tamil Nadu, has a natural understanding of the universality of God, who takes many names throughout the ages and can be Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ram or Mohamed and this humble farmer possesses the knowledge that there is something deeper than the skin and the mind, and a life beyond death. This knowledge is inbred, it is not in his head, not even in his heart, but in his or her genes transmitted from generation to generation.
Of course, the English speaking media is too happy to oblige Brinda Karat and come down hard on gurus with all kind of accusations, ranging from superstition to conman ship. There is of course a strong communist streak in most Indian newspapers, whether it is Frontlineâs and the Hinduâs open allegiance to Communist China, or Brinda Karat being the sister of Prannoy Royâs wife (not many people know that). Before Ramdev, they condemned the Shankacharya, before him Osho, before him Dhirendra Brahmachari. You can even go back to Sri Aurobindo, who was accused in the early 1900âs by the moderate Congress-controlled press to be a âfanaticâ, when he was only demanding total independence from the British, long before Gandhi took it up. Accusation against Hinduism of superstition, brainwashing, ritualistic ignorance, date back from British missionaries and have been taken up today by communists. Yet, Hinduism, at least the Hinduism which goes beyond the rituals and becomes universal spirituality, has nothing to do with superstition and conman ship: it is all about science, knowledge and light. Look at pranayama, a science that has known for thousands of years how to harness breath and use it for controlling the mind, for a better, more healthy, more spititualized life. If you read Oshoâs books today, you find a lot of solid common sense and wisdom. Sai Baba cannot have millions of disciples from the most humble to the presidents of India, without âsomethingâ which is beyond superstition. So it goes for Amrita Anandmai, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Ramdev, or Guruma of Ganeshpuri.
And why should Brinda Karat target Ayurveda, the most ancient medical system in the world still in practice, the first medecine to realize 3000 years ago that plants and minerals offer the best cure, that many illnesses have a psychosomatic origin, the first to practice plastic surgery on patients? In India today, every third shop is an allopathic medical shop, whose profits go to western multinationals (hello Mrs Karad!) at a time when ayurvedic medicine is becoming increasingly popular in western countries, disillusioned by antibiotics and other heavy-handed medicines.
We are witnessing an interesting phenomenon in India today. Communists, Christians, Muslims and some of the Congress leadership (notice that Brinda Karat has written to Uttaranchal Chief Minister Narayan Dutt Tiwari to close down Swami Ramdevâs pharmacy), all of whom have nothing in common and often hate each other, are all united against Hinduism and Hindu leaders. Each one of course, have their own reasons for doing so. The Christians, under the leadership of people like John Dayal, want to convert the maximum of âheathensâ Hindus, as Jesus Christ is the only âtrueâ God that can save India; some of the Muslim leadership, here, in Pakistan, or even in todayâs Bangladesh, still dream of 'Dar-ul-Islam', the House of Islam in South Asia; and Sonia Gandhi, maybe in a true spirit of secularism, maybe out of personal conviction, has chosen to ally her party with anti-Hindu forces. <span style='color:red'>Whatever it is, their unity makes them a powerful enemy.</span>
In contrast, look at Hindus: Swami Ramdev himself criticized Sri Sri Ravi Shankar live on TV, advising his followers not to practise the Art of Living breathing techniques. During the Tsunami relief operations in Nagapatinam, disciples of Amrita Anand Mayi and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar nearly came to blows over who would give relief to whom, instead of networking and uniting their efforts. And who came to the rescue Osho when he was maligned to death, or Brahmachari, when the entire press came down on him, of Sai Baba, when he was slandered, of the Shankacharya when he was thrown into jail, or of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, when Javed Akhtar accused him of coming âfrom a cave to live in a palaceâ (and not from a palace to a cave, like the Buddha) ? None of the previously mentioned. Yet, Indian politicians can commit any crime, have any number of court cases against them, and they still end up as Union ministers and get positive press coverage .
The greatest curse of Hinduism throughout the ages has been its disunity - and more than that â its betraying each other. The British did not conquer India, it was given to them by its warring Hindu princes, jealous of each other. The same is true of Islam: the last great Hindu empire, that of Vijaynagar, was betrayed to the Muslims by the Lingayats. Today, if the combined forces of communists, Muslims, Christian fundamentalists and the Congress win, it will not be because of their strength and valour, but rather because of the disunity of Hindu leaders.
I know that there is something mysterious and unfathomable in the manifestation of the Divine upon earth, that each guru has a defined task to fulfil and that the combined task of all the gurus may solve the great puzzle that is this ignorant and suffering earth. Thus it may not be necessary for each guru to communicate with each other. But nevertheless, it is of the greatest urgency today that Hindu leaders unite to save Hinduism, rather than the âeach one for his ownâ that we see today. The Catholics have their Pope - and his word is binding to most catholics, whatever the resistance of some progressive leaders. Muslims have Mohamedâs words written 1400 years ago â and that binds all of Islam together, whatever the relevance of these words in the 21st century; India Communists have Marx and Lenin words, their opium, even if it has become irrelevant in Russia, Germany, and even in China; but the poor Hindus have nobody to refer to, so as to defend themselves.
Yet, if you take the combined people power of Satya Sai Baba, Amrita Ananda Mayi, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev, Gurumayi of Ganeshpuri, the Shankacharya of Kancheepuram, and so many others I cannot mention here, it runs in hundreds of millions.
Again, in all humility and conscious of the limitation of my small mind, compared to some of these great gurus whom I have met, I propose that a Supreme Spiritual Council, composed of at least seven of the most popular Hindu leaders of India, be constituted, maybe under the leadership of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (with a yearly rotation of leadership), the most travelled of all these, the one who has disciples and teachers of all religions, both from India and the West. It would be a non-political body, and each group would keep its independence but nevertheless, it could meet two or three times a year and issue edicts, which would be binding to 850 millions Hindus in India and one billion over the world.
Then and then only, can this wonderful spirituality which is Hinduism, this eternal knowledge behind the outer forms, the wisdom to understand this mad earth and its sufferings, be preserved for the future of India, and for the future of humanity. I bow down to each of these gurus above-mentioned and to all those not mentioned, to Swami Vivekananda, the initiator of modern Hinduism, to Sri Aurobindo, the great avatar of the supramental and to all the great gurus who have graced over the ages, this wonderful and sacred land which is India and beseech them to hear my prayer: Hindus leaders, unite against the common enemy if you want the eternal Dharma to survive.
François Gautier
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 03-11-2006
UP Bill can't bail out SP leaders
Manoj Mitta
[ Saturday, March 11, 2006 01:46:24 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
In view of this categorical provision, the SC ruled in 1996 on a petition filed by Subramaniam Swamy that "the President was bound to seek and obtain the opinion of the EC and only thereafter decide the issue in accordance therewith. In other words, it is the EC's opinion which is decisive."
On the other hand, the parliamentary committee on offices of profit, which is headed by a party colleague of Jaya Bachchan, is not meant to perform any adjudicative function but to recommend from time to time the offices that could be added to the exempted list under the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Act 1959.
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The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 03-13-2006
<b>There is a massive Hindu backlash building up</b>
Vir Sanghvi
Hindustan Times
March 4, 2006
For the last couple of months, I have spent very little time in Delhi or, for
that matter, in Bombay. A succession of conferences, engagements and the
shooting schedule for a new television programme have kept me on the road. I
have visited parts of south India I had not seen for a decade; have driven
through chunks of western India; spent much of the last week in north Bengal;
and travelled through cities and small towns that have changed dramatically
over the last ten or fifteen years.
Admittedly, my approach is that of the standard journalistic paratrooper who
lands in a new place without bothering to learn the background to the
situations he encounters and then moves on without fully understanding the
people he has met. And yes, the vast majority of those I met were middle class
or very nearly middle-class â I didnât meet any landless labourers or poor
farmers.
But, from my perspective, despite these obvious shortcomings, the experience
was valuable because it got me out of Delhi and its pre-occupations. And it
afforded me an opportunity to listen to people elsewhere in India.
In the ten years since I last travelled so widely, India has been transformed.
Integral to this transformation has been the growth of Big Media. A decade ago,
you relied on the local paper in each town (The Deccan Herald in Bangalore, The
Telegraph in Calcutta, The Tribune in Chandigarh etc) to judge popular
sentiment. Now, while the local papers still survive, they are being
increasingly challenged by new editions of the national dailies.
Then, there are the TV channels. We live in an era when the news channels
dictate the immediate responses of the middle classes (and the political
elite). A case in point is the way in which educated Indians reacted to the
verdict in the Jessica Lall murder case. When Manu Sharma and Vikas Yadav
murdered Jessica seven years ago, it was essentially a Delhi story. But when a
court let them walk a fortnight ago, all of middle class India was outraged. It
was the news channels that took the case national.
But I wondered if the public mood outside of Delhi mirrored the pre-occupations
of the nationâs capital. Had Big Media succeeded in forging a national
consensus? Or were there trends bubbling under the surface that we had missed?
Here, for what it is worth, is a snapshot of the middle class India I
encountered on my travels.
* The first and most obvious change I noticed was that politics obsesses people
much less than it used to. A decade ago, when people found out I was a
journalist, they wanted to know about the government. What was the Prime
Minister like? How stable was his ministry? Or, they would want to discuss the
latest political scandal.
The big change, this time around, was that few people wanted to talk about
politics. There was widespread, if muted, approval of Manmohan Singh and Sonia
Gandhiâs aura has yet to fade. But nobody seemed particularly interested in
either of them. Nobody asked the great Indian political question of the last
two decades: âWill the government last?â
When political issues were discussed, they tended to be local (I was in
small-town Karnataka when the state government fell) and nobody cared about
national political scandals. A decade ago, I was always asked about hawala,
Bofors, corruption etc. Even a few years ago, Tehelka would crop up. But this
time nobody asked about Quattrochhi or Natwar Singh or, even,
cash-for-questions.
The only scandal that ever cropped up in the conversation concerned the Amar
Singh tapes. And even then, all people wanted to know was: who were the
actresses involved? And were the conversations really naughty? When I responded
that I had heard the tapes and that there was nothing remotely salacious in
Amar Singhâs conversations, they immediately lost interest.
* Logic suggests that if people have tired of politics, they should care about
economics. But in the run-up to the Budget, not one person â not even a
businessman in some aircraft cabin â asked about the Budget, before proceeding
to favour me with his own thoughts. Once upon a time, this was the Big Subject.
Flying back to Delhi, a day after this Budget, I began to wonder if all of us
in the media had got the public mood badly wrong with our back-to-back TV
coverage and excessive newspaper focus on the concessions offered to the
ice-cream sector.
My guess is that Indians donât really give a damn about the Budget any longer â
unless there are huge increases in taxation. And that we in the media should
rethink our outdated obsession with Budget news.
* It is a truism within Big Media to say that the people of India want peace
with Pakistan. My sense, however, was that while nobody wants another war,
outside of Delhi and parts of the Punjab perhaps there was no great warmth
towards Pakistan. Most of India is young, does not care about Partition and
sees Pakistan as just another foreign country â and a hostile one at that.
<b>When peace with Pakistan came up, every single person I met was clear: there
could only be peace on our terms. And this meant not giving up an inch of
Kashmir. Nor was there any support for the idea of more autonomy for Kashmir.</b>
So, let us treat all this liberal rhetoric about how Indians long for peace
with scepticism. <b>Our idea of peace is: Pakistan should shut up and behave itself or we will retaliate.</b>
It is not a public mood that will lead to any lasting settlement of this
long-running conflict. And I think that the challenge before politicians is to
shift the consensus. <b>Big Media has tried. And I think it has failed.</b>
* The general view in Delhi is that the BJP is floundering, that it is a party
without an issue. Judging by my travels, this view could be seriously mistaken.
<b>There is a massive Hindu backlash building up. The public mood reminded me of the late 1980s, when such issues as Shah Bano and The Satanic Verses so upset
moderate Hindus that they turned against Congress-style secularism.</b>
The provocation, this time around, is the attitude of the Muslim political
leadership to foreign Islamic issues. <b>No Hindu I met thought it was right for a
Danish paper to carry cartoons of the Prophet. But why, they all asked, did
Indians Muslims have to get so agitated? What did it have to do with us? Why
should a minister in the UP government announce a bounty on the head of the
Danish cartoonist? Why should Indian Muslims demand the recall of the Danish
ambassador?</b>
I have written about the shameful cop-out by liberal Muslims over these issues
before so I will not labour the point. But the Hindu backlash is a perfect
issue waiting for a BJP initiative. This time around, the BJP need not focus on
how Indian secularism makes Hindus second-class citizens in their own country.
(Nobody buys that line any longer.) All it needs to do is to portray Indian
Muslims as unreasonable fanatics obsessed with global Muslim issues and argue
that they subscribe to some international pan-Islamic identity that could
easily conflict with Indian nationalism.
My feeling is that if liberal Muslims continue to react as pathetically as they
have over the last few months and if liberal Hindus do not make it clear that
genuine secularism means that we fight all kinds of fanaticism â both Hindu and
Muslim â a new generation of BJP leaders will ride this backlash to return to
power. By ignoring the Hindu sentiment, Big Media is making a big mistake.
* So, finally, how powerful is the influence of Big Media? If you treat the
national media as a force for homogenisation, then there is no doubt that they
have enormous influence. I found fewer regional variations in sentiment than a
decade or so ago. Even the reach of the media is astonishing: who would have
heard about the Amar Singh tapes fifteen years ago?
But the old divide between the Delhi-Bombay mindset and the rest of India
remains. Much of what Big Media believes (on the Budget, on relations with
Pakistan, on the future of the BJP etc) seems to me to be out of step with the
public mood that I encountered on my travels.
For instance, this is the age of the TV sting. But while the original Tehelka
stings (on defence purchases and cricket fixing) got the country talking, the
new stings are viewed as TV reality shows â as paler versions of the drama on
Sa Re Ga Ma. People may watch them. But they donât care very much. And each
sting is quickly forgotten.
And as for all the little issues and scoops that we in the Delhi media care so
much about (did Natwar Singhâs son go to Iraq, does Quattrochhi have access to
his back accounts, do ministers listen to the PMO? etc), no matter how valid
and important they are as news stories â and it is not my intention to play
down their significance â the truth is that they have lost their resonance with
Middle India.
<b>Big Media has the influence. But all too often we focus on things that nobody
cares about. And miss the ones that matter.</b>
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 03-13-2006
Singhvi had changed is tone after Varanasi blast, now he is back to BJP/Hindutava bashing. Don't trust this liar and snake.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 03-13-2006
will someone please explain why all indian intellectual types, irrespect of linguistic community, feel such a strong need to have utopian p-sec, if not outright commie viewpoint??