The South Asia File

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The intent was not to hurl personal insults and that is not what I am doing. I am getting more aware of your writings and the long effort you have put on this forum and respect that. I will be glad to take those words back, if they have hurt you. The critiques to your thesis stands and at least in my eyes remain unsubstantiated.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

You are missing the point. We hardly know each other to know whether we are honest or not and your opinion of me is not really very relevant to me under such circumstances. By making a hasty judgement based on a few posts you are revealing more about yourself than making an impact on me. In the internet there is a tendency to say things you would not say face to face.I am encouraging participants on this forum at least to stick to our traditional values and show 'maryaada' to each other. 'Respect for the individual' was one of the cardinal values expected of all employees at the company where i worked which fitted in very well with our Vedantic tradition. It is worth emulating in our forum.

Debates whether in college, on the internet or at cocktail parties rarely change anybody's opinion. But they do inform when a fact that is new is presented.It is difficult to argue the facts. There are characteristics which differentiate a good debate. One of the hallmarks of a superior debate is to debate the issue with cogent reasoning and not resort to 'I dont agree with you because i think you are a cockroach. IOW, do not bring in the personality of your debator.

There are some other hallmarks of a good debate. Behind every opinion is an assumption or hypothesis. it is best to state ones assumptions early in the debate, which may reveal that differences in the resulting inferences are unbridgeable. For example a fundamental assumption that you may make about the Brits is that they are basically a decent people and they would not do anything to deliberately to harm India. Whereas my fundamental assumption (or hypothesis) may be the Brits are a fundamentally decent people who nevertheless put their countrys national interest at a very high level, if not make it a paramount criterion. Even a pirate like Sir francis Drake placed his country's national interest at a very high level, so much so that Q E I knighted him. The same can be said aboout Warren hastings, Sir William Jones, or even of Macaulay who was a veritable genius with a prodigious memory. His authorship of the Indian Penal Code (which you will note i neither criticiize nor ascribe ulterior motives to the writing thereof) ranks very high in my opinion among important contributions to the world. But all of these gentleman did what they did keeping the national interest of britain at a high level.Well at least that is my assumption which is basically unverifiable.

The difference in the assumptions is significant and the difference in the resulting inferences may be even more unbridgeable. But it is important to recognize where the differences lie , namely in the fundamental assumptions that we make about events and life in general, rather than ascribe 'intellectual dishonesty' or lack of insight to your opponent.

i may be forgiven for the professorial tone of the lengthy lecture ,but i i thought it might make for better communication and a better debate (for all of us)

[ramana]

kaushal< I posted this in the Colonial History thread. Its from deccan Chronicle, 12/10/2005
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The role of quislings

Itihaas by Akhilesh Mithal:


Grozny and Baghdad are the continuation of Dillie and Lucknow in 1857. The White powers continue to think of a world divided in terms of “we and they.” Asiatics figure as less than human and Muslims continue as a synonym for terrorists.

Perhaps it is time to suggest that the life and times of “Badshah,” “Fakhre Afghan,” “Frontier Gandhi” and “Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan” should be made compulsory reading in the chanceries of the world. This apostle of non-violence endured a lifetime of suffering for his principles along with his family. The Khan’s son, Wali Khan spent some time in London studying the papers of British rulers of India such as Viceroys and Secretaries of State and wrote a book called Facts Are Facts in Pushto.

His wife Nasim transliterated it into Urdu and Saiyada Syed Hamid rendered it into English. It was published in 1987 and is now out of print. Wali Khan writes, “….the Viceroy sent a weekly report to the Secretary of State and the Secretary responded…through a weekly courier..”

“What I discovered…was far beyond expectations…I found detailed analysis of the internal affairs of India.”

“I had never really believed…my elders who accused the British of using the most underhand tactics to promote their policies...”

“But never could I imagine that their allegations were a pale reflection of the truth, the truth was much uglier.”

“Their mischief exceeded our wildest imaginations. Badshah Khan’s and the (Indian National) Congress’ allegations were far short of the truth. If there was the slightest doubt earlier, it was removed because the documents preserved in the archives bore the official British seal…. signed by no less than the Viceroy and the Secretary of State for India.” Wali Khan cites the Partition of Bengal 1905, the Minto-Morley Reforms 1909 and the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms as the devices used by the British to mire nascent India democracy in communalism. The ‘Reforms’ decreed that Muslim votes could only be cast for Muslims and Hindu votes for Hindus.

“In this manner,” records Wali Khan, “the British laid communalism as the foundation stone of Indian democracy.”

“By proposing a communal rather than a national base for politics, they forced the Hindus and Muslims into a position whereby if they wanted to enter municipal or community politics, their electioneering was limited to wooing their religious brethren, and fighting on religious rather than national issues.”

Wali Khan uses the Khilafat movement records to show how the British used their Indian pawns to counter national moves for unity and freedom.

During the World War I (1914-1918) a prime British objective was to wipe out the Ottoman Empire and replace the Sultan of Turkey with puppets. This pattern had worked in India. Maulana Muhammad Ali and Mahatma Gandhi saw through this game and jointly started the Khilafat movement. The Khilafat Committee asked Hindus and Muslims to return all British titles and to resign from any official position they may hold in the police, the army or the civilian wing of the administration.  

The British responded by having their puppets amongst the Muslims allege that the above demands of the Khilafat Committee were a Hindu ploy to eliminate all chances of Muslim advancement by getting them out of scarce government jobs.

On May 22, 1920 His Exalted Highness, the Nizam of Hyderabad issued a ‘firman,’ which declared that since the Khilafat movement was anti-Muslim it would henceforth be considered illegal!  Another ‘loyal’ Muslim, Sir Muhammad Shafi gave advice that special efforts needed to be made to lure away Muslims and this could be done by the British making peace with Turkey and organising an Anglo-Muhammadan Union to cater to the needs of the British Empire.

<b>By September 21, 1922, the Viceroy Reading could report to the secretary of state, “My telegram will show you how near we have been to a complete break between Muslims and Hindus.” “I have been giving the greatest attention to this possibility, and I have had the greatest assistance from Shafi on my council who is a highly respectable Muhammadan.”</b>

We shall, in future columns, show how “highly respectable” toadies Muslim, Hindu and Sikh behaved during the struggle for freedom.
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I di the highlighting in the other thread.

[Guest]

<b>India Research Foundation cordially invites you to a presentation

Kaushal Vepa

Tiny URL is http://tinyurl.com/dl566</b>

Thefirst part of the 3 part presentation is available here


TheTinyURL is

http://tinyurl.com/d2h4f

[Guest]

There is a new website which will report on future presentations like the South Asia File orother events sponsored by India Research Foundation. Pl. cjeck the website for details of the aims of the foundation.

www.indicethos.org

[Guest]

The updated version og the south asia file can be found here

[Bhootnath]

# SOUTH ASIA ?

As usual you are right Gurudev.

Regards

[Guest]

read it and you will understand the reason for the title (ametaphor for the huge amounts of money the US State department grants to south asian studies)

[ramana]

From Deccan Chronicle, 27 April, 2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The meaning of Indian identity
By Madhuri Santanam Sondhi


Of late there has been a mounting discourse about the meaning and content of Indian identity provoked by the various communal crises afflicting the Republic. Whereas developing industrialisation, communications, urbanisation, and the popularity of cricket and Bollywood films, not to mention televising of regional cultures, have led to a deeper sense of mutual familiarity within this multi-cultural nation, an elegy awaits composing on the “communal problem.”

Despite the brighter atmosphere surrounding people-to-people contacts between Pakistan and India (which is inevitably linked to Hindu-Muslim relations) no one can as yet claim that the past is totally behind us.

Amalendu Misra in his Identity & Religion: Foundations of anti-Islamism in India (Sage Publications) traces the roots of contemporary Hindu-Muslim tensions to some representative personalities of the last century, Vivekananda, Gandhi, Nehru and Savarkar. By locating the toxin as much in the national mainstream as in the more extremist groups of either community, he finds it endemic to the whole national endeavour, both in definition and in management.

Misra avers that an aggrieved Hindu oral tradition plus British anti-Muslim historiography provided the orientation for all four Hindu ideologues (his term) towards both Islam and the past period of Muslim rule. He does not mention any alternative available viewpoint, such as a possible accommodation that might have been bypassed.

He has several breathtaking statements unsupported by citations: for example, where Vivekananda is described as favouring religio-political institutions, the misleading footnote gives references to the religio-political character of past Hindu kingdoms by other historians, and not to Vivekananda’s alleged visualisation of India’s political future — a task with which he is not usually credited.

Again, despite suggesting that a spurious British intellectual legacy combined with aggrieved oral traditions have spawned heavily Hinduised formulations of a future India, and denigration of pre-British periods of Muslim rule, Misra contradicts himself throughout the text by apparently using similar sources for his own criticisms of his subjects’ views.
Space allows for only one example from his assessment of Nehru’s attempts at re-interpreting history against popular Hindu stereotypes of Islam.

He selects five points on which Nehru relied to provide a less damaging picture of the Islamic period. Muslim dynasties became Indian, they looked on India as their home, they intermarried with Hindus, they refrained from interfering in Hindu affairs, and their patronage of art and architecture led to a happy syncretism of Hindu and Muslim styles. In contradistinction, Misra avers, the invading rulers had no territorial bases elsewhere: they came to India in search of fiefdoms and remained Islamic. Despite a few politically motivated inter-marriages, as conquerors they largely took local women as slaves.

They tried to suppress Hindu culture by destroying temples and other monuments, but could not do a complete job as they were contained by the sheer size and expanse of Hindu India. On Indo-Islamic art Misra quotes Richard Lannoy as saying that it bears the impression of “a grim tyrant and foreboding conqueror.”

He does not quote independent sources for these counter-arguments.
Moreover, he bypasses the common view that British rule helped to firm up separate Hindu and Muslim identities (also Sikh, Christian and Jewish) through various aspects of their governance, sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate. His aetiology is thus too narrow.

There was also the census, the first land settlements, the legal system, army recruitment, the Anglophone educational system, improved all-India and later faster communications both within and outside the country. Many factors contributed to an increasing awareness of national-communal solidarities, not only for Hindus but for other communities, at times sowing the seeds of future discord.

Thus the Maharashtrian Shanivari Telis were discovered to be Jews, Sikhs became increasingly differentiated from Hindus, Muslims learnt to see themselves as part of a single Indian community, and Hindus also, in the chequered course of their interactions with their white rulers, became aware of a common religious identity and past.

However, Misra’s overall object is to indicate the need for a new conceptual basis for common citizenship, since past formulations, including Nehruvian secularism, have proven unsuccessful. He criticises Hindu inclusivism, whether in Nehru, Gandhi or Vivekananda, as failing to give Islam equal respect. However, as he himself inadvertently indicates, Abrahamic exclusivism has not shown itself to be more respectful to non-Abrahamic faiths.

Conceptually the problem, as Basanta Kumar Mallik pointed out, is to do with the incompatibility of absolutes of all traditions. Their mutual intolerance may be expressed in different ways, through social habits, political measures or outright violence, but it is logically impossible for two absolutes to be equal. This applies to the absolute of modernity as well, which is gnawing away at the foundations of the religious outlook.

The enlightenment enterprise, of which secularism and democracy are an integral part, itself faces challenges in the region of its birth from those who do not accept its implicit absolutes of universal human rights.

Majoritarian-minoritarian problems are the logical outcome of democratic (rule by the majority) practices in multicultural nations. All Indian political parties use the “communal card” to win elections: indeed, as it has been used up till now, the democratic process can sharpen religious and caste identities.

Ernest Renan is quoted to say “nations are partly built on the knowledge of history and partly on the ignorance of it.” Every nation needs some mythological or quasi-historical symbolism for its raison d’etre. But in a heterogeneous society historical interpretation can become a contentious tool of political competition. Misra would like yet another interpretation, but provides no clear guidelines.

Recommending a “multiculturalist accommodationist approach” to give equal space to all communities again needs to be spelt out. Acknowledging that current historical tradition has roots too deep to be easily countered, he envisages incremental changes through the media, political parties and educational institutions. However, these very institutions have been and are the main purveyors of past traditions.

Today there are three main competing traditions in India — the Hindu, Muslim and the secularist. The last can be threatening to the former two, with its views say, on female emancipation or property rights, sometimes aligning with one or other for political advantage, thereby creating an unstable triangle. While endorsing Misra’s call for inter-faith dialogue, one would have to extend it to include the non-religious, who are also parties to the identity problematic.

Immediately, in the social field, equitableness is a more workable notion than strict equality; ideationally, and this requires a certain scepticism as no ideology or tradition can claim completeness, mutual respect has to rest on a recognition of plural absolutes, which logically implies several non-absolutes, or the relinquishment of total claims to truth. Not only Hindus, but to be effective, all groups need to address the issue together.

Misra could have taken a more comparative approach to communal tensions within India at different periods of its history or with communal tensions in other countries, as for example Ireland and India, for he has taught at Belfast. Moreover, with globalisation, the problematic of community identities is developing dimensions which are a challenge to the entire international community.

The writer can be contacted at mssondhi@hotmail.com
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[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Amalendu Misra in his Identity & Religion: Foundations of anti-Islamism in India (Sage Publications) traces the roots of contemporary Hindu-Muslim tensions to some representative personalities of the last century, Vivekananda, Gandhi, Nehru and Savarkar. By locating the toxin as much in the national mainstream as in the more extremist groups of either community, he finds it endemic to the whole national endeavour, both in definition and in management.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

The foundation of anti islamism(where is the statistical evidence for such an ideology) in India has very little to do with anything intrinsic in the core beliefs of the Sanatana Dharma or even the most right wing Indic and everything to do with the predatory aspects of the idealogy fleshed out and propounded in the caves and deserts of the Arabian peninsula where exclusivity and anti-kafir sentiment is the law of the land even today. If Islam were to reform itself and accept the premise that other faiths have a place in the cosmos(and not just in Darul harb) the nub of the problem would have disappeared in large part.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Conceptually the problem, as Basanta Kumar Mallik pointed out, is to do with the incompatibility of absolutes of all traditions. Their mutual intolerance may be expressed in different ways, through social habits, political measures or outright violence, but it is logically impossible for two absolutes to be equal. This applies to the absolute of modernity as well, which is gnawing away at the foundations of the religious outlook<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I beg to differ. Sanaatana Dharma has always embraced diversity,not merely tolerated it, so the problem is not of mutual intolerance but the absolute exclusivity of the Abrahamic paradigm carried out to extreme and absurd unsustainable lengths in the instance of Islam.

I do not detect any intolerance towards the average Akhtar in india,but there has always been revulsion towards the propensity for violence, ethnic cleansing and destruction lurking just slightly below the surface in the Islamic psyche and constantly reinforced in their Friday sermons- no secrets here these are loudly broadcast for all to hear. The distinction is too stark to overlook.Muslims are thriving in India both in numbers and prosperity(relative to the Hindu).Can one say anything remotely comparable about Hindus in Pakiland,the indian state of J&K, and B'Desh ?

[Guest]

interesting statistics on visitors to indicstudies.us

<img src='http://indicstudies.us/webstatistics/countries[1].gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

[Guest]

interesting statistics on vsitors t o indicstudies.us over a 1weekperiod

<img src='http://indicstudies.us/webstatistics/countries[1].gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bhootnath+Mar 7 2006, 11:44 PM-->QUOTE(Bhootnath @ Mar 7 2006, 11:44 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--># SOUTH ASIA ?

As usual you are right Gurudev.

Regards
[right][snapback]48060[/snapback][/right]
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<!--emo&<_<--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dry.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='dry.gif' /><!--endemo--> Gandhi, Nehru, Sachin in Time's heroes' list
[ 9 Nov, 2006 1848hrs ISTIANS ]


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NEW DELHI: Architects of modern India Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, steel baron Lakshmi Mittal and IT czar Narayana Murthy have been named among Time magazine's 'Asian heroes' in its forthcoming 60th anniversary issue.

"For six decades, Time has chronicled the triumphs and travails of Asia. In this special anniversary issue, we pay tribute to the remarkable men and women who have shaped these Times," the magazine says. The anniversary edition will be available Nov 13.

Terming Gandhi and Nehru as opposite in nature, the magazine says "they shared a passion for freedom and justice, and together created a giant of democracy".

"Gandhi's unique method of resistance through civil disobedience, allied to a talent for organisation, gave the Indian nationalist movement both a saint and a strategist.

"The principal pillars of Nehru's legacy-democratic institution-building, staunch pan-Indian secularism, socialist economics at home and a foreign policy of nonalignment-were all integral to a vision of Indianness that sustained the nation for decades," the magazine says.

Other prominent figures in the list include - Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen, Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her father Aung San, Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, China's Deng Xiaoping, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, Sufi singing legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, martial arts exponent Bruce Lee, mountaineers Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, Mother Teresa, this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and writer Salman Rushdie.

Tendulkar has been described as the "greatest living exponent of his craft".

"When he's in form, which is often, Tendulkar can rout the world's best bowlers with ease."

About Mittal, chief executive officer of Arcelor Mittal, the magazine writes: "His boldness and spectacular wealth reflect India's growing financial might."

Time pays its tribute to Sen saying he is a "philosopher and economist who preaches tolerance to a divided world".

On Narayana Murthy, it writes: "From a Bombay bedsit, he launched an economic revolution. His wildly successful company - Infosys - had laid the groundwork for the business process-outsourcing- that defines globalisation in action."