"Vishnu Strategy": Bigotry on JESUS scale

[Guest]

The issue hottens up a bit (both on FPIF & ASIA Times) FPIF also published my letter. Below are Author's responses (published on both sites) & my counters (unpublished so far):


Today's Asia Times Online:
saga coutinues....
[The author comes back charging...and is already falling back to the last avenue of defence....accuse the mag of "<i><b>censorship</b></i>", & the other party of "<b><i>fundamentalism</i></b>" !]

<b>Conn Hallinan responds to readers</b>
I was frankly distressed to learn that Asia Times Online has removed my commentary, The Vishnu strategy meets its match (Feb 7) from its website because you received a number of letters suggesting that I was insulting the Hindu religion.

I assure you that was not my intention. The title of the commentary came from a remark made by Robert Oppenheimer following the detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site in New Mexico. His exact quote (from Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, page 676) was: "I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him he takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or the other."

In researching the quote I found that Oppenheimer had edited it slightly. The most accepted translation is "The Supreme Lord said: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy" (chapter 11, verse 32). I also found that the speaker is actually Shiva who takes on the form of Vishnu (the reference to Shiva was dropped in the editing process). The concept of "destroyer" is a powerful one, and one that many religions use.

One letter writer said that I should have used the Christian Armageddon (I assumed the writer thought I was a Christian; I am not), but Armageddon is not about destruction per se, it is about the great battle that is supposed to be fought in present-day Israel between the forces of Zog and the followers of Jesus. It would supposedly bring on the Second Coming.

The suggestion by the letter writer is, I suppose, as casual as my use of the phrase from Oppenheimer. The letter writer is wrong in his use of Armageddon, but I certainly take no offense, and I doubt most Christians would. What I was doing in the commentary was using the words in the context that Oppenheimer used them: What have we done? What have we unleashed upon the world? That is the context that he used it in (he also compared what his team had done to Prometheus).

The US, Israel, Britain and some other nations have increasingly resorted to being "mighty destroyers". I also referred to the ability of those nations to unleash mayhem of "biblical proportions." I hope that phrase does not offend Christians, but it is a phrase based on the kinds of destruction the Christian Lord rains down on any number of occasions. I am disturbed that Asia Times Online withdrew my commentary based on the fact that people didn't like it. Isn't the idea of commentaries to provoke discussion? Shouldn't Asia Times Online have printed the letters and let people debate the question?

Granted, the focus of my commentary had nothing to do with religion, but still and all, debate is debate. Maybe there are others out there who happen to have a somewhat different view than most the letter writers. How will we know this? If we censor ideas because we fear they may offend someone, why have different ideas? There are certainly Christians who would take offense at one letter writer's casual suggestion of substituting Armageddon, and maybe me using the Bible to describe what the US does in Iraq and Israel in Lebanon.

Do we not run such a letter or a commentary because those people might be offended? What article will be withdrawn next? Last, the tone of the letters directed at the commentary and myself is revealing. There is whiff of fundamentalism in them that chills me. Debate, disagreement, even correction are what we should be seeking, not attack and denunciation. The last thing this world needs is more sectarianism. It leads to the very kind of policies I was attempting to challenge.

Conn M Hallinan
Foreign Policy In Focus (Feb 9, '07)



Finally.....
FPIF (original publisher) published my letter too. And sure enough, Prof Hallinan published his rejoinder, the same as the one in ATimes, as posted in previous comment.

I've sent in my rejoinder, & here it is: [my highlights only in this comment]
{Hope it gets published too.....}

--------Start my Rejoinder----------
Many thanks for publishing my previous letter. I see the author's rejoinder here, and his insinuation of fundamentalism compels me to respond.

I hope editors will note that I'm attempting a measured reaction to the introduction of religion by the author himself.

I'd be happy if he plays by the rules of good scholarship & debates the merits of his analogy, instead of painting his readers with derisive labels. His article is fine without this analogy, faulty as it is, & certainly deserves attention.

Prof. Hallinan's distress almost has my sympathy, except of course, that he is ignoring the Power Differential between the Accredited Scholar with access to multiple avenues of publication (FPIF, CounterPunch,San Francisco Chronicle, etc) and readers whose distress is limited to letters to FPIF/ATOL editors.

As a responsible scholar, his defense of "not intentional" is disingenuous, to say the least. He seems to believe he is the underdog here, whereas the underdog is the not so well understood hindu thought that is suffering under his heavy handed approach.

Is he deliberately failing to understand that the reasons for readers' distress are not with the points he is making, but with the casual way he has coined a new phrase in the foreign policy lexicon, that of the "Vishnu Strategy".

Being a PHd in anthropology (his credentials from the UCSC website where he is a provost) he should know the power of the words that Western Scholars use, especially regarding words from a different culture. When they set the context, they force a redefinition of these words. One knows what to think, when one hears "Machiavellian Strategy", "Nazi strategy", "Solomon strategy" "Vietnam strategy" etc, since the context is quite well known to the reader.

By connecting "insane and monstrous" with his own fabrication of a "vishnu strategy" he has provided a radical new context, one completely at odds with the way Sri Vishnu, or the Gita is understood by a billion people. Soon the chatterati will be abuzz with "vishnu strategy" in the meaning that he has singlehandedly provided.

I fail to understand why the ideas of Gita, Krishna, & Vishnu sacred to millions of hindus, should suffer as a "collateral damage" by being dragged into what essentially a US foreign policy debate.

How difficult is it, especially to a PHd scholar, to do some basic checking before latching onto an analogy just because "Oppenheimer said it" so it makes good press? Any scholar on Gita would know that a governing interpretation of those Gita lines would be "Time am I, destroyer of worlds".

[See Philosophy Professor's REFERENCE at end of this letter]

Is it that difficult to grasp the concept of Time as Destroyer? It has been part of Hindu thought for millennia. One can see his nuanced understanding of judeo christian concepts in his comments here. why not the same treatment to hindu thought, if he chooses to use it?

And the question of his "not taking offence" at the Armageddon analogy doesn't arise. I didn't use it to write a major article, I just pointed out that it was less far fetched than his "vishnu strategy" analogy.

The point went home, apparently, with accusations of "fundamentalism" emanating from him. Accusing someone of ignorance & faulty scholarship is a far cry from "fundamentalism". Hindus are not even a party to any of the conflicts her describes! Bottom line- he made a religious issue out of a foreign policy issue, and needs to explain clearly.

The less said about his line "the speaker is actually Shiva who takes on the form of Vishnu" the better. Unfortunately, by adding another ridiculous statement to the mix, he is exhibiting even more glaringly his lack of grasp of basic hindu thought.

Shiva as Rudra (the regeneration/destruction aspect in general) is quite absent in the Gita, and Shiva & Vishnu do not take each others forms.

Finally, I agree, the analysis merits discussion on its own merit, and one wishes the author would rephrase it without the irrelevant "vishnu strategy" bit.

REFERENCES:

With regards to the Gita passage he purports to quote, here's some details:

1. His take:

<b><i>“The Supreme Lord said: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy.”</i></b> According to the great Hindu text Bhagavad-Gita, Vishnu delivered that speech to Prince Arjuna before a great battle almost eight millennia ago. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer paraphrased it in 1945 to describe the explosion of the atomic bomb. <i><b>The latest channeling of the Hindu god</b></i> can be found in an Israeli commander's evaluation of last summer's war with Lebanon: “<i><b>What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs</b></i>.”


2. The actual shloka (verses) from where he picks it up, and (a) mistranslates, (b) violates the context.

The above said quote is from the eleventh chapter of Bhagavad Gita (verse 32). And Conn Halliman has not taken the entire quote but mutilated it to suit his article.

<i>I am death,
The mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy.
Even without your participation all the warriors
Standing arrayed in the opposing armies
Shall cease to exist. </i>
<i><b>
Kalo’smi lokaksayakrt-pravrddho
Lokan smahartum-iha pravrttah|
rte’pi twam na bhavisyanti sarve
ye’vasthitah pratyanikesu yodhah||
</b></i>

The term used for death in the verse is ‘Kal’ which also means ‘Time’ so the verse also means

Time am I, that comes to destroy worlds, grown mature, engaged here in subduing the world.
Even without thee, all the warriors stationed in the opposite ranks shall not be.

(Translated by Shakuntala Rao Shastri)

Krishna is here removing the ignorance of Arjuna by pointing out that ‘Time’ or ‘death’ will anyway consume all those that you are worrying for. When Krishna says ‘Time am I’ he is saying that he is Brahman or the ultimate truth.

From blog-
Wrongly quoting Bhagavad Gita to explain the mass destruction caused by US and its allies


FOR CONTEXT:
[Below from correspondence with Dr Antonio De Nicolas, Philosophy Professor Emeritus, SUNY ]

In my translation of the Gita, The Bhagavad Gita: The Ethics of Decision-Making here is what Chapter 11, v. 32 says:

<i>Time am I, the world-destroyer, grown mature,
engaged here in fetching back the worlds.
Even without you, all the warriors standing over against you
will cease to be.</i>

And in 33,

<i>Therefore stand up, gain glory.
Having conquered enemies,
Enjoy a prosperous kingdom.
By me they are already slain;
Be you merely the occasion, O Savyasaacin (Arjuna)</i>

--------End my Rejoinder----------

~x~

Thanks to Dr Nicolas' timely reference (Dr Nicolas is a renowned Gita Scholar, writing for Sulekha, members like me are proud to have him there.)