04-14-2007, 06:56 PM
The 'you farted...' method needs a lot more practice before it can be used on seasoned rhetoricians. The ideal method is to make a point as a dispassionate third party while making any kind of wild accusations but not addressing them to the person you are accusing.
When sajan (sorry for the OT for IF folks, pl. bear with me) started his jihad against hindus and upper castes, I challenged him asking him why he hates Hindus and upper castes. In retrospect it was a wrong tactic. The right thing would have been to mention sajan's hatred en passant while addressing my reply to Shiv or anybody else. This would have put the onus on sajan to either challenge my assertion or to let it stand.
Another thing that has been bothering me is this - somebody posted a link depicting the images of Hindu deities on underwear. Should it bother me? Hindu philosophy says that God is omnipresent. So he is there in the underwear too. Then philosophically it should not be an insult but actually we should use our philosophy to claim that now the wearer of those undies has actually become a Hindu or something equally egregious.
It is quite possible that the underwear was made with an explicit or implicit motive of insulting Hindus or Hindu Dharma. Thankfully the power of our philosophy is such that we can turn that into triumph. At the same time, because of our 'secular' nature we cannot return the favor.
BTW Shaurya, sengot(t)uvel seems to be not very uncommon South Indian name.
When sajan (sorry for the OT for IF folks, pl. bear with me) started his jihad against hindus and upper castes, I challenged him asking him why he hates Hindus and upper castes. In retrospect it was a wrong tactic. The right thing would have been to mention sajan's hatred en passant while addressing my reply to Shiv or anybody else. This would have put the onus on sajan to either challenge my assertion or to let it stand.
Another thing that has been bothering me is this - somebody posted a link depicting the images of Hindu deities on underwear. Should it bother me? Hindu philosophy says that God is omnipresent. So he is there in the underwear too. Then philosophically it should not be an insult but actually we should use our philosophy to claim that now the wearer of those undies has actually become a Hindu or something equally egregious.
It is quite possible that the underwear was made with an explicit or implicit motive of insulting Hindus or Hindu Dharma. Thankfully the power of our philosophy is such that we can turn that into triumph. At the same time, because of our 'secular' nature we cannot return the favor.
BTW Shaurya, sengot(t)uvel seems to be not very uncommon South Indian name.