02-07-2009, 08:45 PM
http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/07/stories/...441000.htm
This sort of cultural policing has fascist overtones and translates into vandalism and violence against women and minorities. It is also typical of both Hindutva and Islamist fundamentalism. The sangh parivar has long peddled the stereotype of the backward-looking and antediluvian Islamist fundamentalist exercising a stranglehold over an entire community. Yet it has no compunctions in allowing its offshoots, the Bajrang Dal and now the Sri Ram Sene, to implement a version of Hindu culture that is the spitting image of Islamist fundamentalism. What is there to distinguish these Hindutva outfits from the fundamentalist Dukhtaran-e-Millat in Kashmir, which has frequently threatened to disrupt such events as Valentineâs Day and has been issuing Taliban-style edicts to coerce Muslim women into wearing burqas?
This sort of cultural policing has fascist overtones and translates into vandalism and violence against women and minorities. It is also typical of both Hindutva and Islamist fundamentalism. The sangh parivar has long peddled the stereotype of the backward-looking and antediluvian Islamist fundamentalist exercising a stranglehold over an entire community. Yet it has no compunctions in allowing its offshoots, the Bajrang Dal and now the Sri Ram Sene, to implement a version of Hindu culture that is the spitting image of Islamist fundamentalism. What is there to distinguish these Hindutva outfits from the fundamentalist Dukhtaran-e-Millat in Kashmir, which has frequently threatened to disrupt such events as Valentineâs Day and has been issuing Taliban-style edicts to coerce Muslim women into wearing burqas?