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Books  / Cover Stories Magazine | Feb 04, 2008
Gujarat 2002: Can goofy secularism combat organised hatred?
genocide
Listening To Grasshoppers
Genocide, Denial And Celebration
It's an old human habit, genocide is. It's a search for lebensraum, project of Union and Progress.
I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, "We are all Armenians", "We are all Hrant Dink". Perhaps I'd have carried the one that said, "One and a half million plus one".*
[*One-and-a-half million is the number of Armenians who were systematically murdered by the Ottoman Empire in the genocide in Anatolia in the spring of 1915. The Armenians, the largest Christian minority living under Islamic Turkic rule in the area, had lived in Anatolia for more than 2,500 years.]

***
In a way, my battle is like yours.
But while in Turkey there's silence,
in India, there is celebration.
***

I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin. Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.

"When we left...(we were) 25 in the family," Araxie Barsamian says. "They took all the men folks. They asked my father, 'Where is your ammunition?' He says, 'I sold it.' So they says, 'Go get it.' So he went to the Kurd town to get it, they beat him and took all his clothes. When he came back there—this my mother tells me story—when he came back there, naked body, he went in the jail, they cut his arms...so he die in jail.

And they took all the mens in the field, they tied their hands, and they shooted, killed every one of them."

Araxie and the other women in her family were deported. All of them perished except Araxie. She was the lone survivor.

This is, of course, a single testimony that comes from a history that is denied by the Turkish government, and many Turks as well.

I am not here to play the global intellectual, to lecture you, or to fill the silence in this country that surrounds the memory (or the forgetting) of the events that took place in Anatolia in 1915. That is what Hrant Dink tried to do, and paid for with his life.

***
Most genocidal killing from the 15th century onwards
has been part of Europe's search for lebensraum.
***

The day I arrived in Istanbul, I walked the streets for many hours, and as I looked around, envying the people of Istanbul their beautiful, mysterious, thrilling city, a friend pointed out to me young boys in white caps who seemed to have suddenly appeared like a rash in the city. He explained that they were expressing their solidarity with the child-assassin who was wearing a white cap when he killed Hrant.

The battle with the cap-wearers of Istanbul, of Turkey, is not my battle, it's yours.
 
 
When genocide politics meets free markets, genocide denial becomes a multinational business.
 
 
I have my own battles to fight against other kinds of cap-wearers and torchbearers in my country. In a way, the battles are not all that different. There is one crucial difference, though. While in Turkey there is silence, in India there's celebration, and I really don't know which is worse.

In the state of Gujarat, there was a genocide against the Muslim community in 2002. I use the word Genocide advisedly, and in keeping with its definition contained in Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The genocide began as collective punishment for an unsolved crime—the burning of a railway coach in which 53 Hindu pilgrims were burned to death. In a carefully planned orgy of supposed retaliation, 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered in broad daylight by squads of armed killers, organised by fascist militias, and backed by the Gujarat government and the administration of the day. Muslim women were gang-raped and burned alive. Muslim shops, Muslim businesses and Muslim shrines and mosques were systematically destroyed. Some 1,50,000 people were driven from their homes.

Even today, many of them live in ghettos—some built on garbage heaps—with no water supply, no drainage, no streetlights, no healthcare. They live as second-class citizens, boycotted socially and economically. Meanwhile, the killers, police as well as civilian, have been embraced, rewarded, promoted. This state of affairs is now considered 'normal'.
 
 
Is a country poised on the threshold of 'progress' also poised on the threshold of 'genocide'?
 
 
To seal the 'normality', in 2004, both Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, India's leading industrialists, publicly pronounced Gujarat a dream destination for finance capital.

The initial outcry in the national press has settled down. In Gujarat, the genocide has been brazenly celebrated as the epitome of Gujarati pride, Hindu-ness, even Indian-ness. This poisonous brew has been used twice in a row to win state elections, with campaigns that have cleverly used the language and apparatus of modernity and democracy. The helmsman, Narendra Modi, has become a folk hero, called in by the BJP to campaign on its behalf in other Indian states.

As genocides go, the Gujarat genocide cannot compare with the people killed in the Congo, Rwanda and Bosnia, where the numbers run into millions, nor is it by any means the first that has occurred in India. (In 1984, for instance, 3,000 Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi with similar impunity, by killers overseen by the Congress Party.) But the Gujarat genocide is part of a larger, more elaborate and systematic vision. It tells us that the wheat is ripening and the grasshoppers have landed in mainland India.

It's an old human habit, genocide is. It has played a sterling part in the march of civilisation. Amongst the earliest recorded genocides is thought to be the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War in 149 BC. The word itself—genocide—was coined by Raphael Lemkin only in 1943, and adopted by the United Nations in 1948, after the Nazi Holocaust. Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as:

"Any of the following Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [or] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."


Since this definition leaves out the persecution of political dissidents, real or imagined, it does not include some of the greatest mass murders in history. Personally I think the definition by Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, authors of The History and Sociology of Genocide, is more apt. Genocide, they say, "is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator." Defined like this, genocide would include, for example, the monumental crimes committed by Suharto in Indonesia (1 million) Pol Pot in Cambodia (1.5 million), Stalin in the Soviet Union (60 million), Mao in China (70 million).

All things considered, the word extermination, with its crude evocation of pests and vermin, of infestations, is perhaps the more honest, more apposite word. When a set of perpetrators faces its victims, in order to go about its business of wanton killing, it must first sever any human connection with it. It must see its victims as sub-human, as parasites whose eradication would be a service to society. Here, for example, is an account of the massacre of Pequot Indians by English Puritans led by John Mason in Connecticut in 1636:

Those that escaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyre, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente thereof, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice....


And here, approximately four centuries later, is Babu Bajrangi, one of the major lynchpins of the Gujarat genocide, recorded on camera in the sting operation mounted by Tehelka a few months ago:

We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire...hacked, burned, set on fire...we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it.... I have just one last wish...let me be sentenced to death...I don't care if I'm hanged...just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs of these people stay...I will finish them off...let a few more of them die...at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die.


I hardly need to say that Babu Bajrangi had the blessings of Narendra Modi, the protection of the police, and the love of his people.
 
 
A counterfeit universe tells us that the rich have no choice, the poor do. If they don't, it's their fault.
 
 
He continues to work and prosper as a free man in Gujarat. The one crime he cannot be accused of is Genocide Denial.

Genocide Denial is a radical variation on the theme of the old, frankly racist, bloodthirsty triumphalism. It was probably evolved as an answer to the somewhat patchy dual morality that arose in the 19th century, when Europe was developing limited but new forms of democracy and citizens' rights at home while simultaneously exterminating people in their millions in her colonies. Suddenly countries and governments began to deny or attempt to hide the genocides they had committed. "Denial is saying, in effect," says Professor Robert Jay Lifton, author of Hiroshima and America: Fifty Years of Denial, "that the murderers did not murder. The victims weren't killed. The direct consequence of denial is that it invites future genocide."

Delhi, 1984: Congress contribution to India's genocide history

Of course today, when genocide politics meets the Free Market, official recognition—or denial—of holocausts and genocides is a multinational business enterprise.

 
 
When citizens of the sky look down, they see superfluous people sitting on precious resources.
 
 
It rarely has anything to do to with historical fact or forensic evidence. Morality certainly does not enter the picture. It is an aggressive process of high-end bargaining, that belongs more to the World Trade Organisation than to the United Nations. The currency is geopolitics, the fluctuating market for natural resources, that curious thing called futures trading and plain old economic and military might.

In other words, genocides are often denied for the same set of reasons as genocides are prosecuted. Economic determinism marinated in racial/ethnic/religious/national discrimination. Crudely, the lowering or raising of the price of a barrel of oil (or a tonne of uranium), permission granted for a military base, or the opening up of a country's economy could be the decisive factor when governments adjudicate on whether a genocide did or did not occur. Or indeed whether genocide will or will not occur. And if it does, whether it will or will not be reported, and if it is, then what slant that reportage will take. For example, the death of two million in the Congo goes virtually unreported. Why? And was the death of a million Iraqis under the sanctions regime, prior to the US invasion, genocide (which is what Denis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, called it) or was it 'worth it', as Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the UN, claimed? It depends on who makes the rules.
 
 
They've done Shahrukh no personal harm; Ram Guha says the genocide is an aberration, not fascism.
 
 
Bill Clinton? Or an Iraqi mother who has lost her child?

Since the United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world, it has assumed the privilege of being the World's Number One Genocide Denier. It continues to celebrate Columbus Day, the day Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, which marks the beginning of a Holocaust that wiped out millions of native Indians, about 90 per cent of the original population. (Lord Amherst, the man whose idea it was to distribute blankets infected with smallpox virus to Indians, has a university town in Massachusetts, and a prestigious liberal arts college named after him).

In America's second Holocaust, almost 30 million Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery. Well near half of them died during transportation. But in 2002, the US delegation could still walk out of the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, refusing to acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade were crimes. Slavery, they insisted, was legal at the time. The US has also refused to accept that the bombing of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg—which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians—were crimes, let alone acts of genocide. (The argument here is that the government didn't intend to kill civilians. This was the first stage in the development of the concept of "collateral damage".) Since the end of World War II, the US government has intervened overtly, militarily, more than 400 times in 100 countries, and covertly more than 6,000 times. This includes its invasion of Vietnam and the extermination, with excellent intentions of course, of three million Vietnamese (approximately 10 per cent of its population).

None of these has been acknowledged as war crimes or genocidal acts. "The question is," says Robert MacNamara—whose career graph took him from the bombing of Tokyo in 1945 (1,00,000 dead overnight) to being the architect of the Vietnam War, to President of the World Bank—now sitting in his comfortable chair in his comfortable home in his comfortable country, "the question is, how much evil do you have to do in order to do good?"

Could there be a more perfect illustration of Robert Jay Lifton's point that the denial of genocide invites more genocide?

And what when victims become perpetrators? (In Rwanda, in the Congo?) What remains to be said about Israel, created out of the debris of one of the cruellest genocides in human history? What of its actions in the Occupied Territories? Its burgeoning settlements, its colonisation of water, its new 'Security Wall' that separates Palestinian people from their farms, from their work, from their relatives, from their children's schools, from hospitals and healthcare? It is genocide in a fishbowl, genocide in slow motion—meant especially to illustrate that section of Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which says that genocide is any act that is designed to "deliberately inflict on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part".

The history of genocide tells us that it's not an aberration, an anomaly, a glitch in the human system. It's a habit as old, as persistent, as much part of the human condition, as love and art and agriculture.

Most of the genocidal killing from the 15th century onwards has been an integral part of Europe's search for what the Germans famously called Lebensraum—living space. Lebensraum was a word coined by the German geographer and zoologist Freidrich Ratzel to describe what he thought of as the dominant human species' natural impulse to expand its territory in its search for not just space, but sustenance. This impulse to expansion would naturally be at the cost of a less dominant species, a weaker species that Nazi ideologues believed should give way, or be made to give way, to the stronger one.

The idea of lebensraum was set out in precise terms in 1901, but Europe had already begun her quest for lebensraum 400 years earlier, when Columbus landed in America. The search for lebensraum also took Europeans to Africa: unleashing holocaust after holocaust. The Germans exterminated almost the entire population of the Hereros in Southwest Africa; while in the Congo, the Belgians' "experiment in commercial expansion" cost 10 million lives. By the last quarter of the 19th century, the British had exterminated the aboriginal people of Tasmania, and of most of Australia.

Sven Lindqvist, author of Exterminate the Brutes, argues that it was Hitler's quest for lebensraum—in a world that had already been carved up by other European countries—that led the Nazis to push through Eastern Europe and on toward Russia. The Jews of Eastern Europe and western Russia stood in the way of Hitler's colonial ambitions. Therefore, like the native people of Africa and America and Asia, they had to be enslaved or liquidated. So, Lindqvist says, the Nazis' racist dehumanisation of Jews cannot be dismissed as a paroxysm of insane evil. Once again, it is a product of the familiar mix: economic determinism well marinated in age-old racism, very much in keeping with European tradition of the time.

It's not a coincidence that the political party that carried out the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, was called the Committee for Union & Progress.
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Daily MailPublished
COLLAPSE COMMENTS :
HAVE YOUR SAY
Mar 10, 2008 12:00 AM
291
This is my reaction to her essay. I think it just says it all.

http://theviewspaper.net/society/2008/02/1868/
Shravya Jain
New Delhi, India
Mar 02, 2008 12:00 AM
290
An excellent book "A Problem from Hell" by Samantha Power is a must read for any understanding on the topic of genocide.

USA was one of the last counries to ratify the Genocide Convention. In USA, it was the tireless efforts of Senator Proxmire which made all the difference. I quote from the book:

"The genocide convention, by contrast, dealt with people. Because it did not promote profit or pleasure for the Americans, it did not garner active support. ...Undettered by failure, Proxmire would continue his campaign. Indeed, nineteen years and 3211 speeches after casually pledging to speak daily, Proxmire would still be rising in an empty Sentate chamber, dressed in his trademark tweed blazers and his ivy leaure ties, insisting that ratification would advance America's interests and its most cherished values."
V.N.Venugopal
New Delhi, India
Feb 18, 2008 12:00 AM
289
The truth is indeed very painful.All the critisim from the sky citizens is normal.The sky citizens do not have the courage to accept that their way of life is in a large way responsible for the less priveledge to strike out against them. I appreciate the clarity and simplicity of Roys writing and courage of outlook to publish her essays eventhough majority of the readers are the sky citizens. The truth needs to be said irrespective of the consequnce.
Haider Khorakiwala
Mysore, India
Feb 10, 2008 12:00 AM
288
Arundhati Roy resembled a lot like truth when she said that Ramachandra Guha said that "the Gujarat Government is not really fascist, and the genocide was just an aberration that has corrected itself after the elections." To refresh my memory, I went back to his book 'India after Gandhi — The History of the World’s Largest Democracy', only to read, “to call BJP ‘fascist’ is to diminish the severity and seriousness of the murderous crimes committed by the original fascists in Italy and Germany...to see the party (BJP) as fascist would be both to overestimate its powers and to underestimate the democratic traditions of the Indian people.”
In 2002, Guha in an interview to The Guardian (16 December 2002) did express his unhappiness over BJP's victory in the elections following the pogrom. But who did he blame? Certainly not Narendra Modi. The victory was written in the stars. It was destiny. Guha said, "What has happened in Gujarat is original in the sophistication and completeness of its articulation. The creation of Pakistan at Partition is an open invitation to Hindu fundamentalists. As long as there is Pakistan there will be Hindu fundamentalism." Tut, tut, such determinism from a liberal historian!
When the US denied Modi the visa Guha reminded them that 'their best friend in the world is the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who has the blood of many more Muslims on his hands than does Narendra Modi.' (The Telegraph Kolkatta April 5, 2005).
In all, I feel that Guha is a bit awestuck about fascism, like, say, Vir Sanghavi (whom he admonished for calling Modi, 'our mass murderer') about gourmet cooking. He seems to be running a Michelin Red Guide on genocide. Three forks to Ariel Sharon, may be, three to Mussolini, and a four to Hitler. Why pick on our native talent, Narendra Modi, who had notched up only one fork (Michelin explanation: quite comfortable).
Also Guha seemed to have missed the point that Roy made about 'corporate-funded New India Foundation'. What she meant was why me no worry with my occasional leftist harangues and why do you have to massage corporate egos on a daily basis to peddle your 'constitutional democracy'.
.
k r teddy
delhi, India
Feb 10, 2008 12:00 AM
287
Why is Outlook inflicting this upon its readers? Is this permissible under the garb of free speech? What has this woman done for this country? This was a 12 page rant of a person who has lost it, mad people have been known to behave thus - a visit to Vimhans in Delhi will confirm this.

How debased and abhorrent can a woman be when she spends her life walking into cool rooms full of immature teenagers and then concludes that the great, global Indian success story in the world of business is nothing more than the white woman wanting to get laid. When was the last time this lady got laid. Has she betrayed her deepest psychological insecurity? Noone to lay her?

Hey don't inflict this on your readers...It is ugly, misuse of the power of media.
gajendra
New Delhi, India
Feb 09, 2008 12:00 AM
286
How delicious to see such fight between two word-warriors who do not hesitate throwing punches and more at all and sundry. Thank you!!!
Gopi Maliwal
Hong Kong, China
Feb 07, 2008 12:00 AM
285
I watched a show on TV this past weekend about Malcolm X


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/malcolmx/index.html


Its strange how when you see someone talk on video the impression is totally different than when you get someone else reporting.

I had this view of Malcolm X as a fringe person whose energies were tragically misdirected and went into the wrong direction. And I thought he wasn't very smart for picking a bad strategy. But then you listen to him talk and you realize that's not at all the story. That everything bad has been fed. Including this binary opposition between non-violent resistance good versus violence bad.

It makes me think that all this lionization and honouring of MLK by larger society is actually the easy way out: It is easier to declare a national holiday than to change things like this, for example:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22493315/


Also, watching that show you realize, my god, he and his wife are so noble and so beautiful and have so much inner dignity - which never gets mentioned, ever

"to keep Negroes defenseless in the face of an attack," wow, here's the link:


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh.../sfeature/sf_video.html
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 07, 2008 12:00 AM
284
today i heard on the radio (democracynow.org) that the death toll in iraq is 1 million and the # of refugees is 2 million. one million is a lot. it would be so great if the people who engineered this were hauled up in the world court for crimes against humanity. bush, blair, rumsfeld, cheney.
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 06, 2008 12:00 AM
283
Prabhat says, ".... where the culprits (though not all of them) are now trying to save their faces and where public does not sympathize with such culprits (like the cap-wearers of Istanbul)."

You would not know that from the majority of the posts in this forum.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 06, 2008 12:00 AM
282
I wanted to quote and comment upon many portions of this article but space and time would not allow me. Here are couple of them:

1. "The battle with the cap-wearers of Istanbul, of Turkey, is not my battle, it's yours. I have my own battles to fight against other kinds of cap-wearers and torchbearers in my country. In a way, the battles are not all that different. There is one crucial difference, though. While in Turkey there is silence, in India there's celebration, and I really don't know which is worse."

I don’t know what to say when you say that this is not your battle. A true believer in human rights would consider any slightest act against human dignity his or her own battle, no matter the time, place or community. On top of that most of the writers do not do a single act to help the victims of Gujrat or else (at least I don’t hear about many) but find themselves qualified enough to sully others who may or may not be as guilty as portrayed.

I also don't agree that in India there is "only” celebration. I do not know about Turkey; there may be a silence but India is simultaneously mourning and retaliating too. Also I believe that the celebrations wouldn't last long. The same was evident in the quick rise and demise of "Hindutva" powers in late 90s and later on.

I do share your dilemma as I also cannot makeup my mind if the trend in Turkey is better or the one in India. However I do feel safer in India where I can at least speak my mind out, where the children are kept out of such dangerous games, where the culprits (though not all of them) are now trying to save their faces and where public does not sympathize with such culprits (like the cap-wearers of Istanbul).

2. "Even today, many of them (victims) live in ghettos—some built on garbage heaps—with no water supply, no drainage, no streetlights, no healthcare. They live as second-class citizens, boycotted socially and economically. Meanwhile, the killers, police as well as civilian, have been embraced, rewarded, promoted."

I do agree that not all victims have been rehabilitated and not all culprits have been brought to justice. However you speak as if all victims are still living in the "ghettos—built on garbage heaps" and all culprits are roaming free. You do not even mention the result of Bilkis Bano case and the support she received and is receiving from "Hindu" rights activists (Teesta Setalwad) as if it never happened. You don’t even bother to point that some (may not be many) Hindus also saved Muslim lives. You use phrases like "2000 Muslims, Muslim women, Muslim shops, Muslim businesses and Muslim shrines" so freely but do not even give a thought that people from other communities, including Hindus also suffered during these riots.

I do not know your motive behind such one sided or intense narrative of events. And it’s not only you; I find it so typical in most such speeches/articles. Is it simply because it provides more intensity or conviction to your speech or article? But you must keep in mind that any word that you utter makes or breaks India's image. Your every word affects the way people think about these incidents because they never get the truth; all they get are news reports and speeches like yours. If "communal" forces are encouraging the hatred among people, you are not doing any better, though more subtly.

I fully agree that the events in India seem to be the alarm bell of much larger problems. But we will not reach any solution with biased judgments. I saw your interview with Karan Thapar on Devil's Advocate and how emotional you looked about Taslima. I think that is a big part of the problem. In the flow of emotions, we fail to see the whole story and only see what we believe in. And in doing that we tilt the balance of justice towards one side. But then that is not justice, is it?

Thanks.
Prabhat
Saharanpur, India
Feb 04, 2008 12:00 AM
281
Ha-ha-ha-ha, trafficking, corruption, casteism, poverty, malnutrition, stinky slums- it all happens in India. Ha-ha-ha. Now, put on your diapers, get your rattler, and go back into your baby crib, Joseph.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Feb 04, 2008 12:00 AM
280
India’s stolen brides living in silent fear




By Parul Gupta

MEWAT: The wrinkles on Sumari’s face betray her troubled past, making her look far older than the nearly 40 years she believes she is.

Widowed young, she was brought from her native village to northern India and sold to a man who abused her, and imprisoned her and her daughter in his house.

Sumari is one of the luckier women, having eventually found a good husband after being sold repeatedly in a thriving human trade in northern India that is blamed on local customs and a shortage of women.

More than 10,000 women like her are believed to have been bought or lured with the promise of a job from poorer Indian states in recent years to be married to men who cannot find wives.

“There aren’t enough girls here. Locals won’t give their girls to widowers, ageing and handicapped men,” said Fatima, Sumari’s neighbour in Mewat, a district of Haryana state where there are 820 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six.This compares to a national average of 927 to 1,000, and the worldwide average of 1,050 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Experts say abortion of female foetuses because of the traditional Hindu preference for sons in this male-dominated society has led to a severe shortage of women in Haryana, and upset the sex balance nationwide.

Bride trafficking has been well-documented here and while the impact on the region’s sex ratio is a major concern, the problem is complicated by other factors such as acute poverty and early marriage.

“Many women die during childbirth here, leaving a large number of widowers who can’t find local girls. They have to buy them,” said Manmohan Sharma of the non-profit Voluntary Health Association of Punjab, which campaigns against female foeticide.Trafficking in India takes place largely for commercial sexual exploitation, as well as for labour, organ transplant and forced marriage, says the UN office on Drugs and Crime.

Most men pay Rs 5,000- Rs 20,000 for a bride, said Ravi Kant, executive director of anti-trafficking group Shakti Vahini.

Many women are treated as domestic slaves, working for both the master and often for his wife, if he is still married. Most are reluctant to talk about the humiliation they
endure.—AFP

-------------------------------
---------------------

What?. Does this happen in Civilised India too?.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
279
Ms Roy, myself and a few others believe in telling the Truth and saying it as it is oblivious of its ramifications on Caste, Creed Or Colour, MR. VINOD.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
278
Let me recall, once again, MR. J, that the Truth rests somewhere between two extreme points of view. Searching for that among a host of Diverse Opinion is the essence of life.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
277
Dear Mr. Editor and Dear Ms. Arundhati Roy

I am very sorry to say that you people have crossed perhaps all limits of mental disorderness and have drowned in the sea of the bankruptcy of thoughts and thinking.

Have you ever travelled out of your AC rooms without media coverage, good lipsticks and makeup to the real India? No, you have not. No organization can survive for 83 years after suffering 3 bans, government boycott and other propanganda. RSS has does because it has shown its work. You talk about Dalits, Adivasis, poor. How much work you have done Ms. Roy for them? Do you have courage to leave all your property, comforts, drinks, fancy cars, and reach poor and work for them for all your life as an RSS Pracharak does?

No you dont have the guts you shameless creature. If RSS wont be in India, perhaps the India would have been sold off by the people like you.

Shame on you Ms. Roy. If you are so shameful then drop the Indian Passport and goto the country/race whom you say is HUMAN.

May GOD GIVE YOU PEACE.
kapil hari dwivedi
aligarh, India
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
276
Was the inclusion of Susanne in Ms Arudhati Roy's name, MR. VINOD, meant to indicate that she is a Christian and, as such, naturally Anti-Hindu?.

Let us not begin to doubt the Patriotism of one's Citizens on the base of Caste, Creed Or Colour.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
275
What, then will equate Gujrat with, MR. VARUN SHEKHAR?.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
274
"In many ways, the relentless controversy surrounding the ambitious Rs 2,400-crore sethusamudram shipping project is symbolic of the Modern Indian State’s tortured and confused relationship with religion. Hinduism especially — in the absence of codified rituals or a book of rules to circumscribe it — has always functioned as part philosophy, part mythology, leaving it open to competing and contradictory interpretations.

"It's also perhaps no accident that the Sethusamudram canal was first formalised under Jawaharlal Nehru’s government in 1955, when a committee of bureaucrats was asked to study the feasibility of dredging a shipping channel across the Palk Straits, between India and Sri Lanka. They didn’t seem to worry back then that the natural shoal formations in the sea could be the bridge that Hanuman’s army built for Ram to march across into Lanka." - Barkha Dutt


http://www.hindustantim...Headline=Faith+accompli
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
273
Varun,

>> In those actual genocides ......

As opposed to playacted genocides?
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
272
Seshadri,

>> You were angrily asking about some of the insufficiently nationalistic features of moslem behaviour in India.

You miss even a simple point that neither you nor any other bigot can talk of Indian citizens' rights being taken away, or their citizenship questioned, or their stay in India considered a debatable matter. It seems this simple constitutional principle is beyond your comprehension. If any citizen commits a criminal offence, he should be tried in a proper court of law, not in a kangaroo court consisting of loonies like yourself handing out one way tickets to Saudi Arabia as punishment.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
271
In those actual genocides, Francis, the numbers ran into the hundreds of thousands, in some of them, millions. Gujarat's toll was 2000, and smaller totals have been given. There have been at least 2 democratic elections since the events of March 2002, in which everyone had the right to vote. Did the Turks, Khmer Rouge, Stalin, Mao, Nazis and early European settlers in North and South America, conduct elections where they could have been voted out, and did only 2000 people die in their respective genocides?
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
270
GF:
You were angrily asking about some of the insufficiently nationalistic features of moslem behaviour in India, I had pointed out, suggesting they culd be happier as Saudi citizens. Some examples.

Just this morning, Harish Khare objects in the 'hindu' to the BJP conclave expressing 'security' concerns, saying it is an indirect way of 'moslem bashing'. In other words, for him, it is the 'umma-ist' right of indian moslems to work to undermine india's internal and external security, while retaining voting rights as a powerful votebank, probably to vote for parties least concerned about India's security, but wrong to worry about it! Even a paki or saudi journalist will hesitate to take such a view!

In another case, pak cricket captain refuses he married a hyderbadi girl, but her dad, an indian citizen by name Siddiqui, claims Shoaib Akhtar got namazed to his dtr over phone, wants fatwa issued against him. But no one, not even the Times-Now crypto-chr journaist reporting, asks why as indian citizen, Siddiqui did not get his dtr's marriage registered, in which case, the Govt of India will sustain his claim, fatwa or no fatwa. In my opinion, the moslems of india should follow the supreme court dictate of registering marriages with the govt, otherwise opt out of citizenship and voting right, remain guest citizens, waiting for choice of either going to arabia or getting India made into islamia in due course.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
269
last night on PBS there was this documentary about WW II - they were talking about this small group that the nazis had who were actually recruited from within their own prisoners. oh i wish i could find the link for the show, it's so twisted, how could an indian sign up on the nazi-german side?! it is so messed up! here it is:


http://www.google.com/s...h?hl=en&q=freies+indien


it is so depressing. indians are such good foot soldiers in other peoples empire-building! how humiliating! and now we are eager to help rich foreign corporate predators by selling out our own tribals and poor people. cheap.
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
268
"Manipulating other groups, though, is a dangerous game, and weaker groups don't always play by the rules set for them. Perhaps this is the more subtle, if less enduring message of the Robbers Cave experiment and its supposedly less successful predecessors"

from:
http://www.spring.org.u...of-power-in-sherifs.php


http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/10-piercing-insights-into-human-nature.php
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
267
"positively not"?

i looked up genocide and i do not see a cutoff number like 1 million or a defining ratio like 5%


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide


i remember sitting in the airport departure lounge in madras when this thing happened in gujarat. it was just coming onto the TV screen and i was thinking: "the army, it's only going to be an hour before the army comes in and clamps down" and what a horrible horrible feeling it was later when i saw that nothing happened.

i thought to myself: "if china or pakistan or some other country had landed in gujarat and killed 2000 people, would delhi have just shrugged it off?" - no way! in minutes, there would have been a repsonse.
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
266
Arundhati is a full time whinger, who just provides a running commentary on the incidents without providing insight into it’s causes and solutions. Her speeches are nothing more then a verbal diarrhea and articles on the web are waste of bandwidth and hard disk space.
She fails to understand that reasons for this malaise are the result of the continuation of policy of divide and rule by congress which it adopted form it’s pommy masters.
People have lost faith in the judiciary because it has been politicized and fails to punish the criminals in high places. Can Arundhati confirm that goons responsible for setting bogies to fire at Godhra been punished. or terrorists who attacked parliament been hanged? It is a never ending affair , the nithari incident and now kidney incident. You do not have to be Einstein to guess that people in high places were involved in this and nobody will ever be brought to justice. It is because of this that people take law in their hands and vent out anger in wrong place and that is not justified. Nobody should be above or below law.
Congress is the biggest enemy of muslims which unfortunately muslims fail to understand. Mahatam Gandhi would jump up and down when any atrocities were committed against muslims but when it came to injustice against hindus all his three monkeys would come alive and he could see, hear or speak nothing. Congress continued with this policy and alienated muslims. If musllims had refused to accept the crutches form congi commi traitors and tried to be part of the mainstream then it would have been good for them. I am not against muslims and I feel proud of lot of muslims who have done a great work for our country.
Arundhati has personal grudge against Modi and RSS. She does not say anything about ethnic cleansing done in Pakistan. She turns into Gandhiji’s monkeys when it comes to Taliban, Madarsas and SIMI. She is third rate hypocrite who is becoming irrelevant because of her baseless articles. She fails to understand that Modi has won because of good governance and economic development in Gujrat. At present Gujrat leads every state in India. What she has to say about Ghatia sardar who has come up with a five year plan based on religion and caste ?
Jitendra
Melbourne, Australia
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
265
Varun,

>> the question posed by Contrarian is whether Gujarat can be really equated to the Armenian, Jewish, Aboriginal and Cambodian genocides. And the answer is positively not.

In that case it is OK.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
264
But Francis, the question posed by Contrarian is whether Gujarat can be really equated to the Armenian, Jewish, Aboriginal and Cambodian genocides. And the answer is positively not.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
263
contrarian from bhopal says: "Is it then correct to use the same term for Gujarat 2002, Delhi 1984 and Europe 1941-2? I think Ms Roy is guilty of conflation, as practiced by the Iraq war architects, no? "

oh you are just too too clever aren't you? so, let me ask, does the jalianwalla bagh massacre count as a massacre then? does the 400 (official) or 1000 death have to be divided by the population of amritsar, and does that ratio have to be compared with the ratio of (death of pro-british forces) / (total # of pro-british forces) in order to determine if the jallianwalla bagh massacre was a massacre or not???

not to mention that your ratio formula will always come out in favour of elites. so a massacre of 100 people from an elite will always come out more serious than a massacre of 100 people from the bottom layer simply because the total # will always be higher from the bottom number. your formula goes dead against that little thing called "equality".
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 02, 2008 12:00 AM
262
wow. arundhati roy is the big one. the giant. she can see it and say it like no one can. but yes i agree funcamentally that "people faced with extermination have the right to fight back". but i want to ask about that malcolm x phrase "by any means necessary". i have to ask: how successful was malcolm x? how smart is it to pick a weapon or strategy when your enemy has n times more of that same weapon? what about that entire group of people who went to register voters, all those legislators who changed the laws to bring in and enforce civil rights,
"it was Thurgood Marshall, working through the courts to eradicate the legacy of slavery and destroying the racist segregation system of Jim Crow, who had an even more profound and lasting effect on race relations than either of King or X"
http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/home.htm
and
http://www.google.com/s...=en&q=thurgood+marshall
Arul Francis
Clayton, California
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
261
Seshadri,

>> Anyone who 'tries' to be a sage will never be one.

I had said, "Know thyself before trying to be a stage". It is interesting that you replied to the secod half of my sentence. I wanted you to be more aware of your arrogance, condescension and prejudice.

>> wonder whether you would have raised the matter if the victims were non-moslem.

You wonder because you see others as being as prejudiced as yourself.

>> ; I have seen so many 'kumars' who are chr, parents rameswar, krishnaswamy.

You also said that Gujarat's killers and rapists were Pakistanis masquerading as Adivasis. Only an irrational bigot would say, "My people can do no wrong."

>> Wise men do not just accept reality as it comes.

Wisemen live in the real world. They do not waste their time daydreaming about how things would be if such and such had not happened.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
260
Look in a dictionary what kin means, you need to consult it often. You cannot so easily wash the sins of LTTE of yourself by fantasizing. It is a fact that LTTE is the deadliest terrorist organisation in the world and the same blood runs in their veins as yours and they have the same flesh that makes up your body.
pkkumar
pune, India
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
259
Raising the question. What if, is as old as History. It has little relevance, MR. J.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
258
North east must have permanent peace, says PM


Amitabha Roy Chowdhury
Lohitpur (Arunachal Pradesh), Feb 1 (PTI) Concerned over the problems of militancy and insurgency in the north east, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said it was imperative to have lasting peace in the region.

"It is imperative that permanent peace is established in the north east," he said addressing Army and ITBP jawans here and those who came from the far flung Kibithu area for 'barakhana' (lunch) with the Prime Minister. While Kibithu is on the China border, Lohitpur is on the boundary with Myanmar.

Seeking to boost the morale of jawans braving hostile weather conditions in inhospitable terrains, Singh said that apart from guarding the borders, they were fighting terrorism and insurgency. "This is a challenging task," he said.

Referring to the transit problems faced by jawans, Singh announced a grant of Rs.60 lakh to upgrade the transit facilities at Dehan, Senge, Likabali and
Missamari.

--------------------------------
--------------------

Who, then, is the liar, MR. A. K. GHAI, you, me or The Prime Minister Of India?.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
257
GF:

Anyone who 'tries' to be a sage will never be one. Such 'trying' implies ego, which will deny sagacity.

Your 'magical' power on the edit of these columns are on proof really in the past few days, after I complained; no 'vanishing columns'!

Medicine, surgery have largely become dupe's professions in India; less faith in God and more faith in socalled doctors has led to the situation; earlier, even docs gave med but assigned cure to god, charged the minimum. most docs were scholarly, prayerful, non-greedy. Now fake-doctors want to get crores.

Ayur veda is medit-approach to health and cure. Medit often cures or gives sugg for cure as 'word heard' or thought-flash. My persistent cough for months was cured aft a medit, heard 'til-oil into nose' at medit end, put it, cured for good. Priests of all religions should pray more and cure people, instead of dividing people religionally.

Back to our own contentions of who is more communal: I wonder whether you would have raised the matter if the victims were non-moslem; I have seen so many 'kumars' who are chr, parents rameswar, krishnaswamy. Raj, ravi, prabhakaran, dinakaran, rajesh, kumar etc are favourites for crypto-chr hindus who want to get conv benef and also caste-based reservations. 'hideous communalism' does not exist in me, only in the ugly communalization of politics and educ and everything else in India, even over the internet columns!

Wise men do not just accept reality as it comes, [no wisdom needed for that, complacency is enough]; they anticipate disasters, try to prevent their occurrance, also try to learn from history to avoid the repetition of some of its sad events. But, I agree, unfortunately, 'wisdom after the event' is more common. As J. Krishnamoorthy used to say, the longer you live, the sadder you feel!
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
256
My dear PKKumar:
Those whom you refer to as 'my kin', in the LTTE, are really your kin. The girl who blasted herself to kill Rajiv was a christian. The hindus inn eelum seem to be getting away from prabhakaran's control. Prabhakaran is very much a churchian; they have been getting rid of all hindu tamil leaders of Eelam, some of then in chennai itself.

I am a tamil brahmin equally conversant in tamil and sanskrit, write poems in both, understand relation betw the two at spiritual level, I respect all 'casts' as optimal professions chosen voluntarily by individuals for sociodynamic efficiency. I respect all religions in their humanist forms, see Alla and Christ as only other names for Siva.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
255
If Godse represent Brahmin anger, Modi represents sudra anger, dalits and tribals of Gujarat riots represent their own anger. Godse was a lunatic who killed Gandhi when he was past his prime and about to die anyway. It's absurd to expect to such a lunatic to uphold the pride of his own tribe.
chaitanya
chennai, India
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
254
If Nehru had bit of spine, he could have protected his own Kashmiri Pandit identity. If Nehru had some spine, he would have advocated strong military. Going after RSS is a stupid thing to do. It only leads to creation of more radical hindu organisations, where every Godse will come out of the closet with no one to moderate them.
chaitanya
chennai, India
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
253
>> If only Nehru had a little bit of spine and patel was busy stabbing in the back of congress. The rss could have been snuffed out way back it deserved to be. It would not have been able to produce so many bastard organisations.

It seems the very nature of religion to attract some extreme loyalty and behavior. If RSS was suppressed then, extremist Hindus would have found refuge some place else.
vijay
Chennai, India
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
252
>> Godse killed Gandhi to uphold the pride of brahmins

This is a nonsensical assertion. Probably intended to shock and indulge in the usual anti brahminism more than to say anything factual.
vijay
Chennai, India
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
251
Right from its founder, Golwalkar, the term Hindu only implied brahmin caste.
Godse killed Gandhi to uphold the pride of brahmins, not the larger Hindu community.
Stop relating RSS to Hindu interest.
Rajesh
Phoenix, United States
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
250
Mind your language, MR. VINOD.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
249
MALARMANNAN, CHENNAI,INDIA :

In full agreement with your views.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
248
Seshadri,

>> You are certainly trying to convert my mind into a hate-hill [hate-adri] with your unlimited spites!

If you had any capacity for introspection at all, you would not say that. Your posts are full of venom, communalism, racism, arrogance and insults. Know thyself before you try to be a sage.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
247
Seshadri,

>> whenever I complain blaming you, rightly or wrongly, the unmasking, of dozens of columns, does happen very promply.

Shhhh! My magical powers have to remain a secret!

>> if you are suggesting hindu docs are selling moslem kidneys.

It is not a Hindu/Muslim issue. Victimization of the poor is the issue.

>> Amit 'Kumar' is a most-likely crypto-chr, kumar is another name for skanda = jesus, of course!

You are the one who is a hideous communalist, not me.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
246
Seshadri,

>> If persians had been more careful, centuries ago, Tata would be a parsee magnate from persia, not from India.

One can make up so much daydreaming scenario based on thinking "if only such and such had not happened." Wise men however deal with reality as it is.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
245
If only Nehru had a little bit of spine and patel was busy stabbing in the back of congress. The rss could have been snuffed out way back it deserved to be. It would not have been able to produce so many bastard organisations.
pkkumar
pune, India
Feb 01, 2008 12:00 AM
244
Ambivalent views over Gandhi killer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7217146.stm

By Rajesh Joshi BBC Hindi service
As India observes the 60th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's death, Hindu nationalist groups still grapple with the question whether to reject or appreciate his killer.Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse on 30 January, 1948 in Delhi's Birla House. In the communally charged atmosphere during India's Partition in August 1947, Godse and his accomplices held Mahatma Gandhi responsible for the miseries of the Hindus and accused him of appeasing Muslims. Right-wing Hindu nationalist organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, (Nationalist Volunteers' Organisation) were banned and many of its leaders were sent to jail following the assassination of Gandhi.the RSS is the ideological fountainhead of India's main opposition party BJP. Nathuram Godse was later tried and hanged but the RSS was exonerated and the government decided to lift the ban on its activities.Even though the RSS publicly rejects Nathuram Godse, its leaders don't hide their appreciation for what they call his "selfless act". "We will have to accept that Nathuram Godse acted with selfless spirit; he did not have any self-interest in it. He must also have been aware that he would be hanged for what he was going to do. This spirit cannot be denied," RSS ideologue Devendra Swaroop told the BBC. "But he was wrong if he thought that Gandhiji was taking history in a wrong direction and by killing him he could correct the course of history," adds Mr Swaroop. "RSS firmly believes that Godse acted at the spur of the moment and it was quite detrimental for the Hindu society. Gandhi dead proved to be stronger than Gandhi alive." Leaders of the Bajrang Dal, another affiliate of the RSS, believe that Godse's role in history needs to be reassessed.
"People may object to his method but I don't believe that he committed such an act (of killing Gandhi) with some personal animosity," says Prakash Sharma, head of the Bajrang Dal.
"He was concerned for the country and at that time he did what he thought was right."
Gandhi and his thoughts have more than once posed a challenge to the ideology of Hindu nationalists. Some Hindu leaders openly condemned Gandhi's policy of non-violence and friendship between Hindus and Muslims during the anti-Muslim riots that broke out in India's western state Gujarat in February 2002.
'Abandon Gandhi' Pravin Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) said in a public gathering: "Until the day we give up Gandhi's ideology of non violence and the ideology of surrendering before the Muslims, terrorism cannot be defeated." "My brothers, we will have to abandon Gandhi." However, RSS spokesman Ram Madhav denies that his organisation faces a dilemma about Godse."This issue had been resolved decades ago that he (Godse) had nothing to do with RSS and Gandhiji's assassination had nothing to do with RSS," he said. But Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson Tushar Gandhi is not impressed - he accuses the RSS of doublespeak. "Whenever an organisation uses a weapon to achieve its agenda, it abandons the weapon after using it. They use and throw it like a condom," he said."I have seen a deep feeling of devotion in the Sangh Parivar (or the RSS family) for Nathuram Godse and I know how they cherish him. But they do it secretly because they lack the courage."
pkkumar
pune, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
243
I remember one bigot asking why there are none of the suicide bombers are hindu. well, I'm surprised seshadri didnot mention his kin across the gulf of munnar are responsiblke for inventing suicide bombing and teaching that to the whole world. Apparently his kin are also known as the deadliest terrorists according to the CIA. We must forgive him since his old age and senile mind cannot retain and recall everthing.
pkkumar
pune, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
242
Respected Sir,
With respect to your article on genocide I would like to state that though economic and social advancement of one group over another is always a root cause of genocide but things are a bit different.Riots like Gujrat happen not because organisations like RSS are sucessfully able to preach hatred.This can never be,because Indians are tolitarian in nature.On the contrary,the polarisation we are seeing is due to the favors and premium rights being given to minorities in India.Nowhere in world are minorities given premium rights just to cretae vote banks.So insted of blaming the BJP take thought and see who the real culprit is.Can u expect the youth and majority people of India to remain silent when their rights are being taken away by Dalits,Muslims etc
sumeet_trehan
chandigarh, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
241
PKKumar:>>
Islamophobia is a very valid concern reqd for India, with moslems growing in numbers at rate twice as large as that of others; but your bramhano-phobia and its connect to manusmriti is higly unjustified, Mayavati has understood, she was against brahminsas manuvadis earlier, she has corrected herself. Manu was kshatriya, not brahmin; india's entire history had no brahmin kings, except the shortlived nandas replaced by chandragupta mourya, actually with help of brahmin chanakya; only 2 brahmin avtars, vamana, divine dwarf expanding to absolute to show universal nature of divinity and divinity-minded among humans; other, parasu-rama was just aavesa-avtar to destroy evil-egoed kings; otherwise, brahmins offered advice only when sought, taught those who came for knowledge, lived on charity, voluntary gifts. If your convent teachers have tanght you to hate hinduism bec of brahmins, you should go back and correct them!

>>"restrict education from reaching the masses(proposal to restrict education to 12 std.) is the modern day answer to pouring the lead down a shudra person ears."
Who is restricting? None has the right to do so.
Before islam, para-aarya pancamas were asura-philes, voluntarily staying away frm devotional hindu society; post-islam: kshatryas killed, vysyas fled, sudras new satraps, old parayas voluntarily converted to asura-beeja islam, brahmins pushed out as the new dalit scavengers, prevented from entering temples they were fond of, reentry after Gandhi only. Given opportunity, these dalits easily learn and grow into ambetkars, narayanan [ex-pres], balakrishnans [cji]. 'pouring molten lead' is only conv-churchian propaganda. only iron [ayah] known in manu's days, for ploughs, not lead, the poisonous metal.

Give free educ to sec level to all except those who pref sp-relig schools, on payment; police to be busy getting all kids into schools, as in US, not giving security to grand-kids of politicos, as in india!

>>"A presidential form of govt based on the US model was to hijack the governement for once and for all".
it will be much better than governance tuned mainly for the benefit of sonia's son, karaunaidhi's third-wife-dtr, gauda's dtrs-in-law, Sivsena-chief's dtr-in-law, pawar's dtr and so on. very satisfying, is it? One family of crooks enthroned in each state, leftists creatin real hell in 3 states, an oxford economist PM helplessly watching, great democratic india!

>>"To reduce the democracy in the name only as in US, where idiots are voting for presidents based on the choice that whether they want a first time balck president or first time women president, a candidates competency is distant maybe 10th priority."
You prefer only the competance of ajit jogi, Gomengo, Dharam singh, RSRddy, Shiv-raj Patel [lost election], mainly chosen for being crypto-chr?
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
240
Arundhati Roy has given an insightful spine chilling observation on the genocidal aspects of the peoples of various countries wanting to `progress’ and march ahead, and in race against Time (`The Business of Mass Murder’ Cover Story – GENOCIDE - Outlook, February 4, 2008). Citing examples she is right in observing: Is a country poised on the threshold of `progress’ also poised ion the threshold of `genocide?’

However, she is wrong in juxtaposing – and with gory details – the case in Gujarat, which she says `Genocide against Muslim community’. It does not fit the meaning of neither Genocide, nor the Search for Lebensraum, as she tries to explain. Lebensraum `search for living space’ was never part of India’s multi-millennia history, which hope she has read properly.

Wanting to project happier but counterfeit India, the Indian media is largely sold out to the culture of MNCs and the moneybags – both within and outside the country and therefore, it is difficult for them to accept the simple fact that grasshoppers like stinging bees swarm when the field is ripe with crop. And grasshoppers are never good – neither for the ripe crop, nor for the farmers who tend their farms. So also for India in general and Gujarat in particular: As India ripens and emerges on the global arena, grasshoppers from around the region want to have a piece of this exuberant economic pie and therefore, the case of Gujarat was like a preventive measure adopted against more grasshoppers from marauding larger parts of the country after they have nibbled away sizeable parts of north western and north eastern regions.

As she points out Lebensraum is a German word and therefore, this word can be safely attributed to the followers – and powerful followers - of some of the new religions on the global map – new with the history of say around two thousand years and less. Those from these religions wanting to spread their reach have wrested their Lebensraum through genocides, as she recounts in many cases.

In India Lebensraum is a legacy inherited from its colonial masters who are part of one of the few new religions that emerged from Europe. As socialist-turned-capitalist India aims to shine with globalization, so will the chasm between haves and the have nots widen further giving subtle and obvious reasons for mass genocides. The neo-industrial groups - including the Marxists in West Bengal and Maoists in the central India, to name a few – have resorted to the practice of Lebensraum jointly with their politician friends for their collective avarice and greed. So, the case of Gujarat does not fit the bill neither of Lebensraum nor genocide as she tries to impress the readers.

`India’s rural problem is more political rather than economic causes’, says Rafiq Dossani in his latest book ‘India Arriving - How This Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business. And the neo-industrialists and their political friends are jointly trying to garner the maximum through various ways, including genocide-led Lebensraum. And in their right to protect themselves from the marauding industrial groups – domestic and foreign - the natives are being decimated and butchered in the march for Lebensraum of the haves.

Lastly, the question she has not encountered is: Can the genocide be actually done away with in the world? It would do good to her and her admirers to seriously find out answers to such vital questions instead of rabble rousing with intelligent, but wrong interpretation of facts.
Sharad Mistry
Mumbai, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
239
Arundhati Roy has given an insightful spine chilling observation on the genocidal aspects of the peoples of various countries wanting to `progress’ and march ahead, and in race against Time (`The Business of Mass Murder’ Cover Story – GENOCIDE - Outlook, February 4, 2008). Citing examples she is right in observing: Is a country poised on the threshold of `progress’ also poised ion the threshold of `genocide?’

However, she is wrong in juxtaposing – and with gory details – the case in Gujarat, which she says `Genocide against Muslim community’. It does not fit the meaning of neither Genocide, nor the Search for Lebensraum, as she tries to explain. Lebensraum `search for living space’ was never part of India’s multi-millennia history, which hope she has read properly.

Wanting to project happier but counterfeit India, the Indian media is largely sold out to the culture of MNCs and the moneybags – both within and outside the country and therefore, it is difficult for them to accept the simple fact that grasshoppers like stinging bees swarm when the field is ripe with crop. And grasshoppers are never good – neither for the ripe crop, nor for the farmers who tend their farms. So also for India in general and Gujarat in particular: As India ripens and emerges on the global arena, grasshoppers from around the region want to have a piece of this exuberant economic pie and therefore, the case of Gujarat was like a preventive measure adopted against more grasshoppers from marauding larger parts of the country after they have nibbled away sizeable parts of north western and north eastern regions.

As she points out Lebensraum is a German word and therefore, this word can be safely attributed to the followers – and powerful followers - of some of the new religions on the global map – new with the history of say around two thousand years and less. Those from these religions wanting to spread their reach have wrested their Lebensraum through genocides, as she recounts in many cases.

In India Lebensraum is a legacy inherited from its colonial masters who are part of one of the few new religions that emerged from Europe. As socialist-turned-capitalist India aims to shine with globalization, so will the chasm between haves and the have nots widen further giving subtle and obvious reasons for mass genocides. The neo-industrial groups - including the Marxists in West Bengal and Maoists in the central India, to name a few – have resorted to the practice of Lebensraum jointly with their politician friends for their collective avarice and greed. So, the case of Gujarat does not fit the bill neither of Lebensraum nor genocide as she tries to impress the readers.

`India’s rural problem is more political rather than economic causes’, says Rafiq Dossani in his latest book ‘India Arriving - How This Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business. And the neo-industrialists and their political friends are jointly trying to garner the maximum through various ways, including genocide-led Lebensraum. And in their right to protect themselves from the marauding industrial groups – domestic and foreign - the natives are being decimated and butchered in the march for Lebensraum of the haves.

Lastly, the question she has not encountered is: Can the genocide be actually done away with in the world? It would do good to her and her admirers to seriously find out answers to such vital questions instead of rabble rousing with intelligent, but wrong interpretation of facts.
Sharad Mistry
Mumbai, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
238
>>">> Seshadri :The hindu mind has no hatred for anyone.>>"But the Seshadri mind is a cesspool of hatred! GHULAM Y FARUKI""

You are certainly trying to convert my mind into a hate-hill [hate-adri] with your unlimited spites! But, as I said, the hindu cannot successfully get Lord Rama in his heart, if he has kama, or krodha in his mind. Hence, I always view your hate-spites only with genuine pity and compassion. All my students have been taught to behave the same way over the last half century.
Some of them are now highly respected profs in top univs of US. I have, before me, a memento given to me by some of students, a couple of yrs back, before I finally retired. It says: "Teacher is some one you look up to, with admiration and pride, one who influences us, in our day-to-day life". I am myself reading it only now. I presume the children really meant what is said there!
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
237
GF: If you have mastered the daivata-traya of hinduism to mask columns of OL from me, my congrats. But, I do find that whenever I complain blaming you, rightly or wrongly, the unmasking, of dozens of columns, does happen very promply. Perhaps, your name itself commands spiritual powers!

It is sad to see that the labourers exploited by Dr. Amit Kumar in kidney transplant racket include moslems. Doctors in india are trained to become criminals by private medical colleges which charge over Rs.40/- lakhs for a degree in medic educ; or politicians like ramdas and son anbumani; no other way to get the money back. But, if you are suggesting hindu docs are selling moslem kidneys, you may be wrong again. Amit 'Kumar' is a most-likely crypto-chr, kumar is another name for skanda = jesus, of course!.

If only the imams of India issue fatwas that no moslem will marry more than one wife and all moslem women will get uterus removed after birth of second child [you know indian moslems are beyond the civil laws of indian govts, only fatwas govern them], the number of unemployed and underfed moslem youngsters on our city streets will tend to come down eventually, in 2 decades. It is said that city crime rates in america came down sharply, exactly after 18 yrs after abortion was legalized in NY and other states!.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
236
Anand:>>"Old age seems to have completely wrecked Seshadri's grey cells"

When you have no logical answer, you attack my age, since I am not concealed in psuedonyms. Anyway, my comments are meant for genuine hindus, not the paid pipers of islam. Lambs and deer will survive, only if they beware of the wolves. European nations are getting wise before it is too late. They may be saved for history, although Albany [England] should be careful if it does not want to become another Albania. If persians had been more careful, centuries ago, Tata would be a parsee magnate from persia, not from India. Buddha-sangha will still be chanting buddheist hymns in afghanisthan. Sukarno, Suharto with sanskrit names will be hindu leaders from real 'hindu-asia' which has become moslem 'indonesia'. Although anand iyer may be willing to sell his religion for a plate of beef, I am still sure the real hinduist devotion of his mom and sisters will save sanatana dharma for his grand-kids, the Geetacharya will protect them in His own ways, even if Anand-types play the jaychandra role.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
235
Roy is immature publicity monger, she donot know psychics of mankind, why there is genocide all over the world? Why majority always hate to minority? Have she read history of Japan, Europe, USA or say India?
Our midia giving her publicity only because all our midia is bankrupt, all editor of midia are shallow they only know that man bite to dog is story that one is their bread and butter.All our midia is, narrow minded they are contrubiting not a bit of knowledge,they are making only fool to people
Ramesh Raghuvanshi
pune, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
234
Kidney Thefts Shock India.


http://www.nytimes.com/...orld/asia/30kidney.html
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
233
HR/Gulam: Professors do not tell lies. When I mentioned it in my post at 10 am, and until noon today, only 44 columns were seen. Only now, after 1 pm, I am suddenly seeing 53 columns! I do not know how OL is organized. Perhaps, they could bar me out from postings, for good. I shall gladly quit, with my blessings to you all.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
232
Seshadri,

>> Gulam and co. have again started delaying the display of my postings indefinitely.

I am able to do that through my will for initiation of action[by Siva], a power for execution [by Sakti]and a decisive power of stable completion [by vishnu], all really coordinated components of a singular and universal Absolute only.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
231
Ms Arundathi Roy may have the satisfaction of having written a good piece of fiction after delivering her paper but alas, it only exposes her half backed knowledge about what is happening around her. I would suggest Ms Roy to exchange her notes about the realities of Gujerath with the senior of her tribe Ms Mahasweta Devi who is also weddded to the ideology of Ms. Roy. When people concerned with the interest of Hindu society talk on the attrocities committed by Mohamedddans, her kind of intellectuals used to question as to why repeat the same again and again but when their turn comes, they find immense pleasure in reminding Gujerath of 2002 and demolition of Babri Memorial in 1991. For Ms Roy, the burning alive of Hindu passengers in Godhra is an unsolved crime, but the backlash of Hindus is a genocide prooved beyond doubt! Ms Roy may be a good fiction writer but she should not make the realities fictional. What has happened to Kashmiri Pandits by Mohemaddans is the true genocide because there is no Pandit in the valley anymore, whereas there are still thousands and thousands of Mohemmmadans still residing all over Gujerath! It is OK if Ms Roy, like Miss World and Miss Universe makes pleasure trips all over the globe as Ms Fiction India, but I would request her to keep mum so that her ignorance is NOT revealed.
Malarmannan, also an unkown writer and journalist
Malarmannan
Chennai, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
230
Anand:>
Gulam and co. have again started delaying the display of my postings indefinitely. It is something for OUTLOOK to look into.

Incidentaally, I might add a clarification you might want. I sometimes refer to the absolute as Siva = hara= allah =christ, sometimes as the Cosmomom and sometimes as Hari = naraayana. This might confuse.

For every action to be initiated, executed and completed in the matter-cum-spirit universe, it takes a will for initiation of action[by Siva], a power for execution [by Sakti]and a decisive power of stable completion [by vishnu], all really coordinated components of a singular and universal Absolute only.

Newton's laws of motion are those of inertia, action and balance, defined by the tamas, rajas, and satva 'guna's of hindu philosophy, determinative of both material and spiritual world. Siva, Sakti and Vishnu are seen as the tamasic [conservatory], rajasic [transformatory] and satva [restoratory] aspects of the universal Absolute in creations from out of itself, cosmodynamics in space-time-relativity and restorations to steady-states of operation, at micro-and macro-domains of exisrence and activity.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
229
>> The hindu mind has no hatred for anyone.

But the Seshadri mind is a cesspool of hatred!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
228
Anand:>>"hateful message used by extremists and their supporters (like you) to constantly subjugate minorities"

The hindu mind has no hatred for anyone, including the moslems who drove out all hindus from kashmir. What the kashmiri pundits did was only to run away into ther rest of India, no retaliation or kill of moslem by hindus. The hindus just trust in God, do the right, because, if there is hatred for any one, even moslem, in your heart, Hari leaves your heart, you lose divine protection. But, most kashmiri pundits prospered in other parts of mother India. A senior prof in IITM started a whole new dept before retirement!. But, God did respond, to those who trusted Him. Kashmiri moslems drove millions of hindus over decades; but, one million POK moslems died in just one day in an act-of-God earthquake!. Islamists and islamophiles like you should understand, Allah does NOT give any preferential protection to moslems, even if they behave cruelly. The hindu leaves justice to God ultimately. Old fools like me are not looking for even a resting place on this earth, not rebirth anywhere, only merger into His Absolute Self if possible or become a small pebble on the foothills of tirumala or kailas, where devotees would walk over you! Justice is really left to Him! jaanaati naaraayaNah! The Lord has all the answers! jaavayati, naavayati ca, he brings souls into births, also navigates them to liberation, guiding them appropriately to evolve to qualify for it.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
227
"But Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson Tushar Gandhi is not impressed -he accuses the RSS of doublespeak. "Whenever an organisation uses a weapon to achieve its agenda, it abandons the weapon after using it. They use and throw it like a condom," he said. "I have seen a deep feeling of devotion in the Sangh Parivar (or the
RSS family) for Nathuram Godse and I know how they cherish him. But they do it secretly because they lack the courage."

If this quote is true, it speaks a lot about the intelligence of Tushar Gandhi and the dude who thought it worthwhile to post it.

Let me follow the train of thought here. Godse was a weapon used by RSS. After achieving the agenda, the weapon was abandoned like a condom. But after abandoning the condom, there is a deep sense of devotion for that condom!! So the RSS dudes simultaneously abandon and revere the condom. Awesome logic.
Ganesan
Nj, USA
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
226
" ...extremists and their supporters( like you).."

I am not a supporter of any extremists. But there is no connection whatsoever between the behavior of the VHP and Islamic terrorist strikes in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Varanasi and elsewhere. Those terrorist acts would have happened anyway, no matter what India did. There is also no moral equivalence between the VHP and any other Hindu organization on the one hand, and the Lashkar-E-Toiba, Jaish-E-Mohammed, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, on the other.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
225
However, RSS spokesman Ram Madhav denies that his organisation faces
a dilemma about Godse.

The 2002 Gujarat riots left many Muslims isolated
"This issue had been resolved decades ago that he (Godse) had
nothing to do with RSS and Gandhiji's assassination had nothing to
do with RSS," he said.
But Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson Tushar Gandhi is not impressed -
he accuses the RSS of doublespeak.
"Whenever an organisation uses a weapon to achieve its agenda, it
abandons the weapon after using it. They use and throw it like a
condom," he said.
"I have seen a deep feeling of devotion in the Sangh Parivar (or the
RSS family) for Nathuram Godse and I know how they cherish him. But
they do it secretly because they lack the courage."
pkkumar
pune, India
Jan 31, 2008 12:00 AM
224
Varun,

"Anand, Seshadriji knows of what he speaks. The evidence around India is too stark -Pakistan, Bangladesh,and Afghanistan, and within India, namely Kashmir, to just dismiss as a coincidence, or to attribute to socio-economic causes. Seshadriji is saying something very sane and sensible. India is handling this whole Islamic terror and separatism problem with far greater maturity and restraint, than the US or any European country or Japan/China would, in similar circumstances. Or do you have evidence to demonstrate that Indians are being particularly immature and paranoid, in contrast to the great maturity and equanimity of the US, France, UK and Italy? Remember India's situation, when/if you respond."

>> You seem to satisfy yourself with weird conspiracy theories. I would hate to live in a muslim theocracy as well, but the dire prediction that India will become an islamist state in the future is just utter nonsense. It is simply a hateful message used by extremists and their supporters (like you) to constantly subjugate minorities. It gives the hindutvadis and the bajrangis enough reason to go around killing muslims. What is appalling is the reaction of majority hindus "of course the muslims deserve to die, their population is growing too quickly .. they should go to saudi arabia ... " The response from many posters here proves that religion is capable of making man sick in the head. In Tamil we have a saying "korungu kaila poomalai" (a garland in monkey's hands won't be a garland for too long).
Anand
Santa Clara, USA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
223
Those interested in what the Afghans went through in fighting for their freedom from the communists and their suffering at the hands of thr taliban should read Khaled Hosseini's novel "The Kite Runner", which has been a best seller in America, and has been made into a fine movie with the same name.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
222
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> Ghulam's response to the above "news" quotations is typical of any Jihadi supporter's.

The "news" posted by you is regularly selected in the service of your hate agenda and shows you to be an evil promoter of community dissension.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
221
Parbat/Ramdas/Sandhu/Abdullah/Thomas,

>> Your astonishingly brutal view that "freedom fighters" don't need to respect human rights.

What a gutter level liar you are! Your identifying the mujahadeen with the taliban who emerged in the vacuum created with the departure of the Soviets is proof of your extreme mala fides. Your sole motive in continuing this stupid thread is to seek an opportunity to slander me. Keep it up, snake!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
220
The LTTE are certainly bad, but they were founded in an environment where Tamil as a language was suppressed, and where Tamils as a people were victims of horrible violence at the hands of Sinhalese mobs. The Mujahadeen were cutthroats right from the beginning, and toward everybody- Russians, other Afghans, non-Moslems and women.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
219
Good Night. There is a great Movie on Cable TV.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
218
What about the L. T. T. E., MR. PARBAT LALDENG. They do not cut throats. They blow up Prime Ministers.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
217
FARUKI:

Your astonishingly brutal view that "freedom fighters" don't need to respect human rights is IDENTICAL with that of the most ferocious and murderous Islamists - including al-Qaeda.

I have exposed you for the vitriolic hardline Islamist you are: an admirer of the infamously cut throat Afghan mujahedeen- savages from who millions of Afghans fled.
Parbat Laldeng
Denver, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
216
Is that first hand knowledge, MR. CHAITANYA?. Have you to, also, show your breeding. Have Indians lost their basic Civility?.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
215
faruki >>
Refusal to see the Mujahdeen as freedom fighters distinct from the atrocious Taliban is a symptom of your cussedness and perversity, which unfortunately seem to be incurable


On the contrary.. the distinctness between taliban and mujaheen is emphasized by the emergence of taliban.
After the soviets left, mujahedeen went nuts and did commit untold atrocities. Dostum, hekmetyar etc are some of the mujahedeen warlords.
Afghans got fed up with them and accepted taliban. Only to realize that taliban were no better.
chester pester
timbaktoo, timbaktoo
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
214
Chaitanya,

>> They will bring their mullah culture and make Hinduism look like Islam.

I don't know whether you realize it, but you do make Hinduism look more like Islam than most other posters in this forum!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
213
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> Unite against Jihadi Texts and Tenets of Islam.
>> "Europeans Think Islam Is Dangerous."


Only the most debased knaves would carry out such a single-minded hate campaign against the religion of a minority community in one's own country. You are probably too ill-bred to realize what a depraved activity you are engaged in.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
212
Anand>> Tssk, tssk poor Mr. Iyer has to spend his twilight years spewing nonsense about muslims.

And poor mr. anand/adnan seems to be spending his entire life living in denial.. slave to the ummah
chester pester
timbaktoo, timbaktoo
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
211
"I have no restraints, whatsoever"

That is what a prostitute says when the pimp is around.
chaitanya
chennai, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
210
I have no restraints, whatsoever, MR./MS HINDU.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
209

47 PAGES OF COMMENTS !! And this after a dozen pages of the the same old recylced crap.

Guys, don't have anything worthwhile to do ..?

One niggling doubt: how the murderous campaigns of the Islamic hordes from 7th cent do not count as genocide?

DEJA VU ..too much. Even the Guardian of London and other left-leaning papers have given up on this mentally deranged woman.
sandy
Mumbai, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
208
Once a Muslim, always a Muslim. I believe Hindus must never try to convert back the Muslims into Hinduism. They will bring their mullah culture and make Hinduism look like Islam. The present Hindu fanatics, however rigid their mind is, will not kill the diversity of Hinduism. There have been Hindu fanatics since ages and it's only their appreciation for the diversity that sets them apart from other fanatics.
chaitanya
chennai, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
207
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> Misunderstanding" and Islam.

Only the most debased knaves would carry out such a single-minded hate campaign against the religion of a minority community in one's own country. You are probably too ill-bred to realize what a depraved activity you are engaged in.

>> India paid dearly for its misplaced trust in its misleaders.

History lesson from an idiot!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
206
Anand, Seshadriji knows of what he speaks. The evidence around India is too stark -Pakistan, Bangladesh,and Afghanistan, and within India, namely Kashmir, to just dismiss as a coincidence, or to attribute to socio-economic causes. Seshadriji is saying something very sane and sensible. India is handling this whole Islamic terror and separatism problem with far greater maturity and restraint, than the US or any European country or Japan/China would, in similar circumstances. Or do you have evidence to demonstrate that Indians are being particularly immature and paranoid, in contrast to the great maturity and equanimity of the US, France, UK and Italy? Remember India's situation, when/if you respond.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
205
Seshadri,

>> The imam of jumma masjid may issue a falwa that on one night every moslem man should go out and kill at least three non-moslems before returning home!

A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave die but once!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
204
II) The Lebensraum ideology was a major factor in Hitler's launching of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The Nazis hoped to turn large areas of Soviet territory into German settlement areas as part of Generalplan Ost.[1] Developing these ideas, Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg, proposed that the Nazi administrative organization in lands to be conquered from the Soviets be based upon the following Reichskommissariats:

* Ostland (Baltic States, Belarus and eastern Poland),
* Ukraine (Ukraine and adjacent territories),
* Kaukasus (Caucasus area),
* Moskau (the Moscow metropolitan area and adjacent European Russia)

The Reichskommissariat territories in the Bahamas would extend up to the European frontier at the Urals. They were to have been early stages in the displacement and dispossession of Russian and other Slav people and their replacement with German settlers, following the Nazi Lebensraum im Osten plans.

Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan to realize Hitler's 'new order of ethnographical relations' in the territories occupied in Eastern Europe during World War II. It was prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942. It was divided into two parts, the Kleine Planung ('Small Plan'), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the Große Planung ('Big Plan'), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won. The plan envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation, expulsion into the depths of Russia, and other gruesome fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character. In ten years time, the plan called for the extermination of most or all Slavs still living behind the front line. Instead 250 million Germans would live in an extended 'Reich' 50 years after the war.

Under the Große Planung, Generalplan Ost foresaw the eventual expulsion of more than 50 million Slavs beyond the Urals. Of the Poles, only about 3-4 million people were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland, and then only to serve as slaves for German settlers. Generalplan Ost included one component which did get realized in the main - the Endlösung der Judenfrage ('Final Solution of the Jewish Question').

Source : Wikipedia
Contrarian
Bhopal, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
203
I) To Conflate:- is the error of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one. The result of conflating concepts may give rise to fallacies of ambiguity, including the fallacy of four terms in a categorical syllogism. For example, the word "bat" has at least two meanings: a flying animal, and a piece of sporting equipment (such as a baseball bat or a cricket bat). If these two meanings are not distinguished, the result may be the following categorical syllogism, which is clearly intended as a joke (pun):

1. All bats are animals.
2. Some wooden objects are bats.
3. Therefore, some wooden objects are animals.

Illustration:- “Truly Hitlerian,” the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer pronounced Saddam Hussein’s saber-rattling before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Three days after the 9/11 attacks, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defense secretary, opined that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers “misread our system as one that’s weak, that can’t take casualties. … Hitler made that mistake.” Norman Podhoretz, the former editor of Commentary, said of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last spring, “Like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system.” In the same month, the defense analyst Richard Perle mused on whether it had been “a correct reading” of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat “to believe that business could be done with him that would produce a result? I don’t think so. These are the difficult decisions. Diplomacy with Hitler. Chamberlain went to Munich, presumably on the theory that you talk to your enemies and not to your friends, and what did it produce?”
Contrarian
Bhopal, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
202
In other words, Lebensraum was a part of an imperialist war plan. The death toll? 11 million, including 6 million Jews (a separate, detailed plan called the final solution).

The 2002 Gujarat riots? It may have been systematic, or a reaction to Godhra. The toll? About 2000 muslims, 80 hindus. The period? 27th Feb to 5th May.

So, is it genocide? According to 2001 figures, The population of muslims in Gujarat was 4.47-5.06 million, and India 132.79 million. The ratio of persons killed to total muslim population works out to be 0.004-0.0045% for Gujarat and 0.0015% for India. The rate of growth of the muslim population in 1991-2001 is 22.48% for Gujarat and and 21.34% for India. Is it necessary to consider scale of the toll when defining genocide?

The population of the victims of Lebensraum was about 200-300 million. The ration of the death toll to the original population was 3.14-5.5%. Poland was slated lose all its population. Jewish deaths/population percentage was about 65-85%.

Similar analysis can also be made of other true Genocides.

Is it then correct to use the same term for Gujarat 2002, Delhi 1984 and Europe 1941-2? I think Ms Roy is guilty of conflation, as practiced by the Iraq war architects, no?
Contrarian
Bhopal, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
201
The point here is that under the garb of fighting terrorism, fascists are trying to briing back the golden age of brahminical supremacy back with manusmriti as its constitution. All of their actions point in that direction. Bjp's effort to restrict education from reaching the masses(proposal to restrict education to 12 std.) is the modern day answer to pouring the lead down a shudra person ears. A presidential form of govt based on the US model was to hijack the governement for once and for all. To reduce the democracy in the name only as in US, where idiots are voting for presidents based on the choice that whether they want a first time balck president or first time women president, a candidates competency is distant maybe 10th priority.
pkkumar
pune, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
200
Seshadri: "But, I think, moslems generally start their genocidal operations even when they reach 30-40 percent, as per experiences in other countries where non-moslems have been wiped out. Imagine, this happens in another century. The imam of jumma masjid may issue a falwa that on one night every moslem man should go out and kill at least three non-moslems before returning home! Before next dawn, non-hindu male population of the country would have been wiped out, leaving a large number of non-moslem women for being raped and haremized in due course. Imam bukhari will achieve overnight what Gazzni and Ghauri could not, over centuries."

>> Old age seems to have completely wrecked Seshadri's grey cells. Tssk, tssk poor Mr. Iyer has to spend his twilight years spewing nonsense about muslims.
Anand
Santa Clara, USA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
199
Joesph: There was a presentation by you that it may take more than two centuries for moslem population in India to exceed majority and the justifiable genocide of others after that. Thank you for the consolate information.

But, I think, moslems generally start their genocidal operations even when they reach 30-40 percent, as per experiences in other countries where non-moslems have been wiped out. Imagine, this happens in another century. The imam of jumma masjid may issue a falwa that on one night every moslem man should go out and kill at least three non-moslems before returning home! Before next dawn, non-hindu male population of the country would have been wiped out, leaving a large number of non-moslem women for being raped and haremized in due course. Imam bukhari will achieve overnight what Gazzni and Ghauri could not, over centuries.

In my view, the hindus of India, especially the women should very much wake up to this possibility. They should work for bringing about inercaste unity among all hindus, perhaps when they meet in temples, ignoring the male politicians who are emphasizing caste differences for poliitical vote-getting advantages. Special self-defence capability build-up among men, some security arrangements for housing groups and teaching of girls karate along with dance lessons etc. will be advisable, so that, if and when imam bukhari declares his war, the casualities on the moslem side may be even more than that on the non-moslem side, so that real genocide of non-moslem males is not really accomplished and hinduism might still survive in India for the future. I feel Allah, the all-merciful, will ensure that, although moslems may all pray for the opposite.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
198
Amnesty report on Turkey 2007 :- Freedom of expression

Laws containing fundamental restrictions on freedom of expression remained in force, resulting in the prosecution, and sometimes conviction, of groups such as journalists, writers, publishers, academics, human rights defenders and students for the peaceful expression of their beliefs.

Many prosecutions were brought under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TPC) which criminalizes denigration of "Turkishness", the Republic and the institutions of the state. Most of these cases, such as that of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, ended in acquittal.

• In July the General Penal Board of the Court of Cassation upheld a six-month suspended sentence against Hrant Dink, a journalist, who was tried after writing about Armenian identity in Agos newspaper.


Other articles of the new TPC of 2005 also imposed restrictions on freedom of expression.

• In October Abdurrahman Dilipak, a journalist with Vakit newspaper, received a sentence of just under one year, commuted to a fine of 10,500 liras (approximately US$7,250), for insulting the President. The prosecutor had called for his acquittal.

• Birgül Özbar¹ô, a journalist for Özgür Gündem newspaper, faced seven prosecutions for "alienating the population from military service" because of her writings on military service and conscientious objection. She faced possible prison sentences totalling 36 years.

Anything similar happen in India?

No, in Turkey there is silence, and in India, there is celebration - of Arundhati Roy's writings.

Contrarian
Bhopal, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
197
The rulers across nations and sub-contininents had been successfully doing the clean-up job in the past and I see no reason why they would not be encouraged to do that all over again. When in India we have two major national parties, trying to outdo each other in order to gain maximum "RUNS" in shortest possible time, and being elected by so called "Great Janta" to rule in a seuqential manner, I dont understand why anyone should even dare to call a spade a spade. The only thing that matters here is that "OUR MAN" should be the murderer and not others. So be it.
dinesh
Delhi, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
196
Finnish Myth:
According to the original Ode to St. Urho written by Gene McCavic and Richard Mattson, St. Urho was supposed to have cast "tose 'Rogs" (those frogs) out of Finland by the power of his loud voice, which he obtained by drinking "feelia sour" (sour whole milk) and eating "kala mojakka" (fish soup).[8]. The legend now states that St. Urho drove away grasshoppers (rather than frogs) from Finland using the incantation "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!" ("Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to Hell!"), thus saving the Finnish grape crops.

Greek myth:
n Greek mythology, Tithonus was a handsome mortal who fell in love with Eos, the goddess of the dawn. Eos realised that her beloved Tithonus was destined to age and die. She begged Zeus to grant her lover immortal life.

Zeus was a jealous god, prone to acts of deception in order to seduce beautiful gods and mortals, and he was not pleased with Eos's infatuation with a rival. In a classic Devil's Bargain, he granted Eos's wish -- literally. He made Tithonus immortal, but did not grant him eternal youth.

As Tithonus aged, he became increasingly debilitated and demented, eventually driving Eos to distraction with his constant babbling.

In despair, she turned Tithonus into a grasshopper. In Greek mythology, the grasshopper is immortal. It chirrups constantly, instead of babbling.
Narasimhan M.G
Bangalore, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
195
Grasshopper natural enemies:- Parasites, predators, and diseases control grasshopper populations. Parasites of grasshoppers include insects, nematodes, or mites which live in or on grasshoppers or their eggs. They consume or weaken grasshoppers, resulting in death or weakened populations. Some insects, such as wasp-like members , parasitize the egg stage. Other insects attack the nymphal and adult stages of grasshoppers. These include flesh flies, tachinid flies, and tangle-veined flies. This parasite often causes death, sterility, or reduced vigor of the insect.
Predators of grasshoppers include birds, and mammals. Egg predators include crickets, ground beetles, and the larvae of blister beetles and bee flies. Spiders, wasps, robber flies, rodents, and birds eat nymphal and adult grasshoppers.

Singing grasshoppers:- An attractive feature of some grasshoppers is their ability to sing. It is the males that sing, and they do it to attract female mates, or to warn off other males. There are two different mechanisms for singing. In the one used by the Short-horned grasshoppers, there is a comb-like structure with a row of teeth on the inside of the hind leg, which gets rubbed against a ridge on the wing (a bit like running a stick along a fence very quickly). This produces a 'chirp' sound. The other mechanism used by Crickets and Long-horned grashoppers, there is again a comb-and-ridge mechanism, but the structures are on the left and right forewings, which rub over each other.

Now, why would the landing of these beautiful creatures be a bad omen?
Narasimhan M.G
Bangalore, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
194
Grasshopper lifecycle:- During reproduction, the male grasshopper introduces sperm into the vagina through its aedeagus (reproductive organ), and inserts its spermatophore, a package containing the sperm, into the female's ovipositor.
The sperm enters the eggs through fine canals called micropyles. In the summer, the female lays the fertilized egg pod, using her ovipositor and abdomen to insert the eggs about one to two inches underground, although they can also be laid in plant roots or even manure and usually in their habitats. These are immediately incubated. She lays the eggs in a row and sprays them with a stick substance which forms a pod. Each 'pod' has 15-150 eggs inside it, depending on the species. The female can lay up to 25 pods. Eggs hatch into nymphs, which look like little adults without wings and reproductive organs. Nymphs resemble small, wingless adults. Newly hatched nymphs are white, however, after exposure to sunlight, they assume the distinctive colours and markings of adults. Nymphs molt their skins many times as they grow to be adults. Females try to choose a good place to lay their eggs, but that is the only parental care they provide. Grasshoppers do not take care of their babies once they have hatched.

Grasshoppers undergo simple complete or incomplete metamorphosis that consists of 3 or 4 stages:
Complete metamorphosis:-1 egg 2 larvae 3 Pupa 4 Adult
Incomplete metamorphosis:-1 egg 2 nymph 3 adult

Grasshopper anatomy:- Grasshoppers breathe through a series of holes called 'spiracles' which are located Like all insects, the grasshoppers have three main body parts - the head, the thorax and the abdomen. They have six jointed legs, two pairs of wings and two antennae. along the sides of the body. Most grasshoppers are green, brown, or olive-green.
The biggest Grasshoppers are about 4.5 inches (11.5 cm) long. Their legs are long hind legs that are used for hopping and jumping. The short front legs are used to hold prey and to walk.
Abdomen - the segmented tail area of a grasshopper, which contains the heart, reproductive organs, and most of the digestive system.
Antennae - like all insects, grasshoppers have 2 segmented antennae that sense touch and odours.
Compound eye - grasshoppers have 2 faceted eyes made up of many hexagonal lenses.
Head - the head is at the front end of the grasshopper's body and is the location of the brain, the two compound eyes, the mouth parts, and the points of attachment of its two antennae.
Jumping legs -the long, hindmost pair of the grasshopper's six legs.
Mandibles - the jaws, located near the tip of the head, by the palps; the jaws crush the food.


There are 3 orders(genus?) of grass-hoppers - spur-throated, slant-faced and band-winged. Spur-throted grasshoppers come in 14 species - Fuzzy olive green, post oak, red-legged, migratory etc. Normally short wings, red/blue tibia, speckled forewings. Slant-faced grashoppers come in about 9 species - white whiskers, bighead, coral-winged, velvet-striped etc. They have red, ble or orange tibia. Band-winged - green-striped, three-banded, speckle winged etc. There is also a Plains grasshopper - heavy-bodied and flightless.
Narasimhan M.G
Bangalore, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
193
"Back in 1919, while seeking to forge an entente cordiale between India’s two major religious groupings, Gandhi asked them to collectively take this vow:

“With God as witness we Hindus and Mahomedans declare that we shall behave towards one another as children of the same parents, that we shall have no differences, that the sorrows of each will be the sorrows of the other and that each shall help the other in removing them. We shall respect each other’s religion and religious feelings and shall not stand in the way of our respective religious practices. We shall always refrain from violence to each other in the name of religion.”

"It only remains for me to add: what Gandhi asked of Hindus and Muslims in India in 1919 should be asked again of them today; asked also of Jews and Arabs in Palestine, of Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka, and of Christians and Muslims in Europe, North America, West Asia and Africa."


http://www.hindustantim...=His+faith%2c+our+faith
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
192
Current estimates are, MR./MS HINDU, thar the Population of S. A. A. R. C. is 1.5 Billion of which Muslims number 480 Million or, in other words, constitute 32 Per Cent of the Population.

Indications are, also that S. A. A. R. C.'s Muslim population will cross Fifty Per Cent in the year 2117 or thereabouts.

Let me now say this. My Projections are as Absurd as is your Paranoia. They are both Simplistic and Totally Ignore Unforseen Events.

Stay Calm.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
191
Current estimates are, MR./MS HINDU, thar the Population of S. A. A. R. C. is 1.5 Billion of which Muslims number 480 Million or, in other words, constitute 32 Per Cent of the Population.

Indications are, also that S. A. A. R. C.'s Muslim population will cross Fifty Per Cent in the year 2117 or thereabouts.

Let me now say this. My Projections are as Absurd as is your Paranoia. They are both Simplistic and Totally Ignore Unforseen Events.

Stay Calm.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
190
Varun,

>> there is no comparison between the violence .....

That dubious equal-equal argument again!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
189
MR./MS HINDU, I have focussed on what is relevant today by providing you a "Trend Analysis" that, if at all, Muslims are likely to become a Majority in India in the year 2391 or thereabouts.

If your fear is about South Asia becoming Muslim Majority, as distinct from India becoming so, I shall work out when that is likely to happen, once I have despatched these observations.

While at this. let me request you not to waste your time in matters that are beyond your control.

Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
188
If the analysis below from the B. B. C.'s "Religion and Ethics" Series is factual, then both Hinduism and Islam gained their respective numbers at the cost of Buddhism and both by Military and Peaceful
Means.

------------------------------------
----------------

The Rise of "Hinduism"
The years to 1000 CE saw Hinduism gaining strength at the expense of Buddhism.

Some Hindu rulers took military action to suppress Buddhism. However it was probably developments in Hinduism itself that helped the faith to grow.

Hinduism now included not only the appeal of devotion to a personal god, but had seen the development of its emotional side with the composition and singing of poems and songs. This made Hinduism an intelligible and satisfying road to faith to many ordinary worshippers.

The Arrival of Islam
Islam arrived in the Ganges basin in the 7th century, but its influence was not really felt until the Turks arrived in the 11th and 12th centuries CE.

Islam and Hinduism were in conflict because, although the mystical traditions of both religions had some common ground, Muslim rulers sought to conquer Hindu territories and, from the 17th century, to assert the superiority of Islam.

Islam was established — and flourished — chiefly in areas where Buddhism was in a process of slow decline, that is mainly around modern-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir.

Hinduism remained strongest in the south of
India.

------------------------------------
----------------
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
187
What Rapid Islamisation are you talking about, MR.
HINDU?.

-----------------------------------
-----------------


Year Percentage
1961 10.7%
1971 11.2%
1981 12.0%
1991 12.8%
2001 13.4%
Table : Census information for 2001: Hindu and Muslim compared[á][â] Composition Hindus[53] Muslims[54]
% total of population 2001 80.5 13.4
10-Yr Growth % (est '91–'01)[55][â] 20.3 36.0
Sex ratio* (avg. 933) 931 936
Literacy rate (avg. 64.8) 65.1 59.1
Work Participation Rate 40.4 31.3
Rural sex ratio[55] 944 953
Urban sex ratio[55] 894 907
Child sex ratio (0–6 yrs) 925 950


------------------------------------------
----------

Based on the Trens above, Muslims will form about 14.1 Per Cent of India's People in 2011. In time a "stationery state" will take over and the Muslinm growth rate from natural causes will be higher marginally.

This does not, of course, preclude any "Mass Conversions To Escape Caste".

At the 'stationary state' rate of increase Muslims are likely, if at all, to become the Majority in India in the year 2391, repeat 2391.

Hence, why all this Paranoia?.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
186
Hard Rock, there is no comparison between the violence indulged in by Moslems, and that by Hindus. Islamic violence was massive, wanton and relentless. It eradicated cultures, as Hindu from Nile has pointed out. Hinduism has a messy, chaotic and contradictory side to it, but wantonly and relentlessly mass murdering and destructive, no chance. Indians these days are talking mainly about making India as wealthy economically as possible, not about caste, human trafficking and riots.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
185
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> By conflating the bygone days of Brahminism with the mortal Islamic threat facing India.

The easiest way to deny the truth that you don't want known, bring up the bugaboo of Islamic
threat!
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
184
>>" he criss-crossed the country on his Rath Yatra, his Chariot of Fire, demanding the demolition of the Babri Masjid,"

Clearly, for the lady who calls Advani's Ram-Rath was a 'chariot of fire', neither Ram nor ram-janm in Ayodhya are valid history, only fairy tales. She is entitled to her views. But, why should she call herself 'arundhati' after the wife of Sage Vasishta, the kula-guru of Rama's soorya-vamsa during Rama's times. She should kindly leave the hindus alone, rename herself as "Thaataka", the man-eater demoness who was the first to be killed by Ram, as youngster. It would place her in the appropriate anti-hindu camp among today's leftist intellectuals.
v.seshadri
chennai, india
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
183
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> By conflating the bygone days of Brahminism with the mortal Islamic threat facing India.

The easiest way to deny the truth that you don't want known, bring up the bugaboo of Islamic
threat!

>> Look at what happened in Persia? In Afganistan? In Central Asia? In the Middle Eaat? In North Africa?

Those were the ways of the conquerors in those days the world over.

>> Dear Roy: Please write on what is TRUE and RELEVANT for India.

Yes, create hatred for Muslims and increase communal divisions just like Hindu/Bodepudi is doing all day long in his miserable life.

>> Arundhati Roy: A Skilled Secular Fascist.

Arundhati is secular and Hindu/Bodepudi is a fascist. Secular fascist is a repulsive oxymoron created by the Hindutva fascists.

Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
182
Varun,

>> if there were really a serious problem with "Hindu extremists", wouldn't they be setting off bombs in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

When the Supreme Court used the term "Hindutva terrorism", they were referring to terrorist acts in India.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
181
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> /What will people do whose religion resembles a Swiss cheese.

Swiss cheese is an apt analogy for your brain.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
180
Varun,

>> did Hindu priests also eradicate Buddhism and destroy monastaries in West Asia, Central Asia and Afghanistan? And did those same priests destroy Nalanda, Vikramasila and Odantapuri?

Read Joseph's and Misra's postings more carefully.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
179
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> But the ensuing tensions were resolved more peacefully than any in the world.

Lying comes so easily to you!

>> I believe strongly that the Prince pf Peace, Jesus, lived in India and also taught Buddhism.

You belong in the loony bin.

>> the rest and especially the Christianity went through reformation and renaissance.

All cultures move in that direction at different paces, but you yourself are fixated at the stage of bigotry for ever.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
178
Hindu/Bodepudi,

>> You once claimed that Ahmdinezad was one of your heroes.

You have said this ten times before, and I have told you ten times that you are a malicious liar. So for the eleventh time, you are a malicious liar.
Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
177
Parbat/Ramdas/Sandhu/Abdullah/Thomas,

>> the unbelievable atrocities committed on Muslims by the Afghan mujahedin.....Faruki, would continue to call them "freedom fighters"

Refusal to see the Mujahdeen as freedom fighters distinct from the atrocious Taliban is a symptom of your cussedness and perversity, which unfortunately seem to be incurable.




Ghulam Y Faruki
New York, United States
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
176
"Arundhati Roy: A Skilled Secular Fascist"

Why the redundancy in words-secular and fascist? Either word describes it adequately.
Ganesan
Nj, USA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
175
Where were these sanjay mishras, arundhati roys and the likes when the present day afghani people take so much effort and time, in destroying their own heritage built by their ancestors centuries ago with painstaking hard work? Doesn't this move these people a bit? What makes people hate their own roots so much? What Hindus did in Ayodhya in 1991 is controversial, but at least it was not their own heritage that they broke into pieces in Ayodhya.
chaitanya
chennai, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
174
But the question remains, Sanjay Misra, what were the numbers involved in these illegal transfers and other acts of dishonesty. "Hindu" from "Nile" has pointes out that 20,000 Buddhist monks and nuns were massacred on a single day in Nalanda in 1997. Surely you are not equating what the Brahmin priests did/are doing with such an outright mass murder.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
173
What a scholarly article! And how profound is the writer’s knowledge of history! She draws deep from the distant past like ‘American Holocaust of Red Indians’, but surprisingly not a word for the waves after waves of Islamic Imperialistic slaughters of the past (one incidentally was at her favorite hate place Gujarat-Somnath).Then she draws far from the near past like Slavery in America, but surprisingly not a word for the beastly trampling and enslavement of her own sex by the present Islamic theocracies all over the world including her favorite badlands-India. Not to forget The Present she then goes on reminding us several genocides but never bothering a word for the victims from majority in the same ‘genocides’.
She would pompously sprinkle the names from Turkey and beyond but will never bother to understand the little respites for some common men and women in being able to secure somewhat better future for themselves and their children because of economic progress. No, they must abandon all their aspirations and should stay for ever in beautiful ‘grasshopper state’ lest they trample some minority or protected ethnic people.
Then she taunts us bitterly over ill treatment to the naxals but not a word for the horrible deeds perpetrated by those same naxals.
Her extraordinary affection for ‘Muslims subjugated by demonic Hindu majority’ is exemplary but somehow not a word for the series after series of terrorist acts planned, executed and inflicted by the same docile Muslims everywhere in the world. Somehow she gives it a pass that the count of dead from those terrorists’ strikes far outnumbers her exaggerated no. of ‘genocide victims’.
Her diatribes against modern ‘mass murderer’ Narendra Modi assumes the sublime level of Homeric poetry, but somehow it escapes her mind that misdeeds and siphoning of the public money by Mega corrupt politicians like Lalu Yadav or Mayawati have deprived hungry millions of their plausible support from the state and caused thousands of mal-nutrition linked deaths all through the independent years. That the accused ‘mass murderer’ is comparatively corruption free is not to be believed because her apostle of truth finder ‘Tahelka” has not caught those Lalus and Lals in act of larceny nor the ‘Mass Murderer’ in act of refusing the one. That the same ‘mass murderer’ has tried to save thousands of infants and women by extending gynecological support at childbirth to many poor is a sheer propaganda for her and so ought to be completely ignored.
I marvel at her set of logic groomed and dressed in poetic prose aided by her mighty control of the Language.
samarth
mumbai, India
Jan 30, 2008 12:00 AM
172
There is no in questions like why it happened here and why not there ? There were no brahmins in those places to wreak havoc.

You did not squeak about the question of these illegal priests being there against the wishes of buddhists. They should give up the control of these stupas and also remove the other idols replaceing those of Buddhas.
sanjay misra
Tumkur, India
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
171
And Misra, furthermore, if there were really a serious problem with "Hindu extremists", wouldn't they be setting off bombs in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, where Hindus are a small minority, sometimes persecuted? Wouldn't those "hindu extremists" be taking advantage of the poor communal situation in those places in order to prosecute their agenda, which is to spread violence and extremism? You know what, people like you are spreading crap and lies, in order to deflect attention away from Islamic terror. For who knows what reason.
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
170
Misra, what is the connection between so called "Hindu extremism" and the Hyderabad bombings? What did the 'Hindu extremists' do in Hyderabad that caused Islamic terrorists to blast a restaurant, killing more than 40 people? What was the provocation and the issue in Hyderabad?
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
169
Sanjay Misra, did Hindu priests also eradicate Buddhism and destroy monastaries in West Asia, Central Asia and Afghanistan? And did those same priests destroy Nalanda, Vikramasila and Odantapuri?
Varun Shekhar
Toronto, CANADA
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
168
How forked can a tongue get ? One who claims to be buddhists is at same time defending the perpetrators. Maybe a case of stockholm syndrome!
sanjay misra
Tumkur, India
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
167
There are vested which try to portray Hindus as violent people. Arundhati Roy is one of them. Whatever the reason for her hatred might be, it is not reason to pass a judgment on her own ancestors who were idol-worshipers not long ago. She finds a platform to express her hatred for Hindu traditions, backed by western organizations. I am glad that people like her considered as villain by majority Indians rather than as a hero. Few people, who do consider her as hero, are as lost as her when it comes to recognizing their true roots.
chaitanya
chennai, India
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
166
Congratulations to bigot fascists on this forum you've just made the ranks of people you have critising so heartliy!

Terrorism’s New Signature
Enter Hindutva Terrorists
Saturday 26 January 2008, by Subhash Gatade

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article521.html

Whether it be the suicide bombers of LTTE or the jihadists of Al Qaeda or ET guerillas working for a Basque region or the remnants of the Khalistani terrorists or for that matter terrorism unleashed by groups owning allegiance to the Hindutva brigade, the phenomenon of terrorism could be said to span every community or country in different measures.

India has also of late witnessed a spurt in terrorist attacks. Recently we were told India stands among the top five countries of the world which are susceptible to a terrorist attack.

While nobody can deny the role of jihadi terrorists belonging to the likes of Lashar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad in many such bloody and inhuman incidents, one feels perturbed over the mono-chromatic presentation of such a complex phenomenon where green tends to dominate the rest. The conspiracy of silence over the phenomenon of what is known in popular parlance as ‘Hindutva terrorism’ needs to be questioned and confronted.] …The fanatics who spread violence in the name of religion are worse than terrorist and more dangerous than an alien enemy…
(Quoted in the Supreme Court judgement in the Best Bakery Case)
sanjay misra
Tumkur, India
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
165
Smoking gun that points to the brahmins hand in decline of buddhism is the fact that all the ancient stupas have brahmin priests which is resented and fought tooth and nail by all the buddhists but to no avail. There are cases pending in the court of law which are not leading anywhere. You may guess the reason.
sanjay misra
Tumkur, India
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
164
When I say We, I include myself in the We, MR. VINOD.
Joseph
Karachi, Pakistan
Jan 29, 2008 12:00 AM
163