Pankaj Mishra recently reviewed Martha Nussbaum’s new book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future in the New York Review of Books. The review gives some tantalizing hints as to Nussbaum’s arguments, but Mishra also spends a considerable amount of time rehashing his own views (rather than Nussbaum’s) on the subjects of communalism and India’s evolution as a free market economy.
A better introduction to Nussbaum’s ideas about India can be found in a good-sized extract from the new book that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month. (Also check out Ramachandra Guha’s review here. And finally, there’s an MP3 Podcast of Nussbaum’s lecture at the University of Chicago you can download here; listen especially to Nussbaum’s prefatory comments on what led her to this project.) For those who are unfamiliar with Nussbaum’s interest in India, she has collaborated closely with Amartya Sen in the past, and also published a book called Women and Human Development that dealt with gender issues in India.
A few quotes from the extract at the Chronicle and some thoughts of my own on Nussbaum’s ideas after the jump.Nussbaum is clear from the start that the main goal of her book is to help American readers see India’s communalism problems in a global context. She wants to debunk Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, and suggest Gandhi as an alternative:
The case of Gujarat is a lens through which to conduct a critical examination of the influential thesis of the “clash of civilizations,” made famous by the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. His picture of the world as riven between democratic Western values and an aggressive Muslim monolith does nothing to help us understand today’s India, where, I shall argue, the violent values of the Hindu right are imports from European fascism of the 1930s, and where the third-largest Muslim population in the world lives as peaceful democratic citizens, despite severe poverty and other inequalities.
The real “clash of civilizations” is not between “Islam” and “the West,” but instead within virtually all modern nations — between people who are prepared to live on terms of equal respect with others who are different, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity and the domination of a single “pure” religious and ethnic tradition. At a deeper level, as Gandhi claimed, it is a clash within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.
This argument about India suggests a way to see America, which is also torn between two different pictures of itself. One shows the country as good and pure, its enemies as an external “axis of evil.” The other picture, the fruit of internal self-criticism, shows America as complex and flawed, torn between forces bent on control and hierarchy and forces that promote democratic equality. At what I’ve called the Gandhian level, the argument about India shows Americans to themselves as individuals, each of whom is capable of both respect and aggression, both democratic mutuality and anxious domination. Americans have a great deal to gain by learning more about India and pondering the ideas of some of her most significant political thinkers, such as Sir Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi, whose ruminations about nationalism and the roots of violence are intensely pertinent to today’s conflicts. (link)
What’s interesting about this is the way Nussbaum — by training a philosopher — keeps a philosophical (rather than a political) idea at the center of her argument. She is not talking about competing political systems or the ideologies of individual political parties so much as she is trying to suggest competing ways of understanding the “self” in a world full “others.”
That said, Nussbaum does get into some specific details, and outlines a version of the rise of the Hindu right starting with the arguments of Savarkar and Golwalkar, and ending in Gujarat 2002. (Some readers will agree with her version of events, some may disagree. I think she is substantially correct.)
For Nussbaum, the rhetoric of Hindutva is to a great extent a rhetoric of masculinity under threat:
The creation of a liberal public culture: How did fascism take such hold in India? Hindu traditions emphasize tolerance and pluralism, and daily life tends to emphasize the ferment and vigor of difference, as people from so many ethnic, linguistic, and regional backgrounds encounter one another. But as I’ve noted, the traditions contain a wound, a locus of vulnerability, in the area of humiliated masculinity. For centuries, some Hindu males think, they were subordinated by a sequence of conquerors, and Hindus have come to identify the sexual playfulness and sensuousness of their traditions, scorned by the masters of the Raj, with their own weakness and subjection. So a repudiation of the sensuous and the cultivation of the masculine came to seem the best way out of subjection. One reason why the RSS attracts such a following is the widespread sense of masculine failure.
At the same time, the RSS filled a void, organizing at the grass-roots level with great discipline and selflessness. The RSS is not just about fascist ideology; it also provides needed social services, and it provides fun, luring boys in with the promise of a group life that has both more solidarity and more imagination than the tedious world of government schools.
So what is needed is some counterforce, which would supply a public culture of pluralism with equally efficient grass-roots organization, and a public culture of masculinity that would contend against the appeal of the warlike and rapacious masculinity purveyed by the Hindu right. The “clash within” is not so much a clash between two groups in a nation that are different from birth; it is, at bottom, a clash within each person, in which the ability to live with others on terms of mutual respect and equality contends anxiously against the sense of being humiliated.
Gandhi understood that. He taught his followers that life’s real struggle was a struggle within the self, against one’s own need to dominate and one’s fear of being vulnerable. He deliberately focused attention on sexuality as an arena in which domination plays itself out with pernicious effect, and he deliberately cultivated an androgynous maternal persona. More significantly still, he showed his followers that being a “real man” is not a matter of being aggressive and bashing others; it is a matter of controlling one’s own instincts to aggression and standing up to provocation with only one’s human dignity to defend oneself. I think that in some respects, he went off the tracks, in his suggestion that sexual relations are inherently scenes of domination and in his recommendation of asceticism as the only route to nondomination. Nonetheless, he saw the problem at its root, and he proposed a public culture that, while he lived, was sufficient to address it. (link)
I think the threatened-masculinity point is interesting, as is Nussbaum’s proposed alternative. For her, the way to combat the hyper-virility of communal groups is not anti-masculinity, but an alternative conception of what it might mean to assert oneself as a man. I’m not sure the Gandhian idea of masculinity — which has always struck me as rather abstruse — is the best way to go, but this is still a provocative point.
The one point of disagreement I have with Nussbaum — at least from the extract I linked to — relates to whether the “clash within” is primarily a matter of Hindus/Muslim tension. As I’ve been watching Indian politics over the past few years, I’ve been struck, first, by the degree to which regional and state political considerations have come to dominate over grand ideology and national politics. Secondly, I’ve been struck by the continuing electoral fragmentation by caste — the Indian political system is not simply divided on a left/right diagram, but cut into a much more fragmentary array of caste-based political parties that can form (and break) alliances with the national parties at the will their respective leaders. Nussbaum may in fact be right about the principal problem in Indian politics (i.e., her philosophy of “the clash within”), but perhaps she needs to move beyond her current exclusive focus on Hindu/Muslim conflicts.
On a more serious note, the Hinduvta goon does have some unhealthy obsession with the sexuality of the Indian Muslim women. I am yet to see evidence of the Palestinian goon for example having the same obsession about the sexuality of the Jewish women in West Bank.
Red Snapper,
That was the greatest Spoor Lam impersonation I have ever read. I bow to you, sir. 🙂
That was the greatest Spoor Lam impersonation I have ever read. I bow to you, sir. 🙂
I concur.
Maybe I am missing some subtle nuances, but haven’t the same points been made by other writers before, particularly Ashis Nandy? For example the point about Tagore and Gandhi’s philosophy vis-a-vis nationalism in ‘The Illegitimacy of Nationalism‘, and the different interpretations of masculinity by Gandhi and the RSS, etc in ‘Final Encounter: The Politics of Assassination of Gandhi’.
LOL. C’mon dude, we are the land of the Kama Sutra. Don’t.You.Ever.Forget.That. 😉
Arshia Sattar translated the oldest Valmiki text she could find directly from Sanskrit to English, so it’s not entirely inaccessible.
I think Ramanand Sagar’s TV series is the canonical Ramayana of today. After that, Tulsidas’ commentaries seem to be best-known (and Sagar’s epic was based mostly on Tulsidas). From letters I’ve received, I gather very few people actually read Valmiki versions.
I dont know about Martha Nassbaum but Pankaj Mishra is a “wingnut”. Mishra repeatedly insinuated in a radio show, that last year’s Mumbai train serial bombing was a have v/s have-not issue. How can anyone take anything he says seriously.
i agree on the ‘masculinity’ issue. You will be given constant reminder about your masculinity where i live. If you are weak, do not cheat try to be honest, do not drink/smoke or do not criticize Muslims ur branded as Gandhi( don’t be a gandhi). Gandhi is term described for the weak, i.e the person who did not fight the British( physicial ) or as rss tries to remind u always the person who allowed Pakistan to be created. If you have attended any RSS meeting they would remind u that Hindus are not weak like gandhi but are warriors, able to kill people if need be.
FOBguy :
FOBguy, your comments are so typical. This is a discussion about Hindu right and that’s why comments here will condemn Hindu fascism. When a discussion about Islamic extremism pops up we will be talking about Islamic hate speech, and there have been plentiful of that in this board as well. What do you expect that whenever someone condemns Hindu extremism in this board, he/she has to pacify the situation by citing extremist example from all other religions !!!
“minority pandering policies of the govt.” — This is the biggest BS propagated by apologists of VHP and Bajrang Dal. How come with all that minority pandering the biggest minority in India still lags at the bottom of the economic ladder ? When all other disadvantage groups have got their share of the reservation pie why are Muslims denied that ? As with any democracy, the political parties always pander to the largest voting block and that it India happens to be SC/ST and OBCs. I wonder why no one pointed out the caste angle in Hindu extremism as well. For me the rise of the Hindu right is a backlash by the upper caste in India, angered by the sudden change in social order. I always laugh aloud when an upper caste ‘FOBguy’ comes around and complaints that the govt. does not pander to them enough. With all the privileges and wealth they posses, I wonder what else they want from the govt.
On a broader note, Imam Bukhari can say whatever he wants, but probably even he knows he does not count much. Muslims are never going to be a political force in India and as such would “never return to rule”. But the Sangh might and as a result is a much bigger threat to be concerned about.
I lost interest in the Nussbaum book after skimming the NYRB review, quite honestly (perhaps because it’s hard to tell where Mishra ends and Nussbaum begins?); these ideas have been written about, in this form, about ten years ago. I have a dozen books on my shelf about Indian politics in the post-Mandal period blah blah communal and caste conflict blah blah. Loads of books and articles were written on Hindutva and masculinity in the late nineties, nothing new there. Generalised books are difficult to write on such a vast polity and particularly without very fine-grained expertise on the questions at hand and they all end up rehashing the same themes. I much prefer more specific books on caste politics or Hindutva (Jaffrelot, Hansen, etc) or the politics of economic reform, or the problem of ascriptive identity-based civil society mobilization (Khilnani and Kaviraj). And I’m looking forward to Rajdeep Sardesai’s book (if he ever does finish it) on how television has changed Indian political debate.
Everybody is leaping with indignity at the idea that Hindu males may feel / be projected as historically emasculated, without looking at the actual institutional processes that ostensibly lead to this. Nussbaum’s article, Body of the Nation, is a good thing to read to clarify your thoughts about the notion.
ANNA,
Just to clarify the “rules” for your little site, it’s OK to routinely lampoon Hindus, that gets praised. Would I get similar props for lambasting Christians or Sikhs, or would that result in a ban.
How dare these Hindu bigots assert their saffron selves!
Do they not understand that I, in my magnificent white glory, am the only one capable of determining what parties and leaders are worthy of following?
Do they not realize that only Abrahamics are justified in using their religion for the violent conquest of others?
Do they not know that only the light skinned of the world may inhabit lands specified only for their own kind?
They must realize that one must shirk useful work in order to pursue a PhD at a pseudo-secular Western University in order for their views to be important. Just look at these troops of fawning brown profs who dance when we command it! They understand that in order to achieve academic credability, it is neccessary to sepoy themselves and denounce any actions by those backwards brown people that they resemble.
Death to those Right Wing Hindu Bigots and the 10,000 years of violent conflict, colonial impression and human salvery they have inflicted upon the world! Death to the BJP, RSS, Congress and all other browns that have conducted innumerable Crusades, Holy Wars, dropped Atomic Bombs, raped virgins, uprooted small trees and consistently refuse to put down the toilet seat!
It is clear that their undersized cocks drive all Indian foreign policy. If only they would cease with their penis envy, then the world would return to peaceful, Caucasian bliss. Thankfully we have people such as myself, who have experienced a wide range of men, both emasculated (brown) and not (White) in order to show them how unworthy they are to rule their own country.
Hail Gayathri Spizak! Hail William Dalrymple!
G Unit, SpoorLam’s parodies are often funny. Yours isn’t — too wordy, for one thing. It’s also not clear whether you’re parodying “pseudo-secular academics” or rather people (like yourself) who rant on and on about “pseudo-secular academics” who “sepoy themselves.”
Incidentally, it’s obvious you’re the same as “Gautham” and you’ve made these accusations many times before, under different aliases. Why not stick to one alias?
(Hint: study Hari Kondabolu if you want real anti-colonial humor)
Dipesh wrote :For me the rise of the Hindu right is a backlash by the upper caste in India, angered by the sudden change in social order.
This is not borne out by facts. As I pointed out in my comment on this thread, there has been a study published (in either Outlook or Week) about how the so-called lower castes (esp Vaishyas) form a large element of the right wing organizations. The more fanatical they are (Bajrang Dal, VHP), the chances are that “higher” castes are less represented in them. (Ditto with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra).
For a long time, the BJP was known as the “bania” party by the mainstream English press. Before the rise of that party in the 1980s, the now-famous India Today polls (done by the redoubtable Prannoy Roy) had indicated its marginal acceptance in mainstream India.
In 1984, they had gotten exactly 2 seats. In 1989, they got 88.
The change between 1984 and 1989 was largely due to (a) Mandal (b) Bofors (c)rise of regional parties. The 1989 election was the first “coalition election” in India and that has been the trend ever since. Thus, the Akali Dal and the DMK form alliances with the Congress on Saturdays and the BJP on Sundays.
In 1991, the BJP moved it to 120 seats. The Congress did too – from 197 in 1989 to 244 in 1991 ! Guess who lost? The “social justice” caste-based party Janata Dal which, went from 143 to 59. This was clearly a result of the terrible economic conditions during that period. Ergo, the “lower castes” (esp in the middle classes) shifted their vote to the BJP and back again to the Congress. This was at a time when the BSP and the JD were reigning supreme in caste-based politics.
Same in 1996. The referendum, if any was against the Harshad Mehta and Lakhubhai Pathak scam tainted Rao government. Congress went from 244 to 140. The BJP went from 120 to 161. The JD went down further from 59 to 46. i.e. once again the party claiming to be the voice of the lower castes performed worse.
State elections are a different story. They are almost always anti-incumbent votes. Except in Bengal, where the pinkos rig elections. 🙂
I keep hearing this nonsense about “Hindu resurgence = upper caste resurgence” repeated far too often. Time to put it to rest.
Quizman,
How dare you use facts and logic to debate something that’s been accepted by many here as a “Done Deal – Case Closed”? You have no right to complicate matters by bringing pertinent issues like socialist economy, license-raj, balance-of-payments crisis, scams, Shah Bano, Mandal etc to validate the rise of BJP – Martha does not want to hear all these. She’s decided it’s due to libido – accept it and move on.
Jokes aside, does anybody here think that Martha’s analysis is patently racist (for lack of a better term)? She’s clubbing all of 700 million+ Hindus under the category of people suffering from some syndrome – if you did that with any group of people you would be booed and hissed wherever you went. I don’t think American academia permits scholarship that boxes entire peoples of a certain race/religion/ethnicity under a category and psychoanalyse them. One would find themselves on a street in a blink of an eye if they attempted that.
Sakshi #56:>>C’mon dude, we are the land of the Kama Sutra. Don’t.You.Ever.Forget.That. 😉
This, my friends, is the root of the problem. Too many western acadamecians see India as a land of KamaSutra and erotic temples, and they harp on this single aspect. They have this vision of pre-mughal India where everyone was bonking everyone else and behaving like hippies on a beach, and the Arabs/Persians/British came and put an end to all that. This stifled sexuality is the cause of all of India’s problems, is their pet theory.
Someone tell them that despite KamaSutra/erotic temples, Indias were largely traditional throughtout their history with strong societal guidelines on sexual matters. Agreed that sex was not considered evil unlike the invading barbarians did, but sex was also not considered something that was free-for-all. It was considered to be something that was a ncessary part of life, with the consent and blessing of society. It was no more or no less important than respect for elders, work ethic, wealth creation, pilgrimages, planning for children’s future, etc etc. Society encouraged a balanced life, and sex was one of the aspects.
But then, understanding all of this would need one to get blinkers off.
M. Nam
“G Unit, SpoorLam’s parodies are often funny. Yours isn’t.”
They are all unfunny. That whole genre contains repeating patterns as though a computer program generated them. (For genuine humor, read Rahul or my namesake.)
Please do consider closing this thread–both Amardeep and G Unit seem to have hit some trigger points.
G-Unit:
It’s not my little site, it’s our rather nicely-sized one. You come here, you comment, it’s yours, too. But I appreciate the attempt to put me in my place, unsuitable as it was.
We’ve always adhered to the same policy– it’s spelled out clearly at the end of the instructions which are above the very comment box I am typing in right now:
If we did that then EVERY thread on this site would get shut down. Perhaps you would prefer an SM with no comments at all? That would be the only way to guarantee that no trigger points ever get hit.
No two people will agree on everything, especially when someone should close a thread, but I think we do an okay job of using our judgment while hosting this free-for-all.
Didn’t he also make the argument that we need an ‘alternative’ to history without even attempting to describe what academic trajectory that particular endeavour would take?
He’s a lovely fellow, especially in a post-colonial studies-friendly environment, willing to spare some time to explain to clueless undergrads, like myself, how LK Advani is really a textbook sociopath. (but that’s a temptation only if you’re a psychoanalyst who decided that area studies was a better career direction)
anyways, what MoorNam and the other outraged Saffronites are missing here is that repressed masculinity is only a component of Nussbaum’s argument. It’s probably the least defensible of all her positions, as it’s based on very little in the way of empirical evidence, but that’s not what she’s trying to do in the main.
muralimannered (#71), okay, maybe I am missing some subtle nuances again, but I am not sure what any of this has to do with the fact that these points have been made by Nandy and others before.
Do western academics “analyze” western Europe as a whole or go into country by country level granularity?? I think that they dont (I am willing to be corrected if someone shows examples). Then why would they lump India which is equal or larger in sq. mile area compared to Western Europe and has several times more population ?? Why would a western academic than just theorize for the entire large group of people and conclude “sexual repression”???
Racism or “the analysis of the OTHER” may be a part of it. There are people getting all riled up here when someone “OTHERises” them. When they get “pyscho-sexually-analysed” on top of being “otherised” why no protest?
in comment #73, I meant to say that …”They do” (As in they do go country by country go into more granular level)
anyways, what MoorNam and the other outraged Saffronites are missing here is that repressed masculinity is only a component of Nussbaum’s argument.
Its not that it is just a component of it, but the analysis ignores the importance of vote-bank politics and minority appeasement being reasons for the rise of hindu extremism.
indeed you are missing some nuance here. I was trying to make the point that half-assed explorations of topics don’t really qualify as precedent–that which you could point to and triumphally say, “been there, done that!”
The Pankaj Mishra review made me curious about Ramachandra Guha’s book, India after Gandhi, especially because he says it asks this question:
Why is there an India at all?”[5] For centuries India was not a nation in any conventional sense of the word. Not only did it not possess the shared language, culture, and national identity that have defined many nations; it had more social and cultural variety than even the continent of Europe.
It is something that has genuinely puzzled me, and I’m very curious to see if Guha has an interesting thesis on this topic. Has anyone read this book, or are there other books relevant to this issue?
And which is why I asked initially why this attempt in not half-assed and the previous ones are. Reading the excerpts Amardeep posted I could find no substantial difference in the arguments. But your comment (#71) was a criticism of positions taken by Nandy that have no relevance to this argument.
PS: I am no big fan of Nandy and indeed of psychobabble in general, and there are other writers who have been over all this: SP mentions many others.
i’ve rubbed my eyes twice now and I still don’t see anything beyond a breezy recollection about Nandy in my comments.
if you wish to play administrator and decide what is and what is not relevant, i heartily encourage you to write to Anna and make your case.
now if you could find Nandy’s musings on repressed masculinity we could have a real and valid discussion instead of the one we’re having currently which is not terribly dissimilar to the exercise of one-hand clapping.
I can’t find these essays online, but surely you’d agree that most of these ideas have been expressed many times before. Or if you think they are new, I’d be interested to hear that too, and also which ones you think are new. I am not even remotely an expert in any of these areas, so I cannot lead the discussion here. But if you (or anyone else here) can explain Nussbaum’s novelty beyond half-assed vs not half-assed, I’d be v interested.
The discussions revolving around Hinduism and the BJP and Freud are fine if that’s what you get your jollies from. I’ll even concede the point that viewing India through an Amerocentric lens distorts and misleads more than it edifies or illuminates, MoorNam. But let’s revisit this part:
This rings so true to me that I want to stand up and shout it into this sea of cubicles I work in.
Salil,
Nice as this sounds, Martha makes the same mistake she accuses others of: Offering only binary choices. Either you want equality, respect and compassion (more on that below) or you want to dominate and defile.
There is a third way (and a fourth, fifth…)
How about I offer only one guarantee: Equal rights under law. Respect? You’ll have to earn it. Compassion? Maybe, but I’ll be the judge of those who deserve compassion and those who don’t. Equality? At what? It’s a fuzzy word, and has been used to justify communism, socialism and all forms of religious theocracies and secular dictatorships. So no – we’re not equal. You’re better at somethings than me, and I will have some other things that you will never have. Dominate? That’s another fuzzy word, and it’s been used to justify high taxation of rich, license-raj, union-bullying, protectionism etc. If I’m the company owner or your manager, I’ll tell you what work to perform. Is that domination? If so, then domination is ok. Defile? That’s another fuzzy word, and it’s been used to justify the denial of right to marry whoever one wishes, denial of entry into places of worship, denial of sharing wells etc.
See, all these need context, which neither Gandhi nor Martha provide. There’s only one concept that does not need context: Equal under the eyes of law. Everything else if up in the air.
M. Nam
To add to what Salil said, as Amardeep says in his post and I point out above, the discourses she discusses may not have any causal force whatsoever (in fact I personally think they don’t). But they are nonetheless at least used to justify certain acts and mobilize people in favor of these acts. That the “real” causes of violence may be different (see quizman, for instance)does not detract from the fact that certain stories are told to justify, and make sense of, this violence (and this is a matter of verifiable fact). And it is at this level that Nussbaum questions (and tries to explain) this tale. Further such tales tap into our various insecurities (which themselves are caused by among other thing, various political-economic factors) as humans. At least this is how I read her.
Salil, let me know how that goes. Even better, put it up on YouTube.
Can somebody address my question #77, if possible?
Typo. among other things
Rahul,
Ram Guha et al’s argument is basically that the idea of “nation” is an European concept imported to the so-called “third world” due to colonialism and the resultant emergence of Euro style nation states. I think this argument is weak and very superficial. True the “nation state” is a peculiarly European cultural and administrative articulation, but what underlies it is a universal (not culturally specific) instinct (though states normally exploit this human instinct for their own sordid purposes). Another book that might be very useful is Rajat Kanta Ray’s The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism.
M. Nam:
There’s nothing wrong with “equal rights under the law,” except you’ve got the same problem. What rights? How you gonna enforce it? Dalits HAVE equal rights under the law. So by your logic there’s no problem, right?
The problem isn’t context. The problem is a lot more concrete than that: attitudes, thoughts, actions. The law needs enforcement, otherwise it’s just noise.
And really, I don’t think that the Nussbaum quote is bad because the choice is binary. Sometimes binary choices actually offer up a new dimension for cracking the world you previously were unaware of. If you might want more choices, fine, fill in the blanks.
It sure does seem like she sums up some of the problems we face in the US political system, the Indian political system, the Iraqi political system, and about a hundred others in a rather succinct and interesting divide that for once does not use national boundaries, but cuts across another dimension that I don’t think many of us have given enough thought to, or did not vocalize before.
Do you mean that there is some organic instinct to form nations, nestled deep within the bosoms of those without such a structure?
I think what Guha is getting at, and what is the general thrust of such analyses of the spread of nationalism and the continuing popularity of the nation-state model, is that Western nation-states are generally perceived to be based on common language/ethnicity/history/traditions and that these unifying factors generally don’t exist in the third world where the nation-state model was so blithely applied.
Now the same argument could be applied to some western nation-states as well (France comes to mind, especially with regards to language as a unifying factor) but they’re not as temporally proximal as the formation of nation-states in the third world.
Rahul,
outlook has extracts from Ramachandra Guha’s new book here http://www.outlookindia.com/fullprint.asp?choice=1&fodname=20070507&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1
i’ll endeavor to understand FOBGUY’s reasoning:
If something isn’t excoriated by a commenter, they must…endorse it fully! Hence, since FOBGUY isn’t clearly denouncing human-black buck relations, he must be a fervent supporter of zoophilia! Three cheers for FOBGUY!
feel free to expand.
Thanks for the references, folks. Maybe my puzzlement will find a solution.
Answer to Rahul — Comment 77
**Why is there an India at all?”[5] For centuries India was not a nation in any conventional sense of the word. Not only did it not possess the shared language, culture, and national identity that have defined many nations; it had more social and cultural variety than even the continent of Europe. ***
Nation states are of recent emergence only, particularly in the last 100-200 years. So it may not be appropriate to focus on that idea. India does possess a shared identity. Even though it has more variety than Europe, it has a common vedic history behind it. Shankaracharya 2000 years back established maths in the four corners of India – Karnataka, Gujarat, UP and Orissa. That shold tell something.
Let me ask you one thing — we have so many differences within India… but why do we not fight with each other and try to secceed — eg Tamil Nadu Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat etc.
The answers for all this is to look outside the western way of thinking. We are a developed civilization for several thousand years even before the advent of Europe. India has excelled in many things live and let live (and also vasudeva kutumbakam) is one of these. There are skirmishes and frictions, for sure, but overall we get along very well …
In ancient times there were no water tight borders like Hinduism/Janism/Buddhism.. people use to cross over easily.
People use to get violent and take up arms. But that was only left to the kshatriyas. Other sections of society continued their life as usual. All sections of society were deeply linked with each … so all were well protected even in times of calamity. For example let us say in bad times, a brahmin priest does not get enough work. But he will never take up another profession, thus ensuring survival of the other communities. Even when foreign religions came to the shores they were accorded with economic functions which resulted in them being important to society, thus guaranting their security and survival
The real success of any culture and civilization is when you are able to get thru difficult times. Those who know about the Hindu religion, they may not need any explanation. And those who ignore our ancient traditions and try to find answers in modern western concepts .. will never find it.
This is a very good article to explore The Unity Of India http://www.svabhinava.org/HinduCivilization/DileepKaranth/UnityofIndia-frame.php
Note to readers:
Comments that contain name-calling (i.e., “You are a typical leftist spewing BS” or “You are a raving loon”) will be deleted.
Please make your points without excessive ad hominem attacks or name-calling.
That doesn’t even make sense grammatically.
We don’t like insane Canadian ducks now?
But was “say it, don’t spray it” okay, Amardeep?
Venkat, this is simply not true. Tamil chauvinism led to ridiculous amounts of violence in Tamilnadu in the 60s, people in Karnataka continually see fit to burn buses and theaters over real and perceived tiffs with TN (language, water etc.), Karnataka and Maharashtra keep bickering, often violently, in Belgaum. There are many fights for secession in the north east, new states were created as recently as 5 or so years ago (Uttaranchal, Chattisgarh), and so on. None of these states really has the military might to secede, but that doesn’t prevent assorted isolated movements.
This sounds dangerously close to something we’ve spent the better part of a day discussing on another thread.
India fundamentally seems unwieldy and far more “diverse” than would naturally be accomodated in one country to me. But it has lumbered along so far. I wonder how the economic and natural resources of different entities play into this.
India fundamentally seems unwieldy and far more “diverse” than would naturally be accomodated in one country to me.
No worries, capitalism will take care of that!
No, I mean that the instinct is to form attachments and have yearnings for something greater than the self (e.g.community; can be religious, ethnic, national). Hence this statement:
people in Karnataka continually see fit to burn buses and theaters over real and perceived tiffs with TN
Thats because they want new ones!! have you seen those public transportation buses? the newer volvos are much cooler and thanks to all the bus burning the fleet is getting much better.. and oh yeah the old theaters are burnt down to be replaced by shopping malls and multiplexes..
nothing to do with cauvery really!! 😉
This “humiliated masculinity” idea is so ridiculous – it smacks of the oh-those-natives attitude, no matter what “academic” language you dress it up in. Do religious extremists have a problem ? Of course they do. But I don’t see anyone saying that the white men of the Christian right are acting the way they do because they feel emasculated. Or that the islamic terrorists have no balls and are trying to hide that fact by killing civilians in cold blood. Correction : Some french guy did suggest that jihadists just need to get laid.
“the sexual playfulness and sensuousness of their traditions” – do you seriously believe that someone who wrote that understands india or hinduism.
But the point I am trying to make is that it is easy to focus on the fringe and dismiss those people – as evil, perverse, sexually frustrated, feeling emasculated or some such thing. That is hardly an interesting discussion. It is more important to understand why regular hindu people – folks who will not kill you for being muslim in the next bombay riots, folks who probably have muslim friends, adore shah rukh khan and listen to A.R. Rehman – why such people share some of the concerns expressed by the BJP and quietly vote for them during the elections inspite of the fact that gujarat makes them very uneasy. Its only when you talk about regular people, Hindu and Muslim, and their apprehensions and distrust, that we can start to have some real dialogue and progress.
The political reality on the ground in india is never cute and easy, as Quizman rightly points out. We do try to overcome our overwhelming “sense of masculine failure” and think about other stuff – like justice, the state of the economy, corruption. Mostly we just vote for the other bloke – whatsisname.
Rahul
Tamil chauvinism led to ridiculous amounts of violence in Tamilnadu in the 60s, people in Karnataka continually see fit to burn buses and theaters over real and perceived tiffs with TN (language, water etc.), Karnataka and Maharashtra keep bickering, often violently, in Belgaum. There are many fights for secession in the north east, new states were created as recently as 5 or so years ago (Uttaranchal, Chattisgarh), and so on. None of these states really has the military might to secede, but that doesn’t prevent assorted isolated movements.
Why should reacting against imposition of Hindi in TN be construed as “Tamil Chauvinism”.
My question is yes, there are instances violence. But these are of recent origins. I do not see anything wrong with occassional letting of steam. In fact this prevents problems that can escalate to a more serious, dangerous in nature.
You have to ask yourself .. do many of these secession agendas have popular support. Why are they not sustainable.
But we are actually talking of centuries of diversity .. have you come across liguistic/cultural intolerance of extreme extent. The Arabs and the Europeans will give an arm and leg to achieve the unity that India is. But the reasons really for India’s unity goes back thousands of years back.
The answer is something you have to go to India’s ancient past. I feel your problem is you are looking at Western concepts for an answer. You will never find it in there. Most of our thinking is very westernized. IF you delve deeply and try to understand the Indian mindset you will find the answers. But this takes several years of study. It cannot happen tomorrow.