Andrew Sullivan has a blog post comparing the Indian and U.S. political situations today, citing an anonymous reader. The reader’s main point is that the current infighting within the U.S. Republican party might be seen as resembling the BJP’s own internal chaos in India:
Perhaps the Democrats can look to India for reasons to be optimistic. At this time, the BJP is in electoral ruins, aided by their rank and honest fundamentalism. They’ve been smashed by Congress for two elections in a row and the report on Ayodhya is about as damning as can be. In response, the hardcore base is working to eliminate anyone who can lead them out of the wilderness. Just as in the GOP, this is done in a pursuit of ideological purity. The only difference is the religion being espoused. (link)
This seems like a viable parallel for a minute, but only for a minute. First, the recent report on Ayodhya, which I blogged about recently, doesn’t seem politically significant; it’s more of a symbolic event. As the reader continues, the parallel starts to seem really shaky:
The RSS, which provides the ideological grounding of Hindu nationalism, as well as a significant section of the ground game, has forced Jaswant Singh out for the simple act of praising the founder of Pakistan. They’ve warned all other moderates to basically shut up and toe the party line. No one seems to remember that the BJP became nationally popular thanks to a pragmatic program of economic growth, reducing corruption, and downplaying Hindutva. Again, the moderates in the party are bemoaning these trends, and warn that divisive communalism may lead to short term electoral gain, but will ultimately lead to total marginalization. No one is listening.
I question the reader’s understanding of what happened during the 1990s. Yes, the Congress Party was widely seen as deeply corrupt and incompetent after the disastrous decades of the 1970s and 1980s. But as I understand history, the BJP actually gained quite a bit of popular momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s, specifically through communal rhetoric focused on issues such as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and Shahbano. They may have also had another face, which appealed to educated urbanites focused on economic issues, but there were not enough such people to win elections at the national level. As I read it, for better or worse, it was the rhetoric of communalism that finally brought them to power late in the 1990s. Moreover, the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002 did not hurt them politically, in regional elections in 2002-2003. (Admittedly, most of what the NDA/BJP government actually accomplished while in power between 1999 and 2004 was related to economic policy. But that shift in focus happened after the election.)
Even in the U.S., one has to keep in mind that a big part of what enabled Republican dominance in American politics for more than a decade was a pronounced message of social conservatism focused on divisive issues (abortion, gay marriage) combined with belligerent partisanship. George Bush, though he talked about “compassionate conservatism” during his election campaign in 2000, embodied that identity.
In short, one could just as easily argue that the BJP is weak right now not because of infighting or the kind of ideological litmus test that led to Jaswant Singh’s expulsion. Rather, they simply haven’t found the “next” popular issue yet — their next Shahbano, Mandal Commission Report, or Ayodhya. I think they thought terrorism would be it in the most recent election cycle, but for whatever reason, the attempt to label the Congress Party as weak on terrorism didn’t seem to stick.
post-Buddha). See P.K. Mishra, Studies in Hindu and Buddhist Art, p. 104. I think my motives may differ from Hamit’s, but I, too would like to see credible citations to Hindus building their temples over Buddhist and Jain ones. I’m told this is a Marxist calumny against Hindus, trying to whitewash (through relativism) the history of Islam in the subcontinent. I’m open to being shown wrong
Since you are so open minded, maybe you should crack open a book (you know, that thing made out of paper) and read about the decline of buddhism in India. I think it would serve you better than those cool experts on Marxism you seem to enjoy the company of.
I’ve read several books that say the fatal blow to Buddhism in India was the pillaging of Nalanda by the foreign Muslim invaders, b/c it didn’t have a Koran in its collection.
I’ve read several books that say the fatal blow to Buddhism in India was the pillaging of Nalanda by the foreign Muslim invaders, b/c it didn’t have a Koran in its collection.
Blows are great and fatal blows even better, however, if you go back and read what I wrote you will notice the word ‘decline’. Now, as I implied fatal blows sound pretty neat but I think you need to understand the notion of decline as well.
Remember, reading is FUN-damental.
People, please do not jeer at each other.
In general, I fear we’ve wandered way off topic here. Perhaps in the future I may do a post discussing the issue of Buddhist and Jain temples and the issue of whether they may have been replaced by Hindu temples (or whether that is just a “Marxist calumny” as someone said). If someone can suggest a serious, reliable, non-partisan book to me on the subject, please email me at amardeep at gmail dot com.
For now, however, this is mainly a post about American Republicans and the BJP, and whether one can or cannot compare the two.
Why are you so tendentious and elliptical, anon?
Sorry Amardeep, please ignore #56. Would be an interesting topic to cover at some point–most of what I’ve read touching on it is pretty partisan, so unfortunately I don’t have any useful cites for you, though I’d like to get some too.
By whom? Many temples in the south like Beluru, Halebidu were destroyed by Malik Kafur This was the sad history lesson i learnt in my school days so much so that I started to hate the history class altogether. Why India chooses to teach her kids about how she was maimed is another story
evidence please and not like the below evidence (Buddha attained Nirvana in Bodh Gaya)
It is really hard to make distinction between Jainism ,Buddhism & Hinduism (Philosophically similar). The gods are worshiped by everyone and also many people consider Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu. The inter-religious marriage between these (mainly Hindus & Jains in south) happen without any fuss even from the conservative families. If you have a Jain friend please see what all gods he/she will worship.
55 – Agreed, it is way too off topic
keep denying. sunga dynasty persecution is noted in the north and pallava in the south. don’t make up sad lessons you learnt, or whine about why you failed at history 🙂 even huen tsang documented massacre of buddhists in what is now southern tn. there is lots more instances here. the hindu revival in south was a big society wide project that was dominant around 700 ad and several decades before and after saw lot of action against buddhists and jains. (and of course growth in hindu philosophy like vedanta, as well as bhakti movements like the alwars. but also violence).
this is not because jains and buddhists decided to hold hands with hindus and sing kumbaya. assimilation was as much a tactic as it was forced.
5th column, that chowk piece you link to doesn’t pass the laugh-out-loud test at Pace University, let alone Oxford. “Hired Brahmin killers”–ROFL!
yes, this is the way to respond to evidence. i guess one similarity between bjp and repubs is the complaint about reality having a socialist bias.
uh, ok–so that’s why Nalanda was going strong ’til the barbarian invasions. . . .
amardeep, just saw your post #56. no more from me on hindu violence against buddhists and jains.
I know the moderator wants us back on topic, but one more rebuttal to fifth column since I feel there is a duty to ensure people are not misinformed.
.
Actually that’s not evidence. That’s a few minutes of sloppy web-browsing that led you to some questionable assertions from a questionable site. For one thing, in the 600s, 700s, and 800s AD the Palas (an openly buddhist dynasty in Bengal) were prospering. Also, continuing to repeat “persecution in the south” doesn’t make it so. One of the greatest Mahayana thinkers, Nagarjuna, came from Andhra desha during the rule of the “Brahminical” Satavahanas. And contrary to your “evidence” the Pallavas were considered to be great patrons of Buddhism as well–so your Xuanzhang story is likely apocryphal or the result of poor scholarship like your “source”. When Xuanzhang visited the South, he wrote glowing accounts of the numerous viharas that still existed in spite of the existence of subsequent hindu dynasties in that region.
Also, the “source” you provided neglected to mention that during the so called “peaceful thousand years in North India”, your much reviled Sungas (180-73 BCE) also ruled –since they came directly after the Mauryas (318-180 BCE). Indeed, the Sunga critique by the buddhists who wrote the Ashokavadana has itself been criticized by modern historians. The Sungas actually patronized buddhism as well, having helped construct the Stupa at Bharhut. Moreover, the Buddhist Sangha conceivably went sour on the Sungas because they, unlike Ashoka who donated 99 crore gold coins to them (probably causing the contraction and eventual fall of the Mauryan Empire), were not as generous in monetary support. That note comes from the very same primary source (Ashokavadana) in which they attack the Sungas. Indeed, this theory of Sunga persecution is as hollow as the Hinduism caused the fall of buddhism motif.
Finally, the Gupta Dynasty which ruled from the 320s to the early 500s was a devout hindu dynasty that also patronized Buddhism–which also directly contradicts your lone “source”. Please do your research properly. The decline and fall of buddhism in India coincided with the Turkish invasions of Bengal and their destruction of great institutions such as Nalanda, Vikramshila, and Odantapuri–where countless monks were actually slaughtered. Many lay-readers will come across your comments as this is a popular site. Please avoid misleading them with false histories and propaganda pieces.
As per to the moderator’s request, I’ll bring us back to topic: the comparisons in the realm of history are unfortunately as lazy as those made between the BJP and the Republican party. For one thing, the center of political gravity in the US is significantly further to the right than it is in India. After all, what would the NYT say about Shah Bano being denied Alimony? Women’s right’s? Anybody? So please, this effort really doesn’t stand the test of intellectual scrutiny. Any right thinking Democrat in America would be aghast at the thought of not having a Uniform Civil Code, and that’s not just reality having a nationalist bias.
No religion has ever been extirpated by Hindus. Not one. Anywhere.
The Christians, on the other hand, completely extirpated ALL of the hundreds of religions that existed throughout Europe, North Africa and most of the Middle East. The exception was Judaism (which, after all, was the only religion that Jesus every preached or practiced!) — and the Jewish experience under Christendom has not exactly been a story of religious freedom.
Buddhism thrived side by side with Hinduism throughout India for centuries. They argued and perhaps sometimes fought. Buddhists and Hindus are only human. But Asoka’s well known, and well documented, religious tolerance was typical of all Hindu and Buddhist leaders throughout history. The main difference is that Asoka had the wisdom to literally write down his thoughts on religious tolerance and diversity in stone!
And Buddhism and Hinduism continue to flourish in the land of the Buddha’s birth: Nepal. But maybe the Maoists will put an end to that. I’m sure they would like to.
Apuleius
The co-existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism over a period of almost two thousand years is a fact. Buddhism was, obviously, still ongoing in India when the Muslims destroyed Nalanda in the late 12th century, about 17 centuries after the life of the Buddha. Jainism, of course, is still practiced today by millions of Indians.
Question: name one religion that Christianity or Islam have peacefully coexisted with for a period of well over one thousand years? Muhammad’s first order of business was eliminating all other religions from the Arabian peninsula — a state of affairs that continues to this day.
“In general, I fear we’ve wandered way off topic here …. For now, however, this is mainly a post about American Republicans and the BJP, and whether one can or cannot compare the two.”
If one wishes to equate the fundamentalism of right-wing American Christian evangelicals (and also that of Islamists) with the nationalism of the BJP, then one must be willing to discuss the historical background.
The original post specifically refers to Ayodhya…..
Big business backs everybody, openly since corporate contributions to political parties became legal recently, and in other ways earlier. But analysed to the paisa big business contributions do not amount to that much as small/local business contributions do. It is the many contractors, dealers, distributors, suppliers to big business who fund political parties. Apart from this the parties themselves run and are run as businesses. The CPI(M) is notorious for its business ventures in Kerala and the many extortion rackets it runs in West Bengal. The various Muslim Leagues make a lot of money from the Wakf properties they administer. The TN family of the Karunanidhis as family run parties go are obscenely wealthy with interests in hotels, papers, TV channels, etc. The Congress and the BJP have their respective fund bases, small businesses mainly plus a very dues paying large membership that works at zero marginal cost. The Congress of course has a stranglehold on the press and over 60% of the newspapers in India are owned by Congress politicians.
To borrow from the world’s most interesting cultural scholar S.N. Balagangadhara, Indian and US politics are not simply different, they differ in different ways.
This is disingenuous. If my reading of pre-Islamic Indian History is correct, Buddhists, Jains were not discriminated on average. You seem to have sough an analogy between destruction of Hindu temples and burying idols under the footstall to Hindu Kings deliberately having destroyed/disfigured temples. The evidence is to the contrary, for instance Nalanda is a hybrid of Hindu/Buddhist architecture and so are the caves at Ajanta/Ellora. Commentaries by foreign travelers such as Fa Hein also seems to suggest freedom of religion. I don’t know your agenda or intentions but you need to put things in perspective.
The library had a collection of tens of thousands of books/records. They burnt everything 🙁
Much more sensible than simply donating one no?
If they got rid of all the stuff that made Indian civilization prosperous, who exactly did the Afghans plan on raping and pillaging in the future?
after they get everyone in india praying 5 times a day to a rock in arabia they move on to whatever the next country over they can find is and repeat process….
(slightly off topic to the post, but in line with the thread 🙂 )
Parents and I visited a historic Buddhist site in Sri Lanka ( do not remember where, near Kandy I think). There the guide-man was describing to the tourists (95% westerners) that the people responsible for the devastation of the site were ‘Indian’ invaders. (I guess armies from the Chola kingdom were the culprits – not sure though). This comment awakened the ‘uncle’ in my father, what followed was a pretty hilarious debate – guide avoided us for rest of the trip and westerners were totally confused on why two brown middle aged man were arguing in the hot sun.
My father complained to the GM of the resort where we were staying about guide who was ‘misleading’ people 🙂 – the GM and his assistant, were apologetic still they sided with the guide (who was right) “But Saar! it was the Indians… South Indians” :))
The Cholas were always pretty rough, but their douchebaggery reached its nadir under Rajendra I and his kids. It was noted even by the Brahmins of the time that they were assholes, primarily for their habit of “loosening the girdles of women” and carrying off cows and livestock (a huge no-no as disrupting the lives of peasants unnecessarily was widely regarded as a dick move at the time.) For this as well as the fact that they were the only Hindu empire to aggress against foreign kingdoms (in S.E. Asia), they ought to go down in history with the same attitude of “we don’t like to talk about it” that Americans apply to those dark-skinned folks who used to live on this here land.
But even they look like saints compared to what was to come, or even to the barbarism going on in Europe and the Middle East at the time.
Interesting isn’t it, all those sanctimonious pleas not to treat a community or its beliefs as a monolithic entity disappear when it is Hindus we are talking about? Forgetting the absolutely trashy speculation that passes off for history…
talk about deflection 🙂
yes, it is the maoists and the “barbarians” that did it all… that’s the solid history. i love how evidence to the contrary must clearly be agenda driven 🙂
Evidence to the contrary mustn’t be agenda driven, that’s the point. However, when all the arguments to the contrary are, it’s kind of hard to admit them as evidence no? If someone could offer a valid source on par with Yajnavalkya I would be happy as a lark to see some genuine historical discussion. I like honest, good-faith debate. Sadly, the best we’ve come up with is a combination of “the evidence is out there, find it yourself” and a link to some guy on some site with a clear ideological bent that nobody has ever heard of.
I mean, the two closest justifications you would ever find for an argument that Hindus systematically oppressed Buddhists and Jains would be the supposedly hard times faced by Buddhism under Pushyamitra Sunga and the occasional fight between Hindu kingdoms and Buddhist ones in the South, primarily around the Cholas. First of all, that we only really see two individuals in all of Indian history to justify this theory kind of indicates how much of a stretch it is. Secondly, even the evidence for it is tenuous. Pushyamitra Sunga likely a bit of an asshole, he did rise to power through a bloody coup after all. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he went after Buddhist monks. The Sangha was proficient about record keeping and running itself as a para-statal organization. It makes sense on the face of it to assume that there would have been some conflict between the Sangha and anyone trying to consolidate power in areas under their sway. We’ve seen it elsewhere in conflicts between the Sangha and temporal governments in Tibet, Bhutan, and Japan. In Tibet the monks won, in Bhutan the king won, and in Japan the emperor coopted the monks and turned it into an organ of the state. So we can speculate all day about whether Sunga was actually committing genocide against Buddhists or simply consolidating power and breaking any eggs he needed to along the way in the same way the military juntas would assassinate Catholic Bishops in Latin America for opposing them. That’s a valid debate the have. We need to keep in mind, however, that solid evidence about what exactly happened under the Sunga empire is pretty scant. So trying to take such idle speculation and elevate it to the level of historical fact is outright bullshit and is always put forward by folks with an agenda. Pretty much all we actually know from primary sources is that they got less money from the state than they did under Ashoka and some various records about some stupas being torn down with no attendant explanation as to why (maybe they were dilapitated? Maybe nobody was using them?). Romila Thapar claims that Pushyamitra Sunga put a bounty on the head of each monk, but I cannot, for the life of me, find a primary source citation for that. Legitimate historians, however, will tell you that our information about the Sunga dynasty is “Meager to the extreme” so trying to draw any sweeping conclusions from such limited information is disingenuous at best.
Moreover, I learned just now as I looked for that link that Buddhism didn’t actually do half bad during the Sunga empire.
Note how he points out that most accounts of Pushyamitra Sunga being an oppressor come from non-contemporaries?
As for the Cholas, they actually were dicks as I mentioned before. But even the Hindu kings and priests of the time thought they were assholes. So trying to say they’re emblematic of a Hindu desire to persecute non-Hindus makes no sense. It’s not even like they destroyed the idols they spirited away. They took the idols and installed them elsewhere. If this is on par with shattering idols and destroying temples, then any tour of the Smithsonian would imply that Americans are are absolutely heinous.
The history of India is a sandbox for poorly read scholars who for the most part have no formal training or even a cursory grasp of the languages and the many forms of cultural expression that make up a rich tapestry and palimpsest. Te very fact that one or two supposed experts claim to the last word on enormous spans of time 1000 years at a stretch, shows how little we have to work. Without their agendas, the “scholars” would have nothing to write about. The likes of Romila Thapar have been wrong for a v/long time, on a simple topic like the Sarasvati river. In India archaeological research and history have followed unrelated paths. The former as a rule are the ones with a classical grounding in the languages and the skills required to work on artifacts and manuscripts, whereas the latter have simply built upon translated or even made up stuff.
Absurd analysis. Friend, you need to get a better handle on that brain-finger-keyboard thing. You seem far too comfortable with with the notion that you are educated about things you are pulling out of your ass. Its annoying.
I think they missed the memo. You should teach for a living.
I suppose that infantile analysis explains why Buddhism is today almost non-existent in the land where it originated. By the way, reading your scribble is taxing and exhausting, try to elevate your writing to above high-school level and in that process pick up a good history book or two and read. Your basic problem is that like yoga fire (or whatever the f) you seem to be very insecure in your thinking.
Till recently.
From an interview with the author, a little sideways shot at the ‘party’ historians.
There’s ideology even in professional history, and it has results as insidious as, if more innocuous than those of fear. “This comes back to my experience as a teacher,†says Singh: “Ideologies have a way of permeating down into the level of the classroom in subtle ways. What students end up doing — even if you’re not told to — [is] parroting what they think is the dominant view or the dominant line in history.â€
The ideological “straitjacket†of the teacher “gets passed on to countless individuals who I think then in the long run may lose the ability to think beyond that ideology. I want this book,†she goes on, “to break through this kind of impasse.â€
The reason for this is not in the history books, it is in philosophy books. But since your primary source is Wikipedia, it would be too much to expect of you to read philosophy.
India’s move from Hinduism to Buddhism and back is the only known instance where an entire population changed from one religion to another, and then back, based on argumentation. This episode is the larger frame of India’s non-violent rejection of colonialism. These three non-violent rejections (Hinduism, Buddhism, Colonialism) is at the core of why India is respected.
Factual history just plays out philosophy’s script.
What’s annoying is your belief that glib condescension constitutes an argument. You might need to review your notes on points and counterpoints. “Nuh uh!” stopped being an accepted discussion tactic sometime in elementary school, and it wasn’t especially persuasive even back then. How about using some of that prodigious historical knowledge you claim to possess and try actually, like, arguing the point instead of content-free flames?
I was hesitant to use wiki but the article I linked to is sourced from Library of Congress Country Studies. U.S. Library of Congress, thanks for noticing though. I appreciate it.
Your argument while deserving of the sweet sounds of a viola solo, is flawed fundamentally due to the fact that there was in fact plenty of violence during your so-called era of “argumentation”. If you are naive enough to believe that buddhism and hinduism were not political bastions back then you are kidding yourself. Again, if you think somehow that all the Hindus and Buddhists “back then” were somehow too spiritual to have conflict then you live in a world where history is not based in reality but the whoring out of Indian history by special interest idealogues.
Great. Thanks.
Anonymous above is me by the way. Damn Keyboard.