Author: Rajeev Srinivasan
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: June 4, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/04rajeev.htm
I wrote the following column a couple
of months ago, but did not publish it because I felt sorry for Dilip D'Souza;
now the story of the reading of Shashi Tharoor's book Riot in New York,
and the egregious grandstanding that accompanied it, compels me to publish.
I know Shashi Tharoor, and he is capable of surpassingly beautiful prose;
and Tunku Varadarajan's columns in the Wall Street Journal are often a
pleasure to read. I shall not say anything about either of these gentlemen.
Then there is Shabana Azmi, my personal bete noire.
Here is a prodigiously talented
actress, beautiful and intelligent. Why, then, does she insist on being
such a consistent Hindu-hater? Whatever did Hindus do to her other than
admire her acting skills? I am not sure whether she is a Marxist fundamentalist
or a Muslim fundamentalist; in any case, she is dependable: if there is
any cause that is anti-Hindu, she is there in the forefront.
As far as I know, she has never
once condemned violence against Hindus, but she is the patron saint of
Muslims, and Muslims alone, which is standard Marxist posturing too. It
was poetic justice, then, that the arch Muslim fundamentalist, Imam Bukhari,
recently called her a singing, dancing lady of the evening [ganewali, nachnewali
tawaif].
Azmi is but the epitome of a whole
class of Indians, the 'secular' 'progressives' who are thoroughly addled
by a Macaulayite education and who live surrounded by a Marxist miasma
of smug complacency, certain that they have seen the truth, and that only
they have been thus privileged. This is the textbook definition of a fundamentalist.
Bertrand Russell put it well: 'The trouble with the world is that the stupid
are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.'
As an example of their self-righteous
Talibanism, here is an excerpt from a tirade I received from a very mediocre
hack. This is after a litany of caste-based insults [yes, from a 'progressive'].
'It is amazing that a half-literate like you have the temerity to talk
lowly of the educated, the literate and the enlightened... You are nothing
but a half-baked Hindu, a barbarian with weird ideas that need to be consigned
to the dustbin...' God alone can save us from the 'enlightened', 'literate',
'educated' ones, namely she and those of her ilk. And the venom with which
she spits out the word 'Hindu'! Clearly it is, a priori, a crime to be
a Hindu.
And these are the vipers who shout
loudest about 'freedom of speech'! In the case of the Riot reading, someone
named Narain Kataria, handicapped because he lacks the urbane veneer and
marketing skills of the Leftists, tried peaceful democratic dissent, which
he is constitutionally entitled to. The 'secular' 'progressives' condemn
and demean him for that. But as you see below, when they themselves wish
to disrupt something, they do so without any qualms. Where is the symmetry,
I ask? But then, 'hypocrisy' is their middle name.
Indulge me for a minute while I
paint a scenario for you:
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The American Museum of Natural History
decides to hold an exhibition on The Elements of Christian Devotion, put
together by an American academician of impeccable credentials. He has collected
a great deal of information about how ordinary Christians go about 'meeting
their God', through rituals, practices, and just plain humble devotion.
-
However, to 'balance' this positive
picture of the faith, the Museum decides to show a few films that portray,
selectively, the very worst aspects of recent political Christianity, for
instance:
-
Catholic Pope Pius XII colluding with
the Nazis in their efforts to wipe out the Jews
-
the corrupt evangelistic churches of
America, with preachers consorting with prostitutes and pushing hate speech
on television
-
the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood's
plans for eliminating all non-whites from America
-
the Dutch Reformed Church's justification
for apartheid based on their interpretation of the Bible
-
Catholic priests and nuns in Rwanda
being convicted of crimes against humanity for helping Hutus massacre thousands
of Tutsis
-
the ongoing outcry about paedophilia,
rape and other sexual abuses perpetrated widely by Catholic priests all
over
-
Let us say these films are made by
a self-confessed extreme Marxist, who has gone on record with his aversion
to Christianity; he deliberately picks and chooses images intended to give
the impression that there is nothing humane about Christianity; anything
positive about Christianity is intentionally downplayed.
-
Consider that a few practising Christians
then circulate a petition on the Internet. An excerpt from the petition
follows:
-
'Elements of Christian devotion are
best depicted by practising Christians, and by sympathetic and objective
scholars. We believe that it is very inappropriate to screen movies by
a self-professed Christian hater in such an exhibit. These movies may perhaps
be appropriate in a different type of exhibit; for example, if the Museum
wants to hold -- at some time in the future -- an exhibit on secularism,
or lack of religious tolerance in various parts of the world, but then
the Museum must also include similar documentaries regarding other major
world religions in order to provide the visitors with a balanced world
view.
-
'We, the undersigned, being practising
Christians, fear that the screening of these anti-Christian movies in the
context of Christian devotion would promote disrespect, bias and hatred
against our religion in the general American populace.
-
'We, therefore, urge the American Museum
of Natural History to drop these movies from the exhibition of Meeting
God: Elements of Christian Devotion.'
-
A group that opposes Christianity now
circulates a counter-petition on the Internet, suggesting that not showing
the offending films is an attack on the right to freedom of expression,
alleging, falsely, that the original petition is seeking to ban the film.
This group also claims to represent victims of the acts portrayed in the
films.
-
The original petition gets more signatures
than the counter-petition. Both are submitted to the museum authorities.
-
The curator of the show announces that
the screening of the films has been 'cancelled owing to threats of violence'.
Please note that these are unspecified 'threats of violence' by unidentified
people, presumably supporters of the original petition. The implication
is that practising Christians are violent thugs.
-
On being questioned further as to the
nature of the threats and the identity of the alleged perpetrators of the
threats, the museum authorities change tack. The curator now suggests that
'the screenings have been postponed due to capacity issues. All of this
concern has caused the museum to anticipate a large audience than could
be accommodated at any of the museum's theatres. It may have to be moved
off-site.' Note that the unspecified 'threats of violence' have disappeared.
But the damage, the smear campaign, the vilification has been accomplished.
-
The museum goes ahead and shows the
films at an off-site theatre despite a thousand signatures on the original
petition by Christians, more than in the counter-petition.
How do you think Christians
in America would respond to such provocation? In particular, given that
they consider Marxists to be -- and generally with good reason -- agents
of a hostile foreign power, I suspect the uproar would be so great that
the museum authorities, the film-maker, and everybody else associated with
this travesty would be tarred and feathered.
But this is exactly what happened
in the case of Hindus. An exhibition about the elements of Hindu devotion
was hijacked by a controversy about a series of films by a known Hindu-baiter,
an agit- prop, a propaganda artist whose entire oeuvre has been a continuing
orgy of misrepresentation and defamation of Hinduism. Faith and politics
were deliberately mixed up, although there was absolutely no reason to
confuse Hindu devotion with politics. In particular, Hinduism is the most
apolitical of religions, with an extremely clear separation of church and
state. This has always been the case historically.
To provide another analogy, what
would happen if the same thing were to happen in the case of Muslims? An
exhibition on, let's say, elements of faith in Islam, is proposed: in fact
there is one going on right now, on Islam in America. Let us say that a
film on the depradations of political Islam, by an apostate Muslim who
has converted to Marxism, is added to the show. Let's consider what this
film might include:
-
The attack on the World Trade Centre,
-
The acts of the Taliban in Afghanistan,
including violence against women, imposition of harsh Islamic laws,
-
The burning of 59 people, including
14 children, in a train in Godhra, India,
-
The massacres of 100,000 people in
Algeria,
-
The effect of notorious rape laws in
Pakistan where a woman who reports a rape has to produce four male eyewitnesses
who testify on her behalf; otherwise, she is sentenced for fornication
and in effect treated as a prostitute,
-
The decapitation of Daniel Pearl in
Pakistan,
-
The attack on a church frequented by
Americans in Pakistan,
-
The suicide bombing of a bus containing
French engineers in Karachi, Pakistan.
How would Muslims react to this?
With grave concern, naturally. They would milk multi-culturalism to the
hilt, and shout from the rooftops about minority rights and the demonisation
of a vulnerable minority group. Every Muslim in America will support this
agitation, and the museum authorities will be forced to cancel the offending
film show. That would only be fair: Muslims, and all religious minorities,
face enough ignorance, discrimination and ill-will in the US already without
some rabble- rouser adding to it. Just ask the Sikhs who were attacked
after the WTC bombings.
But that is not what happened with
the Hindus. A group of people of Indian origin, some with Hindu names,
pushed this blatantly anti-Hindu agenda forward.
The museum authorities are not entirely
blameless in this shameful episode. The original exhibit, Elements of Hindu
Devotion by anthropologist and ethnographer Stephen Huyler, is, I am told,
extremely sympathetic towards Hinduism. I didn't see the exhibit, not having
been in New York City for some time, but I can well believe this based
on Huyler's book of the same name, which my good friend Amrita H once showed
me.
But the authorities allowed themselves
to be hijacked into showing the Anand Patwardhan films. If they were keen
on showing a related film, here is something that would have been much
more appropriate: the animated film Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama,
directed by Yugo Sako and available from www.excelhomevideos.com [I noticed
that one of the licence holders was Tamil star Kamalahaasan: good for him!]
I bought this in India for Rs 450, and this is a steal. For, this 'Ramayana',
made mostly by Japanese animators with a little help from Indonesians,
is wonderful. The script is terrific, and the animation, in typical Japanese
'anime' fashion, is very appealing. This is a film that would appeal to
everyone, for it works as a mythic tale of great heroes and valiant deeds.
The animation makes the extraordinary tales, especially the battle scenes,
come true vividly, just as we might have imagined them when, wide-eyed,
we sat at our grandparents' feet to listen.
It is an incredible shame that even
though it was made in 1991 or so, The Legend of Prince Rama has never been
released widely in the US market. This is much better than most Disney
animations, for instance Mulan that they clearly made to appease the Chinese
government. If there are any influential Indians in the studio or film
distribution setups in the US, I would request that you, gentle reader,
pass on to them the idea of releasing this film widely. At a time when
the movie-going public needs real heroes, and tales like The Lord of the
Rings are very popular, what better than to show the story of the Righteous
Man, Rama?
But to go back to the museum authorities,
I did not personally contact them, but people I know did; for instance,
someone who was quite worried about the allegation about 'violent acts'
threatened apparently by Hindus. He spoke to Dr Laurel Kendall, curator,
Asian Ethnographic Collections, who, in the interest of fairness, I salute
for having curated the exhibition.
I quote my acquaintance verbatim:
'When I expressed my concern over the threat of violence, Dr Kendall said,
in saying that, I overspoke. I am not at liberty to give any details, the
news of this threat came down through unofficial channels. We take the
safety of our public very seriously. This was not the threat of a demonstration,
or of bringing a weapon into the Museum, which our security can handle,
this was much more than that. Yes, we are looking to screen the films at
another occasion or venue. When I said that we would want any miscreants
among Hindus to be identified so that we can take action against them,
she said that she was not able to give any details.'
What does this accomplish? I would
call it a successful smear, possibly unintentional. There is an unspecified
threat of violence that may or may not have been made by an unidentified
person or persons. In today's climate of vigilance in the US, the FBI and
the NYPD take a very dim view of any threats of violence by some ethnic
group. If they didn't, or if details of a threat cannot be made public,
how can one take it seriously? But it certainly did succeed in portraying
the Hindus as some kind of wild-eyed, medieval yahoos. This, as Israelis
might say, is blood-libel.
I most certainly take exception
to the museum authorities' act. For they, sitting comfortably in their
ivory towers, do not know what it means to have your nation partitioned,
your people massacred and ethnically cleansed regularly, your heritage
ridiculed, your faith insulted daily. This is what the Hindus of India
face: we who have been drained of our wealth; we whose history has been
derided as myth; we whose very self-image is under siege by malign foes.
Some of us are standing up and saying, 'Never again!' We refuse to be made
vaastuhara as in the brilliant G Aravindan film: bereft of self- hood.
No more columns of wretched Hindu refugees, fleeing Pakistan or Bangladesh
or Muslim- dominated areas of Jammu & Kashmir!
The story of the vague and unsubstantiated
threat was picked up by the 'secular' 'progressive' mafia, including those
who circulated the counter-petition. I contend that there was no threat
of violence, and I challenge them to produce proof instead of insinuations.
But then innuendo is their strongest suit.
They further made the mischievous
equation of 'political Hinduism' with 'devotional Hinduism'. The exhibition
was clearly about 'devotional Hinduism'. Despite the traditional secularism
of Hinduism, and the clear separation between church and state, there is
undoubtedly a political Hinduism -- this is what the BJP rode to power
by orchestrating a Hindu vote-bank, much as others have utilised Muslim
vote-banks. But all this has nothing to do with the faith of the average
Hindu, which is what the exhibition was all about. Remember, it was 'Meeting
God: Elements of Hindu Devotion' and not 'Hindu Politics'. This is why
the Anand Patwardhan films had no business being shown there.
Finally, the 'secular' 'progressive'
mafia has been bleating about 'freedom of speech'. This is a total red
herring. For one, the petition did not seek to ban the showing of the Patwardhan
films. As seen in the earlier quote from the petition [just replace 'Christian'
with 'Hindu'], it merely suggested, gently, that the films be shown in
context.
For another, 'free speech' doesn't
mean 'irresponsible speech'. I said this in my previous column The Problem
with Fire -- responsibility comes with freedom. There is a responsibility
to not indulge in 'hate speech'. You do not walk up to a black man and
call him 'nigger': Yes, you do have the right to abuse any religion, but
you choose not to do it because it is hurtful to those who believe.
Unfortunately, in the 'secular'
'progressive' manifesto, free speech means hate speech against Hinduism,
but not other religions. Hinduism is fair game for the most vile hate speech,
innuendo, insinuations, and just plain invective. This is blatant discrimination.
The Leftists have made Hindus second-class citizens in India, less equal
than others. This, in fact, is the root cause behind the Ayodhya problem:
a persistent feeling, with good reason, of oppression not only in the distant
past, but right now, today.
There is an entire cottage industry
in India that consists of this egregious and endemic Hindu-bashing. Any
harm that befalls a Hindu is not of any interest to practitioners of this
art. But let the exact same thing happen to any non-Hindu, and they are
all up in arms. They are adept at minority appeasement. They have constructed
an entire fantasy about 'South Asia' and about a commonality of interests
and attitudes between all residents of the Indian subcontinent, despite
much evidence to the contrary.
They applaud discriminatory treatment
of Hindus, for instance in laws pertaining to the management of religious
institutions: for instance, Hindu temples are managed by, and their funds
looted by, the government; whereas other religions' shrines freely bring
in large amounts of foreign funds with no oversight or audits. In Kerala,
Christians, Marxists and atheists have been allowed to sit on the Devaswom
Board that oversees Hindu temples! The government has no business whatsoever
interfering in the affairs of any religion, but of course Jawaharlal Nehru
in his infinite wisdom embarked on a 'destroy Hinduism' campaign, which
continues apace.
A lot of this cottage industry's
proponents retain Hindu names -- even though they are largely converts
to Marxism -- and therefore they claim their perspective is the prevailing
Hindu perspective. They are, on the contrary, practitioners of apartheid
against Hindus. These are no Hindus, they are rabid Semitic fundamentalists,
with a generous dose of imperious fascism thrown in: if you disagree with
them, you are ipso facto scum. They are also generally anti-national, apologists
for Pakistan or China. They are starry-eyed about every Pakistani general
[Musharraf is a particular favourite], and about every Chinese apparatchik.
One particular such 'progressive'
has gone to the trouble of devoting an entire column to attacking me. I
suppose I should be flattered when rediff.com columnists do this -- a couple
of them have done so before. But I do find Dilip D'Souza's attack on me
particularly entertaining because he has elevated professional whining
to such a class act.
On doing a little poking around,
I also find D'Souza to be quite economical with the truth. He lies, period.
Perhaps he has learned this from the 'denotified tribes' he is so fond
of, who, we note in passing, were condemned by the British [yes, the 'egalitarian'
Brits who were so horrified by 'casteist' Indians] as no-good layabouts
to the last, woman and child, adept at theft and petty crime. Or maybe
he is copying the Islamic doctrine of al-taqiyah that holds that lying
for the greater good of Islam is an acceptable tactic. Or maybe the Marxist
habit of manufacturing facts on a daily basis. In any case, D'Souza certainly
is good at half-truths, cover-ups, etc.
I have observed D'Souza's 'progress',
if you could call it that, over some years. I first noticed him on the
newsgroups net.nlang.India or soc.culture.Indian where he'd post what he
claimed were actual letters to the Indian government from individuals written
in archaic, overly formal, and somewhat erroneous English. These were mildly
amusing, but it was really not fair for this person, born into privilege
as the son of a senior bureaucrat, to make fun of those less fortunate.
Over time I observed his transition
from irreverent gadfly into single-issue fanatic. In this he reminded me
of another blinkered person, a Tamil (Sri Lankan, I think) named Meenaradchagan
Vishnu, a remarkable name for a virulent Hindu-basher. Vishnu's favourite
topic was the Ashwamedha Yagna and how it showed that Hinduism was a terrible
religion. He seemed to not comprehend that the last Ashwamedha Yagna was
performed by Pushyamitra Sunga 2,000 years ago! D'Souza similarly appears
to lack a sense of proportion.
D'Souza's favourite topics in addition
to Hindu-bashing are public toilets and the Srikrishna commission. About
the Srikrishna commission, it turns out that D'Souza has been very coy
about a few little facts. One is that his father, one J B D'Souza, a former
chief secretary in Maharashtra [see the byline at www.rediff.com/travel/1998/mar/26rajb.htm]
filed a Public Interest Litigation asking for immediate implementation
of the Srikrishna Commission report and has been in the forefront of those
making noise about it.
Now Dilip D'Souza has written innumerable
columns on rediff.com supporting the Srikrishna Commission's report, without
ever once mentioning his father's vested interest. Why this bashfulness?
Isn't it a blatant violation of journalistic ethics to avoid full disclosure
of one's biases? What is the difference between D'Souza, Jr, and a business
journalist who takes money to write stories trashing a particular stock?
Shouldn't D'Souza, Jr, be investigated by the Press Council for deliberately
withholding relevant information? Did he just 'forget' all 47 times he
wrote about the Srikrishna Commission?
Further, Asghar Ali Engineer wrote
in an article that J B D'Souza 'filed a public interest writ petition in
the Bombay high court to punish the editor [of the Shiv Sena's Samna newspaper]
under (sic) Criminal Procedure Act'. Does this perhaps explain why D'Souza,
Jr, also takes a pretty dim view of the Shiv Sena and its arms?
It is quite touching that a son
follows in his father's footsteps, and even more touching when he takes
up cudgels for his dad, and I am all for it, being a believer in the sanctity
of the family and all that. But I do believe that enquiring minds would
like to know when the son is providing free propaganda for the father,
all the while pretending to be an impartial observer.
Speaking of money, it appears D'Souza,
Jr, is not employed full-time, even though he is trained as a software
engineer. So what is his source of support? Could it be some foreign-funded
NGO, with a missionary connection, funding him to help their anti-Hindu
agenda? That would explain a lot, wouldn't it? Note here how I am using
the tactics of the 'secular' 'progressive': innuendo without proof. If
the smear campaign sticks, well and good. If it doesn't, well, I have merely
speculated. It's not implausible, considering how much Christian fundamentalist
money does end up in India for conversion jamborees and how much D'Souza
rails against Hindus.
D'Souza further asserts that I haven't
seen Patwardhan's films. How does he know this? Did he read my mind? I
certainly don't confide in him. Patwardhan's films have been getting screened
at a lot of US campuses thanks to a zealous group afflicted by 'South Asian'itis.
So why couldn't I have seen them there? Or on late-night television in
India, when there was a court-ordered showing of these films? No, D'Souza,
in the absence of facts, simply makes up convenient ones. They become truths,
in the usual Goebbelsian way, by the simple expedient of repeated assertion.
In terms of making up facts, I was
entertained by D'Souza's about-turns in the controversy a while ago about
the film Fire. Shabana Azmi claimed in an article that the lesbian lovers
were named Radha and Nita in the film, and that they had been, and would
continue to be. Now this was a bald-faced lie by Azmi, as I knew because
I had seen the released US version of the film wherein the names were,
in fact, Radha and Sita, chosen deliberately to offend Hindus. D'Souza,
without having seen the film, jumped to accept this assertion at face value.
This is a general problem many in
India suffer from: the willingness to accept things at face value without
any attempt to question or verify. It has to be a byproduct of the general
Marxist way of blind acceptance of dogma, of some nonsense written in a
book. 'Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die.' On the contrary.
Question authority! Verify sources! Argue vigorously! Poke holes in the
logic! Think!
D'Souza really doesn't know what
he is talking about. He regularly lights candles at Wagah and attends all
these people-to-people meetings, and he'll probably be the first person
garlanding the Chinese if they ever invade India. And what has all this
got India? Kargil. The Agra Summit. Ethnic cleansing in J&K. Godhra.
Kaluchak. Attempts to foment religious tension. 'Containment'. Fat lot
of good woolly 'liberalism' has done.
This is the kind of prior track
record that Dilip D'Souza has. He is a perfect example of the kind of person
who becomes a 'secular' 'progressive' 'intellectual' in India. Someone
with touching but half- baked ideas of being a do-gooder, who is brainwashed
first by the Macaulayite/JNU-ite education system, and then by some handler
who recognises him as a perfect recruit: an innocent whose head can be
filled with dubious ideas and who fails to realize that he's being turned
into an anti-national.
Samuel Johnson said it best: 'Integrity
without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity
is dangerous and dreadful.' I leave it as an exercise to the reader to
decide which of these applies to India's famous 'secular progressives'.
In fact it may be even worse, them possessing neither integrity nor knowledge.
I wonder what Johnson would have said to that.
