Thanks for your comment. I dont have that paper. Pls try Kapil Kapur (ex-JNU Sanskrit): kkapoor40@yahoo.com. Another person to ask would be George Cardona at UPenn, or Madhav Deshpande at Michigan.

 

 

http://samachar.com/showurl.php?rurl=http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14480562

 

In 2007 it was IF that funded the Bangkok Sanskrit Conf where their sanskrit journal was launched and the university center announced. I expresed my concerns to the Indian embassy folks there about the missed opportunity by India to project cultural diplomacy. The response was that this would be against secularism, so we had some discussions.

 

My plenary address there, attended by the Crown Pincess of Thailand, was titled, Geopolitics and Sanskrit Phobia," and is posted at: http://rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com/blog/post/2005/07/geopolitics-and-sanskrit-phobia.htm

 

Even though GOI dont mention the role played by IF, I am glad that the Thai king was able to convince GOI of the importance to support this initiative. French, British, Chinese, US,and various other nations support cultural diplomacy as a part of their soft power. India lags behind in this and in fact many Indians work in the reverse direction. So this fresh announcement is encouraging.

 

Zafar,

 

You seem to trivialize the singificance of geography in nationhood. That is indeed what islam calls for in the dar-al-Islam concept, namely, that it transcends man-made boundaries. But the concept of sovereignty as it stands today in defining various countries is about geographically bounded nations, not any other kind.

 

So there are two counter movements that seek to demolish or at least dilute geographically bounded states:

A) Pan-Islam, Pan-Christianity, Communism, etc. - each ideologically specific and territorially expansive. (Imperialisms)

B) Academic postmodernists and other idealists who aspire a boundary-free world, in which we are all citizens of a global village. There is no imperialist control and there is genuine equality, and no imposition of any A-typer ideology.

 

My positions:

1) I support B as a goal long term. I oppose A vehemently.

2) If B is implemented in a manner such that it facilitates A, i naturally oppose this.

 

Therefore:

 

3) If we promote B to the nations other than the Imperialists of A, we make these nations soft targets for the Imperialists. When we tell weak nations to blur boundaries on idealistic grounds, the Imperialists take advantage of this to capture them by a variety of means. Its like disarming the prey while leaving the predators armed.

4) Therefore, I oppose the trendiness of advocating any dissolution of India, for instance. We would not end up with an open world, but a world controlled by competing Imperialists who would carve out parts of India. We would end up slaves of Arabs, Americans, Chinese.

5) My path towards B is long term but safer: I advocate B among the Imperially inclined countries (like USA and many Islamic expansionists) - i.e. to give up their expansionist ideologies.

6) This is because disarming must start at the top of the power structure. You first disarm the bullies in the school and not the weak kids who learnt self-defense against these bullies. Sovereignty is a form of protection of a people against Imperialism.

7) Yes, the same sovereignty also has its own internal oppressiveness. But between the two, I choose internal over external oppression as a temporary condition. The "difference" between oppressor/oppressed is greater in an external oppression, and hence colonialism did not work to improve the human condition of the colonized. Internal oppression has over time been remedied from within, in societies like India, where the ideology is not grounded in dogma of finality as in the prophetic religions. Change internally brought about is healthier - thats why importing democracy into Islamic countries has and will fail.

 

Hence, foreign nexus is qualitatively different than a geographically internal nexus. I prefer an internal nexus thats bad to a foreign one thats good - i.e. I am against imperialism and colonialism no matter how well packaged by its salesmen.

 

Note al-Qaeda's latset demand is for America to not come in the way of common control of all Islamic states -- i.e. a call for dar-al-islam. Al-qaeda are not the forst nor the only onles today to want this. This is an unstated desire of many Muslims, gives them pride in numbers, etc.

 

Your argument amounts to subtle advocacy of Mughalstan on the grounds that India's internal nexus is oppressive. It argues against India's sovereignty. By default such a power vacuum would quickly get filled by the predatory civilizations competing for India, i.e. the Dar-al-Islam vs. American Manifest Destiny clash would fight over India.

 

Tavleen's article: I posted it as something relevant about the way Indian Muslims are being won over by the global Islamic nexus, thereby trumping India's sovereignty. The process is related to your view that internal/external distinction does not matter much. This de facto mindset of Indians is what Tavleen is complaining about.

 

The absence of addressing you by name was unintented to convey any significance. But in any case since it hurt you I do apologize for the indiscretion. I was trying to draw in more voices into the discussion, so its not just a 2-party chat which we could easily have on private email.

The following article by Tavleen Singh provides support for my discussion with Zafar.

 

De-Indianising Indian Muslims - Tavleen Singh
http://indiasecular.wordpress.com
Cybernoon - May 31, 2007

Gone is the easygoing, Indianised Islam of before which gave us some of our great poets, musicians, writers, thinkers and movie stars.

Writing a book requires solitude and as I am in the last stages of one I have spent the last ten days holed up alone in a house by the sea, away from the seductions of city life. I spend the mornings writing and revising and the afternoons reading. The solitude has given me time to read two books that I recommend to our policy makers and to those who believe that Indian Muslims have been unaffected by the worldwide jehad. The first is ‘Infidel’ by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the second is ‘The Islamist’ by Ed Husain. Both books describe in frightening detail the changes that occurred in the interpretation of Islam in the nineties and how a
literal understanding of the Koran by Islamists has created an aggressive, new religion whose stated objective is world domination through the resurrection of a caliphate, or an international Islamic republic.

Global domination Ed Husain, a British Muslim of Bangladeshi origin, was an Islamist  himself for a while and writes this about the objective of radicalising Muslims in Europe. “All this, we were convinced, was  based on the sira, or the life of the Prophet Mohammed. He had  bequeathed a political system for us to implement, a total ideology for global domination: Islam. This ideology would be carried to other parts of the world by means of a
jihad, which was the raison d’ etre of the army of the future Islamic state.”

What makes the books important is that they have been written by Muslims who have observed what is happening in Europe from the inside. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somalian woman who became a Dutch citizen and Member of Parliament and who lives under permanent guard now because she angered Islamists by pointing out that the position of women in Islam was that of slaves. She worked with the Dutch film maker, Theo Van Gogh, on a film about Muslim women called ‘Submission’ and it resulted in the brutal murder of Van Gogh two years ago by an Islamist fanatic.

Overt influence What does all this have to do with India? Well, we have the second largest population of Muslims in the world and since the early nineties they have been gradually radicalised. Most Indian analysts are too politically correct to acknowledge this and those of
us who do blame it on the demolition of the Babri Masjid. After the mosque was demolished in December 1992 there were riots across the country and especially bad ones in Mumbai in which more than a thousand Muslims lost their lives. We even sort of justify the bomb blasts that happened in March 1993 by saying they were a reaction to the riots.

We refuse to accept that there is a movement to de-Indianise Indian Muslims by imposing an Arabic idea of Islam. Travel to any Indian city with a large Muslim population and you will see more veiled women than ever before, more children in Islamic schools and more overt influence of the religion than before.

Gone is the easygoing, Indianised Islam of before which gave us some of our greatest poets, musicians, writers, thinkers and movie stars. Gone are the movies of yore, the Muslim family dramas, that gave us “Chaudhvin ka Chand” and “Mere Mehboob”. Have we
stopped to ask why they are not made any more?

What is more worrying is the manner in which our ’secular’ politicians are making the same mistake Europe made by inadvertently encouraging the worst kind of Islamism through their policies. Ever since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government came to power in
Delhi three years ago it has revived the old Congress policy of encouraging Muslims to believe they have valid reasons for a sense of grievance. The Sachar Committee was set up with the specific purpose of establishing that Muslims do not get their share of the Indian pie without anyone bothering to point out that the problem lies mostly with the community
refusing to understand the importance of women’s education. Uneducated women usually produce educationally handicapped children because half a child’s learning comes from its mother.

The UPA government has gone beyond Sachar in its efforts to create a sense of insecurity among Muslims. Banks have recently been ordered to give priority loans to Muslims and there are at least two Congress states that have started reserving jobs for Muslims. It was similar mistakes in England and Europe that allowed the Islamists to feed on insecurities and lure Muslims into their fold with ideas of pan-Islamism. If we take our blinkers off and look around we will notice that the same thing is beginning to happen in India. The recent municipal election in Malegaon was won by an Islamic party called the Indian Muslim Congress. It is a religious party that was born out of insecurities in the community that resulted from the bomb blasts in September last year. Muslims felt they were being targeted by the police and discriminated against by the Maharashtra government.

How long will it be before we see Muslim religious parties winning elections in other parts of India? How long will it be before these religious parties become involved in the international jehad because let us not forget that Hindus are as much the enemy as other
kafirs like Jews and Christians?

Source : Media Monitor Group -Digest Number 3088 (May 31, 2007)

 Zafar wrote:

"Are we creating an artificial notional line between what is perceived to be indigenous in origin, and what is perceived to be exogenous in origin, when it comes to normative cultural dominance? Meaning, is how we respond to them (positively and negatively) actually that different? I am not sure that it is..."

 

My response:

 

In international business, the nexus from where an activity is controlled is important. There are varying degrres of control by a foreign nexus and corresponding laws/regulations to regard the "local" Indian operation as domestic or foreign.

 

A branch or agency of a foreign business is acting as though the foreign entity itself were acting, i.e. the Indian location is merely for convenience but the liabilities are with the foreign HQ. A subsidiary is diferent as it has local component and the local assume liabilities to various extents. Even more diluted is the case of a franchise where the Indian entity receives a certain bundle of things (name brand, technology...) from the foreign nexus and has a defined set of obligations to it. The most diluted form is a sale/license of technology or goods or services in which the ownership shifts to the Indian buyer/licensee.

 

There is also a distinction made between form and substance: On paper it might say that things are run from India but in fact they might be controlled from the foreign nexus. A famous case is of Union Carbide's Bhopal trajedy. The Indian subsidiary was technically run by Indian directors and the US parent had less then controlling equity. But in substance all the quality assurances, productivity tools, safety procedures, as well as the high pressure to deliver results - these were driven from the US. So the Indian courts ruled that the US parent had liability because in substance even though not in form it did control the Indian operations in terms of safety standards.

 

USA tax laws have a concept known as Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC). If your activity passes the test of being a CFC then all sorts of rules apply. To be deemed a CFC there can be many criteria examined and then a poin system used to decide. For instance, who apoints the directors and managers? Are the directors or managers linked even indirectly to you? Where are contracts signed/negotiated? A subjective criteria is, where are meetings held where decisions are made? This is a very sophisticated area with high priced experts at placs like E&Y who advise and keep clients out of trouble.

 

If you were to apply these standards to churches, madrassas, mosques, NGOs and various humanities scholars based in India, the analysis would be fascinating. The Vatican appoints all the bishops in India and also made the final judgments on what rules apply to govern the churches. Hence they are operating a network of branches in India. Some Protestant Churches have less control exerted from their foeign HQ. The Orthodox Church came to India soon after the time of Jesus and did not have any foreign nexus control them, i.e. they became 100% indigenous. So Orthodox churches are more Indianized than the Catholic Churches in India.

 

The Southern Baptist church of Billy Graham in Texas in efect calls the shots of much of the Nagaland christians, who comprise about 90% of Nagaland's population. This happened over a period of 2 generations after India's independence. Naturally, considerable amount of lobbbying, funding, management direction and strategic oversight of Nagaland's affairs comes from USA. This is a good example of how foreign based religions can tamper with sovereignty. East Timor's independence was forced by global nexuses geting politically mobilized and using Western states (despite the talk about separation of church and state).

 

The church/state separation does not seem to apply to foreign affairs even in the case of secular western nations. The Arabs are of course very blatant about their direct and indirect control mechanisms worldwide.

 

Many Indian NGOs are in effect foreign branches, franchisees or subsidiaries. Ford Foundation was explicitly given this role after WW2, namely, to capture leftists in the third world using funding to infiltrate. They have produced a huge informal network of influence across India which has many sleeper cells that could get activated any time from US. Tehelka's report some years ago on foreign funded evangelists with links to CIA was a good one. But after that report there was pressure from invisible places that ended further inquiry by Tehelka on this and both journalists who did that investigation left Tehelka to pursue other interests. Mysterious!

 

If the career success of an Indian writer is controlled by foreign awards, travel invites, foreign reviews and book sales, etc. then that person is working for the foreign market and like any supplier must be loyal to that market.

 

One has to delve into what constitutes sovereignty, not just formally and explicitly, but also informally and indirectly. Then one may evaluate what foreign nexuses are ok and which ones are dangerous.

 

China is more secure in its sovereignty because it has understood the importance of soft power and cultural integrity. India is the playing field of American and Arabic nexuses competing to takeover the masses using a combination of overt and covert activities.

 

Given the history of how the above mentioned processes have worked for the past 1500 years in imperialism, evangelism, jihad, colonization, I cannot help being suspicious. Its ok to discuss such doubts and debate both sides without emotions or abuse or geting too defensive. This is just my view and I remain openminded to new data and ideas.

 

 

 

Ahlad, to your request for a single example of Eurocentrism in the human rights discourse, I offer the following:

 

1) The amount of valuable prime real estate wasted on cemetries runs into the billions in most major metros in the US. Imagine if this land was sold off, and the funds used to feed the hungry/poor in the very same cities. Now ask yourself why such an idea never gets studied by human rights folks, Ford Foundation and similar agencies, etc. Why is it that the Abrahamic religions' belief in burying the dead is not problematized? While something remote written in Manusmriti gets used to explain "Hindu" problems in society today, why not look at Abrahamic social problems?

 

2) Another study could be made of circumcision - female circumcision is banned by human rights law but why not male circumcision? The former is present in heathen societies while the latter is Biblical-Qu'ranic.

 

3) Why is meat-eating not a human rights issue, given that the land can be used to feed vegetarians in much larger number than growing cattle food and supplying the meat to people.? I do not see the past 30 years of South Asian Studies papers at the Madison Conference even remotely interested in such topics, whereas they intensely research every kind of issue that could be blamed on Hindu society. India turning into meat-eating will worsen the food shortages given the scarcity of arable land.

 

4) The care of the aged in varna-ashrama has to be compared to the culture of old folks homes prevalent in Abrahamic societies (now being adoptred in India metros). Infinity did 2 conferences on Indic approaches to aging at IIT-Kharagpur. Scholars showed the differences in the care/respect for aging, between those societies where aging/death is deemed natural under the reincarnation system, and those societies where aging is linked to dreadful ideas of death.

 

5) The color complex many Indians have of not being fair-skinned was the result of Islamic influence but this is never studied, while all sorts of Hindu problems are. Not only are most Hindu deities dark (Krishna, Shiva, many forms of Devi), but also the natya-shastra where Indic ideas of aesthetics are discussed do not emphasize fair-skin as a marker of beauty. But the Arab-Persian invasions brought a genre of glorifying the foreign folks. This Islamic-British origin or racism is a big topic hiding under the rug. In fact, Jesus was depicted with dark skin in all the early art, until the Italian Renaissance when it became fashionable to make him look like a white man. (I have an unpublished paper on "How Jesus Became White.")

 

Jewish immigrants becoming white was not at the expense of giving up Judaism. On the contrary the Jews successfully changed the American civic religion from Christianity to Judeo-Christianity, something unique to USA and not found in Europe.

 

Indian immigrants are not able to make a similar change in the American civic religion. While Jews are based on the Old Testament, the precursor to the Christian Bible, Hinduism has no similar claim to being the ancestor faith of Christianity. On the contrary, Hinduism is depicted as idolatry, something the Bible and Qu'ran condemn vociferously. Hindus are deemed pagans and heathens, and there is a long history of "civilization" marching ahead by trampling upon such folks in the past. Jews are required to believe in a specific account of History as being literal, whereas Hindus have no similar dogma (thankfully).

 

Hence the analogy of Jews and Indians in America is not so applicable as it seems. Also, Jews are required by faith to tithe as much as 10% of their salary to the Synagogue or related charity, which is not a custom among Hindus. Jews go their powewr in USA by funding massive institutions which have championed their cause - including PR, litigation, etc.

Ahlad is right that Indian liberals' championing of human rights is comparable with that by American liberals. But my point is different. I agree that both champion with equal passion.

 

The difference lies in their level of impact.

 

USA is far to strong as a nation-state, its citizens far too proud and patriotic, and hence the "cases" against the state can simply be ignored. There are no political parties in the US Congress based on specific fragments whose views are critical for government to function. Every elected politician must say he is a devout Christian whether he is or not. (in the past 10 days there was a front page New York Times leading article about Obama titled that he frames his positions in Biblical terms. The photo was of Obama giving a political speech in a church. Much election campaigning is done from church forums - including by "liberal" Democracts.

 

The equivalent of Indian fragmentation in politics would be to have US Congressmen from the Native Indians Party, from the Hispanics Party, from the Mormons Party, and so forth. Such parties dont exist, or remain at the margins INCLUDING in state level elections. Why? This must be understood to appreciate how america differs amidst all its diversity.

 

Which US national level leader attacks US human rights record against native Americans, for instance? None of substance. But there are many indian politicians attacking India on behalf of militants of various kinds.

 

While 50% of India's states have permanent establishments of selaratists' headquarters you simply dont find such things in USA.

 

Liberalism of the Indian kind is very contained in USA outside the campuses. This difference is critical to understand.

Zafar: "How, exactly, is Arundhati Roy’s critique of India any more or less nationalist than Chomsky’s critique of the US?"

I am glad you raise this as it shows precisely where Indians have a blockage. Let me explain how the positions of Roy and Chomsky differ with respect to India and USA, respecticely.

 

It has to do with the "following" each has established within the institutionalized power structure of the respective country. In USA, Chomsky is a non-entity outside the liberal arts academic cocoon:

1) No serious politicians of Democratic or Republican party quote him or are inspired by him, at least never publicly.

2) Professors who follow him as a mentor do not serve on governmental committees to manage policies. Such dissenters are marginalized - America has always been very good at that. See what happened to George McGovern.

3) The media moguls do not position him as some kind of icon for inspiration - he is seen largely as a disgruntled voice of dissent with little power in the realpolitik.

4) Heads of powerful multinational corporations couldn't care less about him, dont invite him as keynoite speaker or at events to inspire leadership.

5) The big guns at think tanks and at influential at grant-making funding agencies do not have him serving as consultant/advisor even informally.

 

Of course you can find exceptions; but you must understand what I am trying to say - Chomsky is irrelevant in the institutions of power that drive America's direction.

 

On the other hand, A. Roy and dozens like her are very influential in India. Many politicians in CPI(M), Congress etc view such "thinkers" very seriously. They are much more mainstream in Indian media, planning commissions, various social sciences funding agencies, etc. Even Indian corporate houses are very impressed by them.

 

I heard Vinay Lal once say that there is no real America Left, and i agree with this. What is called left in USA has no power at all, and is a noisemaking showpiece within the academic setting only.

 

Worst of all, the American Left is largely for promoting export of anti-nationalism to third world countries where mimics suffering from inferiority complexes are eager to impress their western mentors, funding agencies, etc.

 

Note how Ford Foundation in third world promotes "human rights" at the expense of the nation, but that within the US it does not do this!

 

This export-only orientation of postmodernism, Marxism, etc. is a major issue I am researching for several years. Even the nature of Christian evangelism in USA is different than the Christian radicalism being exported to the third world. (There is a form of tribal Christianity being practiced in parts of Africa and Latin America that is an embarassment to white liberal Christians in America, who naturally try to ignore/deny its existence.)

 

In his book, "Liberalism and Empire," Uday Singh explains how the domestic liberals (such as John Stuart Mill) more than conservatives  were hand-in-glove with colonizers and helped them dominate the "savages" elsewhere. Mill pioneered democracy, workers rights, etc in UK and is seen as a giant among the Enlightenment thinkers. But from age 18 till retirement at 53, his income came as an official of the East India Company, where his job was to advise the London headquarters on how to manipulate the rights of Indian people, always citing lofty ideals as the basis for replacing Indian rajas. Whites made better kshatriyas, they claimed, and were more competent at providing goivernance in accordance with dharmashastras. Hence, the liberalism justified colonialism abroad while championing rights at home.

 

In America today, Liberal White Chauvinism is far more dangerous than Liberal Conservatism because the former is stealth based (i.e. disguised) behind the image of egalitarianism. I recommend a book titled, "Two-Faced Racism," by Picca and Feagin (Routledge, 2007). It gives hard facts about how whiteness rules beneath the surface of the "liberal" society circles. White supremacy has simply gone underground. Indians are among the largest community being deceived.

Zafar and ProudHindu,

 

My claim is that:

 

(1)  American liberals, while being anti conservatives, are very nationalistic and deeply hold a sense of superiority of their civilization. They use Enlightenment or Postmodernist theories as their basis.

 

(2) Indian liberals are not pro-India nationalists in the same manner using theories of Indian siddhanthas. Such thought is not considered liberal and is known as Hindutva chauvinism, the Indian equivalent of the american Manifest Destiny, except that MD is externally expansionist by nature whereas Indian doctrines never espoused global or external takeover for any reason.

 

I am not concerned with the merits of the Indian liberals' position, merely making the distinction with their American counterparts. So whether internationalism is better or whether it invites invasion by softening India as target is for another thesis at another time. Further, whether such internationalism should take the form of pan-Islam is irrelevant to our discussion.

 

Repeating: I am comparing nationalism of one set of liberals with internationalism of the other. Then I am saying that the former exports its theories to the latter and encourages them to mimic it, while the former side does not implement the same theories to undermine its own nationalism.

 

Its like cricketers of one team enouraging the opponent team to drop catches in the name of good sportsmanship while not following that advice in their own performance. Only a moronic team would buy such advice.