“There are, in the US, Christian fundamentalists who would argue that he US is, or ought be, a strictly Christian nation.”

Q1: Do you support Israel being the Jewish nation?
Q1B. Do you support Pakistan being an Islamic Republic?

Also, note that Hinduism (and Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, the other major Dharmic religions) are native to India as they were born in the Indian subcontinent (Hinduism existed for 5000+ years), whereas Christianity is not native to the US, but reached its shores from migration (eventually leaving the natives, i.e. Native Americans, in a severely marginalized state, teetering on possible extinction.) Islam and Christianity reached and spread in India only in the last 1000-1300 years, and are not native religions of the land.

“Hindu fundamentalism is a political, not a religious movement, just like Christian fundamentalism.”

Q2. Could please specify exactly what you mean by “Hindu fundamentalism?”

Before you answer, please keep in mind what Will Durant, an English author, wrote in his 1935 book “The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage” (page 459): “The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword during this period.”

Q3. If some colonial rulers had destroyed the Mecca+Medina shrines and built churches over them, would you, or would you not, support restoring the Islamic shrines after independence was restored to that land?

Q4. If X is the demographic identity that’s the strongest for you personally, how would you feel if 200 people of X identity were locked inside a train compartment by a Muslim mob of thousands, with 59 X’s charred to death from being burnt alive with 100 liters of Gasoline.

Q5. How would Christian organizations in the US react to organized Muslim (or Hindu, for that matter) missionary-equivalent groups, engaged in converting millions of US Christians (including some entire townships) into that other religion? And how would you feel about the conversions and the expected reactions?

I would also like to request you to go over http://tinyurl.com/ind-math as that gives a sense of how sophisticated the Indian civilization (in which Hinduism played a central unifying role) was, when the foreign assaults on it began 1000-1300 years ago, and eventually left it sucked dry (and mutilated with the partition.)

I did hit the “reply to this” tab, and when the text entry box appeared, it said (for some reason unknown to me) “Post your comment reply to Vickie (****),” hence my address to you as Vickie, but I later noted that your screen name was “davidlosangeles” and was then left confused (I reconciled thinking that, perhaps, the screen name was different from your real name.) Anyways, sorry about the confusion created from my learning the ropes around here (great looking site, BTW.)

Since the site software is still in its beta, there may well be some bugs in it. As I am typing this (and, again, I clicked the “reply to this” tab to get here), I am seeing the following header above the text box:

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Post Your Comment Reply to Obama Mania « Tales of a Fattractive Egyptian Woman
Click here to cancel reply.
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which, as before, is misleading and confusing, and does point to possible bugs in the software. Perhaps the developers of the site may want to look at this?

Response to the substance of your comment shortly.

– Ashok.

You seemed to have replied to my response to Mr. Eteraz’s blog but my name is not “Vickie” and you did not hit the “reply to this” tab so it was not clear to whom you were responding, otherwise I would have replied sooner.

I believe that you have misunderstood my posting. I was not speaking about the Hindu peoples nor of the religious beliefs of Hindus but the views of certain political forces. There are, in the US, Christian fundamentalists who would argue that he US is, or ought be, a strictly Christian nation. This is not say all Americans believe this, nor that all Christian believe this, nor even that all Christian American believe this, just that certain right-wing interests do.

Hindu fundamentalism is a political, not a religious movement, just like Christian fundamentalism. They need to be discussed in political terms for the discussion to have any meaning.

Most people in the Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan) have their ancestral and cultural roots in the 5000+ Indian civilization, regardless of their current religious affiliation. That civilization thrived until the Islamic conquests and conversions began at circa 1000 AD, and the missionary activities and colonial rule which followed from around 1500 AD. An important part of that Indian legacy was that, Indian mathematicians, with their inventions of formal grammar (500 BC, by Panini for Sanskrit), the number zero, and the decimal and binary place-value number systems (these during 5th-8th centuries) laid the foundation for modern mathematics, and with it to modern science and technology. Please see: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Projects/Pearce/index.html That’s heritage that every person with roots in the Indian subcontinent should take great pride in, and others should hold respect for.

The truth is sometimes harsh, but only when people can be honest with one another can trust emerge and, in turn, peace and unity evolve therefrom. I came across this post http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/505795/ by Meghnad Desai on the Jaswant episode where he ratifies Jaswant Singh’s description, and gives what appears to be a brief and accurate account of how the partition came about.

That’s it for now, but if I think of some additional thoughts, I will return to post them. Thanks for writing and reading.

– Ashok

“Right-wing nationalists take the position that India is a strictly Hindu nation in which non-Hindus”

I can’t speak for the fictitious strawman construct of “Right-wing nationalists,” but the BJP government at the center under PM Vajpayee governed rather progressively, and started many initiatives to extend the economic growth to all sections of the society which were later adopted or extended by the Congress administration. Vaypayee extended his arms in friendship when he visited Pakistan in 1998, but his warmth was reciprocated by Pakistan by infiltrating Kargil and starting a war there in 1999 (many people killed, unnessarily as a result of that aggression by Pakistan.) Leaving out the 2002 Gujarat violence (which was triggered by a Muslim terrorist cabal plotting and charring to death 59 Hindu pilgrims, after goading the local Muslims to come in thousands and pelt stones at the stopped train. Please see my other posted comment for the report), Vajpayee’s regimes was also socially liberal and progressive.

“Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsi, &c) are at best guests”

Sorry. You couldn’t be further from the truth(, and are saying because you’ve absorbed all the spins being leveled against Hindus by anti-Hindu and anti-India crowd.) Members of all of these religions and faiths are all integral part of India, and most Hindus think that way. Remember, India is a secular democracy, whereas, for a comparison, Pakistan is an Islamic republic where most minorities (Hindus, Christians, Jews, and even Muslim minority sects) have been severely persecuted over the years. See this for an example of an Islamic sect , which was instrumental in building Pakistan, now being oppressed there: http://www.thepersecution.org/50years/build.html

“and at worst – well have seen what the worst is.”

Again, please do not forget that the Gujarat violence was the result of burning alive 59 Hindu pilgrims.

As for the “worst,” may I suggest you to find out about the 3 million civilian subjects killed by Pakistan in what is now Bangladesh in 1971? You can do so, by starting with this: http://www.liberationwarmuseum.org/liberationwar.html#01

“To praise any Muslim leader in any way seriously undermines the fundamental logic of the nationalist position”

You are mistaken here as well. Indians love their former President Dr. Abdul Kalam, a Muslim. The reason being, he loves India and its rich heritage, considers himself an Indian first, is a scholar with many accomplishments. Also, Maulana Azad is also held in very high regard by all Indians, including Hindus. Why? Because he was a patriotic leader who was an Indian at heart, and did not attack Hindus with the usual animosity seen in the divisive elements of the Muslim community of the Indian subcontinent. I grew up thinking of Azad as one of my heroes. A hand shake takes two hands. When you hand is bitten off every time you extend it, you will learn to stop extending it. That’s the reality of what happened to Hindus since the 1300 year long struggle which began with brutal Islamic conquests starting in the 7th century.

“and of course Jinnah was not just any Muslim leader.”

You will be surprised how receptive Indians and Hindus are to the truth of the matter, if the truth in this matter can be figured accurately. I do now believe that Jinnah was a secularist (and may have had a soft corner for India after the partition. I have heard that he longed to return to Bombay to visit his place of birth, That touched me.), but I also think that he was heeding the advice of some divisively oriented people. Hindu philosophy is rooted in the Sanskrit saying “Satyameva Jayate” which means “Truth Alone Triumphs,” and not coincidentally, it is the slogan on India’s national emblem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyameva_Jayate

“The bigger question is that of the social base of the Hindu supremacy position. There are those who would benefit (and have benefited) from Hindu supremacy over non-Hindus. This is at the end of the day the real issue.”

Again, a false impression you seem to have gained from the spins and smears against Hindus. In reality, Hindus want to respected, and are all too eager to respect in return (often, even to be point of becoming obsequious). I don’t know how many Hindus you know in person, but they are generally very docile and easy going people, “live, let live” kind. In terms of religions, India gave birth to 4 major religions, hosted many smaller religions over hundreds of years of people that come to India to escape persecution elsewhere, and many of them flourished (eg, the Tata are of the Parsi faith, and they are a super wealthy and leading industrial power house in India). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi

In fact, as Jewish folks acknowledge, India is one of the only countries where Jews were never persecuted by the majority (Hindus in India). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_India

It really pains me, as a progressive minded human being that happens to be a Hindu and is also proud to be one (in fact, Hinduism and other Dharmic religions are the very sources of progressivism in my opinion, with their values of ahimsa, spirituality etc), to see so much gratuitous smearing of Hindus and Hinduism going on, and progressives and intellectuals absorbing those spins without sufficient examination.

Part I:

First, the Gujarat violence of 2002 was started by Muslims burning alive 59 Hindu pilgrims in the Godhra train carnage incident, in a pre-meditated plan executed by five Muslim terrorists (who stocked up 150 liters of Petrol the night before for the precise purpose of killing the pilgrims, and goaded the locals against the pilgrims) with suspected Pakistan/ISI hand. See this report of the first of two parts of the extensive investigation being conducted by the commission headed by former supreme court Justices Nanavati and Mehta: http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/sep/27godhra.pdf . The inescapable fact that must be noted is that, without the gruesome Godhra train carnage of Hindus, there would not have been the gruesome post-Godhra violence and deaths of so many: official tally of post-Godhra violence casualities: 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus, add to that 59 Hindus killed in the train carnage.

Second, while any killing of innocent lives is inhuman, the scale of the violence that took place in Gujarat in 2002 is dwarfed by the horrific genocide and ethnic-cleansing of Bangladeshis conducted by Pakistan in 1971, where 3 million people were killed (most of them Hindus, and likely most of them from lower/dalit castes), 200,000 women were raped, and tens of millions were displaced: http://www.liberationwarmuseum.org/liberationwar.html#01 During March 25 through November of 1971, Pakistani forces, upon direct order from their generals and commanders. killed an average of 12,000 people and raped 800 women every. single. day. for. 250. days. The world sat and watched, and still ignores and/or refuses to acknowledge the Holocaust-scale genocide committed by Pakistan in 1971.

It seems to me that this all superficially seems academic, who did what decades ago. Does it really matter “who lost Pakistan” in the 1940’s now at the beginning of the 21st century? The partition is a fact that is not going to change anytime soon so what is the big deal.

However the great upheaval that has accompanied the release of this book clearly indicates that there is some important contemporary issue that the partition question serves as a surrogate for. Specifically that would seem to be the comparative position of Muslims in India vis-à-vis Hindus. Right-wing nationalists take the position that India is a strictly Hindu nation in which non-Hindus (Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsi, &c) are at best guests and at worst – well have seen what the worst is. To praise any Muslim leader in any way seriously undermines the fundamental logic of the nationalist position, and of course Jinnah was not just any Muslim leader.

The bigger question is that of the social base of the Hindu supremacy position. There are those who would benefit (and have benefited) from Hindu supremacy over non-Hindus. This is at the end of the day the real issue.