THE STORY

“Oh no , not again!”

Every Indian sensitive to misportrayals of hindu thought in the media  says this often, probably more than once a day.

Asia Times Online [ http://www.atimes.com] is one online journal I read regularly, for it’s excellent coverage on GeoPolitical issues, with writings by Intelligent & well qualified leaders in their fields, who are ignored by the mainstream media machine. Its readership is big, & is growing more & more. It is published from Thailand, & has a lot of writers from the Indian Sub-Continent, other parts of asia, and of course many experts from the “West”.

But even there, there are times I cringe at their writers’ casual inaccuracies about India. Yesterday was one such occasion.

I read a headline with “Vishnu Strategy…” in its title. Curiosity inflamed, I read the whole article. It was about  Israel & the Lebanon misadventure recently where they invaded & occupied the country for a few days. From there to grandiose sweeping analogies like -

which has increasingly become an exercise in mass destruction. In the last five years, Vishnu has visited Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. The result has been death and ruin on a biblical—or more aptly, a Bhagavad-Gita—scale.

The whole article, not just the head line, kept insisting all these agressors (who I bet had’n the faintest idea until ol’ wiz Conn Hallinan  ket them know)were following what the “clever author” called as “a Vishnu strategy” of destruction…..

Dumbstruck for a while, I tried to move on to other things, but couldn’t.

So I wrote a letter to the editor (I do that occasionally when I can’t take it any more..)

Today they published my letter, with a written statement below it saying they took the article off the website.  A Pity, that I didn’t save that article, but I’ll see if I find a copy that I can paste here.  I found the original, & it is in the References section. It will be quite a job to get the “great Scholars” to eat crow & take down the original off the FPIF site.

I feel a little better about Atimes decency, though, but know this goes on all the time, & not all editors are as considerate as these. I’m trying with the “Foreign Policy In Focus” guys, the original publishers.

And hindu though does have to depend on the “kindness of strangers” , not having any strong voice in media / academia….

So here it is, as published today in Asia Times Online

at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Letters.html

[After today, it will be in archives]

THE LETTER

_____________________________________________________________

Re Conn Hallinan’s preposterously titled The Vishnu strategy meets its match [Feb 7]:

Words fail me to see such an egregious example of crass and out-of-context analogy between “what we did was insane and monstrous: we covered entire towns in cluster bombs” and the Bhagavad Gita, a text revered even by non-Hindus as explaining Hindu philosophy, in the context of Prince Arjuna compelled to decide, on the battlefield, whether he should fight or flee.

All this a part of the story of the millennia-old epic The Mahabharata. It is a text to aid human decision-making, and not for some boasting about who’s destroying what, or about some ridiculous “Vishnu strategy”.

“The latest channeling of the Hindu god” by this author is a pure figment of his overheated imagination, that of a writer groping for a gripping analogy, and coming upon a gross distortion of this kind. He also needs to understand the context in which the well-read [Robert] Oppenheimer made his original remark. I certainly can’t accuse this author of having the faintest idea of the Gita, Lord Krishna, his message, or Hindu philosophy.

Liberally spraying the incorrect “Krishna = destroyer” reference, and a silly notion of a “Vishnu strategy”, did it ever occur to the author to do some research? The analogy adds nothing to his points, anyway.

He could have found better analogies closer to home, in the Christian concepts of Armageddon, and evangelical beliefs of Jesus coming back to massacre the “evil ones”.

Also, I’m appalled that ATimes editors let this past. This kind of blunder is perhaps innocent, but could attract the label of hate speech against Hinduism. [I] hope editors understand the false positions they put loyal Hindu readers [in] by letting in this kind of writing.

Karigar
USA (Feb 7, ’07)

THE RESPONSE

___________Atimes Editors respond below__________

We received several letters on this, and the “Vishnu” analogy does seem to have been an unfortunate choice that prevented some readers from getting past the first paragraph (or even the headline) and into the meat of the article, which made salient points. We have taken the article off the website. – ATol

==================================

REFERENCES

1. Though Atimes took it down, the original article is still at

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3958

The Vishnu Strategy

Conn Hallinan | February 1, 2007

Editor: John Feffer, IRC

Foreign Policy In Focus 

“The Supreme Lord said: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy.” According to the great Hindu text Bhagavad-Gita, Vishnu delivered that speech to Prince Arjuna before a great battle almost eight millennia ago. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer paraphrased it in 1945 to describe the explosion of the atomic bomb. The latest channeling of the Hindu god can be found in an Israeli commander’s evaluation of last summer’s war with Lebanon: “What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.”

The commander was decrying the way Israel, the United States, and Great Britain wage war these days, which has increasingly become an exercise in mass destruction. In the last five years, Vishnu has visited Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. The result has been death and ruin on a biblical—or more aptly, a Bhagavad-Gita—scale.

In Lebanon

During the recent 34-day war, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) fired some four million cluster munitions at southern Lebanon. According to UN Relief Coordinator David Shearer, “Nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three or four days of the war.” At least one million of these unexploded bombs are still waiting in ambush for unwary farmers and children.

According to the UN, the IDF destroyed airports, harbors, water and sewage plants, electrical generators, 80 bridges, 94 roads, over 900 businesses, and 30,000 homes. Retreating Israeli soldiers systematically destroyed the infrastructure of villages and deliberately polluted water tanks and wells. According to the Lebanese government, some 1,189 Lebanese were killed, 4,399 wounded, and one-quarter of Lebanon’s population—approximately one million in all—were turned into refugees.

Lebanon is hardly unique.

Since 1991, according to Handicap International, the United States and Britain have dropped over 13 million cluster munitions on Iraq and strewn the countryside with more than 500 tons of toxic depleted uranium ammunition. A Johns Hopkins University study found that anywhere from 426,369 to 793,663 Iraqis have been killed since the March 2003 invasion. The war has also driven 1.8 million Iraqis out of their country and created 1.6 million internal refugees.

Since last January, almost 4,000 people have died in Afghanistan, over 1,000 of them civilians. The United States has dropped more than three times the number of bombs on that country over the past six months than it did in its first three-year campaign against the Taliban. B-1 bombers are routinely unloading 19,000 pounds of explosives during bombing runs while AC-130 Spectre gunships spitting 155mm howitzer shells and tens of thousands of 40mm cannon shells, prowl the skies. In September, an AC-130 killed 31 shepherds.

Three of the most powerful armies in the world attacked countries that are only marginally in the same century as Israel, the United States, and Britain. Yet in spite of overwhelming firepower, Israel was fought to a standstill in Lebanon, the Americans in Iraq are in increasingly desperate straits, and British forces in Afghanistan, according its former chief of staff, Field Marshall Peter Inge, face the possibility of outright defeat.

Has the Vishnu strategy met its match?

Sources of Resistance

There was a time when a thin red line of British regulars ruled the Indian subcontinent, when a few brigades of U.S. Marines could keep Central America safe for the United Fruit Company, and when the IDF smashed far larger armies in a week of fighting. But the thin red line faced mostly tribal warriors, and the Marines were up against unarmed peasants. The Arab armies were big, but poorly led and technologically inferior.

All empires—whether they are based on colonies or economic domination—depend on uneven development. There was a time when industrial capitalism was all-powerful, and when the people it conquered often did not even think of themselves as “nations.” When the people in those conquered countries did think of themselves as a nation, the maintenance of empire became a rockier affair. Tiny Ireland tied down more British regulars in the 19th century than did India.

Eventually the emergence of nationalism made it impossible for the colonial powers to retain direct sovereignty over Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, though many of those former colonies are still economic and political vassals. The thin red line withdrew because it suddenly faced hundreds of millions of people who were united in wanting it out, and if push came to shove, would fight to make it so.

The great powers retreated, but they always believed that their superior military power and their willingness to use the Vishnu strategy gave them a final vote in matters concerning their interests. For many, that illusion of superiority held even when reality demonstrated the opposite. Hence, revisionists like Vice President Dick Cheney currently argue that the United States lost the Vietnam War not because of the impossibility of defeating an entire nation but because the U.S. political and military leadership lacked sufficient resolve.

The Bipartisan Vishnu

Unfortunately, the hallucination that war is still a relevant strategy is not confined to the neoconservatives and a few right-wing Republicans. Many Democrats share it as well, even if they happen to disagree with the current White House about the tactics of employing military power.

The Democrats have voted overwhelmingly to support the almost $600 billion yearly military budget, including the unneeded $65 billion F-22 program and the $256.6 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter plane that no one seems to want. Lockheed Martin, which makes both the F-22 and the F-35, has contributed generously to the campaign of Ike Skelton (D-Mo), the new chair of the House Armed Services Committee and a chief supporter of expanding the military. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently endorsed President George W. Bush’s proposal to enlarge the military. “I have been calling for such an expansion for several years,” he told the press.

In a recent editorial, the New York Times called such an expansion essential for the kind of “extended clashes” the United States will face in the future from “ground-based insurgents.” But “extended clashes” are exactly the kinds of wars that make military superiority irrelevant. The Bush administration’s “surge” of troops into Iraq will make not an iota of difference, any more than the Vietnam escalations did a generation ago.

The cost, however, is extraordinary. The Department of Defense will spend $2.3 trillion over the next five years—actually more if you count nuclear weapons, veterans’ benefits, and the cost of the wars themselves. The price tag for Iraq alone is $450 billion and climbing.

All this massive (and expensive) firepower does achieve something: unprecedented death and destruction. The Israelis bombed Lebanon back to the Stone Age, and three-decade old cluster weapons are still blowing up Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. Iraq may find it harder to recover from its “liberation” than it did from the Mongol invasions. We cannot “win,” but like the Romans of old, we can sow the earth with salt. What we reap will not be acquiescence or compliance, however.

Commenting on the recent Lebanon War, Augustus Richard Norton, a former army officer who served in Southern Lebanon and currently teaches at Boston University, pointed out that previous Israeli invasions and occupations created the conditions for the recent war. “Hezbollah had 20 years to hone their skills and hatred against Israel,” he said. “That hatred was created by Israel; it wasn’t there in the beginning.”

Substitute the United States or Britain for Israel. Shift the locale to Iraq or Afghanistan. And that’s where the Vishnu Strategy gets you in the end.

~x~Saraswati namastubhyam, varade kamarupini

Brand “Gandhigiri”: What are we selling?

It was dark. There was complete silence…the dark stage suddenly came alive with one spotlight, in the right corner. From the wings walked a man, a well built dignified African-American man in a suit. He walked to the center of the stage, to a podium, settled down, and began….

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

 Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.

As some must’ve guessed, this was an actor “doing” the famous Martin Luther King Jr “I have a dream” speech. [full speech at : http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html ]

So, “what about it ?” as you may ask. Remember those sari clad “desi gospel singers” going “God our creator…peace as it was meant to be…” in Part 1 of this blog [Ref: prev entry ]

(this grand brand is in great demand)

There they were, a group of elegant desi women, singing to commemorate this year’s Gandhi Jayanti. Dressed in White salwar kurtas & saris, they were swaying, Gospel Choir-like, as an uncomfortable looking desi guy strummed Guitar chords to their song. The song was not Gandhiji’s favorite “Vaishnav jan to” or even “Raghupati Raghav“, with the Gratuitous “Eeshwar Allah tero naam” thrown in.

No. This was America, & “cool” desis knew that in order to be “mainstream” [i.e. Gora Copy], one had to sing an “English” song, complete with harmonizing, & Guitar chords, & words like “let there be Peace…peace as it was meant to be“, and “God our creator” thrown in. So the predominantly White Christian crowd could nod to each other with self Satisfaction, “Oh! Isn’t that Nice! They’re just like us!“

(Wonder how many say “It’s so nice to know that We’re just like them“…??)

Bhoil ( the bhoot, or imp inside my head) couldn’t take it anymore, & jumped out of the room, out past the parking lot, through the midsized American town, past the Atlantic, Europe, Middle East & Central Asia, past all that fighting, into Bharatvarsh, & into a small town in North India. Back the time warp, through the decades…

Early eighties. Growing up going to Angrezi school. Gandhiji was Everywhere, on the coins & currency notes, on flags, in movies…. We sang to the “father of the nation”…a.k.a “Bapooooo….ji” “De di hamen aazaadi bina Khadg bina Dhaal, Sabaramati ke Sant toone kar diya kamaal…Raghupati Raghav..”

Late eighties, in college, we diligently avoided the label of “Oh yeah, Big Gandhi, you!” cuz that jus’ wasn’t cool….

Moving to the US, while going thru my slave ( oops, student ) phase, I had the unique opportunity to interact with Gandhiji’s Great Nephew, Arun Gandhi. He was visiting our University for the “peace foundation” that he still heads, somewhere in Southern US. You know, jaw jaw, & raise money for “good causes”.

I was supposed to take him to dinner on behalf of the SAS (South Asian Students Association. Yeah yeah…the South Asianization of Indians was already in full swing). I met a nattily suited-booted “gentelman” who turned out to be the “great man” (great man’s greatnephew actually, what a feat to be born that way!). Nothing very Gandhian about our evening, where he insisted on being taken to the “best restaurant in town” & we both gorged to our heart’s content (someone else was paying the bill!), while mumbling big mouthfuls about “global peace”.

Brand AnalysisLet’s throw in some marketing jargon here (gotta keep that MBa up to date, y’know!). The name Gandhi is a Deployable, Marketable asset. Ask Sonia maino & she would confirm, she has both deployed & marketed it well, what with her “Gandhian values” & all. Currently the Brand Managament has been completely “outsourced” to Westernized (mostly pseudo secular) Indians, & their “originals”, i.e. Westerners & their institutions. Gandhi the “son of the soil” the devout hindu, is pretty much a boring, passe afterthought. So, Gandhi the brand has been co-opted & captured by others, or let go by his people.

Among the few (but massive in their reach) brands that are uniquely Indian, i.e. Yoga, Bhagvad Gita, Sanskrit Philosophical & Scientific literature, concepts like Shanti, Ahimsa, etc, Brand Gandhi is probably not quite “up there” (in my opinion anyway), but still, is probably the most accessible to the common man all over the world.

What happens when “your” brand is managed by sophisticated outsiders?  

Agency Conflict, as my Mba prof would say. What this means is that the “Brand Management Agency“, be it the CEO & his Management team (who represents the Board, who in turn represent the owners), or a govt. which manages a country “on behalf of the people”, has its own interests foremost in mind, & this may not co-incide with what the “brand owners” had in mind.

Back to the Gandhi Brand. The “Gandhi Jayanti” (especially this year being Satyagraha’s Centennial) can be looked at as an annual “brand renewal exercise”, that reminds us of the value of this particular brand. It is sad indeed to be treating Gandhiji on par with, say Lux soap, but these are the media soaked times we live in. Personally, I think criticism of Gandhiji is justified in many cases (see sulekha blogger Agneya Panja’s blogs , for a particularly trenchant one-especially in his application of “non-violence”, Was Satyagraha a Hindu Movement?   at [ http://agneya-panja.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4758 ] excerpted in Ref#1 below) but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him, or what he has done.

It is just that I think of him as somewhere between the “20^th century saint deserving worship” & the “Gandhi Brand to be deployed & used for max. gain“.

I’m all for an “Experiments with the Truths” approach to life, as Gandhiji’s Autobio is called, but then my experiments…well…who cares, their consequences do not reverberate thru millions of Indians, & across a century!

Case in point is how the congress party has virtually hi-jacked the brand for the past 60 + years. See how the Lage Raho Munnabhai’s “gandhigiri” effect seems to be playing out with today’s Indian youth “experimenting” with owning brand Gandhi. Better than outsiders doing it, I guess.

In the West, it is particularly interesting to see Gandhiji being regarded as a “great disciple of Christ” (as I’ve personally heard said by Christian Church “Fathers” in lectures organized, ironically enough, by Hindu Temples!). As a “hindu” I see nothing particularly wrong in being a “disciple of Christ”, but then I’m a Hindu ( a lo-brand at best, or a no-brand at worst!) & don’t believe in exclusive identities. From the perspective of common people in the west, when they hear these kinds of “disciple of Christ” characterization, in their minds they are already on to the slippery slope of converting (pun intended) him into a “person of Christian values” and then onto “more Christian than Us Christians”. Anything but the “proud hindu” that he used to often vehemently insist he was.

The whole rationale of this “re-branding” was since Gandhiji, being no different than us other IBCD NRIs (Indian Born Confused Desis, Non-Resident Indians), was more “English” than Indian (he himself hilariously documented this in his chapter “Imitating the English Gentleman” where he goes to learn ballroom dancing..). So like all us “Angrez ki dum“s {“tail of the English dog” if you insist! }, he had more occasion during his growing years to read & admire the Bible than the many & multifaceted (& potentially confusing to an uninitiated boy, I guess) Dharmic literature of his mother land. He picked out the “Sermon on the Mount”, a lecture supposed to be from Jesus to his followers, as a great example of wisdom, which it probably is.

We hindus, of course, whisper to each other at this point “but we KNOW he revered the Bhagavad Gita“. Yes, the fair minded “Christian Fathers” always say a line or two about the “Bhagavad Gita” (a powerful & not to be neglected Brand), but the lion share, the bulk of their talk is about Gandhiji’s “Christian Values“. Cuz they do after all, represent the world’s first “modern style” Corporation, a 2000 yr old behemoth with a “growth oriented” model, with it’s own well funded marketing department. (My “hint” of course it towards the Catholic Church, and it’s “rebel Independent franchisees”, i.e.the many many Evangelical Protestant churches proliferated around the world.)

So in this Brand Tug-of-War (yeah…more mixed up jargon!) who won? Who co-opted “Brand Gandhi” from whom, & why ? We really don’t need an MBa to recognize the “winners & losers” in this “game”, do we?

Meanwhile not many of these powerful “Brand Managers” bother about Gandhiji’s strong insistence that “Conversion” by missionaries is pretty much “evil”. Aftre all, where’s the glamour in repeating that truth?

[Contd. in Part II.]

—————————–

Ref#1:

“Gandhian” ideas have a lot of confusing elements in them, & there is plenty to criticize (especially in his application of “non-violence”, see Agneya Panja’s blog Was Satyagraha a Hindu Movement?   at [ http://agneya-panja.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4758 ]

Excerpt:

While Gandhi is viewed as a spiritual leader, in reality he was more a politician who used religious ideas. Being a politician, Gandhi should have practiced the dharma of a Kshatriya (ruler, politician, warrior). Of all the Hindu varnas, it is the Kshatriya varna where violence is used frequently. For Gandhi to suggest otherwise, as he often did, clearly violates the tenets of Hinduism. One only need view the Bhagavad Gita to see that violence was viewed as being — depending on the circumstances — necessary for the Kshatriya.

It was on the battlefield of Kurukshreta that Lord Krishna, considered to be one of the many Avatars of Vishnu — urged Arjuna to go to war against his relatives. Krishna’s message — based on the knowledge of the divine and eternal soul — is in chapter 2 of the Gita:

The embodied soul is eternal in existence, indestructible and infinite, only the material body is factually perishable; therefore fight O Arjuna.[1]

Arjuna did not fight with a charkha. Instead he picked up a bow and arrow, and yes, he killed people! Gandhi had to have known this, because he stated on numerous occasions that he had read the Gita. He chose to ignore the obvious, and interpret Krishna’s message in another manner.

……….

It is always “their” fault, not “ours”.

(We are Not Violent! I will go to war with anybody who disagrees!)

[Scene- Name: AnySchool, location: Anywhere...Time: Any Century]

The class was strangely quiet, except for muffled grunts, and thuds, and scratching & scuffling noises that the teacher could hear as she walked closer towards the classroom.

Reaching the door, she saw only the backs of the kids’ heads, as they all seemed to be gathered around something going on , right on the floor in front of them. She quickly rushed thru the crowd, only to see two of the class’ “big guys” rolling around on the floor, clearly in the middle of a “fight to death“. [Kill, him! C’mon, finish him!" as one exhilarated, clapping member of the crowd was yelling].

She quickly broke it up, sent the now bleeding “gladiators” to the first aid room. When they came back, with band-aid on their cuts, she tried to get at the bottom of it all (the class was wasted, anyway, no one was in the mood).

“He hit me first” said the first. “He started it all, by insulting me” said the second.

“I did not! I just said bullies are bad!” said the first. “So whom did you mean, then? Smartass?” said the second.

“Oh I was just saying generally. Why do you feel so insulted? Perhaps you are a bully, then!” said the first.

“I’m not a bully, & no one can dare call me one! I’ll teach them a lesson!” said the second.

“you’re a bully, and have been for ever & ever, and you have been stealing my power ever since you came!“

said the first, and again jumper at the second one, fists flying. Before too much further damage, they were separated again & banished to detention for the rest of the day.

She asked the rest of the class why they didn’t try to stop them, or break up the fight. No response. After much probing, she could piece together a basic explanation, one that at least could satisfy her. Both the “fighters” were the “coolest kids” in the class, good at the cool things, like sports, etc. You either accepted one, or the other, as “boss”, if you wanted to be part of the “cool crowd”.

The “good kids” you know, the ones who were good at studies, always with their books, etc, left them severely alone. But then, “everybody” who was “anybody” left these “good kids” alone, except when there was need to yell “bookworm”, “nerd” etc, or to copy from their homeworks.

She now understood what the one kid meant, when he said “…stealing my power!”

She sat back & puzzled over this. What (if anything) should she do?

[END SCENE]

——————

Pope Benedict (formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, prior to his promotion) “casually”, in an academic setting, mentioned “offhand” a conversation between a Christian Emperor & a Muslim Scholar, that Islam brought the world nothing new except Mohammed’s use of violence to spread their faith. ["Show me just what Mohammed [the Prophet of Islam] brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he has preached.”]

All “defenders of Islam” are upset, pointing out all the historical evidence showing how Christianity, since Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion, had pretty much done the same thing through out Europe & neighborhood, & then the middle-eastern “crusades”, to the Euro-Colonization of the world, in the recent past.

So what are the others (you know, the people “not of the book”) to think?

Obviously they (these others, the “hindoos” & others) have no power to do anything about it. So they can sit back & watch, & learn. Learn how similar both “opponents” are, once you get past their superficial differences.  The fact that one typically looks better than the other, is only since it has a more sophisticated marketing department, knows how to spin events, & manage its image much better. [We hurt you for your own good, Vs We hurt you for our good, cuz you hurt us]

Learn how they have the zeal & pathological need to “protect” their identity fortress (Christian, or Islamic identity) at all costs. They have to protect their “peaceful” image, even if it means a little violence. After all , what’s a little violence between “Brothers”?

Also, it’s worth considering how this Pope would behave, when he turns his “Holy” attention to India. He’s supposed to be less “liberal” then his predecessor, John Paul II, who of course, during his visit to India, flatly refused to apologize for the Goan “Inquisitions” [reputed to have been worse in many respects than the more famous Spanish one], and refused to say that local “religions” like hinduism were also legitimate paths to divine [See Ref # 4 below]. Of course, all perfectly understandable. How can one “Harvest the Souls” when the “farm” is declared a “National Park”? Our great “Secular leadership”, barring the BJP & allies, accepted meekly & did arati etc…to the “divya atithi… ["What the hay….let him make hay while the sun shines…]

We Indians have also “benefited” from the “munificence & magnificence” brought by our Islamic Invaders. [Short, interesting history of "Islam’s other Victims" at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=4649 ]So, how do we judge these current actions above, and all actions in general, to say they are “good” or “bad”? Dumb “hindoos” like me turn to our “Wisdom literature” which we worship a lot, & rarely read. This time I took the easy way, & surfed the net (granted, I knew where I wanted to go, and amongst the many sources, good & bad, found something).The Gita has some answers, if only on looks.

Both sides’ motivation is questionable, & so is their selective knowledge. If the pope’s remark (coming from the head of a “State” as well as a “Religion”, since the Vatican is both!) was innocent, it shouldn’t have caused this much hue & cry, & he would’ve retracted, which he’s not doing, notwithstanding his “regrets”. If the (pretty uniform, & across the board) condemnation & reaction from the muslim world would have stopped at words (in exchange for what, obviously, were mere words!), that would be fair enough. But the easy threats that are coming out of various “representatives’ mouths carry the ominous promise of more than just words.The Aga Khan [http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/sep/22aga.htm ] recently said, “We are often told these days that tension and violence in much of the world grows out of some fundamental clash of civilizations — especially a clash between the Islamic world and the West. I disagree with that assessment. In my view, it is a clash of ignorances, which is to blame.”

REFERENCES:1. Quoting from[http://www.bvashram.org/articles/22/1/Are-All-Religious-Paths-Equal%3F ]

A good action is judged by good results. To know whether something is actually good or bad requires us to know the results it brings in full, not superficially. For example, I may eat some food that tastes good and then say I feel this action was good because I enjoyed the taste. But if the food was poisoned, I would later die. So to judge whether something is good requires complete knowledge of the results, not partial knowledge; and those results should be universally beneficial for the action to be good.The second aspect of judgement is to know objectively what is good. Someone may judge the taste of food as being good, but if it is poisoned we can see it is not actually good to eat (the ultimate result is bad). Thus the Gita warns us that what appears sweet at first may not always be good:

“That happiness which is derived from contact of the senses with their objects and which appears like nectar at first but poison at the end is said to be of the nature of passion (rajo-guna).”… the Gita further explains that faith or religion is also influenced by and categorized according to the three modes of nature (i.e. the three gunas: sattva guna, rajo guna, and tamo guna), and that based on the qualities (gunas) one is influenced by, his destination is determined. …………

“The result of pious action is pure and is said to be in the mode of goodness. But action done in the mode of passion results in misery, and action performed in the mode of ignorance results in darkness.”The first thing we should note is that each action influenced by each mode of nature brings a distinctly different result. Actions in the mode of passion (rajo-guna) and ignorance (tamo-guna) lead to misery and darkness for the performer of the action. … clearly says those who act in passion or ignorance attain only misery and darkness.2. Quoting from

Faith, Civilization and Eurocentric Racism by George Thundiparambil at [ /expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=307432 ]The Western Legacy of Abrahamic FaithMost people living in contemporary times would agree that the world has certainly become a better place ever since rationalism gained the upper hand in Europe. An average student in Europe would attest to the fact that modern western culture as characterized by its secular credentials is much obliged to the rise of rational thought and humanism that superseded Christian faith. It is on the basis of this secular and democratic yardstick that western thinkers and statesmen justify themselves for their intent of propagating western values in the Islamic world, which is also characterized by Abrahamic faith. The Islamic leaders are resisting such efforts not only because of the misperception by some that these western values are indeed part and parcel of Christianity, but also due to the systemically ingrained intolerance, similar to Christian faith, for rationality.

3. Ref – ‘Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel’ [Rediff interview at http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/14inter1.htm ]Richard Zimler‘s novel, Guardian of the Dawn, documents the little-known Portuguese Inquisition in India, in 16th century Goa. He points out that, apart from their laws and religion, the Portuguese also imported and enforced their infamous methods of interrogation to subdue troublemakers.Zimler has won numerous awards for his work, including a 1994 US National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and 1998 Herodotus Award for best historical novel. The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon was picked as 1998 Book of the Year by British critics, while Hunting Midnight has been nominated for the 2005 IMPAC Literary Award. Together with Guardian of the Dawn, these novels comprise the ‘Sephardic Cycle’ — a group of interrelated but independent novels about different branches of a Portuguese Jewish family.4. Sample some Soul Harvesters Shennanigans at

As Swami Dayananda Saraswati writes in an open letter to the Pope:“You cannot ask me to respond to conversion by converting others to my religion because it is not part of my tradition. … Thus, conversion is not merely violence against people; it is violence against people who are committed to non-violence.” [xvi]

Recently Ashok Singhal, head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), asked the Pope to “announce that Christianity is one of the ways that can lead to salvation and not that Christianity is the only way to salvation.” The newspapers called Singhal a “hardline” Hindu leader but did not accuse the Pope of being rigid in his views.Yet Singhal accepts a pluralism to religion and salvation but the Pope does not.

He was in rapture! He pointed out to the assembled crowd of supporters, a macaca, right in their midst of the crowd, holding a video camera! The crowd strained for a look, wow! A moment in the history of Virginia, they thought!

Unfortunately (for him) the “macaca” turned out to be an ABD ( American Born Desi, or Indian American) Sidarth. Sidarth was “shadowing” him on behalf of his democratic opponent. (One species doing some “Anthropology” on another ?)

He’s (“conservationist” Allen has) now spent the past few weeks explaining to anyone who’d listen, that it was an “honest mistake”. That he thought the brown face among the sea of white faces was, using “deductive” logic, a “macaca” not a human being. (OK I made that one up too, but you get the point.).

So far no one’s buying. (he had repeated the “macaca” word twice in that speech, an “honest mistake” both times, perhaps, also hoping that the crowds would love such “honest mistakes”) His polled approval ratings have dropped from the 70s to the 30s, media & comedians are having a laugh at his expense, his competitor is making hay while the “macaca” sun shines.

So, ……Sunshine,….is that where the Sunshine State of California comes into this story ? Well, yes & No.

In California, the fate of some of Sidarth’s “bandhus” (brothers or fellow beings, dunno about their “macaca” status) hangs in balance.

Apparently they (their parents) got tired of being labeled as “macaca worshippers” (the exact words in the 6th grade California History textbooks being “monkey worshippers”,..you guessed it…due to many hindus “degenerate” bhakti to Sri Hanuman). So they decided to “take the law in their own hands”. No, not the classic American Western Way, with guns, but the new way, i.e. they got the contents of California’s History textbooks “washed” off some of this “filth” (as in above example, & more) so the kids could touch them again without getting their hands soiled. All this was done perfectly legally, textbook style, like a good “model minority” should, with painstaking attention to procedure, making presentations to the State Board of Education Review Panel, suggesting edits so all would be satisfied.

But one can wash filth out of books, but can one wash cobwebs out of “scholars” brains? Apparently not, as a bunch of “eminent scholars” (led by the Harvard “Sanskrit Don” Michael Witzel, & followed, amongst other desi “scholar/sepoys” by the likes of Univ of Mich’s Madhav Deshpande, etc..) jumped into the fray, uninvited, shouting “Aryan Invasion”, Conspiracy”, “Caste System”, “Womens Rights”, “We know best” “You know nothing” “We will get you”.

They bamboozled the SBE to allow them to insert themselves into the process, messed around with the texts some more, & “voila”, behind closed doors, the textbooks once revised, were re-revised so that these scholars could put back their favorite words (the above “swear” words).

The last act (so far) in the drama has been the HAF (Hindu American Foundation) getting in & suing the California SBE for violating due process & discriminating against the rights of Calif kids by doing backroom shennanigans, when they should have been out in the open Calif Sunshine.
HAF won the lawsuit, judges agreeing with their contentions. But the text books won’t change (beyond the 75% changes that still managed to withstand the “Aryan Invasion” by Witzel & his desi “Comrades”).

Meanwhile there is another lawsuit in US federal court by CAPEEM (not “kapim”) on similar lines, & this is bound to get some encouragement from this victory.

Moral of story, be a model minority, but within the rules, fight hard or you’ll get trampled.

Some Afterthoughts. In US we at least got this much, in the “other great democracy” of “Secular” India, the “Aryan Invasions” are still on (led by the Krishnaless Gitaless Arjun {Singh}), with “Eminent Historian” still riding on imaginary horses to save the imaginary “real” history of India from the clutches of “Hindu Fanatics”.

————————————————–
REFERENCES
(If the story wasn’t fun enough, you can enjoy yourselves here! Wide choice of entertainment guaranteed, of course, your outrage is just “collateral damage”. As a shield, please wear your sense of humor, & don’t lose it please!)

1. Samples from Sixth Grade California Textbooks (at http://www.eshiusa.org/Documents/SamplesCATextbook2005.htm )
By far the most exciting stories about India! Stories you (or your desi Grandma) would have never dreamed of hearing, much less saying!

2. California Textbooks Controversy: Politicization of an Academic Issue by Hindu-Haters (at http://www.india-forum.com/articles/83/1/California-Textbooks-Controversy:-Politicization-of-an-Academic-Issue-by-Hindu-Haters )
He lays out the relevant details of the controversy. e.g. (Excerpt):

2. What are Hindu groups trying to achieve through their proposed edits?

Hindu groups want sixth grade children to get a fair and accurate portrayal
ancient Indian history and of Hinduism, that also conforms to CA State Law,
Education Code 60044(a) and Subsection (b)], and the “Standards for Evaluating
Instructional Materials for Social Content (2000 Edition) which clearly state
the following guidelines for textbooks:

“1. Adverse Reflection. No religious
belief or practice may be held up to ridicule and no religious group may be
portrayed as inferior.”

2. Indoctrination. Any explanation or description of
a religious belief or practice should be present in a manner that does not
encourage or discourage belief or indoctrinate the student in any particular
religious belief.”

It is very clear that these standards are violated very
often when Hinduism is discussed by most of the textbooks.

3. HATING HINDUS IN A ‘SCHOLARLY’ WAY (at http://www.india-forum.com/articles/86/1/HATING-HINDUS-IN-A-%91SCHOLARLY%92-WAY )
Title is self-explanatory .

4. Gunga Din Comes to Michigan (at http://www.india-forum.com/articles/88/1/Gunga-Din-Comes-to-Michigan )
If Ref#3 helped others hate hindus in a “scholarly way” this one teaches desis how to hate themselves. Learn from “guruji” of self-hatred Madhav Deshpande In today’s landscape of “self-help” books, these desi “scholar/sepoys” are “ahead of the curve”.

5. Is Madhav Deshpande an amnesiac? (at http://www.india-forum.com/articles/87/1/Is-Madhav-Deshpande-an-amnesiac%3F)
Title is self-explanatory .

6. Thus Spake Michael Witzel (at http://www.vigilonline.com/downloads/Dossier%20on%20Witzel.doc)
The previously mentioned “guruji” is this guy’s “chelaji”.

7. End Harvard Association of Hate Groups! (at http://www.petitiononline.com/stopIER/petition.html )

Desi attempts to do something about “guruji’s” shennanigans. Very informative.

8. Scientists Collide with Linguists to Assert Indigenous origin of Indian Civilization
(at http://www.umassd.edu/indic/press/origin_pr.cfm )
Desis take on Witzel in his own language, at U Mass.

9. Hindu organisation flays US court’s decision on textbooks (at http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/sep/05hindu.htm )
Victory in theory only…lots more to be done.

Thanks & Om Shanti