goanet-digest Saturday, May 18 2002 Volume 01 : Number 3984
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In this issue:
[Goanet] Mere assertions
[Goanet] Article on Shabana Azmi & Narain Kataria
[Goanet] From Goa Sudharop, thank you Siddharth
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Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 14:29:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: "J. Almeida" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] Mere assertions
Santosh Helekar's message quotes a Mr. Barker: "I am
now no longer satisfied with mere assertions, with
creative rehashings of myth."
I have never knowingly confused myths with factual
reality. Reality is what I am after, and
evidence-based refutation of error. I think that
Scientific Method ("mere" conjecture and refutation)
is a powerful safeguard against errors of both belief
and disbelief. That is why it is not "even" scientists
and thinkers, but ESPECIALLY scientists and thinkers,
who conjecture boldly while seeking refuting evidence.
Prejudice, or a closed mind, forms no part of
Scientific Method.
CS Lewis offers a personal account, not formal logic,
as I said. Although it is decades since I read "Mere
Christianity", I thought his literary style would form
a pleasant contrast to the Kreeft & Tacelli book. If I
were to pick one, I would go with the formal approach.
Should I come across better books, I will mention
them.
Cheers,
Joel Almeida
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Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 15:28:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: George Pinto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] Article on Shabana Azmi & Narain Kataria
>From the South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch #1 | 18 May 2002
http://www.mnet.fr
For Information & news on the Gujarat Carnage visit:
http://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/
__________________________
1. European Parliament Concern over violence in the Indian state of Gujarat
2. India: Chhote Modi Lives up to Bade Modi's Reputation
3. India: Memorandum from women's groups May 1, 2002
4. India: Suggestions For Medical Teams. Doctors Needed for Gujarat
5. Gujarat Appeal
6. Politics, Religion and Our Ailing Public Institutions (J B D'Souza)
7. Yankee Hindutva's Intellectual.
Who is Narain Kataria and why is he after Shabana Azmi? (Vijay Prashad)
#7.
Yankee Hindutva's Intellectual.
Who is Narain Kataria and why is he after Shabana Azmi?
Vijay Prashad
Little India
17 May 2002.
Narain Kataria's Indian Americans for Truth and Fairness in Media (IATFM) sends out a
notice that
it will conduct a protest of a book reading in New York on 21 May 2002. The note
threatens the
reading itself, but principally its most well known participant, the film star Shabana
Azmi.
Shabana Azmi, the note fulminates, "is a strange blend of a fundamentalist Moslem
woman and a
diehard Communist, out to defame Hindus and tarnish the image of India." Furthermore,
"this crafty
woman suffers from Hindu phobia and needs urgent counseling."
That IATFM stands for "truth" is extraordinary on many counts. For one, there are
numerous errors
of fact in the note, about her movies, and then about the role that the Hindutva Right
was most
incensed about - in Earth. The error here is strange, mainly because Earth, in which
Ms. Azmi did
not act, is about the terror of partition, whereas Water, a movie unmade because of the
churlishness of the Hindutva Right, has "a Hindu widow in Varanasi 100 years ago." If
a group
wedded to "truth" cannot establish the basic facts, it should be impossible for us to
believe its
grotesque value judgments.
"Shabana is born with an animus against Hindu society," says the note, telling us that
her
parents, "Kaifi Azmi and Shaukat Azmi [are] both hard core communists." What the note
does not say
is that Kaifi Azmi recently died, and brought tears to most of the nation and its
diaspora. That the IATFM decides to go after Ms. Azmi now is a mark of extremely poor
taste. "When
a person comes to weakness, whether it be through old age or disease, the person is
free from
these limbs just as a mango, a fig or a berry releases itself from its stalk"
(Brihadharanyaka
Upanishad, Yajurveda, 4. 3. 36) - the ethic of grief is given to all people and Mr.
Kataria breaks
with the ethos of the ancient Vedas with his lack of empathy.
That Ms. Azmi is close to the communists is not something that Shabana Azmi has ever
hidden. Yes,
she works with the oppressed among Mumbai's slum-dwellers. And certainly, Ms. Azmi has
taken the
side of the freedom of expression, a sacrosanct right of artists - her moving speech
at the
National Film Awards just a few days after Safdar Hashmi was brutally killed by
Congress Party
militants in 1989 is only one sign of her commitment. There is nothing to hide in
these
relationships and I have never heard her discount them as she's visited the US. There
is no
question of duplicity (according to Kataria, "In India she hobnobs with followers of
Lenin and
Stalin. When in USA, she struts around as a progressive Moslem woman") - there is no
contradiction between Indian communism and progressivism, between those who want to
stop dams and
those who want a modern future.
That Kataria calls Ms. Azmi a fundamentalist must come as a shock to Imam Bukhari, who
only
recently, on a national television show, called her nachne ganewali tawaif
(prostitute). That this
so-called leader of the Indian Muslims can stoop to such levels of misogyny should
give pause to
any notion of a unified Muslim community of which Ms. Azmi is a part - the rifts in
Islam are a
wide as those that separate Mr. Kataria from me. When asked by Lalitha Panicker what
her views are
on political representation, Ms. Azmi brushed aside the sectarian idea that only the
orthodoxy in
a religious community must represent its people (one of the hallmarks of
fundamentalism): "What
are the issues that concern the average Muslim? Roti kapda, makaan, education, health,
the same as
any average Hindu, Christian, Sikh etc. The self-appointed fundamentalist leaders do
not provide
any solutions for this, they reinforce only the communal aspects of Muslim identity
using rhetoric
to whip up communal frenzy and rage. The moderate, on the other hand, speaks about
education,
employment, health. The fundamentalist is only reinforcing the stereotype and
perpetuating
[Samuel] Huntington's clash of civilizations theory."
But let us take the spotlight off Shabana Azmi and ask whom Narain Kataria represents?
He claims to be the secretary of the Indian American Intellectuals' Forum in this
note, but he is
much more than that.
Mr. Kataria is a long-time member of the Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata
Party, a senior
member of the group that runs the VHPA-allied Indian Development Relief Fund, a senior
figure in
the Bajrang Dal/Meir Kahane-linked Hindu Unity Group (whose website posts a "hit
list"), the
Organizing Secretary of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (the overseas wing of the RSS) and
a
contributor to the RSS's paper, Organiser.
The Indian American Intellectuals' Forum is a Hindutva organization whose members
include: Jagat
Motwani, Sardar Inderjit Singh, Raksh Pal Sood, Arvind Gupta, Arish Sahani, Ravi
Kulkarni, Romesh
Diwan, Narindar Kukar, Dinesh Agarwal, Rakesh Shreedhar and many others.
Messrs. Singh and Sood are from the Sikh Sangat of America (an organization from
Edison, NJ, that
is part of the Sikh-Hindu alliance organized by the Hindutva groups, and which held a
Hindu-Sikh
Unity Celebration in Edison on 8 November 1997). Messrs. Agarwal and Sahani
are from the Overseas Friends of the BJP. At their gathering on conversions and
missionaries, the
chief guest was the VHP's External Working President (and Chairman of Mody Industrial
Group), Dr.
Bhupendra Kumar Mody. The surprise in the list is Jagat Motwani, head of GOPIO.
To get a sense of Mr. Kataria's importance in the world of Hindutva, we might
eavesdrop on the
HSS's Hindu Sangathan Divas of 1999 in New York City. As organizing chief of the HSS,
Mr. Kataria
took a leadership role in the meeting, where the head of the HSS told the six hundred
people in
attendance that the Hindu Empire extended from Afghanistan to Indonesia, and that
there is a
chance for a revival if Hindus remain united. If you think this is the world of the
crackpots,
bear in mind that not a moment later, the Consul General of India in New York, Mrs.
Shashi
Tripathi took the stage, extolled the armed forces and called the Kargil war "a little
bit of a
pinprick." "Our armed forces are very strong," she continued. "They have been taken
unaware. But
it does not matter. They will soon throw the enemy out of our country."
The Intellectuals' Forum made an entry into the world of US electoral politics on 16
April 2000,
when it held a forum in New York City entitled "Democracy vs. Terrorism," and hosted,
for a
fund-raiser, conservative Republican Congressman Benjamin Gilman (New York) - who is
militantly
against China, for missile defense and along the grain of every single foreign policy
position of
Hindutva. At the forum, Dr. Romesh Diwan, an economist from Rensselaer, noted, "latest
studies suggest that 50 million Indians were killed during the Islamic domination of
India and 200
million Indian were done to death during British rule." Based on these fantastic
facts, the forum
concluded, "Nexus among terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and drug trafficking is
posing a serious
threat to civilized and egalitarian societies and must be destroyed." The waters must
first be
muddied with a suggestion of "Islamic" atrocities in the past (that these Muslim
rulers made
alliances with Hindus and killed both the Muslim and Hindu working people is beyond
the sufferance
of Hindutva), and then the intellectuals of Yankee Hindutva toss in words like
"terrorism" and
"drug trafficking" to make the case finally that Islam is bad news.
A few years ago, Biju Mathew and I wrote an article entitled "The Protean Forms of
Yankee
Hindutva," in which we argued that Yankee Hindutva creates a multitude of forms that
seek to
address various parts of our lives in the US, at the same times as these many avatars
seek to hide the mainspring of its agenda - to create a "Hindu American" community
that is a
long-distance supporter of the Hindutva Right in India. Mr. Kataria's role in several
of these
organizations is one more indicator of the protean forms.
But like his comrades in the Yankee Hindutva movement, Mr. Kataria betrays a host of
the yamas
that enjoin an ethics to people who subscribe of Hinduism: where is his arjava, his
honesty, his
satya, his truth, his kshama, his tolerance and patience, and finally, his ahimsa, his
lack of
violence?
The attack on Ms. Azmi is a travesty and it comes from the bowels of the Hindutva
movement. If
Gujarat must not become the future face of India, let Mr. Kataria's antics not become
the future
face of the desi diaspora!
__________________________________________________
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LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 15:49:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: George Pinto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Goanet] From Goa Sudharop, thank you Siddharth
>From Goa Sudharop (www.goasudharop.org). Thank you Siddharth, great work! Your
>volunteer work
and dedication are an inspiration to us all. Goa is fortunate to have selfless
volunteers like
you - we at Goa Sudharop are very grateful and indebted to you.
George
*************************************************************************************
Mr. Siddharth Gejji is an American India Foundation (AIF) volunteer currently placed
with Goa
Sudharop Community Development in Goa, India. His 6-month long assignment runs from
February to
July 2002.
The American India Foundation (AIF) is a US-based organization with a long term
commitment to
providing financial, technological and managerial resources towards helping the people
of India
realize their full potential and strengthening the bonds between the US and India.
Siddharth is one of the volunteers serving on the AIF Service Corps., a program
created by the
American India Foundation that is focused on creating a cross-cultural experience that
promotes
development in India. By partnering with existing Indian NGOs and developing a strong
support
layer for volunteers, the AIF Service Corps. is creating a safe and impact driven
program for
US-based volunteers to contribute to Indian development while gaining meaningful
experience. Other
AIF Service Corps volunteers are currently working with NGOs in Maharastra, Gujarat,
Rajasthan and
Karnataka.
A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA), Siddharth obtained his
B.S. in
Business Administration in May 2000. He then worked for a year and a half as an IT
Consultant with
American Management Systems Inc. (AMS), a global business and information technology
consulting
firm based in the Washington DC area. In December 2000, Siddharth won an essay contest
entitled
“The Changing Face of India”, sponsored by the New York Life Insurance Company and
Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, USA. The award was a three-week trip to India with 7 other winners,
specifically focused
on touring Andra Pradesh and meeting various dignitaries like AP Chief Minister
Chandrababu Naidu,
AP Governor C. Rangarajan and Former J&K Governor K.V. Krishna Rao. The group then
proceeded to
New Delhi where they met with the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and
Former President
R. Venkatraman. For Siddharth, this was an eye-opening trip that exposed him to the
many spheres
of Indian life and thought.
After this trip, Siddharth felt a keen desire to serve India for an extended period of
time in an
area of his interest. And he came across the American India Foundation program. His
motivation for
volunteering through this program…“springs from my deep-rooted desire to do hands-on
work in the
area of “digital divide” – the increasing socio-economic gap between technology haves
and
have-nots. I wish to leverage my IT knowledge, community experiences and Indian
background to work
with NGOs/projects that are experimenting with IT to bring about socio-economic change
in
rural/semi-urban communities in India”.
Currently Siddharth is working with Goa Sudharop on building and deploying an
electronic
documentation and consumer information center and Internet site for Goa DESC, a
Goa-based
non-profit activist outfit working on the issues on development and democracy.
Siddharth is also
involved in other Goa Sudharop "digital" initiatives like the Goa Computers for
Schools project,
Goa Sudharop online handicrafts and development of Internet websites and applications
for local
NGOs.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com
------------------------------
End of goanet-digest V1 #3984
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