On 11/04/2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dr Anand wrote: > I can say from personal experience that in todays Goa ( and India ) , > thanks to the minority appeasement / vote bank policies of the > Congress and the reservation schemes for certain communities > being born a Hindu is bad enough ... being born a Brahmin Hindu > is the ultimate disadvantage.
True. Check the list of heads of Goa government departments and you'll know the facts, for instance! See who controls, as my sociologist friend put it, the minds and wealth of Goa through the most impressive places of worship (of both larger religions) and the mines (a changing reality now though). Catholic "upper" castes would also like to believe they are discriminated against, I guess, because the stranglehold of the once-feudal structure of Goa is s-l-o-w-l-y withering away. > Comment: This is the second or third time I am reading this > comment by Dr Anand. Once before, I requested him to > substantiate his statement but so far there has been no > response but a reiteration of the same statement. I am > beginning to wonder whether he is a closet hindutvadist > since the language used is the standard phrase used by > them in all their propaganda. I challenge him once again > to list all the 'minority appeasement' actions in Goa and > elsewhere in India and also the disadvantages that a > Hindu faces. Further can he deny that the BJP > does not believe in or practice vote bank politics? "Appeasement" is an interesting term, brought in by Hindutva to justify the exclusion of those whom it considers not to be part of its alliance of majoritism. Yahoo, among other meanings, describes the term thus: "The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace" Enemies indeed! That's what Macaulayites, Marxists, Muslims and minorities deserve to be seen as, isn't it? Dr Anand, do you think it's right to use a term used for the Munich Pact of 1938 (negotiated between Neville Chamberlain and Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain, the prime minister of Britain, allowed Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia to Germany) to describe the treatment of minorities in India? I won't claim that Christians are an exploited minority. Many in Goa are indeed not (though the tribals facing the saffron fire in other parts could well be). But what about the 120 million Muslim minority, whose indices are far below than that of the average Indian? You need to be blind not to see this... and to term it appeasement! Subsidies for the Haj fares don't help the average Muslim to get access to badly-needed education, health-care and social services; if anything, it helps keep Air-India afloat! (There are also subsidies for Manasarovar, but that doesn't amount of "appeasement", of course!) Even Goa's "uniform" family code allows for express discrimination on basis of religion and caste ... but such issues conveniently never get raised! FN
