--- On Thu, 12/25/08, Carvalho <elisabeth_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> On this Christmas day I have to defend Samir. To my memory
> he has never been communal. He was the only Hindu to
> immediately condemn the Orissa violence and to my memory has
> never taken a communal position in political issues.
>
I know that Samir is not a communal-minded guy because I know him for more than
three decades.
But this business of deciding who is communal or not based on their
condemnation of this violence or that, or taking what someone perceives as a
"communal" position in political issues, is a rather frivolous and superficial
way of forming serious opinions about other people.
It depends on whether or not the person forming the opinion himself/herself has
a communal bias. Moreover, it assumes that he/she has a clear understanding of
the issues in question that is comprehensive enough to know that disagreements
with him/her on them could only be for communal reasons. Things are never this
simple in reality. As I have said before, the world is never so black and
white. That is why relying on such superficial perceptions in a public forum is
unfair and unhealthy.
Cheers,
Santosh
