tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post1548584188742445017..comments2024-03-27T15:36:44.737-07:00Comments on Haq's Musings: World Values Survey Finds Indians Most Racist Riaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-69973924150706310502023-08-11T08:05:53.512-07:002023-08-11T08:05:53.512-07:00Hindu Violence against Buddhism in India has NO Pa...Hindu Violence against Buddhism in India has NO Parallel<br /><br /><br />by Syed Ehtisham<br /><br /><br />The ruthless demolition of Buddha statues by the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan has invited severe criticisms from different quarters of the world. It is quite surprising to note that the Hindu Nazi-led Indian Govt. supported by all other Hindu Nazis has condemned the Taliban action. It appears paradoxical that the ancestors of the present Hindu Nazis in India wantonly destroyed the Buddhist statues and brutally killed the followers of Buddha in India. An impartial student of history can unequivocally remark that the Indian Nazis have no moral right to criticise the Taliban action.<br /><br />Hundreds of the Buddhist statues, Stupas and Viharas were destroyed in India between 830 AD and 966 AD in the name of the revival of Hinduism. Indigenous and foreign sources, both literary and archaeological, speak volumes of the havoc done to Buddhism by the Nazis in India.<br /><br />Role of Sankaracharya<br />Nazi leaders like the Sankaracharyas and many kings and rulers took pride in demolishing the Buddhist images aiming at the total eradication of the Buddhist culture. Today, their descendants destroyed the Babri Masjid and they have also published a list of mosques to be destroyed in the near future. It is with this sin of pride that they are condemning the deed on the part of the Afghans.<br /><br />The Hindu ruler, Pushyamitra Sunga, demolished 84,000 Buddhist stupas which had been built by Ashoka the Great (Romila Thaper, Ashoka and Decline of Mauryas, London, 1961, p 200). It was followed by the smashing of the Buddhist centres in Magadha. Thousands of Buddhist monks were mercilessly killed. King Jalaluka destroyed the Buddhist viharas within his jurisdiction on the ground that the chanting of the hymns by the Buddhist devotees disturbed his sleep. (Kalhana, Rajatharangini, 1:40). In Kashmir, King Kinnara demolished thousands of Viharas and captured the Buddhists villages to please the Brahmins. (Kalhana 1:80).<br /><br />Demon’s role<br /><br />A large number of Buddhist viharas were usurped by the Brahmins and converted into Hindu temples where the Untouchables were given no entrance. The Buddhist places were projected as the Hindu temples by writing Puranas which were concocted myths or pseudo-history.<br /><br />The important temples found at Tirupati, Ahoble, Undavalli, Ellora, Bengal, Puri, Badrinath, Mathura, Ayodhya, Sringeri, Bodhgaya, Sarnath, Delhi, Nalanda, Gudimallam, NagarjunaKonda, Srisailam and Sabarimala (Lord Ayyappa) in Kerala are some of the striking examples of the Brahmanic usurpation of the Buddhist centres.<br /><br />At Nagarjunakonda, the Adi Sankara played a demon’s role in destroying the Buddhist statues and monuments. Longhurst who conducted excavations at Nagarjunakonda has recorded this in his book Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India No: 54, The Buddhist Antiquities of Nagarjunakonda (Delhi, 1938, p.6.).<br /><br />Non-Brahmins burnt alive<br />The ruthless manner in which all the buildings at Nagarjunakonda were destroyed is simply appalling and cannot represent the work of treasure-seekers because many of the pillars, statues, and sculptures have been wantonly smashed to pieces. Local tradition relates that the Brahmin teacher Sankaracharya came to Nagarjunakonda with a host of followers and destroyed the Buddhist monuments. The cultivated lands on which the ruined buildings stand was a religious grant made to Sankaracharya.<br /><br />In Kerala, Sankaracharya and his close associate Kumarila Bhatta, an avowed enemy of Buddhism, organized a religious crusade against the Buddhists. We get a vivid description of the pleasure of Sankaracharya on seeing the people of non-Brahmanic faith being burnt to death from the book Sankara Digvijaya.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-20559919297574888542023-05-22T13:22:34.094-07:002023-05-22T13:22:34.094-07:00A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook...A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook no longer says why Nathuram #Godse killed #Gandhi and omits references to #Hindu hard-liners affiliated with #RSS who opposed his vision of religious pluralism. #Islamophobia #Hindutva #BJP https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-was-gandhi-killed-after-official-edit-indias-textbooks-dont-say-d5b86e77?st=gnzmnvpkv53jw42 via @WSJ<br /><br />NEW DELHI—For years, government-prescribed high-school textbooks in India included a few telling details about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin: The man worked for an extremist Hindu newspaper and had denounced Gandhi, the iconic freedom fighter, as “an appeaser of Muslims.”<br /><br />A revised version of the Class 12 history book, whose printed copies became available this year, no longer says that. It identifies Nathuram Godse as Gandhi’s killer, but provides no information about him or his motive. Also deleted are broader references to Hindu hard-liners who opposed Gandhi’s vision of religious pluralism for newly independent India 75 years ago.<br /><br />The edits are among recent changes under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to what students learn about their country’s past. Members of his political party—which is linked to a decades-old movement to shape India into a Hindu-dominant nation—have long criticized school curriculum as unbalanced and biased against Hindus.<br /><br />It does little, they say, to instill pride in young Indians, and particularly the country’s Hindu majority, in their history and heritage.<br /><br />Underlying their grievances is a broader ideological debate. Modi supporters accuse the left-leaning, liberal forces that shaped India after independence in 1947 of representing Westernized values and of pandering to Muslims, India’s largest minority. To them, Modi’s rise symbolizes Hindu revival.<br /><br />Critics accuse Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party of promoting a divisive Hindu nationalist ideology that threatens India’s secular foundations.<br /><br /><br />The changes to textbooks “go against the idea that education should encourage an open mind and a liberal outlook,” said Krishna Kumar, an academic under whose leadership they were originally written. The books, he said, have been “mutilated so crudely.”<br /><br />Modi’s supporters say revisions were long overdue. Teaching of India’s precolonial history overemphasized Islamic empires established on its territory and sidelined Hindu kingdoms, they say. Too much importance was given, they say, to the Mughal dynasty, a vastly wealthy empire during the 16th and 17th centuries whose Muslim rulers built the Taj Mahal and left a lasting cultural imprint on the region’s architecture, food and literature.<br /><br />Hindu nationalists see the Mughal era as a period of temple destruction, religious conversion and the subjugation of Hindu customs.<br /><br />A chapter on Mughal courts is gone from the Class 12 history book, though another on agrarian life during the empire remains. A two-page table on the battlefield triumphs of Mughal emperors, from Akbar to Aurangzeb, has been removed from a Class 7 book. A chapter on the 13th century Muslim conquest of northern India has also been pruned.<br /><br />In a public letter, more than 250 historians and academics criticized the move.<br /><br />“The selective deletion in this round of textbook revision reflects the sway of divisive politics,” they said. Indian history cannot be seen as consisting of Hindu and Muslim periods, they said, adding: “These categories are uncritically imposed on what has historically been a very diverse social fabric.”<br /><br />The changes were made by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, an autonomous body whose members are mostly appointed by the government. It said it rationalized textbooks to help students catch up after the Covid-19 pandemic and to make space for critical thinking.<br /><br />The books are used by schools aligned with the central government’s education board and some state-level boards.<br /><br />College freshman Shivam Kumar, a Modi supporter, welcomes the changes.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-18234255105263124752023-03-30T17:15:40.975-07:002023-03-30T17:15:40.975-07:00If we were racist, why would we live with South In...If we were racist, why would we live with South Indians, black people around us: BJP’s Tarun Vijay<br /><br />https://scroll.in/latest/833983/if-indians-were-racist-why-would-we-live-with-black-people-in-the-south-says-bjps-tarun-vijay<br /><br />He has apologised for the statement, which he made during an interview on Al Jazeera on the attacks on African nationals in Greater Noida.<br /><br />Bharatiya Janata Party leader Tarun Vijay is facing criticism for responding to a question on the allegedly racist attacks on African nationals in Greater Noida by saying if India was, indeed, racist, we would not “live with” “black people around us”. “If we were racist, why would....all the entire South – you know, Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka – why do we live with them?” He added, “We have blacks...black people around us.”<br /><br />He made the statement during a discussion on TV channel Al Jazeera, while responding to another Indian panelist, Bengaluru-based photographer Mahesh Shantaram, who asked, “Why are people saying Indians are racist? Why are Indians saying Indians are racist? Why are people abroad and those who visit our beautiful nation feeling that Indians are racist?”<br /><br />Vijay’s remarks triggered outrage soon after the interview was shared on social media. He took to Twitter to clarify his statement. “In many parts of the nation, we have different people, in colour and never, ever did we have any discrimination against them...My words, perhaps, were not enough to convey this,” he said, apologising to those who felt he spoke “differently from he meant”.<br /><br />The BJP leader also said that Indians were the “first to oppose any racism and were, in fact, victims of the racist British”. Vijay explained that he had meant to convey how Indians did not face racism even though the country has “people with different colour and culture”. “I can die, but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly-framed sentence,” he said, further claiming that he never called South Indians “black”.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-40737289788725551692023-03-05T13:40:49.221-08:002023-03-05T13:40:49.221-08:00#Caste system in #Indian Prisons: Unconstitutional...#Caste system in #Indian Prisons: Unconstitutional but legal – State prison manuals legitimize caste-based rules for prisoner activities, from cleaning to cooking. #India #Modi #BJP #Hindutva #Brahmin #Apartheid https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/caste-system-in-indian-prisons-unconstitutional-but-legal-state-prison-manuals-legitimise-caste-based-rules-for-prisoner-activities-from-cleaning-to-cooking-judiciary-must-step-in-to-stri/<br /><br />By Atishya Kumar<br /><br />India’s criminal justice system, a legacy of the Raj, is intended primarily to punish. Reformation or rehabilitation was never on the agenda. As a result, the age-old social system of caste remained prevalent in prisons. Worse still, many colonial policies heavily relied on caste-based rules for administration and maintenance of order in prisons.<br /><br />To date, the primary law that governs management and administration of prisons is still the colonial era law – Prisons Act, 1894. That state-level prison manuals remain unchanged since the establishment of the modern prison system also prominently reflects the colonial and caste mentality.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-45543111402076342702023-01-28T21:46:42.854-08:002023-01-28T21:46:42.854-08:00'Ideology Of Hate' Consuming #India, Says ...'Ideology Of Hate' Consuming #India, Says #Gandhi's Great-grandson. Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra #Modi and his #Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (#BJP). #Hindutva #Islamophobia #Hate #Violence https://www.barrons.com/news/ideology-of-hate-consuming-india-says-gandhi-s-great-grandson-01674969308<br /><br />India's rising tide of Hindu nationalism is an affront to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, his great-grandson says, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the revered independence hero's assassination.<br /><br />Gandhi was shot dead at a multi-faith prayer meeting on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a religious zealot angered by his victim's conciliatory gestures to the country's minority Muslim community.<br /><br />Godse was executed the following year and remains widely reviled, but author and social activist Tushar Gandhi, one of the global peace symbol's most prominent descendants, says his views now have a worrying resonance in India.<br /><br />"That whole philosophy has now captured India and Indian hearts, the ideology of hate, the ideology of polarisation, the ideology of divisions," he told AFP at his Mumbai home.<br /><br />"For them, it's very natural that Godse would be their iconic patriot, their idol."<br /><br />Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).<br /><br />Modi took office in 2014 and Tushar says his government is to blame for undermining the secular and multicultural traditions that his namesake sought to protect.<br /><br />"His success has been built on hate, we must accept that," Tushar added.<br /><br /><br /><br />"There is no denying that in his heart, he also knows what he is doing is lighting a fire that will one day consume India itself."<br /><br />Today, Gandhi's assassin is revered by many Hindu nationalists who have pushed for a re-evaluation of his decision to murder a man synonymous with non-violence.<br /><br />A temple dedicated to Godse was built near New Delhi in 2015, the year after Modi's election, and activists have campaigned to honour him by renaming an Indian city after him.<br /><br />Godse was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a still-prominent Hindu far-right group whose members conduct paramilitary drills and prayer meetings.<br /><br /><br /><br />The RSS has long distanced itself from Godse's actions but remains a potent force, founding Modi's party decades ago to battle for Hindu causes in the political realm.<br /><br />Modi has regularly paid respect to Gandhi's legacy but has refrained from weighing in on the campaign to rehabilitate his killer.<br /><br />Tushar remains a fierce protector of his world-famous ancestor's legacy of "honesty, equality, unity and inclusiveness".<br /><br />He has written two books about Gandhi and his wife Kasturba, regularly talks at public events about the importance of democracy and has filed legal motions in India's top court as part of efforts to defend the country's secular constitution.<br /><br />His Mumbai abode, a post-independence flat in a quiet neighbourhood compound, is dotted with portraits and small statues of his famous relative along with a miniature spinning wheel -- a reference to Gandhi's credo of self-reliance.<br /><br /><br /><br />Tushar is anxious but resigned to the prospect of Modi winning another term in next year's elections, an outcome widely seen as an inevitability given the weakness of his potential challengers.<br /><br />"The poison is so deep, and they're so successful, that I don't see my ideology triumphing over in India for a long time now," he says.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-17917520846776777572023-01-05T19:51:33.087-08:002023-01-05T19:51:33.087-08:00“India Is the Most Racist Country I Have Been To” ...“India Is the Most Racist Country I Have Been To” — an African-American’s POV<br /><br />https://www.kajalmag.com/india-is-the-most-racist-country-i-have-been-to-an-african-americans-pov/<br /><br /><br />In February of 2016, a Tanzanian student in Bangalore was pulled out of her car, assaulted and stripped by an angry mob after a 35-year-old pedestrian was knocked down by a Sudanese student in another car. This horrific incident added fuel to the “India is racist” debate, with light being shone on various other indicators of our racial intolerance as a country. Terms such as “colonial hangover” and “xenophobia” flew across social media, and the hypocrisy of our intolerance was pointed out, since Indians travelling abroad often complain about white-world countries discriminating against them for being “brown.”<br />Now, we have yet another painful indicator of our own violent shortcomings with the horrific mob attack of several Nigerian students in Greater Noida, around 40kms from Delhi. At least four of them had been admitted to the hospital at the time of writing this article. In the days leading up to the attack, locals in the enclave where these young men lived had become convinced that a young Indian boy’s suspected drug overdose was linked to them somehow. In fact, they were even accused of cannibalism a few days before it all went down like this. The victims’ injuries range from swollen chests to broken ankles.<br /><br />Opening up another layer of this subject, our obsession with light skin was tossed around in this debate, with names of beauty products such as “Fair & Lovely” coming up. Dark-skinned opinion leaders and celebrities have spent years fighting against discrimination on the basis of colour in India, with movements such as the “Dark ‘n’ Beautiful” awareness campaign joining the dialogue.<br /><br />In a 2013 map based on the World Value Survey which measured the social attitudes of people in various countries, India was ranked among the top four most racist countries, along with Bangladesh, Jordan and Hong Kong. Another map showed India as one of the least hospitable places for foreigners to visit, which is ironic considering our culture of treating guests as Gods.<br /><br />Even within the nation, Indian citizens from the Northeast have spoken out about social persecution they face from a majority of the country’s population. In 2014, a 20-year-old named Nido Tania from Arunachal Pradesh studying in Delhi was attacked in South Delhi market, beaten to death by shopkeepers using rods and sticks. The violence occurred after the men allegedly shouted racial slurs at Nido, making fun of his hair and appearance, which angered him and started a brawl that cost the young student his life. This is one of many incidents in India’s history that spurred a fervent outrage over discrimination against Indians from the Northeast, within their own country.<br /><br />To a recent Quora question that asked “Which is the most racist country you visited as a tourist?” an American answered “India.” His explanation for the same is one that reflects the intolerant atmosphere in our country, whose ugliness rears its head every now and then. And it’s more relevant now than ever before.<br /><br />Here is Dave Adali’s answer on Quora:<br /><br />I am an African-American in the IT field and I have thus far had the good fortune to live and travel extensively throughout Western and parts of Eastern Europe and many countries in Asia. I have lived or traveled in the UK and most of the EU countries as well as Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and several other Asian countries including India. Of all the countries I have been to, India ranks way up there among the most “racist,” IMHO. Indians aren’t so much “racist” as they are intolerant. Indians discriminate against fellow citizens to a degree that I have NEVER encountered in ANY other country.<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-29417395149632172902022-06-18T18:56:44.340-07:002022-06-18T18:56:44.340-07:00Harvard Scientist Debunks Hindu Nationalists "...Harvard Scientist Debunks Hindu Nationalists "Racial Purity" Myth<br /><br />https://www.southasiainvestor.com/2021/02/harvard-scientist-debunk-hindu.html<br /><br /><br />Male ancestors of the vast majority of present-day South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) came from West Eurasia, Central Asia and Iran, according to the latest DNA research led by Harvard geneticist Dr. David Reich. Reich's team came to this conclusion after studying the Y-chromosomes of present-day Indians. Some Hindu Indian scientists have used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) samples, extracted from the bones of recently discovered ancient skeletal remains of a couple in Rakigarhi in Haryana, to claim the local indigenous origins of all Hindus. Y-chromosomes are passed from father to son while mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to children. The Harvard team's findings thoroughly debunk Hindu Nationalists' "racial purity" myth similar to that promoted by White Supremacist racists in the West. Reich writes: "The Hindutva ideology that there was no major contribution to Indian culture from migrants from outside South Asia is undermined by the fact that approximately half of the ancestry of Indians today is derived from multiple waves of mass migration from Iran and the Eurasian steppe within the last five thousand years".<br /><br /><br />David Reich's "Who We Are"<br />Reich's Indian counterparts were highly resistant to the Harvard team findings of foreign origins of modern-day South Asians. Here's an excerpt from David Reich's "Who We Are and How We Got Here":<br /><br />"Based on their own mitochondrial DNA studies, it was clear to them (Indians) that the great majority of mitochondrial DNA lineages present in India today had resided in the subcontinent for many tens of thousands of years.They did not want to be part of a study that suggested a major West Eurasian incursion into India without being absolutely certain as to how the whole-genome data could be reconciled with their mitochondrial DNA findings. They also implied that the suggestion of a migration from West Eurasia would be politically explosive. They did not explicitly say this, but it had obvious overtones of the idea that migration from outside India had a transformative effect on the (South Asian) subcontinent".<br /><br /><br />To see why the Indian researchers believed the acceptance of West Eurasian origins of present-day Hindus would be political explosive, it is important to understand the myth of racial purity that underlies the Hindu Nationalists' racist ideology. Here's an excerpt from a book by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, leader of the Hindu Nationalist RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) :<br /><br />"To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."<br /><br /><br />Based on DNA studies, Reich divides Indians into two major groups: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and Ancestral South Indians (ASI). He finds that the ANI have much higher percentage of ancestral DNA from Central Asia and Iran than the ASI.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-84886053459682877212021-08-03T08:38:44.125-07:002021-08-03T08:38:44.125-07:00#Congolese man’s death in police custody sparks pr...#Congolese man’s death in police custody sparks protest in #India. #African expats accuse Indian police of #racism & harassment. Many claim they are routinely detained over fabricated charges of drug peddling and face daily discrimination. https://aje.io/etf78k via @AJEnglish<br /><br />At least six nationals of African countries have been injured during a scuffle with police in India’s southern city of Bengaluru over an alleged custodial death of a Congolese student, an official says.<br /><br />Joel Shindani Malu, 27, was detained by police on Sunday over charges of possessing a small cache of banned psychotropic ecstasy pills but died in custody early on Monday after suffering cardiac arrest, an officer said on Monday.<br /><br />“He was diagnosed with Bradycardia and was administered with several rounds of CPR [Cardiopulmonary resuscitation] and other life-saving interventions but died due to a suspected cardiac arrest,” the officer said.<br /><br /><br />Following his death, several nationals of African countries staged a demonstration outside the police station and scuffled with policemen, which led to the assault of an officer.<br /><br />The Hindu newspaper said they were members of the “Pan African Federation”, a group set up to protect the rights of African students and professionals in the city.<br /><br />The demonstrators refuted the police claim that Malu had died of cardiac arrest and accused them of falsely detaining him before police used batons to push back the protesters and arrested a dozen demonstrators.<br /><br /><br />Police said they have opened an investigation into the death amid claims that the deceased student was “illegally” living in India after his passport and visa expired in 2017.<br /><br />“Investigation into the death is being conducted as per NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) guidelines including inquest by a judicial magistrate. The investigation has been transferred to CID (Crime Investigation Department),” Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant tweeted.<br /><br />Nationals of African countries often accuse Indian police of racial bias and harassment.<br /><br />Many claim that they are routinely detained over fabricated charges of drug peddling and face daily discrimination.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-8998478498553087462020-07-23T10:31:43.768-07:002020-07-23T10:31:43.768-07:00Netflix series "Indian matchmaking": Epi...Netflix series "Indian matchmaking": Episodes show people with darker skin tones are subjected to harsh discrimination and prejudice while fairness is revered and associated with beauty, wealth and power. #India #racism #colorism #caste #Hindutva #Modi https://www.cnn.com/style/article/indian-matchmaking-netflix-intl-hnk-beauty/index.html<br /><br />This cultural bias is engrained from an early age, with women bearing more of the societal pressure to have lighter skin. If you're a woman, darker skin can be a deal-breaker for families seeking the perfect wife for their son. For men, fair skin is seen as a bonus but not as much of a requirement.<br /><br /><br />Colorism and the desirability of "fairness" is drilled into young girls. In my own case, it started when I was in middle school in India, when my classmates taunted me for having darker skin. Older women would also make unsolicited comments about my complexion, veiled as genuine concern for me and my future marriage prospects.<br />In India, the beauty standard is further perpetuated by pop culture and a booming cosmetic industry.<br /><br />Skin lightening products are heavily marketed. Actors with glowing, pale complexions are the stars of Bollywood movies while their dark-skinned counterparts play poor, disenfranchised characters. Some dating apps even include skin tone filters.<br />Unspoken rules<br />"Indian Matchmaking" itself offers a window into the lifestyles of an elite class of Indians who can enlist the service of a top-tier matchmaker, and in some cases, fly them to the other side of the world. This is not something regular families do, so status is already built into the narrative.<br /><br />Perhaps this makes it easier for families to avoid explicitly specifying fair skin as part of their match criteria. Taparia assumes it goes without saying, and constantly describes women as a "good person" or match because they are "fair and good looking." Some of the families rely on this -- it allows them to be politically correct and vague in their search for someone "good looking" without explicitly saying "fair."<br /><br />Yet, they get exactly the kind of complexion they want to see. It's the equivalent of writing "caste no bar" in a matrimonial ad -- a suggestion that the person who placed the ad is willing to consider candidates regardless of social hierarchy -- but in reality only going on dates with people from the "community," which becomes a euphemistic catch-all term for people from the same religion, caste or class.<br /><br /><br />Take the young Mumbai-based Pradhyuman Maloo, who features prominently in the show, as an example. His well-to-do parents desperately want him to settle down and find a wife, but he seems mostly uninterested in the women presented to him, until he's shown a photo of Rushali Rai, a beautiful model from Delhi. His eyes light up at the sight of her. Taparia describes her as "fair and good-looking, but also, she's smart."<br /><br />When Maloo first sees her photo, he is elated. "Ahh, she's so cute!"<br />"I'll tell you that from her dressing style to her look and everything, how she carries herself, that I can meet her," he said. "It's going to be exciting. It's going to be fun."Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-71508300175558927332020-06-29T09:50:13.663-07:002020-06-29T09:50:13.663-07:00#India Debates Skin-Tone Bias as Beauty Companies ...#India Debates Skin-Tone Bias as Beauty Companies Alter Ads Facing Charge of Promoting #Racist Attitudes. For centuries, discrimination over skin tones has been a feature of #Indian society. It was greatly intensified by #British Raj, #caste & #Bollywood https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/world/asia/india-skin-color-unilever.html?smid=tw-share <br /><br />America’s intense discussion of race, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, seems to be having some impact here.<br /><br />This past week, Unilever and other major international consumer brands, facing accusations that they were promoting racist attitudes, said they would remove labels such as “fair” “white” and “light” from their products, including the skin-lightening creams that are wildly popular in India.<br /><br />At the same time, a big Indian matchmaking website, Shaadi.com, decided to remove a filter that allowed people to select partners based on skin tone after facing a backlash from users that began in North America.<br /><br />Ms. Jennifer and several other Indians said these were moves in the right direction.<br /><br />“This is a fantastic news — a stepping stone toward ending colorism,” Ms. Jennifer said. “Now young people won’t feel ashamed of how they look while growing up with dark-tone skin.”<br /><br />Preferences for light-toned skin over dark — when it comes to marriages and some jobs — are still upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians.<br /><br />In some families, daughters-in-law with darker skin are called derogatory names, sometimes branded with the same words used for thieves. Students with dark-toned skin are more frequently bullied in schools.<br /><br />Such attitudes have spawned a huge demand in India for whiteners and bleaching products. Shop shelves are crammed with creams, oils, soaps and serums promising to lighten skin, and some are manufactured by the world’s biggest cosmetic companies. The king of the market is Unilever’s Fair & Lovely cream, a fixture in many Indian households for decades.<br /><br />But even before this past week, the culture had been changing.<br /><br />Earlier this year, India’s government proposed a law that would make it illegal to market products that make false health claims, including those that promise to lighten skin.<br /><br />Kavitha Emmanuel, the director of Women of Worth, an organization in Chennai, started a campaign in 2019 called “Dark Is Beautiful.” Many young men and women, she said, have complained to her that their skin tone is an impediment to social mobility.<br /><br />She welcomed the moves by Unilever and the matchmaking website Shaadi.com, but said India was still slow in confronting such discrimination.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-7839703156250476952019-11-22T07:26:17.166-08:002019-11-22T07:26:17.166-08:00#Indians not #racist, we accept South Indians, say...#Indians not #racist, we accept South Indians, says #BJP's Tarun Vijay. In a debate on Al Jazeera TV over the issue of attack on some #Nigerians in Greater Noida #Delhi, Tarun Vijay said it was wrong to say that Indians are racist. #Tamil https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/tarun-vijay-south-indians-racism-remark-nigerians-attack-greater-noida-970084-2017-04-07?fbclid=IwAR3dP5S2GJlSMl5z_hA_j8cT_i17qQBnl-MidEmFAejt3uK28coD8lIwWY0 via @indiatoday<br /><br />Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha MP has come out with an apology for hurting sentiments after making a bizarre statement hinting that Indians can not be considered racist as they live with 'black' South Indians.<br /><br />Participating in a debate on Al Jazeera TV over the issue of attack on some Nigerians in Greater Noida, Vijay said it was wrong to say that Indians are racist.<br /><br />"If we were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Why do we live with them (if we are racist)? We hae blacks, black people around us," Vijay said.<br /><br />The BJP leader, however, apologised for his statement while admitting that his choice of words may have been wrong.<br /><br />"I feel the entire statement sas this - we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism," Vijay said.<br /><br />"My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant," he added.<br /><br />I feel the entire statement sas this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-583805583495427362019-07-04T07:57:04.426-07:002019-07-04T07:57:04.426-07:00The politics of biography: Ram Guha’s concluding G...The politics of biography: Ram Guha’s concluding Gandhi bio is a familiar exercise in deifying him, reinforcing inequality—a review<br /><br />https://thepolisproject.com/the-politics-of-biography-ram-guhas-concluding-gandhi-bio-is-familiar-exercise-in-deifying-him-reinforcing-inequality-a-review/<br /><br />The celebrity Indian historian’s refusal to triangulate Gandhi’s own recollections and memoirs and the sources contemporaneous to his times with more recent scholarship leaves us with a biography intellectually thin and long on anecdote. Gandhi’s uncritical internalization of the separation between the political and the social on which the book rests impoverishes Guha’s analysis of both Gandhi and his foremost intellectual and political adversaries like Jinnah and Ambedkar. In the end, an adroit strategy of guilt-by-association clears the space for Guha the moderate biographer to consolidate Gandhi’s towering place in history.<br /><br />-------------<br /><br />On 22 September 1932, the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar met Mohandas Gandhi in Yerwada Jail in Pune, Maharashtra. Gandhi was into the third day of his fast unto death against the British colonial administration’s Communal Award that created separate electorates for Muslims, Sikhs, and the “Depressed Classes” (as Dalits were then termed). Gandhi’s objection was not to the awarding of separate electorates to Muslims and Sikhs but to Dalits. Since the Depressed Classes totaled about 50 million or approximately 20 percent of India’s population at this time, their recognition as a distinct or separate category would severely compromise Gandhi’s, and the Congress Party’s, claim to speak for all, or at least the vast majority of, Indians. While the separate electorate would greatly strengthen Dalits in their effort to redress their horrendous socio-economic status, one that had endured for centuries if not millennia, Gandhi was against such a political solution to what he regarded as a social or even a moral problem. He considered Dalits to be Hindu and his preference was for ‘Harijan uplift’ or social reform—changing the minds and hearts of Caste Hindus about untouchability. According to the media at the time, the nation was in a frenzy as Gandhi’s health was deteriorating fast. The pressure on Ambedkar to “save the life of the Mahatma” by giving up the separate electorate the Dalits had been awarded, and to settle for a diluted version of it, can only be imagined.<br /><br />At one point in their negotiations in Yerwada, Gandhi said to Ambedkar, “You are born an untouchable but I am an untouchable by adoption. And as a new convert, I feel more for the welfare of the community than those who are already there.”3 Picture, if you will, President Lyndon Johnson telling Martin Luther King Jr. during the mid-1960s that though he was not black, as someone successfully chaperoning the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through the US Congress at that very moment, he (Johnson) felt more for the welfare of African-Americans than King possibly could, for after all the latter’s blackness was merely an accident of birth.<br /><br />--------------<br /><br />Gandhi’s views about indentured laborers were identical to caste Indian views of Dalits back home that, similarly, blamed the victim. The only group even further down the ladder of inferiority in Gandhi’s view was native Africans whom he referred to as “kaffirs” throughout his time in South Africa.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-4324205641012625652019-02-01T10:02:53.358-08:002019-02-01T10:02:53.358-08:00#Bollywood Actress Esha Gupta exposes everyday #ra...#Bollywood Actress Esha Gupta exposes everyday #racism in #India by sharing conversation with her 3.4m Instagram followers mocking #Nigerian #soccer star, Alex Iwobi, as a "gorilla" and "Neanderthal" who "evolution had stopped for". <br />https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47042681<br /><br />Up until Monday, Esha Gupta was just a Bollywood actress with a passion for Arsenal football club.<br /><br />That changed after the actress decided to share a screengrab of a WhatsApp conversation in which a friend mocked the team's Nigerian star, Alex Iwobi, as a "gorilla" and "Neanderthal" who "evolution had stopped for".<br /><br />"Hahaha," wrote the actress, who helped Arsenal unveil its 2017 away kit, as she shared the screengrab with her 3.4m Instagram followers.<br /><br />The racist slurs - and the fact she thought it was funny - horrified many, and the backlash was unsurprisingly swift. How dare she call herself an Arsenal supporter, her fellow fans demanded.<br /><br />Gupta apologised quickly, but the post hints at a long-known - but little acknowledged - problem of racism towards people of African descent in Indian society.<br /><br />"Of course I'm not surprised by the post," Ezeugo Nnamdi told the BBC from Delhi, his home of five years.<br /><br />In fact, the secretary-general of the Association of African Students in India (AASI) added that, as racial slurs go, her words were no worse than what fellow African students experienced on a daily basis - to their faces.<br /><br />"Racism is not something which is very hidden here. It is something very open," he said. "People just look at you.<br /><br />"They call you 'habshi' [a derogatory term], and a lot of other words and racial slurs.<br /><br />"Here, you are regarded as a cannibal."<br /><br />You don't have to look far to see examples of prejudice towards people of African descent in India: just look at how Bollywood treats its black characters.<br /><br />Take, for example, the award-winning 2008 film Fashion, which told the tale of an aspiring model - played by Quantico actress Priyanka Chopra - who is caught in a downward spiral of drink and drugs.<br /><br />But the moment she realises she has truly hit rock bottom is when she wakes up beside a black man. According to Dhruva Balram, the racial undertones of her realisation were clear.<br /><br />"For Bollywood, as an aspiring model, the worst thing you can do is position yourself sexually next to a black person," he argued in an article for Media Diversified.<br /><br />The article immediately resonated with Kadisha Phillips, an African-American New Yorker who spent a month in Bollywood during her degree. The racism she experienced left its mark - whether being ignored in a restaurant, or blocked from entering the school's campus by one of the guards.<br /><br />"I could tell it was because of the colour of our skin," she recalled. "It was just easy to notice."<br /><br />So were Gupta's messages just another example of the everyday racism experienced by black people in India?<br /><br />It is fair to say the furore which surrounded the Instagram post failed to make as big a splash in India as it did in other parts of the world.<br /><br />But why? That could be down to the fact it takes a more shocking incident to become a talking point.<br /><br />It was one such incident back in 2016 - when a young Tanzanian woman was beaten and stripped by an angry mob - which inspired photographer Mahesh Shantaram to take a fresh look at his own country.<br /><br />Endurance Amalawa was attacked by an angry mob in 2017<br />What he found, after spending months travelling around his own city, and then the country, meeting, speaking with and photographing black Africans, left him shocked.<br /><br />"I was hearing things for the first time," he said. "Imagine someone telling you stories about your country that you think you know very well, but they tell you a very different story."<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-24813668212138680712018-12-15T07:37:13.029-08:002018-12-15T07:37:13.029-08:00Statue of '#racist' #Gandhi removed from #...Statue of '#racist' #Gandhi removed from #Ghana university campus. A petition for the statue's removal cited Gandhi's writings calling #Indians 'infinitely superior' to black #Africans. @AJENews https://aje.io/9tzlq<br /><br />A statue of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has been removed from Ghana's most prestigious university following complaints that he was racist against the black Africans.<br /><br />The statue, installed at the University of Ghana in capital Accra, was removed in the middle of the night earlier this week after protests from students and faculty.<br /><br />India's former president Pranab Mukherjee had unveiled the statue two years ago as a symbol of ties between the two nations.<br /><br />But professors at the university soon began a petition calling for its removal. They cited passages written by Gandhi depicting Indians as "infinitely superior" to black Africans and using the racist pejorative "kaffirs" to describe them.<br /><br />One of Gandhi's writings cited in the petition read: "Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness."<br /><br />The online protest was one of a number on university campuses in Africa and beyond about the enduring symbols of the continent's colonial past.<br /><br />'Victory for black dignity'<br />The Gandhi statue on the university's Legon campus in Accra appeared to have been removed overnight on Tuesday, students and lecturers told AFP news agency.<br /><br />The head of language, literature and drama at the Institute of African Studies, Obadele Kambon, said the removal was an issue of "self-respect".<br /><br />"If we show that we have no respect for ourselves and look down on our own heroes and praise others who had no respect for us, then there is an issue," he said.<br /><br />READ MORE<br />Gandhi: 125 years since whites-only train incident<br />"If we indeed don't show any self-respect for our heroes, how can the world respect us? This is a victory for black dignity and self-respect. The campaign has paid off."<br /><br />Adelaide Twum, a student, said the move was "long overdue".<br /><br />"I'm so excited. This has nothing to do with diplomatic ties," she added.<br /><br />Another student, Benjamin Mensah, said, "It's a massive win for all Ghanaians because it was constantly reminding us of how inferior we are."<br /><br />The university authorities refused to comment. An official at Ghana's foreign affairs ministry said it was "an internal decision by the university".<br /><br />Ghana's former government had said the statue would be relocated "to avoid the controversy ... becoming a distraction from our strong ties of friendship" with India.<br /><br />Campaigners in Malawi are currently trying to stop a statue of Gandhi going up in the capital, Blantyre, arguing that he used racial slurs against black people.<br /><br />Though Gandhi is more commonly remembered for his non-violent resistance to British colonial rule in his native India, his legacy in Africa is mixed.<br /><br />Born in 1869, Gandhi lived and worked as a lawyer in South Africa from 1893 to 1915 before he left for India to continue his anti-colonialism struggle.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-41279595473709809422017-08-20T22:25:33.186-07:002017-08-20T22:25:33.186-07:00#Indian #Americans blind to #racism within their o...#Indian #Americans blind to #racism within their own community | POV | OZY<br /><br />http://www.ozy.com/pov/colorblind-racism-and-the-model-minority/76451?fb=ozy&type=cpc&aud=ENG<br /><br />Given their higher education and earning capacity, Indian-Americans frequently perceive themselves to be “good,” “successful” and “safe” immigrants — language they’ve adopted to distance themselves from what is often portrayed as “undesirable” or “unsafe” Black and Latino communities of color. Admittedly, I have heard friends and community members in the privacy of their homes use derogatory Hindi words such as kalu — in place of the N-word — to describe some Blacks as lazy, uneducated and disposed to violence and criminality.<br /><br />And yet the paradox is that while these Indian immigrants readily acknowledge experiencing racism when they arrived in this country, they are fearful, ambivalent and reluctant to talk about the latent — and at times blatant — racism within our own communities.<br /><br />Model minority thinking is based on a colorblind racism. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociologist, explains that colorblind racism is an ideology in which racial inequality and discrimination are explained in nonracial terms. The most common example of colorblind racism is reflected in the statement, “I don’t see any color, just people.” Such a statement assumes that a person’s race or ethnic background does not play a role in their experiences with racism or discrimination.<br /><br />In my ethnographic research, I found that the Indian-American study participants used three specific strategies to maintain their colorblind racism and thus their model minority status.<br /><br />First: The model behavior of the Indian-American community rests on refuting their racial identity and presenting themselves primarily through their professional status as doctors or engineers.<br /><br />My research shows that when skin color, bindi, sari, food, gods and goddesses, and accents of Indian migrants invite racial attacks, they deflect these racist incidents by insisting, “Every culture discriminates,” or “It is human nature to marginalize others,” and “Europe is even worse.” Neeta, a 43-year-old woman who studied in Delhi and has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, said, “I have come to realize that no matter what nationality you are, what color skin you are, we all have the same principles. That’s the bottom line.”<br /><br />Second: The professional Indian-American community I studied fully embraced the idea of American meritocracy, a system that rewards an individual based on his or her intelligence, ability and effort. Raju, a professor of biology, stated, “I firmly believe that being of Indian origin or looking different has nothing to do with the way you go about your life, your professional life, career development.” Like many of the study participants, Raju was aware of his difference, but he genuinely believed individual effort, talent, hard work and merit are the foundations of the American dream.<br /><br />Third: An important feature of colorblind racism is to frame one’s individual or group identity through a cultural rather than a racial lens. By extolling their culture’s 5,000-year-old history, Aryan ancestry, Bollywood movies and religious rituals, many Indian-Americans feel freed not to engage in discussions of race and to see racism as a dilemma facing other racial communities.<br /><br />When study participants were told of the psychological, immoral and societal cost of failing to confront racism, they responded by referring to “our society back home in India,” where the caste system is far more oppressive. Perhaps, but the recent upsurge in hate crimes against Indian-Americans is a clear sign that model minority status does not immunize us from racist acts.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-2432159361297602182017-08-11T10:30:30.292-07:002017-08-11T10:30:30.292-07:00#India at 70: #Lynchistan #racist #fascist #xenop...#India at 70: #Lynchistan #racist #fascist #xenophobic #Hindu #Supremacist #Modi #BJP<br /><br />"Mr. Modi’s rule represents the most devastating, and perhaps final, defeat of India’s noble postcolonial ambition to create a moral world order. It turns out that the racist imperialism Du Bois despised can resurrect itself even among its former victims: There can be English rule without the Englishman. India’s claims to exceptionalism appear to have been as unfounded as America’s own." --- Pankaj Mishra<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/india-70-partition-pankaj-mishra.html <br /><br />India at 70, and the Passing of Another Illusion<br /><br />By PANKAJ MISHRA<br />AUG. 11, 2017<br /><br />August 15, 1947, deserved to be remembered, the African-American writer W.E.B. Du Bois argued, “as the greatest historical date” of modern history. It was the day India became independent from British rule, and Du Bois believed the event was of “greater significance” than even the establishment of democracy in Britain, the emancipation of slaves in the United States or the Russian Revolution. The time “when the white man, by reason of the color of his skin, can lord it over colored people” was finally drawing to a close.<br /><br />It is barely remembered today that India’s freedom heralded the liberation, from Tuskegee to Jakarta, of a majority of the world’s population from the degradations of racist imperialism. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, claimed that there had been nothing “more horrible” in human history than the days when millions of Africans “were carried away in galleys as slaves to America and elsewhere.” As he said in a resonant speech on Aug. 15, 1947, long ago India had made a “tryst with destiny,” and now, by opening up a broad horizon of human emancipation, “we shall redeem our pledge.”<br /><br />But India, which turns 70 next week, seems to have missed its appointment with history. A country inaugurated by secular freedom fighters is presently ruled by religious-racial supremacists. More disturbing still than this mutation are the continuities between those early embodiments of postcolonial virtue and their apparent betrayers today.<br /><br />Du Bois would have been heartbroken to read the joint statement that more than 40 African governments released in April, denouncing “xenophobic and racial” attacks on Africans in India and asking the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate. The rise in hate crimes against Africans is part of a sinister trend that has accelerated since the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.<br /><br />Another of its bloodcurdling manifestations is the lynching of Muslims suspected of eating or storing beef. Others include assaults on couples who publicly display affection and threats of rape against women on social media by the Hindu supremacists’ troll army. Mob frenzy in India today is drummed up by jingoistic television anchors and vindicated, often on Twitter, by senior politicians, businessmen, army generals and Bollywood stars.<br /><br />Hindu nationalists have also come together to justify India’s intensified military occupation of Muslim-majority Kashmir, as well as a nationwide hunt for enemies: an ever-shifting and growing category that includes writers, liberal intellectuals, filmmakers who work with Pakistani actors and ordinary citizens who don’t stand up when the national anthem is played in cinemas. The new world order — just, peaceful, equal — that India’s leaders promised at independence as they denounced their former Western masters’ violence, greed and hypocrisy is nowhere in sight.<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-26430803780939142092017-08-05T08:03:44.373-07:002017-08-05T08:03:44.373-07:00BBC suspends #British #Indian host Tommy Sandhu &a...BBC suspends #British #Indian host Tommy Sandhu & starts major inquiry into his racist, sexist, anti-#Pakistan slurs<br /><br />https://www.geo.tv/latest/152540-bbc-starts-major-inquiry-into-staff-over-racist-anti-pakistan-slurs<br /><br />LONDON: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has suspended a star of its Asian Network, in a row over online messages littered with lewd comments and racist slurs – including racist attacks on Pakistanis and the BBC’s British Pakistani staff members.<br /><br />Indian origin DJ and BBC host Tommy Sandhu, 40, is amongst at least four colleagues allegedly part of WhatsApp groups sharing sexist comments as well as homophobic remarks and a derogatory terms for Pakistanis.<br /><br />One of the men in the group suggested that they refuse to play any music by Pakistanis on the breakfast show, even though the network was set up to cater to all Asian groups. <br /><br />This is not the first time that BBC's asian network has been accused of anti-Pakistani bias, on several occasions it has emerged that BBC Asian Network’s hosts and DJs have refused to give due coverage to Pakistan's arts and culture. <br /><br />Allegations have been made by insiders that the broadcaster's asian network has an intolerant policy towards Pakistani music and musicians.<br /><br />Another message shared on the group referred to BBC’s British Pakistani entertainment reporter Haroon Rashid as a ‘Paki’ – a derogatory term used to attack Pakistani origin individuals.<br /><br />It was also discussed in the group that one of the DJs who worked with British Pakistani presenter Noreen Khan had been converted by ‘Pakis’.<br /><br /> When one of the men did an assignment with Noreen Khan, another BBC Asian Network DJ, they were asked on the messaging group “have them Pakis converted you?”, according to sources who revealed evidence to British media.<br /><br />Vile sexist comments were also made about female staff working with the network, including young assistant producer Amanpreet Kaur.<br /><br />These messages, said media reports, were accidentally linked to a BBC laptop where Kaur stumbled across them, forming the basis for the BBC to open a major investigation, including disciplinary action against some of those involved.<br /><br />It is not clear how many people were part of the secret messaging groups but they included Asheesh Sharma and Kejal Kamani, two radio producers who routinely join Sandhu on air, and a disc jockey known as DJ Sachy.<br /><br />Sharma has been given a final written warning and Kamani has been fired. DJ Sachy, who has worked at the station as a freelance for years, has been told he will not get any more shifts, insiders claimed.<br /><br />Sources close to Sandhu claimed he did not make derogatory comments himself and was simply part of WhatsApp groups where some of the remarks were made. It is understood that he did not object to comments and did not raise complaints, but was an active member of the group.<br /><br />BBC Asian Network staff also used the messaging groups to make vile homophobic slurs, calling one colleague a ‘batty boy’ and used highly offensive terms for homosexuals – using an Urdu/Hindi expression used by Pakistanis and Indians. <br /><br />They also accused a fellow radio host of being gay, even though he is married.<br /><br />“We never comment on matters concerning any individuals working with the BBC. Any allegations of inappropriate behaviour would always be taken extremely seriously and would be dealt with swiftly and appropriately,” said a BBC spokesman. <br /><br />The BBC Asian Network costs around £7.5 million a year to run and is listened to by nearly 650,000 people a week, according to latest figures available. <br /><br />It was nearly shut in 2010 when it was pulling in just 477,000 listeners a week. Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-59921772125391311002017-04-14T21:50:23.555-07:002017-04-14T21:50:23.555-07:00#India is world's 4th worst for religious viol...#India is world's 4th worst for religious violence after #Syria (1) , #Nigeria (2), #Iraq (3). #Pakistan at no 10. https://qz.com/959802<br />India historically touts itself as a secular state, one where all religions are recognized and can peacefully co-exist. Well, at least in theory, it is. Unfortunately, the reality is much different.<br />An April 11 Pew Research Center analysis of 198 countries ranked India as fourth worst in the world for religious intolerance. In the country of 1.3 billion, the incidence of hostility related to religion trailed only Syria, Nigeria and Iraq, all places where sectarian violence is widespread.<br />India is not alone in seeing more religious unrest. Globally, Pew says, government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years.<br />Pew analyzed cases that involved hate crimes, mob violence, communal violence, religion-related terror, the use of force to prevent religious practice, the harassment of women for not conforming to religious dress codes, and violence over conversion or proselytizing.<br />Tensions between religious groups—especially Hindus and Muslims—has long divided India, but the rifts have intensified. “[In 2015,] Muslims in India at times experienced attacks by Hindus because of alleged cow slaughter, while Hindus were also sometimes the targets of hostilities by Muslims as well,” Katayoun Kishi, the study’s lead author, told Quartz. “In addition, there were multiple incidents of rioting and mob violence involving the two groups.”<br />Lynchings of beef-eating Muslims have compromised India’s status as a secular country. But a re-burgeoning Hindutva nationalist agenda has not made even the majority Hindus immune to discrimination, in India or elsewhere. Around the world, Hindus were harassed in 18 countries, fewer places than some other groups. “But the vast majority of the world’s Hindus—95%—live in India, where harassment of Hindus by both government and social groups was reported in 2015,” the study’s authors note. Dalits, the lowest-caste Hindus, were especially ill-treated in society. (Dalits are often secluded from basic government institutions and services, such as education and health care, too.)<br />National crime statistics in India also indicated that, compared with other caste affiliations, assailants most often perpetrated rape against Dalit women, according to the US State Department’s human-rights country report. Many of the assailants are not prosecuted. On June 24, 2015, attackers beheaded Dalit engineer V. Gokulraj in Pallipallayam, Tamil Nadu, reportedly because of a romantic relationship with an upper-caste Hindu classmate. The primary suspect, local caste leader S. Yuvaraj, absconded for months after the incident. (He later surrendered.)Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-66002193128011435392017-04-13T17:07:48.933-07:002017-04-13T17:07:48.933-07:00#India should confront its racial, xenophobic prej...#India should confront its racial, xenophobic prejudices. #racism #Hindutva<br /><br />http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/india-should-confront-its-prejudices<br /><br />Last week in India's Parliament, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj rose to rebut a statement by the 54 African heads of mission in New Delhi who laid out their complaints about a series of attacks on African students around the national capital region.<br /><br />Noting that the violence was not sufficiently condemned by the Indian authorities, the envoys had threatened to take the matter to international human rights bodies, saying the attacks had been "xenophobic and racial in nature".<br /><br />Her voice quivering with anger, Mrs Swaraj slammed the statement issued by the ambassadors as "unfortunate, painful and surprising". India, she insisted, was committed to the security of all foreigners in the country.<br /><br />Around the same time, Mr Tarun Vijay, a former MP from her Bharatiya Janata Party, went on international television to defend India's record on racism. After questioning the patriotism of a fellow panellist, Mr Vijay, who edited the official mouthpiece of the Hindu nationalist RSS organisation for nearly a quarter-century, offered this disjointed explanation: "If we were racist, why would we have all the entire South…Tamil (Nadu), Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra (Pradesh) …Why do we live with them? We have black people around us."<br /><br />Mr Vijay, known for his deep interest in Tamil literature, quickly apologised for his remarks after running into a volley of criticism from across India. For one thing, except in the vale of Kashmir, it would perhaps be factually inaccurate to characterise particular regions on the basis of skin colour. Pitiably though, he seemed unaware of the casual prejudices that his words revealed. Nor did he seem to realise that his remarks subliminally assumed that people of the populous North had first call on Indian nationhood.<br /><br />Indians can take pride that theirs is a nation that includes every racial group on earth. From the Proto-Negroid to Mongoloid and Caucasoid, Indians come in a variety of shapes and skins. This remarkable mix, combined with the ancient social stratification system based on caste, has however created a nation where multiple prejudices unfortunately do exist in parallel.<br /><br />Colour prejudice remains even as the flintier edges of the caste system - such as restrictions on physical contact - are being dulled as every passing generation shares workplaces, schools, canteens and play areas. Indians - men included - lap up skin-lightening creams, evidence of aspirations for a fairer tone. In some states such as Tamil Nadu, lighter-skinned girls get better treatment within households although this too is easing, thanks to shrinking family size.<br /><br />In northern India, a popular lullaby has the Hindu god Krishna, known for his roguish playfulness, lamenting he was born dark-skinned even as Radha, his consort, was fair. Some years ago, the visiting Australian cricket team was outraged after a section of the crowd in Vadodara, in Gujarat state, made monkey-like chirrups at the all-rounder Andrew Symonds, who is of mixed-race parentage. Symonds responded by smashing the Indian bowling attack all over the ground.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-62305113530745825232017-04-06T14:01:38.153-07:002017-04-06T14:01:38.153-07:00Hatred of Arabs deeply rooted in Persians, says Ir...Hatred of Arabs deeply rooted in Persians, says Iranian intellectual<br /><br />http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/10/09/170927.html<br /><br />The relationship between Arabs and Persians has always been a source of controversy, not only owing to the contemporary power struggle in the region, but also because of a long history of rivalry that formed an integral part of the national psyche of both people. Iranian intellectual Sadek Zibakalam provides deep insight into the different levels of this enduring animosity. <br /><br />“I think the majority of Iranians of all types hate Arabs, and I believe they hate us, too,” Sadek Zibakalam, who is also a professor at the University of Tehran, said in an interview with the Iranian weekly Sobh Azade.<br /><br />Zibakalam said there is a link between racism and a lack of education, and pointed out that this is the case in Europe, where people who express hatred against Jews or Muslims or foreigners are mostly uneducated. However, the situation tends to be different in Iran.<br /><br />“The phenomenon of hating Arabs is very common among intellectuals in Iran,” he said.<br /><br />He added that religious people also frequently express their resentment of Arabs, which usually comes in the form of curses directed at Sunnis.<br /><br />“As a matter of fact, Iranians’ constant attacks on Sunnis stem from their hatred of Arabs.”<br /><br />This hatred, Zibakalam argued, is not the product of the current hegemony conflict in the region, as many people might suspect, but has its roots in history.<br /><br />“Persians will never forget their defeat at the hands of Arabs in the Battle of Qadisiya 1,400 years ago. It is as if a fire keeps seething under the ashes and is waiting for the right moment to explode,” he said. <br /><br />Iran’s attempts to gain supremacy in the region are not triggered by political ambition as much as by a racist drive that pushes Iranians to prove they are superior, the professor said.<br /><br />“Whenever Iran issues any fiery statement about our neighbors in the U.A.E, Qatar, or Kuwait, you can easily detect that they revolve around a belief that Persians are superior. Listen to our foreign minister, parliament speaker, or even mosque imams, and you will notice that derogatory tone they use and which focuses on the racial and not the political superiority of Persians.”<br /><br />He cited the example of the U.A.E., which many Iranians, politicians and clergy derides in their statements.<br /><br />“They would say that if Iranians just blow some air across the Persian Gulf, they would wipe the U.A.E off the map,” he said.<br /><br />When asked whether the stance of the people is similar to that of the government as far as hatred of Arabs is concerned, Zibakalam replied in the affirmative.<br /><br />“Yes, people are like the government, and may be even more racist and intolerant.”<br /><br />For example, he said, when a couple of years ago the U.A.E said it was not going to drop its opposition to Iran’s occupation of three disputed Islands in the Gulf and referring to the “Persian Gulf,” large numbers of people rallied in front of the U.A.E embassy in Tehran with a cake that had 35 candles: they were making fun of the U.A.E’s 35-year history, compared to Iran’s 2,500.”<br /><br />He added that Iranians also criticize their compatriots who travel to Arab countries. For example, they always ask why they would go and spend their money in Arab countries, while they never do the same with Turkey, where huge numbers of Iranians go.<br /><br />“This even applies to religious trips to the Arab world, while if Mecca or Karbala were in Turkey or Malaysia, Iranians would not have a problem with people going there,” Zibakalam said.<br /><br />He added that Persian racism against Arabs becomes very clear in language, and that the establishment of the Persian Language Institute was intended to carry out a plan to remove Arabic words from the Persian language. <br /><br />“Arabic words that have been in the Persian language for more than 1,00 years would be removed even though they are mentioned in great literary works like The Shahnameh and the poetry of Rumi, all of which are parts of our history.” <br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-60264319929503423872017-04-06T14:00:44.765-07:002017-04-06T14:00:44.765-07:00Overcoming the Arab-Persian divide: On bigotry and...Overcoming the Arab-Persian divide: On bigotry and racism<br />Persian and Arab bourgeois nationalism has paved the way for racism and disregard of a rich and diverse common past.<br /><br />http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/overcoming-arab-persian-divide--201442010479453110.html<br /><br /><br />byHamid Dabashi<br />@HamidDabashi<br /><br /><br />The history of both Persian and Arab bourgeois nationalism is solidly predicated on a sustained genealogy of racist bigotry, partaking in its European prototype. Today the legitimate criticism of the Islamic republic easily degenerates into a nasty Islamophobia among a wide spectrum of Iranian bourgeois liberalism that fancies itself "secular". There is a very brittle and porous line between that Islamophobia and a rabid anti-Arab racism, astonishingly shared by a significant portion of the selfsame constituency for whom a delusional notion of "Cyrus the Great" is the ahistorical panacea of an entire history of imperial nostalgia.<br /><br />This racism is not limited to the history of Islamic republic and extends well into the Pahlavi period and before it to the Qajar dynasty, when leading Iranian intellectuals ranging from Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani coming down to Sadeq Hedayat, harboured the most pernicious anti-Arab racism. They categorically attributed what they thought was Iranian backwardness to Islam, Islam to Arabs, Arabs to fanaticism and stupidity and thus began ludicrously to celebrate a lopsided reading of the pre-Islamic Iranian history that was informed mostly by the figment of their perturbed imagination.<br /><br />Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.<br /><br />"An Arab-Iranian poet and human rights activist, Hashem Shaabani," according to a report published on Al Jazeera, "has been executed for being an 'enemy of God' and threatening national security". The report further added that, "The Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal [had] found Shaabani and 13 other people guilty of 'waging war on God' and spreading 'corruption on earth'."<br /><br />These are standard, now almost cliche, charges based on Shia jurisprudence that the judiciary branch of the Islamic Republic has regularly brought against people they consider a threat to their state security. In this particular case, Hashem Shaabani and his fellow defendants were charged with "separatist terrorism". In a follow-up report, Huffington Post identified Shaabani as "a member of the Arabic-speaking Ahvazis ethnic minority".<br /><br />Labour migration and cosmopolitanism<br /><br />Much confusion and disinformation cloud the circumstances in which such atrocious violations of civil liberties are perpetrated in Iran and much of its violent neighbourhood. I was born and raised in the city of Ahvaz. The term "Arabic-speaking Ahvazi ethnic minority" is a misnomer.<br /><br />Ahvaz is a major cosmopolitan city in southern Iran, the capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province, which has attracted labour migrants from all over the country. The nature of urbanisation and labour migration in Ahvaz and other major Iranian cities has created a mosaic of ethnicised communities brought together by the force and necessity of labour and not by the delusional fantasies of bourgeois nationalism of one sort or another.<br /><br />My own father came to Ahvaz from Bushehr as a labourer for the Iranian national railroad and my mother's family from Dezful. Neither of them were Arabs. From Azerbaijan and Khorasan in the north to Isfahan and Yazd in the centre and down to the coastal regions of the Gulf, labour migrants regularly come to Ahvaz in search of work. As the capital of Khuzestan, Ahvaz belongs to all of them, and as such the term "Arabic-speaking Ahvazis ethnic minority" is categorically flawed.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-32971890762349059402017-04-03T08:08:19.693-07:002017-04-03T08:08:19.693-07:00BBC News - #African envoys: #India attacks on #Nig...BBC News - #African envoys: #India attacks on #Nigerians 'xenophobic' and 'racial'. #racism<br /><br />http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39482239<br /><br />Envoys from African nations in the Indian capital, Delhi, have condemned the handling of recent attacks on Nigerian students in the city.<br />In a statement, the African Heads of Mission said the attacks were "xenophobic and racial".<br />Indian authorities had failed to "sufficiently condemn" the attacks or take "visible deterring measures", the envoys added.<br />The students were attacked last month in Greater Noida, close to Delhi.<br />Five Nigerian students were attacked by crowds, while another was beaten by a mob inside a shopping mall.<br />The violence was prompted by the death of a local teenager due to a drug overdose. His parents blame Nigerian students for giving him the drugs.<br />I<br />Police say five people have been arrested over the violence and India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has promised an "impartial" inquiry.<br />But the African Heads of Mission said that the response was inadequate, and called for an investigation by the UN Human Rights Council.<br />They also called for "strong condemnation from the highest political level (both nationally and locally) of the government of India, as well as expediting legal actions against the perpetrators".<br /><br />The attack on one student inside the shopping mall was recorded on mobile phone cameras by other shoppers and widely circulated on social media.<br />The victim told Indian reporters he had been beaten with rods, bricks and knives. He said that no one had helped or even called the police.<br />Many Indians have reacted with shame online. But there have been a number of incidents in recent years in which people from African nations living in India have faced apparent discrimination or violence.<br />In May 2016 a Congolese man was beaten to death in Delhi after an argument over an auto-rickshaw. Three months before that, a Tanzanian student was assaulted and partially stripped by a mob in the southern city of Bangalore.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-63350115491092151622017-02-13T10:39:42.117-08:002017-02-13T10:39:42.117-08:00Hinduism and Terror
Paul Marshall
In the past d...Hinduism and Terror<br /><br />Paul Marshall<br /><br /><br />In the past decade, extremist Hindus have increased their attacks on Christians, until there are now several hundred per year. But this did not make news in the U.S. until a foreigner was attacked. In 1999, Graham Staines, an Australian missionary who had worked with leprosy patients for three decades, was burned alive in Orissa along with his two young sons. The brutal violence visited on Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002 also brought the dangers of Hindu extremism to world attention. Between one and two thousand Muslims were massacred after Muslims reportedly set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing several dozen people.<br /><br />These attacks were not inchoate mob violence, triggered by real or rumored insult; rather, they involved careful planning by organized Hindu extremists with an explicit program and a developed religious-nationalist ideology. Like the ideology of al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists, this ideology began to take shape in the 1920s as a response to European colonialism. It rejected the usually secular outlook of other independence movements; in place of secularism, it synthesized a reactionary form of religion with elements of European millenarian political thought, especially fascism.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Twentieth-century agitation against the British led to the rise not only of the secular and socialist Congress movement but also of the rival Hindu nationalist movement collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (“family of organizations”). The Parivar proclaims an ideology of “Hindutva,” aimed at ensuring the predominance of Hinduism in Indian society, politics, and culture, which it promotes through tactics that include violence and terror. Its agenda includes subjugating or driving out Muslims and Christians, who total some 17 percent of the population. It castigates them as foreign faiths, imposed by foreign conquerors—even though Christians trace their origins in India to the Apostle Thomas in the first century and Islam came to India in the seventh and eighth centuries.<br /><br />The Sangh Parivar’s central organization is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded by Keshav Hedgewar in 1925. Hedgewar was influenced by V. D. Savarkar, who believed that Hindus were the descendants of the ancient Aryans and properly formed a nation with a unified geography, race, and culture. Savarkar’s 1923 book Hindutva—Who is a Hindu? declared that those who did not consider India as both fatherland and holy land were not true Indians—and that the love of Indian Christians and Muslims for India was “divided” because each group had its own holy land in the Middle East.<br /><br />M. S. Golwalkar, the RSS’s sarsangchalak (supreme director) from 1940 to 1973, sharpened these themes. In 1938, commenting on the Nuremberg racial laws, he declared: “Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us … to learn and profit by.” In an address to RSS members the same year, he also asserted: “If we Hindus grow stronger, in time Muslim friends … will have to play the part of German Jews.” He insisted that “the non-Hindu … must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion… Or [they] may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges.” On March 25, 1939, the Hindu nationalist Mahasabha Party, an RSS ally, likewise proclaimed: “Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning, and the ardent championship of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope.”<br /><br /><br />https://hudson.org/research/4575-hinduism-and-terrorRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-12968127327341256192016-12-29T18:38:22.256-08:002016-12-29T18:38:22.256-08:00Permitting Exclusive #Brahmin-Only Housing Develop...Permitting Exclusive #Brahmin-Only Housing Development in #Bangalore, #India Reinforces #Hindu #Caste #Apartheid <br /><br />https://www.thequint.com/india/2016/08/03/how-a-brahmin-only-township-was-allowed-in-21st-century-karnataka<br /><br /><br />A township strictly meant for Brahmins claims to revive the “lost traditions” of the Brahmin community. The architecture, the lifestyle and culture will ensure a “Brahmanic way of life.” <br />Welcome to The Vedic Village- Shankar Agraharam, a ‘Brahmin only’ housing project that was planned in the outskirts of Bengaluru in 2013.<br />With the launch of the township, national and international media picked up the story and reported the disturbing trend of ‘segregated housing’ and ‘housing apartheid’ in India. A group of activist lawyers wrote to the state government and human rights commission to immediately scrap the project because it promoted caste-discrimination.<br /><br />Three years down the lane, Vedic Village is nearing completion and has received the ‘proud’ approval of the Department of Town and Country planning in Karnataka. Project managers even claim to have sold 900 units of the planned 1800 in the integrated township.<br /><br />The Sanathana Dharma Parirakshana Trust that is funding and developing the project is backed by the Brahmin community. The trust believes in:<br />emancipation of the living conditions of the Brahmin community and to closely work towards creating a liveable environment, and assets for the future generation of the community. Source: www.vedicgraham.com<br />The housing project is not open to non-brahmins, but that isn’t the only problem with the project. The website and the brochures repeatedly emphasise that it is a township for the ‘superior’.<br />Our plots are clearly earmarked for Brahmins only…Our motto, to give the highest to the highest in all respects. Source: www.vedicgraham.comRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-3297876995101087642016-10-21T16:53:34.402-07:002016-10-21T16:53:34.402-07:00Ahmad: "Well, that film was largely based on ...Ahmad: "Well, that film was largely based on the book, "Freedom at Midnight." And it may well be that the Indian government paid for it.<br />The Pakistanis also produced a movie on Jinnah. It was a big flop."<br /><br />The big difference between the films "Jinnah" and Gandhi" was the choice of the director. <br /><br />Sir Richard Attenborough was an established name and a big draw; Jamil Dehalvi was an unknown. <br /><br />The other difference: Nehru and Indira were personally involved in the making of Gandhi to make themselves good and put H=Jinnah in a very poor light. <br /><br /><br />Here's more from the Grenier review:<br /><br /><br />Gandhi, therefore, the film, this paid political advertisement for the government of India, is organized around three axes: (1) Anti-racism—all men are equal regardless of race, color, creed, etc.; (2) anti-colonialism, which in present terms translates as support for the Third World, including, most eminently, India; (3) nonviolence, presented as an absolutist pacifism. There are other, secondary precepts and subheadings. Gandhi is portrayed as the quintessence of tolerance (“I am a Hindu and a Muslim and a Christian and a Jew”), of basic friendliness to Britain (“The British have been with us for a long time and when they leave we want them to leave as friends”), of devotion to his wife and family. His vow of chastity is represented as something selfless and holy, rather like the celibacy of the Catholic clergy. But, above all, Gandhi’s life and teachings are presented as having great import for us today. We must learn from Gandhi.<br /><br />I propose to demonstrate that the film grotesquely distorts both Gandhi’s life and character to the point that it is nothing more than a pious fraud, and a fraud of the most egregious kind. Hackneyed Indian falsehoods such as that “the British keep trying to break India up” (as if Britain didn’t give India a unity it had never enjoyed in history), or that the British created Indian poverty (a poverty which had not only existed since time immemorial but had been considered holy), almost pass unnoticed in the tide of adulation for our fictional saint. Gandhi, admittedly, being a devout Hindu, was far more self-contradictory than most public men. Sanskrit scholars tell me that flat self-contradiction is even considered an element of “Sanskrit rhetoric.” Perhaps it is thought to show profundity.<br /><br />_____________<br /><br />Gandhi rose early, usually at three-thirty, and before his first bowel movement (during which he received visitors, although possibly not Margaret Bourke-White) he spent two hours in meditation, listening to his “inner voice.” Now Gandhi was an extremely vocal individual, and in addition to spending an hour each day in vigorous walking, another hour spinning at his primitive spinning wheel, another hour at further prayers, another hour being massaged nude by teenage girls, and many hours deciding such things as affairs of state, he produced a quite unconscionable number of articles and speeches and wrote an average of sixty letters a day. All considered, it is not really surprising that his inner voice said different things to him at different times. Despising consistency and never checking his earlier statements, and yet inhumanly obstinate about his position at any given moment, Gandhi is thought by some Indians today (according to V.S. Naipaul) to have been so erratic and unpredictable that he may have delayed Indian independence for twenty-five years.<br /><br /><br />https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-gandhi-nobody-knows/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.com