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Dear Readers, III

It's that time of the month again -- stress, discomfort, short temper, lassitude and general ill-being. All brought about by the terrible injustice of Nature. I, of course, mean the responding to hate males.

But before I tally-ho, here's Mr Arun Shourie on the rationalisations habitually forwarded by the secularist glee club: "If events are still fresh, their response always is: 'But where are the facts?' If you happen to have enumerated and substantiated the twenty facts about which evidence is in, their response is: 'But he has not taken into account item 21; this selective focus on just a handful of facts shows that he is working to a purpose.' When sufficient time has elapsed, and you have garnered and presented evidence about all the facts, their response is: 'But this is an old charge...'"

And so it goes...

Anyone with contacts can get a couple of suitably selected stats on government spending... if there are places of [Hindu] pilgrimage in remote/urban areas, then one needs to take into account the amount the government has spent to make access easy (by laying down railway tracks, related installations, communications).]

(This, after my laying out stats on Haj subsidies.) Like, the use of said railway tracks, related installations, communications, etc, would be earmarked for Hindus alone...

What about the expense incurred when the government has to make security arrangements for Hindus to go Amarnath, Badrinath, Somnath, Baidyanath, Prannath, and what not?

Like, said security isn't necessitated by the nice-nice exploits of Islamic terrorists...

And what about the loss due to inconvenience, damage, and upkeep costs caused to the government when Hindus install huge idols of Ganesh, Kali, Durga and what not in every town and city in the country? And then the loss due to pollution when they go and immerse these idols in the nearest lake or pond?

The over 82% Hindu population doesn't avail of subsidies, upkeep costs or damages WRT festivities. Re. inconvenience, halt pavement namaaz, taziyas, amplified azaan and nocturnal iftaari set-ups. And, immersing Kali in water is a lot better than spraying non-Muslim pedestrians with god-knows-what-not during the manifestation of shokh in Muharram processions.

In a previous article, you had said Bombay was taken off movie-houses because of 'Muslim protests,' and when someone points out that that is a lie, you abuse him, giving some convoluted logic that does not prove you did not lie...

Prove that I did. Are we supposed to take your word for it just because you have a bee up a certain ill-lit place about Bal Thackeray?

What about the TAX that Muslims pay, which is spent on the police force?

(Same guy.) Sweets, do something about Dawood Ibrahim & Co. Then Hindustan won't need so much policing.

...the retaliation method to answer reader's mail. It's pretty bad in taste.

(This, from a dweeb who prefaced his mail with "Crap".)

Presumably she seems to suffer from illusions about her English, and in any case it is these very readers who happen to provide her bread and butter.

"Aamhi kaay kunache khaato re, to Ram aamhala deto re..." We eat only that which the Lord provides...

However, you do spoil it when you say: "Even so, proscription is not just a Sena thing. Indians have taken pains to foster an atmosphere where anybody can get up and start enforcing bans"... The logic seems to be: (1) All Indians do it (2) Ergo, if the Sena does it -- that does not make their actions uniquely reproachable (3) If you have to criticise the ghaati lumpen -- reproach the whole country first.

Tsk, tsk... Your basic premise itself is garbage: Where have I said that ALL Indians do it? Since when is "anybody" equal to "all"...?

Secondly, does having an atmosphere conducive to proscriptions mean that everybody does avail of it...? How do you conclude that I implied that all Indians DEFINITELY "do it"? Despite our population, I wouldn’t be so confident about all Indians even making whoopie!

Thirdly, how does my statement indicate that the Sena's actions may not be reproachable -- uniquely or otherwise? Where have I raised the conditional "IF"?

Fourthly, how do you take the magnificent leap to my supposedly asking for the whole country to be reproached FIRST? Never mind the preceding trash, but where is there anything to suggest a sequence in reproach?

Madru, gird your veshti/mundu before questioning this ghaatan. Please return to school for a course in deductive logic.

I have taken pains to mention my name at the end so that you may have no difficulty identifying which caste/community I am from... I just wanted to make your task easier... s/d Shankar Venkataraman

Like I should know that Anita Pratap, Priyanka Vadera, Ajit Jogi and Pritish Nandy are Hindu? *More* fallacy in logic...

Bhosle cannot make up her mind whether she supports rescinding the freedom of expression or not... The root cause of these issues is that the Constitution and the rule of law are not being upheld in India... Bringing in laws on religion is just another attempt to pervert the Constitution and justify legal laziness on the part of the State... Either Bhosle is opposed to arson, assault, and slander or she is not.

(This, about the ban on Fire.) Can't indicate the statement which made you assume I waver over my support of freedom of expression? That's the trouble with prejudice...

Mathew, laws on religion already exist. For instance, the Constitution expressly forbids conversion to, say, Christianity, through allurement. Quite right; the rule of law is not being upheld in India...

I totally believe Aldous Huxley's "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." Therefore, if arson and assault are called for in a given situation, I may back them, who knows? As for slander, that’s my profession :-D

Notice how Bhosle apportions blame on the publishers, Nehruwallahs, Indira Gandhi's admirers, the Congress party, and faceless corrupt politicians for being paranoid about Rushdie's ficitionalisation of politicians. But those who read the book, and I'm assuming Bhosle read it too, would notice too that she rather conveniently overlooked the character of Raman Fielding aka Mainduck, the leader of the Maharashtra Axis, who oh so closely shadows her favourite politician Thackeray!

I reproduce a paragraph from the article: "BTW, how come you ignore the fact that Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh -- portraying Balasaheb as a "political cartoonist and supremo of neo-Stalinist inner structures of Mumbai's Axis, a lascivious, woman-pawing, goggle-eyed, foul-tongued, slobbering, frog of a man who likes to caress naked men under the guise of kusti" -- is freely available in Saffron Maharashtra? Or can't you absorb that which could make you think?"

Thick, yes. Blind, too.

Now a days [sic], even in the US, I am meeting lot [sic] of these "MODERN HINDUS" or "HINDU VISIONARIES"... Bhosle is just one of them... If Parivar says, "Hey little girl, we know all that..." then Varsha can say, "Look you, I am ADDRESSING you. Did I tell that you don't know all these? Did I tell that you are not doing anything? Did I tell you have to listen to me?

Even if I die, I wouldn't say "did I tell that you don't know all these". That apart, I'm still trying to figure out what it all means. I admit, I'm foiled. BTW, may I know your Bajrang Dal registration number?

Bhosle is tiresome. She is ignorant. And she is inconsistent... Rather than breaking out of a cycle of wrongdoing, she advocates further wrongdoing.

Mathew, third week consistently?! You just can't get enough of me...

May be, it is too disturbing a fact for you to accept the years of tyranny and torture rural Indian faces/d due to Brahminisation. Isn't that a gruesome crime? Isn't this a good enough reason for "stepping on others toes"? Why do you think this must be ignored and conversions condemned?

I'm re-reading a para from the article -- "More significantly, do you really think the wretched convert without cause? That they have no complaints against the system? We deserve to dwindle since it's we who twisted caste" -- and wondering which measure of intellect I'm supposed to be catering to...

Let's set our homes right first. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others!

(This, from a Mosie!)

It does not need a rocket scientist to figure that if the missionaries (only) goal was conversion through allurement, then by now 70% of the population would be Christians.

We guys have survived centuries-spanning assaults from Semitic religions. Did you think that because some destitute and feeble-minded people convert, Hindustan will be bereft of Hindus?! Hahaha... you don't know how the System works, do you? You must be nuts to believe that missionaries can achieve what Aurangzeb couldn't. Sorry, rocket scientist.

This seems to suggest that Hindu organisations only shout at Christian missionaries and they themselves do nothing for the welfare of weaker and neglected section of Hindu society... Some such organisations are the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Seva Bharti, Vikas Bharti in Bihar, R K Mission and Swadhyay Parivar. And these organisations are running thousands of schools, dispensaries and similar other projects under developed and remote areas.

As I recall, I mentioned Pandurang Shastri Athavle and Ramakrishna Mission in the article. Perhaps you don't know that RK stands for Ramakrishna, or that Athavle founded the Swadhyay movement. None of which lets off the Bajrang Dal or VHP off the hook.

Issue-less, wastage of space and time... Rediff guys, please get rid of this person. I can assure you that you will be loosing a lot of readers b'coz of writers like Varsha.

Editor, darlin', could you please refrain from publishing junk mail? Ultimately, it's bad for their egos: My persistence in face of their public demands could evoke feelings of impotency.

All in all, the article is gratuitous, and self-indulgent, and doesn't justify the space it is published in.

I aim to be gratuitous! And, ALL my articles are self-indulgent. No writer is anything but. Which is why *we* write -- and you read.

You could not write anything bad about people who are opposed to saying Vande Mataram at school, why are you writing about people who are just turning the other cheek to you?

Xavier, I appreciate your efforts to direct my energies towards Mosies, but is that fair...?

Maybe I'm just too dense to grasp the literary value of her columns, who knows. But chances are if I'm not "getting it," there might be quite a few other readers out there who ain't getting it either. You see what I'm saying?

If I began to follow readers' guidelines, or aimed at pleasing them, or wrote for individual levels of comprehension (eg, avoiding quotations), the next thing I may land up doing is pushing Nehruvianism or discoursing on Bah Bah Black Sheep. My opinion. My style. My space. My readership. I don't need more.

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