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Postscript

My mailbox has been especially full lately, so I will bring several items to your attention.

Reader Rajender, a displaced Kashmiri Pundit, sent me the web-site www.kashmir-information.com that shows the other side of the picture. For all of us bombarded with terrible tales of the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir, here is what it looks like to an ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Hindu.

A friend sent me the web-site of an Afghan women's organization www.rawa.org that chronicles the acts of the Taleban against women there. This is a good road-map for what the Taleban-ISI axis has in mind for the women of Jammu and Kashmir.

A friend sent me information about the appointment of K N Panikkar, former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, as the vice-chancellor of the Adi Sankara Sanskrit University at Kaladi, Kerala, the birthplace of Adi Sankara. K N Panikkar (or is it K N Pannikar, I forget) is an extreme, radical Marxist whose utter contempt for Hinduism is legendary. He knows no Sanskrit either. He has been foisted on this university by the ruling Marxists of Kerala: widespread protests have had no effect. Only in the Nehruvian-Stalinist Alice-in-wonderland world of India would such a thing be possible! This appointment is roughly the equivalent of Osama bin Laden being made the head of the Vatican's main seminary!

Reader Dahyabhai forwarded me the following alert from the office of Kumar Barve, a member of the Maryland legislature. I forward it without checking the quotes below. The following may be one reason for Hindus to be a little wary of the Bush administration. Pat Robertson is an infamous Christian fundamentalist. His words arise out of fear, and perhaps the feeling that his faith is inferior to Hinduism which he cannot understand. He does offer a fine example of the tyranny of the majority, though, doesn't he? And look who's talking about apartheid. I guess Robertson hasn't heard of people in glass houses.

It may also be remembered that Dubya caused a flutter in the early days of his campaign by visiting Bob Jones University, a bastion of right-wing lunatics. Also, all those 'progressive' 'secular' idiots in India need to understand this is the kind of Christian attitude that leads the Taleban-like missionaries in the northeast to run around provoking their converts to murder Hindus and Buddhists (again, tyranny of the Christian majority there).

Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 10:34:30 EST
From: Delbarve@aol.com
Subject: Bigotry Alert

Reverend Robertson's quotations speak for themselves, and may perhaps inspire action on the part of your readers.

Contact address (from www.cbn.com):
Rev. Pat Robertson
The Christian Broadcasting Network
977 Centerville Turnpike
Virginia Beach, VA 23463
Telephone CBN Main Switchboard (757) 226-7000; 24-hour Prayer 1-800-759-0700
For e-mail contacts, see www.cbn.com

Rev. Robertson spoke at Cleveland's City Club -- the longest running free speech forum in the nation -- on Friday, December 8, 2000. A member of the Indian-American community asked him about some of these quotations during the forum. The question and his answer were broadcast nationwide on hundreds of public radio stations, and will be televised on Sunday December 11, 2000 at 10:00 am on WVIZ, Channel 25, Cleveland. You may order a videotape or audiotape copy from www.cityclub.org.

Christian Nation

700 Club, 12-3-81:
"The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christians and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society."

Hindus and Hinduism

700 Club, 7-26-88
"...Ouija boards aren't harmless. Ouija boards are often time-directed by demonic spirits. There are various types of chants. The so-called TM Mantras are actually prayers in Sanskrit to various Hindu Gods who are in turn demons, and you are saying something you don't understand when in essence you are praying to a devil to come to you."

700 Club, 9-11-89
"Hinduism and many of the occult activities that come out of the Orient are inspired by demons and demon worship...There's this concept that all religions are the same and all are good. That is not true. The worship of the Devil is not good."

The New World Order, 1992:
"If anybody understood what Hindus really believe, there would be no doubt that they have no business administering government policies in a country that favors freedom and equality."

700 Club, 1-7-91:
"[W]hat is Hinduism but Devil worship, ultimately?"

700 Club, 1-8-91
"You mark my word: the secularists have stripped society of Christianity, or are trying to do it, but when the vacuum is filled, it isn't going to be anti-God. No way. It's going to be God from India. It's going to be Hinduism."

700 Club, 10-1-93
"The poverty of that nation, the poverty that Hinduism has brought upon them. They had one million Gods in the Hindu pantheism. Here they've got a God that's got a face like an elephant."

700 Club, 4-20-94
"These [Hindus] are the folks who are bringing New age to America and telling us that they have something better. I mean, and I've heard some of these so-called liberals who say, 'Oh, you just don't understand how good Hinduism is.' Just look at it."

700 Club, 3-26-95:
"The thing about Hinduism that is so pernicious is -- and, Ben, you would be interested in this -- this is Apartheid with a religious sanction, because the untouchables basically were Black people and the Brahmans were the white ones. The fair-skinned were the Aryans who came in and overcame the Davidians who were the native people. So in order to keep them under subjection, they said `God says that when creation took place, you were inferior,' and if a shadow of an untouchable even goes across the faith of an Brahman, the untouchable will be punished severely, maybe even killed....So we're importing Hinduism into the United States. Edward Casey is here in Virginia Beach, talking about reincarnation. The whole thought of Karma, of meditation, of the fact that there no end of life, and there is an endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism...This is the kind of thing we think is elevated, whatever, the origin of it all is demonic. We can't let this kind of thing come into America."

700 Club, 7-3-95
"Significantly the land of their origin, India, has horrible poverty. It also has desperate problems of overpopulation, illiteracy, hunger, mismanagement, and suffering. So it seems strange that religions which have brought such trouble to India would be imported to the West, where we have flourished and prospered under Christianity for many centuries."

700 Club, 10-5-2000
[On a dispute in Houston over the distribution of 10 Commandments book covers to schools, quoting an opponent of the book covers who said that the first commandment, "Thou shall have no other gods before me" is offensive to Hindus.]

"The concept that one God, 'Thou shall have no other gods before me,' will somehow upset a Hindu, that's tough luck! America was founded as a Christian nation. Our institutions presuppose the existence of a Supreme Being, a Being after the Bible. And we as Americans believe in the God of the Bible. And the fact that somebody comes with what amounts to an alien religion to these shores doesn't mean that we're going to give up all of our cherished religious beliefs to accommodate a few people who happen to believe in something else. You just can't do that. And that's been the thing that's been pushed over and over again . . ."

Kumar Barve
Maryland House of Delegates
Chairman, Subcommittee On Science and Technology

301-417-0158 [voice]
301-948-3084 [fax]

Speaking of "South Asian" nonsense, my old acquaintance Rajan P sent me this news item about TiE. I am taken aback. Subcontinental friendship is all well and good, but let us also consider that whatever money is made through IT in Lahore and Karachi, a good fraction of it will go to murder Indians through the good offices of Pakistan's ISI.

Indian tech achievers to help Pakistan's IT sector

BANGALORE, India, Nov 3 (Reuters) - A group of Indian information technology (IT) entrepreneurs based in the United States said on Friday that they will set up offices in Pakistan to promote the country's nascent IT sector.

"TiE is not concerned with political, relgious and cultural issues. Entrepreneurship unites and not divides," Raj Popli, vice-chairman of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), told reporters on the sidelines of a technology conference in Bangalore.

India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since independence from Britain in 1947 and nearly came to blows again last year over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

But this has not phased [sic] TiE, a network of IT entrepreneurs and professionals of Indian origin based in California's Silicon Valley.

TiE advises tech entrepreneurs on raising capital, runs businesses and fosters entrepreneurship, and counts some of the biggest names in the global IT industry among its members.

Popli said the group would open offices in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Karachi in February 2001. The organisation currently has 22 offices around the world, he added.

Pakistan recently unveiled plans to invest up to 15 billion rupees ($250 million) in the next two years to promote the tech sector, including establishing a virtual university and seven other regular universities focused on information technology.

Pakistan's software exports are worth something in the region of $30 million to $50 million, compared with India's annual exports of $4 billion in 1999/2000 (April-March).

Links

Eric Raymond's home page has 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' and some commentaries on it.

Rajeev Srinivasan's neo-liberal manifesto

Rajeev Srinivasan on language as a mask of conquest

Rajeev Srinivasan on why he is not a "South Asian"

Rajeev Srinivasan