HVK Archives: Why I am not a commie
Why I am not a commie - The Sunday Observer
Varsha Bhosle
()
6-12 July 1997
Title: Why I am not a commie
Author: Varsha Bhosle
Publication: The Sunday Observer
Date: July 6-12, 1997
In March 1989, a little after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against
Salman Rushdie, The Observer, London, published an anonymous letter from
Pakistan. It stated, "Salman Rushdie speaks for me.... Mine is a voice
that has not yet found expression in newspaper columns. It is the voice of
those who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not
permitted to on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic
society cannot imagine the sanctions, both self-imposed and external, that
militate against expressing religious disbelief.... So we hold our tongues,
those of us who doubt."
The Ayatollah's decree had so outraged this letter-writer that, under the
pseudonym Ibn Warraq, he went on to publish Why I Am Not A Muslim, a book
which surpasses The Satanic Verses in terms of blasphemy. Of course, Mr
Warraq is still identified only as a man who had grown up in an Islamic
republic but now living and teaching in Ohio. Tempting fatwas is no joke.
In his review of Why I Am Not A Muslim, Dr Daniel Pipes wrote, "Where
Rushdie offered elusive critique in an airy tale of magical realism, Ibn
Warraq brings a scholarly sledgehammer to the task of demolishing Islam.
Writing a polemic against Islam, especially for an author of Muslim birth,
is an act so incendiary that the author must write under a pseudonym: not
to do so would be an act of suicide."
And what do you suppose the scholarly task included? To begin with, Mr
Warraq refutes the existence of Muhammad, but concedes that if he did exist
at all, then he had nothing to do with the Quran - that tome being
fabricated a century later in Palestine and then "projected back onto an
invented Arabian point of origin".
With the very source of Islam questioned, it would be dumb to expect the
author to find anything sincere in the rest of Islamic tradition: "Bowing
toward Arabia five times a day must surely be the ultimate symbol of
cultural imperialism.... The effects of the teachings of the Koran have
been a disaster for human reason and social, intellectual and moral
progress.... All innovations are discouraged in Islam -- every problem is
seen as a religious problem rather than a social or economic one." In
short, the Quran is a fraud, and everything based on it, mumbo-jumbo.
With that, we come to the new star on the literary horizon: Kancha Ilaiah's
Why I Am Not A Hindu. I wonder, why didn't our secular pundits laud Why I
Am Not A Muslim as they are applauding this censure of "casteist" Hinduism?
Why isn't Mr Warraq's book a stick with which to beat Islamists? if Mr
Ilaiah is a professor of political science in Osmania University, Mr
Warraq, too, is an educationist - in a country where "affirmative action"
hasn't quite made the wretched dent in quality that reservation has in
India. Also, both revile the legacies they were born into. (Note:
affirmative action is when the qualified among weak classes are given their
due, while Mandalization flatly reserves opportunities regardless of merit.)
This whole Why-I-Am-Not-A business began with Bertrand Russell's lecture to
the National Secular Society, London, in March 1927. Published as a
pamphlet that same year, the theme subsequently achieved new fame with his
book Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays. It is not required that
anybody carping about Hinduism must also drag WIANA-Christian or -Communist
or Mass-Murderer into the picture, but it makes one think.... Dear Bertie
spawned a genre, and within a genre, comparisons, although odious, are to
be expected. Sort of like, my disillusionment is bigger than yours.
So, how did I react to WIANA-Muslim? Sorry to disappoint you, but I
thought the book was over-the-top: put that down to my, ahem, Hindu sense
of equity. Although Dr Pipes calls Mr Warraq's thesis "a well-researched
and quite brilliant" indictment of Islam, I thought it lacked the
detachment inherent in Mr Russell's work of the same nature, and thus
bordered on the scurrilous. I was loathe to indict Islam on the basis of
one man's anger, however justified it may be - for that, I can access the
Quran's anti-kafir suras. Islam ain't gonna die because Mr Warraq wills
it. And Hindutva don't need no tombstone because Mr Ilaiah writes an
epitaph for it.
In his quest to belittle Hinduism, Mr Ilaiah says the Dalitbahujan spirit
is a non-Hindu spirit: that the opposite of Hindu culture is Dalitbahujan
culture: that the idea of the great majority in this country being Hindu is
tripe: that Dalitbahujans are profoundly distinct from Hindus.... Yes, OK,
all right. But then, will someone please tell me why caste differences
exist among Christians and Muslims? I mean, you can't get a more non-Hindu
spirit than in these guys, can you?
In August 1996, the All-India Muslim OBC Sangathan acknowledged that Indian
Muslims practise caste discrimination: some 115 Muslim backward castes,
based on occupational divisions, are identified in Maharashtra alone. This
acceptance of a Hinduism-like system made our modernist intellectuals have
kittens over its "progressiveness". It was deemed a step towards "a
trans-religious solidarity" which would make vote-bank politics redundant.
Meaning, a trans. religious caste-based vote bank is preferable to a
communal one - since the latter nearly put the saffron culture into power.
The illuminati are so transparent.
The All-India Catholic Union, too, has been in the forefront of the
struggle for Dalit reservations. Its vice-president, Dr Remy Y Denis,
writes: "The Caste system, many argue, is a feature of the Hindu religion
and therefore the evil social effects are applicable to only Hindus. It is
a fallacy to relate the problem only to Hindus.... [Dalit Christians] are
not only discriminated outside the Church but also within Christian
society. They have separate places to sit in the Church. They have
separate burial grounds and they have no matrimonial relationship with
non-Dalit Christians. Even their children do not get preferential
admission in our prestigious institutions."
So tell me, do Muslims and Christians fit Mr Ilaiah's non-Hindu-spirit
bill? And where does that leave the great-majority-isn't-Hindu theory?
The simple truth is, in India, whatever religion you may be born into, you
are a Hindu first and the rest afterwards. If you weren't, you wouldn't be
bogged down by centuries of idiot traditions. Of course Dalits have been
and are- -exploited-: of course they make legitimate charges. But to use
that to justify Mandalization and prove the ulterior motives of the Sangh
Parivar is pigswill. It's just another pinko in the woodpile: Since it's
getting more and more difficult to support the
divisive-communalist-fundamentalist-forces chant, the new tune being tried
is divisive-casteist-elitist-minority forces.
Even if ail governmental posts were to be filled with Dalits, it would not
bring about social justice. Ideas can be crushed only by better ideas. The
annihilation of the Romanovs brought the proletariat to power, but saddled
him with a green-blooded aristocracy - and even that came to naught. It is
not self-serving scum like V P Singh, Kanshi Ram and Mulayam Singh that can
better the SC/OBCs! Needed are social reformers (almost all of whom have
been zaalim Brahmins) to cleanse minds on both sides, for anything less can
only provoke an upper-caste backlash. The object of the Mandal exercise -
like, make Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs eligible for reservation and
institute their separateness: perpetuate caste by bestowing privileges - is
to subvert Hindu society and so keep alive parties that thrive by dividing
the majority.
Fact: Where there is man, there is disparity. Whether WASPs in American,
Slavs in Russia, or Wahabis in Arabia - the elite will carve their pound of
flesh. Discrimination narrows as it moves from race to religion to country
to region to gender.... But to crucify Hinduism as One Bad Mamma to
propagate one's imported brand of politics is abhorable intellectual
skulduggery.
Henry Miller said, "Religion is always revolutionary, far more
revolutionary than bread-and-butter philosophies." Meaning, prosperity
cannot replace religious cohesion - or why would wealthy American Jews and
Catholics keep afloat Israel and Northern Ireland? So I say to these
Ilaiahs: Hinduism is caught, not taught: better that it be wrought than
fought. And that is why I am not a Commie.
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