SACW #1 | 06 Oct. 2005
sacw
aiindex at mnet.fr
Wed Oct 5 19:08:48 CDT 2005
South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch 1 | 06 October, 2005
[1] Pakistan - India : Missile test agreement
(Editorial, The News International)
[2] Bangladesh: Countering religious propaganda (Editorial, The Daily Star)
[3] The lure of fundamentalism (Salman Akhtar)
[4] India : Moral policing in Tamil Nadu (Editorial, The Hindu)
[5] India : Shyam Benegal slams NDA for 'saffronising' Bollywood
[6] India: Earth is still flat for 6 pc of Indians (Kalyan Ray)
[7] India : Superstition eclipses science (Dennis Marcus Mathew)
[8] India : Book Review - Hindu nationalist politics (Jyotirmaya Sharma)
______
[1]
The News International
October 05, 2005
Editorial
MISSILE TEST AGREEMENT
Only hours before Islamabad and New Delhi signed
an agreement on warning each other prior to
testing any ballistic missiles, India test fired
an Akash missile from a sea-based launcher, not
once but three times, and without warning
Pakistan. In fact, it never needed to because
Akash, being a surface-to-air missile, does not
fall under the jurisdiction of the agreement
which covers only the testing of
surface-to-surface missiles.
The agreement, signed by Foreign Minister
Khurshid Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Natwar
Singh after reviewing the second round of the
on-going dialogue process between the two
countries, therefore, at best warrants partial
celebrations. The missile programmes of both
India and Pakistan intend to acquire everything
that technology can offer: From long-range
air-to-surface ballistic missiles like Pakistan's
Shaheen and India's Agni to cruise missiles which
the former is developing as Babur and the latter
as BrahMos, with various machines of short and
medium range falling in between, their arsenal is
too varied to be covered by anyagreement which
fails to cover all types of missile technologies
available.
A welcome development in its own right, however,
the agreement is yet another step in the
direction of preventing fatal and strategic
accidents that may be caused by un-intentional,
untargeted acts by the two countries. It's indeed
a perfect follow up on 'Prohibition of Attack
Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities'
that was signed by the two South Asian neighbours
on December 31, 1988.
But the failings of the agreement on missile
testing are as glaring as its achievements. On
August 11, 2005, only five days after a
memorandum of understanding was signed as a
precursor to the agreement signed on Monday,
Pakistan test fired its first cruise missile
Babur. Now India's testing of Akash on the same
day the agreement was signed only serves to
highlight that any missile control regime in
South Asia needs to go further than it has
already gone.
The Akash test is certain to evoke a response
from Pakistan, first through diplomatic channels
informing on its fall-outs, followed by
scientific and military ones which can be
translated as the testing of a similar looking
machine. We have already observed India and
Pakistan conducting tit-for-tat missile tests not
once but on a number of occasions. This race to
outmatch each other in the destruction, range,
speed and accuracy of their missile systems will
unfortunately go on, agreement or no agreement.
The real need, therefore, is not to look for an
improved agreement on missile testing or a
different agreement covering different missiles,
for none of them can be comprehensive enough to
cover all the types and ranges of missiles the
countries have, but to have an altogether
different agreement: The one which ensures that
Pakistan and India carry out no more nuclear
tests at all. South Asia will become a safe
region only once we stop producing weapons of
mass destruction, along with the technology to
deliver them, and ensure that the ones we have
already acquired are not used. Till then, the two
sides will keep benefiting from one flaw or the
other in the early warning regimes to have an
upper hand.
______
[2] [Bangladesh]
The Daily Star
6 Oct 2005
Editorial
COUNTERING RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA
The motivation campaign must be kept above party politics
The government's plan to launch a motivation
campaign as a counterweight to the Islamic
militants' strategy of indoctrinating innocent
and unsuspecting youths-- and using them for
carrying out all sorts of subversive activities
-- is no doubt a move in the right direction.
The militants are exploiting the religious faith
and sentiment of the youths and also the
religious education that they are being imparted
in madrassahs. And the result is an ideological
onslaught on Islam itself by a fringe group of
fanatics whose politics is based on violence and
bloodshed, which deserves condemnation in
unequivocal terms.
Now, the question is what have we been doing all
these years to neutralise the fundamentalist
activities? Obviously, the matter never received
the kind of attention that it ought to have until
recently. And the religious extremists got the
time to organise themselves and began to execute
their evil plans.
True, the ideological challenge has to be met by
a similar counter offensive that can lay bare the
flaws of what the militants are preaching in the
name of Islam. But a word of caution would not be
out of place here. First, any motivation campaign
sponsored by the government itself might not be
able to generate enough enthusiasm among the
people because of its all too explicit political
undertone. So the campaign has to be neutral in
the political sense and party priorities must not
be allowed to influence the campaign. Second, the
government has to dispel the doubts that had
crept into the public mind about its role
vis-à-vis religious fanaticism, which was greatly
bolstered by the ruling alliance's stand on the
issue in the past. The government always tried to
establish that no religious extremists existed in
this country.
So the motivation campaign has to be designed and
conducted in a strictly objective manner.
Finally, if the government acknowledges that a
"kind of education" is working as the driving
force behind creation of zealots and fanatics, it
should go deeper into the matter and think in
terms of redesigning the education system that is
liable to breed religious extremism.
______
[3]
Communalism Combat
12th Anniversary
August-September 2005
Perspective
THE LURE OF FUNDAMENTALISM
What makes the human mind susceptible to the lure of fundamentalism?
- A psychoanalytical perspective
By Salman Akhtar
A man urinates on himself and in the process he
also breaks some expensive crockery as when the
fit occurred he was sitting at the dining table.
On another occasion the man who has epilepsy is
driving a car when suddenly he has a seizure and
as the car goes out of control many innocent
people are killed. Obviously in such
circumstances we have to take into consideration
the kind of epilepsy he has, the manifestations
of the seizure and which part of his body goes
out of control, how unconscious he becomes et
cetera and therefore how dangerous this situation
can be. We must of course examine the
consequences of the seizures on him and on things
and people around him but to my mind those
concerns pale in comparison to our wondering why
this man has epilepsy and what causes this
epilepsy.
As physicians, I am a doctor myself, we certainly
treat symptoms although that is not our
preference. We treat symptoms if symptoms become
very annoying but as good doctors we are most
interested in pathology: What is causing the
symptom? That is what we need to treat. The same
thing applies to prejudice; the same thing
applies to the topic at hand: fundamentalism.
Certainly we should define it, certainly we
should describe it, certainly we should think
about its consequences but I think it is more
important to worry about its causes. Why? What is
the attraction? What pull, what hypnotic
attraction does fundamentalism have that people
succumb to it? And if we know why then we can
devise remedial strategies that would go deeper
and are not related merely to phenomena.
What is fundamentalism? Please understand that
when we talk of fundamentalism we are not talking
of any particular religious group. We are not
talking of Jews, we are not talking of Muslims,
we are not talking of Hindus, we are not talking
of Christians. We are not talking of any
particular group because this is a human
phenomenon and fundamentally or perhaps I
shouldn't use the word fundamentally, basically
all human beings are more or less alike and all
of us have struggled with basically similar kinds
of problems. There are two problems that we all
struggle with. In fact, all human problems can be
boiled down to two fundamental problems. One,
that some things are impossible and two, that a
few others are prohibited. If you can swallow
this bitter pill, I think you are fine (you'll
never need to see Dr. Sudhir Kakar, me or any
other psychoanalyst!).
When we say fundamentalism, we mean a complex set
of five things that go together. First, there is
a literal interpretation of some religious tract
so what is written is no longer deciphered or
deconstructed. It is not to be thought about, it
is not to be given meaning, it is what it is.
There is literalness to the interpretation - one.
Second, there is an ethnocentric attitude. The
fundamentalist says my belief, my religion, my
book is the best one there is. So there is
literalness and there is ethnocentricity. With
that there is megalomania - We know and we have
the solution and we can solve the problem; we
know exactly what the problem is and we know
exactly what the solution is. Megalomania, and
then interestingly, a little spice, just as we
add a little hing when we are cooking aloo gobi,
a little spice of a sense of victimhood, a sense
that we are endangered. Real or imaginary, it is
a cultivated sense of delightful and delicious
masochism, a masochism that will come very handy,
as you will see. The imagined cultivated threat
is what creates cohesion of the group and would
then permit the enactment of violence towards
others as a justified protective device. But this
is merely a description. Why does fundamentalism
have such a powerful appeal? If Marx called
religion the opium of the people I believe
fundamentalism is intravenous morphine.
In my way of thinking, to be mentally healthy and
to be sane is not an easy thing. Sanity comes
with its own burdens. It is not easy to be
mentally healthy. As psychoanalysts,
psychotherapists, psychiatrists, clinical
psychologists, we write volumes about mental
illness and its struggles, about what is ill,
what is not ill, what is normative and what is
not normative, and what do normative and
pathological have to do with each other and so
on, but we pay inadequate attention to what is
healthy and the problems of mental health. When
Freud said that the purpose of psychoanalysis,
clinical psychoanalysis, was to reduce neurotic
suffering into day-to-day misery, what did he
mean by day-to-day misery? That is what I think
we need to understand. I think that sanity has
its own burdens; mental health comes with many
problems.
There are six problems that mental health poses
and it is these problems that fundamentalism
solves. This is the key issue here because mental
health comes with some baggage, some problems and
some burdens, and fundamentalism is the treatment
of those burdens. (You could say that
fundamentalism is the cure for mental health!)
The burdens of sanity are the following six
things.
1) Factual uncertainty. A mentally healthy person
has to accept the fact that things are uncertain.
We don't really know what is about to happen and
what can happen. Who knew that the tsunami would
happen and that so many people would get killed?
Who knew that 9/11 would happen? Some people
knew, of course, but in general who knew that
9/11 was going to happen? And we don't know, car
accidents happen, you're taking a flight to
Bombay and the flight is cancelled or delayed, we
don't know. We don't know what will happen, what
happens, what is happening right now. You have no
idea what is happening right now, not only in
Calcutta but even in Karol Bagh. Things happen. A
mentally healthy person has to understand that
things are uncertain.
2) Conceptual complexity. Matters are not simple,
all matters are complex. How to get from Place A
to Place B does not have only one path - it can
have many paths. What does a phenomenon mean?
Four people will leave this particular meeting
and may describe it in entirely different ways.
Our reaction to the vice chancellor's leaving can
be a complex reaction. Some people might respect
him for the fact that he spared some time to come
here and feel grateful for that. Some people
might be annoyed at him for leaving. Some people
might think that it was all a pretence, that he
comes, just says a few words and leaves. Some
people will say how humble and decent of him it
was to take time out of his busy schedule, to
walk over, give his blessings and shake people's
hands, and so on. The same phenomena can be
interpreted in many ways. Conceptual complexity -
things are not simple.
3) The third burden of sanity is moral ambiguity.
Freud said that there are two great human crimes:
incest and parricide. Here Freud was right about
incest, certainly. Why is incest such a horrible
thing to do? Because it destroys the family
structure and family is the unit of civilisation.
So incest is an attack against civilisation. But
parricide I'm not too sure about because the
implication is that killing the mother is alright
or killing a child is alright, infanticide is
alright and matricide is alright. That is
undeniably ridiculous but that was Freud's own
personal phallocentric bias. The correct word he
should have used is homicide. Two fundamental
human crimes are homicide and incest. Between
these instances most things are actually
ambiguous.
Take the example of stealing. Is stealing bad? Of
course stealing is bad, but let us suppose that
your daughter is terribly, terribly ill, near
death, and you have no money. Should you steal
money, or medicines from a doctor's cabinet? Of
course! In fact, if you stand on ceremony, moral
rights and righteousness at such a time that
would be silly and that would be wrong. Murder?
Certainly murder is wrong but sometimes murder in
self-defence is the correct thing to do. And
that's what Krishna says to Arjuna in the
Mahabharata, "Jo avashyak hai wahi uchit hai
(What is necessary is therefore appropriate)". So
there is ambiguity about morality. What seems
right in one place becomes wrong in another
place. What seems right today becomes wrong
tomorrow, what was right in one era is not right
in another era, what is right in a certain
context is wrong in another context - moral
ambiguity.
4) Cultural impurity. A mentally healthy person
realises that there is no such thing as purity.
Purity, the search for purity, is the enemy of
truth and the enemy and destroyer of reality.
Reality is always hybrid whether we acknowledge
it or not. I am an Indian who is an American
psychoanalyst because I've been trained in
certain modes of analysis that are prevalent in
America. There is a psychoanalyst called
Christopher Bollas whom you should read, he's
very good. He is an American but he is a British
analyst because he is trained in the British
tradition. Bhimsen Joshi is a South Indian, I
think from Bangalore originally, but trained in
the Patiala tradition. The sitar is born out of
the hybrid mixtures of Afghani drone instruments
and the southern rudra veena. All things are
mixed up, all things are mixed up. I am speaking
in a language that is predominantly British in
origin, predominantly, not exclusively, but
British in origin, with profound Latin, Greek,
German ancestry. I am speaking it in an Indian
accent (all I haven't done is nod my head but I
can do that too - "What yaar?"!) and here I am,
having travelled on a German airline, Lufthansa.
Life is mixed up. Life is not pure. I am wearing
a watch made in Switzerland, a suit made in Italy
and a tie most likely made in the USA or since
most things in the USA are made in KoreaŠ Life is
mixed up; life is not pure. The search for purity
is an attack on reality - It is the refusal to
accept the complex tapestry that human cultural
organisations are.
5) Personal responsibility. We are all
responsible for our actions, however accidental
they may appear. If I knock over the glassware or
crockery at someone's dining table, break some
expensive pieces of their dinner set, I must take
responsibility for my actions. Obviously on the
surface it is a mistake but it is very likely
born out of my envy of him and his wine glass or
something, some hostile destructive intent is
hidden in that somewhere. I can't just brush it
off by saying it was a mistake. It was a mistake
but I committed that mistake and I have to be
responsible for that mistake. The epileptic
cannot get away without an apology for breaking
somebody's fine china. The epileptic needs to
apologise. Even if it was out of his control, it
was his action; it was his brain that messed the
crockery up. As Freud says, the ego is first and
foremost a bodily ego. Personal responsibility
involves first and foremost an ownership of the
body - its demands, its sensations, its agenda
and its use and then the conscious and
unconscious fantasies and drives emanating from
the body and affecting the body in a dialectical
feedback loop. One has to be responsible for
one's body, one has to be responsible for one's
sexual life, real or imagined, and one has to be
responsible for one's aggression, one's hostile
feelings - expressed, suppressed, conscious and
unconscious. One is responsible for one's life.
6) Total mortality. A mentally healthy person has
to know that he will be dead - some people in the
audience will not agree with this but that's
alright - complete and total mortality. We are
all going to be dead. Nobody from this room is
going to get out alive, nor is anyone from this
world, unless there is a five million-year-old
man hiding in Australia (we only think of
Australia because it is kind of far away!),
laughing at me. The fact is: all human beings
die. The day we are born, on the day I was born a
bullet was shot and that bullet is travelling in
the air and is coming towards my forehead and I
am merrily walking towards it and so are you, and
so also are you. All human beings die but it is
not enough to merely accept that.
Of course, those of you who are young, in your
twenties and thirties, you don't have to worry
about such things yet - Consider yourselves
immortal. You will find out that that's not true
anyway. But when you are 50 or 60 the clock
begins to tick and you can hear the rumble of the
footsteps of death, at 3 a.m., when the wind
blows, you can hear it. But it is not enough to
accept that one will be dead, that is not enough.
What is more important is to accept that one will
be really dead and finally dead and totally dead.
There ain't no coming back, either as a rat or a
mouse or as a beautiful woman. (I would like to
come back as a beautiful, gorgeous South Indian
woman lawyer - that's what I would like to be!).
He says I'll take you but that is not going to
happen, it is not going to happen. I have to live
with this fantasy; it is not going to take place.
Once I die, I'm dead, and so are you.
And the idea of heaven and hell? When I was 12 my
father asked me, do you believe in heaven and
hell? When you're 12 years old you're awkward and
you don't really know what the hell is going on
anyway so I mumbled something incomprehensible
but he was in one of those moods, he said no, no,
no, tell me, do you believe in heaven and hell,
and I again tried to wiggle out of it by mumbling
something silly so he gave me a stern lecture. He
said look, these guys who made up the idea of
heaven and hell, these are mostly people of the
desert - Jesus, Moses, Muhammad. (They are all
born within 300 miles of each other, and that's
also weird actually, I mean, suppose somebody
said all psychoanalysts are born in Bangalore
wouldn't you be puzzled - Why?!) He said look,
these were people from a hot climate; they were
social reformers who were trying to do some good
for people. And people don't move unless you give
'em something and they had nothing to give 'em so
they gave them a few fantasies. And because it
was a hot climate they made heaven cold and hell
hot. If Jesus, Moses or Muhammad had been born in
Alaska, trust me, ladies and gentlemen, hell
would be cold and heaven would be hot.
Think also of another strange thing - why is it
that heaven is always up, nobody says you will go
(down) to heaven. Why? Think about it. Why is
heaven up? Because when we're babies we spend at
least one year lying supine, lying unable to
stand up, and even when we stand up we stand up
weakly after a little while and then our mother
picks us up onto her lap or our father picks us
up onto his lap. And when they carry us we are
up, when they put us down we are down. That
(down) is hell; this (up) is heaven. These ideas
are based on psychological experiences.
But the idea of heaven and hell is a fantasy for
god's sake, just as reincarnation is a fantasy -
they are not really going to happen. When you die
you are dead. Your children will remember you
fondly and your grandchildren will remember you
vaguely, and your great grandchildren will forget
about you. If you write a few books and give a
few lectures perhaps a few more people will
remember you. But sooner or later people will
forget about you. Who reads Sophocles? (I heard
someone in the back say who the hell is Sophocles
- That's exactly the point; that is exactly the
point!) All of us start out and live with
fantasies and may die as active memories. But we
are dead, we are not coming back, please don't
harbour such illusions - there is total mortality.
1) Factual uncertainty 2) Conceptual complexity
3) Moral ambiguity 4) Cultural impurity 5)
Personal responsibility 6) Total mortality. This
package of factual uncertainty, conceptual
complexity, moral ambiguity, cultural impurity,
personal responsibility and total mortality, this
is the suitcase, the heavy suitcase of sanity. It
is a burden that a mentally healthy person has to
carry. Fundamentalism relieves this burden.
We carry this burden because compensating factors
are offered to us. We are offered safety, we are
offered the pride of having an identity, we are
offered the pride of having continuity in time, a
sense of belonging, we are offered the factor of
sexuality, we are offered the factor of efficacy,
we are offered the honour of generativity - these
compensating packages help us to bear the burden
of sanity. When there is a threat, a real or
manufactured threat to the compensating factors
of safety, identity, continuity, individuality,
efficacy and generativity, when this package is
really threatened or a manufactured threat is
made to this package then the reality becomes
very, very difficult to bear and a person
regresses into a simplistic world.
Now instead of uncertainty he is offered
certainty. The fundamentalist leader says we know
exactly what's going to happen and what should
happen. We know it, we can predict it, we can
control it. Instead of complexity he is offered
simplicity. He is told this thing means just this
thing. Instead of moral ambiguity - things can be
good, things can be bad, maybe this behaviour is
sometimes good, maybe sometimes this behaviour is
bad, he is offered moral clarity - this is right,
this is wrong. You eat pork you go to hell,
remember, you don't eat pork, you won't go to
hell. What about the poor pig?
When my son was five years old he asked me about
the story of Abraham and Isaac. I said, well, god
was testing Abraham's love for him so he said if
you really love me you will sacrifice your son,
this is your parichay, your initiation. (Even god
carries out this sort of test, you know, he's not
certain about himself. He's like a lover saying
please tell me you love me, please, tell me you
love me, if you love me you'll make an omelette
for me today. God is like that - an uncertain
lover. He says please praise me, the Book begins
by saying 'Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim' - In the
name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful - I
begin in his name, with praise to god. Why? He is
the one writing the book and yet he's praising
himself, it doesn't make sense to me!) Anyway, in
answer to my son's question about Abraham and
Isaac I said, well, look, god was testing Abraham
and said if you really love me you will kill your
son. You sacrifice your son and I'll know that
you really love me. And Abraham said, what the
hell, you know, I have to prove to god that I
love him. So he put a blindfold on his eyes and
took a sword and chopped off his son's head but
when he opened his eyes the son, Isaac was
standing right there and a lamb had been cut and
lay dead in his place - That's what the origin of
the festival Id-ul-Zuha or Bakri Id is. But I'm
proud of what my five-year-old son said in
response. He thought for a second and said, but
that was not fair of god, what did the poor lamb
do? What did the poor lamb do?
Instead of uncertainty fundamentalism offers
certainty, instead of complexity fundamentalism
offers simplicity, instead of moral ambiguity
fundamentalism offers moral clarity, they tell
you what is exactly good and exactly what is bad.
Instead of cultural impurity and hybridisation
fundamentalism offers purity; hybridisation is
the nature of life, not just life today, not just
immigrations - patterns of life today, life has
always been hybrid. When you make a samosa the
outer crust comes from wheat which is grown in a
field somewhere, the potatoes come from under the
ground, the spice comes from another place, the
ghee in which you fry it comes from somewhere
else and a stainless steel pan is needed. A
samosa a pure thing? Nobody can say that we sell
pure samosas. (Now you're probably thinking, how
come this guy is talking about omelettes and
samosas? - he must be hungry!)
Instead of complexity - simplicity, instead of
uncertainty - certainty, instead of moral
ambiguity - moral clarity, instead of impurity -
purity. We are pure people. We are pure Hindus,
we are pure Muslims, we are pure Jews, we are
pure Christians. Keep others away from us; don't
let others mess this up. Don't let the mlecchas
come near us, we are pure Brahmins.
Then, instead of personal responsibility, of
conduct, of life, where a person says I am
responsible for what I am saying, doing, how I am
behaving; my sex life, my hostile life, my greedy
life, my financial life is my business and my
responsibility. I take responsibility for what I
am doing and what I have done to others and to
myself. The fundamentalist says don't worry, we
will take over responsibility, we will show you
how to kill Muslims, don't worry. The
fundamentalist takes over responsibility and says
you are not responsible for your conduct, we are
responsible. This relieves one of personal
responsibility.
And finally of total mortality, which is the
deepest dread that all human beings live with.
Young people deny and need to deny, it's good for
them to deny that they are mortal. Fundamentalism
promises rewards of immortality - you will go to
heaven, you will get 72 virgins - I don't know
what one would do with 72 virgins (I mean, 72
virgins for god's sake, I would rather take one
or two non-virgins, frankly!). You will be born
again, you'll come back, and if you behave well
you'll come back as this or that kind of person.
(Or as a German Shepherd whom Dr. Kakar will keep
in his house and treat well and give good dog
food too!) It's not going to happen; it is not
going to happen.
Fundamentalism, in a literal, narrow,
ethnocentric and megalomanic manner takes a
religious tract and interprets this in an
extremely narrow, megalomanic and grandiose way,
seeking to offer a world of simplicity, lack of
personal responsibility, immortality, purity and
simplicity. These are notions of children. This
is how two-year-old and three-year-old children
think. This is not how a grown-up, adult person
thinks. Fundamentalism turns us from adults into
children, turns us from individual units of
flesh, psyche and spirit, thinking, pulsating,
changing, constantly struggling with choices,
decisions, tragedies, losses, mishaps, triumphs
and victories - constantly in conflict,
constantly in the inner Kurukshetra.
Fundamentalism removes us from such war, from
such complexity, from personal responsibility,
from impurity, from handling looking death right
up front in the eyes and then adopting to live in
a more responsible manner.
Fundamentalism lulls us into a sleep of
childhood, a sleep of simplicity but it is worse
than childhood because a child is always
questioning and attempting to come out of its
innocence bit by bit. Fundamentalism is worse
than childhood because it takes us backward, not
forward. And with fundamentalism comes its twin
sister, prejudice, and its evil brother called
violence.
So what is the solution? If this is the
pathology, what is the solution? The solutions
reside in addressing the pathology. We have to
make it possible for people to bear the burden of
sanity. And how can we make people bear the
burdens of sanity? - By offering them
compensating factors, such as a feeling of
safety. And if the feeling of un-safety is real,
then we have to restore a feeling of safety. If
the feeling of un-safety is manufactured for
political purposes, then we have to teach, ignore
and fight against it and inform people that this
is a manufactured dread not a real dread.
There are people in New Jersey, people in Chicago
and New York, extreme right wing Indians who
believe that not only are the conversions to
Christianity in India a truly horrible thing but
they are also proceeding at such an alarming rate
that soon Hinduism will disappear from India.
That is a manufactured dread, that is entirely a
manufactured dread and it has to be logically
questioned by education and upfront dialogue in
social forums. But we have to provide people with
a feeling of safety, we have to provide a feeling
of efficacy - people should have jobs, people
should be able to do what they want to do and see
the results of what they do.
Efficacy, safety, identity - everybody wants to
know who they are and are proud of who they are.
Suppose your name is Pradeep Saxena and I ask you
who's Pradeep, you say me; I ask you who's
Saxena, that's your father. Identity has to do
with our selves and our sense of belonging to
some place. We have to make sure that people are
able to maintain their identities and their
identities are not threatened. If they have
safety, if they have efficacy, if they have
identity, if they have opportunities for sexual
pleasure and if they have opportunities for
generativity or passing on, cultivating,
elaborating their myths, language, symbols and
rituals and imparting them to the next Orphic
generation in a safe, tender, protective and
loving way.
If we can restore this package - safety,
efficacy, identity, sexuality and generativity -
when it is really threatened, or when there is a
manufactured threat to it, if we can prove in
dialogue, by political discourse, that there is
no such threat, then this package can come alive.
And when compensating factors are in place then
human beings are able to bear the burdens of
sanity. And although burdened with sanity they
then live life in more peaceful ways - peace
outside and peace inside. And when they have
peace inside, this is a mixture, a product of
post-burdened sense, post-mourning sense,
post-realisation that life is complex, difficult,
limited and hybrid. When they have an inner
peace, and when they know that even this peace
that we have is fragile, it comes and goes, then
that peace anchors them more solidly in reality
and takes them away from dreams, poisonous dreams
and dangerous dreams especially.
They grow up, they can tolerate other people and
they can tolerate differences. They can even
learn from differences and enjoy differences.
They know life is limited, they know life is
complex; they know that there is no moral
certainty. And it is when they live with this
attitude that they do not require hate because
they don't hate themselves and they do not need
to hate others. And when they don't need to hate
others, they do not need to idealise themselves.
And when they do not need to idealise themselves
and take this intravenous morphine that
fundamentalism offers them then they walk out
wide awake, open-armed and with a good and clean
heart.
Thank you.
(Inaugural lecture at the Centre for
Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Delhi. Dr.
Salman Akhtar is an eminent psychoanalyst, an
award-winning professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson
Medical College, a lecturer at Harvard Medical
School and a well known author and poet, and
scholar in residence at the Interact Theatre
Company, Philadelphia, USA).
_____
[4]
The Hindu
Oct 01, 2005
Editorial
MORAL POLICING IN TAMIL NADU
A rash of recent events has exposed an ugly vein
of intolerance, chauvinism, and sexism running
through a section of Tamil Nadu's police, media,
and polity. Pictures published in two newspapers
of a private party in a five star hotel become
the basis for the Chennai city police ordering
the suspension of its licence, arresting two of
its managerial employees, and even threatening to
take those surreptitiously photographed into
custody. A popular actress who speaks her mind
about matters of sexuality is coerced into
apologising, thanks to an orgy of politically
backed protests, which include effigy burning and
shrill cries for her arrest and banishment from
the State for allegedly "denigrating Tamil
women." In an engineering college in Chennai's
suburbs, a student is pulled up for wearing a
dark shirt in violation of the institution's
`code' that requires male students to wear only
light-coloured shirts! The incident happens a
couple of months after the Vice-Chancellor of
Anna University `bans' the wearing of jeans,
T-shirts, and sleeveless tops in 231 engineering
colleges across the State to make students dress
"in a way that befits our culture." Something of
a trend can be discerned in these disparate
happenings. The culture cops of Tamil Nadu are
menacing young people's rights, including freedom
of expression; and also targeting girls and women
in a sanctimonious, sexist way, as several
women's organisations have pointed out.
Tamil Nadu has a tradition of being socially and
politically progressive, of having a culture of
tolerance and respect for diversity. It is a sad
commentary that an actress' personal opinion on
pre-marital sex has been viciously
misrepresented, and blown out of all proportion,
as an attack on Tamil womanhood by political
parties keen on playing the chauvinism card.
Likewise, it was a gross over-reaction for the
Chennai police to order the temporary revocation
of the hotel's licence because a couple of Tamil
newspapers published photographs of a fashion
show held within its premises. The photographs of
young men and women drinking and couples kissing
were published to reveal the `immoral' goings-on
at the party. The odd thing was that no one in
these pictures was "scantily clad" (as alleged by
the police) but the affair exposed the hypocrisy
of a tabloid and tabloidising section of the
press that regularly publishes `scantily clad'
and suggestive pin-ups of film actresses as a
circulation booster. As for dress codes,
university and college campuses in developed
countries have "student rights officers," and it
is well recognised that it is a serious
transgression for college teachers and
administrators so much as to comment on such
personal matters as dress, demeanour, lifestyle,
ethnicity, and the social background of students.
Morality is a contentious and complex subject.
Laws and rules, such as the prohibition on
serving alcoholic drinks to minors, must of
course be strictly enforced. But morality,
ethics, and core values can be inculcated only
through education, which must begin at home, and
friendly persuasion - not by backward-looking
diktats and sanctions from an obscurantist,
intolerant, and sexist moral police.
______
[5]
The Hindu
October 5, 2005
BENEGAL SLAMS NDA FOR 'SAFFRONISING' BOLLYWOOD
Aligarh, Oct 5. (PTI):Bollywood reflected
"saffron" agenda during the NDA regime
popularising a misconception by tying Pakistan
and Muslims on a single string, noted film-maker
Shyam Benegal said here on Tuesday.
"Saffronisation of the polity during late 1990s
was sharply reflected in popular Hindi cinema
made in that period. Some of the Hindi films made
during that period displayed an intransigence
where Pakistan and Muslims are made synonymous,"
he said delivering the annual Sir Syed Memorial
Lecture at Aligarh Muslim University.
Speaking on 'Secularism and Indian Popular
Cinema,' he said, "nationalism and by implication
secularism was considerably narrowed down and
made an exclusive preserve of the Hindu
Community."
"You can see this in J P Dutta's hit film
'Border.' Excessive jingoism is even more crudely
depicted in another film Ghadar," Benegal, whose
latest film on Subhash Chandra Bose created a
controversy, said.
However, he said, the same period also gave rise
to successful films like Lagan, Fiza and Bombay
which equated an "inclusive secular unity with
nationalism".
The film-maker, who was among the pioneers of new
wave cinema in the country, said the horrific
riots in Gujarat "aided by the non-action of the
state" had threatened to dangerously divide the
polity and entire edifice of the society.
Urging film makers to confront the challenges
faced by Indian society, Benegal said, "imaging
of the minorities in popular cinema constitutes
an excellent barometer of the attitudes in the
cinema. It can easily be considered the coal
miners canary of Indian society."
______
[6]
Deccan Herald
September 30, 2005
EARTH IS STILL FLAT FOR 6 PC OF INDIANS
From Kalyan Ray DHNS,New Delhi:
The India Science Report reveals the ignorance of
a number of people who are either clueless of the
contributions of science or reluctant to
acknowledge them.
The progresses made in science and education
notwithstanding, almost six per cent Indians
still believe that the earth is flat and more
than 10 per cent are under the impression that
human beings were created by Brahma.
Moreover, a large section thinks that seeing an
eclipse adversely affects the unborn child (18.8
per cent), earthquakes are caused by the shaking
of the mythological snake (18 per cent) and
rainbows are actually the bow of the God Indra or
Rama (8.2 per cent).
These are some of the findings of the first ever
India Science Report, an initiative undertaken by
the Indian National Science Academy and the
National Centre for Applied Economic Research
(NCAER), which was released by Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh on Wednesday.
In one of the largest exercises to find out the
national progress made in science, its impact on
the society and students' perception about
science, the NCAER survey was based on 30,255
responses picked up from 3.46 lakh people in 152
districts in the mainland. They were further
classified into various subgroups for the survey.
On people's perception about science, the report
shows that close to a one-third of the surveyed
population did not acknowledge contribution of
science and technology in improving national
security and 21 per cent don't think weather
forecasting has improved because of advancement
in science.
Among the educated, there is an overwhelming
perception that "scientific work is harmful",
"scientists are considered peculiar" and they are
not religious.
The survey has identified the reasons for women
being ill-treated in the society as 28.6 per cent
of the respondents have expressed ignorance on
the fact that the gender of a baby is determined
by the father.
A comparison with the USA Science and Engineering
indicators, 2002 shows that 65 per cent Americans
know that the mother has no control in
determining the sex of the child.
As many as 60 per cent illiterates said one
should not sleep under a dense tree and 75 per
cent said plants are living organisms - a sign
that traditional medicine is alive and kicking,
said NCAER economist Dr R K Shukla who led the
effort. The India Science Report points out that
58.7 per cent have not visited a zoo and 64 per
cent have not seen a museum.
More than 60 per cent have not seen an aquarium,
planetarium, and science parks.
SUPERSTITIONS
Seeing an eclipse adversely affects unborn child (18.8 pc)
Earthquakes are caused by the shaking of the mythological snake (18 pc)
Rainbows are the bow of the God Indra or Rama
(8.2 pc)
_____
[7]
The Hindu
Oct 04, 2005
Superstition eclipses science
Dennis Marcus Mathew
HYDERABAD: As the beautiful spectacle unfolded
across the skies with the moon partially hiding
the sun, tradition and superstition pushed
science aside and threw a blanket of abstinence
and prayers over the twin cities on Monday.
There were many who did not budge from their
seats and remained indoors for the entire period,
which lasted around two hours, refusing even to
relieve themselves. In offices, many left by 3
p.m. so that they could be inside the "safe
confines" of their homes before the "dragon
swallowed the sun". Many others observed fast.
No marks!
Housewives were busy before the eclipse placing
`darbas' and tulsi leaves on food items and
throwing away cooked food to prepare fresh food
later. Pregnant women too were tense, sitting
tight for fear of hurting their babies. Some
grandmas prevented them from scratching too for
the fear that the newborn would have scars!
These were the deeds of those who believed that a
solar eclipse was not the best of times of to do
anything. The list actually is much longer. "A
cyber city in the 21st century, and all these?"
was the question the progressive ones raised.
Panicky NRIs
"I got several calls from non-resident Indians,
asking about precautions when the eclipse would
occur in their country. I told them there was no
need of such fears," says the director of the
B.M. Birla Science Centre, B.G. Sidharth.
"These beliefs have no scientific backing. In
fact, many reasons are actually contradictory,"
says Y. Ravi Kiron of the Association of Amateur
Astronomers.
Science-speak
"For instance, they say you should not go out to
avoid the radiation. Truth is that during an
eclipse, the sun's rays are blocked and radiation
is minimised! As for food getting spoiled when it
becomes dark during the eclipse, what about the
daily sunset? And on normal days too, it is
harmful to look directly at the sun," Mr. Kiron
argues.
"Same logic applies for worries of pregnant women
getting affected due to ultraviolet rays. The UV
rays are blocked during an eclipse. Avoiding
scratching to prevent the baby from getting scars
is also unscientific.
They say the fall in temperature is dangerous.
What about winter?" he asks. Still, science and
its advocates had few listeners in the cyber city
on Monday.
______
[8]
The Hindu
September 27, 2005
Book Review
HINDU NATIONALIST POLITICS
Jyotirmaya Sharma
Describes the matrix of the Sangh Parivar and
traces the rise of the right wing in Indian
politics
THE SANGH PARIVAR - A Reader: Christophe
Jaffrelot - Editor; Oxford University Press, YMCA
Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New
Delhi-110001. Rs. 675.
Lists can be tedious, but they also serve a
useful purpose. At the outset, therefore, it
would be useful to list the organisations that,
in popular perception, constitute the entity
known as the Sangh Parivar. These are: Akhil
Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, Akhil Bharatiya
Sahitya Parishad, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Bharat Vikas
Parishad, Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojna,
Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Bharatiya Sikshan Mandal,
Deen Dayal Shodh Sansthan, Hindu Jagaran Manch,
Pragya Pravah, Rashtra Sevika Samiti, Sanskrit
Bharti, Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, Sewa Bharti,
Samajik Samrasta Manch, Vigyan Bharti, Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, Vidya Bharti and the Vanwasi
Kalyan Ashram.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) calls these
affiliates `inspired organisations', implying
that they derive their inspiration from the
overall philosophy of the Sangh. Conspicuously
absent from this list are the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) and the Bajrang Dal.
The deletion of the BJP from this list has more
to do with the constant theme perpetuated by the
RSS that its agenda is non-political. In fact,
the RSS Constitution, Article 4(c), clearly
states that the "Sangh is aloof from politics and
is devoted to social and cultural fields only."
Periodic turbulence
Christophe Jaffrelot's useful introduction to
this volume rightly likens the idea of the Sangh
Parivar as a `purely descriptive proposition'.
Jaffrelot's argument, on the other hand, that the
RSS was largely inspired by Savarkar's philosophy
is a proposition that needs infinite refinement
and additional nuances.
The story of periodic turbulence within the
so-called `parivar', largely due to the BJP's
role within national democratic politics is also
sufficiently well etched, though the similarity
between the Sangh's discomfort with the
Savarkar's brand of Hindu Mahasabha politics and
the current political role of the BJP requires
greater elaboration.
In effect, apart from the introduction, this
volume is a collection of chapters or articles
already published in well-known books. Many of
these are classics, but require substantial
updating.
The exclusion of excellent pieces from an issue
of Ethnic and Racial Studies 23(3) is also
surprising, since they appear as part of a
chapter in yet another edited volume brought out
by the Jaffrelot et al production line on
Hindutva (reviewed in The Hindu on July 19, 2005)
and published by the same publisher.
Paradigm shift
Overall, the volume suffers from the endemic
academic and publishing peril of recycling. What
could have potentially been a useful `reader' is
reduced to a collection of well-known tracts,
without covering the entire spectrum of the Sangh
Parivar.
Only a handful of the `inspired organisations'
mentioned above find any place in the volume.
Extracts from the original texts of the Sangh
ideologues would have been a useful addition as
well.
Reviewers, however, can endlessly quibble about
what a book under consideration ought to have
been. But reviewers are also readers. For them,
the crucial question is one of the bind in which
the Sangh and its affiliates find themselves
after the BJP's six-year stint in running a
coalition government at the Centre.
The paradigm shift, therefore, lies in the
inability of the Sangh to come to terms with
democratic politics and its demands. Even the
so-called cultural and social agenda of the Sangh
requires democratic consecration. Sangh studies
will now require a major reorientation towards
taking into account this significant change.
In other words, the weight and vehemence of
ideology has been tempered and compromised by the
imperatives of public endorsement and scrutiny.
This is not to suggest that the days of
fundamentalist politics are over.
What it simply means is that the current
configuration of forces within the polity and
society are unprepared for jehadi Hindutva and
its diabolical agenda. Democratic politics,
unguided by secular institutions that command
emotional and intellectual allegiance, can also
endorse again the Hindu Right in the future.
Limitations
There was a time when countries of Western Europe
likened the Orient as despotic, largely as a ploy
to argue for greater freedom within their own
societies.
Many Western commentators today liken the Sangh
Parivar and its politics to Fascism in order to
make sense of the growth of extremist politics
and intolerance within their societies. This
simplistic transference has done great injustice
to our knowledge of Hindu nationalist politics.
Neither does reducing Hindutva or the Sangh
Parivar to preoccupations of postmodernism serve
any purpose. Feminist attempts to study the Sangh
are circumscribed by the very limitation that
every ideology offers: unable to see the wood for
the trees. There is yet another trend that
reduces the Sangh Parivar to be a factor of
deviant Hinduism.
The book partakes of all these limitations and at
the same time offers intermittently small slivers
of light out of these. Otherwise, it is an
irregular collection, bound together by no
thematic unity, other than the inevitability of
having been published.
How else can one explain a Sangh Parivar Reader
published in 2005 without a single piece on
Gujarat after Godhra and the riots of 2002?
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
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