Vikram’s Talking Points

Troy, Michigan–November 25, 2007–Navya Shastra, the international
Hindu reform organization, vociferously condemns the Malaysian
government for its maltreatment of the Hindu and the greater Indian
population in the country. The government has been wantonly
destroying Hindu temples with active congregations for over a year
under the flimsiest of pretexts, including claims that 100 year-old
structures occupy "illegal" property. To close observers, Malaysia
appears to be sliding towards a theocratic abyss, and its vibrant
secular traditions– in which the 150 year old Indian community has
played a significant role building–are under imminent threat.

On November 25, the government forcibly harassed and tear-gassed Indian protesters who gathered at the behest of the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), to protest the religious and economic
marginalization of the once-vibrant community. Indians in Malaysia comprise 7 percent of the country’s population. Despite the government’s disruptive efforts, at least 10,000 people managed to attend the rally and voice their protest. One Navya Shastra member who participated in the rally reported anonymously: "We have changed the political equations at home and inspired minorities everywhere. We walked the talk. We smelled the tear gas and it swelled our chests. Like Rosa Parks we said, ‘No!’"

Navya Shastra stands in complete solidarity with the Hindu community and all other minorities in Malaysia who are the victims of government persecution. "We call on multinational corporations who
are doing business in Malaysia to reassess their positions in light of the human rights violations and religious discrimination taking place in the country," said Dr. Jaishree Gopal, Navya Shastra Chairman. "In addition, we call upon responsible political leaders in Malaysia and the United Nations to take collective action to insure that secularism prevails in the nation," she added.

In his Hindu column, diplomat-grandee and belles-lettrist Shashi Tharoor agrees that Malyalees are the most cosmopolitan of all Indians:

"Already in the 1920s Malayalis were exposed to Impressionism, Dadaism, Post-impressionism, Cubism etc. through the writings of Kesari Balakrishna Pillai," says Mr. Sreetilak. "A Malayali who reads at least one Malayalam newspaper and one good magazine is likely to have at least heard the names of Garcia Marquez, Saramago, Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera, all of whom are available in Malayalam translation." Most non-Malayali professors of literature, he avers, are ignorant beyond their Shakespeare and Eliot. Debatable, perhaps, but hard to disagree that Kerala is undoubtedly more intellectually cosmopolitan than any other Indian State taken as a whole …

While elite east coast universities still strive for a student body somewhat representative of the American population, the highly-regarded University of California system does no such thing, and, thanks to state proposition 209, must admit students based on quantifiable achievements.

Whites, who were expected to be the beneficiaries of the proposition, don’t seem to have benefitted at all. Instead, the California system has witnessed an Asian influx.

The axing of affirmative action | Unintended consequences | Economist.com

On the Orissa temple entry controversy.

The number of Britons and Americans employed in India’s IT industry. [Via Harpers]

Today, World AIDS Day, always brings back memories of Larry Kramer and the era of heroic AIDS activism. It was 1981; gay men were dying of a mysterious disorder that compromised the immune system, leaving the victim vulnerable to a host of baffling diseases.

Larry Kramer - playwright, activist, provocateur - wrote a famous article in the gay press entitled "1,112 and counting," urging the community to act. While the government took some early initiatives, partly at the behest of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an organization Kramer helped to found, the response was predictably inert and bureaucratic.

As friend upon friend passed into Hades, Kramer believed that a more combative activism was the only solution, so he founded the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP). This was a full frontal, fuck all movement; and it had to be. I still recall the time ACT UP activists busted onto the set of CBS Evening News while it was on air; and can still hear the chant - "Act up, act now, fight AIDS!" - they declaimed with desperate commitment at the Halloween parades in Greenwich Village. Their resolve came amid a time of manifest despair, when a whole community lay exhausted from the relentless round of funerals; it galvanized them to fight against extinction.

Kramer contracted HIV himself, though he lived on as his friends continued to die. Recently, there was a rumor that he had died after a liver transplant (necessitated by chronic Hepatitis B infection), but he emerged from that as well, and continues, at 72, to taunt the government and the gay community for its indifference to the suffering and the dying.

While his play, The Normal Heart, may be his most famous work, I would recommend Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist, which is a compilation of his writings in various newspapers, including the New York Times. In Reports, we have a vituperative voice battling a host of public figures -Senators, Mayor Ed Koch, prominent scientists and fellow gays - for indifference to a horror he likened to the Holocaust. In some ways his rage reminds one of King Lear, but, unlike Lear, Kramer is sane, too sane for most.

His heroism is not easily emulated, and because of that, frequently condemned, but history, I am persuaded, will see him as a pivotal figure in America’s continual struggle against the many varieties of human injustice.

Cartier, erstwhile jeweller to the maharajahs, hosted a polo match in Jaipur, India to raise awareness about the plight of the Asian elephant. All in all a commendable effort, I would say, but PETA India had loads of trouble with it:

Local branch of animal activist lobby group PETA protested at the site claiming that the event was perpetrating cruelty to animals, suggesting that the jeweler should stick to “selling watches.” It’s a contentious situation and certainly harks back to the colonial, English Raj days.

Despite the colonial overtones, polo has a long history on the subcontinent. It is likely that its modern form originated in India. According to wiki:

Polo came to the west via Manipur, a northeastern state in India. The Guiness Book of Records in its 1991 edition (page 288) traces the origins of the game to Manipur, circa 3100 BC, where it was known as Sagol Kanjei.

Niall Ferguson, in his apology for imperialism known as Empire, pointed to India’s cricket obsession as a prime example of the supposed benificience of British rule; but even in the realm of sports, where India never seems to be Shining, the British, particularly the leisure class, certainly benefitted as well.

Mahmood Farooqui has written one of the best essays on India I have recently read:

Let me explain my locus. I am an atheist, I follow none of the Islamic taboos, but I live in a locality in the capital that can only be called a ghetto. I lived here for five years, when I was a student, when I was very self-consciously opposed to the Indian Muslim stereotype. I had grown up on Chandamama and Nandan, Holi was my favourite festival, Karna my hero, Shiva the great God, Hinduism a highly tolerant religion and I had dreams of attaining martyrdom fighting Pakistan. I was studying history and detested medieval Muslim rulers; I would expatiate on the reasons why Islam had trouble with modernity; I admired Naipaul and Rushdie; supported Mushirul Hasan during the Satanic Verses controversy — a novel I deeply admire in spite of its undoubted blasphemies — and I detested many things about Indian Muslims, except, predictably, Urdu literature and Sufism. I was, in short, a model Hinduised-Indian-Muslim, who always put India before Islam. I was desperate to leave Okhla.

But I am now back in Okhla, arguing simultaneously for the legitimacy of difference and the fact of a universal human. Between the self-hatred of my youth and the current uneasiness with my earlier positions lies, possibly, a series of adult defeats — perhaps they have dulled my passions and my hatreds. However now I have, you could say, chosen to live here, after a series of eliminations — Defence Colony, Greater Kailash-I, Jangpura — on grounds of my being Muslim and/or not having a company lease. But, crucially, I came here because I was sickened by South Delhi and because I was incipiently aware of Okhla’s hospitableness. [Kalifa]

Wasn’t Mahmood exactly the type of Muslim the Hindu Nationalists wanted - respectful of the Hindu traditions, one who put “India before Islam”? His rejection by elite South Delhi is emblematic of the problems secular India continually faces.

To my mind there is a further angle: Indian pluralism is more the thali than the melting pot. In posh Mumbai complexes mainly occupied by vegetarian Gujuratis, meat-eating Marwaris have a difficult time getting in. Dalits have complained about exclusion in Delhi as well. It’s sort of like this: Go sacrifice your goat to the goddess over there; I will not object to it. But don’t you dare come into my house, or I will be forced to purify it with cow-dung. [Via Sepia Mutiny]

The mass conversion rally in Nagpur, where a million Dalits were to change their religion today, turned out to be a damp squib with only 600 of them in attendance.

The VIPs, too, decided to give the event a miss. The only people who had turned up in strength were reporters from across the world.

Titled World Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Religion Day, the rally was planned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism.

V.P. Singh and Mayavati were on the guest list, but there was no sign of the two, although Mayavati was in the city to address a BSP meeting.

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Nation

So much for a religious rebellion meant to shake the very foundations of Hindu society. The non-event appeared finely spun in the international press, which leads me to believe that at least some of the organizers were from western Christian bodies. The drive took place in many cities in India. The most impressive may have been in Karnataka.

Christian and Buddhist activists jointly organized the effort. That Christians have appropriated Ambedkar seems curious to me: it is well-known that the Dalit hero and Indian founding father rejected Christianity for the Dalits because he ardently felt that the religion would "denationalize" them, besides forestalling the emancipation of India.

But exigencies create coalitions. The Dalit Buddhists don’t have much money, but they have the prestige of being Ambedkar’s spiritual heirs; the Christians have plenty of money, but are associated with westernization and colonialism.

The Christian groups probably don’t consider the decentralized Buddhists a threat to their designs anyway, so what’s a little money for stage time?

And beyond the game sits the Dalit under the tree, aware that he is a pawn in a religious and political spectacle, bemused that no one really cares what he thinks. What if, God forbid, he’s happy just the way he is?

Mr. Gill, dubbed India’s "supercop," is credited with putting down Khalistani separatism in Punjab.

K.P.S. Gill set to fight Maoists in Chattisgarh | India Defence

"We are training the police. We are taking the help of the army and getting better equipment. We have posted young IPS officers to the affected districts. That’s what I did in Punjab, soon you will see the results," said K P S Gill, Security Advisor, Chhattisgarh Government.

Part of the strategy is to consult the adivasis, already involved in an anti-Naxal movement. The Sulwa Judum is described by a local citizens group as the precursor to a civil war. But Gill is all praise for the adivasis.

"Never in the history of India have unarmed people stood up to insurgents, not even in Punjab and even the Naxals say it is the biggest setback to their movement since 1972," Gill added.