tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post1227188368533372268..comments2024-03-26T19:25:43.970-07:00Comments on South Asia Investor Review: Racism in IndiaRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-5484777062125467302023-08-11T08:02:56.725-07:002023-08-11T08:02:56.725-07:00Hindu Violence against Buddhism in India has NO Pa...Hindu Violence against Buddhism in India has NO Parallel<br /><br /><br />by Syed Ehtisham<br /><br /><br />The ruthless demolition of Buddha statues by the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan has invited severe criticisms from different quarters of the world. It is quite surprising to note that the Hindu Nazi-led Indian Govt. supported by all other Hindu Nazis has condemned the Taliban action. It appears paradoxical that the ancestors of the present Hindu Nazis in India wantonly destroyed the Buddhist statues and brutally killed the followers of Buddha in India. An impartial student of history can unequivocally remark that the Indian Nazis have no moral right to criticise the Taliban action.<br /><br />Hundreds of the Buddhist statues, Stupas and Viharas were destroyed in India between 830 AD and 966 AD in the name of the revival of Hinduism. Indigenous and foreign sources, both literary and archaeological, speak volumes of the havoc done to Buddhism by the Nazis in India.<br /><br />Role of Sankaracharya<br />Nazi leaders like the Sankaracharyas and many kings and rulers took pride in demolishing the Buddhist images aiming at the total eradication of the Buddhist culture. Today, their descendants destroyed the Babri Masjid and they have also published a list of mosques to be destroyed in the near future. It is with this sin of pride that they are condemning the deed on the part of the Afghans.<br /><br />The Hindu ruler, Pushyamitra Sunga, demolished 84,000 Buddhist stupas which had been built by Ashoka the Great (Romila Thaper, Ashoka and Decline of Mauryas, London, 1961, p 200). It was followed by the smashing of the Buddhist centres in Magadha. Thousands of Buddhist monks were mercilessly killed. King Jalaluka destroyed the Buddhist viharas within his jurisdiction on the ground that the chanting of the hymns by the Buddhist devotees disturbed his sleep. (Kalhana, Rajatharangini, 1:40). In Kashmir, King Kinnara demolished thousands of Viharas and captured the Buddhists villages to please the Brahmins. (Kalhana 1:80).<br /><br />Demon’s role<br /><br />A large number of Buddhist viharas were usurped by the Brahmins and converted into Hindu temples where the Untouchables were given no entrance. The Buddhist places were projected as the Hindu temples by writing Puranas which were concocted myths or pseudo-history.<br /><br />The important temples found at Tirupati, Ahoble, Undavalli, Ellora, Bengal, Puri, Badrinath, Mathura, Ayodhya, Sringeri, Bodhgaya, Sarnath, Delhi, Nalanda, Gudimallam, NagarjunaKonda, Srisailam and Sabarimala (Lord Ayyappa) in Kerala are some of the striking examples of the Brahmanic usurpation of the Buddhist centres.<br /><br />At Nagarjunakonda, the Adi Sankara played a demon’s role in destroying the Buddhist statues and monuments. Longhurst who conducted excavations at Nagarjunakonda has recorded this in his book Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India No: 54, The Buddhist Antiquities of Nagarjunakonda (Delhi, 1938, p.6.).<br /><br />Non-Brahmins burnt alive<br />The ruthless manner in which all the buildings at Nagarjunakonda were destroyed is simply appalling and cannot represent the work of treasure-seekers because many of the pillars, statues, and sculptures have been wantonly smashed to pieces. Local tradition relates that the Brahmin teacher Sankaracharya came to Nagarjunakonda with a host of followers and destroyed the Buddhist monuments. The cultivated lands on which the ruined buildings stand was a religious grant made to Sankaracharya.<br /><br />In Kerala, Sankaracharya and his close associate Kumarila Bhatta, an avowed enemy of Buddhism, organized a religious crusade against the Buddhists. We get a vivid description of the pleasure of Sankaracharya on seeing the people of non-Brahmanic faith being burnt to death from the book Sankara Digvijaya.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-47354686459559422512023-05-22T13:20:03.750-07:002023-05-22T13:20:03.750-07:00A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook...A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook no longer says why Nathuram #Godse killed #Gandhi and omits references to #Hindu hard-liners affiliated with #RSS who opposed his vision of religious pluralism. #Islamophobia #Hindutva #BJP https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-was-gandhi-killed-after-official-edit-indias-textbooks-dont-say-d5b86e77?st=gnzmnvpkv53jw42 via @WSJ <br /><br />NEW DELHI—For years, government-prescribed high-school textbooks in India included a few telling details about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin: The man worked for an extremist Hindu newspaper and had denounced Gandhi, the iconic freedom fighter, as “an appeaser of Muslims.”<br /><br />A revised version of the Class 12 history book, whose printed copies became available this year, no longer says that. It identifies Nathuram Godse as Gandhi’s killer, but provides no information about him or his motive. Also deleted are broader references to Hindu hard-liners who opposed Gandhi’s vision of religious pluralism for newly independent India 75 years ago. <br /><br />The edits are among recent changes under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to what students learn about their country’s past. Members of his political party—which is linked to a decades-old movement to shape India into a Hindu-dominant nation—have long criticized school curriculum as unbalanced and biased against Hindus. <br /><br />It does little, they say, to instill pride in young Indians, and particularly the country’s Hindu majority, in their history and heritage. <br /><br />Underlying their grievances is a broader ideological debate. Modi supporters accuse the left-leaning, liberal forces that shaped India after independence in 1947 of representing Westernized values and of pandering to Muslims, India’s largest minority. To them, Modi’s rise symbolizes Hindu revival. <br /><br />Critics accuse Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party of promoting a divisive Hindu nationalist ideology that threatens India’s secular foundations. <br /><br /><br />The changes to textbooks “go against the idea that education should encourage an open mind and a liberal outlook,” said Krishna Kumar, an academic under whose leadership they were originally written. The books, he said, have been “mutilated so crudely.”<br /><br />Modi’s supporters say revisions were long overdue. Teaching of India’s precolonial history overemphasized Islamic empires established on its territory and sidelined Hindu kingdoms, they say. Too much importance was given, they say, to the Mughal dynasty, a vastly wealthy empire during the 16th and 17th centuries whose Muslim rulers built the Taj Mahal and left a lasting cultural imprint on the region’s architecture, food and literature. <br /><br />Hindu nationalists see the Mughal era as a period of temple destruction, religious conversion and the subjugation of Hindu customs. <br /><br />A chapter on Mughal courts is gone from the Class 12 history book, though another on agrarian life during the empire remains. A two-page table on the battlefield triumphs of Mughal emperors, from Akbar to Aurangzeb, has been removed from a Class 7 book. A chapter on the 13th century Muslim conquest of northern India has also been pruned. <br /><br />In a public letter, more than 250 historians and academics criticized the move.<br /><br />“The selective deletion in this round of textbook revision reflects the sway of divisive politics,” they said. Indian history cannot be seen as consisting of Hindu and Muslim periods, they said, adding: “These categories are uncritically imposed on what has historically been a very diverse social fabric.” <br /><br />The changes were made by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, an autonomous body whose members are mostly appointed by the government. It said it rationalized textbooks to help students catch up after the Covid-19 pandemic and to make space for critical thinking.<br /><br />The books are used by schools aligned with the central government’s education board and some state-level boards. <br /><br />College freshman Shivam Kumar, a Modi supporter, welcomes the changes. Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-35738146532683422312023-04-08T07:19:01.509-07:002023-04-08T07:19:01.509-07:00New Indian textbooks purged of nation’s Muslim his...New Indian textbooks purged of nation’s Muslim history<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/06/india-textbooks-muslim-history-changes/<br /><br /><br />By Anumita Kaur<br /><br /><br />The Taj Mahal is one of India’s most iconic sites. But this year, millions of students across India won’t delve into the Mughal Empire that constructed it.<br /><br />Instead, Indian students have new textbooks that have been purged of details on the nation’s Muslim history, its caste discrimination and more, in what critics say warps the country’s rich history in an attempt to further Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.<br /><br />The cuts, first reported by the Indian Express, are wide-ranging. Chapters on the country’s historic Islamic rulers are either slimmed down or gone; an entire chapter in the 12th-grade history textbook, “Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts" was deleted. The textbooks omit references to the 2002 riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, where hundreds of Indian-Muslims were killed while Modi was the state’s leader. Details on India’s caste system, caste discrimination and minority communities are missing.<br /><br />Passages that connected Hindu extremism to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi’s assassination were pruned as well, such as the 12th grade political science textbook line: Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate [him].”<br /><br />The new curriculum, developed by India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training, has been in the works since last year and will serve thousands of classrooms in at least 20 states across the country. It follows long-standing efforts by Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to craft a Hindu nationalist narrative for the country — a platform that Modi ran on in 2014 and secured reelection with in 2019.<br /><br />“The minds of children are now under direct onslaught in this kind of intense way, where textbooks must not ever reflect South Asia’s dynamic, complex history,” said Utathya Chattopadhyaya, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “So you basically create a body of students who come out knowing very little about the history of social justice, the history of democracy, the history of diversity, and so on.”<br /><br /><br />India has been home to Hindu, Muslim and many other religious communities for centuries. British rule stoked tensions among communities, leading to violence in 1947 after the country was partitioned into Pakistan and modern India.<br /><br />Hindu nationalism has intensified under Modi. It has led to violent clashes, bulldozing of Indian-Muslim communities and deepening polarization throughout India and its global diaspora.<br /><br />The curriculum change is another step in the trend, Chattopadhyaya argued. BJP-led state governments have launched textbook revisions for years. But now it’s stretched to the national level.<br /><br />“This is actually an intensification of something that’s been happening. It is a way of ‘Hindu-izing’ South Asian history and ignoring all other kinds of diverse plural histories that have existed,” he said.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-66047988283872245682023-03-30T17:14:52.361-07:002023-03-30T17:14:52.361-07:00If we were racist, why would we live with South In...If we were racist, why would we live with South Indians, black people around us: BJP’s Tarun Vijay<br /><br />https://scroll.in/latest/833983/if-indians-were-racist-why-would-we-live-with-black-people-in-the-south-says-bjps-tarun-vijay<br /><br />He has apologised for the statement, which he made during an interview on Al Jazeera on the attacks on African nationals in Greater Noida.<br /><br />Bharatiya Janata Party leader Tarun Vijay is facing criticism for responding to a question on the allegedly racist attacks on African nationals in Greater Noida by saying if India was, indeed, racist, we would not “live with” “black people around us”. “If we were racist, why would....all the entire South – you know, Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka – why do we live with them?” He added, “We have blacks...black people around us.”<br /><br />He made the statement during a discussion on TV channel Al Jazeera, while responding to another Indian panelist, Bengaluru-based photographer Mahesh Shantaram, who asked, “Why are people saying Indians are racist? Why are Indians saying Indians are racist? Why are people abroad and those who visit our beautiful nation feeling that Indians are racist?”<br /><br />Vijay’s remarks triggered outrage soon after the interview was shared on social media. He took to Twitter to clarify his statement. “In many parts of the nation, we have different people, in colour and never, ever did we have any discrimination against them...My words, perhaps, were not enough to convey this,” he said, apologising to those who felt he spoke “differently from he meant”.<br /><br />The BJP leader also said that Indians were the “first to oppose any racism and were, in fact, victims of the racist British”. Vijay explained that he had meant to convey how Indians did not face racism even though the country has “people with different colour and culture”. “I can die, but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly-framed sentence,” he said, further claiming that he never called South Indians “black”.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-24852113909264510092023-01-28T21:44:06.480-08:002023-01-28T21:44:06.480-08:00'Ideology Of Hate' Consuming #India, Says ...'Ideology Of Hate' Consuming #India, Says #Gandhi's Great-grandson. Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra #Modi and his #Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (#BJP). #Hindutva #Islamophobia #Hate #Violence https://www.barrons.com/news/ideology-of-hate-consuming-india-says-gandhi-s-great-grandson-01674969308<br /><br />India's rising tide of Hindu nationalism is an affront to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, his great-grandson says, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the revered independence hero's assassination.<br /><br />Gandhi was shot dead at a multi-faith prayer meeting on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a religious zealot angered by his victim's conciliatory gestures to the country's minority Muslim community.<br /><br />Godse was executed the following year and remains widely reviled, but author and social activist Tushar Gandhi, one of the global peace symbol's most prominent descendants, says his views now have a worrying resonance in India.<br /><br />"That whole philosophy has now captured India and Indian hearts, the ideology of hate, the ideology of polarisation, the ideology of divisions," he told AFP at his Mumbai home.<br /><br />"For them, it's very natural that Godse would be their iconic patriot, their idol."<br /><br />Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).<br /><br />Modi took office in 2014 and Tushar says his government is to blame for undermining the secular and multicultural traditions that his namesake sought to protect.<br /><br />"His success has been built on hate, we must accept that," Tushar added.<br /><br /><br /><br />"There is no denying that in his heart, he also knows what he is doing is lighting a fire that will one day consume India itself."<br /><br />Today, Gandhi's assassin is revered by many Hindu nationalists who have pushed for a re-evaluation of his decision to murder a man synonymous with non-violence.<br /><br />A temple dedicated to Godse was built near New Delhi in 2015, the year after Modi's election, and activists have campaigned to honour him by renaming an Indian city after him.<br /><br />Godse was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a still-prominent Hindu far-right group whose members conduct paramilitary drills and prayer meetings.<br /><br /><br /><br />The RSS has long distanced itself from Godse's actions but remains a potent force, founding Modi's party decades ago to battle for Hindu causes in the political realm.<br /><br />Modi has regularly paid respect to Gandhi's legacy but has refrained from weighing in on the campaign to rehabilitate his killer.<br /><br />Tushar remains a fierce protector of his world-famous ancestor's legacy of "honesty, equality, unity and inclusiveness".<br /><br />He has written two books about Gandhi and his wife Kasturba, regularly talks at public events about the importance of democracy and has filed legal motions in India's top court as part of efforts to defend the country's secular constitution.<br /><br />His Mumbai abode, a post-independence flat in a quiet neighbourhood compound, is dotted with portraits and small statues of his famous relative along with a miniature spinning wheel -- a reference to Gandhi's credo of self-reliance.<br /><br /><br /><br />Tushar is anxious but resigned to the prospect of Modi winning another term in next year's elections, an outcome widely seen as an inevitability given the weakness of his potential challengers.<br /><br />"The poison is so deep, and they're so successful, that I don't see my ideology triumphing over in India for a long time now," he says.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-79656820045614403462023-01-27T16:55:10.678-08:002023-01-27T16:55:10.678-08:00India against Gandhi: Gandhi is now a major hate f...India against Gandhi: Gandhi is now a major hate figure in Modi's India<br /><br />by Ramachandra Guha<br /><br />https://www.ft.com/content/a0b17ed9-092d-4e83-90fe-2a6cea952518<br /><br />Gandhi is the major hate figure (in Modi's India). He is blamed for emasculating Indians by preaching non-violence; blamed for choosing the modernising Jawaharlal Nehru as his political heir instead of a more authentically “Hindu” figure; blamed for not stopping the creation of Pakistan; blamed for insisting that Muslims who stayed behind in India be given the rights of equal citizenship. BJP members of parliament hail Gandhi’s assassin Godse as a true “deshbhakt” (patriot); praise for him trends on Twitter every January 30; there are periodic plans to erect statues to him and temples in his memory. YouTube videos mocking Gandhi and charging him with betraying Hindus garner millions of views.<br /><br />Seventy-five years after his assassination, the ‘father of the nation’ is a problem for Narendra Modi — but the country still needs his ideas<br /><br />--------<br /><br />Born in 1958, a decade after Gandhi’s death, I grew up in an atmosphere of veneration towards the Mahatma. One of my great-uncles helped to edit Gandhi’s Collected Works; another founded a pioneering initiative in community health inspired by Gandhi. These familial influences were consolidated and deepened by the public culture of the time. Gandhi was the father of the nation, the leader of the struggle for freedom against British rule, whose techniques of non-violent resistance had won admirers and imitators across the world. It was largely because of him that we were free and proudly independent, and it was largely because of him that — unlike neighbouring Pakistan — we gloried in the religious and linguistic diversity of our land. In our school assembly we sang a 17th-century hymn that Gandhi was particularly fond of, which he had rewritten to reflect his vision of the India he wished to leave behind. Hindus saw God as Ishwar; Gandhi’s adaptation asked us to see him as Allah too. And it was to these lines that our teachers drew our particular attention. The first criticisms of Gandhi that I remember encountering were in a book I read as a student at Delhi University. This was the autobiography of Verrier Elwin, an Oxford scholar who became a leading ethnographer of the tribes of central India. Elwin knew Gandhi well, and at one time considered himself a disciple. In later years, while he retained his admiration for the Mahatma’s moral courage and religious pluralism, Elwin became sharply critical of Gandhi’s advocacy of prohibition, which he thought damaging to tribal culture (where home-brewed alcohol was both a source of nutrition and an aid to dance and music), and of his exaltation of celibacy, which Elwin thought damaging to everyone.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-35970856403230927952023-01-05T19:49:40.653-08:002023-01-05T19:49:40.653-08:00“India Is the Most Racist Country I Have Been To” ...“India Is the Most Racist Country I Have Been To” — an African-American’s POV<br /><br />https://www.kajalmag.com/india-is-the-most-racist-country-i-have-been-to-an-african-americans-pov/<br /><br /><br />In February of 2016, a Tanzanian student in Bangalore was pulled out of her car, assaulted and stripped by an angry mob after a 35-year-old pedestrian was knocked down by a Sudanese student in another car. This horrific incident added fuel to the “India is racist” debate, with light being shone on various other indicators of our racial intolerance as a country. Terms such as “colonial hangover” and “xenophobia” flew across social media, and the hypocrisy of our intolerance was pointed out, since Indians travelling abroad often complain about white-world countries discriminating against them for being “brown.”<br />Now, we have yet another painful indicator of our own violent shortcomings with the horrific mob attack of several Nigerian students in Greater Noida, around 40kms from Delhi. At least four of them had been admitted to the hospital at the time of writing this article. In the days leading up to the attack, locals in the enclave where these young men lived had become convinced that a young Indian boy’s suspected drug overdose was linked to them somehow. In fact, they were even accused of cannibalism a few days before it all went down like this. The victims’ injuries range from swollen chests to broken ankles.<br /><br />Opening up another layer of this subject, our obsession with light skin was tossed around in this debate, with names of beauty products such as “Fair & Lovely” coming up. Dark-skinned opinion leaders and celebrities have spent years fighting against discrimination on the basis of colour in India, with movements such as the “Dark ‘n’ Beautiful” awareness campaign joining the dialogue.<br /><br />In a 2013 map based on the World Value Survey which measured the social attitudes of people in various countries, India was ranked among the top four most racist countries, along with Bangladesh, Jordan and Hong Kong. Another map showed India as one of the least hospitable places for foreigners to visit, which is ironic considering our culture of treating guests as Gods.<br /><br />Even within the nation, Indian citizens from the Northeast have spoken out about social persecution they face from a majority of the country’s population. In 2014, a 20-year-old named Nido Tania from Arunachal Pradesh studying in Delhi was attacked in South Delhi market, beaten to death by shopkeepers using rods and sticks. The violence occurred after the men allegedly shouted racial slurs at Nido, making fun of his hair and appearance, which angered him and started a brawl that cost the young student his life. This is one of many incidents in India’s history that spurred a fervent outrage over discrimination against Indians from the Northeast, within their own country.<br /><br />To a recent Quora question that asked “Which is the most racist country you visited as a tourist?” an American answered “India.” His explanation for the same is one that reflects the intolerant atmosphere in our country, whose ugliness rears its head every now and then. And it’s more relevant now than ever before.<br /><br />Here is Dave Adali’s answer on Quora:<br /><br />I am an African-American in the IT field and I have thus far had the good fortune to live and travel extensively throughout Western and parts of Eastern Europe and many countries in Asia. I have lived or traveled in the UK and most of the EU countries as well as Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and several other Asian countries including India. Of all the countries I have been to, India ranks way up there among the most “racist,” IMHO. Indians aren’t so much “racist” as they are intolerant. Indians discriminate against fellow citizens to a degree that I have NEVER encountered in ANY other country.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-32128395093858488372022-12-18T06:56:54.836-08:002022-12-18T06:56:54.836-08:00Hundreds killed each year for marrying outside cas...Hundreds killed each year for marrying outside caste: CJI DY Chandrachud<br /><br />https://www.indiatoday.in/law/story/hundreds-killed-each-year-for-marrying-outside-caste-chief-justice-of-india-dy-chandrachud-2310427-2022-12-17<br /><br />Hundreds of people are killed each year for falling in love or marrying outside their castes or against the wishes of their families, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud said today while speaking on morality and its interplay with the law.<br /><br />The CJI made the statement while referring to an incident of honor killing in Uttar Pradesh in 1991 as carried in a news article by the American magazine, Time.<br /><br />The article shared the story of a 15-year-old girl who eloped with a man of 20 from a lower caste. They were later murdered by the upper castes of the village, and believed their actions were justified because they complied with the code of conduct of society.<br /><br />The CJI was delivering the Ashok Desai Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Law and Morality: The Bounds and Reaches’, addressing questions on the indissoluble link between law, morality, and group rights.<br /><br />While talking about morality, the CJI said that expressions of good and bad, right and wrong are often used in everyday conversations.<br /><br />The CJI said that while the law regulates external relations, morality governs the inner life and motivation. Morality appeals to our conscience and often influences the way we behave.<br /><br />‘We can all agree that morality is a system of values that prescribes a code of conduct. But, do all of us principally agree on what constitutes morality? That is, is it necessary that what is moral for me ought to be moral to you as well?’ he asked.<br /><br />While discussing what constitutes ‘adequate morality’, the CJI said that groups that have traditionally held positions of power in the socio-economic-political context of society have an advantage over the weaker sections in this bargaining process to reach adequate morality.<br /><br />The CJI further built an argument that vulnerable groups are placed at the bottom of the social structure and that their consent, even if attained, is a myth. For example, Max Weber argued that the Dalits have never rebelled.<br /><br />He pointed out that the dominant groups, by attacking the etiquette of the vulnerable groups, often prevent them from creating an identity that is unique to themselves.<br /><br />The CJI elaborated on the same by sharing an example of clothing being one of the tools employed by dominant castes to alienate the Dalit community, where it was a wide-spread norm that the members of the Dalit community must wear marks of inferiority to be identified.<br /><br />The CJI further spoke about how, even after the framing of the Constitution, the law has been imposing ‘adequate morality’, that is, the morality of the dominant community.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-21106540622415145592022-11-19T08:52:50.224-08:002022-11-19T08:52:50.224-08:00Another popular Hindu mythological text often shar...Another popular Hindu mythological text often shared with children is the Ramayana. In the story Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother Lakshmana are presented as dashing and heroic, particularly because they had braved exile and fought against a terrifying demon king, Ravana. Yet a closer look at the full Sanskrit text of Valmiki’s Ramayana reveals a violent undercurrent in its reinforcement of dharma. In one later addition to the story, a Brahmin goes to King Rama with his son dead in his arms. You must have done something wrong as king, he says, otherwise my son would not have died. A sage at court explains that the son died because a Shudra peasant fouled the order by learning to read and doing ascetic practices to try to ascend to heaven, which as a member of the lower caste he had no right to do.<br /><br />Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 64). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.<br /><br />Rama immediately leaps into his flying chariot and spies a mystic hanging upside down from a tree in an act of spiritual asceticism. It’s the Shudra Shambuka, who explains to Rama he is doing this rigorous penance in hopes of knowing the divine. Rama doesn’t even let him finish his sentence. He just slices Shambuka’s head off. All the gods cry out, “Well done!” Flowers from the heavens rain down on Rama, and the dead child of the Brahmin comes back to life.32 This story terrified me as a caste-oppressed child. I could not understand what was wrong with wanting to aspire to know God. Even more tragic than the existential implications of this story, today this kind of ritual decapitation occurs as the violence prescribed in scripture has spread across the subcontinent. Scriptural edict has become material violence.<br /><br />Soundararajan, Thenmozhi. The Trauma of Caste (p. 65). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-65486199620856910672022-06-18T18:56:17.543-07:002022-06-18T18:56:17.543-07:00Harvard Scientist Debunks Hindu Nationalists "...Harvard Scientist Debunks Hindu Nationalists "Racial Purity" Myth<br /><br />https://www.southasiainvestor.com/2021/02/harvard-scientist-debunk-hindu.html<br /><br /><br />Male ancestors of the vast majority of present-day South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) came from West Eurasia, Central Asia and Iran, according to the latest DNA research led by Harvard geneticist Dr. David Reich. Reich's team came to this conclusion after studying the Y-chromosomes of present-day Indians. Some Hindu Indian scientists have used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) samples, extracted from the bones of recently discovered ancient skeletal remains of a couple in Rakigarhi in Haryana, to claim the local indigenous origins of all Hindus. Y-chromosomes are passed from father to son while mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to children. The Harvard team's findings thoroughly debunk Hindu Nationalists' "racial purity" myth similar to that promoted by White Supremacist racists in the West. Reich writes: "The Hindutva ideology that there was no major contribution to Indian culture from migrants from outside South Asia is undermined by the fact that approximately half of the ancestry of Indians today is derived from multiple waves of mass migration from Iran and the Eurasian steppe within the last five thousand years". <br /><br /><br />David Reich's "Who We Are"<br />Reich's Indian counterparts were highly resistant to the Harvard team findings of foreign origins of modern-day South Asians. Here's an excerpt from David Reich's "Who We Are and How We Got Here": <br /><br />"Based on their own mitochondrial DNA studies, it was clear to them (Indians) that the great majority of mitochondrial DNA lineages present in India today had resided in the subcontinent for many tens of thousands of years.They did not want to be part of a study that suggested a major West Eurasian incursion into India without being absolutely certain as to how the whole-genome data could be reconciled with their mitochondrial DNA findings. They also implied that the suggestion of a migration from West Eurasia would be politically explosive. They did not explicitly say this, but it had obvious overtones of the idea that migration from outside India had a transformative effect on the (South Asian) subcontinent". <br /><br /><br />To see why the Indian researchers believed the acceptance of West Eurasian origins of present-day Hindus would be political explosive, it is important to understand the myth of racial purity that underlies the Hindu Nationalists' racist ideology. Here's an excerpt from a book by Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, leader of the Hindu Nationalist RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) :<br /><br />"To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by." <br /><br /><br />Based on DNA studies, Reich divides Indians into two major groups: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and Ancestral South Indians (ASI). He finds that the ANI have much higher percentage of ancestral DNA from Central Asia and Iran than the ASI. Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-79057859028181476382022-06-18T18:54:09.218-07:002022-06-18T18:54:09.218-07:00India's Culture ministry to study ‘racial puri...India's Culture ministry to study ‘racial purity’ of Indians - The New Indian Express<br /><br /><br /><br />https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2022/may/28/culture-ministry-to-study-racial-purity-of-indians-2458899.html<br /><br /><br />NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Culture is in the process of acquiring an array of DNA profiling kits and associated state-of-the-art machines for establishing the genetic history and “trace the purity of races in India”. Highly placed government sources said the acquisition process began recently following a meeting that Ministry of Culture Secretary Govind Mohan held with well-known archaeologist Professor Vasant S Shinde and senior scientists and scholars of the Lucknow-based Birbal Sahani Institute of Paleosciences (BSIP) in Hyderabad two months ago.<br /><br />Shinde is adjunct professor at the Bangalore-based National Institute of Advanced Study and director of the Rakhigarhi Research Project. Founder of the Society of South Asian Archaeology, Prof Shinde’s research contribution includes “DNA analysis and craniofacial reconstruction of Harappan People”.<br /><br />When contacted over phone, Prof Shinde admitted that the gadgets were in the process of being acquired. He said, “We want to see how mutation and mixing of genes in the Indian population has happened in the last 10,000 years. Genetic mutation depends on the intensity of contact among populations and the time that this process takes. We will then have a clear-cut idea of the genetic history. You may even say that this will be an effort to trace the purity of races in India.”<br /><br />The Kolkata-based Anthropological Survey of India (ANSI), which has, “of late”, expressed “disinclination” to proceed with the exercise to trace the genetic origins of early Indians because the issue is “politically loaded”, is also part of this project which was initially conceived in 2019. A budget of `10 crore has been earmarked for procuring the DNA profilers and the other related scientific gadgets, sources said. The aim, according to the ANSI, is to “develop a resource of cell lines and DNA samples that can be used to study DNA sequence polymorphism in contemporary Indian populations”<br /><br />More importantly, the ANSI seeks to “establish (the) Indian role in the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa” because “modern humans could have taken the ‘southern route of dispersal’, utilising the coastlines to travel from Africa, through Arabia, across the Indian subcontinent and then into South-East Asia and finally into Australia”.<br /><br />Secondly, the ANSI wants to understand the genetic diversity of Indian populations among various ethnic groups in different regions of India based on direct re-sequencing of haploid genomes. By its own admission, under this project, the ANSI has studied 75 communities comprising 7,807 blood samples from different parts of the country. These communities include the Jarawa, Nicobarese, Andh, Kathodi, Madia, Malpaharia, Munda, Bhoi Khasi, Nihal, Toto, Dirang Monpa,Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-90291214670500212432021-11-14T17:39:40.611-08:002021-11-14T17:39:40.611-08:00Fair skin craze in #India. ‘Fairness mania’ is fue...Fair skin craze in #India. ‘Fairness mania’ is fueling a dangerous drug dependence in India. Watch 'White lies', a series by #CNN’s As Equals investigating skin whitening practices worldwide to expose the underlying drivers of colorism. #racism #steroids https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/11/health/skin-lightening-india-health-risks-intl-cmd/<br /><br />Betamethasone is a potent topical corticosteroid medication habitually used to treat a wide range of skin conditions, including psoriasis and eczema, but one of the potential side effects is lightening of the skin.<br /><br />Creams containing Betamethasone should only be used on the advice of a doctor and are typically acquired with a prescription. But in India, as CNN learned from doctors and users around the country, Betamethasone, and other corticosteroid creams, are regularly being misused as a skin lightening agent -- mostly by women.<br /><br />In 2003, when Banik was just 14, a neighbor told her mother how much their child had “benefitted” from becoming “fair” by using a new cream. “Your daughter will also become fair,” they said.<br /><br />Wanting Banik to have the best prospects in a country where lighter skin is seen as desirable and associated with success, Banik’s mother took her neighbor’s advice. “I was disappointed that it came in a tube so unappealingly medicated,” Banik recalls, “but it held the secrets toward my fairer future.”<br /><br />School friends were the first to notice, commenting on Banik’s newly acquired “good looks,” but within two months of using the steroid cream, she started to feel a burning sensation whenever she was out in the sun. She says she accepted this as part of the process: no pain, no fairness.<br /><br />But one morning, the teenager forgot to apply the cream and within hours, a zit appeared on her chin. Though it quickly settled on applying the cream, Banik’s face started itching all the time. She soon developed acne and then, a year after the zit appeared, hair began to grow all over her face.<br /><br />CNN spoke with multiple Indian dermatologists all of whom confirmed that Banik’s symptoms -- itching, acne, and hirsutism (hair on the face) -- are signs of Topical Steroid Damaged/Dependent Face (TSDF), caused by the excessive or prolonged use of steroid creams.<br /><br />Topical corticosteroids, such as Betamethasone, have several medical benefits, including anti-inflammatory effects, but they should only be used for short durations and under the supervision of a doctor, ideally a dermatologist. Extensive use can cause a range of side effects, including pustules, where big rashes appear on the face, dryness, hypopigmentation (lighter skin), hyperpigmentation (darker skin), or photosensitivity (reactions to sunlight).<br /><br />It is the potential for hypopigmentation that is thought of as desirable by many women, and leads to misuse of the drug, in turn, fueling a dependency.<br /><br />Once the skin is dependent on a steroid cream, explains Dr Rajetha Damisetty, it is difficult for a person to stop using it. Every attempt to stop will lead to an eruption of pimples, rashes, and redness. “That’s why people go back to using it,” says Damisetty, chairperson of the Indian Association of Dermatologists, Venereologists and Leprologists’ (IADVL) task force against topical steroid abuse.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-87138762909622695032021-09-30T10:52:39.138-07:002021-09-30T10:52:39.138-07:00Unmasking Hindutva - Frontline
Inbox
https://fron...Unmasking Hindutva - Frontline<br />Inbox<br /><br />https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/unmasking-hindutva-looking-back-on-dismantling-global-hindutva-online-conference-september-2021/article36628499.ece<br /><br /><br /><br />Benign Brahminism<br />Considering that caste is an intrinsic part of the Hindutva world view, a session was dedicated to the theme. Gajendran Ayyathurai presented his paper on “Systematic Blindnesses: Hindutva, Benign Brahminism and the Brick Wall of Caste/Hindu Identity”. In his argument, “benign Brahminism stands for how Brahmin-male claims of Hindu identity, Hindu culture and Hinduism have come to be legitimised in the Indian and Western academy’s theories, institutions and practices that superimpose and mask the latent and manifest forms of caste/casteism”. Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who quit the RSS as he became disgusted with its casteism, explained in Hindi that “Hindutva is not a religion or faith but is a communal political ideology that is based on brahminical Hinduism that wants to turn India from a secular nation into a Hindu rashtra”. Basing his argument on his own experience, Meghwanshi asserted that “the lower castes do not have any role in determining the strategies or politics of the RSS, instead, they are exploited and weaponised against religious minorities”. In her presentation, the philosopher Meena Dhanda said it was possible for caste “to be included in the legal definition of race under the [U.K.’s] Equality Act of 2010”.<br /><br />Also read: Hindu right-wing organisations in the U.S avail themselves of low-interest loans offered by the SBA<br /><br />In a session on “Gender and Sexual Politics of Hindutva”, the film-maker Leena Manimekalai showed a clip from her incomplete film Rape Nation, which partially looks at the stories of survivors of sexual violence during the communal carnages that took place in Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar in 2002 and 2013 respectively. Arguing that sexual violence is at the core of Hindutva, Leena Manimekalai said: “Hindutva has redefined nationalism as a genocidal impulse to rape and murder non-Hindu women. It is a celebration of toxic masculinity.”<br /><br />The transgender studies scholar Aniruddha Dutta showed in his presentation how the BJP’s rise had even affected the Hijra tradition where there has been a transformation from a “syncretic Indo-Islamic tradition to a more orthodox version of Hinduism”. The Dalit feminist P. Sivakami critiqued Hindutva as having “no vision for Hindu women except that it intends to prepare and reorient them against their imaginary enemy, i.e., the Muslim man, thus diverting her from her real struggles”. The feminist scholar Akanksha Mehta segued from this presentation, stating that “notions of gender and sexuality rooted in caste and race are crucial to the Hindutva project” even as she compared the analogous role of women among savarna (caste) Hindus and Zionists.<br /><br />Hindutva and its relationship to nationalism was the theme of the session titled “Contours of the Nation”. The focus was on the operation of Hindutva in Kashmir, the north-eastern region and the Adivasi-inhabited areas of central India. The anthropologist Mohamad Junaid examined the “spectacle of domination” of the Hindutva state, characterising it as “primarily an anti-Muslim state”. He also spoke about the long history of Hindutva in Kashmir, tracing it to the land reforms of the 1950s, which were a challenge to “Hindu sovereignty”.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-69231417450711308532021-08-03T08:37:37.431-07:002021-08-03T08:37:37.431-07:00#Congolese man’s death in police custody sparks pr...#Congolese man’s death in police custody sparks protest in #India. #African expats accuse Indian police of #racism & harassment. Many claim they are routinely detained over fabricated charges of drug peddling and face daily discrimination. https://aje.io/etf78k via @AJEnglish <br /><br />At least six nationals of African countries have been injured during a scuffle with police in India’s southern city of Bengaluru over an alleged custodial death of a Congolese student, an official says.<br /><br />Joel Shindani Malu, 27, was detained by police on Sunday over charges of possessing a small cache of banned psychotropic ecstasy pills but died in custody early on Monday after suffering cardiac arrest, an officer said on Monday.<br /><br />“He was diagnosed with Bradycardia and was administered with several rounds of CPR [Cardiopulmonary resuscitation] and other life-saving interventions but died due to a suspected cardiac arrest,” the officer said.<br /><br /><br />Following his death, several nationals of African countries staged a demonstration outside the police station and scuffled with policemen, which led to the assault of an officer.<br /><br />The Hindu newspaper said they were members of the “Pan African Federation”, a group set up to protect the rights of African students and professionals in the city.<br /><br />The demonstrators refuted the police claim that Malu had died of cardiac arrest and accused them of falsely detaining him before police used batons to push back the protesters and arrested a dozen demonstrators.<br /><br /><br />Police said they have opened an investigation into the death amid claims that the deceased student was “illegally” living in India after his passport and visa expired in 2017.<br /><br />“Investigation into the death is being conducted as per NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) guidelines including inquest by a judicial magistrate. The investigation has been transferred to CID (Crime Investigation Department),” Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant tweeted.<br /><br />Nationals of African countries often accuse Indian police of racial bias and harassment.<br /><br />Many claim that they are routinely detained over fabricated charges of drug peddling and face daily discrimination.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-60227437027541772202020-07-23T10:31:06.964-07:002020-07-23T10:31:06.964-07:00Netflix series "Indian matchmaking": Epi...Netflix series "Indian matchmaking": Episodes show people with darker skin tones are subjected to harsh discrimination and prejudice while fairness is revered and associated with beauty, wealth and power. #India #racism #colorism #caste #Hindutva #Modi https://www.cnn.com/style/article/indian-matchmaking-netflix-intl-hnk-beauty/index.html<br /><br />This cultural bias is engrained from an early age, with women bearing more of the societal pressure to have lighter skin. If you're a woman, darker skin can be a deal-breaker for families seeking the perfect wife for their son. For men, fair skin is seen as a bonus but not as much of a requirement.<br /><br /><br />Colorism and the desirability of "fairness" is drilled into young girls. In my own case, it started when I was in middle school in India, when my classmates taunted me for having darker skin. Older women would also make unsolicited comments about my complexion, veiled as genuine concern for me and my future marriage prospects.<br />In India, the beauty standard is further perpetuated by pop culture and a booming cosmetic industry.<br /><br />Skin lightening products are heavily marketed. Actors with glowing, pale complexions are the stars of Bollywood movies while their dark-skinned counterparts play poor, disenfranchised characters. Some dating apps even include skin tone filters.<br />Unspoken rules<br />"Indian Matchmaking" itself offers a window into the lifestyles of an elite class of Indians who can enlist the service of a top-tier matchmaker, and in some cases, fly them to the other side of the world. This is not something regular families do, so status is already built into the narrative.<br /><br />Perhaps this makes it easier for families to avoid explicitly specifying fair skin as part of their match criteria. Taparia assumes it goes without saying, and constantly describes women as a "good person" or match because they are "fair and good looking." Some of the families rely on this -- it allows them to be politically correct and vague in their search for someone "good looking" without explicitly saying "fair."<br /><br />Yet, they get exactly the kind of complexion they want to see. It's the equivalent of writing "caste no bar" in a matrimonial ad -- a suggestion that the person who placed the ad is willing to consider candidates regardless of social hierarchy -- but in reality only going on dates with people from the "community," which becomes a euphemistic catch-all term for people from the same religion, caste or class.<br /><br /><br />Take the young Mumbai-based Pradhyuman Maloo, who features prominently in the show, as an example. His well-to-do parents desperately want him to settle down and find a wife, but he seems mostly uninterested in the women presented to him, until he's shown a photo of Rushali Rai, a beautiful model from Delhi. His eyes light up at the sight of her. Taparia describes her as "fair and good-looking, but also, she's smart."<br /><br />When Maloo first sees her photo, he is elated. "Ahh, she's so cute!"<br />"I'll tell you that from her dressing style to her look and everything, how she carries herself, that I can meet her," he said. "It's going to be exciting. It's going to be fun."Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-88164985747404214232020-06-29T09:50:53.819-07:002020-06-29T09:50:53.819-07:00#India Debates Skin-Tone Bias as Beauty Companies ...#India Debates Skin-Tone Bias as Beauty Companies Alter Ads Facing Charge of Promoting #Racist Attitudes. For centuries, discrimination over skin tones has been a feature of #Indian society. It was greatly intensified by #British Raj, #caste & #Bollywood https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/world/asia/india-skin-color-unilever.html?smid=tw-share<br /><br />America’s intense discussion of race, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, seems to be having some impact here.<br /><br />This past week, Unilever and other major international consumer brands, facing accusations that they were promoting racist attitudes, said they would remove labels such as “fair” “white” and “light” from their products, including the skin-lightening creams that are wildly popular in India.<br /><br />At the same time, a big Indian matchmaking website, Shaadi.com, decided to remove a filter that allowed people to select partners based on skin tone after facing a backlash from users that began in North America.<br /><br />Ms. Jennifer and several other Indians said these were moves in the right direction.<br /><br />“This is a fantastic news — a stepping stone toward ending colorism,” Ms. Jennifer said. “Now young people won’t feel ashamed of how they look while growing up with dark-tone skin.”<br /><br />Preferences for light-toned skin over dark — when it comes to marriages and some jobs — are still upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians.<br /><br />In some families, daughters-in-law with darker skin are called derogatory names, sometimes branded with the same words used for thieves. Students with dark-toned skin are more frequently bullied in schools.<br /><br />Such attitudes have spawned a huge demand in India for whiteners and bleaching products. Shop shelves are crammed with creams, oils, soaps and serums promising to lighten skin, and some are manufactured by the world’s biggest cosmetic companies. The king of the market is Unilever’s Fair & Lovely cream, a fixture in many Indian households for decades.<br /><br />But even before this past week, the culture had been changing.<br /><br />Earlier this year, India’s government proposed a law that would make it illegal to market products that make false health claims, including those that promise to lighten skin.<br /><br />Kavitha Emmanuel, the director of Women of Worth, an organization in Chennai, started a campaign in 2019 called “Dark Is Beautiful.” Many young men and women, she said, have complained to her that their skin tone is an impediment to social mobility.<br /><br />She welcomed the moves by Unilever and the matchmaking website Shaadi.com, but said India was still slow in confronting such discrimination.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-66756621699772710612019-11-22T07:26:51.250-08:002019-11-22T07:26:51.250-08:00ormer Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha MP ...ormer Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha MP has come out with an apology for hurting sentiments after making a bizarre statement hinting that Indians can not be considered racist as they live with 'black' South Indians.<br /><br />Participating in a debate on Al Jazeera TV over the issue of attack on some Nigerians in Greater Noida, Vijay said it was wrong to say that Indians are racist.<br /><br />"If we were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Why do we live with them (if we are racist)? We hae blacks, black people around us," Vijay said.<br /><br />The BJP leader, however, apologised for his statement while admitting that his choice of words may have been wrong.<br /><br />"I feel the entire statement sas this - we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism," Vijay said.<br /><br />"My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant," he added.<br /><br />I feel the entire statement sas this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-50046984921423557342019-03-26T11:12:31.453-07:002019-03-26T11:12:31.453-07:00The Indian Constitution, which is appreciated worl...The Indian Constitution, which is appreciated world over for its progressive content, was a disappointment for the RSS. The Organiser had stated in the November 30, 1949 issue:<br /><br /><br />https://www.newsclick.in/neech-debate-heres-what-manu-smriti-favourite-rss-has-say-about-it <br /><br /><br />“The worst about the new constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bhartiya about it. The drafters of the Constitution have incorporated in it elements of British, American, Canadian, Swiss and sundry other constitutions. But there is no trace of ancient Bhartiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclature and phraseology in it…But in our constitution, there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.”<br /><br />While conservative Hindus see Manusmriti as a document that “excite(s) the admiration of the world”, the laws of Manu really need to be examined to see what it has to say about women, the lower castes and the “untouchables”.<br /><br />The Manusmriti is a law-book that prescribes rules and regulations for the four varnas (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) as well as avarnas or the “untouchables” or the chandalas. The book bestows privileges upon the Brahmin men, which is what the RSS leadership is made of. For women, lower-castes and untouchables, there are no rights at all.<br /><br />The law book – which the RSS wants as the guiding document to run India – has certain prescriptions for the untouchable castes on what they can eat; what property they can own; what should be their clothing, and how and where they should live (excerpts from ‘Laws of Manu’, published by Penguin):<br /><br />[50] These (castes) should live near mounds, trees, and cremation-grounds, in mountains and in groves, recognizable and making a living by their own innate activities.<br /><br />[51] But the dwellings of ‘Fierce’ Untouchables and ‘Dog-cookers’ should be outside the village; they must use discarded bowls, and dogs and donkeys should be their wealth.<br /><br />[52] Their clothing should be the clothes of the dead, and their food should be in broken dishes; their ornaments should be made of black iron, and they should wander constantly.<br /><br />[53] A man who carries out his duties should not seek contact with them; they should do business with one another and marry with those who are like them.<br /><br />[54]Their food, dependent upon others, should be given to them in a broken dish, and they should not walk about in villages and cities at night.<br /><br />[55] They may move about by day to do their work, recognizable by distinctive marks in accordance with the king’s decrees; and they should carry out the corpses of people who have no relatives; this is a fixed rule.<br /><br />[56] By the king’s command, they should execute those condemned to death, always in accordance with the teachings, and they should take for themselves the clothing, beds, and ornaments of those condemned to death.<br /><br />One look at these laws that Manu prescribed for the untouchable castes makes it clear why the Constituent Assembly did not even mention the “law-book”.<br /><br />The “law-book” even dictates what names of the people should be the according to their castes.<br /><br />[31] (The name) of a priest should have (a word for) auspiciousness, of a ruler strength, of a commoner property, and (the name) of a servant should breed disgust.<br /><br />[32] The name of a priest should have (a word for) secure comfort, of a king it should have protection, of a commoner it should be connected with prosperity, and of a servant it should be connected with service.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-10893796364780913902019-02-01T10:01:53.809-08:002019-02-01T10:01:53.809-08:00#Bollywood Actress Esha Gupta exposes everyday #ra...#Bollywood Actress Esha Gupta exposes everyday #racism in #India by sharing conversation with her 3.4m Instagram followers mocking #Nigerian #soccer star, Alex Iwobi, as a "gorilla" and "Neanderthal" who "evolution had stopped for". <br /> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47042681<br /><br />Up until Monday, Esha Gupta was just a Bollywood actress with a passion for Arsenal football club.<br /><br />That changed after the actress decided to share a screengrab of a WhatsApp conversation in which a friend mocked the team's Nigerian star, Alex Iwobi, as a "gorilla" and "Neanderthal" who "evolution had stopped for".<br /><br />"Hahaha," wrote the actress, who helped Arsenal unveil its 2017 away kit, as she shared the screengrab with her 3.4m Instagram followers.<br /><br />The racist slurs - and the fact she thought it was funny - horrified many, and the backlash was unsurprisingly swift. How dare she call herself an Arsenal supporter, her fellow fans demanded.<br /><br />Gupta apologised quickly, but the post hints at a long-known - but little acknowledged - problem of racism towards people of African descent in Indian society.<br /><br />"Of course I'm not surprised by the post," Ezeugo Nnamdi told the BBC from Delhi, his home of five years.<br /><br />In fact, the secretary-general of the Association of African Students in India (AASI) added that, as racial slurs go, her words were no worse than what fellow African students experienced on a daily basis - to their faces.<br /><br />"Racism is not something which is very hidden here. It is something very open," he said. "People just look at you.<br /><br />"They call you 'habshi' [a derogatory term], and a lot of other words and racial slurs.<br /><br />"Here, you are regarded as a cannibal."<br /><br />You don't have to look far to see examples of prejudice towards people of African descent in India: just look at how Bollywood treats its black characters.<br /><br />Take, for example, the award-winning 2008 film Fashion, which told the tale of an aspiring model - played by Quantico actress Priyanka Chopra - who is caught in a downward spiral of drink and drugs.<br /><br />But the moment she realises she has truly hit rock bottom is when she wakes up beside a black man. According to Dhruva Balram, the racial undertones of her realisation were clear.<br /><br />"For Bollywood, as an aspiring model, the worst thing you can do is position yourself sexually next to a black person," he argued in an article for Media Diversified.<br /><br />The article immediately resonated with Kadisha Phillips, an African-American New Yorker who spent a month in Bollywood during her degree. The racism she experienced left its mark - whether being ignored in a restaurant, or blocked from entering the school's campus by one of the guards.<br /><br />"I could tell it was because of the colour of our skin," she recalled. "It was just easy to notice."<br /><br />So were Gupta's messages just another example of the everyday racism experienced by black people in India?<br /><br />It is fair to say the furore which surrounded the Instagram post failed to make as big a splash in India as it did in other parts of the world.<br /><br />But why? That could be down to the fact it takes a more shocking incident to become a talking point.<br /><br />It was one such incident back in 2016 - when a young Tanzanian woman was beaten and stripped by an angry mob - which inspired photographer Mahesh Shantaram to take a fresh look at his own country.<br /><br />Endurance Amalawa was attacked by an angry mob in 2017<br />What he found, after spending months travelling around his own city, and then the country, meeting, speaking with and photographing black Africans, left him shocked.<br /><br />"I was hearing things for the first time," he said. "Imagine someone telling you stories about your country that you think you know very well, but they tell you a very different story."<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-67236341011689951082018-07-17T21:32:54.546-07:002018-07-17T21:32:54.546-07:00Watch an "untouchable" woman from India ...Watch an "untouchable" woman from India tell her story<br /><br />Sujatha Gidla was part of the lowest class in India's social hierarchy -- the untouchables. When she left India for the United States, she was finally free of caste, but the psychological toll left her feeling inferior for years.<br /><br /><br />https://www.facebook.com/HuffPostPerspectives/videos/1820530418014581/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-46023388321621288782017-12-13T20:54:03.611-08:002017-12-13T20:54:03.611-08:00The indignity of being #Muslim in #India. #BJP #Mo...The indignity of being #Muslim in #India. #BJP #Modi #Hindutva #Islamophobia<br />https://qz.com/1152569/the-indignity-of-being-muslim-in-india/<br /><br />by Sahil Wajid <br /><br />I have, over the years, endured considerable discomfort and faced discrimination on account of my Muslim name—despite being wholly irreligious, despite having had a sheltered upbringing in a big city and access to education and employment, and despite having had many Hindu friends over the years who stood up for me.<br /><br />Extrapolating from these personal experiences beyond my narrow prism of privilege, I can only imagine the horrors that the less fortunate Muslim men and women in the Hindi heartland would have had to endure. Especially, those who try to exercise their so-called freedom of religion and, unlike me, choose to assert their religious identity.<br /><br />Sure, they are free to practice their religion and there are no legal obstacles (at least not yet), but for minorities in general and the beleaguered Muslims in particular, what this freedom essentially translates into is little more than the freedom to suffer marginalisation and humiliation.<br /><br />And most of them do not even have “secular” first names to hide behind.<br /><br />-------------------<br /><br /><br />My first name was chosen by my mother because it was, as she put it, a “secular” name. Being a mildly religious woman, that really meant the name came as close as it could to a Hindu one, without sounding like a complete cop-out to some of her more orthodox Muslim relatives.<br /><br />At any rate, it was better than the more spiritual name that my father, an atheist working at a bank, had in mind: Khusro, which, she said, would have been a pronunciation nightmare (besides being, as I later realised, egregiously Muslim-sounding).<br /><br />While the turmoil of 1992 was still a few years away when I was born, my mother, unlike my father, seemed to have foreseen the times to come. However, as I was soon to find out, while first names can be chosen, there are no such secularising remedies for family names.<br /><br />Delhi pejoratives<br />At my Delhi school one day, a seven-year-old in my class found out that my middle initial “A” stood for “Abdul.” He declared it was something to be ashamed about—rather viciously for his young age and in the unrelenting manner that children do when they pounce on an embarrassing secret. I realised at that early age that my Muslim surname was unlikely to ever be an asset and was best kept to oneself when it could be helped.<br /><br />Subsequently, I introduced myself only by my first name. Once, when pressed, I lied about the “A” standing for “Agarwal,” before eventually dropping the inconvenient middle-name altogether. Of course, there were more such instances along the way to high school, from being <br /><br />bestowed with nicknames pertaining to the <br /><br />I introduced myself only by my first name.<br /><br />stereotypical Muslim occupations, such as Darzi (tailor) and Naai (barber), to the now all-too-common Pakistani.<br /><br />I also became familiar, much to the horror of my scandalised parents, with the more unsavory pejoratives for Muslim men, thanks to some of the older boys in my Delhi locality.<br /><br />In college, stereotypes dressed as harmless “jokes” were routinely flung in one’s face. With my Muslim name, they came in the form of gags centered on terrorism—about hijacking small vehicles, a supposed proclivity for explosions, and so on. My surname provided a sustained spark for creativity of this kind, and not wanting to be perceived as unsporting and risk isolation, I played along.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-25733477327276393112017-11-01T16:19:49.927-07:002017-11-01T16:19:49.927-07:00Harvard Genetics Study Finds Most Indians Are Not ...Harvard Genetics Study Finds Most Indians Are Not Indigenous<br /><br />http://www.riazhaq.com/2013/08/harvard-genetics-study-finds-most.html<br /><br />Debunking the myth of "the purity of the Race" pushed by Hindu Nationalist leader Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, a Harvard study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics has found that vast majority of Indians today have descended from a mixture of two genetically divergent populations--Ancestral North Indians (ANIs) who migrated from Central Asia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Europe, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), who are not closely related to groups outside the subcontinent.<br /><br />Geographically, Ancestral North Indians (ANIs) tend to be more concentrated in the northern and western parts of India closer to West Asia, while Ancestral South Indians are found mostly in southern and eastern parts of India.<br /><br />The paper, titled "Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India" confirms that North Indians ancestors started migrating to India from outside thousands of years before the advent of Islam. ANIs and ASIs routinely intermarried between 4,200 and 1,900 years ago until the imposition of strict segregation by the Hindu caste system, according to the study.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-79384705188262872062017-11-01T16:17:39.962-07:002017-11-01T16:17:39.962-07:00Aryan Invasion May Have Transformed India's Br...Aryan Invasion May Have Transformed India's Bronze-Age Population<br />By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer<br /><br />https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-central-asian-invaders.html<br /><br />Contd....<br /><br />But past genetic analyses were based on either DNA from mitochondria, which is passed from mothers to daughters, or from genetic mutations found in nuclear DNA, which are inherited from both parents but can be difficult to date.<br />In the current study, which was reported in March in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, Richards and colleagues analyzed modern genetic data from mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome DNA — which is passed only from father to son — and nuclear DNA. By tying all these pieces of data together, the team was able to tie patterns of migration to specific points in time.<br />The team found evidence that people began colonizing India more than 50,000 years ago and that there were multiple waves of migration into India from the northwest over the last 20,000 years, including waves of people from Anatolia, the Caucasus and Iran between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago.<br />But evidence for one migration was particularly striking: The genetic makeup of the Y chromosome dramatically shifted about 4,000 to 3,800 years ago, the study found. About 17.5 percent of Indian men carry a Y-chromosome subtype, or haplogroup, known as R1, with the haplogroup more dominant in men in the north compared to the south of India.<br />This new finding points to an ancient group of people who inhabited the grassland between the Caspian and Black seas from about 5,000 to 2,300 years ago, known broadly as the Yamnaya people. The Yamnaya (and its later subgroup, the Andronovo culture) typically buried their dead in pit graves, drove wheeled horse chariots, herded livestock and spoke an early precursor Indo-European language. About 5,000 years ago, people from this culture almost completely transformed the genetic landscape of Europe, a 2015 Science study suggests.<br />The genetic signature of the Yamnaya people shows up strongly in the male lineage, but hardly at all in the female lineage, the study found.<br />One possibility is that a group of horse-riding warriors swept across India, murdered the men and raped or took local women as wives, but not all explanations are that martial, Richards said. For instance, it's possible that whole family units from the Yamnaya migrated to India, but that the men were either able to acquire (or started out with) higher status than local males and thus sired more children with local women, Richards said.<br />"It's very easy for Y-chromosome composition to change very quickly," Richards told Live Science. "Just because individual men can have a lot more children than women can."<br />The shift wasn't as dramatic as the genetic transformation of Europe; while up to 90 percent of European men from some countries carry a version of R1, only a minority of men from the Indian subcontinent do, Richards said.<br />"It's not like a complete wipeout by any means," Richards said.<br />Remaining questions<br />The study has a limitation: Because the very hot conditions in India don't preserve DNA well, the group lacks ancient DNA to prove that ancient migrants to the region carried the R1 haplogroup, said James Mallory, an archaeologist at Queen's University Belfast in Ireland, <br />o was not involved in the study.<br />"They're trying to read the history of a people through its modern DNA," Mallory told Live Science. In the past, similarly well-grounded theories have been disproven once people sampled ancient skeletal remains, Mallory added.<br />The other problem is that there is very little archaeological evidence for a dramatic cultural transformation in India at that time, he added. The Andronovo left behind distinctive artifacts and evidence of their culture in other places, such as their pit burials and unique pottery.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-65171922565055781732017-11-01T16:17:11.176-07:002017-11-01T16:17:11.176-07:00Aryan Invasion May Have Transformed India's Br...Aryan Invasion May Have Transformed India's Bronze-Age Population<br />By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer<br /><br />https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-central-asian-invaders.html<br /><br />An influx of men from the steppe of Central Asia may have swept into India around 3,500 years ago and transformed the population.<br /><br />The same mysterious people — ancient livestock herders called the Yamnaya who rode wheeled chariots and spoke a proto-Indo-European language — also moved across Europe more than 1,000 years earlier. Somehow, they left their genetic signature with most European men, but not women, earlier studies suggest.<br /><br />The new data confirm a long-held but controversial theory that Sanskrit, the ancient language of Northern India, emerged from an earlier language spoken by an influx of people from Central Asia during the Bronze Age. [24 Amazing Archaeological Discoveries]<br /><br />"People have been debating the arrival of the Indo-European languages in India for hundreds of years," said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England. "There's been a very long-running debate about whether the Indo-European languages were brought from migrations from outside, which is what most linguists would accept, or if they evolved indigenously."<br /><br />Aryan invasion theory<br /><br />From the earliest days of colonial rule in India, linguists like William Jones and Jakob Grimm (who co-edited "Grimm's Fairy Tales") noticed that Sanskrit shared many similarities with languages as disparate as French, English, Farsi (or Persian) and Russian. Linguists eventually arrived at the conclusion that all these languages derived from a common ancestral language, which they dubbed Indo-European.<br /><br />But while North Indian languages are predominantly Indo-European, South Indian languages mostly belong to the Dravidian language family. To explain this, scholars proposed the so-called Aryan invasion theory — that a group of people from outside India swept in and brought a proto-Sanskrit language to northern India. (The name "Aryans" came from a Sanskrit word for "noble" or "honorable.") In the early 1900s, British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler proposed that these Aryan people may have conquered, and caused the collapse of, the mysterious Indus Valley Civilization that flourished in what is now India and Pakistan.<br /><br />The Aryan migration theory eventually became controversial because it was used to justify claims of superiority for different Indian subgroups; was claimed as the basis for the caste system; and in a bastardized form, was incorporated into Nazi ideology that the Aryans were the "master race."<br /><br />What's more, earlier genetic data did not seem to corroborate the notion of a dramatic Aryan influx into India during the Bronze Age, according to a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-43698152086011347832017-10-30T21:37:42.689-07:002017-10-30T21:37:42.689-07:00Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrect...Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrected by the alt-right<br /><br />http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41757047<br /><br />Savitri Devi, a mystical admirer of Hitler and a cat-loving devotee of the Aryan myth, seemed destined to fade into obscurity after her death 25 years ago. But thanks to the rise of the extreme right, her name and her image now crop up online more and more, writes Maria Margaronis.<br />In 2012, browsing the website of Greece's Golden Dawn party for an article I was writing, I stumbled on a picture of a woman in a blue silk sari gazing at a bust of Hitler against a blazing sunset sky.<br />What was this apparently Hindu woman doing on the site of an openly racist party devoted to expelling all foreigners from Greece? I filed her as a curiosity at the back of my mind, until the rising tide of extreme-right politics in Europe and America threw up the name "Savitri Devi" once again.<br />It isn't hard these days to find discussions of Savitri Devi's books on neo-Nazi web forums, especially The Lightning and the Sun, which expounds the theory that Hitler was an avatar - an incarnation - of the Hindu god Vishnu, and Gold in the Furnace, which urges true believers to trust that National Socialism will rise again. The American extreme-right website Counter-Currents hosts an extensive online archive of her life and work.<br />Her views are reaching a wider public, too, thanks to American alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, former Trump chief strategist and chair of Breitbart News, who have taken up her account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil — a theory she shared with other 20th Century mystical fascists.<br /><br />Dark metal bands and American right-wing radio stations also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, which Savitri Devi believed that Hitler was once destined to bring to an end.<br />Who was Savitri Devi, and why are her ideas being resurrected now? Despite the sari and the name she was a European, born Maximiani Portas to an English mother and Greek-Italian father in Lyon in 1905.<br />She learned Indian languages, married a Brahmin, and forged an elaborate synthesis of Nazism and Hindu myth<br />From an early age, she despised all forms of egalitarianism. "A beautiful girl is not equal to an ugly girl," she told an interviewer sent by the Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in 1978.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.com