Internet Hindutva groups are a caricature of the Talibanism they opposes, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

Internet Hindutva groups are a caricature of the Talibanism they opposes

By Ashok Malik

March 07, 2010

Looking back at the M.F. Husain imbroglio, it is worth posing a counterfactual. What if the artist had not decided to take Qatari citizenship and returned to India to face the court cases, the rabble and the drama?

Would India have forced a 95-year-old artist, one of its best, to make multiple appearances in court or — in an extreme chance — face arrest? It would have invited ridicule. The so-called angry mobs that have spent years disrupting every Husain exhibition — even if these featured paintings completely unrelated to the controversial nude renditions of goddesses — would have become the subject of public hostility. They would have been as isolated as the Shiv Sena a few weekends ago.

Unfortunately, the Husain affair has handed a victory to the wrong sort of people for the wrong reasons. The reference here is to the Hindutva fringe, much of which has now migrated to the Internet. The Internet Hindu has blogged and tweeted and emailed exultantly about the defeat and exile of Husain. In parallel, a new campaign has gathered momentum, centred on a new hate figure: Wendy Doniger.

Doniger is a well-known American academic who, in 2009, released her book The Hindus: An Alternative History. In part, the book is engaging, its treatment of ancient India is detailed — that period is Doniger’s self-admitted strength — but its analysis of modern Hindu currents are perhaps a bit too rushed and dismissive. That aside, there are stylistic angularities that the author is no doubt entitled to but individual readers are free to disagree with.

http://newageislam.com/internet-hindutva-groups-are-a-caricature-of-the-talibanism-they-opposes/books-and-documents/d/2552

Pakistani intelligentsia are not in control of their country, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

Pakistani intelligentsia are not in control of their country

Yes, we love you too

By Ashok Malik

India’s attitude towards Pakistan has changed from being patronising to apathetic. And it seems that Islamabad just can’t stomach that, writes Ashok Malik.

Advocates for greater civil society engagement between India and Pakistan have three essential arguments. First, they contend a vast majority of Pakistanis want friendship with India but are being thwarted by a small minority. Second, with Indian help Pakistani civil society and democracy can yet win the battle against Islamism. Third, a democratic and ‘mainstreamed’ Pakistan will guarantee amity.

To be fair, these ideas are not new. Till even the 1990s, it was fashionable to believe that once the Partition generation — or the children of the Partition generation, those with once-removed experiences of 1947 — moved on, India and Pakistan would be able to relate to one another as normal countries.

They would not necessarily love each other or always cooperate. The sense of competition would still be there, but not blind demonisation. In the media and in popular culture, at football matches and occasionally at diplomatic conferences, Britain and France still disparage each other. Neither side sees this, however, as a resurrection of Agincourt and Crecy.

How has this theory panned out? The past 10-odd years have changed Indian attitudes towards Pakistan. After the attack on Parliament in December 2001, India was livid and at one level ready for war. Troops were mobilised. For a whole host of reasons, India did not and could not go to war.

http://newageislam.com/pakistani-intelligentsia-are-not-in-control-of-their-country/current-affairs/d/2462

TRAGEDY IN KABUL: A policy for the security of Indian diplomats abroad is needed, War on Terror, NewAgeiSlam.com

War on Terror

TRAGEDY IN KABUL: A policy for the security of Indian diplomats abroad is needed

By K.P. Nayar

He has just done three years of demanding political work in Kathmandu, the joint secretary attempted to rationalize with herself. Nepal had been in turmoil and Indian diplomats in Kathmandu did not have an easy time when the world’s only Hindu kingdom — then — was in ferment. In addition, the Nepalese government had hosted the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which meant a thankless additional workload for the Indian mission in Kathmandu. What is wrong with him, declining one of the most coveted postings in the Indian Foreign Service, the joint secretary kept asking in the hope that someone — even a visitor waiting in the outer office to see the foreign secretary — would give an answer that would satisfy her logic.

Eventually, Rao did go to Washington, where he was immediately thrown in at the deep end in the mission’s commerce wing. Economic work at the embassy in Washington is divided between a minister who is usually an Indian Administrative Service officer with experience in an economic ministry back home, and an IFS officer, also with the rank of minister, but who is on deputation to what is a post of the commerce ministry.

http://newageislam.com/tragedy-in-kabul---a-policy-for-the-security-of-indian-diplomats-abroad-is-needed--/war-on-terror/d/192

We Are Sitting Targets: ISI has succeeded in Indianising the Jehad, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

We Are Sitting Targets: ISI has succeeded in Indianising the Jehad

By B Raman

29 July 2008

The blasts are ominous for India. They mark the success of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in its efforts to Indianise the jehad by creating Indian versions of organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. They are now manned increasingly, if not totally, by Indian Muslim recruits and are being projected as the Indian Mujahideen.

The Indianisation of the jehad serves the ISI in three ways: it could aggravate the communal divide; it keeps the jehad going with limited Pakistani involvement; and Islamabad escapes pressure from the US to act against the jehadi set-up in its own territory.

Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad are only the beginning of this process. There is a danger of the Indianised jehad spreading to other areas. If it succeeds, it would not only add to political instability, but would also come in the way of our attempts to compete with China.

The atmosphere of insecurity would also cause nervousness in the foreign business and investor community.

The growing jehadi terrorism is a bleeding ulcer. The solidarity of the jehadis is, however, not confronted by the solidarity of the political class and civil society. We are frittering away our resources and energy in divisive debates marked by partisan point scoring. A disunited political class, clueless in the face of terrorism, cannot provide leadership to the counterterrorism community, which has been lurching from one failure to another.

http://newageislam.com/we-are-sitting-targets--isi-has-succeeded-in-indianising-the-jehad/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/349

‘Ancient Nalanda was more than Indian’, Islamic Culture, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Culture

‘Ancient Nalanda was more than Indian’

Q& A

A mentor group set up for this is to meet in August to discuss the treaty that is to be adopted in December this year at the East Asia summit. The mentor group has identified the pedagogy. It would be a postgraduate institution, a semi-European model with a rector (instead of vice-chancellor), someone internationally recognised. The project should take off in 2009 when construction begins. The architecture will retain the original flavour.

What would the medium of instruction be?

Mainly English. We aim to include the study of Asian languages, especially dormant ones like Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit. Pali is still one of the options in the Indian Administrative Service examination, but few choose it. Nalanda was a confluence of cross-cultural influences between East and South Asia. The idea is to revive the spirit.

http://newageislam.com/%E2%80%98ancient-nalanda-was-more-than-indian%E2%80%99/islamic-culture/d/240

Nudity isn't obscenity, it's just art

By Shashi Tharoor

Justice Kaul begins by quoting Pablo Picasso: "Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art." Recalling the richness of India's 5000-year-old culture, the judge adds, "Ancient Indian art has been never devoid of eroticism where sex worship and graphical representation of the union between man and woman has been a recurring feature.