Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan

[ranjeet]

This intolerance debate has been wrongly framed. Mainly because the opposition is not competent and the government has focused on politics. The questions we are dealing with so far are: Is India becoming intolerant? Is India less or more intolerant than before? Etc. Already we can see the vagueness emerging.

Playing hero: The vagueness of the debate has allowed Hindutvawadis to position themselves as India’s defenders against liberals

Aamir Khan’s anguish, which reignited the embers, produced a fresh set of reactions including: ‘If India were intolerant, PK would not be a hit’ (Shatrughan Sinha), ‘if BJP were tolerant, it would show in PM’s ability to appreciate Nehru’ (Congress) and ‘if PM were intolerant he would not have forgiven me’ (Smriti Irani). Meanwhile Arun Jaitley has been educating us on intolerance in the Congress 40 years ago and in Germany some decades before that.

Clearly, there is no focus, and why should anyone have to subscribe to the Gandhi clan’s ancestor worship rituals?

When Aamir said he felt uneasy in the atmosphere prevailing, the BJP produced this magnificent response: “No country in the world is better for Muslims than incredible and unmatched India, and no neighbour was better than a Hindu.”

There. Now shut up and stop whining. I could say here that I have a Danish neighbour I almost never see and certainly never hear, whom I prefer to all Hindus who have gone before him (and I doubt, based on my behaviour, whether he agrees that Hindus make for the best neighbours). But that would be digressing.

A full 85% of TOI’s online readers, tens of thousands of literate people, who were polled on the matter agreed with the BJP’s response to Aamir. This did not surprise me because we Indians love ourselves, but also because the BJP fully controls the narrative. This goes: ‘look, stuff happens and it has always happened but India is not intolerant so please don’t say it is’.

Except that it is not India that is being accused here. Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan.

It is natural that the BJP should seek to conflate the two but it was up to the opposition to bring clarity to the argument. In this it has failed, because it feels forced to keep defending its own blemished record. That shouldn’t hold the rest of us back because, like Aamir, all Indians are invested in it.

In Parliament and elsewhere Jaitley keeps dragging the debate back to the Congress of Indira and Rajiv. Those who murdered Sikhs have no right to speak of intolerance. Does that justify the doings today of Hindutva on cow and Muslim? It is insulting for Indians to be told that the BJP must be allowed to molest us in 2015 because Congress molested us in 1984.

Jaitley has not won a single election in his life (the Indian voter showing unusually good sense there). Why is he still lecturing us? Because he is the sophisticated face of Hindutva — the assorted yogis and sadhvis we actually elected to Parliament on the promise of development and governance not being particularly presentable. Jaitley has been tasked with drawing the fire away and he’s doing that job well.

He should not be allowed to distract us. The problem is, I repeat, Hindutva. The same fires we saw in the past are being stoked, and stoked deliberately. Partly because of political benefit. Partly, this is the scary bit, because of ideology and belief. If the prime minister is seen as silent, we must not assume it is because of a lack of interest.

As an ideology, Hindutva is unappealing, unintellectual, even unaesthetic. It is not attractive enough to be supported fully by even its enthusiasts (some of them lurking nearby) who cough out their objections every so often. But my big problem with Hindutva is that it is also dangerous. The BJP is convinced it can calibrate Hindutva, and that once the benefit is milked, in Muzaffarnagar, in cow politics, it can be switched off or turned down. But we have seen that this is not always possible. And it is Indian citizens who, as they always have, will pay for the recklessness.

The vagueness of the intolerance debate has allowed the Hindutvawadis to position themselves as defenders of India against pernicious troublemakers like Muslim filmstars and liberal writers. This is a lie. It should be seen immediately as being such.

This is a political matter only insofar as our ruling party is invested in Hindutva. It is a matter of social and national concern. The opposition’s failure to take the debate by the throat (child prodigy Rahul in particular putting up a poor show) mustn’t detract the rest of us from addressing it for what it is.

The intolerance debate should have a clear demand: Hindutva must stop poisoning our land.

Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan - TOI Blogs

@Mamsalaphala @SarthakGanguly @Skull and Bones @JanjaWeed @Mike_Brando

Liberals shifting intolerance goal post?

 

[Mamsalaphala]

All that is well and good, only he fails to mention how Hindutva is "bad" or "intolerant".

Its just a Rant in defence of Aamir Khan and the "secular" gangs and the blame is put on the door step of a convenient scrape goat called "Hindutva".


The only fact he has mentioned is Jaitley din't win election and he has asked what right CONgress has to speak on "intolerance".

To put it mildly the article is Rubbish.

 

[ranjeet]

Another star joins the intolerance debate.

https://twitter.com/x/status/670887431772606465

 

[Alpha BeeTee]

The international community doesnt have the time to understand the differences between Hindutva and Hindustan and this and that..
People only know that there exists an India with severe rascist tendencies and intolereance issues.

 

[ranjeet]

All that is well and good, only he fails to mention how Hindutva is "bad" or "intolerant".

Its just a Rant in defence of Aamir Khan and the "secular" gangs and the blame is put on the door step of a convenient scrape goat called "Hindutva".


The only fact he has mentioned is Jaitley din't win election and he has asked what right CONgress has to speak on "intolerance".

To put it mildly the article is Rubbish.

He mentions few facts in this article where he urges ISIS to provide Indian recruits with better leadership.

Warrior races of the subcontinent - The Express Tribune

I saw this story a few days ago and was surprised by it. It said the Islamic State, also called Isis and Daesh, “does not consider South Asian Muslims, including Indians, good enough to fight in conflict zone of Iraq and Syria and treats them as inferior to Arab fighters”.

Because of this belief, “the fighters from South Asia are usually housed in groups in small barracks and are paid less than the Arab fighters and are provided inferior equipment”, the report said.

This information came out of an intelligence report prepared by foreign agencies and shared with Indian agencies. It said fighters from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh as well as certain countries like Nigeria and Sudan are considered inferior to Arab fighters.

High alert: Agencies warn of Da’ish-inspired attacks in Punjab

I do not know much about the history of warfare in Nigeria and Sudan. But I can assure the Arabs that the sub-continental man has a better record of fighting than them.

On the one hand, it is a good thing this asset is not being used because the cause is wrong. But on the other hand, it may interest the reader to know history so that the record can be set straight.

Professional Indian fighters first appear in history in 479 BC in Greece. This is at the Battle of Plataea between the Iranian and the Greek city states. The historian Herodotus tells us about the various formations on both sides, and describes the Indian contingent of mercenaries, hired by the Persian king Xerxes. I read the book a long time ago, but cannot remember if mercenaries from any other nation were hired.

The Indians give a good account of themselves in the battle, though the Persians lose.

The historian Arrian writes of events in Punjab a century later when Alexander the Great invaded. The only serious resistance he faced was from bands of mercenaries that villagers hired to defend their settlements against the Macedonian army. The Indian mercenaries were very good at fighting. We know this because Alexander concludes a truce with them, then betrays them and massacres them.

This action is one of the few that his otherwise fawning biographers, Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus, single out as being morally reprehensible, so we know it happened.

Indian soldiers have spilt and drawn blood in some of history’s most fierce battles. The First World War fighting, which made Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Ataturk famous in 1915 in Gallipoli, included Indian soldiers, as many will know.

But most may not know that trench warfare, which defined that war, was an Indian invention.

Kerry says US can ‘neutralise’ Islamic State quicker than it did al Qaeda

In his book, The First World War, military historian John Keegan wrote: “The first trench raid appears to have been mounted on the night of 9/10 November 1914 near Ypres by the 39th Garhwal Rifles of the Indian Corps. Fierce irruptions into enemy positions under cover of darkness was a traditional feature of Indian frontier fighting and this first murderous little action may have represented an introduction of tribal military practice into the ‘civilised’ warfare of western armies.”

There has been no shortage of courage and skill from the Indian fighter. In his work, Catastrophe: Europe Goes To War 1914, historian Max Hastings writes that “Indian troops taught the British the art of patrolling”.

There were so many Indians in the trenches in France that the British foreign office was asked to supply 10,000 live goats a month to meet the ritual dietary requirements of Indian troops.

The four-volume work on the decline of the Mughal empire of the historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar shows the manner in which the three major Rajput clans (Sisodia, Kachwaha and Rathore) fought. Even when they were losing a battle, the Rathores continued to wheel their horses around and charge the enemy’s guns again. This was because, Sir Jadunath writes, they felt that not enough of them had been killed for them to return with honour.

Of course, the problem of the Rajputs was that they mainly fought each other. In one battle, I was amazed to read, the full charge of a few dozen Rathores scattered one lakh rival Rathore fighters.

This is not the legacy or indication of a nation of fighters inferior to Arabs.

In a newspaper 15 years or so ago, I read of an instance where two British units fought in a bar after one of the groups got drunk and aggressive. Unfortunately for them, the other unit was the Gurkhas who, though much smaller in size than the Brits, were superior fighters, and they, I still remember the line, “wiped the floor” with the opponents.

What the Indian soldier has always needed is good leadership. I doubt the Arabs of the Islamic State provide that and thank heavens for that.

 

[Mamsalaphala]

Another star joins the intolerance debate.

https://twitter.com/x/status/670887431772606465

Yet she expressed herself with a Laugh and a Smile ........ she must be very Brave. Like Aamir khan.

She has not even tried to leave this country. That itself is a testimony to her courage.

I like the part where Aamir Khan Clarified that he is "Proud" to be an Indian at the same time telling us to "ashamed" of being an India

 

[ranjeet]

Yet she expressed herself with a Laugh and a Smile ........ she must be very Brave. Like Aamir khan.

She has not even tried to leave this country. That itself is a testimony to her courage.

I like the part where Aamir Khan Clarified that he is "Proud" to be an Indian at the same time telling us to "ashamed" of being an India

Her father was throw out of the government bungalow by this government earlier this year.
Door shown to artistes overstaying in govt accommodation in Delhi | india | Hindustan Times

 

[Pakistani till death]

Intolerance was hindustan. We pakistanis separated ourselves from Hindustan not india. India is the name of this region aka south asia. The country today called india is actually hindustan!

 

[Mamsalaphala]

Her father was throw out of the government bungalow by this government earlier this year.
Door shown to artistes overstaying in govt accommodation in Delhi | india | Hindustan Times

Ufff .... no wonder she has recognized the rising Intolerance in India.


BTW these MOFO's had free houses allloted to them by the CONgress govt. ? On what grounds ?

 

[nForce]

Intolerance was hindustan. We pakistanis separated ourselves from Hindustan not india. India is the name of this region aka south asia. The country today called india is actually hindustan!

and then, the first time when Pakistan had democratic election, they perfectly managed to divide their country in two halves, that's racial intolerance.
Any non-Muslim can't be the head of state in Pakistan - that's institutionalized religious intolerance.

A thread is going on about persecution of Ahmadiyya community, with rules against them - again, institutionalized sectarian intolerance.

Kidnappings and forced conversion of Christian girls ? killings of Shias ? Those are signs of great tolerance, isn't it ?

Some of these Pakistanis are pure laughing stock. Now that Modi is in power, all of them are masquerading as great beacons of tolerance and secularism, pointing fingers at others, while at the same time, they have exact same thing in a much greater, organized and institutionalized scale in their own country.

 

[Skull and Bones]

If you're not tolerant against intolerance, then you are intolerant.

 

[Mike_Brando]

This intolerance debate has been wrongly framed. Mainly because the opposition is not competent and the government has focused on politics. The questions we are dealing with so far are: Is India becoming intolerant? Is India less or more intolerant than before? Etc. Already we can see the vagueness emerging.

Playing hero: The vagueness of the debate has allowed Hindutvawadis to position themselves as India’s defenders against liberals

Aamir Khan’s anguish, which reignited the embers, produced a fresh set of reactions including: ‘If India were intolerant, PK would not be a hit’ (Shatrughan Sinha), ‘if BJP were tolerant, it would show in PM’s ability to appreciate Nehru’ (Congress) and ‘if PM were intolerant he would not have forgiven me’ (Smriti Irani). Meanwhile Arun Jaitley has been educating us on intolerance in the Congress 40 years ago and in Germany some decades before that.

Clearly, there is no focus, and why should anyone have to subscribe to the Gandhi clan’s ancestor worship rituals?

When Aamir said he felt uneasy in the atmosphere prevailing, the BJP produced this magnificent response: “No country in the world is better for Muslims than incredible and unmatched India, and no neighbour was better than a Hindu.”

There. Now shut up and stop whining. I could say here that I have a Danish neighbour I almost never see and certainly never hear, whom I prefer to all Hindus who have gone before him (and I doubt, based on my behaviour, whether he agrees that Hindus make for the best neighbours). But that would be digressing.

A full 85% of TOI’s online readers, tens of thousands of literate people, who were polled on the matter agreed with the BJP’s response to Aamir. This did not surprise me because we Indians love ourselves, but also because the BJP fully controls the narrative. This goes: ‘look, stuff happens and it has always happened but India is not intolerant so please don’t say it is’.

Except that it is not India that is being accused here. Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan.

It is natural that the BJP should seek to conflate the two but it was up to the opposition to bring clarity to the argument. In this it has failed, because it feels forced to keep defending its own blemished record. That shouldn’t hold the rest of us back because, like Aamir, all Indians are invested in it.

In Parliament and elsewhere Jaitley keeps dragging the debate back to the Congress of Indira and Rajiv. Those who murdered Sikhs have no right to speak of intolerance. Does that justify the doings today of Hindutva on cow and Muslim? It is insulting for Indians to be told that the BJP must be allowed to molest us in 2015 because Congress molested us in 1984.

Jaitley has not won a single election in his life (the Indian voter showing unusually good sense there). Why is he still lecturing us? Because he is the sophisticated face of Hindutva — the assorted yogis and sadhvis we actually elected to Parliament on the promise of development and governance not being particularly presentable. Jaitley has been tasked with drawing the fire away and he’s doing that job well.

He should not be allowed to distract us. The problem is, I repeat, Hindutva. The same fires we saw in the past are being stoked, and stoked deliberately. Partly because of political benefit. Partly, this is the scary bit, because of ideology and belief. If the prime minister is seen as silent, we must not assume it is because of a lack of interest.

As an ideology, Hindutva is unappealing, unintellectual, even unaesthetic. It is not attractive enough to be supported fully by even its enthusiasts (some of them lurking nearby) who cough out their objections every so often. But my big problem with Hindutva is that it is also dangerous. The BJP is convinced it can calibrate Hindutva, and that once the benefit is milked, in Muzaffarnagar, in cow politics, it can be switched off or turned down. But we have seen that this is not always possible. And it is Indian citizens who, as they always have, will pay for the recklessness.

The vagueness of the intolerance debate has allowed the Hindutvawadis to position themselves as defenders of India against pernicious troublemakers like Muslim filmstars and liberal writers. This is a lie. It should be seen immediately as being such.

This is a political matter only insofar as our ruling party is invested in Hindutva. It is a matter of social and national concern. The opposition’s failure to take the debate by the throat (child prodigy Rahul in particular putting up a poor show) mustn’t detract the rest of us from addressing it for what it is.

The intolerance debate should have a clear demand: Hindutva must stop poisoning our land.

Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan - TOI Blogs

@Mamsalaphala @SarthakGanguly @Skull and Bones @JanjaWeed @Mike_Brando

Liberals shifting intolerance goal post?

Well what can we say about them,it's our sheer bad luck that this country has always been blessed by it's share of Ambhis and Jaichands since the time immemorial.Personally i don't give two hoots to what these libtards think about us and our religion!!

 

[The_Showstopper]

Liberals shifting intolerance goal post?

Liberals haven't changed their goal posts, it's your lot which has failed to differentiate it..

 

[JanjaWeed]

This intolerance debate has been wrongly framed. Mainly because the opposition is not competent and the government has focused on politics. The questions we are dealing with so far are: Is India becoming intolerant? Is India less or more intolerant than before? Etc. Already we can see the vagueness emerging.

Playing hero: The vagueness of the debate has allowed Hindutvawadis to position themselves as India’s defenders against liberals

Aamir Khan’s anguish, which reignited the embers, produced a fresh set of reactions including: ‘If India were intolerant, PK would not be a hit’ (Shatrughan Sinha), ‘if BJP were tolerant, it would show in PM’s ability to appreciate Nehru’ (Congress) and ‘if PM were intolerant he would not have forgiven me’ (Smriti Irani). Meanwhile Arun Jaitley has been educating us on intolerance in the Congress 40 years ago and in Germany some decades before that.

Clearly, there is no focus, and why should anyone have to subscribe to the Gandhi clan’s ancestor worship rituals?

When Aamir said he felt uneasy in the atmosphere prevailing, the BJP produced this magnificent response: “No country in the world is better for Muslims than incredible and unmatched India, and no neighbour was better than a Hindu.”

There. Now shut up and stop whining. I could say here that I have a Danish neighbour I almost never see and certainly never hear, whom I prefer to all Hindus who have gone before him (and I doubt, based on my behaviour, whether he agrees that Hindus make for the best neighbours). But that would be digressing.

A full 85% of TOI’s online readers, tens of thousands of literate people, who were polled on the matter agreed with the BJP’s response to Aamir. This did not surprise me because we Indians love ourselves, but also because the BJP fully controls the narrative. This goes: ‘look, stuff happens and it has always happened but India is not intolerant so please don’t say it is’.

Except that it is not India that is being accused here. Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan.

It is natural that the BJP should seek to conflate the two but it was up to the opposition to bring clarity to the argument. In this it has failed, because it feels forced to keep defending its own blemished record. That shouldn’t hold the rest of us back because, like Aamir, all Indians are invested in it.

In Parliament and elsewhere Jaitley keeps dragging the debate back to the Congress of Indira and Rajiv. Those who murdered Sikhs have no right to speak of intolerance. Does that justify the doings today of Hindutva on cow and Muslim? It is insulting for Indians to be told that the BJP must be allowed to molest us in 2015 because Congress molested us in 1984.

Jaitley has not won a single election in his life (the Indian voter showing unusually good sense there). Why is he still lecturing us? Because he is the sophisticated face of Hindutva — the assorted yogis and sadhvis we actually elected to Parliament on the promise of development and governance not being particularly presentable. Jaitley has been tasked with drawing the fire away and he’s doing that job well.

He should not be allowed to distract us. The problem is, I repeat, Hindutva. The same fires we saw in the past are being stoked, and stoked deliberately. Partly because of political benefit. Partly, this is the scary bit, because of ideology and belief. If the prime minister is seen as silent, we must not assume it is because of a lack of interest.

As an ideology, Hindutva is unappealing, unintellectual, even unaesthetic. It is not attractive enough to be supported fully by even its enthusiasts (some of them lurking nearby) who cough out their objections every so often. But my big problem with Hindutva is that it is also dangerous. The BJP is convinced it can calibrate Hindutva, and that once the benefit is milked, in Muzaffarnagar, in cow politics, it can be switched off or turned down. But we have seen that this is not always possible. And it is Indian citizens who, as they always have, will pay for the recklessness.

The vagueness of the intolerance debate has allowed the Hindutvawadis to position themselves as defenders of India against pernicious troublemakers like Muslim filmstars and liberal writers. This is a lie. It should be seen immediately as being such.

This is a political matter only insofar as our ruling party is invested in Hindutva. It is a matter of social and national concern. The opposition’s failure to take the debate by the throat (child prodigy Rahul in particular putting up a poor show) mustn’t detract the rest of us from addressing it for what it is.

The intolerance debate should have a clear demand: Hindutva must stop poisoning our land.

Intolerance has a name, and it is Hindutva, not Hindustan - TOI Blogs

@Mamsalaphala @SarthakGanguly @Skull and Bones @JanjaWeed @Mike_Brando

Liberals shifting intolerance goal post?

So says Aakar Ahmed Patel...bwwwaaahhhaaa

 

[Mike_Brando]

Another star joins the intolerance debate.

https://twitter.com/x/status/670887431772606465

I have never seen any one uglier than her in my entire life.Man,i just don't understand that who in his/her right mind would give the leading role of a movie to such a fugly!!