Is being Anti-Islam the same as Pro-Indian?

[doppelganger]

Yes yes. Just one example to debunk your claim. Or possibly you are either brain washed or ill-educated. In Pashchimbangla the official Muslim population is 35%. Actually it is more like 50%. And Muslims have only 2.50% govt jobs. They are also far backward in education and economic well being.

They need to study and work harder then my friend.

I believe a balancing act is actually needed. It is no secret that Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India face the worst persecution. I say this as a person whose both parents are from Lucknow and were born there. We saw certain massive biases and the death of a distant relative family. There is a lot of institutional bias. The Rinkle Kumari case proved this in Pakistan while the case of Sana baji in India. Courts, police all work together and favor the majority group. Relatives were told to "go to Pakistan" by a judge or a lawyer-not sure who. In either case there are huge biases.

The reason I am mentioning this is there has to be an act that evens the playing field. We all know muslims in india make up 48% of all jail inmates when they are 13% of the populace and have literacy about 10% lower than Hindus. Now some may blame the Muslims for this as it is the simplest task but something needs to be done about this. The way is to give the selected groups extra benefits.

You can ask anyone I advocate the same for Pakistan. Hindus should receive more funds and help and their yatras should be covered by the government. I designed this for Hindu community in my loyalty to them.

They should be given equal oportunities. When we talk about treating them equally we do not take into account institutional biases that occur and the cases where innocents are picked up ATA 2013 amendment in Pakistan or POTA in India.

Biases are natural in society. Point is, the state has done a lot for our muslims. Continues to do so. Their numbers keep increasing. Yet their literary and economic lot does not. There are very deep rooted issues at play here. We know them. Yet as a democratic and secular country our hands are tied. I so wish so often that we were more like China.

 

[bronxbull]

@KS
You are talking about Haj subsidies given to muslims, but what about the government involvement in Kumbh Melas, its entire administrative machinery is involved in it, wouldn't it be favoring a particular religion.

It is normal for Indians to celebrate a Hindu festival/

Actually BJP under Vajpayee abandoned the Ram Mandir issue after 1998. He rode the wave and abandoned it along with the hopes and aspirations of all those Hindus who supported BJP on this issue. It is to be remembered that BJP grew from a 2 member party to 182 seats purely on the Nationalism and Ram Mandir issue ......as there was no other issue in the election then.

@ 60% (59.99%) voting and BJP (Not NDA) getting 37% of the vote it translates to 222 million Indians who were asking for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. It is difficult to imagine that these 222 million Indians (and now also their children) would have forgotten about the issue, especially after the Supreme Courts admission that there was a Temple in the disputed territory. It is an emotive issue that is waiting to be raised.

You are mistaken when you say BJP has tried to rake Ram Janmabhoomi issue earlier.......BJP under Advani foolishly believed they had enough credibility among Indian voters to win an election under anti-incumbency vote. They tried to stay put Ram Janmabhoomi behind them and project themselves as a modern party in the foolish belief that 'secular' votes would come to them. They even sidelined Narendra Modi as he was not seen as 'secular' enough.

Congress played dirty by their Loan waiver (which has resulted in today's HUGE Deficit) and this and and next Congress is going to use Direct Cash Transfer to bribe their way back to Lok Sabha.

BJP has nothing to fight Direct Cash Transfer (....people are going to see this as congress paying them off) except rake up an emotive issue that has the potential to create a divide again in peoples mind.

Bihar had hit rock bottom under laloo and they had nowhere else to go but up.....add to that Nitish offered free cycles to kids and Women and extremely backward castes were given 50% reservation in electorals in 2005. Bihar voted for 'NOT LALU' rather than 'Pro Nitish'.

Hindus who vote for parties other than BJP and against BJP also want a Ram Mandir there.

 

[Bang Galore]

@ 60% (59.99%) voting and BJP (Not NDA) getting 37% of the vote it translates to 222 million Indians who were asking for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. It is difficult to imagine that these 222 million Indians (and now also their children) would have forgotten about the issue, especially after the Supreme Courts admission that there was a Temple in the disputed territory. It is an emotive issue that is waiting to be raised.

Where do you get those figures?....and did you just take the entire population in your calculation instead of the actual electorate numbers? Still interested in those numbers. 37%? Emotive issues have a life cycle, can't use them again & again without the effect wearing off. Also, I'm just not sure what you think will happen? The BJP will announce the Ram Mandir program & everyone will come rushing Back? If that was the case, the BJP would have always won.

Not all who voted for the BJP did so for the Mandir or more correctly did so only on the mandir issue. The BJP was looked at as a real alternative to the Congress & in Vajpayee had a leader who commanded personal charisma like no other.

You are mistaken when you say BJP has tried to rake Ram Janmabhoomi issue earlier.......BJP under Advani foolishly believed they had enough credibility among Indian voters to win an election under anti-incumbency vote. They tried to stay put Ram Janmabhoomi behind them and project themselves as a modern party in the foolish belief that 'secular' votes would come to them. They even sidelined Narendra Modi as he was not seen as 'secular' enough.

They have done it repeatedly in the U.P. elections & have failed to get any traction. Your logic simply does not hold that there is so much interest in the Mandir but people with that interest would simply switch to parties having the opposite agenda. No logic at all.

Bihar had hit rock bottom under laloo and they had nowhere else to go but up.....add to that Nitish offered free cycles to kids and Women and extremely backward castes were given 50% reservation in electorals in 2005. Bihar voted for 'NOT LALU' rather than 'Pro Nitish'.

True but the narrative has started changing and will continue to change.

 

[KS]

is it true that south Indians worship Raavan

No........

 

[KS]

This is not about Ram, it's about the Babri masjid structure. Till Rajiv Gandhi, ill advised by Arun Nehru decided to play the Hindu card to lessen the blowback from the Shah Bano case, there were not many who had heard of this issue. It was by no means completely unknown but it was to most people, even in North India. The last time before 1989 that it had really caught anyone's attention was a half century before.

Again you are speaking from a south indian perspective and not from perspective of a north or west indian.

It is a popular myth that the Ram janmabhoomi issue only started in 1949 with the Ram lalla issue. No, the issue actually never lft the consciousness of the people there from the moment it was destroyed..Tens of thousands,if not lakhs, of lives were lost through the centuries and the ownership of the plot kept going back and forth and Hindus there never really reconciled to tthe destruction.

It was lying dormant waiting for a vent to explode and the shah bano case proved to be the vent.

I have always believed that just by trying to push things under the carpet things like these never solve themselves. Only by facing them and taking a stand we can hope to solve them. Sure, there might be some problems, but they are short-term and ultimately it will heal in the long term.

An example is the Somnath mandir issue. Today how many know that the masjid there was pulled down and shifted to some other place and the mandir was rebuilt there ? Ayodhya must have been handled the same way. Nehru did a blunder by trying to push this away and some decades later it exploded in everyones face.

----

Also this is regards your reply to zaxcollix, the fortunes of BJP are not strictly tied to the rise or ebb of Hindutva.. I know many people with total right wing idealogy voting for DMK or ADMK in my place because of familial, caste affliations.

 

[ashokdeiva]

This is exactly the argument of the Psedo Seculars. What you are saying makes us NON SECULAR. So first decide is India a Secular Country or a Pseudo Secular Country.

If they didn't want to be minority they should have moved to Pakistan. They stayed in India knowing they will be minority. So why do they need special privileges. And a very fallacious argument. You just ignored the other 9. Are they any less Indians.

For thousands of years, they have lived here in INDIA, and because two political leaders divided the country should they move to the other.
Because of two men, we saw a stretch of 400 km border burn for 20 km on either side.
When you say secular, are the people of INDIA really secular, do they keep their religion or faith as their private matter as lock it to the prayer hall or temple or mosque like in France.
Muslims come out to the streets and exhibit their number. so does Hindus and Chirstians go to every home promising Jesus is comming to their home to wash their sins.
Are we really secular to do what you wish with giving privilages to one sect?
man you guys are either too naive to see the obvious or you want to cleanse the minority for this country. be true when you think of this in your heart.

There might be partiality in some case, but can we not live with that saying that we are still majority, let them have the pi. can we not do that.

Some one brought in Kashmir, Remember Kashmir was an independent princely state. The king joined INDIA just because Pakistan attacked too early, had they not attacked slowly the majority Kashmiris who are Muslims would have made sure that they either remain as a independent pro Pakistani state or would have joined Paksitan as another province.
This might be a better truth to digest to most INDIAN, but we have to accept the facts.

 

[Bang Galore]

Again you are speaking from a south indian perspective and not from perspective of a north or west indian.

It is a popular myth that the Ram janmabhoomi issue only started in 1949 with the Ram lalla issue. No, the issue actually never lft the consciousness of the people there from the moment it was destroyed..Tens of thousands,if not lakhs, of lives were lost through the centuries and the ownership of the plot kept going back and forth and Hindus there never really reconciled to tthe destruction.

It was lying dormant waiting for a vent to explode and the shah bano case proved to be the vent.

Never said it started in 1949, only that it lay dormant for over half a century till 1989. I'm aware of its history. I have not entered into a discussion of what people's religious feelings were but I still contend that pre-1989, it simply did not hold widespread attention & was more a local issue. Anyone who has knowledge of Mathura & Kashi has a clear idea that those are far more clear cut cases of aggression but even that never had a national character to the anger felt. Unfortunately symbols of destruction by Muslim rulers are dime a dozen. It takes a movement to generate an anger that has been dormant about an issue but by the very nature of such movements, they come with a shelf life.

 

[zaxcolix]

Where do you get those figures?....and did you just take the entire population in your calculation instead of the actual electorate numbers? Still interested in those numbers. 37%? Emotive issues have a life cycle, can't use them again & again without the effect wearing off. Also,.

60% voting and of that 37% voted for BJP. Do your math and you will end up with the same figure.

Religion have been an emotive issue for the last 2000 years. It can and have been used in politics for centuries. Even inconvenient truths have been to acknowledged sometimes.

I'm just not sure what you think will happen? The BJP will announce the Ram Mandir program & everyone will come rushing Back? If that was the case, the BJP would have always won. Not all who voted for the BJP did so for the Mandir or more correctly did so only on the mandir issue. The BJP was looked at as a real alternative to the Congress & in Vajpayee had a leader who commanded personal charisma like no other. .

For those who want Ram Mandir, BJP still remains their best bet (..in fact their only bet).

As mentioned earlier, BJP did dump the Ram Mandir issue by calling the matter Sub Judice and focused on ‘India Shining’ …….but facts shows that BJP got more votes pan India on Ram Mandir than ‘India Shining’ a.k.a development. NDA did worse.

No body saw BJP has an alternative to congress when they had 2 seats ….they became an alternative only when they had 180+ seats and became India’s first Non Congress government that lasted full term. That 180 seats came because of Ram Mandir.

Politics makes for strange bed fellows …parties come together because of convergence of Interests (make money, stay out of jail, grab power)…..its naïve to credit that to ‘Vajpayee’s charisma’ ..If you want to belive that story, I have nothing more to say to you.

They have done it repeatedly in the U.P. elections & have failed to get any traction. Your logic simply does not hold that there is so much interest in the Mandir but people with that interest would simply switch to parties having the opposite agenda. No logic at all.
.

Vajpayee was a politician cut in the congress mould (he admired Nehru/Indra Gandhi) and he used the Janmabhoomi wave to become PM and then like an astute politician, dropped Ram Mandir from his agenda. That is how he became darling of the Media and hence the claims of his ‘charisma’ in English media. However betrayal of that agenda also destroyed BJP’s credibility among Hindu voters.

BJP also lost credibility in UP when it turned apologetic on the Ram Mandir issue. Kalyan Singh who was responsible for Babri demolition was sidelined and forced to resign from BJP. He was also a backward caste leader and when he left the backward caste vote went to Mayawati.

Today Kalyan singh is back in the BJP. Why do you think that is?

True but the narrative has started changing and will continue to change.

But Yes …as India gets more urbanized …the narrative will continue to move towards development.

 

[Bang Galore]

60% voting and of that 37% voted for BJP. Do your math and you will end up with the same figure.

I know my maths (you can use the American term ), I just wanted to know where & when did 37% vote for the BJP?

 

[zaxcolix]

I know my maths (you can use the American term ), I just wanted to know where & when did 37% vote for the BJP?

Too afraid to Google ? .........Indian general election, 1999 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Bang Galore]

Too afraid to Google ? .........Indian general election, 1999 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A little bit of circumspection & a lot less condescension won't hurt.

Go read that page & this time carefully.


This is what you said. Go read carefully.

@ 60% (59.99%) voting and BJP (Not NDA) getting 37% of the vote it translates to 222 million Indians who were asking for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

I see 23.75% for the BJP, that is far less than your claim(which was the NDA percentage). Second you are still wrongly extrapolating this percentage to the Indian population as a whole who are all not part of the electorate. Anyways that was a minor point but you are incorrect with your figure as quoted.

 

[MST]

For thousands of years, they have lived here in INDIA, and because two political leaders divided the country should they move to the other.
Because of two men, we saw a stretch of 400 km border burn for 20 km on either side.
When you say secular, are the people of INDIA really secular, do they keep their religion or faith as their private matter as lock it to the prayer hall or temple or mosque like in France.
Muslims come out to the streets and exhibit their number. so does Hindus and Chirstians go to every home promising Jesus is comming to their home to wash their sins.
Are we really secular to do what you wish with giving privilages to one sect?
man you guys are either too naive to see the obvious or you want to cleanse the minority for this country. be true when you think of this in your heart.

There might be partiality in some case, but can we not live with that saying that we are still majority, let them have the pi. can we not do that.

Some one brought in Kashmir, Remember Kashmir was an independent princely state. The king joined INDIA just because Pakistan attacked too early, had they not attacked slowly the majority Kashmiris who are Muslims would have made sure that they either remain as a independent pro Pakistani state or would have joined Paksitan as another province.
This might be a better truth to digest to most INDIAN, but we have to accept the facts.

I am really confused about the point you are trying to make here.

Regarding Secularism you totally missed the point. People are not Secular its the Govt which is secular.
You can't say an individual is secular because each individual has some beliefs that drives him. And even an atheist is not secular. Since they don't believe in GOD which itself is a belief. Tolerence to other religion and Secularism is different. People can be tolerant but not secular.

Now coming to Govt of India which is supposed to be secular (as stated in Constitution) cannot have religious biases in its functioning. Now the Govt of India is not secular atall. Since it has shown many a times that it is driven by Religious sensitivties. E.g. take the case of Salman Rushdie. As recent as a few months ago The Govt has banned his entry. How long has it been since he wrote that book. I have not seen these things happen in US or Europe which are far more secular than India has been.

And don't try to judge me with your half baked knowledge. Just because I point out obvious fallacies which show appeasment based on religion I don't become anti minority.

 

[zaxcolix]

Even with 23.75% its 143 million hindus who want that Ram Mandir build. That is only those who voted for BJP. Now consider all those in NDA who wanted the temple built and then those in congress and other parties who want that temple built .....and now consider all those who wanted that temple built but did not vote.

If I were to make an intelligent guess...it would be close to 300 million hindus who want a Ram Mandir there. That is 1 in every 3 Indians. That looks like a pretty emotive issue to me....and also a good reason the build that temple there.

 

[KS]

Never said it started in 1949, only that it lay dormant for over half a century till 1989. I'm aware of its history. I have not entered into a discussion of what people's religious feelings were but I still contend that pre-1989, it simply did not hold widespread attention & was more a local issue. Anyone who has knowledge of Mathura & Kashi has a clear idea that those are far more clear cut cases of aggression but even that never had a national character to the anger felt. Unfortunately symbols of destruction by Muslim rulers are dime a dozen. It takes a movement to generate an anger that has been dormant about an issue but by the very nature of such movements, they come with a shelf life.

Local issue ? Hardly, as I keep saying, this was a pretty emotive issue in the Gangetic plains and the Hindi belt and that hold nearly 60%-70% of the Hindus in India.

Also you are right in saying the issue was always dormant for 4 decades..that is what I am saying too..though it was dormant it was never forgotten..even now it is only dormant waiting for shah bano to burst out..dont get fooled by all the media bimbos shouting "has the gen Y moved past it". The issue will never be forgotten unless and until a mandir is built there. Actually what you said is the typical Indian mentality (including me) of wishing away certain problems in the hope that time would somehow solve them. No, in this problem it wont. The more dormant it lays, with that much force it will explode.

As regards Kashi and Mathura, why they dont hold as much appeal as Ayodhya was, they have the temples rebuilt atleast adjacent to their original spot which has tempered the emotions..but in case of Ayodhya, the fact that there was no temple and Ram always a special place amognst those people was the precipitating factor.

 

[Bang Galore]

Local issue ? Hardly, as I keep saying, this was a pretty emotive issue in the Gangetic plains and the Hindi belt and that hold nearly 60%-70% of the Hindus in India.

Nope, pre-1989 it was a local issue alone with no widespread belief universally about it being the sole Ram Janmabhoomi. There were other temples that claimed the same.

Also you are right in saying the issue was always dormant for 4 decades..that is what I am saying too..though it was dormant it was never forgotten..even now it is only dormant waiting for shah bano to burst out..dont get fooled by all the media bimbos shouting "has the gen Y moved past it". The issue will never be forgotten unless and until a mandir is built there. Actually what you said is the typical Indian mentality (including me) of wishing away certain problems in the hope that time would somehow solve them. No, in this problem it wont. The more dormant it lays, with that much force it will explode.

I believe differently. I think economic liberalisation has changed India in as much that people have now seen the downside of the "appeasement" to Muslims ( actually only to the Ulema) because Muslims have disproportionately ( because of lack of education) been unable to join in the benefits that accrued to other Indians. So the old story of appeasement no longer has the same currency as before.

As regards Kashi and Mathura, why they dont hold as much appeal as Ayodhya was, they have the temples rebuilt atleast adjacent to their original spot which has tempered the emotions..but in case of Ayodhya, the fact that there was no temple and Ram always a special place amognst those people was the precipitating factor.

One look at the mosques there will teach you differently. The violence of destruction is clearly evident in the structure itself.