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| HOME | NEWS | COMMENTARY | DARRYL D'MONTE | |||
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October 17, 1998
ELECTIONS '98
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How Readers responded to Darryl D'Monte's recent columns
Date sent: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 19:40:05 -0700
I commend Rediff for carrying Darryl D'Monte's column that looks at the Hindutva phenomenon from the Christian point of view. It is a point of view that is sorely needed to fill the vacuum caused by the dearth of leaders in the Hindu community who speak out against social injustice. Secular Hindus should awaken from their slumber and rise to the threat posed by the Hindutvawadis. Hindutvawadis will stop at nothing: whether it is subverting the law and advocating the murder of Muslims, attacking priests, destroying churches, burning Bibles, desecrating graves, demolishing mosques or rubbishing history to impose their idea of India. Hindutvawadis seem bent on erasing every vestige of India's non-Hindu past by demolishing buildings and changing the names of streets and cities. Because they are insecure and those vestiges are reminders of other equally compelling ideas of India. Finally, the Christians of today cannot answer for the crimes committed by Christians in the past. They can only be made to answer for crimes committed by Christians today. Just as Hindus must be made to answer for crimes committed by Hindus today. Hindutvawadis are a bunch of philistines and bullies who, if their claims go unchallenged, will only become bolder and more dangerous. Joachim Fernandes
Date sent: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 15:11:49 PDT
Mr D'Monte makes no attempt to hide his agenda of trying to discredit the BJP. He accuses it of neglecting historical monuments while making a lot of noise about preserving cultural values. Given that EVERY party makes a lot of noise about preserving cultural values, the thrust of the accusation is that the BJP neglects historical monuments. The question then is this: does Mr D'Monte lament the general neglect of historical monuments or does he selectively lament the neglect by the BJP? I, for one, believe that we in India do not know how to preserve our historical monuments or sites. A couple of years ago I visited two temples in the south -- the Vaitheeswaran Kovil and the Chidambaram Natarajar Kovil. A dip in the pond at Vaitheeswaran Kovil is supposed to be good for the soul and body. At that same pond I saw a couple of people washing their clothes with soap, one man bathing, and someone who looked like a priest actually washing his mouth! Much to my parents' chagrin I refused to take a dip in the water. At the Natarajar kovil, in one remote corner of the temple compound, a man was relieving himself. Tamil Nadu has never had a BJP government. How about this allegation: in spite of all his bluster in attacking the BJP for being a communal party, Mr D'Monte is unable to separate issues from ideology, thereby revealing his own communal tendencies? On another note, in his first article Mr D'Monte had warned readers to beware of the Hindu Taliban. Hindu Taliban! What rot! On one hand, you have a party that pushes for reservation to politically empower women; on the other, you have a regime that has systematically driven women out of social interaction, denied them basic education, even the right to be themselves outside their houses. I did not expect that the Indian Leftist woodwork contained people nuttier than Yechuri and company but Mr D'Monte easily out-Yechuris the most Leftist Sitaram. A specific comment: Mr D'Monte mentions that Mr Shourie's works have acquired a patina of scholarship through exhaustive quotations from documents, "however selective" the quotations. I challenge Mr D'Monte to prove with documented references, that any three quotations in Arun Shourie's book on Ambedkar are selective in a manner that distorts their meaning. Is he up to it? Prem Natarajan
Date sent: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 16:48:38 -0400
I do not know if you got my earlier mail. Why the hell do you still publish the obnoxious articles of Darryl D'Monte? It's so lopsided and disgusting. The author has no idea what Christian missionaries do in schools. I wish we could really be a Nazi club sometimes and throw these people out of the country, of course not harming them in any way.
Date sent: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 11:57:56 -0700
A very nice and thought-provoking article describing the atrocities of the rising saffron gang in India. Fizal
Date sent: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 12:57:15 -0500
The incidents he spoke to highlight the communal nature of the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal, and the attack on Husain's residence and the incidents in Gujarat sure smack of intolerance. Even then, certain trivialisations in his article suggest Mr D'Monte's opinions are not balanced. Especially, his criticism of Arun Shourie's articles. He grudgingly accepts Shourie quotes (scholarly) on anything he writes about in an attacking, selective manner. But the word 'selective' is meaningless in this context. Because Shourie clearly objects to certain pieces, he quotes those, and raises objections against those. At no point, Mr Shourie trashed an entire religion or the people of an entire religion. Regarding Communism, Communism itself being a theory, Mr Shourie is absolutely justified in rejecting it outright, based on his own opinions. Even here, he gives painstaking instances of the theory and practice, which he cannot accept. Mr D'Monte's trashing of Mr Shourie is especially objectionable because the latter is one of the few and rare truthful Indian journalists, who not only gives his opinions but also unreservedly shows the basis for the opinions. If Mr D'Monte's contention is that criticism of an ideology or religion itself is a proof of chauvinism, then what he can read will be sweet nothings. The basis for judging a writer should be how properly and objectively he is building his case, and if there is any jumping to conclusions and presence of falsehoods in the arguments. Ironically, Mr D'Monte's criticism of Mr Shourie displays these deficiencies: a. He says Shourie criticised Communism because Leftists currently show up as the only secular lot. Shourie may be still criticising Communism here and there (his current criticism is more on controlled economics of Communism), but his severest criticism dates back at least 12 years. b. Mr D'Monte says Shourie quotes selectively. He gives no instances where he felt the basis shown by Mr Shourie was inadequate for arguments forwarded. If one reads Shourie's articles fully (even if not closely), Shourie gives the context and a verbatim account of what he finds objectionable and dissects it. Moreover, Shourie's criticism is never of fiction, but of theories, or non-fictional books, or the public discourses (of persons). So there is not even a chance of quoting out of context. c. Mr Shourie's criticism of Ambedkar too was accompanied by painstaking references to the times and instances. Lastly, I hope Mr D'Monte recognises that the same Shourie was instrumental in reporting the Bhagalpur incident. I don't mean to say one has to accept all of Mr Shourie's outpourings. If people are lazy to examine the arguments provided by Shourie, they should not be hasty enough to pronounce judgment on his writing. If sufficient basis, to the contrary, can be displayed, one might proceed with a full-blown debate and not hasty trivialisations.
Date sent: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 11:23:59 -0700
Darryl D'Monte, Dilip D'Souza and others of their ilk are so quick to preach what they themselves are loath to practice in their own religion. I have personally seen the depth to which these so-called "Christian-minded" people will go through to convert somebody. The day after my father died, I got a visit from a "concerned Christian friend" who tells me that if I convert to Christianity he can assure me that my father will go to "heaven"! This shameless guy then went so far as to tell me that he knows of a "support group" for people who have lost their parents, which meets at some talkies in Bandra, Bombay. When I made enquiries, I found that that this so-called support group is nothing but a bunch of like-minded Christian fanatics who get their jollies by luring innocent Hindus into converting by preying on their grief and personal problems. Now you know why people like Mr D'Monte oppose any legal attempts to prevent forcible conversions. Ever wonder why there is nary a peep out of these guys about the real issues of the Christian minority, being persecuted in Pakistan? The Bishop of Faisalabad recently committed suicide. But then taking up this issue will put Mr D'Monte in an awkward position in his secular cocktail circuit... how dare he take up issues of another minority! Please pardon me when I get cynical when people like Darryl D'Monte and Dilip D'Souza preach to Hindus about tolerance. The very fact that such shameless proselytising activities still continue unabated is proof enough of the tolerance that Hindus have towards other religions. The fact that you will not dare to publish such email but give a pulpit to this phalanx of fundamentalists substantiates it further. Me, I am still a Hindu and still proud of the good things in my religion and will work towards changing those things which I am not proud of... not by changing my religion to another but by trying to change my religion for the better. Rajen
Date sent: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 11:43:15 -0400
I believe that words, spoken or written, have a greater effect when they are succinct. It is easy to debunk an entire ideology by painting it "fundamentalist". The Nazi movement is the Evil of the Century, right? In fact, a certain Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners, has tried to paint an entire populace as criminals. Their crime: they lived in the age of Nazism. Taking a cue, the British for our subjugation and the Americans for slavery can be said to qualify for the same degree of condemnation, and hence branded criminals. Obviously the author will disagree. As one brave Scotsman once said, history is written by those who have the blood of martyrs on their hands. No one has any count of how many Indians died in the freedom struggle. No records of how many Africans died being subjected to trans-Atlantic travel and slavery exist. No account of the innocent Vietnamese killed fighting the French and then the Americans, in their struggle for freedom, exist. Why no International Tribunal for Crimes Against Humanity was set up to try any American or British? So, then, how is Nazism alone the evil incarnate? What the author succeeds in conveying is his failure to understand why the movement for Hindutva is popular. By comparing it to Nazism, he not only adheres to the blanket condemnation of all the Nazis, as opposed to their leaders alone, but also betrays a clear lack of understanding of what Hindutva is. Why some of us feel the way we do is because it is the unfortunate history of this country of ours to be told time and again about our 'glorious country' and our 'secular traditions', first by the British and then the so-called secularists of the world. It is an undisputed fact that only with the pursuit of dharma has our society been able to accommodate a great number of religions and sects, be they animist or otherwise in their beliefs. It is because of this separation of dharma from the political fabric of our nation that we have succeeded in totally ruining ourselves and our country. It is also unfortunate that others have come from outside and mistaken the pursuit of dharmaas a form of cowardice, something to be taken advantage of. The Muslim rulers did so, and so did the British. The conversions, forced or otherwise, were/ are a direct result of the efforts to subvert our society. They certainly do not stand out as the efforts of a community to "peacefully" practice its religion. This is what you don't understand, Mr D'Monte. You think that I consider you a lesser Indian than myself for being non-Hindu, if indeed you are, as your name suggests? On the contrary, you are able to remain who and what you are because the society in general still practices a dharmic way of life, in small, but meaningful ways. Please do not put down an entire movement because you fail to see beyond the headlines. Your own great service to Bharat is undisputed and my response to your myopic article about the Hindutva movement is neither an attack on you nor should be construed as such. I recognise, but fail to understand, your absolute failure to mention whatever is happening in Kashmir these days. Is Gujarat the only place left on earth that is visible to you? Maybe you don't recognise the conversion movement as an effort to subvert the Hindu identity, maybe I do. Sadly, it is only the crimes against the minorities that get reported somehow. That is probably why Gujarat is so high on the list of national priorities that the National Minorities Commission makes a trip to the state whereas the innocent Kashmiri Hindus who have languished since 1990 have had no succour. It would do well for you to read an article in Rediff that describes how Keralite Muslims opposed the singing of Vande Mataram. What kind of a country do I live in when organisations issue fatwas against singing of the National Song? It is true that the RSS opposed this in Kerala? It is also true that ONLY the RSS opposed this. I don't know what kind of a nation I live in if for opposing such attitudes in a community, I have to be compared with Nazis. Do you, Mr D'Monte, know what kind of a country you live in? Ashish Chandra
Date sent: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 18:55:26 +0530
This article is childishly ridiculous. When the BJP is trying to speak in favour of Indian culture, tradition and swadeshi you brand them as fascists and fundamentalists. Now you come up with strange ideas to blame them for the protection of cultural entities. How is it that no matter what the BJP does, you find fault with them? What will the Indian public get if some thousand-year-old monument is protected? Isn't it the public's responsibility not to destroy such monuments? What can a government do about that? When will you stop publishing such nonsense?
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