Further response to Dr. Jerrold Atlas

Atlas adds:
Dear Suzarin raises some important on-the-spot
comments about the changing climate in India.
It is a groundswell reaction to dissatisfaction with 
the ways things have not been going well in India.
Thus, Congress has lost the people's confidence --
as have the old concepts of Gandhi/Nehru based on
building a "civilized" India on the foundations set 
in the British rule.

I think much more discussion about this is essential 
to understanding India ahead.  It is a rejection of 
what had been the founding ideas -- never a mark of 
stability in a nation the size of India.  Size and 
incredible diversity really mark what others have 
preferred to see: a fantasy meme of a monolithic 
people. 

Size prevents a modicum of order and civility as 
barely contained rage from overcrowdedness 
imperils order. One simply can't find "space" in 
public space to achieve calm and escape crowds 
-- thus, isolation becomes a mark of status and  
wealth enabling order and calm in one's private 
isolation space.  But what do the billion+ others do?

Diversity is now an increasingly burdensome mark 
of the reality of India despite a long history of 
public education instilling whatever the accepted
homogenized group-illusion of India has developed.
Thus, identity-formations exist among many sub-
groups creating a rash of parties emphasizing 
whatever their base seeks. This inhibits unity and
an acceptable national group-illusion. 

Indeed, frustrated younger elements turn to chaos 
and fomenting troubles for the larger national 
group because of this.  Large political parties find 
themselves broadening their message to 
accommodate the sub-groups within and this 
waters down their impact and acceptability to 
others. One simply can't be all things to all sub-
groups and remain a viable message in a huge and
very diverse group.  Simpler, all-embracing virtues/
values need to become the messages sold by large 
parties.

The turn away from what was also means a turn to 
a nationalist Hindu fantasy embodied in one party 
and leader.  How this will turn out for India is 
anyone's guess but it will definitely bring a rise in 
influence of the puritanical.  Thus, this change is so 
far turning more to cleansing India than marrying 
the sub-groups.  It is "exclusivity" rather than 
"inclusivity" -- a nasty turn and certainly one where
hates are turned into allowed rage by Indian laws.

Suzarin is wrong, however, in denying "banned" as 
the correct expression for what is taking place (with 
Doniger's book and many other elements of life there).
That Penguin chose a business decision rather than 
intellectual reality is a mark of the savaging of what 
had been India's real past for a revisionist meme 
hardly in keeping with the greatness that was. True,
the settlement eliminated the "banning" but it was
really a caving in to "banning".

Suzarin is fully correct, however, in everything else.
This is a dangerous turn for India, it will gain little 
more than hatred unleashed, violence nascent, anger
for a nation that needs tolerance and inclusivity. India
will be wasting its vast intellectual/cultural heritage
in the pursuit of unleashed angers and repression in a 
regressive regime.  Things do not bode well.  Mark's
other illustration of this shows the spreading nature
of this passionate "exclusivity".    J ATLAS]

My response:

I agree that the effect of Penguin India’s out of court settlement with the petitioners is the same as banning. But in India, a distinction is usually made between challenging and banning. Banning has to be by the government, with or without a court order.

Doniger’s book was only challenged by a retired school teacher and five others in a civil suit filed before one of the Additional District Judges in New Delhi in 2011. They had also registered two criminal complaints before a police station in New Delhi in 2010 and 2013.

But on February 4, Penguin agreed to withdraw all the copies of the book from India within a period of six months. On February 10, the court accepted the agreement and dismissed the suit as withdrawn. Following that, the two criminal complaints also stood withdrawn.

Wikipedia has a list of the books ‘banned’ and the books ‘challenged but not banned’ in India till date. Please see the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_in_India

Some of the books on the list may really surprise you.

I also agree with the detailed observations about what is looming over contemporary India, threatening its very survival as a single state. But history seldom follows predictions! One factor that might change the course for the better is a movement, nascent though, led by Arvind Kejriwal. India watchers may take note of the name.

Suzarin

Wendy Doniger's Op-Ed in the NYT - A response to Dr. Jerrold Atlas' remark

Dr Jerrold Atlas posted the link to Dr. Wendy Doniger's Op-Ed on the Psychohistory-historical motivations forum with his comment:

[Worthy of interest, even if just for the rising tide of Hindu nationalism that is 

about to burst forth in a new leader once condemned by the US.  This is the 

India few wanted to see -- a deeply nationalist, revisionist, highly puritanical 

defenders of a group-illusion that never was.  It is undemocratic in leaning 

and very willing to condemn those who oppose them as "enemies". It 

condemns their vision of a purified society in a deep group-think and rejects 

what had been the Hinduism of yore.  Thus, the Nehru-orginated Congress 

Party has lost control over the hearts and minds of the majority in India.

We should try to remember that India is a mix of old and new with enormous 

corruption and shoddy workmanship as well.  It is a country where education 

is prized but business shrewdness is more preferred, along with cronyism.  

Thus, some succeed while others feel the sting of rejection and or losing to 

become rather outcasts in their own world.  Add in the demographic bulge 

making population swell enormously (like China), increase urban tensions, 

harbor desires for emotional outbursts as a way of relieving overcrowdedness-

caused stress, seek relief in Bollywood-style extravaganzas and allow an 

increase in fundamentalist groups demanding faith-based purity or 

erversions with religious context.  

That neighboring Pakistan is nuclear and sees all purpose as attacking larger 

India while Pakistan fundamentalism has led to civil wars between opposing 

religious fanatics, fanatical modernists seeking success through industrial 

opportunities misusing their fellow Pakistanis, westernized generals and their 

armies focused on maintaining balance in society and protecting the nuclear 

arsenal and the borders, ISI agencies playing all sides against each other 

and willingly confronting what they deem to be Pakistan's enemies while 

rewarding or dealing with enemies of neighbors (and keeping Afghanistan

weak, disorganized and confused).

This region is a powder-keg of trouble dangerously trying to not let anyone 

light a match.  All the while, they have to watch the East where larger 

neighbor China is going through growth spasms and currency. manipulation, 

generating endless billionaires annually and then seeing them collapse into 

corruption (dragging down many of the party's potential leaders with them).  

Their enemy neighbor is blustering for power and making demands on 

neighbors that now frightens many.

In this context, the censoring of this standard text on Hindu past and culture 

past is very clearly understandable, albeit disgusting.  It is an academic 

author's dream, to be banned and become a best seller.               J ATLAS]

This was my response:

 ‘Banned in Bangalore’ is a misleading title for Dr. Doniger’s NYT Op-Ed. She chose it to sync with the mid 19^th – mid 20^th century selling caption in the U.S., ‘Banned in Boston’.

I am from Bangalore. The book was not banned there. It was not banned anywhere in India. It was just withdrawn by its publisher–distributor, Penguin Books, with the offer to ‘pulp’ the remaining stock in an out of court settlement with the petitioner. The Indian blasphemy law is quite illiberal and sweeping, and Penguin obviously wanted to avoid an acrimonious litigation. I condemn both the blasphemy law and the pusillanimity of Penguin Books.

I have read the book. I found it has nothing much to commend and nothing much to condemn.

The problem with every discourse is the mismatch of perceptions. This problem is extremely acute in the case of Hinduism. In the first place, the word ‘Hinduism’ itself is a misnomer. It does not signify any comprehensive system of belief or practice, let alone a unified one. As Dr. Atlas has correctly pointed out, some “deeply nationalist, revisionist, highly puritanical defenders of a group-illusion that never was” are trying to give it a monolithic form, but in vain. It was partly because of this problem that the main Hindu political outfits are using the word ‘Hindutva’ (the state of being a Hindu) instead, which the Indian Supreme Court has glibly defined in one of its judgment as a “way of life”. Actually, it is not one way of life but many.

About the Hindus, Doniger gave her perception. If others had disagreement with it, they could have given their versions. But fundamentalism does not work that way, whether it is of the defenders of a certain point of view, or its detractors.

This April, India is going to the polls. Political atmosphere here is hyper charged. Doniger’s book became an issue also because of that. As an aside, I agree with Dr. Atlas that the dream of an academic author to become a best seller through controversy has come true in the case of Dr. Wendy Doniger. So far so good!

Suzarin