@Santro
I think your comment was excessive, for reasons that I shall set down, and which I believe you will appreciate and agree with.
Both Wotzis and Wotzat have taken extreme positions, almost laughably unproven positions and are having the time of their lives relieving their excess of testosterone by knocking each other off multiple times. Harmless fun, so long as they don't turn around once they get off their systems and knock the block off some completely unsuspecting passer-by; that has been known to happen.
For the rest of us, we can take positions or we can stay neutral.
I have taken positions in past comments, I hope earnestly and sincerely that I have never taken a position that lacks integrity. It has always been a position that I believed to be accurate, within the limits of historical accuracy relating to times so long past, and to events so poorly and scantily reported.
On other occasions, I have taken a neutral stance, committed more to supplying information, when it seemed to be lacking.
I am in no position to advise you and would consider it an impertinent act to do so; you have more than the maturity and capacity required to gauge what is appropriate and what is not. In the same vein, you will not misunderstand, nor resent an observation, made without rancour, that you are leaning a bit too much to a side.
Perhaps the point would sound reasonable if I were to walk through your last observation. Please note that I do so with respect, and with no intention to score points.
And yet Guru Nanak's inspiration was from both religions??.. is it not?
It is the introduction of Islam that changed the course of history..and Sikhism was part of this history..
Would Sikhism still exist in its current form had Islam not come in.
Oh, certainly, this admits of no debate, no controversy. But in his own flamboyant way, Wotzat was saying that Sikhism, influenced in whatever way, was still indigenous to the sub-continent.
I believe that that point is his. It is quite another thing whether we wish to agree with him that it is the location, the place that characterises a feature of culture and of human existence such as religion, or it should be bound to people. That point is certainly not his, if I may say so, and that was also, if I may further say, a criticism which might well have been made.
Also..if you are saying Indians arent proud of Muslim history in the sub continent.. then it seems that every Indian Muslim carries a burden of apology for his ancestors actions..
Since only Muslim rulers in your words were plunderers and conquerors..therefore every Indian Muslim should be apologetic about his existence??
Should he be more "Indian" than the rest??
Christianity is alien too.. so is mother Teresa not to be taken at the same level as other figures?
All those with Alien backgrounds need to sing "Vande Mataram" with more fervor than the rest to prove their allegiance to Bharat?
Two separate issues here: whether those 'not Hindu' should swear loyalty oaths the rest of their own lives, and through the generations to come in future, and about Vande Mataram.
I am myself an agnostic, and not an observant Hindu. Both from that point of view, and from the point of view of my friends who happen to be observant of the practices of another 'not Hindu' religion (or even those who are not observant but still find themselves in the same pound), I strongly protest against any demand, from any quarters, that we should prove our credentials. As a citizen of the country, under its democratic constitution, I shall believe what I consider it appropriate to believe, and I shall resent any attempt to make me feel inferior.
Perhaps you are already aware from the very public displays of plumage and other martial rites on this very forum that there is a wide range of political opinion in India. One shade of opinion has taken its resentment of historical wrongs, none of them felt, knowledge of all of them inculcated through means specially devised for the purpose, to an extreme which is a toxic element in a democratic society. This is a matter which has to be sorted out by Indians themselves; unfortunately, there is no way in which external forces, including friends, can be of assistance to those of us committed to mute or neutralise this trend.
You will notice that this is the exact mirror image of what I have advocated to my liberal Indian friends on PTH:
festina lente, it is not for us to lecture Pakistanis, especially not liberal Pakistanis, but not even fundamentalist Pakistanis on how to run their country. We can at best support the like-minded elements in their society, offer them comfort and sustenance, cluck our tongues sympathetically but stop at that; nothing further is permissible, or appropriate. I offer this as an example of what has been done, and of course, it is open to each and every one of us to adopt or to reject this course of action.
I nearly forgot to write about Vande Mataram.
That is an adjunct to the panoply of state; it is not our National Anthem, I am not obliged to rise to it and pay it respect, but it was included at the sentimental behest of the Congress Party, which used it as its slogan and rallying cry throughout the freedom struggle; to the old-school Congressman, it would have been unthinkable to step into an independent India without the comfort of this slogan always with them.
It was appropriated, however, by a most surprising segment of opinion that had never done much of any substance during the actual struggle, but was hugely concerned about the symbology after all the shouting and bloodshed was safely over. As the Congress gradually slid into a mire of corruption, and into the mistaken delusion that the country that they had fought to free was theirs for the taking, other forces objected vehemently to their presumption. One such force, as I have mentioned, turned this uniquely Congress slogan around and against them, and represented it as an anti-Muslim, pro-Hindu slogan.
The sad part is that people, Hindu and Muslim alike, Indian and Pakistani alike, fall for this creative fiction. The author, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, wrote a number of novels, some of them as historical romances, in the style of Walter Scott, but with a wealth of local detail pertaining to Bengal which cannot have been inspired by anything else but an ardent love of the country and an intimate and comfortable knowledge of local lore. This particular song occurs in a book named
Ananda Math - the monastery of joy - and the song is put in the lips of a near-deranged fundamentalist sadhu, as almost a spontaneous outpouring of extreme religious feeling. It hardly represents the sentiments of all sections of the characters in the book; only the sadhus in rebellion against the British, a rebellion known in history, ironically, as the Faqir Mutiny. This was one of the last outbursts of the out-of-control factions of sadhus and faqirs against any kind of civil control, and their desire to retain their unfettered right to wage war on the country at their sweet will and plunder at will. The setting in the book was Hindu fundamentalist; the historical circumstances, of which Chatterjee knew very well, were equally rooted in Hindu and in Muslim fundamentalism. Perhaps fundamentalism is the wrong word; there was little religious in this incident. It was more a case of a rebellion.
Was this intended to offend Muslims? Was Chatterjee a Hindu apologist? No, and yes. He had no intention to offend Muslims, if we are to take the evidence of his oeuvre in general. In Durgeshnandini, the chieftain's daughter, his hero is a Rajput prince; in vain combat against him, in a display of poignant chivalry, in the best sense of the term, is an Afghan princeling, who nurses the wounded hero back to health in his own home, at the hands of his own beloved sister. The sister herself is a character of the depth of passion and sacrifice of Rebecca from the novel Ivanhoe; nobody who reads about them can think for a moment that Chatterjee despised Muslims. He was a consummate character-painter. There is a plethora of minor characters swirling about, good people, ordinary people, scumbags - he distributes them among factions, camps, ethnicities, religions with an even hand. Not totally even; he was a Bengali Hindu, recovering from the days when his contemporary, traditionally trained in Persian, represented the Great Mughal at legal proceedings before the Privy Council in Britain. The reaction from this, the clear and evident dependence on the new methods of Macaulayite education - Chatterjee was one of the first graduates of the elite Presidency College - were quite evident as a sub-stratum in his writing.
What I am trying to argue is that it was never intended by the author that Vande Mataram should be a Muslim-baiting song. It became one at the hands of those who are ever-alert to find ways in which to bait Muslims; a phoo-phoo band, a hunk of pork, a muttered remark in a crowded market-place, all will serve the purpose. And have done so, each on its own bloody day, each along with its mirror equivalent aimed at over-sensitive Hindus.
Should the song be imposed on any section of the population? Of course not! the whole issue is a non-issue, created out of thin air to pull some votes, 'to catch some votes', to use Jinnah's scathing phrase.
With regards,
