Closing remarks to Dr. Vassilkov (& Mr. Agarwal) (I)

Tue Sep 7 18:34:18 UTC 1999

<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>On Sun, 5 Sep 1999 11:13:35 +0200 Koenraad Elst wrote:<bigger>

<italic><color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param><smaller>> Dr. Zydenbos,      

</italic></color>>

<italic><color><param>7F00,0000,0000</param>> You did make the statement cited (not quoted literally) by

> Rajaram [...]

</italic><color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>Oh, I see... Welcome to the list, Dr. Elst. So according to you I did
 make the statement, but not literally? Or how should we
understand this? I would like to see that statement. But something
 tells me that you cannot show it to us.

<italic>> </color>I have a copy.</italic><color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>

You need not be the only one with a copy of the relevant
materials. For those who are interested in that brief statement of
Rajaram's ethnocentric, xenophobic, quasi-religiously inspired view
of the world, how this connects with his political antipathies, and
the way in which all this is expressed, I can offer the following
URL:

http://www.angelfire.com/in/zydenbos/laermendepolemik.html

</color>Here one will find the full text of Rajaram's article as well as that of
my response to it, graciously provided to me by the Indian
Express when I visited their office recently. They can be read online
or downloaded in a compressed zip archive in RTF and plain ASCII
formats. We can leave it to the readers to decide for themselves
whether Rajaram's (what shall we call it? 'non-literal', as you do?
'free'? 'imaginative'?) reference to me is based on what I have
actually written or perhaps on a nightmare of his in which I
unwittingly appeared. And the readers can also form an opinion
about your special personal hermeneutics for interpreting short,
contemporary English texts.

<color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>Let us go back to Rajaram.

<<<<A certain Robert Zydenbos (or his ghostwriter) compared this
reviewer to Hitler for questioning the Aryan invasion, and even

exhorted him to accept responsibility for the Ayodhya

demolition!>>

The readers can see whether my text (see the URL) contains a
statement like  Rajaram "is like Hitler", or: "is like the Führer", or: 
"is like the leader of the NSDAP". You see, I am making things
easy: I  will accept any of these possibilities as a refutation of my
denial.

Or let us look at another possibility. Is everybody who, at some
time or the other, wittingly or unwittingly, innocently or deliberately,
lent whatever kind of support to the Nazi program of ethnic hatred
and confrontation, Mr Hitler? Now think carefully.This is probably a
difficult question. Rajaram, in spite of being a scientist, could not
come up with the right answer in all of six years.

My _question_, viz.:

<<<<Does he really not see the parallel between Nazi attacks on
synagogues in the 1930s and what happened in Ayodhya on
December 6th?>>

which you quoted in your article / pamphlet which is honoured on
your web page with the name "zydenbos.pdf" (p. 7), was a real
question. Rajaram could have written back, saying "no, I don't see
it" and explaining why I was wrong. Instead, he chose to make a
fool of himself in that review of your book.

Another thing in that pamphlet:

<<<<in the present debate, it is Dr. Zydenbos who has uninvitedly
introduced Nazi rerferences.>> (p. 9)

I introduced them? I did? Dr. Elst! Why are you doing this? How
about going through the relevant materials and updating yourself
before uttering whacky accusations? In this case, you needed only
to see that one article by Rajaram.

By the way, perhaps you can enlighten me on something else.
Immediately after quoting me in your pamphlet, you continue:

<<<<We would not have believed it, but it is there in cold print: an      
academic tries to score against a fellow academic by arbitrarily
linking him with an event which had not yet taken place when  the
latter's paper was published, and with which he had strictly
nothing to do, viz. the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya
on 6 December 1992.>>

Let us skip over the rhetoric of the passage. One thing disturbs
me.You should have noticed that in my article I have referred to
only one single bit of writing by Rajaram. I have not referred to
anything prior to Dec. 1992. The only "published paper" I referred to
is the November 1993 article. My question is: does December 1992
come after November 1993? Think carefully. It has something to do
with numbers. I believe (like most scientists, by the way)  that
1993 comes after 1992. I will make it simpler for you: it is
something like 1, 2, 3, but the numbers are bigger this time.

Of course you can argue that 3 comes before 2 if you count
backwards. (Hindutva defenders indeed show a tendency to go
backwards.) But I believe that this is not an appropriate justification
here.

(continued)
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