Rajaram's bull

[Samar Abbas]

On Sat, 5 Aug 2000, Lakshmi Srinivas wrote:
> Indeed the Hindutvavadi movement ...  was strongest among the
> shopkeeper class in the northern parts of India. ... The backbone of
> the BJP has always been the bania's of northern India.

  This is factually incorrect. The Gujaratis and Banias are mainly an
innovative, innocent, and hard-working people. Gujarat, the center of
Banias, has the highest (after Punjab) per-capita income of all Indian
states. Even in the West, many motels and businesses are owned by the
thriving Patels. To bash these persons as the "backbone of Hindutva" is to
do a grave injustice to a model community.

  Let us see who are the real fathers of Hindutva:
1. Hegdewar, founder of the Sangh, his caste is given at
   ( ref. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1050/Hitler1.html )
2. Golwalkar, 2nd leader of RSS, his caste is given at
   (ref. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1050/Hitler2.html;
        http://www.comebackkid.com/madhav2.html )
3. S.P.Mukherjee, founder of BJP, his caste is known to all.
4. Secret name of BJP is actually "B****** Jati
   Party" (ref. Dalit Voice, http://dalitstan.org/voice/ )
5. Sudarshan, current leader of RSS, his caste is given at
   (ref. http://dalitstan.org/journal/politics/hindutva/sudhwar.html )
6. Pandit Nehru, although some on this list wish to protray him as
   an innocent `socialist', was actually an admirer of Hitler and
   supported RSS too
  ( cf. http://dalitstan.org/journal/politics/hindutva/finasslt.html )

Luis Gonzalez-Riemann is perfectly right in his last post. In addition,
Rajaram himself belongs to Nehru's caste.

The Banias only played a secondary role in this movement. There is in fact
no anti-Bania site - nobody attacks Banias anywhere on the internet as
"backbone of Hindutva". But there are plenty of hate sites which attack
Indira Gandhi's caste (eg. http://www.allindiaserver.com ).

[ Not that I agree with these websites - I am giving them just to prove a
point. ]

That is not to say that a particular community should be demonised or
persecuted for the crimes of a few. Of course, many will be innocent, -
especially those belonging to the elite. But to shift the blame onto
another community altogether is perhaps pushing things a bit.

> This may be a good place to mention that political Dravidianism, of
> which there is plenty in evidence on this list, is the same kind of
> rabid disease as Hindutva but more about it another time.

Dravidianism is, as far as I can see, the pride which an indigenous
community feels for what the entire international community acclaims as
its achievements. How is it a "rabid disease" ?

Samar