Rules of Membership

[Koenraad Elst]

Since
 George Thompson <GthomGt at CS.COM>
insists on continuing his attack and is also getting away with it, I will
(separately)
post the reply I had withheld from sending after Dr. Wujastyk's
intervention, and I will now comment on his latest.

> Well, whether it likes it or not, the List now knows what I think of K.
Elst,

I am surprised to learn that a scholarly weblist, protecting its scholarly
character from all kinds
of misuse with a set of rules, tolerates being used as a medium for declared
personal attacks.  George did not go off on a somewhat personal tangent in
the heat of a discussion on the Harappan script, he was not contributing to
that discussion at all.  Out of the blue, he shot off several mails whose
only content was an attack on me.

> as well as his friend, whose name, by the way, I promise *never* to
mention
> again on this list [so he can call off his lawyers].>

In your litigious country, fear of lawyers is more conducive to good conduct
than old-fashioned respect for colleagues, it seems.  Come to mention the
sick state of society in the US, isn't that where various groups are
competing for victim status?  So that must be where your projection of a
victimhood obsession onto my discourse comes from.  That background
information makes it easier for me to forgive you.  Unlike you, I don't take
long to forgive.

> I will take Dominik's good advice to 'rein it in.'  I will also try to
find
> viveka.  But

higher morality trumps the list rules, so George will at the same time *not*
rein himself in, for

> I will continue to say what I think is true, as I tried to do in
> my last post, which unfortunately was also tainted by anger.
> Now, anger is certainly not a virtue [incompatible as it is with viveka,
to
> be sure].  And even though this is a scholarly list where anger certainly
has
> no place,

holy anger trumps the list rules, so

> I just cannot permit myself as a moral person to concede the
moral
> high ground to a person who actually thinks that Gandhi's attempt to
> reconcile with Muslims was a retreat from morality. I just can't do it.

People who are interested can always consult my writings on Gandhi to see
for themselves that George's allegation is rather less than truthful.  But
the problem with defamation (for the targeted person), or its great
attraction (for the perpetrator), is precisely that most people have more
pressing concerns than to verify every slander which has reached their ears.
So they lap it up, or at least keep it in mind somewhere as one version of
the facts, equal in weight with other versions.  As for the small
minority who care to find out the truth, even those sympathizing with the
victim (to use George's favourite word) will still be influenced by the
defamation in their actual behaviour: "Sorry Sir, we know you've been
treated unfairly, we know that what they say is untrue, but we as a
well-reputed institute cannot afford to have such a controversial person
among our invited speakers"...

About the effect of defamation, George, let me give you a simile which lends
itself excellently to the kind
of dramatic misinterpretation at which you already are a repeat offender: if
I were to punch your face in, the damage done would not be one tenth of the
damage done by defamation.  A face can be repaired nowadays, but a bruised
name?  (another difference is that punching a face takes some courage,
whereas any coward can spread lies)   Maybe that is why academics are
generally hypersensitive to matters of reputation.  It is perhaps also why,
in my
search for moral injunctions which are truly common to all literate
religions, I have so far found only one: not a prohibition of violence, or
of drunkenness, or of fornication, but the prohibition on defaming others.

About victimhood and Gandhi's morality, two in one:
I don't normally use loaded words like "victim" in an argument about the
unabashad
contempt with which AIT proponents routinely treat OIT proponents.  It would
be an
inflationary devaluation of the word to use it for inconsequential quarrels
between hair-splitting academics.  I would rather reserve the term for
statements like this one: "In 1947, a hundred thousand Muslims and four
times that many Hindus and Sikhs who were trapped on the wrong side of the
border in
Panjab became mortal *victims* of Mahatma Gandhi's foolish and dogmatic
rejection of Dr. Ambedkar's proposal to organize a peaceful and orderly
exchange of population."  As Paul Johnson has remarked (in the section on
Indian independence in his book Modern Times), for an apostle of peace,
Gandhi with his self-centred gimmicks and whimsical mass politics has left
an unusually bloody trail.
And Johnson was not
the first to cut the mythical Mahatma to size, there have been numerous
others, see e.g. from a Black and Dalit
angle, Fazlul-Haq's book Gandhi, Saint or Sinner?  Less of Gandhi's
theatrical moralism and more common sense would have saved numerous lives.

The Mahatma gave us a peep into the workings of his own mind when he advised
refugees from West Panjab in Delhi to return home (and face certain death):
"If all Panjabis were to die willingly, Panjab will become immortal."
(someplace in Collins and Lapierre: Freedom at Midnight)  This to refugees
who had lost everything and seen their relatives butchered; as Alain
Daniélou has remarked, Gandhi was alternately ice-cold and arch-sentimental.
In such altercations between a trumpeted media saint and the ordinary folk
who became the *victims* of his irresponsible policies, I tend to side with
the victims.  Incidentally, Gandhi's assurance that dying brings immortality
has proven correct in his own case: thoroughly discredited after his
mishandling of the transfer of power and partition, he regained immortality
by being shot.  And that, apart from universal moral reasons, is one extra
reason for Gandhi's critics to condemn the murder: it postponed a sobre
assessment of Gandhi's highly mixed role by several generations.

> If insisting on this gets me removed from this List, well, I can give the
> List up also, if I have to.

Going by past experience, you don't have to worry about that.

> Maybe it would lead to my getting more work done

You certainly have stolen a good chunk of my precious time by forcing me to
deal with your unprovoked and repeated libels.

> [now, *that* is voice of
the
> scholar in me talking, firmly taking the reins away from the little
moralist
> in me, whom I hope to subdue, sternly, by means of all kinds of difficult
and
> distracting niyogas].
> Best wishes and with all due prAyazcittas,

Spare me your inner voices, in Gandhi's case the inner voice didn't do any
good either.  And spare me your dharmic
good
intentions.  A simple apology will do.

Otherwise, all the best.

K. Elst