Politics on this list; goodbye

[Bijoy Misra]

Message to Elst that didn't make it.


On Sat, 15 Jul 2000, Bijoy Misra wrote:

> 
> 
> Dr Elst,
> 
> You should make peace and stay in this list.
> Research is always argued.  No one is definitive.
> We move by analysis and understanding.
> 
> There is an establishment culture and "counterculture".
> Sometimes the counterculture is right.  History is
> ridden with examples where the establishment tries
> to trash an anti-establishment opinion.
> 
> We are here to further knowledge.  Ask Dr Rajaram to
> be a part of this list. This list should grow and
> create inroads into the history of India and its
> culture.  I am proud that you have devoted time
> towards this effort.
> 
> People are not bright enough to work in isolation.
> People are also not bright enough to tolerate each
> other's views.  Indology will gradually grow from 
> such shallow thinking to understand how the
> himan civilization indeed began.  We have to
> diligently work towards it.
> 
> I appeal to all to forgive each other and look
> to a distant horizon with zeal and enthusiasm.
> On behalf of people of Indian origin in the list,
> I must express our deep appreciation to each
> of you that you bring so much devotion to
> a culture that we live.  We need to move forward.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Bijoy Misra
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 15 Jul 2000, Koenraad Elst wrote:
> 
> > (for the record: a mail withheld from sending for the sake of peace, Dec.
> > 1999)
> > 
> > Dr. Wujastyk,
> >         Does one and the same set of rules apply to
> > everyone here?  In the last week there have been two personal attacks with
> > political content on me, and you
> > didn't find it necessary to intervene, unlike in other recent cases.
> >                 1. Irene Maradei supplies a list of URLs including fervently
> > political ones such as the "Bible of the Aryan invasion" by Uthaya Naidu.
> > But she adds a political comment only to mine, describing me as a "fervent
> > Hindutva fan".  I  outgrew fanhood years ago, and as for my view of
> > Hindutva, vide my critical book BJP vs. Hindu Resurgence, 1997.
> >                 2. In one of the personal attacks with which Dr. Zydenbos
> > keeps polluting this list, he accuses me of a "preoccupation with Hitler".
> > It happens to be a fact of history that in Nazi textbooks, the AIT scenario
> > of dynamic
> > white Aryans invading a country of dark natives, then imposing a racial
> > apartheid system on them, then degenerating because of their mixing with
> > dark natives nonetheless, was *the* illustration of the racist worldview.
> > Like L�on Poliakov in Le
> > Mythe Aryen, I found I could not give a fair account of the AIT without
> > mentioning its Nazi episode.  But I never deduced any conclusions about the
> > rightness or wrongness of the theory from the political uses made of it.
> >             As you can verify, it was Zydenbos himself
> > who chose to introduce Hitler into the recent discussion on Vedic
> > chronology.  It
> > was also he who on October 28 made an uncalled-for reference to an unnamed
> > "political personality" as saying that a lie repeated often enough will end
> > up passing for the truth,-- a principle which he himself is applying with
> > his endlessly repeated denial (as "lies", no less) of my observation that he
> > started this whole wrangle on 12-12-1993 in
> > his Indian Express article "An obscurantist argument".  There he made
> > several Nazi references in his attack on NS Rajaram (who didn't know
> > Zydenbos and hadn't attacked him), e.g. he described Rajaram's
> > non-invasionism as "close to the *Blut und Boden* ideology of
> > Nazism".  When I reminded him of this, he took his pedantry to
> > the surrealistic extent of insisting on a distinction between a "Hitler"
> > smear (as alleged, imprecisely, by Rajaram against him)
> > and a "Nazi" smear (as effectively committed by him in his IE article).
> > Such a distinction does not exist, unless you know of an employer telling an
> > applicant: "At first I wasn't going to hire you, for I had heard that you
> > are a
> > Hitlerian, but since you are only a Nazi, it's OK."
> >             If Zydenbos doesn't want to own up his "Nazi" attack on Rajaram,
> > he could simply disown it, say that he changed his mind or so.  We welcome
> > conversions to fairness.  When Zydenbos denied his own statement, I had
> > posted a correction to this
> > list not because I have anything against Dr. Zydenbos (do
> > reread those September E-mails or my website article to see for yourself
> > what kid gloves I had put on before expressing my disagreement with him),
> > but simply for the record, as yet another example of how
> > otherwise well-behaved invasionists routinely lapse into abuse when they are
> > faced with AIT skepticism.
> >             As for my mention of Hitler in my review of the Deshpande &
> > Bronkhorst volume, do verify that I was commenting on such references
> > given in the book itself (p.148) and by invasionist polemicists in general.
> > Where people volunteer Hitler references to a debate, in most cases (not in
> > the D&B volume) it is not as a real argument but as a trump card to knock
> > the other side out of the debate, e.g. against ecologists: "But the great
> > pioneer of
> > ecology was none other than Hitler!"  I have never
> > used that kind of argument against the AIT, because unlike Zydenbos, I have
> > more substantive arguments.
> >             And also because I have seen other debates completely derailed
> > by contrived Hitler references.  In writings about Hindutva, "Hindu fascism"
> > rhetoric systematically replaces fact-based analysis, cfr. MJ
> > Akbar's or MS Aiyar's pre-election phrases like "1933: If the BJP Wins..."
> > (As we all know, in its 28 months' rule, the BJP has emulated Hitler by
> > abolishing parliament, opening concentration camps, prohibiting interracial
> > marriage, and a bloody Long Knives purge of its own ranks;-- must be, for
> > none of the
> > "Hindu fascism" mongers has yet apologized for misinforming the public).
> > All kinds of wild stories are abroad to buttress the "Hindu fascism" line,
> > e.g. in his acclaimed book Hitler's Priestess (p.66), N.
> > Goodrick-Clarke writes: "After (...) March 1939, Indian opinion on Germany
> > polarized sharply into two camps: those who would be loyal to Britain in the
> > event of a war between Britain and Germany and those who would not.  The
> > Hindu Mahasabha adopted a particularly strong pro-German position".  In
> > reality,
> > the HMS decided, immediately after Britain declared war on
> > Germany, to call on all Hindu young men to join the British-Indian Army.
> > HMS president V.D. Savarkar was derided as a "recruiting officer" by
> > Congress activists, but it was his recruits who
> > saved the day for Britain in Dunkirk, Libya, Iraq, Burma.  Even the nadir of
> > Hindutva history proves it: of the seven conspirators involved in Gandhi's
> > murder, three were British-Indian Army veterans of WW2.  But no reviewer has
> > pointed this out, and Goodrick-Clarke's howler will pass into the
> > conventional wisdom.  Probably some list members are already teaching it in
> > class.
> >             By the way, apart from the AIT, Hitler had something else in
> > common with most India-watchers.  From Mein Kampf and from
> > the minutes of his meeting with Congress leftist Subhash Bose, it is clear
> > that Hitler had a steep contempt for Hindus, much in contrast with his high
> > esteem for Islam.
> >             3. While we are at it, Dr. Wujastyk, you yourself once
> > volunteered a political intervention here, viz. that Aditya Prakashan is a
> > very "right-wing" publishing-house.  It seems you define AIT-skeptical books
> > as "right-wing", even when written by Marxists like Bhagwan Singh (The Vedic
> > Harappans, 1995).  For the rest, all AP books are about
> > indological topics like music, text editions of versions of the epics and of
> > illustrated Buddhist manuscripts (also in Chinese and Tibetan), painting
> > etc., much of it edited by art historian Dr. Lokesh Chandra, former Congress
> > MP.  How could such topics be "right-wing", from what perspective?  I'll
> > give you one.  When I was a juvenile Maoist, the bookstore where I bought my
> > copy of the Little Red Book had some translated literature of the Cultural
> > Revolution, then (1974) not officially over yet.  That's where I read that
> > the Buddhist manuscripts and sculptures
> > which had fed the bonfires of Beijing were "reactionary", "feudal",
> > "oppresive", "poisoning the people's minds with superstition".
> > >From Mao's angle, the Aditya Prakashan subject-matter would indeed be
> > "right-wing", but  I had not expected to run into that viewpoint here.
> >             Dr. Wujastyk, you have offered an apology to Dr. Zydenbos
> > because Mr. Agarwal had used intemperate language ("pathetic") against him.
> > If you owe an apology whenever a list member gets intemperate language
> > thrown at him, you owe several to me.  There definitely are class A and
> > class B
> > members on this list, but since that is just the way of the world, I won't
> > make
> > a point of it.  Rather, I'll satisfy Dr. Zydenbos's repeated complaints that
> > I haven't answered his questions, "even the most elementary one".
> >             Most elementary was certainly the question "whether 2
> > comes before 3".  The first time he posed it, I had understood it
> > as rhetorical, but when he started repeating it, with the grim airs of a
> > judge entitled to an answer from the man in the dock, I wondered if I
> > was faced with a mental case.  The facts: in my website article, I had
> > mistakenly assumed (in spite of having the correct date in footnote) that
> > the 1993 articles by Rajaram and Zydenbos were written in 1992, due to
> > Zydenbos' referring to the date of the 1992 Ayodhya demolition as "December
> > 6",
> > without giving the year.  Alright, my mistake.
> > I had also noticed the mistake when rereading the article, but since
> > changing things on a website is pretty cumbersome for an internet beginner,
> > I had postponed correcting it, on the assumption that it was
> > inconsequential.  My assumption that nobody would be petty-minded
> > enough to make a point of this little mistake proved to be yet another
> > mistake: one such person did show up.  So for his
> > benefit, I can now clarify that upon closer inspection, 2 does precede 3
> > (except in numbers like 32 or 9392).
> >             He also wanted to know why Westerners like Francois
> > Gautier and myself make common cause with
> > the so-called Hindutva forces.  To the extent that this is the case, we're
> > certainly not doing it for the money, for it is a bad career move.  The
> > answer is simpler: we are taking the stand that we are convinced is the
> > right one.  For example, we can see for ourselves that there is much truth
> > in the
> > BJP allegation that Nehruvian secularism really is "pseudo-secularism".
> > Thus, India has separate religion-based civil codes, defended by all
> > "secularist" parties: in demanding a Common Civil Code, the BJP represents
> > secularism while the "secularist" parties uphold religious
> > discrimination.  This is a very simple fact, so simple that opponents short
> > of arguments dismiss it as "simplistic".  The question is not why *we* have
> > noticed this fact, for it is obvious enough, but why all those tenured
> > experts have failed to notice it.
> >         Dr. Wujastyk,  I am now quitting this list, because dealing with all
> > the abuse I have been receiving, is taking too much of my time and energy.
> > My conclusion regarding Dr. Zydenbos is that one
> > just can't argue with a sick mind.  If I had known that a supposedly sobre
> > academic could run away from his own words in such a nasty and destructive
> > manner, I would never have intervened in the AIT debate on this list, which
> > was making promising
> > progress.
> >         But I still find it odd, Dr. Wujastyk, that you banned AIT
> > discussion
> > because it "doesn't bring out the best" in some of us, all while continuing
> > to allow the very type of intervention which gave you that negative
> > impression, esp.
> > the calumny which Dr. Zydenbos has been spewing against Rajaram, S.R. Rao,
> > Agarwal, and
> > myself.  Banning the debate ad rem while permitting the attacks ad hominem
> > is a case of throwing out the baby and retaining the dirty bathwater.  So,
> > you keep what you chose to keep, and I follow the baby on his way out.
> > Goodbye.
> > 
> > Yours sincerely,
> > Koenraad Elst
> > 
> 
>