SV: SV: Plight of Buddhist art

[Rohit Chopra]

>Dr. Fosse - when you, as an Indologist, a Norwegian, a human being,
>are complicit in the international policy that says the Taleban
>government must be treated as international pariahs and the Afghan
>people as legitimate casualties of an extradition dispute, what right
>do you have to protest when they behave desperately and irrationally?
>When the Afghans have been subjected first to widespread destruction
>by the Russians, then to the funding and arming of disparate private
>groups by the wealthiest country in the world to the point where the
>nation's capital became the permanent battleground of those groups,
>and then to the active and effective hostility of that same country
>with all other nations (except a few like Pakistan and Turkmenistan)
>acquiescing, by what logic can you attribute their adoption of extreme
>ideologies and desperate (and unpleasant) actions to their inherent
>failings rather than to the pressure of contingent circumstance?
>Forgive me, but if your hypocrisy is not clear to you it is quite
>revolting to me; you sound like a German of, say, 1941, complaining
>that Poles are violent terrorists by nature.
>

I second that, it seems almost to comply to the classic definition of
orientalist stereotyping. It is interesting that if a white European or
American group or individual commits a reprehensible action, it is always
made out to be the case of an "pathological, disturbed individual" or the
work of some aberrant group (such as David Korresh's cult for instance).
This is the idea the western media reinforces and one that echoes popular
western sentiment as well. However, if any other population commits the same
action, then a generalization is made about the innate negative qualities of
that group, people, population or even civilization. Thus neo-nazi white
supremacist groups are conveniently designated part of a lunatic fringe in
chiefly white, western societies, whereas the Taliban is supposed to
represent the innate "fanaticism" of all Afghans or even Islam.

What is equally sad is that an equal number of Indians on this list jump to
the same easy conclusions mirroring in the in-built assumptions of a
centuries-old means of representing the geographical equivalent of the
subcontinent. This is one of the infections of colonialism, that ironically,
infects most strongly those who stridently makes claims about the purity of
Indian (which, in their opinion, is Hindu) culture. Unfortunately there
still is a reliance on the categories of neo-liberal democracy, which is
based on so-called universals that in actu have their provincial roots in
European history, and thus innately endorse a white, male ideology. The same
neo-liberal democracy allows for affluent western countries to choke third
world countries in the name of "justice" or "world peace". Additionally, the
models of "civil society" cannot account for the historical specificty of
formulations of community in cultures other than those European provinces
where these models were formulated. Arms exports to the third world form a
significant source of revenue for affluent developed and postindustrial
nations. It is on the basis of this money that the west can afford to make
those "democratic, liberal" generalizations about "fanatics" and Islam.

Rohit






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