SV: SV: Plight of Buddhist art

[tina debruyn]

sorry but i think it is a shame that you are fighting about this instead of
talking constructively!We all must feel sad about the fact that a part of
human art will be destroyed in a few days!
Tina


>From: Rohit Chopra <cosmicomic at HOTMAIL.COM>
>Reply-To: Indology <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
>To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: SV: SV: Plight of Buddhist art
>Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 02:41:08 +0000
>
>>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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