Hindutva (Hindu nationalism)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I take turns obsessing over different brands of fundamentalism, and the Hindu brand is one I've been following on and off for the last decade (triggered, I always figure, when Deb and I were swarmed by a bunch of these characters near the temple in Puri). I have to say, though, I hadn't checked out one of their boards in a while, and after I got an email from a U of T prof this morning about it, it was a bit of cold water on the face, to move from jambands to the one what pops up here -

http://www.hinduunity.org/ -

in the second window. Check out some of the threads. It makes me awfully thankful for what we have here. I'd love to hear what people think about this.

What always gets me are the posts about other fundamentalistic groups - especially evangelical Christians, who are, too often, hamfisted and, well, dumb as a bag of hammers doing the stuff they do there. These tensions hit critical mass sometimes in India, and we don't always hear about the murders and riots that ensue.

Kinda sharp twist from the kind of Hinduism that can be found on the bookshelves at Chapters and New Age bookstores everywhere.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Yikes

No doubt! I had to check to see if my friend at U of T was on that list, as she's certainly persona non grata with the RSS and VHP locally; thankfully, she may just be below the radar for this lot back in India.

I have these recurring phantasies about taking all these folks from all different corners and leaving them on some godforsaken island somewhere to sort it all out, but a) I like to think there's no such thing as a godforsaken anything, and you wouldn't want to inflict them on the local wildlife.

But what do you do when the response of people you want to take the time to disagree with is to simply kill you?

I've been using this piece by Arvind Sharma at McGill for the last couple of courses I've run, and I think he hits some key points squarely on the head.

http://www.acrossboundaries.net/voices/voices1-1/sharma.html

The point he makes, basically, is that for all the overlap between Gandhi and Godse, what marks them as different is their conception of evil and how to fix it - Gandhi holding that there is no such thing as an evil person, only evil circumstances which a person might be enticed to leave with a strong enough moral appeal. It's a good (and brief) read. Of course, he was also a sometimes stubborn traditionalist, too, but I guess that's another story.

SugarMegs, yes, let's do talk more - it's nice indeed to hear from you; a sole regret from that Ottawa weekend is not having talked more with you and Hux (apart from musical conversation, I mean); I chalk it up to that thing that happens where all the speech centres in my brain shut down once I've got a guitar in hand (and neurotransmitters going haywire too, I suppose ).

[timouse]

I have these recurring phantasies about taking all these folks from all different corners and leaving them on some godforsaken island somewhere to sort it all out, but a) I like to think there's no such thing as a godforsaken anything, and you wouldn't want to inflict them on the local wildlife.

ok dave, let's pitch it to the fox network...Fundamentalist Survivor!

throw religious nutjobs of all stripes on an island somewhere and let them duke it out for ratings "...see which is the one true faith."

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

You know perfectly well how well that would sell!

Games

- abstract theological reductionism

- hitting each other over the head with sticks

- what else could they do?