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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (70834)	2/1/2003 8:51:45 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Very, Very, scary article from "The New York Times" Magazine this week on the Hindu religious problem in India. Brrrr! I assume that's meant to count as a recommendation for this article. If so, let me second the recommendation. Very powerful article. If you do not already know this, the article will lead you to rethink some of your thoughts about India right now.

To: LindyBill who wrote (70834)	2/1/2003 9:06:47 PM
From: kumar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Yes the article is scary. and the trends worth monitoring. The RSS has always been an extremist group - they probably learnt some stuff from the Nazis. My experience tells me that it is not the view/perspective of the majority of Indians. What happened in Gujarat recently had no justification. What will happen in the next national elections ? time will tell.

To: LindyBill who wrote (70834)	2/2/2003 3:03:43 AM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

The Hindufascist movement RSS, which is the "back room" of the BJP national governing party, ironically, wishes to make India a mirror image of Pakistan. Pakistan suffers from the activities of religious islamist extremists who wish to make the country - and the rest of the world - a theocracy. In the same way the Hindu extremists wish to make the billion people of India live in a world governed by the tenets of their version of "secular" Hinduism. They, of course, demonize the islamofascists and claim every muslim in India is a terrorist or terrorist supporter and threaten the nature of Hindu culture, and should be converted to Hinduism, driven away, or killed. This, after all, they argue is only "just" since this is what the Muslims of South Asia do to non-believers.. Unfortunately, the islamofascists give the hindufascists plenty of ammunition. The following article is rather middle of the road and taken from a forum sponsored by the SAAG group. I do not believe the authors are RSS or even BJP types. It's worth reading. Lots of information and insights. The first insight is to notice that the authors believe India is under a threat to its survival. A rather absurd belief. The Hindu population of India is about 850 million, that of Muslims about 150 million. The only part of the country with a peopnderant Muslim population is Indian part of Kashmir and as a recent poll has shown, the majority of people there do not want to join Pakistan. saag.org

To: LindyBill who wrote (70834)	2/2/2003 11:27:27 AM
From: jcky	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 281500

Very scary, indeed. This brings up a more sensitive and prosaic question: the role of fundamentalist religions in society. There has been a recent affront on muslims and Islam following the events of 9/11, but if we look deeper into other cultures and the growing trend of religious fanaticism and correlate this phenomenon with globalization and an inability to adapt to modernity, a disturbing trend may be emerging in the foreseeable future. Chrisitian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, and Hindu fundamentalism are all the same flavor of nut but with a different package. There are many reasons why our form of governance has survived and prospered. I suspect secularism is one of the many reasons. So when I see this current Bush administration trying to mingle Government with God, this just scares the beejesus out of me.