From: jawad@ecst.csuchico.edu (Jawad Ali)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.indian
Subject: Ayodhya:  Symptoms, Malice + the Holy Grail
Date: 13 Dec 92 19:19:55 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico
NNTP-Posting-Host: cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu



Asalam alaikum Saad,

Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful article on Ayodhya.
I do, however, disagree very strongly with it.  You say:

>  No contemporary 
>person is at fault, and certainly not Lal Krishan Advani nor his followers.  

and then add...

>And please blame the socialists, typified by the communists
>of Kerala, who seek to acquire select Western statistics but bear
>contempt for the creation of wealth.  

There are some obvious flaws in this logic.  The communists of Kerala
are contemporary persons.  It takes a substantial leap of imagination
to blame the communists of Kerala before one blames the religious parties.  
Especialy if you consider the fact the extemists, when they are not
lootin' and shootin', are also playing their role in the creation
(or lack of) of wealth.

My main disageement, however, is theoretical.  You may be surprised
to know this, but your argument is almost identical to the one that
is presumably put forward by the communists of Kerala (I say presumably
here, as I know next to nothing about Kerala).

Both are materialistic arguments in the extreme.  The Marxists agree,
to put it simplisticaly, that all of the society's problems can be
addressed through the creation of wealth.  Their model is slightly
more sophisticated than yours as they would add the distribution of
this wealth to their equation.  A dedicated Marxist is no more concerned
with the failure of the Soviet model than a dedicated capitalist is
disillusioned by the collapse of capitalism in, say, El Salvador; or
a dedicated Islamacist is by the apparent failure of Shariat Law in
Saudi Arabia.

One extreme view of the creation of wealth is the Hamiltonian model.
Simply put, the best interests of a nation are served by letting
the rich elite get richer (a.k.a Trickle Down, Supply-side, Reganomics,
Voodoo, etc. in recent times).  Any tinkering with this model is 
disparagingly refered to as socialism.  Whatever you may think of its
economic merits (and I think it is a sham), it does not have the
social values for which you yearn in your article as its goals.

Wealth alone will not make the demons of Ayodhya go away.  The richest
societies in the world (atleast from per capita point of view) continue
to be the most repressive and intolerant -- I am thinking of my darling
Fahad here.  Just as you point to Singapore and Malaysia as examples of
relative communal harmony achieved through the creation of wealth, a Marxist
may point to Cuba, for example, as racial and communal harmony achieved
through social engineering.  [A marxist may also point to the raging
economic success of Cuba, against all odds and dirty tricks, and in dramatic
contrast with its neighbours.  Dont tell Bezyar I said this, but political
reality of this neighbourhood allows only one economic success story :-)].
Both materialistic models are based on the same falacies.

I am not even sure if emperical evidence would support your conclusion.
As a rule, is communal and religious tolerace in the Subcontinent
really proportional to income levels?    Leave it to us unruly Punjabis
to thorow a monkey-wrench in such elegant theories :-).  I would also
venture to guess that Kerala's "tinkering with demographics" has had
more success in this regard than the greening of Punjab.

My understanding is that religious and communal parties in Pakistan
are almost exlclusively a middle-class phenomenon.  I suspect that this
recent rise in Brahmanism across the border is mostly middle-class
as well.  So unless Nawaz Sharief keeps all the nation's newly created
wealth to himself, :-), we should expect more of these demons of Ayodhya
as more wealth is created, and as other things remain the same.

But these other things must not be alowed to remain the same.  We need
a solution that is far more complex than supply-side economics.  My
lesson from Ayodhya is that we cannot leave the building of our 
national institutions (our schools, press, politics, law, etc), 
our national conscience, and our collective psychies to the hidden
hand of the market.  You are making the same mistake for which you
chide the desi intelligensia.  Wealth and the business ethic has simply
replaced democracy as the holy grail.

I have more to say on the subject, but this should be plenty for now.

Warm regards,

j n a.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan