From: deb@soil.Princeton.EDU (Arghya Deb)
Subject: A N-Y Times article
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 17:07:05 GMT


I was reading a N-Y Times article this morning about the current situation
in India. The writer, Edward Gargan, talks about the dangers of the 
impending "Hindu-ization" of India. I believe it was Napoleon who said
"Perfidy thy name is Albion". It would have been far more apt if 
he had chosen to include the entire Western World in the scope of his 
generalization. 

Mr. Gargan starts of with a bang. He panders to Western fears about nuclear
proliferation, and harps on the BJP's professed aim of making India go nuclear.
So far so good; barring a mildly garbled rendition of the history of India's
ruling dynasties, he has at least stuck to the facts. He still stays the 
course when he talks about the BJP's attitude to foreign investment. A few 
flights of fancy here and there, as when he mentions a Japanese bank's 
decision to wind up it's operations in India in the face of the rising tide
of Hinduttva, but on the whole he is correct. The BJP does believe that
India needs foreign investment for urban transportation and computers, not
for Kellog and Pepsi. 

But when he enters the domain of the BJP's social policies, he goes 
completely hay-wire. It is perhaps understandable. Social policy is an
area where the label of fundamentalism is easiest to attach, and Mr. Gargan
makes the most of his opportunity. He chooses to selectively quote Shri K. R.
Malkani, a vice-president of the BJP, and then embark on a rampant ride
of twisting facts and spreading misinformation. 

The BJP he says, does not believe in education for the masses. The implication
being that it would much prefer them to remain in the present state of 
dark ignorance, so that they can be easily manipulated for votes. A plausible 
and facile hypothesis, but unfortunately untrue. From what I understand 
of their policies, education and social upliftment  are the corner-stones
of the RSS movement. But the question is what sort of education. Do we
want to churn out several million more literate but uneducated young men to
join the already swelling ranks of the disgruntled and the disillusioned? With
no specialized skills whatsoever, they quickly turn to desperation and only
serve to intensify society's collective head-ache.  Nor do we want to 
raise an entire generation of pseudo-secularists; God forbid, we have enough
of them already. 

Education must be harnessed to the task of nation-building. While this may
sound polemical and stale, in practice it means educating a generation of
young men who are enlightened and forward looking, equipped with the 
practical skills to take advantage of the opportunites arising from the 
abolition of the license-permit raj; but at the same time with a solid 
grounding in the humanistic values which provide sustenance to a society.
Young men and women who will look at their past critically, not with
star-gazing wonder, but with a sense of attachment and belonging: which
would enable them to separate the trivial and the trash from what is sublime
and soulful. India will not merely be an eastern edition of the West. The
soul-less materialism, the endless consumption, the craze for instant
nirvanas - they cannot be allowed to suppress and pervert the natural
genius of the Indian race. This was the message of the great Indian
reformers of the nineteenth century; Swami Vivekanda was their most eloquent
spokesman, Gandhiji their most powerful advocate. Unfortunately, 
for the first forty years after independence, an overwhelming
preoccupation with Fabian socialism, a deracinated and ultimately sterile
remedy, kept us from appreciating the worth of our own home-grown palliatives.
The Nehruvian vision gave us a democratic infrastructure, a great foreign
policy, but it's standards and values were, in the ultimate analysis, alien
to the collective consciousness, and thus kept us from realizing our "selves".

The problem with Western analysts of Mr. Gargan's variety is that they
cannot understand that the satisfaction which a people get from chanting
the name of Shri Ram or for that matter invoking Allah's "reham" 
five times a day, is at least as important to them as the benefaction which
his country-men receive from the combined wisdom of Madonna and Howard Stern.
It all stems from an inability to empathize. An over-dose of secularism
blunts the sensibilities and dwarfs humanity.
                                                  Arghya Deb