From: banarji@unixg.ubc.ca (Ajai Banarji)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Fanatics in Canada
Date: 21 Nov 1992 03:45:13 GMT
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: unixg.ubc.ca

			Fanatics in Canada?

  I do not know if Sarmaji considers me to be one of the Canadian
fanatics, but perhaps I can make a similar generalization. 
  Anyone who has read sci for a while might conclude that the "more
interesting" writers such as Mahadevan Ramesh, Arun Gupta and Ramesh
Venkat are not CS/EE types while the junk writers (too many to mention)
are invariably CS/EE types. Could we therefore conclude that there is
something deficient in the education of CS/EE types which makes them
write junk :-)
  Anyway, Sarmaji's conclusion deserves to be studied further. He seems
to base his conclusion on the basis of

1) Sikh extremist fanatics from Canada
2) Tamil -do-	 -do-		-do-
3) Various other fanatics       -do-

  However, the reasons for a high volume of "fanatic" postings from Canada
are varied. Sarmaji seems to be surprised at the relatively higher "per
capita" postings from Canada. As the ratio of population between Canada
and the US is about 1:10, perhaps one may expect that the postings on
s.c.i. would be in the same ratio.
  However, due to the different policies in the two countries, there are       more good universities in Canada on a "per capita" basis when compared to
the US. 
  Thus the number of desi students in Canada is somewhat more than the 1:10 
ratio one might expect. Still, that is not the only factor.
  For historical reasons there has been a high migration of people from 
Punjab (especially Sikhs) to Canada. As there are more Sikhs in Canada than
in the US, naturally there are more Khalistan supporters in Canada. You 
might have a point if you could prove that the incidence of extremism 
among Sikhs in Canada was more than in the US. According to our man in
Chico (which is one of the main centres of Sikh population in the US), 
the support for Khalistan is quite strong in the US as well.
  I'm not so familiar with the Tamil population in Canada. However, it is
possible that Canada's more liberal policies for political asylum have
resulted in more Sri Lankan Tamil refugees ending up in Canada rather than
the US. This may be the reason for the apparently larger number of nasty
postings on Sri Lankan and Tamil issues originating from Canada.
  Perhaps Sarmaji's conclusion was based on the high volumes of postings
by a couple of individuals. One such person (known for his diehard
communist fanaticism) is at our neighbour Simon Fraser U. The janata at
SFU regard him as a "special case" who is in no way typical of the desi
population there.
  Or perhaps he meant the gentleman from Concordia. Now, it is true that a
lot of peculiar things have happened at that university recently, but I
feel that this particular gentleman's postings on s.c.i. were not particularly
bad (compared to what we have been seeing in the past few weeks). He seemed
to have been flamed more because he dared to take on the powerful 
CPM/PWG/human rights lobby on s.c.i. which is not accustomed to having its
propaganda being rebutted. I am not the first person to have pointed this
out.
  To sum up, one may be correct in saying that the incidence of "fanatic"
postings from Canada on s.c.i. is more, but that has nothing to do with
the air of Canada :-)
     

Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian