Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Babri Masjid, Hindus and Muslims
From: <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Sunday, 20 Dec 1992 09:12:49 EST
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

-I really don't find this argument at all valid. There is nothing
-"Western" about the mosque, so why should one view its destructino
-rationalization. I think it is far better to see the destruction of
-the mosque as the act of violent people unwilling to remain at peace
-with those who do not share their religion. The question remains then
-how people willing to remain at peace with those who do not share their
-religion should react to such a violent act. If every event of history
-can be used to justify violence there will never be peace on earth.
-
---
-Gregg Jaeger (jaeger@buphy)  Dept. of Physics (and Philosophy), Boston Univ.

    I wish you had read my post more carefully.  I have said nothing
to indicate that the destruction of the mosque was justified.  In fact in
the very same post, I questioned why Rama should be regarded as God at all.
However, I see you yourself as talking out of the very same values that
I implicitly criticised.   There is nothing wrong per se with the Western
liberal values,  but the fact that they are over-running the globe is
in my opinion quite similar to the way that we humans are over-running the
globe, squeezing all other species out of existence.

   `Man does not live by bread alone'.  The modern response seems to be,
`yes, he needs a condom too'!  :-).  While having nothing against condoms
per se, or `rational secular' values per se, people are more complicated
and deeper beings and  you as a person affiliated with a Philosophy
department ought to know that!

     It was only 35 years ago that the opening of stores on Sundays was
not acceptable in  the US.  Eating of dogs, as the Chinese do, was not
OK till recently, though Americans have had no trouble eating other
species.  The US has built up its identity thorugh 200 years of Christian
values, so now it can be secular and afford to sneer at Sandra O'Connor when
she calls the US a Christian nation.  Before India becomes truly secular,
it will first have to find its identity as a largely Hindu nation.  Stable
values that India will eventually have must be Hindu secular values and
not what amounts to Judeo-Greek-Christan secular values as we have now.

   I should tell you that I am myself not a Hindu but a Jain and in many
ways, Jains and Hindus are further apart than Hindus and Sikhs or Hindus
and Muslims, since Jains do not believe in God.  Jains have prophets but
they are prophets of Truth, not prophets of God.  Nonethelss, I have NEVER
been made to feel in any way discriminated against by Hindus.  Sikhs were
in the same status until the killings started.

    At the time of the birth of Buddha, all of India was `Hindu'.  200 years
later, the official religion, under king Asoka, was Buddhist.  Then, under
the Guptas, it was Hindus again and then again under Harsha-vardhan it
was Buddhist again.  There were no wars that accompanied these changes
and when Sankaracharya re-established Hindu pre-eminence, it was through
debates.  Compare that with the inquisition and the 100 years war over
religion in Europe and see that the Indian record in exceptionally good.

   Buddhism fought Hindusim for pre-eminence for some 15 centuries, but Hindus
did not retaliate with violence.  Budhhism, weakened by Hinduist revival,
came to an END in India when invading Muslim armies put Buddhist monks
at Nalanda to the sword.  We can tolerate and even respect Islam, but we
cannot blindly ignore the fact that the notion of settling religious
disputes through violence is not Indian but comes from outside.

    Rohit Parikh