From: budaraju@cae.wisc.edu (Srinivas Budaraju)
Subject: Re: Riots Paralyze Bombay for Seventh Night
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 12 Jan 93 15:57:41 CST
Keywords: Riot Bombay

In article <104543@netnews.upenn.edu> sarkar@grip.cis.upenn.edu (Nilanjan Sarkar) writes:
>In article <1993Jan12.173444.24285@crd.ge.com> srinivas@vision.crd.ge.com (Chukka Srinivas) writes:
>Having said that, I have a question for you (and others like you e.g.
>Srinivas Budaraju, Sanjeev Mahajan (if he is still there)): Why are
>you people silent when, for example, temples are demolished in
>Kashmir, a particular group do not want to sing natioal anthem, head
>of Jamia-Milia(sp?) is threatened for his opinion of book banning and
>so forth?  Do you have any particular mission in which you only
>castigate Hindu fundamentalism and keep quiet about others? In one of
>your posts you mentioned -- "Hindu fundamentalism is the worst (in the
>context of our country)". I agree that any sort of fundamentalism is
>bad - period.  How do you grade them -- bad, worse and worst? Just
>because Hindus are majority? Fundamentalism is a qualitative aspect --
>quantity does not make it any better or worse.

Looks like much of this is directed at the Chukka Srinivas, but since
you bring up my name, let me defend myself. I haven't remained silent
about Islamic fundamentalism. I posted on SCI, SCP, and SCB, among
other things about Salman Rushdie, Shah Bano, etc. I can send you
copies of these posts if you want. But Hindu fundamentalism
is of more interest to me because at present it is the most dangerous
animal in India.

>If you want to sound rational and want others to value your opinion --
>be balanced. You never answered why uniform civil code is not
>justified. To the contrary, you come up with the question that how
>does it matter if Muslims are allowed to have four wives.  But, why
>not uniform civil code??

In principle, I have no problem with uniform civil code. It is how
we go about achieving that matters. Article 44, Part IV of Indian
Constitution says:

"The State shall *endeavour* to secure for the citizens a *uniform*
civil code throughout the territory of India." [emphasis mine]

This Article is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy
and cannot be enforced by any court as per Article 37. 
Note the word 'endeavour'. That means that the govt will pursuade
and not coerce people to have a uniform civil code. It can't ram
it down people's throats, it can't intimidate them thru demolishing
their religious structures to get them to do it.

First, let the Hindus make their civil code uniform (which I think
is not that easy to do) and dare other communities to do better.

Secondly, there are some arguments that say that uniform code means
that regional variations of existing civil codes should be removed.
This means that Muslims living anywhere in India should have the
same civil code and no local variations are allowed. If we want
all religious groups to follow the same code, what we need is a
*common* civil code. (For more details, see "Muslim Problems -
Constitutional Perspective" by Syed Ameenul Hasan Ali Rizvi, in
"The Muslim Situation in India," Edited by Iqbal A. Ansari, Sterling
Publishers Private Ltd., New Delhi, 1989).

From your side, can you tell me what is so wrong about not having a
uniform civil code? Different States have different civil codes. But
that doesn't seem to bother us that much. If such differences are
tolerated in different administratitive regions, why can't we tolerate
the same between different religious groups? Considering the fact that
Hindus and other non-Muslims practice polygamy much more than Indian
Muslims, I don't know why such a big issue is made out of it. Also,
even if the female/male ratio is 1:1 - actually it is less - how is
it theoritically possible for all the Muslim men to practice polygamy?
I think it is basically a different stick to beat the Muslims with,
that's why so much fuss is made about it.

>>-srinivas
>--Nilanjan

-Srinivas				budaraju@cae.wisc.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian