[Reader-list] Slander Match, 2nd innings

[pratap pandey]

Hey Tarun,

You say you received "an unsigned communication from
pp". What the hell does that mean? Either the
"communication" is "unsigned" or it is from "pp".
What are you saying, yaar?

The core issue is NOT "attribution of motives and
slander directed at someone not able to defend herself
in this public forum". Don't turn a technicality into
a core issue. YOU posted the poem. So YOU are also
part of the textual web of the poem. I responded to
YOUR posting. 


The core issue is the insistent excoriation of the
Partition question among the global eaducated Indian
community. This community keeps the Partition alive.
It stokes the fires of an incitement towards "rift".
It utilises a spiral into the abyss of an unresolved
"rift" (the Partition question) to constantly
reproduce that "rift" via the tropes of nostalgia and
memory.

Why keep a "rift" alive, Tarun? Should we keep alive
"the complexity of the experiential
> situation of Punjabi migrant families affected by
> Partition, then further afflicted by the 1984 riots
and recently Sept. 11" (please notice the
sentimentality of this sentence), or should we
jettison the Partition as Logos of being "Indian" and
try and find new ways of being "Hindustani"?

The poem you posted made me mad. Such a nostalgic
piece of prose. It assumes that if Gujarat happens,
there should be silence. It belongs to a discourse
within which the VHP president, delivering a speech at
MIT, eloquently quotes the Gita to prove that what
happened in Gujarat was a just reaction to Godhra.

What is more important, Sept 11 or Gujarat? Difficult
question, even I don't know the answer to that.

A VHP president can appropriate the nostalgia of the
poem and utilise it to create more rift. The poem is
an extension of that "ethnic" ethic. What then is the
use of such nostalgia? What purpose does this memory
serve?

I think that NRIs are as responsible for propping up a
fascist political formation in India, and so holding
civil society to ransom, as are the VHP and the
Bajrang Dal (who only promise poor village and slum
youths of a complete future). Hence the "vicious and
ugly" "satire".

Is this "anarchy without responsibility"?         

The "facile reduction of the statement made in the
poem For Papa to petty issues of tenure politics" is a
generic demand. Recognise that, please. That's a
standard satiric strategy, applied. That's
"mock-heroic" discourse. Remember Pope?

Don't be "disappointed". That makes you morally
superior. You have no right to be disappointed. Get
angry, man!

Yes, Suvir ran away from Khalsa, and not HIndu. My
mistake (don't be hyperbolic and say: "lamentable
ignorance of their background and training"). But he
did run away. Because he couldn't do what he wanted
to, over here, within Indian academia. You have
completely misread that portion of my posting, or have
chosen to do so ("Furthermore, by attributing motives
to senior academics who spent many years in Delhi
university before making the difficult decision to
shift to the USA"...).

Stop being so uptight, man! What is this crap about
"attributing motives to senior academics" and so on
and so forth? They went abroad because they couldn't
stay here, they felt "puny" and "frustrated". I am not
blaming them. Why are you defending them? Who are you
to be defensive about them? What are you defending?
DU?

Tarun, I don't need to be "unmasked". Please. Don't
make me a more complicated person than I am. And if I
wanted to "leap down others' throats" (do you mean
you?), I would have done it in a different way. I
didn't want to leap down Jyotsna's throat (poor
Illinois lamb). I did want to leap down the throat of
the poem (if you can call it that -- if this is what
Indian-American academics consider a poem to be, then
sad scene, man! You and I could write any tripe and be
published!), and rip it apart.     

Tarun, please re-join the list. Just because I have
assholic opinions doesn't mean the entire List has
assholic opinins. Why are you blackmailing the List? I
don't understand this. It seems as if the List is
"guilty" for posting my postings, and so the List
should be punished.

As I said, kick my ass. Don't withdraw from the list.

yours with a wink,
pp   

--- tarunksaint <tarunksaint at sify.com> wrote: > Hi
there,
> Thanks for posting the guidelines. I guess some of
> them apply to this former
> contributor as well!
> 
> I received an unsigned communication from pp, with
> the header 'sorry'. I
> read through it with disappointment, since one had
> hoped better sense would
> prevail. Indeed, there is no recognition at all of
> the ethical principles at
> stake as regards the the core issue-- attribution of
> motives and slander
> directed at someone not able to defend herself in
> this public forum. The
> form the purported 'satire' took was vicious and
> ugly, unwarranted by
> anything in the original posting, which was my first
> in this forum. Indeed,
> the commentators' failure to understand the
> complexity of the experiential
> situation of Punjabi migrant families affected by
> Partition, then further
> afflicted by the 1984 riots and recently Sept. 11,
> is doubly distressing,
> given his admitted location in academia. The facile
> reduction of the
> statement made in the poem For Papa to petty issues
> of tenure politics
> demonstrates a lack of insight and empathy,
> compounded by the impertinent
> use of the author's first name, and sly insinuations
> which accompanied this
> direct address (Know thyself, as the adage has it,
> vis-a-vis the question of
> authorial intention). Anarchy without
> responsibility, as another contributor
> has put it, is simply unacceptable.
> 
> This impertinence has been on display before,
> vis-a-vis the posting about
> UGC rules, which effectively silenced the person
> concerned, and more
> recently in the context of discussion of the silence
> on Gujarat.
> Furthermore, by attributing motives to senior
> academics who spent many years
> in Delhi university before making the difficult
> decision to shift to the
> USA, pp  repeats his earlier mistake, and shows a
> lamentable ignorance of
> their background and training (one of the academics
> referred to spent long
> and difficult years at Khalsa, not Hindu College,
> and has earned his present
> positon by any reckoning through outstanding
> scholarship). It seems
> indignation may have its functions after all, if it
> allows for the unmasking
> of the sender of such occasional poison-pen messages
> on this list.
> 
> Resentment and jealousy have their outlets, and it
> is this along with the
> disturbing alacrity to leap down others' throats
> that cyberspace facilitates
> that prompts my decision to remain unsubscribed.
> There are certain norms one
> believes in, and if others think otherwise and
> condone the abuse of a woman
> author not on this list, well, I beg to differ. No
> justification in the name
> of satire will do; literary criticism is about
> making the distinction
> between puerile infantilism and honed articulations
> backed up by thought
> processes which are open to evaluation and
> assessment.
> 
> I retract my statement about 'puny and frustrated
> intellects', as a
> polemical expression written while angry. I
> certainly have no intention in
> either reviewing pp's books to come, nor continuing
> what has degenerated
> into a slanging match.
> Finally, I would appreciate your sharing this
> message with the list. The
> list has contributed to my understanding of various
> issues, and I wish it
> well.  I hope this thread can be satisfactorily
> resolved. This will be my
> last communication on the subject.
> Enough said.
> 
> Regards,
> Tarun
> 
> 
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and
> the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to
> reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the
> subject header.
> List archive:
<http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> 

________________________________________________________________________
For live cricket scores download  Yahoo! Score Tracker
 at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html