[Reader-list] balkanisation

[tarunksaint]

Dear Jeebesh, others on the list,

Once again I have the sense that we do not read postings very carefully, that predetermined arguments are being rehearsed to make a case/score points.

Your analogies, from managerial institutes and schools, are far from the kind of context-specific, philosophically grounded unity which I was invoking, in the spirit of the Karahasan article, which makes an interesting case as regards the dangers of endless valorisation of difference. As he argues, similarities may be equally important in a given context such as that of the Balkans during the phase of ethnic cleansing on the pretext of the supposed threat to Serbian identity (and here I am with Shuddha in repudiating identity politics). My problem with the Versey piece was on the basis of its timing, given the aggressive anti-Gandhi rhetoric current in Gujarat, and its tone, which was, in my view,  dismissive and prurient. For Shuddha to present his own analysis of Gandhi would have been certainly far more pertinent, even though I may totally disagree with his assessment of Gandhi's role in fomenting communalism. (In my view, the role of the colonial state in the formation of separate electorates, and the continuous playing out of the politics of language and identity which allowed the two-nation theory to gain ground might be far more significant than the part played by individual leaders, who spent years in jail on account of their convictions) .

The question of timing still remains to be considered, given the fragmentation of antifascist groups today, often due to ideological splits based on a selective reading of historical records exhumed for the purpose of scoring tired 
points. Why drag Gandhi into the debate on Gujarat indeed, that hoary old relic of Congress nationalism, staple beating boy of the left? I'm no Gandhi scholar and I would freely concede the many contradictions within his career. However, I find it deeply disturbing that the sort of connection that was sought to be made (Gandhi and Godse are of the same mould, Gandhism and Hindutva are somehow analogous) at the very moment when the fragile remnants of the voluntary sector which remain in Gujarat are being battered by hate-driven bigotry,  when a Jain industrialist running a furnace can be calmly asked to help burn Muslim bodies or else, when threats are being issued to Gandhian institutes/organisations to close shop or hold their tongues. The banality of evil, of the many Eichmanns sitting on files about killers or refusing to fire for fear of being transferred, is now accompanied by fiendish and sadistic violence, both pathological and necrophiliac in nature. What price Gandhi in the face of this, that sad soul whose last function was to bring a cessation to the cataclysmic violence of an earlier era after his assassination in Jan. 1948? At least 'Hey Ram' was able to recognise the transformation in the mentality of another (fictional) would-be killer after traversing the anguish of loss, the beginning of healing and subsequent partial reclamation of selfhood.

As for your general statement about power, again, I must point out that the application in this context is mechanistic, and misplaced. My career on this list has been short, and stems from the posting of a poem to which a plurality of responses were made, to which I chose to reply, and which in my opinion, in many cases were ill-considered. You will grant me the right to express dissent in my own way, as a courtesy one is entitled to , I'm sure. Discussions are most rewarding when there is a context which allows for both sides of an argument to be heard.

Rgds,
Tarun


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