[Reader-list] Indo-centrism On Sarai

[S.Fatima]

No, no... we won't talk about Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Aren't those regions part of the Akhand Bharat. I hope
you know what akhand means. You better start learning
Hindi or else you would be branded anti-national. You
are a security threat to our Rashtra. You are a
Bangladeshi.

(Sorry Naeem - that wasn't real me. I think being on
the Sarai list I am slowly turning into a Patriotic
Indian, which practically means being a Gaurav shali
Bharatiye and no longer respecting other cultures and
languages).

By the way, they were exchanging Urdu couplets, not
Hindi. Since when has Urdu become Indian?



--- Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are many members of Sarai who are neither
> Indian, nor
> Hindi-speakers.  But Indian members of Sarai seem so
> oblivious to
> their Indo-centrism that they presume that we will
> be able to, or want
> to, follow debates that are at this point even
> written entirely in
> Hindi (I refer to recent posts where entire couplets
> are posted in
> Hindi w. no translation).
> 
> This comes at the cost of many other debates that
> could possibly
> happen.  I've witnessed items posted regarding
> Bangladesh sinking
> without a trace/response.  Recently, particular
> "Indian" topics have
> generated hundreds of replies, drowning out all
> else.  The only time a
> Bangladeshi cultural producer (Taslima Nasreen) gets
> debated is when
> what is at stake is how she was treated in India. 
> Only when Taslima
> is a vehicle to debate Hyderabad values, Indian
> secularism, etc does
> she become a person of interest.
> 
> Bangladesh/Pakistan/or elsewhere in South Asia does
> enter into other
> discussions-- as a foil.  To insert immigration into
> the debate, and
> of course the ultimate insult that can be flung at
> Suddha is that "he
> is no longer in Bangladesh".
> 
> This weekend, I was talking to Manosh Chowdhury, who
> has just returned
> from Japan to Dhaka. Unprovoked he started talking
> about how "we" is
> used unquestioningly on Sarai to mean "Indian". 
> Even "South Asian"
> means "Indian", or at least everything non-Indian is
> through the prism
> of the "center".
> 
> But it's a bore to be the resident scold, or a
> token.  I fear
> eventually most who feel suffocated by the recent
> endless debate (a
> debate which is often between a few individuals,
> sometimes even
> one-to-one, and yet it gets sent to the entire list)
> will have
> Manosh's reaction.  They will drift away, exhausted.
> 
> As Jeebesh pointed out, it takes very little time to
> destroy a
> cyber-community that has been built up painstakingly
> by Sarai over the
> years.  Tyranny of the few threatens to do just
> that.
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