[Reader-list] Gun Salutes for August 15

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Aditya Raj Kaul,

A passing thought in your response to Inder Salim's recent post  
intrigued me.

You said, "I didn't find you confused Inder; but your name is what I  
meant. Now, if you take it that ways; its all upto you. Its not about  
you being a artist, a nude actor or anything.....its about your  
nature of appeasing Muslims and lick their feet while you play with  
words in mails..."

I don't quite see why Inder's choice of a name for himself, the name  
Inder Salim, says anything about 'appeasing' and 'licking the feet  
of' Muslims. True, it is a common Muslim name, but then so is Iqbal,  
or Bahadur, or Shamsher, (all with respectable perso-arabic origins)  
names that are often used as a first name for devout Hindus and  
Sikhs. And frankly, what if it also happens to be a common Muslim  
name? And what exactly is the problem in 'confusing' two different  
kinds of identity within the framework of a name? How does that  
'confusion' amount to 'appeasement' of anything other than a person's  
desire to choose how to represent themselves to the world?

The word Salim, means 'peaceful' in Arabic, Persian and several other  
languages. its cognates are 'Salaam' in Arabic, and 'Shalom' and  
'Shulamit' (a common girls name) in Hebrew, And, like Iqbal, comes  
originally from Arabic-Hebraic-Semitic  roots. Inder, as we all know,  
is a variant on the name of Indr,  the sky god of Rig-Vedic religion,  
who hurls thunderoblts, conquers and destroys cities. If through the  
act of naming himself, Inder Salim has transformed a warrior deity  
into a peaceful one, by making a name for himself (in more ways than  
one) then I don't quite see what objection there can be to that. All  
his name says to me is that he, this Inder, is at peace with himself,  
and that he is peaceful.

Since, the word, 'Salim' has actually no necessary exclusively  
'religious' connotation, and could for instance be a word like say -  
'Shanti' (and I know several Bangladeshi and Indonesian people, who,  
though Muslim, carry high Sanskritic names like Pragya, Lavanya,  
Sukanta or Paramita), I do not quite see how carrying the name  
'Salim' necessarily identifies one as a Hindu, a Muslim, as an  
agnostic or as a Seventh Day Adventist. My name, Shuddhabrata, is as  
Sanskritic as it can get, but does it really tell you anything about  
which kind of feet I lick, or if I lick feet at all?

Is your problem merely the fact that the word has a semitic-perso- 
arabic-hebraic origin, and that any word of that nature is by  
association 'Muslim' then, (which of course, makes you so upset)  
then, I am afraid you will have to do a lot of name changing, even  
within the Kashmiri Pandit community, where traditional names like  
Toshkhani, Bakhtawar, Durrani, Iqbal, Zorawar, Saraf, (all words with  
respectably perso-arabic lineages) are fairly common first and second  
names, especially if you go back a generation. Of course, you would  
then, demand that Kashmir Muslims with fairly common second names  
like Dar, Butt, and even, Pandit, also drop those names, because they  
point to a Sanskritic, pre-Islamic lineage, which you no doubt would  
want them not to sully.

That is a lot of work. Surely you could find more useful things with  
which to occupy your enthusiasm and your energy. And, by the way, do  
you have a problem with nudity? What exactly is wrong with the human  
body? Which part of the human body, which is a sheath for the human  
spirit, just as a name is a sheath for a person, needs to be excised  
or amputated, for you to be satisfied?

regards

Shuddha


On 17-Aug-08, at 5:20 PM, inder salim wrote:

> Dear Aditya Raj Kaul,
>
> Your comment on my name reflects the sickness of our times; If you
> think my conceptual name is some CONFUSION then what about  Ram Rahim?
> Is Lal Ded's ' mov zaan haund tai musalman' a confusion? If it is so
> then yes, inder salim is a confusion, and I am humbly content with
> that.
>
> Your comment on nudity is also alarming. Is nudity in Hinduism an act
> of obscenity? As a good Brahmin boy, you must know what  'vastra'
> means in Hindu thought. The body itself is the garment, and the
> depiction of it leads to some radicalization of thought.
>
>

Shuddhabrata Sengupta