[Reader-list] Iconoclasm and a quest for hired limousines

[radhikarajen at vsnl.net]

Shuddha,

  thanks for your post to bring back the "objective" look at history and archives. But being emotional in responses in the process always takes objectivity out of the debates as is the norm.

  As regards, histroy it must be remembered that objective look and journalising the vents of yester years is now coloured by the looks of the writer, no more objective, as different writers write the history as they view it, grasp it, like to portray it. The written histories, each of them only give partial vies from the view point of writers, so it is always better to read and grasp as many versions of archives as possible and then digest what is right and the true factual position of the vents that hae gone in to the sands of time. !
  Now, this Bharatha varshas has seen many rulers, some good, some rank bad and some ugly when the rule got influenced by what the rulers percieved as good for their subjects, and in all such cases the ruler, or king always tried to impose what he/she thought was good to his/her subjects and the result is intolerence to any objects which that ruler percieved as not right for his subjects. be it a hindu king, buddhist king, muslim ruler, or of any faith, the ruler always tried to foist what he believed as right and correct for his subjects, in the process none have been tolerent to other symbols of faith, be it temples, churches or mosques. So, in the free nation, today, as we are living in supposed to be secular India, where religion has no place in good governance, the fact that every ruler today irrespective which political spectrum and colour belongs to is at it again when it is absolutely should be left to the citizrens to have their choice of worship.History gives out t
he role of different kings in destruction of temples, by different rulers, but moot point is now in free India, the right is sought to be imposed by wrongs and not by tolerent negotiated correction of wrongs with mutual accommodation. That is the issue.
  Regards.

----- Original Message -----
From: shuddha at sarai.net
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:15 am
Subject: [Reader-list] Iconoclasm and a quest for hired limousines
To: reader-list at sarai.net

> Dear Rashneek, Dear All on the List
> 
> Happy new year. (so what if it is a few weeks old !)
> 
> I have watched with dismay our list degenerating from the heights it
> ascended to with Rashneek Kher's riposte to my annotations on the 
> historyof iconoclasm in Kashmir. The current volley of invective 
> unleashed by
> Oishik, Chanchal Malviya, Radhikarajen, We Wi and Pawan Durani is 
> sad, and
> I hope we can climb out of it, as we did momentarily when Arnab, 
> Sadan,Prem Chandravarkar and others were discussing archives, 
> personhood and
> other things that make this list more worthwhile. I hope I can 
> attend to
> some of those fascinating questions in coming days. I also hope (in
> agreement with Ravi Agarwal's response to Aarti, that matters 
> other than
> those that concern our resident Hindu patriots can get a hearing. 
> It would
> be tragic if this list were to be monopolized by a bunch of time 
> servingfanatics intent on the destruction of conversation with 
> their hatred filled
> agenda. The arts, environment, technology, culture, 
> contemporaneity, the
> making of images and words, philosophical speculation and debate, -
> all
> these are part of the mandate of this list, and need vigorous 
> cultivation.The best way to deal with right wing lunacy is to 
> ensure that it does not
> drown other voices. I appeal to everyone on this list to ensure 
> that this
> does not happen. Please write, and write about a lot of other 
> things as
> well.
> 
> But this post takes us back to the issues raised by Rashneek Kher on
> iconoclasm on Christmas day last month.
> 
> I read with interest your (Rashneek's) long posts in reply to my
> annotations on iconoclasm in Kashmir, posted almost exactly a 
> month ago .
> And I appreciate the hard work that Rashneek has put in. Thank 
> your for all
> the notes and references. They are useful.
> 
> I do however have some issues with the contents of Rashneek's 
> argument. i
> do not wish this to be a very detailed post, so I will keep my 
> arguments as
> brief as possible.
> 
> FIrstly, it is disingenuous on your part to say that you had not 
> said that
> Hindu kings had not undertaken acts of Iconoclasm. The question of
> iconoclasm was raised by you in a response that you wrote to my 
> reply to
> Pawan Durani about genocide by Communist rulers. In my reply, I 
> had said
> that I am willing to atone for the genocidial violence that stains the
> record of regimes that have used the name Communist to describe 
> themselves,and asked, whether Pawan Durani would be similarly 
> prepared to grieve and
> atone for those killed in order to defend the Indian nation in 
> Kashmir. In
> your reply to my willingness to atone, you invoked what you 
> implied was
> another history of violence in Kashmir, where you focused, or 
> chose to
> focus on instances of (solely) Muslim iconoclasm. You made it 
> appear in
> your post as if iconoclasm and temple destruction and Islam had some
> special relationship, and you did not mention non Muslim 
> iconoclasm and
> temple destruction in Kashmir. Had you wanted to be objective, you 
> couldhave mentioned that non Muslim rulers also destroyed temples. 
> You chose not
> to.
> 
> Secondly, the implications of your argument about the relative 
> merits of
> different acts of iconoclasm and temple destruction based on a 
> reading of
> the motives behind them are interesting. In your conceptual and moral
> universe, greed, lust for wealth and power (which for you are the 
> motivesof the acts of iconoclasm of the non-muslim rulers of 
> Kashmir) seem to be
> somehow preferable to the iconoclasm that derives its energy from 
> faith and
> proselytization alone (which you attribute solely to the three 
> Muslim kings
> you mention).
> 
> The iconoclasm of non-muslim Kings, though reprehensible, is in 
> your view,
> less damaging in the last instance, because it is not accompanied 
> by a
> faith based fanaticism.
> 
> I am not interested (and never have been) in furnishing a differential
> framework of justification for any act of destruction. I condemn,
> unequivocally, acts of violence by ruling powers, no matter which 
> rulingpower perpetuates them, and for what reason. Not because I 
> view them
> through the lens committed to the hierarchical and differential 
> ordering of
> their motives but because I view them in terms of their 
> consequences. The
> consequences, unvaryingly, are tragic, no matter what the 
> declared, or
> retrospectively unveiled 'motives' may be.
> 
> It matters little to me as to whether those who witness and 
> recount such
> acts condemn these motives as base (as Kalhana does) or glorify 
> them as
> exalted (as some of the Muslim chroniclers you mention do, though 
> others,like Kalhan, are prepared to call them base). What matters 
> to me is that
> these instances were acts of wanton destruction, and need to be 
> recognizedas such.
> 
> But let us leave the absured question of whether it is 'better' to 
> destroyfor greed or the so called greater glory of god aside for 
> the moment.
> 
> As far as the attribution of motives to acts of state terror are 
> concerned,(and the killing of people, and the destruction of their 
> property by forces
> partisan to the state are acts of state terror, no matter who 
> orders them,
> or when they occur) I am less than willing to accept the motives 
> ascribedto them (which you accept without hesitation) by court 
> chroniclers.
> Let us take a contemporary example to try and understand what I 
> mean. If we
> follow the debate on Nandigram, which has occurred on this list and
> elsewhere, we will see that several people (myself included) have no
> hesitation in seeing the violence that has been unleashed in West 
> Bengal by
> the ruling CPI(M) as being symptomatic of the avarice, greed, lust for
> wealth, influence and power that has completely turned the heads 
> of the
> leadership of the CPI(M) led government in that state. While on 
> the other
> hand, the people I would consider to be the 'court chroniclers' and
> apologists of the CPI(M) have insisted that in fact the CPI(M)'s 
> actionsare actually evidence of its commitment to the pro-people 
> developmentpolicies that it claims to uphold. Substitute a 
> commitment to  what our so
> called Communist Parties call 'people's democracy' with what the 
> 'courtchroniclers' of the Kashmiri Salatin's called 'Islam' and 
> you will see
> exactly what I mean. Or, better still, if you read the writing on 
> Army, BSF
> and CRPF bunkers in Kashmir and Srinagar, which often declare that the
> Indian Armed Forces are protecting the 'Freedom' or 'Azaadi' of the
> Kashmiri population then too you will see what I mean.
> 
> Every ruling power attempts to dignify its base violence with the 
> sanctityof an exalted purpose. In Marxism we call this exalted 
> purpose 'Ideology'.
> So, when the court chroniclers of the Salatins say that the 
> purpose of loot
> and the destruction of property is the advancement of Islam, I am 
> quitewilling to bet that what we see is as much 'ideology' in 
> operation as when
> someone like Prabhat Patnaik exhorts the CPI(M) faithful that 
> whatever is
> happening in West Bengal is happening for the benefit of the 
> people there.
> In both cases, the greed and lust for power are given a suitably 
> exalted'cover' by intellectuals who also happen to be courtiers.
> 
> Strangely, if I were to accept your logic that the actions of 
> Muslim rulers
> in Kashmir can be glossed only in terms of their commitment to 
> their faith,
> then we have to arrive at another paradoxical conclusion - which 
> is as
> follows - that the pre-eminence of Kashmiri Pandits throughout the 
> historyof medieval Kashmir, the fact that their religion and 
> rituals remained
> intact, that new temples were also built and that Sanskrit scholarship
> continued to exist in Kashmir, is also indicative of the strength 
> of the
> piety of those Muslim rulers who ensured that all this could happen.
> Because, the Qur'an explicitly states ' To you your faith, and to 
> me mine',
> or 'that there can be no compulsion in matters of religion'. In other
> words, just as (following your logic) those Muslim rulers who 
> persecutedPandits and destroyed temples were acting as per the 
> injunctions of their
> faiths, those other Muslim rulers who did not persecute Pandits 
> and did not
> destroy temples were also acting out of their 'Islamic' religious
> motivations. In other words the 'bad' Muslims were bad because 
> they were
> Muslims, and the 'good' Muslims were good because they were 
> Muslims. I do
> not see how this line of reasoning can help us to understand anything,
> because it is internally contradictory.
> 
> I have heard and read many Muslim and Islamist ideologues argue 
> that the
> historical record of Islamic rule in the pre-modern world is 
> indicative of
> its higher tolerance of diversity, (which is empiricially true if 
> we take
> into account the broad contours of the cultural and religious 
> histories of
> the Ottoman, Abbasid, Fatimid, and Mughal empires), and that this is
> because, Islam itself is the 'most tolerant' and peace loving of 
> all faiths.
> 
> Now, let me make it abundantly clear that I think that this line of
> reasoning is absolute rubbish. It is Islamist propaganda that I do 
> not buy
> at all. Islam per se is neither more nor less tolerant than other 
> faiths.And Muslim rulers are not tolerant or intolerant because 
> they are 'Muslims'.
> 
> Muslim rulers were tolerant, or not, because it was expedient for 
> them to
> be so, because tolerance, or highly selective but non 
> discriminatory forms
> of intolerance were effective and pragmatic instruments of rule. 
> Similarly,I do not think that Narendra Modi organizes pogroms, and 
> arranges for the
> massacre of Muslims in Gujarat because he is a good Hindu. I think 
> he does
> so because this is a means by which he can rule through terror and 
> fear. To
> give his actions a 'Hindu' gloss, despite the spin and 
> representationalexcess with which it is surrounded, (including by 
> him and his courtiers)
> would be succumbing to the error of mistaking reality for 
> ideology, the
> concreteness of the deed for the slipperiness of the word.
> 
> Similarly, to say, like the court chroniclers you mention that 'temple
> destruction' was motivated by the cause of furthering the agenda 
> of Islam
> is about as meaningless, in my opinion, as saying that the 
> tolerance and
> liberality of Muslim rule existed in order to further the agenda 
> of Islam.
> What you are saying, and what Islamist apologists of the principle 
> of the
> so called 'just caliphate' say actually amount to the same things, 
> thoughyou come to them from different ends and from different 
> purposes - namely
> that the acts of Muslim rulers must only be seen in terms of their
> provenance in the sacred tenets  of Islam, while the acts of non 
> Muslimrulers can be explained by mundane motivations. This 
> amounts, actually to a
> theory of 'Muslim exceptionalism' that can be used to justify and/or
> describe anything and everything when it is attached to any entity 
> that is
> nominally Muslim, from the Islamo-Fascism of bin Laden and 
> Ahmedinijad to
> the liberality and openness of Jalaluddin Rumi, even to the playful
> heresies of Ma'arri and Rushdie.
> 
> I prefer a more simple and simutaneously more complex explaination 
> - which
> sees actions and motives rooted in everyday contexts,  and 
> especially views
> Kingship, statecraft and the exercise of political power of any 
> kind as a
> complex intersection of different kinds of motives, mainly base and
> mundane, mainly to do with the accumulation of wealth and the 
> maintenanceof patterns of domination by different ruling classes 
> in different epochs.
> 
> Finally, lets turn our attention a little to the manner in which 
> you have
> read your sources. I notice, that the actual substantive 'temple
> destroyers' that you mention are none other than the familiar Sikandar
> But-Shikan, whose name you drag out like a cheap magic trick, 
> again and
> again.
> 
> You list 49 references from Jia Lal Kilam's book, forgetting to 
> mentionthat temple destruction are mentioned very few times in 
> these references.
> The bulk of these citations have to do with the persecution of 
> pandits (and
> others) for reasons that have to do with expediency, court 
> politics, greed
> for wealth and a host of other mundane factors. The few instances were
> Muslim fanaticism is at play are also those that are also 
> corrected and
> resisted by other Muslim claimants to power. But we hardly find 
> any 
> specific mentions of temple destruction. This makes it difficult 
> to believe
> that the quantum of temple destruction in Muslim rule was 
> substantiallydifferent from what might have occured earlier.
> 
> Generally, the behaviour of oppressive Muslim kings is just as 
> base, just
> as banal, just as reprehensible as their non-Muslim predecessors. 
> Just to
> give an example, (because I do not want to bore our readers with 
> an excess
> of detail, an achoholic king like Haider Shah ('given to drunken 
> orgies' in
> Kilam's words) makes for as good and devout a Muslim as the pork 
> eatingShiva worshipping crypto Muslim pioneer called Harsha - whom 
> you are happy
> to claim is Muslim because Kalhana uses the word 'Turushka' for 
> him. S
> 
> You conveniently cite Abdul Qayoom Rafiqi (Sufism in Kashmir) 
> mentioingSyed Ali Hamadani's list of injunctions agains 'Zimmis' 
> without mentioing
> that the term 'Zimmis' (the protected) refer to Jews and 
> Christians, not to
> Hindus. The word used for Hindus is Kafir, and Rafiqui whom you cite,
> actually refers to Hamadani's verses stressing the equality in 
> God's eyes
> of the Momin (Muslim) and the Kafir. This actually really damages your
> argument, as does the fact that Rafiqui explicitly mentions the 
> fact that
> the fanatical excesses of his successor, Mir Mohammad Hamadani 
> were also
> resisted, and defeated by another Sufi
> 
> Thank you once again for the energy with which you have attempted to
> marshall evidence for your arguments, I am afraid, that after a
> dispassionate reading of your arguments, I am forced to conclude 
> that they
> make up in shrillness what they lack in coherence and cogency.
> 
> Keep trying, 
> 
> regards
> 
> Shuddha
> 
> PS. As long as non Kashmiri Indian soldiers continue to occupy and 
> harassKashmiris in Kashmir, I am afraid you will have to deal with 
> the likes of
> me, commenting on the situation in Kashmir. I do this, not because 
> I have a
> particular interest in what you call the 'pain' of Kashmir. I am not
> Kashmiri, and have no interest in giving further purchase to 
> Kashmir self
> pity, regardless of the denomination that it speaks in the name 
> of. Rather,
> I am interested in understanding and resisting what a prolonged 
> period of
> military occupation does to the occupying power. Let the last non 
> KashmiriIndian soldier leave the valley, and I too, will 'cease-
> fire'. Until that
> is done, I am afraid, the skirmish will continue.
> 
> Finally, at the end of your multi part missive, you exhort Pawan 
> Duraniwith the words, "Be not despaired of these,limousine 
> liberals oh my friend
> Pawan Durani,poor in means,we maybe,but aren't poor in passion and 
> zest."
> While it is interesting to think of people who brandish their 
> 'blackberryfuelled' enthusiasm as being 'poor in means', I must 
> point out that all my
> life I have wanted at least a brief ride in a limousine on Delhi's 
> streets.A liberal, I am not, but I really would not mind an 
> occasional spin in a
> hired limousine . Alas, I have never really enjoyed the delights 
> of one. I
> did notice, that on 'Homeland Day' which was celebrated with a 
> major bash
> by the Panun Kashmir organization I noticed a long line of expensive
> automobiles outside the Chinmaya Mission Auditorium on Lodi Road 
> in Delhi
> where Panun Kashmir was pledging itself anew to its homeland. I 
> noticed in
> particular the several shiny grey and black Toyota Innovas, which 
> thoughnot limousines, are handsome vehicles. Perhaps our Kashmiri 
> Pandit Patriot
> friends were there in person too. Would any of them care to lend 
> me, or any
> other anti-national automobile fanatics, a nice big car for a day?
> 
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