No one knows of the roots of the tree.

You have just eaten your own words and you dare to give me medicine Your previous comment was a lengthy satire about the “evils” of polytheism as against the “goods” of monotheism. The immediate next comment was about the general evils of “religion” – poly/mono put together.

In fact, you just walked into the camp of Alpana (and me), where she was bemoaning the fact that those professors in India got attacked by a group of angry-”polytheistic”-religious-zealots. She pointed an apt similarity between the this and the Islamic petitions to remove the prophet’s picture on wikipedia. Neither of these are different from the witch-hunters of USA or the religious revivalists of medieval Europe. Instead of patting her on the back for her observation, all you guys started flaming her. This is what I call a waste of education. Let facts be facts.

@idlinginc :
Seriously, why do you want to compare us Indians with “deepshit flying around in the neighborhood”. If the protestant thinkers of the enlightenment kept on comparing themselves to the catholic fiefdoms down south in Europe, they would have got nowhere. We in India are at a privileged position, that doesn’t mean we are perfect. Accepting our blemishes is the first step towards betterment.

Also, Alpana has never said that “monotheistic religions are more tolerent” Neither did I.
All our argument is that this intolerence has nothing to do with mono/poly-theism.

I went a little further and pointed out that technological advances in the spread of information (writing=>printing=>computing) have more influence on the cultural mores of a society. This has just been gulped down by my friend md-yahoo who wants to give me a little bit of the same medicine

What is Wafa saying about islam?

We can keep on giving examples all day – but we’ll be talking past each other. Let us stick to basic arithmetic and stick to similar objects that we can compare. Otherwise, you would call us lizards, bigots, hilarious reasoning and intolerant (and many things usually not mentioned in polite company) and we’d end up calling you something else which you might not be very pleased with.

http://www.deeshaa.org/2003/10/11/the-need-to-do-arithmetic/

When you claim monotheistic religions are more tolerant, do you have any numbers to substantiate your claim?

Percentage of minorities in Pakistan went down from 15% at partition to lower than 3% now. Ever heard of a muslim country with a burgeoning ‘other’ religion? In the meantime, population of muslims in India has been increasing and the rate of increase is growing as well.

Next, India accepted a christian at the helm (Sonia – in case you don’t understand) and a Sikh PM and until recently a muslim President – without batting an eyelid. Minorities have held top positions throughout history. CM of AP is Christian, and many other CMs as well. Can you show us countries with this kind of acceptance? How many times have you witnessed a hindu PM/president in Pakistan/Bangladesh/Iran/Iraq/Tajikisthan?

Please do give us some numbers and let us debate on them. When we have numbers it is easy to measure. We can understand the relationship between the two numbers, using one of these signs =, and make some claims. “When I was at your level of understanding”, “hilarious reasoning”, “US Passport”, won’t settle matters. It shows intellectual dishonesty and illiteracy.

A spoonful of your medicine will help you go a long way in understanding what is being said here. If you truly show a ’spirit of enquiry, reason and humanity’, you will realise that religion and progress (or, sometimes, lack there-of) are intimately linked.

The dark ages of Europe are mostly due to the overriding influence the Church had on every aspect of daily living during those ages. People who could think rationally and logically were either barbecued on the stake or imprisoned or banished. Galileo was an unsung hero in his own neighbourhood. The northern Europeans and England, which had shaken off the shackles of the Vatican much earlier, benefited from such ‘blasphemous’ enlightenment. The printing press, in particular, brought about the ‘death’ of an interfering church. This was the main mechanism, rather than making ‘knowledge’ more ubiquitous, the printing press was able to usher in a new revolution. This is lost on a great number of people who think their education has not been a waste. If the printing press alone were to be the engine of progress, the middle-east would not be languishing in the state in which it is now – where the spread of free knowledge and speech are tightly controlled.

It’s easy to pigeon-hole people into fanboy/adversary category rather than carefully analyse what is being said. Especially with the arrogance of one who believes that the other guy’s education was a waste, it will be even harder to see through the fog.

Looks like the objective of your blog is to gain fanboys over flamewars. You get what you ask for. As Alpana has said, what a waste of an education in Berkeley.

Please try to criticise my earlier comment, the values of the enlightenment (spirit of enquiry, age of reason, equality of humanity..) have nothing to do with poly/mono-theism.

Readers (vaibhavg8, md yahoo … )

We are trying to build a new and modern India here. Our objective is to carry the light forward in the world. Let’s not compare ourselves with deepshit that is flying around in the neighborhood. Why do we aim so low ?

Were you serious while writing this comment? You can just compare percentage of non-Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1947 and their percentage now. Minorities have been wiped out there.

And the conditions of non-Muslims in Arab countries. They have to follow all the Islamic rules and regulations and severely punished if they dont do so.

You can easily win this debate with Atanu by citing some clear examples. You came close by stating that, “Knowing fully well how “tolerant” polytheists have treated and continue to treat half their brethren in a very “tolerant” manner” . All you need to do now is to get down to the specifics.

Fo starters:

*) Talk about the wonderful tolerance you experienced ( or would have experienced) if you were to carry around and read Jain or Hindu philosophy books in the monotheistic country of Dausi Barabaria, where you seem to have spent a significant portion of your life.

*) Talk about how the polytheists since historical times have spread out to far corners of this world, with sword in one hand, and their hate-filled polytheistic holy book in the other, destroyed great monotheistic cultures, temples and in some cases whole civilizations of Ygept, Repsia, Rysia, Psain, South & North Aremica, and Nidia.

*) Talk about the civil war in which the great historical monotheistic Kapistan sub-continent was brutally divided in the civil war of August 1947 by the intolerant polytheists who demanded the formation of an intolerant polytheistic country called Nidia.

*) Talk about how the polytheists show cultural intolerance by throwing out a writer such as Naslima Tasreen from GanblaDesh.

*) Talking about universities, do present Atanu with the example of how tolerant the monotheists are with scientists such as Adbus Samaal and honoured him even though he was not the right flavour of monotheism.

*) Talk about how one monotheist brother never kills another monotheist, but have civil arguments. There is no record of any Nussis killing Hsiaa, or vice-versa.

*) Talk about how the monotheistic Latiban tried to honour ancient culture by preserving the Mabiyan Dubbha statues.

*) Talk about how the intolerant polytheists in Nedmark and other Ueropean countries, when their prophet’s face was drawn in cartoons, set ablaze many a bus and car and wreaked havoc and mayhem all over the globe.

With such solid examples, you should throw the gauntlet in Atanu’s face, and challange him to put his money where his mouth is. You shouldn’t stop now.

Good luck!

thanks for getting our “logic” right. i am enlightened.

There the Jain’s manoritism showing up

I think you are honestly confused between persons and ideologies.

We come across many of your species in the internet

Dharma is far larger than thes dichotomic thought streams which makes things easy for the majority of the population.

I concede that you are one amongst them.

What Atanu has been lucidly explaining is as simple as this:

Let dharma be.

Let not the dichotomic and dividing and discriminating thought stream poisoned minds not disturb dharma.

If you want to elevate yourself to a higher level, please digest Prof. S. N. Balagangadhara’s “The Heathen in his blindness” book. Perhaps that will activate many more nuerons

Regards

Rajagopal

Well said. And that includes capitalism too. Remember a certain East India Company?

Talking of logic, I found your reasoning on inherent tolerance of polytheism hilarious — to put it mildly. Knowing fully well how “tolerant” polytheists have treated and continue to treat half their brethren in a very “tolerant” manner.

It reminds me of Russell’s quote that if a lizard could argue it will most certainly claim that lizards are the greatest speceis in universe because they can crawl upside down on a ceiling and other lizards will find this argument most convincing.

I do not blame you for your beliefs because I have been there myself. When I was at your level of understanding, I had found it equally difficult to grasp. Though I think it a sheer waste of resources that you had to spend such long time in the US to learn what you could have picked up in a two day camp at local Bajrang Dal.

May be if you grow up someday (and not just age) then you will be able to see things in a different light. Till then good luck with your blogging!!

Ah, those were the days! The quality of the discourse was amazing because the internet then was limited to only those in universities and in research labs in the US. It was a pleasure to engage extremely bright minds in debate because it was a great learning opportunity. You could not debate a topic without coming away refreshed with deeper insights into it.

Posting to the usenet was also a time of honing one’s skills. Fighting in countless flame wars equips you with the skills to devastate your opponents and delight your friends. Even though I say so myself, I am not too shabby when it comes to flaming. I have never actually taken off the gloves on my blog. You have to be restrained on a blog. It is like your home and you don’t flame visitors however much they deserve it. The usenet groups were more like public places. You did not have to play host to people. Sort of like meeting in a cafe or a bar. You could tell it like you actually meant it. On your blog, you treat others with restraint and courtesy.

With the coming of the world wide web and blogs, most of the veterans of the usenet days moved on to blogs. But while blogs are good in what they do, they can never quite capture the dynamic of a usenet group.

Sigh. I miss the usenet. Over the years, I must have written a few thousand posts. Now I am come over all nostalgic and should google for my old usenet posts — I am sure some yet survive.

My apologies for arguing with you. I see my mistake. It is unfair of me to engage you with logical arguments. May I suggest an introductory course on logic? Many generations have profitably used Copi’s introductory text on logic. Check your local library or place an order at Amazon.

I make this suggestion because I certainly don’t have the time to point out all the logical fallacies you have delightfully demonstrated in the comments recently. I am sure that after a brief encounter with basic logic you yourself will see the gaping logical holes in your argument. I certainly will not rob you of the joy of discovering your own mistakes.

I also recommend you ponder the implications of the Dunning-Kruger effect (wiki). You’ll see what I mean.

Goodbye and be well.

Sincerely,
Atanu

Excellent post! I think you have made your stance clear ealier also ( but not in such a detail) where you wrote about the difference between Islam and Muslims, and you clarified that you dont have any problem with Muslims, but it is Islam that concerns.

BTW, in today’s Indian Express, Sudheendra Kulkarni in his column made the exact opposite statement: “I condemn those Hindus who, explicitly or implicitly, hold Islam to be a religion of terror.” He, like other politicians , thinks ( or claims that he thinks ) that it is not the ideology but some of the members following the ideology is a problem. Sad!

Alpana,

I was expecting a well-reasoned argument. But you disappointed me with babbling anecdotes.

As they say, plural of anecdote is not data. And all your arguments are specious.

Thanks for informing that you have stayed in a country dominated by motheists. I am assuming it is a western country. Please correct me if I am wrong. If I am not, then I do not think this issue needs any more discussion than some chuckle. If I am wrong, then really I am pleased to learn that.

Now, you get concerned about books, films , movies. To preempt any misconception, let me tell you, we do too. My spouse is an artist and we are absolutely great admirer of Hussain. Whatever happened to MSU baroda and happening in other places make us sick. I hate BJP, BD, SS or whatever.

But as Atanu has pointed out, if one’s house is burning then only a fool will go for his regular jog , ignoring the house. It is the order of magnitude, can’t you see?

You see the DU ruckus, you see Hussain’s exile, but you can’t see the ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, you can’t see the monthly bomb blasts in which just people like me and you get wiped off ( may be I deserve to be because I am an infidel but when the bomb detonates, believe me it does not leave the liberals unhurt), you can’t see the home imprisonment of Taslima ( alarming, since you seem to be concerned about happening in art and academia), you can’t see a whole community being seen as a vote bank rather than voters, you can’t see the profusions of anger in the streets on every pretext ( if you happne to live in India , how could you miss this last part)?

Believe me, bomb blasts are not fun! On the mumbai blasts in July’06, my wife could not board a train due to crowd and a compartment of that train was blown up in Borivili. We have lived that day from very close quarters. And I would remind you many among the victims were liberals.

And it did not stop there. Diwali Blast in Delhi, Blasts in banaras, Hyderabad and innumerable not so big ones but indeed fatal which go reported ( such as IISc ) or not much reported ( such as one sided riot in Mau). When they are not blowing infidels up they blow up each other ( Malegaon, Hyderabad mosque blast).

Pleased to know you are not concerned about happenings in Pakistan or Bangladesh.

May I remind you, the persons who hijacked the Indian plane IC 814 have all made Pakistan their home. But that may not be of much importance had it ended there. But from Pakistan they are controlling they are exporting murderers who have already made hundred s (if not thousands) Indian children orphan.

May I remind you that in Mumbai bomb blast, the police has established that all of the persons who carried out the operations were from Pakistan?

Haven’t you seen the burgeoning illegal immigrants from Bangladesh? I am not against the immigrants because they are fleeing their own nation in tatters, for livelihood. But due to the situation in Bangladesh, India is being bombarded with additional poverty/ terrorism. Don’t you know most of the terrorist organizations now use Bangladesh as the recruiting ground? Can’t you see the rabid anti Indian stance is the only ploy to win an election in Bangladesh? Did not you notice that a liberal person such as Shaikh hasina had to wear a head cover to gain a mass base similar to Khaleda? Did not you know the Rajakar leaders who fought side by side with Khan army in ‘71 and butchered tens of thousands of polyteheists had to be made ministers in last Bangladesh government? Do you think those ministers with “liberal” history and with only one elections manifesto ( anti-Indian/ anti-infidel) brought love to India?

You must be living in your own ivory tower!!

Now your last dig at Atanu’s passport is as deplorable as the comment made by Pankaj. You don’t have any argument but to tom-tom your liberalness. So why compensate for your lack of reasoning by mean mudslinging on personal info?

Sorry Atanu for this long post.

It is an obvious fact that the scientific method is not a product of monotheism. Monotheistic religions tend to be non-accomodating, and closed to any criticism. But what makes you think polytheistic religions would not be the same ??

After all, as you have acknowledged yourself, we did not invent the scientific method in our polytheistic India. It was done in a monotheistic Europe during the 15th century !

You have diagnosed the disease incorrectly, Atanu. If the only tool you have is a hammer, you keep hitting the nail down, but is it the right nail ? All this hammering wouldn’t open you any new doors.

Michel Serres, whose lecture I had the fortune of listening to (transcript available here in French), traces the development in human thought to revolutions in the way we handle information. Principally, we had 3 revolutions in the entire history of mankind.

STEP 1 ) The first revolution was the invention of writing – this has brought in the notion of state (Hammurabi’s code written on a stone), money (value written on a coin) and also the religion of a book (monotheistic religions). Our religion in India has been rooted in an oral tradition which are the Vedas. The written tradition stepped much later in Indian religions, but indeed brought significant changes such as Buddhism, BhagavadGita and so on.

STEP 2) The second revolution was printing. This has brought in the notions of capitalism (banks) and the scientific revolution (where knowledge became accessible to everyone). So, why did the Europeans invent the scientific method ? Because they invented printing. Not because of poly/mono-theism. In the sphere of religion, the protestent movement began due to printing, because “every man is equal to the Pope with a bible in his hand”. The same notions of equality brought in the system of democracy.

The thing is in India, we didn’t have a natural evolution of these phases, and most of our society is still hardwired to an ancient era. The same is true of the Islamic world, it is not because of monotheism that they are so unproductive.

STEP 3) This is the invention of computing. We are still experiencing the birth pains of this revolution. We have no idea what changes this will bring in the spheres of state, business and religion / ideology. But, we can be sure that we Indians will not be lagging behind.

Again I agree to your argument that people should be judged on their actions, not their beliefs. I lived extensively in a country that was dominated by monotheists. And quite honestly I found them much more tolerant of others’ views than many of the polytheists. So allow me disagree with you that polytheism is inherently more tolerant than monotheism.

Secondly, I am myself a Jain. So thanks for the complement. (Though I certainly did not make any effort to get born as a Jain). Now growing up as a Jain in India, did I ever feel a “minority”? Certainly not. However I am not so sure of it now. In my own lifetime I have seen an increasingly jingoistic version of Hinduism taking over this country, which does not tolerate a deviation from its own world view. It does not like books written from a different perspective; does not like films made from a different perspective; does not like paintings made from a different perspective and insists on imposing its own cultural mores on everyone else. It has been a gradual but a consistent onslaught in one direction only.

Now tell me when do I have a reason to get concerned about my future in India? When 180000 muslims sign a petition to Wikipedia for taking out pictures of the Prophet or when Hindutva brigade ransacks the offices of a University Professor? Honestly I think, signing petition for taking out pictures was the most civilized way for those people who found it blasphemous. I would take this form of protest any day over ransacking of a Professor’s office who might have introduced some blasphemous papers.

Do I feel threatened by what happens in Bangladesh or Pakistan or Palestine? May be so. But only as a concerned world citizen. OTOH I feel a palpable alarm when I see an art gallery being vandalized in my backyard by cultural brigade. You may think that isolated incidents like these are not any matter of concern, but I see a consistent pattern here which which has been getting increasingly consolidated over the years.

If you do not see this pattern or think that it is of little importance compared to larger events going on in the world, then you obviuosly have your reasons. May be your world view already matches to this predominant version of Hinduism and so you do not see any cause of getting personally alarmed. Or may be since you still carry your US passport, you do not see any reason to be unduly perturbed to what happens to this country.

Look at the commentators on this blog. They are a cross section of India. Do you see many people here who feel concerned that there are many many people living in India, whose worldview is not the same as Hinduism – at least not the version of Hinduism they hold dear? If you do not see them, then in my view it is much greater cause of alarm than some people writing in protest to Wikipedia.

As a nation, we seem to be incapable of engaging in dialogue – at best we have 2 monologues in progress.

Let’s hear both sides and have the “free market” determine which one has merit.

I hold the same opinion as Alpana does on some of your writings. In my opinion, while they are balanced in most cases, they wheels come off the wagon when it comes to you writing about religion, and specially Islam. I am no supporter of either, but to single out Islam as being the only religion capable of killing others in the name of their beliefs seems completely unjust to me.

I have not read the Quran (or the Bible or any other religious text for that matter) so I don’t know whether your claims of the Prophet commanding all muslims to kill anybody who isn’t, is correct or not. Either way, I will say this (and I guess we agree here too), it shouldn’t (and doesn’t) matter what is written – what matters is what should be done. Given that, we must judge Muslims (and maybe Islam) by their actions. Here again, I concede that a lot of Muslims seem to have trouble with accepting criticism of their faith, but to use that to say that the whole religion, and hence all the people who follow it are guilty of the same, is unfair. To me, it’s the equivalent of saying that all Hindus think and hence are just as guilty as the perpetrators of the Godhra riots of 2002.

I also take issue with your assertion that if India were to become a majority mulsim state, that we would end up the same way as Pakistan or Bangladesh have. This, in my eyes means, that religion, not the people of the land, has everything to do with how the land is run. You are actually discrediting the people who have run this land in an admirable way (at-least in comparison to our aforementioned neighbors). India is run the way it is because of it’s people, they may happen to be hindu’s, but that does not have anything to do with it.

What I’m trying to say is this – all religions are bad, and all are good, in their own ways. For a long while, Islam was not percieved as a threat (I don’t remember any rhetoric about Islam being bad up until 09/11/01), let’s not make that the case with any other religion.

Best,

R

Damn, can’t get anything past you, can I? I bet you were the smartest cookie in your class. How on earth did you ever figure out my antipathy towards monotheistic ideologies? Could it be . . . umm let me see . . . could it possibly be . . . ummm . . . the paragraph after paragraph of argument detailing that I think monotheism ideologies are evil?

Nope. That could not possibly be the reason why you concluded that I dislike monotheism. Must have been something else because otherwise it is too transparent a conclusion.

Since you are so clever, I have decided that there is no point in my arguing the other points in your above comment.

Sincerely,
Atanu

I have been reading your blog for more then a year now. I enjoy reading your blog and the insights you give in the economic problems India faces. Earlier, I supported capitalism by the example of USA, but your blog has given me an informed opinion how capitalism and socialism work. Thanks for the knowledge.

The above article is very well written. It just goes to show how an ideology can misguide sane people to do wrong things.

BTW, i had commented earlier, too, but somehow it did not show up. So here, i comment again.

I have been reading your blogs from more then a year. Earlier, I had a vague idea that capitalism is better then socialism in terms of creating wealth. But my knowledge in this regard as grown hugely after reading your blogs. I thank you, for your blogging and coming with clear concepts.

The current blog on religion was very well written too.

Peace out

I read the first exchange in the previous article of this series, and I was disappointed with your response. Was not like you, and I saw anger and rage in the reply. Was about to write, when I saw the promise to write in detail. And, am I glad I waited? You bet, I am!

Abstract issues need to be illustrated using concrete examples. The problem with examples – esp. real life ones – is that they also contain “influences” from other sources. The earlier post in this series offers an interesting example. The paragraph that starts “Here’s a clue to those clueless retards …” is talking of an abstract principle applicable to everybody, including Muslims and the BJP. It is unbiased and it’s last line contains the answer for everybody (including the correct choice for BJP over the book issue, given a level playing field). However, being placed between paragraphs discussing a very specific example of Muslims calling for censoring the Wikipedia, causes confusion when read casually. I suspect Ms. Alpana has read rather casually as suggested by the last paragraph of her first response. What surprised me was your falling for that paragraph.

I am not always clear when should I use examples, and when not. And then abstract concepts like Freedom, and equality are not easy. Consider:

I, like everybody else, am a free human being. Free to move my hands around as I please, when I please, and where I please. Problem starts when another individual comes within the influence of my moving hands. As far as I am concerned, there are two cases:

1. I stop my hands where his/her nose starts, or
2. I require he/she move his/her self away so as to not impede my freedom of movement.

Which of the two I choose, decides who I am going to be. Some one who respects you, or some one who doesn’t care. Let me begin the interaction game. If I choose the first choice, I’d better be prepared for you being the second kind (especially, if your moving hand holds an axe). And if I see you having an axe, one of the things I do is to shout out at you. No credit for analysis of the rest of the cases . And hopefully the use of first person has a reader think in first person.