Is there a sourde for that video that does not require me to crreate and log into a youtube account?
Preferably with a transcript, so I don’t have to rely on audio?
Video is showing liar’s paradox(Google it) causing the android (a robot with human appearance) leader to short circuit.
I’d like to address a few things brought up in the OP – the concept of Hindutva, historical revisionism, and Narendra Modi’s links to extremists.
During the colonial era, there was a dynamic where groups – including Western European but also Muslim groups and others – defined themselves in contrast to a “Hindu” identity which was cast as inferior. While a distinct Hindu identity existed much earlier, it was during this time when it was explicitly and exclusively applied to increasingly large numbers of people, and it turned out that often those groups of people who most vociferously claimed and elaborated a Hindu identity were those who wanted to contest that inferior status.
Consequently, the Hindu nationalist movement that emerged built itself around a narrative of addressing a perceived “lack” in Hindus in order to combat their status. Organizations like the Arya Samaj claimed that as long as Hindus continued to lack unity and assertiveness, they would forever be at the mercy of other groups – especially Muslims – who do possess these traits and constitute an existential threat. Their solution was to assert a strong and pure Hindu identity to strengthen a shared Hinduness, or Hindutva.
As a part of this effort, early Hindu nationalists looked to other nationalist movements around the world and one of the things they did was frame their quest for a strengthened Hindutva as a call to return to a glorious past. They saw themselves as reformists, re-creating unity and re-asserting Hindu identity. While they were not all from elite castes, they turned to traditions of the elite religious canon as a unifying foundation for this identity and to find their glorious past. A particularly important example of this process is the historicizing of Lord Ram’s birth in Ayodhya, but it is also seen in finding examples of tanks and nuclear bombs in ancient texts as mentioned in this thread. It’s about creating a great and glorious history that suits their current needs. When historians or scientists challenge those claims, it gets a very hostile reaction because it is seen as questioning the validity of the whole narrative.
Unfortunately, that narrative has nasty repercussions. Indian adherents to religions with ‘foreign’ origins like Islam and Christianity are perceived as converts away from Hinduism, and for the Hindu nationalist ideology serve as an open and ongoing reminder of Hinduism’s “lack”. Adherents to native but non-Hindu religions like Sikhism and Buddhism, meanwhile, are labeled as Hindus and this causes its own problems. Visible fault lines between communities in certain places occasionally broke out into violence, and groups like the RSS came out of this context and undertook programs of schooling support, social justice work, and martial training to unify and strengthen the Hindu people. Hindu nationalists had early popularity among Hindi speakers in Northern India and what became the BJP built on electoral success in Gujarat beginning in the 1970s to win the state in 1990. This led to the growth of Hindu nationalist thought in the state and the penetration of BJP loyalists and Hindu nationalists into civil society, especially the police forces. They also developed the organizational capacity in Gujarat to mobilize and turn out large numbers of people for rallies and other pursuits.
By 2002 the BJP had lost some key elections and was feeling unsure of its hold over what was now one of its national strongholds in Gujarat. That year, communal riots broke out following the Godhra train burning. During the riots, thousands were killed, tens of thousands chased from their homes and countless Muslim affiliated businesses were burned. The reason people criticize Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time, is because he reportedly instructed police to let the rioters go about their business. Furthermore, the case that the rioters actually had government assistance prepared in advance is strong; they had maps and information on Muslim-owned businesses that would have been impossible to gain without government help and the tacit support of police. CM Modi called for early elections during the turmoil, the BJP won, and in the eyes of many of their supporters, the local Muslim population had been taught a lesson. Consequently, the accusation is that the violence, along with many other instances of communal violence, was facilitated and encouraged by the BJP and their allies for electoral gain. However, widespread criticism of Modi has generally served to arouse Gujarati patriotism and strengthen the BJP’s hand, and as you can see he has more power now.
With all that said, because Modi and the Gujarati BJP have delivered economic results, and because Congress is a total corrupt mess, support for them has widened even outside of their Hindu base, as has been mentioned in this thread. And now of course Modi is where he is. Many people have made the case that power moderates the BJP, and their current record is there to see, especially when compared to the secular Congress party which is no stranger to violence. Still, the Hindu nationalist ideological focus on Hinduness or Hindutva continues to advance a version of history that leads to Christians and Muslims in particular being viewed negatively and with suspicion. Ties between the BJP, RSS, and even more radical groups form a complex web. This is a recipe for continued violence, and I don’t have much confidence in Modi to do much about this.
/thread
If you insist:
I broadly agree with the initial part of your post(which I have not quoted) about the origins of Hindutva as a reaction to the aggressive success of Islam and Christianity in India.
The first paragraph in the quoted section however, displays more bias than I am comfortable with. At the very least you should mention that a Special Investigation Team(SIT) appointed by India’s supreme court(widely accepted as an independent authority) cleared Modi of complicity in the riots well before he became prime minister.
(I’ll copy paste here from some posts I’ve made before)
There is plenty of evidence that he and his government did a lot to try and stop the riots. Here’s a detailed listput together by an academic.
I have myself seen a number of public statements made by Modi at the time of the riots to maintain peace, here’s one with English subtitles where he strongly appeals to the people of Gujarat to maintain peace and harmony. Watch it yourself.
I have seen a number of statements by him in interviews that maintain that riots and violence are a stain on civilised society and should not happen at any cost. I can link to them if you’re interested. His entire campaign to be PM, and his governance in Gujarat focused on development, not on being ‘divisive’. He rejects claims of being a religious nationalist, independently accepting both apellations, in that he is religious, and he is a nationalist, but he puts the country’s development before all else. He has gone to the extent of making the statement that ‘toilets are more important than temples’, which is not one I would expect from someone who gives primacy to religion.
To me, the most compelling evidence lies in his performance since the riots. In Gujarat, which has had Hindu Muslim riots every decade since independence (including worse ones under the opposition party Congress - where many more people died) there have been none in the last 12 years under Modi’s rule. The only one that happened was 5 months into Modi’s Chief Ministership, when he was new to the job. In this period, several other places, with so-called ‘secular’ parties in power, including the BJP’s main oppposition the Congress, have had religious riots with significant loss of life.
Since becoming PM, his performance on the matter of religious inclusion has been entirely unexceptionable, except to his political opposition, and even criticism from them is limited to him not controlling his partymen’s statements. Those critics want him to discipline his partymen strongly every time any of them makes comments that appear to be anti Muslim.
I personally view him as an astute politician who genuinely wants India to develop. He’s not going to antagonise his core base to please his most ardent critics. (especially when sometimes, in particular with regard to women’s empowerment and education, criticism of the Indian Muslim community is deserved, even if perhaps the best place for it to emerge is not the Hindu right wing) At the same time, I feel he’s genuine about his desire for India to develop, and he realises that you cannot alienate 15% of your population and achieve that. He’s certainly the most politically powerful moderate in his party by a long distance, and IMO he makes better Hindu-Muslim relations more likely, not less.
Since when does accusing your opposition of policies that are “less than ideal in a purportedly secular state” become your “less than ideal in a purportedly secular state” policy?
How much of your rant is actual fact and how much is fiction? There are American politicians who reject Darwin and insist on teaching creationism. We’ve heard Republican legislators propounding that rape victims can avoid pregnancy through willpower. We’ve all heard the current Republican frontrunner’s views on Mexicans and Muslims. Successive US politicians supported the bombing and murder of a few hundred thousand Iraqis over WMDs that didn’t exist. A previous US President was apparently a serial molester whose wife knew about it and looked the other way – and that wife is now the Democratic frontrunner. The incumbent President has been accused by his detractors of being rabidly anti-white on race issues (Ferguson, Zimmerman) and he is at any rate supporting the Al Qaeda against Assad in Iraq.
We Indians could argue that Obama and his potential successors are far more dangerous to the world than Modi.
The official figures are 790 Muslim and 254 Hindu casualties. Anti-Modi cheerleaders such as yourself tend to inflate the Muslim casualties while ignoring the Hindu dead altogether. Or do you think the Bajrang Dal killed the Hindus too?
[
By 2002 the BJP had lost some key elections and was feeling unsure of its hold over what was now one of its national strongholds in Gujarat. That year, communal riots broke out following the Godhra train burning. During the riots, thousands were killed, tens of thousands chased from their homes and countless Muslim affiliated businesses were burned. The reason people criticize Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time, is because he reportedly instructed police to let the rioters go about their business. Furthermore, the case that the rioters actually had government assistance prepared in advance is strong; they had maps and information on Muslim-owned businesses that would have been impossible to gain without government help and the tacit support of police. CM Modi called for early elections during the turmoil, the BJP won, and in the eyes of many of their supporters, the local Muslim population had been taught a lesson. Consequently, the accusation is that the violence, along with many other instances of communal violence, was facilitated and encouraged by the BJP and their allies for electoral gain. However, widespread criticism of Modi has generally served to arouse Gujarati patriotism and strengthen the BJP’s hand, and as you can see he has more power now.
QUOTE]
I like the way you refer to the Godhra train burning without mentioning that the burning involved 59 Hindus – including women and children – being burnt alive by a Muslim mob. The death of one Michael Brown in Ferguson triggered riots for days with black mobs burning the town down, policemen getting shot – and neither the local nor the federal govt. was able to stop them. Why is it so hard to believe that Modi had trouble stopping Hindu rioters after the murder of 59 people?
The case for Modi instructing the police to go soft on rioters rested on the evidence of a crooked cop named Sanjiv Bhatt who claimed that he heard Modi say so. The Supreme Court of India recently tossed Bhatt’s claim out, stating that Bhatt’s hands were dirty and that he appeared to have conspired with a rival political party (presumably the Congress) to defame Modi. Incidentally, Bhatt’s wife was rewarded with a Congress ticket in the last elections, but was rejected by a discerning electorate.
Basically, the liberal English media in India hate Modi and the BJP/RSS, and since Westerners follow only the Indian English language press, that’s the version you get. If you want to know what a real religious purge is, think of 300,000 Hindus driven out of Kashmir by Islamic fanatics while the local Kashmiri Muslim leaders blithely looked the other way. When the Modi/BJP Govt. last made an attempt to pass policies to bring the Hindus back a few months ago, Muslim mobs in Kashmir went on the rampage (for the noblest of reasons, of course!) Was that the fault of the RSS too?
Assad in Syria, not Iraq.
Because it’s still followed by humans who remember the war of X and the murders of Y and the rapes of Z. Etc.
Syrian civil war (is that what Obama was given Nobel Peace prize for?) costing 300k+ lives and counting is direct consequence of the US supporting anti-Assad forces (including ISIS, and weapons ending up with ISIS).
For the same reason that Trump is popular in the US and far-right parties are gaining popularity in Europe. All-encompassing secular liberalism is all very well till your own survival comes into question. Pakistan and Bangladesh used to be 10% Hindu – now less than 1%. Kashmir in India used to be 10% Hindu – now also less than 1%. Hindus in the rest of India used to be nearly 90% and are now down to 79%. Secular parties in India have tended to be blatantly Islamist in practice, giving all sorts of benefits which are denied to Hindus. Think subsidies, job quotas, etc. Plus the increasing harassment faced by Hindus in Muslim-dominated districts – Kashmir is the extreme example. The Hindu pushback was inevitable. How would Americans react if Muslims in America were allowed four wives, given welfare subsidies which were denied to Christians, and then offered job quotas to boot? Not to mention secular American politicians looking the other way when Muslims attack Christians but screaming their heads off when it’s the other way round?
Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. The Jews still remember the Holocaust, don’t they? American blacks remember slavery? And Indian Muslims go on and on about past grievances as well?
Hindus have every right to remember.
Huh?
You say some of his policies are less than ideal in a purportedly secular state. As an example, you quote an article about his campaign speech where he is accusing his political opposition (correctly) of offering affirmative action on a religious basis. That does not demonstrate your point. Which one of *his * policies is less than ideal?