I saw the following column in Daily Pioneer on thev HAF's study and report on
Caste-ism.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/306132/Not-cast-in-stone.html
I lot of controversy about HAF report "Not Cast in Caste" has been created by a
few individuals on yahoogroups. I don't understand why Hindus, residents of any
country or any person from any where, can't discuss the caste system. HAF is
an advocacy group for Hindu rights, and it has done a superb job of defending
Hindu causes.
In the past in various fora, HAF has confronted the charges of discrimination in
Hinduism due to caste-ism. In response to such misinformation campaign, HAF
undertook a comprehensive study of the caste system with the assistance of many
Hindu experts and saints.
HAF report correctly states that caste-ism is not authorized by Hinduism and
Hindu scriptures. Hinduism is capable of solving the problem of caste-ism.
However, the reform has been slow-going due to complex political and economic
conditions.
We are sure that the report will be revised with contributions from the
community and the experience. However, the unnecessary criticism is not helpful
to the cause of Hinduism
Please read the column by Ashok Malik in today's Daily Pioneer.
Dr. R. Singh
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
________________________________
Email | Print | Rate: 12345
________________________________
Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
________________________________
Email | Print | Rate: 12345
________________________________
Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
________________________________
Email | Print | Rate: 12345
________________________________
Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
DAILY PIONEER
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
________________________________
Email | Print | Rate: 12345
________________________________
Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
________________________________
Email | Print | Rate: 12345
________________________________
Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
________________________________
Email | Print | Rate: 12345
________________________________
Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
Not cast in stone
December 31, 2010 11:26:11 AM
Ashok Malik
There is nothing which says Hindus living in America or elsewhere in the world
don't have the right to comment on Hinduism in India
Earlier this month, the Hindu American Foundation published a report named
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste. The subtitle — 'Seeking an end to caste-based
discrimination' — summed up HAF's overall objective. The report itself is a
short introduction to the history of caste, and the agencies and processes —
from British imperial administrators to modern democratic politics — that have
encouraged it. It catalogues cases of discrimination in contemporary India as
well as carries messages from religious leaders who describe caste hierarchies
as un-Hindu and a repudiation of the essential message of Hinduism: That
divinity rests in every person.
The report argues, as others have, that evil practices such as untouchability
were absent in the Vedas and clearly a "later development". Citing among others
BR Ambedkar, it suggests sections of post-Vedic texts, the Smritis, were written
by dominant elites who had "vested interests" in sustaining "a system of
birth-based discrimination and spiritual privileges". Its verdict is
categorical: "HAF decries these later additions and practices as morally
repugnant and unacceptable."
Hinduism: Not Cast in Caste is not an academic treatise, much less a definitive
compendium of the phenomenon of caste within Hindu, Indian or South Asian
society. It should be viewed as what it is: An advocacy document.
Not everybody has chosen to see the HAF report in such terms. Internet-based
Hindu polemicists have decried it and used language that borders on xenophobia.
HAF has been charged with encouraging the United States Congress to intervene in
India's domestic social and political structures. It has been accused of
Semitising Hinduism by giving primacy to some 'books' over others. Finally, some
have put forward the absurd claim that Hindus who have migrated and live in
countries outside India have no business commenting on caste, Hinduism and
social and religious practices of the 'matrabhumi'. This is not just bizarre, it
is dangerous nonsense.
The episode has thrown up two issues that require deeper analysis:
* What are HAF's motivations?
* What is the political/ideological relationship between a collective of
American Hindus, and Hindu activists in Indian public life?
HAF believes its caste report is timely and necessary to establish its
credentials as an interest group that plays fair and is not shy of facing up to
the not-so-admirable aspects of Hindu society. In the US as in Britain, the
caste issue has often — and exaggeratedly — been used as a stick to beat both
Hinduism and India. There have been attempts to equate caste with racial
discrimination and present untouchability as the equivalent of apartheid. While
the latter may have been true for specific periods in Indian history, racial
segregation was official policy in apartheid-era South Africa. In today's India
untouchability and caste discrimination are illegal. However, they remain social
distortions.
HAF finds it ironical that the caste debate in American academic and advocacy
circles — those that carry weight with individual members of Congress or with
the State Department — has been more or less appropriated by groups that
self-identify as non-Hindu, and that represent positions that may be Marxist or
actively hostile to India. It wants to intervene as a group that is sympathetic
to the basic tenets of Hinduism but can take a rational and clearheaded call on
its shortcomings, in practice or even in theory.
The debate HAF has walked into is set within the framework of Indian society but
is actually a discussion between different groups of Americans, all of which
have a different interpretation of the prominence of caste in contemporary
Hinduism and each of which, in its own way, seeks to influence Washington, DC,
and its policy towards New Delhi. Given this matrix, HAF's entry into the wider
discourse on caste should be welcomed rather than cussedly rejected.
That apart, the right and ability of an external institution — American Hindu or
American non-Hindu for that matter — to study and assess a social phenomenon
that is broadly limited to the territory of another nation cannot be denied. It
is an irreversible reality, a collateral consequence of globalisation. The
globalisation of causes and concerns, of protest and activism and, ultimately,
of soft power is a manifestation of global networking. It uses the same tools
and communication technologies as its business counterpart and it cannot be
wished away.
Does this make HAF a US-based auxiliary of the Hindu politico-social Right in
India? It would be hazardous to arrive at that easy and lazy conclusion. There
will be times when the two will seem to move in parallel. For instance, each
year HAF publishes Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human
Rights, recording prejudice against Hindus by state and non-state actors in,
among other places, Bangladesh and the Kashmir Valley.
Yet, there will also be occasion when the two entities — the domestic Hindu and
diaspora Hindu — will look at an issue very differently. HAF is a religious and
ethnic minority interest group in a multi-cultural nation. Its leadership and
the locus of its work are embedded in American society. Much of its endeavour
will carry little resonance with somebody residing in India.
Take the Ten Commandments controversy. Some years ago, the chief justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court ordered the installation, within the court complex, of a
sculpture depicting the Ten Commandments. His point was the Ten Commandments,
along with texts such as the Declaration of Independence, comprised a moral and
philosophical source of American law.
Left-liberal intellectuals and segments of religious minorities contested this.
They contended the display of a religious symbol violated the separation of
church and state and disputed the Christian foundations of American nationhood,
implicit in the Alabama chief justice's decision. HAF participated in this
process, campaigning against the placing of the Ten Commandments "in public
schools, courthouses, and other public buildings".
To the Hindu Right in India, this controversy made little sense. If anything,
there would have been sympathy for the Alabama judge's position. The original
copy of the Constitution of India carries Hindu religious iconography. If a
religious minority in India asks for this to be removed, the Hindu Right would
respond with an argument not dissimilar to that of the Alabama chief justice.
Rather than get entrapped in such conundrums, Hindu activists in India should
not grudge HAF its intellectual space. As for the caste issue, a serious
discussion is certainly needed within the Hindu Right. Pointing fingers at HAF
won't change that.
-- malikashok@gmail.com
* Post Comment
COMMENTS BOARD ::
________________________________
Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
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COMMENTS BOARD ::
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Hindus and caste system
By Kumarpushp on 12/29/2010 5:45:35 PM
I think hindus has problem with caste system because they donot know how caste
system came into India but 160 million dalits are sure that they are not
hindus.once 160 million dalits will get educated and become Ambedkerised then
caste system will disappear from earth.Recently in mitchigan University ,all
intellectuals from south Africa and India gathered and discuss about Gandhi and
taken decision to remove the statue of gandhi from university campus.Hindus must
know that you people can not mak
Caste Structure in India
By Krish on 12/28/2010 4:28:42 PM
Untouchability is surely an abhorrent practice. But the rigid caste system has
had its positives according to some commentators. I can say with personal
knowledge, for I spent first 16 years of my life in a village in Haryana, that
apart from the shudras, each caste definitely has a sense of pride in itself.
Though they have social dealings with each other, even participating in the
marriage and other celebrations, but inter-caste marriages were not allowed, nor
sharing of things like the Hukkah
Right on Hindism and not India
By Gautham on 12/26/2010 6:54:23 PM
The author has rightly pointed out that any Hindu organization has a right to
openly discuss the vedas, irrespective of the country it belongs to.
However, the question is not about HAF speaking about Hinduism but about "Caste
System in India". Every right thiinking Hindu has to resist attempts by foreign
organizations to interpret India through their version of Hindu history.
They are free to interpret Hinduism, but not to interpret Hindu history in
India!
Right Hindus
By Jitendra Desai on 12/25/2010 7:59:59 PM
Hindu Right is actively involved in educating Hindus to grow beyond their castes
and acquire a pan Hindu identity. Very large segment of Hindu middle class has
become a near casteless Hindu. Serious discussion is needed among Indian Left
that has sided with castists political formations to defeat so called communal
forces.
only GOD knows in which world you are living in, reality is different
By abhishek rai on 12/25/2010 3:50:08 PM
even you seems to be suffering from the same prejudices which is a stereotype in
india. except for some tv channel sponsered events hardly anybody can see caste
system being practiced in a way that many wishes to be practiced so that they
can launch the crusade against it and earn their bread and butter by foreign
funding most probably sponsered by church. today's reality is that the brahmins
are the most weakened group of people.
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