Now this is something that I read about and discussed in India. Two incidents both driven by the howling fanatics and blithering morons. But first, the Hindu Government idiots on the Gujarat side who took umbrage on an article written by Ashis Nandy. They went and launched a criminal case against him. Well, the basic anti-intellectualism of these goons is very clear, anybody who has even the basics of civilisation would know to protect freedom of speech, but lets not use the word civilisation and these idiots in the same sentence.
And then, lest you forget, there is the other side. A conference by the Ahmadiya community was canceled by the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh. This party, for those who have forgotten, are the true fathers of communalism in India, have actually committed genocide on Sikhs and now turn around and pander to Islamist extremists by banning conferences run by people who are objected to by some other foaming morons who think that only they have the right to define what a religion can or should look like.
So what do you end up with? Two of the main parties in India, the BJP and Congress I, both pandering to extreme religious notions. Welcome to the land of India, full of morons in white, pandering to rage boys in the Hindu and Muslim worlds. We have seen the enemy and they are us.
1 comment:
Yeah, the same problem with us. A secular state since 1918, we always thought of ourselves as europeans, and as a european state, and even have a red stripe in our flag as a symbol of our europeanness, so can you imagine our shock when our minister of foreign affairs suddenly declared in WSJ, that we are "a secular Shiite state", instead of traditional "we are a euopean state"!(I am from a Shiite family myself, indeed from a Seyyid family, but I was always a secular of principle)
Yet, we were shocked second time when our secular government removed the principle of secularity from list of the national interests of our country in new National Security Concept. We were comfortable that our constitution and Law of National Security declared that we are a secular state. But this new concept omitted any mentioning of secularity, and replaced it with such ambiguous phrases as "preserving current level of ethnic and religious tolerance", and "sharing heritage and mentality of islamic world as a part of it".
And yet, we were shocked third time, when a state (secular!) court jailed two journalists because of an article critical of Islam. And this happened in a time when Iranian grand ayetullahs declared fetwas for their murder! Instead of protecting them from the interference of a neighbouring state, our court imposed on them additional punishments!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafiq_Ta%C4%9F%C4%B1
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