Sunday, May 03, 2009

In today's news - PI quits China, Chindu bashes India again and more

Apparently Ms. Pallavi Aiyar, once a fave of LiC and CBCNN for diametrically opposite reasons, is leaving Beijing to head to Brussels.
These were people who had eaten bitterness and survived through dint of sheer will and endurance.

Apparently still she refuses to acknowledge the iron fist of communism ruling China after years of living there.

Denying India's history
Dr.Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP lead a team to draft the BJP's manifesto where he quoted some facts about Indian history. Chindu in its eagerness to disprove that India had some civilized history asked for comments from "eminent historians" whose names were not mentioned. Here are some nuggets,
About India's agricultural prowess,
Famine was common and is mentioned in Indian texts. We do not have to go looking for certificates of merit from foreign visitors. References are made to anavrishti and ativrishti and locusts as the cause.

About India losing its pride after foreign (read Islamic) invasions
India lost its pride when it became a British colony and not before that. Colonial domination was more deeply destructive than any other had been before it.

Really could you please then explain why millions were slaughtered just to quench the anger of Islamic despots?

About Charaka and Susruta famed Indian physicians of yore,
India had no practice of plastic surgery until modern times. Nor did India know about vaccines.

About ancient India's health care system with hospitals built by kings,
This was probably the treatment given to sick monks in monasteries.

Do you really believe that Vikramaditya, Chandragupta, Akbar, RajaRaja Chola, KrishnaDeva Raya and the Rajputs did not build a single hospital?
Give me a break.

Another set of articles is Chindu's support of Mallika Sarabhai against L.K. Advani.
Ms. Sarabhai on Gujarat,
She lamented the silence and complicity that enabled the massacre, and spoke of her own sense of guilt. “For letting myself become part of that silence. For trusting incorrectly. For letting everyday inanities dull myself to the genocide being planned and executed”. This earned her a great amount of credibility and admiration, more so because she did not waver despite a battery of harassment mounted by the State government.

I'm sure the pinkos will be queuing up to vote for you.
And who's her main supporter? Another CBCNN fave Krisha Iyer the jackal himself,
For this reason, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, himself one of the most credible moral voices among living Indians, notes that since Mallika “waged a spirited and consistent struggle on various fronts — judicial, social, cultural, political — against the forces of communalism and majoritarian extremism in the State”, he feels confident that if elected she will “uphold the secular and democratic principles as enshrined in our Constitution”.


Lastly an article about a book fair in Abu Dhabi, which Chindu claims is progressive and
has been growing by leaps and bounds and now presents, for the interested publisher, a window to the world of books and reading in Arab countries.

They have not cared to elaborate which countries they mean? I'm sure its not Saudi Arabia, Iran or Iraq. Perhaps Syria or maybe the gigantic Dubai is the likely reference. While it is good to see some influx of modern literature and thoughts into the Arab world a lot of references to the fair itself exposes the control by the powers-be exerted on the fair like the absence of alcohol, women forced wear hijabs etc.

10 comments:

B Shantanu said...

DirtDigger: Thanks for bringing this up...I read the article and was amazed by its tone of supercilious contempt...

No wonder they would not name the "eminent historians".

Anonymous said...

Perhas the greatest regret of these "eminent" creatures is that they were not born with a white skin. Anyhow, they seem to derive enormous satisfaction by polishing gora sahibs' shoes (and in turn, get rewarded by way of lectureships, two-bit awards, study tours etc.).

As for Mallika S, not only Chindu, but the entire Angrezi desi media have reached ecstatic heights, as if the greatest thing that has happened to India in the recent years, is the nomination of this woman to contest for the parliament in the same constituency as LKA. For some strange reasons, the contest is portrayed as only against LKA (and not against the Congress party).

cbcnn_Pilid said...

I suspect at least one of the 'eminent historians' is Irfan Habib, a marxist historian previously interviewed in Frontline. Romila Thapar is another possibility.

shyam said...

This orphaned article (author/source unknown) contradicts itself couple of times:

1. "We do not have to go looking for certificates of merit from foreign visitors."......
"The Chinese pilgrims visiting India — Fa Hien and Hsuan Tsang — make a brief mention of sick persons being treated by having to fast for seven days and being given some medicine."

2. "India lost its pride when it became a British colony and not before that. Colonial domination was more deeply destructive than any other had been before it.".......
"They were not applied to changing the technologies of Indian society in a major way. This is something Indians learnt through colonial rule."

The article ends on a good note:

A new paradigm is called for, but one that endorses the primacy of the human being, the citizen of India, rather than "THE HINDU".

kuttychathan said...

I can name a few others... K N Panikkar, Ravinder Kumar, A G Noorani, Jyothirmaya Sarma...

Dirt Digger said...

Shantanu,
Thanks. Supercilious is the right adjective to describe the riffraff who are quoted in this article.

Dirt Digger said...

Anonymous,
You are right, the historians have a severe ego complex which needs psychiatric analysis.
Why do you think the Congress is getting the short end of the stick in that particular MP election?

Dirt Digger said...

Shyam,
The article is rife with contradictions, fallacies, ignorance and hypocrisy. I would like to see some of the real historians response in today's reel.
Thanks for your thoughts.

Dirt Digger said...

kuttychathan,
Well those jerks need to be put in their place. And the easiest way is to point them to the historic evidence not their imagination of how things were perceived.
Thanks!

Dirt Digger said...

Pilid,
Irfan Habib seems to ring a bell. Have you brought up his work in one of your earlier posts?