Lack of discipline and vacillation forms a self imploding mixture when combined with short term memory. Ramachandra Guha’s book has started receding in the dark alleys of my memory and with each passing day, I am forgetting more on the stuff which bought out his biases very clearly.
Hence, my attempt at further analysis may be much weaker when compared to the previous two posts on the book, on its content part.
The ‘centrist’ Mr Ramachandra Guha echoes his Marxist fellow travelers when writing about the Right, Nehru, India and the communal problem in the country.
In the chapter ‘Riots’, he states that most of the riots were a result of initial petty reasons like playing of music in front of the mosque by a idol immersion procession or slaughter of a cow near a temple. Isn’t is enlightening to know that the act of killing a venerated animal near a place of worship is deemed as mild a provocation as playing of music in front of mosques, that too for a short duration and during processions alone?
In his notings on Mumbai riots, Mr Guha sadly notes that the Muslim massacre meant that around 70% of the people killed in any riots were Muslims while their share of population was only 16-17%. What exactly is Mr Guha trying to say? That the dead in the riot should reflect their respective proportions in the general population? Mr Guha probably ignores the fact that a group 1/6th in population would bear an inverse brunt of riots. In facts, the East Bengal with around 31% of Hindu population at the time of independence never saw any riot after independence. It was only a clean, simple, clinical massacre of the minority group. Getting back to India, shouldn’t Mr Guha’s notings have been the other way round…that the Muslim hooligans, in spite of being 1/6th in population, manage to kill almost double their proportion in any riot?
It is noteworthy that the proportion of Hindu casualties in riots is coming up. In the first few decades post independence, riots used to have around 1/5th Hindu casualties. Now this has gone upto a third. Who to blame? The rising Muslim population, their rising belligerence or these 2 factors combined with the cover provided by the Guhas of the world??
While commenting on the frequency and hot spot of riots, Mr Guha himself notes that cities having a larger proportion of Muslims were more riot prone. Doesn't that itself give away a prime cause of the riot? However, he moves on to completely apportion the blame on Hindu Right wing rather than attempting any analysis behind this data.
Hence, my attempt at further analysis may be much weaker when compared to the previous two posts on the book, on its content part.
The ‘centrist’ Mr Ramachandra Guha echoes his Marxist fellow travelers when writing about the Right, Nehru, India and the communal problem in the country.
In the chapter ‘Riots’, he states that most of the riots were a result of initial petty reasons like playing of music in front of the mosque by a idol immersion procession or slaughter of a cow near a temple. Isn’t is enlightening to know that the act of killing a venerated animal near a place of worship is deemed as mild a provocation as playing of music in front of mosques, that too for a short duration and during processions alone?
In his notings on Mumbai riots, Mr Guha sadly notes that the Muslim massacre meant that around 70% of the people killed in any riots were Muslims while their share of population was only 16-17%. What exactly is Mr Guha trying to say? That the dead in the riot should reflect their respective proportions in the general population? Mr Guha probably ignores the fact that a group 1/6th in population would bear an inverse brunt of riots. In facts, the East Bengal with around 31% of Hindu population at the time of independence never saw any riot after independence. It was only a clean, simple, clinical massacre of the minority group. Getting back to India, shouldn’t Mr Guha’s notings have been the other way round…that the Muslim hooligans, in spite of being 1/6th in population, manage to kill almost double their proportion in any riot?
It is noteworthy that the proportion of Hindu casualties in riots is coming up. In the first few decades post independence, riots used to have around 1/5th Hindu casualties. Now this has gone upto a third. Who to blame? The rising Muslim population, their rising belligerence or these 2 factors combined with the cover provided by the Guhas of the world??
While commenting on the frequency and hot spot of riots, Mr Guha himself notes that cities having a larger proportion of Muslims were more riot prone. Doesn't that itself give away a prime cause of the riot? However, he moves on to completely apportion the blame on Hindu Right wing rather than attempting any analysis behind this data.
In Guha’s world, Muslims come across as lamb like creatures covering forever in fear of beastly wolf like Hindu marauders. Hence, the ghastly 1969 riots at Ahmedabad, which were triggered off with attacks on Rath Yatras and butchering of cows and sadhus gets declared as a riot in which Muslims suffered immensely.
In his writings on Abdullah and Kashmir, Guha is so left of center that he even manages to find fault with the otherwise spotless Nehru. No mention is made of the games the Sheikh played or how he systematically targeted the Hindu population or flirted with Pakistan. Even his book, Aatish E Chinar, which offers panoramic glimpses to the mind of the one time Freedom fighter, is given a miss lest it threw up anything adverse on the persona of the Great Sheikh.
Mr Guha himself mentions as to how a decade after independence, Muslims started attempting to form their own political parties on the count that they were backward, cheated by the Congress and had got nothing out of independence. Guha’s heart then bleeds for Muslims and the conditions they live in and points that it is the insecurity bred by the murderous Hindu Right which makes Muslims huddle up for security with their fundamentalists and hence they remain backward. My, my!!! Never thought that the thief steals because of me…its my fault after all that I possess something which the other also desires. It is not the others’ duty to keep that desire in check but it is my fault to possess something…Same logic, isn’t is Mr Guha. It would probably do good people to read some more and realize that these were precisely the sentiments which Muslim League propagated and the same language is being spouted today. Breast beating and blaming others for ones’ own ill has become the hallmark of at least one community in India.
It is not surprising that Mr Guha’s heart does not beat at the same rate for the Hindu Refugees from Kashmir. No tears are shed for the men and children who were brutally massacred, nor any tear for those hapless women who were gangraped and murdered. And of course, moving away from their land of forefathers was an act facilitated by the wicked Jagmohan. After all, the ‘militant’ Kashmiri were brothers. How could they want their brethren to go away?
The list may go on and on. The issues, analysis and my argument would be the same. Here again, I am not at all trying to convey that Mr Ramachandra Guha does not have a right to his own opinion. He of course does, like I do or anyone else in the civilized world does. However, the issues are 2 fold: Firstly, he wants to be a centrist which he is not. Second, coloured opinion from the intellectual class impacts the way the larger public thinks.
Here is a man who in wake of the recent Mangalore pub attacks was sharing space with Harsha Bhogle on NDTV and agreeing that India has no defined culture or claiming that there is nothing such as Indian Culture as nothing has been written down as to what is Indian Culture? As a beginning, he may please read A L Basham’s ‘A cultural history of India’ to understand something about Indian culture. Anyways, what to say? Before asking such an inane question, he could at least have paused and realized that no country or civilization writes down commandments as to what its culture is.
