New Hope for Free speech and religious freedom in India.

[Sharp]

India had new elections about two months ago. It was a revolution. For several elections the BJP radical Hindu Party had dominated. Their agenda is decidedly anti-Christian, anti-free speech, and anti-Moslem.
They we beaten back in the Indian supreme court when they tried to outlaw all attempts to convert, but they allowed brutal mobs to kill, or injure, or destroy the property of church members and evangelists. Fortunately there were many areas of India where this did not happen. Any dictatorial regime like this makes enemies, and the BJP finally got so rugnent to other Indians that the voters rejected them!

I correspond with people from India - Christians, Moslems, and Hindus. At first the Indian Christians were ecstatic. Finally they thought the power of the BJP was broken. The BJP party is militantly Hindu and IS NOT typical of most Indian Hindus. Their policies have resulted in arrests, beatings, and even death for native Indian Christian missionaries. The BJP wants to make it illegal to convert to another faith and illegal to attempt to convert other people. Other Indians used to think the BJP was a joke only a decade ago. When the voters rejected the BJP recently, both Christians and Moslems were pleased. It looked like a new day of tolerance.

This post by an Indian explains what happened next:

In a new turn Sonia Gandhi by declining to be the PM of India has turned the tables on BJP, VHP and the sanghis. They now appear to be rascists by having said that they would boycot her swearing in as PM. In a democracy those who talk like that are certainly undemocractic bunch and are now exposed as waiting dictators like Hitler. It is going to be bad news now for India as the world will see the indians-hindus as rascists who denied a Christian white woman the election she had won. India is headed for a civil war over this. There is no greater wrong than to be unjust.

Other posts from India are harder to understand. Seems some angry Moslems are making insults about the parentage of Pakistan and the USA and that is supposed to relate to Sonja. Don't ask.

Here are some other reactions:

From a Hindu:
India is a free, democratic and secular nation. The elections must make every Indian proud.

From a Moslem whose lack of English skills is no barrier to communication:

India has POTENTial of JOINING isrA$$EL theocratic STATE or BILY graham PAT the RAT (Rev Pat Robertson?) PRIEST VISION...

HINDUTVA is NOT dead it is STIL LOOMING threatening AND WAITING inThe WINGS to BITE like COBRA of GUJJURAT JONING of Israssel WEAPON program

WE NEVE FORGET like ZIOnever FORGET to FK muslim For there IMPOTENYT FKING by GERMAN holocaust WHOM THEY CANT KILL

I hope that language is okay for use on this board.
===

So opinoin in India is all divided. I guess there is guarded optimism that democracy will prevail and that religious toleration will increase. Let's pray it does.

 

[BobbieDog]

Interesting stuff.
Intolerance is a tragedy in the sub-continent: as Africa has riches of game; the sub-continent has riches of spirituality.
Noted the move to ban conversion. I'd like to see the inverse. Global legal mechanisms for movement between all and any belief systems. Respect for the Indian courts.
Intolerance and its hatreds, is just the major problem right now.
Tolerance studies should be a major funded discipline, everywhere. Stop funding armies and space programs; start funding tolerance, and what sustains it.

 

[BobbieDog]

If America has been some crucible of democracy, some social melting pot of the hopeful from many lands: then India has been the world's workshop and forge of spirituality; not withstanding that spirituality that crucially emerged between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and its environs.
The treasures of spiritual endeavour, are currently endangered by a flood of intolerance: where spirit forged instruments of peace, are being beaten to service as weapons; leaving truth weeping.
An India, dripping with such spiritual instruments: could become a carnal house of intolerance; or an epi-centre of peaceful recovery.
There is much to play for in India: for all of us.

 

[kurabrhm]

Interesting stuff.
Intolerance is a tragedy in the sub-continent: as Africa has riches of game; the sub-continent has riches of spirituality.
Noted the move to ban conversion. I'd like to see the inverse. Global legal mechanisms for movement between all and any belief systems. Respect for the Indian courts.
Intolerance and its hatreds, is just the major problem right now.
Tolerance studies should be a major funded discipline, everywhere. Stop funding armies and space programs; start funding tolerance, and what sustains it.

Its all very well saying to India that it should curb its defense spending and divert more of that money to society in general. But if you look at it, you can see why Indian defense gets a lot of money - they have defense minister George Fernandes!

 

[kurabrhm]

If America has been some crucible of democracy, some social melting pot of the hopeful from many lands: then India has been the world's workshop and forge of spirituality; not withstanding that spirituality that crucially emerged between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and its environs.
The treasures of spiritual endeavour, are currently endangered by a flood of intolerance: where spirit forged instruments of peace, are being beaten to service as weapons; leaving truth weeping.
An India, dripping with such spiritual instruments: could become a carnal house of intolerance; or an epi-centre of peaceful recovery.
There is much to play for in India: for all of us.

Well I know from direct experience that India is a land of contradictions. But it somehow seems to work nonetheless.
Currently India seems to be going in two directions. There is the ever growing liberal middle class who are a legacy of British imperial rule and the Americanisation of the global economy. On the other hand, the crude realities of modern day capitalism has meant that the poor in India are also booming, in numbers that is. India can't improve as a nation unless it takes measures to slow down the rate of poor people being born. However, the Indian middle classes realise that they have little to gain but a lot to lose if the number of poor people in India start to decline. The middle classes in India need the poor to keep the modest Indian infrastructure working on a day to day basis. If the poor decline in number then cheap labour will start to become confined to history books and the middle classes would see a decline in their annual revenue. So as i say, a land of contradictions.

 

[BobbieDog]

Kurabrhm, I was thinking about us the West, when speaking about moving from military spending, to tolerance spending.

What you say about the middle class and the poor in India is succinct. I wonder if a middle class is an alien thing to India. The population levels are such that poverty does not seem something that India can abandon. I've always viewed India's traditions of poverty, as a strength and treasure. While we in the West have sought unsustainable resolution in prosperity, Indian life has sustained itself in a sustainable poverty. When I look at the difficulties we in the West now face, as we contemplate how we can become environmentally more responsible: it often comes to mind, that in its poverty, and the cultural adaptations that sit with that poverty; India has pioneered perspective that we could learn much from.

 

[kurabrhm]

Kurabrhm, I was thinking about us the West, when speaking about moving from military spending, to tolerance spending.

What you say about the middle class and the poor in India is succinct. I wonder if a middle class is an alien thing to India. The population levels are such that poverty does not seem something that India can abandon. I've always viewed India's traditions of poverty, as a strength and treasure. While we in the West have sought unsustainable resolution in prosperity, Indian life has sustained itself in a sustainable poverty. When I look at the difficulties we in the West now face, as we contemplate how we can become environmentally more responsible: it often comes to mind, that in its poverty, and the cultural adaptations that sit with that poverty; India has pioneered perspective that we could learn much from.

You're probably right actually. The rich have more of an 'access card' to destroy the world sooner than the poor can ever dream of. Look at America's rejection of the Kyoto protocol when America knows very well that its CO2 emmissions are of too high a level.
India is probably one of the best example's of sustainable development in the third world. Even though the rich nations media portray India as an urban grime. If you look at the rural side you'll find how the Indian people have for a long time tried to get along with nature rather than control nature as we do in the West.
Quickly crossing over to Brazil and her Amazon forest (no pun intended!) I would also say that the rate at which the beautiful Amazon is being chopped down is a prime example of the West using its cash rich economy to destroy the world. The loss of the Amazon only creates an even greater hole in the Ozone layer, if I'm not mistaken, and this leads to dangerous levels of exposure to the Sun's harmful rays. Moreover, there are the effects of global warming. We better watch out for the Amazon and indeed many other forests around the globe.

 

[BobbieDog]

You're probably right actually. The rich have more of an 'access card' to destroy the world sooner than the poor can ever dream of. Look at

America's rejection of the Kyoto protocol when America knows very well that its CO2 emmissions are of too high a level.

India is probably one of the best example's of sustainable development in the third world. Even though the rich nations media portray India as an urban grime. If you look at the rural side you'll find how the Indian people have for a long time tried to get along with nature rather than control nature as we do in the West.

Quickly crossing over to Brazil and her Amazon forest (no pun intended!) I would also say that the rate at which the beautiful Amazon is being chopped down is a prime example of the West using its cash rich economy to destroy the world. The loss of the Amazon only creates an even greater hole in the Ozone layer, if I'm not mistaken, and this leads to dangerous levels of exposure to the Sun's harmful rays. Moreover, there are the effects of global warming. We better watch out for the Amazon and indeed many other forests around the globe.

If we can preserve what you say here from being misrepresented and shot down by partisan argument: then it has the essential features for an understanding we could carry in this international politics forum; not as a doctrine, but more as the common sense that sciences tend to go in for.

What you say here is factual and true, basically: we can argue about details and interpretation; but to abandon the basics of what you say here is simply to degenerate to partisan political argument.

I hope that we can build a body of useful and inclusive understanding through this forum: exchanging perspectives of stance and understanding; rather than getting involved in knock down political rhetoric.