US Professor’s faulty logic blames Indian government for religious riots
Martha Nussbaum, a professor of Law in the University of Chicago and a romancer of Amartya Sen in an earlier life, is seriously prejudiced against the BJP in India. Her article that constantly rebukes Modi and the BJP and flowers immense praise on Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh raises serious questions about the professionalism and ethics of her writing. It is the numerous faults of the article, however, that has incensed me into writing this rebuttal.
Until the spring of 2004, its parliamentary government was increasingly controlled by right-wing Hindu extremists who condone and in some cases actively support violence against minorities, especially the Muslim minority.
In her first paragraph, she has criticized the BJP Govt. both at the centre and state of abetting with religious extremism in Gujarat State. Although there have been many wild allegations of this sort, none of them have any weight because the matter is currently sub-judice and so far there is not enough evidence to incriminate the Government. While she mentions the Godhra train burning incident, the lack of respect given to this stands starkly against her vivid descriptions of the aftermath. The Gujarat riots clearly have a religious premise and the Govt. is still not found guilty of any conspiracy charges. On the other hand, the Sikh riots of 1984 had a political premise based on the death of Indira Gandhi and the riots themselves were justified by Rajiv Gandhi in his irresponsible words, “Whenever a big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake”. Moreover, quite a few people in the Congress Govt. have been incriminated in participating in these riots. Therefore, her outspoken support in favour of Congress is tainted and clearly biased. I am not trying here to clear the BJP of any wrongdoing, but only pointing out that while there is evidence for Congress’ indulgence in religious riots, BJP has not been convicted of involvement in similar mischief. Consequently, her painting of Congress all rosy betrays her prejudice.
The fact that it has yet to make it onto the radar screen of most Americans is evidence of the way in which terrorism and the war on Iraq have distracted Americans from events and issues of fundamental significance.
It is grave of any academic from any part of the world, more so from the US, to indicate that terrorism and the unjust war on Iraq are trivial matters. Clearly, Martha has gross imbalance of faculties in suggesting that terrorism and America’s conquest of Iraq are not “issues of fundamental significance” in today’s global scenario.
Amidst her rather graphic description of violence, which she wholly and unjustly blames on the Hindus, she alleges that two thousand Muslims were killed in the riots. The official death toll revealed by the Indian Govt. is: 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus. It is rather disconcerting that distinguished academics should make fantastic claims without due references.
But Gujarat also shows us something else: the resilience of pluralistic democracy, the ability of well-informed voters to turn against religious nationalism and to rally behind the values of pluralism and equality.
The state of the economy, however, was not the only major electoral issue. Prominent as well was a widespread popular rejection of religious extremism.
Martha goes on to tell us that it is the riots of 2002 that led to the fall of the BJP in 2004. For her kind information, in the elections in Gujarat state that were held after the riots, Narendra Modi’s BJP government came back with a resouding victory. My aim here is not to justify the riots, but to clear misinformation.
She would also have us believe that Congress was voted into power at the Centre partly because of the alleged religious extremism of the BJP. She may be naive in the political history of India, but that is no reason to concoct false relations between two incidents. The Muslims of India have always voted for Congress in the past. Suggesting that the Muslims switched to Congress from the BJP after the riots is an untruth. Therefore, the fall of the BJP was only because of the rural vote, which indicates that the reason was wholly economic, confirming and conforming with the opinions of numerous analysts.
Over the next few days, I want to blog about this story –- a story of democracy’s near-collapse into religious terror and of democracy’s survival (at least for the time being) — a story that has important lessons to offer to all nations struggling with problems of religious extremism. The posts are all drawn from a book manuscript I am now finishing up.
Martha tells us that she is writing a book on this. Having seen her standard of writing, I can only hope that her book is classified as “Fiction” rather than anything else!
Read my response to her second article.
Related Articles |
Comments
You misstate Nussbaum’s claims and you yourself engage in wild assertions. To take one point, in response to the claim that the BJP was involved, at least at the state level, in perpetuating the violence, you state:
“Although there have been many wild allegations of this sort, none of them have any weight because the matter is currently sub-judice and so far there is not enough evidence to incriminate the Government.”
This is simply not true. You turn a blind eye to the words of Modi, the State Chief Minister. The RSS had plans in place, maps of Muslim neighborhoods and Muslim places of business. They wanted this to happen. Your national pride clouds your judgment. Ms. Nussbaum is guilty of making a simplistic claim that overreached, as those outside the society that they study often do, and fails to account for the complexity of Hindu-Muslim relations, but your response was based in emotion, not fact.
History is never black and white. While I do believe that Nussbaum is taking a simplistic view of the affair, you too seem to be biased in your presentation. For one, Nussbaum does clearly state that economic policies did play a *big* role in the defeat of the BJP at the general elections.
Your point that Nussbaum seems to glance over the Godhra train burning is indeed true and a bit disappointing.
You cite the attrocities commited against the Sikhs after the Indira Gandhi killing and try to potray Congress as being equally ‘bad’. But does that in any way negate what Nussbaum has stated?
Sooraj and others,
The problem with academicians is that they are just that “academicians”, and more so when they comment about cultures and societies that they have only seen virtually (via books, online media, et al). What does Nassbaum know about the 1000 years of tyranny shown by the Islamic bigots to the Hindus? If she understood that, she would have come to, if not condone, understand the outrage that Hindus must have felt when the innocent Hindus were roasted alive in the Godhra massacre.
Besides, she is inaccurate on many counts in her post. Even though you are biased, at least you are not inacurrate.
And btw - Nassbaum seems to be one of those self-hating Jews (sadly there are quite a few of them in this country) who does not seem to be able to acknowledge the violence that Islam preaches. She is probably one of those hypocrites who think Islam is a religion of peace. From her vantage point, of course the Muslims were victims (as they always claim to be) in the Gujarat riots.
So I am with you on this one my friend.
Rags.
Martha N was a colleague of Mr Know all , Prof Amartya Sen , probably at Harvard.
(http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=091806022325)
Senology must have been her source for this logic. Again , I digress, Sen effect. Sen called Panini an Afghan. You can now expect some goodness of fit to this blundering conjecture of Sen from Martha N. In second century BC did Afghanistan exist , was it called Afghanistan or by any other name. I would like the bloggers to do some research on what Afghanistan was called in 2nd century BC, as I am getting bored listening to more and more , on radio and TV on the bizarre activities of Panini’s descendants.
Panini was a Sanskrit Grammarian and if there was a Prize for Linguistics like the Nobel , I would call it Panini Prize
I don’t know enough about Indian history to straighten this all out, but I can at least say that you are equally biased in your reading of Nussbaum’s piece. For instance, she does NOT indicate that the Iraq war is not of fundamental significance; rather, she indicates that IN ADDITION to the Iraq war, which IS an issue of fundamental significance, there are OTHER issues of fundamental significance which we Americans pay no attention to. In addition, it’s pretty fantastic to trust an official government death toll when the government is allegedly to blame for the incident.