[Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Sikh Holocaust

Thu Sep 27 03:13:47 CDT 2007

I wonderif anyone in mainstream India cares for the Sikh holocaust . In the West it still raises hackles -as I saw at Vancouver, Canada last Sep (2006) and a year before on Jul 18th, 2005 outside White House where local Sikhs gathered outside protesting treatment of Sikhs while Indian PM ManMohan Singh met US Prez inside. I was walking down the road  from a meet with someone at World bank nearby.
http://www.mail-archive.com/assam@pikespeak.uccs.edu/msg14732.html

When Indians like to celebrate Bhangra dances abroad and in India they should remember the injustices and take action. By pushing dirt under the carpet does not make it go away. Harvard supported project Facing History , Facing Ourselves says that.

Umesh

Umesh

umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com> wrote: I was watching the Sikh Holocaust video again and am struck by the fact that Bhindrawale resembles Osama Bin Laden so much -same flowing beard and same sharp features with a smilar turban ---ofcourse Osama came on the scene much after Bhindrawale was dead. I do not know much about Bhindrawale nor regret that he is dead but it was wrong of Indira Gandhi to have attacke Golden Temple. They cold have laid a siege outside and let him starve to death else come out.

Osama seems to have sen these videos beforehand -having lived in the west for long and learned the use of mass media to fool Western audiences. Ofcourse, unlike Anti-Sikh riots in Delhi etc in 1984 nothing similar has happened against muslims  in the West.

Umesh 

umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com> wrote: Rajen-da,

The dictatorship is too much of a term  - it depends where you are in India - those in metros definitely are having full democracy and as you go into interiors where law and literacy are remote it becomes dictatorhip by the elected.

See the video of Indira's India of 1984 - Sikh Holocaust http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MasMHq7oUs&NR=1

Umesh

Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:     Umesh:
 India is best described as 'an elected  dictatorship'.
 Rajenda
    ----- Original Message ----- 
   From:    umesh    sharma 
   To: A  Mailing list for people interested in Assam    from around the world 
   Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 11:52    PM
   Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India    After Gandhi- Bengal democracy

Rajen-da

Good example of India-Shining rhetoric. 
But    just becos there is peace (despite armed militancy in 25% of India's    districts- NE, Kashmir, Bihar, Central India, LTTE South India etc etc) and    not many are dying of starvation and voting not by reading election manifestos    but by  recognizing cartoons (election symbols) of political parties .     

Even democratically elected communist govt (an anamoly) of West Bengal    is allegedly  in power for past 25 years non-stop since  a     nexus  prevents  anyone  from voting against the "party"     or  else face ex-communication a-la erstwhile Pope's rule in Europe in    medieval times -as per a Bengali researcher .

But ofcourse noone can    deny that despite is shortcomings the India that is Bharat is growing  -    despite spoofs like Hollywood's "Borat" movie (Bharat ??) from Kazakhstan    (Rajasthan???)

Umesh

Rajen & Ajanta Barua    <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:                   Following may be added from another  review about the      book:

      India is the country that was never expected to ever      be a country. In the late 19th century, Sir John Strachey, a senior British      official, grandly opined that the territory's diverse states simply could      not possess any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious.      Strachey, clearly, was wrong: India today is a unified entity and a rising      global power. Even so, it continues to defy explanation. India's existence,      says Guha, an internationally known scholar (Environmentalism: A Global      History), has also been an anomaly for academic political science,      according to whose axioms cultural heterogeneity and poverty do not make a      nation, still less a democratic one. Yet India continues to exist. Guha's      aim in this startlingly ambitious political, cultural and social survey is      to explain why and how. He cheerfully  concludes that India's continuing      existence results from its  unique diversity and its
 refusal to be      pigeonholed into such conventional political models as Anglo-American      liberalism, French republicanism, atheistic communism or Islamist theocracy.      India is proudly sui generis, and with August 15, 2007, being the 60th      anniversary of Indian independence, Guha's magisterial history of India      since that day comes not a moment too soon. 32 pages of b&w illus., 8      maps.  
            -----        Original Message ----- 
       From:        Rajen &        Ajanta Barua 
       To:        assam at assamnet.org 
       Sent:        Tuesday, September 25, 2007 10:42 PM
       Subject:        [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi

                     Good review of a grand        900 page book on India recently published:

       India        After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy        by Ramachandra Guha  

>From The Washington Post's Book        World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by George        Perkovich
                     A toast to India on its 60th birthday: No country has more heroically        pursued the promise of democracy. Against the odds of staggering poverty,        conflicting religious passions, linguistic pluralism, regional separatism,        caste injustice and natural resource scarcity, Indians have lifted        themselves largely by their own sandal straps to become a stalwart        democracy and emerging global power. India has risen with epic drama -- a        nonviolent struggle   for independence followed by mass mayhem and        bloodletting, dynastic succession and assassination, military victory and        defeat, starvation succeeded by green revolution, political leaders as        saints, sinners and sexual ascetics. And yet, the Indian story rarely has        been told and is practically unknown to Americans.
       India After Gandhi masterfully fills the void. India needs a wise and        judicious narrator to convey its scale, diversity and chaos -- to describe        the whirlwind without getting lost in it. It needs a biographer neither        besotted by love nor enraged by disappointment. Ramachandra Guha, a        historian who has taught at Stanford and Yale and now lives in Bangalore,        has given democratic India the rich, well-paced history it deserves.
       Much will be new to American readers.        Large-scale conflicts in India's northeast between tribal groups          and the center have been as enduring, and in some ways as important, as        the more familiar violence in Kashmir. The framing of India's        constitution from 1946 through 1949 should induce awe, especially in light        of Iraq's post-Saddam experience.
       In the midst of Hindu-Muslim bloodshed, a flood of 8 million        refugees, starvation, and other profound conflicts, Indian representatives        worked out constitutional provisions to protect minorities, keep religion        out of state power, correct thousands of years of caste discrimination and        redistribute power and wealth accumulated by still-regnant princely        states. This was done with no external guidance or pressure. The drafting        committee was chaired by an "untouchable," B.R. Ambedkar -- analogies are        inexact, but imagine if James Madison at the Philadelphia Constitutional        Convention had been a freed slave.
         Specialists will quicken over insights from the private papers of        Indira Gandhi's confidant, P.N. Haksar, who gave his papers to Guha. These        documents reveal, among other things, that it was the Soviet Union that        proposed the 1971 treaty of cooperation and friendship between the two        countries, and that suspicion of China motivated both nations more than        was appreciated at the time.
       Miniature biographies of grassroots leaders and movements also        enliven Guha's storytelling. Jay Aprakash Narayan -- "JP" -- plays a        leading role. A onetime friend of Nehru who became the bête noir of his        daughter, Indira Gandhi, JP led a massive movement for radical        governmental reform in 1974-75, which moved Indira Gandhi to declare a        national emergency and suspend democracy.
       Some themes go under-explored: For example, why has the Indian Army        abstained from interfering in   politics, unlike the military in many other        developing countries? And why has India given short shrift to primary        education, even as it has developed technological institutes that rival        M.I.T?
       Many chapters begin or end with India's future in doubt. "India is        almost infinitely depressing," Aldous Huxley wrote in 1961, "for there        seems to be no solution to its problems in any way that any of us [in the        West] regard as acceptable." He predicted that "when Nehru goes, the        government will become a military dictatorship." Guha records that "ever        since the country was formed there have also been many Indians who have        seen the survival of India as being on the line, some (the patriots)        speaking or writing in fear, others (the secessionists or revolutionaries)        with anticipation."
       Yet, marvelously, India's survival as a democracy seems more assured        than ever. Less   clear is the nature of its relationship with America.        Since 2005, the U.S. and Indian governments have moved toward nuclear        cooperation, reversing 30 years of U.S. policy against nuclear assistance        to countries that refuse to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation  Treaty.
       Washington clearly views India as a counterbalance to China's        strategic power. But Guha records an important historical parallel.
       In 1962, China crossed disputed boundaries in the northwest and        northeast of India. A shocked Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru abandoned        nonalignment and pleaded for emergency U.S. military assistance.        Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith wrote to President Kennedy: "The only        Asian country which really stands in [China's] way is India and pari passu        the only Western country that is assuming responsibility is the United        States. . . . We should expect to make use of India's political   position,        geographical position, political power and manpower or anyhow ask."
       Four decades later, another Harvard professor-cum-American ambassador        to India, Robert Blackwill, championed the proposed nuclear deal with        similar reasoning. As different as the presidents they served, Blackwill        and Galbraith were tempted by strategic abstraction and a desire to raise        "their" country -- India -- in American priorities. Yet supplying arms to        India in 1962 did not make India any more deferential to U.S. foreign        policy. Washington will delude itself again if it thinks that nuclear        India will be a pliant instrument in its geostrategy. As long as India is        a democracy, it will go its own way.
       To comprehend India's achievement, imagine if Mexico became the 51st        of the United States, followed by Brazil, Argentina and the rest of        Central and South America. Add Egypt, Saudi   Arabia and Bahrain to give        this union the Sunni-Shia mix of India. The population then represented in        Congress would still be smaller and less diverse linguistically,        religiously, culturally and economically than India's. If such a state        could democratically manage the interests and conflicts swirling within        it, and not threaten its neighbors, the world should ask little else from        it. If we were such a state, we would feel that our humane progress        contributes so much to global well-being that smaller, richer,        easier-to-manage states should not presume to tell us what to do.
       Sixty years after Gandhi, India has earned greater appreciation than        we give it.

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1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. -    International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of    Education,
Harvard University,
Class of    2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu    info)

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Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)

www.gse.harvard.edu/iep  (where the above 2 are used )

http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/          

---------------------------------
  For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit Yahoo! For Good this month.  

Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)

www.gse.harvard.edu/iep  (where the above 2 are used )

http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/        

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Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)

www.gse.harvard.edu/iep  (where the above 2 are used )

http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/

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