[Assam] Appeasement

[uttam borthakur]

Swimming with the current is always easy Chandan Da; swimming against is understandably not. Some of our prejudices are due to propaganda dinned into our ears all the time. That is how politicians like Bush and his kindred elsewhere in the world survive. He was trying to attribute food price hike to indian/chinese middle class consumption. He asked everyone to put blinkers about the waste in the US itself; farm subsidy in the western world; competition between men and cars for corn; structural shifts in the economy brought about by the US led brand of globalisation.

Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at charter.net> wrote:  I hear the word 'appeasing minorities' in India all the time--in 
Assamnet, in desi papers and internet forums.

A raging controversy is going on in the US right this moment on GW 
Bush's likening diplomatic contacts and efforts to 'appeasing 
terrorists' which he implied Barrack Obama would do, in a speech in 
Israel. Aside from it being a blatantly shameless form of 
pandering to the Jewish vote in the USA, the tactic employs the 
misuse of words to score political points with poorly informed 
voters, something this administration has employed masterfully to 
take the country into war under false pretenses, among other misdeeds.

And the Indians, who tend to copy whatever the west does and parrot 
whatever their politicians might, particularly those who have 
shamelessly tried to ride the coat-tails of US reaction against 9/11, 
hoping to exploit it to deliver themselves from the Kashmir fallout 
also have been using the word 'appeasement' without ever knowing what 
it MEANS, just like GW Bush has done.


Appeasement means , in this context:

The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain 
peace. ( from Wikipedia)


So, when our THINKING friends here in assamnet use the word to vent 
their anger against Muslims or their Hinduttwa frustrations, they 
might consider its meaning first, to see if it is applicable.

_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
assam at assamnet.org
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org



Uttam Kumar Borthakur

       
---------------------------------
 From Chandigarh to Chennai - find friends all over India.  Click here.