At last an objective analysis of the situation!. This is a good article. People who do not even go to vote on the election day, have no right to critisize any of our freedom fighters who earned for us through their blood and sacrifices the right to self determination.
Whether it is Gandhi or Nehru or even Jinnah. Ask not what they did or they did not do, ask yourself, what you have done for your country...
Despite may good arguments, the author/editor's style gets "corrupted" by his casual hatred of Indian epics , & other aspects of Indian culture, dragging willy nilly references to ramayana, mahabharata, "lingam" (which incidentally is a "symbol" of essence, & not an object belonging to anyone, deva or man).
A lot of good points are thus lost in the hot haze of hindu hatred...
saisuresh seems to have many confused thoughts and has tried hard to carry such confusion to the readers.He should have some basic knowledge of Dravidian movement (which is limited to Tamil Nadu). Only this movement has attempted to idolize Ravana, merely because: Ravana is supposedly a "Southerner" (he was King of Sri Lanka which has long ceased to be part of India, anyway). Rama was a "northerner" and on top of it an "aryan" and therefore for a Dravidian movement there is a pathological hatred against Rama. What is forgotten and surprising too, is that in this process this Dravidian Movement which has been attempting to idealise Ravana (only to spite the Northerners and the Believers) forgets conveniently that Ravana was also a Brahmin! How come then that this brahmin haters have turned to become a brahmin lover (only in the case of Ravana?). Reference to Valmiki as a thief is neither charitable nor apt. Valmiki had deeply repented this side of his earlier life and completely reformed himself by deep penance. Do you still call him a thief? Ridiculous.
Ravana is bad by action and his life, despite his devotion to Shiva. He used his powers for wrong things. So did Jinnah.
Sivaswamy has elaborated on Ravana's good qualities, and goes on to say, "The Hindu outfit also needs a refresher course on the country's legends..." I agreel and add that all the people who fancy themselves as Hindus (that includes me) should take a refresher course. The basic difficulty is that Hindus confuse between epics and scriptures. Ramayana and Mahabharata are epics, not scriptures. There are no lessons of ethics or morality to be learnt from them. Ravana and his brothers were Vishnu's servants before a sage cursed them, along with their master, to be born on earth. If one reads the details from the _puranaas_ and it will clear his mind about Ravana et al. They were NOT monsters.
Truth is distorted by the lens one wear. We should not have any prejudices when we want to have long term solution. Any solution will last only if both the parties are satisfied that they havent been cheated. It has to be agreed that against a backdrop of mutual hatred and non acceptance of each others history, we cant broker long lasting peace. Jinnah had secular thoughts also which are clear from his speech. Due to reasons less clearly known to us, or avoided by us, he advocated partition.
Whatever the follies of past, if we have to see the future, we need to accept the past without any misconceptions and ready to swallow actual truth even if it is bitter. We should be ready to accept others history and respect each other.
Advani here atleast had the vision to foresee this and had the guts to speak against his own ideologies. This must be admitted as a sign of a true leader.
I appreciate the central idea of mindshift highlighted in this enlightening peace. Since the independence and passing through several unfinished wars, Indo-Pak history has many evidences of peace being held as hostage of jingoism and false sense of nationalism. Perpetuation of ill-feeling fed on bitterness and hatred has so far led to nowhere and certainly does not promise anything better in future.
Coming out of our pre-conceived mindset based on unpleasant events of 20th Century, we need to chart a new course of future based on amity, peace and prosperity. Evolution of post-second world war Europe (more particularly Germany) is an ideal case, where bitterness of history has been pushed in the back to recreate nation with strong economic capabilities, bringing much of national pride and glory as a natural bye-product.
Irony is that carrying such onerous thought from history has great opportunity cost attached to it, which our poor economy is hard to sustain. So while we feel proud in maintaining post in most difficult terrain in Siachin (the highest battlefield in the world), we keep falling below in the world human resources development index on every successive year.
