Dear Mr.Swamy
I recently heard that Harvard dropped your summer courses covering economics in Asia. I also heard that your article in a local Mumbai newspaper titled "How to wipe out Islamic terror" (no more available on the newspaper's website) was the cause of this exclusion from Harvard's summer course catalog. While I am sad that you, as an Indian were excluded from one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world, I uphold their decision to remove you, sir, from their faculty. I believe anyone with a conscience would deem your article as supremacist snobbery at best and plain ol' bigotry at worst. And this underlying attitude of yours which showed its ugly face in the above-mentioned article of yours was perhaps simultaneously your worst professional move (Harvard and all..) and your best political one. Who knows?
Why I consider this to be your best political move is the fact that you've roused a number of hindu nationalists in the blogosphere and on social networking sites to revel in fundamentalist blather. And I wouldn't be surprised if this were to spil out onto the streets (although I think that such bloggers prefer to keep their fundamentalism veiled). While I laud your efforts against corruption and taking Congress ministers to task, I vehemently oppose your motivation to do all the things you do - which is the belief that India is essentially a "Hindu nation". This belief of yours, I will place in the same category of beliefs as that including the allegedly fake NASA moon landings, pink unicorns and the flying maggi monster, if you will. In other words, I place this belief of yours in the category of "out-of-the-world-mindboggingly-ridiculous". To be sure, another equally asinine idea is that of America being a "christian" nation. Yes, the USA does have a christian population of 78%. However, separation of church and state is expressly important to religious freedom in the US. James Madison, one of the authors of the US constitution, made it very clear in a letter to Rev.F.L.Schaefer in 1821, agreeing with him on this matter:
"The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity."
However, there are a group of Americans who oppose the idea that the USA is NOT a "christian country". Any guesses as to who they might be? Yep, you guessed right - Christian right-wing fundamentalists. And I found it funny, although not surprising, that you would appear on the right-wing american news channel, FOX News, defending your article. If watching a hindu fundamentalist appear on a christian fundamentalist news channel defending an anti-muslim view that is common to both isn't downright hilarious, I fail to see what is. I'm sure you disagree, Mr. Swamy, sir.
In keeping with the vein of your fundamentalist ideas, I see this interesting trend of fundies, across the board, distorting facts to support their pre-existing beliefs. You quote a research paper by Trager & Zagorcheva (2005-2006; not "this year" as your article suggests) to justify your strategy of developing "goals" to deter terrorism. I fail to see how this article has contributed to your method of identifying the entire Indian muslim population as a threat to national security. Not once do the authors even mention religion or its association with terrorism in their article. In fact, the authors mention this:
"A related argument made by some scholars is that because terrorists easily blend into the local population, collateral damage caused by attempts at retaliation against them inflames hatred of the retaliating state and galvanizes support for the terrorists’ cause. Indeed, inciting such retaliation may be an explicit terrorist objective, so threatened retaliation would hardly deter... Although lessons from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are difficult to draw, it seems intuitively clear that tactics that harm or kill large numbers of noncombatants have radicalized more moderates than tactics that focus squarely on the perpetrators of violence."
I know that you have a PhD in Economics from Harvard, but when you make dangerous forays into subjects of terrorism and national security, you should get your facts checked. Oh wait, I'm sorry, your "strategy" of removing 300 mosques as a "tit-for-tat" would have been thrown out the window had you done that. I'm beginning to see the reason for your attrocious methodology.
I am a christian, Mr. Swamy; one of the groups you would prefer not having voting rights if we didn't accept our hindu ancestry. For some reason, you think that this is a good way of judging patriotic intent. But Mr.Swamy, you make a grave mistake in correlating a genetic determinant with an intent to serve the country. Many of us fail to see this connection, because although a genetic determinant may exist, our intent to serve India draws from the fact that we were born there, grew up there, had family there and had friends there, whether Hindu, muslim, jain or christian. That we respect each others beliefs is not related to our shared genetic makeup. In fact, if one were to seriously consider your "genetic-ancestry-determines-national-fervor" hypothesis, then we should all owe allegiance to Africa, for as evolutionary anthropologist, Svante Paabo (of neanderthal genome fame) points out, "In a sense, we are all Africans, though some of us have gone to live in exile".
In closing, Mr.Swamy, I hope your ideas stay where they are - in the fringes, never to pollute the redemption of our tryst with destiny. That solemn pledge we all swear by, as Nehru so eloquently mentioned on the eve of independence from the British Raj:
"All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action."
It would only be appropriate to end this letter, Mr.Swamy by quoting the muslim officer, Major Abin Hasin Safrani of the Indian National Army, under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose, who taught us to say, JAI HIND!
Sincerely
A concerned Indian citizen
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