Muhammad@tajdeed.net. This is our open letter to the Saudi tyrants, addressed to Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi Foreign minister:
How impressing that you chose to criticize the Americans publicly (normally you don’t even do it privately) for their policies in Iraq. Your main worry (as expected) was Iran phobia, and by implication. Shia phobia that the Southern Iraq will be handed over to Iran. Your statement is worth going into the Guinness Book of World Records. If only you had cared to cage your 16 out of the 19 gang of hijackers of Sept. 11, the Muslim world would have been spared from the disasters of the Afghan and Iraq wars. Perhaps it is time for you to take inventory of your Wahhahi contribution ever since your bloodthirsty history of the last 300 years. Your duplicity reached its climax when you threw your moral and financial support during the eight years Iran-Iraq war behind Saddam, who would be considered a disgrace even by Abu Lahab to act as his representative. Nevertheless, the entire Arab world took pride to appoint him as its spokesman and representative against the Shiites of Iran, who were described throughout the eight years as Al-Fars Al-Majons by Saddam’s media. As if this was not enough. the largest gathering of Sunni ulama gathered at the behest of the dictator in Baghdad to show their solidarity with Abu Jahl. Didn’t they have any sense of shame Recently. Shaykh Yusuf al-Qardhawi said in his Friday sermon from Qatar, that only himself and Nadwi from India boycotted this conference. It is high time that you put your own empire in order. Your Wahhabi gangsters have brought havoc to the Muslim world because of the extremist and radical version of Islam that you are exporting, all for the sake of curbing the Shias. In the process, your extremists have endangered the lives of millions of Muslims in the West. You and your Ulama are nearer than anybody else to the House of Allah. Perhaps all of you should spend this Ramadan in repenting for the chaos that the people in your robes have caused in the world.
Aarati Vasant Moon, 447-Hanuman Nagar, Nagpur-440 009: Mrs. Meenakshi Moon, wife of Vasant Moon, died on Oct.2, 2004. On her first death anniversary, we are writing this letter on behalf of Dr. Ambedkar Research Institute to pay homage to her in Dalit Voice of which she was a great admirer. She was an active participant in Ambedkarite movement particularly involved in the work of women liberation movement. She was the editor of the Marathi magazine, Amhi Maitarani, for last 10 years Lam a keen reader of DV and much impressed with your journal. I read your article. Three Commandments. Your thoughts always provoke awareness and make us struggle. Keep it up.
Raju Thomas, PO Box 2296, Madras 600 023: These are the days when no one wants to suffer and sacrifice for any cause. People have become extremely selfish and Muslims are not an exception case. No one has served the cause of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs as DV has done but how far they are faithful to DV is the question. Bui DV continues to be faithful in its mission. This is the uniqueness of DV and its Editor. The Christians, Muslims and the Sikhs have made full use of DV and they also are conscious of it. What I suspect is because of the upper cast leadership of these non-Hindu religious minorities and their total control on everything including their money, mind, institutions and foreign connections. wealth and land, they are not interested in DV. The existing Opper caste leadership has to be overthrown and a new indigenous leadership must take control and then only we can expect some thing from “minorities”. But is this possible is another question.
Shamsul Arifin. M/91-Abul Fazal Enclave. Jamia Nagar, Okhla, New Delhi-110 025: It is a fact the police reforms are too important to neglect and too urgent to delay. Corruption in our society is not one of the severest problems but evidently it is the severest problem for millions and millions of common people of this country. And I am of the firm mind that if we really want to curb this cancerous corruption prevalent in our society, we will have to check our police first. If we go by the findings of various commissions, complaints received by human rights commissions, the stories reported in the press and the experiences of common people, the police are not found to be problem-solvers hut problem-makers. Despite the High Court order not to let any construction in any unauthorized colony of Delhi, construction is going on in full wing in such colonies with the consent of the police. Take for example Abul Fazal Enclave and Shaheen Bagh of Jamia Nagar. After every midnight tractors and other carriers keep flowing into these colonies unchecked. These trucks upset me every night. 1 spoke to the DCP South on telephone about my agony The DCP assured to inquire. In our Abul Fazal Enclave and Shaheen Bagh the police charge Rs. 10,000 for each floor, Who will check all this? Are all the law, rule and regulation only for the common people?
Jayant Ramteke. B-106, Tagore Hostel. IIM. Joka, Calcutta 700 140: Ambedkar studies at Heidelberg in recent years has gained increasing recognition in academic and political circles in Germany. Within the realm of scholarship at the South Asia Institute, his role in the framing of the Indian Constitution has been adequately recognized (Kulke, Rothermund 1998: 394) as well as the implementation of constitutional safeguards for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Conrad 1995:419) through so-called reservation of seats in politics, education and administration. His political role, especially his social movement has been subject to a dissertation in political sciences (Hurst 2000) as well as part of more elaborate discourse on the part of Dalits in social movements in India (Fuchs 1999; 2003), In the fields of German Indology and history of religion. Dr. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism caught considerable academic attention. He viewed Budhism as theology of liberation (Gensichen 1995:197) as well as an original development under the beading of civil religion (Fuchs 2001: 205). In addition, fieldwork among Mahars in Maharashtra focussed on the social relevance of Dr. Ambedkar’s Navayana Budhism (Beltz 2001). Textual studies focussed on a comparison of Budhist sources with Dr. Ambedkar’s The Buddha and His Dhamma (Buss 1998; Fiske/Emmrich forthcoming), projecting Dr. Ambedkar’s view of Budhism as an effort to reconstruct the world (Beltz/Jondhale forthcoming). Ambedkar studies apart, the concern with Dalits has been the focus of a number of studies in social anthropology in the urban (Bellwinkel 1980) as well as the rural setting (Randeria 1993). The most comprehensive project in this respect was an interdisciplinary research project financed by the Volkswagen Foundation and linked with the Department of Modern Indology. South Asia Institute and the Department of Sociology, Delhi University. Under the heading of “Memory, violence and the agency”, the topic was the role of Dalits as victims and perpetrators in Bombay and Kanpur (Fuchs forthcoming). This project set an example for the memorandum of understanding between Heidelberg University and Delhi University in common fieldwork for the exchange of scholars and students. During my fieldwork among Dalits in Kanpur (Bellwinkel-Schempp 1998), 1 was often asked to give speech, which I used to do with the introductory words, that I was born at Bonn in Germany, the town where Dr. Ambedkar studied Sanskrit, I had found the reference of a short, three months stay in 1923 in Dhananjay Keer’s De. Ambedkar biography (Keer 1995: 49). My projection of benevolent German indology, transgressing the Hindu norms of reserving Sanskritic knowledge to the upper castes and caring for the Dalits, was highly appreciated by my Dalit audience. It made me even think of a Dr. Ambedkar Jayanti in 2003 in Bonn, why not, perhaps with the German Dalit Platform and concerned scholars and its activists. This idea made me visit the university archives at Bonn on Jan 14, 2003 to find out more about Dr. Ambedkar’s studies at Bonn University. Within no time.
(I am grateful to Dr. Thomas Becker and Herrn Johannes Arens for their kind help. Maren Bullwinkel-Schempp, maren bellwinkel@ schempp.info, next pages: Handwritten curriculum vitae and letter of intent of Dr. Ambedkar Babasaheb’s hand-writen letter in German can be found at:http://www. sai uni-heidelberg.de/saireport/2003/pdf/1 ambedkar. pdf) .
I found Dr. Ambedkar’s application for registration with the Prussian Ministry of Science, Fine Arts and Public Education, a CV in German and his registration into the university ledger on 29.4.1921 which reads as follows:
Father’s profession general; religion Hindu: previous universities: Bombay, Columbia, London, number of semesters: 18. school leaving certificate yes, subject: economics, date of birth: 14.4.1891, place of birth: Mhow, home town: Bombay, district Bombay.
So, he delightfully upgraded his father’s military rank Noteworthy is also his religious affiliation at the early stage of his life certainly before he was contemplating on the question of conversion, he wrote “Hindu” under the heading of religion. Amazingly, Dr. Ambedkar registered for economics and not for Indology. In his handwritten CV, he stated that he knew German well, because he had taken it as a minor at Columbia University. He continued:
I would like to mention that the University of Bonn through the kind help of Prof. Dr. H. Jacobi granted me to submit a Ph.D. thesis in case I show adequate performance and 1 am enrolled for three semesters there.
It is not clear in which subject he intended to submit his dissertation, or how he got in touch with Professor Hermann Jacobi (1850-1937), who was the leading German Indologist of his times. The chair for Indology and Comparative Linguistics at Bonn University was very distinguished. Founded by August Wilhelm von Schlegel in 1807, Hermann Jacobi was the chair holder from 1889 to 1922. He had a great number of famous disciples, amongst them Helmut von Glasenapp. August Winter and Vasudeva Gokhale. The Russian scholar Cherbatskole, the Italians Ambrosio Balini, Luigi Salvi and George Herbert Grierson were regularly corresponding with him. It was said that all Indian scholars visiting Europe during the 1920s and 1930s would pay their respect to Professor Jacobi. But how did Dr. Ambedkar get in touch with Hermann Jacobi? In 1913/1914, when Hermann Jacobi was visiting Professor at Calcutta University, Dr. Ambedkar just left for the US take up his studies at Columbia University. The contact must have been forged through letters and correspondence, while Dr. Ambedkar was in London. working on his thesis at the London School of Economics, Well, they might have met personally during Dr. Ambedkar’s brief visit to Bonn on the occasion of his registration at Bonn University. But that is all speculation. Dr. Ambedkar never took up his studies in Bonn. As he did not sign any lectures or attend any classes, he was taken off the university register on 12:1.1922. Intentions and plans apart. Dr. Ambedkar’s project of Sanskrit studies at Bonn university remained unfulfilled. German Indology, represented through Hermann Jacobi, certainly played a supportive role in Dr. Ambedkar’s endeavor to study in Germany, But for his scathing attack on Hinduism as well as his most creative view of Buddhism, he had to rely on translations and secondary sources. But his hunger for learning never subsided. He took up Pali studies in the 40s (Bellwinkel-Schempp forthcoming). Finally, his conversion to Buddhism as an universalistic and egalitarian religion was for him a liberating act as for many Dalits nowadays. Isn’t his conversion to Budhism the greater event to he commemorated by German indology and Sanskrit studies (Reproduced from the SAI Report 2003, Bulletin of the South Asia Institute, Im Neuenheimer Feld 3.30. D 69120, Heidelberg. Germany.)
Gama Ram. A-2/4 Paper Mill Colony. Nishat Ganj. Lucknow-2260006: This relers to your appeal on page 16 of DV Aug.1 regarding membership of Brother K. Siddajah, ex-MLA of Karnataka. I have already sent MO of Rs. 400. Today I am sending another Rs. 1.140 The balance of Rs. 1,500 towards his lite membership will be cleared shortly. You know Lama pensioner and retired on 31.1.82 when my total emoluments were Rs. 2.300 pm.
Navamurthi@yahoo.com: The “World Development Report 2006” released by the World Bank (Sept 20, 2015) vindicates the positions of Periyar E.V.R. and Amartya Sen on the importance of social justice. The World Bark calls it “equity”. It is undoubtedly a “radical” shift in the World Bank’s position: from “trickle-down” to “trickle-up” development. One of the co-authors of the Report described an experiment conducted with groups of children in India to determine the influence of caste and stereotyping on their performance:
Here, what they did was the experimenters got groups of children, six at a time, always three kids from a high caste and three kids from a low caste, and asked them to fill out a mare, and if you filled out the maze correctly, you got a rupee in the piece-rate treatment: you got 20 rupees if you were the guy who filled out most mazes.
The experiment consisted of doing this, sometimes telling the kids what their castes were and sometimes not telling them what their castes were. And the remarkable result is that when you didn’t tell them what their castes were the experimenters found that the high caste and low caste children did exactly the same, whereas when caste was made salient and announced, and the kids knew that they wore high caste or they were low caste compared to others in the group, there was a statistically significant difference between the low caste and the light caste Notice that the high caste didn’t go up very much, it’s the low caste that lost. And therefore, in aggregate terms for this society, there is an aggregate loss. There is a loss in performance, there is a loss in productivity, that comes. from the impact of stereotyping and segmentation. Further details in blog post on “Social Justice thru Equity: World Development Report 2006”.
End Brahman-Raj@yahoo.com: For the sake of nationalism, neither Pakistan nor China is our enemy. India’s biggest enemy is within India. The only obstacle in the path of strong India. Find out that sole enemy within. The biggest enemy is within India. After India’s freedom in 1947, the British were replaced by Brahminical Mobocracy or Brahminical Mafia Raj and as planned. For Brahminism’s sake the most popular mass leader and hero of freedom struggle. M.K. Gandhi, a Bania by caste, was dumped, sidelined by Brahmins. This is a well known fact and can be verified with reference to the magazine. Frontline (Feb. 11. 2005 p.88):
Mahatma Gandhi had, just few months before he was shot dead, said to one of those very close to him. Nirmal Bose, that he would have to prepare for another mass movement because the govt. of free India was no different from the Govt, of the British.
However, there is no proof to back up but what happened after Gandhi’s death, 1 mean Brahminical mafia Raj, the free India saw and is seeing it appears to be 100% true. Gandhi was the biggest and the sole threat to Brahmin Raj because only he (Gandhi) was capable of overthrowing, uprooting the Brahminical mafia raj the Day Gandhi would have decided. Gandhi’s success in South Africa plus he was not Brahmin but a Bania by caste. Because of these two factors the non-Brahmins felt Gandhi would free India from both evils/devils. British and Brahmins in one go. That is how Gandhi became the undisputed, tallest and the most popular mass lead target to push the non-Brahmins into the sea of poverty, illiteracy, disease, misinformation, blind faith. vulnerability because development means awareness of fundamental rights, which could have posed direct threat to Brahminical tactics to limit the access of all the resources for Brahmins only. To ensure this the policy of Brahminism was adopted and all high profile top jobs were given to Brahmins only. Brahmin agents present in politics, media, IAS, IPS, police, judiciary, education. religions, acted like secret agents for the cause of Brahmin Raj. Their main job was to keep non-Brahmin Indians hungry, naked, sick. Very complex rules and regulations for all departments were cunningly crafted to keep the non-Brahmins at bay. But these complex rules did not apply to Brahmins and those willing to pay bribes. Tactics was to crate a gulf. All this would have been impossible had Gandhi must alive.
Sri Siddharama Swami, Naga Noora Rudrakshi Mutt. Shivabasava Nagar. Belgaum-590010: I have received Dalit Voice along with your books Brahminism. Marathas Declare War on Brahminism, Hindu Terrorism on Minorites and felt very happy. I appreciate you for educating the Dalits, awakening them and liberating them from Brahminical clutches. Please continue your work of enlightening the Dalits who are oppressed from centuries. I pray Basavanna and other Sharanas to give you more energy in your work.
