[Reader-list] Fwd: Bihari filth and Bihari angst

[Ravikant]

A friend wanted to share this with the list. Enjoy.


Ravikant 

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: 
Date: Friday 28 Jan 2005 8:44 pm
From: "manoj kumar" <tomanojmishra at rediffmail.com>
To: ravikant at sarai.net

The Biharies of our parents' generations had passed us many anecdotes related
 to the involvement of Bihari leaders and political activists in freedom
 struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders. We have grown up on the
 stories of Yogendra Shukla, Jay Prahash Narayan, Sahajanand and other
 leaders. But in the second freedom struggle, which has been led by Reverend
 Advanijee and started with the Ram Janm Bhoomi Movement, Biharis are so far
 elusive. Like the first one this second freedom movement also has several
 phases.So far- Demolition of mosque, Pokharan Explosion, Kargil, Gujarat's
 ethnic cleansing. During the last Cleansing Operation some dirty Biharis,
 who piss and shit everywhere and make every Indian city stinking, right from
 Delhi to Ahamadabad, had been burnt alive in Best Bakery with dirty Muslims.

Dirty may be, but Biharis have role to play in the Neo-Nationalist Project. So
 here is the role envisaged for them (us  ..ssh..  Should I include myself
 and use first person pronoun--"us"?)

I am quoting from a book which I have read recently. The writer Joseph Alter
 has a different conclusion to draw from this anecdote, but amidst Bihar
 Assembly Election-2005, when Bihar, Biharis and Lalujee is the talk of the 
town,  I can only read the passage as a Bihari, keeping all other possible
 identities aside. You are free to read the anecdote the way you
 like.

"On the train from Delhi on July 1, 1999, I was talking with a young man, a
 Jain going to perform obligatory rituals in Haridwar. This young man owns a
 fairly successful computer repair and assembly company in capital and is an
 active member of the RSS - Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(National Association
 of Volunteers, a militant pro-Hindu organization) - and the Vishwa Hindu
 Parishad( a militant Hindu organization).He is extremely proud of the fact
 that with his active support  these organizations were able to collect ten
 thousand liters of blood to support the troops fighting Pakistan
 infiltrators along the line of control near Kargil  in Kashmir." More blood
 than they bloody well new what to do with," he laughed. He is a self
 proclaimed skeptic and has nothing good to say about politics or diplomacy
 but is, through his training with RSS ,along with an intensive course in est
 - about which he could not say enough good thing - committed to self
 development, personal growth, public service and social reform. As an RSS
 volunteer he did not advocate nonviolence - the double negative is
 imperative. "Can you imagine," he pointed out with a sense of self confident
 cynicism, "a Jain who advocates violence? Do you know what I would propose
 as a solution to the problem of Pakistan? Get eighty crore Hindus, most of
 them from Bihar, take them to border, and have them shit and piss all at one
 time! Can you imagine the stink? All those Biharies in one place, shitting
 and pissing. I tell you, Pakistan would be washed away in a river of filth.
 I tell you", he continued, now warming to his subject, "this is a perfect
 Gandhian solution. Shitting and pissing are natural act, and there is
 nothing violent involved in shitting and pissing. And then when it is all
 over, the land will be fertile and those who are left can spend their time
 harvesting crop rather than fighting."

Alter, Joseph S. Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism.
 University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2000. Page-147.


It was Gandhi, who was much concerned about piss and shit, because perhaps
 intuitively he could sense the root cause of untouchability and unease of
 upper caste Hindus, especially male, with shit, piss. blood, cough, menstrual
 discharge and all. It was Lohia who once raised voice for rural women,
 easing out road-side and when some member started laughing the mercurial
 leader had given him a befitting reply. It was ShreeLal Shukla who, amidst 
the cynicism of 70s, gave description of women easing out on roadside in his
 famous novel 'Rag Darabari'. So friends, nothing natural about this very
 natural act. Calling it 'natural call' is in itself a cultural act. Yes,
 indeed, it's a political and cultural issue.
Could it be an election issue sometimes in future?

Manoj
Gent, Belgium
27 January 2005

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