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From: raghu@ut-sally.UUCP (Raghunath Ramakrishnan)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: INDIA AND THE US MEDIA - A SUGGESTION
Message-ID: <1352@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Mar-85 05:42:41 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.1352
Posted: Thu Mar 21 05:42:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Mar-85 01:27:52 EST
References: <125@iitcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: raghu@ut-sally.UUCP (Raghunath Ramakrishnan)
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 34
Summary: 

In article <125@iitcs.UUCP> mazum@iitcs.UUCP (Pinaki Mazumder) writes:
>
>          appease the wrath of the Godess, her disciples in a demented
>          spree  would  ritually behead the innocent men and offer the
>          heads to the Godess and finally in a spirit of triumph, they
>          would  celebrate  the act with bacchanial cry. I was hurt to
>          see these shows, because they present our religion  and  our
>          Gods  and  Godesses  with diabolical overtones. But recently
>          after Indira Gandhi was felled down by  a  glut  of  bullets
>          fired  by  her bigoted Sikh bodyguards, the way their fellow
>          brethren at abroad have publicly  expressed  their  satiated
>          pleasure  with champagne, sweets, religious sword fights and
>          pledge for more heads, it became quite apparent  that  those
>          shows  were not over exaggerating or grossly misrepresenting
>          our religious propensities.
>

      'indiana jones' was an exercise in tasteless, inaccurate and 
     irresponsible titillation. some sikhs displayed an equal lack of taste  
     and responsibility. i'd like to point out that many non-sikhs behaved
     in an equally crass and disgusting fashion.

      to judge a nation's 'religious propensities' by the asinine behaviour
     of some bigots is neither fair nor accurate. an historically egregious
     parallel is the persecution of jews because some of them killed christ.

      our country has a history of religious tolerance, despite several
     violent and misguided exceptions. given our religious diversity, this
     tolerance is crucial if we are to survive as a nation. so let us
     remember the sikhs who regretted gandhi's violent death (inspite of the
     fact that they might have disliked her policies), and the non-sikhs
     who helped their sikh friends and neighbors during the riots. i don't
     know how many of them there were, but for all our sakes i hope there
     were many.