Xref: utzoo news.groups:18202 soc.culture.indian:24462 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!srinath From: srinath@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Srinath Viswanathan) Newsgroups: news.groups,soc.culture.indian Subject: Re: talk.politics.south-asia: CALL FOR DISCUSSION Message-ID: <22561@unix.cis.pitt.edu> Date: 26 Feb 90 22:51:33 GMT References: <5231@brazos.Rice.edu> <0ZtK56e00WB90MQJJ8@andrew.cmu.edu> <22527@unix.cis.pitt.edu> Reply-To: srinath@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Srinath Viswanathan) Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services Lines: 57 In Article sa1z+@andrew.cmu.edu (Sudheer Apte) writes >srinath@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Srinath Viswanathan) writes: >> >> I would venture to say that most of the acrimony has involved >> Kashmir, which in turn has involved religion and in some sense culture, >> since it seems about to spawn soc.culture.pakistan. >Yes, and before Kashmir it was the elections, and before that it was >the Nepal embargo, and before that it was the '71 war... in what sense >are these topics "cultural" by any stretch of the imagination? We're >not saying, "don't discuss these problems," or that they're not >important---only that they deserve to be discussed on another >newsgroup, not on s.c.i. You left out that part of my posting where I >pointed out that the soc hierarchy is not meant for such debate, and >that the talk tree is. Or are you denying that many s.c.i.-ers don't >want to read long political debates? And that they are justified? >And that those who want to will also be better served by their own >group? It may be that your memory is better than mine, but I don't remember as much acrimony in the Indo-Nepal embargo debate as in the Kashmir debate or the cricket debate, for example. Also, would discussions of Indian elections really be the place for t.p.sa. It would seem to me that t.p.sa should confine itself to discussions of political developments that affect more than one country in the region. My response was mainly prompted by your reiteration that t.p.sa would address the acrimony in s.c.i. I fully believe that that is the wrong reason to form a new group. Good reasons might be a) political discussion is beginning to so overwhelm s.c.i. that other topics are becoming impossible to discuss, b) certain discussions don't fall within the charter. I do not believe that the discussions that have contributed the most to the acrimony are purely political in nature. On the other hand, they have almost always been India vs. Pakistan. The discussions on cricket are a good example. Thus, I do not believe that forming a new group, especially one that claims to legitimize India or Pakistan bashing (which is what most of the acrimony in s.c.i. consists of), is healthy, or a solution. >I hope I've been able to explain the idea a little better. Do you >think the charter needs to be modified to clarify this point? IMHO, yes. I think it would be better to state the objectives as what it will do within the confines of t.p.sa, rather than what it will do for s.c.i. >Thanks, > Sudheer. >----------------- >...{harvard, uunet}!andrew.cmu.edu!sa1z >sa1z%andrew@CMCCVB.BITNET Regards, Srinath srinath@unix.cis.pitt.edu