continued from the Mutiny...

Eternal Truth from the Mutiny had this to say:

http://mutiny.in/2008/09/16/should-we-take-up-arms/#comment-59884

My response follows:

Eternal Truth,

While I agree with your first 3 paras & your 5th one, I am in total disagreement with what you state in your 4th paragraph. AGAIN, it points to what Yaamyn was saying in his post, and what I have always maintained: You see what you want to or have been taught to see. That is called Prejudice.

Or it could also stem from a fairly innocuous lack of information or perspective, which I am hoping to supply here.

I think the Indian people as a mass have never been able to drop their personal local, cultural or religious identities as a whole. The blame for this doesn't fall only on one community!

If you look closer you will find people with churkhis dangling behind bad haricuts. Sometimes you will see even worse... churkhis dangling behind entirely shaven heads!!! You will see naked upper bodies of men with potbellies protruding far out in front and male-breasts bouncing on the potbellies. You will see dhotis hanging so low that they threaten to fall off! You will see vermilion tilaks and sindoor proudly proclaiming their choice of relision/culture! You will see mangalsutras & ghungats!

In South India, you will see three stripes on each forehead and an elongated crescent over them!

In Punjab & elsewhere in the country turbans & beards (& kataars!) proclaim a different identity!

I think it is unfair & shameful of you to say that one community hasn't wanted to get integrated in the national mainstream; Or wanted to maintain a different identity, when every other community is guilty of the same! I also think that there are groups responsible for feeding you with this kind of propaganda & making you think in this manner.

I would very much like to hear from you again on this subject.