| October 11, 2007 | Thursday | Ramazan 28, 1428 |
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A salad bowl going stale
ON most counts, New York is a salad bowl of agreeable values representing diverse cultures.
Recently, two of its respected institutions exhibited abusive language towards elected representatives from Iran and India, which didn’t seem to do justice to the city’s tolerant image. The New York Times carried a full-page ad of scurrilous allegations on Saturday against India’s Sonia Gandhi.
From the bias of the expensive insert it seems to have been placed by right-wing Indian expatriates who, for tactical reasons, masquerade as devotees of Mahatma Gandhi. Last month, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was hectored and abused by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, a case of a worthy host losing his shirt at a respected guest.
How a newspaper as old and seasoned as The New York Times could carry the ad defies logic. It accuses Ms Gandhi of wrongs, which include helping terrorists, converting Hindus to Christianity, and mind you, ‘requesting clemency for Afzal Guru’ the Kashmiri convict sentenced to death for alleged involvement in the December 2001 attack on India’s parliament.
‘Her party has shown religious intolerance towards 900 million Hindus by blowing up Rama Sethu, an ancient Hindu heritage monument,’ claimed the ad completely out of sync with the facts. ‘This is similar to Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas,’ it said. The text is not just libellous; it is tasteless and unworthy of The New York Times the way we have known the newspaper all these years.
That Hindu fanatics in America have been trying to align with right-wing Jewish lobbyists in a common cause against Islam and its non-Muslim sympathisers is well known. But what has gone wrong with the good newspaper in question? The pitch of the ad is aimed at a rabid audience. That’s clear.
It accuses Rajiv Gandhi of being on the KGB payroll, and Sonia Gandhi of profiting from Iraq’s oil-for-food programme. ‘Before entering India, she was an au pair with modest means. Since then, she and her family members amassed millions through questionable means.’ Has NYT gone loopy to publish the claim that since Gandhi ‘came to power, there is a crusade to Christianise India at the behest of international missionary enterprises’?
There could have been many arguments, including a few valid ones, about why Sonia Gandhi may not have been the best choice to represent Mahatma Gandhi’s India at the UN General Assembly when it met on Oct 2, his birthday, to declare it International Non-Violence Day. Gandhi’s party has blood on its hands in the massacre of 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.
Far from ‘Christianising’ anybody, her Congress party is working hand in glove with right-wing politicians, many of who have defected from quasi-fascist Hindu groups to swell its ranks, particularly in Gujarat.
In other words, the Congress is on its way to becoming the blue team of the BJP, nursing, if not openly practising yet, a rabid ideology. Also, while her party still keeps Gandhi’s spinning wheel as a symbol, it has done everything to curtail the rights and sources of livelihood of the poor with neo-con economic policies.
And finally, Gandhi’s party is an advocate of India’s nuclear arsenal, a contradiction with the avowed non-violence of the Mahatma. These are some valid criticisms that could have been raised to question anyone’s credentials to speak for Mahatma Gandhi. But then, who can educate neo-fascists about the instant appeal of sober criticism?Columbia University is another hallowed institution of New York, and yet its approach with President Ahmadinejad told a different story. True, the Iranian president represents a rightist revivalism of sorts. His bona fides could always be questioned in a debate at Columbia, which usually allows both sides in a dialogue to have their say.
But Bollinger opened the programme with an abusive introduction in which he berated Ahmadinejad for allegedly calling for the annihilation of Israel, denying the Holocaust and supporting the execution of children. He also told the leader of Iran that he resembled ‘a petty and cruel dictator’. Was the last line strictly necessary?
We can understand if Iranian students and professors were to accuse Ahmadinejad of being a dictator. That would be quite in order for that’s the sovereign right of every Iranian fighting for democracy. In fact, there may be millions of non-Iranians worldwide who might agree with the description of Ahmadinejad as an intemperate man, who knows. But you don’t invite someone to speak at a prestigious university and let loose a volley of abuses at them. ‘You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,’ Bollinger told the president. ‘Will you cease this outrage?’
Anyway I was glad to read a polite rejoinder by seven chancellors from Iran’s universities to Bollinger. Each one of the 10 questions they posed in the letter has rankled many of us at some given time.
‘Your insult, in a scholarly atmosphere, to the president of a country with a population of 72 million and a recorded history of 7,000 years of civilisation and culture is deeply shameful,’ the Iranian missive says. ‘You asked the president approximately 10 questions. Allow us to ask you 10 of our own questions in the hope that your response will help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth.’
Let me summarise the key questions.
Why did the US media put Bollinger under so much pressure to prevent Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? Why did the US administration overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and support the Shah’s dictatorship in 1953? Why did the US support Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and against his own people?
Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognising it? And why does it oppose Iran’s proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum? Why has the US military failed to find Osama bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment? How can Bollinger justify the Bush administration’s efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the Sept 11 attacks?
Why does the US administration support the Maoist Mujahedin-i-Khalq organisation despite the fact that the group has accepted responsibility for massacres in Iran and Iraq? Where are the weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be stockpiled in Iraq? Why do America’s closest allies in the Middle East come from extremely undemocratic governments with absolutist monarchical regimes? Why did the US oppose the plan for a Middle East free of unconventional weapons in the recent session of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors despite the fact the move won the support of all members other than Israel?
Why is the US displeased with Iran’s agreement with the IAEA and why does it openly oppose any progress in talks between Iran and the agency to resolve the nuclear issue under international law?
‘Finally, we would like to express our readiness to invite you and other scientific delegations to our country…You can be assured that Iranians are very polite and hospitable toward their guests,’ says the chancellors’ letter to Bollinger. The question here is not merely about Sonia Gandhi or Ahmadinejad, or about Jews, Gentiles, Hindus and Muslims turning rabid. The question really is about the salad bowl getting rancid.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
