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PURETICS...

PURETICS...


Interesting Findings And World Unfolding Through My Eyes.

Monday, May 14, 2007

What Happened in Baroda Is Not Form Of Fascism?

Ranjit Hoskote reacts to the Hindu fundamentalist intrusion at the Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda. He asks whether these fundamentalists would go ahead with moral policing and destroy all our cultural heritage.?.............................


"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
The Wikipedia article then quotes Paxton as summing up the essence of Fascism thus:

1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination.
I shall end by quoting the end of Ranjit Hoskote’s fine piece:

It appears that the champions of a resurgent Hindu identity are acutely embarrassed by the presence of the erotic at the centre of Hindu sacred art. As they may well be, for the roots of Hindutva do not lie in Hinduism. Rather, they lie in a crude mixture of German romanticism, Victorian puritanism and Nazi methodology.

What happens next? Will the champions of Hindutva go around the country destroying temple murals, breaking down monuments, and burning manuscripts and folios?


More at:http://www.artconcerns.com/html/baroda1.htm

Posted by Ajay :: 4:16 PM :: 0 comments

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