A Veiled Comment June 23, 2009

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken out strongly against the wearing of the burka by Muslim women in France.

“We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity,” Mr Sarkozy told a special session of parliament in Versailles.

Read more here.

Many Indian Muslim women in cities and small towns can barely veil their disgust over French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s comments on the burqa. From the college lecturer in Mumbai to the young married woman in Bihar’s Munger to the student in Lucknow — all say the burqa is an article of faith, a pillar of support.

“It is so embarrassing that a head of state can make such an ill-conceived statement. There’s simply no compulsion to wear a burqa,” says Jamia Millia geography professor Haseena Hashia, member of Muslim Law Board.

Many Indian Muslim women in cities and small towns can barely veil their disgust over French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s comments on the burqa. From the college lecturer in Mumbai to the young married woman in Bihar’s Munger to the student in Lucknow — all say the burqa is an article of faith, a pillar of support.

“It is so embarrassing that a head of state can make such an ill-conceived statement. There’s simply no compulsion to wear a burqa,” says Jamia Millia geography professor Haseena Hashia, member of Muslim Law Board.

Read more here.

I think it’s something tricky France is attempting to do. You can’t really separate religion from the culture that accompanies it. And I think India’s long since accepted this.

Don’t get me wrong. I personally would never cover myself from head to foot just to “protect” myself from someone else’s “evil intentions”. I think it’s the one who has “evil intentions” who should probably wear blinders or a blindfold to keep his evilness in check. But if someone thinks a burqa works towards protecting them, who am I to judge? How is that any different from me driving to the grocery store that’s maybe half a kilometer away just because it’s “after dark”? It’s not any safer, really. But it surely makes me feel better.

Just as my not wearing tank tops and shorts and looking terribly out of place in the American Summer doesn’t make me oppressed, I don’t see why an educated woman making a free choice to wear a scarf or veil should be judged as oppressed.

I think it’s time the burqa was judged more for how it makes the woman feel than how it makes the observers feel.

From The WSJ Opinion April 24, 2009

Here’s something “the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush” wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It would be good to hear some comments from you guys on it. One line that stuck out…

In London, he [President Obama] said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by “just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy” — as if that were a bad thing.

As if that were a bad thing…

I really wish the WSJ would stick to economics.

Manmohan vs Advani – II April 13, 2009

The pointless verbal battles of these octogenarians (give or take a few years) never cease to amuse me.

What right does Manmohan Singh have to talk about the Kandhar episode? Delhi, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Assam… And not to mention the ludicrous failure of administrative machinery Mumbai was… For five years, it seemed no city in India was safe. Dr. Singh should pick a better issue than National Security to attack the NDA on. He might also do better to brush up on some details of the international pressure India faced during the Kandhar episode.

What right does Advani have to talk about strength of will? Gathering troops of maniacs and demolishing a mosque seems to be his level of comprehension of strength of will and execution.

The Congress could do better than to harp on their diplomatic triumphs. Someone should remind them that Pakistan has not yielded an inch on Mumbai yet. Indo-Pak relations were a million times better with Vajpayee and Musharraf.  The animosity was open for all to see. But we still played cricket with each other. Now we don’t do that either.

At the end of it all, I think I preferred the old NDA to the current UPA. At least they kept us a little more safe. From the terrorists and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the endless reservations that killed the aspirations of a small town student who is about as economically backward as the officially backward guy.

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Disclaimers:
1. I trust the allies of the BJP to keep it from getting too communal and the RSS type organizations to keep it from ever instituting religion based reservations.

2. Not too sure if the new set of allies are as trustworthy as the old. The two best ones – BJD in Orissa and TDP in Andhra – seem to be gone.