A ferengi's response to the ferengi

A ferengi's response to the ferengi
BERNARD IMHASLY

I cannot contest your right to appoint anybody you wish as your columnist. But as a foreigner who has lived in India for the last 17 years and who is married to an Indian, I do object to the title given to Fran‡ois Gautier's regular communal outburst as `The Ferengi's Column'. For it insinuates a representative foreigners' view of India which it most emphatically is not. It is narrow-minded and smacks of an intolerance with which we are all too familiar in these times, both in India and in Europe, but which is thankfully not the mainstream view of either.

That this intolerance is expressed in the same breath as a regular appeal to tolerance can only fool the credulous. The most recent column `A lesson from the Jews' (IE, January 15) is a case in point. Gautier gallantly calls for "truth and reconciliation" in the relationship between Hindus and Muslims. But how does he conceive of such a process? By repeating historical wrongs and heaping them on Indian citizens of a particular faith, holding them collectively responsible for whatever may have been perpetrated in the past.

As Gautier openly admits, by citing the Jewish reaction to the Holocaust, he wants to bring "a sense of guilt" which is supposed to act "as a deterrent to future atrocities". Does he seriously think that there is a chance for truth and reconciliation if one party keeps heaping abuse on the other? History as well as psychology show us that guilt is a bad counsellor. The recent attempts by some Jewish organisations in Europe and the US to use the stratagem of "guilt by association" has only resulted in a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. Conversely, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been successful precisely because it makes each party reflect on its own past, rather than seeking fault with the other.

Should this not be done in India as well? Chances that Gautier is open to such a process of introspection are, sadly, very slim. By identifying the fate of the tiny minority of Jews with that of 850 million Hindus -- and of the Muslim minority with that of a dominating "Herrenrasse" -- he betrays an inferiority complex which is symptomatic of the Hindutva right and explains its aggressiveness. The fact that such aggressiveness is coupled with the threat of a huge majority and the advantages of political power opens a daunting perspective. One can only take comfort from the thought that Gautier's views do not reflect those of the truly tolerant majority of Indians.