Regular readers may remember an older post on the debate sparked by the very public exchange of words between Ashish Nandy and Sanjay Subramanium on secularism in India. Subramanyam has since then responded to Amit Chaudhuri’s rejoinder in The Telegraph.
An interesting new weblog called Locana provided a good overview of the conversation so far and the blogosphere’s reaction to it.
Locana feels that Subramanyam has made his point well. (In that, he agrees with Amardeep Singh, who too felt the same, although he has a few significant caveats of his own in his post).
My views on Subramanyam and his debating tactics are closer to Chaudhuri’s which he expressed in a later article (you have to use the text box on top of the page to select August 14, 2004 and then click on ‘Opinion’ using the right hand menu to find the the Chaudhury article). I would like to think that people may be letting their agreement with the position that Subramanyam has staked out (i.e. a defender of secularism) cloud their judgement on the quality of his argument. Subramanyam uses that secure perch to attack a broad range of subject matter ranging from Tagore (as a kid who grew up on Tagore, I found that last unexplained slur rather offensive) on one hand to what he considers colonialism friendly literature on the other.
Since I have not read any of Nandy’s books, I would refrain from commenting on the merits of the Subramanium’s innuendos (that Nandi is ignorant, repetitive and a closet RSS supporter).
My main problem with Subramanium is his intellectual sleight of hand. Subramanium’s uses a variety of logical fallacies – ad hominem attacks, false cause, fallacy of many questions – rather than provide a disciplined argument.
Working in USA, I have seen Bush campaign employ slander very effectively; for the first three long years of their administration they had been very effective in shutting down dissent in USA. That sort of message discipline was originally practiced by the communists.
I lean towards the notion that the last few years of the revisionism and attacks have taken their toll. The secular liberal commentators in India feel under sieze and are in danger of coalescing around monolithic positions from which you stray at your peril. But it is still disquieting to see an Oxford don write a rejoinder in a newspaper so completely lacking in depth and so dripping with jargon and slander. The only charitable explanation that I can come up with is that Mr Subramanyam is a very angry man and his pent up anger and vanity washed out his inclination to engage on ideas.
The first time I read his piece in The Telegraph, I almost laughed and agreed with this headline. But rereading it now, I feel rattled enough to try to write something up and see if I can peddle it somewhere.