A testament to values of peace, unity, and harmony
Ram Mandir Day: With the upcoming Pran Pratishtha ceremony at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya scheduled for January 22, 2024, preparations are not only in full swing in India but are also making waves globally. In a notable gesture, the towns of Oakville and Brampton in Ontario, Canada, have officially declared January 22, 2024, as “Ayodhya Ram Mandir Day.”
The mayors of Oakville, Rob Burton, and Brampton, Patrick Brown, acknowledged the long-standing aspiration of the Hindu community and emphasised the cultural, religious, and historical significance of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir inauguration on this date. Describing it as a testament to values of peace, unity, and harmony, the local governments have chosen to commemorate January 22, 2024, as a special day in honour of this momentous occasion.
So they’ve simply never heard of the intercommunal riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid? In which thousands of people were killed? Those values of peace unity and harmony?
After a wait of 500 years, the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is set to take place on January 22, 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the Pran Pratishtha ceremony, marking the culmination of centuries-old dreams and aspirations.
Who wrote this bilge? Modi himself?
H/t Seanna Watson
Nobody has “waited” 500 years for this. The few Terran species actually capable of waiting that long aren’t aware of the wait, and wouldn’t care. This little shindig is not going to show up on the radar of either Geenland Sharks or Bristlecone Pines. The only reason that people are worked up about this is that they’ve been recruited into a pointless, multi-generational grudge.
This grand opening is not fulfilling any great need. Nobody is going to die if it doesn’t go ahead (though it apparently required several thousand deaths to take place before it could proceed). The world will still keep turning without this “FUCK YOU!” to Indian Muslims. It’s not like holding your breath, or having to wait for a drink of water, or a bite to eat. It’s not that important. If you’d never heard of this, you’d never know, and you wouldn’t miss it. That this event is freighted with such meaning is as artificial an occasion as one might concoct. You could cancel it altogether and nobody would suffer, just as nobody gets hurt if you “desecrate” a holy book, or burn a flag. Any “pain” or “hurt” is purely performative, for the benefit of others, so that you can be seen to approve and disapprove of the same “correct” things as the rest of your in-group.
If you’re not already inculcated and invested in the import of the dedication, it’s completely pointless and irrelevent. The same could be said of pretty much any “national” or “religious” celebration. It’s not a bad thing to remember and commemorate positive aspects of one’s culture and society, assuming they really are positive. But if the symbols and celebrations take over, becoming more important than the actual values and practices of which they’re emblematic, then they are emptied of whatever meaning they might have had.
Why bother protecting a flag if you’re going to subvert and destroy the freedoms it is supposed to represent? If you don’t hold someone to their Oath of Office, why even have someone say it? Is your “holy” site still holy if you’ve murdered thousands of people to “reclaim” it? Is your book really worth killing people for? If your book claims that it is, that’s a mark against it, not for it, and a good reason to drop it altogether.
How’s the global decolonization effort going? Things better now?
“This grand opening is not fulfilling any great need.” YNNB #1
Ah, but there is an election coming up
Forging a Hindu Nation in India
The Globe and Mail Jan. 20, 2024, O1
that the BJP wants to win.
Interesting word in this article: ethnonationalism.
Orban, Rishi Sunak (Brexit; ‘boat people’ immigrants exported to Rwanda), Modi, Ergodan, Xi, Putin …
I have not put Trump in this list. His only ‘ism’ is Trumpism.
Shouldn’t Bibi be on that list too? I rather think Likud and BJP are cut from the same cloth.
Blood Knight in Sour Armor #4
“I think this nobility argument or a greater nation for a persecuted people is a pretext to eject all unwanted foreigners.” The character Akiko Fumeti, barely tolerated by other female students and who tells Noa “Perhaps you didn’t think about these books long enough”, speaking on p. 279 of Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
Noa later (p. 280) ponders “Was it possible that Eliot was suggesting that foreigners, no matter how much she admired them, should leave England?”