"Youre a hateful writer"

I do occasionally put up feedback received and my replies, if any, here. Many of them are those that disagree. This is not to say there have been no positive responses; it is just that these give a glimpse into a more varied mindset. Positive and negative are anyway relative terms.

The following did not deserve a personal response and came from someone trying to sound like an organisation.

On the fatwa piece

Youre a hateful writer. I was so disappointed to read your disturbing diatribe against muslims and their community leaders. so hateful, so drirty. Shame on you. Who pay you to produce this kind of text?

Damn. If only I knew where to get the monies from…Well, all I know is that Swami Ramdev will get lots of business from the Muslim fraternity for learning how to blow their noses.

As for the “community leaders”, here is a report from today’s papers:

Six days after the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind passed a resolution asking Muslims not to sing Vande Mataram on the grounds that it was “un-Islamic’’, the community’s clerics have reportedly softened their stand. The change of heart came after spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar visited Deoband on November 8 and met Jamiat leaders.

After the meet, the ulema said they did not have any objection to the national song and had left it to the conscience of Muslims who could decide for themselves whether they wanted to sing the song or not.

So ask these hypocrites, Mr. Letter Writer, who is paying them.

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Sometimes, correspondence is really worth it and makes one feel that what one is doing isn’t so bad. Not for me, at least!

The next was unexpected, although I have indeed corresponded with quite a few academicians. It is from someone who knows Structuralism enough to hate it. We have had a bit of an exchange and here it is without naming the name.

On The Savage Mind

Farzana, you are much too kind to Levi-Strauss's incomprehensible fog.

Marvin Harris was a scientific anthropologist & Levi-Strauss's greatest critic.

Harris takes the Gallic charlatan's know nothing structuralism to the woodshed for a thorough thrashing in Cultural Materialism (chap. 7).

There are thousands of academics still pretentiously spouting the rancid bullshit of structuralism.

Reply:

I am kind and do believe that all fog does not denote winter, so one must meander through the mist.

There are anti-Structuralists as there anti Freudians or anti anything, and there ought to be. I was, in my own little non-academic way, trying to question some theories...it was part tongue-in-cheek.

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Structuralism turns anthropology into a delight for literary poseurs.
Try Marvin Haris's expose.

Reply:

I delight in exposes. According to your theory, anything construed as a delight is anathema, or logically ought to be from your perspective on poseurs. Whether it is Levi-Strauss or Harris, they are taking a position which might be deemed as a posture for one critiquing it, which would in turn be seen as posturing. It is a clique of charmed intellectuals, and for an outsider, whose primary interest lies in the human as animal, social creature and sublime wannabe, anthropological analysis can come from the toenail of an ape and I’d be happy. Or, delighted?

I only wish you had noticed that I used the Structuralists paradigm to explore the mundane. Not too many academicians are interested in it, but it might surprise you to know that many of us live it.

Having said this, I appreciate your position and almost proselytising fervour. Harris is a lucky god!

Mine is more like Margaret Mead’s:

“Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.”

~F