From New York Times on this attack,

"The Hindus alleged that Muslim rulers had built their mosque on top of a temple that had marked the birthplace of a blue-skinned Hindu deity, called Ram".

Blue-skinned Hindu deity called Ram. How stupid is Somini Sengupta. Does she really believe that Ram had blue skin because hes depicted as such ?

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/international/asia/05cnd-india.html?hp

Harper’s magazine, July 2005, contains a horrific statistic: 44% of wounding or fatal terrorist attacks last year took place in India, only 32% in Iraq. Israel isn’t even close, nor Sri Lanka.

Given that it's Harper's, they probably count Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters. I'd really have to see the raw numbers.

(that's not to dispute that India and Iraq are also plagued by the Religion of Peace's less peaceful adherents...)

exhibit 1: the blast at the Delhi movie-theater showing the supposedly "anti-sikh" sunny deol movie.

exhibit 2: Ayodhya Temple attack.

To me, it looks like our misguided cross-border 'brothers' are still making desperate attempts to push down the "wobbling wall".

It is Somini Sengupta's prerogative to believe whatever she wants...should journalists always be atheists or non-Hindus?

Avinash,
Ram was not blue skinned. Blue skinned Ram is not a Hindu belief.

Al Mujahid, I too caught that stupendously silly remark about a "blue skinned deity". So much for reporting in the NYT. And Avinash, reporters in newspapers are supposed to state facts, not their beliefs...whether Sengupta believes that Ram was blue-skinned or not is besides the point.

Its the equivalent of a reporter for New York Times referring to Jesus as a blue eyed Jesus.

don't be too quick to dis somini, y'all. her editor could easily have put that in, as a "service" to the readers. when a correspondent for a daily paper files a story in a rush, he/she doesn't have time to review the edits. not everything that comes out under your byline actually comes from you. so please, give the sister the benefit of the doubt.

peace

Part of me is surprised that Sengupta made that mistake just because she would appear to be of some kind of Hindu background, and to me it's like, duh, of course He has green skin. But it's hard for me to judge how obvious that is for the avereage, typical, perhaps not all that religious Hindu Indian-American kid growing up here. I mean, the reason I know has more to do with my somewhat rarified Bengali Vaishnav upbringing--there's a specific story where the green skin specifically comes up. Most temple Deities are carved out of white marble or cast in brass, paintings are as often blue as green (you've got one ink for Vishnu and Krishna, so why not just use the same one for Sri Ram?), etc. I don't have my Amar Chitra Katha on hand, but I'm pretty sure they usually use their generic blue-skin ink. It's really easy to make the green look just terrible, so people usually stick to blue. My favorite Ramayan movie uses blue skin.

And other than asking your friendly neighbordhood purohit or Grandma, or actually digging out the Valmiki-Ramayan, I'm not sure how you'd go about fact checking this. Weirdly enough, Sri Ram isn't even in the SAJA stylebook.

I'm just saying, I don't think "stupid" is the right word here.

The real issue is, why use that sort of useless sobriquet anyway? It's not like that's what all Hindus think of when they're thinking of Ram. I bet most Hindus don't even visualize Ram as greenish OR bluish particularly. He's an Archer, He's a King, He's the Scion of the Sun-dynasty, He's supposed to be the exemplar of following duty above all else, etc. etc. In what Bharat Natyam dance have you ever seen His green or blue skin denoted? It seems like somewhat pointless exoticism to me. Ooh, those wacky Hindus with their COLORFUL gods . . . .

The real issue is, why use that sort of useless sobriquet anyway? It's not like that's what all Hindus think of when they're thinking of Ram. I bet most Hindus don't even visualize Ram as greenish OR bluish particularly. He's an Archer, He's a King, He's the Scion of the Sun-dynasty, He's supposed to be the exemplar of following duty above all else, etc. etc. In what Bharat Natyam dance have you ever seen His green or blue skin denoted? It seems like somewhat pointless exoticism to me. Ooh, those wacky Hindus with their COLORFUL gods ...

Bingo! Relevance? Zero.

right on, saheli. which goes again to my point: it's likely the editor who threw this in, not somini, who is a top notch journalist.

peace

Aight I won't front...I actually thought his skin was blue. Well not blue per se....I heard his skin was really dark so thats why they always draw him blue. But I didn't know it was really green.

On another note, was Shiv really purple, or has Amar Chitra Katha foiled me again?

was Shiv really purple, or has Amar Chitra Katha foiled me again?

I hear he was silver. If only they'd foiled him ;-)

I heard his skin was really dark so thats why they always draw him blue.

This is what I heard, too, albeit from a militant South Indian. anyway, regardless of what's written, i've always seen the vishnu avatars depicted as blue. i don't think i've ever seen them in green (not that that means much...just that i don't know if there's a "true" color). well, unless you want to just make him some shade of brown, which is what he was, unless he was anemic :)

i don't know if i buy the "somini sengupta couldn't possibly have been guilty of this" argument--i didn't really love her commentary in the south asians in new york video they show on pbs sometimes and i feel like i've gotten this lahiri-esque overly explanatory tone from her writing before (i can't cite any specifics :). But she's probably not that stupid or an ardent Hindu ideologue; i'd give her the benefit of the doubt that she meant "depicted as blue" not actually blue.

Anyway, to the topic at hand--mabye it makes sense on grounds of population figures that the number of incidents of violence would be higher in India than in Iraq or Israel given the population figures? Just speculation.

Also, I take issue with the title of this post. "Terrorism" is not a single phenomenon (at least in terms of choosing a target--as opposed to commonalities in method, etc.), despite what the Bush Administration and other governments might have us believe for their own purposes.

Here's Somini's SAJA profile.

Saurav, actually the first few lines of Manish's original post did make the distinction between the number of terrorist attacks and the number of people killed. I am not sure that the number of attacks needs to be necessarily correlated with the population of the country.
I too find it hard to swallow the idea that it is the Editor who managed to slip the "blue skinned" reference past Ms. Sengupta. Maybe she just took her Amar Chitra Katha pictures at face value...

Continuing the fascination with skin color, Lord Rama is depicted as blue-skinned (Neela megha shyama - color of dark clouds). AFAIK, the only green skinned persona in Indian scripture is Mahisasura the demon.

Saurav, actually the first few lines of Manish's original post did make the distinction between the number of terrorist attacks and the number of people killed. I am not sure that the number of attacks needs to be necessarily correlated with the population of the country.

No, he was connecting the methods used by the people committing the violence to the casualties (i.e. car bombs vs. molotov cocktails or whatever). Nothing to do with population. Anyway, I'm not sure either that that's the relevant difference between Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and India, but it might be one of them.

Another one might be the number of different insurgencies operating in India due to the sheer size and diversity of the place (which sort of subsumes the population argument) and the traditional unwillingness of the central government to grant more autonomy without an armed struggle (...I think...I'd be happy to be corrected on this). If you count Kashmir, the Naxalites, the Hindutvaites, what's going on in the Northeast, Khalistan violence, and things I don't even know about, it seems unsursprising...

unless, of course, we rely on the U.S. media, which only likes to significantly cover violence and public events in places of "strategic interest" to the U.S., which for some reason includes Northern Ireland but not Kashmir. To loosely quote Queens poet laureate Ishle Park, "I know that I don't know $hit, but I know that I've been systematically taught not to know $hit."

Here's some less-than-official hilarious send-up on Somini Sengupta, just to add some color to the discussion :)

"Ooh, those wacky Hindus with their COLORFUL gods . . . ."

On the money. by Saheli IMO. If I do a little psycho-analysis (its loved here in the west) May be it is Sengupta's self-hate. The embarrasment of having related to those "freaks" and their "freaky gods", so this is a way of distancing herself away from it.

you guys, with all respect, this is ridiculous. you need to stop hating on somini until you have a solid critique that you can back up.

(disclaimer, blah blah: somini and i have mutual friends. but i don't know her personally, and have never met her.)

somini is the first india correspondent of any major us paper to be a desi. by the identity politics standards that so many people like to fall back on, that alone should be reason to support her in her work.

leaving that aside, the kinds of accusations that are being tossed at her here from the sidelines are completely ill-considered and lack understanding of the context of working for a daily paper. first, as i mentioned earlier, a writer never has final control over the article. that happens in blogs, but not in dailies. whether she used "blue skinned," or didn't use it, or used it in some additional context that got deleted, we simply don't know. again, give her the benefit of the doubt.

(now, since that was the way it got printed, it's obviously fair game to go at the new york times for the subtext this kind of portrayal presents. i'm completely in agreement with saheli and the others on this. but again: don't hate the player, hate the game.)

second, i took a lot at the supposedly hilarious blog posting about her. again, a complete lack of context: both articles were for page 3 of the front section of the NYT, which regular readers know is often devoted to a specific kind of article ("letter from") where the writer is encouraged (required?) to stretch out.

moreover, you
could chop up any printed sentence
or for that matter
paragraph
into pseudo-poetic fragments
and chances are
that it would look
silly.

those of you who write, subject some of your own prose to the same test and see what happens.

furthermore, somini's journalistic record is excellent. she was most recently posted in west africa where she did some terrific work. much better than the typical reporting by american journalists in the region. there's every reason to believe that her overall record as south asia bureau chief will be the same.

if you wish to psychoanalyze the sister, go ahead, but you'd probably need a few more observations to make a diagnosis, no? go ahead, collect them, and come back with your findings, and then we can talk.

meantime, please stop hating.

peace

Hi Siddhartha, I am asking this question out of genuine curiosity and not sarcasm (it is clear from your webpage that you would know more about the working of newspapers than I would)...is it possible that an editor at a major newspaper could work in phrases into an article without approval from the author of the piece? I can understand that editing (of the punctuation sort) is possible, but the addition of phrases/adjectives? or even the re-arrangement of entire sentences?
On a somewhat related yet unrelated note, the movie review in verse of "Yes" by Anthony Lane in the 27 June issue of the New Yorker "http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050627crci_cinema" was quite fabulous.

who really gives a shite whether he's blue skinned or green skinned or dark skinned or purple skinned? It's like arguing whether Spiderman could beat up Wolverine. We are talking about an *imaginary guy* here. And as is obvious from the thread, there is hardly consensus over what color this *imaginary guy's* skin really WAS.

She tossed in an adjective. That's it. To go from that to say that Sengupta is "self-hating" is ridiculous. Seems like a lot of people here just want to cover their ears when they hear about another Muslim terrorist attack (surprise!) in India -- kill the messenger, I guess, if she brings un-PC news...

btw, love this BBC story on the attack. Straight from the lefty playbook.

Mention of "Hindu fanatics"? Check.

Blaming the attack on communalization by "Hindu extremists"? Check.

Total expungement of the religion of the perpetrators, who could not possibly be from the Religion of Peace? Check...

Just in case there was any doubt about the creed of the perpetrators, we have:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/2005/Jul/05/181_1421188,001300020001.htm

Although no militant outfit has claimed responsibility, Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) is suspected to be behind it, security sources said.

Pakistan, huh? Lashker-e-Taiba? Must be...oh...Quakers. Or maybe Buddhists.

And don't you just love the way they pulled out the thesaurus for this one? They're gunmen, they're militants, they're attackers....but let's not mention they were MUSLIMS!

(instead, let's get back to our regularly scheduled program -- focusing on the adjective rather than the substantive...)

Hi Siddhartha, I am asking this question out of genuine curiosity and not sarcasm (it is clear from your webpage that you would know more about the working of newspapers than I would)...is it possible that an editor at a major newspaper could work in phrases into an article without approval from the author of the piece? I can understand that editing (of the punctuation sort) is possible, but the addition of phrases/adjectives? or even the re-arrangement of entire sentences?

it's a fair question, mathematiker. it's very much possible, though clearly far from ideal. adding words, removing words, moving stuff around, and my pet peeve, using a purported "synonym" that ends up totally altering the meaning.

given the rush of deadlines, breaking news such as the material covered in the article we've been discussing, and so on, it's entirely possible that the author didn't get a chance to review the editor's work. it's also possible that the author is not the sole author -- material from wire services might have been incorporated as well.

again none of this is ideal, but all of it is possible.

and i will check out that movie review!

peace

you guys, with all respect, this is ridiculous. you need to stop hating on somini until you have a solid critique that you can back up.

All right, fine :) You're always so goddamn reasonable, siddartha. btw, I didn't know she was South Asia bureau chief though...when did that happen?

Anyway, I still say her commentary in that video on South Asians in New York wasn't her best work--I can't remember exactly what it was that bothered me, but it felt very unnuanced for someone who covers such things, has a greater degree of access to the communities than a nondesi reporter, etc. Anyone else seen it?

by the identity politics standards that so many people like to fall back on, that alone should be reason to support her in her work.

Or to shift away from identity politics standards towards evaluating the work of other desis with power on the merits (or our very unzen personal jealousies :)

I just wanted to say that I totally accept the phrase might not be Sengupta's (though if she's bureau chief. . .hmm), that it's an easy thing to mess up, that it might not even be messed up (though most Vaishnavs would say that Neela megha shyama - color of dark clouds -- applies to Krishna, and there are theological reasons for denoting the color variations between various avatars), etc. etc. etc. But I do think that, when taken as a whole, the coverage of papers like the Times gives a very skewed idea of who Sri Ram actually is to the hundreds of millions of people who believe in Him. Which is important.

As for the substance of the blogpost: this is a real problem. I often remind people that India was asking Americans to more actively fight terrorism long before 9/11. I think it's a real testament to the deep Indian desire to keep working and keep trying that this is a somewhat surprising statistic, and that it hasn't slowded India down even more. That famous not-so-controlled chaos keeps rolling out with effort. It's pretty impressive.

Patriotic, security-obsessed American that I am, I wish we two giant Republics would work together better, for some very pragmatic reasons. Butthough there's no good way to say that without giving people (like some of the commenters we've attracted) the wrong idea altogether.

BTW, let me take this opportunity to gratuitiously, again, plug the work of Susheela Raman's Love Trap which has an absolutely rocking rendition of a poem by Tyagaraj addressed to the Emerald-hued One.

oops...sorry for the absence....here is the google pics link for the search term "Lord Rama"...duh...that aint blue??...hmm..shall we suggest indigo??
And the point of my post was not whether Lord Rama was blue or not...it was this comment from Al Mujahid "Does she really believe that Ram had blue skin because hes depicted as such?" Thats why I said that she can believe what she wants...

gosh...not my day...herez the link

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2005-24%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=+lord+rama

Avinash,
I dont have a problem with her beliefs.
I have a problem with the exoticism of Hinduism and for that matter of all Non Western cultures in the US.
As I pointed out earlier, Jesus is usually depicted as blue-eyed and blond.
When the Church in Bethlehem was taken over by the Palestinian militants, I didnt see New York Times reporters referring to the Church of Nativity as the birthplace of a blue-eyed blond haired Jesus.

WRT Saurav's link , and Siddhartha's comments

those of you who write, subject some of your own prose to the same test and see what happens

The blog is actually employing a technique taught in poetry and creative writing classes, called "Found Poetry". Though Wiki's example is not very in-depth, I vividly remember an assignment where we picked an article from a major magazine (newsweek, whatever. I think I used Rolling Stone) and rearranged the text so that it would read like a beautiful poem, instead of an essay or article.

Nobody's hatin, just kickin some rhymes.

Yes, Sengupta is getting the Rummy treatment. Behold the poetry of Rumsfeld.

Like Rumsie's poetry? Take it home to grace your coffee table.

Better yet, crank it up on the stereo.

Seeing that there is still confusion on the actual color of (imaginary?) Ram's skin, I am here to enlighten you folks!

It's neither green, nor blue, somewhere inbetween. I have seen my mom refer to saris as having ramar color, aka mayil kazhuthu (peacock neck) color. It's a mixture of dark blue, dark green and dark purple - wonderful, isn't it?

The blog is actually employing a technique taught in poetry and creative writing classes, called "Found Poetry" ... I vividly remember an assignment where we picked an article from a major magazine (newsweek, whatever. I think I used Rolling Stone) and rearranged the text so that it would read like a beautiful poem, instead of an essay or article.

thanks desidancer, you make a good point. at some point when i am looking for a new way to procrastinate other than hanging around here with all you excellent people, i imagine i'd do well to subject some of my own work to this exercise.

Nobody's hatin, just kickin some rhymes.

would that it were so!

peace

Just goes to show you that there is violence and terrorism everywhere. I write about such things in my blog.

http://politicalcritic.com

It is less prevalent in developed countries, but in emerging, third-world nations, terrorism is rampant. Just recently, Sri Lanka flared up once again with the violent, gang-like, Tamil Tigers.