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Re: SRH-reorg.. No basis for accusations
I notice that most of Gopal's post was cut out, and if we're following
the standard pattern here, I should respond with something like "Why
did you snip the post, Ajayji? Can't you answer the points it raises?"
or something of a similar nature ;-)
However, I think that it's more useful to expand on what Gopal said,
since he showed that the claimed links between SRV and SRH are tenuous
at best. In fact, I would contend that it really takes selective
viewing of the facts to try to establish the conspiracies that some
people have claimed. Every time a new post is dug up as a "smoking
gun", the claim has been analyzed and refuted. Sometimes, it is the
proponents of the reorg who do the analysis, and sometimes it is not,
but in any case, I don't think a single one of these conspiracy claims
has gone unanswered.
To give an example of why I say it takes selective viewing, let me
show a case where Shrisha, Vijay and I _were_ actually proponents of a
newsgroup - soc.culture.indian.karnataka. As many of you know, the
predecessor was alt.culture.karnataka, and it had poor propagation at
many sites. We proposed the group (and note that we even added the
word "Indian" into the newsgroup name), and went through the necessary
processes. In the end, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the group,
and it exists today.
I examined the voting results just now. I did not find YES votes from
a number of people who are opposing the SRH reorg, and I'm sure that
if I wanted to make up my own conspiracy theories, I could. For
example, I could quite truthfully state "Ajay Shah, Raj Bhatnagar, Jai
Maharaj, Arun Malik, and Vinod Nair were not among the supporters of
SCIK." If anyone wants to verify this, you can see the vote results at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vivek/scikvote or search on DejaNews for
"result" and "soc.culture.indian.karnataka". Now, from this claim, I
could leap to all sorts of wild statements about "Indian unity" or
"destroying the Karnataka group", etc., etc. However, I would hope
that reasonable people would see through such conspiracy theories.
These claims of personal vendetta and petty politics is just a load of
garbage, in my opinion. In fact, let me describe an event which
occurred recently which should shed a little light on this
matter. I've been saying for some time that I want to reach a
compromise rather than taking this to the CFV stage. However, my
efforts towards a compromise have been less than successful so far,
since the only people who have spoken out about their willingness to
compromise have been the proponents. I mentioned earlier a phone
conversation I had with Vijay Pallod, a friend of Ajay Shah, wherein I
explained some of the rationale of the RFD to him.
At that time, Vijay Pallod and I also discussed the possibility of
having an HSC at Rice, and we decided to keep in touch. A few days
ago, there was a regional HSC conference in Houston, and Vijay Pallod
told me about this. I decided to attend, and this would give me an
opportunity to meet Vijay Pallod. For most of the conference, I spoke
with various HSC officers and members. Toward the end of the
conference, Vijay Pai and I met Vijay Pallod, who introduced me to a
few other gentlemen. I'd never met any of them before, and I thought
that I might recognize some of their names from the net. I didn't get
all of their names, but the ones I did get, like Sharad Amin, or
Dinesh Shah, or Susheel (forgot his last name) didn't ring a bell.
Vijay Pallod had told me that he'd spoken with Ajay Shah about this
meeting, and since most of these men arrived quite late into the
conference, I was relatively sure that they didn't want to discuss the
HSC with me. After a little talking, we went to a "back room", which
in this case was the kitchen of the day care facility where this
conference was taking place.
For the next 20-30 minutes, we discussed the RFD and what it entailed.
At first, the gentlemen were very keen on withdrawing the RFD, or
delaying it for 6 months to a year. They wanted to know who the single
person was who would be able to make that decision. I informed them
that there was no "head" in the group of proponents, and after several
tries of the same question, they wanted to know "Well, then, who's the
second-in-command". I informed them that they hadn't given me any good
reason to delay the RFD for 6 months, so this topic ended. They seemed
to have a hard time believing that one person wasn't "calling the
shots" on this RFD.
The group of gentlemen were very interested in the RFD, but when I
asked, not _one_ of them had ever read soc.religion.hindu or had
looked at the GHEN web site. Only one seemed to use his e-mail
regularly at all. The rest were concerned about "leftists", and some
wanted to make sure that this RFD wouldn't make it easier for these
"leftists" to speak their views on Hinduism. This whole newsgroup
seemed very much to be an issue of control to them, and I had to reply
that the best way to confront other views is not to stifle them, but
to argue effectively against them.
When I informed them that the current SRH setup doesn't allow for the
"control" that they had envisioned, they seemed a bit surprised at
first, but then replied that "Yes, but Ajay is the ringleader". At
this point, it made sense to me why a group of men who had never seen
a newsgroup were so keen about a possible reorganization which brought
in more moderators. They didn't want moderators who were "just normal
guys", but instead, they wanted moderators who were "ringleaders" who
would "save" Hinduism from the "leftists". I didn't pursue the issue
very much, but I made it clear that it would be unethical for a
moderator to suppress viewpoints which don't agree with his.
The rest of the discussion came back to many of the conspiracy
theories, and I was surprised that a group of people who had never
read soc.religion.hindu (or any newsgroup) were so well-informed about
the various conspiracy theories which had been floated on this group.
What was funny was that while they knew the theories, they didn't seem
to know that all of them had been answered. After we discussed two of
the common misconceptions about the SRH reorg, I decided life would be
simpler if they all read at least the RFD first. So, I offered to send
them a copy of the RFD and a copy of the reorg FAQ.
Only two of them had e-mail accounts, so I got their addresses and
sent them copies the next day. Before I left the conference, I spoke a
little more with Vijay Pallod. I emphasized that there was definitely
room for a compromise, and that Ajay could still be a moderator under
the reorg RFD. He told me that he'd be calling Ajay that evening, and
I told him I'd like him to convey that message personally. I don't
know if he did or not, but overall, the series of events was
interesting. I didn't think I'd end up in a "back room" with a group
of people talking about "power" as a result of the reorg RFD.
I guess that ultimately, it didn't have any effect, since there hasn't
been any progress on the compromise issue. At this point, I'm left
wondering what people mean when they continually talk of "Hindu Unity"
- does that mean that there's one view of Hindu Unity and that
everyone else has to "fall in line", or does that mean that many
voices can be heard, and when there are differences, there's room to
compromise? I seem to get the impression that a lot of the people I've
been meeting recently seem to believe in the former approach. I
personally don't know who is the one who dictates what is the
"correct" path for Hindu Unity, so I personally would like to let
everyone speak and then see if a consensus can be reached.
Anyway, on with the article.
In article <4cvjbp$4g@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
Ajay Shah <editor@rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu> wrote:
>Those who have followed SRV and SRH debates for a long time would readily
>recognize the word "proponent" not strictly in the newsgroup creation
>terminology "proponent", but as a "staunch supporter".
Muddling the terminology is pointless, and it seems to be intended to
confuse people.
>After all, in several of my messages, to avoid this confusion, I
>explictly stated that the proponents of SRH re-organization move are
>among the proponents/maintainers/staunch supporters of SRV.
>
>Gopalji, please let me know if the following comments are incorrect!
>
>On Tue, 9 Jan 1996, GOPAL Ganapathiraju Sree Ramana wrote:
>
>> In article <4csfms$its@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
>
>> (a) Fact #1 Proponents of SRH-reorg are NOT proponents of SRV
>> ================================
>> S Rao was NOT a proponent of SRV
>
>Shirsha Raoji was one of the people who drafted the charter for SRV, he
>in fact wrote to me before the RFD was posted,
But that doesn't make him a proponent in the Usenet sense of the word.
>and he was among the first to "threaten" SRH re-org.
That is incorrect, Ajayji.
>> Vv Pai was NOT a proponent of SRV
>> Vj Pai was NOT a proponent of SRV
>
>But they were *very* staunch supporters of SRV, and one of them actually
Staunch supporters, yes. Proponents, no. I'm glad you are
acknowledging this difference.
>threatened/supported re-org move during SRV debate.
Once again, your conspiracy theory on this one was also shot down.
>> Mani V was NOT a proponent of SRV
>
>Maniji maintains the hardware part of SRV automoderation
Good - once again, I am glad you are being clear.
>> H Groover was NOT a proponent of SRV
>
>Maintains the software part of auto-moderation for SRV.
Yes, he does.
>Would you still want to claim no connection between SRH re-org "proponents"
>and SRV "proponents"?
That seems to be the case. The SRV proponents and the SRH proponents
are different people. It is this intentional confusing of the words
that forced me to add in a question in the FAQ about who proponents
are and what they do.
-Vivek
(submitted around Wed Jan 10 15:17:25 CST 1996)
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