[Buddha-l] Jayarava's rave on the IE lingos

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joanna,

> It's not just  "a neat trick" as you say, Dan. This country
> subsidizes the small piece of land you refer to with billions of
> bucks each year. That being said, I shan't continue this as a debate ...

Of course not. That's how myths work. It's already "understood," never to be
questioned -- carrying its own moral weight and conviction regardless of
reality. One can't debate against a myth.

The issue was the propensity of certain languages to violence these days.
Which of the groups in Kashmir speak either Arabic or Hebrew?

In the late 40s, early 50s the Muslim Kashmiris, backed by newly created
Pakistan, unleashed a major ethnic cleansing of the Hindu Kashmiris, killing
over a million according to some estimates, and driving many Kashmiris into
exile, where most still remain. The Muslims in Kashmir actually did to their
Hindu brethren what the myths accuse Israel of doing back in 1948 -- though
even while words like "genocide" and "apartheid" are bantied about
promiscuously, no one yet has had the imaginative audacity of accusing
Israel of killing a million arabs (no where close, after 60 years of wars).
Is Washington, or anyone, working hard to return the Kashmiri Hindu exiles
to their homeland? Why not? Preoccupied with another piece of real estate
perhaps?

That some Buddhists remain in the eastern Himalayan region of Kashmir
(Ladakh, etc.) is fortuitous. A palpable difference in cultural orientation
is noticeable there from other parts of Kashmir, but that can hardly be
ascribed to native tongues.

Dan