A Nation without an Identity

The ground reality:
In late 80s, Pakistan started using the following tools to create problems for India -

1. Cross-border terrorism with the help of uneducated & unemployed youth of Pakistan & Afghanistan.
2. Roping in Kashmiri youth later on by offering money and by brainwashing them in the name of religion.
3. Regular shelling in the border areas.
4. Intensifying anti-India campaigns over radio and TV.
5. Raising Kashmir issue before the international community by falsely implicating India.
6. Killing Kashmiri Pandits thus forcing them to migrate out of Kashmir so that Kashmir can be branded as an Islamic state.

I want to ask just one question: Where was the Kashmir problem before 1989?

Nowhere - because it had not been created by that time. Kashmir had a flourishing tourism business and was even more peaceful than any other Indian state. Terrorism and proxy war are the weapons being used by Pakistan in revenge for their 1971 debacle.

So there is just one solution to this problem. True Indians know that.

Re: # 20
I want to ask just one question: Where was the Kashmir problem before 1989?


Dear friend ! I quote `` Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.``

Kashmir: The tale of a besieged nation By Dr Ashis Ghosh

Tales of torture and custodial killings Statement by Women`s Initiative, Mombai

Cases of human rights violations By Tapan Bose, Committee for Initiative on Kashmir, Delhi

An open letter by Balraj Puri, chairman, RAC

The plight of Kashmiri women By Dr Ritu Dewan

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Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to his home to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage

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To quote Salma Tasadduque Hussain, a former member of the Punjab Assembly (1946-58) and a social worker, “It gave great encouragement to women to see that they could find a place of honour with men like Quaid-i-Azam....”

In the meantime, at Jinnah’s instance, the Muslim Women Students Federation (1941) and the Women National Guards (1942) were launched, in a concerted attempt to mobilize the womenfolk alongside the menfolk in the struggle for Pakistan. All this signified the acceptance of an entirely new role for women, and the breaking down of the male-female segregation and stratification syndrome and, more important, of the male domination in vogue till then because of the patriarchal mindset and ethos, which had ruled the subcontinental Muslim societal structure for centuries.

During the general elections (1945-46), the Muslim women

played a pivotal role. Women comprised almost one-third of the audiences in the election meetings in the Punjab, to quote Mian Mumtaz Daultana, the most dynamic Muslim League leader in the 1940s’. According to him, their role in getting the men voters to the polling booths was crucial, especially in the Punjab where the Unionist Ministry had put up all sorts of obstacles in the way of a favourable verdict on Pakistan.

More significant was the women’s role in the burgeoning civil disobedience movement in the Punjab (January-February 1947) and in the NWFP (February-June 1947). Women took out processions in Lahore day after day for a whole month, undergoing all sorts of hazards, bravely facing teargas, lathi-charge, beatings, arrests, and imprisonment.

One of the prisoners, the intrepid Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, made a green flag out of her own dupatta, surreptitiously climbed up the jail building and hoisted it on top, shouting “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is great) and “Pakistan Zindabad”.

Two weeks later, when a mammoth women’s procession finally reached the imposing Punjab Secretariat building, the seat of Punjab bureaucracy, at the fag end of the Mall in Lahore, a 13-year-old girl, Fatima Sughra, suddenly climbed up the massive iron gate, pulled down the fluttering Union Jack, the living symbol of imperial power, and replaced it with the burgeoning green Muslim League flag, which she, too, had made out of her own dupatta. And all this in the presence of a strong police contingent.

No less striking was the women’s performance in the NWFP, traditionally one of the subcontinent’s most conservative areas. During the civil disobedience movement, the usually timid and traditionally home-bound Pakhtoon women plucked up courage to a point that they cast off their veil and organized public processions and demonstrations, in defiance of Section 144.

Like their compatriots in the Punjab, they also faced teargas, lathi charges, beatings, and even gunfire; they also scaled ladders and climbed up buildings to hoist the League flag at various public places. And on April 3, 1947, some 1,500 women resorted to picketing, for the first time in the NWFP history. More daring: they launched a secret organization called a “War Council”, and ingeniously set up an underground radio station called Pakistan Broadcasting Radio Station, which continued to be on the air till Pakistan’s emergence on August 14-15, 1947.

Thus, within a brief spell of ten years (1937-47), the apathetic and timid, homebound, purdah-clad, and superstition-prone Muslim women had been able to transform themselves radically into a pro-active, vocal, highly motivated and mobilized group, supremely conscious of their latent potentialities for political and social action. Indeed, the Pakistan movement had enabled them to prove their ability to organize, demonstrate, mobilize, court arrest, face persecution, lathi-charges, and teargas, as well as to raise funds and organize relief work in time of crises.

Thus, they had raised sizeable funds during the Bengal famine (1943-44) and the 1945-46 general elections, and for the victims of the communal holocausts in Calcutta and Bihar (1946). They had also organized extensive relief work over there, as well as for the seven million refugees that had poured into West Pakistan during the partition riots in 1947.

It’s always crisis that catalytically helps to actualize the latent potential in a community no less than in an individual, and the Muslim crisis in 1937, when Muslim India had reached its nadir in their chequered history since 1857, had helped to cause this gigantic transformation in the mindset, ethos and behavioural patterns of both men and women.

It is an important fact that men gallantly went along with women in this emancipatory exercise — for the simple reason that the women could not have possibly donned this role without their full support. Thus Jinnah utilized the political mobilization route to put the male-female relationship on an even keel, and get women emancipated and empowered — to a point that it became routinized in Pakistan’s national life.

Simultaneously, if only because of their role alongside their menfolk, they had won the right to vote, to receive education, and to own property. In their emergence as a vocal, pro-active group during the momentous 1937-47 decade, Jinnah had helped them the most. He also acknowledged their notable contribution in the freedom struggle.

Upon Pakistan’s birth, therefore, he obviously felt that “In the great task of building the nation and maintaining its solidarity, the women have a valuable part to play -–– not only in their homes but by helping their less fortunate sisters outside.”

And he saw to it that women were represented in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, that they were included in the delegations to the UN and other international moots, and in the executive bodies of almost every organizational set up after Pakistan’s birth. Again, it was he who had inspired his own sister, Fatima Jinnah, and Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, wife of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, to found several institutions and organizations for the educational uplift, economic amelioration and professional training of women in Pakistan’s formative years.

Thus, a new matrix of socially acceptable behaviour on women’s part was firmly laid, which, with the years, enabled women to work their way up into the upper echelons of the government, the professions, and the educational and political fields.

It was, again, Jinnah’s benign influence that had emboldened Fatima Jinnah to contest against Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1965 presidential election. Inter alia, her candidature had settled, once and for all, the thorny question whether or not a woman can be the head of an avowedly Muslim state, thus paving the way for Benazir Bhutto to become the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country, in 1988. Equally important, Fatima Jinnah was probably the first woman in the world to contest for the office of the president of a country.

In contesting the election in the most difficult circumstances, compounded by advanced and failing health, Fatima Jinnah had, in a sense, dramatized Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan.

When asked, in 1942, by Geti Ara Bashir Ahmad, sister of Begum Shah Nawaz and daughter of Mian Mohammad Shafi, whether the “Foundations of our new State (would) be laid on conservatism or whether it would assume the shape of a progressive country”, Jinnah had categorically said, “Tell your young girls, I am a progressive Muslim leader. I, therefore, take my sister along with me to backward areas like Balochistan and NWFP and she also attends the sessions of the All India Muslim League and other public meetings. Pakistan will be a progressive country in the building of which women will be seen working shoulder to shoulder with men in every department of life.”

The author was Founder-Director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy (1976-89), and authored “Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation” (1981), the only work to qualify for the President’s Award for Best Books on Quaid-i-Azam.

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A niece remembers

Gulshan Chandio, the grand niece of Quaid-i-Azam, remembers him fondly. The granddaughter of his sister Marium who was very close to him, Ms Chandio’s memories of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Fatima Jinnah remain vivid to this day.

“A day before Pakistan came into being we arrived at Karachi from Bombay and stayed at Central Hotel, now long demolished. My mother rang the Governor House and Jinnah’s ADC informed them that they were invited to tea by the Quaid. He was extremely busy as they were preparing for Independence Day but he made time for us. Invited again on August 14 at the Governor House he came towards my mother to greet her. Such was his regard for his family.”

While residing in Bombay she and her family were regular visitors of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Gulshan remembers wearing a western dress to lunch with her mother to the Quaid’s house. He asked her to wear a gharara and she happily agreed to it, wearing one when she next went to his house for lunch. Once she bought some jewellery and showed it to him and he advised her to buy one big thing rather than little sets, so she returned it the next day. A connoisseur of furniture he pointed out a shop where her parents could buy good furniture for her elder sister who was getting married.

Gulshan remembers the honesty, integrity and caring for each other in Jinnah’s family. He didn’t like his relatives using his name to achieve their ends. Gulshan’s father firmly believed that Jinnah would be able to achieve the goal of creating Pakistan because of his honesty and principles. “Nehru and other leaders would come to visit him at his Bombay residence, he never went to them. People have misunderstood him saying he was distant, cold and arrogant but actually he was strong and principled,” she says.

Gulshan recalls that Quaid-i-Azam encouraged women to step into different fields of life and he always encouraged Fatima Jinnah to take part in politics. She once accompanied Fatima Jinnah to a meeting arranged by the Muslim league in Bombay.

When Gulshan heard that Quaid-i-Azam had died she was very sad and wanted to come to Pakistan right away but her father did not allow it as he felt that it would have created problems for the family in India. She did, however, visit Pakistan a few weeks later and stayed with Fatima Jinnah. Flagstaff House, she said, was like a home to her.

After her marriage she came to Pakistan permanently in 1952, and grew very close to Fatima Jinnah who had moved to Mohatta Palace.—Khursheed Hyder

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The Quaid’s family life

Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s first marriage was with Emibai in 1892. He was 16 and she was 14. Only nikah was solemnized and the rukhsati was to take place later on. Shortly after the marriage, Jinnah left for England. When he returned, his child bride had died. Struck by the tragedy, Jinnah didn’t marry for a long time. Years later in 1918, he married Ruttenbai Petit, daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit.

Ruttie Jinnah, as she came to be known after her marriage, was a firebrand a revolutionary like her husband. She was at his side during his struggle, braving police brutality when Jinnah led a demonstration against Lord Willingdon (the Bombay Governor). At a reception she greeted the viceroy in the native manner, the Viceroy told her: “In Rome, you must do as the Romans do”, to which she retorted: “That is exactly what I did your excellency, in India, I have greeted you the Indian way”.

Jinnah did not keep his wife under his shadow and in May 1919, she made her own speech protesting against the deportation of B.G. Horniman, Editor of the Bombay Chronicle. However, their marriage ran into difficulties. Why? We can perhaps gather a glimpse from her own words. She wrote to a mutual friend that “he has a habit of habitually overworking himself, and now that I am not there to bother and tease him, he will be worse than ever”.

Jinnah could not give her the time she wanted. When she died, he opened his heart out to Kanji Dwarkadas, who wrote that Jinnah never recovered from this shock and lost his cheerful disposition forever.

Their only daughter, Dina Wadia, was born on August 14, 1919. She married a non-Muslim against her father’s will; and for sometime there was estrangement. She phoned her father when he was attacked by an assassin in 1943. Later, she wrote to congratulate him on the achievement of Pakistan. She came to Pakistan on her father’s funeral and then, in 2004, after many years.–– Dr Mohammad Reza Kazimi

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A connoisseur with rich aesthetics

While political aspects of the life of Mohammad Ali Jinnah have been well researched and documented, his personal life is still largely shrouded in mystery. Even less is known about his tastes and personal interests. For instance, most people are unaware of the fact that he was a collector of the most exquisite and classical carpets.

Azhar Samdani, a foreign trained economist who developed rare expertise for restoring damaged period carpets, described him as a ‘connoisseur’ with rich aesthetics and an eye for quality. His opinion is to be taken seriously because all the carpets of Quaid-e-Azam displayed in Mohatta Palace were restored by him.

Samdani’s expertise led him to the Quaid’s carpets that the Lahore-based economist inspected during a visit to Karachi. They were faded and frayed. He decided to undertake their restoration.

He spent over two years trying to convince concerned officials that the carpets could be revived but no one was interested. However, the then federal secretary culture awarded him the assignment.

Jinnah, according to Samdani, owned about 120 carpets; each of them expensive Bokhara or Iranian piece of the finest quality, every carpet numbered and signed M. A. Jinnah; however, only 17 pieces were left by then. The other over 100 carpets had apparently been either stolen or plundered by officials, or so callously neglected that there was just no trace of them. He selected 11 carpets for restoration; the others had reached a stage where nothing could be done about them.

It took him more than three years to complete the job. It was a challenging assignment because many carpets had ‘only borders or corners intact that provided an idea of the carpet’s design’. The carpets are now on display in Mohatta Palace. — Z. S.

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We`ve come a not-so-long way

It’s become a common practise, when analyzing the state of the country’s affairs, to say how disappointed the founders of this nation would be with the country’s degeneration. Every year comes Jinnah’s birth or death anniversary, every commentator writes how he would have bemoaned the collapse of virtually every state institution or public sector had he been alive. The same is true for the status of Pakistani women on whom Jinnah placed a great deal of hope when he envisioned a progressive nation, where men and women would equally share the burden of building a strong and secure future for their country. While women have made great strides in various fields, on a socio-political front, their situation is deplorable —- and the onus of the blame lies with successive governments who did little to alleviate their lot.

It is particularly disappointing given that women made many contributions in the freedom movement and had remarkable female role models like Fatima Jinnah and Rana Liaquat Ali Khan who inspired younger women to achieve the impossible. Then there was the women’s movement, born as a reaction to draconian laws created by General Ziaul Haq that relegated them to second-class citizens, which dared to challenge the system. Women’s groups in the 80s’ galvanized support across the country to rise together against such discriminatory laws, and while they may not have met success in overturning these laws they were able to raise awareness and make their voices heard. The two Benazir Bhutto-led governments heralded new eras of promise but sadly did not translate into the necessary action that could have alleviated their plight.

While the two democratically elected governments of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had women in its assemblies, politics preceded women’s issues which were always relegated to drawing room discussions. When it came to crimes against women, for example, the right speeches were always made but when it came to changing discriminatory laws, nothing was done.

Oddly enough, it was a military dictator’s government which introduced the 33 per cent representation of women at local, provincial and federal governments that is bound to pave way for future generations of women. While this move, too, has not created any ripples as far as qualitative change is concerned, the mere fact that there are more women in parliament than ever before means that ultimately women’s issues will be forced into the foreground —- provided women parliamentarians are able to convince their male colleagues that their issues merit substantial consideration. As such, there is no powerful women’s pressure group or lobby that can challenge the status quo. Nonetheless, one lives on hope.

Changing laws is only part of the solution, for according to the Constitution and Islam, women and men are accorded equal rights but rarely are those instances implemented. For real change to occur, society has to be integrated into a debate whereby men are taught on the ills that customs like honour-related crimes bring upon communities. It is a woman like Mukhtaran Mai who has initiated that debate by challenging the system. She symbolizes the very woman that Jinnah would have been proud of. She represents the perennial hope that can brighten the country’s future.–– M. Khan

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A man of principles

Till today, we have not tired of making M. A. Jinnah’s personality elusive, creating a singular facet to introduce him only as a politician whose vision for this country has become a victim of self-interpretation. Historians have written about Jinnah’s politics, his statesmanship, often condescending mention is made of how Anglicized the country’s founder was. Not much is known, neither has the trouble been taken through academic research, to delayer and depoliticize the man who gave us an independent country on the world atlas.

Talk on Jinnah mostly revolves around the kind of republic he envisioned, Islamic or secular running high on debate is a deliberate attempt to diffuse his perspective on what his position was on women and their role in Pakistan’s progress. The three most important women in his life, his sister, Fatima Jinnah, wife Ruttie and daughter Dina Jinnah are usually mentioned in stereotypes to under-emphasize their importance. Fatima Jinnah is forced to a somewhat higher level than the other two because she was his official companion, consort and confidante till the very end of life. The other two have become a series of disjointed historical anecdotes, not to be analyzed for fear of drawing out Jinnah’s human side as a distressed father and an estranged husband.

Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage.

A man whose goal was to get an independent state believed first and foremost in independence of mind and action. His wife Rattie left for Paris when his objective became bigger than familial considerations and his daughter went to stay with her maternal grandparents. Jinnah did not summon legal or moral prohibition to prove a patriarchal point. Jinnah’s firm non-distinction between a man and a woman was obvious on many occasions.

Sarojini Naidu, the first woman president of the Indian National Congress and a nationalist poet, saw Jinnah “as a symbol of everything attractive about modern India”, (Mohammad Ali Jinnah —- ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity by J. Ahmed 1966). If Jinnah were an inflexible, dogmatic man given in to confer specific roles to women, a political force of Naidu’s stature would not have put down her praise in writing for him.

Sharing her views on Jinnah’s liberalism, Tahira Mazhar Ali, daughter of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, leader of the Unionist Party and prime minister of the Punjab in 1937, now in her early 80s remembers the founder of Pakistan not only as a fastidious and extremely well-dressed man but also as an articulate person. “He used to come to visit my father quite often in Lahore. He wanted women to participate actively in politics just as the men. He drew no boundaries, restricting women to their houses. He encouraged women’s movement for Pakistan and their role as equal partners,” recalls Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali.

As a 14-year-old Tahira Mazhar Ali bicycled her way to the Mamdot Palace in Lahore where he was staying to show him the pamphlet she was carrying for the Communist Party in which it had declared its support for an independent Pakistan. “I told the chowkidar at the Mamdot Villa to inform Jinnah that Tahira was there. He immediately asked me in and was amused to see a young girl carrying the Communist Party’s pamphlet. Not once did he make me feel inadequate or try to patronize me because of my age. He was very civil and nice and when I asked him if I was going to be able to meet my friends in India after partition his reply was very comforting. He said that I need not worry because I’ll be able to see my friends just as he was going to regularly visit his home in Bombay. That’s what he said! I remember it only too well! He was an upright, honest and fair person and not a conservative man against the progress of women as some would like us to believe,” asserted Mrs Mazhar Ali.

Support of Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali’s claim of how balanced Jinnah was can be found in Professor Akbar S. Ahmed’s Jinnah, Pakistan, and Islamic Identity, (1997). In the book, Professor Ahmed wrote about an incident related by Yahya Bakhtiar, a senator from Balochistan and a former Attorney General of Pakistan, which showed Jinnah’s non-compromising stance on the freedom of women. “….. in those days not even British male politicians encouraged their womenfolk to take a public role as Jinnah did. After Pakistan had been created he asked Fatima Jinnah to sit beside him on the stage at the Sibi Darbar, the grand annual gathering of Baloch and Pukhtun chiefs and leaders at Sibi. He was making a point: Muslim women must take their place in history. The Sibi Darbar broke all precedents……”

After giving up dentistry to help her brother in creating a homeland for the Muslims, Ms Jinnah attended the League session in 1937 and all the annual sessions from 1940 onwards. “Her life was centred around her brother and she was all the time concerned about his health,” comments Mrs Sarwat Ahsan, daughter of Syed Muratib Ali. “My father was close to Jinnah and he would often come to Nashaiman, our house on the Davis Road in Lahore,” says the 81-year-old Begum Sarwat who was a good friend of Fatima Jinnah.

Fortunate enough to have met Jinnah at the age of 17, Begum Sarwat makes an effort to invoke her first impression of the great leader. “He had invited my father and my brothers over for dinner at his house on Malabar Hill in Bombay. I also went because Fatima Jinnah was my friend. I can’t really remember what he and my father talked about, but I do remember Fatima by her brother’s side all the time. He treated her like a friend, somebody he could talk to and with whom he could discuss important issues,” recollects Begum Sarwar. “Fatima and I never discussed his wife and daughter, but she always spoke about how he encouraged her to be with him.”

Merging Jinnah’s politics with his person, the matter of his slant towards women cannot be left to mere speculation. In a country built to protect an individual’s freedoms and beliefs, his reaction to the existence of discriminatory laws against women despite his categorical statements favouring their equal status would have been shocking. He would have been clear on that score because Jinnah did not separate practice from preaching.— Shehar Bano Khan





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Jinnah and women’s emancipation


By Sharif al Mujahid
Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima Jinnah, to Muslim Leaque sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the elevating message of gender equality, writes Sharif al Mujahid


All said and done, Quaid-i- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a liberal, par excellence. To quote Hector Bolitho who had interviewed some two hundred persons who knew Jinnah personally, during 1952-54, “Jinnah told Dr K. M. Ashraf that during the last two years (1894-96) in London his time was ‘utilized for further independent studies for the political career’ he had already ‘had in mind’.”

Jinnah also said, “Fortune smiled on me, and I happened to meet several important English liberals with whose help I came to understand the doctrine of liberalism. The liberalism of Lord Morley was then in full sway. I grasped that liberalism, which became part of my life and thrilled me very much.”

It is obvious that his fascination for liberalism led Jinnah to subscribe to democratic ethos, and these, in turn, inexorably led him to become, perhaps, the foremost spokesman for civic freedoms and human rights in the Central Indian Legislature, of which he was a member for some thirty years. Even when his opponents were involved, he consistently espoused the cause of the aggrieved and pled for conceding or restoring them their basic, inalienable rights.

And as a corollary to his liberal ethos and this consuming concern with human rights was his passion for reversing the “wretched” condition of women, who stood marginalized not only in the pre-modern East but also in the modern West, in the decades before and after the advent of the twentieth century.

Thus, to quote Miss Agatha Harrison, one of the speakers at a memorial meeting for Jinnah at Coxton Hall, London, on September 14, 1948, “When Jinnah was a student in London, (1892-96), the Suffragette Movement was gathering momentum; but we had very few sympathizers and supporters. He always came to our meetings and spoke in defence of vote for women. Even then he was not afraid of championing an unpopular cause.”

Jinnah’s belief that women should be extended the opportunities available to men at various stages in their lives was amply reflected in his careful handling of the schooling and career orientation of Fatima Jinnah; his youngest sister and ward.

Much against the family and the community traditions, she had been sent to the Bandhara Convent School (1902), and then to the St. Patrick School (1906), both in Bombay, where she did her Senior Cambridge (1913), and, still later, to Dr Ahmad Dental College, Calcutta (1919-22), to study dentistry. There she stayed at a hostel, although her sister, Maryam, along with her family, was living in Calcutta.

Upon graduation, Fatima opened a dental clinic on Abdur Rahman Street in Bombay, in 1923, and simultaneously worked at the nearby Dhobi Talau Municipal Clinic on a voluntary basis. All this was, of course, something of a rare phenomenon even for cosmopolitan and modernized Bombay. But it was made possible; only because Jinnah believed that the women have an inalienable right to carve out for themselves a career.

During his long parliamentary career (1910-47), Jinnah stood against every sort of discrimination against women and other unprivileged classes. Thus, he stoutly supported Bhupendranath Basu’s Special Marriage Amendment Bill (1912), which provided for legal cover to marriages falling outside the Hindu and Muslim laws, although it caused consternation among Muslims — to a point that he felt that he could no more claim to represent them in the Imperial Council and, hence, decided to sit out in the 1913 elections. Likewise he had materially helped in the passage of the Sarda Act (1935), prohibiting child marriage.

However, Jinnah’s major role in the emancipation of Muslim women came in the mid-1930s when he began to reorganize and revitalize the moribund All India Muslim League (AIML), the most authoritative Muslim political organization since its inception in 1906.

Till then, the Muslim women were mere shrouded, silent creatures, confined to the four walls of their homes, steeped in dogma and superstition and denied the fruits of modern education, health care and a career. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the foremost Muslim to raise his authoritative voice against the pathetic conditions to which the Muslim women had been consigned for a long time, and against discrimination of all sorts.

He boldly and consistently espoused the women’s cause and wished to see them as equal partners often in all walks of life. No wonder, he declared in Aligarh on March 10, 1940: “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. I do not mean that we should imitate the evils of western life. But let us try to raise the status of our women according to our own Islamic ideas and standards. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable conditions in which our women have to live. You should take your women along with you as comrades in every sphere of life...”

When Begum Shah Nawaz told the AIML Council at Lucknow in October 1937 that she had set up a Punjab Muslim Women’s League, Jinnah stood up and said that he did not believe in separate men and women’s organizations, but in their working together from the primary League upwards. He instructed the provincial Leagues to include two women members in their respective quotas of membership in the AIML Council.

Thus, adequate women representation came to be secured and ensured. Jinnah also nominated Begum Mohammad Ali to the AIML apex body, the Working Committee, which position she held till her death in 1944.

In December 1938, at the AIML session at Patna, Jinnah appointed a Central Women’s Committee with Fatima Jinnah as convener, for the specific purpose of drafting a programme for the social, economic and cultural uplift of women.

When the question of purdah (veil) was raised by a section at Patna, Jinnah intervened to emphasize that “It is absolutely essential for us to give every opportunity to our women to participate in our struggle for life and death. Women can do a good deal within their homes, even in purdah.” On another occasion, Jinnah asserted, “No nation can make any progress without the co-operation of women. If women support their men as they did in the days of the prophet of Islam (PBUH) we should soon realize our goal.”

Besides political mobilization, the Central Women’s Committee addressed itself to social problems encountered by the community, and organized social work. Thus, it passed several resolutions concerning housewives’ problems and food shortages, as well as on more fundamental issues such as women’s inheritance. In subsequent years, the committee would hold separate sessions after the AIML annual sessions.

Separate arrangements were also made for women participants in the AIML sessions, while the more prominent among them sat on the dais. And with the years, their participation increased to a point that some 5,000 women attended the AIML session at Karachi, in December 1943.

Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima, to these sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the ennobling message of gender equality. And although it was politically risky to take her along to traditional and tribal areas such as the NWFP and Balochistan, especially when he was striving to gather them on the AIML platform, he did it with impunity since he would not compromise on a principle he had believed in so passionately since his student days.


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Written in a hurry with disjointed ideas and wandering. Neitherhere nor there.
Poor selection by the chowk staff.
What do you want to say?
Cheerios

mimazhar, the ``Kashmiri`` argument - presented here and elsewhere - seems no less messed up than are Indian and Pakistani ones. Obviously, disputants and their resources are fated to deplete faster than the `dispute` itself.

no word on kashimiri hindus ??

another garbage opinion passed off as an article .....

Re: # 12
By the way, what do you understand by this: ``the state of Jammu & Kashmir provides some of the clearest instances of shared religious identities in the world``?

he got a trial .. not bad compared to all those in pakiland who are just ``missing``

``Mohammad Afzal’s Letter to his Lawyer``

Perhaps he needs a trial which should be telecasted live like SH so that the entire world can see his ``innocence``. And like SH he can tell the world that the ``reality`` was that he was framed by the STF and STF has infact carried out that attack on the parliament and those who were killed in the parliment attack were innocent kashmiris who happen to come to see parliament as a visitor.
These kashmiri Islamists are merely following the standard guidelines from their Jehad manual.

World’s Largest Democracy- in action.

The Indian Parliament was attacked by Kashmiri terrorists a few years back. Afzal has been “found” guilty and waits on death row. The following is a true unedited typed version of a handwritten letter from Afzal to his lawyer.


From the leaflet entitled ``Afzal`s Story in His Words`` published by the Society for the Protection of Detainees` and Prisoners` Rights New Delhi, October 2006, pp. 12-24.Carried without any editing or corrections from the transcription of Afzal`s handwritten letter.




Mohammad Afzal’s Letter to his Lawyer,
Sushil Kumar, Sr. Advocate, Supreme Court



Respected Shri Sushil Kumar;

Hello (!)
I am extremely thankful and feel very much obligated to you that you have taken up my case and decided to defend me. From the beginning of this case I was neglected and had never been given a chance to reveal the truth before media or in court. The designated court did not provided me the lawyer inspite of giving three applications. In the high court one human rights lawyer asked the court that Afzal had expressed his desire that he want to be killed by toxic injection rather by hanging which is absolutely false. I never told this to my lawyer. Since that lawyer was not of my own choice (or my family) but it was due to my helplessness and non-accessibility to proper lawyer. Being locked up in high security jail and without being in communication with that human rights lawyer I could not change him or to convey my objection regarding my death desire to highcourt as I came to know this after high court’s decision.
In the parliament attack case I was entrapped by Special Task Force of Kashmir. Here in Delhi the designated court sentenced me to death on the basis of special police version which workes in nexus with STF, and also came under the influence of mass media in which I was made to accept the crime under duress and threat by special police A.C.P. Rajbir Singh. That threat even get confirmed to designated court by T.V. interviewer (Shams Tahir Aaj-Tak).
When I was arrested in Srinagar bus stand I was taken to STF Headquarter from here the special police along with STF brought me to Delhi. In Srinagar at Parompora Police Station everything of my belongings was seized and then they beated me and threatened me of dire consequences regarding my wife and family if I reveal or disclose the reality before anybody. Even my younger brother Hilal Ahmad Guru he was taken into police custody without any warrant etc. and was kept there for 2-3 months. This was first told to me by A.C.P. Rajbir Singh. Special police told me that if I will speak according to their wishes they will not harm my family members and also gave me false assurance that they will make my case weak so that after sometime I will get released.
The most important priority I gave to safety of my family. As I know from last seven years how the SIF men kill the Kashmiris, how they had made youth invisible and had disappeared them while killing them in custody. I am living and organic eye-witness to various tortures and custodial killings and I am myself the victim of STF terror and torture. Being an surrendered militant of JKLF I was constantly harassed, threatened and agonized by various security agencies like Army, B.S.F. and S.T. F. But since S.T.F. is unorganized, without being accountable a band and gang of renegades patronised by state government. They intrude every house, every family everywhere in Kashmir anytime day or night. If anybody is picked up by STF and his family came to know this, then family members only wait to get his dead body which they hope. But usually they never came to know his whereabouts. 6000 youths have disappeared. Under these circumstances and under this fearful environment persons like me are always ready to play any dirty game in the hands of S.T.F. Just for the survival. The people who are able to pay in terms of cash are not forced to do the dirty things the way I did as I was not able to pay. Even one of the policeman of the same police station of Parimpora named Akbar had extorted 5000 Rs. long before attack and threatened me that he will charge me as selling duplicate medicines and surgical items of which I was doing business at Sopore, in 2000. He came here in designated court and became a witness against me. He was knowing me before parliament attack. In the court room he told me in Kashmiri that my family is o.k. indirectly it was a hidden threat which the designated court hardly could realise otherwise in court I would have questioned him but before court started recording his statement he told me this. Throughout the trial I remained mute and helpless spectator as witnesses, police and even judge they all became a single force against me. I remained a frustrate bewildered and confused between the security and safety of myself and my family. I protected and saved my family. That is how I am lying in deathrow.
II. In 1997-98 I started a business of medicines and surgical instruments on commission basis as I could not get a govt. job due to the reason of being an surrendered militant. Because surrendered militants were not given jobs. They were either to work as SPOs or STF or to join the renegades under the patronage of security forces or police. Everyday SPOs were get killed by militants. In these conditions I started my commission based business earning 4000 Rs. – 5000 Rs. per month. But since the police informers (SPOs) usually harass those surrendered militants who do not work with S.T.F. etc. From 98-2000 I usually used to pay 300 Rs. sometimes 500 Rs. to local SPO so as to keep myself in business otherwise these SPO make us to present us before security agencies. Even one of the SPO one day told me that they too have to pay their bosses. As I was working hard in my business my business flourished. One day at 10 AM I was on my two wheeler scooter that I had purchased just before two months. I was whisked away by STF men in bullet proof gypsy to Paihallan camp. There the D.S.P. Vinay Gupta tortured me, electrified me – put me in cold water – used petrol-chillies and other techniques. He told me that I possess weapons but at evening time one of his inspector Farooq told me that if I can pay 1000,000 Rs. to him (DSP) I will be released or they will kill me. Then they took me to Humhama STF camp where D.S.P. Dravinder Singh also tortured me. One of his torture inspector as they called him Shanty Singh electrified me naked for 3 hours and made me drink water while giving electric shocks through telephone instrument. Ultimately I accepted to pay them 1000000 Rs. for which my family sold the gold of my wife. Even after this they could manage only 80000 Rs. Then they took the scooter too which was just 2-3 months old which I bought for 24000 Rs. Thus after getting 1 lakh rupees they let me free. But now I was a broken person. In the same Humhama STF camp there was one more victim named Tariq. He suggested me that I should always co-operate with STF otherwise they will always harass and will not let me to live normal – free life. This was a turning point of my life. I decided to live the way Tariq told me. Since from 1990-1996 I had studied in Delhi University I was also giving tuitions in different coaching centres and also home tuitions. This fact reached to the man named Altaf Hussain who is brother-in-law of S.S.P. Ashaq Hussain of Budgam. Since it was this Altaf Hussain who managed my family rather he became the broker between my family and D.S.P. Humhama Dravinder Singh. Altaf told me that I should teach his two children one on 12th, 2nd [second one] in 10th class as his children were not able to go outside for tuition due to militant threat. Thus I became very close to Altaf’s and Altaf also. One day Altaf took me to Dravinder Singh (D.S.P). D.S. told me that I had to do a small job for him that has to took one man to delhi as I was well aware about Delhi and has to manage a rented house for him. Since I was not knowing the man but I suspected that this man is not Kashmiri as he did not speak in Kashmiri but I was helpless to do what Dravinder told me. I took him to Delhi. One day he told me that he want to purchase a car. Thus I went with him to Karol Bagh. He purchased the car. Then in Delhi he used to meet different persons and both of us he Mohammad and me used to get the different phone calls from Dravinder Singh. One day Mohammad told me that if he want to go back to Kashmir he can. He also gave me 35000 Rs. and told me that this gift is for you. 6 days or 8 days before I took a rented room at Indra Vihar for my family as I decided to live in Delhi with my family because I was not satisfied with my this life. I left the keys of rented house to my land lady and told her that I will be back after Eid festival on 14th Dec. after parliament attack about which there was a lot of tension. I contacted Tariq in Sgr. [Srinagar]. At evening he told me when I came back from Delhi. I replied just one hour before. Next morning when I was about to leave to Sopore from bus stand Sgr. police caught me and took me to Parampora police station Tariq was there also with STF. They took 35000 Rs. from my pocket, beated me and directly took me STF Head Quarter. From there I was taken to Delhi. My eyes were blind folded. Here I found myself in special police torture cell.
In special cell custody I told them everything regarding Mohammad etc. but they told me that I Showkat his wife Navjot (Afshan) Geelani are the people behind parliament attack. They too threatened me regarding my family and one of the inspector told me that my younger brother Hilal Ahmad Guru is in STF custody. They can lift the other family members too if I don’t co-operate with them. They tried me and forced me to implicate Showkat his wife and Geelani but I did not yield. I told them this is not possible. Then they told me that I should not say anything about Geelani (be about his innocence). After some days I was presented before media hand cuffed. There were NDTV, Aaj tak, Zee news, Sahara TV etc. Rajbeer Singh (A.C.P.) was also there. When one of the interviewer Shams tahir told me what is the role of Geelani in parliament attack, I just said that Geelani is innocent. This moment A.C.P. Rajbeer Singh got up from his moving chair he shouted at me and told me that he had already said me not to speak about Geelani in front of everybody (Media-personnel). Rajbeer Singh’s behaviour exposed my helplessness and media personnel at least came to know that what Afzal is saying under threat or duress. Then Rajbir Singh (A.C.P.) requested T.V. personel that the question regarding Geelani should be washed away or not to be shown before public. At evening time Rajbir Singh told me that if I want to talk [to] my family. I replied in yes. Then I talked to my wife. After finishing my phone he told me if I want to see my wife & family alive I must co operate [with] them at every step. They took me to various places in Delhi. From where they showed that Mohammad had purchased different things. They took me to Kashmir from where we came back without doing anything. They made me to sign on at least 200-300 blank pages.
I was never given an [a] chance in [the] designated court to tell the real story. The judge told me that I will be given full opportunity to speak at the end of case but at the end he even did not recorded my all statements neither the court gave me whatever even court recorded. If phone numbers recorded will be seen carefully the court would have come to know the phone numbers of STF.
Now I hope that the Supreme Court will consider my helplessness and the reality through which I had passed. STF made an [a] scapegoat in all this criminal act which was designed and directed by STF and others which I don’t know. Special Police is definitely the part of this game because every time they forced me to remain silent. I hope my forced silence will be heard and justice will prevail.
I once again pay heart felt thanks to your good self for defending my case. May truth prevail!


(Sd)
Mohammad Afzal
S/C Habibullah Guru
Ward No. 6 (High Security Ward)Jail No. 1,
Tihar New Delhi 110064

now Mazhar sahib don`t tell me that India did not do anything for Kashmir -- at the partition time Kashmir was practically in stone age -- India sunk a lot of its meager sources in Kashmir to uplift especially the downtrodden Muslim population with no access to education, no jobs, no health care no schools no colleges no influence in the government to a fully participatory state even better than the other states of India like Bihar or Orissa -- in just fifty years.

The Indian government practically took the lazy masjid oriented Muslims of Kashmir by the collar and put them in the mainstream -- or at least tried their best to put them in the mainstream -- despite the Muslim congenital reluctance and abhorrence for higher education and cooperative secular politics.

Of course big mistakes were made by Nehru his daughter and Abdullah and Bakhshi and others -- but at least we should be fair -- let`s not blame the Indians for `everything ` that ails Kashmir or a Kashmiris today.

Kashmir is not an exception for the culture of 5 thousand years old -- every state including even the stupid Bihar has a 5 thousand year culture in the subcontinent -- it is the rule.

In fact every state of India and Pakistan is so unique and different from each other that every state should have been an independent country -- just like Europe or Balkans -- but it is not -- and thank the lord it is not -- what they have to do is to LEARN TO LIVE TOGETHER AND WORK TOGETHER -- period.

Despite the ‘differences’ they are not much different from each other – from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Bengladesh to Burma -- now called Mian nu mar.

After the 1971 liberation of b desh there is no rational

but independent Kashmis by them for them and of them...

Its only minority Elite in arm chair use religion to advance there political profession (do they have any other skill that pays equally)while lakhs of Muslims have died and stil dying in Kasmir for stupid saying Kashmir Banega Pakistan

February 6, 2007

During the recent years, the indigenous Kashmiri struggle



Umm...ok then...