Khuda Hafiz, Kashmir?

Rsaxena

No matter what you like to believe but the fact is that over the last 50 years Pakistan and Turkey have been the closest of Muslim countries. Both countries were in RCD and also in the SEATO ...

Turkey has openly upheld the cause of Kashmir many times ... and in the 1965 war Turkey supplied Pakistan with jet fuel and revenue ...

As a matter of fact if you read a few books on Turkey`s post World War 2 History you will see that Pakistan Turkey friendship has been exemplary ...

As for Terrorism ... I am the first one to say that fight terrorism by all means...I am the most anti terrorist person there is ... especially state terrorism unleashed against Kashmiris by the Indian Unition ...

I dont support Ossama bin Laden and I definitely dont support Taliban ... I do support the Kashmiris right to self determination and yes I am

for the freedom struggle and against Indian state terrorism in Kashmir...

so you see Terrorism SHOULD be condemned ... in all ways and forms and means ..

Pakistan Zindabad

Quaid e Azam Zindabad

Ataturk Zindabad

Jiye Bhutto

Imran Khan for PM

-Yasser

Naqshbandi

Please stop giving Muslims and Islam a bad name ... we are a rational people and ours is a rational religion ...secular democracy is to be our polity not theocracy or rather the perverted word theodemocracy of Maudoodi ..

Kemalism is the answer to the plight of the Muslim World ....

Pakistan Zindabad

Quaid e Azam Zindabad

Ataturk Zindabad

Jiye Bhutto

Imran Khan for PM

-Yasser Hamdani

Re: Sheesh Naag:

I wasn`t aware this forum was a beauty contest...

Incidently, could you please tell me what was ``so silly`` about that post? :)

My friend, I have never taken myself too seriously and I have no intentions about starting right now.

Ciao!

Ref Fuzair #: 156

You say {Gandhi`s call for civil disobedience, etc, were completely irrelevant in that the British left because they were exhausted after WWII and the new Labour government was much more concerned with building its version of a modern welfare state in England. The British Empire, at least the metropole component of it, was completely exhausted and virtually bankrupt.}

You seem to forget the fact that only South Asia (India, Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka) got its independence from Britain in the aftermath of WWII. All the African colonies waited till the 1960s to gain independence and little Hong Kong until 1997.

Of all the colonies Britain possessed, India was the richest in terms of the purchasing power its large population possessed for the manufactured goods of industrial Britain. With Japan`s economy devastated after WWII, there was no way Japan could export even the textiles that it used to send to India. With only ordnance factories established in the subcontinent during WWII, there was still a lack of ordinary daily-use goods that Britain could have supplied India. And India would have to pay for this either through export of raw materials or through expenditure of Britain`s war debt to India which had left India with the fifth largest reserves in the world.

The American economy boomed after WWII because its factories were intact and it was sending a lot of goods to Europe under the Marshall Plan which kept its factories busy. If Britain had retained India, British exports would have created a somewhat similar post-war boom in Britain.

I agree that post-war Britain had no stomach for colonies but that condition was created by years of civil disobedience and, as I pointed out earlier, applied only to South Asia. Gandhi`s call for non-participation in the war was no doubt ignored by millions of Indians who joined the Indian Army but the country was ungovernable after WWII and Britain had to leave.

Britain could have ruled India through its army after WWII but that would have meant massive bad publicity for Britain. You also seem to ignore the work of the India Independence League in Britain with its connections to the Labor Party at the highest levels that had been lobbying for years and had its friends come to power after WWII.

The cause of Indian independence had many reasons for its success but success would not have come about in 1947 just because of the factor of British fatigue. That would be a one-sided view that is amply refuted by the facts.

Regards.

Ref Rooster-Blues #: 129

You asked {Since when going to jail has become a qualification to be a ‘Freedom Fighter’ ..}

Other than white, Protestant colonies of Great Britain, no colony has received self-rule, Dominion status or Independence without the colonized people fighting for it one way or another. The only countries to which Dominion status (and virtual independence) were granted without a fight were Canada and Australia. Even white Ireland lost several thousands of people (and this continued even today in Northern Ireland) to its freedom struggle. Thus, if you fight for freedom, whether through civil disobedience in India or through violence as in Ireland, you end up in jail.

You said {only in India a bandit can be a Queen of the congress! ..}

I believe Phoolan Devi the Bandit Queen was arrested and convicted for her crimes and she was elected to the Parliament after she had paid her debt to society.

You said {the reason that so many congress-wala Leader did go to jail .. could very well be that these guys were criminals .... I am pretty sure that Gahndi The Bapo Ji snatched that goat from some Gora officer and that’s why he was thrown into the slammer}

You have exposed your lack of knowledge about freedom struggles in general and the struggle in India by these comments. Your hatred of India is so blind that you make these statements which have no basis in fact. If this is an attempt at humor by you, I fail to find anything to laugh at. I waited 36 hours before I posted a reply to see if any Pakistani would come out and ask you not to make an ass of yourself; I am disappointed no one chose to do so.

The thousands of Muslims who went to jail in Sindh, NWFP and Punjab did so under the banner of the Congress Party. These people had a vision for an independent India. By marginalizing them and excluding them from any participation in the political process, the Pakistan Muslim League essentially sealed the fate of the average Pakistani. Jinnah could have lived another 15 years and that would not have made a whit of difference to Pakistan: if his followers` hearts were not in political and social reforms, there is no way they would have been carried out in Pakistan no matter how much Jinnah asked for them. You would have the laws on paper, as you do now, and they would have no effect in real life.

hamidm

{{as far as I am concerned anyone who consorts with the enemy is a traitor, plain and simple - }}

---And you married a traitor!! tauba tauba!!

But then , your parents chose her for you, youre excused.

Alas, another bad tradition from your Hindu ancestors. Damn those hindus--

haha. It`s funny to see the ylh kid shouting Turkey Zindabad so soon after the PM snubbed Pakistan and made suggestive statements about ``condemning and fighting foreign terrorism jointly with India`` during his trip there. We all know what India is talking about when it says that and so did the PM.

You Pakis will get slapped around and keep harboring dreamy visions of the Islamic Ummah which seems to not care about Pakistan.

Harpeet...

I will reply in detail later because I am sleepy right now ...

but I think no two countries have been more alike in History ...

both countried presupposed religion as ehnicity at the time of its conception... and the lives and personalities of both countries founders are strikingly similar.... both were allied with the US during the cold war ... and Turkey supported Pakistan most generously in the 65 war ....

The issue of the Kurdistan is similar to the problems Pakistan has faced in NWFP in the name of Pakhtunistan and also in Baluchistan ....

So for the most part ... Pakistan and Turkey have strikingly similar features both in religious and ethnic components, language and even founders ...

Pakistan Zindabad

Turkey Zindabad

macgupta #152 & #151

``By the way, today`s Economic Times reports that collection of direct taxes jumped 66% in 1Q2000 over 1Q1999 and indirect taxes collection jumped 13.5%.``

You are continually confusing collection of revenue with the control of generation of GDP. I hope it suits your arguments, whatever those are.

``The number of income tax assessees is slated to jump from 22 million to 26.5 million which is also a healthy jump.``

I am very bullish about India, but I am not blind to the challenge it faces. I certainly do not believe shuting eyes make the problems disappear. So now it is about 2.7% of Indian entities (people and companies) that pays income taxes. Please benchmark it with the countries India may want to emulate.

``I am not, and I don`t think anyone here is against decentralization, liberation of the economy from the government and so on.``

You are missing the point, that ``it is economy, stupid.`` It is naive to believe that economy and politics fall in different and unrelated boxes and are not related. You may need to rethink.

``However, Central versus State revenue is not an indicator of autonomy, e.g., the case of the US where the Federal Government raises twice the revenue than all the state governments put together.``

You are cofusingly stuck on this issue. Whereas my point had been control of generation of GDP. Let me illustrate it through example. A state-owned enterprise when it generates and sells electricity in India, and when a state-owned enterprise operates Road Transport are very different than state government collecting revenue. In above-mentioned cases these state-owned enterprises control the generation of GDP, and may never collect revenue as per your example. Similarly, when a central government owned enterprise, like SAIL runs steel-mills, then it once again control the generation of GDP, and not the collection of revenue. Please rethink your reasoning.

May I suggest that you look at Delhi`s phone directory and strike out the departments, state corporations etc. would become redundant if privatization is seriously is followed; and devolution of power to state is carried out. You would be surprised.

``Nor is it how much the Central government levies by way of taxes. The US Federal Government gets about 34% of GDP as taxes. And that is low -- France and Germany for instance take 50% of their GDP as taxes. (In India the Central Government takes about 20% of GDP as taxes. )``

Arun, you`re missing the point, I hope my examples of controlling the generation of GDP gives you an idea of my point.

``There definitely is a problem with having to take permission from the Indian Government to do anything (the license-permit raj). However, the cure is not to move the license-permit function from the Center to the States, it is to do away with it where possible and streamline it when it must absolutely be retained in the public interest.``

Here you are rightly pointing, and if the licensing etc. is gone then what is centralized. Please think, and you may also discover a U.S. like model for Federal - State relationship emerges, which is not centralized like it is in Indian democratic set up.

``Again, fixing these problems have very little to do with autonomy.``

Fixing these problems at a smaller level is always easier. Even in the U.S. the education is dealt at local (city / county government level). Your house-tax pays for your kids education at the public schools.

``Your Harvard Business School people may be very acquainted with the economics of India, but I`m not so sure about their knowledge of Indian politics.``

Politics is never divorced from economics. Politics is accumulation, control and distribution of power. The motivation to acquire power is always economic. History is full of examples.

``To put it bluntly, the Indian politicians are using the ``lack of autonomy`` to be the reason for their failures in performance.``

Please do not put it bluntly, realize the real issue is to evolve an efficient political system. The present system worked in dynastic period of Indian democracy.

``Somehow, removing from the State politicians the shackles of the Supreme Court, the Election Commission, and the danger that if they screw up, their governments might be dismissed by the Center is going to enable them to deliver paradise to their constituents.``

The U.S. model of Federal-State relationship does not put any shackles for Supreme Court to ensure not removal. It is the same U.S. Supreme Court which once ruled slavery to be legal, and later in different times ruled the slavery to be unconstitutional. The moral of the story is that to remain dynamic and vibrant the system must change with time and society, otherwise they die. The judiciary becomes nothing more than a watchman of shackles, rather than address real issues.

I have said enough, and please excuse me if I do not respond any further on this matter.

Good luck

Anil Kapuria

Anil@Kapuria.COM

Gymnosophist #148

You might be mistaken.

Iran is a country, which consists of Turks, Kurds, Baluchs and Farsi or Persian people.

Iran and Persian are not synonymous.

Persian or Farsi people are proud of their ancesstory which dates back to thousands of years.

Most of the people who emigrated at the time of revolution, I expect them to be Persian, to which Shah of Iran was very much a fan. If you remember his 5000 years celebration of Iranian Empire, I think in late 60`s or early 70,s.

It is possible as you are suggesting that naming Iran is not good in America.

And in such a secular country (I can laugh at all the secular BS being poured from all orfices of people), I was targeted for working in Iran during interviews.

RE hamidm # 155

``religion is like a smorgass-board, you pick what you like and leave the rest to the Mullah and Sadhu ``

thunderous applause.........Hamid Sahib, I remember you scolded some muslim woman (Sobia?)who wanted to pick what she liked (hijab I think) from the smorgrass-board. You reminded her, rather sternly, about the other ``good stuff`` that tags along with the choice picks.

``You can`t have your halwa and eat it too...`` was a well written piece I think, so please re-read it!

Re: AD #104

Gandhi`s call for civil disobedience, etc, were completely irrelevant in that the British left because they were exhausted after WWII and the new Labour government was much more concerned with building its version of a modern welfare state in England. The British Empire, at least the metropole component of it, was completely exhausted and virtually bankrupt.

The entire gold reserves had been transferred to the US during WWII and the home country owed the US and the white dominions a massive war debt. Between the casualties of WWII, its cost, the debt burden, and the general exhaustion, India simply was not worth the bother. Don`t forget, basic rationing of food items continued all through the end of the 1940s in the UK and some items were rationed as late as the early 1950s. As late as the end of the 1950s, large-scale bomb damage was still visible in large parts of London: that is, the capital of the greatest empire history has ever known was still not fully repaired ten years after the war was over.

As far as Churchill is concerned, he was not PM when India was given its independence. Perhaps if he was still PM, i.e., Labour had not won in 1945, in 1947, then things might have been different. But don`t forget, there were mutinies among the BRITISH troops in India (the RAF, I believe) when their transfer back to the UK was delayed by a few weeks. The British had simply, for a time, lost the will to keep their empire. All they wanted was to be shed of the British Indian Empire as fast as they could. It is less than edifying to our colective self-esteem but our, and your, ``Freedom Fighters`` did not win our Independence from the British. The group of Britishers then in power decided that it was not worth the trouble.

If the British had decided to stay on in power and rule by force, I have no doubt that they could have managed. The key to the situation was the Army and the Army, being Punjabi, was loyal as long as the Punjab was loyal. During WWII, out of 2.5 million men in the Army, the largest all-volunteer force in history, about 2/3 were, I believe, Punjabi (Sikh, PM and Hindus). Things only got bad once the British made it clear to all and sundry that they were indeed going to leave. Then, loyalty to the Raj became pointless.

I once asked some uncles of mine who were in the Army in WWII what the Army would have done if the British had decided to use it to put down rebellions/civil-disobedience in India. Their unanimous response was that as long as it wasn`t used in the Punjab, the loyalty of the Army would not have wavered.

So sorry to disillusion you old boy, but no go. The freedom movement was not the key factor in Indian independence.

gymnosophist

..... you are right - when it comes to India, you won`t find too many Pakistanis who are ``liberal``.... as far as I am concerned anyone who consorts with the enemy is a traitor, plain and simple - and really it has nothing to do with religion .... even someone like me who does not let religion interfere with his life, has no use for India or its irritating inhabitants ...... we simply wish you would leave us alone .... we apologize for having foisted the indignity of minority rule on your ancestors for a thousand years .... but let bygones be bygones ... go back and pick up where Ashoka left off, but not at our expense ..... India, like all other nations, has delusions of grandeur and wants to throw its weight around as a regional power, but please, go knock up Nepal or Bangla Desh or Bhutan ...... we have enough trouble without the saffron brigade trying to carry out an ancient vendetta ....

.... as for the apparent dichotomy between quoting the Koran and then advising a young man to go and have a few beers or chase a few skirts, there is none ..... religion is like a smorgass-board, you pick what you like and leave the rest to the Mullah and Sadhu ...... of course there is always the risk that you might end up on the wrong side of the Divine Being - but it is a calculated risk....and please don`t quote ``The Hypocrites`` .... I know, I know....

In reply to Shankar who wondered why the OIC resolutions have no teeth and why they do not impose an oil embargo against India.

Going from the lesser to greater reasons --

It would take an oil embargo from OPEC and not just the oil-producing members of the OIC to have an effect on India. Mexico, Venezuela are examples of non-OIC OPEC countries.

The OIC countries could expel Indian workers, but that would hurt their own economies as well.

But most important -- how can the OIC countries ask for Kashmir what they do not give their own citizens ? In how many OIC countries can the people choose their governments ? Is Iran or Iraq going to give self-determination to the Kurdish minority that is demanding it ? And so on.

-arun gupta

In reply to Kabuliwallah :

I was a non-vegetarian from age 1-4, a vegetarian from thereafter to about 24, a non-vegetarian after that until about three years ago.

Of course, tastes vary. Being a vegetarian in the US can be inconvenient, too, at times. But I don`t think that I`m missing anything. I will agree that to be a happy vegetarian, you have to have a superior quality of cooking; you can get by with average non-veg. cooking.

There is a myth that a non-veg. diet is unconditionally superior to a veg. diet, and that is simply not true.

-arun gupta

In further reply to Anil (#145 ) :

By the way, today`s Economic Times reports that collection of direct taxes jumped 66% in 1Q2000 over 1Q1999 and indirect taxes collection jumped 13.5%.

The number of income tax assessees is slated to jump from 22 million to 26.5 million which is also a healthy jump.

-arun gupta