1971 in 2000

Re: SR # 216

Just a correction, yaar...

The name was Ahsan. The admiral was the last of a kind - the perfect gentleman-officer. As a young Lt., he served with the Royal Navy in the Med during WWII and was awarded the DSC for leading a raiding party against the Germans on Crete. This brought him to the attention of Mountbatten and finally led him to become of one of Mountbatten`s aide de camps.

I had the distinction of meeting the admiral, a close friend of father`s, a few times. The admiral had a bulldog aptly named Lord Nelson. My dad used to play jokes on people by asking them if they would like to have lunch with an English lord, and when they would say ``yes``, he would take to the Admiral`s house and introdouce them to Lord Nelson! Lord Nelson used to chase me, because I was an irritating idiot (still am) in those days and the sight of Lord Nelson, in full fury vanquishing all before him used to amuse the late admiral! :)

I have fond memories of Admiral Ashan and I only wish I was old enough to appreciate my rare moments with him!

Ciao!

Bangladesh asks for a copy of HRC report.

Not only should Bangladesh be given a copy of the report (ideally Pakistan should do so voluntarily), the government in Dhakka should invite the UN to set up War Crimes Tribunals and formally start charging and holding trials (in absentia, for the most part) against individuals starting with Tikka Khan, Rahim Khan, Rao Farman Ali, and on down the line. Yahya, Hamid and Gul Hassan should be put on trial posthumasly. Only Admiral Ehsen (and perhaps Sahibzada Yaqoob) are not indictable.

If the present crop of generals have any political savvy, they would see the wisdom of doing the just thing even if only for cynical motives.

If this demon is not exorcised, the state will not survive. This is a curse of history that if not dispelled, no state can ever survive for too long.

...SR
...SR

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_903000/903149.stm

Bangladesh wants the report published by INDIA TODAY.

The report accuses Pakistani soldiers of committing atrocities

Pakistan says it will consider a request from Bangladesh for a copy of a report on events nearly 20 years leading to the creation of Bangladesh. Pakistani Information Minister Javed Jabbar said the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report was a highly classified document and could not be released unless a decision was taken to declassify it.

The commission was set up in December 1971 to inquire into the circumstances which led to the Pakistan army losing East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

The report, submitted in October 1974, was highly critical of the army generals in charge of the then East Pakistan, but was never made public.

Bangladesh`s request came after an Indian magazine, India Today, published excerpts from the secret report earlier this month.

According to the magazine, the commission accused Pakistani generals with abuse of power, atrocities, moral turpitude and cowardice.

Firm action

``Firm and proper action would not only satisfy the nation`s demand for punishment where it is deserved, but would also ensure against any future recurrence of the kind of shameful conduct displayed during the 1971 war,`` the magazine quoted a passage from the report.

At least 1.5 million people are believed to have been killed in the military crackdown by Pakistan against those demanding a separate Bangladesh.

The Hamoodur Rahman Commission blamed this largely on Lieutenant-General AAK Niazi, the then commander of Pakistan Army`s Eastern Command.

The complete report has not been released because all the copies were withdrawn by Bhutto and he amended those



General AAK Niazi`s son Amanullah

But General Niazi`s son, Amanullah Niazi, has dismissed these allegations, saying the report had been ``doctored`` by the then Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

``The complete report has not been released because all the copies were withdrawn by Bhutto and he amended those,`` he told the BBC.

``The harsh action which took place was done by General Farman Ali and General Tikka Khan, and when General Niazi came, a court of enquiry was ordered against those who resorted to looting and they were sent to Pakistan to be court-martialled.``

krashid #182:

{You not only need sleep, but very heavy sleep, so that when you wake up all these things get out of your mind.

So you think, Punjabi, Sindhi and Mohajir are victims of Arab Baluch and Arab Pakhtuns.)):::

Thank God we have BJP and their think tank in India. Blessing in disguise.}

Sorry uncleji maaf kar do. I am sorry I expressed sympathy for the P-S-M Pakistanis. But you know, lack of sleep can do a lot of things to you. It was lack of sleep, not me.

You can go back and socialize and jehadize with your tribal brothers from NWPF and Baluchistan.

I take back my sympathies.:)

Unsympathetically,

Satyavadi

Bilal Ahmad #176:

``You may hate/dislike Baber for his invasion of a part of India (which of course was violence against his adversaries–peaceful or otherwise). Unfortunately, the Indian history is full of such violent actions. How about the Indo-Ayran invasion of the Vedic Era (1500 BC to 1000 BC)? Do you hate (presumably) your own part-ancestors for invading India?``

No I dont. But then I admire Akbar, the grandson of Babar, as well.

``By the way, I also don’t grieve for the destruction of a dilapidated building, particularly if it leads to such insane actions that took place in Ayodhya. No building “should” be more sacred than the life of human being (my personal idealism).``

Agree cent percent with that.

``: I agree with your position. This is what I also said during the Ayodhya crisis to a visiting (Hindu) Indian Professor. He disagreed with me. He maintained that the Ayodhya crisis was a part of a systematic anti-Muslim campaign. Around that time, people like Advani were threatening to convert some 3,000 mosques, all over India, into temples``

The BJP and the RSS did exploit the matter politically. No doubt about that. But the response that they got was in part also due to the Indian Muslim leaderships obscurantism (ShahBano case for eg.) and obduracy, and the Congress, Janta Dal`s Muslim appeasing policies. I think had the Babri thing been resolved the anti-Muslim campaign would have lost its steam anyways, as it has now with the destruction of the Babri masjid.

``If you really “condemn” (a very strong word), then what is the purpose of your post?``

The purpose of my post was to slightly nudge the leftist intellectual establishment of India to recognize and respect the faith of an ordinary Hindu, just as they do the faith of Muslims and Christians. I agree with them when they unequivocally condemn the destruction of the mosque, but would like them in all fairness to acknowledge the religious sentiments of a Hindu, some attachment that they probably has for the supposed birth place of his avatar, Rama.

I was asking them to shed the hypocrisy of keeping silent or supporting the govt when India was the first country to ban Satanic Verses, while actively defending MF Hussain`s nude Saraswati paintings in the name of freedom of expression. Where was that sentiment for freedom of expression when Satanic Verses was banned? Why because Muslims were offended? Then wouldnt an ordinary Hindu, some one who is not an intellectual and not an atheist, be offended the nude painting of his Goddess, in a country where nudity is taboo, Khajuraho notwithstanding? why did have to cater to and defend the urge for sensationalism of MF Hussain ? If they had to, why cant they be more consistent in their support for freedom of speech.

My ire was and is directed agains these people, who have one set of rules for one community and other for another. None of them answers when asked to imagine a temple in Kaba. They hide behind lame technicalities like Ayodhya is not an equiavalent of Kaba or Vatican. Why should everything religious be seen in Semitic light, to be holy, pure enough? OK if Varanasi comes closer, how about the Kashi Vishwanath temple there, which shares a wall with a mosque which most historians believe was constructed byu destroying a part of that most holy temple? Would the leftists support the moving of the mosque from there because there is some evidence of the actual destruction of a part of the temple and because Varanasi comes closer to the Semitic equivalents of Vatican or Kaba?

Its doesnt make any difference personally to me whether a Ram temple is built at that infamous location. For all you know, Ram maynot be my God. But the question is about respect for the sentiments of a community which the leftists think will take any trash from them.

``Do you see some sort of RSSness in your position ``

I dont know if its RRS position and I dont care, though I do disagree with all the nerdy things that they do. And not just the anti-Muslim actions of those geriatrics (There goons went on the rampage in Kanpur this last Valentine`s day because they think its un-Indian and immoral. Who the heck gave them the right to decide what is moral and what is Indian? If me and girl wanna kiss each other we will, if we wanna sleep together we will and the neighbour, the politican ,the Mulla and the RSS have no say in it, we will decide for ourselves).

``Are you sure that your position is based on the good values on which the Indian political system was initially structured?``

Please be direct Mr Ahmad. No euphemisms please. I donot whether my position is based on all those good values enshrined in the Indian system. I am pretty nasty at times, but yet still I am ``a moderately decent person`` as your yourselves once put.

I will leave it at this.

Satyavadi

Shankar,

Why did I change the style of my posts over the two years. Good question. First read pak.org history. Then read dawn and jung news papers, every day, including the opinion and letters for two years. You would have found the answer. In the mean time, there is a little arrow at the bottom left corner of the page, use it frequently as I do.

regards

jay.

fairdinkum,

What was your point in asking these three questions:

1) What is the definition of a nation-state?

2) Was India ever a nation-state prior to or during Muslim/Mogul rule?

3) Was India a nation-state when British decided to leave?

You obviously think you know the answers.

-Vicky

Jay,

You repeat the same tired message over & over again. The wording in your posts may change, but the jist is always the same.

If you believe that most Pakistanis have nothing but hatred towards India, why the heck are you still lingering on Chowk? You`ve made your point; now move on! Exactly what purpose are you trying to fulfill?

When I read posts from 2-3 yrs, I surmise that you are one of the first Indians that discovered Chowk. In those days you sounded a lot more intelligent & your comments were more constructive. What in God`s name changed you?

You remind me of one of the Hare Krishna volunteers who hand out pamphlets at JFK. Most people accept them, just to have the guy get out of their face & throw them in the nearest dustbin.

I really think you should shack up with your soulmate Hamidm in an igloo at the North Pole.

Bilal #: 203

Thanks for a very informative post.

Regards

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20000904/neighbours.shtml

History Creates Hell

The release of the Hamoodur Rahman report on india-today.com unsettles the country and raises demands for a probe into Kargil and other `national disasters`.

The report of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission (HRC) set up by president Z.A. Bhutto in 1971 to inquire into the Pakistani debacle in East Pakistan had a ghostly presence in Pakistan since its submission in 1974. Suppressed from the public, its purported findings were a subject of intense conjecture. That the HRC had been harsh on the military was easily surmised from Bhutto`s grandiose announcement that every copy had been burnt.

Re: Jay

You have a real problem understanding me, don`t you!

I am not sure how you twisted my words, but you did! I will say it as simply as I can and if you can not understand it, then you need some serious help!

Our common problem is hate and misunderstandings. Misunderstandings fuel hate and hate sustains ignorance! That is all I was suggesting and not attacking your beloved BJP. I am sorry you got your panties in a twist over my reference to your political extermist groups, but India too has its share of people who love to fan the flames of animosity against Paksitan. If I can admit to the excess of the Pakistani extermist groups, why cannot you admit to the Indian extermists groups existence? Playing osterich will excuse you from your own mea cupla!

I was not proffering an apolgia pro forma for our groups; merely saying that both, Indo-Pak, groups of hate have a mutallly benefical relationship of using hate for their own interests.

Ciao!

bahmad #203

Bilal,

This is great! Thank you very much for taking time to search for (and writing) these quite insightful and interesting passages. Things are a lot clearer for me now.

Once again thanks for you help.

A thoughtprovoking analysis by Salman Akhtar. Definitely time for some soul searching by all those involved in comitting the heinous atrocities. Though one fails to understand what prompted the Army to act in such a manner against their fellowcountrymen and co-religionists. Majhab nahi sikhata aapas main bair karna.

DEATH OF REASON

To ferof and karashid,

I cited the news report of PML leader saying that a peace deal by CE with india is a betrayal of the jihadists and that pakistanis. PML is the largest party in pakistan, a few years ago it had a landslide victory and had to be ousted only by a coup. Great, what did Feroz compare the remarks to, that of fringe parties in india. This is the essence of pakistani problem, the educated cannot grasp the import of what is happening, the largest, supposedly moderate, the last ruling party of pakistan calling for continuance of jihad is significant, it is not some marginal 2% party. The blinkers of TNT suddenly reduces PML to a fringe party to deflect the need for`introspection`, or rather put even the ducated into the religious straight jacket. Or can I call it fatwafobia.

Krashid also exibits the same type of reasoning. He finds duplicity in indian relationship with israel. Palestine the cause of the arab israeli problem, has much better relations with israel. The leaders regularly meet, so is the case with several arab countries. Even at the height of trouble, thousands of palestinians worked in israel. Indian relations with israle for a long time was worse that of the arabs with israel. Again to the blinkered TNT mind, Arafat and other leaders can meet the israeli leaders, when an indian minister visits, it a treachery of the arab world.

Read the post by sac, read it and reread it, build up a level of integrity to post it, some day, the essence of what the educated of pakistan gives to the masses, tha language of hatred and paranoia. Education can only choose the weapon, the target is selected by what is learnt in childhood. Death of reason, death by TNT.

In response to fairdinkum (Reply # 199)
Dear fairdinkum:

Please try to figure out the answers of your questions from the following passages.

In his book, “Rescuing History from the Nation,” Prasenjit Duara (1995) writes: “Historical consciousness in modern society has been overwhelmingly frames by the nation-state. Yet, despite the certainty that a history belongs to a nation, the nation itself remains a highly contested phenomenon. Regimes, politicians, and ordinary people within a nation do not often agree on what the nation does or what it should mean. Little wonder then that scholars of nationalism have found it difficult to define such words as “nation, nation-state,” and “nationalism” (p. 3).

Well-known British social theorist, Anthony Giddens, in his book “The Nation-State and Violence” (1987), writes: The terms “nation-state”, “nation” and “nationalism” are often, even characteristically, used in the literature of the social sciences and history as though they were synonymous. But I shall distinguish between them. By “nationalism” I mean a phenomenon that is primarily psychological–the affiliation of individuals to a set of symbols and beliefs emphasizing commonality among the members of a political order. Although sentiments of nationalism often coincide with the actual distribution of population within states, and while those who govern modern states usually seek to promote such sentiments wherever possible, there is by no means always a clear correspondence between them. By a “nation” I refer to a collectivity existing within a clearly demarcated territory, which is subject to a unitary administration, reflexively monitored both by the internal state apparatus and those of other states. Both the nation and nationalism are distinctive properties of modern states and in the context of their original emergence as well as elsewhere there is more than a fortuitous connection between them. There can be no nationalism, in its modern form at least, without the formation of nations, although the reverse relation is a more problematic one” (p. 116).

Giddens (1987: 120) then defines a nation-state as a “bordered power-container.” He treats it as “the pre-eminent power-container of the modern era.” In distinguishing between “traditional states” and “nation-states,” he writes: “All traditional states have laid claim to the formalized monopoly over the means of violence within their territories. But it is only within nation-states that this claim characteristically becomes more or less successful. The progress of internal pacification is closely connected with such success–they are, as it were, different sides of the same process.” Hence, the “ . . . nation-state, which exists in a complex of other nation-states, is a set of institutional form of governance maintaining an administrative monopoly over a territory with demarcated boundaries (borders), its rule being sanctioned by law and direct control of the means of internal and external violence” (p. 121).

B. R. Nanda (1998), in his book “The Making of a Nation: India’s Road to Independence,” writes: “In 1884 Sir John Strachey, a retired member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, was invited by the University of Cambridge to deliver a series of lectures on India. “This is the first and foremost thing to learn about India,” he said, “that there is not and never was an India.” Strachey thought it was impossible to that men of Bombay, Punjab, Bengal and Madras should ever feel that they belonged to one great Indian nation. He spoke a year before the Indian National Congress held its first meeting in Bombay. Little did he know that there were already forces at work imbuing the people of India with the spirit of nationalism which within a matter of six decades would compel the British to wind up their rule in India” (p. xv).

Nanda (1998: xvi) adds: “It is, of course, true that India had never been a nation-state.” But nationalism in the sense in which we understand today–the identification of the state and nation, the feeling that the supreme loyalty of individual is to the nation-state–is a phenomenon of recent growth. It became important even in Europe only towards the end of the eighteenth century. It received a boost from the American and French Revolutions, the Napoleonic wars, the revolutions of 1848 in Europe and the struggles for the reunification of Germany and Italy in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The final triumph of the idea of the nation-state came only in the second decade of the twentieth century after the First World War with the break-up of the Autro-Hungarian and Turkish empires.” He further maintains: “Through its long history India had been politically fragmented. But the idea of a chakaravartin–a monarch exercising sway over the entire country– lived on in the collective consciousness of the Indian people, even though it was only occasionally realized such as under the Mauryan and Gupta dynasties. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the whole subcontinent came under the umbrella of Mughal rule, and the Mughal Emporer came to be recognized as the paramount ruler of India” (xvi).

If these passages do not provide adequate insights/answers, please let me know.

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

Vicky # 201

You say:
“Are you making a case FOR India being one of the oldest nation states in the world - since the advent of muslim rule? Are were you implying something else and chose a bad example?”

Dear Vicky,

I am sorry; can you elaborate on your statement please? What do you mean when you say I chose a bad example?