Joint Indo-Pak School History Textbook on the Web

Dear Cherayam

C`mon you are also an IITian it seems. So nice to hear from you. You are right on both counts, I took D.N. Saraf`s course. He taught us Heat transfer. And I will never forget him `coz he gave a midsem in which I scored 1/30 and the average was 2.6/30. That was my all time lowest. Of Course I cracked end sem big time and got an A. S.K.G was indeed out for a sabbatical to Wisconsin. These days Ashutosh Sharma is doing some great work in Colloids and Interfacial Science. BTW are you also a Chemineer, if yes , which batch. Where are you now, and what are you doing. I am doing my MS here and plan to go for MBA afterwards. I am presently working on modeling and simulation of multiphase flow through naturally fractured porous media. Thanx again for enquiring.

Cheers

Pankaj, did you take SKG and DN Saraf`s courses? They are my all time favorites. SKG was out for sabbatical (Wisconsin and NUS)probably last half of your study? Am I correct? Chowk has the maximum entropy, what do you think? Are you doing Ph.D now or MS? I think your guess on Sameer is probably correct.

Best wishes for your study. You show more maturity for a 22 year old! and I love Kanpur, specially those peacocks in the IIT campus.

Sameer and Tahmed

Thanx Tahmed. Actually I was tickled by the use of words like entropy and boundary conditions by Sameer in explaining social concepts. Well it is my educated guess that Sameer must be either from engineering/science or a student of science(no one is a master in science:)). But I would bet on his being a Professor of natural sciences. In his last post he talks about complex problems demanding complex solutions and taking into account multidimensional aspects of a problem. This is exactly scientific lingo. You are definitely a sort of compassionate guy with a humanitarian attitude and it is a pleasure to talk with you. However I could not guess your profession. About myself, I am relatively new to chowk. As you might have guessed, I am a student of Chemical engg.. I am 22, did my bachelor`s from IIT Kanpur(remember Kanpur) and ended up here in America last year. There are some people whose posts I like to read like you people. You people provide me a new insight into the old problems.

Cheers

dear krashid

misinformed post!!! huh. Would appreciate a point wise rebuttal.

history bhool gaye kya and truth is bitter and it hurts.

Sameer: tahmad: Pankaj:

(Been following your interesting and level headed posts.)

As Mahajizardeh said: ‘Pehlay Khuda phir Rasool: pehlay insaan phir musalmaan’ ... this approach can and should be applied to any and all faiths or ideologies with appropriate word changes ..... ‘insaan’ remaining unchanged.

Re Muslims and Hindus came across this recently:

Yahan tasbeeh ka halqaa wahaaN zannar ka phanda
Aseeri laazmi hay mazhab-e-shaikh-o-brahmin maiN.

regards,

temporal

PS: For you Sameer, I`will sign off as rms temporal. That shall remain between us ;)

SameerJB#117/Pankaj#116: First, thanks SameerJB for taking the trouble of explaining what you meant by boundary conditions. I was a bit curious since Pankaj had mentioned the intellectual beauty of this engineering concept - looked up the internet to learn a bit about it and ran into some heavy duty equations and all I have understood so far is that in engineering they have to do with different arcs that join two points. Anyway, enough of my problems ... :-)

On the business of the Mullahs and Mahants (the latter, I assume, being the Hindu-version of the Mullah): I agree with you and Pankaj. We dont need any brokers between the individual and God.

Manoj#

J for ``Jahil``.

Misinformed post.

I have a question for you. If you don`t kill Muslims in mosques in India, where do you kill them. I thought that was the only place for Muslims to be killed. I forgot, you demolish mosques, so you have to find some other place to kill them.

Sameer JB #117

Can you tell me your perspective on many people`s choice of natural herbs as compared to taking medicine by physicians.

Many factors come into play, including desire of physicians to extract money, desire of drug companies to extract most profits, contempt towards literate by illiterate. There will be many other factors.

What is truth. Are the UNO resolution truth and demonstrate the will of nations. Then why some resolutions are implemented and some not.

Was Colonialism justified because it was advanced and caused the condition of people colonized to be improved or war against colonialism justified.

The truth is ones perspective except in science perhaps.

Tahmed321 and Pankaj: Boundary conditions of the self simply means within the limit or bound of self or individual. I also used the term entropy somewhere that is quite complicated to define completely but simply put; it means disorderliness. I wanted to follow up on this discussion but after reading message from Chowk Staff, I tried for 24 hours to refrain from unrelated issues.

Pankaj, you have elaborated my previous post very well. Similarly, tahmed, you have made a valid observation through human psychology and the unilateral phenomenon of interacting through internet with the factor of delayed time in response. Invariably, this lead to a multitude of one-to-one parallel interacts taking place under one topic with each one trying to make his/ her point as forcefully as possible in each shot. This is exactly where religions come handy because almost everybody has some knowledge of their and their targeted individual`s religion.

Moreover, it is one of the easiest paths to take. All religions do have basic goodness and value system built into them. All of them are based on essentially a very simplistic model of life, social justice and morality because: 1) They were developed in the distant past when consumption and demand of knowledge, spirituality and morality was limited to what we now consider basics and antique. 2) It had to be simple to be applicable and understandable to a large number of people.

Many of the respondents are using the same basic knowledge to the complicated questions of today, similar to Mullahs or Mahants. In practice, complex questions require complex answers with the consideration of a number of variables, absent at the time of inception of moral/ spiritual codes. Relying too much on the basics for complex questions (as in the case of ``religious scholars``, Mullahs or Mahants) leads to a resistance toward facing the tough questions head-on (superiority complex) and obscurantism, both of which are the natural allies of Mullahs/ Mahants. They are well versed and equipped with the basic knowledge that they use effectively against freethinkers (free from the boundary conditions set by organized religions/ priests), intellectuals and specialists in their respective fields. Simply put, modern, rational and logical thinking threatens the status, bread and butter of priestly class which they are bound to defend fiercely through interpreting religion in a way which guarantees their status. In the case of Pakistan, attempts to arabize culture, extensive use of Arabic terminology and phrases in the vernaculars, ``Islamize, both society and state are some of the means towards their desired ends.

Tahmed

Forget boundary condition and calculus. It was just a small ramble from the main topic. What I essentially implied is conveyed in the first para of my post. It is when a class of people with vested interests like Mullahas or Mahantas take up the task of interpreting religion and force their beliefs down the throats of gullible common man, religion becomes a menace to modern society. If there are conscientious people who interpret these sayings with a compassionate heart and humanitarian bent of mind there would be no problems. It is the scientific attitude and humanitarian ideals that should rule human mind not dogmas. True we can make mistakes even if we follow scientific methods but I believe it will be less horrendous than the crimes committed in the name of religion.

Sincerely

SameerJB #101: You wrote that ``All religions are true within the boundary conditions of self. It creates problems when we try to extend the boundary conditions to others and to other nations whose majority belongs to a different religion.``

Pankaj then wrote about the beauty of the concept of ``boundary conditions``. I realized then that I had no clue as to what you meant by this. I then checked the internet to understand what it means and understood this to be a term from calculus (which I never took beyond an introductory class). So, would any of you gentlemen, please explain in a language that even a moron like me can understand, exactly what you mean by this term?

http://www.timesofindia.com/today/09home5.htm
`Badnaseeb` Zafar`s family bemoans lost legacy
Monday 9 October 2000

http://www.sulekha.com/cgi-bin/column.cgi?resource=ms_roma
The Roma and the Persistence of Memory
Subhash Kak

a) Our pakistani friends have the Babri Masjid ( never mind it was built on a hindu shrine, never mind nobody ever offered prayers there) stick to beat the intolerant Indians.

Maybe they can enlighten us on the number of Hindu / Sikh shrines destroyed in their glorious tradition prior to and after the Babri Masjid.

b) let me assure that the Sikhs are very happy and doing very very well in India save for the few who are holed up in Karachi and Lahore. Now gentlemen see the people who are shedding tears for Sikhs.

The Pakistani cultural icon, the deeply religious `Aurangzeb` who bricked alive the kids of the Sikh Guru and tortured the Sikh Guru because they refused to convert. Such is the greatness of their cultural icon. The people who depict the Sikhs as ( J or Z for Zalim with a photo of a sikh) are shedding tears for the Sikhs.

The noble Mughal emperor `Abkar` is quite a villian as per Paki history books. That he choose to respect the other religions and did not break the shrines etc does not go down very well in the land of the pure.



Once again the Baburs, Ghanznis who raped, pillaged the subcontinent are the Paki heroes. That it is quite possible that the ancestors of todays pakistanis , Indians were at the receiving end of the Baburs, ghaznis is convenienlty forgotten!!!

c) As for the Christians, they are much much safer in India and do jobs other than that of `jamadars` which is their primary occupation in the land of the pure.

d) And yes the Muslims. They are much much safer in india. they dont get shot in mosques while parying and they are entitled to all rights that a Indian citizen has. They are not barred from occupying the highest positions in the land. the pakistani friends did not hear the MQM leaders in India asking for reunion with India and repenting the mistakes of 1947.

e) Coming back to the question of who were the the pakistanis before they came under the `civilizing` rule of Islam. i would leave this question to some of the more illustrious memebers of the forum.

f) why is there no reference to Harrapa and Mohanjodaro in the pakistani History books.

RSaxena #

Good to know that you are not yet American citizen. You are entitled to your worst kind of thoughts, because of this. And I apologize for realizing it late.

As far as YLH has clarified his position from Iran. I can trace my lineage all the way back till the time of Tughlaq when my ancesstors came. I cannot speak about Musharraf.

But my common bond with Musharraf is with belief in the same God, Prophet and Book. That was the same bond which made Pakistan possible. That was the same bond which kept Hindus and Muslims as two distinct entities for millenium.

Even if someone cannot trace the ancesstary to Arab, he can trace the common belief.

a) Our pakistani friends have the Babri Masjid ( never mind it was built on a hindu shrine, never mind nobody ever offered prayers there) stick to beat the intolerant Indians.

Maybe they can enlighten us on the number of Hindu / Sikh shrines destroyed in their glorious tradition prior to and after the Babri Masjid.

b) let me assure that the Sikhs are very happy and doing very very well in India save for the few who are holed up in Karachi and Lahore. Now gentlemen see the people who are shedding tears for Sikhs.

The Pakistani cultural icon, the deeply religious `Aurangzeb` who bricked alive the kids of the Sikh Guru and tortured the Sikh Guru because they refused to convert. Such is the greatness of their cultural icon. The people who depict the Sikhs as ( J or Z for Zalim with a photo of a sikh) are shedding tears for the Sikhs.

The noble Mughal emperor `Abkar` is quite a villian as per Paki history books. That he choose to respect the other religions and did not break the shrines etc does not go down very well in the land of the pure.



Once again the Baburs, Ghanznis who raped, pillaged the subcontinent are the Paki heroes. That it is quite possible that the ancestors of todays pakistanis , Indians were at the receiving end of the Baburs, ghaznis is convenienlty forgotten!!!

c) As for the Christians, they are much much safer in India and do jobs other than that of `jamadars` which is their primary occupation in the land of the pure.

d) And yes the Muslims. They are much much safer in india. they dont get shot in mosques while parying and they are entitled to all rights that a Indian citizen has. They are not barred from occupying the highest positions in the land. the pakistani friends did not hear the MQM leaders in India asking for reunion with India and repenting the mistakes of 1947.

e) Coming back to the question of who were the the pakistanis before they came under the `civilizing` rule of Islam. i would leave this question to some of the more illustrious memebers of the forum.

f) why is there no reference to Harrapa and Mohanjodaro in the pakistani History books.

RSaxena #

Good to know that you are not yet American citizen. You are entitled to your worst kind of thoughts, because of this. And I apologize for realizing it late.

As far as YLH has clarified his position from Iran. I can trace my lineage all the way back till the time of Tughlaq when my ancesstors came. I cannot speak about Musharraf.

But my common bond with Musharraf is with belief in the same God, Prophet and Book. That was the same bond which made Pakistan possible. That was the same bond which kept Hindus and Muslims as two distinct entities for millenium.

Even if someone cannot trace the ancesstary to Arab, he can trace the common belief.