An Eulogy For The Hawks

bhartiya musalman, as much as I respect your right to an opinion about Pakistan, I must remind you that 50 years is far too short a time to term a state ``failed``. It may do us well to remember that the United States almost fell apart almost 80 years after she became a country with the Civil War. However, Pakistan is nowhere close to death; her economic indicators for the next year are actually looking up as more taxes are being collected and the IT sector is starting to catch up to speed.

AGAIN, I MUST IMPLORE you to look at the results of Israel trying to do the same thing against Egypt that you`re advocating here for India to do against Pak. The result was that Sadat realised that Israel was trying to bankrupt and bury Egypt, so he figured a war was the only thing to bring international attention and aid to the region. It was, in retrospect, a wise decision for Egypt since they gained honour back (for domestic purposes) and got international aid. If India tries to cripple Pak as you suggest, it will be in Pakistan`s best interest to go to war, and if they attack first there is a very good chance that it will be a disaster for India. If you`re willing to risk that you can beat Pakistan in an all out war, then fine try and cripple her. But those of us who do NOT want bloodshed would rather that you work other ways.

BTW, Afghanistan is the state you want gotten rid of... it has no historical significance as it never existed as a unified region but was always tribal and owned by someone or another. It was created as a region when the British and Russians wanted a buffer zone so they didn`t accidentaly go to war against one another during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Attn: Scout

Doc, what says you; does the patient need another dose of strong medicine? The last one worked for 3-4 days but the symptoms are returning now. The bakri is bleating again. (Or is it braying.... damn my punjabi medium education)

For others who are sick of this bakri`s bleatings and can`t empathize with her, this article below provides some information.

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/an_sci/extension/animal/meatgoat/MGWormer.htm

PS. Scout, I didn`t like it one bit when you apologized to the bakri.

Shammi 88: ``The Master of Objectivity, who frequently appeals for `objective` responses is giving us a lesson in making subjective judgments! Carry on, sir!``

You seem to be on a personal mission to discredit everything I say :-) There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But once again, I would like to request you to highlight my points you disagree with, so I can give counter-arguments. Not just attack. Because I have no way to counter a personal attack. Apart from attacking you, which at least in my opinion, would be a childish immature idiotic hate-filled and ridiculous act. So I will not do so.

I suppose in this reply you have made an attempt, however small it maybe, to present some kind of a point. Calm down, and take a deep breath, so we can initiate an intelligent discussion. Let me give you my point of view.

There is a small group of my ex-military friends who are now employed in the Silicon Valley industry. This includes one friend who went to the US Air Force Academy, another who became a VP of a startup before the age of 29, another who has started a well-funded start up, etc. We hang out together, quite often. All of them went to the same college ylh mentioned.

In my opinion, I have found these people to be more succesful at a younger age, than other Pakistanis I have hang out with, in Silicon Valley. Perhaps because, the college ylh mentioned has (or had in my days) one of the highest academic standards of any school in Pakistan. It was one of the toughest colleges to get through, graduating only around fify percent of the people who joined. It has laid the foundation, since the early fifties, of one of the best internationally recognized Air Forces in the world (there is perhaps no other college in Pakistan that can make such a claim, in any field). During my days, amongst other things, it had some of the most highly recognized names in Urdu literature teaching there. These professors edited/wrote many of the Urdu books, dictionaries, etc. used in Pakistani schools, at the college level. One of them, I believe, was picked up by Oxford, after retirement.

Having seen both the military and the civilian life, and because most of them are self made success stories from middle class Pakistani families (the families with no Internet connection in their homes), I feel this group of friends have a very balanced view of Pakistan`s problems. Or perhaps they seem so competent because my circle of friends is too limited. In either case, I gave a personal opinion on their capabilities, vis-a-vis other Pakistanis I know. That does not necessarily make it a fact. It is just something I have experienced.

anNy #92: Thanks for the kind opinion. I have actually been quite interested in Shammi`s opinion on nearly all issues (except Kashmir; I believe in non-violent self=determination for every group in South Asia, including Kashmiris, Bangladeshis etc., while he does not). However, lately I have become his target. I am not quite sure why.

ROMAIR #1

``despite Nehru`s strong belief that Pakistan would crumble back into India, Pakistan is still around.``

I have heard different versions of this ``nehru`s belief``. Is it possible for you to give reference to where you read about this ``belief``?

veeresh
I am NOT the same as any people who welcome military dictatorships.

I am NOT the same as those who argue `economic pragmatism` and also call others calculating banias.

I am NOT the same as those who express disdain for `nationalist fervor` then use the threat of violent fundamentalists roaming freely in their country as a reason for demanding compromise.

If there are any such Pakistanis as I describe above, any detente with them is just invitation for more grief of the same kind. And I am hard put to understand what good such detente would do OTHER Pakistanis.

We should at least recognise this as a possibility and then set about working harder to fill those empty plates.

Re: bhartiya musalman # 81

I am not sure whether you are trying to be a zealous patriot or are just confused, when you prescribe that India should administer a coup d` grace to Pakistan. India cannot afford to have a Pakistan tottering on the brink of a political abyss, because whatever happens in Pakistan is certain to cause ripples in India.

Whether India likes it or not; whether India admits it or not, but India`s economic future is linked to the fact that Pakistan remains stable and does not undermine India future potential by imploading as a state. India has more to lose than Pakistan and both sides know this reality.

The name of the game in the 21 century is economic pragmatism and not nationalistic ego.

The age of the nation state has been replaced by a world of economic reality and patriotism has been replaced by a sense of economic mobility and globalization. Flags are no longer in vogue; the battles are now fought in the virtual world of computers for the right to master the information war; who ever controls the information will control the future and who ever will control the future will dominate the world.

As to your wish, all I can is be very careful, when you play with fire and try to set your neighbor`s house on fire, because you might burn down your own house in the process. We, Pakistanis, know about the hazards of fire, because we tried to play with fire in Afghanistan and in Kashmir and now that fire, which we helped in igniting, is threatening our own homes.

The fire is a devil`s friend, because you may ignite it, but once its starts to burn no one can control it and one day it will burn the hand that set it aflame!

Ciao

Fuzair #94: I would agree with you on Cowasjee. Cowasjee is one of my favorite writers. He is probably one of the only people in Pakistan, who knows/knew every major Pakistani leader personally, from Jinnah to Musharraf. He would be on top of my list of Pakistanis I would like to meet, and have discussions with.

From his articles, what I have gathered is the following:

He loves Pakistan greatly, to the extent of taking on Supreme Courts and construction mafias. The leaders he likes include Jinnah, Yahya, and Musharraf. The ones he does not like are Z. Bhutto, B. Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Zia, Altaf Hussain and the religious right. I haven`t read much about his views on Ayub, but I get the feeling he is neutral on him. I would say my views are identical to his on all these leaders, except Yahya. I do not know much about Yahya Khan, and Cowasjee seems to be on of the only guys who thinks well of him.

Musharraf`s education team has been complimented by even George Bush. So he must have selected well.

``The six in charge of the country`s education, with four women in the majority, get on well and form a competent team.`` (Cowasjee)

Parsis, on the whole, seem to be the most successful communities in Pakistan. Every Parsi Pakistani I know, seems to be quite educated, and doing well, in Pakistan.

Reading the posts on this and the top board after the Gujerat riots, I am proud to see that there are mostly expressions of sorrow among both the Indian posters and the Paki posters at these riots. No one has used the opportunity to moralize (except ali1) or to act like one of the mob (except harimau) (and hopefully they will learn something from the others on chowk). With this kind of a mature, humane response from those who do not have the excuse of poverty for any communal or nationalistic hatreds, there is hope indeed of better years ahead for the subcontinent.

A nice article for those not excited by the prospect of a perpetual war

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2001-daily/03-07-2001/oped/o5.htm

Any comments on the author`s solution for the resolution of the Kashmir problem?

Most Pakistanis and Muslims do not fully understand the Indian capacity to Hate Islam and Pakistan. Senseing a rising concern in the ``West`` over being targeted by terrorists, these Indians, - ever the zealots - have launched into a international effort at hate and the rewriting of History - Pakistan will progress if it adopts an Indian identity over others. That we are ``one``, ``the same`` as Indian and that Indian ``civilization`` can make room for Muslims.

Islam as a civilization and culture is itself the root cause the social, economic and poltical evils that dog Muslim countries. The Two nation theory is itself pornography. Democracy can find no home in Islamia, because Islam itself is hostile to the idea. Islam and Muslims have inante hostility towards towards the world because Islam is itself ``militant``. These vile ideas do not find expression under some rock, but are diseminated in the pages of major Indian newspapers, witness:

``Wish you were here

K.R. Malkani



GENERAL PERVEZ Musharraf of Pakistan is visiting India in the next few days. He is welcome. Khush-Aamdeed.

Some people say that India had taken the position that there will be no talks until the cross-border violence is stopped. Obviously, the government is satisfied that this violence has abated.

Others wonder why we should negotiate with a man who toppled a duly elected Prime Minister and who has now removed the President also and made himself President. These are internal matters of Pakistan. That is the way Pakistan is. And in any case he was the boss as Chief Executive and he is still the boss as President. It makes no difference to India.

Musharraf has said and done some commendable things. Perhaps he is the first top Pakistani leader to pull up the mullahs and tell them that they are corrupt and irresponsible. Also, he has cut Pakistan’s defence budget. Some people argue that he has done so because he is short of money and the World Bank led him to it. Whatever the reason, he has done the right thing.

The talks will be held in Agra and Musharraf will be paying a visit to Ajmer also. And that will make the talks something more than official business. It will give depth and ambience to this Indo-Pakistan interface. Next only to Mecca, Ajmer is the most sacred place for Muslims of the Indian peninsula.

How will the talks fare? Pakistan has said that Kashmir is the core issue. And India has made it clear that the only thing to discuss about Kashmir is the end of aggression in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Shorn of verbiage, the position is that India cannot give up Kashmir, and Pakistan cannot give up the Kashmir issue. The only solution to this problem is acceptance of the LoC as international border.

We can take steps to facilitate trade and travel. Both countries can also put books and newspapers on the interaction list. Let people across the Radcliffe Line know what people on the other side are saying and doing.

Indians and Pakistanis are the same racial stock amalgam; they have the same languages, historical and political experience. And yet their responses tend to be quite different. Why? How is it that democracy is as safe in India as it is unsafe in Pakistan, although both the armies were trained under the British?

During the freedom movement, the Congress took the position that all Indians are one nation. Later, the Muslim League took the position that Hindus and Muslims are two nations. (Our communist friends saw a dozen nations). The word ‘nation’ or quam is imprecise. As Nehru once rightly put it, if you feel one, you are one; if you don’t, then you aren’t.

From the Himalayas to the sea, civilisationally, we are ‘One People’; you may call it ‘One Nation’ or you may not. Hindus and Muslims may or may not be one nation; but they are two societies. And these societies consist of many sub-societies. No Constitution can possibly take separate note of all these societies and sub-societies. But a full-blooded democracy, with adult franchise and free elections, can take care of all these societies in proportion to their strength.

The Muslim League made the mistake of thinking that Pakistan will take care of the ‘Muslim nation’. Now they know that ‘Indian Muslims’ are something more than a ‘nation’. Apart from Bangladeshis, they are also Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochis and Pathans — and Mohajirs. Also, Shias, Sunnis, Qadianis, Syeds, Khans, Arains and Jats, etc.

Although etymologically Islam means ‘peace’, it spread mostly by the sword. The sword is no doubt important in life. But the Hindu does not concede any role to the sword in matters of religion. As Al Biruni, the great medieval historian, noted a thousand years ago, “At the utmost, Hindus fight with words, but they will never stake their soul or body or property on religious controversy.”

Sufism did tend to soften the militancy of Islam; but the dominant militant character of Islam remained. And so Muslims think in terms of the amir, imam, khalifa, quaids, kafir, fatwa — the jehad and the ghazi. The emphasis was on leadership — preferably of the militant variety — and not on the people.

And so Iqbal regretted that democracy was a system in which “men are counted and not weighed”. Maulana Mohammed Ali once said that “the little learned of the land” were too much of a nuisance; it was much better, he said, in the middle ages, when inconvenient heads were just cut off. Zia said that he had been made chief by Allah and he was answerable only to Allah. He added that Allah had told him in a dream that elections were “un-Islamic”. And that was that.

Jinnah was a big barrister. But he also believed in his own — and only his own — leadership. He not only continued as Muslim League president year after year, after Partition he combined in himself the offices of governor general, commander-in-chief, and president, not only of the Muslim League but also of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. The only Muslim leaders close to the masses, like Fazl-ul-Haq of Bengal and G.M. Syed of Sindh, had to leave the Muslim League in disgust.

We should remember that the Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf take-overs were not the only military interventions in Pakistan. There were nine infructuous attempts at military coups, the first one coming under Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan as early as 1951. The amusing thing is that every time the military overthrows a civilian government, all opposition parties welcome the change.

An important aspect of militant leadership is the premium on successful leadership, on success in life. Badshah Khan said that if a Hindu renounced wealth or office, he commanded greater respect. But if a Muslim did the same, he was viewed as something of a freak.

Once Shaukat Hayat Khan, son of Sir Sikander, Prime Minister of Punjab, called on Jinnah. Jinnah’s advice to him was: “Go and make money. Muslims don’t follow poor leaders like Hasrat Mohani or Zafar Ali. Muslims followed me only when I had collected 50-60 lakh of rupees.”

And since Muslim politics revolves round the rich, the militant and the successful, the people as such do not count for much.

In Hindu society, the people’s urge lies in reform and advancement. Apart from the Congress, the liberals and the revolutionaries, we had the Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission, Theosophical Society, RSS. In the Muslim society all you had was Deobandis, Barelvis, and Tableeghis. You can’t get any Muslim leader to come out even against such evil practices as polygamy, instant talaq and burqa.

Why is this so? After all, for centuries Islam carried not only the sword but also spread agriculture and industry, science and art, culture and commerce. What has paralysed Muslims the world over, so that not even two out of the 40-odd Muslim countries have a proper democracy? It would seem that the world has changed but Muslims do not know how to respond to the new ideas and institutions of democracy and human rights, capitalism and socialism, secularism and liberalism, science and spirituality.

However, there are some stirrings of ideas in Pakistan. Recently, Aitzaz Ahsan, PPP leader in the erstwhile Pakistan senate, counselled in his book The Indus Saga, that Pakistan is based on the Indus basin; it cannot disown the Vedas written on the banks of the Indus; and Pakistan does not have to disown either Krishna or Indra, as if they will “pollute the Islamic faith”.

And now we have Pakistan’s top Mohajir leader Altaf Hussain saying on TV that every Pakistani should sing Iqbal’s Saare jahan se achha, Hindustan hamara as the ideal.

Even Mao echoed the same feeling. In August 1968, Arshad Hussain, then foreign minister of Pakistan, met Mao in Beijing. Sultan M. Khan, then the Pakistani ambassador in China, reports in his Memories and Reflections that the very first remark of the Chinese leader was: “Tell me what is the difference between you and Indians? You look the same to me. Aren’t you only temporarily separated from the Indians.”

This is not a plea for annulment of Partition. Scrambled eggs cannot be unscrambled. But Indians and Pakistanis are brothers. And brothers can also quarrel and separate. However, they don’t have to keep quarrelling even after separating. It is about time we relaxed, admired the Taj, saluted Ajmer and went back home, happy and content.``

Having taken a intellectual dump on Islam and Pakistan - we can now be the brothers and sisters we always were? Why quarrel? You Muslims can`t help being who you are and we Hindus will patronize you, if you will be Indian. Isn`t that a better deal than the one you Muslims have now?

An excellent article from M J Akbar. It is good to see that sane minds are prevailing. There is Hope!!!

``Failure of talks could be infanticide``

By M. J. Akbar

Barring the unthinkable or the unbelievable, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President and Chief Executive Pervez Musharraf will meet in Delhi in the middle of this month. That is the easy part.

The truth about this dialogue is that failure will have many fathers and success will be an orphan. Cynicism is now in-built into India-Pakistan relations; and more people with influence on both sides of the border want this dialogue to fail than those who want it to go somewhere.

It is a mistake to believe that everyone wants something as obvious as peace, and its first cousin, prosperity. Time - and we are talking of five decades and two generations in power now - breeds, sustains and encourages a vested interest in confrontation. The cost of confrontation is huge, but its benefits are wide. As the witty bureaucrat pointed out to his successor on the eve of his retirement, just because a policy has failed is no reason to change it.

At one level this vested interest is material interest. There is money in war. The game of defence-offence requires vast outlays of hard cash (hard as in dollar-hard) that feed mammoth institutions, turn huge corporations profitable and look after the needs of layers of individuals. But this too is easier to negotiate than the other problem. A vested interest also develops in the mind. Hatred can become comfortable and comforting, particularly when cloaked in simulated ideology of paranoid nationalism.

Even those free from the poison of hatred are prone to the temptation of suspicion. After all, what can fifty years of continual war breed except evidence that trust is foolish if not suicidal? Atal Behari Vajpayee rose above his party when he travelled to Lahore. He left behind his baggage of the BJP`s political and emotional history when he took that short bus ride across Wagah in the penultimate year of a century that had ripped and shredded a common subcontinent.

Today he has risen above himself. For who can have experienced more than him, with his political background, evidence of the proposition that trust is a foolish virtue? The participants were still heady with the intoxicating spirit of Lahore when the intrusions along the Kargil cease-fire line took place, blowing up eventually into a nasty mountain-top war that shook the Vajpayee government before it consumed the Nawaz Sharif regime. Mr Vajpayee`s instinctive aversion to the coup that overthrew his Lahore comrade underlined his anger against the perpetrators of Kargil. In meeting the general with whom he had to do literal battle, Mr Vajpayee has placed his perception of the national interest above his own sorrow and anger.

It is obvious that this would not have happened if, so to say, the general mood in Pakistan had not changed. The warriors of Kargil adopted the language of accommodation the moment they seized power. Words alone, however, do not create trust. Words can be pre-planned, manipulated. But General Musharraf has proved a surprisingly effective communicator; few men in uniform have used television better than he has. Television does of course convey words, but it also photographs body language, which is infinitely harder to disguise than words. General Musharraf is a bad actor; you can see him getting uncomfortable when compulsion requires him to be evasive. But this also doubles the effect of his sincerity when he is being sincere. When he reaches Delhi General Musharraf will bring with him the promise of sincerity.

This is what makes Delhi more dangerous than Lahore. Too many things are right. The talks are between representatives of hard-line constituencies and therefore leaders whose commitments will be backed by parties that could have sabotaged any agreement, as indeed they have done in the past. The timing is right, since American interest in the dialogue is a given: six months ago, Washington had a mess instead of an administration. This is going to be a dialogue pregnant with possibility. An abortion will depress both countries immeasurably, and there may be no medicine available to stop the bleeding.

The stakes could hardly be higher: we are playing nuclear poker out here. The first, and immediate, requirement, therefore, is a definition of success. Success in any manifestation is a comparative fact. Only those who want failure see it in absolute, and, therefore, unachievable terms. There will be one chorus (you can hear it practising already) in both India and Pakistan that will measure everything said and done against a ``solution`` to the Kashmir dispute that achieves their present positions. No dialogue can survive the scrutiny of such parameters.

If one wants to be disputatious, there is no end to this game. There is enough ammunition to blow apart any position, including the holy ones that the hard-liners assume.

Self-determination might be a very noble idea, but it does tend to sound more relevant in the vocabulary of a nation committed to democracy. A country that has not managed more than two or two and a half honest general elections in five decades, that has been ruled by unelected bureaucrats, presumptive politicians and dictatorial generals is hardly qualified to preach about the will of the people. The people of Sindh and Punjab could make a good case for self-determination at this moment, having seen their elected leaders dismissed and exiled. India, heaven knows, has had its share of incompetents but its leaders have only been removed from office by the will of the people, not by the will of army officers.

There is a growing view in India that the best solution to the Kashmir problem is to convert the cease-fire line into an international border; this was believed to be the ``secret`` (although there is no evidence of any ``secrecy`` in Pakistani records) understanding behind the Simla Agreement between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Logic is acid to this idea.

Why does an accident of January 1, 1949, have to become a permanent fact?

Would we have been equally sanguine if the cease-fire line had been ten miles further to the east? If Maharaja Hari Singh ceded the whole of Jammu and Kashmir to India and that is the basis of our international position, what right does then any government have to hand over any portion of that land? Does this not dilute and destroy the very principle on which Jammu and Kashmir came to India?

It does, but the counter argument is that this is the only pragmatic solution left. Ah. So we have conceded the role of pragmatism. This opens a whole new world.

The only sensible definition of success in the Delhi talks is this: if the gamut of problems between India and Pakistan stretches from A to Z, then the Delhi summit should be deemed successful if Prime Minister Vajpayee and General Musharraf achieve clarity on A. At this moment relations are in negative space, outside the alphabet and therefore outside the flexibility of dialogue. To reach the beginning may sound paradoxical, but that is the only phrase that does justice to the truth. Mr Vajpayee and General Musharraf must create a new beginning.

And they must find the structures, preferably stable, in which to house and nurture this new beginning. To send them into the doghouse conventional formats would be equivalent to infanticide. A series of parallel streams, or feeder systems, needs to be put in place to create a political-government-popular interface that begins to soothe the stretched nerves of the subcontinent. If this does not happen together, it will not happen at all.

It is these feeder systems that will keep the momentum rolling when the high drama of Delhi and Ajmer Sharif has crossed the clock. Politicians have their role, but they also have their limitations. Government, in the form of bureaucrats, is by training careful to the point of immobility, and will only respond to factors rather than create them. If there is spring in the air, the bureaucrat will stir (stir, not leap); if there is winter approaching, he will freeze by autumn.

Both governments need to involve those outside the political machinery. To expect a breakthrough in people-to-people relations at this point is to expect too much. But there are sectors that can be linked. The media is always a good starting point; it controls communication and can, deliberately or inadvertently, shift the mood. Pakistan Television and Zee TV have already done their bit by informing India and Pakistan that they are exactly alike when it comes to scheming in-laws, mischievous relatives, flirtatious cousins and ruthless impostors. This must be reassuring to mothers-in-law all over.

But more important than media is business, and particularly private sector business. Why has Dhirubhai Ambani become such an advocate of friendship between India and Pakistan? I doubt if he wants to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. He wants peace between India and Pakistan because he wants an even fatter bank account. That is an excellent reason. Peace must bring a dividend to attract motivators. Those Pakistani and Indian sugar dealers who traded right through the Kargil war may have been members of the Jamaat-i-Islami or the RSS in their spare time. In their useful time they were making money for each other. Money is a very strong cement for trust. When Iran, Pakistan and India begin to make or save money out of their gas pipeline, improving the lives of countless millions in the process, then the peace dividend will become a daily fact. You should be able to bank on peace.

If the account can be opened in Delhi, even if there is not enough for an initial deposit, then the Delhi talks can be considered successful.-Dawn/Asian Age Service

veeresh #77

.......i appreciate your sentiments which are probably provoked by an inner goodness which exists in all of us and sometimes makes us behave like humans, but i still cannot trust an indian as far as i can throw him ......this is rather sad because because i am about as ``liberal`` as a paki can get without having to eat eat pork with a syphillitic whore - and most of us would do that before we break roti with the devils from your side of hell on earth .......

........... even though most pakistanis living in pakistan are not as obsessed with hindustan as the expatriate community which feels the constant need to reaffirm its pakistaniness, all of us , from the wild-eyed jihadis to the tree-hugging heretics, hate ( and fear ) india with a passion bordering on schizophrenia.......... the only reason we can sleep at night is because we have the ``bomb`` which keeps the saffron-clad bogey-man away ...........

.......... so we are doomed..... our only consolation is that we go straight to heaven whereas you have to come back and suffer again and again .......

pakistan zindabad !

hidustan murdabad !

Studebaker and Bharatiya Musalman seem to be the two extremes of the Indian Muslim.

Studebaker blames everything on Hindus for the plight of the muslims and on the other hand Bharatiya Musalman blames everything on the muslims themselves.

Godot

. ``That is my belief. I firmly believe that Pakistan is Islam`s last hope.``

I too believe in that. Let us drink to that along with hamidm, the sigle malt variety, the pure, unmixed, the real halal stuff.

regards

jay.

Adnan 76,

What ever one might say, the impact of islam on education is there for every one to see. Middle east countries are pretty high on the income totem pole, but what about education, indonesia for a long tome had higher income than india.

Education of women, it is hard to dismiss the effect of religion. Islam and democracy, again the correlates are obvious.

I do accept that quran might contain all the knowledge, kalifait may be better than democracy. women might be better as chattels. These are mutially exclusive world views, islamic and the `western`, comparisons in which case becomes baseless.

Bhar-Muss #64:-

1) Your assumptions on my ``ethnic``/Punjabi background are incorrect. I don`t have to defend that here, though those who know me, know about it.

2) Your assumptions on my not knowing India, and a lot of the rest of the world, are incorrect. However, I am always willing to learn more. As part of my multi-faceted worklife, I regularly criss-cross India by air, rail and road. Some of the best travel guides about India have small acknowledgements for inputs from me, especially about the backwaters.

3) Your assumptions that I am obsessed with Indo-Pak are incorrect, I have after all only lost a brother and a few cousins and friends to the strife between our countries. I am obsessed with getting ahead, and the Indo-Pak thing does hold us back.

4) Your assumption that the Indian model of nation building is ``reaping results`` is quite incorrect, please take a look at our public health and education system as only two examples of how much things have deteriorated and how much more distance we have to cover.

5) Your assumption that I do not consume coffee in large amounts is incorrect. 80 plantation, 15 peabury and 5 chicory, freshly ground, black, without sugar, if you wish to try my favourite brew.

6) But the largest assumption incorrect on your side is that people in the rest of the country are not ``obsessed`` with Indo-Pak matters. There seems to be no other topic, inspite of the Manipur & Tamil Nadu problems, lately, all over the country.

7) Your assumption that I am a refugee is also incorrect.

8) The only possibly correct assumption you may have made is that my humour is pathetic. I think some of your reasoning is correct. But then again, both of us may have assumed wrong as seems to be the trend.

Dear Bhar-Muss, I am not trying to run you down. All I am saying is, give our poor countries a chance. Muslim or Hindu, Indian or Pakistani, nobody is sucking up from those on this board because we already have enoug to eat. But for our unwashed millions, kafir or otherwise, the Indo-Pak problems just reflect lesser food on their plates. Please try to look at it fromt hat perspective / assumption, call it wat you may, and move ahead on this board.