Riots

satyavadi #363
And I was contemplating a 3-step cessation of hostilities :)

Pankaj #362
Pankaj I am ignorant about Urdu poetry, so this is the closest I came:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/sia/Events/indep.doc
Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Yeh dagh dagh ujala,
yeh shab-guzeeda sahr
Woh intezar tha jiska
Yeh woh sahr to nahin

This sullied dawn
This night-bitten daybreak
Surely this is not the dawn we longed for
In the quest of which we had set out once.

Reference Sadna #357:

I agree, it appears Shammi is misrepresenting what you wrote, first unknowingly and now after several clarifications,knowingly.

It hard to back off after taking such a sanctimonious stand. Only some preachers can accept they are not infallible.

Sadna

``I now know you are being plain dishonest here. My comment #71 clearly refers to Pankaj #60 which quotes Asif`s post #43 which is in response to asifk #37.

``

Yeah, I also thought so. Why some people are making so much fuss about it is obscure to me???

Anywayz do you happen to know about the lines of Faiz I talked about...

Re: Shankar

``... I think Partition was the RIGHT thing to happen...``

Why don`t we then work towards turning the clock back in India and instead of merely 525 princely states, work towards creating a few thousand along religious lines since the conditions (Hindu-Muslim animosity) are still there?

``…the formation of Pakistan has indeed saved the many muslims who opted for Pakistan… Whether those muslims who opted for Pakistan jumped from the frying pan into the fire is debatable…``

Am I the only one who noticed contradiction above? What would you say to the millions who lost their fathers, mothers, children, siblings and were ethnically cleansed? That they feel bad because they are jilted?

#343

``Won`t India have drop the ``Muslim`` as ``Invader``, Muslim responsible for ``Hindu Holocaust,`` Muslim responsible for ``breaking OUR country`` constructs that burden the history recalled in India?``

Have you read an Indian high school (eg NCERT) history textbook?

``a last note: Heard Dr. Aniruddha Das, a journalist for Asia Pacific Forum decribe the current govt. in India as complicit in several matters of concern; the embrace of Enron, the Narmada Dam, and finally, what he termed state/national cooperation against the Muslims in Gujrat.``

The only fanatics in India that compare to the VHP kind are of the leftist kind. I wont even start to refute this.

sadna #294:

…thanks for sharing this straight-from-the-heart post…appreciate this…

…let me share my views…first some specific ones and then a general one…

[…If anything I thought that Pakistan was a country where the right balance between Islamic tradition and modernity could be struck, not having the historical baggage other countries had…]
---this pre-supposes that the people in a newly carved piece of real estate have no prior baggage to carry in terms of tradition, culture and identity…not so…the stroke of pen or gun can usher in a new name…but…the older baggage and linkages do survive…

[….. a balance which Indian Muslims maynot feel fully empowered to strike as speedily because the Indian Muslim intellectual class was decimated by Partition….]
---while it is true that thousands of muslims migrated…millions stayed put…some because they were too poor to migrate…some because they did not agree with the partition…in fact…one can argue that in the partition holocaust…where entire villages were burned down…on either side…thousands had NO choice but to migrate!…as for the muslim intellectuals…some stayed…some moved…some moved and returned…salman, aijaz, josh etc…

[…Its only Kargil and the coup that brought Pakistan on my personal horizon and to chowk…]
---this is so true in another sense…lots of indians who had not been affected by the i/p tensions and shouting matches all these years…particularly those living below the cow belt finally joined the ‘band wagon’ (in the negative sense!)…witness the rise of anti-pakistan feelings in tamil nadu, kerala etc. after kargil and the rise in popularity of macho anti-enemy pro-desh bollywood films…

[… I gradually realised that for Pakistanis, India was not just `another country` like Pakistan was for me. I got the impression that a disdain for India and Indians(and amazingly Hindus and Hinduism) seems to be a hotly protected part of the Pakistani identity and Pakistanis are liable to take offence if Indians try to gloss over this part of their identity….]
---this has several parts that I would like to address…first..agree…from your perspective pakistan was another country just like here americans think canada is just another country…but if you scratch under the surface…the canadians are influenced and watch the us very carefully…anything that happens there inadvertently has implications for them…sort of living under the elephant’s shadow…and I suspect it is this reasoning that makes average pakistani more tuned in to India than the reverse…and couple this with successive pakistani governments policies to bring up the mirage of India to divert attention from their own shortcomings and gradually and inevitably it sinks into the people’s psyche…and it is not limited to hindus…this feeling is generic…so ingrained ...that muslim families that sometimes re-unit in the diaspora…the pakistani muslims have this disdain for their indian cousins…and vice versa!….

[…Another inseparable part of their identity seems to be a carefully cultivated feeling of being cheated out of their rightful Muslim heritage, a sort of premepted Mughal succession attributed to sneaky scheming of uppity Hindus namely Indians….]
---just as you share your personal experience let me share mine…I grew up in karachi but my experiences are not confined to Karachi only…use to travel and had friends all over…we did not subscribe to this thinking at all…babar was not an elephant…true!... but he was just a king in them history books…and re-occupying India was not a aspiration or tall claim…we never thought in those terms…now cricket was another thing!...

…I do not know what 90s school children there were taught…should ask kk aziz’s view on the subject (murder of history in Pakistan)..but in the over all scheme of things that may be a fundamentalist hiccup not a sustained thought…

[…But still you see people behaving (and using the demeaning terminology) of frustrated Mughals toward Indians, while ignoring the significance of political instability and wholesale slaughters going on in the parts of the world they prefer to identify with, take Afghanistan or Iraq for instance or the lack of just and representative government and equitable societies in much of the Arab world..]
---you are not referring to the indo-centric jahils here?…but you are right…about them indo-centrics…it puzzles me most times too…this obsession with Kashmir…and their ignorance of happenings in other muslim countries…ordinary and even some informed pakistanis also cannot explain how despite all their prayers and support yasser arafat had always been more friendly towards india…and more importantly…how with pakistan’s traditional and knee-jerk support in all international forums of all arab causes how come the arab governments have not been supporting the pakistani causes with the same intensity…

[…The determined dislike for Hinduism also puzzled me, how many Hindus do Pakistanis deal with on a daily basis anyway? The country is the seventh or eightth largest in the world, fifth? in terms of population(you get the picture), so why cannot they shake free of this Hindu-fixation? ..]
---think have touched on this briefly…their mostly ‘unrepresentative’ governments felt the bogey of ‘hindu aaya-hindu aaya’ as sufficient deterrent for the poor masses to forget their genuine grievances against the government of the day and rally behind it…the fundos discovered islam much later…

[…My impression also is that far from being the liberal citizens open to all ideas of the world, Pakistanis ( a large number of with very honorable exceptions) however cosmopolitan and well-travelled and in touch with the latest and the brightest can still be very parochial in their outlook…]
---would you believe me that i can lay the same claim about indians…based upon my personal friendships and acquaintanceships?….here, there and other parts of the world?…so what does taht tell us?...must be in them genes...

[… Class seems to be a very important diffrentiator, birth, religion, ethnicity, things like appearance, clothes and accents also matter very much to them in their dealings with others….]
---same comments as above….our immediate past master’s legacy!...they brought their class system and left a lasting scar on us… so what is new?

[…Pakistanis as a society have a very different world view from Indians and the best that India and Pakistan can do for each other is perhaps keep out of each others way and maintain a clear distance…]
---agree they do appear to be birds of a different feather at this moment…but enough of the barriers and the distance and the ethnic/religious berlin-walls ..that has not worked in the past and bodes ill for the future…I believe that all artificial barriers and walls should come down…open-ness should rule!…hopefully….hopefully as the economic lot of our people improves they will overcome the psyhobabble of the past and learn to look at each other if not with love than the same was as they look at say the burmese?…


…general comments:…in real life nothing is as black and white …while relations between India and Pakistan have a long way to go…there is only one direction they can go...up …we cannot go down any further…but wait!…you are right…am not considering the itchy-finger factor at all…I do not want to consider that at all… or god-bhagwan forbid we would all be glowing in the dark too…that is if we survive that nightmare…

lve,

t

shammi #341
``What had my goat there was the isolated comment (with no references whatsoever) that appeared (perceptions at play here again?) to lay claim of Indian superiority at a time when savagery of the worst kind has just visited India``

I now know you are being plain dishonest here. My comment #71 clearly refers to Pankaj #60 which quotes Asif`s post #43 which is in response to asifk #37.

Its one thing to disagree but this is something else. You have absolutely NO RIGHT to misrepresent my views and then attack me for your own misrepresentations as you are repeatedly doing here. Spare your exercises in self-righteousness for someone else.

Zafar #331 Yes, I almost forgot. The chocolate cake too is mine. And so are all the film actresses, fashion models, and millions and millions of other generally cute females around the world (to enjoy by their presence only in all cases except one, and that is good enough for me).

soysauce #307 ``Do you also take ownership for Cuzco (& what transpired there), vietnam, cambodia, bangladesh, el salvadore, nagasaki, the gas chambers, cultural revolution, black hills and ahmedabad?`` Interesting question. I suppose these represent the ``darker side`` of mankind, and one must keep in mind the ``evil that exists in the minds of men`` as well.

You ask ``Are you related to Krishna of the Gita by any chance?`` I dont think one needs to be ``God in human form``, or an unrealistic optimist, in order to express love and appreciation for the works of those he came before us, and to celebrate the wonderful creation around us. One needs to be a normal person, and to see things in the right perspective. And there is no shortage of people with this viewpoint in the world - that is why we have a tourism industry, that is why we have men risking their lives to land on the moon, that is why we have the Hubble and Chandra telescopes, and people working at the frontiers of biology and particle physics. It`s just that these people are on the frontiers of human endeavor, our link to the future, whereas those who kill and burn and rape are at the back end, our link to an animal past. It is for us in South Asia to move closer to the frontier, and thus be less of a problem and more of a solution for the rest of the world.

I suppose Jinnah was not only power hungry and stupid as well... because he could have become the governor of one of the Provinces as early as 1931, but he rejected that, he could have become the Prime Minister of a United Inda, but he rejected that.. so great was his power hunger that he rejected all of that, to become the Governor General of a moth eaten, trouble ridden, Pakistan for a WHOLE one year and 27 days during the last phase of his Lung cancer and Tuberculosis.

Wonderful!

(writers/authors also were not included in that list; most of my favourite fiction writers are non-muslims)

Just thought of some other non-Muslims whom I admire/respect: (sportspersons and other entertainers excluded)

Goethe

Mirabai (the lover of krishna not the urdu poet)

Alexander the Great

St Augustine

Socrates (not the Brazilian footballer!! Though I think he was great too!)

Richard Feynman (physics nobel laureate)

Firaq Gorakhpuri

etc,.

20,000 ARRESTS ACROSS INDIA

Barring sporadic violence and re-imposition curfew in Ahmedabad and arrest of over 20,000 people, the country on Friday remained calm during the shila daan ceremony in Ayodhya.

Curfew was clamped in three Muslim-dominated localities of Ahmedabad -- Shahpur, Kalupur and Karanj -- as mobs hurled stones at passing vehicles.

About 10,000 people were arrested in Maharashtra, 8,000 in Mumbai alone. Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists performed special prayers in over 2,000 temples across the state.

RSaxena,

Believe it or not but I DO actually love India: I still see it as dar-al-Islam (an abode of Islam( --and most Sunni scholars (even from India) [I don`t mean nuts like the Deobandi extremists] will agree with me. Also I have quite a lot of emotional attachment to Hindustan too--and I really don`t want any harm to come to it.

What I DO dislike is the treatment of the Muslims as second class citizens and the slow erosion of their culture and heritage. That`s all. As for the Hindus, I have nothing against them personally and would not wish any harm to any individual (as long as he leaves the Muslims alone) amongst them (I get on quite well with them in real life generally--esp. those from North India: South Indians are a mystery to me--no offence intended); it is their belief system which i hate, their kufr; this does not mean I will be horrible to a hindu but it does mean I will never be able to really trust one or become friends with one the way i would with a muslim.

Godot

I, as an Indian, hereby acknowledge that PAKISTANIS, in general, and Godot in particular is superior to ANY AND ALL Indians. Pakistanis, of course are a higher evolved race, with their degree of evolution matching or even surpassing white Caucasians. Indians in general and Hindus in particular are a lowly and inferior people as far as level of biological and mental evolution is concerned, that can be judged by the bollywood movies, not to mention the preposterous fact that they worship monkeys and lingam. Pakistanis and Islam are superior to Indians and Hinduism. Pakistanis are a more evolved people... Pakistanis are more...(add whatever you like).

PS No pun intended. This is actually what most of the Pakis think about us and Godot is only voicing his frank opinions. I salute you Godot for being a true Pakistani and expressing your frank opinions about the Indians being on the lower rungs of evolution.