On Hate

Hobbyty #321

{You are right Pakistan has lost previous wars with India and most Pakistanis do not want to war with India - One can agrue that it was cowardly to have ordered outrages in Bangladesh, and cowardly to to have accepted such orders.}

There is no reason to believe that the Pakistan Army has changed its colours. It was just as cowardly to foist the vile Taliban regime on helpless Afghanistan. And please note that both previous major wars with India occurred under the rule of military dictators, and both led to their eventual ouster.

{What do you think of the ideas below and what do you think Mr. Musharraf will extract in return for providing the Indian government a fig leaf to allow the Indian government to order their forces back to the barracks?}

Hobbyty, your pathetic delusions never cease to amaze and amuse me. FC-1 `variants` entering service with the PAF in 2-3 years (this was in January 2002); Indian aircraft lacking missiles; T-72 an `international failure`; the evident obsessive concern for potency, beginning with the talk of `intellectual and moral neutering` and proceeding to pumps; the naive belief in Asghar Butt`s fictions about what the Indian MEA spokeswoman said; etc, etc ad amusem. Now comes this latest risible claim about Musharraf supposedly `extracting` something from India to `allow` Indian troops to return to barracks. If the Indians are sooo eager to return to barracks, why is it that the repeated whines are heard only from Pakistanis like you, not from the Indians?

Has it occurred to you that, given the current state of hostility, India might not mind a long-term massive troop deployment that forces a similar deployment from Pakistan? Pakistan, with its finances in poor shape unlike India, is going to have its economy suffer disproportionately from such an exercise. Here are some links along these lines:

http://in.news.yahoo.com/020420/43/1m4qc.html

``India tension weakened Pakistan`s growth: World Bank``

Washington, Apr 20 (IANS) The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have warned Islamabad against the adverse impact of the troops build-up along the border with India on Pakistan`s economy.



The World Economic Outlook (WEO), which the World Bank made public Friday, lists ``heightened tensions`` with India as one of the factors for Pakistan`s weakened economic growth last year.



Improvement in the regional security situation should support stronger growth in the period ahead. The World Bank report also says Pakistan`s economic viability and growth would be enhanced by normalisation of ties with India and that it can ``ill afford`` the money it is spending on maintaining troops on the border.

.....



If instead the Kashmir crisis was to be resolved and Indo-Pakistani relations were to be normalised, the benefits would be enormous for both countries, but proportionately larger for Pakistan.``

http://www.dawn.com/2002/04/30/top9.htm

``Border tension hits fiscal recovery``

etc.

The overrun in Pakistan`s defense spending is said to be on the order of 1500-1700 crore for this year alone. Less money to spend on golf courses for the Army and on Chengdu`s R&D!

{Should we war again? Does the fact that both armies include nuclear weapons not suggest a more sober view?}

I can sympathise with your consternation. You evidently imagined that brandishing nuclear weapons would allow Pakistan to continue with its `low-cost` strategy of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir indefinitely. India`s behaviour indicates the contempt with which they view these threats. Ejaz Haider`s article in TFT a week or two ago discussed the problem of Pakistan`s credibility gap with respect to deterrence and the difficulties in doing anything about it. In any case, the Indians know that you know that any nuclear exchange will mean the obliteration of Pakistan; and that even a conventional war will result in the Pakistan armed forces getting badly bloodied, and having their bluff about their supposed competence exposed to their own citizens, as it was in 1971. And they also know that Generalissimo Musharraf will do a great deal to avoid war, given that it will surely mean the end of his reign, as it did for two previous Pakistani military dictators. So India has lots of options to pressure the Great Dictator and the establishment of Pakistan; they happen to have chosen the one with the least cost to themselves, and perhaps also the least human cost to Pakistanis at large. I would suggest giving the strategic visionaries of Pakistan, the Shireen Mazaris and Nasim Zehras, the Ikram Sehgals and Hamid Guls and Brigadier Usman Khalids and others of like persuasion, time to do a cost-benefit analysis at their leisure and compute the actual expenses of their brilliant `low-cost option` suddenly transformed into a high cost option. And then perhaps they can decide whether Supreme Leader Musharraf and the Pakistan Army are really in a position to extract any concessions from India.

Ali1

Ali rest assured I do not have in mind to stuff anyone witrh anything. I think if it`s true that it is the ``brutalized who in turn brutalize``, we should at least explore the role of caste in the cycle of brutalization.

You are right that Indians on Chowk have shown a curious attitude in not discussing items that are unconfortable for them - but the fact that it is uncomfortable to them is because they think it is some sort of secret that only they know of - but of course it is not.

Also, I think such a discussion if it ever got of the ground and away from the defensive hysteria we have witnessed - could be of help to Pakistanis as well. Prem has asserted that it is Pakistan that is the heir to ``Bhramanic racism`` - we must not avoid that we are effected by trends in Indian culture and that the discussion of caste also effects us.

Prem

Dekh, tu mere ko ekdam sharif aadmi lagta. Kaise es hobby ke chakkar mein pad gaya re. Ab yeh hobby tera bheja fry kar ke chicken kee mafik khaa jayega. Bada pakau aadmi hai yeh hobby. Es se pind chuda ke sarpat bhaag ja.

Hobyty, I see that you have stuffed the Hindutva-vadis with Habaneros. Good Job dude! You raise questions that they know the answers to, but wouldn`t acknowledge that these exist or have any significance.

Akash - anyone else interested

You are right Pakistan has lost previous wars with India and most Pakistanis do not want to war with India - One can agrue that it was cowardly to have ordered outrages in Bangladesh, and cowardly to to have accepted such orders.

Should we war again? Does the fact that both armies include nuclear weapons not suggest a more sober view? Why are some indians on Chowk so prickly towards criticism? what are you so afraid of? That the rest of the world will know what you discuss amongst each other in private? is that what you are afrid of - don`t be - everyone one these issues - there is no reason to be afraid or defensive. As you know there has been very little reporting on the conditions of the forces stationed in the Indian desert - Is inquiry, like criticism, also, to be denied? I think most Indians will agree that these issues should be discussed and not treated as a threat, other Indians do discuss these issues, why are Indians on Chowk so defensive, so ready for a fight? What do you think of the ideas below and what do you think Mr. Musharraf will extract in return for providing the Indian government a fig leaf to allow the Indian government to order their forces back to the barracks?:

From the ``Hindu``

``Between war and surrender

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI APRIL 28 . Does the Government have a Plan B if its Plan A does not work on the border with Pakistan? Is the Government thinking of strategic alternatives if its explicit threat to go to war does not persuade the Pakistani leadership to give up on cross-border terrorism?

If the Government, busy this week defending its dismal record in Gujarat, does not quickly concentrate its political energies in dealing with the military situation on the border, the riskiest strategic manoeuvre India has ever initiated is likely to end up in a humiliating political defeat.

After the shocking December 13 attacks on the Parliament House, India threw much of its military might on the border with Pakistan with a very simple message to Islamabad — either end cross-border terrorism or face the consequences. The hints from Gen. Musharraf are that he is ready to call the Indian bluff.

The Indian military mobilisation and the Anglo-American diplomatic intervention nudged the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, into promising, on January 12, a crackdown on the jehadi forces at home and prevent the use of Pakistani territory to foment terrorism across the border.

India was not ready to believe Gen. Musharraf`s words and wanted to see evidence on the ground which would not come until the snows melted. The first indications are that there is no substantive reduction in cross-border terrorism.

If the next few weeks confirm that Gen. Musharraf has no intention to honour his words, New Delhi will face a stark choice. It will either have to escalate the military pressure on Pakistan with all the consequent risks or tamely concede its willingness to live with a perpetual threat of cross-border terrorism.

A conscious Indian decision to raise the military temperature on the border will have to be accompanied by a serious diplomatic effort to maintain international pressure on Gen. Musharraf and a determined bid to restore the national resolve demonstrated after December 13.

A failure to persuade Pakistan on cross-border terrorism will also have its impact on the elections in Kashmir due later this year. All the planned political initiatives of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in Kashmir will go up in smoke if he cannot pursue the coercive diplomacy against Pakistan to its logical conclusion.

Forget for a moment the beating India`s image has taken in the world in the last couple of months of bloodletting in Gujarat. That pain will be nothing compared to the strategic reversals that await India on its borders with Pakistan and in Kashmir. Mr. Vajpayee can either hang on to Narendra Modi or vigorously implement the national security agenda. He cannot do both.

What is a demarche? It is an official representation by a diplomat or a group diplomats from different countries to the host nation. It usually involves a request for action or decision from the host nation on a matter of concern to other governments.

Over the recent years India has received many demarches, mostly on Indo-Pak relations and on its nuclear and missile programmes. Thanks to the BJP Government in Gujarat, India`s internal governance is now up for international scrutiny.``

Sadna# 305:

Sadna, that was hilarious.

-h-

Stuka

Unfair - not, Zafar - please not, Zafar.

Dost Mittar

Something you may not want to see or discuss or be critical of - it could be used as a stick to beat up on India - you better get used this, you are going to one sore Indian, or you can simply discuss it as an adult person:

From ``Daily Nation`` -

``BJP planned anti-Muslim riots

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Members of India’s ruling BJP were directly involved in the killings of hundreds of Muslims in the western state of Gujarat, which were pre-planned and could spread throughout the country, Human Rights Watch charged Tuesday.

The New York-based rights group said the state government of Gujarat, led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist BJP party, was engaged in a ‘massive cover-up’ to hide its role in two months of communal violence that has left at least 900 people dead.

‘What happened in Gujarat was not a spontaneous uprising; it was a carefully orchestrated attack against Muslims,’ Smita Narula, Human Rights Watch’s senior South Asia researcher, said in the 75-page report.

‘The attacks were planned in advance and organised with extensive participation of the police and state government officials,’ she said.

Police officials who sought to protect Muslims were removed from their positions, while some police even led distraught victims directly into the hands of their killers, the rights group said.

At the height of the riots between February 28 and March 2, thousands of saffron-clad Hindu hardliners descended on Muslim neighbourhoods ‘guided by voter lists and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties — information obtained from the local municipality.’

‘This is a crisis of impunity,’ Narula said. ‘If charges against members of these groups are not investigated and prosecuted accordingly, violence may continue to engulf the state and may even spread to other parts of the country.’

The rights body said mass graves have been found around Gujarat and that the death toll from the riots could be as high as 2,000.

Human Rights Watch quoted a woman at a mass grave in Gujarat’s commercial capital Ahmedabad who washed female victims’ charred and mutilated bodies before burial.

‘Some bodies had heads missing, some had hands missing, some were like coal — you would touch them and they would crumble. I washed 17 bodies on March 2; only one was completely intact. All had been burned, many had been split down the middle,’ the woman said.

Mansoori Abdulbhai, a 53-year-old resident of Ahmedabad’s Gulmarg Society neighbourhood, said 19 members of his family were killed.

‘First they cut people so they couldn’t run and then they set them on fire. One or two women were taken inside and gang raped. After five hours the police came and brought us here (to a mass grave site). It was so well-planned,’ he said.

Citing witnesses and police reports, Human Rights Watch said the BJP was directly involved in the anti-Muslim violence along with several affiliated Hindu revivalist groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), Bajrang Dal and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The riots broke out February 27 after a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindu hardliners, killing 58 people. Most of the victims since have been Muslims, up to 100,000 of whom languish in displacement camps.

Opposition parties have been demanding that Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi be sacked, but the BJP has refused to accept his resignation, calling on him instead to seek a new mandate in early elections.``

Zafar zafar, Hobbyty is troubling me...pls teach him a lesson :))

HobbyTy

``Only Indians have been responsible for the break up of India``

Well, yeah!!! if you are counting all Pakistanis as erstwhile Indians, then yes, only Indians are responsible for partition

`` - and among Indians, Hindus must own up to their responsibility in breaking up India. ``

True, true. When Jinnah said Partition or Civil War, Hindus shoulda said civil war.

``Iit is Hindus who label Muslims, ``Invaders``,``

What should we label them? guests? They were invaders, even Pakistani history talks about the conquest of Sind. Muslims were not coming to India claiming political asylum.

``it is Hindus who are exclusionary``

True, and you guys are too inclusionary!!

``either way, all those Indians who wish to secure the territorial integrity of India, must be conscious that it`s not possible to secure this objective without the agreement of Muslims and Christians, who are also EQUAL claimants to India, To Life, to Liberty, to a safe present and future``

Not true. we could be territorially be one country, and still fight it out. Yeah?

Hobbyty

``The Indian armed forces in the desert are in a pitiable situation - these servie men do not even have field toilets, and clean drinking water is becoming highly prized, with the coming rainy season, their armour movement will be difficult if not impossible, the new aircraft do not have air to air missiles and only 30 aircraft have avionics required to target precision weapons, T72 tank that form the bulk of Indian armour is an international failure - and you want to convince us they are battle ready against Pakistani armed forces, ``

Mian dum hai to lad ke dekh lo, eent se eent baja denge tumharee. When we thrashed the crap out of you in 1971, we had lesser ammunition. This time with all the ammunition we have, we can make the world forget the place of Pakiland on the map. This is a challenge to the coward Paki army who lost each and every war against us. You lost yesterday, you will lose today, and you will lose to India in future. A bunch of losers you guys are...

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/magazine/28LIVES.html

SHE IS`NT MIRA NAIR THE MOVIE PRODUCER/DIRECTOR BUT LITERARY PERSONALITY WHOSE FIRST BOOK OF SHORT STORIES ``VIDEO`` JUST HIT THE BOOK STORE.

A Show of Faith

By MEERA NAIR

here`s a dead Hindu in the building,`` says the Muslim watchman. We are standing inside the gates of my apartment complex in the South Indian town of Hyderabad. Outside, except for a stray dog nosing through a garbage bin and the armed soldiers at the corner, the sun-rinsed street is deserted. The city is under curfew for the eighth straight day, and the soldiers have orders to shoot violators on sight. They announce this fact at intervals, politely, over megaphones.

It is December 1990. Hindu fundamentalists have once again tried to tear down a 400-year-old mosque in Ayodhya. They claim that Babar, the Mogul emperor, razed a Hindu temple to Ram, the Hindu god-king, to build the mosque. The mosque is only slightly damaged. But it is enough to make mythic hatreds between Hindus and Muslims bubble to the surface.

``It was a mistake,`` the watchman says. The dead man was a laborer, newly arrived from North India, one of a gray, overlooked brigade that polished floors. His downfall was that he spoke an unfamiliar rural dialect.

``He was shouting something, but no one understood.`` The watchman is insistent, a town crier with an important proclamation. ``So the Hindus thought he was a Muslim and cut him.``

``Where was he?`` I ask.

``His wife found his body in the alley behind the building,`` he jerks his thumb over his shoulder. ``Fate! What else?`` he cries, trying to answer the unanswerable. ``He had to be there at that time.`` I look away from his darting kohl-rimmed eyes and his rumpled khaki uniform. I didn`t want him to sense my unease.

I want to believe his version -- that it was a tragic misunderstanding. But first, I want him to explain how he knows the details -- the worker`s futile pleadings, the identity of his killers. ``How do you know they were Hindus?`` I ask him.

``They were,`` he replies and starts to walk away. Too quickly, it seems to me.

Did he see it all? The scuffle in the alley, the knives to the belly. Did other tenants stand by, watching from their windows? Letting a man die because he was Hindu? Until that moment, it hadn`t occurred to me to be afraid of my neighbors.

My brother and I were among the few Hindus in a predominantly Muslim complex. We had moved in four months before. We hardly knew anyone in the building. But we liked the place and didn`t mind the smell of biriyani rice in the corridors or the hordes of children playing loud cricket on holidays.

Even when the curfew emptied the streets, I felt safe, surrounded by the ordinary. But that was before the laborer was killed. Now, after, I am afraid of drawing attention to myself and ashamed of my fear. I don`t want to see the changed, severe faces of my neighbors turning to watch me as I walk past the knots of women talking in the courtyard. The escalation of attacks -- women and children, Hindu and Muslim, killed in their beds -- angers me. I can only imagine what it makes my neighbors feel.

We don`t nod hello to each other anymore. How can we? In the streets, our people are doing unspeakable things to one another. There are rumors about the revival of an age-old torment: mobs from both sides stop men at random and demand they declare their religion. Those suspected of lying are forced to undress. Once naked, they are easy to indict or set free -- only Muslims are circumcised.

One evening, our food runs out. During a brief break in the curfew, my brother goes for groceries. We hear the stores are empty. But he must try.

The knock on the door, when it comes, is soft and hesitant. I hear my breath, noisy in my chest. ``Kaun hai?`` I ask in Hindi. ``It`s me,`` my co-worker Muhammed answers. ``And Anwar. Open the door.`` They live 20 minutes away. I have known them for years. Yet for one horrible, shameful instant, I stand in my doorway and wonder if it is safe to invite them in. They must have read my face because they rush to state their purpose. Muhammed`s mother has sent me a gift: potatoes and onions in a string bag. Last year, she showed me how to make sheer korma, the creamy vermicelli dessert she made each year to celebrate the end of Ramadan. I didn`t know what to say.

``Leave the door open,`` Anwar says, as I let them inside. ``This being a Muslim area, we thought it was good to show people that we know your family.`` They stayed for some time and left only when my brother returned.

I`ll never know whether we were in real danger. Were Anwar and Muhammed just playing it safe? Or did they know of actual threats against us? I never could bring myself to ask them. It was a terrible time; and when it was over, none of us wanted to talk about it anymore. So I only told them how wonderful the potatoes had tasted. I never told them that I had eaten dinner that night more terrified and more grateful than I had ever been.

Meera Nair is the author of ``Video,`` a collection of short stories, published this month by Pantheon.

Dost Mittar, Shankar, Sadna, Prem

Here we go again - these series of post are based on the contention that caste serves to distribute inequality in society based on biology - that caste is unique to Hinduism, and the violence associated with Hindutva and it`s organs, suggests that there is a relationship between caste and religious bigotry and violence in India.

The hysterical response of inseucre persons such as yourself has been fun.

You could have chosen to discuss the matter, explain the matter, explore any connection - but instead you are so insecure - you can`t even discuss it like adults. - you will discuss no criticism - too bad, you`re just going to have to deal with it; goes with democracy, secularism and growing up.

All you have come up with in response to criticism is Hobbyty hates Hindus, hobbyty hates caste, we condem caste but are unable to discuss it, for fear that Hinduism relationship with caste will be brought up - hobbyty wants to break India - whine, whine - when all that was require was to discuss the issue like adults. You can whine all you like, but this issue will not go away - as a matter of fact it is a issue of national importance to Indians - not without impact on Pakistan. Grow up, learn to accept and discuss criticism.

Dost-Mitter ji

Eh kide naal sir-khapai karan lage de ho? Eh hai kharh budhi, `Main Na maanu`. Tussi jo marzi kahi jaao, eh record apni jagah to nahi hilna.

Regards

hobbyty,

{{Why are you and Prem and most shocking for me, Shankar, defending the caste system?}}

Yo..butthead! Where the heck was I defending the caste system?! I think it is the greatest mistake hinduism ever made. Dont twist things out of context..

Reply YLH:

``Ladies and gentlemen

REQUEST: Please don`t throw Jay a bone by responding to him.``

Yeah... I second that. Why don`t we just toss YLH to him instead and kill two birds with one stone?

Hee-HAWWWW<