Regarding the Stupid White Men

semipreciousme #268
You asked about terrorist attacks, so I replied. I didnot mention the ISI at all, I mentioned Pakistani jihadi organisations.

hamidm #224 ``... so you are saying that paganism should have been allowed to flourish inside the kaaba and the muslims should have built themselves a new mosque down the street? .... hobbyty and others might consider this blasphemous and declare you wajib-ul-qatl or something ...``

If hobbyty thought this was blasphemous he would have said so himself. So I think it is not fair for you to put words in his mouth. And the reason Hobbyty has not said so is I think because he realizes that what I am saying is entirely consistent with the basic message of Islam: i.e. (a) respect for all religions, and (b) that no man, not even the Holy Prophet, shares divinity with God. A message that many muslims often ignore, but which no muslim dares to challenge. Since he knows the meaning of ``there is no god but God`` and he knows that God has sent prophets other than Muhammed as well.

And all muslims (except, it seems, with the exception of Mr. Asim Hayat) are aware that the Day of Judgement is reserved, per the Quran, for all humanity and not just muslims. Being a muslims is no big deal, per the Quran, and it is only chauvinistic muslims who think it is.

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#222 Asim Hayat

Urstruly seems to have an overactive imagination as all punjabis apparently do.

It`s either his imagination or the ``manuals`` he picked up from a platform vendor in lahore that are filled with descriptions of impossible sexual perversions..

[As an aside, egypt has in the past treated members of the muslim brotherhood with particular viciousness. The brotherhood itself is notorious for brutal attacks on foreigners and what it percieves as secular egyptian entities. Lately tho, the govt of egypt has become chummy with the brotherhood and the polity has become less secular as a result. The copts are under increasing threat of force to convert or leave.]

sadna:

….it’s easy to blame everything on the big, bad isi…just as it’s easy for the pak. gov’t to have ‘proof’ about raw being involved in the terrorist attacks here….but the blame game doesn’t get anyone anywhere…

Here is a recap:

DISCLAIMER: The Figures I am using are solely Indian. Our own claims are evn more grandiose and probably true as well.

1) Indians have not presented any sources for their claim that PAF planes are grounded. I know by personal experience that PAF is operating at full strength right now.

2) PAF logs in as many hours as the IAF given our Pilot to cockpit ratio which is roughly between 3 and 4 to 1. This is a known fact.

3) The contributor to Bharat Rhakshak, Mr.Jagan Mohan PVS, though a biased commentator, has been forced to admit PAF`s superiority.

He gives a comparison of Pakistani Pilots and Indian Pilots:

Pakistani Pilots

http://members.tripod.com/

FYI Last year PAF became the first Airforce in Asia to take off and land of a normal expressway. PAF did so with F 7Ps/Mig 21s..

If one was to mention to sane people that an Airforce perfected take off and landing from airstrips prepared on an Expressway ... they would be like Wow... But not the dehliwallahs.. dehli wallahs will make wisecracks.. possibly because if India was to try and do the same thing it would lose another 100 Mig 21s...

Arjunm

I have written a longish post with links to the IAF records, and I sent it. If its not posted by tommorow, I will post it again..

Once more.. Indians who are inaccurately claiming that PAF logs in less flying hours than IAF, please give the source for such a stupid remark..

It seems that you people suffer from the disease of denial, and you try to explain away everything with more lies...

-YLH

Arjunm,

You are free to quote any russian general... Please do quote: Col Dogrovolsky`s book .. I am interested to know what does he say about the IAF .. or does he even exist? Cuz, no honest Airforce officer in the world would praise the IAF.

The way, you people are miserly in praise for an Airforce which is respected world wide for its professional abilities and skill shows the inherently unjust mindset that Indians possess..

You ask for the IAF numbers.. here is an Indian statistician who compiles the numbers for Bharat rhakshak... keep in mind that he is extremely biased and tries really hard to manipulate the facts... His name is Jagan mohan PVS and he is also the contributor for Bharat Rhakshak:

Here is a comparison of Pakistani Pilots and Indian Pilots figures wise...

Pakistani Pilots

http://members.tripod.com/

Urstruly

Is it true? I mean all the stuff about ``dog sodomizing`` of political dissidents in Egypt!!! This is too weird and scary... What is the source of this info...I thought Egypt was a liberal country??

Here we go on the IAF vs PAF stuff again. It has to be either Jinnah/Gandhi or IAF/PAF, right? (Kashmir is now passe . . .)

a) Proves that white man is not stupid. He sells us airplanes, teaches us how to fly them and bomb each other, and then watches while we fight. When we`ve wrecked enough, he sells us some more!

b)OK, OK, the PAF is the best airforce in the world, Manto also said so (never mind Yeager, right?) and they went to the moon before Apollo 11 too (read that story??)

But.

BUT and more B U T.

At least the IAF on date has operational command over its airbases. Which is more than what the PAF can say at points as diverse as Karachi and closer to the Afghan borders.

It is very difficult to fly airplanes if you are drinking Rooh-Afza and watching smuggled Hindi movies (really lousy ones coming out nowadays, other than COMPANY), it is probably even more difficult to prang them . . . because the Yanks won`t let you get them in the air. Unless you land and take off from semi-used expressways . . .

whatever.

ylh:please study

Ayodhia vs Shahidganj-----A classic contrast

www.flonnet.com/fl1803/18030890.htm

__________________________________________________On May 2, 1940, the Privy Council brought the curtain down on the litigation by dismissing the appeal. By then the SGPC had secured in August 1935 the municipality`s sanction for construction of a gurdwara on the site of the mosque.

The issues raised by the Privy Council are highly relevant to Ayodhya.

``The first question to be asked with reference to this immovable property is: In whom was the title at the date when the sovereignty of this part of India passed to the British in 1849? It may have been open to the British, on the ground of conquest or o therwise, to annual rights of private property at the time of annexation, as, indeed, they did in Oudh after 1857. But nothing of the sort was done so far as regards the property now in dispute. There is nothing in the Punjab Laws Act, or in any other Ac t, authorising the British Indian Courts to uproot titles acquired prior to the annexation by applying to them a law which did not then obtain as the law of the land. There is every presumption in favour of the proposition that a change of sovereignty would not affect private rights to property. Who, then, immediately prior to the British annexation was the local sovereign of Lahore? What law was applicable in that State to the present case? Who was recognised by the local sovereign or other auth ority as owner of the property now in dispute?...

``If it be assumed, for example, that the property in dispute was by general law, or by special decree or by revenue-free (muafi) grant, vested in the Sikh rulers, the case made by the plaintiffs becomes irrelevant...

``The rules of limitation which apply to a suit are the rules in force at the date of institution of the suit, limitation being a matter of procedure. It cannot be doubted that the Indian Limitation Act of 1908 applies to immovables made waqf, notwithstan ding that the ownership in such property is said in accordance with the doctrine of the two disciples to be in God... The property now in question having been possessed by Sikhs adversely to the waqf and to all interests thereunder for more than twelve y ears, the right of the muttawali to possession for the purpose of the waqf came to an end under Art. 144 of the Limitation Act, and the title derived under the dedication from the settlor or wakf became extinct under S. 28.``

Justice Bhide rightly said that the law of limitation does not distinguish between property sacred and other. Yet faced with precisely that law, the Sangh Parivar demolished the Babri mosque. In Pakistan, the law laid down by the Privy Council on May 2, 1940 is still respected.

The last word must belong to the distinguished educationist Dr. Amrik Singh: ``The interesting thing is that even after 1947, when there is hardly anyone to visit the gurdwara, the character of that building has not been changed and it has not been conver ted into a mosque. If this can happen in Pakistan, which according to its constitution is described as an Islamic state, can India, which describes itself as a secular state, act differently? How does one deal with an issue when faith is put forward as t he governing principle in place of reason? If that contention were to be accepted, it would be the end of civilised governance.``

These remarks were made before the demolition of the Babri Masjid. They apply with yet greater force to the future of its site. So do Amrik Singh`s censures of the Parivar`s conduct on December 6, 1992.

Bhagat Singh case---an interesting study

of Gandhi`s TOADYISM and Jinnah`s BRILLIANCE.

GANDHI:The greatest HOAX played on HUMANKIND anytime & anywhere.

Not a Mahatma at all but the JADOONAATH of SARKAAR.

__________________________________________________

THE TRIAL OF BHAGAT SINGH: POLITICS OF JUSTICE

By A.G. Noorani, Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.,

Delhi; pages 339; Rs. 350 (hardback)

Sixty-five years ago, on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh and two of his associates were hanged to death at the Lahore Central jail. This was the culmination of the Lahore Conspiracy Case, one of the most controversial, not to say notorious, trials to take place in India under the Raj. The execution robbed the Indian freedom struggle of a leader who, although just 23 years old at the time of his death, inspired millions through his personal courage and dedication to the cause of freedom, the depth and seriousness of his thought, his commitment to the cause of social justice and his vision of a future India.

Small wonder, then, that the political-legal machinery of the Raj moved into top gear to ensure for Bhagat Singh the hangman’s noose. In his new book, lawyer, writer and journalist A.G. Noorani argues that Bhagat Singh and his comrades were the victims of a travesty of justice that amounted to nothing short of judicial murder. In their determination to send this remarkable young man to the gallows, the Government of India and the British-controlled judiciary committed what Noorani calls ``a forensic Jallianwala Bagh``, transgressing fundamental principles of law, changing the rules of the game at will, denying the accused every procedural safeguard, removing from the trial any judge who revealed integrity and a sense of fair play, and denying the condemned men any right of appeal.

Noorani, a practising advocate in the Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court, is the author of a number of books, including a study of the Kashmir question. One of his earlier books explored the phenomenon of Indian political trials, for him ``a twilight zone in which law and politics meet in mutual embarrassment``. That book did not take up the trial of Bhagat Singh, an omission which Noorani seeks to make good in his new study.

In his introduction, the author explains that he has set out, not to provide a ``definitive record`` of the long trial, but rather to study it in its political setting. The comprehensive record of the two centuries of British justice under the Raj has, he notes, yet to be written, but ``It is doubtful if there was any political trial in which the regime’s grim determination to ‘evict’ its political foe from the scene was accompanied by such egregious violations of the norms of justice and was matched by such willing compliance by the judges in that aim as in Bhagat Singh’s trial.`` (page xv)

One aim of the book, then, is to set the record straight, to reconstruct a telling but surprisingly little studied instance of colonial jurisprudence in action. In his dissection of the gross miscarriage of justice that sent Bhagat Singh and his comrades to the gallows, Noorani provides abundant food for thought for apologists of the Raj as well as those who persist in believing that British colonialism operated under a system of rectitude, the strict, impartial rule of law.

But the author also believes that Bhagat Singh’s trial has contemporary relevance. If we look back at India’s post-independence experience, he argues in a short but impassioned conclusion, we find plenty of evidence that the Indian political trial is alive and well. Let down by every arm of the state - Parliament, the Executive and the Supreme Court - citizens of free India still have their basic Human Rights infringed, still find themselves incarcerated by illiberal rulings and legislation every bit as bad as the Ordinance under which Bhagat Singh was tried and sent to his death.

The book opens with a consideration of Bhagat Singh - the man and the phenomenon. Noorani pays tribute to his intellectual qualities and scholarly bent of mind, noting that ``all evidence that has come to light of his thinking in the last few years of his life, and particularly of the last few months, suggests that deep commitment and strong emotions spurred, rather than retarded, his intellectual growth.`` (pages 5-6)

The remarkable diary kept by Bhagat Singh in prison, the letters smuggled out, and articles reveal a young man evolving away from revolutionary terrorism towards mass struggle and socialist ideas and practice. ``It is my considered opinion,`` he wrote in a letter to young political workers a few weeks before his death, ``that bombs cannot serve our purpose... Throwing bombs is not only useless, but is often harmful as well... Our chief aim should be to mobilise the toiling masses.`` (page 6)

But, of course, it was for two specific acts of revolutionary terrorism - the shooting to death of a British police official, John Saunders, and the throwing of non-lethal bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly - that Singh and his comrades were put on trial for their lives. As Noorani’s narration makes clear, the killing of Saunders was a case of mistaken identity: the real target was Lahore’s Superintendent of Police, J.A. Scott, held responsible for a physical assault on Lala Lajpat Rai during a demonstration against the Simon Commission, in the aftermath of which the ageing freedom fighter died.

Noorani provides a detailed reconstruction of the Saunders shooting, and explains what exactly happened in the Central Assembly on April 8, 1929, when Bhagat Singh and his comrade Batukeshwar Dutt made their literally explosive point before calmly surrendering. The culpability of these young freedom fighters is nowhere in doubt; as the author notes, no serious historian contests the fact that Bhagat Singh fired the fatal shots or hurled the bombs. What is at issue is the fairness of the trial that ensued.

It is to this trial that Noorani applies his considerable analytical skills, drawing on court records and archival material to provide a detailed reconstruction and a damning critique. He brings to his task the perspective of an experienced lawyer, sensitive to the nuances of the legal points involved. But this is by no means a book simply for lawyers, historians and legal scholars. There is much here to interest and hold the attention of the general reader.

In a basic sense, the trial involved a struggle between the accused who were determined to assert their rights as political prisoners and British colonialism equally resolved on treating them as common criminals. Quite early in the proceedings, Bhagat Singh and his comrades began an epic hunger strike in protest at the conditions in which they were imprisoned, demanding that they be accorded the status of political detainees. The prosecution, as well as an openly partisan judiciary, preferred to present the hunger strike as a devious stratagem to obstruct the proceedings. Using this as a pretext, the Government set about the task of bending the law and flouting long established legal principles in order to secure the verdict it desired.

As the hunger strike progressed, exacting its toll of the young men’s health and firing nation-wide protest as details of their treatment, including their subjection to painful and debasing forced feeding, filtered out, the colonial authorities turned British legal tradition on its head by seeking to provide for trial in absence of the accused.

This was the essence of what came to be known as the ‘Hunger Strike Bill’, an attempt made within the Central Legislative Assembly to amend the Criminal Procedure Code. Rather than concede the just and reasonable demands of the hunger-strikers for humane living conditions as well as access to books and newspapers, the Government sought to get the law amended, even if this meant negating a fundamental principle of criminal law: that an accused cannot be tried in his or her absence.

That this effort within the Central Legislative drew an ignominious blank was, Noorani reveals, in no small part due to the brilliantly argued intervention of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Reproducing extensive portions of Jinnah’s historic speech before the House on September 12, 1929, the author alerts his reader to a little known, and highly positive, facet of a controversial political career.

Having failed in the Central Assembly, the Government then sought to bypass the legislative process altogether. It enacted an Ordinance establishing a Special Tribunal to try the Lahore Conspiracy Case by invoking the Governor-General’s emergency powers. The Tribunal, comprising three High Court judges (two of them British), was not subject to ratification by the Central Assembly. It was explicitly set up to try the case without any right of appeal. ``What is of truly historic and enduring significance,`` comments Noorani, ``is the conscious use of the court of law as a political weapon.`` (page 139)

The travesty of justice to which this trial by a fixed, partisan Tribunal amounted is sharply brought out. A tragic feature of the trial was the key role played in it by certain of Bhagat Singh’s comrades who turned approvers, chief among them Jai Gopal, Phonindra Nath Ghosh and Hans Raj Vohra. According to the law, evidence adduced in corroboration of approvers’ testimony must be independent, reliable and relevant; what the prosecution placed before the Tribunal was, as often as not, pure conjecture. In a trial in which the prosecution evidence was untested by cross-examination, much depended on the readiness of judges to question witnesses actively; the one judge - an Indian - who showed himself prepared to do this was speedily removed from the Tribunal, which was then arbitrarily reconstructed.

Small wonder that the resulting judgement, clearly penned by one of the British judges, gave free rein to conjecture and suspicion, even as it sought to paper over gaping holes in the persecution case. The verdict was, in a real sense, preordained: Bhagat Singh and two of his comrades would hang, and the rest would be transported for life, or subjected to long periods of rigorous imprisonment.

Could the Congress leadership, particular Gandhi, have saved Bhagat Singh from the hangman’s noose? Noorani reopens the question, taking note throughout the book of how Gandhi’s consistent aloofness from the show trial of the spirited young freedom fighters contrasted with Nehru’s activism on their behalf. An admirer of Gandhi who argues that his personal courage and integrity are beyond dispute. Noorani nevertheless finds the historical record relating to his role in the Bhagat Singh case to be far short of inspiring.

The weeks immediately prior to the execution saw Gandhi actively involved in talks with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin; the outcome of this process was the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 5, 1931 - less than three weeks before Bhagat Singh’s death. Clearly, then, Gandhi had the opportunity to intercede on the young man’s behalf and plead with Irwin for a commutation of the sentence.

That he did not is made clear by the archival record. Indeed, instead of pleading for Bhagat Singh’s life, Gandhi was as late as March 20, counselling the Home Secreatary, an avowed racist called Emerson, on damage limitation, on how to manage effectively the anticipated nationwide eruption of feeling against the judicial murders. As Noorani puts it:

``Gandhi alone could have intervened to save Bhagat Singh’s life. He did not, till the very last. Later claims such as that ``I brought all the persuasion at my command to bear on him`` (the Viceroy) are belied by the record which came to light four decades later. In this tragic episode, Gandhi was not candid to the nation or even to his closest colleagues about his talks with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, on saving Bhagat Singh’s life.” (page 252)

In his conclusion, Noorani poses the question: how would free India treat its Bhagat Singhs? He provides a double- edged answer. In its attitude to Human Rights, independent India (or rather the governments that have controlled the state machinery for the past 49 years) has been seriously wanting. No branch of government, whether the executive, the legislature or the judiciary, is found by Noorani to have anything to boast of. Pledged to abide by established norms and to respect Human Rights enshrined in the Constitution and the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Indian state continues to observe these in the breach, continues to engineer travesties of justice.

But the other side of Noorani’s argument is equally telling. The revolutionary terrorism briefly espoused, and later jettisoned, by Bhagat Singh and his comrades of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army has no heirs in contemporary South Asia. There is nothing to link this inspiring tradition with modern phenomena such as Naxalism in Andhra Pradesh, and armed separatist movements in Punjab, Kashmir and Sri Lanka. Through their resort to brutal methods, including terror bombings and indiscriminate murder, these organisations simply demonstrate the yawning moral gulf that separates them from the spirited, highly principled idealism and socialist commitment that is Bhagat Singh’s enduring legacy.

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sadna

``It seems the notorious DonJuan Deepika needs some refuge from the accusations of his other self, the comely Lajwanti :).

``

There are two Lajwantis here. The one with a capital ``L`` , IMO, is not hydra. She is too funny for him. She seems to be someone else.

Stuka,

The mistake I had made was not MINE. I read it on California based Paknews, a stupid website which I will not trust for any information in the future. Indeed, Paknews had said 102 crashes for IAF in one year.. which had shocked me. 102 is a high number for 10 years, but I agree that it is not as alarming as in year. Nevertheless these claims of PAF`s planes being grounded are entirely indian imagination.. your illustrious compatriot, the Glib liar actually declared that Pakistan couldn`t afford to ... You know there has to be an end to this ill founded superiority complex you people seem to have.

-YLH

Stuka #254
Just to avoid any misunderstanding, the `Sadhna` you are replying to, is Shrimaan 12-head hiding behind yet another female moniker. A one-man soap opera in hermself. It seems the notorious DonJuan Deepika needs some refuge from the accusations of his other self, the comely Lajwanti :).