Lessons from Constitutional History

Ref Parcheesi #45

[Harimau #44
You are one of those who should be ignored in cyber dialogue. Goodbye!]

What happened? You just noticed that facts are not on your side?

Same thing goes for Manjit #48, shibil #47, and punjaban #46.

As for you, punjaban, if you want Khalistan, just look at what happened to land-locked Kashmir in Oct 1947. But then, if you don`t know what happened in the 1980s, I can`t expect you to know what happened in 1947. Oh, in case you haven`t looked at a map, Punjab doesn`t have an outlet to the sea.

Harimou, you`re beginning to bore me. Just for your information, I have not mentioned the word Khalistan or the concept of Khalistan even once. So stop jumping to conclusions.

Ref punjaban #51

[Harimou, you`re beginning to bore me.]

I am not surprised to hear that you are bored by facts.

[Just for your information, I have not mentioned the word Khalistan or the concept of Khalistan even once. So stop jumping to conclusions.]

It is just the tone of your postings that suggest that you are a closet Khalistani.

As for your brother being picked up by the police, let me tell you a story. I was returning to the US on Jan 26, 1986, from New Delhi. Since the worthless Fakhrs running the Delhi metropolitan area couldn`t guarantee one`s safety in travelling to the airport at night, I was advised to take a cab to the airport at 9 pm for my 2 am flight. Arriving at the airport, I found that I would not be allowed into the terminal building till 1 hour before the flight time because of security considerations. Jan 26, if you care to remember, is Republic Day in India and the police expected some attempts at bombing the airport. Here I was, stuck in the Delhi cold in shirtsleeves, because neither the Hindus nor the Punjabis nor the UP Bhaiyyas, have the slightest clue about how to run a bus station, let alone an airport. However, they are all good at one thing, the result of which is the population boom in India.

That is my unbiased opinion about ``Hindu rule``. So, don`t jump to conclusions.

The governor general of Pakistan aka Jinnah enjoyed less powers than the President of the United States ....

He operated under schedule 9 of the constitution.

This is not a very factual article and flies in face of reality.

www.time.com/time/asia/2006/heroes/nb_jinnah.html



Mohammed Ali Jinnah
Pakistan, the nation the Quaid-i-Azam founded, needs him and his values more than ever
By Mohsin Hamid

My earliest memory of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan`s Quaid-i-Azam, or Great Leader, is from my childhood. The electricity had gone because of load shedding, and I was doing my homework despite my grandmother`s insistence that this was bad for my eyes. My textbook was part of the curriculum assigned to all primary-school students in Pakistan, and it described Jinnah as a young boy, himself reading a book by candlelight at his home in Karachi, a hundred years earlier. I had heard of Jinnah before, of course; his name was ubiquitous in Pakistan, a country otherwise unsure of its heroes. But it was the small miracle contained in the notion that he—a character in a book—and I—a reader in real life—were doing precisely the same thing that struck me most, and has stayed with me ever since.

In Pakistan, Jinnah is venerated because his struggles on behalf of the Muslims of India resulted in the establishment of the country. But Jinnah`s true claim to greatness as an Asian leader is more universal: he sought to protect the rights of minorities through constitutional law.

Jinnah was a secular, Westernized, British-trained barrister; himself a Muslim, he married a Parsi, spoke mainly in English and wore European clothes. In 1920, he left Mahatma Gandhi`s Indian National Congress, of which he had been a member for two decades, not because of his own faith but because he believed Gandhi`s use of Hindu symbolism would encourage religious zealotry in politics. As Asia emerged from colonization, among the most vexing problems facing the continent`s nascent nation states was that of their large minority populations. Jinnah`s preferred solution was a legal one: constitutional measures ranging from electoral safeguards to guaranteed representation in state institutions. It was only when his attempts to achieve these measures failed that he began to campaign for a separate state for the Muslims of the subcontinent.


Six decades later, Pakistan has drifted far from Jinnah`s vision of a secular democracy. President Pervez Musharraf, who invokes Jinnah`s values in speeches, has little patience for democracy. The religious opposition parties reject as un-Pakistani the concept of secularism. And the inhabitants of smaller provinces like Baluchistan find themselves lacking the protection for minorities that Jinnah made his life`s mission. If one believes in the rule of law, mistrusts religious zealotry and opposes tyrannies constructed in the name of majorities, one should find it easy to see oneself in Jinnah and to empathize with his struggle. Much of Asia could learn from his example, none more so than those of us who belong to the state he founded.

Mohsin Hamid`s second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, will be published next spring