If Army acts like a Political Party Why not a Forward Bloc in it?

Re:Pankaj#26
I think you are being a bit naive here. Both Indian and Pakistani military have the same roots, similar traditions, similar training etc. Many of the older officers attended the same schools as well. Yet we see the Pakistani army being totally involved in politics since the 50s while the Indian army is a mute spectator. Given our general similarities with Pakistani people, surely there has got to be a good reason for this. The Pakistani army is dominated by Punjabis at all levels (except for Musharraf). Hence would-be dictators have an easier time winning the loyalty of the army for his endeavors. In India, the diversity provides an automatic check and balance against adventurism. There is no issue with regular army tasks like fighting on the front, but if someone wants to do anything extra-curricular such as topple regimes, it is much more difficult to obtain consensus.
I would posit that India`s diversity also influences why we have been able to maintain democracy. Everyone realizes that it is the only way to run the place and ensure equitable participation for all sectors or else the country will fall apart.

Re:jay#31
I have personally no illusions about Pakistan and most Pakistanis I know, are well aware of their problems. After all they have lived there and have first hand experience of how difficult life is over there. On chowk I have interacted with people like SameerJB, Bilal Ahmed and Samina Shah and they have been quite vocal about their feelings about Pakistan. I have also read columnists in Dawn and The Friday Times like Irfan Hussain, Ayaz Amir, Cowasjee, Najam Sethi, Khalid Ahmed etc who are very brutal in their criticisms of Pakistani government and society. In fact, at times I have felt that Pakistani columnists are more vocal than their Indian counterparts.
The problem is that if we Indians are too vocal in our criticism of Pakistan, it actually creates a backlash rather than anything else. It is kind of like if you have an ugly baby, you can say it is ugly but you don`t want your neighbor to say so. Also it seems like we are enjoying their misfortune, which makes us look bad. My personal opinion is that the Indo-Pak conflict will get settled the day India`s per capita income catches up with the developed world and becomes several times Pakistan`s per capita income. That day every account will get settled and we will not need to argue any further.

Ref Nova (``Doesn`t go`` in Spanish) #29

[AND SINCE WHEN HARMI ou ,& JAY HAVE INTEREST OF WELL BEING PROSPERITY & SURVIVAL OF PAKISTAN ,CLOSEST TO THE BOSSOM OF THEIR HEART ??????????????????? ]

I will have no problems at all if Pakistan has a prosperous future, survives as a nation that subscribes to peace on earth and has a sense of well-being that emanates from self-assurance about its position in the comity of nations. I may not be wrong in suggesting that Jay would be happy to see such a Pakistan.

What I have a problem with is Pakistan`s inability to accept the facts of life. Such as it is and will always remain smaller than in India by any yardstick that you use. That it has the ability to surpass India not in sheer numbers but only on proportionate basis such as per capita statistics which is more important. But such gains will come about not through confrontation with India but either through cooperation with India or through indifference to India. So long as Pakistan`s fascination with India remains morbid, Pakistan is only signing its own death warrant.

[I have never seen an H Indian ever speak softly of Ayub,Jinnah,Liaqat,Bhuttoo,Zia Or Musharaff ...... ]

I don`t think even Pakistanis think highly of these people -- with the exception of Jinnah for understandable reasons. And quite a few Punjabis didn`t like Jinnah in 1947 because they opposed the Partition.

PS. You on the other hand seem to have such a problem with India. You claim to have graduated from a top medical school in India (kicking the butts of your classmates, if I remember the expression you used in another post). You have used that as your ticket to a high-paying job in the US. Sitting here, you constantly rail against India and express your ardent support for Pakistan. You remind me of another gentleman who used to do that between the 1920s and 1940s by the name of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Fortunately, the only damage you can do is to the psyche of your own children and not to an entire country. And, more fortunately, even that may be limited because of the influence of the liberal American environment in moulding your children`s minds. We all need to get down on our knees and thank Allah for small mercies.

Time to revisit a parable and a quote from jay to enable new chowkies to put jay’s diatribes in perspective:

_______________________________


Let me share with you the story of this Keralite Brahmin.

One day when KB was three or four and playing in the courtyard a provoked rooster fought back and attacked him. KB was frightened of roosters ever since. He genuinely believed that roosters are out to swallow him.

KB comes to States, graduates, returns to marry a beautiful Keralite girl KG. She soon discovers his phobia of roosters. Reasons with him. Rationality in this respect takes her nowhere. Eventually she nudges him to seek psychiatric help. Thus enters KP in the parable.

KB has scores of sessions with KP. KP tries hard to overcome KB’s resistance. One day he tried to use simple reasoning. He brings in a rooster in a cage, points at the rooster’s mouth and asks KB, “Look at yourself and look at this mouth, how can this rooster swallow you?”

An unconvinced and adamant KB replied, “Dr. you know it, I know it, but the rooster does not know it. Given the chance he will swallow me.”


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and this admission from him


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Date Posted: Jan-28-100 -2:49:52 PST Reply #: 167
jay
Temporal,

Take it easy, I didn’t /piss/ in your coke.

There is a game called intellectual origami, I take the clean pure paper of Pakistan, fold it around to make it into a jihadic monster and my good Pakistani friends are busy for a few days, removing the folds, ironing it out.

Take it easy I didn’t….

Regards

__________________________________

blood is thicker than water. congrats to isi for aligning bangalis with the good guys again. i see that progress is being made in on another very important front.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=29553659&sType=1

“Suspending their mutual hostility for a change, the government and the opposition on Wednesday shared concern over the alarming rise in the ISI activity in the eastern region and Bangladesh`s role in it”

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=29716217

“The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was making use of Indian expatriates working in the Gulf countries for its destructive game-plan in India, home ministry sources have said”

For those Pakistani men who are currently foaming at the mouth because of the history lessons they have learned in their schools (and this includes that dear boy Yasser Latif Hamdani who claims he went to school in the Persian Gulf and that Ivy League of New Jersey and not Pakistan), here is an article from Dawn.

Read it and weep, for this is what the Pakistani Army and the fixation of being not-India have accomplished for its citizens. (And, as you read the article, don`t forget that it was that champion of the poor and the downtrodden, the great ZA Bhutto, who advised Ayub Khan to start the 1965 war.)

The final partition

By Irfan Husain

When Mr Jinnah contemplated the new country he had been pivotal in creating 55 years ago, he did not sell his property in India as he could not visualize a future in which travel between the two neighbours would become extremely difficult.

The mass killings and the vast migration that accompanied partition on both sides of the border must have been a heavy weight on his conscience.

He could not have foreseen the bloody consequences of the division of the subcontinent. Indeed, being a rational and secular person, he probably did not fathom the capacity for hatred and violence concealed in so many human hearts.

Gandhi, a leader of an altogether different mould, went on hunger strike to protest against the Congress government`s delaying tactics in transferring Pakistan`s share of the divisible cash resources, and as a result, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.

Many people who fled the violence in both countries left their property and possessions in the expectation that they would be able to return to their homes once the madness had faded. Indians and Pakistanis of that generation still speak nostalgically of growing up in cities that have suddenly become enemy territory. But despite the magnitude of their loss, they are not bitter about their old friends and neighbours; indeed, they retain nothing but fond memories of their childhood. Their anger is focused on the leadership of both countries that have made travel between the two such a nightmare.

Despite the political gulf that opened up with partition and the still-festering Kashmir dispute that erupted immediately afterwards, the cultural and personal affinities between the two countries remained largely intact for some time. Until the 1965 war, travel was relatively simple and people thought little of going across the border to attend a wedding or watch a Test match.

In short, the slogans and shrill rhetoric that emanated from the leaders and propaganda machines had not infected the minds of ordinary citizens who continued to make a distinction between politicians and people. In short, the demonization of the two countries had not yet begun in the popular imagination.

During the 1965 war that began in Kashmir (where else?), pilots of both air forces took great care to avoid civilian targets. Similarly, artillery fire was directed at military targets only, and the little activity that the two navies were engaged in did not include commercial shipping. Although the propaganda war was probably more fierce than actual combat, most Pakistanis did not consider ordinary Indians to be their enemies.

Meeting Indians after the war, one did not get the impression that they felt any differently. Officers from the opposing armies who met after the end of hostilities did not harbour any personal animosity either.

Although the 1971 war evoked far greater bitterness, it was largely confined to the eastern theatre. In West Pakistan, the fighting was more of a defensive nature. But despite the air superiority the Indian air force enjoyed over Pakistani skies, it did not engage in deliberate attacks on civilian targets. I was in Lahore then and remember watching an Indian jet attacking the radar installation at the old airfield in Gulberg (which, incidentally has been taken over by our air force for officers` housing colony). Despite the target being close to so many private residences, I do not recall any reports of civilian casualties.

It was in the seventies that travel became more and more difficult. An entire generation of Pakistanis and Indians grew up with no personal knowledge of each other, their minds poisoned by jingoistic textbooks and official propaganda. More and more young people on both sides of the border began to harbour a personal animus without really knowing very much of the cultural ties that still existed. Even though Pakistanis watched (and continue to watch) Bollywood blockbusters and Indians were enthralled by Pakistani TV soap operas, the gulf between the two countries grew. Popular music, cricket and hockey supplied just about the only glue to the relationship.

Over 30 years have passed since the 1971 war, and apart from Kargil, we have not engaged in any major conflicts. But Kargil was a watershed in many ways. For the first time, there were allegations of uncivilized conduct when infiltrators from this side were accused of having mutilated the bodies of Indian soldiers.

Right or wrong, ordinary Indians were shocked and outraged that the peace moves initiated by their government had been answered by an act of perceived aggression. Being mostly unaware of the hold the military has on decision-making even when a civilian is nominally in power, they saw the infiltration as an act of treachery. More than that, they became convinced for the first time that Pakistan was not interested in peace.

Coming as it did after a decade of escalating violence in Kashmir, for many Indians, Kargil was the proverbial last straw. A hit movie was soon churned out showing Pakistanis as brutal killers; a computer game carried the same message. On our side, the official media and many private newspapers spared no effort in showing Indians in the same light.

Similarly, when General Musharraf travelled to Agra last year, many of us in Pakistan wished him to succeed, and were bitterly disappointed when the talks were broken off when they seemed so close to success. The general perception was that the hawks in India had succeeded in derailing the negotiations just when there was promise of a breakthrough.

Whatever the reality, the fact is that relations between the two nations have never been worse. Despite the economic, cultural and geographic imperatives, we are further away from normality than ever before. Whenever I have written about the urgent need for peace, I have been tauntingly reminded of Kargil by Indian readers who have also gratuitously informed me that their country is far ahead of Pakistan and does not need us. Several of them gloatingly sent me reports of the successful visit of Microsoft`s Bill Gates to India. Pakistani detractors, on the other hand, go on at length about the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir issue and advise me to return to India if I am unhappy about the state of affairs in Pakistan.

Irrespective of whose fault it is, the fact is that we have succeeded in partitioning the subcontinent far more thoroughly than was originally visualized for we have achieved a division of a shared culture and a shared past.

re: amit

{It is difficult for a South Indian general to get the loyalty of the Sikh regiment, if he tries to become a dictator.}


...which looney bin did you pick that out of?...

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Pankaj 26,

You could be very far from truth. The divide and rule policy of the british is followed even today in the indian army, not in air force and navy. The regiments are on ethnic lines, maratha regiment has only maraths up to the NCO level, similar with the rajputana rifles, sikh and others with officers mostly from other ethnic groups.

During the stay of the officers, the foot soldiers develop a healthy hatred to wards the officers. In the 1965 war with pakistan many officers were shot by their own foot soldiers. Since then it is a standard practice to transfer the officers just before a war.

Once again the three chiefs are not supposed to meet even socially with out the presence of a person not below the rank of a secretary in the defence ministry. Socialising across the forces is frowned up on and can barr you from higher ranks, though not stated publically.

Amit 24,

The reason why I have to read letters to the editors in dawn can be found in my post to pankaj. No pakistani would dare to post something like that about pakistan pointing out a reality of pakistan simply because of fatwafobia or a nation of patriotism. Pakistanis enforce the ultimate form of censorship, the most debilitating version, the self sencorship. Only place one can see some glimpses of pak reality is in tangential references in letters to the editors.

To give an example from chowk, at least five times YLH posted that almost every city in pakistan has a road named after Abdus Salam, no one, except hamid in his unique style commented up on it.

Do you know that several temples in pakistan were raised to the ground in what pak govt says as spontaneous response to babri masjid. Youu can never see a report on it, nor you can expect any pakistani on chowk to accept it. In india it is still a raging topic, the babri majid.

Do you know that in pakistan bussiness income tax is collected by electricity company as a percetage of electricity bill. No body will mention it while extolling the great finace minister they have.

The apparently decent tahmeds, temporals and others on chowk are living a sherade, it is only a pretention of decency, and at the slightest provocation, the true pakistani comes out. Read their comments the thread `` the little bit of hindu``.

What you read about pakistan in their news papaers and on chowk is a self censored version, the reality in pakistan is very different. Just imagine for a moment, the biggest event in pakistan, the equivalent of maha kumbh mela in india is the annual get together of lasker e toiba in madreke, attended by more than a million pakistanis.

The burka pakistanis were is not a body cover, it hides their minds.

westwind #18:
[YESTERDAY,S FAROQUE SATTAR,S PRESS CONFERENCE IS THE EVIDENCE...IN WHICH HE SAID THAT A POWERFUL LOBBY IN THE ESTABLISHMENT WAS RESISTING GEN MUSHARRAF} AND MOREOVER IF ARMY ENTERS INT POLITICS, POLITICS WILL ALSO ENTER INTO THE RANKS OF ARMY. ]
Thanks god there are still some people in the establishment who consider Musharraf illegitimate and a robber. Why should anybody support him on principles? Should they support him because of referendum or rubber stamp Supreme court decisions?
During my college years in Pakistan, Islami Jamiaat-e-Tuliba were deliberately asking their cadre to apply for commission in the Army. I knew so many of jamaatias from Government College Rawalpindi who joined army. Many of them must be now colonels and possibly Brigadiers. The JI was openly trying for years to fill military ranks with their supporters. I do not know the situation now. Who knows how many of them are thinking themselves to be divinely ordained to fix all the problems of the world overrunning any law any government in their way.

[Thus, why not a forward bloc in the army? PAP – Pakistan Army Patriots. ]

I do not understand what the concept of Forward Bloc is supposed to be. I am low on PIQ (Political IQ). Explain me: Can there be factions within Forward Bloc. Like PAP-Musharraf, PAP-XYZ, PAP-ABC? How does it work? Don`t you think it is much sensible and simpler to ask army to go away, like t says?

-ew

Mr. Amit

``The diversity in the Indian army is one reason we do not see this phenomenon in India. It is difficult for a South Indian general to get the loyalty of the Sikh regiment, if he tries to become a dictator. ``

Thank God, Indian soldiers and Generals dont think like you. And praise be to the Lord that people like you are not in the Indian army. Sir, I can say this with some confidence because if enough people started thinking the way you do, there would be no India. The Indian Army is a cohesive and disciplined unit and doesn`t consist of people with divisive agendas as your highness. If there are no coups in India, the reason is the presence of strong civil institutions and respect for the choice of the people. The Indian Army is there to protect the interests of the nation and people; not to enslave them. The day Indian Army or politicians start storming Supreme Courts and destroying the civil institutions, will be the beginning of the end for India.

A thunderbolt of a punching column -- a red hot idea

3 cheers for Nighat Yasmeen -- for delivering a General`s Jaw Breaker

and why not --

as Westwind says in his memorable sentence -- ``IF ARMY ENTERS INTO POLITICS, POLITICS WILL/MUST ALSO ENTER INTO THE RANKS OF ARMY.````

Re:jay#20
Jay, as someone who totally hates Pakistan, you seem to be obsessed with them. You even read the letters to the editor section in Dawn and bother to cut and paste from there. You have every right to hate Pakistan but it is intriguing that you spend so much effort researching your enemy. What is it that keeps you attracted to Pakistan ? Did some Pakistani girl break your heart in the past ?

Ref amit #21

[While Pakistanis always talk about Ghairat, they never seem to be able to stand up to their army. Even within the army, everyone is in lock step with Musharraf, even as he goes way beyond his original responsibilities as army chief. I think the solution to this is to make the army a lot more diverse, say give equal representation to all the four provinces in recruitment. This will provide some checks and balances within the army and discourage dictatorships. The diversity in the Indian army is one reason we do not see this phenomenon in India. It is difficult for a South Indian general to get the loyalty of the Sikh regiment, if he tries to become a dictator. ]

If you suggest that the Indian Army`s discipline will break down if a South Indian general attempts a coup, it should break down when the same South Indian general ordered his troops to lay down their lives in the icy mountains of Kargil or Siachen. After all, in a coup, the Sikh regiment could expect to survive with minimal or no casualties.

It is to the generals` immense credit that they don`t think of themselves as the saviours of India. They have the same contempt that the Pak Army officers have for civilians and politicians but they recognize that they do not want to inherit the problems of running a country as fractious as India. The standing orders that say that the GOCs of various Commands cannot meet without the Prime Minister`s authorization may help in preventing a coup but I am sure they can arrange to meet clandestinely if they really want to. It is just that the general officers, having come up the ranks saying ``Yes, sir`` to their senior officers, do the same when they meet with the political leadership of the country. They have the humility to recognize that the politicians, however crooked, however incompetent, however venal and corrupt, have got the one thing that they lack: a mandate from the people.