Towards Greater Tolerance

Great article, I agree with it entirely.
One question though- you say that ``...The first man to talk of Hindus and Muslims as separate nations was V.D. Savarkar who coined the word ‘Hindutva’ in a book with the same title in 1923``. Wasn`t it Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who was infact advocating separate seats for Muslims in councils since 1883? As far as I know, he was dead by 1898- after a lifeime of convincing Muslims of the great differneces between them and the hindus. That would cerrtainly make it seem as though he had the idea first...

Forget what the unintelligent, brain dead Indians (I am one of them) think about you. Who are we to judge you. Get rid of the India obsession. I am a guy who admire Imran Khan. I remember him giving an interview to the DD when I was a kid. He clearly told the audience what ``PATRIOTISM`` has done to the human kind. This single word has eroded all human values.

Its ok if you feel happy to say that Kushwanth is the greatest Indian intellectual.

We unfairly blame politicians when in fact the mainstream politicians both in the Congress and Muslim league were in fact largely secular. What was wrong was the way democracy was defined.

The basis of modern government in a diverse and multi-religious region has to be re-defined. Democracy as defined by the rule of the majority cannot be the sole basis for determining the manner in which laws are passed or the nation is governed.

As an example:

If 51 people in group of 100 decide to shave their heads the other 49 are not likely to follow suit simply because the ``majority`` says so. The equation does not change much if the ratio is 66 out of 33 (which was the ratio of Hindus to Muslims in pre-partition India). A classic case is the issue of cow slaughter in India . If a parliament in New Delhi passed a law banning beef it was unlikely that the Naga, Mizo, Khasi tribals in the North East or the Afridis in the North West would change their dietry habits because some MPs had been pressured by sadhus in Allahabad. Today India is the only ``free`` democracy in the world to institute legal dietary constraints on its people although the North eastern tribes actually care very little what the Kumbh Mela sadhus think and say as much. The Afridis, Muslim Bengalis, Muslim Punjabis, Baluchis and Sindhis ar no longer with us to for comment.

The answer was to rule without forcing issues on the basis of religious or cultural agenda.The British realised this 1857 when a trivial cultural oversight of grease on rifle cartridges in the army acted as a trigger for the eruption of a national revolt. There were other issues for the uprising in 1857 but the issue of cultural or religious non-interference was largely driven home to the British. They subsequently became ``tax-collectors`` with a ``Star Trek`` type prime directive of non-interference in religious or cultural affairs.The Radcliffe Plan attempted this solution in a post-partition scenario but was rejected by hardliners in the Congress.

It was realised very belatedly in India that the insistance by the Congress of a simple ``one-man-one vote `` basis has led to tragic consequences.
Becaue the Baluchi feared rule by Delhi which would regulate ( amongst other issues) what he ate we now have come to ridiculous situation where we are ready to nuke each other over the issue. Which is why in post-independence India even with a majority and howls from ``nationalistic`` hardliners not a single religious, cultural or linguistic issue ( cow-slaughter is a notable exception) has been forced on others. Some of the issues are:

-English continues to be used as a link language and Hindi is not used by the
Southern and North Eastern states for official communications. A number
other languages are recognised as official as represented by the number of times
the denomination of the currency note is spelled out in various languages.The only
one of its kind, the Indian rupee note outdoes even the Euro in the number of
languages depicted on it.

-Common Civil Code: This has yet to be adopted despite a constitutional directive
The religious personal laws of the minorities AND of the majority is yet in use.

-Individual state laws: The most common example of this is the status of Kashmir
and some North Eastern tribal states where the ethnic and cultural identity of the
the people are protected from migration from other states of India.


-Partitioning of states. States in India have been partitioned and re-partioned
several times to ensure that the ``aspirations of the people of that region`` are
represented.

India is ultimately going to become a confederation as envisaged by Lord Wavell and Cyril Radcliffe. It is regrettable however that the process will take one century and hundreds of thousands of lives in communal conflict. Added to that is the ever present danger that we may yet have a nuclear war merely over `` a slab of beef``.


Azeemabadi

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re: Pakistan will be next
Following is the article by Khalid Md from TFT in its entireity. I thought this was so important that i am just pasting it (i usually hate doing this).
I had said in the past that only democracy has the kind of resilence that accomdates for the changing times. The changing times demand that Pak accomodate with India on the question of Kashmir (i am saying accomdate not give up on Kashmir) and move on to build better relations. It benefits Pak immensely to have good trade with one of the biggeste markets next door. But Army ruling Pak has a different agenda. The Army Brass in Pak sing the same tune. It is Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir. There is no policy at all. This is why, there is little hope for Pak`s future, as long as the Army is in control.

The following article suggests that Pak will be the next target, after Iraq. This is not outside the realm of possibilties.
Read on:


``Pakistan will have to be ‘next’


Pakistan lacks the capacity to produce solutions to its problems internally. Just two years ago Islamabad kept offering its Taliban strategy as a policy without alternatives even after admitting that it was hurting Pakistan’s external image and internal security. It was finally overturned, with great loss to Pakistani citizens who were allowed to become pawns in it, simply because of an incapacity to intellectually tackle the problem of total international isolation. Islamabad is becoming globally isolated once again on the question of relations with India. While no one agrees with it, Pakistan is unable to show even the minimum amount of flexibility of approach to prevent an ‘external solution’ from being imposed on it. There is no doubt that Pakistan will be ‘next’ unless Pakistan changes its spots and starts thinking ‘laterally’ for once to save itself from disaster


s America makes ready to invade Iraq, the world is also preparing itself to absorb the shock when it comes. All the regional states have a strategy of coping with the consequences of the invasion. They have acted ‘pragmatically’ by evolving a back-up position if President Bush doesn’t heed their protestations of caution and moderation. The Gulf States are ‘on board’ by giving military facilities to the United States forces. All the states enjoy considerable internal sovereignty to cope with the consequences of the invasion. They enjoy the sort of control over population needed to avoid falling apart under pressure from popular passion. There is practically no terrorist activity in their territories, the random acts against American nationals in them having been taken care of. That leaves Pakistan as the only state where the population is not under control and terrorist activity is far from being conclusively tackled. In fact, in case America succeeds in staging a neat surgical invasion of Iraq, the trouble in Pakistan will become glaring in its incongruity.

The deficit of internal control: When people in Pakistan say that Pakistan will be ‘next’, their subliminal message is that its internal disorder and its external implications would not be easily ignored and some kind of action would be needed to wean the country from aberrant behaviour. The period of ‘pragmatism’ under General Musharraf was at best a period of half measures which satisfied neither the divided groupings inside Pakistan nor the anti-terrorist coalition abroad. After a decade and a half of ‘idealism’ Pakistan discovered ‘pragmatism’ in the face of UN Security Council resolutions following the 9/11 act of terrorism. The army pulled out of its ‘strategic depth’ blunder in Afghanistan and banned the four major jehadi organisations it was covertly supporting. What happened instead was more terrorism. The beginning of the year 2002 saw the inhuman beheading of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, followed by bomb attacks on Christians in Islamabad in February-March and the killing of 11 French technicians in Karachi in May. The following month the American Consulate in Karachi was attacked by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. In July, General Musharraf himself narrowly escaped being killed through a remote-controlled explosion. The following month Christians were targeted in Murree and Taxila. In September more Christians were found with their throats slit in Karachi. Sectarian killings in Punjab ran parallel to the inferno of Karachi. In December, terrorists were caught planning to kill Americans working in the Karachi consulate, and on Christmas, Christian children were blown up in Daska in Punjab. Despite Pakistan’s denial that Al Qaeda was operating inside Pakistan, its leader Abu Zubaida was captured in Faisalabad and notorious Ramzi al-Shibh was caught from Karachi, while a key figure Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was said to be still at large in the city.

In 2003, terrorism is still rampant in the country. (Columnist Inayatullah contested during a discussion on 29 January 2003 in Lahore that there was more terrorism in India than in Pakistan; but the advisories are against Pakistan only, and foreign shareholders meet their Pakistani counterparts in Dubai, while tourism in India is open and foreign investors land in India without fear.) All the leaders banned for their involvement in activities endangering Pakistan’s security are out in the open once again and threatening more Islamic jehad while General Musharraf tries to persuade that it is no longer in the interest of the state to wage mercenary jehad. He says cross-border jehad in Kashmir is at an end but no one really believes him, not even Pakistanis who have knowledge about the activities of the banned but renamed militias. More and more of their activists are caught with weapons and explosives to give the lie to the claim that Pakistan has tamed its local terrorists. Sectarian killings are fewer but still going on. Non-Muslim communities still feel unsafe living in Pakistan and terrorists with plans to hit them have been caught just in time. On the basis of information given to American interrogators by such Arab terrorists as Abu Zubaida, more and more Pakistani doctors and scientists with strict Islamic training are found to be linked to Al Qaeda. More dangerously, Pakistan is seen covertly supporting a Taliban fight-back on the border with Afghanistan in which American troops have suffered casualties.

A threatened reassessment: America seems to be ‘unofficially’ moving towards a reassessment of Pakistan as an ally, given these developments. Seymour M. Hersh writing in New Yorker (27 January 2003) stated: ‘Last June, four months before the current crisis over North Korea became public, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a comprehensive analysis of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions to President Bush and his top advisers. The document, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was classified as Top Secret, and its distribution within the government was tightly restricted. The CIA report made the case that North Korea had been violating international law—and agreements with South Korea and the United States—by secretly obtaining the means to produce weapons-grade uranium. The document’s most politically sensitive information, however, was about Pakistan. Since 1997, the CIA said, Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with the Pyongyang regime. Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration’s important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb.’ There is no doubt that Hersh was officially briefed. His report went on to reveal details that effectively indict Pakistan as an unreliable state that would go to any length to persist in its hostile policy towards India. The changing complexion of the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan could stem from Pakistan’s perception of an Indian comeback in the country under the Tajik-dominated Karzai government in Kabul.

During a meeting at Governor’s House, Lahore, General Musharraf complained earlier this month that in the OIC there were fewer and fewer takers for Pakistan’s India policy and that any reference to Kashmir was accommodated by the Islamic world only after Pakistan threatened to leave the organisation. He also disclosed to newspaper editors that there was actually a move within the Islamic bloc to accept India as a member of the OIC. This is a serious loss of international support on India policy. It develops that Pakistan has to first absorb the negative consequences of the Taliban policy it pursued in Afghanistan before 9/11. It had forced Iran to become its regional rival and caused the Central Asian Islamic republics to protest proxy infiltration. The highwater mark of this Islamic reaction against Pakistan came when in 2002, the Turkish prime minister visited India reciting the Bhagwat Gita while pointedly ignoring Pakistan’s protestations of eternal friendship. Iran’s return to the arms of Pakistan has been only partial because of Tehran’s persisting doubts about Islamabad’s sincerity. According to unconfirmed Indian reports, an accord signed between India and Iran on January 19 will allow New Delhi to use Iranian military bases in the event of a war with Pakistan. The agreement will also boost Indian armament exports to Iran and base Indian intelligence, security and military experts in Iran to train their Iranian counterparts. Appropriately, the ‘strategic alliance’ came just days ahead of the January 26 visit to India of Iranian President Muhammad Khatami. What should Pakistan make of this?

Waiting for externally imposed solutions: Indian opinion-writer Raja Mohan ( Daily Times 21 January 2003) stated: ‘Both New Delhi and Tehran were rattled by the policies of the Taliban, which rose to prominence in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Preventing the territorial consolidation of the Taliban became a shared objective between India and Iran. Besides becoming a key factor in India’s energy security calculus, Iran has emerged as India’s potential gateway to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Europe. New Delhi and Teheran are working together to develop transport corridors from India to these destinations through Iranian territory. A missing link in bilateral relations has been defence cooperation. The two sides are now moving to fill that gap. This week the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Madhvendra Singh is in Iran as part of high-level defence exchanges. Ship visits and other military cooperation is expected to follow.’ India doesn’t have to persuade Iran to agree with its policy on Kashmir. While President Khatami offers mediation on Kashmir, the Indians say Khatami’s pipeline dream would be endorsed by New Delhi only if he is willing to get Pakistan to cease its cross-border ‘terrorism’. Even if the news about an Indo-Iranian strategic alliance is unconfirmed, the extent of Indo-Iranian economic and military cooperation points in a direction that will only increase Pakistan’s isolation in the region. Ahmed Rashid writing recently in The Nation about the growing Afghan reliance on Iran for its trade with the world quotes a Western diplomat in Islamabad: ‘Pakistan is losing out because its myopic policies place countering India above trade and stability in Afghanistan’.

The world will soon converge on the central malady of Pakistani strategists and will have to focus on Islamabad’s obsession with India. Many in Pakistan will rejoice when that happens, thinking that such a focus will highlight the Kashmir dispute. The truth of the matter is that, given Pakistan’s extremely weak and dangerous internal condition, such a focus will be similar to the focus that came on Pakistan’s Taliban policy after 9/11. Pakistan lacks the capacity to produce solutions to its problems internally. Just two years ago Islamabad kept offering its Taliban strategy as a policy without alternatives even after admitting that it was hurting Pakistan’s external image and internal security. It was finally overturned, with great loss to Pakistani citizens who were allowed to become pawns in it, simply because of an incapacity to intellectually tackle the problem of total international isolation. As seen in the above developments, Islamabad is becoming globally isolated on the question of relations with India. While no one agrees with it, Pakistan is unable to show even the minimum amount of flexibility of approach to prevent an ‘external solution’ from being imposed on it. There is no doubt that Pakistan will be ‘next’ unless Pakistan changes its spots and starts thinking ‘laterally’ for once to save itself from disaster.``

Sridhar

re:#274 by stuka
I am not denying the Indian American Astronaut her ethnicity. It is for her (or her parents, now that she is no more) to say it. Ylh has no say in this matter. He failed to mention why this Astranaut`s family had to leave their ethnic roots and migrate to India, where her father, by sheer hard work, became a prosperous businessman.
Let us create an atmosphere where such ethnic groups, who are dislodged, can come back. There are many prosperous Sindhi hindus in India and abroad, who would like to visit their native place and may be even invest. Will Pak govt allow them to do so? This talk about ethnic roots make no sense if it is merely a talk.
To answer your question, my great gradma was not a Sindhi. We are South Indians. There were pockets of South Indians scattered over the subcontinent in those days. They were in small numbers but they were there.
Sridhar

RSridhar:

``The Indian American Woman Astronaut was an ethnic Gujrati Punjabi and her grandparents moved from Pakistan in 1947.``

YLH does not say that Kalpana Chawla is Pakistani. He simply (and correctly) states that she was, in an ethnic sense, from Gujrat which is in West Punjab. Her family moved from Pakistan to India. The same goes for my family.

You say your grandmother shuttled from Karachi to Delhi. But was she an ethnic Sindhi?

For those doubting that Godhra happened or that Godhra was perpetrated by Hindutva-wadis looking for an excuse to kill Muslims, here is today`s news:

[Main Godhra conspirator arrested
Press Trust of India
Godhara, February 6

In a significant development, Railway Police today arrested Mulama Hussain Umarji, allegedly the main conspirator behind last year`s Godhra carnage.

Umarji, a religious priest holding top-most position in the city, was arrested at Signal Falia in the wee hours for allegedly being involved in the burning of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express on February 27 last year in which 59 Kar Sevaks were killed, Railway Police sources said.

The police action followed after one of the Godhra accused Zabir Behra, arrested earlier, on Wednesday made a confessional statement before the city chief judicial magistrate naming the religious head as the main conspirator for the carnage, the sources said.

According to Behra`s confession, Umarji provoked about 12 Muslim youths, including Behra, and while providing information that Kar Sevaks were returning in Sabarmati Express, planned to attack them, the sources added.

Umarji will be produced in the Godhra court on Thursday for police remand, Railway Police officials, who are investigating the carnage, said.

Meanwhile, District Superintendent of Police, Panchmahals N Komar told PTI over phone that there was no tension in the Muslim dominated areas of Signal Falia after Umarji`s arrest.

Behra, during his confession stated that Umarji had also promised to pay a sum of Rs 1,500 to each of the 12 youths for perpetrating the crime.

The special investigating team of Railway Police, probing the crime, has already arrested in this connection more than 75 persons, including Razak Kurkur, owner of the guest house in front of the Godhra railway station, where these youths had put up before the February 27 carnage.]

Isn`t a maulana supposed to be a religious man teaching his flock to keep to Allah`s commandments? Why was he telling people to kill Hindu pilgrims?

re:#235 by YLH2
``
The Indian American Woman Astronaut was an ethnic Gujrati Punjabi and her grandparents moved from Pakistan in 1947``
Ylh,
Actually, i am a Pakistani. I suddenly realised that. My great grandma used to live in Karachi (in the 20s) and often shuttled between Karachi and Delhi. She moved to India for ever after 1947.
Keep weaving the web, young man. Only, do not get entangled in it. You have to complete your Law and look forward to a great political future in Pakistan.
Sridhar

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Ref 12-Head #256

[Harami OU

Did you read the crap hindutva propogate.]

No, I don`t. It may come as a surprise to you but I actually prefer to read real history as opposed to doctored versions put out by either the BJP and its minions or by Jawaharlal Nehru University professors. If then my conclusions sound like some Hindutva propaganda to you, then perhaps there is a lot of truth on their side. Have you thought of that?

[You complainabout jehadists YOU NEVER COMPLAIN about the crap from SAMUKTHA ,unsolicited .I could change my E.Mail but i know she can hack it again besides it will apset my whole file of stored favourite places .]

Whoever SAMUKTHA is, he/she doesn`t sendme unsolicited e-mail. So, put some sort of spam guard in your in-box.

Ref PM #258

[``The reason Pakistan does not have pogroms against Hindus is the same reason India does not have pogroms against the Parsis. They are too insignificant too count.``

Ok. You have a point here. The Shias are probably the closest thing to a threat-posing `minority` to orthodox Sunni extremists, and really, it doesn`t take much of a stretch to imagine organized violence upon them, especailly if, say, the bogeyman of a trainload of Sunni ambushed by Shias were thrown in. I knoiw only to well how potent the mob mentality can be, though I cannot see with any certainty, the government of the two more urban provinced acquiesing in any such massacres.]

Right after the Gujarat riots, I pointed out that Modi was doing what he was doing -- let the riots continue -- for political compulsions, damn the legalities. I was excoriated as the Hindutva goon on Chowk for that. Now that Modi got elected, you are all wondering if all of India is going to go the Modi way.

Politicians will do anything to stay in power. The police in Punjab didn`t cover themselves with glory in 1947 during the partition riots. It is hard to believe that the police have improved -- on either side of the border -- after the British left.

PM,
All legal reasons aside, you were right about India not being able to afford any concession on Kashmir. Pakistan had lived with Indian `occupation` of Kashmir until 1987-88. So Pakistan and its military can survive without Kashmir.

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PM #265,
PM, ``back from where it came``, how do you know where it came from?
Is it not possible that it is your own?

My question with regard to ``India not honoring UN resolutions: statement made by you.
My first request was for you to quote from resolution. My argument is that as per UN resolutions first step is to be taken by Pakistan. In case you accept this position than we have nothing more to argue about this point, except discussing modalities of how Pakistan will meet requirements of Part 1 ..)

(of course I will also ask you for details on other topics .. of your interest)

re. #252 AlephNull:
You quote me:
{.... I have never understood what makes SOME people so terrified of the idea of multi-nation theory and political autonomy. Could it be the awareness of innate insecurity in their nationalistic premise? ... I suppose it just isn`t as fashionable to define nationhood in terms of basic beliefs and lifestyles as to demarcate boundaries by language!)}

and then respond:

``This led me to believe that your particular preferences were backed by *theoretical arguments*. I understand and deeply respect the power of abstract arguments. That is why I asked many obvious questions in an attempt to understand your rationale.}

Nothwithstanding a shared respect in the power of abstract argument, sometimes, Aleph, `wonder` means wonder, nothing more! I am not sure to what rationale it is you refer.

``... [The questions] were *directly addressed* to your comments, and to YLH`s. I intentionally kept them abstract for the most part to avoid another futile wrangle about sub-continental politics, Partition, etc. - but you must realise their fundamental relevance.``

Darn, was hoping I could get away feinging ignorance on that one! :)

re. arjun_m #259:
``so enough of this high moral ground sh!t... ``
Chill already humberto! In case you haven`t noticed, the debate has moved to strategic considerations, not moral. (Then again, what would a day be without some paki to curse, eh?)

``Wake up and smell the double skim milk latte..India doesn`t need to negotiate/talk or do anything it doesn`t feel like doing. It`s Pakistan that needs talks/mediation/something/anything. Unless there is pressure on India, it will talk when it feels like talking.. ``

Yeah, until then I`m sure it finds it more worhtwhile stationing 700,000 troops in that state, right?

``And for all the people whining about talks..India did talk..Lahore..Agra..these ring a bell?``

Yes. Were not these the talks in which India reminded Pakistan that Kashmir was off-limits, talks-wise?

friend:
Nothing caustic intended in my sh!tty remarks. :) In ``...back over the fence from where it came``, please consider what the word `back` implies.
And what exactly is it do you expect me to comment on re. the UN resolutions? Please clarify.

P.S. (to Aleph)
found this altogether quite ticklish:
``I only hope that your reason for being coy is something other than an awareness of innate insecurity in your own premises, or lack of substantiation for your preferred conclusions.``

While I will, in due time, hope to dispell your suspicion of any such improriety on my part, I should hope that the conclusions you have reached, if contradictory to my own, would be duly substantiated with more than citation of personally observed empirical data.

And if I may be so audacious as to offer advice, don`t dismiss your `understanding of human nature, which, it would appear is anything but ``limited``.

re. @250 byAlephNull:
Aleph, your post was informative and convincing, a well as patient, for which I thank you. Guess I should have read up more on the issue myself, especially on the finer and/or closed-door aspects of the Shimla agreement.

You write, however, :
``You seem to regard India`s failure to ask Pakistan to honour its end of the bargain as evidence of India`s intent to dishonour the resolution. That is certainly a curious position considering that it is Pakistan that plainly has to move first, which it has manifestly failed to do for half a century.``

It is not, per se, India`s failure to ask Paksitan to honour its end of the bargain that I see as India`s intent to dishonour it -- it is its position that Kashmir is `internal` and therefore non-negotiable -- which is altogether a different position. Unless it is India`s intention to provide reasons for the Army to stay in power Pakistan ( I fail to see what benefit it affords anyone BUT that army), would you not agree that this is not the strategically, to say nothing of legality, most sound stance for India to be taking?

``I also regard legalities as being of dubious value in relations between plainly adversarial states.``

When internal pressure is brought to bear, legalities may make the difference between choosing high-cost war and face-losing peace.

re. your #254 dealing with the `tangential` issues. Thanks for the time alotted as well as the stimulating thoughts. I am far from intransigent on the view that that, in practice, large polities/societes are more likely than smaller ones to stifle and constrain individual choice. Off the hip, again, I`d say that individual choice in very large polities tends to give rise to a form of idividualism and lack of identity and moorings that tends to tear at the fabric of the meaningful units of society (family, neighbourhood, town) and this may be a reason that many individuals, or groups of kindred individuals, resist being `swallowed up in a homogenizing superstructure` as it were.

Yes, I`m an anarchist at heart. Hell! in skin too :)

IMO, it takes a great deal of thought, checks and balances, and a tradition of tolerance to create unions in which particular rights of individuals or diverse groups are freely given. I am not sure such can be achieved without a thorough subscription to a philosophy of man; not state, as holding paramount inegrity. Even a society such as the US, with its constitution founded in just such a philosophy felt the need to curtail this right (IMO, rightly in that case, since there was an overriding moral imperative OUTSIDE any consideration of national integrity -- I am referring to the Abolition proclamation. Am I mistaken?).

But I have rambled enough already. Allow me to wipe the dust off my volumes of Locke and Russell and perhaps post a more fitting reply to your interesting queries.

regards,
PM

An aside: I honeslty felt your earleir questions were directed generally to ANY ``votaries of liberty`` that might be lurking in these alleys.

PM #258
As far as need for ``India asserting its supiriority`` in 1951 itself, while waiting for Pakistan to meet its obligations, it conducted elections in J&K. J&K got special status (Article 370) and laws of Indian Parliament have limited applicability in J&K.
On the other hand, Pakistan gifted part of J&K to China, without asking Kashmiri people`s opinion (kindly don`t call it border dispute settlement, if J&K is disputed territory than Pakistan didn`t have any rights to settle its boundary). Nothern part of J&K was just eaten by Pakistan as nothern territories. Those people have no representation and status.

Now, when demography of J&K has changed so much in last 50 years, you want India to go back 50 years and show ``moral supiriority``.!! Can you roll back situation to 1947, make Nothern Areas part of Kasmir and get back territory from China.

All the sides can show this supiriority, Pakistan by refraining from any adventure, direct or indirect and India by taking care of issues faced by Kashmiris (for that matter, by people from all the states).

At this point, imho, converting LOC to IB is sanest (and least cost) solution.

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re. stuka #239
``Is India expected to sit around till the end of time to wait for Pakistan to fufill it`s part??? Maybe the second coming of the Mahdi???``

No. India can tell Pakistan that it can forget about Kashmir until it fulfills its (Pak`s) end of the resolution. That would wonderfully put the ball in Pakistan`s court, exposing the issue for what it really is to Pakistan -- the raison d`etre of the Pak Army, who make sure that masses are reminded cosntantly of Indian expansionist designs and ill-will for Muslims. Apart from Urstruly, few educated Pakistanis believe that the Kashmiri struggle is indigenous, though many believe the issue is historically unresolved.

But no, India needs to assert its superiority in the matter, rather than seek a negotiable settlement in which it would even effectively retain it`s part of Kashmir. It has to show it`s the Alpha male in the region. Perhaps this is understandable: Even a HINT of concession on Kashmir could, no matter what harimau might think, lead to seccessionists rumblings in other parts, which India cannot obviously afford.

``Obviously, if the Pakistanis proceed to wreck havoc with their part of Kashmir (basically treating it as their baap ka maal) and do not make any effort to implement the UN Resolution, then why are we expected to do any different?``

You are not. But just don`t play the ``Kashmir is an integral part of India and that`s a reality`` line. Not only because stating such `realities` is about the intellectual equivalent of Pakistan`s claiming that its part is ``integral`` to it, but because it smacks of provocation. And that is plain dumb to be doing when you already have the card you want in hand and can retain it without having to appear as the Numero Uno of the block.

Unless, of course, you think that India`s current position (`Kashmir cannot be discussed. Period.`) is the stragetically soundest for the Kashmiris as well as Indians.

re. stuka #244
``LOL!!! Pakistan is a bastion of tolerance because the great Patrick Masih said so.``

No. It`s actually a cesspool of intolerance becasue jay, arjun_m and you say so. I bow before your superior knowledge!

(Not that Patrick Masih even made any unqualified statements about the way Minorities, in general, are treated in Pakistan. But I guess reading skills are the first to go when cerished ideas of enemy iniquities are challenged.)

``The reason Pakistan does not have pogroms against Hindus is the same reason India does not have pogroms against the Parsis. They are too insignificant too count.``

Ok. You have a point here. The Shias are probably the closest thing to a threat-posing `minority` to orthodox Sunni extremists, and really, it doesn`t take much of a stretch to imagine organized violence upon them, especailly if, say, the bogeyman of a trainload of Sunni ambushed by Shias were thrown in. I knoiw only to well how potent the mob mentality can be, though I cannot see with any certainty, the government of the two more urban provinced acquiesing in any such massacres.

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Ref Urs-Stooley #242

[India has secularism and a pluralistic democarcy and yet there are ferocious genocides of minorities on regular basis. According to your thesis it should not happen in India. As compared to them Pakistan seems to be a kingdom of heaven as per your article and posts which are being duly attested by PM.]

Great! I shall immediately go to New Delhi to stand in line in front of the Pakistan High Commission for a permanent resident visa. I am not sure whether the Kingdom of Heaven aka Land of the Pure will grant me 72 houris (please keep the ghilmans to yourselves) when I present my papers at the Wagah checkpost or I will have to settle first in LaWhore. Do you know the answer?

Do you think minorities like me will have a special line at the Pak High Commission? I know the Indian Muslims are already breaking down the doors to get a visa in their bid to move to Pakistan. I wouldn`t want to be caught in a line that is 130 million long.

Ref 12-Head #249

[.Slave ,Kesto Arjun Harimou ,Jay plz get me off your list i never knowingly gave my e-mail to ]

A) I don`t know your e-mail address

B) I don`t write to idiots like you

C) If you now get a deluge of mail, that is payback for all the unsolicited e-mails you had sent to female interactors on Chowk. Just remember, Allah has ordained that you endure this for all the crappy e-mail you had sent to women.

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PM #225

{Only if we can agree on the idea and extent of autonomy ..... unless we have such agreement, all talk is less than meaningful and not likely to end in agreement. Commonality of premise is a requirement for that of conclusion, right?}

One can try to evaluate the logical soundness or heuristic plausibility of an argument on its own merits, whether or not one agrees with the premises. Such an exercise is valuable - after all, schoolchildren are made to learn Euclidean geometry even though we now believe that spacetime is not flat! That is why I would like to see your detailed premises and conclusions, and at least an attempt at a persuasive argument as to how the latter follow from the former.

{(for me it IS the individual that is paramount, in so far as his liberty/autonomy doesn`t interfere with that of others -- I know, a can of worms in itself!)}

Curiously enough, I too regard the liberty and autonomy of the individual, and his utmost freedom to develop, as paramount. I have grounds to believe that in practice small polities/societes are as likely as, or more likely than, larger ones, to stifle and constrain individual choice,. I admit that I have no rigorous argument in support of this belief - it is based on empirical observation and my limited understanding of human nature.

You seem to have come to different conclusions on theoretical grounds. That is why your comments interest me. We well know that the devil is always in the details, which is why I invited you to elaborate upon your views.

{... matters only tangential to my original comments.}

I disagree with your characterization of these matters as `tangential` to your original comments in #55. Let me quote you again:

{{.... I have never understood what makes SOME people so terrified of the idea of multi-nation theory and political autonomy. Could it be the awareness of innate insecurity in their nationalistic premise? ... I suppose it just isn`t as fashionable to define nationhood in terms of basic beliefs and lifestyles as to demarcate boundaries by language!)}

This led me to believe that your particular preferences were backed by *theoretical arguments*. I understand and deeply respect the power of abstract arguments. That is why I asked many obvious questions in an attempt to understand your rationale. They were *directly addressed* to your comments, and to YLH`s. I intentionally kept them abstract for the most part to avoid another futile wrangle about sub-continental politics, Partition, etc. - but you must realise their fundamental relevance.

{I am neither blessed with the time, nor imbued with the inclination to expound ...}

I know that in the past you have not hesitated to write fairly voluminous posts when the spirit moved you. I`m prepared to wait until after the end of the World Cup and the Karachi football season if need be.

It is your absolute prerogative to not engage me if you find doing so distasteful or on any other grounds - Romiar does it all the time! I only hope that your reason for being coy is something other than an awareness of innate insecurity in your own premises, or lack of substantiation for your preferred conclusions.

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PM #237

{Pakistan`s position on Kashmir is simple: Hold the plebescite.}

You do realise, don`t you, that the plebiscite is to be held in the entire territory of 1947 J & K, *after* it has been reunited under Indian control, Pakistani armed forces and non-Kashmir-residents have been expelled, and refugees who fled Kashmir have returned. If you read the UN resolutions, they are crystal clear about what Pakistan needs to do as the first step towards their implementation.

When Pakistanis are apprised of these requirements, they are wont to start bleating about `modalities for simultaneous mutual withdrawal of forces` - something for which no provision exists in the resolutions.

{If India has any intention at all to honour that resolution, it should at least leve the subject open to negotiation -- ask Pakistan to keep its end of the bargain, make sure their militia don`t infiltrate etc. -- so that IT (India) can then begin to think about playing it`s part.}

You seem to regard India`s failure to ask Pakistan to honour its end of the bargain as evidence of India`s intent to dishonour the resolution. That is certainly a curious position considering that it is Pakistan that plainly has to move first, which it has manifestly failed to do for half a century.

Pakistanis cannot simultaneously demand the implementation of the UN resolutions AND seek to renegotiate their provisions to better suit their ends. If you want to invoke the UN resolutions, the letter of the resolutions is what you`ll get. You cannot have it both ways.

PM #224

{And this is the same as the current Indian position that Kashmir is entirely an internal matter and not negotiable, right?}

No, it isn`t the same. The basis of the Indian position after 1972 has been the Simla Agreement, according to which all differences between India and Pakistan (the Kashmir dispute is not specifically named) are to be resolved through *bilateral negotiations or any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon*. This is held to supersede the various UN resolutions.

It is widely held that the Indian intent at Shimla was to formalise the post-1971 Line of Control as the de jure International Border, and that ZAB agreed to this course but pleaded that it not be included in the written agreement, as it would make his position at home as the head of a defeated country untenable. Naturally none of this has any legal force.

-------------

I personally believe that the offer of LOC=IB gives away far too much to Pakistan. As far as I`m concerned the control of any J & K territory currently in India`s possession is not negotiable with any other power, least of all Pakistan. I also regard legalities as being of dubious value in relations between plainly adversarial states.

I mentioned the fine print of the UN Resolutions primarily to demonstrate the hollowness of your facile claim about `India having dishonoured the UN Resolutions`.

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friend #233 `It is a revelation to know even saner Pakistanis like you also believe those stories of horrible Hindus hijacking there own aircrafts, killing their own citizens, throwing bombs on their own parliaments and in this incident, burning their own Hindu brothers, just to malign Pakistan and Muslims!! Do you really believe such stories to be true? Do you also believe in the theory of Mossad blowing up the trade center?`

Liberal or conservative, for all Pakistanis, these are articles of faith. You should read what Ardeshir Cowasjee wrote about Indians organizing attack on their own parliament building. Irrespective of their educational achievement, more than 90% share this thinking.

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Ref arjun_m #245

[See what the director of the Pakistan institute of strategic studies thinks..India and the US are strategic partners and Pakistan is just a prophylactic....so much for the ``something gigantic is in the pipeline`` pipe dream..
__________________________________________________________

Yet, it is these developments that reflect the new realities in this region - that, India, as a strategic partner of the US is not to be subjected to any questions on its transgression of international norms and laws. Instead, it is states like Pakistan, who want to create their own space in the region, who are to be put under all manner of pressure and stress. This is the price we have to pay for being in the neighbourhood of the Indo-US strategic game plan and for still wanting to befriend the US with no quid pro quos.]

How neatly these guys turn the truth around to suit themselves! It is well-known that no Indian government has exported nuclear or missile technology to any country. On the other hand, China got away with selling both to Pakistan and Pakistan is strongly suspected of selling nuclear technology to North Korea. All that Powell could say about that was that Musharraf has promised that is has stopped and that he, Powell, was not going to go back to pre-Sep 11 time to analyze events.

But the statement that ``India, as a strategic partner of the US is not to be subjected to any questions on its transgression of international norms and laws``, is the propaganda that is being fed to the masses in Pakistan and that too to the English-speaking elite.

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LOL!!! Pakistan is a bastion of tolerance because the great Patrick Masih said so.

The reason Pakistan does not have pogroms against Hindus is the same reason India does not have pogroms against the Parsis. They are too insignificant too count. If the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in India in 1947 had been equal to what you did to us, we would not have pogroms either.

re YLH2:
``The point is that PM`s evidence as a successful minority Pakistani notwithstanding, the condition of the Minorities in Pakistan is despicable... ``
Yasser! Successful? hmmm... I think my mom would have a thing or two to say about that! I mean, she`d like me to have a regualr job, even if I can`t afford a brand new Honda Civic. :)
The condition of Minorities in some areas (both geographical and socio-political) is despicable (tho I wonder how much of it has to do with their ecnomic status and how much with their religious affiliation). Personally, as a middle-class Goan (not Syrian, LOL!) Christian living in Karachi, I have often been a ``victim`` of `reverse discrimination`. You could argue that Christians, like Parsis, are favoured in certain employment positions because of the reputation their communities have earned, but how that is different from stereotyping Muslims (albeitly negatively) because of Sept.11, I don;t really understand.
Bottom line, I speak for a vast majority of urban Minorities when I say that negative discrimination is not a major issue.
Having said that... it is only fair to point out that the majority of Christians and I think Hindus too live in rural-to-semirural areas and are often victims of harsh discrimination.

rgds,
PM
hey, my email addy is @hotmail.com. If you`ve forgotten that (swine!!) then send to postmatser@yahoo.com (please not the spelling)

Patrick Masih:

``It is well known that the Truce Agreement provisions require Pakistan, as a first step, to withdraw all its troops from J & K as well as secure the withdrawal of tribesemen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident in the state, and to hand over power to local authorities. ``

And this is the same as the current Indian position that Kashmir is entirely an internal matter and not negotiable, right````

What an idiot....Is India expected to sit around till the end of time to wait for Pakistan to fufill it`s part??? Maybe the second coming of the Mahdi???

Obviously, if the Pakistanis proceed to wreck havoc with their part of Kashmir (basically treating it as their baap ka maal) and do not make any effort to implement the UN Resolution, then why are we expected to do any different?

At least we retained the demographic balance of Kashmir, unlike you lot. If Nehru had brains he would have handed over the valley to Refugee Hindus and Sikhs from West Pakistan and today Kashmir would have been a fertile breadbasket of India rather than an economic basket case. The land would have been developed by Hindus and Sikhs and the Kashmiri Muslims could have earned excellent livlihood as labourers in rice fields and apple orchards. But thanks to his trying to prove points of secularism a basis for future problem was created.

Can we all please stop this overdone homage-paying to those seven unfortunates who lost their lives over the Texan skies. I mean, they knew full well the risks they were taking for the thrill (face it, being in outer space is a THRILL, first and foremost-- unless someone can convince me that shuttle missions and Hubbles bobbling actually contribute to the general welfare of mankind!) Perhaps us Pakis would do better to save our grief for the seven virtually unnamed innocents who lose their lives everyday to reckless driving by busdrivers while their masters (the traffic cop bigwigs) look th other way!

PM #237,
``Then why did you bother? :) ``
I am surprised at your caustic reply. Aleph will write his own replies but I do have right to write my feedback. Now if you are getting so touchy, just say so and I will desist.
Dear Patrick saheb, you have time & inclination to reply to tangential questions raised to YLH. ``Who is online`` feature & the spread of timestamp of your messages indicate that you are spending enough time on this forum. You claim this ``meri marzi`` only when you run out of arguments!!

w.r.t to yours ``which part of throw it Back``. I really don`t get it. Explain if you can. If you are in sh!t throwing business than all my best wishes are with you.

I will choose to believe BBC, I have seen enough false and biased reports in Pakistani press (Dawn, the News etc) to make that decision.

And yes, I pleaded ``Oh! PM please read UN resolutions`` as I thought that you will take an objective stance. I am now coming to conclusion that I was wrong.

Obviously you have read it, found that first steps was for Pakistan to withdraw from area invaded by her and have no explanations as to why that was not done.

Pakistani position is very simple ``hold the plebescite``. What happened to simple ``step 1`` - ``Pakistan withdrawing from the territories occupied by its forces and tribals and making conditions conducive to plebescite.``?

For fifty years, Pakistan didn`t honor the resolutions but kept harping on ``one muslim equals ten hindus`` and ````making India bleed with thousand cuts`` and having dreams of lunches in ``Jodhpur?`` and dinner in Delhi. Now that policy has shown to be throughly flawed, Pakistan started singing songs of ``at least keep it open to negotiation``. What negotiation you want to do? Kindly elaborate.

And I will wait for your detailed analysis of UN reolutions.

YLH2 : That is precisely why I am such a strong advocate of secularism and pluralistic democracy ... so that we can do away with these blots once and for all... just imagine how much progress we will make in this department...


India has secularism and a pluralistic democarcy and yet there are ferocious genocides of minorities on regular basis. According to your thesis it should not happen in India. As compared to them Pakistan seems to be a kingdom of heaven as per your article and posts which are being duly attested by PM. And this is when Paksitan has neither secularism nor democarcy. So either you are lying about Paksitan or you are beating about the wrong bush.

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re #friend:
In response to my comment to Aleph: ``Don`t hold your breath. I am neither blessed with the time, nor imbued with the inclination to expound on matters only tangential to my original comments...``
You write in #234:
``I trust Aleph to write his own reply.``
Then why did you bother? :)
``... I am accustomed to observing Romair going in hibernation and YLH pleading ``no time due to demands of ivy league education``. Your adopting same approach is totally unexpected!!``
friend sahib, which part of ``only tangential to my original comments`` did you not understand??

re. my comment, ``But it behoves one to throw cr@p back over the fence when one finds it in one`s backyard. ``

You write in #233:
``And this is really hilarious. So philosophy in Pakistan is that if you have cr&p in your own backyard, throw it over the fence. Dear Patrick, why not just clean it. Even while throwing, you have to touch it.``

So, I am prompted to ask, ``which part of throw it BACK..`` did you not get?

A for you comments on the Bishop taking his life, well, it`s certainly less evil than taking another`s, but silly all the same. It achieved nothing, except some raised eyebrows from his fellow ecclesiatics.

Now, you would be surprised to learn that folks in the inner circles of the churches to which that charitable organization (whose seven workers were killed) was linked know full well that the killings were committed in all likelihood by a rival Christian party. The atmosphere was ideal to deflect attention from themselves. Two months before this horrific incident, the leader of an oppsoing camp in this circle was found beaten, up gagged and left for dead in his office. Of course, you can choose to believe BBC whose headlines, a mere 12 hours following this incident, had somehow ascertained that ``Islamic extremists [had killed] Seven Christians``. Wonderfully objective reportage!

As for my assertion that the theory that the Godhra train was attacked and razed by Muslims has some serious holes, would you like me to post references to the same from the Indian press? And please don`t be so disingenuous as to associate this claim with other obviosuly hogwash ones in future. If you wish to engage in debate, tick to the issues beign discussed.

Now, you plead: ``PM!!!!! Why don`y you start with US resolutions, show us that Pakistani position is correct. Wait till that time to analyze Indian position.``

Pakistan`s position on Kashmir is simple: Hold the plebescite. If India has any intention at all to honour that resolution, it should at least leve the subject open to negotiation -- ask Pakistan to keep its end of the bargain, make sure their militia don`t infiltrate etc. -- so that IT (India) can then begin to think about playing it`s part. But you know India`s position, right? Summed up, it`s ``Kashmir is integral to India, so butt out, Pakistan!``

Hope that helps!

re #231 by rsaxena
[re: PM #229
...nobody cares... ]
Gee you`re sweet! Thanks for caring enough to letme know! :)

PM #223
re. friend #198:
``Gee, someone really hasn`t been reading the papers! Or haven`t you heard-- there are serious questions regarding the authenticity of the Godhra-train story. ``
It is a revelation to know even saner Pakistanis like you also believe those stories of horrible Hindus hijacking there own aircrafts, killing their own citizens, throwing bombs on their own parliaments and in this incident, burning their own Hindu brothers, just to malign Pakistan and Muslims!! Do you really believe such stories to be true? Do you also believe in the theory of Mossad blowing up the trade center?

``And would you also write about that old female who distributed sweets in a piece of paper? Or priest (was that a bishop!!) who had to commit suicide in a church?``

Did he successfully internationalize the plight of Pakistani Christians. Taking one`s own life is a hard decision, much harder than killing innocent people (read ``by your freedom fighters``)Obviously Bishop was not allowed to server his community that`s why he took this drastic step. What about a recent church bombing where only witness who somehow survived was grilled for his possible collusion with killers. Final report I read was that he disappeared. Tell me that this is also a fabricated report.

``But it behoves one to throw cr@p back over the fence when one finds it in one`s backyard. ``

And this is really hilarious. So philosophy in Pakistan is that if you have cr&p in your own backyard, throw it over the fence. Dear Patrick, why not just clean it. Even while throwing, you have to touch it.

Will look forward to your response on ``UN resolutions``.

PM #224
[re. AlephNull #206:
``It is well known that the Truce Agreement provisions require Pakistan, as a first step, to withdraw all its troops from J & K as well as secure the withdrawal of tribesemen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident in the state, and to hand over power to local authorities. ``

And this is the same as the current Indian position that Kashmir is entirely an internal matter and not negotiable, right? ]

PM!!!!! Why don`y you start with US resolutions, show us that Pakistani position is correct. Wait till that time to analyze Indian position.



PM #226
[re. AlephNull#223:

``That was why I had a multitude of questions to ask you in #72. They were NOT rhetorical. I trust you will be forthcoming with answers.``

Don`t hold your breath. I am neither blessed with the time, nor imbued with the inclination to expound on matters only tangential to my original comments. Soccer season is in full swing in Karachi, you see, and then there`s the World Cup starting on the 8th. ;) ]

I trust Aleph to write his own reply. I am accustomed to observing Romair going in hibernation and YLH pleading ``no time due to demands of ivy league education``. Your adopting same approach is totally unexpected!!

Prayers for Dr. Kalpana Chawla in Gujrat Pakistan,

I think it is heartening to note that Gujrat City Pakistan Writers forum held a meeting of condolence recently for the death of the first astronaut from our part of the world... The Indian American Woman Astronaut was an ethnic Gujrati Punjabi and her grandparents moved from Pakistan in 1947.

Gujrat is also the stronghold of kingmaker Ch.Shujaat.


Ok now on to the other issue...


I wonder why Indians think that if we say that minorities are only treated as badly in Pakistan as in India that we are paying ourselves some sort of a compliment...

The point is that PM`s evidence as a successful minority Pakistani notwithstanding, the condition of the Minorities in Pakistan is despicable... and the horrible events of Shantinagar, though nowhere close to the events in Gujurat and other places in India where christians and muslims are massacred mercilessly, are a blot on our conscience.

That is precisely why I am such a strong advocate of secularism and pluralistic democracy ... so that we can do away with these blots once and for all... just imagine how much progress we will make in this department...


Anyway ... for the Pakistani Hindu Perspective please visit:

Pakistani Hindu Patrika

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7295/

re:

{ISLAMABAD - Pakistan reacted angrily yesterday to India`s reported decision to seek Israeli help in training its special forces troops, describing the cooperation between the two states as being `provocative and hostile`. }

....hahahaha...cry baby..

re: PM #229

...nobody cares...

At he cost of locking horns with the untamables:

#221 by arjun_m on February 3, 2003 6:49pm PT

``Kasuri needs to wear the cufflinks..Anything to take attention away from the fact that his visit has been a huge failure...

How can Kasuri talk about getting an exemption for Paks from the list, when Italy announced 28 Pakistanis being detained with a plot to kill British Police chief, bomb various facilities, etc? ``

I understand why are you so frustrated and angry. I symathise with your circumstances. I know that you read my message on Pakistani arrests before. I told you that 6 Pakistanis were also arrested By Kenya on similar charges, but were later released. So will be these Pakistanis. And how about the shoe bomber? Rest assured you will be wrong here too. HOW?

Did not you say that India has good relations with all the neighboring countries? Well, read the newspapers and find out about your relationship with Bangladesh now.

Or with Iran did you say?

Your Governemnt turned down Iranian gas line proposal, whereas Pakistan has executed an agreement with Iran for cooperating in the Indian ocean and other defense pacts, including naval exercises. Cosmetic of attending parades does not mean anything. Determine the main reason for the visit of Iranians to your country and then find out what was the achievement against that target.

Sorry, I did not want to hurt your feelings. See you next time angry man.

re. my various wrong referencing of posts.
Since my LAN server seems intent on serving me pages from it`s cache, and I can`t bypass it while browsing, I`m trying to cheat it by fiddling with the passed variables` values. This is resulting in skewed numbering of posts.
Any suggestions (short of killing my LAN admin to enable proxy bypass) would be welcome.

re. my various wrong referencing of posts.
Since my LAN server seems intent on serving me pages from it`s cache, and I can`t bypass it while browsing, I`m trying to cheat it by fiddling with the passed variables` values. This is resulting in skewed numbering of posts.
Any suggestions (short of killing my LAN admin to enable proxy bypass) would be welcome.

re. AlephNull#223:
``I would like to know WHY you consider ``every-village-a-nation`` to be the ideal degree of devolution of sovereignty. For starters, ideal with respect to WHAT? What is it that you seek to maximise - `individual freedom/autonomy`, `social coherence`, `participatory democracy/self-government`, `material wealth`, `safety from violence`, `shared historical consciousness`; some other factor; a weighted combination of one or more of the above? When you mention autonomy above, are you referring to the autonomy of the individual, or of social groups? If it is a social group, HOW is it chosen as deserving of autonomy, and what makes its claims more deserving than those of all other possible groupings, from single individuals to multicultural multiethnic megastates?``

Consider this a preliminary, more or less of the top-off-my head reply. Extent of autonomy and devolution is always problematic in philosophy, and I am guessing consitutes differences in fundamental political theory/philosophy. So, in that sense, if you`re looking for an answer the whole world can agree on, you will be disappointed. (Admittedly, not being a Political Science student, I might be mistaken, but not likely so).

Only if we can agree on the idea and extent of autonomy (for me it IS the individual that is paramount, in so far as his liberty/autonomy doesn`t interfere with that of others -- I know, a can of worms in itself!)-- unless we have such agreement, all talk is less than meaningful and not likely to end in agreement. Commonality of premise is a requirement for that of conclusion, right?

``That was why I had a multitude of questions to ask you in #72. They were NOT rhetorical. I trust you will be forthcoming with answers.``

Don`t hold your breath. I am neither blessed with the time, nor imbued with the inclination to expound on matters only tangential to my original comments. Soccer season is in full swing in Karachi, you see, and then there`s the World Cup starting on the 8th. ;)

rgds,
PM

harimau, re. #223
Amen, bro!

Ana,
Sorry if the `obscure` characterization offended. It was meant to connote the distance from maisntream culture (or educated anyway, no matter how GhalibZaman would chose to define that word :) )
Your ``home away from home ...`` I am doubly saddened to hear that lives indeed were lost. If only becuase it would comment on the integrity of media reportage, I wonder if you could tell us, if it doesn`t open old wounds, some of the accounts of those deaths. Were there lynchings, maimings?
regards,
PM

re. AlephNull #206:
``It is well known that the Truce Agreement provisions require Pakistan, as a first step, to withdraw all its troops from J & K as well as secure the withdrawal of tribesemen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident in the state, and to hand over power to local authorities. ``

And this is the same as the current Indian position that Kashmir is entirely an internal matter and not negotiable, right?

re. friend #198:
[PM #204
``Residents were given the opportunity to flee. ``
wow! what a great proof of tolerance. Residents were allowed to flee!!...
Certainly we have our bands of crooks, but coming from Pakistan, such comments look ridiculous.``]

Can it already! We were discussing respective modes of organized violence against Minority communities.

``Wonder if they wanted to give such a chance to ``flee`` to Godhra train passengers too. Perhaps those passengers didn`t take that chance.``

Gee, someone really hasn`t been reading the papers! Or haven`t you heard-- there are serious questions regarding the authenticity of the Godhra-train story.

``And would you also write about that old female who distributed sweets in a piece of paper? Or priest (was that a bishop!!) who had to commit suicide in a church?``

Sorry I can help with the old lady incident (perhaps I was out of the country then), but I can tell you what many Christians (clergy included-- or mostly!) think of Bishop John Joseph`s suicide. P-O-L-I-T-I-C-A-L stunt. He could have served thecommunity better LIVING to fight another day.``

``PM, perhaps we should not be competing on ``whose sh!t stinks more``. We all stink.``

True, friend. And I am quick to point out that Pakistan is far from angelic. But it behoves one to throw cr@p back over the fence when one finds it in one`s backyard.

Will get back to you on the UN resolutions later in the week.
(Thanks for the pointers, Aleph)

rgds,
PM

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Umer #213.
yaar, i wish i had read that when i was a kid all those years ago, then perhaps I wouldn`t be alone, and i`d still have a sitar, perhaps an even bigger one than the one I smashed to pieces-- an insult to the craftsmen on Ratan Chand Road, and my parents` checkbook!!!!

all levity and jokes aside...yes, wouldn`t it be nice if we could ALL go back to nursery, and we ALL had teachers who taught us more positive ways of responding to tearing a page, throwing a holy book on the ground, being ignored, what have you? From what i remember of being in school though...sometimes the positive teachers made little to no impact...
:-)

Ref PM #204

[Duh! A majority of Pakistan`s 5 million (handful?) Christians and Hindus live in religiously homogenous townships. The nearest thing to an organized riot against a minority community occured in an obscure Punjabi Christian rural township called Shantinagar in `96. In response to a call from an unpaDh mullah citing blasphemy, a mob of equally ignorant Muslims from surrounding towns basically burnt the town to the ground. Despicable, no doubt. But no lives were taken. Residents were given the opportunity to flee.]

So, it is okay for ignorant Muslims to burn property down for an unproved charge of blasphemy but Hindus are not supposed to avenge the burning to death of some 60 pilgrims?

Does anyone even remember that of the 1200 dead in the Gujarat riots, quite a few were Hindus? Or, have they all been admitted to The True Faith posthumously so that they can receive the 72 houris and 24 ghilmans?

I remember posting statistics that showed that PROPORTIONATELY (based on population ratio) there were more Hindus displaced by the riots. I remember the deafening silence with which that statistic was greeted on Chowk.

Patrick

I am not contending your assertion ``India also shares the blame`` but not in the sense you mean. Had Mr. Jinnah not shown the avarice to take the entire Kashmir by force, Paistan would have got the valley while Jammu/Laddakh would have gone to India. Like Punjab and Bengal, Mr. Jinnah attempted to take the entire Kashmir instead of demanding its division according to demographics and failed. You may also perhaps know that the idea of plebiscite was rejected by Jinnah. This is not to ``blame`` Mr. Jinnah. He was doing what he thought would serve the interests of his newly created nation. When it comes to the international diplomacy, it is not the morality but the interests that are important and Mr. Jinnah was doing exactly that. But then you also have no right to complain about his miscalculation/failure.

PS India does indeed share the blame on account of its multiple mistakes and we both know it.

#110 Arjun:

Good link.

Is this the same Mr Ijaz(Fox news-``analyst-cum-security expert``?)
If so, when did he get his doctorate (now he is Dr Mansur Ijaz)

One article mentioned that Kasuri was all ``decked with cufflinks, polished shoes, three-piece suite and all that``; I thought the 3-piece suit was passe`. Cufflink/bracelet??? My, My....The last time I saw someone sporting a cufflink, bracelet is a used-car fasttalking salesman smelling of burnt cheap coffee. Was he also wearing a ``Polka`` tie, ``power``(red) tie? polka is long passe`, power tie is a big no/no....he could worn
plain dockers/polo t-shirt.

How can Kasuri talk about getting an exemption for Paks from the list, when Italy announced 28 Pakistanis being detained with a plot to kill British Police chief, bomb various facilities, etc?

Forget about the list, Mr Haider(TFT fame) also was detained while taking a smoke break according to news report.

PM

``But things were always going to get ugly when India dishonoured the UN Resolutions. War is never pretty, ven if it`s proxy. My point: India shares the blame. ``

Alas! you lost it there Patrick. Two things- 1) UN resolutions came after the Pak army assisted tribal attack on Kasmir ( which Mr. Jinnah denied of course) and 2) even a cursory reading of UN resolutions may tell you that India never ``technically violated`` it.

Ref PM #201

[As for your reckoning of India as the EEC`s dream come true, the parallel is severely limited-- unless you can imagine any of the states being granted accession if and when a politcal majority so decided they wanted it.]

That will come to pass in another 100 years. But by that time, the idea of pocket-sized countries becoming independent will be gone.

Hundreds of thousands died in the US Civil War to maintain the unity of the nation. Britain did unspeakable things to Ireland, Wales and Scotland to create the United Kingdom. Today, the Welsh don`t want to leave the UK. One could cite their poverty but Scotland brimming with North Sea oil is not seeking independence. It takes a long time to create a sense of unity among disparate people and hence my comments about having to wait another 100 years. But you must acknowledge that at least in India we haven`t wiped out any language like Britain did to Gaelic or Welsh, no matter what the Urduwallahs might say. Heck, we haven`t even undertaken a systematic hunting of any type of dissidents like Britain did to the Scots after the Battle of Culloden.

I will be the first one to say that none of this is due to the generosity of Hindus, which was what Jinnah wanted. He wanted guarantees that privileges, if agreed upon and granted at the time of independence to Muslims, be written into the law. On the other hand, this is the fruit of democracy. If Jinnah had figured out that the people will prevail in the long run, he would have had no hesitation in agreeing to a united India.

Can one Pakistani explain how is it possible for the 80% Muslim population of Sindh, the 95% Muslims of Balochistan and NWFP, the 60+% majority Muslims in Punjab and Bengal, to be deprived of their rights in a united India? If Kerala with 25% Christian population can elect AK Anthony to be its Chief Minister overriding the 30+% Muslims and 45% Hindus of that state, what would have prevented the provinces of today`s Pakistan from electing Muslims to positions of authority? On the other hand, if the concern was the 30% minority Muslims strewn across the rest of India, isn`t the correct solution to offer them rights of residence in Pakistan? Once you understand the contradictions inherent in the Pakistan ideology, there is only one thing Pakistanis can do: start saying that Pakistan exists and cannot be wished away.

No one wishes away Pakistan; no one in India wishes it ill. We wish your common man can be freed from the yoke of the army. The people would then take care of the mullahs on their own.

PM #193 writes:

{re. AlephNull #72
Yes, the every-village-a-nation would be the ideal. In the real world, however, consideration is to be given to defence and economic needs for which folks will sometimes, or often, subordinate claims to autonomy at the altar of pragmatic consolidation/centralization.}

I would like to know WHY you consider ``every-village-a-nation`` to be the ideal degree of devolution of sovereignty. For starters, ideal with respect to WHAT? What is it that you seek to maximise - `individual freedom/autonomy`, `social coherence`, `participatory democracy/self-government`, `material wealth`, `safety from violence`, `shared historical consciousness`; some other factor; a weighted combination of one or more of the above? When you mention autonomy above, are you referring to the autonomy of the individual, or of social groups? If it is a social group, HOW is it chosen as deserving of autonomy, and what makes its claims more deserving than those of all other possible groupings, from single individuals to multicultural multiethnic megastates?

In PM #55 you referred to `the idea of multi-nation theory and political autonomy` and to `innate insecurity in their nationalistic premise`. So it was reasonable to infer that you actually had some coherent argument based on clear principles (AKA theory) to support your position; that it was not merely an idiosyncratic personal preference, that it was somehow based on more solid foundations that other peoples` innately insecure nationalistic premise.

That was why I had a multitude of questions to ask you in #72. They were NOT rhetorical. I trust you will be forthcoming with answers.

Dear Ana,

I read what PM wrote and your post in Unplugged flashed into my mind. For some weird reason, I knew it was your mother`s village.

Now the strange thing is, I was going through Dawn today and went through the young world section (never done it before until now - all a part of the typical avoidance behaviour exhibited by students) and I read this. Again, your post came to my mind. They should let the adults read this too. Alas, illiteracy is a problem that has yet to be handled by the short and curlies...

[Hi kids!


By Editor

What would you do if your younger sibling tore a page from your book or misplaced your pen? Or the servant, while cleaning your room, accidentally broke one of your toys? Of course, you will lose your temper and shout and scream at the poor soul from entering your room or touching your things. You think you are right in your action as anyone who commits a mistake ought to be punished. But for a while think what you will gain from all this. You will not get your things back and your relationship with the people around you will be damaged. You might miss enjoying the free time with your sibling; and do all your work yourself as the servant is barred from entering your room.

Yes, a culprit should be punished but this doesn`t mean that you should lose your temper and shout and scream around the house. Instead you should act calmly and select a punishment which should teach the erring party a lesson but not hurt his feelings. Plus losing your temper is not a good habit. It tarnishes your image and gives you a bad name. If you are in the habit of frequently losing your temper over petty things you will soon lose your friends and will find yourself all alone in this vast world. People tend to put up with a lot of things among friends but not bad or short temper. Keeping your temper in control while in anger is one of the most difficult but praise-worthy qualities. Look around for ways to do so and you will find many which are not too difficult.

Have a nice weekend!

Bye! ]

We should all check ourselves back into the nursery :)

Umer M

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PM.
I considered letting your post #204 go without response, but then I said what the hell :-), so here goes:
The `obscure` Punjabi Christian rural township, Shantinagar, which you refer to is one of my homes away from home away from home...it is my mother`s village.
The mob attacked Shantinagar in February of 1997...it was not in 1996.
`Despicable no doubt. But no lives were taken.` is incorrect as well. It was despicable and some lives were taken. Perhaps it wasn`t a large-scale massacre, but nevertheless there were some casualties. People have conflicting reports on this, but I personally know of one.
Just thought I`d point that out to you, Patrick.
ana

PM #201, friend #various:

From PM #201

{There is no question that Pakistanis have acted unconscionably there. But things were always going to get ugly when India dishonoured the UN Resolutions. War is never pretty, ven if it`s proxy. My point: India shares the blame.}

This is really tiresome. Here is a link to assorted UN resolutions on J & K from Pk.gov.pak (the official Pakistan government web site):

http://pak.gov.pk/public/kashmir/kashmir-resolutions.htm

The key resolution is the UNCIP resolution of August 13th 1948. which restates some of the recommendations of the UNSC resolution of April 21st 1948. The August 13th 1948 resolution has never been rescinded by the UN, and is referred to in all subsequent resolutions on J&K. Completion of the Truce agreement provisions in Part II of the August 13th 1948 resolution is a necessary precondition for all further steps.

It is well known that the Truce Agreement provisions require Pakistan, as a first step, to withdraw all its troops from J & K as well as secure the withdrawal of tribesemen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident in the state, and to hand over power to local authorities.

It is only after these steps have been completed that requirements are imposed on India to reduce the bulk of its armed forces in the state.

There are no provisions for separating the bulk of the J & K territory under Pakistan`s control as `Northern Areas` - or permitting the massive influx of Pakistani Punjabis into the territory - or allowing any of the territory to be ceded to China.

We all know the extent of Pakistani compliance with the provisions of this resolution.

Now what was that PM was saying about Pakistan`s position on J & K being `moral` - as opposed to the alleged `moral weakness` of India`s position?

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#201 PM

Amusing to see your abysmal ignorance regarding the 1948 invasion of J&K. All of the UN resolutions (introduced by India to free the area of invaders) came AFTER the invasion. The first clause of the resolution counels withdrawal of all pakistani forces from any part of J&K.

But, heh, dont let the facts confuse you now!!

YLH

I quoted the numbers to make a point. Obviously you missed it ...

The 1971 War and Bangladesh HAS contributed to Indian perceptions of Pakistan secular and saffron. It is the biggest event in the history of your country. It generated a population of refugees (10 Million) that equaled or exceeded the number at Partition and redrew the map of the subcontinent. You can`t ignore it in an article about Indian perceptions about Pakistan and their basis. (or Kashmir too for that matter).


-------------------------------------------
Khushwant Singh - in an interview with Tehelka ...

I go along with you most of the way, and it`s best to assuage the grievances often aired by Pakistanis against India. We have done nothing to defame Islam, but there are a few Hindu rightwingers who do so. In a democratic society, we can`t stop them. All we can do is stand up to them, and silence them by argument. Kashmir remains a point of contention, but the treatment meted out to Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs should make Pakistanis rethink issues, and not simply regard them as Muslims against non-Muslims. If Pakistan has a case against India, so does India against Pakistan. My advice: talk; don`t quarrel.

PM #204
``Residents were given the opportunity to flee. ``
wow! what a great proof of tolerance. Residents were allowed to flee!! Wonder if they wanted to give such a chance to ``flee`` to Godhra train passengers too. Perhaps those passengers didn`t take that chance.

And would you also write about that old female who distributed sweets in a piece of paper? Or priest (was that a bishop!!) who had to commit suicide in a church?

Certainly we have our bands of crooks, but coming from Pakistan, such comments look ridiculous.

PM, perhaps we should not be competing on ``whose sh!t stinks more``. We all stink.

I am waiting for your references on UN resolutions.

re. #168 by rsaxena
[re: hamidm #158
...the reason pakis can kill only a handful of infidels at a time is because there are only a handful of infidels left in pakistan...]
Duh! A majority of Pakistan`s 5 million (handful?) Christians and Hindus live in religiously homogenous townships. The nearest thing to an organized riot against a minority community occured in an obscure Punjabi Christian rural township called Shantinagar in `96. In response to a call from an unpaDh mullah citing blasphemy, a mob of equally ignorant Muslims from surrounding towns basically burnt the town to the ground. Despicable, no doubt. But no lives were taken. Residents were given the opportunity to flee.
In the wake of the Babri incident, many Hindu temples and even Christian churches were attacked and damaged but, again, there was no systematic (or, to my knowledge, ANY sort of) massacre of Hindus.

#203,
Sorry for typo

. It is certainly possible that copies I am looking ``at are`` tainted and modified by vested interests.

PM, will look forward to your feedback to this.

PM#201
``But things were always going to get ugly when India dishonoured the UN Resolutions.``

All the references I could get to those resolutions indicate that Pakistani army was to withdraw first. It is certainly possible that copies I am looking are at tainted and modified by vested interests (in this case, we Indians).
PM, you are one of the saner interactors on this board. Would you please post UN resolutions on this thread and than help me in understanding them?
Would look forward to your reply.

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re. #197 by harimau:
[Ref PM #193 by PM
[re. AlephNull #72
Yes, the every-village-a-nation would be the ideal. ]

Would that apply equally to Pakistan or just to India? ]

harimau, (Take Two) : Presumptousness is a horrible thing.
(Translated: Don`t presume that my nationalisty dictates whose policies I defend and whose I oppose. Please let`s just debate the specific issues at hand. I have no interest in playing the `you guys are as bad as us or worse` game-- and no, it`s not becuase I know deep down that we guys are worse than you, per se. :) )

re. #199: I do not seek to defend the actions of ``[my] irregulars`` in the Kashmir Valley. There is no question that Pakistanis have acted unconscionably there. But things were always going to get ugly when India dishonoured the UN Resolutions. War is never pretty, ven if it`s proxy. My point: India shares the blame.

As for your reckoning of India as the EEC`s dream come true, the parallel is severely limited-- unless you can imagine any of the states being granted accession if and when a politcal majority so decided they wanted it.

re. #191 by Ralph:
Ralph, what is this `great strategic value for both Indai and Pakistan`?

Ref PM #193 by PM

[re. AlephNull #72
Yes, the every-village-a-nation would be the ideal. ]

Would that apply equally to Pakistan or just to India?

[re. Harimau #70
Presumptousness is a horrible thing. :) ]

When Pakistan refers to the Pakistan Criminal Procedure Code of 1935, I must agree that the presumptuousness of the Pakistan Government is boundless. (Please check Pakistan legal sources. Please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, prove me wrong!)

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Ref PM #193 by PM

[re. Harimau #77
Gee, I`m really glad that India ``India is ALREADY the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual federal state that the EEC has been trying hard to become.`` No really, that`s so cool. There is a lot to be learnt from your posts.
Alas, what one could NOT learn is how you might realte any of your arguements to India`s claim on Kashmir. You cite Hindu majority being the reason for the gelling. Would you deny that at the time of partition, most of Kashmir had a Muslim minority?]

Only the Kashmir Valley and a portion of Jammu had a Muslim majority. The measure for ``most of Kashmir`` has to be land area since we are already discussing population by religion. By that measure, ``most of Kashmir`` is and continues to be Buddhist (not Hindu) over which you Pakistanis have no rightful claim, except through the tyranny of the majority that Jinnah used to rail against. Somehow, only Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, according to Jinnah and Company but Buddhists and Muslims can live together without problems. Well, I have news for you: the first thing that the raiders who penetrated into Ladakh did was to loot the Buddhist lamasseries and to destroy the centuries-old tankas and idols. You might want to read books by travellers who have travelled in these parts in the 1960s and 1970s to find out how your ``irregulars`` behaved. But then you can always read today`s headlines for their sense of gallantry in warfare.

The fact that parts of India even today have areas of concentrations of Muslims or Buddhists or animists doesn`t mean they get another partition.

As for learning a lot from my posts, I hope you read #189 that proves that Jinnah lied when he said that minorities will be suppressed by the majority in India. You could actually do the search on the Web yourself but then in the grand tradition of spoonfeeding that passes for teaching in Desh, I spoonfeed the facts to Pakistanis who will not learn even then.

[Oh, GEOGRAPHICAL unity is your point, eh? Well.. look at the map.. Notice those two states that flank India? They used to be part of what was loosely and `fluidly` called `India`. And if GEPGRAHICAL untiy is or was to be defining principle in nationhood, exactly what defines the boundaries in a scenario of princely-state under the dominion of colonists?]

That dear boy Yasser seemed to have confused political unity with the reality of geographical unity that EXISTS for the states of India. Geographical unity is a fact that cannot be wished away but political unity happens when there is a consensus among the population. Thus, 98% of Indians like India the way it is. Since Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who separated in 1947 have expressed no desire to join India, they stay outside.

What defined the borders of the princely states was the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. At that point, the British realized that attempting to secure more land through expropriation of princely states was too costly and decided to allow the remaining princely houses to keep their fiefdoms. If that hadn`t happened and all of India had been turned into British India, you still wouldn`t have gotten Junagadh, Hyderabad or Goa (that last one is laughable... Pakistanis thinking that they have a right to Goa! Did you Fakhrs ever think of asking the French for their Indian possessions? Bet you didn`t even know the French were still hanging around in India! But you want the Portuguese to hand over Goa to you!) As for Kashmir, that would have been partitioned too like Bengal and Punjab and, yes, Pakistan would have ended up with the Kashmir Valley in addition to what you have now. The valley is the reparation Pakistan has to pay for the plunder, rape and killings of October 1947.

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Ralph,

Your question about the truth or otherwise of YLH assertion about abdus salam has been answered by American express in 185. He wants you to skip the topic.

Hamidm, the great wordsmith in 184 ansnswers as follows

``and if yasser says there are things names after abdus salaam, then i would believe him instead of jay who, along with arjun, seems to have gone over the edge ........... ``

At least, I admire the honesty of hamidm, he did not lie like YLH, but as usual took of on a tangent.

The fact is that Abdus Salam centre for theoreticl physics is in Itlay, because Zia at that time would not allow it in pakistan. Then none of the foundations of an islamic society laid by Zia has remained untouched, including the declaration about ahmadias in passport applications.

Holy Cow! Step away from this site one day and you could spend the better half of the next reading replies!

re. AlephNull #72
Yes, the every-village-a-nation would be the ideal. In the real world, however, consideration is to be given to defence and economic needs for which folks will sometimes, or often, subordinate claims to autonomy at the altar of pragmatic consolidation/centralization.

re. Harimau #70
Presumptousness is a horrible thing. :)

re. Harimau #77
Gee, I`m really glad that India ``India is ALREADY the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual federal state that the EEC has been trying hard to become.`` No really, that`s so cool. There is a lot to be learnt from your posts.
Alas, what one could NOT learn is how you might realte any of your arguements to India`s claim on Kashmir. You cite Hindu majority being the reason for the gelling. Would you deny that at the time of partition, most of Kashmir had a Muslim minority?
Oh, GEOGRAPHICAL unity is your point, eh? Well.. look at the map.. Notice those two states that flank India? They used to be part of what was loosely and `fluidly` called `India`. And if GEPGRAHICAL untiy is or was to be defining principle in nationhood, exactly what defines the boundaries in a scenario of princely-state under the dominion of colonists?

...woohoo, yasser from persia and the ivy keague school rutgers is back in full steam....

Ralph #191 you write ``Because Kashmir cannot be solved, the two countries should go on inflicting as heavy cost on the other as they can. ``
You get the ``Most stupid and obtuse statement on chowk`` award for 2003. I bet even Arjun and Romair and YLH and jay may pool their efforts for the remainder of 2003, and they will not be able to beat your record. Hail to the champion chowk idiot!

Kashmir is not just about egos. It has great strategic value for both Pakistan and India. India will never give it up and Pakistan will never stop trying to get India out of it. Because Kashmir cannot be solved, the two countries should go on inflicting as heavy cost on the other as they can. They are doing that.

Romair #53:
``I will take a guess that 50% of Pakistanis and probably 90% of Indians have never even visited Kashmir. Less than 10% of Pakistan`s population is Kashmiri and maybe around 1% of Indian population is Kashmiri. Yet they both seem so interested in it. It is all part of a misplaced ego and the desire of one man to rule another.``
Romair, 90% of Indians have never even visited Orissa or Goa or Andaman and Nicobar Islands or my hometown. Less than 1% of Indian population is Andamani. Yet.... it is all part of a misplaced ego and the rest of your bullsh!t. Wow, kya logic hai!

Ref YLH2 #160

[ turra yeh kay when I give the example of Justice Rana Bhagwandas, he compares that example to Bal Thackerey saying that his sweeper is a Muslim... the sheer lack of reason in that statement baffles me... ]

Yasser, dear boy, the reason we tend to ignore your repeated citing of Justice Rana Bhagwandas is because the selection of a non-Hindu to be a Justice of the Supreme Court of India is not a subject of controversy about if a Hindu can be subjected to a verdict of a non-Hindu; unfortunately, the reverse hasn`t been true in Pakistan.

In the 55 year parallel history of India and Pakistan. India has had three Muslims as Chief Justices of the Indian Supreme Court (The Hon`ble Mr. Mohammad Hidayatullah, Appointed as Chief Justice of India on 25.02.1968, Retired on 16.12.1970; The Hon`ble Mr. Justice Mirza Hameedullah Beg, Appointed as Chief Justice of India on 29.01.1977. Retired on 21.02.1978; and The Hon`ble Mr. Justice AHMADI, AZIZ MUSHABBER, Elevated as Chief Justice of India w.e.f. the forenoon of 25th October, 1994, Retired on 24.3.1997). The current Supreme Court includes Mr. Justice Quadri, Syed Shah Mohammed, Appointed as a Judge of Supreme Court of India on 4.12.1997, Due to retire on 5.4.2003; a Parsi, Mr. Justice VARIAVA, SAM NARIMAN, Appointed as Judge, Supreme Court of India from 15.3.2000, Due to retire on 8.11.2005; and (possibly a Naga - I say this from his service in Nagaland during his early career; his photo shows him to have a distinctly oriental cast to his eyes) Mr. Justice Sema, Elevated as Judge of the Supreme Court of India on 9th April, 2002 and due to retire on 01.06.2008.

By the way, the very first Indian Supreme Court inaugurated on Jan 28, 1950, had one Muslim among a total of 5 Justices.

You could check the various state High Courts and their websites to see how many other minorities, despite what Jinnah said, have attained high positions in the judiciary in India.

Jinnah was actually right. He was the one Muslim who wouldn`t have gotten any job in an independent united India except through the generosity of the Hindus. You could probably include his coterie of Liaqat Ali Khan and other Muslim League functionaries who had fastened themselves to the coat-tails of Jinnah also in that category. He made the mistake of generalizing from the particular to the general case, a no-no in mathematics. But then, no one accused Jinnah of being strong in arithmetic: after all, he demanded a 50% representation for a 30% population.

re: democracy versus dictatorship
If ylh is studying law, he should ponder over the reasons why India is still a democracy while Pakistan has floundered from one dictatorship to another. There are reasons behind this fact and are well summarised in the following article by Roedad Khan:
http://www.dawn.com/2003/02/02/op.htm#3
Excerpts:

1. ``The lesson of history is that the only defence against a military coup in any country is strong political institutions and nothing else. A democratic government can be given to any people, but not every people can maintain it.``

2. ``It is now abundantly clear that Pakistan cannot survive: i) except as a democratic state based on the principle of the sovereignty of the people. There is nothing intermediate between the sway of democracy and the yoke of a single man; ii) except under a constitution which reflects the sovereign will of the people, not the whims of one individual person; iii) except under a system based on the supremacy of civilian rule; iv) except as a federation based on the willing consent of all the federating units. v) if the rule of law gives way to the rule of man because the dykes of justice and law will then break and revolution will begin.

Pakistan cannot survive under military rule, with or without a civilian facade, because military rule lacks legitimacy and is an anachronism in a world of global markets, information and media.``
Let the good men in Pakistan work towards a sustainable democracy in Pakistan, a democracy where the will of a common man prevails, where dictators do not assume the role of saviors every now and then chipping away at all remnants of democracy and institutions. Once Pak has such a democracy, frindship with India will automatically follow. Two democracies can talk to each other and foster friendship. Democracy and dictatorship are incompatible bed-fellows!
Sridhar

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ahmadzai

From the beginning, Bacha Khan and Pakistan were like oil and water. In a few generations, if Pakistan survives, no body will have heard of Bacha Khan. You and your children will be reading about Jinnah and following the lifestyle of Taliban. Whether it is ANP or JKLF, Pakistani strategy is the same.

May Bacha Khan rest in peace.

Yaseer Latifey

``In any event I don`t have time for this, and now I will bid you farewell :) ``

Great! you haven`t yet grown over your old habit. Once you start getting thrashing you will start pleading for ``no time``, ``too many courses``, ``ivy league college`` and in the end ``dear mummy``.

You can certainly go back to your mama`s bossom to think of new load of cr@p. Come back whenever you are ready.

ralph ............

..... i don`t know if there are any roads named after abdus salam in pindi or islamabad, but he is still revered by all educated pakistanis (excluding the god-crazed madrassa students and other people who needlessly pray more than twice a year) ........ on the other hand dr qadeer khan, the self proclaimed father of the bomb, gets mixed reviews and is derided by many for his avarice and self-promoting ways ............. and if yasser says there are things names after abdus salaam, then i would believe him instead of jay who, along with arjun, seems to have gone over the edge ...........

...... and naming roads in pakistan doesn`t mean a dang thing ............ the main drag through pindi was once renamed from murree road to sharah-i-reza shah pehalvi .......... people kept on calling it murree road and over the years it has miraculously been officially renamed murree road ......... they tried to rename canning road after some dead arab and that didn`t stick either ........and after all these years we still have gurdat singh road, abbot road, beaton road and toba tek singh ............of course all that can change if the lunatic mullahs keep on winning in the elections thanks to the follies of the idiots in khaki .............

re:#160 by YLH2
Ylh,
``Long Live Khushwant Singh`s India...

Long Live Behram Atashband`s, Justice Bhagwandas`, Deepak Perwani`s, Yousaf Yohanna`s, Ardeshir Cowasjee`s, Bapsi Sidhwa`s, and Jinnah`s Pakistan !!!! ``
Those words are no doubt well-intended. If you respect even one of the above people you have named, you should read Coasjee`s recent article, which i quote below: Url: http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm.

1. ``Personal freedom, says Fali, is like oxygen in the air. We don`t realize its worth until it is withdrawn - and then it is too late. Few citizens of India realize that if Article 31C in its extended form, under the 42nd amendment, had remained a part of their constitution and not been struck down in the Minerva Mills case, not only parliament, but more realistically any state legislature, by ordinary law could have effectively censored the press and prohibited public speaking on any topic unless a police permit was obtained on the specious declaration that it was to implement directive principles of State Policy. This is the liberty that Nani Palkhivala helped save, and for this all the lawyers of India and all its citizens must forever be grateful and beholden to him. ``

2. ``Now to the mangled and mauled Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan under which it is so effectively misgoverned. Proclaimed on August 14, 1973, whilst its proclaimer, the president converted to prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto....``.
Read on. Why should i spoil your fun.
The important thing is not whether Jinnah or Cowasjee or this guy or the other guy is great. The important thing is: what kind of legacy have these people left behind?
Sridhar

re:#169 by ahmadzai
When i read that your family supported the Red Shirts (also known as Khudai Khidmatgars), i suddenly have a lot of respect for you and your family.
Did you see the movie Gandhi? In that movie, when Gandhiji declares that he is going to Calcutta to help bring peace, he is shown to be standing near a tall Pathan. That man was Khan abdul Ghaffar Khan, also know as Frontier Gandhi. A man of great courage and principles. It is difficult to hold on to the principle of non-violence (the BJP goons are a living proof!). It is even more difficult for a Pathan (who is fiercely independent and violent by temperament) to make non-violence a creed. Just as good things do not last long, Frontier Gandhi`s ideals were short lived in Pakistan. Gandhians have become a rare breed on this side of the border. The last time India remembered Frontier Gandhi was when he fell sick and was treated in India for sometime. That was India`s last brush with the great man.
Sridhar

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Romair #78

{However due to civilian politician`s influence, now religious minorities cannot become COAS - I don`t think the soldiers would care if a non-Muslim became the Chief. After all, there are thousands of soldiers being commanded by Christians and Parsi officers etc. right now. Religious minorities do go to the rank of General however. }

{In the 65 war, there were six Christian fighter pilots in the PAF. Five of them recieved the Sitar-e-Jurat medal. That is amazingly high ratio. The most highly decorated war hero in the PAF ever, is a Christian (died in 71).


Romair #116

{The number of Christians I met was signficantly high - in the hundreds. I would count quite a few Christians as my good friends. I had Christian colleagues as my bosses etc. in the military. }

Interesting indeed. Apparently the PAF had no shortage of personnel - and competent ones, at that - who were Christians.

So tell us - in the last twenty years, how many Pakistani Christians in the PAF have made it to the rank of Air Commodore or beyond? Care to name the highest-ranking such officer?

hamidm #158 With the mullahs now forming governments in the frontier and baluchistan, there is indeed a concern that they may organize mobs in the Modi style to murder ``infidels`` (the shias and ahmedis and christians in this case). So far they have been picking off individual shias only, and they have seemed content (touchwood) to stop with declaring ahmedis to be kafirs and not by attacking them too. Attacks on christians too have been limited to terrorist like attacks and harassment through the damned blasphemy laws. This is bad enough, and all this could become much worse if the mullahs were to use their new-found authority to organize mobs in the Modi style.
One can only hope the Musharaff government realizes the mess it has made by interfering in politics and thus putting mullahs in power, and comes down hard on any mob violence before it starts.

What is the truth? Are there in every major Pakistani city roads, halls, institutes, schools, and libraries named after Dr. Abdus Salam, as Yasser Latif Hamdani claims, or none as Jay claims?

The answer to this question should settle the debate about Pakistan.

What is so difficult about answering this question?

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Yasser:
This is a pointless exercise, but I will do it anyway...when I said check yourself...I meant read what you write and think about it. I haven`t commented on the rest of your article...I focused on that paragraph specifically because facts and figures aside, there is no misconstruing as you put it...I`m sure you meant well, but simply put, that was just badly phrased, and doesn`t reflect well on moving towards `a greater tolerance.`

Speaking of tolerance, clearly you have little to no tolerance for me as a person, which is fine, because I will be able to sleep nights knowing that...as for me gleefully mentioning your thrashing, well Yasser the problem with you is and has been the fact that you don`t read very well, or should I say you misread very well. There is nothing gleeful in any thrashing...and there is nothing gleeful for me in saying any of the caustic things I say to you because there simply is nothing gleeful about a person not using his/her intelligence to the best of his/her capabilities. And I will beat you to the punch by saying that I am guilty of that myself, thank you!
And I thought I might add one more thing...Yousaf Youhanna`s Pakistan is not the same Pakistan for every Christian...it is certainly not the Pakistan of some of my relatives, and it is not the Pakistan of those Christian people whose village was looted and rioted in by thousands of Muslims six years ago, this week, who are STILL recovering from the effects of that, and some of whose lives have changed forever because of that. And that riot was not of a global nature, it was done by ignorant and bigoted Muslims who heard the call to destroy churches, houses, and water supplies just as strongly as they are called to prayer. Such attacks may be far and few between, but the effects last a long long time. Some of these people want to leave, because they grew up (and old) in a Pakistan which they felt was their home because that`s where their roots were long before Pakistan came into being and they were made to feel that those roots meant nothing. That is their Pakistan...that is my Pakistan. These sad realities continue for quite a few of us, and while it`s great that some non-Muslims have made it `big`...some of us are still continuing to pay the price of `intolerance`. So, yes...long live Youhanna`s Pakistan, and yours. My Pakistan...if it should ever come to be, will be a Pakistan where we can realize that Partition was in 1947, and not prolong the situation by our insistence in regards to Kashmir, a Pakistan where the blasphemy laws and laws harmful to women are abolished, a Pakistan where the army and mullahs are removed from power and decision-making vis-a-vis our lives, and a Pakistan where we pay more attention to our own people, and improve the lives of all...not just the rich. When that happens...my Pakistan will be mine again.

YLH: ``we should strive to prove that we Pakistanis and our ideology is the most enlightened, the most tolerant and the most aware. ``


If u start any intellectual pursuit with this belief, then it is propaganda not an intellectual exercise.

That is the core fallacy in the whole argument of this propaganda right-wing artcile.

rsridhar:

I would like to respond to your various posts, but to tell you honestly I did not have any interest in Jinnah till some time ago. I come from an ethnic bachground and a family that supported Gandhi` s student in the NWFP - the great Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Batcha Khan).

I don`t think that Jinnah might have gotten any encouragement from the British. OTOH, I believe that he might have been influenced by the cut off from the reality pan-Islamists in the Muslim League. Recall that these stupid pan-Islamists were running a pro-Khilafat movement at a time when Turkey itself was putting an end to it. After reading various biographies, I also have a strong feeling that when he sat in the Muslim League for the first time in 1906, it would have been easier for him to relate to the pan-Islamists within the Muslim League rather than other uneducated pan and cud chewing Mullas. Iqbal, who was also a pan-Islamist and traveling to all parts of the world could have influenced him too.

The point remains that he started his political career with being the greatest messenger of Hindu-Muslim unity, but in the end got himself a country in the northwest of sub-continent that the pan-Islamist could use as a base for exporting/importing the philosophy elsewhere.

No, I don`t agree with the last part of your post too. Once Pakistan was formed, he had extremely little time to do anything. He was banished to the under-developed city of Ziarat for recovering from TB by the powers that be.

The pan-Islamism went into hibernation till 1979. Subsequently, it re-emerged from its strong base of Afghanistan when former Soviet invaded that country. Of all the ethnic groups in Pakistan now, Pakhtoons are the most pan-Islamist. We have marginalized nationalist forces in the NWFP and this also explains emergence of Islamic parties in the NWFP and northern Pakhtoon dominated belt of Balochistan province.

Although this last para will be target for `hate-Pakistan` Indians on this site, I believe that if Indian Government continues to be hostile to the current Government of Pakistan and the USA continues to put unnecessary pressure on Pakistan, the Islamic parties will gain more and more momentum. Since these Islamic parties will not be able to convince the eastern provinces of Sindh and Punjab on the fundamentalist Islam through good governance, they will instead destabilize them militarily. Subsequently, they will destabilize western India and finally the Indian heartland just like what the Mongol hoards were doing to the Muslim Sultanates of Central Asia and Russian Kingdom initially. Finally these sultanates and kingdoms were totally destroyed.

re: hamidm #158

...the reason pakis can kill only a handful of infidels at a time is because there are only a handful of infidels left in pakistan...

I am sick of Paki wet dreams of redrawing India`s boundaries. I would rather have a million riots, a never ending civil war or even a radioactive wasteland over SOUTH ASIA than to have India partitioned again. The Pakis got their Pakistan and they should sod off. Having your own country means you no longer have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of our country.

Oh yeah..a thousand debates will not get you Kashmir. You will have to fight us for it. If there is to be ethnic cleansing in Kashmir, might as well be of traitors hand Indians. India is no longer the country of Gandhi where Hindus and Sikhs will suddenly become refugees in their own country.

To arjun_m`s various hate posts:

# 154: ``Pakistanis should return from US: PTI``

Yes, Tehreek-e-Insaaf is right. Unlike illegal Indians, Mexicans, other latin Americans who should continue to live in the USA, illegal Pakistanis should return to the country. They should not put themselves into trouble.

#153 ``Headline:Pakistani terrorists caught in Italy. Pakistan lames it on anti-Pakistan bias.....but no one is buying it... ``

Italy has caught Pakistanis before too blaming of Al Qaeda links, but had to free them after no proof. Guranteed, they will do it this time too.

Recall that Kenya also detained 6 Pakistanis after a bomb blast there. Ultimately, they had to be freed.

The famous shoe bomber Mr. Reeve was also touted as Pakistani when he was caught only to be found of other citizenship later.

Rest assured, not a single Pakistani will ever be found to have Al Qaeda links. Pakistanis are not like that.

#152 ``yasser boy..i know you are lurking....we are all dying for you to tell us how supporting islamic terrorists in Kashmir is a sogn of tolerance.... ``

While Yasser may take his sweet time responding to your rather interesting question, I sympathise with your anger at how your elected fundamentalist extremist Government is getting frustrated in Kashmir Valley. I would say that in the absence of neutral observers and of international media in Indian occupied Kashmir, no body has the moral right to blame Pakistan on any ``terrorist`` activity in Kashmir under Indian occupation. OTOH, taking advantage of the war on terrorism, Indian Government has resorted to killing Kashmiris in custody and in fake encounters (please see the HR report). However, I would say that even this is questionable, because there are no neutral observers in Kashmir.

re:#149 by ahmadzai
If Jinnah got Pakistan thr` democratic means, the credit also goes to the British who had decided to divide India and actively encouraged muslim league while throwing most of the Congress leadership in Jail during and following the Quit India movement. Jinnah put fears into the mind of an average muslim, who was made to feel that he could never be secure in an India ruled by majority hindus. In this, jinnah betrayed his ignorance of a functioning democracy. Democracy always works with consensus. It is all too evident in India today. BJP cannot say it has the final voice. BJP is still part of the coalition because ABV is a great consensus builder. Jinnah, despite being secular in outlook (i believe he ceased to be secular during the days running upto partition) most of his life could not fashion a democratic governance in Pakistan. Remember, he called the shots as the ruler of Pakistan, and even though he was short-lived, he could have set the tone for democracy. He did not do so and the result is for us all to see.
Sridhar

PS: The thing is that nothing can alleviate the pangs of hatred which people like P-Mishra2 suffer from. Despite all the examples I have given in multiple posts of very successful Pakistani Hindus both from personal life and national life, P-Mishra claims through divine powers that I don`t know any Pakistani Hindus... turra yeh kay when I give the example of Justice Rana Bhagwandas, he compares that example to Bal Thackerey saying that his sweeper is a Muslim... the sheer lack of reason in that statement baffles me...

BTW On this website which is a medium to reach the upwardly mobile Indian and Pakistani Middle class according to P-Mishra... I wonder why there are so few Indian Muslims? Ofcourse as per evidence provided by PM Chowk had a patriotic Pakistani Hindu until recently...

In any event I don`t have time for this, and now I will bid you farewell :)

Long Live Khushwant Singh`s India...

Long Live Behram Atashband`s, Justice Bhagwandas`s, Deepak Perwani`s, Yousaf Yohanna`s, Ardeshir Cowasjee`s, Bapsi Sidhwa`s, and Jinnah`s Pakistan !!!!

PS: The thing is that nothing can alleviate the pangs of hatred which people like P-Mishra2 suffer from. Despite all the examples I have given in multiple posts of very successful Pakistani Hindus both from personal life and national life, P-Mishra claims through divine powers that I don`t know any Pakistani Hindus... turra yeh kay when I give the example of Justice Rana Bhagwandas, he compares that example to Bal Thackerey saying that his sweeper is a Muslim... the sheer lack of reason in that statement baffles me...

BTW On this website which is a medium to reach the upwardly mobile Indian and Pakistani Middle class according to P-Mishra... I wonder why there are so few Indian Muslims? Ofcourse as per evidence provided by PM Chowk had a patriotic Pakistani Hindu until recently...

In any event I don`t have time for this, and now I will bid you farewell :)

Long Live Khushwant Singh`s India...

Long Live Behram Atashband`s, Justice Bhagwandas`, Deepak Perwani`s, Yousaf Yohanna`s, Ardeshir Cowasjee`s, Bapsi Sidhwa`s, and Jinnah`s Pakistan !!!!

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Romair,

I know a couple of Pakistani Hindus, but none that interact on this board, and i went to uni with a Pak Hindu from who`s parents are Sindhi from KHI, though she was born and brought up here.

And guess what, i actually met a Pakistani Jew in London... i couldn`t beleive it i was like OMG wow, but he looks just like every other Pakistani from KHI... He told me there are a few Jews in Pakistan, and that there is a synagogue in KHI and one in Islamabad... his family seemed to be pretty well off in Pak, and had businesses in Dubai too...

Yasser:
Other interactors may have already raised these issues. Nevertheless, I think your last para and conclusion ought to be the true spirit with which both Indians and Pakistanis must see each other. However, if you talk of burying the hatchet, you must remember a few points.

[For intellectuals: To berate Pakistan, its people and its historical antecedents and in comparison make look India better. For politicians: To use Pakistan as an election issue. BJP Government has failed to deliver and has now made a suitable issue out of Pakistan. Everytime the chest thumping deputy Prime Minister challenges Pakistan to a fourth war, he seems to win more votes in India. Such is the appeal of this bigoted rhetoric, that the Congress was also forced to employ the same tactic. Anti-Pakistanism seems to be the one unifying factor for Indians of all colors, castes and creeds.]

Isn’t Kashmir the unifying factor for Pakistanis? You might say that this is a disputed territory (and I do believe it is, and the Kashmiris know best), but is not the region used by Pak politicians to whip up anti-India sentiments? Why does Prez Musharraf, who I thought could do a lot for Indo-Pak relations, talk of nuking India when Pakistan has not won any war against us? As regards ‘intellectuals’, most of the names you mentioned are essentially siyasatdaars. Only because they are anti-BJP does not legitimise their position. Please remember that sentiments against Pakistan have been there right since Partition and under every single government in power. And most of these worthies had happily cozied up to the Congress. And it was at that time that Benazir Bhutto had talked of bleeding India through a thousand cuts; the BJP was nothing to reckon with.

I would say that the BJP’s anti-minorityism only lends credence and consolidates the mistaken majority view of Muslims as the ‘other’; Pakistan comes in as a default candidate.

[Europe has not achieved unity by superimposing a European nationalism on the immensely proud Germans, French and the English, but by accepting the diversity of its people. The South Asia was never one people, and it will never be one people. Instead the ethnic, religious, cultural, social and caste-based divisions go deep into the fabric of the South Asian society and this can be its greatest strength.]

What do the Germans, French and English have in common? If we go by this logic, then India should be several countries. I think it is insecurity and pathological suspicion that make us want to be ‘different’. And the ethnic differences that you see as a ‘strength’ are really a major problem when you go into the details. However, at the macro level the South Asian identity is cohesive, and neither Pak nor India can run away from it. The Indus vs. the Ganges can at best be a geographical demarcation. Scratch the skin and we are far too similar, even our hatred is of the same kind. Of course, no one is talking of S. Asian nationalism simply because a continent or separate parts of it cannot be a nation.

[The institutionalized discrimination against the non-Muslims needs to be put an end to immediately, not because of International pressure, but because the very premise of our
nation state, our ideology is the safeguard of minority rights and their equal status as
citizens in Pakistan. The point is that our doing so should not be seen as a departure from
an imagined exclusivist principle…]

If the exclusivism is imagined, then there ought not to be a reason to reiterate it, right? I have constantly stated that Jinnah was the most misunderstood leader around that time, but Pakistan was created to accommodate a minority group. And it is an Islamic Republic. And it will be viewed in that light. India flaunts itself as a secular republic, therefore it can get away with murder. I am mentioning this here because it has to do with the swapping of identities. A Hindu is killed in Pak sometimes as a ‘reaction’ to what happens across the border and Indians find a reason to berate Islam and Indian Muslims; thousands of Muslims are treated shabbily in India and that too is because of Islam and Pakistan. We are told to go ‘there’ simply because it was created for ‘us’. And after all this you say we do not share a civilisation? This is our whole darned legacy. The ‘superiority of civilisations’ that you talk of is not possible with such petty thinking on both sides. Besides, how can you deny a common culture?

I have the greatest respect for a nation’s right to be itself and it is time India stopped looking on Pakistan as easy game, but it would be nice if Pak realised that détente cannot be created in isolation.

I go along with your hope for tolerance, though I find the term patronising. But I understand the spirit in which it was said.

nasahsaab (#59):
You tell Yasser, “accept that all three -- the Muslims the Hindus and the Sikhs were equally NAKED in the Hammam of subcontinental BARBARISM -- the ONLY civilized communities being the Christians and the Parsis”.

Agree with the first part, but why did the Partition take place? Which communities had to be relocated? What were the factors that caused such barbarism? Was it possible in those circumstances to be civilised? (I am not for the barbarism naturally, but once the momentum starts, it is a bit difficult to say, “Pehle aap” before you can let someone plunge the knife into you.) The Christians and Parsis had little or nothing to lose given their numbers, their education and their adaptability in the given context. They also had avenues open to them, which were not possible for the other communities. No one asked the Parsis to go back to Iran. And Sardar Patel did not even go to Goa…

Having said this, you are right about “subcontinental passive/aggressive are -- even today -- fully capable of burst of barbaric behavior -- in between bowing hugging and touching feet”.

I wonder though how certain Western societies manage to be barbaric without doing any of the bowing, hugging, feet touching…you talk of “temporary insanity”…can we then discount what happens today on those very grounds and say it is time to move on after it is over?

Do we have to pay such a high price for tolerance?

Regards,
Farzana

...............as much as i hate to point it out, it seems to me that horrid hindus seem to be better organized at bigotry and violence against minorities than the helter skelter pakis ............ inspite of all the sloganeering against ahmedis and infidels and shias and whatnot, i can`t think of an instance when the pakis have systematically gone out and killed hundreds, and thousands, of misbelievers and disbelievers in a matter of days like the indians do every other year or so in ahmedabad and bombay and kanpur ............all we seem to do is randomly kill a shia doctor every friday, and then move on to killing an odd ahmedi guilty of speaking arabic in arabic .........and then on to beating up a heretic or an apostate........total religious insanity, but not as well organized as the saffron brigades with white and red warpaint on their forehead and heeng on their breath ............. like everything else, we pakis can`t even organize a decent religious riot ..............

....... maybe now that the mullahs are in charge in the frontier they can organize a world-class carnage or two like their bjp counterparts on the wrong side of the border...........

The Shuttle tragedy

Before I start I would like to say that what happened to Columbia was very sad and should be mourned as a collective human tragedy.. I especially join my indian friends (not the irrational ones here but real ones) in mourning the loss of Dr. Kalpana Chawla, the Indian American with the most beautiful smile I have ever seen, ... May the souls of the brave astronauts rest in peace, and long live the brave and bold human endeavour to boldly go in space where no one has gone before. The future is up there... in space, and these shaheeds are the brave pioneers of a brave new humanity.

BTW Col. Ilan Ramon`s death it seems as been celebrated by the Arab World as he was the Israeli Pilot who bombed the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor... all I would say is that he was a soldier fighting for his nation... soldiers should not be blamed for doing their duty... He died as an Israeli yes, but he also died as a Human being and I think that should be stressed...



Now ... again a clarification:

I as a student of history fully acknowledge the massacres of hindus and sikhs that took place in Punjab and Sindh at the time of partition (as I do acknowledge the massacre of Bengalis in 1971). I also see how my sentence does not adequately show this and I apologize. Perhaps my slight is an indication of some subconscious bias which has been nurtured by being constantly and unjustly told by Indians especially here on Chowk that Muslims and Pakistanis were solely and exclusively responsible for all mayhem and murders at Partition.

In any event, consider this an apology for the abovementioned sentence.


Dear Ana,

The fact that you gleefuly mention my ``thrashing`` shows what kind of a person you really are. If being cursed upon by a bunch of rabid fanatics is thrashing then so be it. I ofcourse feel that it further strengthens the argument I am trying to put across. By the way, I am not sure which friends you talk about because as I look on the responses almost all Chowkies of any repute are here ... missing I think is dost mittar who has interacted on every other article I wrote... This again shows a deviousness which I have come to expect of you.


P-Mishra2 ji kay jokes :)

Then we have P-Mishra2... he is beating the same old drums again... `you don`t know a hindu` he reveals with the confidence of a holy man ... well yes he is right to the extent that I don`t personally have a friend who happens to be a Pakistani Hindu, though I have christians, parsis, and others... who are atleast from the `same class` as me if not better... (NOW read on:) My cousin who goes to Agha Khan University has many Pakistani Hindu friends studying to be Doctors at one of the most Selective schools in Asia... similarly I had a very CLASSY art teacher in Middle school who wore the loveliest saris and drove the most beautiful cars and who is now teaching something at NCA who happened to be a HINDU. Then he puts words in my mouth when he says that I consider chowk to be a rathole... No actually I don`t consider it to be a rathole, but a place can be rat-infested right? And the original owners leave when rats take over.... So why do I write on chowk? well I think it is really enjoyable getting certain lifeless losers from your neck of the woods worked up about this stuff :) No points for guessing who.

By the way can anyone please explain to me how when I say that one of Pakistan`s supreme court justices today is a Hindu or when I mention that the Hindu MNA from Central Sindh really dresses well is the same as Bal Thackerey saying that he has a Muslim sweeper... frankly I am totally lost. But then I never gave P-Mishra2 much credit for objectivity and rational analysis.

P-Mishra seriously yaar.. If you have any shame whatsoever you will show me which statements I made which prompted you to write down this following gem:

``They make exactly the same statements you make about indian muslims that you have made about hindu pakistanis. The same specious reasoning (``How does it matter if indian muslims are under-represented on the police? See here is a poor muslim man who cleans my house``). They are your natual peers except that they have more humility. ``

And you still haven`t responded to PM`s post which takes the wind (if there was any) out of your argument...


And how can one not notice arjunm... talk about `time` ... this guy is now digging up stuff from god knows when to prove god knows what... and Roohi has started posting figures from Bangladesh massacre of which Pakistanis are undeniably and horribly guilty ... you won`t see me denying that would you... ofcourse does it matter if it is not related to the issue at hand? And to think this was the person who spoke about looking beyond national lines... I am sure Roohi`s latest post was not in anyway shape or form an indication of her anti-Pakistan bias.


Ralph,

Tell you what : Why don`t you come to Pakistan and check for yourself... ofcourse that would be much more authentic than believing Jay who himself acknowledges to be a Paki-Basher... but then from your tenor I don`t think you want the truth ... so go ahead believe what you want. Dr. Salam is a very honored personality in Pakistan despite his religion which is often played down by the more religious of the Pakistanis... ofcourse people like me love to bring it up to embarrass them. Even the fanatical General Zia was forced to honor and receive Dr.Salam in an official ceremony... in which he paid the most glorious tribute to Dr. Salam.


India`s secularism

And then we have one gentlemen proving to us India`s liberalism and secularism, by stating that we didn`t let BJP build the temple on the site of Babri Masjid which we incidentally allowed them to demolish... what a standard to judge secularism by! And ofcourse a famous TV show host and compere from India is now declaring that Khushwant Singh is a British wannabe ... it seems that anyone who doesn`t agree with that famous TV compere (Veeresh Malik whoelse) seems to end up in the anti-India, anti-National or British wannabe list... the list keeps growing Nirad Chaudhry, Arundhati Roy and Khushwant Singh... wonderful...



Qambar :

Thankyou for your comments I totally agree with you... these Jaish Muhammad wallahs are more of a threat to us than anyone else...


Ahmadzai latest...

Very well said.


Behram Atashband,

Good to see you here... I have been reading your articles/letters in Fridaytimes... Good stuff...

:)


friend,

Thankyou for showing us all how desperate one gets when one doesn`t have a cogent argument.


Lovely

Sincerely

YLH

Behram #145: ``Being a Zoroastrian I never felt discriminated against in Pakistan. You are right that minorities in Pakistan are treated well. ``

Behram to the rescue also :-)

So PM and Behram, two interactors who can decide this debate, have both voted positively, as far as Pakistan looking after its minorities. So two out of two.

Wasn`t there a Pakistani-Christian version of Ana (different from the Indian Ana) who used to interact on this site. Waiting for her vote of confidence also.....

A strong Yes from a Pakistani-Hindu (are there any interacting on this site?) would be worth its weight in gold. And one from an Ahmedi, would be worth its weight in diamonds. And one from a Jew (are there any Pakistani-Jews?) would be worth its weight in uranium.

Till then, I think I will have to step upto the plate. Uptil a few hundred years ago, my family was Hindu (a few thousand years ago, on the other side, it was probably Zoroastrian - but we already have the Parsi vote in), so I am probably 1/1000 percentage or so Hindu.

As a representative of the 1/1000 percent Hindu group of Pakistan, I can say that people who are 1/1000 percent Pakistani-Hindus get treated quite well in Pakistan, also. So much so, that they can discriminate against people who are 1/999 percentage Hindu :-)

But seriously, it is good to see that Pakistani religious minorities feel they were/are treated fairly in Pakistan - at least the two who are actively interacting here. I have found all minorities in Pakistan to be extremely patriotic, so I hope it is not just their patriotism speaking.

But, I have always thought the treatment of minorities left a lot to be desired in Pakistan (except in the military), as is the case in most third-world countries. The only group I have seen treated quite well are Parsis - primarily because they are so successful, and thus in positions of authority - usually employing the majority Muslims, and are not being employed by them. And I would say, of all the minorities in Pakistan, the ones who would be the most frustrated and angry would be the Ahmedis, since they don`t want to be considered a religious minority to begin with.

One interesting thing I have noticed: There is a ridiculous and divisive campaign going around, with websites (not to mention terrorism) to get Shias declared non-Muslims. This will not happen, becasue Shias are too much a part of the Pakistani mainstream. Such campaigns should be opposed. However, I have met Shias, who have no problem with Ahmedis being declared non-Muslims. One would think that someone who himself/herself is threatened by the, ``non-Muslim`` card, would be sympathetic towards others who have been hit by that same card....Quite odd....

Very interesting article in NYTimes Sunday Mag this weekend by Pankaj Mishra on Hindu Fundamentalism in India and Gujrat.

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YLH .... ``Some 5.5 Million Muslims were ethnically cleansed from East Punjab and areas neighboring Pakistan, and some 3.5 million Hindus from West Punjab and Sindh then packed up and left for India. `` ... ``Infact some will argue that Pakistan has never had the kind of en masse massacres as one sees in Gujurat and other communally troubled parts of India. ``

Honestly you should really add to this the 10 Million refugees from Bangladesh into India during 1971 Yasser. You should really add to this the well documented massacres of Hindus (and Bengali Muslims) in Bangladesh during the same period as an instrument of Pakistani policy. Talk about glaring ommision !

---------------------------------
In the summary of his report dated November 1, 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy writes (6):

`Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). HARDEST HIT HAVE BEEN MEMBERS OF THE HINDU COMMUNITY WHO HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED, AND IN SOME PLACES, PAINTED WITH YELLOW PATCHES MARKED ``H``. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..`

----------------------------------

The Refugee Situation (from virtualbangladesh.com)

According to National Geographic (Sept. 1972), the estimated number of Bangladeshi refugees was 10.0 million. According to the Indian government the number of refugees was 8.3 million (8/31/71). Other sources:

Other reports

Washington Daily News 6/30/71 6.0 million
Die Zeit 7/9/71 6.0 million
New York Times 7/14/71 6.0 million
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 8/1/71 6.5 million
Newsweek 8/2/71 7.5 million
Time 9/2/71 7.5 million
Sen. Kennedy 8/15/71 12.0 million
The UN in Bangladesh 1972 10.0 million
Newsweek 3/27/72 10.0 million

I hope you do understand the difficulties involved in estimating the total number of refugees. It is clear that by end of Aug., 1971, the number of refugees was around 6-7 million. By the middle of Dec., the number reached 10 million. Also, a large number of people were displaced within the country, estimated number was around 20 million (The UN in Bangladesh).[The United Nations in Bangladesh -- Thomas W. Oliver, Reports Officer at UNROD/UNROB headquarters in 1973.UNROD.United Nations Relief Operations in Dhaka. UNROB. United Nations Relief Office in Bangladesh.]

Partition was a big human tragedy. Lots of people are dead. Millions had to leave their homes for foreign lands. I think Indians should stop pointing fingers at Pakistan and move along. I could care less who was responsible.

I don`t know how Pakistan was before Gen Zia took over. In the 1990`s Pakistan has followed a nasty narrow exclusivist ideology. If you can turn a friendly Muslim state like Iran into a foe that speaks for itself. Even with all the trouble caused by the BJP/RSS/VHP crowd Indian Muslims would stay in India rather than go to Pakistan. Now that tells me one of 2 things. Things are not as bad in India. Or things are not any rosier in Pakistan.

I have seen 2 news reports of violence towards Hindus in Pakistani newspapers in 8 years of reading Pakistani newspapers and Pakistani link news digests. I have to assume either it is not news worthy or Islamic to report acts of intolerance towards Hindus ir Pakistanis are the most tolerant, compassionate people in the world. I will let readers decide which one it is.

jay # 140

This is serious. Does the author just make up facts, or is Jay wrong?

Are there in every major Pakistani city roads, halls, institutes, schools, and libraries named after Dr. Abdus Salam, as Yasser Latif Hamdani claims, or none as Jay claims?

What is the truth?

My answers to some concerns of the Indians as pointed pout by the write of this article:

1) Partition was the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind. Hindus are doodh kay dhulay, but the muslas are the devils who caused this vivisection.

The Indians should note that it was secular, liberal democratic Muslims who wanted to have an independent homeland in the northwest of Asian Subcontinent. They got it through democratic means. The fundamentalist Mullas, that the Indians call ``Jihadi terrorists``, wanted to remain with India.

2) Pakistan is based on a narrow exclusivist ideology.

If it is so, then the same goes for Israel and to an extent Ireland. Indians friends talking on this interactive board about vedic Pakistan and Hindu region are going in the same direction.

3) Pakistan `solved` its minority problem by ethnic cleansing Hindus and Sikhs in 1947. Remaining minorities live in conditions worse than animals today.

Not only the minorities have remained relatively unharmed in Pakistan as compared to India, new minorities have also made Pakistan their home - Bahais from Iran, Hazara ( belonging to Shia sect) and Tajiks from Afghanistan, Bengalis, Vietnamese, Chinese have settled in Pakistan.

An unfortunate trend of 1970s and 80s was that as pro-communism Tajiks and Uzbels migrated from CARs to Afghanistan under the patronage of former Soviet Union, anti-communism Pakhtoons in those areas migrated first to central and southern Afghanistan and then to Pakistan. These Pakhtoons are either nomadic or tribals and feel free to enter both the countries unrestrained. If today somebody tells them that they cannot enter Afganistan without the risk of being categorized as Talibans, this would be utterly wrong.

dullabhatti 136:

why do you have to start poking fun already? granted Qaid-e-Azam didn`t know the meaning of a gym or good health, it doesn` t mean we can`t assume he was all for it. as for changing the name, `yasser from america`s gym` would do just fine.

on a serious note, it`s a great business if you can spend the time. and being in pakistan, you don`t need to worry about being a certified trainer.

re: the article
It is good to see ylh defend secularism, a concept alien to Pakistan. For people like him, there is a battle to be fought with mullahs and other religious zealots.
Sridhar

FERZOK 11,

``He asks us to tell us of one road named after this great Pakistani hero... I say I`ll show him one in every major city, and halls, and institutes and schools, and libraries named after the great man...
``
tHE ABOVE QUOTE IS FROM POST 94 BY ylh. Ferzok, if you are a man bold enough to tell the truth, if you are a man who believes that hatred will destroy, it might be useful to make a beginning by telling the truth, truth about pakistan.

Ferzok, respond to the above quote from YLH. Tell the truth that there are no roads in pakistan named after abdus salam, show by example that there are times when one has to tell the truth. For once let the chowk people know that there is one pakistani who tells the truth, however grotesque the truth might be.

Keep on writing YLH.

Ras

re: question of fundamental rights
Supreme court of India has ruled several times in the past that it is not possible for the Parliament to enact laws that would seek to change the basic nature of the constitution. Url: (PDF format)
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/programs/constitutionalism/publications/the_basic_structure_of _the_indian_constitution.pdf

Muslims in India need not worry. The Supreme Law of the land will defend their faith and rights every time they are infringed. Few countries in that part of the world can boast of such liberal laws. This is the only reason why no temple has ever been built on the area of Babri Masjid. No party can say so openly as it would be an infringement of fundamental rights of the muslms. BJP has done the next best. It has exploited the issue as much as it can for electoral gains and moved on to greener pastures viz islamic terrorism.
Sridhar

re:#124 by temporal
I feel sad by the death of those astronauts. You are wrong in saying that Kalpana Chawla`s name was not even mentioned. It was mentioned several times. CNN even showed a small interview with her talking about her work and ending with a prophetic remark`` I have lived my life``.
Israeli astronaut is a national hero in Israel (which Ms Chawla is not in India). He was an ace pilot, one of the daredevils who took out the Iraqi nuclear installations in the 80s. Also, do not forget that jews control the media in US.
Sridhar

re: #131 by freethinker
You need not apologise. I have been feeling sick after hearing the news. I am just watching CNN like a zombie. Life will never be fair. I read about the Chawla family in rediff. A true testimony to the Punjabi spirit of entrepreneurship.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/feb/01spec.htm

Ms Chawla made it to the top by merit. It is a rare honor to be selected to be part of the crew which went took that fated journey. We, belonging to South Asia, are justified in feeling proud about her achievements.
Sridhar

Dear Yasser: Thank you for a well written article. Being a Zoroastrian I never felt discriminated against in Pakistan. You are right that minorities in Pakistan are treated well. Keep up the good work. I have learnt a lot from your writings. Regards,

ally #134 I think I have in you an ally (in asking the chowk bickerers to grow up) whose parents crossed the India-Pakistan border in 1947 from the west to the east even as mine were crossing in the other direction.
:-)
I see that you also give some good advice to these chowk bickerers from pakistan and from india.
And it is in that spirit of our common humanity, that I join you and temporal and roohi and freethinker and others in mourning todays tragedy. The people who died today represented not just the US or Israel or African Americans or Indian Americans. They represented all humanity. They died for something that is worth striving for - advancements in science, including space exploration.
That is a truly a noble cause.

Yaseer Latifey --


You like selective quotations to prove your points. Now let me propose and than prove
Conclusion:
Bhutto was a cheat.
Proof:
: ``Zulfi was only 13 when he was first married to an older cousin Shireen, whose married name is Amir Begum. She was one of the three daughters of his wealthiest uncle, Khan Bahadur Ahmad Khan Bhutto, one third of whose wadero estate would be inherited by Zulfikar after his father-in-laws death. The bride was much older than her adolescent groom, but he took her to Kashmir`s Srinagar for their honeymoon and handed all bills to his father-in-law, who reluctantly paid. Zulfikar assured his second bride, Begum Nusrat, that his first marriage was ``purely for the property. However shortly after his daughter Benazir was born, Amir Begum also gave birth to a daughter.`` (Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times, Oxford, New York, 1993, p.22).

Will you agree with my conclusion based on ``Wolpert``

Rozaiba: Knowing yasser we know first thing to happen to the gym would be name change to ``Jinnah`s Secular Gym - for madrassah training camp bound youth``(MTCBY) with a life size portrait of Jinnah on every wall. The minor detail that Jinnah probably never went to a gym should not deter the name change because I am sure he did point out to youngsters(like every elder) the benefits of good health at least once.:)

temporal #124

over here, in the UK its the same, heart goes out to all the families who had to watch that happen to their loved ones... I am pretty sure that Kalpana will inspire many more South Asian women to aim higher... May God Bless their souls... Ameen


-------------------------------------------------------

#108 by tahmed32 on February 1, 2003 9:17am PT
My point in burdening you with all this is as follows: You can exchange insults and putdowns about Pakistanis (and your soul-mates from pakistan can do the same about Indians). But you people will never understand the reality of the human tragedies involved in all this. Your exchanges on chowk are so superficial and petty that I find it incredible that any of you could actually be grown men.

Agree with you, my dad still doesn`t talk about his journey from India, i think it traumatised him, and my Boah (phoophee, for the Urdu vallahs) goes on about Des all the time, she has such emotion and tears come to her eyes often, i think those ppl dissing each other here, should ask those that actually went thru it... I hope you at least go back to see your old house, my chacha went back to our house years ago, i would love to go (especially now that chacha has passed), i am planning on going next year InshAllah...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


#107 by hamidm2 on February 1, 2003 9:17am PT
...... i honestly think that indoos and pakis should stop interacting with each other .... the fact of the matter is that we loathe, despise and simply hate each other ....... as much as some of us might try to be politically correct and pretend to ``get along`` and say silly things like ``some of my best friends are hindoos or muslims`` , it is a futile effort to overcome this pathological, but quite reasonable, hatred .......... i will be the first one to admit that i don`t have any use for keralites or bombayites or anybody else who would rather worship a hamburger than eat it .........oh sure, i do socialize with some of these sideways head waggers on friday nights ( and, i must admit we do have a good time) but it is strictly out of necesssity - if i could find four good muslims to go drinking with, i would drop these infidels in a minute ......... the problem with most pakis is that as they get older they give up the spirits and become spiritual, closer to god and really quite useless as normal people on weekends ........ hence the dicotomy .............

......... so ylh, stop wasting your energy and talent on digging up jinnah and khushwant (isn`t he dead yet?) ......... it really doesn`t matter what a madrasi thinks about a lahori - as far as i can tell they are not even from the same planet ..........

lahore zindabad!
ylh zindabad!
hindustan murdabad!

------------------------------------------

LOL funniest post yet


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Does it really metter how or what, the fact is Pakistan IS.

To all the Pakistanis,

What the Indians say has truth to it (the truth hurts), even our own ppl say this, no wonder US and EU are so sceptical... However now that the Indians (some with great glee) have pointed out many of our shortcomings, we should get out of our warped, state brainwashed, big brother (1984 the book not the TV series) style mindset/lock and actually do something about it

To all the Indians,

you know our shortcomings, and so do many of our ppl (the ones still living there)... instead of constantly trying to put down, demean, and degrade with great vindictiveness the land of the OolTy Ganga (i think thats another name for the River Indus), would it not make sense that you maybe offer advice, or suggestions or something constructive to Pakistanis that would actually aid us in bettering our country, and get rid of our problems (way to wishful). After all wouldn`t a stable, more democratic and freer Pakistan also be somewhat beneficial to India (in the grander scheme of things, although i know some of us (Pakistanis and Indians) just love to hate and be petty)...

has it ever occured to you that the saner elements of Pakistani society actually might need some encouragement, support, morale boosting for the challenges ahead?

YLH:

oh, right now, it`s a krappy facility- but i have no doubt that with a proper make-over, you`ll lure the masses to it.

````while reporting they all mentioned the lone israeli astronaut but not one report that i have heard mentioned poor kalpana...i don`t think they did it deliberately...perhaps in their value system we are not high up yet... `` (Temporal)

temporal -- if it is any consolation to u -- they did not mention even the FIVE american dead astronauts --

all over CNN NBC, and CBS -- it was that precious israeli air force officer Ramon -- and his precious boss Sharon -- how must he be feeling poor thing -- all over the media --

of course one israeli death is more tragic than 10 dead Palestinians -- we all know that --

what we didn`t know -- that for even us americans -- even 5 dead americans are not significant enough -- as one precious dead israeli.

and you`re talking about the death of an Insignificant Indian -- and of all the people -- a Woman?

it is surreal -- ah those symbiotic parasites -- we love them to death!

YLH:

Let`s talk about something more siginficant then the futile and unecessary explorations of ideology.

Close to Faisal Town Moon Market, there is a weight-training facility called `Rumi`s Gym`- located in a basement. I was offered to purchase it and run it as my business because Rumi was doing a terrible job of it. However, I decided to go for grad school.

With your Amrekan degree, I suggest you take up the offer and turn the venture around. Pakistanis have gone gym crazy lifting weights as if there`s no tomorrow (that is until the next day comes around and they can`t be bothered to persist with a routine) so put to good use your degree!

You`ll be doing the nation a great service by encouraging the youth to remain healthy.

Help to build those arms that will save Pakistan!

Exploson of the Columbia shuttle today at about 9 a.m. is a tragic incident. The seven astronauts who died in the disintegration of the shuttle were all young or middle-aged (?). They had a life full of promise ahead of them. My heart goes out for them and their families. They died in the noble cause of space exploration and scientific discovery.

I am particularly saddened by the untimely death of Dr. Kalpana Chawala who was an aeronautical engineer. Although I do not personally know much about her and her life, her being on the shuttle crew itself was a great achievement. Her credentials which I could find on the internet are testimony to her professional brilliance.

I condole with her family.

(I apologise for this out of place intervention; the incident is important enough to be noticed and mentioned)

It feels good being quoted. Now I know how it must feel being Dr. Kessinger, Chomsky, and Einstien. Hate and prejudice aside but you gotta admit that what one person, that is, yours truly, was saying alone a year and a half ago is being echoed across the continents - people are chanting what this man said in the processions of over 100,000 at a time even in US. Oh the insight, the vision.......

Stuka,
Ta!

Harimau,

[Well, you must admit those clues at least got you thinking.]

Leave it out. I knew someone was going to say that. Thanks for the education regarding unwritten constitution and conventions (and especially the free eye-openers regarding Jinnah and Pakistan - I know I can always count on you for those) though you still didn’t explain why the second biggest religion in the UK (which is recognised as faith and not race) is not given the same protection as the major faith, that is, Christianity. Of course, it doesn’t matter, I was just interested. I`ll ask someone else.

Umair,
Pakistan, at its peak, held over 3 million Afghan refugees so yes, I`m sure Pakistan had the largest refugee population in the world. Indeed, Pakistanis have definitely been hospitable but there`s something about the UNHCR and World Food Programme aid finishing in `95, a resultant lack of wheat (in an agricultural country of all the places) and subsequently a few riots in Pakistan. Know anything about it?


t,
To be honest, who cares which nationality the dead people belonged to? 7 people died whilst on their jobs. An honourable death. That`s the bottom line. However, I was a bit cheesed off by the fact that someone was quick to fart off the death of an Israeli astronaut again…and again…and again…aaaaaand again, `but no links to a terrorist attack had been proved…yet`. You`d think that at this moment, they`d give the sensationalism a little break.

Well, my condolences and strength`s with their families and friends.

Umer M.

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roohi 114:

over here...(TO)...all over the radio and tv they are talking about the tragic incident over texas...a digression:....while reporting they all mentioned the lone israeli astronaut but not one report that i have heard
mentioned poor kalpana...i don`t think they did it deliberately...perhaps in their value system we are not high up yet...

...my condolences to the families of all the astronauts in their hour of great sorrow...

...t

di

Yasser...
since when is calling someone beta a term of disrespect...my goodness, I will refrain from calling my own children beta. No, you are not my beta, and thank goodness for that. But I apologize, despite the fact that you are young enough to be my beta, I will never refer to you as that again.
And just a friendly clarification...these people who are throwing mud at you are not my `lovable` friends. I do have some positively adorable friends here on Chowk, but most of those friends do not interact on your boards for reasons I totally understand and sympathize with. And yes, I do see something wrong with the way you are trashed here. I also see something wrong with some of your arguments, which is why I speak up sometimes. I now see the merits of silence being golden in some cases.
As for checking myself, or getting myself checked up (matchpoint to you on that)...last I checked, I was fine. Hope you remain that way as well. :-)

rsax #118 Sorry, bad judgement ...

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_______________________________________________________
Our deepest condolences for the families of 7 astronauts who perished in the Columbia disaster this morning.

our heartfelt sympathies for the family of that daring, distinguished, daughter of India -- Kalpana Chawala from Karnal.
________________________________________________________

re: roohi

{Guys - The Shuttle exploded ...

Take a moment and pay your respects to a talented desi woman Dr. Kalpana Chawala the first Indian American woman astronaut. She was the daughter of parents who left Pakistan in 1947 and grew up in Karnal Haryana and got her degree from Punjab Engineering Collage Chandigardh before migrating to the US. }

....please don`t write this here and invite trash on this woman`s and other astronauts` memories...if you need to know why, go to the Unplugged section to witness celebrations over the ``death of evil israeli, american, and indian astronauts`` and how it is a victory for islam...

Thanks Romair # 116 . . . your observations in this message have improved my knowledge.

````i will be the first one to admit that i don`t have any use for keralites or bombayites or anybody else -- who would rather worship a hamburger than eat it .........

oh sure, i do socialize with some of -- these sideways head waggers --on friday nights```` (hamidm2)

hamidm MiaN -- u R a Genuine Genius -- u INDEEEED R a rushdi of chowki prose --

an utterly original definition of subcontinental Hindus and Muslim: --

``one who would rather worship a hamburger that eat it`` --

and the other -- ``the Sideway Head Wagger`` --

wah -- wah:-)

vereesh/harimau: Yes, I did only meet two Hindus in my whole life in Pakistan - and that too, only briefly. I cannot recall meeting anymore than that. I read about quite a few famous ones in Pakistan, but never met any. But, then again, I have met very few native Sindhi speaking Pakistani Muslims and Baluchi speaking Pakistani Muslims either. And I have never met a Pakistani Mekrani Muslim (they are of African descent and look just like skinnier versions African-Americans and live in the Makran coast and in Karachi).

The number of Christians I met was signficantly high - in the hundreds. I would count quite a few Christians as my good friends. I had Christian colleagues as my bosses etc. in the military. I met some Parsis also (there are hardly any in the whole world, much less in Pakistan). I have probably met a lot of Ahmedis, but it is difficult to tell the difference between Ahmedis and non-Ahmedis. The only Sikhs I ever met were the ones who used to visit Lahore on their way to religious shrines in Hasan Abdal. So I met quite a few Sikhs, but I doubt any of them were Pakistanis.

This is just my ratio. It will be different for different people. The reasons are probably, as follows:

- I spent nearly my whole life in NWFP and Punjab. And I don`t think there is any Hindu communities in that area - at least not where I lived. My whole professional career was spent in small rural towns in these provinces, and there weren`t any there either. Or maybe there were, but I never had a chance to meet them.

- There are a lot of Christians in the areas where I lived. I went to school with them, etc. Hence, a lot of contact with them.

- Parsis are a very successful community in Pakistan. I would say, the most successful. They are judges, authors, big businessmen, doctors etc. They live in Karachi, but they travel in the urban areas a lot. So I met them as well and there were some in the military.

- I think nearly all the Hindus live in Sind. Quite a few in Karachi and in the Sind rural areas. I never lived in Karachi much and never lived in rural Sind (only in rural Punjab), so I never came across a Hindu. If you talk to people who grew up in Karachi, however, they probably worked and went to school with Hindus on a daily basis.

Who are the two Hindus that I met? Well, one worked as an orderly for someone I knew. The other was a cadet in the military.

I think the best way to get an idea of how minorities are treated in a society is to get it from the horse`s mouth. How are Hindus treated in Pakistan - well you would have to ask a Pakistani Hindu. Similarly, for all other religions. I have explained how I see it.

You need to keep in mind, that considering Pakistan`s poor economic condition, and small size of the pie, Pakistanis are quite generous and tolerant of others. Pakistanis have looked after over 3 million Afghani refugees for decades (maybe largest refugee population in the world) without complaining much. Australia refused to even accomodate one thousand. And considering the fact that religious minorities at around 4% of the population would have very little power, if mob violence started in Pakistan, it has never even come closed to occruing. In my wildest dreams, I cannot see BJP type mob violence ever occuring in Pakistan, or the type of action that took place against Sikhs during the Congress era. I can see terrorism against Christian chruches by Al-Qaeda etc., but I cannot see a normal guy chasing after a Pakistani Christian or Hindu with a sword and burning him alive.

Another thing you need to notice is that Pakistanis on this board will never be anti-minority, or at least anti-Pakistani minority. If anything, they will be anti-Pakistan govt. and anti-Pakistan majority, when it comes to minority rights. If Patrick Masih were to write an article on minority issues/inequalities in Pakistan, I doubt he would get the same attacking replies as Farzana Varsey`s writing on India on similar issues.

I haven`t been to India, though I am planning on going in a year or so, so it is hard to compare. I have met some Indian Muslims in the USA (and worked with countless Indian Hindus). So I can get some sort of an idea of how they are treated - though it could be inaccurate.

It seems like they felt quite secure in the Congress days, but seem quite apprehensive and insecure now in the BJP days. A small portion of them seem to dislike India, while another small portion of them seem to try to be holier than the pope (or Brahman) in their support for India. The others seem to be in between, like most Indian Hindus I have met.

It seems like they are in large enough numbers in India, where they do have security just due to their size. How secure would they be, if they constituted only around 2% of the population,as Hindus do in Pakistan? I don`t know.

Much like minorities in most third world countries, it seems to me like the Indian Muslims have missed the economic train. Of the hundreds of Indian IT professionals I have worked with here, maybe 2% were Muslim. Nearly every South Asian Muslim in IT in USA you will meet , will be a Pakistani. Hardly any Indian Muslims with me in college here either, though the classes were filled with Indian Hindus.

On the whole, I would say Indian minorities are more integrated into the society, due to their size and due to earlier Indian govt. policies, than the minorities in Pakistan (except Parsis and Ahmedis also maybe). They have far less, if any, constitutional discrimination. And I suppose less social discrimination, as well.

At the same time, everything seems to have changed now under the BJP. All the Indian sites I visit, specially Muslim sites, seem to indicate almost a hunter and prey scenario. The Indian minorities seem scared now. In that sense, I don`t think Pakistani minorities are, ``scared`` of the majority (except for the blasphemy law - which has been applied to Muslims also).

So, Indian minorites - larger in number thus with more clout, more integrated economically, less legal discrimination, but more scared and frustrated at the moment at their own govt and they direction their socieity is taking (things may not be terribly bad, but they seem to be on a downswing - I think BJP is the lowest point for them in Indian history).

Pakistani minorities - smaller in number thus will less clout, less or similarly integrated economically, more legal discrimnation, but quite a bit less scared and frustrated at the moment at their own govt. and the direction the society is taking (things are still not great for them, but they are on an upswing getting better - Zia days was their lowest point).

Just my observations.

ylh2 #96

Certainly none of us can compete with your sophistry and deviousness.

After blathering about how great your country is to minorities, you reveal that in fact (1) not a single hindu OF YOUR CLASS AND EDUCATION is personally known to you or to your friends (2) it doesnt matter that they are not on chowk, because chowk is a rat-hole.

IF CHowk is a rat-hole why are YOU publishing here? Obviously, Chowk is a crude but effective way of viewing the upwardly mobile, internet-savvy, english eductaed population of india and pakistan. But not to you...

Your statements are uncannily similar to statements that the most hardened and hate-filled hindu fascists like Bal Thackeray and Praveen Togadia. They make exactly the same statements you make about indian muslims that you have made about hindu pakistanis. The same specious reasoning (``How does it matter if indian muslims are under-represented on the police? See here is a poor muslim man who cleans my house``). They are your natual peers except that they have more humility.

Yassir,

Glad youre back!

...... i honestly think that indoos and pakis should stop interacting with each other .... the fact of the matter is that we loathe, despise and simply hate each other ....... as much as some of us might try to be politically correct and pretend to ``get along`` and say silly things like ``some of my best friends are hindoos or muslims`` , it is a futile effort to overcome this pathological, but quite reasonable, hatred .......... i will be the first one to admit that i don`t have any use for keralites or bombayites or anybody else who would rather worship a hamburger than eat it .........oh sure, i do socialize with some of these sideways head waggers on friday nights ( and, i must admit we do have a good time) but it is strictly out of necesssity - if i could find four good muslims to go drinking with, i would drop these infidels in a minute ......... the problem with most pakis is that as they get older they give up the spirits and become spiritual, closer to god and really quite useless as normal people on weekends ........ hence the dicotomy .............

......... so ylh, stop wasting your energy and talent on digging up jinnah and khushwant (isn`t he dead yet?) ......... it really doesn`t matter what a madrasi thinks about a lahori - as far as i can tell they are not even from the same planet ..........

lahore zindabad!
ylh zindabad!
hindustan murdabad!

m_souza #102 As a Pakistani, I am indeed saddened that the vast majority of hindus (and sikhs) who lived in what is now Pakistan were kicked out. My grandfather`s house used to be the property of a hindu family, and sometimes I have wondered what how hard it must have been for the owners to leave that wonderful house, and what memories they must have taken with them.
On the other hand, my family too, as I have mentioned on chowk before, had to leave East Panjab and flee for their lives because they were muslims. My mother was in a train that narrowly escaped slaughter by an anti-muslim mob, and she witnessed another train of muslims that was not so fortunate being stopped with passengers being dragged out and killed. Our ancestral village was 40 percent muslim, and half of them were killed and the other half escaped with what little belongings they could carry. We too had a home in East Panjab, and my elders too has many fond memories of that house. It is still standing, and my late father received a picture of that from the current occupants after he wrote a letter introducing himself (some old men of our ancestral village in India still remembered him) and expressing a desire to learn what happened after we left. He received a very warm letter with the picture in return, with the invitation to visit any time he wanted. I and the rest of my family wish that sikh family living in the house that used to be ours nothing but the best, and hope they too find as much happiness as my family did.
My point in burdening you with all this is as follows: You can exchange insults and putdowns about Pakistanis (and your soul-mates from pakistan can do the same about Indians). But you people will never understand the reality of the human tragedies involved in all this. Your exchanges on chowk are so superficial and petty that I find it incredible that any of you could actually be grown men.

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Guys - The Shuttle exploded ...

Take a moment and pay your respects to a talented desi woman Dr. Kalpana Chawala the first Indian American woman astronaut. She was the daughter of parents who left Pakistan in 1947 and grew up in Karnal Haryana and got her degree from Punjab Engineering Collage Chandigardh before migrating to the US.

Kalpana on looking at the Earth from the Shuttle on her previous flight ...

``On the tenth or eleventh day, I wanted to do one full pass and sit by the door and watch the earth. Doing that was mind boggling. It really instilled this huge sense of how small earth is. An hour and a half and I could go around it. I could do all of the math and logic for why this was, but in the big picture the thing that stayed with me is this place is very small. I felt that every person needs to experience this because maybe we would take better care of this place. This planet below you is our campsite and you know of no other campground. I didn`t think this view would be something so philosophical-I thought I would just go around and see the continents and the oceans, but it was much more than that. ``

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The case of Joseph Copper has been raised here as an example of ``freedom of religion``. Mr. Cooper broke indian visa laws (a similar transgression in the US would have led to...) and is a fundamentalist hate monger.

I personally researched this case carefully. Here is my letter to the Pittsburgh Newspaper:

-----------------------------------------------------------
All right thinking people should condemn violence against
Joseph Cooper (Missionary slashed in India attack, January 29). The
indian
police has detained several people involved in the attack against him,
and
they will be punished according to the law.

However, your reporter failed to note that Joseph Cooper`s ``New Jerusalem Church``
web
site includes extensive hate speech and remarks against hindus and
hinduism. Some excerpts include:

http://www.prowebserv.com/faqs/worship.html

``Still people claim that Hinduism is great. Great in sinning? In
reality,
it can be seen that their worship is not towards expiation of sins nor
to
reach heaven. They form new gods and demons are associated with them! ``

http://www.prowebserv.com/faqs/sins.html

``Although humans are told not to do such things, the Hindu devotees are
only spoiled rather than benefitted in any way because of the evil
deeds
of their gods. ``

Your readers should examine these obnoxious and demeaning commentaries
to
gain insight into Joseph Cooper`s brand of ``religion``.

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Yasser, your article was most educational. The best aspect was the genuine attempt to reach out to true Indian intellectuals like K. Nayyar. I too am dismayed by the ``saffronization`` of India; a process by which the extremists there want to recreate an exclusionist and over-simplified brand of history and culture. Very similar to the Wahabisation/Talibanization of Pakistani society.
I was also touched by your admission that Shiite and Ahmadi muslims in Pakistan are victimized by extremists. As a recent expat, your writing brings back some optimism for a better Pakistan in the future.
Nonetheless, before we can achieve Jinnah`s vision of a pluralist and tolerant Pakistan, we have to deal (peacefully) with the ``JaisheMohammads`` who have hijacked our soceity.

To:
jaishemuhammad #86: ``I will not lie to please Shias (jews). Allah`s word is final. Learn more about shias (jews). See the proof. `

http://kafir.8m.net/ ``

Sir,

Are you that insecure about your beliefs that you have to manufacture lies against those whose beliefs differ from yours? Don`t you realize that your rabid intolerance and violence against shias (and ahmadis and Christains and Jews) actually makes their case stronger?

I saw your site and it was the cliched, divine hogwash that I had seen hundreds of times before. What about giving Peace a chance? After all, is that not what OUR common religious affiliation Islam translates to?

Back to Yasser, keep up the keep good work and really liked your letter in the Daily times.

Qambar Abbas

#61 by arjun_m on January 31, 2003 2:50pm PT

“President Muhammad Khatami of Iran, who has just concluded a state visit to India, told a gathering in New Delhi that Mahmood Ghaznavi was a marauder who plundered and destroyed Somnath. He added that Mahmood Ghaznavi did not represent Islamic values; he was a military invader and his 17 assaults on India have no relation with Islam or Islamic principles.”

Arjun..yes indeed there is no problem between the Muslims world over and India. And look at Pakistan…they name their missiles after Ghazni and Ghuari…so as to scare India.
The very invaders who are responsible for making paksitan what it is today are so dearly loved in paksitan. No wonder, the ancestors of pakisitni land (hindus) curse them.

Probably..this is the only way Paksitanis can feel happy about being Muslim, to try to truly belong. In order to love their current religion, they have to hate the religion of their ancestors otherwise they might feel guilty or may get confused.

#83 by Naqshbandi on January 31, 2003 8:14pm PT

“To Romair bhai
As to your general question the Muslim world is split generally into a number of sects the main, in our time, being Sunni (i.e. those on the aqida of Imam Ash`ari and Imam Maturidi AND who follow one of the 4 madhhabs of Sunni fiqh (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, Hanbali) --including the Sufi tariqats within the Sunnis; the Shias (who are divided in subsects: Ithna Isharis[`Rafidis---but see quote below], Zaydis, Ismailis) and the Wahabis/Wahabi-influenced groups (eg some Deobandis, Ahle Hadis) and other ghair-muqallids (those who do not follow a single school of thought). About 90% of the Muslims by the above definition are Sunnis.”


Ufff…such an elaborate Caste System !!! Gosh..no wonder they kill each other. (unlike the caste systems in other religions)

“What happened to the Hindus of Pakistan, the largest group amongst minorities? I suppose they are wandering the desert in Balochistan”

harimau..the hindus were kicked out of the land of their ancient civilization by those who converted. (I am sure their souls are constantly cursing paksitan). And now the few of the leftover scared Pakistani Hindooooooooos hide somewhere so as to earn their bread and butter peacefully

Yaseer Latifey,
You are back to your naraa-bazi.
``Long live Khushwant Signh`s India``
Before it suits your distorted arguments. Your basic premise starts with a reference from Kushwant Singh who argues that Savarkar started of hindutva Hindutva and Bankim and other supported him. I have shown you that his facts are incorrect. Is it not sufficient for you to agree that Kushwant`s other premises may also be be wrong.

Selective quotations do not server any purpose. A pet slogan of yours is ``Jiye Bhutto`` and your pet author is Wolpert. I can quote from Wolpert where he says Bhutto to be a shallow character and basically proves him to be charlton. Will you agree with Wolpert in this case or with Bhutto?
Perhaps best will be to do your own research before shooting your mouth off.

An if selective quotations are what you want, I can quote from Karakoram Students Federations, Baltistan Lawyers Associations and dozens of other organization that state that Pakistan treats even its own muslim minorities like dirt. Would you be receptive to that?

Ref Romair #92

[To tell you the truth, I don`t really know. Nearly all the Hindus live in Sind, I believe. I have never lived in the areas they live in. You would have to ask someone from Sind. I have interacted with, and am friends with, a lot of Christians and a few Parsis (and Ahmedis, if you count them as minorities). I had only met two Hindus in my whole life, before moving to the USA.]

I can understand such a situation if you had lived all your life in small towns in Pakistan. For instance, I had not met a Parsi when I lived as a small child in Tamil Nadu and when I first saw Parsi names on billboards in Bombay, I actually thought they were names of Muslims. Much later, I managed to figure out the differences in the names of Parsis and Muslims.

But I had no problem identifying a Christian or a Muslim because we had them in abundance in the small town I grew up in. I even saw a Sikh there who probably was a government official, 1500 miles from Punjab.

Right now the provision merchant we have used for 20 years in Madras is a Muslim. From being a stone`s throw away from his store, we have moved about a mile but we still buy from him because we have been his customers for a long time. You will find this kind of close proximity between people of all religions in any place in India. In fact, there are definitely more Muslims in any part of Madras than Bengalis or Marathis or Rajasthanis. Walk down any street and you will see a hardware store owned by a Muslim next to a medical shop owned by a Hindu or some such thing. We pay no attention to it because it is not something strange like a calf with two heads or a goat with 6 legs.

Like Veeresh, I am just amazed at the lack of diversity in Pakistan.

Dear YLH,

``Long Live Khushwant Singh`s India``?

Which one is that?

From a family that ``commiserated`` Jallianwalah Bagh, presented a saropa to General Dyer and then got contracts from the Brits in return?

Or the sycophantic ex-Editor of the Illustrated Weekly?

Or the colonial remnants, ruing the day the Britishers left?

You want to have Khushwant Singh and his ilk, you can have him. we`ve taken almost five decades to clean up.

sincerely,

Veeresh

Ref YLH2 #94

[Only Nepal and Bangladesh to him represent cohesive nation-states...]

Bangladesh without West Bengal is a cohesive nation-state?

[even my rabid opponent Harimau has agreed with me on that one.. ]

I must point out that usually it is you who is foaming at the mouth, not me.

[...Lahore`s increasingly liberal night life...]

What`s the closing time for the bars?

[...unlike India where BJP has banned `preaching by visitors` through a central order as Sam Baidya`s letter in Dawn today indicates, Christians are free to preach and propagate their religion in Pakistan legally, though the rise in violence and sectarian terrorism has discouraged them from doing so...]

Yasser, dear boy, the BJP has NOT issued any order banning preaching by visitors. The externment order on the missionary in question, George Cooper, was issued by the local Commissioner of Police in his capacity as Registrar of Foreigners.

If you read the news item emanating from India as opposed to the twisted tales coming out of Pakistan, you will understand that Mr. Cooper had entered India on a 10-year, multiple-entry visitor`s visa which did not authorize him to engage in any activities other than tourism. Pakistanis who violate the conditions of their visas in the US are being held incommunicado in prisons by the INS. Some years back, the Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh was picked up by the INS on technical visa violation charges and held in jail for a couple of weeks. Rajneesh was shackled and handcuffed when he was brought in front of an immigration judge and was finally allowed to leave the US after he agreed not to enter the country again. Mr. Cooper was NOT jailed, he was NOT shackled, he was merely told that since he violated his visa conditions, he had to leave India within 7 days.

In fact, the issue of Mr. Cooper was raised in the Kerala Legislative Assembly and the person who defended the government`s action was the Chief Minister of Kerala, Mr. A. K. Anthony. You get no prizes for guessing Mr. Anthony`s religion.

As for freedom to preach and propagate religions in India, that is available to all Indian CITIZENS. Foreign evangelists need only declare on their visa applications that they intend to engage in propagating their religion during their visit to India. If they then get the appropriate visa, they are allowed to hold public meetings and preach to their heart`s content.

As for freedom of conversion, you might want to look at the Northeastern states of India and you will find that the Nagas, the Bodos, the Mizos and a whole host of tribals have converted en masse in the last decade to Christianity. The population of Christians is approaching 50% in some of those states.

You even see quite a few misguided souls in other parts of India signing up to be slaves of Allah in return for a job in Saudi Arabia.

I am delighted to learn that you are engaged in the study of law. I am saddened that you have a long way to go but I have faith in you and know that you will finally master the finer points of law such as staying within the bounds under which a visa is issued to a person. That would come in handy on your next visit to The Great Satan.

Alephnull,

My friend Prem Bodagala, aka Kabuliwallah, a one time Indian Nationalist, introduced to me to the idea of more autonomy and division of South Asia ... I actually argued against it for the ramnifications it might have for Pakistan... He is today committed to the idea of the break up of India and Pakistan into several new nation-states ... Only Nepal and Bangladesh to him represent cohesive nation-states...

By no means am I an advocate of the further disintegration of India and Pakistan, but I think both countries will have to opt for more decentralization than at present.... failing that, yes they might break up.

BTW I still haven`t received your apology wrt Sri Prikasa issue... even my rabid opponent Harimau has agreed with me on that one..


A General Comment:

I find it remarkable how while quoting directly out of the works of two internationally recognized Indian writers who happen to be icons for an age, I still am being accused of little minds of being `delusional` and `concocting half truths`. Let me make it expressly clear that the argument that Pakistan is not based on an exclusivist ideology is directly out of Khushwant Singh`s work especially his biography which is clear on the matter ...

P-Mishra wants evidence of Pakistan`s Hindus on Chowk. Amazing, that now that is the new objective standard to judge the pluralism of a nation by (though PM has effectively ruined that line of argument for him.. please read #56)... The presence of only 2 or 3 Muslims from India on chowk then is baffling... the great and secular nation of India with close to 130 Million Muslims and just two or three muslims with Internet access? Perhaps P-Mishra should have seen the inaugural session of Pakistan`s National Assembly ... There were many Hindus in that session... I am sure the presence of one `Devdas`, would have amused him as much as it amused all the Dilip Kumar Fans in Pakistan.. but then maybe for P-Mishra2, Dilip Kumar is a Pakistani agent and therefore the hit movie `Devdas` (Dilip starrer) was a Pakistani conspiracy anyway... what next ... Wait .... P-Mishra will now reveal to us that Devdas is an Islamic name. Don`t tell me that Justice Rana Bhagwandas of the Supreme Court of the `Islamic` Republic of Pakistan, is also an Islamic fundamentalist. I am sure everyone can see how skewed some people`s sense of judgement is...


But seriously which right minded Pakistani (or even Indian) would want to interact on chowk with a bunch of fanatics? Have you seen me interact here lately? If Chowk wants sanity to return and free speech to prevail it should consider what kind of interactors it wants here... No one has the time to argue with losers with nothing better to do then regurgitate on their diet of hate and rhetoric... After all the number 1 patriotic act for Indians it seems is to bash Pakistan... I know I don`t have the time for this.. between my job, my law studies, Lahore`s increasingly liberal night life and my brand new sporty Honda City of which I am immensely proud.

The reason why the very reasonable conditions of Pakistani Non-Muslims live in should be played down, is because we liberals don`t want the Mullahs to have an excuse to move towards more conservatism ... the legal discrimination against non-muslims needs to go... Non-Muslims should be allowed to run for the highest office of the land.. Even Liaqat Ali Khan, the architect of the first exclusivist document the Objectives Resolution, was very clear about that. He claimed very unambigiously that non-Muslims could be the head of states and the head of Governments in Pakistan.... So it is unfair both to our minorities and our history to refuse them equal citizenship in this regard....

However we are talking about the ground realities... On election day in October, I was going through the electoral rolls to find my name, and nothing made me prouder of my country than the fact that my name Yasser Latif Hamdani was the only Muslim name on the entire page .... the rest were a line of Masihs ... Akram Masih, Khalid Masih, etc That day as I sat in the PPP stall, I realized that in my locality there are more christians than there are Muslims... what I have called Faisal Town all my life, is actually more popular by its real name `Yusufabad` which is its official name, while Faisal Town is just the name of housing society.

A large part of my paternal family is Ahmadi all of them very patriotic Pakistanis... yet Jay constantly attacks me for not writing about Dr. Abdus Salam. I am sure Dr. Salam would be spinning in his grave with the knowledge that Jay of all people, a self committed Paki-Basher. That great patriot, Dr. Salam had stressed his Pakistani identity on more than one occasion and we know that despite official opposition he continued to represent his nation with courage pride and honor. Today, he is the most distinguished alumnus of GC, and every Ravian rubs it in your face that Abdus Salam went to GC in Lahore... every child knows of our great hero of physics and his portraits are displayed on national days.... yet some how jay figures he has a stick to beat us with. He asks us to tell us of one road named after this great Pakistani hero... I say I`ll show him one in every major city, and halls, and institutes and schools, and libraries named after the great man...

The large number of Christian and Sikhs that one sees in Lahore and parts of Punjab does not even match up to diversity of the great city of the South, Karachi... Karachi, Jinnah`s own city, has people from almost every religion of the world residing there... the beautiful churches of Karachi, the temples, the Parsi tower of silence are filled with worshippers even after the terrible events of last year... PM would be able to tell us about this much better, but there seems to be huge Syrian Christian (from South India) population located in Karachi Saddar... unlike India where BJP has banned `preaching by visitors` through a central order as Sam Baidya`s letter in Dawn today indicates, Christians are free to preach and propagate their religion in Pakistan legally, though the rise in violence and sectarian terrorism has discouraged them from doing so... yet even in the days of Zia it was not uncommon for one to open the door and find a beautiful gift of Bible with the most beaming smile of a very friendly belgian or german Nun. That was my childhood, spent in the heart of Lahore`s historic downtown area.

Our Republic, the (Islamic) Republic of Pakistan is a dynamic and liberal country... true that it has been pulled back by the excess baggage of history and people looking after their own petty self interests, but it continues to be a Dynamic country... Like Ayaz Amir has rightly pointed out in his article yesterday... an average voter in Pakistan remains committed to a fair and just Pakistan... Despite all the propaganda against him on religious grounds, Ayaz Amir still managed one of the largest vote banks in the country from a relatively backwater area like Chakwal....

The discriminatory laws, the abuse and exploitation of religion and the mullah`s attempt to Islamise our Republic will be short lived... the true liberal spirit of Jinnah`s Pakistan will persevere and you all will live to see the pheonix like rise of our civilization, the Pakistani Civilization, a civilization based on tolerance, equality, fraternity and justice... inshallah...






Dear Ana,

About the bias, ofcourse Hindus were the victims of similar butchery, that Muslims were ... I see how my sentence could have been misconstrued.

About the figures however, the displacement of between 9 to 10 million people is an accepted fact... Roughly 5.5 Million Muslims ultimately set out for Pakistan, whereas 3.5 Million Hindus and Sikhs set out in the opposite direction. These figures are not mine, these are accepted figures... As for the word ethnic cleansing, it is commonly used for evacuation of one particular group from a certain place, usually their place of birth or residence, based on ethnicity. This could be physical removal or this could be death. I am quite aware that ethnic cleansing is easily taken to mean `Killing`, as the Letters to Editor of Fridaytimes easily substituted killing for ethnic cleansing...

A request: please refrain from calling me beta. That shows an utter lack of respect on your part. Here I am not your beta whatever my age. Despite my best efforts to be friendly to you, you have always been remarkably caustic towards me, deliberately misconstruing my words.
Instead of asking me to check myself, you could have asked your loveable friends here who have once again shown us that intolerance wreaks from their very existence. But then you never did see anything wrong with that did you. Perhaps it would do wonders if you checked yourself, or got yourself checked up whichever maybe more apropriate...
Just some friendly advice.





Dear PM,

Thankyou once again for giving us a balanced and fair view... I think your response needs to be highlighted for all these freaks to chew on:


PM 56


``Gee, no one told poor ol me I was miserable all this time! Or any of my many Christian friends who`ve chosen to live in the land of the not-so-pure. How miserable is THAT!!
But seriously, I think what Yasser tries to drive home is that while institutional discrimination exists against religious minorities in Pakistan, the reality `on the ground` is different. While the ranks of religious bigots have been swelling at an alarming rate over the past two decades, IMO such folks still constitute a small minority of Pakistani Muslims.
And for the bloke who suggested that Pak Religious Minorities are relegated to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, well, that`s quite untrue. Yes, the bulk of Pakistani Christians belong to the `sweeper class`. However, such has been their lot in life since before they converted to Christianity. Neither can it be claimed that Christians and Hindus are exclusive to such bottom-rung occupations.
And why are Pakistani Hindus not visible on the chowk? Well, statistics might provide a clue... Hindus form 2% of the population. Those with money are either ofthe wadera class in Sindh (read `paDha likhay jahil` --like most of this class) or urban businessfolks, the type you`d least expect to see on a forum such as this.
And just FYI, there WAS a Pakistani Hinud (patriotic one at that!) active here up to a year or so ago. ``


Just to add to that, I know many Hindus in Karachi who are doctors and teachers... Agha Khan Medical University, one of the highly respected and selective schools in Asia, has a lot of capable Hindus studying to be Doctors.

PS I seem to have lost your Email addy... please write to me... I will be coming to Karachi soon...



Note:

Everyone who read this article... I thank you ... and once again I apologize to those whose toes I stepped on, I apologize but truth does hurt.

:)

Long Live Khushwant Singh`s India...

Long Live Patrick Masih`s Pakistan!

Romair . . . I am very amazed without being in any way sarcastic at the simple fact that while living in Pakistan you met only two Hindus while you were growing up . . . a Pakistani I met in India told me in all seriousness that he expected India to be similar to the India he saw in Bollywood movies and that Muslims in India would not be visible . . . I can now sometimes understand maybe even sympathise with the views Pakistanis have on this board and elsewhere about Hindus and Indians.

Didnt you Hindu friends in schools/colleges? Friends of your parents? Or maybe as small shopkeepers, taxidrivers . . . all the sections of society you meet in the course of life?

I am keen to know this, would a young Pakistani growing up in Karachi or Lahore or Jhang not meet more than 2 Hindus (unless they went to UAE or USA or things like that?)?

This is amazing even for me.

Naqshbandi #83: Thanks for the detailed reply. Now can you answer the following question:

I have read the Quran in a lot of detail. I have researched some of it. I have read the views of many sholars, Western, Eastern, Muslim and non-Mulsim on it. I am a scientist by education and profession, and am fascinated by the many statements of the Quran related to science that would not be proved till centuries after its writing. Regardless of how one views it, I think it is the greatest book ever written, or at least that I have read (not that I have read all books in the world).

On the whole, seriously speaking, I consider myself more knowledgeable on the Quran (it is a small book, after all) than any Aalim that I have come across, primarily because the Aalims seem too disconnected from real life in present day, and hence I feel cannot interpret the Quran like I can. I say that with all seriousness.

I have yet to meet or read an Islamic Aalim who has impressed me. I have found all of them to be too self-righteous.

I have read quite a bit of the Hadith. I have my own copies of Sahih Bukhari and Muslim. I am close to being convinced that there is absolutely no way all the Ahadith can be authentic. Most of them, actually make a lot of good common sense. But some don`t. And, how in the world is it possible that all those verbal sayings of the Prophet could have been copied exactly, nearly two hundred years (the author of Sahih Bukhari wasn`t even born till 810 CE/ 194 AH) after the Prophet. There is absolutely no scientific way of proving that the sayings did not change, somewhere in between.

If I say something today, what are the odds that two hundred years later, it will be remebered exactly, regardless of the sincerity of the person trying to recall or research what I said. Can you even remember what you yourself said, two days ago, much less two hundred years ago? How can anyone else remember it? And what are the odds that the context in which I said it will be understood by the person recording it even now, what to talk of two hundred years later.

So regardless of how many Ahadith were disregarded by the writers of the Hadith, there is no way they can say with 100% certainity that the ones they did include in the books, are genuine.

Based on that, I think the usage of Hadith as the basis of so many Islamic arguments has caused more harm than good. So I do not consider Hadith an authentic part of Islam. They should be guiding common sense principles, but the ones that seem odd should be disregarded. So if people cannot find something in the Quran, they should look at the Hadith, but if what the Hadith says seems incorrect, they should disregard it, and figure the solution out on their own. Otherwise, they are giving Mr. Bukhari the same status as Prophet Muhammad.

As for the remaining Imams etc., I don`t even know who they are. I don`t follow any of them. Nor do I have any interest of doing so. Not because I dislike them, but because I think they are not required to be followed anywhere in the Quran. The Quran came before any of them.

And I consider the Ulema who pass fatwas to be an unnecessary beaurecracy, since they are spoiling the concept of a religion which is not even supposed to have fatwa-passing ulema to begin with. I will listen to their fatwas, if they promise to listen to mine, since I consider myself as big, if not bigger, a religious scholar as them.

So, basically Islam to me is the Quran, which I sincerely believe to be the book of God (the moment I stop believing that, I will leave the religion of Islam). The reason I believe in this is because of the scientific facts described in the Quran, which as I mentioned earlier, excite the scientist in me. As well as due to Islam`s concept of egalitarianism of all people being equal.

My imam/scholar/aalim/religious leader etc. is Prophet Muhammad. That is where I draw the line. I look at his life, through the Quran and Hadith, without giving the Hadith the status of law. Everyone after him, is a normal guy like me, as far as I am concerned - some of the people after him, like his close colleagues etc., obviously thru their actions have attained social stauses far higher than I ever will. However, the people/ulema/imams etc. (that you always list) have never appealed to me, and I consider them just like me. Neither of us (Imam Ghazali etc. and I) has a right to tell each other, how to be a Muslim. And no one gave us the right to pass fatwas. We should only pass fatwas on ourselves.

On all religious issues, I have never bothered to consult the, ``ulema.`` Considering myself an, ``ulema,`` and Islam an ulema-less religion, I just consult the Quran myself. It is quite easy to read and understand, and was written for the common man.

As for women, I look at the lives of Khadija, Ayesha etc. for practical examples (as well as Ayat in the Quran for theoretical examples). The first was a widowed CEO of her own multinational trading company, who liked one of her salesman employees and proposed to him. The second was a very confident, aggresive, scholarly lady, who spoke her mind to everyone, including to the Prophet.

Now, based on all of this, could you tell me exactly where I fit into the hierarachy/chart of Muslims that you described. I am asking this seriously.

Also, could you tell me, exactly why someone would have a right to put me in that hierarchy to begin with? How can they be sure they are better Muslims than I am, and thus have that authority? And could you tell, how the Hadith can be proven to be 100% unchanged and authentic?

Please explain the above, without using dreams and things of that sort as an argument. Islam is too practical and too scientific a religion, to be mixed up with fantasy.

jaishemuhammad #86: ``I will not lie to please Shias (jews). Allah`s word is final. Learn more about shias (jews). See the proof. `

http://kafir.8m.net/ ``

I am not a Shia. But I must say your arguments are all nonsense. It`s people like you who give Islam a bad name. You are a misguided soul. May Allah show you the straight path.

harimau #85: ``What happened to the Hindus of Pakistan, the largest group amongst minorities? I suppose they are wandering the desert in Balochistan.``

To tell you the truth, I don`t really know. Nearly all the Hindus live in Sind, I believe. I have never lived in the areas they live in. You would have to ask someone from Sind. I have interacted with, and am friends with, a lot of Christians and a few Parsis (and Ahmedis, if you count them as minorities). I had only met two Hindus in my whole life, before moving to the USA.

Romair
Islam is a complete code of life. No pick and choose like Hindu kafirs. Islam recognizes no boundaries. Those false boundaries are for kafirs. The nation of Islam is one. Shia (jews) can never be Muslim`s friends. Kafirs can not be allowed to hold Muslims hostatge in the conquered lands of Islam.

I will not lie to please Shias (jews). Allah`s word is final. Learn more about shias (jews). See the proof.

http://kafir.8m.net/

Yasser:

The more I read your article, the more convinced I am on the following:

1. Articles such as these are excellent for the consumption of Pakistanis, who get into debates and discussions face to face with Indians and others on an informal basis e.g. on college campuses. When it is face to face, Indians usually are receptive and understanding of their own weaknesses. Also, they are much more polite and humble, perhaps drawing their code of ethic from their religion.

2. In a virtual environment such as this interactive board, it is very difficult to engage Indians in a value added debate, as most of them are here to pass time and vent out their anger against Pakistanis on an unknown account (Kashmir seems to me as being the only one). I have a weird feeling that most of them are students or those having lot of free time to post messages after messages that only project hate and flare tempers.

3. Arguments can be used to project Pakistan on media. How can that be done is a question left for strategists. This task is going to be hard though given the totally unnecessary protest rallies and burning of flags by our Mullas, who lack wisdom for tackling enemies in the arena of diplomacy and media, where the wars are being fought and won these days.

Thank you once again for your excellent article.

Dear Harimau,

Many Hindu (and Buddhist) minorities in the Vedic Republic of Pakistan are actually disguised as high-caste Arabs & Americans, and are currently busy in Gilgit / Baltistan areas.

Baluchistan has been set aside for the time being.

sincerely,

Veeresh

when questioning pakistan`s ideology, pakistanis would say `how can one question one`s existence?` as a way to scrape any reason question the basis for a country.

but really, there`s no reason to have ANY ideology. the only ideology should be to give a better life to a people- and just as a people. Qaid-e-Azam, Gandhi, Nehru, and the rest of the leaders played their roles- we don`t have the onus to defend or perpetuate their visions. They had their points but what of it? Their only point we need is that of tolerance for each other. Everything else is mere triviality.

Ref Romair #78

[Certain minority communities have done very well. Parsis are probably the most successful group in Pakistan - more successful than even Muslim majorities. Ahmadis probably have the highest literacy rate. Christians have done well in places like the military. And Convent and Christian schools are the elite schools in Pakistan.]

What happened to the Hindus of Pakistan, the largest group amongst minorities? I suppose they are wandering the desert in Balochistan.

Hello Umer, here is some more to turn you green wrt faloodas & UK laws:-

a) The bestest faloodas were, for some reason, those with a mixture of green (khus), white (milk badaam) and orange (saffron). This time around, there was a version with Blue Curacao added. This is a True Fact.

b) In UK, people of all three genders can have sex with their windows open even if these windows are on to streets or for basements . . . but they cannot have sex in public places. Ponds where ducks swim are not public places. Eating ducks in public places is illegal. Eating everything else in public places is legal, as long as you do not spi it out. True Fact.

+++

Indian Geography 101. Kerala is a coastal State in India. It has amazingly lovely waterways, great Ceylonese Parathas at Jose Junction, as well as strong matriarchal society fundamentals across religions. As on date, it also has 395 applications from Pakistanis seeking refugee status pending with the Indian Central Government. The guards in the Cochin Jail can only speak Hindi. (The guards in the Delhi Jail can only speak Tamil). True Fact.

To Romair bhai
As to your general question the Muslim world is split generally into a number of sects the main, in our time, being Sunni (i.e. those on the aqida of Imam Ash`ari and Imam Maturidi AND who follow one of the 4 madhhabs of Sunni fiqh (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, Hanbali) --including the Sufi tariqats within the Sunnis; the Shias (who are divided in subsects: Ithna Isharis[`Rafidis---but see quote below], Zaydis, Ismailis) and the Wahabis/Wahabi-influenced groups (eg some Deobandis, Ahle Hadis) and other ghair-muqallids (those who do not follow a single school of thought). About 90% of the Muslims by the above definition are Sunnis.


regarding ``Rafidis``


The following is quoted from Shaykh Gibril Haddad (a Sunni Shaykh from Lebanon who converted to Islam and is also a Sufi):

``
The Ithna `Ashari (literally, ``Twelvers``) are the largest group of the Shi`a and are also called Imamis after their doctrine that their twelve Imams are immune from sin (ma`sum). The Shi`a are also known as Rawafid, or Rafidis, or Rafida, although strictly speaking the Rawafid are only one extreme group among them. However, if we should take Ruhullah Khomayni as an accurate representative of the Ithna `Asharis, it would seem that most of them today are actually Rafidis although they do not show it at all times, but Allah knows best.

Below is an answer from Imam Muhammad Ahmad Rida Khan Barelwi, given in his Fatawa al-Haramayn (Waqf Ikhlas offset reprint p. 10):


Question Three: What is the Status of the Rafadah?
Answer: The Rafidi, if he prefers Amir al-Mu`minin `Ali to the Two Shaykhs [Abu Bakr and `Umar] - Allah be well-pleased with all of them - is an innovator (mubtadi`) as stated in al-Khulasa, [al-Fatawa] al-Hindiyya and other books; but if he denies the validity of the Imamates of Abu Bakr and `Umar or the validity of the Imamate of one of the two, then the jurists (fuqaha`) declared him kafir while the theologians (mutakallimun) declared him an innovator - and the latter ruling is the more precautionary one. If he claims (1) to correct Allah Most High [i.e. in sending the Revelation to the Prophet rather than `Ali] or (2) that the existing Qur`an is defective or (3) that the Companions or anyone else altered it, or (4) that Amir al-Mu`minin [`Ali] or any other of the pure Imams is better than the Prophets in the sight of Allah - upon them all blessings and peace - as openly claimed by the Rafadah of our regions [India] and as stipulated in our time by their Mujtahid - he is definitely a kafir and the ruling that applies to him is that of apostates, as stated in al-Hindiyya quoting the Zahiriyya and in al-Hadiqa al-Nadiyya and others of the Fiqh books. We have enlarged upon this question in our epistle _al-Maqala al-Mufassira `an Ahkam al-Bid`a al-Mukaffira_. ``

(from his ``living islam`` website).

****

jaishemuhammad #75: I have heard and read a lot of BS in my life. But I have to say the article you have presented rates the highest on the BS meter.

As someone who has actually volunteered to risk his life for his country, i.e. me, let me ask you a question: Why is it that all these sectarian groups try to protect Islam (of their variety) by fighting each other? Has any of them actually fought, ``for`` Pakistan, as a whole. Where the hell are they, when Pakistan gets threatened by India?

Where are all the leaders of these parties, the Qazis and the Fazls and the Azam Tariqs and all else, when they are needed on the border? Anoyne can go and shoot an innocent doctor at an intersection, how many of them are willing to stand in front of an Indian tank?

The current Cheif of the PAF is a Shia. He is responsible for protecting the whole airspace of Pakistan, including nuclear installations, homes, schools and all the Sunnis and Shias etc. He did quite a good job, when the Indians recently piled up the biggest force since WWII on any one border. If it wasn`t for him, the Sunnis, Shias and whomever else would be rubble.

How many Sunni countries came to Pakistan` aid when India was threatening it? Not one Shia country, but not one Sunni country either.

I have been saying for a long time, that this whole concept of Ummah, in the present day world, is a pipedream - I wish it weren`t, but it is. No country, Muslim or otherwise, is going to come to Pakistan`s aid. I think Pakistan, at a national level, needs to stop coming to their aid either, until they get their priorities straight -Shia or Sunni or Christian or Jewish or of any other faith.

#75 by jaishemuhammad on January 31, 2003 7:18pm PT
//....Well said brother Naqshbandi.....Beaware of the shia learn their religion like u learn the religion of the kafireen...//

(Sunni)Muslims are openly threatening other(Shia) muslims. Forget about tolerance for other faiths - they can`t even tolerate people of their own faith.

Mr Hamdani - there goes your case for ``tolerance`` in Pakistan. Also the case for great Ummah.

Yasser, dear boy, your plea for greater tolerance has come too late for these Pakistanis affected by 55 years of Pakistani intolerance and 23 years of jihad. As usual, it is the poor, the undocumented, the illegals, who pay the price. The sons and daughters of generals have the visa officer in Islamabad granting them green cards under special category for foreign leaders and their families. As usual, the Pakistani Army has managed to stab the people once again in the back.

How many families in Pakistan will now lose their monthly remittance that was their sole source of support?

The sins of the fathers are supposed to be visited on the sons. The sins of Jinnah are indeed being visited on Pakistanis.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/31/canada.border.closing/index.html

Canada turns away Pakistanis fleeing United States
Crowding in advance of INS deadline forces policy change
Friday, January 31, 2003 Posted: 8:32 PM EST (0132 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Canada has begun sending back Pakistanis from the United States who arrive at border crossings seeking refuge.

The crackdown began Thursday, one day after CNN and the Washington Post reported hundreds of Pakistanis, many carrying all their belongings and leading small children, were walking in subfreezing temperatures across the U.S. border to ask for amnesty in Canada.

Men from Pakistan face a February 21 deadline to register with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service under a new program that tracks their whereabouts.

Many of the immigrants have visas or full residency in the United States, but they have been panicked by stories that Pakistanis who show up to comply with the new INS requirements have been detained for months on minor technical violations, then deported without their children.

At some border crossings, Canada had been accepting the Pakistani immigrants` asylum applications and letting them enter the country within hours. As of Thursday, though, all border crossing began sending them back to U.S. immigration authorities, said Rene Mercier of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

They are given appointments to return to Canada, where they can be considered for asylum, but U.S. immigration authorities can choose to detain or deport them if they find cause to do so.

Mercier said Canada`s policy calls for immigrants to be sent back with appointments to return when border crossings become overwhelmed by one group. The border crossing between Plattsburgh, New York, and Montreal, which had seen about 100 Pakistanis last year, has seen about 200 since January 1.

Ronald Blanchet, who runs that border crossing and implemented the crackdown Thursday, said he sent back 39 Pakistanis that day and another 33 Friday afternoon.

Salvation Army Capt. Dennis Cregan said his Plattsburgh office was packed with Pakistani families sleeping on the floor. He said he was asking agencies in nearby Vermont for help.

He said many of the Pakistanis said family members were detained and deported by U.S. immigration officials after being sent back from Canada. Those who did not have a family member detained planned to return to Canada for their appointments to apply for asylum.

``It`s very sad,`` Cregan said. ``They are all over the floor of my church. There are small children.``

In Buffalo, New York, an immigration rights group called Vive La Casa had been giving Pakistanis legal representation to help them cross over to Canada and sheltering hundreds as they awaited an opportunity to make their case. Thursday, that group announced: ``Immigration laws have been amended in Canada. Overcrowding has also forced us to change our housing policy. Refugees who travel to Vive should be prepared to find independent housing in hotels or hostels.``

The refugees began showing up just over a month ago, when Pakistan was added to the list of countries whose nationals must register with U.S. immigration authorities when they are in the United States.

PM #56: PM To The Rescue :-)

In this debate and competition on rights of minorities, I think your opinion holds a lot of weight, since you are the sole (or one of the only) Pak minority reps here. You can tilt the debate either way.

I have never been to India, but having read whatever I have read, I would say in the pre-BJP days the condition of minorities in India was better than that in Pakistan. Now in the BJP days on the Indian side, and Musharraf days on Pakistan side, the situation is better on Pakistan side than the Indian side.

There are two groups that Musharraf has done a hell of a lot for (at least in comparison to any other leader in my lifetime). One is women and the other is minorities. The ratio of women now in Pakistan`s elected assemblies at any level is higher than many, if not most, first world countries. In local assemblies, at least 33% of the seats are reserved for them. Infact, there are almost more seats than women candidates available. Musharraf had three female ministers and one minority minister, out of a total of around fourteen ministers.

Religious minorities in Pakistan are now more enfranchised than Muslim voters. They have reserved seats as well as can stand on open seats.

However, the condition in Pakistan for minorities is far from good. If I were a religious minority, on average, I would probably leave Pakistan, if I could. There are some discriminatory laws against them. And some laws that are not targeted towards them alone, like Blasphemy law, but are used against them a lot.

At the same time, there are some good things also. I cannot think of any time in my life, where Pakistani majorities have targeted minorities in mob street violence. The only violence has been through terrorist attacks and that to from foreign organizations like Al-Qaeeda. In my wildest dreams, I cannot imagine BJP type mob violence taking place in Pakistan.

Certain minority communities have done very well. Parsis are probably the most successful group in Pakistan - more successful than even Muslim majorities. Ahmadis probably have the highest literacy rate. Christians have done well in places like the military. And Convent and Christian schools are the elite schools in Pakistan.

The one place where I have seen the best conditions for minorities is the military. Pakistan military, contrary to the picture everyone paints, is actually more secular than the rest of the Pakistani society - at least what I remember. Rank is the only thing that counts. I simultaneously had a Christian, Parsi, and Ahmedi instructor and bosses and seniors. I didn`t even know for a year that the Ahmedi and Parsi guys were Ahmedi and Parsi. Nobody really cared.

However due to civilian politician`s influence, now religious minorities cannot become COAS - I don`t think the soldiers would care if a non-Muslim became the Chief. After all, there are thousands of soldiers being commanded by Christians and Parsi officers etc. right now. Religious minorities do go to the rank of General however.

In the 65 war, there were six Christian fighter pilots in the PAF. Five of them recieved the Sitar-e-Jurat medal. That is amazingly high ratio. The most highly decorated war hero in the PAF ever, is a Christian (died in 71).

However, the Pakistani society leaves a lot to be desired for minorities. I don`t think this has anything to do with Islam. It has more to do with economics. I have always felt that conditions of minorities in any country is not tied to secularism. After all, India is technically secular, at the moment. It is related more to respect for human rights, which really has nothing to do with secularism or religionism.

I think Pakistanis and Indians can argue over which country treats its minorities worse. I don`t think they can argue over which country treats them well. Neither treats them well.

#69 by Naqshbandi on January 31, 2003 5:57pm PT
//...this revelation about the Iranian deal with India is bad news for Pakistan...the Rafidis have always stabbed Muslims in the back ..//

Sadly - that is not the only bad news for Pakistan.

But don`t blame the Rafidi` for that - who would want to associate with a terrorist-infested rat-hole?

From the article:

{By no means are the doors of History closed to further redrawing of borders whether here in South Asia or in the world. All effective cases for political autonomy should be entertained.}

Along these lines, it is fascinating to observe how frequently those advocating the further division and subdivision of India into new nations, happen to be Pakistanis. They are motivated, of course, by a purely disinterested desire to spread sweetnes and light. Perhaps they could lead by example, and show other `South Asians` the true benefits of redrawing of national boundaries, by starting at home. Free nations of Baluchistan and Sind might be a good place to begin.

Naqshbandi # 69

Well said brother Naqshbandi. These descendents of Jews will stab Muslims before other kafirs can. Muslims learn about them.

http://www.islamzine.com/ideologies/sects/shias/she3aa.html

Shia`s

Aboo Ibraheem
Salam Aleukum to the Muslimeen

Beaware of the shia learn their religion like u learn the religion of the kafireen .

Of all the many characteristics whereby the Shi`a group differ from the Sunnites, what makes the Shiites worst is the fact that they bear the creed of Hurufi. Those who are excessive in the creed of Rafidi become disbelievers. Rafidis were few and were about to perish, when Shah Ismail, one of them, established a state; so they increased in number. The creed infiltrated into our country, too; almost all the Darwish convents came into contact with it, and many innocent people caught this contagion and tumbled down into eternal death. May Allahu ta`ala not let us dissent from the right, pure belief of the Ahl as- Sunnat. May He protect us against the perils called Shiism, which instigate faction among Muslims! Amin. It is written on the initial pages of Tuhfa-i ithna `ashariyya: The founder of Shiism was a Jew from Yaman, namely, Abdullah bin Saba, who was exiled to Madayin by Hadrat Ali because he called him a god. [It is written in Munjid that he was a Jew who came from Egypt to Medina in 34 A.H. (657) and became a Muslim.] This group of heresy took a different shape in every century, was put into a definite shape during the time of Shah Ismail, and books were written. Shiism was established during the time of Hadrat Ali. Its spreading among people began afterwards. In the sixtieth year of the Hegira, the Kisaniyya sect, in the sixty-sixth year the Mukhtariyya sect, and in the hundred and ninth year the Hishamiyya sect appeared, yet they could not catch on and perished. The Zaydiyya sect, which has been distracting Muslims from the right way for centuries, appeared in the hundred and twelfth year, and all the other sects appeared later. We may say briefly that all sects of bidat which have been instigating faction among Muslims appeared after the deaths of all the Sahaba. The beliefs of all the Shia sects come together in three groups:


1) Tafdiliyya: they say that Hadrat Ali is the highest of the Sahaba.

2) Sabbiyya: they say that the Sahaba, with a few exceptions, became cruel disbelievers. They speak ill of them.

3) Ghulat-i Shia: they say that Hadrat Ali is a god. So do the groups of Sabaiyya and Nusayriyya. They do not practice any worshipping.


These people have always gathered around one of the grandsons of Hadrad Ali and Hadrat Abbas and differed into various sects. When Imam-i Zaynalabidin passed away most of them came together around his son Zayd and while enroute to fight Yusuf-i Saqafi, who had been assigned the governor of Iraq by the Amawi (Umayyad) ruler Hisham bin Abdulmalik, some of them dissented from Zayd. Zayd called them Rafidi. But they named themselves Imamiyya. Those who remained with Zayd were called Zaydi. Both groups said, ``After Rasulullah, the caliphate belongs to the twelve imams.``

The Twelve imams are Ali bin Abi Talib, Hasan, Husain, Zaynalabidin, Muhammad Baqir, Jafar-i- Sadiq, Musa Kazim, Ali Rida, Muhammad Jawad Taqiy, Ali Naqiy, Hasan Askari Zakiy and Muhammad Mahdi. Attaching themselves to various sons of these twelve imams, they parted into different groups. Today the majority of them are Imamiyya and hold the first of the three main kinds of creed, yet there have been changes in their beliefs over the course of time. They now call themselves Jafari. There is lengthy information about the Jafaris in the entry Jafari Sadiq, the hundred and eighty-third entry of the word list at the end of the Turkish origin of the book.]

Naqshbandi #69: ``After all, the Rafidis have always stabbed Muslims in the back when it comes to the crunch``

The more I read your replies, the more complex Islam starts to become for me. Could you explain, once and for all people, exactly how you divide the various sects/groups etc. in Islam. Where exactly does a Rafidi fit it? Shias Sunnis, I know about. Now where exactly does everyone else fit in, and what does one gain from having so many different division?

Ref PM #55

[Good stuff, Yasser!
Liked this very much:
``What makes the imagined geographical unity of South Asian subcontinent more special than the other two? What makes it the right size anyway? By no means are the doors of History closed to further redrawing of borders whether here in South Asia or in the world. All effective cases for political autonomy should be entertained. The unity of the world lies in constant decentralization of authority, till effective governance and equality is finally achieved, and true meaning of liberty is realized.``]

I finally understand what is causing Pakistanis periodic bouts of acute verbal diarrhea when it comes to the political unity of India.

It is that while Muslims are waxing rhapsodic about The Greater Ummah, the only real unity so far has been amongst Hindus scattered across the Indian subcontinent. This is why these folks are imagining separatist movements in Tamil Nadu, Hyderabad, Goa, etc.

What these folks fail to understand is (and this includes Sohail Rabbani who long ago published an article about the desirability of the break-up of India into several countries and that normally sober -- despite the Macallen -- gentleman hamidm) that Hinduism DOES knit the people of India together. Otherwise, you wouldn`t see the poorest UP bhaiyya making a trip all the way to Rameswaram (nope, he is NOT visiting the birthplace of the current President of India in an acute attack of patriotic fervour) nor would you see Maharashtrians, Kannadigas, Telugus and Tamils going all the way to Benares, Gaya and Prayag to perform shraddha ceremonies for their ancestors. You wouldn`t see pilgrims from across the country in places as far removed as Vaishnodevi in Kashmir, Nasik in Maharashtra, Puri in Orissa, Guruvayoor in Kerala, Tirupathi in Andhra, Udipi in Karnataka or Sri Rangam in Tamil Nadu besides places like Mathura, Dwaraka, Hardwar, Ujjain, Kalighat and a thousand other villages, towns and cities. Nor would the world have witnessed the greatest gathering of pilgrims in its history at one place during the last Kumbha Mela. This is the land across which Rama walked, where Krishna played and where the Hindu legends were acted out. That resonates among all Hindus despite the veneer of modernity that they have acquired through Western education. That is why you see vehement opposition from all Indians to the idea of break-up of the country. They LIKE the idea of being able to go where they want to in India without having to have a passport and a visa. So please keep that advice to yourself about breaking up India and then over a period of centuries evolving into a borderless EEC type community. Here is a clue for the clueless Pakistanis: India is ALREADY the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual federal state that the EEC has been trying hard to become.

We Indians do not covet Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bali, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica , Seychelles, Fiji, parts of Manchester/Bradford/London/Toronto/Silicon Valley/New Jersey or any other place where Indians have settled in large numbers. That ought to explain to The Clueless why Nepal or Sri Lanka remains an independent country.

If this repeated suggestion for a break-up of India followed by an EEC type of arrangement including Pakistan and Bangladesh is an expression of a subliminal longing for a united India, nothing actually prevents you guys from petitioning the Indian Parliament for admission to the Republic of India. Since you already have a champion of such an idea in Lal Kishan Advani, it should be smooth sailing through the Parliament. You would then have a Karachi-born native as the Prime Minister of India and who knows, Pervez Musharraf might even become the Chief of the Army Staff, though he will find that his penchant for dictating to elected political leaders would get him cashiered at a moment`s notice.

[What makes the imagined geographical unity of South Asian subcontinent more special than the other two?]

That dear boy Yasser Latif Hamdani ought to look at an atlas carefully. Maybe he even needs to go back to Rutgers for a course in geology. The GEOGRAPHICAL unity is a fact of geology that cannot be wished away. He probably means the POLITICAL unity.

PS. Let me anticipate your next question. Is India then for Hindus only? No. Like the Parsis who, when they landed in Gujarat showed the local king that there is still room for sugar in a full glass of milk, all those who add sweetness to the Indian milieu are welcome. Those with hatred in their hearts and bitterness on their tongues need to seek ask where they got those traits.

this revelation about the Iranian deal with India is bad news for Pakistan...then again it doesn`t really suprise me that much. After all, the Rafidis have always stabbed Muslims in the back when it comes to the crunch....

Ref UmerMurtaza #49

[Harimau #38,

Ha ha. Gotta give it to you. I had that coming but you were being very predictable. I knew some Indian fella was going to do that. ]

Well, you must admit those clues at least got you thinking.

The fact is that Indian Criminal Procedure Code is modelled on British law. The Pakistan CrPC is the Indian CrPC with amendments as dictated by Islamists.

British law recognizes the supremacy of the Parliament and as there is no written Constitution, all laws passed by the Parliament are constitutional. Indian law provides for the review of acts of Parliament unless the parliament chooses to exclude a specific act from review by the Judiciary. Thus it is possible to challenge the tyranny of the majority (the illusory ``threat`` used by Jinnah to demand Pakistan) in the courts and receive justice. In fact, the Indian Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no power to overrule fundamental rights of citizens and so it is not possible, for instance, to declare Islam illegal.

Re the blasphemy situation in the UK: Britain evolved from being a country with no difference between the State and the Church (remember that the Queen is the head of the Anglican Church and one of her titles is `Defender of the Faith`) to one where the Church has been practically removed from having any influence on the affairs of the State. Pakistan has progressed in the opposite direction and that would explain the introduction of the blasphemy law in Pakistan.

Ref PM #55

[I wonder if the Jay`s and Sadna`s are half as vehemently opposed to the Quebecois` call for partition as they are of any suggestion of a subcontinental TNT. I suppose it just isn`t as fashionable to define nationhood in terms of basic beliefs and lifestyles as to demarcate boundaries by language!]

So when are you guys going to grant independence to Sindhu Desh? That would be boundary demarcation by language.

I remember you guys strafing the camel caravans from helicopters in Balochistan. So it wasn`t very fashionable to define nationhood in terms of basic beliefs and lifestyles in Pakistan either.

If East Bengal hadn`t been 1500 miles away, we wouldn`t have you or Romair singing the glories of self-determination.

PM #55

{Liked this very much:

``What makes the imagined geographical unity of South Asian subcontinent more special than the other two? What makes it the right size anyway? By no means are the doors of History closed to further redrawing of borders whether here in South Asia or in the world. All effective cases for political autonomy should be entertained. The unity of the world lies in constant decentralization of authority, till effective governance and equality is finally achieved, and true meaning of liberty is realized.``

Well said. I have never understood what makes SOME people so terrified of the idea of multi-nation theory and political autonomy. Could it be the awareness of innate insecurity in their nationalistic premise? ... I suppose it just isn`t as fashionable to define nationhood in terms of basic beliefs and lifestyles as to demarcate boundaries by language!}

Alright, what makes *any* territorial unit the right size to be a nation? Why not continue the process of subdivision indefinitely? Where does it stop? ``My village for its villagers?`` Or is it to be ``Every man/woman is an island?`` Provide a method, an unambiguously defined procedure, to determine what the `correct` political map of the world should be - and prove its correctness.

The same question can be asked about `basic beliefs and lifestyle`. In reality these are not monolithic and indivisible, no matter how insistently SOME systems of belief are presented as such by their proponents. Each belief system - religion - has perhaps as many shades as it has adherents. Even if you restrict yourself to named schools or sects, the number is very large and constantly increasing. Nor is there a sharp demarcation between supposedly different belief systems; particularly in the Indian subcontinent.

So in particular one might ask why the claims of subcontinental Islam to its own nation should supersede the rights of Shias, Sunnis, etc to form their own nation, and so on; Shias in turn could be further subdivided, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

So exactly where does one draw sharp new boundaries, territorial or societal, and why?

Further, why is an individual`s belief system (real or nominal) to take precedence over all other personal attributes in determining civic identity or `nationality`? What if different people assign different weights to different attributes - for instance, one wants to associate with others who share the same language, another with coreligionists (as he sees them), a third with those who share both language and religion, and a fourth simply wants to be left alone in peace and would prefer current political boundaries to remain? What about those who`d rather be small fish in an ocean than big fish in a small pond? What about nonconformists who don`t want to be confined to a small country whose discourse is dominated by linguistic chauvinists who speak the same language as they do, or by religious fanatics whose religion they nominally share? Whose desires *ought* to take precedence, and why?

The case when the belief system selected as the primary basis of nationhood is a religion (and thus basically a matter of faith, not susceptible to reason) is especially problematic. It is difficult to prevent a nation defined in such terms from regressing into outright theocracy. It also preempts the personal choices of all future citizens in the matter of religious faith (or indifference to religion, or outright rejection of religion), a domain which is basically private and should be purely a matter of personal choice. Why is this considered acceptable?

Do votaries of the `true meaning of liberty` have any sensible and practical answers?

http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/index.html

28 Pakistanis caught by Italian police. Charged with linkage to Al-Queida.

The thing that caught my eye was as usual the following sad commentary:

That all were innocent as per Pakistan foreign ministry and, get this,
they mention they were trapped because the lodging they stayed belonged to the (italian) mafia. Comme on...

By the way, the police found explosives, fuse laced with chemicals, newspaper clippings from Pakistani newspapers, islamic ``jehadi`` teachings, etc besides, maps of naples with locations of bases, harbors, embassy location, etc.....

Why would the mafia cause physical harm to their own country? what will they do with islamic literature?

It is amazing to see the official pakistani institution such as the pakistani foreign office supporting all these people. unless, one assumes, that
the foreign office knew about it, which is even more scarry because it would mean al-queida infiltration via mma influence in foreign ministry and isi encouragement.

it won`t be surprising for bush to include pakistan in the axis of evil pretty soon because a lot of these intended targets were us interests.

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...ouch, this is going to rattle some jehadi beards in pakistan BIG time...hahahahah...eat your heart out hamdani...


from Jane`s (not some Indian publication):

{Strategic shift in south Asia

In an effort to garner international support for their side of the endless Kashmir dispute, both India and Pakistan have been doing their best to attract the friendship of the United States since the beginning of the `war on terrorism`. The US is seen as the only third party that could intervene to solve the Kashmir dispute. While Pakistan holds US President George W Bush`s immediate attention, India seemed to be winning the long-term battle, at least until now. We reveal what is going on.

India surprised both Pakistan and the US in the signing of its recent accord with Iran. This strategic agreement, which will allow India the use of Iranian military bases in the event of any outbreak of tensions with Pakistan, affects the future of the sub-continent.

The revelation by India of the pact not only heightens tension in south Asia, but also leaves the US with a dilemma: how to react to India`s alliance with Iran, which remains part of the US `axis of evil`.

The pact was signed a week before the visit of Iran`s President, Mahammad Khatami, to India to join the celebrations for India`s national day on 26 January. Signed in Tehran by the Indian naval chief and the Iranian minister of defence, the pact marks a complete turnaround by Iran, which used to be a close ally of Pakistan. How the pact fits in with India`s defence relationship with Israel is unclear, but the threat this can pose to Pakistan is all too real.

Iran benefits by gaining access to Indian military expertise, which will include upgrades of its fighters, as well as new tanks and artillery. India will also help train the Iranian army and navy. India will be allowed to deploy troops and equipment in Iran during a crisis with Pakistan and gain access to Iranian ports.

It looks very much like an encirclement of Pakistan by India. The pressure on Pakistan`s defences would be almost overwhelming. We expect Pakistan to respond. Much will depend on the reaction of the Bush administration. }

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Urstruly sahib
``Monkeys`` have now got access to Iranian military bases in case of outbreak of tensions. Read and simmer....
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr030129_1_n.shtml

nasah # 58, # 59

That is the spirit we will need to promote tolerance.

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well said Urstruly bhai :-)

Dasht tau dasht hai daryaa bhi na choRay hum nay
Bahr e zulmat mein dhowRaa diye ghoRay hum nay...

Iqbal (I hope I have quoted him correctly)

:-)

Peace is the issue in the Subcontinent. The question is HOW? While the BJP fascists are in power--no chance. WE have to wait for Congress to win again I reckon...

Or wait till Imam Mahdi alayhisalam blesses the world with their presence...

As long as Hindus keep on dreaming about a greater monkey kingdom spanning from Afghanistan to Nepal there will not be peace and prosperity in the region. Not only they themselves keep on dying with hunger, disease, aids and syphilis but they will keep on making the lives of millions other misearble as well. Mahabharat was only possible twice in history - once under Ashok and second time under Aurangzeb Alamgir (may God bless his soul) - and both times Hindus were put in the right place. Hindus themselves could never do it - even Krishan couldn`t go beyond Gordaspur.

Hamdani my lad -- if u want to move -- ``Towards Greater Tolerance`` -- MINIMIZE the Rancorous Statistics -- 5 million vs 3 million -- that is again argumentative and confrontational --

accept that all three -- the Muslims the Hindus and the Sikhs were equally NAKED in the Hammam of subcontinental BARBARISM --

the ONLY civilized communities being the Christians and the Parsis

no use arguing about the `degree of barbarism` --

subcontinental passive/aggressive are -- even today -- fully capable of burst of barbaric behavior -- in between bowing hugging and touching feet --

Tolerance begins NOT with `accounting` but `discounting` -- what happened -- in the moment of `temporary` insanity -- happened --

tell me what -- u`ve got for the bleak FUTURE -- of Indo-Pak friendship and reconciliation -- any fresh ideas -- or the same old RUT...

Hamdani my lad -- if u want to move -- ``Towards Greater Tolerance`` -- MINIMIZE the Rancorous Statistics -- 5 million vs 3 million -- that is again argumentative and confrontational --

accept that all three -- the Muslims the Hindus and the Sikhs were equally NAKED in the Hammam of subcontinental BARBARISM --

the ONLY civilized communities being the Christians and the Parsis

no use arguing about the `degree of barbarism` --

subcontinental passive/aggressive are -- even today -- fully capable of burst of barbaric behavior -- in between bowing hugging and touching feet --

Tolerance begins NOT with `accounting` but `discounting` -- what happened -- in the moment of `temporary` insanity -- happened --

tell me what -- u`ve got for the bleak FUTURE -- of Indo-Pak friendship and reconciliation -- any fresh ideas -- or the same old RUT...

re #33, Yasser:
``Please show me where I say that Minorities are happy in Pakistan... but that doesn`t suggest that they are happy in Pakistan``
Gee, no one told poor ol me I was miserable all this time! Or any of my many Christian friends who`ve chosen to live in the land of the not-so-pure. How miserable is THAT!!
But seriously, I think what Yasser tries to drive home is that while institutional discrimination exists against religious minorities in Pakistan, the reality `on the ground` is different. While the ranks of religious bigots have been swelling at an alarming rate over the past two decades, IMO such folks still constitute a small minority of Pakistani Muslims.
And for the bloke who suggested that Pak Religious Minorities are relegated to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, well, that`s quite untrue. Yes, the bulk of Pakistani Christians belong to the `sweeper class`. However, such has been their lot in life since before they converted to Christianity. Neither can it be claimed that Christians and Hindus are exclusive to such bottom-rung occupations.
And why are Pakistani Hindus not visible on the chowk? Well, statistics might provide a clue... Hindus form 2% of the population. Those with money are either ofthe wadera class in Sindh (read `paDha likhay jahil` --like most of this class) or urban businessfolks, the type you`d least expect to see on a forum such as this.
And just FYI, there WAS a Pakistani Hinud (patriotic one at that!) active here up to a year or so ago.

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Nicely argued, though grammatically wanting. Welcome back.

EU is the right way to go for South Asia. All regions that want independence should be allowed to have it, specially since that was the battle cry of Indians and Pakistanis themselves, under British. Once they have political independence, they should come together under an economic union, with free trade, no visas, free movement of people and money.

I will take a guess that 50% of Pakistanis and probably 90% of Indians have never even visited Kashmir. Less than 10% of Pakistan`s population is Kashmiri and maybe around 1% of Indian population is Kashmiri. Yet they both seem so interested in it. It is all part of a misplaced ego and the desire of one man to rule another.

Let the Kashmiris decide their fate, and live on their own. Let anyone else do that, as well. After all, the biggest desire of an Indian or Pakistani is to migrate to the USA, not to Kashmir.

I don`t think there can be any peace in South Asia, until all political entities are allowed their breathing space. One of the biggest mistakes of the British was the unification of the whole area of South Asia, against the wishes of some of its local population. All South Asian citizens are now paying the price for it.

If there is one historical consistency in South Asia, it is that any group that has wanted freedom has eventually gotten it - be they Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis. Applying the same rule to other areas like Kashmir, what is the point of killing so many of them (and then using their deaths as a propoganda tool), why not just ask them what they want?

Kashmir`s real rulers are its people. If the people of Kashmir are in favor of opting for Pakistan, no power on earth can stop them from doing so. They should feel free to decide for themselves.

As far as I am concerned.

Good stuff, Yasser!
Liked this very much:
``What makes the imagined geographical unity of South Asian subcontinent more special than the other two? What makes it the right size anyway? By no means are the doors of History closed to further redrawing of borders whether here in South Asia or in the world. All effective cases for political autonomy should be entertained. The unity of the world lies in constant decentralization of authority, till effective governance and equality is finally achieved, and true meaning of liberty is realized.``

Well said. I have never understood what makes SOME people so terrified of the idea of multi-nation theory and political autonomy. Could it be the awareness of innate insecurity in their nationalistic premise? I wonder if the Jay`s and Sadna`s are half as vehemently opposed to the Quebecois` call for partition as they are of any suggestion of a subcontinental TNT. I suppose it just isn`t as fashionable to define nationhood in terms of basic beliefs and lifestyles as to demarcate boundaries by language!

Good to see you back! You know my email addy. WRITE!

Yasser ne farmaya:
{And yet the exchange of populations happened and then came the terrible communal holocaust on both sides. Some 5.5 Million Muslims were ethnically cleansed from East Punjab and areas neighboring Pakistan, and some 3.5 million Hindus from West Punjab and Sindh then packed up and left for India....}

I agree with both dullabhatti, and Manjit on this issue. Regardless of whether ethnic cleansing means killing or not (and believe me, beta, in this case it most certainly did) Yasser, you need to check yourself, not books or figures on what you`ve said here. Have you read Urvashi Butalia`s `The Other Side of Silence`? Read it...it may increase your knowledge. Anyway, what you seem to be implying here (intended or not) is that Muslims were forced out of East Punjab, whereas Hindus just packed up and left. Could there be any greater fiction than this? And please let us not forget our Sikh brothers and sisters. What happened in Punjab in terms of `ethnic cleansing` includes killing on both sides and forcible removals of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs (which you fail to mention) who did NOT just pack up their bags and leave...so many of them didn`t even get to do that. Your phrases reek of bias, intentional or not, and they insult the memories of those who know better. Forget about checking figures Yasser, just check yourself!
ana

Umer:

Indian Law is based on Common Law as well as legislative action. Common Law is derived from British times and there do exist soome similarities in India and England. I assume it is the same for Pakistan.

Dullah Bhatti:

LOL!!! I didn`t notice that the first time around. I will ask my father how many coolies they hired when they were packing up and leaving with the clothes on their backs.

Harimau #38,

Ha ha. Gotta give it to you. I had that coming but you were being very predictable. I knew some Indian fella was going to do that.

But you know what I mean. And PS. Any opinions on the fact why Christianity should be the only religion in UK where one can do you in for blasphemy (no referance to Pakistan please)? I believe Hindus, Sikhs, Jains etc etc are classified as races as opposed to religion whereas Islam and Judaism (I think - not sure) are classified as religions.

Veeresh, Please No. Now`s really not the time to make me jealous.

Umer M

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YLH complains about other`s comrehension and answers to Manjit:

``Manjit...

I think you are making the same mistake...

Ethnic cleansing DOES not mean KILLING (though Even fridaytimes miscontrued my article as such)..

The figures are very clear... 5.5 Million Muslims moved from East Punjab and neighboring areas of India to Pakistan at the time of Partition... you can check the reports of the time, as well the The Times London of those dates for the facts....
``

I don`t think Manjit was talking about authencity of numbers but the some catchy phrases you attached to them. Let me read it back to you:

````Some 5.5 Million Muslims were ethnically cleansed from East Punjab and areas neighboring Pakistan, and some 3.5 million Hindus from West Punjab and Sindh then packed up and left for India.``

That is the level of tolerance and neutrality you have on the issue. Muslims were brutally and forceably ethnically cleansed but Hindu then all of a sudden packed their stuff and moved quietly. Bravo!

Ref YLH2 #34

[Sri Prikasa, India`s first High Commissioner to Pakistan, spelt his name Sri Prikasa... ]

Since Mr Sri Prakasa was from a state neighboring my own, may I point out that that is how his name is spelt?

All of you Northies: just remember that there is a sound in between `sh` and `s` in Sanskrit. You guys choose to spell it `sh` and the South Indians prefer to spell it `s`.

This is a guy who defends pakistani treatment of minorities but who gets cold feet when asked to present a SINGLE HINDU Pakistani interactor on Chowk. Then suddenly every interlocutor belongs to the RSS! Talk about getting caught with your pants down.

If Pakistani minorities are doing so well, why can`t you produce a single hindu from your well-educated and influential circle? You don`t even have a friend`s friend`s friend who is a hindu? Huh? Where are all these influential hindus who are doing so well?

And you have the cheek to lecture us on minority rights in Pakistan? A few hundred thousand cowering hindus in Sindh are all that is left from the historic and ancient hindu/buddhist civilization of N-W India, and without shame or reflection, you dare to compliment yourself on the treatment of minorities in Pakistan.

What is next? Joerg Haider explaining that the 500 jews left in Vienna reflect Austrian broad mindedness? That is exactly the level and quality of your article and your self-serving sophsitry.

Ref veeresh #27

[The only solace I find lately is from some ground-level discussions in a semi-rural train earlier this morning . . . ``when they get beaten by the Americans then they will realise who their friends were all these decades``.]

Let me give them a clue.

It is not the Chinese.

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``Flying falooda``. That is a good one. Thank you Umer.

The best falooda in Bombay was made and sold by this chotte mian guy in the space between the mosque and National Restaurant outside Bandra (West) Station, to the right as you exit. Symbolic, the co-existence of saag-mutton & bright coloured add-ons to the falooda.

Last week I went there to have falooda, and found about ten ``ye olde genuine bade miya falooda`` carts.

That must have been a fly by wire flying falooda?

+++

Yasser, would you consider a career in humour?

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YLH2 #33
Before you start teaching English comprehension, tell us how reliable is this great reference. I have already shown you discrepancy in that reference.
How Bakim Chaterjee could support the notion coined in 1923 by Savarkar?
Before applying your mind, you just ran and quoted Kushwant Singh. Can this error indicate that Kushwant Singh is not infallible? And perhpas your research is incomplete.

For your entertainment, I will quote you something interesting from Wolpert in a short while. Stay tuned.

Ref UmerMurtaza #25

[On another note, are you studying law? I only ask this because I just wanted to ask how close British and Pakistani law is.]

Let me give you a clue.

In Britain women are not jailed as adultresses when they file a complaint of rape.

Let me give you another clue.

In Britain, the blasphemy law has not been used in over 100 years.

Ahmadzai:

.``In order to let Pakistanis viewpoint, as the one summarised above in your article, known to the world, we will have to do a diplomatic and publicity campaign on both a strategic and tactical basis asap. ``

As long as you chaps continue to believe that the only thing wrong with the perception of Pakistan is ineffective Public Realtions, then we really have nothing to worry about. The world is not as foolish as you would like to believe.

All that you said about India is true. I will go further and say this...the average Pakistani outside of NWFP may well be as secular in outlook as the average Indian. Yet, why are we considered secular in comparison to you? Because you name your country the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and we do not call it the Hindutva Ganatantra of Bharat. It is not the people but the ideology of the state that matters. YLH may well be right about Jinnah`s personal outlook, but if Pakistan was meant to be secular, that secularism died the day the Objectives Resolution was passed under Liaquat Ali Khan.

With regards to deiffering perceptions of India and Pakistan, that situation exists only because the Pakistani government willingly surrendered it`s sovereignity, not to the Americans as you may like to believe, but to non-state actors. In India, foerign policy is based on the views of a strategic elite whereas governments fall on the price of onions. In Pakistan, foreign policy is rocked by compulsions of the street and jehadic imperatives.

This article is irrelevant, not because it is lacking in fact, but because it completely ignores the ground reality of today. The influence of non-state actors, if not in day to day decision making, is at least a major factor in Indo-Pak relations.

Dear YLH thnx for writing a piece for those fellow chowk members who always ready to bark on Pakistan. This barking dog seldom bite is becoming the trade mark of BJP Govt and many followers following that trend....... last week it was Defence Minister,George, and if i am not wrong the next week is for Mr Advani to give an empty threat to Pakistan,and time to time Mr Modi also joins the ranks. and where is Mr Vajpayee ? is he still PM? Surprisingly BJP`s head made some good comments about Pakistan and India relations which give us a hope. Otherwise whole lot of politicians try their best to create all sorts of obsession against very small country in comparison.

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Dear Yasser,

Welcome back, buddy boy. You were missed. Enjoyed the read but personally speaking, apart from trying to understand the history of the process, I couldn`t give a flying falooda about what anyone thinks about Pakistan. It exists and that`s the bottom line. I know what you`re thinking and before you say anything...I agree with you

On another note, are you studying law? I only ask this because I just wanted to ask how close British and Pakistani law is.

Thanks,
Umer M.

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OK Yasser, my tu-pence worth and my question for you as well as the other Indians/Pakistanis on this board who would try to please give me a rational answer . . . why does any Indo-Pak discussion have to evolve into a Hindu-Muslim scenario?

````Pakistan and India were created through a mutually agreed partition and were to part as friends and brothers. That has not happened but its time we buried the hatchet and came to terms with each other. ````

Agreed. Where does religion come into this?

The only solace I find lately is from some ground-level discussions in a semi-rural train earlier this morning . . . ``when they get beaten by the Americans then they will realise who their friends were all these decades``.

Oh well . . .

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Layman,

1) Read the whole thing before you let your knee jerk responses take over.

2) Ethnic Cleansing is simply driving an ethnic group out of a place.... if you thought ethnic cleansing meant `killing` then you need to learn more...
though in another version even the Fridaytimes wallah substituted killing for ethnic cleansing...


Manjit...

I think you are making the same mistake...

Ethnic cleansing DOES not mean KILLING (though Even fridaytimes miscontrued my article as such)..

The figures are very clear... 5.5 Million Muslims moved from East Punjab and neighboring areas of India to Pakistan at the time of Partition... you can check the reports of the time, as well the The Times London of those dates for the facts....

The figures are also quoted in K B Sayeed`s `Formative Phase`.




Friend,

As always you have shown us that `reading comprehension` or command of English language is just not your cup of tea.

1) The research was not mine but one of your greatest countrymen: Khushwant Singh

2) It said: ``The first man to talk of Hindus and Muslims as separate nations was V.D. Savarkar who coined the word ‘Hindutva’ in a book with the same title in 1923.``

Source is given above...


Ladies and Gentlemen

I thought I had proved my point but no... it has been amply and more conclusively proved by the loads of garbage that has been spewed by people like P-Mishra, Harimau, Jay, arjunm and others on this board.

Does it really matter if the sources I quoted were Indian?
Oh no... because after all to all of them this is just Pakistani Propaganda...
I am sure P-Mishra had some sort of satisfaction from his sadly perverse comparison between Jinnah and Modi... I am sure such a comparison has only one parallel in history... Some Gandhi-hater comparing Gandhi to Hitler... but then that is another story...


THE NEW DIVINE REVELATION:

Did you know that Khushwant Singh is a Pakistani agent.... thankyou P-Mishra and company for enlightening us ... you are definitely our Gabriels...

MSouza...

Please show me where I say that Minorities are happy in Pakistan... I did say that they are not anymore worse off than they are in India... but that doesn`t suggest that they are happy in Pakistan.



Feroze K,

Thanks for that reply... I think your response sums it up ...

Alephnull,

Sri Prikasa, India`s first High Commissioner to Pakistan, spelt his name Sri Prikasa...

Ofcourse you have to read some more to know that don`t you :)

-YLH

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like roaches, they come crawling from all directions. never in my visits to the land of my forefathers have i tasted anything like the venom secreted by these vermins on chowk. our faith however counsels tolerance. ylh, you can do your bit by adding following disclosure to your columns:

warning: may cause diarrhea, heartburn and high-blood pressure to members of brown shirt brigade circa 2003

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heh, heh, what a blast ! Welcome back, ylh !

I see you are still trying to dissociate Jinnah from his greatest follower Modi of Gujarat. I am sorry, facts are facts, from Jinnah`s Direct Action Day to Modi`s Gaurav Yatra there is a straight and direct line. They are the one and same. It is the use of naked and unbridled violence against simple folk to achieve power. Majority vs Minority, what kind of nonsensical sophistry is that? Minorities have the right to murder their neighbors but majorities dont? Huh?

As for pakistani minorities, where are they? Yes, I know there are a few christians and even fewer hindus in remote place where they keep their mouths shut. I publically challenge you to produce a single pakistani hindu interactor on Chowk. Why is that important? Because this is the forum where the educated class is visible and asserts their rights.

I am pleased to see that there have been many, many indian muslim interactors. SO FIND ME A SINGLE PAKISTANI HINDU INTERACTOR ON CHOWK. Lets see if you can walk the walk !!

Dont take just my word for the Modi == Jinnah equation. Here is Ramchandra Gandhi`s analysis (Mahatmas descendant and well known writer and liberal thinker).

---- from the indian express ---------------------------------------------

Gandhi’s prophecy came true



Ramchandra Gandhi




Gandhi`s earliest dialogues, from the time he was student in London, were with Christian friends and missionaries who saw in his moral steadfastness and concern for the sufferings of others a ripeness for conversion to Christianity. These dialogues continued throughout Gandhi’s life, his argument against conversion to Christianity being that Christ’s life only inspired him to be a better Hindu, and not to cease to be one. The Christian missionary conviction was that there was no memorable example, outside Christianity, of a saint or sage taking a stand against his co-religionists and laying down his life for humanity. Surprise awaited that dogma.

Gandhi opposed many of his co-religionists in his refusal to endorse vengeful retaliation against Muslims in India to counter Jinnah’s misguided secessionist ambition, subtly fuelled by the British Raj’s unwillingness to incarcerate him for inciting communal killings in Calcutta on August 16, 1946; a failure of governance which made partition unavoidable.



And it was on a Friday, the time late afternoon (as with Christ), when Gandhi was killed by a fellow Hindu who believed that Gandhi’s impartial love of all of India’s religious traditions was likely to imperil Hindu orthodoxy’s ambition to establish a Hindu Rashtra in India. And, like Jesus, Gandhi died with God’s name on his lips. This parallelism with Christ’s martyrdom is Gandhi’s unspoken, yet decisive, argument against religious conversion. Communion with all faiths can enable us to embody in our lives the highest ideals of all religions, without abandoning our own traditions.

Muslim majoritarianism, which broke up India and led to the establishment of an exclusivist Islamic state in Pakistan, and which today terrorises Jammu and Kashmir, is the ironical mentor of Hindu majoritarianism in India. Indeed, the recent Gujarat carnage, with the state and central governments looking the other way, is a shameful repetition and reminder of the folly of Jinnah’s experiment with untruth in August 1946; and of the memory beclouding anger (to use a phrase from the Gita) which led Godse to kill Gandhi, who was on his way to his evening inter-faith public prayer meeting.

Gandhi had declared that India would be partitioned over his dead body, yet he did not start anything like a civil disobedience movement or a fast unto death to prevent it. Godse concluded that Gandhi was a fraud and a facilitator of partition and killed him. It is stated in the Hindu shastras that the prophecy of a steadfast brahmachari devotee of God or Truth, such as Gandhi was, can never fail to be fulfilled. But did not Gandhi’s prophecy that partition would occur over his dead body prove false? Not really.

Any civil disobedience movement initiated by Gandhi in 1946 or 1947 to stop partition would have unleashed communal violence of unimaginable proportion all over India, more horrific and enduring than what did occur, and unprecedented for having been instigated by a saint. In the prevailing chaos, India would have been denied independence. Nehru and Patel would have had to beg Mountbatten to rule the country with the aid of the armed forces under his command. The last Viceroy of India would have gladly done so, but on condition that India be broken up into two hundred sovereign states for efficient administration. The great Indian dream, of imagining an ancient civilisation, spiritual and secular, in the form of a modern nation at peace with itself and the world, would have died.

The British Empire would have been quite happy to see this happen, deeply wounded as its pride was by the ‘Quit India’ satyagraha led by Gandhi in 1942, and the formation, in 1943, of the Indian National Army by Subhas Chandra Bose, which together made India’s march to freedom unstoppable. Gandhi did not oblige the British Empire and protected Indian independence and saved the honour of India’s spiritual traditions. And, had he been allowed to live, Gandhi would surely have confronted India and Pakistan with the necessity of atonement for the sacrifice of two million innocent lives lives on the altar of partition. The fixity of division may then have had some chance of becoming transformed into the flexibility of interdependence.

By murdering Gandhi, Godse blocked this possibility, thus himself making Gandhi’s prophecy about partition occurring over his dead body come true! Satyameva Jayate.

Had Gandhi some breath left before he died, what might he have said to his assassin? Perhaps this: ‘Son (he loved all as his own family), you remind me of my Harilal (Gandhi’s eldest son who had rebelled against his father, thinking that he helped other people’s children more than his own). Harilal has not wanted to kill me, but like him, you also fail to understand that we must care for other people’s children as much as our own, even more, if their need is greater. The road to swaraj is long, son, widen your circle of love, be brave!’ Sarvam khalu idam Brahma.

Gandhi is one of the two million innocent human beings led like lambs to the slaughter by the Partition. Along with them also died the idea of a subcontinental India, that vastness of self-identity, suggestive of God’s generosity, which had been available to all Indians down the ages, regardless of cultural, religious and political differences and divisions.

How can India and Pakistan and Bangladesh atone for this crime against humanity, history and divinity? Only through a symbolic resurrection of subcontinental Indian reality, within existing sovereignties, in a region like J&K, which has mercifully kept ‘unfinished’ the vivisectional agenda of Partition. Let a subcontinental cultural parliament be inaugurated in the area as a whole, without upsetting existing legislatures, to which members would be elected from all of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and not only from J&K: men and women of goodwill who would not rule but serve life and nature and all sacred traditions in the region, and not majoritarian or minoritarian or anthropocentric vested interests.

It is my conviction that the mass of subcontinental humanity would thunderously support such a gesture of atonement for the holocaust of Partition. Two million souls now hovering over their former homelands, waiting to be remembered, would find final release and bless, not curse, us in this morally forgetful new century.

like roaches, they come crawling from all directions. never in my visits to the land of my forefathers have i tasted anything like the venom secreted by these vermin on chowk. our faith however counsels tolerance. ylh, you can do your bit by adding the following disclosure to your columns:

warning: may cause diarrhea, heartburn and high-blood pressure to members of brown shirt brigade circa 2003

Dear Hamdai

I loved your wrting and thoughts. There is still hope. There are still people around who are not prisoners of their self-imposed cages and of past.

You provided logic & mathematics. My argument is simpler. If sworn and historical enemies like Germany, France and UK can be a part of EU and live in peace for the greater happiness and properity of their people, why can`t we?

Welcome back on chowk, YLH. You will no doubt attract the usual crowd - the jays and suchlikes - saying their usual things to this article: scientific research shows that any article having anything to do with Pak-India politics is a guaranteed box office hit on chowk. Perhaps you should start charging Rs. 50 for every post written on this board, and you will soon be a rich man, and you could hire your own press agent.

This writer talking about how happy the minorities are in Pakistan is only to prove to the world that muslims in Pakistan are indeed different from others and not fanatical.
Face-saving excercise it is.

When the whole world has resorted to `muslim-bashing`..then Pakistan can`t afford to go on treating its minorities(whatever few left after conversions) badly.

YLH,

Instead of writing this inane piece askinf for tolerence from indians, If you had written an article on Abdus salam, his birth day on 29 th january, you would have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that you are a man of tolerence.

This artcle only proves that you are like most of the other pakistanis on chowk, ``with beard in the tummy``.

It is sad that you can write about tolerence, mind filled with events and quotes more than a fifty years ago, as you travel to the golden age of the book, another 1400 years back.

At least you are a smart man, you could find the INS torture coming and escaped before that. Good luck to you and your article from pakistan only reinforcess my convictions about the future shape of pakistan.

This is the same whining gentleman who had once written in a letter to ``The Friday Times`` in which he claimed that the title ``Mahatma`` was given by Gandhi to himself. So much for the veracity of his sources and ideas. No wonder he feels Pakis are victimized by Indians. Grow up Yasser!!!!! For someone with so much of a habit of complaining against the perceived superiority complex (or ``pseudo-intellectual tradition`` in his words) of Indians, what is hard to digest is that Mr. Hamdani tries to project himself as a campaigner genuinely interested in seeing his nation make peace with India (or rather vice-versa), while he remains silent on the same tradition in Pakistan that has been the sole unifying factor for Pakistanis. In fact, Pakistan`s interests would be much better served if arm-chair patriots like Mr. Hamdani who are ever ready to defend Pakistan`s cause at the drop of a hat with a heady concoction of half-truths and imagination, do something to halt Pakistan`s slide into the self-destruct mode (it it hasn`t already), instead of further sullying the already foul atmosphere existing between the two perpetually hostile neighbours.

Jhangvi group added to terrorist list

WASHINGTON, Jan 30: The Bush administration has designated the Pakistani Sunni Muslim group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi as a ``foreign terrorist organization,`` State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Thursday.

The group has been blamed for a string of attacks on Pakistan`s Shia community, and the leader of one faction, Asif Ramzi, was suspected of involvement in the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl last year. Ramzi died in December in an explosion, possibly an accident.

Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is the 37th group on the United States list of ``foreign terrorist organizations.``

The designation makes it illegal to provide material support to the groups. Their assets in the United States are frozen and members can be denied entry to the country.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell signed the designation order on Jan 21 and Boucher said it became effective on Thursday.-Reuters


////YLH, you cannot see the commonality with the above group..the focus is always on to the out side. You cannot accept the truth that only change you can make is to yourself. How long will you pakistanis will plead for tolerence while attacking others every which way, even their inteligence by articles like this.

...here we go again...ylh moves his ass to the islamic republic of pakistan, but still can only write about india...pakis, give up this obsession with india...

Re: YLH

Yasser, it has been nearly 56 years since Pakistan was created. The reasons behind its creation have slipped away into the mists of history.
They should be left in the past, because we as a nation can not always look backwards - we have to face the future, which lies ahead and that is where we are headed, because we cannot go back to justify the past and we have to move forward. We have to move ahead, because our salvation as a nation lies in justifying our existence in the the future.

We, Pakistanis, cannot for ever justify the reasons for Pakistan`s creation, but those arguments pale in comparsion to the arguments on how to make Pakistan a better, tolerant, progressive looking state. Pakistan needs no justification. Good or bad, benign or evil, tolerant or intolerant, regressive or progressive, inclusive or exclusive, Pakistan exists. As long as it exists, it justifies its own reasons for its creation; it does not need any intellectual justifications, because it exists in reality.

Let the Indians disparage Pakistan. Let them deny the reasons behind its creation and let them belittle its accomplishments. Let the Indians deny the reality; a reality, which has existed since 1947. Everyone has a right to ignore the reality and deny it, but denial of a reality does not make the real any more unreal. Indians have a right to believe what they want and whether it is a wise choice or not, is not the concern of Pakistanis. We should we more worried about own code of conduct than what the Indians are thinking about us. If the Indians want to hate us; then let them hate us to their heart`s content. If hating Pakistan or denigerating its creation makes India internally more progressive, more tolerant, more diverse and more humane for all its citizens, then there is a valid reason to hate Pakistan and Pakistanis. On the other hand, if this anti-Pakistani rhetoric gains India nothing, then what has India gained by hating Pakistan?

Let India hate Pakistan. This hate is slowly but gradually destroying the very rationale, which the Indians used to hold up to make the distinction between themselves and Pakistanis. Pakistan`s hate of India, never justified, destroyed Pakistan. Same thing will happen to India, because hate and justifcation for hate destroys everything. Hate is irrational and hate cannot be reasoned.

I also know that, after reading this interact, I will be personally called all sort of names by Indians. It always happens; they kill the messanger, because of the message and it will happen again. Both India and Pakistan are heading for a holocaust with eyes wide open and only after they have ended up destroying each other, will they learn that hate does not solve anything.

The land of my birth is in flames; the land of my ancestors is starting to crackle with the fires of hate, which are fast spreading though it and those foolish souls igniting the fires, do not realize that their are burning their own homes. Pity.

Ciao

let the games begin :)

welcome back yasser....we missed you

Yasser Latif Hamdanai:

A very good article, but I would say the following:

1. It would not convince Indians a bit. They think Pakistanis are brain-washed. However, a country lead by fundamentalist Hindu and extremist Government that has inspired killings of Muslims and Christians is still considered secular. The two high profile leaders of this Government had actually brought a mosque down. The ensuing riots resulted in the killings of thousand of more Muslims. Yet, Indians on this interactive board will thrash Pakistanis of being Jihadis and terrorists. In the long-run however, I believe that followers of Hinduism, which is a very peaceful religion and a very good Way of Life, will themselves send the fanatic Hindi Government into oblivion.

2. It boils down to media and diplomatic war. India has been very successful on these two fronts. In diplomatic area, Indian Government is procuring arms and related heavy equipment from all the countries whose voice matter in international politics so as to influence their opinion in their favour. In media and publicity, they have struck an alliance with pro-Israel lobby lead American media. CNN for example, is running a soft campaign against Muslims and pro-Israel and India. They have bought air-time on BBC and are achieving the same there. Of course, I am not referring to other media outlets which are decidedly against Muslims. Through exposure to media, Indians have been successfully projecting their view point and maligning Pakistan`s.

3. In order to let Pakistanis viewpoint, as the one summarised above in your article, known to the world, we will have to do a diplomatic and publicity campaign on both a strategic and tactical basis asap.

Wow, YLH, what a reasearh! and what great references!!
`` The first man to talk of Hindus and Muslims as separate nations was V.D. Savarkar who coined the word ‘Hindutva’ in a book with the same title in 1923. .... Eminent Bengali writer Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay also supported the notion``

``First man to talk`` talked in 1923. And Bankimchandra Chattopadhayay died in 1894.

Congratulations! I must send you a Ph.D for your research.

More gems from YLH ...
`` In Pakistan the incidents of violence against non-Muslims are few and far in between and usually the product of problems of a more global nature as the recent church bombings indicate. Generally the non-muslims in Pakistan are left to go about their business....``
Business of what? tilling fields, cleaning toilets?

But this might just be because the Sunni Muslim majority is more interested in killing of shia muslim minority or the ahmadiyya community than christians, Hindus or Sikhs. ``....
Yes now that Muslim majority has reduced christians, hindus and sikhs to insignificant numbers, it is now looking for new hunting grounds.

Best model is a Christian .. Because a muslim girl tried to participate in Miss International this year and was immediately subjected to governmental persecution. (I saw in Tokyo in same hotel at that time and saw poor girl going back in tears). Pious Pakistanis have no objection oogling at a christian model.

YLH would like us to believe that Pakistan is not based on a narrow exclusivist ideology? It may be called the `Islamic` Republic of Pakistan, may bar non-Muslims from being elected to high office, but no, Pakistan is not excluvist!!!
``Some 5.5 Million Muslims were ethnically cleansed from East Punjab and areas neighboring Pakistan, and some 3.5 million Hindus from West Punjab and Sindh then packed up and left for India.``
Why the dissembling, YLH? Were the 5.5 million Muslims killed or did they migrate to Pakistan? The millions of Hindus in Pakistan at Partition - how many of them were killed?
It is a proven fact that the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan has dwindled post Partition, whereas the opposite is true for Muslims in India. Where have all the `missing` Hindus gone? Either they were killed or have converted to Islam. How many Muslims in India do you think have given up their religion?
Remember, India has a free and active press, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to hide communal riots or massacres. Same is not true of Pakistan - the Hindus and other minorities could be killed, raped etc but would rarely make news.
At the time of Partition, India was clear that we would be a secular nation, while Pakistan was clear that it would be a nation for Muslims. So which country do you think would treat minorities better? Muslims did leave India for Pakistan, but they largely did so of their own free will for a `bright future` in Pakistan, whereas Hindus and Sikhs who were landed people or other prosperous businessmen in Pakistan had no incentive to leave it, but were forced to flee, giving up their property and life savings.
Finally, if Jinnah expected that he could ask for a nation on communal grounds and still expect that minorities could life safely and peacefully there, he was a fool. He may have been secular, but he must have been out of touch with reality not to forsee mass transfers and the communal riots. This is what happens when `intellectuals`, out of contact with and contemptous of ordinary people, are in charge of movements.
I am disappointed in YLH that he still feels he can `justify` the creation of Pakistan. I am sure Pakistanis will feel disappointed that he even feels the need to do so. But then, Pakistanis have a wierd sense of nationalism based on religion. They crave for what is not theirs (J&K), but do not miss what was once theirs rightfully (BD).

#1 GhalibZaman
Why don`t you get a room and go on a date with YLH - you seem to be in love with him.

Ref Manjit #4

Well, here is simething more about myth-making in Pakistan, written by someone with much greater credibility than that dear boy Yasser Latif Hamdani.

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=75822

Chakwal Diary: Caught in the muddle
|By Ayaz Amir | 31-01-2003

In the October elections in which I was a candidate for the National Assembly my opponents, rolling out their heaviest artillery, charged me with being a Qadiani.

On the strength of a column I had written about the exploitation of religion as a political tool by successive governments, in which I had also referred to legislation against the Qadianis, a local maulana, Qazi Mazhar Hussain, issued a fatwa to the effect that I was ``pro-Qadiani``.

Only too happy to get this incendiary ammunition into their hands, my opponents from the Q League – ah! the Q League – circulated the fatwa far and wide.

From every platform my good friend General Majid Malik, in times past a worthy ornament to the general staff (and then novitiates wonder why the army has such a talent for making a mess of things), denounced me as a Qadiani. Adding for good measure, that I was also a drunkard.

Nor was this all. A spirited young maulvi, Shakoori Naqshbandi by name, holding out the offending column in his hands after the Asar prayers declared to his small congregation that after what I had written it was an Islamic duty to kill me (wajab-ul-qatal). He then went to distribute the original fatwa in the bazaar.

Shakoori`s maternal family are my neighbours and our relations have always been cordial. Why was he doing this? Because he had come to me a few days earlier saying that in view of his great popularity, his friends and supporters were urging him to stand for the provincial assembly on the MMA ticket.

Since he was asking my advice, I told him that if he felt so strongly about it he should stand by all means but that it would also help if he was a bit more consistent in his actions.

In which connection I pointed out that whereas after September 11 he had helped burn tyres as a mark of protest against the United States` war on Afghanistan, during the referendum he had felt no qualms in mounting the stage when the Punjab Governor, Khalid Maqqbool, had arrived in Chakwal.

Red in the face and a bit agitated Shakoori walked out of my house. A few days later he was issuing invitations for my assassination. (For the record I might add that the offending column was written two months earlier, everyone concerned discovering it only during the elections.)

All is fair in politics, however – more so than in love and war – and candidates hoping to serve the people or save the country will stoop to any level to score a point or win an advantage. Since when have dirty tricks been outlawed in elections? The relevant point is altogether different.

In the end none of the vilification really mattered. I still ended up getting 70,000 votes, just 1,300 or 1,400 behind the officially-sponsored Q League candidate. The ordinary voter didn`t fall for the Qadiani propaganda.

After India`s nuclear tests in May 1998, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif started meeting Punjab MPAs to get their views on Pakistan`s response.

I never tire of pointing out to friends that at the meeting of Rawalpindi division MPAs, out of the 22 MPAs attending, except for two or three, the rest spoke up against a tit-for-tat response.

Anyone might have thought that from a division providing nearly 70 per cent of the army`s soldiery a hawkish line would emerge. But none did.

A bit put out, for he clearly wasn`t expecting this, Shahbaz Sharif said with some asperity that he was more interested in the views of the people. What did the people want?

Having just campaigned in the Punjab local elections, I said that in all the meetings I had addressed I was asked about schools, roads, electricity and jobs, not once about India`s nuclear tests or any mortal danger facing Pakistan.

But who`s to stop our penchant for myth-making. That we had to test was a myth cooked up by the national security establishment with the ideology-of-Pakistan lobby cheering in the background.

We would have been much better off keeping our bombs in the nuclear closet. No one was asking us to throw them away or spike our nuclear programme, only that we shouldn`t test.

When he telephoned Nawaz Sharif (four times as we keep reminding ourselves in our misplaced pride) Clinton wasn`t asking for the moon, only for restraint and a small act of self-denial.

We would have gained the world`s plaudits and some money into the bargain. Perhaps more than we have got for sentry duty in America`s war on terrorism. But against the pressing demands of self-indulgence, for our tests amounted to little more than that, the calls for prudence meant nothing.

So we fired off our nuclear-tipped firecrackers in the conviction that by doing so we were securing our defences and making them impregnable. For myth-making on this grand scale there is no known cure, in science or medicine.

Exactly a year later Nawaz Sharif was in Washington desperately urging Clinton – the same Clinton who had cautioned restraint– to get Pakistan off the hook because of the army`s adventure in Kargil.

If the commanders entrusted with this adventure had their way, they would rewrite history and make everyone believe that but for Nawaz Sharif`s dash to Washington our northern troops were on the verge of a huge victory.

The truth, as every staff officer knows, is that our beleaguered troops, cut off from supplies, were at the end of their tether. The dash to Washington, undertaken in consultation with the army command (let there be no doubts on this score), gave us a piece of paper which allowed us to pretend that our troops were withdrawing from the Kargil heights with national dignity preserved.

Nawaz Sharif lost his way later when he tried to remove Musharraf as army chief while he was still in the air. That was like showing a red rag to Musharraf`s loyalists and, as anyone could have predicted, provoked them to action.

But on Kargil, even though Clinton was in no great rush to see him (remember that Sharif was forcing himself on Clinton on July 4, U.S. Independence Day) he deserved the high command`s gratitude.

Just as Bhutto for bringing home our prisoners-of-war without compromising national dignity deserved a slightly better fate than being strung up from the gallows.

So many debacles, a whole string of them: the `65 war, `71 and the country`s breakup, the disastrous course pursued in Afghanistan, the costs of jihad in Kashmir. And even now, the refusal to learn, the preoccupation with more myths.

Surely this matter calls for investigation because it points to something wrong not just with any particular institution – that would be too facile – but with the national mood, the national psyche.

The values of a governing elite, the spirit and temper of a race or nation, are products of history and culture. When we speak of the English or the French character, or the fighting prowess of Prussia (now mercifully shackled in German democracy), we are alluding to something created by centuries of history.

National attitudes are not changed overnight. It took a revolution, and a bloody one at that, to change Chinese attitudes.

What do we have to fall back upon? A confused and not too accurate memory of the days of Islamic glory and a thin veneer of English polish yet to touch our core.

The Western outlook on life lies not in aping Western manners or in speaking the English language but in imbibing the true spirit of Western learning. (1) Faith in reason (not dogma), (2) a feeling for proportion, and (3) the ability to see both sides of a question (which is the foundation of democracy). These are Greek virtues forming the bedrock of western civilisation.

Our governing classes lack these virtues. The colonial experience introduced these qualities to the subcontinent but we never fully imbibed them.

It`ll take a cultural revolution for this to change but whence such a storm comes it is hard to say because we seem quite happy to muddle along the way we are doing.

``Some 5.5 Million Muslims were ethnically cleansed from East Punjab and areas neighboring Pakistan, and some 3.5 million Hindus from West Punjab and Sindh then packed up and left for India.``

This represents the level of history understood by the author. The task of promoting tolerance should be left in better hands.

BTW, it is `Hindutva`, not `Hinduvta` - the `-tva` ending is exactly cognate with English `-ity` or Latin `-itas`. And it is probably Sri Prakasha, not `Prikasa`. It`s a wonder we diidn`t get to hear about Kuldip Narain yet again. Nitpicks, but YLH ought to get these small details right if he insists on dwelling on them on a chronic basis.

A (mercifully) abbreviated version of this article was published in the OpEd pages of Dawn on January 20th 2003.

This is vintage YLH. The same old arguments, nothing new here at all.

Yasser Latif Hamadani:

You are a pride & joy to be around. Please visit often.
Khudaa tumm ko upnee hifz-O-amaan mein rakhhay.

You are doing what a coward like me could only pathetically dream about....serving Pakistan while within Pakistan. A promise kept is a promising beginning!

Teach us more as you hone your skills sparring with the hindus here. They know not how valuable they are for you. Verily, Allahs` ways & means are mysterious.

wassalaam.