Kashmir: Time for a Radical Approach?

Doug

`` If peace has to prevail then the victors, the powerful and the mighty must learn to be magnanimous, merciful and benign. ``

I see. You perhaps define merciful and benign as Indians bending over and allowing Pakistan to do whatever ot wants. If that is peace, I don`t want it.

re: nakhok

You have taken great pain in painting Sher-e-Bangla Fazl-e-Haq as the Bengali supremo and Jinnah as the sore loser of 1937 elections. I am afraid you have let your nationalistic feeling cloud your history IQ.

The Muslim League campaign in 1937 elections was marred largely because Jinnah was out of the country until 1935. Muslim League was going through a transition period in early 1930s and finally settled on Jinnah as their leader. Jinnah`s westernized image and the late entry of Muslim League in the election campaign were the chief causes of its defeat.

However, the 1937 elections confirmed the communal divide in India. Congress won 711 of 1585 general seats in provinces but only 26 out of 485 Muslim seats. Muslim League won 109, mainly in U.P. and Bombay. However, in Bengal the Muslim League won more seats than Fazl-ul-Haq`s Krishak Praja Party. Muslim League`s final tally in Bengal was 60, KPP`s tally was 59. Surprise, surprise !!

Congress and Muslim League were pre-poll allies. In U.P. and Bombay, both parties had entered into electoral seat adjustments e.g. in U.P. the AIML withdrew its candidate on Muslim seat in favor of Congress Muslim Rafi Kidwai. Nehru and Jinnah had a pre-poll arrangement that in the event of either party`s victory, Congress and Muslim League will form a coalition government in U.P. and Bombay.

However, after the election, Congress realized that it has been routed on Muslim seats. 1937 elections had established that Congress was a Hindu party, whereas Muslims preferred Unionist Party, Red Shirts, Muslim League, KPP, etc. Of the 26 Muslim seats won by Congress, 17 were in NWFP. In 8 out of 11 states, Congress didn`t win a single Muslim seat.

Congress wanted to establish a foothold in Muslim contituencies by buying over the elected Muslim representatives. This ofcourse is an unethical practice. Nevertheless after elections, Congress went back on its word with AIML and imposed tough conditions for forming coalition in U.P and Bombay. Congress High Command demanded that all Muslim Leaguers should resign and join Congress. In effect, Congress wanted to liquidate AIML, not share power with it as agreed earlier.

Naturally Jinnah couldn`t sabotage his party just for the sake an unreliable partner. Jinnah hardened his stance toward Congress as a reaction to the rigid attitude of Congress High Command.

The most glaring feature of this election was that Hindus in Hindu-majority became a perpetual majority, whereas Muslims were reduced to a perpetual minority. But in Bengal and Punjab, the situation was reversed. Hindus could never hope to form government in these provinces, while Muslims were gauranteed a perpetual seat on treasury benches.

In the aftermath of 1937 defeat, Jinnah shunned his western suits and hat. AIML was considered an elitist party in 1937, so Jinnah decided to ``de-starch`` the image of AIML by reducing membership and adopting ``awami`` issues.

It would be hypocritical to accuse AIML of playing the religion card. It was Congress that Hinduized the entire movement by using religious epithets and symbols. Congress tried to expand its Muslim constituency by unethically attempting to liquidate Muslim League.

The results of 1937 election established the Hindu nature of Congress. Jinnah was simply spelling out the results of 1937 and its implications. This does not amount to ``playing the religious card``. The communal divide was already a reality, not Jinnah`s creation.

#284 PM

The good thing about Kashmir is that has been fully internationalized. Everything is going on in the open and under the eyes of the world. And the world understands that murder in Kashmir is funded by Pakistan and through murderous thugs like Saeed.

The state of J&K conducted an open and transparent election last year. Mass murderers like Saeed helped kill over 600 civilians, mostly ordinary J&K residents and placed a price on every candidate participating in the election. Not long before that there was an organized suicide attack on the State assembly with over 30 killed. Anyone who thinks that the indians were responsible for these atrocities, also believes that the jews were responsible for destroying the WTC. Such people should seek medical treatment and not burden us with their demented ramblings.

I have posted on this lists numerous reports of violence against civilians perpetrated by militants. These reports also appear in international newspapers like NYTimes and elsewhere.

SUMMARY: You may choose to remain in your deluded world where gangsters like Saeed are ``public figures`` and their vile utterances ``OK``. No one else accepts that; everyone understands the daemonic role played by Pakistan and its ``public figures`` in fomenting and supporting violence against civilians in J&K. And fortunately, it is no longer we indians who have to bear this burden alone....

# 271

HisExcellency wrote:
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Fazl-ul-Haq`s concept of partition was also rather different from that of Jinnah. He wanted separate states, not one Muslim state.
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Yes, that was the irony of the Pakistan Movement. The Muslim majority states didn`t need a Pakistan. They were already in control of their destiny. It is in the Muslim minority provinces (among the aristocrats of UP or the mercantile class of the Bomaby Presidency) that the Pakistan Movement got its most enthusiastic support - it was the means to promote its class interests. And to this end they did play the religion card to the hilt.

Not surprisingly, the Muslim League establishment could never be comfortable with someone like Sher-e-Fazlul Huq. Class solidarity led them to be at at home with the likes of Nazimuddin and Ispahini.

Shere-e-Bangla Fazlul Huq was not an one-election wonder like Jinnah. He had won elections without the Muslim League before 1945. And he won elections without the Muslim League even after 1945. In 1954, it was under his leadership that Jinnah`s Muslim got completely wiped out in the elections to East Pakistan`s Assembly a mere 6 years after Pakistan came into being.

M.B.Naqvi`s observation was most perspicacious:

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www.jang.com.pk/thenews

The News, Karachi, Pakistan
Wednesday December 11, 2002-- Shawwal 06, 1423 A.H.

Why Jinnah`s Pakistan ended
by M B Naqvi
mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

``One emphasises a narrower reason for the earliest power struggle between the Punjab and Bengal Groups in the first Constituent Assembly
in 1948-49. East Bengalis had opened their account with the expropriation of all intermediary landed interests between the state and the cultivator. This without compensation reform frightened the social elites in West Pakistan, almost all of whom landlords. Bengalis acquiring the central power seemed to them like encouraging the new Bolsheviks to repeat that enormity here also. So they were determined to deny the Bengalis their due share of power and entered into an open conspiracy: they sought help from the bureaucracy and got it. With West Pakistan`s landowning MPs help, they cornered all power``
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re: nakhok

[...for whatever reason, indulging in quack psychology to prove the manhood of the Kakul kleptocrats of ``martial races``. ]

[Wali Khan has been criticised in Pakistan for the book. But no one, not even the government, has dared to sue him for libel or to prosecute him for blasphemy. This gives credence to his book. After all, Pakistan is a nation where an Ahmadiya may be sent to jail merely for calling himself a Muslim and his place of worship can be demolished if he calls it a masjid, all in accordance with the laws of the land!! Wali Khan would have been in very deep trouble if it could be shown that his book is not factual.]

Seems like you have run out of comments. Is that why you are repeating old ones again and again like a broken record.

The military does not need to prove its manhood. It already looked the Indian eyeball to eyeball for 10 months and not one Indian dared to cross the line of control or international border. The sheepish George Fernandes had to one day announce unilateral withdrawal of troops. Case closed.

But here is a complete analysis of Nehru`s homosexual psychology, if you may:

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_EduPamphlet6.html

Credence depends on what you want to believe. If you want to believe that Jinnah was a British collaborator, dream on. I will not attempt to lift the layers of prejudice heaped on you by your media and education. Regardless of your views on Jinnah, the Kashmir issue still needs to be resolved.

Since it is unlikely that Pakistanis will fold up and ditch their principled stand on Kashmir any time soon, India will have to put up with the insurgency for quite some time. Good luck to Indian troops anyway :))

Will catch you again sometime!

# 276

HisExcellency wrote:
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Contrary to your misperceptions that I am perhaps a madrassah-graduate who has been brainwashed by Pakistani education system since childhood, I am actually a British-born Pakistani who has a dual degree in History and Psychology from Trinity College, Cambridge. I followed this one up with an MBA from the Wharton School at Univ of Pennsylvania. I am presently working at a Systems Integration and E-Commerce Consulting company in Philadelphia.
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I can see why HisExcellency believes that readers view him as a madrassah-graduate who has been brainwashed by Pakistani education system.

HisExcellency has applied his training in history and psychology to come up with gems like ``Nehru`s homosexual tendencies explain why he wasn`t man enough to face a plebiscite in his own ancestral state (Kashmir).`` HisExcellency shouldn`t grudge his readers if they come to the conclusion that he learnt his history and psychology at a Madrassah in remote Pakistan.

# 277

HisExcellecny wrote:
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I don`t fault you for getting the wrong picture about Pakistan`s Kashmir policy. After reading the critical English press, westerners get the impression that Pakistani public is critical of Kashmir policy. For every critical article about Pakistan`s Kashmir policy, there are about 7 that support it. Most of them appear in the Urdu press.
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Ah! So it is just the English language press in Pakistan that is not going along with General Pervez Musharraf and his band of merry military officers !! No wonder General Pervez Musharraf won the referundum with 98% approval. The other 2% must have been lead astray by the English language Press.

# 276

HisExcellency wrote:
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``But please don`t get too overawed by my credentials. I would like to continue debating the issue until we can finally get back to the topic (i.e. Kashmir) instead of peripheral issues like Biharis, Jinnah, Nehru, Gandhi, martial race theory, Fazl-ul-Haq and East Pakistan.``
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HisExcellency has opined that it is just the English language press in Pakistan that is into advising the military regime into ``ditching the Kashmir issue``. And HisExcellency must have found out that the English language press in Philadelphia isn`t any different. In fact English-speaking American officials, even on Pakistani soil, have been saying much the same thing.

The American Ambassador in Pakistan wants Pakistan to stop cross-border terrorism.

President Clinton took the unusual step of demanding time on Pakistan TV to lectutre and hector the Pakistan regime on the sins of trying to redraw the LoC with force.

Peace cannot be achieved over the exile of a quarter million Pandits from the Valley. Peace cannot be achieved by imposing PoK`s religious homogeneity over the rest of the erstwhile kingdom of Jammu & Kashmir as well.

temporal has made an excellent suggestion. It is time for a ``radical approach``. And his suggestion for ``a bilateral or multilateral commission that would recommend turning what is de-facto into de-jure border`` would be a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately Pak military has too much to lose from this common sense solution. Pakistan cannot afford war. Unfortunately, Pakistan`s military cannot afford peace either. And peace will remain a distant goal as long as the military is in command of Pakistan`s government.

Heres a quote form an article (unfortunately, from the ``infamous`` English language press in Pakistan) that expresses the predicament very eloquently:

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www.jang.com.pk/thenews

The News, Karachi, Pakistan
Wednesday February 12, 2003-- Zil Haj 10 1423 A.H.

Pakistan`s lost sovereignty
by Khurram Dastgir Khan

``Pakistanis have lost their sovereignty. For more than half of their country`s existence, they have been ruled by military dictators. The Pakistani state exists not to serve the citizenry but solely for the establishment to abuse state resources for selfish personal/institutional gains. Through formation of Quislings` League and through pre-poll, during-poll and post-poll rigging, the establishment has usurped the people`s sovereignty at the ballot box. Milan Kundera might as well be describing today`s Pakistanis: ``They believed they were inhabiting an infinity, and it was not the pain of their current life but the vacuity of the future that sucked dry their energies, stifled their courage, and made [their lives] so craven, so wretched.``
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re pmishra2 #268
Perhaps you can let us know, once the knee stops jerking and you stop seething, exactly which part of Hafiz Saeed`s statement, IN CONTEXT, you found so worthy of your forthing-from-mouth indignation.
Maybe it`s just the jihadi lover in me, but I kinda found myself less than morally outraged reading his statement. Perhaps you missed the pivotal part:
``Our policy of `Kashmir through jihad (holy war)` is absolutely right... India has shown us this path for jihad....We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir.``

If your contention is that the Indian army is NOT responisble for gross uman rights violation/artoricites, well, that`s another matter/ brigde to sell. But, taken at his word, you would have to admit that this Lasharite really says nothing that particularly merits the label `evil`.

# 275

HisExcellency wrote:
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``Wali Khan must be musing about his pre-1937 days of glory when he wrote ``Facts are Sacred``.
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One more artful dodge by HisExcellency!! Wali Khan wasn`t speculating. He cited official papers as reference.

Wali Khan has been criticised in Pakistan for the book. But no one, not even the government, has dared to sue him for libel or to prosecute him for blasphemy. This gives credence to his book. After all, Pakistan is a nation where an Ahmadiya may be sent to jail merely for calling himself a Muslim and his place of worship can be demolished if he calls it a masjid, all in accordance with the laws of the land!! Wali Khan would have been in very deep trouble if it could be shown that his book is not factual.

re: nakhok

[In post # 97, I had pointed out to HisExcellency that if hegoes thru the columns of mainstream Pakistani journalists like M.P.Bhandara, Ayaz Amir, Irfan Husain, M.B.Naqvi, Cowasjee etc. he`ll find out that they are all advising the Pakistan Army to ``ditch the Kashmir issue``. ]

English dailies are not the mainstream in Pakistan. Less than 0.3% people read them. Urdu press, television and radio have far greater penetration. English commentators like Shafqat Mehood (a former Senator) and Shireen Mazari (a very influential journalist) do not endorse the views of Cowasjee, Naqvi, Ayaz Amir, etc. The leading Urdu journalists Irshad Haqqani, Altaf Hussain Qureshi, Asadullah Ghalib, Hassan Nisar, Majeed Nizami et al., are very supportive of the Kashmir policy.

I don`t fault you for getting the wrong picture about Pakistan`s Kashmir policy. After reading the critical English press, westerners get the impression that Pakistani public is critical of Kashmir policy. For every critical article about Pakistan`s Kashmir policy, there are about 7 that support it. Most of them appear in the Urdu press.

However, when I mentioned lack of press coverage of Kashmir, I was referring to television coverage. The primary source of news even in the US is television, not newspapers. In India and Pakistan especially, more than half the population is illiterate. This highlights the importance of news channels. May be the foreign media should set up local bureaus that relay their news in both English and the local languages.

For example, BBC Radio has an English channel as well as Hindi, Pushto, Urdu. Punjabi and Sindhi channels that relay the same news in local languages. Al Jazeera has recently launched an English channel, that runs simultaneously with the Arabic channel.

# 276

HisExcellency wrote:
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``I will not shy away from quoting an exact thesis on homosexual psychology that explains why Nehru... ``
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HisExcellency is most welcome not to shy away from whatever gives him the most satisfaction!!

But the fact remains that when he wrote ``Nehru`s homosexual tendencies explain why he wasn`t man enough to face a plebiscite in his own ancestral state (Kashmir)`` he was, for whatever reason, indulging in quack psychology to prove the manhood of the Kakul kleptocrats of ``martial races``.

re: nakhok

[When HisExcellency was challenged to cite the edition and page number for this claim, he lamely explained: ]

You didn`t elaborate in your post that you were referring to my comments, not Wolpert`s comments. Well now that it is clear that you were objecting to my comments, I have replied to them in a previous post.

But if you insist on a detailed discussion on this, I will not shy away from quoting an exact thesis on homosexual psychology that explains why Nehru...

a) displayed defensive malice towards others (especially Jinnah)
b) exhibited flippant attitude towards sex and marriage in order to cover underlying depression and guilt (of homosexuality)
c) displayed extreme superciliousness in public
d) refused to acknowledge accepted standards in non-sexual matters, on the assumption that the right to cut moral corners is due homosexuals as compensation for their ``suffering,`` ... e.g. on his right to have Kashmir because it is his birthplace
e) ``be generally unreliable, also of a more or less psychopathic nature. Nehru`s impulsiveness was quite well known.

PS: Contrary to your misperceptions that I am perhaps a madrassah-graduate who has been brainwashed by Pakistani education system since childhood, I am actually a British-born Pakistani who has a dual degree in History and Psychology from Trinity College, Cambridge. I followed this one up with an MBA from the Wharton School at Univ of Pennsylvania. I am presently working at a Systems Integration and E-Commerce Consulting company in Philadelphia.

But please don`t get too overawed by my credentials. I would like to continue debating the issue until we can finally get back to the topic (i.e. Kashmir) instead of peripheral issues like Biharis, Jinnah, Nehru, Gandhi, martial race theory, Fazl-ul-Haq and East Pakistan.

# 263

HisExcellency wrote:
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``The polarization in views of Indian and Pakistan chowkies is largely due to incorrect, biased media reports about Kashmir.``
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In post # 97, I had pointed out to HisExcellency that if hegoes thru the columns of mainstream Pakistani journalists like M.P.Bhandara, Ayaz Amir, Irfan Husain, M.B.Naqvi, Cowasjee etc. he`ll find out that they are all advising the Pakistan Army to ``ditch the Kashmir issue``. I gave a fairly large sample of their writings published in 2003. I have no problem with what they wrote.

I don`t think biased media report is the problem.

The Pak military is the number one problem. It is so hell bent on ensuring the largest piece of the national pie for itself that it just cannot risk a peace in Kashmir.

I am not complaining of bias in the mainstream Pakistani media. I have come to respect columnists like Irfan Husain, Ayaz Amir, Cowasjee, M.B.Naqvi and M.P.Bhandara. For whatever reason, it is HisExcellency that is complaining of the Pakistani media for failing to embrace the bias of the Kakul kleptocrats.

[HisExcellency thinks highly of Jinnah because of his ``popularity wave`` in the Muslim Constituencies in a single election (1945). So judging from HisExcellency`s reaction to ``one bitter Pathan`` and ``his party``, unsuspected readers can be excused if they came to the erroneous conclusion that Wali Khan or ``his party`` has never won any election. ]

With due respect to Wali Khan, he was a political pygmy compared to the colossal Jinnah. Wali Khan`s politics was confined to NWFP whereas Jinnah was the ``Quaid`` of the entire AIML and Pakistan Movement.

It would be more appropriate to compare Wali Khan with Dr. Khan Sahib, the NWFP Muslim League leader who gave Wali Khan a tough time in 1937 elections as well as 1943 provincial elections.

Dr. Khan Sahib was the Chief Minister of NWFP from Sep 1937 till Nov 1939. Wali Khan made a brief comeback from 1939 till 1943, but then he was again routed by the Muslim League in 1943 provincial elections. AIML`s Sardar Aurangzeb Khan became CM followed by Dr. Khan Sahib again. The Red-Shirts party of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Wali Khan had already been marginalized.

Wali Khan must be musing about his pre-1937 days of glory when he wrote ``Facts are Sacred``. He should gracefully accept that he lost to Jinnah`s more powerful, popular ideology.

nakhok

You are hoping to do the impossible. Pakistanis swallow state manufactured fantasies for history. These fantasies laced with unmitiated hatred of India and Hindus, not facts are sacred here.