Muslim League’s Politics (1937-1947)

Dost


You are protecting and favoring hindu chauvenism. Please do not mix religion with chauveism - two are mutually exclusive.

I think we are wasting our time in using terms such as ``Muslims`` and ``Hindus`` as if these were monolithic entities and forgetting the actual events being played by players who had their own individual agendas. These terms are used only by ideologues of specific ideological groups who want to first give an analyses of the historical events in terms of the religious identities/categories/events (Islamist/Jahil/Jihad etc) and then evoke the religious symbols to create divisions within communities which have been living peacefully( even if it is externally) for centuries.
We need to first change the paradigm of historiography which is so dominent in our part of the world and get down to some plainspeak on this issue:- Which individual actor/s gained the most after partition???
The people???? with 5 million dead. Are you kidding????
then who gained??????
I ask all of you to revaluate this historical decision which has led to blood sheds, partitions, wars, arms race, wasteful expenditure on nuclear arms, army generals, their dictatorships>>>>>Who gained???????
You also know it...it is time we did some plainspeak!!!!

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!
This guy is a genius!!!
Only God can un-ravel his mystery for him.
#98 by hamidm2 on September 10, 2003 8:48pm PT
````trust me, i know plenty of these guys, and i find it incredible that these fools actually think they are part of the same nation - it is truly amazing! ............. the pakis, inspite of their differences, seem to be more of a nation than these clowns ........four semi-literate neem-pagal pakis from the four provinces of pakistan can carry on a conversation in urdu, whereas these guys, from the cursed side of the border, have to either resort to english, or simply stare at each other while they pick lice ................ but it is still amazing how, in fifty years, the horrible hindoos have managed to form the idea of a nation based on a second class (non-revealed) religion with a veneer of secularism and democracy ............. on the other hand, we, armed with god`s original and authentic work in arabic, are still arguing over how to wash our posterior and the LFO ........ ````

Inquirer at # 86:

Adhering to the Chowk name that you have chosen for yourself, I would appreciate if you could please look into my post # 139 on another topic i.e. Shalom or Salaam by Farzana Varsey and revert here for debate. That topic by Farzana is currently going hot amongst the Chowksters.

Ref hamidm2 #98 and dionysus #103

What you, Hamidm, perhaps don`t know and Dionysus doesn`t want to accept is that there is something that cements this landmass called India together.

Go to Gaya in Bihar, Benares in Uttar Prdesh, Hardwar in Uttaranchal, Vaishnodevi in Kashmir, Nasik in Maharshtra, Puri in Orissa, Kalighat in West Bengal, Dwaraka in Gujarat, Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, Tirupathi in Andhra and Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. You will find pilgrims from every part of India in every one of these places. They have been going there before an interloper called Babar showed up in Delhi, before the British unified the subcontinent, before Jinnah divided the nation. They have been going there for three millennia or more. They have gone to these places when there were no roads, when they had to set their affairs in order because they might not return from such a journey, but go they did. And despite the efforts of Aurangzeb and Jahangir and a host of sultans and petty tyrants of The True Faith, such people still exist in very large numbers.

And when they go to these places, they stand waist-deep in the water of a river, lake or sea to offer their prayers, and they intone, ``.....Bhaaratha varshey, Bharatha khandey...`` just as they do on the banks of the River Indus in today`s Pakistan or the few remaining Hindus in Afghanistan do it on the banks of the Amu Daryu. There is the name for this country....Bhaarathavarsha. It is in the Constitution of India and on its postage stamps and currency... Bharat.

To us, it doesn`t matter that `India` was how the Greeks denoted our country or that the invaders of The True Faith called it `Hindustan` (land of the Hindus). For all eternity to come, it will remain Bharat in our hearts.

#98, Hamidm2; #99, Stuka:
Stuka you are asking too much from a teen-ager.

Stuka:

I sympathize with you regarding the childishness of responses to you.

stuka,

........... as you yourself have admitted, this whole idea of india as a state and the subsequent ``partition`` is a silly creation of the gin-mad british colonialist ........ so why are we getting our dhotis all in a knot over something that is barely fifty years old ?.......... think about it, if the sahib had not arrived when he did, india might have been more like europe with punjab kicking everyone`s behind from time to time (like the germans) and the miserable biharis bringing up the rear like albania .........now you can be a smart small horse and say, ``but what if the muslims had never come in to rape, pillage and stay to rule over hanuman`s progeny?``.............. i don`t know the answer to that, but my bet is that we would still have been more like europe ............i don`t think hindooism, or for that matter any other religion, can be the viable basis for a nation state ............... it is hard to imagine a pathan and a tamil coming together - the very idea is laughable! .............you recognize a nation when you see it ............. the germans are a nation, the finns and norwegians might be scandinavians, but they are not a nation ...........and neither is india ........... next time you meet someone from hanumanland, look into his coal-black eyes and see if you recognize anything ........ if you do, it is a evolutionary mishap ....................

Dost-mitter, Stuka, Hamidm, dionsys, hisexecellency

This is a valid discussion that the South Asian land mass was never a ONE cohesive entity - so what is the commanality?

The only commonality that I can figure out is that they were collectively beaten up by the outsiders, as they came, while they were busy fighting with each other - the outsider invariably used one side against the other.

This continues till today - the outsiders take advantage of the local hostilities towards their benefit.

So there is that commonality of old class mates having gone through the same similar harsh experience of school days - but not having too many individual similar traits.

But broadly, region wise, the people in South Asia did have similarties - the West, The South, The North, The East.

urstruly:
I think that you have been carried away by the flourish of your own rhetoric and your undying love for the Hindus. It was not the Hindus, Muslims or even the British who were responsible for the partition but the three musketeers - Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah in that order. Gandhi because he shunned constitutionalism, which could have brought India gradually into independence as a united country via a dominion status; and also for introducing religion into temporal politics. Nehru, because he was a utopian who had an arrogant tendency to ignore the slippery ground on which he was standing. And Jinnah for leading the campaign for the partition and being too smart for both the bania and the brahmin.

stuka:
hamidm and dionysus have a point. The Indian subcontinent was never a state before the British period. Even the Mughals or the Mauryas never extended their influence to the South or North East. The pre-British India was more like Europe - a large geographic landmass with several cultures, langages, ethnicities and races. The only thing common was a Hindu ethos, pilgrimage sites and some sanskrit mantras and rites. In fact, it was less than Europe, as old Europe had a few large countries like England, France, Spain, Portugal and Russia and had a common script for most of its landmass. And until Reformation, most of them accepted Pope as their spiritual head.

As hamidm has suggested, India`s emergence as a nation state must be considered as a modern miracle. And let us not be stingy with giving the major credit for this achievement to Jawahar Lal Nehru. He may have failed in his utopia of creating a socialist India or a non-aligned bloc but his leadership laid the solid foundation for the country with which most Indians now owe their first allegiance.

Indians have seemed to arrive at some kind of a mutual understanding - they will gang up to beat up on any constituent that wants to leave the fold, be it Dravidstan, Nagaland, Khalistan or Kashmir. At the same time, they are more than willing to rearrange their internal boundaries to accomodate any subregional aspirations or grievances.

stuka #99 ``By that logic Italy, Germany and a host of other nations too cannot be called nations states in the present sense of the word. ``

Yet another false and (probably deliberately) misleading comparison. The German and Italian states shared a common higher language, culture and literature, a common history and identity and a common ethnicity. None of these things are shared by Tamils, Punjabis, Bengalis and the other nations within `India`.

``From Chandragupta Maurya to Akbar to even Aurangzeb and after, all were referred to as King/ Badshah of Hindustan. ``

LMAO! `Badshah` and `Hindustan` are post-Islamic era Persian terms. It is simply impossible for Maurya to have refered to himself as the `Badshah of Hindustan`. This brings me to another point, your `country` of `India` doesn`t even have a native historical name for itself!

``Also, you seem to disregard the fact that British did weld India into a single administrative state. Even the so called principalities were ruled by Kings only at the pleasure of the British government. Britain also recognized India as a successor state to the colony of India, and considered the creation of Pakistan as a Partitioning of British India which it was. ``

Heh?? You`re starting to waffle now. Running dry of arguments, I suppose.

#92 by Romair

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I don’t know why Gandhi didn’t assert himself more during the time of partition, over Nehru, politically, since every Indian (including Nehru) called him Bapu.
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This is actually not correct. Gandhi was increasingly under attack from the extremist Hindu Mahasabha. Many Hindu nationalists believed that Gandhi`s nonviolence was a mere sham and didn`t help the cause of freedom. His assassin (Nathuram Godse) killed him in the name of nationalism.

In the early 1930s, Bhagat Singh and his brand of radicals challenged Gandhi and almost succeeded in marginalizing Gandhi. Later in the 1940s, Gandhi was seen as too soft on Muslims and Jinnah by the radical Hindu Mahasabha.

To put it succintly, Gandhi was no longer the undisputed ``baapu`` of Hindus after 1940. He had grown too old to control the movement. If you read his letters from the 1940s, he sounds like a dejected man, who is losing grip over both his people and his legacy.

Here is an interesting fact: Gandhi did not launch any satyagarh or civil disobedience movements between 1932 and 1947. Perhaps he had realized that his party was not united behind him any more. Or perhaps he realized that people were gradually falling into the laps of Mahasabha, Communist radicals and Subash Chandra Bose (especially).

#91 by stuka

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How do you explain India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Sri Lanka etc?
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The evidence is empirical, not definitive. And besides India, Sri Lanka and South Africa are just 3 countries that don`t fit Seymour`s model. There are scores of other poor countries (especially in Africa) that do. I am therefore inclined to believe that India/Sri Lanka/South Africa are exceptions to the rule.

A Spanish finance minister in 1961 predicted that Spain will become a democracy when its GDP per capita reaches $2000. He based his conclusion on Seymour`s theory that economic development and education must reach certain levels for a nation to realize the importance of stable democracy. Ironically, when Spanish junta restored democracy in 1970 (after Franco`s death), the spanish GDP/capita was $2446. Ever since Spain has enjoyed uninterrupted democracy.

In Pakistan`s context, I can understand Seymour`s theory. Democratic forces usually end up as dynastic parties and shy away from prudent decisions such as agrticultural tax, decentralization of power and constitutional checks/balances. As a result, economy stagnates. Under military rule, economy improves. At a certain, point when Pakistani GDP per capita and literacy rates will reach a certain threshold, the Pakistani population will also understand the benefits of stable democracy.

You might want to check out Francis Fukuyama`s End of History and Last Man. He devotes an entire chapter titled ``In the Land of Education`` to this concept.

Fuzair:

Thank you for the link on Tuker. I did a google search and found some really interesting information.

``Perhaps, in the case of India, even though the middle class is proportionally quite small, it is very large in absolute terms and can provide a large enough pool. ``

True. Though, since approximately the early 1980s, the middle class is India`s largest class and is at approximately 550 million (current figures). When you say ``stable`` democracy, what are you referring to? In India`s case, at least the political process has been stable (though much abused) and the emergency in hindsight seems to be an abberation.

Also, since the military ethos of India and Pakistan were so similar at the time of partition, why do you think the post partition behavior of the two militaries has been so different (i should say generals rather then militaries actually) CW says Kashmir but I find that too simplistic an explanation. Would love to know your views.

HamidM:

``india never was a nation state - it always consisted of a bunch of principalities run by despotic rajas and maharajas kept in line by the even more despotic muslim emperor in delhi ..............``

By that logic Italy, Germany and a host of other nations too cannot be called nations states in the present sense of the word. From Chandragupta Maurya to Akbar to even Aurangzeb and after, all were referred to as King/ Badshah of Hindustan. Not China, not Greece but Hindustan thereby demarcating the nation. If thw writ of the emporer did not run in certain parts of the country, it did not take away from the identity of the country itself. For example, the Pakistan government has admitted many times that Islamabad`s writ does not run in parts of FATA, NWFP etc. That does not take away from the fact that they are still parts of Pakistan.

Also, you seem to disregard the fact that British did weld India into a single administrative state. Even the so called principalities were ruled by Kings only at the pleasure of the British government. Britain also recognized India as a successor state to the colony of India, and considered the creation of Pakistan as a Partitioning of British India which it was.