Vajpayee’s Srinagar offer of Talks to Pakistan

Great going Hassan Shah. Keep it up. Heartening to know someone is there to boldly portray the truth. As Iqbal said
``Tunde-ay Baad-e-Mukhaalif Say Na Ghabraa Aey Auqaab
Yeh tu Chaltee Hei Tujhay Ounchaa Uraanay Kay Liyay``

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Economic unions grow from planting seed and not by planting a grown up tree. All economic unions had predecessor unions paving the way for slowly inching towards each other.

Many small time economic unions exist in Africa with no benefit except additional layer of bureaucracy and another bunch of corrpt officials taking bribes and makng comissions. The economic unions are useless ideas with poor growth rates and without a core state like Singapore in ASEAN, Germany in EU and USA in NAFTA. The poverty is the only thing in southasia evenly spread and in plenty.

Pakistani people hardly like to live with each other due to frontier mentality of civilization, they do not like another layer of government controlling their affairs. They want least interference from governments and not more.

If southasian economic union is such a great idea, why not leave the troublemaker Pakistan out with her 75 billion dollars GDP and the remaining Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Sri Lanka with 600 billion dollars GDP makes an economic union. If there is anything worth, Pakistan can try joining it later or never.

The current government in Pakistan is not a representative government and public do not trust it in any matter. So why even bother to mention it. People of Pakistan are not particularly worrying or loving equally to all south asians. Some love Muslims more than others and other love their nearest neighbors more than distant neighbors even if both neighbor and distant neighbor belong to one nation.

The only thing worth is cultural freedom in the areas of kabaddi, cricket, hockey, music, media, art, literature and tourism. No free trade, no insurgency, no scheming to destablize each other and no Kashmir should come in between people to people relation with the people of their choice. Why should Tamils or Asamese be dragged into economic union with Pashtuns when they have nothing in common or nothing to trade with each other.

HassanShah #287

Actually you have asked two questions. Here are the answers.

(1) Is the belief that men and women should continue to be bound by the decisions of one man without their consent?

Answer: Yes, under at least two conditions (1) there exist legal commitments, (2) if the alternatives are worse.

(2) (Is) the idea that land takes priority over all else what all of you have grown up with ?

Answer: Yes. Indians have grown up with the ideal/belief that the fact that we all share the same land takes priority over many other things that divide us.

Since I have taken the time to answer your questions, I expect you to take the time to think logically and not jump to conclusions that you find convenient.

Your friend.

hamidm

....i never thought i`d see you over kashmir with the rest of the pakis....

#160 by rsridhar

++
I am told Mushy wakes up everynight with nightmares of ``Phalcon``!
++

I guess some Indian savitri is sleeping in the wrong bed.

hamidm #282 Last time I checked, my soul was still in my possession. So was my brain. And my brain tells me (as explained in earlier posts) that there is no moral or practical reason for prolonging the kashmir dispute. Time to accept the status quo, declare victory, and move on from here to tackle the really serious issues (like making Pakistan prosperous rather than poverty stricken).

If you think I am wrong, please tell me why. Just saying that I have sold my soul to the devil makes you sound like Abdul.

Ralph #283 I appreciate your post. And wish you all the best.

#284 by hamidm2

Your kind words are a source of great encouragement and inspiration. Thanks.

#the rest

Delightful to have your views (or unconvincing pretensions thereof) known on all topics, except the ones I asked about. At the expense of putting an end to your constant attempts to digress and substitute verbal outbursts against Musharraf, Pakistan and all others for real answers to questions, I shall repeat the following for your benefit:

``The main point I want to get out of this thread is that do you seriously think like that ? I`ve heard all the anti-Pakistan rhetoric, but is the belief that men and women should continue to be bound by the decisions of one man without their consent and the idea that land takes priority over all else what all of you have grown up with ?

Answer me that. ``

A yes or a no should be sufficient. You can choose to hide the truth behind additional words if necessary.

Mantolives #256

{{however by no means is the word `has` a given... the positive logic would be to say that a country formed out of a minority`s struggle for safeguards can in no way turn around and oppress its own minorities... that indeed would be a positive approach}}

I am dubious about the whole business of ‘safeguards for minorities’ … it is riddled with its own contradictions … but let that pass for now.

In the abstract sense you are right. One could take your positive approach - in complete geographical and civilizational isolation. But it means having to execute a rapid pirouette on a dime, at the climax and denouement of your national movement, when your Promised Land has just been attained. Not an easy manoeuvre at the best of times – requires heroic virtues.

And not to revisit the history in detail all over again, but in Pakistan’s case there were other factors militating against the positive approach. The most important were:

(1) The close geographical proximity and civilizational pull of the very country out of which your own was carved
(2) That your national movement was an elite rather than a mass movement for the greater part of its history
(3) That Islam, the faith and civilization, at its current state of development, is, in text, theory, and practice, the least tolerant of diversity and dissent of the major world faiths/faith families and civilizations. This may be unpalatable but has to be said. Sorry.

{{but it seems that neither you in India, nor our own mullahs are ready to let us take that positive approach. I accept that your role is of no consequence but its seems to fuel our mullahs on into believing that their bigoted negative approach is the correct approach.))

For my part, I’m only too willing to let you (i.e. Pakistan - not you, Manto, personally) take any approach you want as long as it gets you out of our hair for good. I don’t grudge you your Pakistani nationhood one bit provided you stop trying to turn the neighbourhood upside down. I don’t even mind being depicted as a caricatured stage prop (i.e. disaffected dispossessed disenfranchised minority dying to revolt against Hindian hegemony) in your official national myth, as long as I’m not expected to act out the part assigned to me.

On your side, the problem is not your mullahs, but the creators and custodians of your national myths, the intellectual class defined broadly, as Ralph very correctly observed.

Mantolives #256

{{massive introspection is required on the part of our `intellectual elite`.}}

Introspection alone is useless. Would you really welcome more introspection from Lt. General(R) Hamid Gul, or Brigadier(R) Usman Khalid, or Chowk’s own Hot-Air Marshal? It’s entirely possible to have an internally consistent paranoid delusional world-view – and to then act in such a way as to create external conditions that make the paranoia seem ‘reasonable.’ Once that happy state has been reached, all the introspection in the world will simply see convergence to the “everyone’s out to get us” fixed point. Pakistan’s ruling establishment seems to have reached that stage a while back.

What Pakistan may need much more is extrospection, looking outside, without green-tinted spectacles, trying on occasion to see yourself as others have come to see you and figuring out what role your own actions might have played in forming that view.

Mantolives #257, #271

{{…France at its Bohemian peak was still defining its state religion as `Roman Catholicism`... The Bohemianism is on the rise in the `Islamic` Republic of Pakistan... as for France they got over their internal contradiction in 1905…we will get over it one day as well. }}

{{ooops... not 1905 ... 1899 ...}}

Dreyfus affair (1894-1906)? One of its upshots was a severe curtailment of the power of the Catholic Church in France. 1899 was when a host of convents and nunneries were closed. 1905, when the century-old Concordat with the Vatican was terminated, is the date of official separation of Church and State in France. I doubt any causal link with Bohemianism. French society had a long and deep history of anti-Catholic anticlericalism, going back to at least the 1789 Revolution – i.e. much before the French counterparts of Khushboo made their appearance at the Red Mill. 1905 was simply the culmination of the anti-clerical tradition in France. I simply don’t see any counterpart in Pakistan today – i.e. a mass of people who will openly and fearlessly take on Islam.

But to continue with that train of thought … The Church of Rome possesses a more than notional unity of command – sort of an octopus with one head and multiple tentacles reaching all over. Islam, as you know, is a different animal from Catholicism – more like a hydra - being a supposedly decentralized religion without an official clergy, yet still managing to enforce an unusual degree of public conformity on believers. Now the organ of the Pakistani state that openly prides itself on its Unity of Command is the Army. It is here that you may need to go for the best analogy with France. It’s no accident that Ayaz Amir regularly refers to the Corps Commanders’ council as your College of Cardinals. It is the Army and army-backed establishment that rules Pakistan – the hydra-headed mullah monster has been its creature for the longest period, though that may be changing. The proper analogy to French anti-clericalism in Pakistan would be opposition to the Army and its compliant establishment– the self-appointed creators and custodians of national myths. Good luck trying to take them on and pushing your own secular nationalist myth instead.

tahmed,

......... i must have missed the ``abdul`` in hassan ......... he comes across as a young paki patriot who is standing up to incessant verbal abuse from the horrible hidoos rather well (not that it serves any purpose)......... it is not necessary to sell your soul to the devil to prove your civil credentials ( like the mullahs, who have sold their soul to allah) .......... i don`t see kashmir as an ``abdul`` issue - it is an issue for all pakis......... but if we abandon it to the abduls because we are too uppity, polite, civilized and reasonable then we deserve it if the jihadis take over ............... there is a fine line between being reasonable and being a grovelling wimp ............

tahmed32

You did shame me out of the contest. I will try to stay out as long as I can. Better spend my energies on worthier goals :)

Mantolives #269 Thanks for posting the link. The girls did indeed wear skirts. While they may have been pass for Parisian costumes of the time, they were certainly the kind worn in polite company and not the kind by the can-can dancers. I wonder if their rendition of the can-can dance was similarly modified for polite company.

As for claiming to defend Pakistan from the thakerays - i guess if you put it that way that is true. I think of it more of defending the right of the poster`s mind to be used by the poster concerned.

This sounds more complicated, but that is all I ask: people to USE THEIR HEADS. Not be slaves to their own hatreds and prejudices. Nor be slaves to the propoganda lines of their respective governments. Is that asking too much?

ballukhan #276 Thanks again. We are on the same side, the side of sanity, on this very important point about making the internet a part of the solution, not a part of the problem, with respect to India-Pakistan relations.

Seems like we may have shamed most of the contestants out of the contest, although I see Hassan Shah #266 continuing blithely with the propoganda line, ignoring what you and I have been writing. Maybe he IS an android who continues to mindlessly write what he is programmed to write. ;-)