The Tale of Five Rivers

Veeresh #110

Veeresh you gotta give the Listerine to your Sikh compatriots who come over here. ``Hindustan dee maaN dee phudhee`` sounds very musical in a Malwee accent, but it just isn`t on saying that kind of thing in an enemy country.

#104 Urstruly:

plenty of Americans and majority of British opposed US invasion of Iraq through democratic and lawful means. Should they be lower the pride (or acceptance the fact) to be American or British and more importantly, with respect to discussion here, should they detest English language becasue largest and mightiest English speaking nation invaded a smaller country against all norms of international laws?

You are linking socio-cultural identity with poor political judgement of a people by stating that you are ashamed of being a Punjabi because of the actions of mostly Punjabi na-pak fauj. First of all the priorities of na-pak fauj are self-preservation, Pakistan, Islam and then anything else like Punjabi. Whatever they did in Bangladesh was according to the above order of priorities. If you could conclusively prove that ruthlessness per Punjabi soldier in Bangladesh was greater than a Pashtun or a mohajir Pakistani, you would have a strong point about some inherent tendency of Punjabis to be idiots.

During the last elections in Pakistan, despite large scale manipulations and rigging, the total vote against ``mostly Punjabi na-pak fauj rule`` was only larger in Punjab. Since I consider MMA a ``B`` team of military given extensive history and proof of military-mullah nexus, the total vote of opposition to military (mostly PPPP and PML(N)) was larger in Punjab than QML. The total opposition vote in Sindh (PPPP + PML against MQM + MMA + QML), in NWFP (PPPP + PML against MMA and QML) and in Balochistan (PPPP + BNP against MMA + QML) was actually smaller than pro-military parties. How can you complain about Punjabis and not the rest of Pakistanis with regard to na-pak fauj support politically?

The question of ashamed of arises if one is proud of to begin with. I might have been guilty of supporting Punjab as pride but actually and honestly speaking it is acceptance of the fact of cards nature has dealt me. There is absolutely no sense of presenting pride and superiority of any ethnic group within sub-contienent. But by same token there is absolutely no reason to suppress one`s identity in any name. Punjabis often speak up when told to let go of their language in favor of another equally economically useless language. It was/ and still is a matter of defending the cards nature has dealt you against a hand with no better hand in anyway whatsoever. Why should I pass my hand with 13 points against a hand with 13 or less points? How am I suppose to respond, if I had the opportunity, to Baba-e-Urdu Maulana Abdul Haque comments in Dhaka that all languages of Pakistan are of Kafir origins except Urdu. That is true but so is Arabic and so are all of us (Kafirs), give or take few hundred years.

There is reverse reaction to every action which runs parallel with survival of the fittest. First of all I agree that in survival of the fittest race, English has no comparison. However, applying third law of Newton to the imposition of Urdu, the reverse reaction is native languages revolt. Harder they impose Urdu, stronger the revolt would be.

The conditions which gave advantage to Urdu in Punjab among Muslims during early part of last century do not exist now. The three-way religion-based group interests of Punjabis during 1910-1930 evaporated in 1947 with the migration of two competing groups. The ground realities are different now and they do not support keeping hung up with Urdu unless religion-based statements like the one by Maulana Abdul Haque are taken most importantly.

Urduization of Punjab in the name of Pakistan and Islam has worked just the opposite it was aimed at. It is single-handedly responsible for the hegemony of Hindi culture in the form of movies and music all over Pakistani Punjab. Almost all Punjabis are hooked now to watching Hindi movies videos and DVDs, thank to preferential treatment in speaking to Urdu. I dont like TNT but I dont buy that TNT meant two nations, one culture. North Indian Ganges plain culture can not be dumped on Punjabis in the name of Pakistan or Islam.

People here take pride or criticize Pakistan as revival of Afghan-Turkish dynasties. That is just not true. Pakistani rulers are not as ruthless as them and a minority of Afghan-Turks dont hold sway over all the matters of importance. Thanks to opening the floodgates of Hindi culture by promoting Urdu, Pakistan is really a revival of Gupta dynasty sans Hindusim in every respect. Gupta dynasty relied on the native underlings using Brahmins and religion to win their loyalties and presenting Ganges plains culture as pure Hindu culture. Just replace Brahmins with mullahs and we have the revival of Gupta dynasty period with militay + mullah + Urdu.

Janab tahmed321 jee

I would like to know on what basis you arrived at the assumption that Dravidian immigrants to the subcontinent came via Makran. Is it because you see more African influence in Makran today and you put 2 & 2 together and came up with that idea. Is it not possible that since the continents were connected eraly man could have walked into the subcontinent via Maharashtra or Gujarat.

You also seem to show the same attitude that you are criticizing. `` the kind who visit chowk only as an opportunity to ridicule pakistanis from the safety of the internet `` - does it mean to say that you would have used appropriate means to deal with them one on one? The internet has made it possible for people to exchange ideas without having to rely upon history professors to come up with their versions of history. That is democratic . In any case the exchange is not always one sided because I have personally read equally opinionated versions from the your countrymen on this forum.

mitran #115 On your other point, mitran sahib, you are definitely wrong. I have been on chowk for 3-4 years, and have drawn my conclusions based on what I have myself observed - there are just two Pakistanis I can think of who were ridiculing indians when they first came to chowk; however, there are dozens of indians who have come and gone from chowk and all i have ever seen them write is attempts to ridicule pakistan while glorifying india to the point of absurdity. Instead of trying to whitewash the facts, I suggest next time you see a creep (as previously defined) write on chowk, you take him to task yourself as a fellow Indian. That way you will be able to demonstrate that you are a man of principle, and we can all have more intelligent and interesting discussions on chowk.

Mitran sahab
if you forgive my interjection. The continents were joined long before homo spaiens had evolved.

mitran #115 I dont see how you can, by any stretch, that piece I wrote can be considered to be racist against the Dravidians. After all, as I note in the post, ALL mankind (not just Dravidians, but blonde Nordic models, cute Thai waitresses, pudgy Eskimo philosophers, tiny Hottentott scholars...the list goes on) started from Africa. I think, sir, that you are being too touchy on this subject of race. I invite you to embrace Islam and free yourself from such feelings of inequality).

(That last sentence is written in order to annoy any fervent hindu who may be reading this post, and to cause and fervent mullah to wet his pants in delight...personally, I dont care if you are hindu or muslim, and may God bless you and go in peace, dear sir jee.)

Dionysus/114 -well that`s where you err, in addition to the Listerine.

We Indians have never considered Pakistan to be an enemy country, far from it. We consider you to be part of us, Atut Ung and all that, remember?

We are stuck with you like, say, Bihar is.

sameer #113 ``People here take pride or criticize Pakistan as revival of Afghan-Turkish dynasties. That is just not true. Pakistani rulers are not as ruthless as them and a minority of Afghan-Turks dont hold sway over all the matters of importance.``

Sameer another great post and your point about Hindi-Urdu and the eventual long term Indianization of Pakistan is an excellent one, but I just want to clarify something here. I`m not say the descendents of the Turko-Persians rule over us now. That obviously isn`t true. What I said was that Pakistan was founded by them for their own reasons. (If Pakistan was founded for Islam and Muslims why did it leave tens of millions of the poorest and weakest Muslims in India???) And they did rule the place in the first few years of Pakistan`s existence. When I said Punjabis were still slaves I didn`t mean literally. With a few exceptions, like the great Abdullah Bhatti, until the time of Guru Gobind Singh the Turko-Persian rulers could awe and intimidate Punjabis without even the need for armies. Punjabis suffered from a huge inferority complex with regards to the Turko-Persians, and the Pakistan state has made sure that they still do long after the Turko-Persians have become irrelavent.

Sameer # 113

I agree with most of your post except on some issues on which our disagreement may be due to different experiences we went through in life and thus influenced our perceptions.

One such issue is your contention of ``poor political judgment`` of Punjabis. I was of that opinion once. I used to believe that Punjab did not do what needed to be done to save our federation with East Pakistan because Punjabis were kept in dark due to a strictly controlled media. Later I lived through the civil war in urban Sindh that almost lasted eight years. Living in Karachi, which was once a true cosmopolitan city and rightfully a ``mini-Pakistan`` I had had great opportunity of interacting with almost every ethnicity that exists in Pakistan- an opportunity that a common Punjabi living in Punjab never experiences. And being very active in student politics this interaction went above and beyond the normal and went down to the hideous detail of power politics. The devil is in details. After seeing the carnage for years and being a first hand witness of the untold misery that man is capable of inflicting onto his fellow human being, I was still convinced that a Punjabi has the poor judgment because of controlled media. When I used to go back to Punjab, although there were sanitized version of news in newspaper, even the politically active friends of mine used to inquire casually ``bhaiyas making trouble eh?`` and when used to tell them some of the details they found it incredible to believe. At that time when I told them that army was 95% responsible for this political mess they wouldn`t believe it. In their opinion the only solution to subdue urban Sindh was more interference of army into the political mess. I had a very good Sindhi friend from upper Sindh who belonged to Jiyay Sindh, and used to regularly invite me and other friends to his goth where we stayed sometime for week or more during vacations. There not only did I get a chance to share glasses of home-made thaadal (w/pot sometimes) but also got a chance to exchange political views with down to earth Sindhis – peasants, lawyers, school teachers, mirasis, maalshi etc. etc. The over all feeling was that of total disenfranchisement. They used to scoff at my arguments that investment by military establishment like that in Panu Aqil cantonment and Cadet college Pitaro, or upgrading of highways ( which was basically being done to logistically support jihad in Afghanistan), and trade free zones like that in Nooriabad will change their life for good. Their unanimous discourse was still that of disenfranchisement whereas in Punjab I found no such sentiment. As a matter of fact investors were running away from murderous racketeering of MQM and moving their business en mass to North Punjab. It was boom time for Punjab. There was absolutely no feeling of political oppression in Punjab except in southern siraiki belt, which is neither agricultural nor industrial and is not a recruiting base for military. My views on Punjab`s ``poor political judgment`` changed when Zia died and some sort of democracy came and restrictions on media were lifted. This time Benazir used the blunt power of state apparatus to crush MQM. A spate of extra-judicial murders were carried out and constitutional rights of Pakistani citizens were trampled upon like a Gestapo state. Just imagine what would happen if police raids every other house in Rawalpindi and Lahore, without warrant, women are beaten, and young men arrested and taken to undisclosed locations where they were tortured and sometimes murdered in cold blood. But that was happening. Media was reporting. And Punjab was silent. The common sentiment in Punjab was that these bhaiyas must be dealt with force. That was no poor judgment – that was complacency. Punjab is again complacent when military is using the same blunt force on citizens of Pakistan again, same arguments that it is being done to bring law and order and prosperity in to those provinces are being repeated again. Everybody knows very well that instead it is only being done to please American masters and to establish American military bases in the region and to provide a corridor to them to central Asia. It might be good for Pakistan, but do we necessarily have to murder our own citizens to do that? Why Punjab is not asking this question now when almost everyone has CNN, geo, BBC, PTV, STN, and ZTV at their homes. This is not bad judgment – this is complacency - the complacency that will sure destroy this federation once again.

Military is again using ethnic chauvinists to divide the federation and conquer us all. Where do these Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch, and Urdu chauvinists disappear whenever even the poorest form of democracy returns to Pakistan and why do they appear like locust whenever military rules Pakistan. Today Punjabi chauvinists are using the argument that if Punjab is not going to support military the fundamentalists will take over, thus causing the further disenfranchisement of whole Pakistan. And what has Punjabi chauvinism given to Punjabis anyway. Just go to any Punjabi discussion forum and all it does is to emphasize on the tribal affiliations of Punjabis to their clans – the rancid and hideous words like Jatts are lower than Arians, Arains are coward and Gujars are brave people and Maliks are taili and Rajputs are smelly. What the fukk is this. You are dividing human beings on the basis of their very basic prejudices –the prejudices that no one has control over – the prejudices that are a result of accident of birth. Just roll down this very thread and see the evidence with your own eyes. A Punjabi who is so chauvinist, who so prejudiced, who is not willing to tolerate his fellow Punjabi, what would he think of a fellow Sindhi or a disenfranchised Baluchi or Pathan whose women and children are being burnt alive by military as we speak. This is the gift of Punjabi chauvinism to Punjabis. They deserve that.

Punjab is also being terrorized and feared by Punjabi chauvinists into thinking that somehow its own self preservation is at risk. The hateful propaganda that bhayays are taking over Punjab and they are destroying Punjabi language by imposing their own is being fed systematically into Punjabi mind by military establishment and their cohorts of Punjabi chauvinists. Please explain to me when never in history Punjabi was taught in schools, never it was a part of official vernacular (even during sikh times), never it was a language of business, trade, politics, and military then how has it survived over the centuries. Since Akbar`s time, the official language of Punjab has been Farsi, and before that I am not sure we even had our own script to write Punjabi and yet Punjabi has survived. That is almost six centuries now. British replaced local official vernacular with urdu, and that is two centuries now; and yet Punjabi survives. The elite and salariat in those times used to speak farsi and urdu then and now they speak urdu and English and yet Punjabi has survived. No Punjabi chauvinist can answer these contentions even when he sees them with his own eyes because his eyes are covered with prejudices and chauvinism. I humbly appeal to you all not to divide human beings further on the basis of their prejudices of accident of birth. Make them proud by making them appreciative of their vibrant heritage and not fearing them into being passive-aggressive with their prejudices. Expose the hateful game that colonial British and their post-colonial heirs i.e. military and the progeny of Iyad Alawis are playing with us.

Why was my response to Veeresh not been posted? It contain no profanity or any kind of racist comment. Why?



And oh btw, urstruly #121 It is patently obvious that you have lost your marbles - every fricken single one of them. Poor brainwashed miskeen bakistani.

dionysus

If the following doesn`t prove the moral and political bankruptcy of Punjab then what does:

http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en71739&F_catID=&f_type=source

The facts also render Sameer`s empirical evidence of punjab`s uprightness, invalid.

re: #114 by dionysus
Forgot to narrate another incident that happened in and around 1996 i think. My Paki Mohajir friend and i were completing our Residency from a New York hospital. Pakistan Day was fast approaching. My friend bemoaned the fact that there was so much disunity among the Pakis that there was going to be 2 different venues for celebrating the same event! ``Yeh Sudharney wali kom nahin hai`` was how he put it. He also had a lot of unprintable urdu words to describe Pakistan. I had to pacify him. We went to watch a hindi movie later on.
Something is bothering u my friend. U need to take a break.
Sridhar

re:#108 by dionysus
``Veeresh, why does every Sikh yatree from India I meet in Lahore hate India with a passion? Does the Sikh hatred for India worry you at all,...``
The Pakis i have met in USA have all felt bad about the state of affairs in their native country. This cuts across region. If u met some sikhs in Pakistan that do not have a good opinion about India, u must remember that such an opinion is not shared by every sikh. After all, one such person is the PM today and thousands of sikhs join the Indian Army every year. Another prominent sikh (Montek Singh Ahluwalia) left a cushy job to join the Planning Commission.
Anyway, most of u guys are stuck in a groove and find it difficult to come out of it. I am reminded of an incident when i was watching an Indian News Channel with my Paki friend in New York many years ago (Pak did not have any channel of its own, so every Paki was forced to view this channel in New York and suburbs). Newsreader was a Sikh woman (her name ends in Simran; can`t recall her full name). My friend turned to me and said that Indian govt was just keeping the sikhs happy by giving them cushy jobs like the one given to the newsreader!
That pretty much sums up the Paki mentality. There is a general feeling (perhaps fostered by your media and books) that sikhs in India are an unwilling part of the diaspora. Nothing can be farther from the truth. I think u must worry about your own country`s future, which is not very bright at the moment.
Sridhar

re: Kushwant Singh`s interview narrated in post #109 by warpster
Even though this may annoy some Punjabees, i do not think KS is as great a writer as some other Indians have been (R.K. Narayan comes to mind easily). KS is just famous, that is all.
Now, what is our Sardarji talking in the following passages taken from that post:

``What about Punjabi music? Cinema and songs are incomplete these days without a Punjabi
touch.

Our religion is entirely music based. We have 31 ragas....``.
So, Sardarji is saying that Punjabi music has 31 ragas! That would be news. And, what does he mean by ``Our religion`` ? Is he talking about a special Punjabi religion that i am not aware of? As i said once before, this is one senile sikh.
I do not know why KS is given so much importance at his age! The guy has done nothing much to deserve this kind of attention.
Sridhar

dionysus: i agree that panjabis have traditionally had an inferiority complex with respect to their culture. and, as with all inferiority complexes, the reason was pretty obvious: panjabis were traditionally a rustic people, whereas farsi was the language of the court. while the panjabis did have their day as rulers (as modern day names of indian states like gujerat attest; and as that most underrated of ancient battles - the Battle of Multan where panjabis finally turned the tide on Alexander the Great and stuck an arrow in his behind or someplace for good measure as well after he had beaten the then mighty persian empire and also the lands of egypt and central asia) ), they became a conquered people for several centuries at the hands of the turk and other invaders. Like all conquered people, they lost pride in themselves.

Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon wrt panjabi culture that is taking place today in that most unlikely of places: UK and the US. This is not just with the expat panjabi community, but with western people as well - popularized not only by movies like Monsoon Wedding (sold as part of mainstream movies in video stores) but also by panjabi folk songs (now on CDs played by US teenagers, most often as an intermix with english e.g.) and the bhangra which has also gained popularity in the west.

So, Panjab is rising again - not as a martial race or victors or any such rubbish, but as a source of cultural richness that is being appreciated not just in the subcontinent (in Dhaka, the shalwar kameez was considered high fashion by their women a few years ago when i used to go there - and the dress is known to them as simply ``panjabi``) but around the world.

I tend to agree with urstruly (normally i dont, but once in a while he gets it right - like the broken watch that is correct two times a day) that the panjab assembly has disgraced itself by not standing up for democracy. One day the panjabis will get fed up with all this hypocrisy and may even take to the streets - as they did when they finally got fed up of Ayub Khan`s self-promotion with his ``Decade of Development`` and kicked him out of office in disgrace.

an interesting parallel of the panjabi vs. urdu/farsi language issue is to be found in europe that i recall reading about someplace: in 1088, the norman invasion led to a french-speaking nobility in england, with english-speaking peasants. So, when french words were used to describe something it tended to be considered more refined than english words for the same thing. Thus, words like beef and pork (french origin) gradually replaced perfectly fine anglo-saxon words that existed at the time as the english peasantry started mimicking their french sahibs.

Thusin india we had old panjabi/khari boli etc. words being replaced by farsi/turki words as they sought to communicate with their farsi/turki speaking sahibs (giving rise to urdu), with the british raj providing another round of replacement to change 19th century urdu to modern urdu. In this sense, urdu is indeed as much a language of the panjabis as modern english (as opposed to the pre-norman english) is the language of the english!!

PS: as an aside, even the rise of mullahism in pakistan is being reflected in the language of the Bakistanis - as dionysus jokingly referred to the arab-worshipping mullahs - with perfectly good urdu words being replaced by arab words (e.g. namaz being replaced by salaat, ramzan by ramadan. however, this trend is too limited (mostly to religious words, and by those who come most in contact with arabs in mosques etc.) to be of any significance.