Beating The Retreat

Ref Mantolives #21

[All in all we can pretty much match token to token every token Minority you guys have put up except ofcourse as Presidents... ]

No, you can`t.

We Hindus take our tokenism seriously.

The head of our integrated guided missile development program, essential to our defense against Pakistan and China as well as our offensive capabilities against these nations, was one APJ Abdul Kalam, currently the President of India.

The nuclear research establishment in India was founded by Homi Bhabha, a Parsi.

Sikhs have been our Air Chief Marshal as well as Army Chief.

A Vice Chief of Army, also responsible for acquisition of weapons systems, was a Muslim.

A member of a tribe from the Northeast -- you know, those guys you are fondly hoping will secede from India -- was the Speaker of the Parliament.

Most of the senior designers of the nuclear bombs are South Indian brahmins, the most highly discriminated-against population group.

Two persons of Jewish descent made it: one as a Rear Admiral in the Navy and another as a Major-General in the Army.

We Indians have our in-house quarrels. But they are nothing compared to the fight we have with you guys and the Chinese. That is why we band together in these institutions without regard to anything except our nationality as Indians.

By the way, if a <2% Sikh population can make it in India without whining, if a 90,000-strong Parsi community can make it without whining, if a Jewish community less than 5000 strong at this point can make it without whining, one wonders what is wrong with Muslims who constitute about 14% of our population.

Is there a requirement somewhere in the Koran that Muslims have to whine?

Harish...

On the two points you raised now...

1- Lack of Hindu soldiers in the army

2- Officially sanctioned discrimination...

I am in complete agreement.

In fact 1- is ironic because even Mahmud Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb Alamgir - two of the most Islam-pasand conquerors and rulers had Hindus in their army...

I have queried people from the army on this and they have no answer.

#21 by Mantolives

[We have 2 sikhs in the parliament despite the fact that their population numbers in thousands ... and one sikh army officer...]

Yaar how much freedom minorities have can be guaged from whether they are allowed to compete in every field of endeavor. How many Hindu officers has Pakistan had? And there have been Sikhs in Pakistan since 1947, but one Sikh officer (and that guy isn`t even an officer yet, he just qualified for the Defense Academy (not sure of its name)) in 60 years of independence isn`t saying much, is it?

[All in all we can pretty much match token to token every token Minority you guys have put up except ofcourse as Presidents...]

Do you think Abdul Kalam, Shahrukh Khan, Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan, and Azim Premji are tokens? If you think they are, then there isn`t much for me to argue. Because no one can accuse these gentlemen of having gotten into the positions they hold today due to someone`s generosity. They are there because of their abilities and hard work and nothing else. Every Indian is proud of these men for having made it the hard way and not on some minority quota. When Abdul Kalam was elected the President, it was by a unanimous vote. Not even the supposedly Hindutvavadi parties, the BJP and Shiv Sena opposed his election. That should tell you something. Please don`t insult such great men by calling them tokens.

[..but there haven`t been any pogroms against Hindus or Christians like there have been against Muslims in Gujarat.]

Just because there haven`t been riots doesn`t mean everything is fine and dandy. Discrimination against minorities is officially sanctioned in Pakistan as evidenced by denial to minorities of the right to become President or the COAS (I`m not sure other than this, what other positions they are barred from holding). In India, at least on paper minorities are not discriminated against and those who have the ability rise through regardless of the obstacles. Can the same be said about Pakistan?

Anyways, enough has been said about it. Please consider this discussion closed from my side.

Salim/23, finally, thank you, a response about the artilce itself after the Yasser led diversion into the usual Indo-Pak p

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ing contest.

At 62/-, you don`t need to tip because most everybody working at that stall are family members, including some who are on vacation from Canada during the winters to help in Delhi. Also, Indians tip heavy only when they visit LaHore and environs.

Omar, I figured out, writes about what he sees. Therefore it is easy to make sure that Omar sees what you want him to write. See?

Beer on pavement cafes, not right now.

Ref Mantolives #21

[All in all we can pretty much match token to token every token Minority you guys have put up except ofcourse as Presidents... ]

Right there, Yasser, dear boy, you have got a problem.

Can you imagine Punjab (the Pakistani part, that is) electing a Hindu as its Chief Minister?

Maharashtra, home of the Shiv Sena, elected Abdul Rahman Antulay as its Chief Minister some thirty years back. Yeah, Shiv Sena was pretty active at that time as it still is. A. R. Antulay just became a Minister in the Federal Cabinet two days back.

Maybe you should read the cases being decided at the various High Courts and at the Supreme Court of India. Then you would not call the Muslim justices ``tokens``. By the way, they took the oath to uphold the Constitution of India, not some PCO like your guys did.

We don`t have Muslims as plain old officers in the Indian Army. They even manage to become the Vice Chief of the Army.

99.99% of Indian Muslims are committed to India and not to Pakistan and certainly not to the Ummah. This burns you people up. You all would rather have Indian Muslims forever at the bottom of the social heap so that you can point your fingers at India.

{``I walk the 3 or 4 kilometres to join the throngs at India Gate. From there it is another kilometre or so to Prabhu Dayal`s chaat stall outside UPSC on Shah Jahan Road, where I eat along with what appears to be the rest of the city in crowds best described as mammoth:-
# Bhalla Papri full plate masala madhyam with bhoona hua black thing masala I think it is ajwain?
# Followed by 20 rupees = 16 gol gappaas, equal number of atta and suji ones, with in the end free lots of jal jeera.
# Break for walk about and dikaar.
# One plate half-and-half aaloo tikki one piece and aaloo fry. With green chutney in extra.
# Again wash down with jal jeera and burp.
# Then go for final 2 piece gulab jamun, I like the black ones but you can have one each black and brown.
Total spent Rs 62.00

Veeresh,
Amazing - just Rs. 62 for all that? LOL. Man that less than $1.50 and you probably didn`t even tip the bugger. :)

I loved the delicious details about what you consumed for the paltry sum. Omar was right, you do write for an airline magazine that boasts about its inflight cuisine.

When do you think that Prabhu Dayal`s chaat stall will carry Kingfisher or Taj to smooth down the spicy stuff food?

... and ofcourse amongst the richest Pakistanis are the owners of the Avari Hotels .... and they are Parsis... So pretty much you can find a top guy in every field who is not a Muslim...

Not to take away ofcourse from the very real discrimination that exists...

Harish,

Pakistan has its problems... but what you are saying is hogwash... and these three names are not the only ones I have mentioned... Pakistan right now has 10 non-Muslims out of which seven are Hindus as MNAs... over 100 minority representatives in various legislatures... and 1/4th of all local body elected members are Non-muslims... We`ve had several ministers- especially in the 1990s who were Hindus ... and many more who were christians... Pakistan still has a 15% quota for minorities in civil services... Already I have mentioned two Chief Justices who were Non-muslims but we`ve had several Non-muslims as High court and lower court judges - especially Hindus... and some of Pakistan`s finest fighter pilots have been Christians... Some of the finest writers in Pakistan are Parsis... and ofcourse one such Parsi writer`s brother is one of the richest businessmen in Pakistan as well as a member of the National Parliament... We have 2 sikhs in the parliament despite the fact that their population numbers in thousands ... and one sikh army officer...

All in all we can pretty much match token to token every token Minority you guys have put up except ofcourse as Presidents...

However... minorities are discriminated against and this will change... but there haven`t been any pogroms against Hindus or Christians like there have been against Muslims in Gujarat.

#19 by Mantolives

[So one odd case and you assume all Hindus have been converted?]

For god`s sake it is NOT one case Yasser. The report specifically says there are many instances. And this is just one district where the number of Hindus is proportionately higher than in the rest of Pakistan. Just imagine their plight where they are in a smaller proportion. They cannot even seek comfort in numbers.

[Yes it is - but does it prove that Hindus are being butchered like Muslims were butchered in India? Or that every Hindu has been converted?]

The fact that Hindus are being forcibly converted against their wishes is something for you to reflect on. At least in India there is a legal recourse however flawed and people involved in various riots are being/have been brought to book, again however slowly. How many people have been arrested in Sindh? The fact that the family members of the girls are not able to force their case and the reluctance of the police to register cases against the accused points to a deeper malaise. That Hindus/Christians have come to accept their subservient status (at least in rural Pakistan) and the official machinery too looks the other way. For someone passionately arguing for minority rights, you need to look into these things with patience. Just arguing your way out won`t reduce their (and by extension Pakistan`s) problems.

[I am not bothered by this nonsense Harish..]

The number of minorities that have risen to prominence gives an indication of how a society treates its minorities. For a country with the number of minorities that you claim Pakistan has, the number of famous non-Muslim Pakis is pathetically inadequate. If you think pointing that out is nonsense, good luck with your dream of a modern Pakistan.

``15 is that not about Pakistan``

So one odd case and you assume all Hindus have been converted?

Yes it is - but does it prove that Hindus are being butchered like Muslims were butchered in India? Or that every Hindu has been converted? My post #5 was censored because it carried graphic pictures of Muslims being burnt alive in India...



``Well anyway... Did only three make it to the top?``

No... the list of Hindu MNAs, MPAs, Lawyers, Justices, Judges, Civil Society members is very long ... at the moment there are 7 members of Pakistani parliament that are Hindus...

I am not sure what constitutes the top... does ex-Pakistani wicket keeper Anil Dalpat count? Federal Ministers? Do leading Hindu doctors of Karachi count? Educationists? do they count? Do countless Christian fighter pilots and Army officers count?


I am not bothered by this nonsense Harish..

Outlook India, Sept. 5, 2004

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_kali_karachi/txt_kali_karachi.html
Sanjoy Ghosh
Kali idols in Karachi`s posh Clifton area

HINDUS IN PAKISTAN
Jai Kali Karachi Wali
They have their gods, their weddings, their businesses. These Hindus just happen to be living in Pakistan.

MANU JOSEPH


Bani is a Gujarati lady with moist red teeth and a wicked gleam in her eye. When she`s in a good mood, the ancient temple sweeper with no confirmed human master will admit to being ``between sixteen and eighty years old.``

She sits at the gate of the Lakshmi Narayan temple, a small impoverished shrine that stands at one end of a creek in Karachi`s prime real estate. Four young girls walk to the gate. The sheer beauty of two is completely wasted on Bani, who stops the girls with a wave and asks them to leave: ``Muslims aren`t allowed in.``

``We just want to walk around and look,`` one of the girls, Rumi, says.

``Then go to the zoo,`` retorts Bani.

To the conventional secular urban sophisticate, this may sound like the dangerous portent of violent religious conflict. But there is no malice here. The entire exchange on this breezy Karachi evening is just about a marking of territory.

The Muslim girls are far from hurt. They plead between giggles. ``We just want to pray.`` Hirakumari, a few months pregnant and related in some complicated way to Bani, tells them, ``Go pray to your god. You eat cows, make fun of our gods, ask if our gods don`t feel cold, being naked...``

But she then turns and whispers with a smile, ``They are actually lovely people, these Muslims. They will feed us for the rest of our lives, if it comes to that. Pakistan is the only place I call home but how can we let Muslims inside (the temple)?``


A volunteer allowing entry only to Hindus in the temple

A similar scene plays out at a crowded Shiva temple in Karachi`s posh Clifton neighbourhood. It`s Monday night, the busiest spell in the temple`s week. Jayanti Ratna stands with a stick at the gate and screams `Jai Shiv Shankar`. When someone doesn`t respond he stops the trespasser with, ``Muslims and Christians are not allowed.``

Does it feel strange for a Hindu man in Pakistan to stand by a busy pavement and block local Muslims? ``Not at all. I was born here. I belong here. I will exercise my right to serve my faith.``

Today Pakistan`s Hindus number somewhere between 2.5 million (a somewhat suspect official estimate) and 5 million (according to popular Hindu politician Kishinchand Parwani). Over 95 per cent of them live in the province of Sindh; most are poor farmers and labourers from the scheduled castes.


Deepak Perwani with his parents

Many of the worshippers at Karachi`s temples are somewhat better off, and the calm affluence of Karachi`s wealthier Hindus is worlds apart. Thirty-year-old Deepak Perwani, his hair dyed red, and a Ganesha tattooed on his right arm, is one of Pakistan`s top fashion designers. His quick Indo-Pak analysis: ``There is one major difference. Indians can`t cut a salwar to save their lives and Pakistanis can`t cut a churidar!``

As with many Hindus here, `Inshallah` slips out of his mouth easily as a prelude to anything and he eats beef, never pork. A travel agent once booked him into a Lahore hotel as an Indian. ``I was pissed off. I struck out the word Indian and wrote Pakistani.`` Six years ago when he wanted to open a store on an upmarket Karachi street, his friends asked him not to flaunt his name outside. But he was soon forced by market pressure to put his brand up in massive type—Deepak Perwani. ``There`s been no trouble, not a single incident outside my shop.``

Perwani is celebrated and patronised by the rich and mighty of Pakistan, even honoured as the country`s cultural ambassador to China. But he has just one ``small problem`` being in Pakistan.

``Mathematical chance isn`t on the side of a Sindhi Hindu looking for a suitable arranged match within the small community. The girl has to be imported,`` Perwani says, ``since I am doing too well here to be exported.`` His mother Renu will parade him in Bombay, Dubai and Hong Kong, but as she says with motherly concern, ``People in India or Dubai don`t want their daughters to live in Pakistan. It`s a mindset.``

Renu`s endearing motherly look turns somewhat severe when she considers the options for her son, ``I would never accept a Muslim girl in my house. All my friends are Muslims and I know they are very beautiful people, cultured and nice. But a daughter-in-law is a different matter.`` In any case, her son can`t marry a Muslim; Islamic law prohibits a Muslim marrying a Hindu. ``I`d have to convert,`` says Deepak. ``And I would never do that.``


Danish Kaneria, cricketer and Hindu, his parents and wife Dharmita

In between the rich Sindhis and the poor Hindu farmers of rural Sindh is the middle-class setting of Danish Kaneria`s home. The leg-spinner is only the second Hindu to play cricket for Pakistan. His new wife Dharmita is also part of the same Gujarati community. ``We met at a festival,`` Dharmita says, almost shyly. Danish`s elder brother Vikrant is engaged to Dharmita`s sister, who will also live in the four-bedroom flat soon.


A Hindu devotee feeding a calf in the Swami Narayan temple in Karachi

Mrs Kaneria talks fondly about the temples of India, often referring to the country as ``apna desh``. Vikrant is surer of where he belongs. He echoes a popular belief among the elite here that life for the educated is much better in Pakistan than in India. ``And there is no discrimination at all,`` he says. ``The fact that my brother is playing for Pakistan proves that.``

Kishinchand Parwani, a member of the National Assembly (equivalent to the Indian Member of Parliament) from 1988 to 1997, recalls that right up to the late `80s a steady stream of Hindus would migrate to India. ``That was because of home-sickness but they soon realised that in India nobody was going to hug and welcome them just because they were Hindus from Pakistan. Hindus are safe in Pakistan but there is this fear that if anything like Babri Masjid happens, we will have to bear the brunt again. That was the only time Hindus here felt threatened.``


Film distributor Satish Anand (actress Juhi Chawala`s uncle) has released over 450 Pakistani films

A day after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, his staff told Satish Anand not to attend office. Anand, who is film actress Juhi Chawla`s uncle and a Punjabi Hindu settled in Karachi, runs Eveready Films, which has distributed over 450 Pakistani films and a few Hindi films like Awara and Barsat. ``It was the only time I felt like I was in someone else`s country,`` he says. ``After that things have been peaceful.``

Yet beyond Karachi, low-caste Hindus in Sindh`s small villages face a different reality. ``The number of reported cases of violence against Hindus resulted in a distinct worsening in their plight over the year,`` says a report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). ``On September 17, 2003, in broad daylight six armed persons attempted to rape three Hindu women. According to local Hindus, this was the seventeenth incident in the area in 2003.``

Still, HRCP`s Nadia Haroon will make a distinction between crime against Hindus and communal violence. ``The attack on Hindu women is part of crime against rural women in general in Pakistan. Hindus are rarely targeted because they are Hindus but since the justice system is so slow and in some cases biased against minorities, criminals here feel that they can get away with such attacks on Hindus.``


A worker at the Hindu crematorium outside Karachi with the ashes waiting to be collected by relatives in India

On the outskirts of Karachi, near a graveyard, the Afghan taxi driver turns philosophical under the intense afternoon heat.``When it all ends, Hindus and Muslims go to the same place.`` Here, by a Muslim graveyard is a Hindu crematorium. It has a library, though there are no books, only the ashes of Hindus who have passed on. The relatives await the visas that will let them immerse their ashes in the Ganga. In India.

#16 by Mantolives

[I pointed out to you that my paper reported this a long time ago...]

So what`s your point?

#14 by Mantolives

[Nobody said Pakistan was perfect- I wouldn`t be so hyper if it was... but you can see from post 12 that the truth is very different than what you Indies spin.]

Then what about #15? Is that not Pakistan?

[but there was lively debate and if Democracy is allowed to work- inshallah these illogical inane stupidities will also be wiped off.]

Assuming that Zia (although I think it was there from the beginning) was the one who amended the constitution to bar Hindus/Christians from becoming PM/President, you have had 8-odd years when there was democracy (during BB/NS`s tenures), yet that didn`t change a thing. Now Mushy, who has a carte blanche on everything still cannot undo that ruling, so what makes you think that democracy will change that?

[And btw- my paper was the first to report the Hindu women`s abduction one and a half months ago... thats where you guys picked it up from.]

Mariana Baabar is a Paki. Please tell that to her.

Harish are you blind?

I pointed out to you that my paper reported this a long time ago...

So what is your point ?

Here`s the link:

Sindh`s Stolen Brides

Nobody said Pakistan was perfect- I wouldn`t be so hyper if it was... but you can see from post 12 that the truth is very different than what you Indies spin.

And yes the fact that Bhagwandas can`t become the President is wrong - but there was lively debate and if Democracy is allowed to work- inshallah these illogical inane stupidities will also be wiped off.

And btw- my paper was the first to report the Hindu women`s abduction one and a half months ago... thats where you guys picked it up from.

#10 by Mantolives

[Azim Premji and Abdul Kalam are not the only Indian Muslims...]

Yes, they aren`t the only Indian Muslims to have made a mark. There are any number of them and I can go on and on. It is Pakis who always have these three names as the stock answer to questions about the marginalization of minorities.

[And contrary to the brainwashing that goes on in India- no Non-hindus have not been converted and we`ve been over this...]

Mariana Babar of the Outlook is as Paki as you are and very recently wrote about this problem. Hindu girls kidnapped, forcibly converted and then married off to their Muslim abductors. Will find the link for you in a few moments.

[Pakistan Christian Congress claims there are 15 million Christians in Pakistan... census accepts some 3 million... and 2.44 million Hindus... there are cities in Interior Sindh which are completely Hindu.]

Isn`t it odd that despite your claim that there are so many Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, just three names have made it to the top?

[Rana Bhagwandas is a Supreme Court Justice... that is a much more important post than a ceremonial president... and the difference... Bhagwandas is a devout Hindu.]

Wow! Nice spin. If it is such a ceremonial post, why is he barred from becoming the President?