Beating The Retreat
Veeresh Malik January 27, 2006
#44 Posted by MantoLives on February 3, 2006 4:09:24 am
Here is the view of an Indian who has actually been to Pakistan...
Friday, February 03, 2006
VIEW: Pakistan, Islam and Indian media stereotypes —Yoginder Sikand
“[T]he limited support that radical Islamist groups enjoy in Pakistan reflects less a fierce commitment to their ultimate agenda of strict Islamist rule than a protest against the system which, ironically, has abetted such groups for its own purposes”
Contrary to Indian media representations, the average Pakistani is just about as religious or otherwise as the average Indian. The average Pakistani is certainly not the wild-eyed fanatic baying for non-Muslim blood or waging violent jihad to establish global Islamic hegemony that our media would have us believe. Like the average Indian, he is emotionally attached to and culturally rooted in his religion, but he does not wear it on his sleeve; nor does it dictate every thought or act of his. In fact, the thing that first strikes the Indian visitor to Pakistan is how almost identical the average Pakistani is, looks and behaves to the average north Indian.
Almost all the many people I met in the course of a recent month-long visit to Pakistan that took me to several places in Punjab and Sindh do not even remotely fit the description of the average Pakistani peddled by our media. Islamist radical groups undeniably do have an important presence in parts of Pakistan, but they certainly do not command widespread popular support all over the country. This explains the continual dismal performance of religious parties in every Pakistani election. Despite concerted efforts by Islamist and mullah-based parties to establish a theocracy in the country, Pakistani politics are not dominated by religion as much as by economic, ethnic and regional concerns. It is, therefore, crucial not to exaggerate the influence of radical religious outfits in Pakistan, as the Indian media generally does.
Indian media descriptions of Pakistan tend to portray Islam in the country as a seamless monolith. The variety of local expressions of Islam are consistently overlooked so as to reinforce the image of a single version of Islam that is defined by the most radical of Islamist groups. The fact, however, is, that most Punjabis and Sindhis, that is to say a majority of Pakistanis, ascribe to or are associated with the sufi traditions which are anathema for such Islamists. Popular sufism is deeply-rooted in Pakistani soil and provides a strong counter to radical Islamist groups and their exclusivist agenda. Many sufis were folk heroes, radicals in their own right, bitterly critiquing tyrannical rulers as well as Muslim and Hindu priests. This is why they exercised a powerful influence on the masses, irrespective of religion. This explains, in part, why Islamist radicals are so fiercely opposed to the traditions that have developed over the centuries around such figures.
The popular sufi tradition in large parts of Pakistan thus limits the appeal of radical Islamists, making the chances of an Islamist takeover of the country a remote possibility. In recent years, it is true, these groups have gained particular salience and strength, but this is said to be less a reflection of a growing popular commitment to the Islamist cause than to other factors. One of these is the role of the state. Although the ideological founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, envisaged Pakistan as a secular Muslim state, successive Pakistani governments have used Islam to bolster their own frail support base, exactly in the same manner as the Congress and the BJP have done with Hinduism in the Indian case. Islam has also been used to weld together a number of the country’s ethnic groups that have little in common other than their profession of Islam, in the same way in which advocates of both ‘soft’ Hindutva, such as the Congress, and ‘hard’ Hindutva, such as the BJP, have sought to invoke Brahminical Hinduism to define the Indian nation state. Hindutva ideologues propagate a form of Hindu ‘nationalism’ that has no space for Indians of other faiths, and is, in fact, based on an unrelenting hatred of non-Hindu ‘others’. Creating a Hindu identity in this fashion is predicated on excising all elements of culture and tradition that Hindus are seen to share with others. The same has happened in the case of official and radical versions of Islam in Pakistan. Yet, it is important to remember that this is not the only, and certainly not the dominant, form of Islam in Pakistan, as my interaction with numerous Pakistanis from different walks of life revealed to me.
“Radical Islamist groups are not a true reflection or representative of Pakistani Islam”, a social activist friend of mine from Sindh explains. “State manipulation of religion”, he argues, “has had a major role to play in promoting radical Islamism in Pakistan”, which, he says, “is largely an expression of elite politics and Western imperialist manipulation”. “To add to state patronage of such groups”, he points out, “there is the fact of mounting economic and social inequalities, sustained military rule, the continued stranglehold of feudal lords and the absence of mechanisms for expressing democratic dissent, all of which have enabled radical Islamist groups to assert the claim of representing normative Islam against other competing versions and visions of the faith.”
In some parts of Pakistan, such as Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province, he says, electoral support for Islamists “reflects anti-American sentiments rather than popular demands for theocratic rule”. Such groups, he says, have gained added strength from the ongoing conflict in Kashmir by “tapping into Pakistani nationalist sentiments on this issue in the same way as Hindutva groups used the Kashmir conflict in India, both seeking to present the issue in religious terms”. “In short”, he claims, “the limited support that radical Islamist groups enjoy in Pakistan reflects less a fierce commitment to their ultimate agenda of strict Islamist rule than a protest against the system which, ironically, has abetted such groups for its own purposes”.
“The task before Indians and Pakistanis seriously concerned about the future of our common subcontinent”, says another friend of mine, a journalist from Lahore, “is to rescue our religious traditions from the monopolistic claims of the radicals. Islamism in Pakistan and Hindutva in India feed on each other while claiming to be vociferous foes. We need to revive popular forms of religion, such as sufism and bhakti, that are accepting of other faiths and that at the same time are socially engaged and critique the system of domination that produces radicalism as a reaction while at the same time using it as a means of stifling challenges to it.”
The writer is post-doctoral fellow at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden. He also edits a web-magazine called Qalandar, which can be accessed at www.islaminterfaith.org
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006 02 03 story_3-2-2006_pg3_3
Friday, February 03, 2006
VIEW: Pakistan, Islam and Indian media stereotypes —Yoginder Sikand
“[T]he limited support that radical Islamist groups enjoy in Pakistan reflects less a fierce commitment to their ultimate agenda of strict Islamist rule than a protest against the system which, ironically, has abetted such groups for its own purposes”
Contrary to Indian media representations, the average Pakistani is just about as religious or otherwise as the average Indian. The average Pakistani is certainly not the wild-eyed fanatic baying for non-Muslim blood or waging violent jihad to establish global Islamic hegemony that our media would have us believe. Like the average Indian, he is emotionally attached to and culturally rooted in his religion, but he does not wear it on his sleeve; nor does it dictate every thought or act of his. In fact, the thing that first strikes the Indian visitor to Pakistan is how almost identical the average Pakistani is, looks and behaves to the average north Indian.
Almost all the many people I met in the course of a recent month-long visit to Pakistan that took me to several places in Punjab and Sindh do not even remotely fit the description of the average Pakistani peddled by our media. Islamist radical groups undeniably do have an important presence in parts of Pakistan, but they certainly do not command widespread popular support all over the country. This explains the continual dismal performance of religious parties in every Pakistani election. Despite concerted efforts by Islamist and mullah-based parties to establish a theocracy in the country, Pakistani politics are not dominated by religion as much as by economic, ethnic and regional concerns. It is, therefore, crucial not to exaggerate the influence of radical religious outfits in Pakistan, as the Indian media generally does.
Indian media descriptions of Pakistan tend to portray Islam in the country as a seamless monolith. The variety of local expressions of Islam are consistently overlooked so as to reinforce the image of a single version of Islam that is defined by the most radical of Islamist groups. The fact, however, is, that most Punjabis and Sindhis, that is to say a majority of Pakistanis, ascribe to or are associated with the sufi traditions which are anathema for such Islamists. Popular sufism is deeply-rooted in Pakistani soil and provides a strong counter to radical Islamist groups and their exclusivist agenda. Many sufis were folk heroes, radicals in their own right, bitterly critiquing tyrannical rulers as well as Muslim and Hindu priests. This is why they exercised a powerful influence on the masses, irrespective of religion. This explains, in part, why Islamist radicals are so fiercely opposed to the traditions that have developed over the centuries around such figures.
The popular sufi tradition in large parts of Pakistan thus limits the appeal of radical Islamists, making the chances of an Islamist takeover of the country a remote possibility. In recent years, it is true, these groups have gained particular salience and strength, but this is said to be less a reflection of a growing popular commitment to the Islamist cause than to other factors. One of these is the role of the state. Although the ideological founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, envisaged Pakistan as a secular Muslim state, successive Pakistani governments have used Islam to bolster their own frail support base, exactly in the same manner as the Congress and the BJP have done with Hinduism in the Indian case. Islam has also been used to weld together a number of the country’s ethnic groups that have little in common other than their profession of Islam, in the same way in which advocates of both ‘soft’ Hindutva, such as the Congress, and ‘hard’ Hindutva, such as the BJP, have sought to invoke Brahminical Hinduism to define the Indian nation state. Hindutva ideologues propagate a form of Hindu ‘nationalism’ that has no space for Indians of other faiths, and is, in fact, based on an unrelenting hatred of non-Hindu ‘others’. Creating a Hindu identity in this fashion is predicated on excising all elements of culture and tradition that Hindus are seen to share with others. The same has happened in the case of official and radical versions of Islam in Pakistan. Yet, it is important to remember that this is not the only, and certainly not the dominant, form of Islam in Pakistan, as my interaction with numerous Pakistanis from different walks of life revealed to me.
“Radical Islamist groups are not a true reflection or representative of Pakistani Islam”, a social activist friend of mine from Sindh explains. “State manipulation of religion”, he argues, “has had a major role to play in promoting radical Islamism in Pakistan”, which, he says, “is largely an expression of elite politics and Western imperialist manipulation”. “To add to state patronage of such groups”, he points out, “there is the fact of mounting economic and social inequalities, sustained military rule, the continued stranglehold of feudal lords and the absence of mechanisms for expressing democratic dissent, all of which have enabled radical Islamist groups to assert the claim of representing normative Islam against other competing versions and visions of the faith.”
In some parts of Pakistan, such as Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province, he says, electoral support for Islamists “reflects anti-American sentiments rather than popular demands for theocratic rule”. Such groups, he says, have gained added strength from the ongoing conflict in Kashmir by “tapping into Pakistani nationalist sentiments on this issue in the same way as Hindutva groups used the Kashmir conflict in India, both seeking to present the issue in religious terms”. “In short”, he claims, “the limited support that radical Islamist groups enjoy in Pakistan reflects less a fierce commitment to their ultimate agenda of strict Islamist rule than a protest against the system which, ironically, has abetted such groups for its own purposes”.
“The task before Indians and Pakistanis seriously concerned about the future of our common subcontinent”, says another friend of mine, a journalist from Lahore, “is to rescue our religious traditions from the monopolistic claims of the radicals. Islamism in Pakistan and Hindutva in India feed on each other while claiming to be vociferous foes. We need to revive popular forms of religion, such as sufism and bhakti, that are accepting of other faiths and that at the same time are socially engaged and critique the system of domination that produces radicalism as a reaction while at the same time using it as a means of stifling challenges to it.”
The writer is post-doctoral fellow at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden. He also edits a web-magazine called Qalandar, which can be accessed at www.islaminterfaith.org
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006 02 03 story_3-2-2006_pg3_3
reply to this interact
write a new interact
add to favorites
flag objectionable content
#43 Posted by MantoLives on February 3, 2006 4:03:27 am
Must have something to do with people like you who have given Hindus a bad name.
#42 Posted by harimau on February 3, 2006 2:30:31 am
Ref Mantolives #27
[Harish...
On the two points you raised now...
1- Lack of Hindu soldiers in the army
2- Officially sanctioned discrimination...
........I have queried people from the army on this and they have no answer.]
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind.
Yasser, dear boy, the answer is you guys in Pakistan don`t trust the hated Hindus.
Just listen to the wind.
[Harish...
On the two points you raised now...
1- Lack of Hindu soldiers in the army
2- Officially sanctioned discrimination...
........I have queried people from the army on this and they have no answer.]
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind.
Yasser, dear boy, the answer is you guys in Pakistan don`t trust the hated Hindus.
Just listen to the wind.
#41 Posted by MantoLives on February 3, 2006 12:42:39 am
Blah blah blah...
You`ve been shown up to be quite the idiot by Subroto and other Indians and now I realise that responding in kind to your ignorant comments is unnecessary.
You`ve been shown up to be quite the idiot by Subroto and other Indians and now I realise that responding in kind to your ignorant comments is unnecessary.
#40 Posted by veeresh on February 2, 2006 11:52:19 pm
Yasser/39 - I never said India was a land of milk and honey, did I?
AFAIK, the reason you are jumping up and down is because I pointed out the real similarities between LaHore and Nawanshahr to you and others.
Fine, I apologise. LaHore is not like N`Shahr. N`Shahr is now more like Vancouver BC, in fact people say that even Uxbridge and Hounslow are like N`Shahr.
I agree that LaHore is more like Singpoora (a lower-middle locality outside Hajipur). OK?
+++
On minorities in Pakistan - approximately 60% of the population in and around Nankana Sahib/Yateem Khana areas outside LaHore call themselves ``Jat Sikh Muslims``. Many of them are ready to revert back, given half a chance. Is that what is giving you nightmares, Yasser?? Never mind, I shall put in a good word for you.
+++
Indikad75 - thank you. My weight is a terrible problem, so I have given up. But you must try cholle bhature at ``Lahore Stall``, Krishna Market, Lajpat Nagar I, ultimate stuff.
+++
AFAIK, the reason you are jumping up and down is because I pointed out the real similarities between LaHore and Nawanshahr to you and others.
Fine, I apologise. LaHore is not like N`Shahr. N`Shahr is now more like Vancouver BC, in fact people say that even Uxbridge and Hounslow are like N`Shahr.
I agree that LaHore is more like Singpoora (a lower-middle locality outside Hajipur). OK?
+++
On minorities in Pakistan - approximately 60% of the population in and around Nankana Sahib/Yateem Khana areas outside LaHore call themselves ``Jat Sikh Muslims``. Many of them are ready to revert back, given half a chance. Is that what is giving you nightmares, Yasser?? Never mind, I shall put in a good word for you.
+++
Indikad75 - thank you. My weight is a terrible problem, so I have given up. But you must try cholle bhature at ``Lahore Stall``, Krishna Market, Lajpat Nagar I, ultimate stuff.
+++
#39 Posted by MantoLives on February 2, 2006 11:15:51 pm
anti-hypochrist...
Well my friend I did not claim that Pakistan was perfect... at any time. Veeresh on the other hand proclaimed India as a utopian land of honey and milk... My point was the whole routine of trying to figure out who laundry is dirtier is pointless...
This point is obviously lost on this cow we call Veeresh who routinely terrorises my articles with his stupid posts... - mercifuly he has learnt his lesson and not attacked my latest article.
#38 Posted by antihypochrist on February 2, 2006 7:15:59 pm
#5 YLH,
Why only restrict to recent times? Lookup the numbers in your 59 years of history. Except for perhaps Shias, the rest of the minorities in your country are miniscule in numbers. They cannot afford to rub you the wrong way. Gujarat riots are bad. But would there be a Godhra in your country ? Hindus burning down buses ?
The fact that rioting hadn`t spread to other states in India says something my dear lawyer.
Why only restrict to recent times? Lookup the numbers in your 59 years of history. Except for perhaps Shias, the rest of the minorities in your country are miniscule in numbers. They cannot afford to rub you the wrong way. Gujarat riots are bad. But would there be a Godhra in your country ? Hindus burning down buses ?
The fact that rioting hadn`t spread to other states in India says something my dear lawyer.
#37 Posted by jang on February 2, 2006 3:24:47 pm
there is a difference in dilli gol-gappas and mumbai (called pani-puri in mumbai).
Dilli: kinda minty jal-zeera, less spicy, no filling.
Mumbai: spicy-garlicy, usually with potato-sprouted mung filling.
also, chat in dilli tends to have fried potato shavings (salli as in salli boti) and in mumbai its sev (super-thin fried besan noodles)
in summer, we here have all kinds of chilli cook-offs and bar-b-que competitions, veeresh its time to have gol-gappa fest..we will invite the bombay panipuri house from karachi.
Dilli: kinda minty jal-zeera, less spicy, no filling.
Mumbai: spicy-garlicy, usually with potato-sprouted mung filling.
also, chat in dilli tends to have fried potato shavings (salli as in salli boti) and in mumbai its sev (super-thin fried besan noodles)
in summer, we here have all kinds of chilli cook-offs and bar-b-que competitions, veeresh its time to have gol-gappa fest..we will invite the bombay panipuri house from karachi.
#36 Posted by MantoLives on February 2, 2006 2:40:21 am
Inkidad...
Yes absolutely ... I agree that 1- Ummah is a myth 2- Indian Muslims are committed to their country.
This is not what is being discussed here btw.
Yes absolutely ... I agree that 1- Ummah is a myth 2- Indian Muslims are committed to their country.
This is not what is being discussed here btw.
#35 Posted by MantoLives on February 2, 2006 2:38:39 am
No my dear hypocrite...
It goes the other way around. This bear of a man comes and disrupts all my articles by making stupid and inane comments..
So this is a courtesy call.
#34 Posted by antihypochrist on February 2, 2006 12:15:06 am
YLH, you are blindfolded with your love for Jinnah, and hatred towards India. Your very first interact to this article came as quick as a reflex, and it is very clear to all of us - no matter how forceful and objective you try to come out as in your arguments, you are one another Indian basher
#33 Posted by indikad75 on February 1, 2006 11:35:43 pm
Dear Veeresh bhai,
Before I get into other things, let me congratulate you for this delightful piece. Beating of Retreat has been a favourite ever since the time I first saw it. I was one of those ``fauji brats`` sitting on the carpets, though a couple of decades after you were there. To this day I make sure I dont miss BoR on DD (thats the only day we watch DD, I guess); especially the nonpareil `ABIDE WITH ME`. One word to describe this hymn : soul-stirring! The coordination between the band and the guy on the Tubular bells is out-of-this-world. The Drummer`s Call is another classic. I dont think they play Colonel Bogey anymore. The emphasis is more on Indian tunes these days at the BoR.
About Mr.YLH, I think he should have been ignored in the first place. That would have ensured that this didn`t become (irrespective of the article being discussed) the usual India Vs. Pak thing.
Harimau,
Just a couple of points:
1. Interact #24: ``99.99% of Indian Muslims are committed to India and not to Pakistan and certainly not to the Ummah.``
Agree 100.00% ! The Ummah, btw is a myth.
2. Interact #28: ``Is there a requirement somewhere in the Koran that Muslims have to whine?``
Please direct your comments towards the people (or whiners- and you have them in every community) who are making them rather than at their religion. Do you realise that (in your own words) ``99.99% Indian Muslims who are committed to India`` also consider the Koran their holy book. Why drag it into this debate and hurt their sentiments ?
To end, Veeresh bhai, I was in Delhi last year this time and tried out the `chola-bhatura` and `gulab-jamun` in front of the INSA building at ITO. Thankfully, Pet bhi kharaab nahin huwa aur maza bhi khoob aaya.
BTW what was your weight after that Rs.62.00 wala feast ? ;)
Before I get into other things, let me congratulate you for this delightful piece. Beating of Retreat has been a favourite ever since the time I first saw it. I was one of those ``fauji brats`` sitting on the carpets, though a couple of decades after you were there. To this day I make sure I dont miss BoR on DD (thats the only day we watch DD, I guess); especially the nonpareil `ABIDE WITH ME`. One word to describe this hymn : soul-stirring! The coordination between the band and the guy on the Tubular bells is out-of-this-world. The Drummer`s Call is another classic. I dont think they play Colonel Bogey anymore. The emphasis is more on Indian tunes these days at the BoR.
About Mr.YLH, I think he should have been ignored in the first place. That would have ensured that this didn`t become (irrespective of the article being discussed) the usual India Vs. Pak thing.
Harimau,
Just a couple of points:
1. Interact #24: ``99.99% of Indian Muslims are committed to India and not to Pakistan and certainly not to the Ummah.``
Agree 100.00% ! The Ummah, btw is a myth.
2. Interact #28: ``Is there a requirement somewhere in the Koran that Muslims have to whine?``
Please direct your comments towards the people (or whiners- and you have them in every community) who are making them rather than at their religion. Do you realise that (in your own words) ``99.99% Indian Muslims who are committed to India`` also consider the Koran their holy book. Why drag it into this debate and hurt their sentiments ?
To end, Veeresh bhai, I was in Delhi last year this time and tried out the `chola-bhatura` and `gulab-jamun` in front of the INSA building at ITO. Thankfully, Pet bhi kharaab nahin huwa aur maza bhi khoob aaya.
BTW what was your weight after that Rs.62.00 wala feast ? ;)
#32 Posted by MantoLives on February 1, 2006 5:18:30 am
Its not like people-Muslims and Christians- haven`t become Hindu in India...
Do you think Deepak Perwani will ever become a Muslim? Rana Bhagwandas will ever become a Muslim? The Hindus of Clifton will never become a Muslim... Ramesh Kumar will never become a Muslim... the Hindu MPs and Christian MPs will never become Muslims...
So lets keep this issue aside... the fact that this is what you`ve got shows how unbalanced you are and have been for the last 7 years.
#31 Posted by harimau on February 1, 2006 12:03:40 am
Yasser, dear boy, can you explain why Yousuf Youhanna suddebly saw the light and embraced the True Faith?
Do you think Irfan Pathan will ever become a Hindu?
Do you think Irfan Pathan will ever become a Hindu?
#30 Posted by MantoLives on January 31, 2006 10:15:39 pm
harimau
yawn.
Yes India is shining...mooning.
yawn.
Yes India is shining...mooning.
#29 Posted by Salim_Chauhan on January 31, 2006 9:18:35 am
#25, Veeresh {``Beer on pavement cafes, not right now. ``}
Veeresh,
One of my fondest memories about India is that hot day in Bombay right on Juhu Beach, enjoying even hotter chicken tikka and washing the delicious snack down with very cold Kingfisher beer - in the big bottle. :)
Veeresh,
One of my fondest memories about India is that hot day in Bombay right on Juhu Beach, enjoying even hotter chicken tikka and washing the delicious snack down with very cold Kingfisher beer - in the big bottle. :)
#28 Posted by harimau on January 31, 2006 3:14:06 am
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?
[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?
#27 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 11:12:31 pm
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.
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.
#26 Posted by harish_hyd on January 30, 2006 11:04:12 pm
#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.
[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.
#25 Posted by veeresh on January 30, 2006 6:07:18 pm
Salim/23, finally, thank you, a response about the artilce itself after the Yasser led diversion into the usual Indo-Pak p
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.
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.
#24 Posted by harimau on January 30, 2006 4:40:37 pm
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.
[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.
#23 Posted by Salim_Chauhan on January 30, 2006 11:23:04 am
{``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?
# 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?
#22 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 4:43:46 am
... 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...
Not to take away ofcourse from the very real discrimination that exists...
#21 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 4:33:18 am
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.
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.
#20 Posted by harish_hyd on January 30, 2006 4:07:56 am
#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.
[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.
#19 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 2:19:19 am
``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.
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.
#18 Posted by harish_hyd on January 30, 2006 2:08:45 am
#16 by Mantolives
[I pointed out to you that my paper reported this a long time ago...]
So what`s your point?
[I pointed out to you that my paper reported this a long time ago...]
So what`s your point?
#17 Posted by harish_hyd on January 30, 2006 2:07:19 am
#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.
[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.
#16 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 2:03:49 am
Harish are you blind?
I pointed out to you that my paper reported this a long time ago...
So what is your point ?
#15 Posted by harish_hyd on January 30, 2006 1:57:58 am
#14 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 1:51:21 am
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.
#13 Posted by harish_hyd on January 30, 2006 1:42:46 am
#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?
[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?
#12 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 1:33:55 am
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.
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.
#11 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 12:39:02 am
Non-Muslims in second line. Make the correction.
#10 Posted by MantoLives on January 30, 2006 12:38:25 am
Azim Premji and Abdul Kalam are not the only Indian Muslims...
And contrary to the brainwashing that goes on in India- no Non-hindus have not been converted and we`ve been over this... 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.
And here is Deepak Perwani from a very influential Hindu family in Sindh:
http://www.deepakperwani.com/
He is also one of Pakistan`s leading fashion designers and the A-List party goer- the mover and shaker so to speak.
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.
And contrary to the brainwashing that goes on in India- no Non-hindus have not been converted and we`ve been over this... 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.
And here is Deepak Perwani from a very influential Hindu family in Sindh:
http://www.deepakperwani.com/
He is also one of Pakistan`s leading fashion designers and the A-List party goer- the mover and shaker so to speak.
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.
#9 Posted by harish_hyd on January 29, 2006 10:42:04 pm
#8 by Mantolives
[The point is that despite all that drivel about being better than us (``secular`` ``democratic`` etc etc) - you still burn more people, maim more non-Hindus etc all in the name of faith...]
Equally more minorities make a mark for themselves compared to the land of the pure. Where is an Abdul Kalam or an Azim Premji in Pakistan? Rana Bhagwan Das, Danish Kaneria or Deepak Parwani are not the only Hindus in Pakistan. There are others too, about whom Mariana Babar wrote in the Outlook. As for burning or maiming minorities, all those you could have burnt or maimed have either been converted (Yousuf Youhana or even Yasser Latif Hamdani) to the true faith or reduced to being toothless second-class citizens. If a privileged citizen like Youhana must convert to win approval, what is the plight of an ordinary citizen?
[The point is that despite all that drivel about being better than us (``secular`` ``democratic`` etc etc) - you still burn more people, maim more non-Hindus etc all in the name of faith...]
Equally more minorities make a mark for themselves compared to the land of the pure. Where is an Abdul Kalam or an Azim Premji in Pakistan? Rana Bhagwan Das, Danish Kaneria or Deepak Parwani are not the only Hindus in Pakistan. There are others too, about whom Mariana Babar wrote in the Outlook. As for burning or maiming minorities, all those you could have burnt or maimed have either been converted (Yousuf Youhana or even Yasser Latif Hamdani) to the true faith or reduced to being toothless second-class citizens. If a privileged citizen like Youhana must convert to win approval, what is the plight of an ordinary citizen?
#8 Posted by MantoLives on January 29, 2006 6:58:17 am
As you should discover the truth about Kashmir (though it can`t be compred to Balochistan which is minor tribal sardars), the tragedy of 1984, Nagaland etc...
The point is that despite all that drivel about being better than us (``secular`` ``democratic`` etc etc) - you still burn more people, maim more non-Hindus etc all in the name of faith...
I am quite confident about my stances... and I speak as a member of two sects, one of which is a minority now and the other which is supposedly persecuted, and I am glad every day that I was not born in that fascist hell hole where people get burnt for believing in a certain religion.
#7 Posted by veeresh on January 29, 2006 6:24:02 am
Yasser, how far back in history, and how much of a geographical spread, do you want?
And then factor in the weightage you want to give for freedom of the press in reporting events.
If I were you, I would not be sitting in LaHore covering cricket or marathons. I would be out there discovering the truth in Baluchistan.
+++
And then factor in the weightage you want to give for freedom of the press in reporting events.
If I were you, I would not be sitting in LaHore covering cricket or marathons. I would be out there discovering the truth in Baluchistan.
+++
#6 Posted by MantoLives on January 29, 2006 5:19:16 am
Bring me one Ahmadi, Shia, Sunni or Ismaili ... or even Hindu or Christian who has seen this kind of brutality in recent times.
#5 Posted by MantoLives on January 29, 2006 5:17:09 am
=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts
view this users filtered interacts
#4 Posted by jang on January 28, 2006 1:01:27 pm
good job shriman..i can see a subedar-saab with wrinkled skin shouting.
tv would always show the camels against the r. bhavan
tv would always show the camels against the r. bhavan
#3 Posted by harimau on January 28, 2006 5:24:08 am
Ref veeresh #2
[I know this will hurt you, Yasser, but truly, India is a safer place for Muslims.]
What Pakistanis in general, and our dear Yasser Latif Hamdani in particular, cannot handle is that there is no way three Muslims can get together without arguing about who is superior: Sunni, Shia or Ismaili. They all of course agree on one thing: the Ahmediyyas ought to be killed for calling themselves Muslims.
With that kind of a basic premise to start with, there is no way Pakistan will EVER be able to build any kind of institutions that will lead to democracy. He knows that too.
He also knows that the last chance for civilized behavior by the people populating the Indus basin was gambled and lost by Jinnah, a non-native of that region. Hence his constant diatribes against India.
Case of sour grapes!
[I know this will hurt you, Yasser, but truly, India is a safer place for Muslims.]
What Pakistanis in general, and our dear Yasser Latif Hamdani in particular, cannot handle is that there is no way three Muslims can get together without arguing about who is superior: Sunni, Shia or Ismaili. They all of course agree on one thing: the Ahmediyyas ought to be killed for calling themselves Muslims.
With that kind of a basic premise to start with, there is no way Pakistan will EVER be able to build any kind of institutions that will lead to democracy. He knows that too.
He also knows that the last chance for civilized behavior by the people populating the Indus basin was gambled and lost by Jinnah, a non-native of that region. Hence his constant diatribes against India.
Case of sour grapes!
#2 Posted by veeresh on January 28, 2006 2:40:10 am
Well, Yasser, I do routinely go to Chandni Chowk with friends, many of whom happen to be Muslims. Lately we can use the Metro, so it is easier.
While there we increasingly meet up with other Muslims from the angular corners of Muslim society, and of late, many of them are Muslims who are leaving Pakistan to re-settle in India.
The reason for this is that they are safer in India. Many Muslims, including Ahmedis like you and your family, are actually safer in India, you will agree? I mean, they don`t have to go about getting converted and announcing that they are Ismailis, for example.
I had introduced a few to Ayaz Amir of Dawn the last time he was in Delhi a few months ago.
Funny you mention Chandni Chowk, though. The ruler of Saudi Arabia, keeper of the Two Mosques, was there a few days ago. As a guest of the various religions which have eminent presence there, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Jain.
I know this will hurt you, Yasser, but truly, India is a safer place for Muslims.
While there we increasingly meet up with other Muslims from the angular corners of Muslim society, and of late, many of them are Muslims who are leaving Pakistan to re-settle in India.
The reason for this is that they are safer in India. Many Muslims, including Ahmedis like you and your family, are actually safer in India, you will agree? I mean, they don`t have to go about getting converted and announcing that they are Ismailis, for example.
I had introduced a few to Ayaz Amir of Dawn the last time he was in Delhi a few months ago.
Funny you mention Chandni Chowk, though. The ruler of Saudi Arabia, keeper of the Two Mosques, was there a few days ago. As a guest of the various religions which have eminent presence there, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Jain.
I know this will hurt you, Yasser, but truly, India is a safer place for Muslims.
#1 Posted by MantoLives on January 28, 2006 2:09:58 am
Tell me Veeru- do you routinely go to Chandni chowk with the mob to burn Muslims?
Interact Index
Also by Veeresh Malik
Similar Articles
- Government Wins Manmohan Singh Loses Dost Mittar
- Feminist Mumbo-Jumbo! Pranay Rupani
- Translation of a (Love) Letter by Allama Iqbal to Miss Atiya Faizi Asif Naqshbandi
- Fields Of Joy Umer Murtaza
- Time for Musharraf to Quit saeed qureshi
US Elections 2008 Primaries
Get Chowk RSS FeedLatest Interacts
- anil: Re: # 42 Dost sahib: I... Government Wins Manmohan Singh
- dost_mittar: dehliwala#48: I am not a... Government Wins Manmohan Singh
- dost_mittar: GT#47: Yes, we do and... Government Wins Manmohan Singh
- guru: Ahmed, We had come to... Dhokha and Being a
- sattar2: tahir bhai (re #408),... Of Medical Students, Passports
- guru: Re: # 283 "After... Dhokha and Being a
- mohar11: looks like Guru kicked... Dhokha and Being a
- guru: Ahmed, Mind also this the... Dhokha and Being a
