Mahadev Gobind Ranade (1842-1901)

GANDHI LEGACY... more dalit killings in India.

...AND IT HAPPENS EVERYDAY!
12/29/2003: Dalit Woman Harassed
After resisting the advances of a higher caste villager, a 38-year-old Dalit woman was recently forced to drink a mixture of human waste and water in the presence of her husband and children. The woman told media officials that a group of upper caste people also splashed the putrid mixture on her family. The day after the incident, those accused remained free, even though complaints were filed with the police. For India`s Dalits, pain and oppression are a part of life under their caste-based religion. Pray with us for these precious people to find hope in Jesus.

http://www.gfa.org/gfa/latestnewsarticle?wid=316

http://www.gfa.org/gfa/latestnewsarticle?wid=1888


02/18/2004: Dalit Raped and Set on Fire
A Dalit woman in Madhya Pradesh, India, was raped on February 8 and set on fire by her landlord and one of his friends. They poured kerosene on her and set her ablaze when she threatened to speak up about the rape, according to rediff.com. The woman is hospitalized in critical condition with burns on 90 percent of her body.

India`s Dalits suffer atrocities daily in their caste-based society, but the Gospel of Christ is penetrating their hearts. Pray with us for many more Dalits to find hope and salvation in Jesus.

http://www.gfa.org/gfa/latestnewsarticle?wid=1911

05/28/2004: Dalit Found Dead in Well
Nearly 40 days after a middle-aged Dalit man disappeared from his Indian community, villagers found his mutilated body in a dried-up well. They discovered the corpse when they smelled a foul odor. Thinking an animal had fallen in the well, they were shocked to see a human body.

Based on village sources and evidence, police suspected the Dalit was killed for standing up for his employer in a land dispute. Police are investigating the case. Pray for the family to be comforted and drawn to Jesus as they grieve.

Call it a rape as they do in India...

http://www.gfa.org/gfa/latestnewsarticle?wid=2179

09/23/2004: Dalit Girl Raped and Strangled to Death
An 18-year-old Dalit girl was raped last month—and her family dared to go to authorities. Their courage would cost them dearly. Just nine days after they informed police of the incident, upper-caste villagers strangled and killed their beloved daughter and sister, dumping her body in a field. Before that fateful day, a family member says, they had received threats, according to the news site NDTV.com.

Imagine your family suffering such mistreatment and grief—simply for speaking up and seeking justice. For Dalit families such as this one in North India, there is no need to imagine. Though these Untouchables of India are abused and treated as subhuman in their society, they are precious in the sight of God. Pray for the GFA missionaries who are reaching them with the Gospel of Christ. Praise God that many hearts have been receptive to His love. Pray that many more Dalit families will find refuge in a Savior who cherishes them.

re: Jinnah`s legacy: more on honor killings in Bakistan
Jinnah`s wife (a Parsee who converted to Islam before marriage) might have worn low cut western dress in public and escaped retribution, lesser fate awaits women in Bakistan who dare to oppose the tradition of subservience and honor that women are supposed to practice without question. Jinnah paid lip service to women`s rights in Bakistan.
India, OTOH, had many women as freedom fighters. Sarojini Naidu, Aruna Asaf Ali, etc. Gandhi encouraged women`s participation in freedom struggle. When India became independent, it had a woman as a MP and cabinet minister (Rajkumari Amrit Kaur;http://www.freeindia.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=634). It It was to be expected that the Indian women would be on a fast path towards emancipation. The struggle against social evil continues but as the author of this article himself rightly said ``The Hindus have realized that the reason why they have managed to live under foreign rule, which more often than not aimed at changing their very way of life, is because they have always adapted themselves to new challenges and a great majority of them have been pragmatic enough to leave their ancient practices and walk with the dictates of time. The Hindu society might be religious, traditional and cultural, but it has never been dogmatic, since no scripture, idea or thought has ever achieved such primacy as not be questioned.``

In Bakistan, the story is different.
http://mondediplo.com/2001/05/13pakistan
Excerpts:

(The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the last 20 years, accompanied by general application of the sharia, has been described as the ``Talibanisation`` of Pakistan. It has profoundly affected the situation of women. The decrees of 1979, which imposed the death penalty for adultery and fornication, not only turned criminal into religious offences. They strengthened the worst tribal traditions. Rape, which is very widespread in Pakistan, has now been decriminalised and the onus of proof is on the victim.)

(Honour killings are widespread. Since they frequently go unpunished, they are increasingly used to cover up other crimes. The prominent Lahore-based women’s organisation, Shirkhat Gah, recently cited the case of a man who had killed another villager in a brawl and risked a heavy prison sentence. ``Go and kill your sister-in-law,`` his father told him. ``We’ll say she and the dead manwere karo kari.``

``The curse of karo kari will have to be chained if Pakistan is to enter the community of nations as a civilised country,`` Dawn wrote recently (7). Clearly that is not about to happen. ``Pakistan is a country that does not yet see the need to respect human rights,`` says Asma Jahangir. Least of all those of women.)
Sridhar

re: Jinnah`s legacy: more on honor killings
Lest we forget, let us recap what happened to a young married woman on April 6, 1999 in Bakistan. On that fateful day, one of the most notorious ``honour`` killings occurred. Samia Imran was shot in the office of a lawyer helping her to seek a divorce which her family opposed vehemently.
http://www.gendercide.org/case_honour.html

(Samia, 28, arrived at the Lahore law offices of Hina Jilani and Asma Jahangir, who are sisters, on April 6. She had engaged Jilani a few days earlier, because she wanted a divorce from her violent husband. Samia settled on a chair across the desk from the lawyer. Sultana, Samia`s mother, entered five minutes later with a male companion. Samia half-rose in greeting. The man, Habib-ur-Rhemna, grabbed Samia and put a pistol to her head. The first bullet entered near Samia`s eye and she fell. ``There was no scream. There was dead silence. I don`t even think she knew what was happening,`` Jilani said. The killer stood over Samia`s body, and fired again. Jilani reached for the alarm button as the gunman and Sultana left. ``She never even bothered to look whether the girl was dead.``

The aftermath of the murder was equally revealing: ``Members of Pakistan`s upper house demanded punishment for the two women [lawyers] and none of Pakistan`s political leaders condemned the attack. ... The clergy in Peshawar want the lawyers to be put to death`` for trying to help Imran.)

(While the victims of Pakistani ``honour`` killings are overwhelmingly female, tradition dictates that males involved in the ``crimes`` should face death as well. But the accused women are standardly killed first, giving men a chance to flee retribution. Moreover, targeted men can escape death by paying compensation to the family of the female victim, leading to an ```honour killing industry` involving tribespeople, police and tribal mediators,`` which ``provides many opportunities to make money, [or] obtain a woman in compensation,`` according to Amnesty International. The organization also states: ``Reports abound about men who have killed other men in murders not connected with honour issues who then kill a woman of their own family ... to camouflage the initial murder as an honour killing.`` ref: Amnesty International, ``Pakistan: Honour Killings of Girls and Women``, September 1999.)
This then is the legacy of Bakistan. If a seperate land for muslims was meant to have them live in peace away from the wily hindoos, that is not happening. The Hindus are long gone but there is no peace, at least for the weaker sex.
Sridhar

re: Jinnah`s legacy: honor killings in Bakistan
Jinnah`s wife might have worn western clothes but even Jinnah had her converted to Islam in order to marry her. Islam and honor are the big buzzwords in Bakistan. Apparently, in much of the Pak hinterland where the feudal landlords call the shots, women bear the brunt of honor.
Jinnah could not pass on his ideas of women`s rights to his progenies in Bakistan. In that place, a woman is killed on the flimsiest of grounds.
The following article is a gem from The National Geographic. While you are reading the article, please scroll the picture album to look at some graphic but illuminating picture about Bakistan.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_honorkilling.html
(Thousands of Women Killed for Family ``Honor``
Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News
February 12, 2002

View Photo Gallery: Go >>
Note: these photos are graphically shocking.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family ``honor.`` It`s difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.

Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women`s Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.

But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.

In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children`s Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say.

``In countries where Islam is practiced, they`re called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable,`` said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The practice, she said, ``goes across cultures and across religions.``

Complicity by other women in the family and the community strengthens the concept of women as property and the perception that violence against family members is a family and not a judicial issue.

``Females in the family—mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, and cousins—frequently support the attacks. It`s a community mentality,`` said Zaynab Nawaz, a program assistant for women`s human rights at Amnesty International.

Women as Property

There is nothing in the Koran, the book of basic Islamic teachings, that permits or sanctions honor killings. However, the view of women as property with no rights of their own is deeply rooted in Islamic culture, Tahira Shahid Khan, a professor specializing in women`s issues at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, wrote in Chained to Custom, a review of honor killings published in 1999.

``Women are considered the property of the males in their family irrespective of their class, ethnic, or religious group. The owner of the property has the right to decide its fate. The concept of ownership has turned women into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold.``

Honor killings are perpetrated for a wide range of offenses. Marital infidelity, pre-marital sex, flirting, or even failing to serve a meal on time can all be perceived as impugning the family honor.

Amnesty International has reported on one case in which a husband murdered his wife based on a dream that she had betrayed him. In Turkey, a young woman`s throat was slit in the town square because a love ballad had been dedicated to her over the radio.

In a society where most marriages are arranged by fathers and money is often exchanged, a woman`s desire to choose her own husband—or to seek a divorce—can be viewed as a major act of defiance that damages the honor of the man who negotiated the deal.

Even victims of rape are vulnerable. In a widely reported case in March of 1999, a 16-year-old mentally retarded girl who was raped in the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan was turned over to her tribe`s judicial council. Even though the crime was reported to the police and the perpetrator was arrested, the Pathan tribesmen decided that she had brought shame to her tribe and she was killed in front of a tribal gathering.

The teenage brothers of victims are frequently directed to commit the murder because, as minors, they would be subject to considerably lighter sentencing if there is legal action. Typically, they would serve only three months to a year.

In the Name of Family Honor

Officials often claim that nothing can be done to halt the practice because the concept of women`s rights is not culturally relevant to deeply patriarchal societies.

``Politicians frequently argue that these things are occurring among uneducated, illiterate people whose attitudes can`t be changed,`` said Brown. ``We see it more as a matter of political will.``

The story of Samia Imran is one of the most widely cited cases used to illustrate the vulnerability of women in a culture that turns a blind eye to such practices. The case`s high profile no doubt arises from the fact that the murder took place in broad daylight, was abetted by the victim`s mother, who was a doctor, and occurred in the office of Asma Jahangir, a prominent Pakistani lawyer and the UN reporter on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions.

In April 1999 Imran, a 28-year-old married woman seeking a divorce from her violent husband after 10 years of marriage, reluctantly agreed to meet her mother in a lawyers` office in Lahore, Pakistan. Imran`s family opposed the divorce and considered her seeking a divorce to be shaming to the family`s honor. Her mother arrived at the lawyer`s office with a male companion, who immediately shot and killed Imran.

Imran`s father, who was president of the Chamber of Commerce in Peshawar, filed a complaint with the police accusing the lawyers of the abduction and murder of Imran. The local clergy issued fatwas (religious rulings) against both women and money was promised to anyone who killed them.

The Peshawar High Court eventually threw out the father`s suit. No one was ever arrested for Imran`s death.

Imran`s case received a great deal of publicity, but frequently honor killings are virtually ignored by community members. ``In many cases, the women are buried in unmarked graves and all records of their existence are wiped out,`` said Brown.

Women accused by family members of bringing dishonor to their families are rarely given the opportunity to prove their innocence. In many countries where the practice is condoned or at least ignored, there are few shelters and very little legal protection.

``In Jordan, if a woman is afraid that her family wants to kill her, she can check herself into the local prison, but she can`t check herself out, and the only person who can get her out is a male relative, who is frequently the person who poses the threat,`` said Brown.

``That this is their idea of how to protect women,`` Brown said, ``is mind boggling.``

Ending Violence Against Women

Violence against women is being tackled at the international level as a human rights issue. In 1994 the UN`s Commission on Human Rights appointed a special rapporteur on violence against women, and both UNICEF and the UN Development Fund for Women have programs in place to address the issue.

But the politics of women`s rights can be complex. Last year the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions was criticized by a coalition of member countries for including honor killings in her report, and a resolution condemning honor killings failed to pass.

Amnesty International is preparing to launch a worldwide campaign to halt violence against women in 2003.

But a lot of the work needs to be done at the local level.

``Police officers and prosecutors need to be convinced to treat these crimes seriously, and countries need to review their criminal codes for discrimination against women—where murder of a wife is treated more leniently than murder of a husband, for instance,`` said Brown.

Countries that don`t recognize domestic violence as a crime at all need to bring their penal codes up to international standards, she said, adding that increased public awareness and greater education about human rights would also help.

Some progress has been made.

In a National Geographic documentary (which airs beginning Wednesday, February 13), Michael Davie investigated honor killings in Pakistan, where it is estimated that every day at least three women—including victims of rape—are victims of the practice.

The case of one of the victims Davie examined is heartbreaking but also hopeful. Zahida Perveen, a 29-year-old mother of three, was brutally disfigured and underwent extensive facial reconstruction in the United States. She is one of the only survivors in Pakistan to successfully prosecute the attacker—her husband.

``The reason honor killings have emerged as a human rights issue is that it`s the only way ultimately that it can be addressed,`` said Freeman. ``Naming the problem and bringing international attention to it highlights the refusal of some of these governments to shine any kind of light on their failure to protect their own citizens.

``Change can`t happen if it`s just people working inside the system; they`re overwhelmed. International campaigns and media attention give them some ballast and the ability to say `Look, the world is watching what is going on here,` and provides support for making change in their own countries.``)
Sridhar

re: Jinnah`s legacy
Jinnah might have worn a 2 piece suit all his life and looked down upon Ganhi`s dhoti but we judge people by the legacy they left behind.
In Bakistan of today, a woman can`t walk alone on a street at night. In the NWFP, the same plight awaits a young boy, who is sodomised by the feudal lords at regular intervals. So bad is the situation that someone jocularly remarked that even a bird flying over NWFP covers its rear end with its one wing!!
(Plight of women in Bakistan
http://www.ivillage.co.uk/print/0,9688,182103,00.html
Dishonourable death

More than one thousand women in Pakistan are slain each year over matters of family `honour`. The stories are horrifying. Mark Sylvester investigates their plight

Ghazala lived in the Joharabad region of Pakistan`s Punjab, a mountainous area of small farms run by tenant farmers. She was just 16, and the chances are she`d never been kissed. But her family noticed the looks she gave her young neighbour - and that was enough.

On 6th January 1999, Ghazala`s brother burst into her room and dragged her, screaming, into the dusty street. In front of onlookers he poured kerosene over her and set her alight. The passers-by did nothing to stop the barbaric act; most of them had seen this sort of thing before.

Ghazala didn`t die easily, but in slow and unimaginable agony as the flames consumed her. When she finally gave up the fight, her charred and naked body lay in the street for more than two hours before anybody bothered to move it. According to her brother, Ghazala had been having `illicit relations` with her neighbour and brought dishonour on the whole family. Only her death could restore that honour.

What Ghazala`s family did is known in Pakistan as Karo-kari, or `honour killing`. According to the most conservative estimates of the Human Rights Commission for Pakistan, more than 1,000 women die this way every year. Most human rights campaigners believe the number is much higher.

Women as possessions

Karo-kari has no basis in religion - although it has been encouraged by the rise of fundamentalist Islam - and under Pakistani law is murder. However, it is deeply rooted in Pakistani society and culture, with origins in the old tribal customs of the Baloch and Pashtun ethnic groups.

The basis of Karo-kari is the belief that women are little more than household possessions to be bought or sold, at their males` whim. As the English language newspaper Dawn reported in January this year: `A woman in Upper Sindh has no individual identity. She is just a chattel. She can be killed on mere suspicion.`

# Over the page: killed for a dream

Women are seen as the repository of family honour - although not regarded as honourable in themselves - and any perceived slight to that honour, whether true or not, must be punished in the most brutal way.

Hina Jilani set up the first all-female law firm in Pakistan, along with her partner Asma Jahangir. She says: `Women are killed on the flimsiest of suspicions. There is the often-cited example of the man who dreamt that his wife was having an adulterous affair, and so when he woke up he killed her. Women are killed for having, or being suspected of having, `illicit sex`, refusing an arranged marriage, or trying to get a divorce - often from an abusive man.`

Terrifying

Jilani speaks from first hand experience. On 6th April 1999, she was sitting in her office in Lahore consulting with her client, Samia Sarwar, when the door burst open. Samia, 29, was seeking to divorce her violent husband of 10 years. Gunmen charged in and shot Samia dead, her blood splashing across the documents meant to help set her free. Despite overwhelming evidence that Samia`s family were responsible for the killing, no one was ever arrested.

Karo-kari is at the most extreme end of a spectrum of habitual violence carried out against women in Pakistan. A survey by the Human Rights Commission in 1998 showed that 82 per cent of women in the rural Punjab feared regular violence from men, often their husbands, for the slightest of displeasures. Women are beaten, burned, starved and humiliated.

Shahnaz Bokhari, chair of the Pakistan Progressive Women`s Association, has recorded 4,000 cases of women being badly burned in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi between 1994 and 1999. She believes it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Bokhari says: `I`m sure there are many cases that go untreated, and unheard of. When these women end up in hospital the family normally says that the stove exploded.`

# Over the page: women used for revenge

In February 1999, delegates from the human rights group Amnesty International saw a 17-year-old girl in a hospital in Hyderabad. She had suffered 70 per cent burns and was dying. At her bedside her mother wept quietly as she explained how the girl`s scarf had caught fire on the stove. A doctor told the Amnesty delegates that the girl was six months pregnant and the `accident` had happened as soon as the pregnancy began to show.

Because women are seen as possessions, they can become victims simply as a means of revenge against their menfolk. In 1998 the commission recorded 54 cases of women being stripped and dragged through the streets of the Punjab in `revenge` attacks. There are incidents of landlords stripping the wives of tenants who refuse higher rents.

The courts

Murder might be murder in both Pakistani law and Islam, but the police and courts in Pakistan nearly always accept `extenuating circumstances`. Barely 10 per cent of such killings lead to arrests and far fewer to charges and convictions.

The attitude of a large section of the law community in Pakistan is demonstrated by an incident when Asma Jahangir was in court on a divorce case. Suddenly the judge rounded on her and shouted: `You have no right to be in this court, it is you who should be in prison.`

The situation was made worse by decrees passed in 1979, which made adultery and sex outside marriage a religious offence.

Reform

Attempts at reform are being made, but most simply scratch the surface. In January this year, under new laws passed by the secular government of General Pervez Musharaf, women stood for election to local village councils for the first time in Pakistan`s 50-year history. But even then, women could only stand with the permission of their nearest male relative.

# Over the page: what the Qur`an says

Article 12 of the Pakistani constitution guarantees equality on grounds of sex, but to really affect change in the country the government would have to totally transform Pakistani society, root and branch. So far it has been unable, or reluctant to do that.

Although the Qur`an guarantees equality between men and women, and actually states that no woman should be forced against her will to marry - although it does call on parents to be the prime movers in choosing a husband - its teaching has been perverted by fundamentalism. Some Islamic scholars believe the rapid spread of the Islamic religion meant it was sometimes interpreted wrongly, and nailed onto existing pre-Islamic customs, many of which were misogynistic.

The government can pass what legislation it likes but, in practice, many of the old laws continue to hold sway. Most attempts to change the position of women have provoked a male backlash.

Amnesty has produced a three-point plan for change, which it is attempting to get the Pakistani government to adopt. It calls for the full protection of the law for women and provision of proper refuges where they can receive care and counselling in a safe environment. It also asks for a campaign of education in schools and through the media to change society`s perception of women.

Without these the plight of women in Pakistan remains appalling. As Hina Jilani says: `At the moment the very right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying a whole raft of social norms, customs, and traditions.` )
Sridhar

re:#475 by Mantolives
Looks like u are dwelling into the right wing literature that paints the Mahatma in bad light. There is no dearth of Indians castigating Gandhi. I notice all your posts were from Indina newspaper written by Indians. Does this tell any story about the intellectual caliber of people of Bakistan? I wonder.
Sridhar

Re: # 527

G B Singh is a secular humanist... his book ``Behind the Mask of divinity`` is a best seller...
Next you are going to tell me M N Roy was also a right wing fanatic...

re: #473 by Mantolives
Who the fukc is G.B.Singh?
You seem to become a shadow of the pathetic creature that Jiinah was. That is the price to pay for dreaming, reading about Jinnah all the time.
Sridhar

re: Jinnah`s legacy
Jiinah was a pathetic creature. He not only failed miserably in his personal life, his own daughter deserted him when he moved to the new, benighted nation of Pakistan (from now on will be called Bakistan, as the present day Pakistan is a left over of the nation that creature founded) he also failed miserably in giving any direction to the nation of Pakistan.
Bakistan today is a pathetic nation, prostituting itself to anyone who has the right price to offer. This, then is the legacy of Jinnah, the whisky sipping, pork eating specimen whose brain was possibly rotting away by T.B (he died of T.B).
This is a series of a number of articles that i shall post under the heading: Legacy of Jinnah.
Read for yourself what is becoming of Bakistan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/europe/05SPIEGEL.html?ex=1111899600&en=ab58cb645ca307f5&ei=5070&pagewanted=4&ei=5070&en=b428044ebc25255b&ex=1081915200
Excerpts:
(Pakistan, created during the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 into a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim ``land of the pure,`` is the only country in the world that owes its existence to Islam. Upon being founded, Pakistan was immediately catapulted into the center of global politics, and three wars with India followed. By no later than September 11, 2001, and in light of its dramatic shift toward the West, the world`s attention once again became focused on Pakistan, a country wracked by terrorism and at risk of nuclear war with its neighbor and of breaking apart.)
Sridhar

Re: # 525

Yes... good... but your Mahatma is still a racist bigot at the end of the day.

Talking about obessions with purity:

http://www.shiachat.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t19587.html

Re: # 524

Yes... but Macdonalds ... these fcukkked up poor and pathetic souls NEVER claimed to be great. How is it that you put forth ignorant bigotry ... to ward off criticism off of the great Mahatma?

... the great soul you hold in such esteem was off into the South African Army, to exterminate more black people. The problem here is that you are unwilling to accept that Ambedkar was probably right about the Mahatma who was a racist bigot... atleast for a major portion of his adult life... and his acts later were merely patronizing ... and not anything substantial.

I think Indians on this forum should know some aspects of Partition, so that they
know why YLH behaves the way he does.

The demand for Pakistan was supported by a lot of Qadiani`s in pre-Partition India
and there were many leading pro-pakistan politicians who were Qadianis.
The Qadianis thought that by creating an islamic Pakistan they could get more power
and also be able to be recognized/accepted by the sunni factions. There was a section
of conservative mullahs in India (such as Maulana Azad, who is falsely
portrayed as being secularist in todays India), who did not want
partition - not because they loved India - but, because they believed partition
would make it harder for them to convert the kafir-India into a Dar-ul-islam.

However, after Pakistan was created as the homeland for muslims, the sunni-factions
gained considerable strength and threw out the Qadianis. After all, from the sunni
perspective, Qadianis are not muslims.
The Shias are also considered kafir by most of the
sunni leadership in Pakistan. I would not be surprised if Ismailis get thrown out
as being kafirs sometime in the near future.

YLH`s new found love for secularism is because of the treatment being meted out
to qadianis and shias in Pakistan.
Now, YLH quotes the paki academic Ayesha Jalal and Seervai - blaming Gandhi and
Congress for not being accomodative enough !!

How the times have changed :))