Last Rites in Kashmir or a New Journey?

Re: # 89

more eg. Sahir Ludhianvi, Habib Tanvir, Safdar Hashmi too were/are left inclined. But I am talking about the masses not individuals. recent eg. malaysia, afghanistan.

``Neti baba you need to do a whole lot of reading about Pakistan before you comment on any thing about Pakistan. ``

or maybe I will just learn from enlightened souls like you :)

``Who was that Ghar ka bhedi? ``

in ramayana, it was ravanas brother. In sub-continents history there are too many.

romair, most people in india dont give 2-hoots for bangla desh or jiye sindh or anything. only concern was large refugee population and the way govt put a VAT of 20% on things like bus-tickets to pay for refugees. there is no moral support from indian people for bengali freedom fight. mukti-bahini support was mostly at government-army level. no big rallys collecting funds for bengali freedom fighters that i recall..they got their ammo form indian army straight

romair, most people in india dont give 2-hoots for bangla desh or jiye sindh or anything. only concern was large refugee population and the way govt put a VAT of 20% on things like bus-tickets to pay for refugees. there is no moral support from indian people for bengali freedom fight. mukti-bahini support was mostly at government-army level. no big rallys collecting funds for bengali freedom fighters that i recall..they got their ammo form indian army straight

#98 is not by me.
Till now i had just heard about computer/network malfunctions, have experienced now.

Re: # 91

I support indian intervention to protect hindus. Apart from that nothing more. Doesn`t make much difference whether it is BD or pak. May be things would been nastier on the NE front had pak still stayed. It was said that indian forces will be welcomed for the forst 10 days, the 11th day it will be viewed as a Hindu occupying force. India just took advantage of paks fault, same as pak took during punjab disaster and currently kashmir.
May be if pak had stayed to our east, checking illegal BD migration would have taken a higher priority.

# 98/99

That`s an important point. Indian interventions in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were largely implemented at the level of governments. In neither case, there was any popular mass mobilization of the Indian populace. Hence, nobody felt any imperatives to justify those military interventions in popular moralistic terms.

Netizen/Kaalchakra/RawDust: Do you support the cessation of Bangladesh from Pakistan and its creation.......

You have provided all kinds of reasonings, about why and how India supported it. But have not answered the basic question. Every side provides some kind of reason, for what they did or did not do which in many case is conflicting......

I am asking on a matter of principle, i.e. Do you think a group of people, if it feels threatened or if it feels it can prosper better on its own, has the right to break away from its parent country, and form its own independent country?

A simple Yes or No will suffice.......

romair..

``Do you think a group of people, if it feels threatened or if it feels it can prosper better on its own, has the right to break away from its parent country, and form its own independent country? ``

in kindergarten veriety economics we talk of ``ceteris paribus`` .. a silly notion of ``if all other things being equal``. In such conditions, simple answers make sense.

Romair:

``#91 by Romair on June 8, 2005 1:50pm PT
Netizen/RawDust: Do both of you support the creation of Bangladesh or do you oppose its creation? ``

Here is the answer:
Contingent upon the denial of transfer of power to the People`s representatives (democratically elected) - the Federation had seized to exist and it was only the Right course to claim independence from the Occupiers of the federation called Pakistan.

Your question naively implying it was Bangalis who instigated the crisis. How very amusing!

HP:

I agree with the thrust of your article. One could disagree with statements here and there but that would distract from the main analysis, which is on the right track. You have also identified the ointment:

``Both Indian and Pakistani state machineries excel in dragging their feet, shoving issues under the rug and bringing the decision making process to a crawl in their respective internal systems.``

This is why there has been no progress on any of the non-kashmir issues on which bilateral negotiations are taking place.

#77 Tahmed

You win! Keep your Pakistan! You have earned it (once again) through your religious bigotry, hard-headed persistence and absolute obduracy - there is no room for logic and obvious facts in there. Obviously, you have a lot of company on this site. Enjoy each other! Happy trails!

You really DESERVE it - anything but a Hindu. Keep away from all those HINDUS - including me, please! (See, all the problems got solved, didn`t they?)

Have fun!!You and your kind! Now, and forever!

Ref Aha_Snark #95

[...Only 40 years have allowed the Government to contradict in real life the resolution calling for the armed forces to throw the Chinese out. We give Aksai Chin, they give Arunachal and Sikkim.]

No, it is the stupidity of Nehru who thought India wouldn`t need an army now that he was the Prince of Peace, First Among the Beggar Nations, and Bhai-Bhai with China.

It is that b!tch Indira Gandhi who said she won`t go to war with China over land where even grass does not grow.

It is freaking Commies like you who would not mind giving up land to kiss Chinese arse.

Read Kissinger`s books. The Chinese were afraid India, Russi and the US would attack Cina together in 1962.

The Americans not only provided military aid to India in 1962 but suggested bombing the Chinese from the air. Instead, Nehru`s cousin Gen. Kaul meekly surrendered territory in Arunachal Pradesh.

Wimps!

re: 105

I don`t know if most Pakistanis (I am mostly interested in younger people) have come to know/realize the truth of what you wrote.

It`s astonishing that the 1971 debacle is represented as some sort of `breaking away of Bangladesh.` In the post-war period, the nation`s majority, East Pakistan could justifiably have claimed the name of Pakistan for itself, forcing the current `Pakistan` to be renamed as Industan or some such other thing.

In a way, 1971 saw the original Pakistan Jinnah`s dreams break in two radically different parts: one in which the principle of democracy was accepted as supreme, and the other in which legitimate power was accepted to flow from brute coercive force, from the power of the gun.

Surely, it is nothing more than coincidence, but more than 30 years later, the two parts of Pakistan continue to carry the imprints of their original traumatic choices.

re: Romair # 103

``Do you think a group of people, if it feels threatened or if it feels it can prosper better on its own, has the right to break away from its parent country, and form its own independent country? ``


Absolutely not. Feelings are never sufficient justification for radical surgery. Feelings are just feelings, which could be related to deeper maladies.

A wiser decision is to conduct a proper diagnosis, and then if feelings are found to be unrelated to reality, then to cure the source of those feelings.

Sometimes feelings do reflect the reality, as reality is commonly understood. In those circumstances, the appropriate response would be obviously different.

Re: # 107 BJ
//...Keep your Pakistan! You have earned it (once again) through your religious bigotry, ...//

I understand your frsutration, but I knew you will reach this conclusion sooner or later. Like I have said from the very beginning - there is a reason why partition was done and there is more reasons why it should be enforced.

The reason was simple - as exemplified by closet-mullah32[tahmed]. There were[and still are] a host of muslims[not all] so steeped in prejudices against hindus [and others] they are beyond repair.... It`s always the same - hindu animosity, hindu treachery, hindu cowards, hindu this, hindu that. Mr tahmed perfectly personifies such big0try. Now consider the fact that he is supposed to be one of the so-called liberal paki and self-proclaimed gate-keeper against gross generalizations. And yet - the guy goes on and on about so called ``hindu animosity``[ that`s why I call him the closet-mullah] . SO you can imagine what the not-so-liberal pakis would have in mind so far as hidnus and indians are concerned.

This big0try has always existed[and still does] among a lot of muslims - it springs partly from anti-kufr fascism promoted by islam. It was no secret - Jinnah always knew that too. So when things fell apart with congress - it didn`t take much for him to unleash his last and most potent weapon - the big0try of the common musalman. So when jinnah made his call for war against hindus [he termed it as direct action day] - the faithful were ready to go.

See - jinnah was never a man of the masses. he didn`t talk their language, didn`t eat their food, didn`t pray with them - didn`t identify with them. And yet how come he was able generate the mass hysteria? because he touched the right button which always existed - the button of the un-precedented bigo0try of many muslims agains their fellow men. He appealed to their most basic instincts and the rest is histroy.

It`s good that jinnah did what he did and when he did it - right before independence so that the partition could be done right at the outset. Otherwise, we have had an vicious civil war later - becuase some other politician would have definitely done exactly what jinnah did - because it was waiting there to be exploited.

One needs to look at the context of Pakistan’s creation and 24 years of two-wing existence before evaluating the question of Bangladeshi ‘secession.’

Recall that one-man one-vote universal adult franchise was not good enough for Jinnah and his ilk, since it would inevitably have led to tyranny of the ‘permanent Hindu majority.’ All kinds of constitutional ‘safeguards’ – separate electorates, communal parity, provincial grouping and gerrymandering, etc. – were proposed to prevent such an undemocratic outcome. Partition happened because of the pig-headed refusal of Congress to accept these safeguards.

It was therefore completely consistent to apply the same principle once Pakistan was formed. Why should kala-kaloota Bangalis lord it over Punjabis and others in West Pakistan merely because of their accidental 57% majority of the population? Hence the ingenious schemes – inter-wing parity of representation and One Unit – invented to prevent Bangali majority tyranny. Hence also the refusal by the West Pakistani establishment to accept the results of the 1970 general election (the only undiluted one-man one-vote general election in undivided Pakistan’s history) – leading to Civil War and separation.

In addition, the ruling establishment of Pakistan used various devices to transfer economic resources from East Pakistan to the West wing. Most revenue sources were placed under central control, whereas revenue expenditures overwhelmingly favoured the West wing (about 75% of total expenditures). Foreign exchange earnings from East Bengali jute were used to fund imports for industrialization of the West wing (which had been earmarked as the preferred location for industries). An overvalued Pakistani rupee was used to favour importers in the major importing (i.e. West) wing. Perhaps as a consequence of all this, the per capita ratio of gross regional products (West / East) went from 1.2 in 1949-50 to 1.61 in 1969-70.

During Ayub Khan’s celebrated Decade of Stability and Progress, Pakistan was on a higher growth trajectory than Turkey, Malaysia, etc.; was cited by the World Bank as a model developing economy, was studied as an example by South Korea, and so on. Unfortunately those fractious Bengalis thought they were being discriminated against, colonised and robbed blind to make this splendid achievement possible.

What one makes of these policies depends on ones outlook and ones definition of equity. Obviously the West Pakistani establishment – starting with Jinnah – had little use for conventional ideas of equity. It’s entirely a matter of taste whether you think East Pakistani secession was justified by the prior history.