Tilak and Gokhale

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TIME, December 23, 1996

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/union/paksa/www/html/pakistan/jinnah2.html



A TIGERISH MAN, ATOP A SECTARIAN TIGER

The chronicle of a leader and the passions he fanned into flames



By Carl Posey

Delhi in the spring heat of 1946 was not relaxed,`` TIME reported that April. ``It was taut with waiting, gravid with conflict and suspense. Two socialist lawyers and a former Baptist lay preacher from Britain had sat of 25 days in the southeast wing of the viceregal palace, preparing to liquidate the richest portion of empire that history had ever seen---to end the British Raj, the grand and guilty edifice built and maintained by William Hawkins and Robert Clive, Warren Hastings and the Marquess Wellesley, the brawling editor James Silk Buckingham and the canny merchant Lord Inchcape and by the great Viceroys, austere Curzon and gently Halifax. The Raj was finished.``

Finished, perhaps, but still difficult to put down. The Raj at the end was like one of the unexploded bombs still lettering postwar Europe, and it held the same promise: peaceful independence if you do it right, explosive civil war if you fail. ``The issue,`` said TIME, ``seemed to turn on one man---Mohammed Ali Jinnah.`` On Boris Chaliapin’s portrait cover, the metaphorical tingers of East and West Pakistan stalked the subcontinent.

TIME had watched Jinnah intermittently since 1930, first as an ardent articulator of Indian nationalism, then as a spark flashing perhaps too close to the subcontinent powder keg. ``Where the low, bare limestone ridges of Sukkur, Sind slope like unkempt stairs down to the banks of the Indus,`` TIME reported in December 1939, ``Indians who loudly object to fighting Germans in the name of Empire last week fought each other in the name of their various gods.`` Muslims had claimed a government building near the river as the site of an ancient mosque and ``threatened to hold it until nirvana-come. Whereupon Hindus swept the city, storming, looting, burning Moslem shops.`` It was a chilling preview of bloodbaths ahead.

``The leaders of the Moslems,`` TIME observed, ``usually thinks first about independence for Moslems and afterward about independence for Indians. His name is Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and he is probably the greatest single force for disunity in all disunited India.`` As TIME watched the inexorable progress of the cracks that would culminate in India’s partition, that view of Jinnah would be modulated, but it would not fundamentally change.

There was, in fact, a good deal to admire in Jinnah’s tough single-mindedness and the way he played his cards. Talking with TIME correspondent William Fisher in 1942, Jinnah said he would accept a national government that gave Muslims ``a fair break,`` but that he would stop cooperating if the British made peace with the Hindu-dominated Congress Party.

The April 1946 Jinnah cover story reported by Pacific bureau chief Robert Sherrod was more than TIME’s bittersweet obituary for the British Raj; it was one of the world’s first real close-ups of the man who would have Pakistan, in all his coldly tigerish colorations. Here was a charismatic leader who during Gandhi’s 1942 Quit India campaign had ``boasted that if his followers joined Gandhi’s pacifist program, the British would have 500 times more trouble ‘because we have 500 times more guts than the Hindus.’`` It was also a grim prophecy. ``The British Raj had given India a unified defense and a unified region of internal free trade,`` said TIME. ``Jinnah would destroy both ... Between mighty Russia to the north and the main body of India to the south, Pakistan would dangle like two withered arms.``

In August, Jinnah unleashed---perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not---an ugly sample of the horrors to come. Opposed to a British plan for Indian independence that did not also create Pakistan, he designated the 18th day of Ramadan as ``Direct Action Day.`` ``Though direct,`` TIME reported, ``the action was supposed to be peaceful. But before the disastrous day was over, blood soaked the melting asphalt of sweltering Calcutta’s streets.

``Rioting Moslems went after Hindus with guns, knives and clubs, looted shops, stoned newspaper offices, set fire to Calcutta’s British business district. Hindus retaliated by firing Moslem mosques and miles of Moslem slums ... By the 21 day of Ramadan, direct action had killed some 3,000 people and wounded thousands more.``

Interspersed with what TIME called ``musical chairs`` of negotiation, in which neither the Hindu side nor the Muslim side could be budged by British nudging, the killing went on and on. ``Perhaps, after all, there would be no independent India,`` TIME mused sadly in May 1947. ``Indeed, there might be no India.``

Pakistan was by then an idea nothing could contain. In August 1947 it became the world’s largest Muslim nation. The forces of hatred unleashed by Jinnah’s rhetoric, however, had acquired a life of their own. By late October 1947 the plague of enmity flared in Kashmir, where a Muslim majority lived under a Hindu maharaja who decided to throw in with India. ``In Moslem Karachi,`` TIME reported, ``Pakistan Governor General Mohammed Ali Jinnah raged at the news. He ordered Pakistan troops ... into Kashmir.`` But as the raiders pushed into the Vale, ``the blind butchery of neighbor by neighbor had reached Kashmir. Pakistan heard that 50,000 Moslems had been slaughtered by Hindus. British officials said that 100,000 fleeing refugees from Kashmir and nearby Jammu had crowded south into the still reeking Punjab.``

Jinnah, meanwhile, seemed to fade even as his discordant creation took form. ``Last week,`` TIME reported in early December 1947, ``after less than four months of independence, Pakistan was economic wreck, and serious social unrest was rising.`` The new country coul dnot afford to feed its millions of refugees; its checks bounced around the globe. As for the health of the seldom seen Jinnah, TIME added, ``The Pakistan Ministry indignantly said: ‘There is absolutely no truth in the rumors that Quaid-e-Azam [the Great Leader] is seriously ill.’``

In fact, as evidently only he was aware, Jinnah was dying.

``Out of the travail of 400 million in the Indian subcontinent,`` TIME wrote in September 1948, ``have come two symbols---a man of love and a man of hate. Last winter the man of nonviolence, Gandhi, died violently at the hands of an assassin. Last week, the man of hate, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, at 71, died a natural death in Karachi, capital of state he had founded.``

Enemies gave Jinnah his due, though. ``The Hindustani Times,`` TIME observed, ``devoted a page to an uncompromising attack on Jinnah’s motives and methods. However, it concluded: ‘A man of destiny, he was perhaps the greatest man of Islam since Mohammed.’`` But, TIME noted warily, his death ``raised the possibility that his political heirs might seek the final solution for insolvent, disorganized governments: war.`` Indeed, Jinnah’s chief legacy proved to be an eternity of discord

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Upman:

I came across your interesting post on ``Award Complex`` some time back and had been meaning to comment on it. My apologies for the delay. Although the post was not addressed to me, but I felt the need to comment on it.

I have not known about the tug between Tagore and Sir Iqbal. Personally, I would NEVER EVER do a comparison between poets. They all had their own stance, charm, beauty, impact, passion and last but not the least, they all had human emotions.

Hafeez Jalandhri, Ghalib, Faiz, Faraz, Hali, Akbar Ilah Abadi, Nazir Akbar Abadi, Zoaq, Firaq G, Meer[I cannot stand him], Omar Khayyam, Hafez, Gibran, Zafar, Sahir L and many many more - they all had a different flavor to their verses. You can never and should never compare them. They all held a special place. Sir Iqbal had his own philosophy.

Ghalib was never recognized while he was alive. All the recognition he recieved, was after his death. A great irony! Do not tell me that his heart won`t have bled many times on seeing other poets getting where he deserved to be. His circumstances were very different and sad, but still... This example may not be directly applicable to what we are talking about, but in a very indirect way, it is!

I am sure Sir Iqbal must have come up with:

Upman:

``Should I educate this person that being a Pakistani or and Indian, a Muslim or a Hindu, has nothing to do with whether a person is a good person or a bad person``

You said it yourself, you should not be doing the job of my parents or my teachers. You should focus on what your parents and teachers left out in your upbringing.

Please, I urge you not to separate things from its context. My statement to prefer any Pakistani over an Indian despite the religion, was in direct retaliation to Bhartia Musalman`s invitation to marry an Indian Muslim.

My motivation is my country. And in direct consequence I am cautious with anything Indian. It is true that I feel utmost respect and high thoughts for Non-Muslims of Pakistan, and I feel the equal and opposite for the Indians. I feel utmost concern for the Muslims of Pakistan and I feel equal and opposite indifference towards the Muslims of India.

I have switched my belief system form the basic Islamic upbringing to very Hindu spiritualistic (Gandhi, Yoga, Deepak Choopra) to very Islamic (only the Quran) to now the simple focus of returning to my country what I got form it, irregardless of such non-important self-righteous things such as religion. I have seen the worst of irrationalities resulting form devotion to the religion more than a common social cause.

Nonetheless I do strongly believe that it is important to believe in one source of love and life and creation, to be tranquil in the mind.

Now that you know clearly what I believe in, you should focus on your worthiness and not why I come across as bigoted.

Aisha Sarwari

klutz - Am not one to flog a dead horse but what made you say this ??

``You remind me of an ``indian Muslim woman`` who on her friends advice went to a ``Mandar`` to pray for her sons health who was dying.She didnt pray to Allah (well maybe she didnt) . but she went to a mandar and prayed to those objects

made of stone. ``

when lesser things in life have made us turn to other religions/quacks/faith healers/idols/you name it - so something as significant as the impending loss of someone who is dear to us - yes i would say try anything and everything in your power !!! That will never lessen your faith !

But I do have to add all that turns out to be futile anyways !!

aicha

When bigoted fanatics like Jay start talking of truths ... one fears that the world is coming to end.

#432

JAY...AnNy

80 million female are stopped from breathing life in the FOETUS stage of development of FEMALE child in the womb,IRONICALLY detected sex by Ultra Sound technique ,the very cutting edge technology invented in Medicine to SAVE life ,used to destroy FEMALE child SELECTIVELY in the last 20 yrs numbering approximately 80 millions.Leading to DROP in further lowering of Female : : Male ratio !!!!!!!!!!

http://www.tribuneindia.com/20010520/edit.htm#5

The “missing” hundred million girls

A. J. SinghIT may come as a shock to many, but it is, nevertheless, true. The greatest enemy of a girl child is not man but the educated woman, not even the uneducated woman. This fact came to light when Monica Dasgupta, a researcher, analysed the sex ratio data, now known among demographers as Khanna data from Punjab. According to it, second and subsequent girls ``experience 32 per cent higher mortality than their siblings if their mothers are uneducated, but this gap jumps to 136 per cent if their mothers are educated.``And what holds true of Punjab is equally true of other North Indian states, particularly Haryana. No wonder, the latest census figures reveal a dangerously falling sex ratio in these states. For every 1,000 males, there are varying figures of females, with 870 as the lowest. It is an alarming trend but it does not seem to bother the powers-that-be. The reason: the politicians are interested only in capturing power — and all that flows from it — rather than in sociological issues. And there are not many social organisations — much less tall social leaders — who can bring about a change in the social attitude of the public against the female child.This bias against the girl child has led to the killing of over one hundred million (ten crore) of them in a decade through various methods. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen calls these `murdered` girls as ``missing women``. Many of these were killed right in the womb through induced or forced abortions or by other means as soon as they were born. In the states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar — nicknamed as BIMARU (or sick) states — the foetus of the girl child is detected in the womb through high-tech aminocenteses test (AT). This is followed by induced abortion.Everybody in any locality in Punjab or Haryana or elsewhere where such clandestine clinics flourish knows this but no one dare prove it. Such is the terror of the police in the public mind because the former is known to torture those very persons who come forward to give information about law breakers. In such a scenario can femals foeticide be stopped? Surely, provided the public is educated to give up out-dated and harmful social practices. The topmost among these is the heavy expense a girl`s parents are expected to bear on performing the marriage of their daughter.Nine out of ten couples told a survey team that to bring up a daughter meant setting aside at least four to five lakh rupees for performing her marriage alone. ``We just can`t afford it``, said one couple. This couple further said that whatever money they were to spend on the girl`s education or marriage eventually went to enrich the family into which she was married. On the contrary, they favoured raising sons only. Why? Because the money spent on their education comes back to the family by way of their economic contribution when they grow up. Again, the sons become the crutch for parents to lean on in their old age. On top of it, when they get married, they bring brides along with dowry.This logic is common sense, but lop-sided even at its best. If there were no girls to wed, what would the boys do? Such a situation has begun to surface. In another 20 years, there will be too many eligible bachelors out in the marriage market chasing too few eligible girls. Such a situation can unleash a host of social evils like spurt in crime against women, abductions, forced marriages, buying and selling of women or girls and so on. The scenario is too dreadful to imagine. To avoid such a situation we need thousands upon thousands of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) countrywide to educate the public on this issue. They should hold discussions, go from door to door, talk to newly married couples and generate a movement to end the insane, practice of female foeticide.Side by side, they should conduct on an anti-dowry campaign, targeting the vulgar rich for perpetrating this evil. They can set up marriage bureaux where marriages are performed with the barest minimum expense. Further, these NGOs should detect clandestinely-run sex-determination clinics and laboratories and force the police to get them closed. Wherever corrupt police officials are seen protecting such outfits, they should also be exposed with the help of the media.Although the Constitution of India guarantees equal status to the sexes in every sphere of life, yet it stays only on paper. In every walk of life, the bias against women persists. One reason for this is the low status women have been given over the centuries in our male-dominated culture.It is this discrimination that must be targeted by the NGOs. By educating the people in the urban and rural areas, they can make the people aware of this bias. The NGOs can also force the government to create new opportunities for the females in every sphere of life. These NGOs can help end pay discrimination in the unorganised sector of the economy or in private firms against women. All this will go a long way in elevating the status of women in the Indian milieu.

The bold & the beautiful

#432

JAY......AnNy,

Somthing to think about proportionately 100 times greater problem in India compared to Honor Killing hype sited by you .....500 million Indians BELOW poverty & basic human STATUS!!!

Amnesty Home,Library,ASIA,SOUTH ASIA,INDIA

India

India in 2001 annual report, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997

View all India documents (please note this index may be large and take a while to download)



AI-index: ASA 20/029/2001 08/05/2001

India: Violence against women - a double discrimination

Authorities in India are failing to prevent violence against women and sometimes take an active part in it, Amnesty International said today in a new report launched as part of the organization`s international campaign against torture.

The report highlights patterns of violence including the beating, stripping and rape of women, in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. It focusses particularly on dalit (``untouchables``) and adivasi (tribal) women; their lack of access to justice, and the failure of the state to protect them at the local level. These women often suffer a double discrimination; discrimination on the basis of caste as well as gender.

Although high levels of violence against women are widely acknowledged by the authorities and some steps are being taken to address these problems, officials at the local level continue to ignore complaints, take bribes, and cover up the abuses.

``In a year declared by the Indian government as the Year of Empowerment of Women, Amnesty International hopes the government will take its policies seriously and not confine them to paper alone,`` the organization said.

``The organization is calling on the government to consider implementation of the comprehensive recommendations in the new report, which would help make the rights of women a reality in India.``

Many women don`t approach police for fear of dishonour or that they will be dismissed or further abused. An activist working with dalit women in Uttar Pradesh estimated that only 5% of cases of violence against women are registered. Many dalits are not aware of their rights under special legislation designed to protect them, and it is rare for police to voluntarily inform them.

Police are also accused of withholding and destroying evidence in many cases, usually at the behest of the accused with whom they may have caste or other links. Witnesses often withdraw their testimony after taking a bribe or being threatened by the accused and medical evidence is lost because simple procedures are not followed. The length of time it takes to pursue a case of torture through the courts encourages victims to make compromises under pressure.

Narbada, an 18-year-old woman from Udaipur district of Rajasthan told Amnesty International that she was raped by a Rajput (upper caste) landlord in March 2000. The attacker`s mother reportedly heard the victim`s screams but did nothing to stop her son. She then beat Narbada and told her not to go to the police. When Narbada tried to go to the police with her uncle, 50 Rajputs stopped them.

When they reached the police station two days later, they were verbally abused and told to pay Rs. 500 ($11) if they wanted to file a complaint, which they refused to do. They travelled three and half hours to the district headquarters where the Superintendent of Police recorded their complaint. Police were present during her medical examination which was conducted four weeks after the rape. When the case went to court, the public prosecutor tried to convince Narbada and her family to withdraw the complaint. Narbada and her family continue to face harassment from members of the Rajput community.

Women activists in India have played a crucial role in highlighting problems faced by women but they are often punished for it, becoming victims of violence themselves.

``The Indian government has a long way to go in bridging the gap between promises of protection for women and actual protection for women,`` Amnesty International said.

ENDS

public document

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To receive a copy of the report ``India: The battle against fear and discrimination - The impact of violence against women in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan`` please contact mcatsani@amnesty.org or for more information phone Amnesty International`s press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5729 web : http://www.amnesty.org. To find out more about Amnesty International`s campaign against torture visit www.stoptorture.org

P.a.n.k.a.j:

I am glad that your name`s halat`ae`zaar left a lasting effect on you :)

You`ve been making the same mistake repeatedly -it was time for a lesson.

Take Care.

PS: By the way, I have heard the name, as Punkhuj than Pankaj. The first one must have been derived from Punkh, whereas the second one must have had something to do with Pancakes :) Sorry, if it is otherwise, Pank.aj :)

AnNy,

WB asks Pakistan for effective loans recovery laws

By Rauf Klasra

ISLAMABAD. The World Bank in its updated proposed country Assistance Strategy for Pakistan for 2001-03 has asked Pakistan to strengthen legal and judicial reform laws.

According to this proposed three years country strategy paper, which has been prepared by the Bank after long consultation with the government officials during the recent months, the WB has called for laws to allow financial institutions to recover unpaid loans without lengthy court proceedings.

It also asks the government to provide courts with `adequate resources` to achieve effective loan recovery through the courts. The Bank has also asked the government to introduce certain reforms, which include increased independence for the State Bank of Pakistan so it can carry out its main function of maintaining price and financial sector stability.

//The above is a statement of the world bank from jung of today. They are not talking about corruption, they are not talking about the general blah blah like you the young and the educated of pakistan are.

For example, take honour killing, all the posts I have seen try to dismiss this as the influence of corruption. No it is not, there is some law in pakistan which says the `honour killing` is legal. There are cases in every country, take for example the `BMW case` in india, one rich young chap killed afew by driving a BMW seven series, in a drunken state. He was charged, but the case is dragging on and it is likely that he he would be found not guilty. That could be deemed corruption, `manipulation` you name it.

But in the case of honour killing in pakistan, no case is raised, no one is charged, because no crime has been committed. To give an example, if any one makes a funny face at you, it could offend you, but no where in the world the police will take note, because there is no law that says making funny face is an offence. In pakistan, honour killing is exactly like that. Remember the murder in the office of Asma Jahangir.

If you are really about changing anything, find out the law that makes honour killing legal, come up with a post like the world bank demand, state precisely what you want. If you can do that may be, in the eyes of what hamidm calls a curmedgen, you are a true young person with a spirit, an eagerness to change and the intelectual decipline to take the task on.

It is easier to chant the old song, pakistan is corrupt.

regards and best wishes.

jay.

Zahra

Okay, good way to make the other spell your name correctly. You literally raped my name.

M.J. Akbar`s history seems a little strange.

Here is the Britannica on the ``compromise`` that

M.J, Akbar alleges de Valera accepted. Moreover,

such a deal was not on the table for India.

Division of Ireland was implicit in the deal.

-Arun Gupta

``Ultimately, on Dec. 6, 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on behalf of Great Britain by David Lloyd George and leading members of his cabinet and on behalf of Ireland by Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and other members of the Republican cabinet.``

``The Anglo-Irish Treaty provided that Ireland should in future have the “same constitutional status in the community of Nations known as the British Empire as the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa with a parliament having powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland and an Executive responsible to that parliament.”

``The new dominion was to be known as the Irish Free State. This peace agreement, ratified by the British Parliament, became operative when it had also been passed (January 1922) by a meeting of the Dáil. The new state comprised only 26 of the 32 counties; the northeastern area, known as Northern Ireland, remained part of the United Kingdom.``

``But the terms of the treaty had been accepted by the Irish signatories only because Lloyd George had threatened war on Ireland if they were rejected. Particularly obnoxious were a prescribed oath of allegiance to the British crown and the provisions allowing Northern Ireland to remain outside the new state. De Valera and the Republicans immediately repudiated the treaty, and, after its passage in the Dáil, de Valera resigned the presidency.``

------

One of the Gandhi-wrought changes in the Congress of 1920 that was so upsetting to the Old Guard :

The revised constitution of the Indian National Congress, largely Gandhi`s own handiwork, was approved at the Nagpur session of the Congress in December 1920; it defined the creed of the Congress `as the attainment of Swarajya by all legitimate and peaceful means`. Satyagraha was thus brought within the four corners of the constitution of the Congress.

The smallest unit of the Congress organization was to be the village Congress committee. A number of such committees were to be grouped into a Union Congress Committee. Union Committees were to be formed into tehsil or into district committees which in turn were to elect provincial committees. The All-India Congress Committee was to consist of about 350 members representing the Provinces.

The Congress became a broad-based organization: anyone who accepted its creed and paid four annas annual subscription could become its member. A small working committee led by the Congress president of the year constituted the highest executive of the Congress.

The Congress was thus reorganized not only on a more representative basis but in such a way that it could function efficiently between its annual sessions. It ceased to be the preserve of the upper and middle classes; its doors were opened to the masses in the smaller towns and villages whose political consciousness Gandhi was quickening.

(from http://www.mahatma.org.in/showbook.jsp?chap=chap026&book=og0001&link=og )