War Now and, Forever?
Veeresh Malik January 3, 2002
#130 Posted by cutandpaste on January 9, 2001 8:01:40 pm
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 09 2002
Cover story
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html
A state of war
BY TREVOR FISHLOCK
The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?
Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. Only Kashmir, he murmured. Only Kashmir.
Indias first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.
Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the worlds most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.
In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.
It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.
Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.
The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinents Muslims.
Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.
Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.
The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the womans husband.
At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.
Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistans new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.
India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.
India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.
Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistans leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.
Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.
Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the worlds population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.
Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For Indias Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.
The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.
Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.
In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.
Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the unfinished business of Partition. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. Indias treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.
It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehrus idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.
It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.
In the meantime the two nations face each other again and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.
People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each others beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of cartographic aggression inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.
Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.
Cover story
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html
A state of war
BY TREVOR FISHLOCK
The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?
Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. Only Kashmir, he murmured. Only Kashmir.
Indias first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.
Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the worlds most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.
In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.
It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.
Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.
The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinents Muslims.
Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.
Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.
The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the womans husband.
At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.
Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistans new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.
India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.
India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.
Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistans leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.
Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.
Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the worlds population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.
Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For Indias Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.
The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.
Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.
In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.
Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the unfinished business of Partition. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. Indias treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.
It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehrus idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.
It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.
In the meantime the two nations face each other again and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.
People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each others beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of cartographic aggression inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.
Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.
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#129 Posted by harimau on January 8, 2001 7:39:55 pm
Ref hydra-head-Aeisha #: 127
[How is Kashmir good for India so far it has been most expensive MISTAKE!!]
A mistake about which the people of India are totally unconcerned. So it is NOT a mistake. When the people of India think it is a mistake, the policy will change.
[Ask from Joyti Basu C.M.longest reigning Chief Minister in India to Laloo Yadav ( long & Surprisingly proving all PUNDIT BRAHMIN WRONG RUBBING THERE NOSE IN BIHIRI CHILLI)They will say to hell with Kashmir take care of BENGAL & BIHAR which has been neglected for 30 yrs since becoming NON CONGRESS state.]
The usual pea-brained argument of distorting historical truths to bash India. Jyoti Basu and his Communist thugs are responsible for ruining Calcutta and West Bengal. From being the first city in India in manufacturing, Calcutta has regressed so badly under Communist rule, it is probably behind even Patna today. All because of the `gherao`s and `bandh`s that paralyzed Calcutta under Communist rule. After 30 years of this, why do you expect anyone to invest in Calcutta? Every single engineering and manufacturing company was turned into a loss-making entity by repeated strikes and unfair demands on management. They were all taken over by the government and overstaffed with Party sympathizers who didn`t have a clue how to run a company. Jyoti Basu had the nerve last year to come to the US and meet with Indian enterpreneurs begging them to invest in West Bengal. Screw him, I say! Let him and those who elected him pay for his mistakes. There is no reason for the Central government to bail him out. Same stuff goes for the Laloo Prasad Yadav and Rubri Devi duo of Bihar. Bihar, and Biharis like you, are condemned to live subhuman lives until they decide to go to school and use their god-given brain to make something of themselves.
As far as allocation of Central funds to States, the Finance Commission that decided on the allocation in 2000 was headed by one Mr. Ansari. I believe Ansari is a good Muslim name. So why don`t you blame Muslims for the backwardness of Bihar as opposed to the Hindus, RSS, VHP, etc.?
By the way, people like Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra, were asking why they should be penalized for the non-performance of West Bengal and Bihar as those states got even more money compared to the proportion of revenues taken in from them.
Why don`t you, with your Magadh University MBBS, just shut up and concentrate on your profession? You know, you will be able to wreak your vengeance on Americans for Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, and any other imaginary grievances you Muslims might have by killing more Americans on the home front and Tom Ridge wouldn`t have a clue about what you are doing.
[Of Pakistan reason,they have a moral obligation not only because etnically religously geographically & relation wise .....Kasmiris are inter-twined with Lahoris,Pushtun,NWFP ,PATHANS people etc etc .]
What moral obligation does a frikking Bihari Muslim like you have to defend Pakistan?
No wonder RSS wants loyalty tests for Indian Muslims or deport them to Pakistan. No wonder Bangladesh doesn`t want any of you traitors.
[BUT MOST IMPORTANT IF PAKISTAN IS THE LAST & ONLY CHANCE OF KASHMIRIS TO ACHIEVE INDEPENDENCE ,HONESTLY]
Have Azad Kashmir and Northen Areas been constituted into the Independent Democratic Republic of Kashmir? Then you can talk about Pakistan helping Kashmiris achieve independence. It is a fact that Pakistan has made it very clear that the only choices in any Kashmiri plebiscite would be union with India or Pakistan but not independence. No matter what Romair says or what Benazir Bhutto is supposed to have said.
Pardon me for not sharing your pain. If you feel, as a Bihari Muslim, you were treated so badly in India that you could get a professional degree -- what is your complaint, you actually had to go to classes and learn something other than the Koran for a change? -- and move to the US and make big bucks, I assume you want to be a Nawab and people to come and pay you in silver, gold and diamonds just because you happen to have been born a Muslim. Even the Nawab of Bhopal decided in 1947 it was time to give up his throne and become a citizen of India -- and a loyal one at that!
Kwitcherbitchin, you pathetic idiot. People like you bring a bad name to all Indian Muslims. You are a disgrace to the ordinary farmer or coal miner of Bihar who has to drag his sorry a$$ every day to work on his field or in the coal mines in sweltering heat and has precious little to show for his labor. Compared to these honest laborers, you are a goddamn leach on society. Just shut the fcuk up and thank Allah that you have a cushy life. If you want to do anything for the poor and downtrodden in your home state, just go to the Bihar Samaj meetings and ask how you can contribute something so that you can pay a little back for what you have become by being born in a country that didn`t treat you as shabbily as you have claimed here.
You have been here too long to do any good. In the name of God, go. And take your multiple personalities with you.
[How is Kashmir good for India so far it has been most expensive MISTAKE!!]
A mistake about which the people of India are totally unconcerned. So it is NOT a mistake. When the people of India think it is a mistake, the policy will change.
[Ask from Joyti Basu C.M.longest reigning Chief Minister in India to Laloo Yadav ( long & Surprisingly proving all PUNDIT BRAHMIN WRONG RUBBING THERE NOSE IN BIHIRI CHILLI)They will say to hell with Kashmir take care of BENGAL & BIHAR which has been neglected for 30 yrs since becoming NON CONGRESS state.]
The usual pea-brained argument of distorting historical truths to bash India. Jyoti Basu and his Communist thugs are responsible for ruining Calcutta and West Bengal. From being the first city in India in manufacturing, Calcutta has regressed so badly under Communist rule, it is probably behind even Patna today. All because of the `gherao`s and `bandh`s that paralyzed Calcutta under Communist rule. After 30 years of this, why do you expect anyone to invest in Calcutta? Every single engineering and manufacturing company was turned into a loss-making entity by repeated strikes and unfair demands on management. They were all taken over by the government and overstaffed with Party sympathizers who didn`t have a clue how to run a company. Jyoti Basu had the nerve last year to come to the US and meet with Indian enterpreneurs begging them to invest in West Bengal. Screw him, I say! Let him and those who elected him pay for his mistakes. There is no reason for the Central government to bail him out. Same stuff goes for the Laloo Prasad Yadav and Rubri Devi duo of Bihar. Bihar, and Biharis like you, are condemned to live subhuman lives until they decide to go to school and use their god-given brain to make something of themselves.
As far as allocation of Central funds to States, the Finance Commission that decided on the allocation in 2000 was headed by one Mr. Ansari. I believe Ansari is a good Muslim name. So why don`t you blame Muslims for the backwardness of Bihar as opposed to the Hindus, RSS, VHP, etc.?
By the way, people like Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra, were asking why they should be penalized for the non-performance of West Bengal and Bihar as those states got even more money compared to the proportion of revenues taken in from them.
Why don`t you, with your Magadh University MBBS, just shut up and concentrate on your profession? You know, you will be able to wreak your vengeance on Americans for Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, and any other imaginary grievances you Muslims might have by killing more Americans on the home front and Tom Ridge wouldn`t have a clue about what you are doing.
[Of Pakistan reason,they have a moral obligation not only because etnically religously geographically & relation wise .....Kasmiris are inter-twined with Lahoris,Pushtun,NWFP ,PATHANS people etc etc .]
What moral obligation does a frikking Bihari Muslim like you have to defend Pakistan?
No wonder RSS wants loyalty tests for Indian Muslims or deport them to Pakistan. No wonder Bangladesh doesn`t want any of you traitors.
[BUT MOST IMPORTANT IF PAKISTAN IS THE LAST & ONLY CHANCE OF KASHMIRIS TO ACHIEVE INDEPENDENCE ,HONESTLY]
Have Azad Kashmir and Northen Areas been constituted into the Independent Democratic Republic of Kashmir? Then you can talk about Pakistan helping Kashmiris achieve independence. It is a fact that Pakistan has made it very clear that the only choices in any Kashmiri plebiscite would be union with India or Pakistan but not independence. No matter what Romair says or what Benazir Bhutto is supposed to have said.
Pardon me for not sharing your pain. If you feel, as a Bihari Muslim, you were treated so badly in India that you could get a professional degree -- what is your complaint, you actually had to go to classes and learn something other than the Koran for a change? -- and move to the US and make big bucks, I assume you want to be a Nawab and people to come and pay you in silver, gold and diamonds just because you happen to have been born a Muslim. Even the Nawab of Bhopal decided in 1947 it was time to give up his throne and become a citizen of India -- and a loyal one at that!
Kwitcherbitchin, you pathetic idiot. People like you bring a bad name to all Indian Muslims. You are a disgrace to the ordinary farmer or coal miner of Bihar who has to drag his sorry a$$ every day to work on his field or in the coal mines in sweltering heat and has precious little to show for his labor. Compared to these honest laborers, you are a goddamn leach on society. Just shut the fcuk up and thank Allah that you have a cushy life. If you want to do anything for the poor and downtrodden in your home state, just go to the Bihar Samaj meetings and ask how you can contribute something so that you can pay a little back for what you have become by being born in a country that didn`t treat you as shabbily as you have claimed here.
You have been here too long to do any good. In the name of God, go. And take your multiple personalities with you.
#128 Posted by pmishra2 on January 8, 2001 7:39:55 pm
AeishA #131:
[begin quote]
...Look how far India has come to be more inimical of Indian Muslims than ever Jinnah thaught of Congress!!
[end quote]
And how so? Could you please explain?
All citizens in India have equal rights
(one person, one vote). There is a
muslim middle-class which is growing
larger.
What has ``India``
done that is ``inimical of Indian Muslims``?
Have their rights being legislated away
into separate electorates? Is there a
distinction made between Ahmedias and others?
What exactly did you have in mind?
[begin quote]
...Look how far India has come to be more inimical of Indian Muslims than ever Jinnah thaught of Congress!!
[end quote]
And how so? Could you please explain?
All citizens in India have equal rights
(one person, one vote). There is a
muslim middle-class which is growing
larger.
What has ``India``
done that is ``inimical of Indian Muslims``?
Have their rights being legislated away
into separate electorates? Is there a
distinction made between Ahmedias and others?
What exactly did you have in mind?
#127 Posted by wadera on January 8, 2001 12:24:08 am
rsridhar (#116) ``...Md Ali Jinnah would be a sad man today. All he wanted was a secular, muslim majority county at peace with itself and with India. Look how that country has evolved.``
The evolution has just begun. Come back in five years time and then look at us ...
Jiyaeee Pakistan!
The evolution has just begun. Come back in five years time and then look at us ...
Jiyaeee Pakistan!
#126 Posted by Prem on January 8, 2001 12:24:08 am
Aeisha # 127
Studebaker bhai, here`s a confession strictly between us two Indians. Its breathtaking beauty notwithstanding, Kashmir has consistently been an economic drain on the rest of India. A poor country like India could hardly go on pouring resources into Kashmir, even without our Pakistani brethren poking their fingers into our backs.
So there are many rational reasons to review our Kashmir policy, let alone the very important humanitarian ones. But this I will NEVER EVER confess to a Pakistani who supports sending armed zombies into Indian Kashmir, or whose mouth can`t stop watering at the thought of grabbing some strategic real estate, and/or avenging some stupid defeat.
Bhaijan, you might have heard this ancient saying - ``shathe shathyam samacharet.`` That is, our behavior must match the context of the person we are dealing with. There are some amazing Pakistani people to whom I would happily give away all of India (if I could, ofcourse, except your house! :)) along with the last shirt off my back. Then there are Jihadis and JaisheMohammad types who would invariably find in me an implacable foe, made not of flesh and blood but hard hard steel.
But again, this is only between you and me.
Studebaker bhai, here`s a confession strictly between us two Indians. Its breathtaking beauty notwithstanding, Kashmir has consistently been an economic drain on the rest of India. A poor country like India could hardly go on pouring resources into Kashmir, even without our Pakistani brethren poking their fingers into our backs.
So there are many rational reasons to review our Kashmir policy, let alone the very important humanitarian ones. But this I will NEVER EVER confess to a Pakistani who supports sending armed zombies into Indian Kashmir, or whose mouth can`t stop watering at the thought of grabbing some strategic real estate, and/or avenging some stupid defeat.
Bhaijan, you might have heard this ancient saying - ``shathe shathyam samacharet.`` That is, our behavior must match the context of the person we are dealing with. There are some amazing Pakistani people to whom I would happily give away all of India (if I could, ofcourse, except your house! :)) along with the last shirt off my back. Then there are Jihadis and JaisheMohammad types who would invariably find in me an implacable foe, made not of flesh and blood but hard hard steel.
But again, this is only between you and me.
#125 Posted by tvarad on January 8, 2001 12:24:08 am
Urstruly,
Perhaps your conern for the Kashmiris will be taken more seriously if you don`t append it with your obvious blind hatred for anything Hindu.
Perhaps your conern for the Kashmiris will be taken more seriously if you don`t append it with your obvious blind hatred for anything Hindu.
#120 Posted by rajendra_panwar on January 7, 2001 8:53:52 pm
One of those rare articles that brought tears to my eyes. Hopefully what the author says is true that nothing has changed - only media publicity has increased because of the already shining limelight in the neighborhood (because US interests are involved). But whatever is going on is not good either. If only both governments (that supposedly represnt the majority) could realize that they are not fighting against each other but against a very very small minority of fundamentalists that like to make nuisance because someone has brain-washed them in the name of religion.
#119 Posted by sadna on January 7, 2001 5:05:44 pm
Urstruly #122
``there is no point in answering your questions``
And I thought you said Pakistan is doing its best..?
``there is no point in answering your questions``
And I thought you said Pakistan is doing its best..?
#118 Posted by shammi on January 7, 2001 5:00:15 pm
Re: Ali1
``...Let me make a guess too, is your family originally from...``
I will answer it, if you first let me know how I fared on my hypothesis. I asked the question first.
``...Let me make a guess too, is your family originally from...``
I will answer it, if you first let me know how I fared on my hypothesis. I asked the question first.
#117 Posted by Prem on January 7, 2001 5:00:15 pm
Urstruly # 117
So long as YOU understand the point you were trying to make ....:)
So long as YOU understand the point you were trying to make ....:)
#116 Posted by Urstruly on January 7, 2001 4:39:14 pm
Sadna # 121
By the same standards that you apply to yourself; there is no point in answering your questions since you and I donot have the same standards for the understanding of murder and rape of helpless Kashmiris using state aparatus by Hindus. I can live with that.
By the same standards that you apply to yourself; there is no point in answering your questions since you and I donot have the same standards for the understanding of murder and rape of helpless Kashmiris using state aparatus by Hindus. I can live with that.
#115 Posted by sadna on January 7, 2001 4:27:38 pm
Urstruly #120
I asked you a number of questions in #104 and got not a single answer. My point is that neither jihadis and jihadi organisations nor their open supporters like you consider yourselves answerable to any question about their actions, apparently even on discussion boards, forget about public accountability.
These organisations were supposed to be covert deniable instruments of state policy and now are confused by people like you as being above the constraints of the state such as natioanl interest, constitutional law and public accountability. What was meant to `help` Kashmiris is killing Kashmiris, and even fervent believers in this policy like you have no method or structure for wielding control on this.
As Tibor pointed out this lack of accountability or control in using violence is inherently part of armed coercive tactics:
http://www.chowk.com/bin/showr.cgi?f=asarwari_jan0402&n=40#reply62
``The ugliest side of terrorism is that any fool, thug can become a terrorist. Leadership requires some qualities, terrorism requires only criminal instinct. Terrorists inject authority through fear, and those who oppose are killed. Terrorist are nothing more that criminal gangs``
While stating that you have Kashmiris interests at heart, apparently you think it is only right to expose them to the horrors of these out of control groups who consider themselves above the law even in Pakistan and about which you cannot answer simple questions.
Thats my point and you keep proving it again and again.
PS: There is no point in questioning me where you used `insulting language`, you and I donot have the same standards for these things and I can live with that.
I asked you a number of questions in #104 and got not a single answer. My point is that neither jihadis and jihadi organisations nor their open supporters like you consider yourselves answerable to any question about their actions, apparently even on discussion boards, forget about public accountability.
These organisations were supposed to be covert deniable instruments of state policy and now are confused by people like you as being above the constraints of the state such as natioanl interest, constitutional law and public accountability. What was meant to `help` Kashmiris is killing Kashmiris, and even fervent believers in this policy like you have no method or structure for wielding control on this.
As Tibor pointed out this lack of accountability or control in using violence is inherently part of armed coercive tactics:
http://www.chowk.com/bin/showr.cgi?f=asarwari_jan0402&n=40#reply62
``The ugliest side of terrorism is that any fool, thug can become a terrorist. Leadership requires some qualities, terrorism requires only criminal instinct. Terrorists inject authority through fear, and those who oppose are killed. Terrorist are nothing more that criminal gangs``
While stating that you have Kashmiris interests at heart, apparently you think it is only right to expose them to the horrors of these out of control groups who consider themselves above the law even in Pakistan and about which you cannot answer simple questions.
Thats my point and you keep proving it again and again.
PS: There is no point in questioning me where you used `insulting language`, you and I donot have the same standards for these things and I can live with that.
#114 Posted by Urstruly on January 7, 2001 3:47:53 pm
Sadna
Please stick to your point and point out to one insulting word that I have used as you have alleged.
``Stick to the point about jihadis.``
Sure. I will show you mine if you show me yours.
Please stick to your point and point out to one insulting word that I have used as you have alleged.
``Stick to the point about jihadis.``
Sure. I will show you mine if you show me yours.
#113 Posted by sadna on January 7, 2001 3:41:04 pm
Urstruly #118
If you are leaving chowk, wish you all the best!
If not, then are you either a jihadi or a jihadi organisation? No? Then why discuss yourself so much? Stick to the point about jihadis.
Of course the option of leaving chowk is still an alternative to discussing jihadis, in which case, wish you all the best!
If you are leaving chowk, wish you all the best!
If not, then are you either a jihadi or a jihadi organisation? No? Then why discuss yourself so much? Stick to the point about jihadis.
Of course the option of leaving chowk is still an alternative to discussing jihadis, in which case, wish you all the best!
#112 Posted by Urstruly on January 7, 2001 2:53:40 pm
Sadna
Please point out to one insulting word and I will quit chowk for good. I have actually given the meaning of each word that I have used in paranthesis-I am especially respectful to women. But again I am also an artist. I jsut happen to know how to turn the switch of insecurity on and off. Why it is my fault?
Please point out to one insulting word and I will quit chowk for good. I have actually given the meaning of each word that I have used in paranthesis-I am especially respectful to women. But again I am also an artist. I jsut happen to know how to turn the switch of insecurity on and off. Why it is my fault?
#111 Posted by Urstruly on January 7, 2001 2:48:48 pm
Prem #115
Another pathetic affirmation of being a heartless, conscienceless hindu-the point I was trying to make.
And you ARE saying that white man can be phudooized-again another point I was trying to make.
Another pathetic affirmation of being a heartless, conscienceless hindu-the point I was trying to make.
And you ARE saying that white man can be phudooized-again another point I was trying to make.
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