Evian and Roy At the end of the day , inspite of any sort of wet dreams that Hamid Gul and his loyal canines might have - Roy, Ram and Gupta amount to zero when it to comes to public discourse in India.

Guys , face it Medha Patkar of the unkempt , rags fame has more credibility vis-a-vis Narmada or any anti-establishment agenda.

Ram is a rich publisher from Madras , who professes Commie leanings I suspect purely in the form of a hobby.

And finally guys who have been invited to Pakistan for ant-establishment chats will lose infinitesimal credibility they might have in India.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India SameerJB

Some questions relating to the Punjabi society in Pakistan.

I often hear that the Punjabis are tribal and not caste based - when many share their surnames with Hindus or Sikhs. If that is the case how did caste morph into a tribal existence. How does this impact the chances of candidiates in elections when these are held? I mean are distts gerrymandered for particular caste groupings.

The recruitment for the British army ( from the areas that are part of Pakistan now), was primarily from the Jhelum distt. Has this feature changed ? Do you have tribal / caste based regiments such as the Dogras/Ghurkas/Jats in India?

Peace in South Asia rsridhar # 310

I am surprised to not find that a Bong brahmin was also not invited along with the trio here.

In previous years we used to have Muslim League worthies from India do the trash talk in Pakistan.

On a different note - don`t you think it is time we moved away from all those romantic stories of people being humbled by Sufi saints or Christian missionaries.

I mean gimme a break - Rajputs and Jatts claim some Sufi invited them to Islam or the brahmins who were converted to Christianity .

So many Syrian Christians exist today that they outnumber the Brahmin community 8-1. Not all Syrian Christians claim Brahmin ancestors - only a few and that has been blown out of proportion - many were people from the lower and middle castes. Many are descended from Persian/Assyrian/Canaanite settlers.

The April Fool Referendum sac # 204

And when Indians were despairing to hear about good news , comes your statement about ex-generals of the Pak army using South Indian labour and that too cheap.

Hats off to the smart Pak entreprenuers and the honest hard-working South Indians dont` you think.

My friend SAC , please verify before conferring such status on the South Indians, they are generally the least represented outside of any profession and also the least open to work in 8 hour shits and such. You may be mistaking hard-working Gujjus or Punjabis or Mohajirs for South Indians.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India rsridhar #300 , 301

Regarding your other comment about a person choosing to not adopt the Northern Muslim culture - here are my thoughts

Firstly the Muslim population of Tamil Nadu has two major strains - one which is indigenous or has been localised , the other is clearly the element that came from the North / NW India and may be actually from Afghanistan.

The first strain includes two different peoples - the Marikkars who are basically descendants of Arab traders and the Labbais who are converts to Islam from Tamil Nadu.By the way the current President of India is a descendant of Marikkars.

In recent times a fourth group has been added to this by the migrant Malabari Muslims who retain their Malabari culture.

The other group would include the Turks , Pathans and such eg. Nawab of Arcot , these people never adopted Tamil culture. These people stayed with their origins and later on adopted Urdu as their language.

There has been little intermingling between the foreign and local groups. As a matter fact of fact some Tamil Muslims as they make it up the social ladder choose to identify with Urdu and ``Urduise`` simply because in their estimation that puts them higher in the social ladder .

There is strong pressure on Southern Muslim groups to sdopt Urdu as their language.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India Dost-mittar # 308

Another point of discussion is this, I leave this for the chowkies to ponder upon.

I believe that the so-called Ashrafs never really gave serious thought to wholesale conversions because that would have put them in a woeful minority vis-a-vis the emerging local converts with whom they would then have to marry share power, and enjoy wealth with.

So deep-inside the caste system continued albeit ironically through the Muslim Turkish conquerors.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India rsridhar #301

I do not agree with your surmise that the Islam of the South is of the Sufi type. AR Rehman may have converted because of the good guidance of some SUfi , that does not prove that Southern Islam is Sufi in nature, unless your definition of the South encompasses TN alone. TN hardly accounts for any substantial portion of the Muslim population of the South.

The Islam of Hyd AP is by and large of the orthodox variety and actually the Deobandi type of thought has ardent followers there. The Islam of the coastal regions of the Southwest is not exactly Sufi , neither is the Islam of the interior of Karnataka. It is fashionable to call strains of Islam SUfi without really getting into the dteails of what they are.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India Dost-mittar , SameerJB , Pmishra

I have my two-cents to add regarding the growth of Islam , in an area which has been seldom publicised as much as it has been for the North West of India and I am referring to the South and particularly to the South West.

We have these wonderful theories about how Islam was brought to India by Arab traders et al. But if you closely analyse the history of the coast you will see that it is what they remained - basically ghettos of Muslims of Arab-Indian origin going about their trade and /or farming, they were a miniscule minority well until the 1700s when Tipu launched one of his Mujahid expeditions to the coast , a bulk of the coast are converts to Islam who were essentially coerced by Tipu and that is where the Muslim League of Kerala draws its numeric advantage from, not the Islam of the Sufi variety brought by the so-called Arab traders. We have to remember that Tipu through his father Hyder was either from Afganistan or from the Punjab and probably behaved like any of the depots of Turkish / Mongol stock. Towards the 1930s there was a revolt by Muslim reactionaries when they pretty much cleansed parts of northern districts of Kerala of other religious groups.

There is a group of Muslims along the Mangalore coast and they are called Navayats - there are several stories - some suggest that these were Brahmins who were converted to Islam about 3-4 centuries back. Me - I think they were probably more like Jewish communities that settled along the West coast and were co-opted into Brahminhood , except some might have been forced / found their way into Islam.

History is also replete with how the Muslim rulers of Deccan banded together to loot and destroy the Vijaynagar kingdom, they did not sparre any inhabitants - and it is beleived that they put males belonging to the ruling classes to death or forcibly converted them to Islam.

You also have traditional trading communities along this coast that chose to adopt Islamic values because it would help them advance economically. We have to remember that the Arabs controlled all the ports in the Persian gulf at that time and would not let European explorers to visit / trade India , until some such as Vasco broke through.

To the extent that Muslim rulers held sway over parts of Deccan - mention may also be made of the difference between the Sunni-rulers of the gangetic plains ( except may be for Avadh) and the predominantly Shia rulers of Bijapur except for the Nizam of Hyd. The Shia seem to have gotten along rather well with the Brahmins of the South. The SHias were predominantly from Iran.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India Sameer # 285

I agree with you on the necessity of nourishing local cultures - they are the product of so many centuries of evolution , one should not expect to replace them with a one color fits all formula , without dangerous results.

Many of the arguments you put forth have also been provided by people from TN,AP etc. My assumption is that state sponsored uniformity will be absorbed by people only as long as there is an economic or social need to adapt. I am reminded of an incindent when Mulayam Yadav was the CM of UP and in his usual pompous way sent a interstate file to his Kerala counterpart Nayanar in Hindi. The Marxist CM of Kerala would have none of it, so he wrote back his response in Malayalam .Domiciles of TN who migrate to the NOrth would not learn Hindi except for economic and social reasons. With Pakistan the adoption of Urdu serves the purpose of people who would like to build a pan-Muslim identity.

Regarding Tamil / Telegu directors making movies in local languages it is simply because there is a strong local market and many times overseas markets because of the expatriates living abroad.For example many times ``BOllywood-type`` Hindi movies are seen as overly melodramatic and bordering on fantasy in Kerala and the locally made movies are very different on an average from the run-of-the-mill Hindi movie.

Regarding demographic changes ,again people seem to vote with their feet for better opportunities. The long term solution is to have uniform development , that does not swamp other states / provinces. It is time the governments moved away from the British model where administration was organised from cities / towns and hence these places developed the most.

For example most recently Bangalore is drawing in masses from so many states that the demographics of Bangalore is no longer Karnatak.

It seems to me that while many of the Sufi sants of Punjab nourished the Punjabi language in more recent times - may be the last 2 centuries or so only the Sikhs have actively sustained the Punjabi culture - it is directly connected to their religion and culture , they go hand-in-hand. The same cannot be said by and large for the other major communities residing there.

India has a long way to go in terms of true Federalism.

I guess this is the local South Asian version of globalisation where people can migrate and find jobs in other states / provinces.

In so many ways the sustanance of local culture is important because in the overal picture all these cultures provide an underlying unity which sometimes the Federal Govt seeks to displace .

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India SameerJB # 276 etc

I think we hear you loud and clear , but I am hesitant with any sort of bonding which happens on the basis of sub-nationalism such as Punjabiat that you seem to point to. Remember you do not have to look further than India to realise that linguistics based states have not gotten long with each other( States fight each other over each one`s share of river water for irrigation for example) and this gets worse because states or rather politicians ruling these states would like to be seen as custodians of the local language and culture rather than promoters of the overall social and economic good.

Happy 56th Anniversary, Pakistan and India Layman # 261

Amen to you brother.

Unlike the Northern parts where the Islamic beliefs even inspired the founding of new religions which where a synthesis of Hindu and Islamic thought, to date I have not heard of any historic research mention the same for Hinduism in the South.

Kerala was exposed to Judaism, Christianity and Islam aprat from Buddhism and Jainism and Hindu beliefs have never shown any synthesis with Islamic beliefs.

Sankars` A-Dvaita is considered to be a counter to the prevalent Atheistic Buddhist thought, though scholars argue that he used Buddhist philososhy extensively.

What Went Wrong With Devdas Ahmed Madani Saheb # 50

You are a Pakistani Sayed who claims WHite Turkish blood, Bhai Saheb , Turks were not whites when they hit the subcontinent , they mixed with whites in Europe when certain Turks settled there.

Secanadly Sayeds were supposed to be Pure Arab ( if ever there is a pure one), and then they are not Turkish , neither are many of these Arabs white, I suggest you stop eating the MacDonalds meal cause it is bringing WHite man`s cow`s disease into Pakistan.

Allah Hafiz

India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario DOst-Mittar #231

Actually Sekhar Gupta - the same person that YLH raved about 8-10 years back , had visited Pak part of so-called Kashmir and he was able to talk to the so-called Kashmiris who actually spoke Western or Pothari dialects of Punjabi.

Historically , it seems the Kashmir valley is the only part that really speaks Kashmiri, you have Pahari / Dogri / Gojri in Jammu and then you have the Sudhan, Jatt and Rajput clans of Mirpur etc who seem to be more Punjabis by culture than Kashmiri.

India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario Dost-mittar # 189

Regd. Kerala Christians etc.

I must add the irony here - it is a fact that the Christians in Kerala for the most part trace the origin of their religion to the Areas of Middle East that used to be called Assyria , parts of Persia, Turkey and Iraq - Antioch, Mosul , Diyarbakir etc to be precise. But they have localised to such an extent that when a Patriarch of the Syrian Christians was asked by the Australians about the status of his community in India - he said we are sons of the soil , We are more Hindu than the Hindus themselves. There are people who trace their ancestors to Canaan and call themselves Kanayas but every single one is proud of his Malayali heritage.

The patron saint of one such community is Saint Abdul Jaleel mar Grigorios. Rituals are sometimes conducted in Syriac or Greek laced Latin , but inevitably the language of expresssion is Malayalam.

Kerala is a curious mix indeed of liberal Hindu kings who welcomed immigrants with tax free lands to build settlements , churches, synagogues and mosques and the localisation of foreign philosophies and ideals.

India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario krashid #175

Here is the link to Nobel laureates by nationality , you can figure this out.

http://www.nobel.se/search/nationalities.html

The only Middle Easterner who won a prize for Science was the Egyptian who won it for chemistry in 1999.

The following is a list of female Nobel laureates

http://www.nobel.se/search/women.html

India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario krashid #175

You may be hardpressed to find more Middle-Eastern Nobel price winners than the ones you found out.

There has been just one in literature and that was Naghuib Mahfouz .

Sigalph`s point is that Middle Eastern universities do not shine as beacons of higher learning or research into ideas that might seek the betterment of human life and understanding of our environment , (unless we count the countless schools the Saudis have conveniently spawned in other countries that are exclusively religious in nature).

Admittedly the prizes are given away to what is perceived in the collective estimation of the Royal academy as the best effort towards understanding or solving problems.

The academy and the intelligentsia may even have got the problem wrong.

Regarding the Peace prize it is anybody`s guess it is used as a political tool. And it has become a political choice only because we have megalomanicas who seem to be willing to tailor their actions to meet the Prize guidelines.