Mohajirs Are People Too # 23 izuber

You "being the grandson of the person who drafted Qaid e Azam into Muslim League" (info among my favourite interacts), this is valuable information indeed.

The noble people you mention served Pakistan in it's infancy. Among those you mentioned are some who were very close to me and thus it makes it more poignant.

My respects to you izuber.

Mohajirs Are People Too Atif

"And then I noticed something that made me feel proud that Karachi was part of Pakistan."

This compatriot is very proud to call you as one of her own.

Yet another brilliant FP article that I have come to expect from you. What a mastery of words to keep the reader occupied till the very end.

Thank you for your explanation of wanting this to be a humorous piece. Otherwise I was going to swoon and write a most patriotic post. But I am adat say majboor so am attempting a smaller version.

Being a visual person I applied this literary Rorschach Test and found you to be be taking your first tentative steps into the city which is the birthplace of our beloved Founder Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and where he breathed his last! Hail Karachi!

You seem to be pleasantly surprised and then wonder why you have not been to visit and then it hits you – this is your city too. This is YOUR Pakistan!

"I can only wonder how long an account I would write if I were to spend a full day in Karachi."

I look forward to that account. In other words Karachi Aapka intizaar kar raha hai so you too can come and see why we Karachiites are so enthralled by our city.

Abdul Latif Khalid (1944-2007) Yasser

My sincere condolences on the death of your father which I have also noted in ijaz_gul’s thread on UP for the same.

I can see that your father lived a most fulfilling life, “a life well lived” indeed. He did a lot of good for which he will be remembered with love and respect not only by his family and friends but also by the greater community he served - remarkable and praise-worthy to say the least. I wish to extend my support to you for your immense loss and the following lines have attracted my attention.

“He would repeat the story again and again in front of me. Perhaps he suspected I would treat him badly once he grew old. We will never know because he never gave me a chance to show him what kind of a son I would prove to be.”

To do justice to the memory of your father, your “guide and mentor”, you need to decipher what a parent actually means when he repeatedly points out something to his adult son:

“My darling beta, I am so grateful to Allah that you have turned out to be such a good son that I am able to share with you a historical fact, a father-son relationship, which has affected me so profoundly. Oh noble Yasser, I would not replace, with all the riches in the world that an emperor could have, the love and respect that you have for me. You are my pride and my joy.”

YLH, your Baba knew the kind of son you have turned out to be. Reading between the lines of what you wrote about him, I do believe that you were responsible for a great deal of happiness in his life. May that truth give you strength and peace.

Pakistani Judges - Read This Lawyer’s Oath VRV, in case you don't know, Aisha Sarwari is quite capable of posting her own responses!

Farewell to Shimla Salim, #287 should read: and all I can think of is what Salim is also angry about...thus acknowledging how you always condemn the massacre of the defenceless. You are a good man Salim.

After Andrew Roberts had written the article, excerpts of which I presented earlier, I asked him where he had got the information to write about Jinnah in such glowing terms. He looked at me in a quizzical manner and said he was a historian. As such he had shifted through all the information and come up with the truth. Its all there, he said!

I am sure we will meet on one of our 'travels'. Till then I wish you Peace.

Farewell to Shimla Salim, how's it going? I have just come back from a plane trip and am trying to formulate my reply to you. But "More Tar Ma Bezamir Bhutni" (laughing icon) and my name not being mentioned by either you or IB as a fellow traveler (angry icon) and all I can think of is what Salim is angry about is... and there you said it yourself: "We are left with being unpopular, disdained, and unrewarded."

Farewell to Shimla Salim

I have noted your heart-felt and erudite comments. You probably know that I admire you for your valour, compassion and analytical mind.

I would differ on your view that Jinnah was responsible for the whole-scale massacre during Partition. Through his technical, legal and political skills undoubtedly Jinnah was responsible for achieving the creation of Pakistan. But the impetus for the creation was the almost unanimous understanding of the Muslims that they could not live under a Hindu Raj after the British left. This understanding was a product of history and circumstance.

If Jinnah had died before he personally achieved the creation of Pakistan the mutual ill-feeling between the two communities would have resulted in carnage anyway. Partition or no partition. Jinnah or no Jinnah

Here is what one noted Western historian writes:

Jinnah, star of the East reborn - Andrew Roberts

Excerpt

Without Jinnah there might never have been a Pakistan. The sub-continent would have been subjected to the horrific consequences of 90m Muslims being forced into a unitary state dominated by 225m Hindus. However unfortunate some parts of Pakistan’s history has been – with three leaders shot, hanged and blown up – it cannot have been anything like as bad as the civil war which would undoubtedly have resulted had Jinnah not won partition.

Never more than today do Pakistanis need to be reminded of the tolerant, tough-minded, secularist pluralist who created their nation. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence, and are probably now both nuclear powers. Mutual trust can be built only through both sides appreciating each other’s historical perceptions. In the sub-continent all border and political arguments between the countries inevitably return to 1947. A proper understanding of Jinnah's role is a crucial piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Only by placing him in his proper context, as an actor equally as great as Gandhi and Nehru in the 1947 drama, can Indians and Pakistanis gain a proper perspective.

The Sunday Times August 1996

Farewell to Shimla Tahmed :-)

As I have stated elsewhere, I find violence perpetuated against any defenceless person/group quite abhorrent.

Farewell to Shimla # 121 IB

“At a same time Labour - which came to power in early 1947 rushed the partition - and Lord Mountbatten exploited the situation.”

So true!

While India burned, Nero aka Attlee aka Mountbatten’s boss was busy taking care of ‘more’ important matters. That is how Mountbatten was able to ‘exploit’ the situation.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2283238.ec e

Attlee: the unnamed guilty man of India’s slaughter

On the 60th anniversary of Indian partition, the part played by Clement Attlee in facilitating mass killing is still ignored

Patrick French

Ten years ago I got into trouble when I published Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division. The Calcutta Telegraph called me “the most hated man in India”. The reception in Britain was better, but in India I was banned from appearing on diplomatic premises and had to be given security protection when I made a speech in New Delhi.
My crime was to depict Mahatma Gandhi as a ruthlessly sharp political negotiator and Mohammad Ali Jin-nah, the founder of Pakistan, as an underestimated historical figure who had protected the interests of his people. A decade ago India was less confident than it is today and a foreigner taking a bite out of the father of the nation was not appreciated.
Memories of the events surrounding independence and partition are still raw even 60 years on – the anniversary was last week – particularly in the north, where the violence was worst. About 1m people were murdered in communal massacres in 1947 and at least 14m people were displaced, making it the largest mass migration in history.
The legacy is still visible in the social composition of New Delhi, a city of one-time refugees, in the unresolved conflict over Kashmir and in the shaky position of Indian Muslims, despite their near-universal loyalty to the idea of India. Over the past 60 years India and Pakistan have fought four wars against each other and remain bellicose.
Ten years on, looking at the archive material again, I see the events of 1947 in a slightly different light. What strikes me now is the extent to which the architect of the political chaos of that time has been sold a pass. Whatever the rights and wrongs were of the strategy pursued by the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, it is apparent that British policy at the time was dangerously inept. Clement Attlee, quiet and uncharismatic – like John Major but without the circus background – makes an unlikely villain, but he was responsible for the key decisions.
Attlee hated the camera as much as his last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, loved it. A recent biographer repeats the common claim that in India he “achieved what virtually no one else, in any country, has achieved, before or since: to withdraw in good order from a vast slice of Empire”.
This is palpably untrue: through his action and inaction, Attlee facilitated mass slaughter but never took the blame for it. In later life, he said that giving India independence was his greatest achievement. As Stalin observed, one death is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
During the second world war, Attlee chaired the India committee as deputy to Winston Churchill, who regarded Indians as “a beastly people with a beastly religion”. Attlee followed Churchill’s line that India should supply troops for the allied war effort but receive nothing in return. A Labour colleague on the committee, Lord Listowel, found Attlee “a muted echo of his master’s voice”.
Leo Amery, Churchill’s school-friend who was secretary of state for India, complained that Attlee did not have “the courage to stand up to Winston and tell him when he is making a fool of himself”. Even during the Bengal famine of 1943, when 2m people died, the cabinet refused to send grain to India; and when food was sent to Holland, the viceroy Lord Archibald Wavell noted “the very different attitude towards feeding a starving population when the starvation is in Europe”.
When Attlee became prime minister in 1945, his policy was no more competent than Churchill’s had been. In one of his rare pronouncements, he said he found India “particularly intractable and nearly insoluble”.
Freddie Pethick-Lawrence – “a foolish old dodderer” according to Woodrow Wyatt, the Labour MP – was made secretary of state. Although the country was in a state of incipient breakdown, it took nine months for a delegation led by “pathetic Lawrence” to go there to seek a constitutional settlement.
Wavell wrote in his diary that he was “a charming old gentleman but no man to negotiate with these tough Hindu politicians”. He began each meeting “by giving away independence with both hands and practically asking Congress to state their highest demands . . . he is no poker player”.
Pethick-Lawrence returned to London having done nothing but increase tension. Violence spread as political and religious groups tried to secure their position. Despite repeated warnings, Attlee ordered the chiefs of staff to discontinue preparations for the military reinforcement of India.
By the end of 1946, many troops had left and Britain’s ability to keep the peace in India was reduced: each British soldier was in theory responsible for keeping 40,000 restive Indians under control. As a privately educated turn-of-the-century socialist with sentimental, doctrinaire ideas about the British working class (his maudlin poetry has to be read to be believed), Attlee’s main interest was in building the new Jerusalem and strengthening the power of the state in their support. India was an irritant.
Busy creating the National Health Service and the welfare state with borrowed American money, Attlee took two months to respond to an important letter from the viceroy. As Wavell wrote to Pethick-Lawrence: “We are very near what will amount almost to open civil war between the communities . . . the absence of a definite policy on the part of His Majesty’s government is a very serious matter indeed at a critical time like this.” After meeting Attlee and the cabinet, Wavell told his private secretary that he was “really horrified by their lack of realism and honesty”.
In early 1947 the prime minister solved the problem by installing Mountbatten as viceroy. His instructions were to get a deal and get out. Although in old age Mountbatten liked to pretend he had been given plenipotentiary powers, it is apparent from cabinet minutes that the crucial decisions were all taken by Attlee. He reversed earlier promises and blocked India’s princely states from deciding their own future; he weakened Pakistan by denying it many assets under the partition agreement; he decreed that all British soldiers should be withdrawn from the date of independence and could not be used to prevent disorder. Crucially – despite requests by Wavell from 1946 onwards – he still refused to confirm the borders of the new Pakistan.
Instead, Attlee gave Cyril Radcliffe, a British barrister, six weeks to invent a new dividing line. This uncertainty over boundaries was the proximate cause of the mass migration and ethnic cleansing. It meant Indian electors had no idea what they were voting for when they chose to accept or reject partition and Pakistan. Some presumed Delhi, given its Mughal heritage, would be in Pakistan; others thought Lahore, with its Hindu businesses, would be in the new India.
When the border was announced two days after partition, the refugee crisis multiplied as people fled in their millions. Muslims were burnt out of east Punjab and west Bengal, and Hindus and Sikhs were driven from east and west Pakistan. Villages were looted and destroyed. Women were kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted. No preparations were made for the vast movement of peoples. They died of thirst and disease and babies were left by the roadside. According to independent witnesses, about 1m people lost their lives.
On the day when Radcliffe’s boundary was announced, Attlee held an emergency cabinet meeting over a currency crisis: the meat ration was cut, foreign holidays were banned and the convertibility of sterling was suspended. India was the last thing on his mind.
Ultimately, it was murderous neigh-bours, religious gangs and criminal militias who were responsible for the slaughter of partition. Nobody was held to account and it was in the interests of all the politicians to play down the scale of the bloodshed and praise their own role in making India free. The Indian leadership, and Jawaharlal Nehru in particular, did not want British troops to remain in a peace-keeping role after independence.
Today the carnage is often presented as the product of atavistic rivalries and larger historical forces, rather than the consequence of gross political incompetence. The BBC2 epic The Day India Burned: Partition – which was shown last Tuesday – has the best broadcast interviews I have ever seen with survivors and perpetrators of the 1947 massacres, but ignored Attlee altogether.
I was the historical consultant on the programme and fought and lost a battle with the producer to pin more blame on the single figure who, I now believe, bears the greatest responsibility for the debacle.
Focusing on the photogenic Mountbatten and “the British government” is like blaming the American regime for the invasion of Iraq without bothering to name-check President George W Bush.

Farewell to Shimla #139 tahmed32

That’s what I call a tactical retreat. From discussing which group (PANJABI Muslim vs. Sikh/Hindu) was the initiator and perpetuator of one of the worst massacres of modern history, we have gone on to talking about the “street thugs of mqm”.

Farewell to Shimla #83 Majumdar

I don’t have a problem if you have the last word on this but I object to your truncating my statement and so will reproduce it for you:

I am grateful that Jinnah the incorruptible - acknowledged as such even by his opponents - WON Pakistan for us.

That is in reference to Jinnah’s not ‘bending over’ too.

Necessity I can accept as a motivation but if a liaison with MB and Edwina was Nehru’s idea of having a whale of a time – or is it yours – then there’s no accounting for taste.

Now that we are ‘grateful’, what I would whole-heartedly wish for is that both our countries prosper and flourish.

Regards to you too.

Farewell to Shimla Re # 80
Majumdar, I don’t have a problem if you accept your leader ‘bending over’ for both the ‘judge’ and his wife.

I am grateful that Jinnah the incorruptible - acknowledged as such even by his opponents - WON Pakistan for us.

Re the religious status of Ahmadis at partition – give it any spin you want, but the fact remains as I have pointed out earlier.

Farewell to Shimla Majumdar various

“One man bends over to please both the judge and his wife.”
Just my point majumdar! A corrupt and impotent ‘judge’ would go for the former option.

“Muslim majority parts go to Pak, non-Muslim parts stay with India that I believe was the principle of partition.”
Ahmadis, at the time of partition, were accepted as Muslim by Pakistan.

“The rape and murder of any human being during the partition - irrespective of caste and creed- was an act of abomination.”
Majumdar, I could not have put it better myself. During partition, one act of violence or a million - perpetuated against any human being of whichever faith – is to be abhorred.

Musharraf’s New Ordinance Hoopla #139 Anil

“Yasser's face here, does not reflect the Pakistani youth”

Is that because he challenges your assertion that you know what is best for Pakistan? Or because of his scholarship – brilliantly articulated - of the “dead and gone”?

Farewell to Shimla # 21 VRV As for machinations, history is clear that MB was not involved in the day2day work of Radcliffe.

Well, ‘history’ is certainly unearthing a few lost details.

“The central theme ever present in Beaumont's historic paperwork is that Mountbatten not only bent the rules when it came to partition - he also bent the border in India's favour.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6926464.stm

Farewell to Shimla # 34 Mohar11 Fine - we started it... either way, you paid for it... :)
Glad you admitted it. For a moment I thought you actually believed in dehliwala’s claim that the Shimla killers were “just criminals not Sikhs” and the Quetta killings was at the behest of Jinnah.