Pakistan not on the map

Indians often threaten to wipe Pakistan off the map.  I laughed this off until I saw this map….

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2dfOEiyyG7o/TbTmVVYlDcI/AAAAAAAAAC8/-AaZjLKHRmA/s1600/World_Map_AIDS_HIV_exag.jpg

Indian attacks on Pakistan, Pakistanis and Pakistaniyat

You Pakistanis are a shameless beggar nation with a begging bowl

>> India has received 160 billion dollars in aid from the world while Pakistan has taken less than 60 billion.(OECD Foreign Aid Database).

Indian muslims “Muhajirs” are treated poorly in Pakistan unlike muslims in India;  Muhajirs (refugees from India) live under terrible circumstances and discrimination. 

>> Urdu-speaking people are represented in various spheres of civil and military establishments in greater proportion to their numbers. Urdu speaking people have held some of the highest positions in government, military, entertainment, commerce. Pakistan is poor nation that has welcomed refugees like no other country. For 20 years, Pakistan has hosted anywhere from 1-4 million Afghans. The same cannot be said of Indian Muslims who are overwhelmingly discriminated in all spheres of Indian power. (People Without History – India’s Muslim Ghettos, Sachar Commission report). According to the 2001 Census of India, Muslims constitute 13.4% of the country’s population. But they account for just 3% of government employees, and an even smaller percentage are employed by private Hindu businesses.  If you are a Muslim, no matter how much money you have, you will find it difficult to rent a flat in any respectable middle-class locality. A Muslim in an otherwise-cosmopolitan Mumbai is bound to end up in a ghetto. The story repeats itself in cities like Delhi, too.  India government stood by idly as the destruction of Babri Masjid took place.

It is common knowledge that during the last two decades, Muslim families have faced enormous difficulties in renting houses and flats in developed residential areas, which are obviously Hindu-dominated areas, as Hindu landlords tend to shun Muslim tenants even if they belong to the same social class and enjoy equal or better footing in society.  Urdu speakers live in every major city of Pakistan.  In Bombay, a large majority of housing societies openly refuse membership to Muslims. In other cities, too, it is difficult for a Muslim to get an apartment in a housing society. Landlords and housing societies generally may not openly say no to Muslims but adopt various subterfuges. If a well-known Muslim cine artist in Bombay finds it difficult to rent a house from a Hindu landlord, the plight of the common Muslim as well as the gravity of the situation can be estimated.

In 2002, the wealthy state of Gujarat witnessed the first live televised riots of Indian history. More than 2000 Muslims were killed in order to avenge the burning of 58 Hindus in a train compartment. The then political party that was governing the state during the time of riots and which had encouraged this massacre was later re-voted to power by the Hindu majority as a thank-you gift for teaching a fitting lesson to those Muslims.  

Since 1940, 75 per cent of the causalities – in terms of lives and property destroyed during riots have been of Muslims.
(Source: Riots and its Aftermath by Shashank Shekhar).  India has slaughtered 70,000-130,000 muslims in Kashmir. Indian forces have raped 9900 muslim women in Kashmir. India maintains an army 0f 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir (50% of its total army and greater than the entire Army of neighboring Pakistan) against the civilian population of that small state which numbers less than 4 million people. India massacred peaceful Kashmiri protests in Gowkadal, Maisuma and Bijbehara. Human rights organization like Amnesty International and Asia Watch constantly report of indescribably inhumane treatment meted out to Kashmiris in government run torture cells and elsewhere.  In Pakistan it is terrorists that kill Pakistanis.  In India it is your neighbor that guts you in front of your family.

Pakistan is a failed state. India is a paradise.

>> If you look at the latest Global peace index, India ranks at a dismal 135th rank while Pakistan at 146th rank. India is just 15 places above countries like Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan. The World Health Organizations “World mental health initiative” has confirmed India as the most depressed nation on earth. Pakistan needs many improvments, however Indians should focus on their own countrymen.  One out of every three illiterate adults in the world is an Indian, according to UNESCO. Pakistan stands fourth in the world in terms of illiterate adult population, after India, China and Bangladesh. One out of very two hungry persons in the world is an Indian, according to World Food Program. Pakistan fares significantly better than India on the hunger front.  Population living under $1.25 a day – India: 41.6% Pakistan: 22.6% Source: UNDP.  The reason for higher levels of poverty in India in spite of its rapid economic growth is the growing rich-poor disparity. Gini index measuring rich-poor gap for India is at 36, higher than Pakistan’s 30. Gini index is defined as a ratio with values between 0 and 100: A low Gini index indicates more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini index indicates more unequal distribution. Zero corresponds to perfect equality (everyone having exactly the same income) and 100 corresponds to perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, while everyone else has zero income).  Underweight Children Under Five (in percent) Pakistan 38% India 46% Source: UNICEF  Health:  Life expectancy at birth (years), 2007 India: 63.4 Pakistan: 66.2 Source: HDR2009  Education:  Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000 to 2007, male Pakistan: 80% India 87% Source: UNICEF  Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate,  2000 to 2007, female Pakistan 60% India 77% Source: UNICEF.  GDP per capita (US$), 2008 Pak:$1000-1022 India $1017-1100  Child Protection:  Child marriage under 15-years ; 1998–2007*, total Pakistan – 32% India – 47% Source: UNICEF  Under-5 mortality rate per 1000 live births (2007), Value Pakistan – 90 India 72  Source: UNICEF.  Indian Account balance is -8.9 Billion, Pakistan is -2.4B (cia.gov).

Pakistan is the regional aggressor and terrorist state, bad neighbor etc.

>> India threatened England in order to take Gurduspur and Ferozpur originally allocated to Pakistan. India swallowed Junagarh on the basis of majority hindu against the wishes of its nawab who had acceeded to Pakistan. India invaded Hyderabad on the basis of majority hindu against the wishes of the nizam. When Pakistan invaded Kashmir at the request of the Kashmiris in Poonch, India swallowed Kashmir on the basis of the maharaja ‘wishes’ irrespective of the muslim majority’s wishes. All of these acquisitions have been taken on a contradictory premises. The instrument of ascension was conveniently “lost”. India swallowed the princely state of Bantva-Manavadar and it 26 muslim villages. India invaded and absorbed Goa 4,000 Portugese security with a force of 30,000 on the basis of a foreign presence on “republic of India’s” land. India annexed Sikkim by formenting a coup against the Buddhist king manipulating the grievances of his subjects. The prime minister that supported India was labelled a traitor by his own people. 5000 Indian soldiers stormed a force of 243. 1 nineteen year old palace guard was killed. Sikkim the tiny country was no more. India maintains contested boundary sections with Nepal including 400 sq. km over the Kalapani River. India continues to stall negotiations on disputed territory in Sir Creek with Pakistan. India invaded Siachen Glacier. India swallowed Minicoy Islands (forgotten by the British) without any negotiation with the other dominion (pakistan). Indian encroached on Nepali lands and committed atrocities along the border villages of western district of Dang. These actions resulted in the displacement of more than 6000 people from their homes. Cases of rape and disappearance have been reported. From Jhapa in the east all the way to Darchula in the west (where the Indian military has even set up a permanent base), the pattern of border encroachment is repeated, with forceful displacement, shifting of border markers and appropriation of territory. India has already appropriated some 59,970 hectares of Nepali territory at 54 points in 21 districts. Pakistan has never taken an inch of land from its neighbors Iran, Afghanistan, China or Oman. It gave China it’s historic territory. It paid Oman for Gwadar from its depleted treasury. One need not go further that compare Pakistan’s handling of Omani Gwadar versus India’s handling of Portugese Goa. 30,000 Indians attacked a small force of Portugese.  Pakistan simply paid Oman money.  India has stolen land from Pakistan, China (forward policy), Bangladesh, Nepal, Sikkim and Portugal. It has interfered with Sri Lanka, Maldives, Tibet and Burma. Under such overwhelming preemptive aggression by India, it is mind boggling that Indian keep making allegations against Pakistan.

Your Paki Air Force has never won any battle

Pak-India War-1965 (Pakistan/India draw) - The 23 day conflict in September 1965 represented the zenith for the Pakistan Air Force and could justify claims to be its country’s crowning glory. During this war, Sq. Ldr.M.M.Alam set a world record by shooting down five Indian planes in just one battle. PAF proved the performance of its pilots by bombing Pathankot and Kalaikunda Air Bases, two of the most important and heavily guarded complexes of the Indian Air Force. PAF downed a total of about 65 Indian planes while losing only 19 planes.

The Arab-Israel War-1967 (Israel won) - During this war, PAF sent a contingent of its pilots and airmen to Egypt, Jordan and Syria. PAF pilots performed excellently and downed about 10 Israeli planes including Mirages, Mysteres, Vautours without losing a single plane of their own. Flt.Lt. Saif-ul-Azam was decorated by Jordan and Iraq.  The performance of PAF pilots was praised by Israelis too. Eizer Weizman, then Chief of Israeli Air Force said once about Air Marshal Noor Khan : “…He is a formidable person and I am glad that he is Pakistani not Egyptian…”  The Israelis Air Force are a proud people who at least give credit when it is due.

The Battle of Sharoora-1969 (Saudi Arab / Pakistan won) - In 1969, South Yemen, which was under the communist regime and a strong ally of USSR, attacked and captured Mount Vadiya inside the province of Sharoora in Saudi Arabia. Many PAF officers and men from different branches who were serving in Khamis Mushayt (the closet airbase from the battlefield), took active part in this battle in which the enemy was ultimately driven back.

Pak-India War- 1971 (Heroic Bangladeshis won) - This war was mostly confined to the Eastern sector where only one PAF squardon (no.14) was pitched against 10 Indian Air Force squardons. The western sector saw limited action in the Punjab area. The war resulted in the separation of the Eastern wing from Western Pakistan as Bangladesh. PAF destroyed a total of 110 Indian planes while losing about 40 planes. This was a very great achievement as compared to Indian air force as at that time Indian paid  rebellions, Mukti Bahni,  had set up many hurdles against armed forces at all those levels which were in their reach

War of Attrition – 1973 (Draw) - The PAF got chance to prove their abilities and expertise in air combats in Middle East sector after about 6 years. The PAF contingent deployed at Inchas Air Base (Egypt) was led by Wg.Cmdr. Masood Hatif and five other pilots plus two air defence controllers. During this war, Flt.Lt Sattar Alvi was decorated by the Syrian goverment when he shot down an Israeli Mirage over Golan Heights.

The Afghan War 1980-88 (Afpak defeat superpower) - During 1981-88, Pakistan experienced about 2000 air intrusions by Afghan/Soviet forces. It shot down about 14 Afghan/Soviet aircraft over the years and suffered one loss while chasing the intruders, albeit to its own shooting down of an F-16. This war helped Pakistan to acquire the latest F-16s aircraft from U.S.A and modernise its air-defence system.

The 1989 Insurgency in Kashmir was started by Pakistani Terrorists.

>>  One need not go further than the BBC’s coverage on what sparked the entirely indigenous liberation movement:  Simmering discontent over this unfinished business left over from the partition of India in 1947 turned into a full-scale insurgency after the kidnap of Rubiya Sayeed, the daughter of the Indian home minister, on 8 December 1989.  She was released a few days later in exchange for five militants held in an Indian jail.   A police crackdown on victory celebrations was the spark that lit the fuse of the conflict.  One of the militants who took up the gun that week, Mukhtar Baba, said that he and his friends had the confidence to take on India because of events in Europe.  “The German people stood up against that man-made Berlin wall, so we thought why don’t we, and we started that armed struggle here,” he says.

India does not owe Kashmir a plebiscite

>> Here are the 18 solemn promises made by India’s premier and well-respected leader Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on the Kashmir issue: http://reformistani.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/nehruskashmirpromises/

Pakistan was the aggressor in Kashmir in 1948

Although the partition formula was implemented in letter and spirit in Junagarh, Hyderabad Deccan where Hindus were in majority yet ruled by Muslims king and nawab.  It is in this background that the newly formed Pakistan preparing to celebrate freedom were shaken and shocked with the news aired on Radio India on 13 August 1947,  is the pain staking story of Gurdaspur Punjab that were to be part of Pakistan where Muslims were in majority.  (Nehru and Mountbatten had become very good “friends”.   Nehru was romantically involved with Mountbatten wife while the latter was romancing Nehru’s sister.)  Together they violated the partition framework and Gurdaspur was delivered to India.  Gurdaspur was illegally annexed to India because it was ONLY ACCESSIBLE ROUTE which will connect India to Kashmir.  Upon this provocation, Tribal people or Qaballis of NWFP raised a militia and voluntarily attacked Kashmir to secure this last Muslim inhabited place.  Junagarh was annexed by Indian against the wishes of the pro-pakistan nawab (who has ascended to Pakistan) on the basis of Hindu majority.  Hyderabad attacked/invaded by India against the wishes of the pro-independence nizam on the basis of hindu majority.   In contrast, Kashmir was swallowed by Indian on the basis of the Hindu Maharaja’s instrument of ascension (now lost).  The fact that Kashmiris do not want to be part of India is quite clear.  India has more than a million soldiers in Kashmiri cities to placate the local populace.  Kashmiris call Pakistani ‘administered’ Kashmir “Azad Kashmir” and Indian Kashmir “Muqzooba” (Occupied) Kashmir.

You are a failed state.  Do you guys have any achievements of your own to speak of, so that for once, you can thump your own chests?

>> It is not part of the Pakistani character to self-congratulate and self-promote.  we don’t run to the internet to post the latest 5 rupee increase in per capita income.  It’s just not part of our nature.  However if you insist, indeed CHALLENGE me to produce ONE positive aspect, I will give in.  Here are some humble facts and accomplishments about my humble country.  Please read and then be quiet.

• World’s 26th biggest economy at half a trillion dollars GPD(PPP)
• Pakistan has won a nobel prize in Physics
• Part of the “Next 11″ as stated by Goldman Sachs
• Projected to be 16th biggest economy by 2025
• 6th largest standing armed forces – 0.7 Million strong
• 7th Nuclear Power
• JF17 Thunder (equivalent to F16) completely built in Pakistan and being exported
• AGOSTA 90b submarines – completely built in Pakistan after French transfer of technology
• Al-Khalid Tank best tank by developing country
• World’s 6th largest Nation – 165.8 Million Population
• World’s tenth largest English Speaking Nation with 17 million
• World’s 5th largest democracy
• 300 dailies, 400 weeklies and 700 periodicals (circul. of 10 million)
• One of the largest pool of scientists and engineers in the World.
• Largest Deep Water Port: Gwadar
• Road on the top of the world – Karakoram Highway (16,000 feet)
• Pakistan World Champion in Cricket, Hockey, Squash, Wrestling, Snooker, Boxing
• Complete Aircraft Rebuilding Complex in Kamra
• Indigenous Manufacturing of Pilot less Aircraft, “Uqaab”
• 90 Million Cell phone Users
• The availability of natural gas in 60% of house-holds via net-work of pipes
• World’s Biggest Dam when built – Tarbela Dam
• Pakistan revenues from Information Technology Industry $ 5 billion
• Pakistan is one of the world’s largest exporter of textiles and related products such as yarn and cotton.
• Mobile phones are growing by about 1.0 Million a month. Long distance rates are down by two-thirds in five years and by 80% for data transmission
• Pakistan is among Seven countries that launch their own satellites .
• Pakistan’s PAKSAT is among the world’s largest domestic satellite communication systems.
• Pakistan is among only few countries that have ADVANCED SPACE PROGRAM.
• Pakistan is one of the countries which intends to put its national Spacecraft in Space.
• Pakistan is among the few countries in the World that have built its own Nuclear  Power Station
• Pakistan is among the few countries in the World that have built its own Training Aircraft (Mashaq) by its own indigenous technology.
• It has also prepaid millions owed to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
• Pakistan provides aid to 7 countries
• Pakistan provides protection to Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
• The Pakistani pharmaceutical industry at $ 1.4 billion and growing at 8% annually, is the 8th largest pharmaceutical industry in the world, and is expected to be worth $2.0 billion by 2010.
• Its exports are over $0.75 billion. Pakistan is among the top ten bulk drug makers and at home, the local industry has edged out the Multi-National companies.
• Trade of medicinal plants has crossed $ 500M already.
• Pakistan is a founding member of OIC
• There are 40 biotechnology companies in Pakistan, involved in the development and manufacture of genomic drugs, whose business is growing exponentially.
• Over 50 Foreign Companies have plan to set up R&D facilities in Pakistan in the past five years.
• Pakistan’s telecom infrastructure between Karachi, Lahore provides one of the largest bandwidth capacity in the world.
• With more than 50 universities, 15 research institutions and 20 higher education institutes, Pakistan produces 20,000 engineering graduates and another 10,000 technically trained graduates every year.
• Besides, another 0.1 million other graduates qualify out in Pakistan annually.

Pakistan has no case for Kashmir

>> At the time of the British withdrawal from the Sub-continent and its partition, into India and Pakistan, the numerous princely states like Kashmir, Hyderabad and Junagadh were given the option to join either India or Pakistan. States in which rulers were from the same religion as their populace had no trouble deciding. Hindu states acceded to India and Muslim states naturally went to Pakistan. However in the aforementioned states the rulers belonged to a different religion than that of their respective populations and there was a clash of interest. The Muslim rulers of Hindu Junagadh acceded to Pakistan and that of Hyderabad wanted to remain independent. But the Indian army soon overran these states and annexed them. 
The Hindu Maharajah of Muslim Kashmir wanted to remain independent but his people wanted union with Pakistan, which had come into existence as a result of a union of the Muslim majority areas of pre-partition India. Maharajah’s refusal to do so led to disturbances and widespread protests and his subsequent flight from his capital. His subsequent attempts to effect a crackdown failed and he turned to India for help, which immediately invaded the state (27 Oct, 1947). Later the Indians claimed that the Maharajah had acceded to India. There was no public comment from the Maharajah.
However as Alistair Lamb, a journalist of world repute, reports in his in-depth study of the dispute (Jammu & Kashmir; summary of which is available as “The myth of Indian claim to Jammu & Kashmir”), the chronology of events as reported by the Indian government leading to the signing of the “Instrument of Accession”, is fraught with obvious inaccuracies and lies. In fact, to date, no satisfactory original of the “Instrument of Accession” has been produced. Realizing the dubious nature of the ‘accession’ would spark world-wide protests, Indians declared that the “Instrument of Accession” executed by the Maharajah was “provisional” and subject to a “reference to the people”. Indeed in a broadcast on 
All-India Radio on 2nd November 1947, the first Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru pledged “We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is to be ultimately decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharajah has supported it, not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it”. Similar statements were also given by him at other forums, including the Indian parliament, and are on record 
Sir, how ironic and sad is the fact that this pledge, given by the first prime minister of world’s largest democracy and further mandated by the United Nations, as is clear from the statement the President of Security Council of the UN made on 28 January, 1948, remains unfulfilled to this day 46 years later. The above mentioned address by the President of the Security Council reflected the various General Assembly and Security Council resolutions which emphasized that the accession of Kashmir to either India or Pakistan shall be decided by a fair and impartial plebiscite conducted under the aegis of the United Nations. The forceful subjugation by Indian troops was rejected by the Kashmiri people and this has resulted in constant upheavals and revolts against the Indian occupation in the last four and a half decades. This problem has caused two out of three Indo-Pakistani wars. Now this uprising has reached a decisive point and India has resorted to deploying 600,000 troops (50% of its total army and greater than the Army of neighboring Pakistan) against the civilian population of that small state which numbers less than 4 million people. 
even this horrifying imbalance of 1 soldier for every 6 Kashmiris (majority of whom are old men, women and children) has failed to suppress the freedom movement. Kashmir is under direct President’s rule since 1990, after the state legislature was dissolved (the federally appointed governor had admitted that the Kashmiri legislature had a history of rigged elections). The nature of State-sponsored terrorism is exemplified by such unbelievable laws as “The Armed Forces (J&K) Special Powers Bill (1990), which have been passed by the parliament of world’s largest “democracy”. This Bill grants authorization to members of Indian Security Forces to “fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death against any person” without fire orders. No wonder, more than 60,000 people have been brutally murdered by the Indian Security Forces in the past eight years and thousands more have been intimidated and terrorized. What else would you call State-terrorism? And ironically it was Pakistan which almost had the distinction of being branded a terrorist state for professing support for these oppressed people. The Indian security forces have flouted all norms of civilized conduct. Kashmiri youths have been murdered in cold blood in fake encounters and Kashmiri women of all ages were and are gang-raped in the prescence of their families. International human rights organizations and the international press has been refused entry into the State by the Indian government. They can only visit the 
These human rights organization like Amnesty International and Asia Watch constantly report of indescribably inhumane treatment meted out to Kashmiris in government run torture cells and elsewhere. 
While the world has responded to the Bosnian Civil War, it has so far failed to act to stop an even greater problem of abuse of human rights and mass genocide of Kashmiris by an invading army. It seems that commercial interests have taken precedence over the dignity of human life. even as you read this, people who have dared to stand up for their basic human rights are being tortured and killed in Kashmir.When the previous and current situations are analyzed, it is clear that it is Pakistan that has the legitimate claim to Kashmir, as India’s claim is based on fraud and violence.  The current population of the entire region is thirteen million, of which approximately sixty-four percent are Muslim. Though a clear majority of the citizens were Muslim, the region was ruled by a Hindu prince.The Maharaja Hari Singh presided over Kashmir during the end of British imperialism in South Asia. During the British partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, the princely states were supposed to accede to either India or newly created Pakistan. Hari Singh wanted neither, and delayed his decision. Both Jawaharel Nehru, the leader of India, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, urged the maharaja to join their respective nation. In early September, a Muslim rebellion seeking unity with Pakistan erupted in the Poonch district. India accused Pakistan of sending Pashtun fighters into the Poonch to sabotage the pending decision of Hari Singh. By mid October, the rebel army was only four kilometres away from capturing Srinagar. It was at this point of desperation, that Hari Singh reportedly signed the Treaty of Accession with India. The Indian army would enter the province the same day, and would be at war with Pakistan within a month. The validity of this treaty would be the basis of both nations’ claim to Kashmir.Historians often disagree with one and other about the interpretation of the dispute in Kashmir. There are three main concepts that are used by supporters of India to justify India’s occupation of Kashmir. The first is that because of the Treaty of Accession, India’s actions and claim to Kashmir are legal. A.G. Noorani, a lawyer in New Delhi, whose Indian bias has clouded his judgment about the Indian claim, and author of The Kashmir Question, summarized India’s long- standing stance regarding the treaty in his book’s introduction:“ Kashmir is legally [because of the Treaty] a part of India, Pakistan is therefore an aggressor and must be asked to vacate her aggression; having become a part of the country, Kashmir cannot claim self- determination; her accession is final and irrevocable as there is in law no such thing as a provisional accession.”The appeals India has made to the United Nations all reflect this attitude. As Nehru argued in a complaint issued to the UN in 1948, because India has a document that states Kashmir belongs to India, all Pakistani claims and actions in the region are void and aggressive, as well as demonstrating a blatant disregard to international law and procedure.In an effort to gain public support from the international community, India has rallied behind two popular slogans. These are: democracy and multi-culturalism. As an article in the January 19th, 2002, edition of the Economist indicated, these have had considerable success in brandishing Pakistan as an evil, rogue state. After all, India promotes itself as a secular democracy. India embraces its minorities. Pakistan, on the other hand, has always been an Islamic State, has been ruled by successive military governments, and tarnished by civil war. The Kashmiri people, India argues, would be better suited in a secular nation that embraces the rule of law. Legality. Democracy. Multi-culturalism. These are the three concepts that form the basis of the Indian claim to Kashmir. The relevance and truth of these ideas are questionable.Historians supportive of the Pakistani claim believe that the Treaty of Accession is void because of the conditions and historical discrepancies pertaining to its signing. India acted aggressively and irresponsibly in forcing the agreement with a leader that did not represent the majority of his population. The Maharajah was a Hindu prince. During the time of accession, seventy-seven percent of the Kashmiri people were Muslim. Indian historians, on the other hand, have debated even the importance and truth of this fact. Prem Shankar Jha, editor of the Hindustan Times, and author of the book Kashmir: 1947, writes that the figure is exaggerated and misleading because the Muslims of Kashmir “belonged to at least three frequently antagonistic sects, two-thirds sharing a strongly synergetic tradition of Islam that had a good deal in common with the Bhaki tradition in Hinduism.” Mushtaqur Rahman, author of the brilliant analytical Divided Kashmir, counters the relevancy of this claim by stating that while the Muslims consisted of different sects, their beliefs separated from them other Muslims no less so than the differences between Kashmiri Hindus and Indian Hindus. Indeed, these Hindus possess their own dialect, dress, and food. In response to questions over why the demographics of Kashmir have changed (Kashmir is now estimated to be 64% Muslim.), he reminds readers that it is estimated that over 4 million Muslims have fled Indian occupied Kashmir since 1947. Despite the exodus, civilians in Indian controlled Kashmir still have great ethnic similarities to Pakistan, as noted by famed historian Richard Reeves, in Passage to Peshawar describing his experience in the region: “When I crossed from Azad Kashmir, in Pakistan, to Kashmir in India – across the disputed northeastern border established after the countries’ 1948 war – the people looked the same. They should have, because many of them were cousins of Pakistanis and practiced the same religion.” In the end these discrepancies and arguments pertaining to how Islam is divided into many types is merely nitpicking by supporters of India, highlighting facts that have no significance to the larger picture. In a census taken in 1941, of 4,021,698 people living in the entire region of Kashmir, 3,101,247 of them were Muslim. In the turbulent Kashmiri Valley (site of most of the recent violence in Kashmir) 94% ( 1,615, 478 to 1,728,705) of the citizens were Muslim. Under the provisions of the divisions of the Indian Subcontinent, regions that were mostly Muslim were designed to accede with Pakistan. Thus, in the natural course of history, if had India not acted irresponsibly, and the Kashmiris’ had a leader that represented their interest, Kashmir would have gone to Pakistan.The Maharajah Hari Singh never represented the will of his subjects, creating tension between the Hindu rulers and the Muslim population of Kashmir. Muslims in Kashmir detested him, as they were heavily taxed and had grown tired of his insensitivity to their religious concerns. The Dogra rule (the name of the municipal governments) had excluded Muslims from the civil service and the armed services. Islamic religious ceremonies were taxed. Historically, Muslims were banned from organizing politically, which would only be tolerated beginning in the 1930’s. In 1931, in response to a sermon that had tones of opposition to the government, the villages of Jandial, Makila, and Dana were ransacked and destroyed by the Dogra army, with their inhabitants burned alive. A legislative assembly, with no real power, was created in January, 1947. It issued one statement that represented the will of the Muslim people: “After carefully considering the position, the conference has arrived at the conclusion that accession of the State to Pakistan is absolutely necessary in view of the geographic, economic, linguistic, cultural and religious conditions…It is therefore necessary that the State should accede to Pakistan.

This is one of the rare instances that an elected block of the people of Kashmir had been given the chance to speak. Representing the subjects who elected them, they sought accession with Muslim Pakistan. Prem Nath Bazaz, founder of the Kashmir Socialist Party in 1943, a reliable primary source of history, reiterated that a majority of Kashmiris were against the decision of the Maharajah in his book, The History of The Struggle of Freedom In Kashmir. He writes, “The large majority of the population of the State, almost the entire Muslim community and an appreciable number of non Muslims was totally against the Maharjah declaring accession to India.” This statement, and the decision reached by the legislative assembly are important because they dispel any belief that the Kashmiris’ religious ties with Pakistan did not necessarily indicate a will to unite. Indeed, the ethnic bond between Kashmir and Pakistan influenced a majority of the people to seek accession with Pakistan. The Hindu Maharajah would not listen, and continued to delay his decision about which nation to join. Still, even though Hari Singh’s actions were wrong, they do not compare to the deplorable pressure and tactics applied by India to capture Kashmir.

India relentlessly pressured Hari Singh to accede to India. While Pakistan agreed to sign a standstill agreement that would continue trade, travel, and transportation with Kashmir, India refused until the Maharajah did as they wished. India encouraged neighbouring provinces to pressure Kashmir to accede to India. Nehru said that if

Kashmir joined Pakistan the chances of resuming any diplomatic or economic relationship with India would be remote. Pakistan took no such action. While the traditional view has been that Nehru sent his army into Kashmir only after the Treaty of Accession, there is growing evidence that this is not true. Alaistar Lamb, author of a series of books on Kashmir, has discovered evidence based on declassified military papers that India had Patalia gunners at the Sringar airport by October 17 1947, and has scoffed at the Indian apologists who propose that India’s invasion of Kashmir was the triumph of improvisation. Instead, he states that India had troops mobilized for an invasion of Kashmir by October 25th This would mean that India’s army was in Kashmir before the decision of the Mahrajah. With India’s army already in Kashmir it is obvious why the Maharajah would hand his country over to India. Because of the injustice displayed by India, the Treaty of Accession, if it was even signed, is nullified and void.

India claims to represent democracy in the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. If upholding democracy was indeed India’s motivation in their actions over Kashmir, one has to question why a plebiscite has never been issued. The Kashmiris have always demanded one, and India has always resisted. Even Nehru has conceded that Kashmiris do not want to remain under Indian occupation. When asked about never holding a plebiscite in Kashmir in 1965, Nehru responded, “Kashmir would vote to join Pakistan and we would lose it. No Indian government responsible for agreeing to a plebiscite would survive.” This logic is more fitting for describing an autocracy, not a nation claming to represent democracy. As for the issue of whether Pakistan is a theocratic state, it certainly cannot be, as its political power is not held by priests and religious heads claiming to represent a God. Islam may be the only official religion of Pakistan, but that does not warrant the title of a totalitarian theocracy. The historians supporting India have no grounds for saying that India has behaved better because it states itself to be the only democracy.

Apologists for Nehru and the successive governments of India have also made the peculiar claim that if Kashmir were to vote to succeed from India, it would lead to other revolts and demands for independence in other dissatisfied regions of India. Victoria Schofield, author of the comprehensive Kashmir in the Crossfire, has researched and analyzed the response of Kashmiris bewildered that a “secular democracy” would use this argument. Kashmiri independence groups have pointed out that it is the only region in India that has already been granted a plebiscite (that never materialised) in a United Nations Security Council Resolution that was actually approved by India. Even if politicians are worried about

the possibility of India disintegrating because of losing Kashmir, this does not warrant the suppression of the Muslims in Kashmir, and the Kashmiris are indeed oppressed. Amnesty International has repeatedly decried atrocities committed against separatists in Kashmir, and they estimate that 34,000 civilians have been killed.

India basing its claim on adhering to diplomatic rule of law and the decision of a nation’s leader is made even more laughable because of its actions in Hyderabad and Junadgh. Hyderabad, located in central India, was the opposite of Kashmir. There, a Muslim ruled over a Hindu majority, and did not want to join India. The Indians did not accept the leader’s wishes and invaded Hyderabad in September of 1948. In Junadgh, the situation was similar. Nehru forced the ruler of Junadgh to hold a plebiscite after the latter claimed that he could not make the decision because he did not represent his people. That Nehru agreed to the principles of self-determination and ethnicity when it served his interests, and not in Kashmir, illustrates the hypocrisy of the Indian claim to Kashmir. As Mushtaqur Rahman reiterates in his book, it even renders the Indian claim illogical:

“Their arguments were that it made no sense geographically, that a ruler had acceded to a region of different religion then his people. Logically then, India should have supported the Muslims majority of Jammu
and
Kashmir
and
let
them
join

Pakistan.” Mr. Bazaz was also mystified by the hypocrisy in India’s actions, as he writes:

“Obviously in accordance with the basic principle governing the partition the consideration of the religion professed by people in different parts… the Jammu and Kashmir State, whose population is preponderating (77 percent) Muslim – almost the same as is the ratio of Hindus in Junagad and Hyderabad to the total populations of these States – should legitimately and unconditionally belong to Pakistan and must in fairness go to it.”342

What the hypocrisy and determination of India to take Kashmir at the expense of logic and the will of Kashmiris does illustrate is the underlying motivation of India to serve Nehru’s interests. Nehru’s family heritage originates in Kashmir. This appears to be one of the only two possible reasons India has so forcefully demanded it be given Kashmir. The second cause is that of deep resentment over the creation of Pakistan.

If one were to base India’s claim on Kashmir on actual principals that are present in its actions, they would be: pride, resentment, and aggression. The government of India’s desperate attempt to validate

its hold on Kashmir is merely just India rejecting the concept of Pakistan in general. Nehru and the government of India’s rejection of Pakistan is well known. Liaquat Ali Khan, the vice-president of Pakistan during accession, reiterated this in a telegram to Nehru when he wrote, “India never wholeheartedly accepted the partition scheme but her leaders paid lip service to it merely in order to get the British troops out of the country. India is out to destroy the state of Pakistan . Indeed, this attitude would explain why India visibly rejected the mandate of the creation of Pakistan, as well as the common sense of ethnicity in Kashmir. The Indian resentment of the creation of Pakistan is not just a rumour started by Karachi. Even A.G. Noorami, sympathetic to the Indian claim to Kashmir, writes, “We are a secular State and we do not believe in the “two-nation” theory. But is it necessary for that purpose to retain Kashmir in India against the will of her people?” Perhaps most telling of this pride and hatred towards Pakistan is the response given by a representative of the Indian government to peace talks offered by Pakistani President Jinnah, which was, “for the prime minister to come crawling to Jinnah, when India was stronger would be a step which the Indian people would never forgive.” With such sentiment, it is little wonder that peace in Kashmir has been hard to achieve.

Due to the contradictions and falsifications that India has used to present its argument towards ownership of Kashmir, and its inaction towards holding a plebiscite in Kashmir, it cannot reasonably be argued that India has the more legitimate claim to Kashmir. In reality, India has kept its army in Kashmir to maintain hostile relations with Pakistan because of the formers rejection of the “two-nation” theory that created Pakistan. India cannot claim to represent the interests of the Kashmiri people and their democratic rights because it refuses to let them decide their future. Its relentless pressure on the Maharajah, as well as Hari Singh’s inability to properly lead, nullifies the relevance and significance of the Treaty of Accession. That the Indian army landed in Kashmir even before Hari Singh had conceded his nation to India proves it never intended to respect his decision anyways. India has ignored the rules set out in the partition of the sub-continent, dividing the region by ethnicity.

Sources:
1. Alastair, Lamb. Kashmir : A Disputed Legacy. Hertingfordbury:Roxford Books, 1991.
2. Bazaz, Prem Nath. The History of the Struggle for Freedom in Kashmir. New Delhi. Kashmir Publishing Company. 1954.
3. Noorani, Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed. The Kashmir Question. Bombay: Manaktalas, 1964.

4. Rahman, Mushtaqur. Divided Kashmir : Old Problems, New Opportunities for India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiri People. Boldour, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996.

5. Reeves, Richard. Passage to Peshawar : Pakistan: Between the Hindu Kush and the Arabian Sea. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1984.

6. Jha, Prem Shankar. Kashmir 1947 : Rival Versions of History. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1996.
7. Schofield, Victoria. Kashmir in the Crossfire. New York: I.B. Taurus, 1996
8. “The Standoff at the Roof of the World.” The Economist. 19 January, 2002.

There was no such thing as a country called Pakistan.

>> There was no Republic of India either.    The region comprising of South asia consisted of many different states consisting of many races, cultures, states, territories, religions.  India has no right to simply inherit all these territories conquered by Muslims or British.

Mahajanapadas, Harappa, Gandhara, Magadha
Nanda kingdom, Maurya kingdom, Sunga kingdom, Kanva kingdom
Kharavela kingdom,Kuninda Kingdom, Indo Scythian Kingdom
,Chera dynasty,Pandyan Kingdom
, Chola kingdom which spread to Malaya, Indonesia, Ceylon
, Satavahana kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdom, Indo-Parthian Kingdom, Western Satraps
, Kushan kingdom, Indo-Sassanid Kingdom
, Kalabhras Kingdom, Gupta kingdom, Pallava dynasty, Kadamba Dynasty
, Western Ganga Dynasty, Vishnukundina, Huna Kingdom, Chalukya dynasty
, Harsha, Eastern Chalukyas, Pratihara kingdom, Pala kingdom
, Rashtrakuta Dynasty, Paramara dynasty, Yadava Kingdom, Solanki
, Western Chalukya kingdom, Hoysala kingdom, Sena dynasty, Eastern Ganga dynasty
, Kakatiya dynasty, Kalachuri, Muslim Sultanates, Delhi Sultanate
, Ahom Kingdom, Vijayanagara kingdom, Kingdom of Mysore, Madurai
, Thanjavur Nayak kingdom, Maratha kingdom, Sikh kingdom, Mughal kingdom
, British Empire  (Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Thailand, Andaman, Nicobar, Ceylon, Malaysia, New Guinea, Somalia, Oman, Yemen, Maldives)

Pakistanis don’t have an identity or history of their own.  They are the same as Indians.

>> About 70% of Pakistanis are Caucasoid by race, 20% Australoid- Negroid, and 10% Mongoloid in their overall genetic composition. Majority of Pakistanis are tall with fair skin complexion, similar to Middle Eastern and Mediterranean peoples. While the racial features of each ethnic group are not uniform, Pashtuns are the most Caucasoid, followed by Kashmiris, Baluchis, north Punjabis, and then Sindhis, Seraikis, Urdu-speakers, etc. The Australoid-Negroid and Mongoloid racial elements are quite infused within the dominant Caucasoid genes among Pakistanis, however there are some that have retained their distinct racial characteristics.

About 50% of Indians are Australoid-Negroid by race, 35% Caucasoid, and 15% Mongoloid in their overall genetic composition. Majority of Indians are darker in their skin complexion, with wider noses, shorter heights, etc. The Australoid-Dravidoid racial element dominates among the lower caste Indians, South Indians, Eastern and Central Indians, etc. The Caucasoid racial element dominates in Northwest Indians and higher caste Indians. The Mongoloid racial element dominates in Northeast Indians and border regions with China.

Huxley’s original model included populations in India. Some scholars still use the term Australoid to denote the small populations, mainly of some of the Adivasi and the Andamanese people in India and the Veddas in Sri Lanka. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1996, p. 382) by American Association of Physical Anthropologists. L. L. (Luigi Luca) Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza in their text, The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994, P. 241) both use the term.

Balgir (2004)^[10] designates tribes as Australoid or Proto-Australoid according to language family:

It may be mentioned here that the major scheduled tribes of Orissa belong to three linguistic groups, namely, Indo-Aryan or Indo-Europeans, i.e. Non-Australoid, Austro-Asiatic (Mundari) speakers, i.e. Proto-Australoid, and Dravidian (Gondi or Kuvi) speakers, i.e. Australoid. Proto-Australoid racial group includes Bhumiz, Gadaba, Juang, Kharia, Koda, Kolha, Mahali, Mirdha, Munda, Santal and Saora tribes. Tribes like Bathudi, Bhatra, Binjhal, Bhuyan, Lodha and Saunti belong to non-Australoid racial stock while Australoid racial stock is represented by Gond, Kondh, Kissan, Oraon, Paraja and Pentia Halva tribes.

Kashyap (2006)^[11] designates 23 out of 54 Indian populations studied as Australoid, of which one speaks an Indo-European language (Dhangar of Maharashtra), 4 speak Austro-Asiatic languages (Kurmi of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar Kurmi of Bihar, and Juang and Saora of Orissa), and 18 speak Dravidian languages. 7 populations were designated as Mongoloid, and the remaining 24 as Caucasoid. No Proto-Australoid category was used. Note: Som

Obviously, both countries have distinct racial identities. A common international perception based on observance of physical features is that most Pakistanis are lighter skinned than most Indians. Most Pakistanis resemble the looks of peoples inhabiting on its western borders and beyond. Indeed, many Pakistanis also resemble many Northwest Indians or higher caste Indians, but those are a minority in India. Similarly, a few people of Pakistan resemble peoples of South India, lower caste Indians, Northeast India, etc. but they are a minority in Pakistan. And besides, let’s say, if some Saudis look similar to the French that does not make them one people, same applies here between Indians and Pakistanis.

Language/linguistics:

About 99% of languages spoken in Pakistan are Indo-Iranian (sub-branches: 75% Indo-Aryan and 24% Iranian), a branch of Indo-European family of languages. All languages of Pakistan are written in the Perso-Arabic script, with significant vocabulary derived from Arabic and Persian. Punjabi, Seraiki, Sindhi, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Kashmiri, etc. are the languages spoken in Pakistan.

About 69% of languages spoken in India are Indo-Iranian (sub-branch: Indo-Aryan), 26% are Dravidian, and 5% are Sino-Tibetan and Austro-Asiatic, all unrelated/distinct family of languages. Most languages in India are written in Brahmi- derived scripts such as Devangari, Gurmukhi, Tamil, etc. Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Assamese, Punjabi, Naga, and many others are the mother-tongue languages spoken in each of India’s states.

As you can see both countries have distinct linguistic identities. Even in the case of Punjabi, while it is the mother-tongue of a majority in Pakistan, it represents the mother-tongue of only 2% Indians. Besides, Pakistani Punjabi (Western Punjabi) is distinct in its vocabulary/dialect and writing script when compared to Indian Punjabi (Eastern Punjabi). Another thing to keep in mind is that Indian Punjabi is mostly spoken by Sikhs who consider themselves distinct from the rest of Indians and had been fighting for independence. In the case of Urdu/Hindi, while Hindi is the mother- tongue of a majority in India, Urdu is the mother-tongue of only 8% Pakistanis. Besides, they both are distinct languages, Urdu has a writing script and strong vocabulary derived from Arabic and Persian, whereas Hindi has strong vocabulary derived from Sanskrit and is written in Devangari script. Most Pakistanis can understand English and watch American/Brit movies but that does not make them British/American, same is the case with Hindi.

You Pakistanis fu*k your own cousins.

Quran, like all Abrahamic Monotheistic Religions- Judaism, Christianity and Islam, strictly forbids incest and incest marriages in the following verse :

Prohibited for you in marriage are your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, the sisters of your fathers, the sisters of your mothers, the daughters of your brother, the daughters of your sister, your nursing mothers, the girls who nursed from the same woman as you, the mothers of your wives, the daughters of your wives with whom you have consummated the marriage – if the marriage has not been consummated, you may marry the daughter. Also prohibited for you are the women who were married to your genetic sons. Also, you shall not be married to two sisters at the same time – but do not break up existing marriages. GOD is Forgiver, Most Merciful (4:023).

Hinduism has through out the history encouraged incest, and even to this day incest (cross-cousin, father-daughter, mother-son, brother-sister, etc.) is extremely common amongst the Hindus. No other race on earth has ever recorded such a prevalance of this practice. Just as Lesbianism in ancient Lesbos, so incest has its home amongst the Hindus. References abound even in the Rg Veda, showing that the perversion of brother-sister incest was institutionalized by Hindu scriptures:

1) Pushan is the lover of his sister [ Rg Ved VI.55.4 ][ Apte 11 ]
2) Agni is the lover of his own sister [ Rg Ved X.3.3 ][ Apte 11 ]
3)Ashvins are referred to as the sons of Savitar and Ushas who are brother and sister [ Apte 11 ].
4)The Ashvisns married Surya and Savitri who is their sister [ RV I.116.19 ].
5) Agni is the son of his fatehr and his sister [ Rg Ved.I.91.7 ]
6) Father-daughter incest occurs in the famous story of Prajapati (later identified with Brahma, in tunr incorporated as an incarnation of Vishnu) and
his daughter [ RV III.31.1-2 ].

You have not achieved anything:

To value the progress of Pakistani Muslims, we should look at the demographics of pre-1947. Without burdening the reader with too many statistics and numbers, it can be said that 99 per cent of the Muslims of present Pakistan were peasants, artisans, labourers or attached to lowly professions. Yes, of course there were Muslim feudals all around, but they did not represent the vast majority. Other than the army and police, Muslims were almost negligible in business, services, professional classes, bureaucracy or education. All the non-agricultural sectors were completely monopolised by Hindus. This was not from the British era, rather, it was the pattern for the entire Muslim era as well.

Lahore was the main city in the areas now included in Pakistan and is now the second most populous city. One should imagine the Muslims of Lahore of that that era and compare it with the present one. Back then, every economic sector, from banking to education, was owned and run by Hindus only. Muslims had only couple of shops in Anarkali and Mall Road and only two families of note, headed by Ch. Muhammad Shafi and Nawab Muzaffar Qazalbash. In Jhutha Sach (The False Truth, 1958–1960), novelist Yashpal encapsules the status of Muslims in a dialogue between two Hindu ladies talking to each other about seeing a Muslim vegetable vendor in the inner city, one says, “these are the people who will rule us in Pakistan?”

The division of Punjab was very tragic and probably unfair to non-Muslims who had built the city with blood and sweat but watched the downtrodden become the masters of the city in this historical twist.  Furthermore, despite all daunting challenges for Pakistan, the most fertile part of north India if not the entire subcontinent became part of Pakistan. With huge surplus production in agriculture it could provide capital for industries. It was not fair to the peasantry to transfer their surplus to budding industrial class but this is how it happened.

Now, not only does Lahore enjoy a rich and midlde class of Muslims along with the poor, but the industrial areas are stretched in every direction up to Sheikhupura, Kasoor and Bhai Phairo to the south. If the textile industry of Faisalabad, along with other industries in entire Pakistan is included, poor peasants, artisans and laboring classes of pre-1947 era have done a marvelous job just in 60 some years. Pakistan-Punjab, as compared to its eastern part in India, has much more industry on a per capita basis. Furthermore, Punjab has still remained the bread basket of Pakistan and Sindh has progressed in fruit production. Other provinces have done their own share in the economic sectors in which they have comparative advantage.

India and China have certainly done better than Pakistan in most areas. However examined in a historical perspective, both countries had inherent advantages over Pakistan. China had been the world leader in industrial production for 1800 years, except the last five to six hundred years.

Furthermore, the Indian bourgeoisie industrial/entrepreneurial classes were far more mature than the peasantry and feudals of Pakistan. Though urban Hindu migrants to India were a burden for that country for some time, but they were still skilled and intellectually advanced.  And, if human capital is extremely important in socio-economic growth then Indian gained at the expense of Pakistan because of this devastating migration. Despite all the advantages India had, if one looks at living conditions in the entire northern region of the subcontinent, its Pakistani counter-part has done equally well if not better.

As far as the breaking up of Pakistan is concerned, one can cynically repeat what Faiz Ahmed Faid had once said “My fear is that this country will go on like this.” On a serious note, the disintegration of Pakistan does not seem to be on the agenda of history. Basically, most ethnicities have developed huge stakes in united Pakistan. Pashtuns from KP and Balochistan have developed economic interest in every big city of the country. They even monopolize certain sectors of the economy in Punjab and Sindh. Why would they wish Pakistan broken to leave them to struggle where they cannot find jobs and markets in which to sell their products? Sindhis, despite the protestations, are much better off within Pakistan rather than being a small country.  This is why no nationalist Sindhi political party has ever won the elections.

You Pakistanis are too degenerate to have a functioning democracy like us civilized Indians.

you will have to excuse our lack of progress on the democratic front. you see, our nation was opposed violently by your country before it was even born. On the eve of its birth, it absorbed a large population of refugees (bloody traumatized and hungry) from the violence inflicted upon them by your countrymen. Before we took a breath as an infant, you severed our jugular vein (kashmir, gurduspur). Before we could have our first meal, you deprived us of our portion of funds to suffocate us. we did receive one gift for our birth — territorial issues with almost every single neighbor, separated by east pakistan by a thousand miles (surrounded entirely by a hostile neighbor). opposed globally for our islamic leanings and eyed globally for our geo-strategic location. Nobody expected this infant to survive (certainly not you).

To survive in this neighborhood, we were given ONE choice — to live on our knees under your hegemonic umbrella. We chose another path – that is to be a martial state to defend our ideology, faith, territory and our god given right to exist.

We had to fight for our very existence before we could build a road let alone institutionalized democracy. So, you will have to excuse the slow progress on democratization.

God willing, we will do this and more. We won’t simply ape our former colonial masters. We will build a democracy in our own image — one that is inspired by universal values of gender, racial, social and financial equality preached by our faith 1400 years before your precious democracy.

We don’t desire a democracy where 40 individuals are multi-billionaires while 700 million sleep hungry. Where leaders are elected by caste-based politics. Where birthright decides social mobility.

We don’t desire a hypocritical democracy that imposes its will at the barrel of the gun in the kashmir valley, that deprives an internationally disputed nation of UN mandates.

Muslim Ghettos in India

http://abdusalaam.blogspot.com/2008/07/muslim-ghettos-and-indian-civil.html

In Delhi, there are two localities which are Muslim concentrated. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration if you were to call them Muslim Ghettos, because they are exactly that: highly concentrated populations of a minority group within a city, living under social pressure. And in this case, social pressure is the fear of being victims of a hate crime. Especially during a full on communal riot

Now there are two such ghettos in Delhi. One is in the heart of Delhi, known as Old Delhi or more officially known as Shahjehanabad. And the other one is on the outskirts of South Delhi, bordering the state of Uttar Pradesh. This latter one is also relatively newer. The area is known as Jamia Nagar in a district called Okhla. And this is where I live.

Now let me tell you what kind of weird stuff I’m referring to.

The other day while I was coming back home from some place far into the city — during mid-day mind you — I noticed, while entering the street where my ghetto begins, the police had put up barricades on the street and they were only letting a single vehicle go in at a time, thus creating a bottleneck. Now I didn’t see them stopping or questioning anybody, but their presence had created an atmosphere of unease in the area, to say the least.

This reminds me of something else. I’ve noticed since my arrival here that there must be about half a dozen streets leading out of the ghetto. And on every such exit point I’ve seen there either exists a police station, or a barricade with around the clock police presence ready to be deployed at a moments notice. It is like what one would see on TV in a Palestinian ghetto under Israeli occupation. However, people shouldn’t get the wrong impression, it is nothing that serious.

Then just yesterday, I hear an account from a very reliable source, that in his part of the ghetto, the Delhi Police where going around knocking on doors, house-by-house and questioning people. They wanted to know who all lived in the house and what they did. In some cases he said, they even walked into the house for a closer look. I doubt they had such blanket warrants to enter the house. But then again, I wonder if they even needed a warrant to do so.

This brings up the issue of Indian civil liberties. Is there even such thing as civil liberties here in India? Or is that something you only hear in America? And if there is such a thing as civil liberties, what is considered to be part of it? Are unwarranted searches of people and their homes considered to be legal under the Indian legal system? Is cordoning off an entire neighborhood because they fit an ethnic profile considered to be legal? Is collective punishment considered to be a viable course of government action? These are some of the questions I had yet to think about on such a personal level before. Up until now, things like these happened to other people. Even while I was in the US, the most I had to deal with were “random” checks on an airport. And I used to think that was going too far. But this; this is on an entirely new level.

Moreover, I get the feeling things will only get worse before they get better. If they’ll even get better that is.

 

http://luthfispace.blogspot.com/2011/04/disturbing-book-on-indian-muslims-by.html

Topsia, a largely slum region on the edge of wetlands in east Kolkata, is an area that has fallen outside the map of municipal development. Worse, on the radar of the city’s general consciousness, the name registers no more than a feeble beep.
Along with Beniapukur, Tiljala and Tangra, the other three main areas focused upon in the book, Topsia also happens to be among the city’s most densely populated Muslim neighbourhoods.

The stubborn, uninterrupted poverty of these places and their residents’ Muslim faith is the basis of Seabrook’s study into the lives of the Others. “There is a widespread view that little common ground exists between Muslims and the rest of humanity,” the author notes. “This has become axiomatic for many…who contrast our ‘progress’ with their ‘backwardness’.”

With the avowed intention of correcting this unhappy state of affairs, the British journalist and commentator stitches together a collage of urban lives caught in a whirlpool of crime, drugs, larceny, corruption, coercion, underdevelopment, ignorance, neglect, vote-bank politics and intrigues of land sharks.

Yet the grand canvas that the title of the book suggests, and the blurb reiterates, is missing between the covers. Even while doing an admirable job of documenting the lives there (the most desperate creatures on earth, the author contends), People without Historyrarely moves beyond the precincts of its four Kolkata Muslim slum areas. In fact, it doesn’t even venture into the other Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods with similar or worse living conditions, Rajabazar being a notable example. People without History can only be a study of India’s Muslim Ghettosthrough gross generalization.
Most unsettling is the premise of the book that pits wider society against the largely Urdu-speaking Muslim slum population in Kolkata, and by the strength of notion, in all of India. Even as most interviewees in People without History testify, it becomes obvious that their circumstances are often not uniquely different from those living in, say, Kolkata’s and the country’s Hindu-majority slums: the other Others. The vortex of death, addiction, decay and exploitative politics is common to every urban Indian slum. Is faith the only differential in the lives of the Muslim slum dweller in Beniapukur and the Hindu day labourer in Dum Dum and Behala?

Seabrook highlights the appalling lives of the poor and their tremendous urge to survive the odds in painstaking detail, but misses the forest for the trees. In the plight of the Muslims of Topsia, Beniapukur, Tiljala and Tangra resonates the plight of the city; one which has seen the flight of capital and opportunities to more profitable and less-politicized shores, leaving behind barely enough for all its citizens. Since then it has been a narrative of shared struggle and common shame across communities in the city.

Take, for instance, the story of Qutubuddin Ansari, which hasn’t found a place in the book. Ansari was referred to as the “face of the 2002 Gujarat riots” after the photograph of the Muslim’s tailor’s horror-struck face pleading for life was splashed in the media. Ansari would find a home in Kolkata after the state government pledged support to rebuild his life and business. In less than a year, Ansari would go back to Gujarat and his tailoring business. The promise of peace brought him to Kolkata; the lack of prospects saw him return.

It could have been the story of a city.

Khabar Indian-American Monthly Attacks Pakistanis

Khabar an Indian-American monthly has published this gem of investigative journalism against Pakistan:

http://www.khabar.com/magazine/features/Post-Osama_Scenarios

It is impossible that the Pakistani Army and the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) did not know of Osama’s presence.

Does Khabar know something that the NY Times does not?  Any evidence?  If the mighty USA could not stop Osama from entering Pakistan from Afghanistan and India with it’s 3 million in army reserves could not stop terrorists from entering Mumbai, why have such lofty expectations from Pakistan?

There are strict zoning laws near military installations, and any construction inside a garrison cantonment would have required a building permit. All these requirements are especially stringent in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area, which is the heart of the Pakistani security establishment. It should be further noted that Osama’s “hide-out” was custom-made, took a year to build (completed in 2006) and far exceeded in size and cost anything in the vicinity. It had 18-foot-high outside walls and seven-foot-high inside walls, with dish antenna for TV but no telephone or Internet connection. From an espionage and security standpoint alone, it is inconceivable that the Pakistani Army-ISI would allow anyone to reside in such a house for five years without their knowledge and approval.

Any Pakistani will tell you there are thousands of homes/compounds like this one.  It is plausible that a rogue within ISI or retiree may have known about Osama but to make the indian leap that Pakistani govt. or Kayani was safeguarding Osama is a claim that nobody can make.  It’s no secret that Pakistan is embroiled in a civil war.  It’s  a dirty business and a legacy of Soviet/Afghan war.  The very groups that Pakistan and USA supported are now fighting against Pakistan and USA.  The expert authors prefer to ignore the history.

On the contrary, it is plausible that the location was chosen quite deliberately by the Army: away from the border areas and hence safe from the scrutiny of the U.S. and Indian forces, and inside a cantonment that would enable Pakistan’s Army and intelligence brass to visit Osama surreptitiously.

Notice the packaging of mighty USA with India.  What can Indian forces do on Pakistani territory whether it is in our cities or border regions?  Bharati hegemony has been checked by Pakistan but she still fantasizes.  The evidence indicates there is tacit approval and collusion with the United States by Pakistani to fight terrorists.  The difference is that Pakistan has to live with the Afghan fallout after 2014.

From this point forward, Pakistan will find it increasingly difficult to sustain the dual game it has played since 9/11.

Where is the dual game?  3000 Pakistanis have died, 10000 have been maimed.  Why not discuss the dual game Bharat is playing in Kashmir where the state has murdered 100,000+ kashmiris, raped 10000+ women.  Pakistan provides moral support to freedom fighters.  The tragedy with Pakistan is that it has supported some unsavory characters in the Kashmiri independence movement.  It should distance itself from terrorists and support only freedom fighters with a legitimate cause.

The Pakistani Taliban has already started to avenge Osama’s death, killing 80 recruits of Pakistan’s Frontier Constabulary on May 13. This new cycle of violence and counter-violence is likely to intensify, with Islamabad finding it harder to pursue distinct strategies against “good Taliban” and “bad Taliban.”

More bias and double standards.  No credit is given to Pakistani sacrifices.  No mention is made of Indian approaching the Taliban in Afghanistan.  No mention of Indians support of equally sinister Northern Alliance which went on a murderous rampage in Kabul.

China’s building of additional civilian nuclear reactors in Pakistan, and Islamabad’s accelerated program of increasing the size and sophistication of its nuclear weapons and missiles.

Magazine uses publication to further Indian cause at the expense of Americans.

Pakistan will remain a strategically vital base for U.S. operations for several years, especially as tension with Afghanistan’s other neighbor—Iran—mounts.

Afghanistan’s other neighbor and India’s jettisoned friend Iran ??

Islamabad’s complicity in harboring Osama and his ilk might increase U.S. and international pressure on Pakistan, but this will in no way translate into Islamabad rendering counter-terrorism cooperation to New Delhi.

Was Kayani or Zardari’s connection to Osama was proven?  Will India cease her terrorist operations on the unarmed civilians in Kashmir?

Indeed, in the foreseeable future Islamabad is likely to pursue a more aggressive course toward India to shore up its battered domestic image, and there is already evidence for that. This week, Pakistan tested its nuclear-capable Nasir short-range missile and announced that it has developed low-yield “tactical” nuclear warheads that it can deploy on Nasir. It also said this is in direct response to India’s “Cold Start” doctrine, which will enable India to conduct surgical strikes inside Pakistani territory to take out terrorist cells.

India’s offensive threat of the controversial and dangerous cold doctrine is given minimal attention but Pakistan’s defensive strategy to counter the threat is vilified.  Nice.

Washington has allowed India to interrogate David Headley and also provided it satellite intercepts revealing ISI “handlers” providing tactical assistance to Ajmal Kasab and his team as they conducted the Mumbai attacks. But while this has strengthened the evidence that India presented to Pakistan for prosecution of the masterminds behind the Mumbai attack, Islamabad has continued to stonewall any requests for expediting its domestic trials in this regard.

Will India expedite the punishment of Bajrang Dal and Jagdish Tytler ?  No?  How about the proven Indian army handlers of Samjotha Express terrorism?

India is likely to encounter similar resistance from Pakistan in the capture and hand-over of Dawood Ibrahim, or leaders of LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Jihadi-al-Islami factions.

Here, we have agreement with the Indian Americans.  Pakistan should jail Dawood Ibrahim and eliminate Let, JuH.

Indian Perception: Pakistan evil because it won’t turn over Hafiz Saeed

Hafiz Saeed is under house arrest (more should be done)…. What has India about this terrorist?  He roams free?  How about Jagdish Tytler, he was awarded a govt. position.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107After_killing.asp

SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

Bajrangi: My role was as follows: I was the first to start the [Naroda] Patiya operation… We and the local residents were all together. Patiya is just half a kilometre away from my home… I had gone to Godhra when it happened… I could not bear what I saw… The next day, we gave them a fitting reply…

TEHELKA: What were you unable to tolerate in Godhra? 

Bajrangi: Any person who saw the Godhra kaand [massacre] would have felt like just killing them at once, hacking them apart… that’s how it was…

TEHELKA: You were there?

Bajrangi: Yes, yes, I was with them… So the Godhra kaand happened and after what I saw, I just came back to Naroda and we took revenge.

TEHELKA: How could you organize it all in such short time?

Bajrangi: Little time… We organized everything that night itself… We mobilised a team of 29 or 30 people… Those who had guns, we went to them that night itself and told them to give us their guns… If anyone refused, I told them I would shoot them the next day, even if they were Hindu… So people agreed to part with whatever cartridges and guns they had… In this way, we collected 23 guns. But nobody died of gunshots… What happened was this: we chased them and were able to scare them into a huge khadda [pit]. There we surrounded them and finished everything off… Then, at 7 o’clock, we announced…

TEHELKA: This was in Patiya? That’s what it’s called, isn’t it?

Bajrangi: Yes, yes, Patiya.

TEHELKA: Please describe the area.

Bajrangi: In Patiya, there is an ST [State Transport] workshop with a huge wall beside it; next to this wall, Patiya begins… Opposite Patiya, there is a masjid and beside it is a sprawlingkhadda… That’s where we killed them all… At 7 o’clock, I called the home minister and also Jaideepbhai [Jaideep Patel, VHP general secretary] and told them how many people had been killed and said that things were now in their hands… I don’t know if they did anything, though… At 2.30 in the morning, an FIR was lodged against me… The FIR said I was there… the police commissioner even issued orders to shoot me at sight…

TEHELKA: Who, Narendrabhai?

Bajrangi: The commissioner ordered…

• • •

Bajrangi: We and the Chharas carried out the Patiya massacre… After that, we all went to jail… People gave us a lot of money after we were jailed… I am rich, so I have no worries, but the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders didn’t care for those who were poor and had no money. Even from jail I was telling them [the VHP] to look after their families, do something for the accused. They provided for them for some four to six months, after that all help was stopped… They had promised to fight our cases in court… but till today, nobody has done a thing… Pravinbhai [Togadia, VHP international general secretary] had promised this openly… and he had also said that if there were any problems at their home or any loss [he would take care of them]… but no one knows where they put all the money they collected… Nobody was given any money… for five to seven months, they gave rations, but nothing apart from that…

TEHELKA: You were in touch only with Jaideepbhai?

Bajrangi: Only Jaideep was talking to me from the VHP.

TEHELKA: The day the Muslims were killed…

Bajrangi: I spoke to Jaideepbhai 11 or 12 times… aur humne tabiyat se kaata… Haldighati bana di thi [and we killed at will, turned the place into Haldighati]… And I am proud of it, if I get another chance, I will kill even more…

TEHELKA: Where was Jaideepbhai camping then?

Bajrangi: Jaideepbhai was sitting at Dhanwantri, which is Pravinbhai’s dispensary, he was there… in Bapunagar… There he was and I didn’t even tell him that we were going to do this… In Naroda and Naroda Patiya, we didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire, we set them on fire and killed them… That’s what we did… Up till then, they didn’t know what was happening; when they got to hear of how many had been killed, they got scared…

• • •

Photo: Paras Shah

Bajrangi: There is a distance of about half a kilometre between Naroda [Patiya] and Naroda Gaon… We did a lot at both places… must have butchered not less than… Then we dumped the corpses into a well… At first, I didn’t talk [This was TEHELKA’s fourth meeting with him.] I thought… Many journalists and all kinds of people and come ask me if I was in the Patiya incident… I tell them I was not involved, I was quite far away admitted in a hospital…

• • •

TEHELKA: Do you know Gordhan Zadaphia has revolted?… During the Patiya massacre, what did he say when you spoke to him?

Bajrangi: I spoke to Gordhan Zadaphia… I told him everything that had happened… He told me to leave Gujarat and go into hiding… I asked what he meant, but he told me to run away and to not ever say anywhere that we had talked…

• • •

TEHELKA: Tell us how it was all done… revolvers… cylinders…

Bajrangi: The cylinders were theirs [the Muslims’]… Whichever house we entered, we just grabbed the cylinder and fired at it, and, dhadak, they exploded… We had guns in any case… I can’t tell you what a good time it was… But four of our activists died in it… No hearing took place even in that…

TEHELKA: Did you climb to the top of a masjid and tie a pig there?

Bajrangi:We rammed an entire tanker into it… the tanker was fully laden… We rammed that tanker inside…

TEHELKA: It was a petrol tanker, no?

Bajrangi: It was diesel… We drove a whole diesel tanker in and then set [the mosque] on fire…

TEHELKA: Meaning, it was the tanker explosion which set Patiya on fire?

Bajrangi: In the masjid…

TEHELKA: In the masjid…

Bajrangi: As for the rest of it, I was in charge at the time… Whatever I wanted to do, I did…

TEHELKA: At the pit, was oil… Those people had gathered there…

Bajrangi: It was a huge pit… You could enter it from one side but you couldn’t climb out at the other end… They were all there together… They started clinging to each other… Even while they were dying, they told each other, you die too, what are you going to be saved for, you die too… so the number of deaths increased.

TEHELKA: Then people poured oil in…

Bajrangi: Oil and burning tyres…

TEHELKA: Where did the oil come from?

Bajrangi: Oh that… We had lots of material with us… we filled lots of jerrycans in advance… From the petrol pump, the night before… Petrol pump owners gave us petrol and diesel for free…

• • •

TEHELKA: Muslims were hacked to pieces…

Bajrangi: Hacked, burnt, set on fire, many things were done… many… We believe in setting them on fire because these bastards say they don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it, they say this and that will happen to them… I have just one wish… one last wish…. Let me be sentenced to death… I don’t want to be incarcerated… I don’t care if I’m hanged… Give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura [a Muslim dominated are], where seven or eight lakh of these people stay… I will finish them off … Let a few more of them die… At least 25-50,000 should die…

TEHELKA: How many witnesses have testified against you?

Bajrangi: Fourteen Muslims and 16 policemen… Out of the 14 Muslims, some have moved to Juhapura… They’ve left Patiya, they don’t have the guts to stay there, defying us… The rest have gone to Karnataka… They got money after all, Rs 7 lakh each… Narendrabhai never said how much they would be given… He announced [the compensation package] then gave out cheques of Rs 20,000 each and that’s where things got stuck… Afterwards, he gave nothing to anyone… But then the Central government supported them…

• • •

TEHELKA: In other words, the way [you] have killed will go down in history.

Bajrangi: Arrey hamari FIR me likha gaya hai… ek woh pregnant thi, usko to humne chir diya thha b*******d sala… Unko dikhaya ki kya hota hai… ki hum log ko tumne maara to hum tumko kya pratikaar de sakte hain… hum khichdi kadhi wale nahin hai [It has been written in my FIR… there was this pregnant woman, I slit her open, sisterf****r… Showed them what’s what… what kind of revenge we can take if our people are killed… I am no feeble rice-eater]… didn’t spare anyone… they shouldn’t even be allowed to breed… I say that even today… Whoever they are, women, children, whoever… Nothing to be done with them but cut them down. Thrash them, slash them, burn the bastards… Hindus can be bad… Hindus can be bad, and I’m saying that because, as I see it, Hindus are as wicked as those people are… Many of them wasted time looting… Arrey, [the idea is] don’t keep them alive at all, after that everything is ours…

TEHELKA: And some people also raped…

Bajrangi: No, there were no rapes…

TEHELKA: One or two Chharas may have…

Bajrangi: If some Chharas took some women, that’s a different matter… We were marching in groups… There was no place to rape anyone there… Everyone was on a killing spree… we were killing, hacking… There were lanes where we had to face Muslims… there would be a confrontation, they’d fight back with all their strength…The moment we’d killed a few, we’d move on… In this melée, if some girl was trying to run away and if a Chhara caught her, then that’s another matter… That day, it was like what happened between Pakistan and India… There were bodies everywhere… it was a sight to be seen, but it wasn’t something to be filmed, in case it got into someone’s hands… There was a video-wala there, some mediawala, we set him on fire too… Lots of those miyas [Muslims] deceived us… They’d chant Jai Mata Di and get away… that happened too… they’d put tilaks on their foreheads and shout Jai Shri Ram, Jai Mata Di….

TEHELKA: Tell me how that SRPF [State Reserve Police Force] man saved people?

Bajrangi: There was just one Muslim… some big SRP man… Sayeed…

TEHELKA: He was an officer…

Bajrangi: Yes, he was… All this cutting and killing happened behind the SRP camp… The ones who weren’t in the pit, they ran and got into the SRP compound… The SRP jawans there were driving them away… when the officer came in his vehicle and said take everyone inside… He was in command… an officer… So, lots of people were saved this way… at least 500 were rescued… Otherwise would they have all gone too… The officer was also fired at… He is also a witness against me…

TEHELKA: But then Narendrabhai promoted him and…

Bajrangi: Silenced him… So, there was good work done in Patiya. Today too I am fighting against Muslims and will continue to do so… I have nothing to do with politics… What I say is this: the VHP is an organisation… a Hindu organisation… Our politics should be limited to killing Muslims, beating them up…

TEHELKA: How do you feel after you have killed Muslims…

Bajrangi: Maza aata hai na, saheb [I enjoy it]… I came back after I killed them them, called up the home minister and went to sleep… I felt like Rana Pratap, that I had done something like Maharana Pratap… I’d heard stories about him, but that day I did what he did myself.

Indian Aggression: Nepal

Source: http://www.nepalesecanadian.com/news/69-global-day-of-action-against-indian-aggression-in-nepal.html

June 15, The Progressive Nepali Forum in Americas (PNEFA) in collaboration with other organizations around the world today held a global day of action against Indian aggression in Nepal. Except for the New York rally, where our brothers and sisters were mistreated by the “Brown Sahibs” while trying to handover the letter addressed to the Indian PM, today’s historic protests were held successfully from Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Canada, UK, Australia and Nepal.

Nepalis and peace-loving friends of Nepal protested the encroachment into Nepali lands in Dang District by the Indian Border Security Forces (IBSF) last month. These actions of IBSFs resulted in the displacement of more than 6000 people from their homes. Cases of rape and disappearance have also been reported, all consistent with a pattern: encroachment, forceful displacement, shifting of border markers and appropriation of Nepali territory and committing atrocities by IBSFs. Since 1950, India has already appropriated more than 60,000 hectares of Nepali territory at 84 places along the border. But India has not shown any sign of taking responsibility of its excesses in a foreign land. Two high level delegations of elected officials have investigated the incidents and determined that Nepal’s borders have been illegally and forcefully breached.

Participants in the rallies put forward the following demands: that the Indian government retract its recent aggression, that the IBSE be brought home to their barracks in India, that the government of India apologize to those Nepalis who have been the victims of a barbaric act, and that it compensate those whose property has been destroyed. The rallies also appealed all Nepalese, regardless of their ideology or party affiliation, to defend sovereignty. Organizers ask international friends and communities to condemn Indian aggression in Nepal. The systemic encroachment into Nepali lands as well as the atrocities committed against Nepalese citizens are a violation of international law and human rights, and constitute an attack on Nepal’s sovereignty. People from Nepal and India have very cordial relations: they respect and admire each other. They share many common attributes. Nepalese appeal to the Indian government to base its foreign policy on those attributes as envisioned in Gujaral Doctrine. It is high time for Indian foreign policy making be taken out of the hands of bureaucrats still living in the shadow of colonialism. Here is the online petition for your signature and distribution, which we plan to submit to the once reaches the markhttp://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Condemn-Indian-Aggression.

Adapted from a press release, sighed by Abi Sharma, President of PNEFA and distributed by Subash BK.

Unlike his predecessors who specialised in Pakistan or China, Chaturvedi is the first head of India’s Intelligence agency whose area of expertise is Nepal. However, in December 2007 the R&AW Chief faced another embarrassing scandal when the ‘Nepal Weekly’ magazine revealed that R&AW was trying to interfere in the internal political dynamics of Nepal. The magazine also revealed the names of various R&AW agents working at the Indian embassy in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu which included Suresh Dhundiya, R&AW’s station chief in Kathmandu, and his deputies Alok Tiwari posted as First Secretary (Education) and K. V. Johri, a counsellor. It was also publicized that Dhundiya was being replaced as station chief by Alok Joshi. This revelation resulted in Joshi being exposed before he even assumed his new position thus compromising R&AW’s intelligence apparatus in Nepal. To make matters worse, Nepalese newspapers were also able to find out the detailed travel plans of Chaturvedi’s visit to Nepal in December 2007, including the airline he flew on and which hotel he stayed in.^[29][30][31]

Chaturvedi forced the interim government of Girija Prasad Koirala to award a contract to an Indian firm for a hydropower project. It has also been alleged that Chaturvedi may have financially benefited personally from the deal. Questions have been raised in India as to why the head of an Indian intelligence agency was promoting a commercial company in Nepal.^[32]

The timing of these events coincided with worsening relations between India and Nepal. In a snub to India, Nepal’s Foreign Minister Sahana Pradhanrequested a high level Chinese delegation visiting Kathmandu to extend the Tibet rail into Nepal. The request carries significance against the backdrop of Nepal’s warning to India not to go ahead with a proposed highway along the India-Nepal border.^[30]

The Telegraph Weekly of Nepal commented that “With R&AW facing continuous debacle in its Nepal affairs, it is highly likely that the R&AW machinery will come in a heavy way in order to regain its lost ground in Nepal. Chaturvedi is being told to pack up by the New Delhi set-up, it is talked”.^[29]

New book on Gandhi’s antics

Indian perceptions are Jinnah was a devil, Gandhi a saint… A new book questions Gandhi’s credentials.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703529004576160371482469358.html

By ANDREW ROBERTS

Joseph Lelyveld has written a generally admiring book about Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet “Great Soul” also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals.

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For all his lifelong campaign for Swaraj (“self-rule”), India could have achieved it many years earlier if Gandhi had not continually abandoned his civil-disobedience campaigns just as they were beginning to be successful. With 300 million Indians ruled over by 0.1% of that number of Britons, the subcontinent could have ended the Raj with barely a shrug if it had been politically united. Yet Gandhi’s uncanny ability to irritate and frustrate the leader of India’s 90 million Muslims, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (whom he called “a maniac”), wrecked any hope of early independence. He equally alienated B.R. Ambedkar, who spoke for the country’s 55 million Untouchables (the lowest caste of Hindus, whose very touch was thought to defile the four higher classes). Ambedkar pronounced Gandhi “devious and untrustworthy.” Between 1900 and 1922, Gandhi suspended his efforts no fewer than three times, leaving in the lurch more than 15,000 supporters who had gone to jail for the cause.

Sixty-two years to the day since Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination ashes kept by a friend of the family for decades were finally sprinkled onto the waters of the Indian Ocean. Video courtesy of Reuters.

A ceaseless self-promoter, Gandhi bought up the entire first edition of his first, hagiographical biography to send to people and ensure a reprint. Yet we cannot be certain that he really made all the pronouncements attributed to him, since, according to Mr. Lelyveld, Gandhi insisted that journalists file “not the words that had actually come from his mouth but a version he authorized after his sometimes heavy editing of the transcripts.”

We do know for certain that he advised the Czechs and Jews to adopt nonviolence toward the Nazis, saying that “a single Jew standing up and refusing to bow to Hitler’s decrees” might be enough “to melt Hitler’s heart.” (Nonviolence, in Gandhi’s view, would apparently have also worked for the Chinese against the Japanese invaders.) Starting a letter to Adolf Hitler with the words “My friend,” Gandhi egotistically asked: “Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?” He advised the Jews of Palestine to “rely on the goodwill of the Arabs” and wait for a Jewish state “till Arab opinion is ripe for it.”

In August 1942, with the Japanese at the gates of India, having captured most of Burma, Gandhi initiated a campaign designed to hinder the war effort and force the British to “Quit ­India.” Had the genocidal Tokyo regime captured northeastern India, as it almost certainly would have succeeded in doing without British troops to halt it, the results for the Indian population would have been catastrophic. No fewer than 17% of Filipinos perished under Japanese occupation, and there is no reason to suppose that Indians would have fared any better. Fortunately, the British viceroy, Lord Wavell, simply imprisoned Gandhi and 60,000 of his followers and got on with the business of fighting the Japanese.

Gandhi claimed that there was “an exact parallel” between the British Empire and the Third Reich, yet while the British imprisoned him in luxury in the Aga Khan’s palace for 21 months ­until the Japanese tide had receded in 1944, Hitler stated that he would simply have had Gandhi and his supporters shot. (Gandhi and Mussolini got on well when they met in December 1931, with the Great Soul praising the Duce’s “service to the poor, his opposition to super-urbanization, his efforts to bring about a coordination between Capital and Labour, his passionate love for his people.”) During his 21 years in South Africa (1893-1914), Gandhi had not opposed the Boer War or the Zulu War of 1906—he raised a battalion of stretcher-bearers in both cases—and after his return to India during World War I he offered to be Britain’s “recruiting agent-in-chief.” Yet he was comfortable opposing the war against fascism.

Although Gandhi’s nonviolence made him an icon to the American civil-rights movement, Mr. Lelyveld shows how implacably racist he was toward the blacks of South Africa. “We were then marched off to a prison intended for Kaffirs,” Gandhi complained during one of his campaigns for the rights of Indians settled there. “We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the Natives seemed too much to put up with. Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.”

In an open letter to the legislature of South Africa’s Natal province, Gandhi wrote of how “the Indian is being dragged down to the position of the raw Kaffir,” someone, he later stated, “whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a number of cattle to buy a wife, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.” Of white Afrikaaners and Indians, he wrote: “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.” That was possibly why he refused to allow his son Manilal to marry ­Fatima Gool, a Muslim, despite publicly promoting Muslim-Hindu unity.

Gandhi’s pejorative reference to nakedness is ironic considering that, as Mr. Lelyveld details, when he was in his 70s and close to leading India to independence, he encouraged his 17-year-old great-niece, Manu, to be naked during her “nightly cuddles” with him. After sacking several long-standing and loyal members of his 100-strong personal entourage who might disapprove of this part of his spiritual quest, Gandhi began sleeping naked with Manu and other young women. He told a woman on one occasion: “Despite my best efforts, the organ remained aroused. It was an altogether strange and shameful experience.”

Yet he could also be vicious to Manu, whom he on one occasion forced to walk through a thick jungle where sexual assaults had occurred in order for her to retrieve a pumice stone that he liked to use on his feet. When she returned in tears, Gandhi “cackled” with laughter at her and said: “If some ruffian had carried you off and you had met your death courageously, my heart would have danced with joy.”

Yet as Mr. Lelyveld makes abundantly clear, Gandhi’s organ probably only rarely became aroused with his naked young ladies, because the love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908. “Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom,” he wrote to Kallenbach. “The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed.” For some reason, cotton wool and Vaseline were “a constant reminder” of Kallenbach, which Mr. Lelyveld believes might relate to the enemas Gandhi gave himself, although there could be other, less generous, explanations.

Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach about “how completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.” Gandhi nicknamed himself “Upper House” and Kallenbach “Lower House,” and he made Lower House promise not to “look lustfully upon any woman.” The two then pledged “more love, and yet more love . . . such love as they hope the world has not yet seen.”

They were parted when Gandhi returned to India in 1914, since the German national could not get permission to travel to India during wartime—though Gandhi never gave up the dream of having him back, writing him in 1933 that “you are always before my mind’s eye.” Later, on his ashram, where even married “inmates” had to swear celibacy, Gandhi said: “I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women.” You could even be thrown off the ashram for “excessive tickling.” (Salt was also forbidden, because it “arouses the senses.”)

In his tract “Hind Swaraj” (“India’s Freedom”), Gandhi denounced lawyers, railways and parliamentary politics, even though he was a professional lawyer who constantly used railways to get to meetings to argue that India deserved its own parliament. After taking a vow against milk for its supposed aphrodisiac properties, he contracted hemorrhoids, so he said that it was only cow’s milk that he had forsworn, not goat’s. His absolute opposition to any birth control except sexual abstinence, in a country that today has more people living on less than $1.25 a day than there were Indians in his lifetime, was more dangerous.

Telling the Muslims who had been responsible for the massacres of thousands of Hindus in East Bengal in 1946 that Islam “was a religion of peace,” Gandhi nonetheless said to three of his workers who preceded him into its villages: “There will be no tears but only joy if tomorrow I get the news that all three of you were killed.” To a Hindu who asked how his co-religionists could ever return to villages from which they had been ethnically cleansed, Gandhi blithely replied: “I do not mind if each and every one of the 500 families in your area is done to death.” What mattered for him was the principle of nonviolence, and anyhow, as he told an orthodox Brahmin, he believed in re incarnation.

Gandhi’s support for the Muslim caliphate in the 1920s—for which he said he was “ready today to sacrifice my sons, my wife and my friends”—Mr. Lelyveld shows to have been merely a cynical maneuver to keep the Muslim League in his coalition for as long as possible. When his campaign for unity failed, he blamed a higher power, saying in 1927: “I toiled for it here, I did penance for it, but God was not satisfied. God did not want me to take any credit for the work.”

Gandhi was willing to stand up for the Untouchables, just not at the crucial moment when they were demanding the right to pray in temples in 1924-25. He was worried about alienating high-caste Hindus. “Would you teach the Gospel to a cow?” he asked a visiting missionary in 1936. “Well, some of the Untouchables are worse than cows in their understanding.”

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India

By Joseph Lelyveld
Knopf, 425 pages, $28.95

Gandhi’s first Great Fast—undertaken despite his belief that hunger strikes were “the worst form of coercion, which militates against the fundamental principles of non-violence”—was launched in 1932 to prevent Untouchables from having their own reserved seats in any future Indian parliament. Because he said that it was “a religious, not a political question,” he accepted no debate on the matter. He elsewhere stated that “the abolition of Untouchability would not entail caste Hindus having to dine with former Untouchables.” At his monster rallies against Untouchability in the 1930s, which tens of thousands of people attended, the Untouchables themselves were kept in holding pens well away from the caste Hindus.

Of course, any coalition movement involves a certain degree of compromise and occasional hypocrisy. But Gandhi’s saintly image, his martyrdom at the hands of a Hindu fanatic in 1948 and Martin Luther King Jr.’s adoption of him as a role model for the American civil-rights movement have largely protected him from critical scrutiny. The French man of letters Romain Rolland called Gandhi “a mortal demi-god” in a 1924 hagiography, catching the tone of most writing about him. People used to take away the sand that had touched his feet as relics—one relation kept Gandhi’s fingernail clippings—and modern biographers seem to treat him with much the same reverence today. Mr. Lelyveld is not immune, making labored excuses for him at every turn of this nonetheless well-researched and well-written book.

Yet of the four great campaigns of Gandhi’s life—for Hindu-Muslim unity, against importing British textiles, for ending Untouchability and for getting the British off the subcontinent—only the last succeeded, and that simply because the near-bankrupt British led by the anti-imperialist Clement Attlee desperately wanted to leave India anyhow after a debilitating world war.

It was not much of a record for someone who had been invested with “sole executive authority” over the Indian National Congress as early as in December 1921. But then, unlike any other ­politician, Gandhi cannot be judged by actual results, because he was the “Great Soul.”

—Mr. Roberts’s “Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War” will be published in May.

Indian Media coverage of Pakistan Cricket Team

Funny parody by Pakistani kids.

Kashmiris in India praying for Pakistan in world cup semi

Credits: TARIQ SOFI SRINAGAR, INDIA  - Mar 29 2011 13:12 FROM AFP

Not everyone in India is hoping for a victory over Pakistan in the cricket World Cup: in Indian Kashmir, allegiance to the rival team reflects bitter feelings in the turbulent region.

Kashmir, a picturesque Muslim-majority Himalayan region that has sparked two wars between India and Pakistan, is split between the two countries but claimed in full by both.

In the highly militarised Indian part, anger over New Delhi’s rule runs deep. An Islamist insurgency has raged for the last two decades and the past three summers have seen huge street demonstrations.

From internet networking sites to social gatherings, most Kashmiris openly acknowledge their support for Pakistan in Wednesday’s semifinal clash with India.

“I am very tense and praying for the victory of Pakistan,” die-hard fan Mohammad Hafiz (65) told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir.

“Supporting the Pakistani cricket team is in our genes. It reflects our anger at India,” he said.

At the quarterfinal stage, Pakistan’s thumping victory over the West Indies was celebrated with fire crackers but India’s win against Australia passed without a murmur.

‘Distrust and alienation’
Security forces, who are constantly on patrol, try to prevent any sign of support for Pakistan, and locals say that hoisting a Pakistan flag would be a life-threatening act.

Cricket has been used as a platform for protests against India in the past.
Two one-day internationals were held in Srinagar in the past: against Clive Lloyd’s West Indies in 1983 and Allan Border’s Australia in 1986.

The Indian team lost both games and faced hostile crowds at the Sher-i-Kashmir stadium. No internationals have been staged there since.

The full-throated support for the West Indians in 1983 prompted Lloyd to wonder if the match had been played in the Caribbean.

“There is huge distrust and alienation among Kashmiris due to the wrong policies of India,” Gul Mohammad Wani, who teaches political science at Kashmir University, told AFP.

“In my opinion, these are the main reasons for the support the Pakistani team enjoys.”

Restoring peace
The match comes at a time when India and Pakistan are again engaging in peace talks with a view to permanently resolving a range of issues that bedevil their relations, including Kashmir.

Measuring public opinion in Indian Kashmir is difficult, but two surveys last year suggested a large majority favoured independence for the region from Pakistan and India.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has invited Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to watch the game with him at Mohali in what will be their first meeting since April last year.

“This is a positive development towards restoring lasting pace in the region,” said Mehbooba Mufti, president of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party in Kashmir.

“The fact that the Pakistani premier has accepted the gesture from his Indian counterpart is a clear indication that both the countries want to resume the highest-level dialogue process,” she said.

India broke off talks with Pakistan in 2008 in the wake of Mumbai terrorist attacks which left 166 people dead.

The gunmen who stormed the city travelled from Pakistan and India suspects they were given help by Pakistani intelligence officers. — Sapa-AFP

Win or Lose, this is a team we can be proud of.

Picture credit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/cricket-world-cup/8412184/Cricket-World-Cup-2011-largest-security-operation-set-for-India-Pakistan-semi-final-amid-political-protest-fears.html

 

from http://www.dawn.com

SRINAGAR: People in Indian-administered Kashmir are hoping for a Pakistan victory when it takes on another sub-continent giant India in the second semi-final of the ICC cricket World Cup. Allegiance to Pakistan reflects bitter feelings in the turbulent region.

Kashmir, a picturesque Muslim-majority Himalayan region that has sparked two wars between India and Pakistan, is split between the two countries but claimed in full by both.

In the highly militarised Indian part, anger over New Delhi’s rule runs deep. An insurgency has raged for the last two decades and the past three summers have seen huge street demonstrations.

From internet networking sites to social gatherings, most Kashmiris openly acknowledge their support for Pakistan in Wednesday’s semi-final clash with India.

“I am very tense and praying for the victory of Pakistan,” die-hard fan Mohammad Hafiz, 65, told AFP in Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir.

“Supporting the Pakistani cricket team is in our genes. It reflects our anger at India,” he said.

At the quarter-final stage, Pakistan’s thumping victory over the West Indies was celebrated with fire crackers but India’s win against Australia passed without a murmur.

Security forces, who are constantly on patrol, try to prevent any sign of support for Pakistan, and locals say that hoisting a Pakistan flag would be a life-threatening act.

Cricket has been used as a platform for protests against India in the past.

Two one-day internationals were held in Srinagar in the past: against Clive Lloyd’s West Indies in 1983 and Allan Border’s Australia in 1986.

The Indian team lost both games and faced hostile crowds at the Sher-i-Kashmir stadium.

No internationals have been staged there since.

The full-throated support for the West Indians in 1983 prompted Lloyd to wonder if the match had been played in the Caribbean.

“There is huge distrust and alienation among Kashmiris due to the wrong policies of India,” Gul Mohammad Wani, who teaches political science at Kashmir University, told AFP.

“In my opinion, these are the main reasons for the support the Pakistani team enjoys.”

The match comes at a time when India and Pakistan are again engaging in peace talks with a view to permanently resolving a range of issues that bedevil their relations, including Kashmir.

Measuring public opinion in Indian Kashmir is difficult, but two surveys last year suggested a large majority favoured independence for the region from Pakistan and India.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has invited Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani to watch the game with him at Mohali in what will be their first meeting since April last year.

“This is a positive development towards restoring lasting pace in the region,” said Mehbooba Mufti, president of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party in Kashmir.

“The fact that the Pakistani premier has accepted the gesture from his Indian counterpart is a clear indication that both the countries want to resume the highest-level dialogue process,” she said.

 

Pakistan is an artificial country. “India” is a nation-state since 1 million B.C.

Where is the mention of the country of India that spans from the “indus to burma”?? Can someone please help. All I can find is these countries, city-states, kingdoms, religions, races, cultures that existed in south asia…

* Mahajanapadas
* Harappa
* Gandhara
* Magadha
* Nanda kingdom
* Maurya kingdom
* Sunga kingdom
* Kanva kingdom
* Kharavela kingdom
* Kuninda Kingdom
* Indo Scythian Kingdom
* Chera dynasty
* Pandyan Kingdom
* Chola kingdom which spread to Malaya, Indonesia, Ceylon
* Satavahana kingdom
* Indo-Greek Kingdom
* Indo-Parthian Kingdom
* Western Satraps
* Kushan kingdom
* Indo-Sassanid Kingdom
* Kalabhras Kingdom
* Gupta kingdom
* Pallava dynasty
* Kadamba Dynasty
* Western Ganga Dynasty
* Vishnukundina
* Huna Kingdom
* Chalukya dynasty
* Harsha
* Eastern Chalukyas
* Pratihara kingdom
* Pala kingdom
* Rashtrakuta Dynasty
* Paramara dynasty
* Yadava Kingdom
* Solanki
* Western Chalukya kingdom
* Hoysala kingdom
* Sena dynasty
* Eastern Ganga dynasty
* Kakatiya dynasty
* Kalachuri
* Muslim Sultanates
o Delhi Sultanate
* Ahom Kingdom
* Vijayanagara kingdom
* Kingdom of Mysore
* Madurai
* Thanjavur Nayak kingdom
* Maratha kingdom
* Sikh kingdom
* Mughal kingdom
* British Empire – included Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Thailand, Andaman, Nicobar, Ceylon, Malaysia, New Guinea, Somalia, Oman, Yemen, Maldives