Hang on a minute. You're clearly conflicted. In the first part of the post, I explained the underlying reality that most Pakistanis (obviously I don't speak for all and it would be foolish for you to generalise on the "cynicism of Pakistanis" based on a minority of posters) have made it clear that hindutva is the common enemy. Muslims who align with hindutva will be targeted as much as Hindus who do so. Likewise, Hindus who resist hindutva will be supported just as Muslims who resist hindutva will. To refer to this struggle as a Bhai-Bhai ummah job is inaccurate and misleading based on the above point.
Up to this point, I find nothing to object to.
India as a republic cannot be sustained as hindutva has - as predicted - come to the fore.
Our forefathers knew this 72 years ago.
This is - pardon my French - rubbish. What happened was a demographic upheaval of gigantic proportions. Nobody could have predicted this, and nobody did. The old wives' tales and gloomy forebodings shared over a hubble-bubble don't count; they are derisory.
I can explain this in detail if you are interested. I have done so before, but it is unlikely that anyone listened; it was all about 'pin the tail on the nearest Indian'.
In my opinion, this is a failure of genuine moderational forces such as yourself, who have simply ignored this hindutva foundation of Indian society lurking just below the surface for 72 years.
Half right, half wrong. Much to be said on both sides.
What you call a democratic opposition party (now the ruling party of course) is quite simply a banned extremist party in any normal functioning democratic nation. Having the BJP as the second main party is not an illustration of a functional vibrant democracy. It illustrates an existential crisis that has persisted for decades and recently worsened.
I will not dignify this canard by rebutting it, but will confine myself to asking you to check the party-wise seats in the General Elections from time to time. The post-Bangladesh General Election is a good point to begin.
It's admittedly difficult with India because it's hard to find Hindu majority nations with which to compare, but on the surface, Nepal (but it's a poor analogy due to different government types) hasn't been through such anti-muslim upheavals as far as I can establish. In other words, whatever has failed with the Indian national experiment is a catastrophic failure of its people, not just something that can be ironed out over a couple of generations. The fixed, false beliefs that underpin BJP/RSS ideology are delusional and incite hatred and violence based on that hatred. As I already said, Muslims are bang in the firing line. To avert genocidal bloodshed, a drastic solution is required. Either BJP needs to be removed altogether and a new moderate opposition created, or India needs another partition.
Wrong premises, right conclusion. If only this was as easy as has been narrated.
Now you and other "moderates" may call that cynical coming from a Pakistani. That's your opinion and it doesn't alter the facts of the matter prima facie.
You assume a retirement to the WhatAboutery argument. What about if it is not made?
The litmus test is simply, if Pakistan and its supposed inherent bias did not exist, would Indian Muslims still feel threatened and subdued by the history-denying, mosque-razing, cow-lynching realities of the secular republic you live in?
Hypothetical history never has one, conclusive answer.
- If Pakistan did not exist, and the Congress had functioned as it did at the time, modern, scientific in temper and progressive, yes, we might have found ourselves in the same situation.
- If Pakistan did not exist, and the Congress had functioned in a regressive, religion-dominated mob clamouring for adjustment of all the petty grievances that had built up under the comparative freedom of British rule, yes, we might have found ourselves in the same situation, and in fact, faster, and without the intervention of the Sanghis.
- If Pakistan did not exist, and the Congress
- had been more aggressive in its approach to modernisation,
- had firmly imposed universal education,
- had legislated into existence generic family law that permitted all citizens to marry, to divorce and to bequeath property in the same manner,
- had anticipated and planned the wave of urbanisation that India went through better, and accommodated the population of the villages after divesting them of their superstitious baggage and caste and religious exclusionary habits,
- had anticipated and planned the growth of employment and the enriching of recent migrants from the countryside better,
India would not have been in the present situation.
Nobody anticipated #4 and #5, nobody. And that is where we stumbled.
To both you and
@padamchen , that some "escaped" Indian Muslims actively rail against these realities of the nation they fled is damming evidence of the voluntary self-censoring they had to engage whilst in India in order to not draw ire simply for demanding their rights.
When did I rail against 'escaped' Muslim Indians?
Like SRK and others, Indian Muslims have to overcompensate in abrogating their own rights instead of demanding fulfilment of these rights. This is precisely what Jinnah meant when he said Indian Muslims would spend the rest of their lives proving their loyalty to India.
That is not an unmixed curse.
I know Indian Muslims in UK and they're not going back to India any time soon. Indian Christians in UK tend to stay quiet so as to avoid drawing flak but you won't find them at the "howdy Modi" events either. They refer to themselves as malayalam or Tamil and that's about it. Every non-Hindu in this failing state will have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove fealty to the state while living there simply to preserve their lives and livelihoods.
There is such a thing as driving an analogy too far. My friend M****** R*** in Wolverhampton, originally from Sialkot, who made his money in Kuwait, is not going anywhere back to Pakistan. U**** S****** originally from Lahore, came back for a holiday to Pakistan after 17 years and fled back to York as soon as he could. N***** S****** has made too much money to think of going back to Pakistan; however, he finds the time to travel 20 days in the month (before the virus) and measures his time on travel in 15 minute segments. When I think about the Indian Muslim coming back, and the proud republic of Bradistan, I have to restrain myself from laughing. If Indus Pakistan were here, I would summon him as a witness to bear testimony on what he had to say about the Mirpuri diaspora and their probability of return. So if I were to use whataboutery, you would not have much left to say.
Now for the funny part: every non-Hindu has to fiercely proclaim loyalty to India while staying in India. Every Muslim in Pakistan has to fiercely proclaim loyalty to Pakistan while staying in the UK, in the Netherlands, in the US, in Australia, in NewZealand, you name it, and they feel impelled to spring to their feet and proclaim their fealty in ringing tones. Ah, I am located right here in India, and talk to Muslim Indians frequently, and we damn the central government daily; it is amusing to see the vehemence with which the Pakistani diaspora insists that it is Pakistani, entirely, never mind what the citizenship laws of their present state say.
In short, your passage above is irrelevant.
We have seen what hindutva types drunk with power do in the middle east when dealing with their fellow Indian Muslims, let alone how they treat them in the safety of India itself.
We suspected that - I suspected that - in 2002. Your point being?
@padamchen may well dismiss such individuals as simple traitors but in reality, such simple denial of their true situation is a damming affirmation of India's intolerance. If India ignores such voices, it will disintegrate, and Pakistanis, myself included, will say "I told you so" and "Jinnah was right".
Two points: first, it is difficult to discuss a complex issue when what we are confronted with is a two-dimensional cartoon caricature of the real thing. The vision that Pakistanis have painted are so bizarre that it consumes a huge amount of energy just to level things to tabula rasa.
Second, it never fails to bemuse me how, step by step, we are told how much better we were a decade ago, and how we have fallen into a sad condition today. Mind you, we will be told, with perfectly straight faces, the same thing ten years later, and would have been told the same thing twenty years earlier. I refrain from comment on this phenomenon to spare your feelings.
A very educated post.
I will say that these jaw droppers will also include Muslims too, some present on PDF.
Indeed. Except for
@Kambojaric and Indus Pakistan (the latter no longer responding to tags; he seems to have taken a long time off).
I worked with Faizan Mustafa at NALSAR, not in the Law Faculty, but in Management. His faculty member dealing with traditional legal systems and I had many long and fascinating discussions, and he was thunderstruck to hear these titbits. He was even more astonished to reference them and find that I wasn't talking through the back of my neck. I really miss those conversations.
Faizan Sahib is a constitutional law expert. His web series is a tour de force.
