In 1947 two muslim countries should have been created!

[Flintlock]

The problem in South Asia is a lack of an adequate security arrangement focused on India. The destabilizing element in the region is India.

Best of luck with that theory!

 

[cactuslily58]

The problem in South Asia is a lack of an adequate security arrangement focused on India. The destabilizing element in the region is India.

The problem in S Asia is that we have a " larger than life " image of ourselves. We are so full of ourselves that we have no room for others.

Add to this the following :

1. Perpetual moaning & whining about the past.
2. In ability to accept the present.
3. Lamenting on what we should / could have been .
4. Complete distrust of each other .
5. Preferring / hoping ( that) " others" try & solve mutual problems & being made a sucker of by "others" in the bargain.
6. Forever plotting / conspiring against each other.
7. Gloating over the discomfort of our neighbors
8. Blaming others for everything that is wrong within ourselves...the list is endless.

As regarding the destabilizing element in S Asia, the views expressed above are not echoed the world over, as things stand the " de stabiliser" is just to the West of India.

But then, the world could be wrong.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence?

Read Pankaj Mishra’s opinion in The Guardian on this matter —

“In the past five years bomb attacks claimed by Islamist groups have killed hundreds across the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. An Indian Muslim was even involved in the failed assault on Glasgow airport in July last year. Yet George Bush reportedly introduced Manmohan Singh to his wife, Laura, as “the prime minister of India, a democracy which does not have a single al-Qaida member in a population of 150 million Muslims”.

To be fair to Bush, he was only repeating a cliche deployed by Indian politicians and American pundits such as Thomas Friedman to promote India as a squeaky-clean ally of the United States. However, Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek International, ought to know better. In his new book, The Post-American World, he describes India as a “powerful package” and claims it has been “peaceful, stable, and prosperous” since 1997 - a decade in which India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war, tens of thousands of Indian farmers took their own lives, Maoist insurgencies erupted across large parts of the country, and Hindu nationalists in Gujarat murdered more than 2,000 Muslims.

Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America’s elite, has declared a “roaring capitalist success story”. Add Bollywood’s singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the “most dangerous place on earth” according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.)

To put it in plain language - which the NCTC is unlikely to use - India is host to some of the fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeastern states.

Manmohan Singh himself has called the Maoist insurgency centred on the state of Chhattisgarh the biggest internal security threat to India since independence. The Maoists, however, are confined to rural areas; their bold tactics haven’t rattled Indian middle-class confidence in recent years as much as the bomb attacks in major cities have.

Politicians and the media routinely blame Pakistan for terrorist violence in India. It is likely that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, was involved in the bombings two weeks ago in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, which killed 46 people. But their scale and audacity also hints that the perpetrators have support networks within India.

The Indian elite’s obsession with the “foreign hand” obscures the fact that the roots of some of the violence lie in the previous two decades of traumatic political and economic change, particularly the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the related growth of ruthlessness towards those left behind by India’s expanding economy.

In 2006 a commission appointed by the government revealed that Muslims in India are worse educated and less likely to find employment than low-caste Hindus. Muslim isolation and despair is compounded by what B Raman, a hawkish security analyst, was moved after the most recent attacks to describe as the “inherent unfairness of the Indian criminal justice system”.

To take one example, the names of the politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 are widely known. Some of them were caught on video, in a sting carried out last year by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as Amnesty International pointed out in a recent report, justice continues to evade most victims and survivors of the violence. Tens of thousands still languish in refugee camps, too afraid to return to their homes.

In an article I wrote for the New York Times in 2003 I underlined the likely perils if the depressed and alienated minority of Muslims were to abandon their much-tested faith in the Indian political and legal system. Predictably Hindu nationalists, most of them resident in the UK and US, inundated my email inbox, accusing me of showing India in a bad light.

It is now clear that a tiny but militantly disaffected minority of Indian Muslims has begun to heed the international pied pipers of jihad. Furthermore, there is no effective defence against their malevolence. Conventional counter-terrorism strategies - increased police presence or greater surveillance - don’t work in India’s large, densely populated cities. Nor do draconian laws such as the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act, which allowed police to hold suspects without charge for six months and was repealed in 2004.

Gung-ho members of the middle class clamour for Israeli-style retaliation against jihadi training camps in Pakistan. But India can “do a Lebanon” only by risking nuclear war with its neighbour; and Indian intelligence agencies are too inept to imitate Mossad’s policy of targeted killings, which have reaped for Israel an endless supply of dedicated and resourceful enemies.

As we now know, the promoters of pre-emptive strikes and rendition have proved to be the most effective recruiting agents for jihad. In that sense the Indian government’s inability to raise the ante, to pursue an endless war on terror or to order 150 million of its poorest citizens to reform their religion is a good thing. For it helps to maintain a necessary focus on terrorism as another symptom of a wider crisis that will be alleviated not so much by better policing, intelligence gathering or consultation with mullahs as by confronting socioeconomic frustrations and political grievances.

The absence of “tough” retaliation also leaves the jihadi terrorists incapable of dealing more than a few glancing blows to the Indian state. Certainly, a hysterical response of the kind that followed the 7/7 attacks in London - a crackdown on civil liberties and demonisation of Islam - would in India only have accelerated the radicalisation of the Muslim minority.

It is true that nihilist terrorism has no greater adversary than people who refuse to be terrorised or provoked. There have been remarkably few instances of retaliation against Muslims in the wake of terror attacks. In Mumbai, where nearly 200 people were killed by bomb explosions on commuter trains in 2006, normal life resumed even more quickly than in London in July 2005.

But the resilience of India’s poor, who have no option but to get on with their lives, should not be taken for granted, or used to peddle India as a stable, business-friendly country. For their stoicism in the face of terror also expresses the bitter wisdom of the weak: that violence is far from being an aberration in the inequitable world our political and business elites have made.”

Pankaj Mishra (kannauj@gmail.com) is the author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond


Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence? « Gurumurthy Kalyanaram: A Reported Blog

 

[ejaz007]

Its quite simple.

Considering how E Pak was bungled by islamabad, these hypothetical parts of Pak would have also separated as BD did.

I believe you are not aware of history.

Hyderabad declared independence and remained independent till September 1948. It was invaded by India in 1948. Junagarh declared that it shall join Pakistan and was annexed by India using force.

Ferdospur and Gordaspur were muslim majority districts yet to provide India land access to Kashmir these were handed over to India coutesy Red Cliff award.

One of the very reason that East Pakistan separated was that it was not physically located with West Pakistan and access was through long journey. Had it been physically attached with West Pakistan I highly doubt Indian attack would have succeeded or the separatist movement. Another reason was that insufficient number of troops were posted there and it was not possible to maintain large enough stocks to support armed conflict. Otherwise situation might have been different.

 

[cactuslily58]

Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence?

Read Pankaj Mishra’s opinion in The Guardian on this matter —

“In the past five years bomb attacks claimed by Islamist groups have killed hundreds across the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. An Indian Muslim was even involved in the failed assault on Glasgow airport in July last year. Yet George Bush reportedly introduced Manmohan Singh to his wife, Laura, as “the prime minister of India, a democracy which does not have a single al-Qaida member in a population of 150 million Muslims”.

To be fair to Bush, he was only repeating a cliche deployed by Indian politicians and American pundits such as Thomas Friedman to promote India as a squeaky-clean ally of the United States. However, Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek International, ought to know better. In his new book, The Post-American World, he describes India as a “powerful package” and claims it has been “peaceful, stable, and prosperous” since 1997 - a decade in which India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war, tens of thousands of Indian farmers took their own lives, Maoist insurgencies erupted across large parts of the country, and Hindu nationalists in Gujarat murdered more than 2,000 Muslims.

Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America’s elite, has declared a “roaring capitalist success story”. Add Bollywood’s singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the “most dangerous place on earth” according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.)

To put it in plain language - which the NCTC is unlikely to use - India is host to some of the fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeastern states.

Manmohan Singh himself has called the Maoist insurgency centred on the state of Chhattisgarh the biggest internal security threat to India since independence. The Maoists, however, are confined to rural areas; their bold tactics haven’t rattled Indian middle-class confidence in recent years as much as the bomb attacks in major cities have.

Politicians and the media routinely blame Pakistan for terrorist violence in India. It is likely that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, was involved in the bombings two weeks ago in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, which killed 46 people. But their scale and audacity also hints that the perpetrators have support networks within India.

The Indian elite’s obsession with the “foreign hand” obscures the fact that the roots of some of the violence lie in the previous two decades of traumatic political and economic change, particularly the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the related growth of ruthlessness towards those left behind by India’s expanding economy.

In 2006 a commission appointed by the government revealed that Muslims in India are worse educated and less likely to find employment than low-caste Hindus. Muslim isolation and despair is compounded by what B Raman, a hawkish security analyst, was moved after the most recent attacks to describe as the “inherent unfairness of the Indian criminal justice system”.

To take one example, the names of the politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 are widely known. Some of them were caught on video, in a sting carried out last year by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as Amnesty International pointed out in a recent report, justice continues to evade most victims and survivors of the violence. Tens of thousands still languish in refugee camps, too afraid to return to their homes.

In an article I wrote for the New York Times in 2003 I underlined the likely perils if the depressed and alienated minority of Muslims were to abandon their much-tested faith in the Indian political and legal system. Predictably Hindu nationalists, most of them resident in the UK and US, inundated my email inbox, accusing me of showing India in a bad light.

It is now clear that a tiny but militantly disaffected minority of Indian Muslims has begun to heed the international pied pipers of jihad. Furthermore, there is no effective defence against their malevolence. Conventional counter-terrorism strategies - increased police presence or greater surveillance - don’t work in India’s large, densely populated cities. Nor do draconian laws such as the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act, which allowed police to hold suspects without charge for six months and was repealed in 2004.

Gung-ho members of the middle class clamour for Israeli-style retaliation against jihadi training camps in Pakistan. But India can “do a Lebanon” only by risking nuclear war with its neighbour; and Indian intelligence agencies are too inept to imitate Mossad’s policy of targeted killings, which have reaped for Israel an endless supply of dedicated and resourceful enemies.

As we now know, the promoters of pre-emptive strikes and rendition have proved to be the most effective recruiting agents for jihad. In that sense the Indian government’s inability to raise the ante, to pursue an endless war on terror or to order 150 million of its poorest citizens to reform their religion is a good thing. For it helps to maintain a necessary focus on terrorism as another symptom of a wider crisis that will be alleviated not so much by better policing, intelligence gathering or consultation with mullahs as by confronting socioeconomic frustrations and political grievances.

The absence of “tough” retaliation also leaves the jihadi terrorists incapable of dealing more than a few glancing blows to the Indian state. Certainly, a hysterical response of the kind that followed the 7/7 attacks in London - a crackdown on civil liberties and demonisation of Islam - would in India only have accelerated the radicalisation of the Muslim minority.

It is true that nihilist terrorism has no greater adversary than people who refuse to be terrorised or provoked. There have been remarkably few instances of retaliation against Muslims in the wake of terror attacks. In Mumbai, where nearly 200 people were killed by bomb explosions on commuter trains in 2006, normal life resumed even more quickly than in London in July 2005.

But the resilience of India’s poor, who have no option but to get on with their lives, should not be taken for granted, or used to peddle India as a stable, business-friendly country. For their stoicism in the face of terror also expresses the bitter wisdom of the weak: that violence is far from being an aberration in the inequitable world our political and business elites have made.”

Pankaj Mishra (kannauj@gmail.com) is the author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond


Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence? « Gurumurthy Kalyanaram: A Reported Blog

Views, views...and more views. To each his own.

The bottom line is that when it comes to an " apple to apple" comparison, with its population , land mass and diversity coupled with the kind of problems such assets carry... the fundamentals in India are surprisingly strong & in place when compared with less diverse nations in the region.

That is all that matters.

 

[cactuslily58]

I believe you are not aware of history.

Hyderabad declared independence and remained independent till September 1948. It was invaded by India in 1948. Junagarh declared that it shall join Pakistan and was annexed by India using force.

Ferdospur and Gordaspur were muslim majority districts yet to provide India land access to Kashmir these were handed over to India coutesy Red Cliff award.

One of the very reason that East Pakistan separated was that it was not physically located with West Pakistan and access was through long journey. Had it been physically attached with West Pakistan I highly doubt Indian attack would have succeeded or the separatist movement. Another reason was that insufficient number of troops were posted there and it was not possible to maintain large enough stocks to support armed conflict. Otherwise situation might have been different.

I partially agree with you.

Independence was not an option given to the princely states in ' 47.

Since I am not aware of Ferozepur & Gurdaspur , I cannot comment.

But then,the NWFP is connected with Pak , how much sway does Islamabad have there ? Development & education are vital to keep a nation together.

 

[nitesh]

I believe you are not aware of history.

Hyderabad declared independence and remained independent till September 1948. It was invaded by India in 1948. Junagarh declared that it shall join Pakistan and was annexed by India using force.

Ferdospur and Gordaspur were muslim majority districts yet to provide India land access to Kashmir these were handed over to India coutesy Red Cliff award.

One of the very reason that East Pakistan separated was that it was not physically located with West Pakistan and access was through long journey. Had it been physically attached with West Pakistan I highly doubt Indian attack would have succeeded or the separatist movement. Another reason was that insufficient number of troops were posted there and it was not possible to maintain large enough stocks to support armed conflict. Otherwise situation might have been different.

ezaz, there were 543 different territories were merged in India, hyderabad people have supported Indian Police force (not army), goa joined in 1960 why you are leaving all this and running behind kashmir. The east pakistan got separated because there were not happy with the country "pakistan". There were ~90000 troops who surrendered.

 

[Xeric]

The idea of creating two Muslim states would not have gain much acceptance at the time of independence. The reason being that the base of our demand for a separate homeland was our religion. It was never two create more Muslim states.

India never gave us our share at the time of independence what to talk about it giving the same to another "separate" independent country.

I personally feel that after getting independence as one country if our politicians had peeped into the future and guessed that india is going to finger around (as it did), it would have been better to separate BD, but it should had merely meant a separtion on papers. As the case between Pakistan and Azad Kashmir.

Declaring BD as a indep country with its own consititution, military, governance etc etc...but having a strong cultural, religious and military tie and bond with Pakistan.


(Just imagine the indian turmoil then)

 

[cactuslily58]

The idea of creating two Muslim states would not have gain much acceptance at the time of independence. The reason being that the base of our demand for a separate homeland was our religion. It was never two create more Muslim states.

India never gave us our share at the time of independence what to talk about it giving the same to another "separate" independent country.

I personally feel that after getting independence as one country if our politicians had peeped into the future and guessed that india is going to finger around (as it did), it would have been better to separate BD, but it should had merely meant a separtion on papers. As the case between Pakistan and Azad Kashmir.

Declaring BD as a indep country with its own consititution, military, governance etc etc...but having a strong cultural, religious and military tie and bond with Pakistan.


(Just imagine the indian turmoil then)

I think you have answered most of your questions.

Politicians hardly ever learn from the past..as far as the future is concerned, they are only interested in their own future.

There would have been no "Indian turmoil" then too.

 

[Vinod2070]

(Just imagine the indian turmoil then)

It's you who are imagining things!

We won't give a damn.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Since I am not aware of Ferozepur & Gurdaspur , I cannot comment.

You can also check out Owen Bennet Jones book Pakistan: Eye of The Storm, for an analysis of the situation surrounding those areas.

He arrives at the same conclusions/makes similar arguments - that Mountbatten influenced Radcliffe to incorrectly award those territories to India.

You can read excerpts of the relevant sections here, starting from "Two of Sir Cyril's decisions have given rise to prolonged angry debate":

Pakistan; Eye of the Storm: Eye of ... - Google Book Search

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

"Ferozepur was of strategic importance not only because it was home to an irrigation head-works but also because it had the only arsenal which Pakistan could hope to have on its territory. There is now littler doubt that Radcliffe intended to award Ferozepur to Pakistan and that Mountbatten persuaded him to change his mind. The most damning piece of evidence is a map that Radcliffe sent to the last governor of Punjab, Sir Evan Jenkins, on 8 August 1947. Jenkins received advance notice of all Radclife's awards so that he could get security personnel in place ahead of partition. The map showed that Ferozepur had been allocated to Pakistan. By the evening of 2 August, however, Jenkins had been instructed to change the map and to note that Ferozepur was now to be part of India. The matter came to light in 1948 when Pakistan managed to get hold of a copy of the original map that had been left in Sir Jenkins's safe......

...Of far greater significance was another Muslim majority district, Gurdaspur, which provided the only practicable land link between India and Kashmir. If it were to be awarded to Pakistan, it would be difficult to see how the Maharajah could realistically opt for India. Mountbatten was certainly aware of Gurdaspur's strategic importance. IN June he publicly raised the possibility that, despite its Muslim majority, Gurdaspur could be awarded to India and in early August he stated that if that happened, then the maharaja's options regarding the future status of Kashmir would be kept open...."

 

[Flintlock]

Wikipedia:

But neither Justice Munir nor any Pakistani leader objected to the inclusion of Chittagong hill tracts in the Bengal partition to Pakistan despite being 97% non-Muslim, as it benfitted Pakistan. Moutbatten instead told Nehru that accommodations will have to be made with the city of Lahore, CHT and Tharparkar district of Sindh that had a non-Muslim majority going to Pakistan if Gurdaspur was to be partitioned and Ferozepur and Zira were to be awarded to India.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

The comment on CHT is absurd. The CHT has always been an integral part of East Pakistan/Bangladesh it has only been Indian propaganda that suggests otherwise. CHT was only made an issue so that India could retain Calcutta and the allocation of CHT to East Pakistan was made to appear as a compromise deal. In effect it was merely Nehru and the Congress browbeating Radcliffe and Mountbatten to give a lions share to India. The just distribution would have been along the lines of the Curzon partition of 1905. That partition of Bengal was widely accepted by the Muslim Bengalis but the Brahmin Hindus whose power became diminished by Curzons decision protested and overturned the partition in 1911.

 

[Flintlock]

The comment on CHT is absurd. The CHT has always been an integral part of East Pakistan/Bangladesh it has only been Indian propaganda that suggests otherwise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah....care to explain why?