What's new

Myths of Pakistani History-Dawn

What you say is idealistic. It is almost colonialist, because the British could argue that since they "unified" so much of the world, the world should have continued to exist that way - after all more than language, culture, religion etc., we are similar as a species. But just as the idea of a vast monolithic British state composed of its colonies is inconceivable, so is the idea of a "United India", just because certain Monarchs/autocrats foreign powers managed to conquer a large percentage of it. Your argument applies just as well to the continuation of a colonial empire.

You cannot just pick an arbitrary standard, "common history/ culture", and in fact that very notion is being debated on other threads, and say, "well those areas should be united". How far back do we go in history? What is considered "common" culture? Some would argue that religion is what should determine, some would argue race.

What is true is that people should have the right to determine what they feel is in their best interest, and out of the colony of the British, a set of people decided what their destiny was, and that it was distinct and seperate.
Indians in the North are a whole different breed than the Indians to the South if you discount the religion (and even that is different, since there is no one hinduism).

India today is a unified bunch of nations who gave up after the central government enforced this unity.

Junagarh, Hyderabad are just the pro-Muslim examples. Sikhs too were given false promises and they never materialized and that caused (and still causes) grievances between them. Indian center won over them and now most of them seem to have given up and accepted India.

The unifying force is there today nodoubt but its just that they all gave up and resigned to the Indian idea after the Greater India (Akhand Bharat) ideology squashed the other ones.

And to be fair, many times they didn't even require force. Some states were just undecided and India did/does have good things to offer.

But Pakistanis have decided. AND defeated the Akhand Bharat(AB) ideology. And not just us, Bangladeshis are up there with us as well. AB was able to take on Two nation theory through force and Bangladesh happened but Bangladeshis too won't accept Indian dominance over them today.

We are just a different breed than the rest of the Indians. That itself tells you a lot about us being separable entities.
 
Pakistan is an idealogical state, it never existed in history before 1947, now for an idealogical state and specialy one that is based on religious idealogy(means making a nation on name of religon) it's important to teach your childerns history according to the view of idealogy. Israel is another example, now do israeli schools teach history of their land without keeping in view their idealogy or their history starts from abraham to moses to david&solomon(pbut) and then tell the childerns about the destruction of juresllum and then skips to the german attrocities and creation of israel.

now if pakistanis start seeing the things according to the geographical viewpoint, meaning the history of say indus valley and tell the history of hindu raja's then me as a rajput must see the defeat of raja dahir by the hand of bin qasim as my defeat by the hands of arabs, or war between jai paal and ghaznavi as a war between rajputs and turks.

if pakistani's start seeing pakistan as just a geographical entity then its possible that our study is taught starting from mohenjo daro or taxila, then it will be confusing for the young minds.

as for the myth about ghaznavi the idol breaker, yes the motive behind his campaigns was riches of india but intentionaly or unintentionaly he did helped the cause of spreading islam. yes sufis were in forefront to spread islam, but we know what happened to the BUDHIST saints in india after ashoka , all that stuff about AGNIWANSH would have repeated itself if there would have been no muscle of ghaznavi or ghauri to protect them.

I do not think that teaching our youth about the IVC civilizations etc. will be confusing for them. In fact it provides an opportunity for them to realize that the world is not black and white, our history is not black and white, it is not as simple as Islam vs the Hindus/Sikhs.

It will teach our children to respect all beliefs, becasue our ancestors were non-Muslims. We should treat those who are not Muslims the same way wwe would have wanted our ancestors to be treated. I see no harm in that.
 
now if pakistanis start seeing the things according to the geographical viewpoint, meaning the history of say indus valley and tell the history of hindu raja's then me as a rajput must see the defeat of raja dahir by the hand of bin qasim as my defeat by the hands of arabs, or war between jai paal and ghaznavi as a war between rajputs and turks.

Eh? Rajput is your ethnic group, just as Rajput was the ethnic group of those rulers. It has nothing to do with geography. You can see it as a defeat or a victory, so what? Everyone loses and wins wars, battles. Why should this narrow down your historical knowledge? You can always teach things with a propagandist slant to them (obviously not faking up data though). Anyway, that sort of thinking is exactly how the current Hindus in Bharat want you to think so they can claim Pak history. Those people who ruled 10th century Pakistan probably weren't even Hindu anyway.

if pakistani's start seeing pakistan as just a geographical entity then its possible that our study is taught starting from mohenjo daro or taxila, then it will be confusing for the young minds.

Why will it be confusing? Look, why fudge history? You're just as bad as the Hindutva in India trying to fudge their history. It's called brainwashing. Teach history as it was. There's not going to be any confusion, unless roots are weak, in which case it won't matter.
 
[
QUOTE=Stealth Assassin;110162]Lol...your article is just propaganda lifted off storyofpakistan.com. Its tone and lack of objectivity tends to give it away, but still, I will try and correct some of the points.
here a artical from edit britannic about congress role in creation of pakistan..India
History > British imperial power, 1858–1947 > Prelude to independence, 1920–47 > Muslim separatism
The Muslim quarter of India's population became increasingly wary of the Congress' promises and restive in the wake of the collapse of the Khilafat movement, which occurred after Kemal Atatürk announced his modernist Turkish reforms in 1923 and disavowed the very title of caliph the following year. Hindu-Muslim riots in Malabar claimed hundreds of lives in 1924, and similar religious rioting spread to every major city in North India, wherever rumours of Muslim “cow slaughter,” the polluting appearance of a dead pig's carcass in a mosque, or other clashing doctrinal fears ignited the tinder of distrust ever lurking in the poorer sections of India's towns and villages. At each stage of reform, as the prospects of real devolution of political power by the British seemed more imminent, separate-electorate formulas and leaders of various parties stirred hopes, which proved almost as dangerous in triggering violence as did fears. The older, more conservative leadership of the pre-World War I Congress found Gandhian satyagraha too radical—moreover, far too revolutionary—to support, and liberals like Tej Bahadur Sapru (1875–1949) organized their own party (eventually to become the National Liberal Federation), while others, like Jinnah, dropped out of political life entirely. Jinnah, alienated by the Mahatma and his illiterate mass of devoutly Hindu disciples, instead devoted himself to his lucrative Bombay law practice, but his energy and ambition lured him back to the leadership of the Muslim League, which he revitalized in the 1930s. Jinnah, who was also instrumental in urging Viceroy Lord Irwin (governed 1926–31) and Prime Minister MacDonald to convene the Round Table Conference in London, was urged by many Muslim compatriots, including Liaquat Ali Khan (1895–1951), to become the permanent president of the Muslim League.

By 1930 a number of Indian Muslims had begun to think in terms of separate statehood for their minority community, whose population dominated the northwestern provinces of British India and the eastern half of Bengal, as well as important pockets of the United Provinces and the great princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad. One of Punjab's greatest Urdu poets, Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), while presiding over the Muslim League's annual meeting in Allahabad in 1930, proposed that “the final destiny” of India's Muslims should be to consolidate a “North-West Indian Muslim state.” Although he did not name it Pakistan, his proposal included what became the major provinces of modern Pakistan—Punjab, Sindh, the North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan. Jinnah, the Aga Khan, and other important Muslim leaders were at the time in London attending the Round Table Conference, which still envisaged a single federation of all Indian provinces and princely states as the best possible constitutional solution for India in the aftermath of a future British withdrawal. Separate electorate seats, as well as special guarantees of Muslim “autonomy” or “veto powers” in dealing with sensitive religious issues, were hoped to be sufficient to avert civil war or any need for actual partition. As long as the British raj remained in control, such formulas and schemes appeared to suffice, for the British army could always be hurled into the communal fray at the brink of extreme danger, and the army had as yet remained apolitical and—since its post-mutiny reorganization—untainted by communal religious passions.

In 1933 a group of Cambridge Muslim students, led by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, proposed that the only acceptable solution to Muslim India's internal conflicts and problems would be the birth of a Muslim “fatherland,” to be called Pakistan (Persian: “Land of the Pure”), out of the Muslim-majority northwestern and northeastern provinces. The Muslim League and its president, Jinnah, did not join in the Pakistan demand until after the league's famous Lahore meeting in March 1940, as Jinnah, a secular constitutionalist by predilection and training, continued to hope for a reconciliation with the Congress. Such hopes virtually disappeared, however, when Nehru refused to permit the league to form coalition ministries with the Congress majority in the United Provinces and elsewhere after the 1937 elections. The Congress had initially entered the elections with the hope of wrecking the act of 1935, but after it had won so impressive a victory in most provinces and the league had done so poorly—mostly because it had inadequately organized itself for nationwide elections—Nehru agreed to participate in the government and insisted there were but “two parties” in India, the Congress and the British raj.

Jinnah soon proved to Nehru that the Muslims were, indeed, a formidable “third” party. The years from 1937 to 1939, when the Congress actually ran most of British India's provincial governments, became the seed period for the Muslim League's growth in popularity and power within the entire Muslim community, for many Muslims soon viewed the new “Hindu raj” as biased and tyrannical and the Hindu-led Congress ministries and their helpers as insensitive to Muslim demands or appeals for jobs, as well as to their redress of grievances. The Congress' partiality toward its own members, prejudice toward its majority community, and jobbery for its leadership's friends and relations all conspired to convince many Muslims that they had become second-class citizens in a land that, while perhaps on the verge of achieving “freedom” for some Indians, would be run by “infidels” and “enemies” to the Muslim minority. The league made the most of the Congress' errors of judgment in governance; by documenting as many reports as it could gather in papers published during 1939, it hoped to prove how wretched a Muslim's life would be under any “Hindu raj.” The Congress' high command insisted, of course, that it was a “secular and national” party, not a sectarian Hindu organization, but Jinnah and the Muslim League responded that they alone could speak for and defend the rights of India's Muslims. Thus, the lines of battle were drawn by the eve of World War II, which served only to intensify and accelerate the process of communal conflict and irreversible political division that would split British India.
edit.britannica.com

Where is your source for that? And what were the muslim leaders in Congress doing when the hindus were making remarks? Sleeping? What were Maulana Azad, Ghaffar Khan doing?
they are in congress just for thier personal interests, after few years from 1939 to 1946 their credibility in muslim comunity become zero


Basically, if you remove the Anti-India tone and other biases, a more appropriate version would be that the Congress was trying to spread the idea of a united India among the people, under the rule of the Congress.
muslim leaders already ask for a federal state of india with muslim atonmy but congress leadership reject it

First of all Vande Mataram is not anti-Muslim. It simply describes the beauty of the homeland and personifies India as a mother
. then why still know all minorities reject it

Is the concept of nationalism anti-muslim?
Most neutral historians consider the popular sentiment against the Wardha scheme to be as a result of loss of power of the muslims. Obviously, with the hindu majority in place, education was more secular and the quran was not given importance. There was no persecution of muslims or attempt to convert them.
look at conditions of muslims in india today, which clearly show that muslim league was right....
State of Indian secularism
By Shah Abdul Halim
Mon, 9 Apr 2007, 10:39:00

Email this article
Printer friendly page
Access News Photos

How are Indian Muslims in the land of Gandhi? What is their socio-economic and political condition? Let us discuss the life style and the environment in which the Indian Muslims are living. What is their position in the main body politic of the Indian society, not in any particular region but throughout India? Let us discuss their position in different important sectors compared to other religious communities. How far they have made progress in education, trade, business and industry compared to other religious communities in India? What is their representation in the services, in public and private sectors? How is the Muslim community represented in the parliament and in the leadership of different political parties? These are the important criterions for a minority community is not identified by its numbers but decided by its socio-economic conditions. How backward the community is? Does the community lagging behind other communities as far as empowerment is concerned? In this article I shall use the statistics provided by the report on the Minorities Commission headed by Dr. Gopal Singh that was appointed by Indian Prime Minister Indra Gandhi in 1980 and report on 'Socio-economic Status of India's 150 Million Muslims' prepared by seven member committee headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar that was appointed by the current Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh in March 2005. This report has been prepared by the committee after visiting 13 most Muslim populous states and tabled in the Indian Parliament on 30 November 2006. Press reports alleged that there are discrepancies between leaked copies of the report and the final version suggesting that some parts of the Sachar Committee findings have been deleted before making them public.

Muslims represent 13.4 percent of the Indian population. Their total number being 150 million, unofficial figure is however considered still more. Muslims are marginalized in all sectors in India. In the Lok Sabha which consists of 544 members, for instance, according to the population of Muslims they should have 83 members; but in every election their number has steadily declined. Today it stands at only 17. Likewise, in the Rajya Sabha which consists of 250 members, where because of indirect election, political parties could easily redress the imbalance; the Muslims' share is far below their population strength. Their number today is 11. The representation is going down everywhere, from Panchayat Samities to Zilla Parishads, from municipalities to corporations, from Zilla Parishads to Vidan Sabhas and to the Lok Sabha.

Muslims however are not bothered whether they had a Muslim President or Minister, what they wanted was the removal of economic disparities and social inequality.

The same is true with regard to employment whether in agriculture, trade or industry. In the police and armed forces, their number is negligible. In the Indian Foreign and Administrative service, the percentage of Muslims is abysmally low; this is so in other public services too. They have hardly any share in the management of public sector, which is largely managed by non-Muslims. In the private sector, their position is worse. All in all, the condition of Indian Muslims has considerably deteriorated after Partition of the sub-continent in 1947; they have literally touched rock-bottom. The recurrence of communal riots allows the Muslims no respite; the police give them hardly any protection. Also, being vastly outnumbered in most areas, their sense of insecurity is enhanced with every passing disturbance.

In 1980 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi set up a high powered panel to go into the condition of minorities headed by Dr. Gopal Singh. They collected data pertaining to the actual condition of the minorities, in particular their participation in schools, colleges and professional institutions on the one hand and their employment in public sector undertakings, private enterprises, state and union services, cooperative and banking and such allied sectors on the other. In over four years, after intensive investigation by the staff of the panel and on the basis of the facts and figures that they have collected, it was found that the plight of the minorities was worst, especially of Muslims. However the report was so startling that Indira Gandhi shelved it. The report however saw the day light when Prime Minister V. P. Singh presented it to the Parliament. Unfortunately no Indian government bothers about the uplift of minorities in concrete terms. The occurrence of communal riots paralyzed the Muslims not only politically but also economically. The minorities have become subdued and hurting them is no longer even politically productive.

The number of Muslims in government services is steadily declining; hardly one or two secretaries in the Centre or States, there is no chief secretary in any state, one high court judge or so in some states; no chief justice in any state. The number of district judges and magistrates don't exceed even two percent of the total; in the armed forces the position is still worse; in industry they have a marginal existence. In public sector undertakings, out of 481 directors, only 6 are Muslims- no chairman, no managing director. In IB and RAW Muslims are debarred.

According to Sachar report the presence of Muslims has been found to be only 3 percent in the IAS, 1.8 percent in the IFS and 4 percent in the IPS. These services constitute the core of civil service responsible for implementing all policy decisions, development programmes and national and state activities. They have done more to deprive the Muslims of their legitimate share. The share of Muslims in employment in various departments is abysmally low at all levels. Muslim community has a representation of only 4.5 percent in Indian Railways while 98.7 percent of them are positioned at lower levels. Representation of Muslims is very low in the universities and in banks. In no state does the representation of Muslims in the government departments match their population share. Their share in police constables is only 6 percent, in health 4.4 percent, in transport 6.5 percent.

According to the Sachar report the share of Muslims having government jobs is just 4.9 percent. Muslims constitute just 3.2 percent of those in India's elite civil service corps.

The situation is worse in states with large Muslim populations. For example, in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam, where Muslims form 25.2 percent, 18.5 percent and 30.9 percent of the population, respectively, their share of government jobs is 4.7 percent, 7.5 percent, and 10.9 percent, respectively.

In the private sector, including the top business and industrial houses of Tatas and Birlas, it was found that Muslim employment come to 8.16 percent. Muslims did not get even 50 percent of what their population entitles in the various schemes involving small farmers, marginal farmers, agricultural laborers, landless laborers, training schemes under Integrated Rural Development, rural artisans programmes such as forestry, horticulture, nurseries, pest control, veterinary services, tractor, pump services etc. Likewise, the picture of Muslim employment in National Rural Employment Programme was not encouraging.

In the small-scale sector, the Muslim ownership figures were almost 15 percent of the total. However they did not obtain much benefit from the government's package assistance and consultancy services, bank credits, allocation of raw materials, etc. They received only 8.14 percent of the benefits as compared to their population of about 13.4 percent. Only 4.4 percent of the industrial units were owned by Muslims, while 16.21 percent were owned by SCs. Their share in the allotment of industrial plots came to 6.69 percent.



Grant of Bank loans: There is evidence that India's banks, both public and private, also discriminate against Muslims. According to the Sachar report, the average bank loan disbursed to a Muslim is two thirds of the amount disbursed to other minorities. "Some banks use the practice of identifying negative geographical zones on the basis of certain criteria where bank credit and other facilities are not easily provided".

In terms of intending borrowers, the Muslims numbered 9.41 percent, but the actual disbursement of loans to them came to 3.73 percent. For SCs the intending borrowers were 20.7 percent and they received loans to the extent of 12.7 percent. The loans never extended one hundred thousand Rupees.

According to the Sachar report, Muslims in India have less access to education than other religious groups. As a result, the literacy rate among Muslims is only 59.1 percent while the national average is 64.8 percent. School enrollment among urban Muslims boys is only 80 percent, as compared with 90 percent of SC/ST boys. Only 68 percent of Muslim girls attend schools, while the figures for Dalit girls and girls categorized as non-Dalit are 72 percent and 80 percent respectively.

The gap between Muslims and the general average is greater in the urban areas and women. 25 percent of Muslim children in the 6-14 age group have either never attended school or have dropped out. Drop out rates among Muslims are higher at the level of primary, middle and higher secondary. The disparity in graduation attainment rates is widening since 1970s between Muslims and all other categories in both urban and rural areas. When it comes to higher education, the Muslim presence is even lower. The report says that in the elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), the Muslim students constitute only 1.3 percent and 1.7 percent respectively, of the student body. In premier colleges only one out of 25 under-graduate students and one out of 50 post-graduate students is a Muslim. Only 3 percent of Muslim children among the school going age go to Madrassas.

70 percent of the Muslims live in villages and barely able to make ends meet and they are forlorn and rudderless. 150 million Indian Muslims live in a miserable existence; they are looked down upon by the dominant majority who are happy to see them in miserable condition. Not a semblance of care and concern for Muslims. As years passed the condition of the Muslims further deteriorated and they became hewers of wood and drawers of water.

This article will not be complete and I shall not be doing justice to subject I am dwelling in unless I discuss the communal situation in India and the perception of Indian Muslims in resolving the problem. The helplessness of the Indian Muslims is reflected in the statement of celebrated novelist Arundhati Roy who cried out: "It must be terrible for Muslims to be in India". No one can deny that the odds against Indian Muslims are heavy; these have mounted, year after year. Justice Rajinder Sachar in his report on 'Socio-economic Status of India's 150 Million Muslims' tabled in the Indian Parliament on 30 November 2006 conceded that "India's Muslims are a socially deprived and victimized minority". Indian Muslims has steadily declined and they have been reduced to a level, which has been worse than that of Scheduled Castes. Educationally, they are most backward; economically, they are at the bottom of the ladder; socially they are outclassed. Indian leaders claim that under Indian secularism no citizen can be discriminated. Still followers of the minority religions do suffer discrimination in practice in all walks of life. Eminent Indian intellectual Khushwant Singh rightly debunked Indian secularism 'a big sham'. He warned the minorities 'not to live in a fool's paradise and believe in what was being told to them'. Here it will be sufficient to mention what is happening in occupied Kashmir even today and what happened in Gujrat only the other day.

The less is said about Indian held Kashmir the better. Kashmir is bleeding just because of India's refusal to hold promised plebiscite under U. N. supervision to determine the status of Kashmir. Everyday innocent young Muslim boys are kidnapped by the Indian security forces and their dead bodies are found the next day lying in a street or in a valley or in a terrain. Young Muslim girls are also violated by the security forces. Where are the human rights?

According official report released on 26 March 2007 from Srinager, 42,147 persons died and 33,885 seriously injured in Kashmir during 1990-2007 because of violence. Human-rights organizations in Kashmir claimed the report as untrue. They claimed that the number of deaths is minimum double of the official figure. According to Jammu-Kashmir based Coalition of Civil Society, in Kashmir more than 80,000 people, excluding Army and Police personnel, lost their life because of valance. Kashmir Hurriat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Jilani claimed that over 100,000 people lost their life in Kashmir freedom movement.

I am a Muslim, I cannot help my tears;

I have gone through fifty nine long years,

Suffering pangs of hunger, day after day

And unbearable humiliation all the way.

I faced riots, bullets, sword and dagger

They brunt my home, mother and sister;

When I complained, they put me in a cell.

There are no jobs, life is one big hell.

Under the benign sky of my beloved land,

I am reduced to starve with outstretched hand.

Weary and worn out, I search for solace,

I wander crestfallen from palace to palace,

I have no home, so no ration card

And thus no vote, no identity card;

With nothing to offer, I cannot marry

I have remained a bachelor, desolate and solitary;

If only my father had had the foresight

To remain a bachelor too, to save me this plight.

[English rendering of a poem]

As a result of February 2002 riot in the India's western state of Gujrat 5000 Muslims were killed (officially the Government of India acknowledged that 2000 Muslims were killed by the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujrat) of which 122 brunt alive including a Muslim former member of the Indian parliament, 100,000 became homeless (Muslims were forced to live in 56 makeshift camps including one camp established within the Muslim graveyard in south Ahmedabad), 350 mosques were demolished, property worth of U.S. $ 500 million destroyed and 250,000 Muslims became destitute in 40 cities and 2000 villages. Still central government of India did not sack State's Chief Minister Naarendra Modi, for failure to stop pre-planned violence to massacre Muslims and protect their life and property, which the central government could do exercising constitutional authority and take over state administration on law and order ground.

In fact there have been more riots in Free India than in the 150 years of British colonial rule. The governments, both at the Centre and States, irrespective of party affiliation, wake up only when disputes erupt, discontent mounts and riots occur but instead of solving the problem try to pacify it temporarily. To-date no officer was charge-sheeted for dereliction of duty, much less punished. They do little to win the confidence of the people by concrete measures, never candid to denounce communalism but play the gallery.

Not one of the recommendations of the commissions, set up after every riot, has been implemented by any government. All these measures have been merely palliatives to appease Muslims, rather than provide them any substantial protection, assistance or relief. What is more, every government has put the recommendations of every commission to the shelf. The situation is so bad that Justice V.R Krishna Iyer of the Indian Supreme Court lamented: "In all major communal riots, the members of the minority community have been invariable the worst suffers and they got no justice". Neither the government or the commission and the courts have provided the Muslims any relief. In fact the political leaders and bureaucrats lack the will and determination to shun communal tension and establish communal harmony. It must be clearly understood that neither pious declarations nor half-hearted measures, however well meaning, are going to clear the mess.

Indian Muslim problem is not law and order problem, they are basically an outcome of economic malaise which turns into a political problem because of religious factor. In this regard the recommendations to improve the communal environment submitted by All-party 45 Muslim MPs to the Indian Government and later released to the press is noteworthy which interalia states:

1. The defense and protection of the minorities against violence should be the responsibility of the Central Government and to be treated as a national issue, and not simply as a law and order problem in the same manner as atrocities against Harijans are, through a constitutional amendment, if necessary.

2. The police force and the intelligence machinery must be purged of communal elements and restructured to provide due and effective representation to all communities. Special anti-riot task forces should be constituted both at the Central and State levels for exclusive deployment in riot situations. Until such forces are raised, the CRPF and BSF should alone be deployed and not state armed constabularies.

3. The record of senior police and executive officers should be screened for communal bias and for performance during communal disturbances and anyone suspected of communal bias should not be posted to sensitive districts. In such districts, there should be a proper mix of officers to generate all-round confidence.

4. If communal disturbances do not stop within 24 hours of the first loss of life, the Chief Minister must personally rush to and camp in the area till normalcy is restored. The D.M. and the S.S.P. should be held responsible and immediately suspended and replaced by a pre-selected team officers, known and tested for their efficiency, integrity and non-communal outlook and for commanding the confidence of the weaker sections.

5. The victims of the violence should be appropriately compensated for loss of life and limb, in accordance with a uniformly prescribed scale. All property, movable or immovable, lost or damaged, should be replaced or reconstructed at State expense. Compensation so paid should be recovered by imposing a punitive fine from those involved in the riot in inverse proportion to the loss suffered.

6. The criminal cases arising out of the communal disturbances should be expeditiously investigated by Central Intelligence Agencies and tried by Special Courts.

7. All militant and extremist organizations preaching communal hatred such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad and R.S.S. should be banned.

8. During the riot all newspapers and periodicals should be screened and malicious and mischievous writing should be dealt in accordance with the law. Rumors of wrong information should be officially contradicted on a daily basis. Detailed information about casualties, including the names of those killed, hospitalized and arrested should be published in daily bulletins in order to catch misinformation and to appraise the nation of the truth.

9. Text books should be screened and materials that preach hatred between communities be dropped from the books.

Other noteworthy recommendations suggested by Indian Muslims include arming the state to put the offender under detention under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act by appropriate legislation and censoring all such news and comments which inflame communal passions, if necessary by amending Indian Constitution. The recommendations also include the demand for special budgetary provisions for the development of the Muslims, like the Schedule Caste, in the Five Year Plan and to keep at least one Muslim representative in all appointment boards. Until now the Indian Government did not make any sincere effort to implement the recommendation by its senior citizens and MPs.

To sum up, what is happening to the Muslims in India is all part of a broader tendency towards curbing civil liberties and scapegoat cultural minorities in an aggressive effort to impose dominant Hindu nationalism on one of the world's most culturally diverse societies. This is proved further by the fact that only in occupied Kashmir Urdu is the official state language. Urdu is discriminated in educational institutions although a sizable people of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh speak Urdu. More than fifty percent of the Indian Muslims have declared Urdu as their mother tongue according to census report and there is a tendency to systematically erode its influence from the society to de-link Muslims from their religious and cultural treasures. What is the way out of this impasse? Muslims of India must realize that they must make headway in education, science and technology. They must prove that there is no way for the dominant Hindu community to ignore them by making their services indispensable. This however they can do if they also make progress in the private sector as entrepreneurs, which I think is possible even without the help of Indian Government given their experience and expertise. There is also no meaning for Indian Muslims to wait for Government help and assistance. No doubt the future of Indian Muslims is bright provided they give emphasis to socio cultural and economic realities of Indian life and at the same time take a fresh look to the Indian national political scenario and work within pragmatic limits. *

(The writer is the Chairman of Islamic Information Bureau Bangladesh. The author is greatly indebted to Rafiq Zakaria for using his scholarly book Indian Muslims: Where Have They Gone Wrong?, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai, September 2004.)
 
^^^

Just one quick point. There is no need to look at Jinnah as a "villain". British India was just a colony, brought about by the conquest of various territories and lumped into mostly one administrative unit (as we have discussed on the name thread), so there is no question of "division of India" - There is no question of "division of a Hindu land". Various civilizations, kingdoms and empires existed simultaneously throughout history in this region - the creation of Pakistan and India was simply a reorganization and unification of parts of the subcontinent into two nations - not a division.

What seems to drive most of the animosity of some Indians towards Jinnah is this notion of "division" - but when you look at history that is simply not the case. But it seems to have been propagated as such within India, and indeed is hard to let go since even the rhetoric from India over Kashmir is based on "historically part of India" - when there never was such a thing as a "nation called India", only a region, the Indian subcontinent.

AM, if it was just a reorganization, what is wrong in other reorgnizations in future? Why did Yahya and many west Pakistanis consider Mujib and Bengalis traitors? If the reorganization was OK in 1947, why not in 1971?

The reorganization idea of Ralph Peters (The new map of middle east) could also be taken as another reorganization as per this thought process, but I am sure no countries who would lose land in the process would agree to it and that includes Pakistan. You do consider people raising separatist voices in Baluchistan and Pakhtoonistan as traitors, don't you? What is really different about them compared to events in 1947?

The point is that Indians do feel that their land was violated by Islamic invaders for a long time and that culminated in the partition. And now pl. do not claim that India was not a united country then! It does not matter at all and it does appear self serving to prove some point.

It is said that the seeds of patition were sowed when the first Islamic invader set foot in India and perhaps it is true. It is surprising for Indians when they see Pakistanis praising their own invaders who possibly looted and murdered their forefathers and people who are universally recognized as being cruel and looters. It seems that they do not consider themselves as sons of the soil but part of the invaders. And in that case, some people can definitely conclude that they deserve no part of our land and should go back to where they came from.

You must be knowing that some Muslims considered doing Hizrat to Afghnaistan during the Khilafat and they were pushed back violently. I read somewhere that Turkey did not allow some Indian Muslims to land there and imposed some restrictions on them while at the same time Hindus in Kerala were being butchered, their temples destroyed and cow meat was stuffed in their mouth as a show of support to Turkey Khalifa (The Moplah masaacre)!

It is not just a simple matter of some people choosing to go their own way (I wish it was as simple as that). Otherwise it won't have been accompanied by so much bloodshed and the abiding hatred thats still persists on both sides.

People with your kind of thinking are few and far in between. Most of them consider it to be a continuation of the old hatreds. So you have organizations like LET who still declare their aim as the balkanization of India and its dissolution in pakistan. Is that only a simple matter of choice?
 
Point 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Pakistan is a country of Muslims and that’s why our ideology is different we cannot separate Religion, politics and everyday life since I have said this before that it is a matter of belief. I am not against any religion but our belief is that before the advent of Islam we were on the wrong side so that’s why we say that our history starts from Muhammad Bin Qasim.secondly I think many people feel negative and say that Muslims in their starting period tried to capture the areas, the case was again our belief that we believe that Islam is the right religion(with due respect to all other religions) and we think that the message of Islam(the right path) should be distributed to every one for their wellbeing. It is a fact that Raja Dahir refused to hand over the pirates and that was the cause of war (same as when Taliban refused to hand over Usama and US attacked them).Thirdly we don’t appreciate Ghaznavi for whatever his intentions may be but we admire him b/c it is also a fact that he broke the idols b/c Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) did the same at the conquest of Makkah. Fourthly yes Aurangzeb didn’t pay attention to defense that’s why the Mughal empire’s decline started in his era. I think Hindus have the same mentality they like Akbar b/c he was the person who almost changed his religion. Fifthly again Hindus have the same mentality they only highlight “Mangal Panday” or “Bhagat singh” as the freedom fighter why they don’t admire “General Bakht Khan”

Point 7:
Muslim League became the only representative party of Muslims b/c before that they didn’t have a leader like Quaid-e-azam also they didn’t have choice before Muslim League
 
If Sindh was attacked because of the pirates why was Iran attacked? Egypt, Iraq, Spain, Eastern Europe, the rest of India, France, I can go on.

Why were the libraries burned in Persia and Gandhara and I don't know where else destroying thousands of years of accumulated knowledge? Why were millions murdered by Timur Lame (building pyramids of skulls) in the name of Islam?

It can all be justified!

If all that was OK, and it can be justified by the supposedly pious intentions of the invaders, the same is being professed by the US to justify their attacks. Only in their case they talk about democracy and human rights.

You can't justify one set of attacks and not the others without being a hypocrite.
 
AM, if it was just a reorganization, what is wrong in other reorgnizations in future? Why did Yahya and many west Pakistanis consider Mujib and Bengalis traitors? If the reorganization was OK in 1947, why not in 1971?

I don't have any issues with the separation of East Pakistan, in hidsight, given the problems we have now, the situation would only have exacerbated.

The reorganization idea of Ralph Peters (The new map of middle east) could also be taken as another reorganization as per this thought process, but I am sure no countries who would lose land in the process would agree to it and that includes Pakistan. You do consider people raising separatist voices in Baluchistan and Pakhtoonistan as traitors, don't you? What is really different about them compared to events in 1947?

There is a nation called Pakistan now, which is why I disagree with Ralph Peters -there was never a nation called India before 1947. However extreme circumstances, such as the inter ethnic hatred and massacres seen between the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians, might result in necessitating a separation. The situation in Baluchistan is nowhere close to that, and I am not sure why Indians keep bringing up Pakhtoonistan, when there is hardly any evidence of a seperatist movement there.

Gotta go - I'll respond to the rest later.
 
Indians in the North are a whole different breed than the Indians to the South if you discount the religion (and even that is different, since there is no one hinduism).

Punjabis are different from the Sindhis - discount the religion,of course. In fact every province of Pak is populated by a different ethnic group. Baluchis, Sindhis, Punjabis, Pashtuns etc.

Sikhs too were given false promises

Like what?

The unifying force is there today nodoubt but its just that they all gave up and resigned to the Indian idea after the Greater India (Akhand Bharat) ideology squashed the other ones.

Greater India was an idea proposed by RSS which was diametrically opposite to those who built modern India. :lol:

The unifying force is there today nodoubt but its just that they all gave up and resigned to the Indian idea after the Greater India (Akhand Bharat) ideology squashed the other ones.

And to be fair, many times they didn't even require force. Some states were just undecided and India did/does have good things to offer.

Out of the 600 princely states that form India today all except three willingly signed up. We knocked down those three as well. One is half complete though.

In my opinion, the idea of Great India is more of a cultural one than a political ideology. Right from Kandahar to the far flung areas of Indonesia societies are dominated by our ways of life, epics - lets just call is culture.

The whole of Indo-China barring Islamic countries continues to be dominated by what was taken from mainland India. Mahayana Buddhism is thriving in Japan. Have you ever wondered as to how our epics reached as far as Laos, Cambodia and Thailand ?

The idea of a Akhand Bharath - a civilizational entity that did have a little bit of its origins in present day Pakistan is very much alive and kicking.

The two nation theory on the other hand evolved into a three nation theory - its exclusive, discriminative on the basis of religion and does not offer anything beyond religion. It can claim all the Indus valley civilization but with one religion becoming the predominant feature of the society there is little scope left for culture to evolve and other religions to flourish.One religion continues to suffocate civilization.

The torch bearer of the Indus valley civilization is India. We continue to cherish the values, the belief systems and ways of life of those who lived in ancient Harappa and other Sindhu-Saraswathi sites.

It is we who offer continuity - the other side offers submission to Arabian values through Islam. It is we who offer wealth, power and might - the other side continues to achieve simple political stability at the federal level.

It is the Republic of India that continues to remain the guiding beacon of democracy and freedom in the Asian continent - relatively speaking. The other side still debates the extent of freedom with which the last elections were held.

It is India that offers much more scope for growth and a dominant yet accommodating role in global affairs. The other side continues to recieve aid to fight terrorists in its own land.

Tell you chaps, the 597 Princely states were not wrong. The two who we had to latti charge into submission are doing exceedingly great as well.

The last one much of which is out of our hands continues to remain a spectacle of terror and religious bigotry thanks to the jihad.

Bharat is doing very fine. Please feel free to ask if you need help.:smokin:
 
The myth of history



By Prof Shahida Kazi


History is a discipline that has never been taken seriously by anyone in Pakistan. As a result, the subject has been distorted in such a way that many a fabricated tale has become part of our collective consciousness

DOES mythology have anything to do with history? Is mythology synonymous with history? Or is history mythology?

Admittedly, the line between the two is a very fine one. From time immemorial, man has always been in search of his roots. He has also been trying to find a real and tangible basis for the legends of ancient days � legends that have become a part of our collective consciousness. As a result, we witness the quest for proving the existence of King Arthur, the search for whereabouts of the city of Troy, and many expeditions organized to locate the exact site of the landing of Noah�s Ark.

During the �60s and the �70s, there was a worldwide movement to prove that the �gods� of ancient mythologies did actually exist; they came from distant galaxies; and that mankind owed all its progress to such alien superheroes. Several books were written on the subject.

We, in Pakistan, are a breed apart. Lacking a proper mythology like most other races, we have created our own, populated by a whole pantheon of superheroes who have a wide range of heroic exploits to their credit.

But the difference is that these superheroes, instead of being a part of a remote and prehistoric period, belong very much to our own times.
A seemingly veritable mythology has been created around these heroes, their persona and their achievements, which is drummed into the heads of our children from the time they start going to school. So deep is this indoctrination that any attempt to uncover the facts or reveal the truth is considered nothing less than blasphemous.


Here are some of the most common myths:

Myth 1
Our history begins from 712AD, when Mohammad bin Qasim arrived in the subcontinent and conquered the port of Debal.


Take any social studies or Pakistan studies book, it starts with Mohammad bin Qasim. What was there before his arrival? Yes, cruel and despotic Hindu kings like Raja Dahir and the oppressed and uncivilized populace anxiously waiting for a �liberator� to free them from the clutches of such cruel kings. And when the liberator came, he was welcomed with open arms and the grateful people converted to Islam en mass.

Did it really happen? This version of our history conveniently forgets that the area where our country is situated has had a long and glorious history of 6,000 years. Forget Moenjo Daro. We do not know enough about it. But recorded history tells us that before Mohammad Bin Qasim, this area, roughly encompassing Sindh, Punjab and some parts of the NWFP, was ruled by no less than 12 different dynasties from different parts of the world, including the Persians (during the Achamaenian period), the Greeks comprising the Bactrians, Scthians and Parthians, the Kushanas from China, and the Huns (of Attila fame) who also came from China, besides a number of Hindu dynasties including great rulers like Chandragupta Maurya and Asoka.

During the Gandhara period, this region had the distinction of being home to one of the biggest and most important universities of the world at our very own Taxila. We used to be highly civilized, well-educated, prosperous, creative and economically productive people, and many countries benefited a lot from us, intellectually as well as economically. This is something we better not forget. But do we tell this to our children? No. And so the myth continues from generation to generation.

Myth 2
Mohammad Bin Qasim came to India to help oppressed widows and orphan girls.


Because of our blissful ignorance of history, we don�t know, or don�t bother to know, that this period was the age of expansion of the Islamic empire. The Arabs had conquered a large portion of the world, comprising the entire Middle East, Persia, North Africa and Spain. Therefore, it defies logic that they would not seek to conquer India, the land of legendary treasures.

In fact, the Arabs had sent their first expedition to India during Hazrat Umar Farooq�s tenure. A subsequent expedition had come to Makran during Hazrat Usman�s rule. But they had been unsuccessful in making any in-roads into the region. Later on, following the refusal of the king to give compensation for the ships captured by pirates (which incidentally included eight ships full of treasures from Sri Lanka, and not just women and girls), two expeditions had already been sent to India, but they proved unsuccessful. It was the third expedition brought by Mohammad Bin Qasim which succeeded in capturing Sindh, from Mansura to Multan. However, because of the Arabs� internal dissension and political infighting, Sindh remained a neglected outpost of the Arab empire, and soon reverted to local kings.


Myth 3
The myth of the idol-breaker.


Mahmood Ghaznavi, the great son of Islam and idol-breaker par excellence, took upon himself to destroy idols all over India and spread Islam in the subcontinent.

Mahmud, who came from neighbouring Ghazni, Central Asia, invaded India no less than 17 times. But except Punjab, he made no attempt to conquer any other part of the country or to try and consolidate his rule over the rest of India. In fact, the only thing that attracted him was the treasures of India, gold and precious stones, of which he took care and carried back home a considerable amount every time he raided the country. Temples in India were a repository of large amounts of treasure at the time, as were the churches in Europe, hence his special interest in temples and idols.

Contrary to popular belief, it was not the kings, the Central Asian sultans who ruled for over 300 years and the Mughals who ruled for another 300 years, who brought Islam to the subcontinent. That work was accomplished by the Sufi Sheikhs who came to India mainly to escape persecution from the fundamentalists back home, and who, through their high-mindedness, love for humanity, compassion, tolerance and simple living won the hearts of the people of all religions.


Myth 4
The myth of the cap-stitcher.


Of all the kings who have ruled the subcontinent, the one singled out for greatest praise in our text books is Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughals. Baber built the empire; Humayun lost it and got it back; Akbar expanded and consolidated it; Jahangir was known for his sense of justice; Shahjehan for his magnificent buildings. But it is Aurangzeb, known as a pious man, who grabs the most attention. The prevalent myth is that he did not spend money from the treasury for his personal needs, but fulfilled them by stitching caps and copying out the Holy Quran. Is there any real need for discussing this assertion? Anyone who�s least bit familiar with the Mughal lifestyle would know how expensive it was to maintain their dozens of palaces. The Mughals used to have many wives, children, courtiers, concubines and slaves who would be present in each palace, whose needs had to be met. Could such expenses be met by stitching caps? And even if the king was stitching caps, would people buy them and use them as ordinary caps? Would they not pay exorbitant prices for them and keep them as heirlooms? Would a king, whose focus had to be on military threats surrounding him from all sides and on the need to save and consolidate a huge empire, have the time and leisure to sit and stitch caps? Let�s not forget that the person we are referring to as a pious Muslim was the same who became king after he imprisoned his won father in a cell in his palace and killed all his brothers to prevent them from taking over the throne.


Myth 5
It was the Muslims who were responsible for the war of 1857; and it was the Muslims who bore the brunt of persecution in the aftermath of the war, while the Hindus were natural collaborators of the British.


It is true that more Muslim regiments than Hindu rose up against the British in 1857. But the Hindus also played a major role in the battle (the courageous Rani of Jhansi is a prime example); and if Muslim soldiers were inflamed by the rumour that the cartridges were laced with pig fat, in the case of Hindus, the rumour was that it was cow fat. And a large number of Muslims remained loyal to the British to the very end. (The most illustrious of them being Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.)

Furthermore, the Muslims did not lose their empire after 1857. The British had already become masters of most of India before that time, having grasped vast territories from both Hindu and Muslim rulers through guile and subterfuge.

The Mughal emperor at the time was a ruler in name only; his jurisdiction did not extend beyond Delhi. After 1857, the Hindus prospered, because they were clever enough to acquire modern education, learn the English language, and take to trade and commerce. The Muslims were only land owners, wedded to the dreams of the past pomp and glory, and when their lands were taken away, they were left with nothing; their madressah education and proficiency in Persian proved to be of no help. As a matter of fact, it was a hindrance in such changing times.


Myth 6
The Muslims were in the forefront of the struggle against the British and were singled out for unfair treatment by the latter.

Not at all. In fact, the first �gift� given to the Muslims by the British was in 1905 in the form of partition of Bengal (later revoked in 1911). The Shimla delegation of 1906 has rightly been called a �command performance�; the Muslims were assured by the viceroy of separate electorates and weightage as soon as their leaders asked for them. After that, he Muslim League came into being, established by pro-British stalwarts like the Aga Khan, Justice Amir Ali, some other nawabs and feudal lords. And the first objective of the Muslim League manifesto read: �To promote feelings of loyalty to the British government.�

The Muslim League never carried out any agitation against the British. The only time the Muslims agitated was during the Khilafat Movement in the early �20s, led by the Ali brothers and other radical leaders. Not a single Muslim League leader, including the Quaid-i-Azam, ever went to jail. It was the Congress which continued the anti-British non-violent and non-cooperation movement in the �30s and �40s, including the famous �Quit India� movement, while Muslim League leaders continued to denounce such movements and exhorted their followers not to take part in them.


Myth 7
The Muslim League was the only representative body of the Muslims.


It is an incontrovertible fact that it was only after 1940 that the Muslim League established itself as a popular party among the Muslims. Prior to that, as evident in the 1937 elections, the Muslim League did not succeed in forming the government in any of the Muslim majority provinces. In those elections, out of the total of 482 Muslim seats, the Muslim League won only 103 (less than one-fourth of the total). Other seats went either to Congress Muslims or to nationalist parties such as the Punjab Unionist Party, the Sind Unionist Party and the Krishak Proja Party of Bengal.


Myth 8
Allama Iqbal was the first person to come up with the idea of a separate Muslim state.


This is one of the most deeply embedded myths in our country and the one which has been propagated by all governments. In fact, the idea that Muslim majority provinces of the north-west formed a natural group and should be considered a single bloc had been mooted by the British as far back as 1858 and freely discussed in various newspaper articles and on political platforms. Several variations of the idea had come from important public personalities, including British, Muslims and some Hindus. By the time Allama Iqbal gave his famous speech in 1930, the idea had been put forward at least 64 times. So, Iqbal voiced something which was already there, and was not an original �dream�. After his speech at Allahbad was reported, Allama Iqbal published a �retraction� in a British newspaper that he had not been talking of a separate Muslim sate, but only of a Muslim bloc within the Indian federation.


Myth 9
The Pakistan Resolution envisaged a single Muslim state.


The fact is that none of the proposals regarding the Muslim bloc mooted by different individuals or parties had included East Bengal in it. The emphasis had always been on north-western provinces, which shared common frontiers, while other Muslim majority states, such as Bengal and Hyderabad, were envisaged as separate blocs. So, it was in the Pakistan Resolution. The resolution reads: �The areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the north-western and eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states, in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.�

Leaving aside the poor and ambiguous drafting of the entire resolution, the part about states (in plural) is very clear. It was only in 1946, at a convention of the Muslim League legislators in Delhi, that the original resolution was amended, which was adopted at a general Muslim League session and the objective became a single state.


Myth 10
March 23, 1940 is celebrated because the Pakistan Resolution was adopted on that day. The fact of the matter is that the Pakistan Resolution was only introduced on March 23 and was finally adopted on March 24 (the second and final day of the session).


As to why we celebrate March 23 is another story altogether. The day was never celebrated before 1956. It was first celebrated that year as the Republic Day to mark the passage of the first constitution and Pakistan�s emergence as a truly independent republic. It had the same importance for us as January 26 for India. But when Gen Ayub abrogated the constitution and established martial law in 1958, he was faced with a dilemma. He could not let the country celebrate a day commemorating the constitution that he had himself torn apart, nor could he cancel the celebration altogether. A way-out was found by keeping the celebration, but giving it another name: the Pakistan Resolution Day.


Myth 11
It was Ghulam Muhammad who created imbalance of power between the prime minister and head of state, and it was he who sought to establish the supremacy of the governor-general over the prime minister and parliament.


When Pakistan came into being, the British government�s India Act of 1935 was adopted as the working constitution. And it was the Quaid-i-Azam himself who introduced certain amendments to the act to make the governor-general the supreme authority. It was under these powers that the Quaid-i-Azam dismissed the government of Dr Khan Sahib in the NWFP in August 1947 and that of Mr Ayub Khuhro in Sindh in 1948.

Besides being governor-general, the Quaid-i-Azam also continued as president of the Muslim League and president of the Constituent Assembly.

It was these same powers under which Mr Daultana�s government was dismissed in Punjab in 1949 by Khawaja Nazimuddin, who himself was dismissed as prime minister in 1953 by Ghulam Mohammad.

However, in 1954, a move was started by members of the then Constituent Assembly to table an amendment to the act, taking away excessive powers of the governor-general. It was this move which provoked the governor-general, Ghulam Mohammad, to dismiss the Constituent Assembly in 1954, and thereby change the course of Pakistan�s history.

These are some of the myths that have been drummed into our heads from childhood and have become part of our consciousness. There are scores more, pervading our everyday life. And there are many unanswered questions such as:

� What is Pakistan�s ideology and when was the term first coined? (It was never heard of before 1907.)
� Why was Gandhi murdered? (He was supposedly guarding Pakistan�s interest.)
� What is the truth about the so-called traitors, Shaikh Mujeeb, Wali Khan, and G.M. Syed?
� What caused the break-away of East Pakistan?
� Why was Bhutto put to death?
� Are all our politicians corrupt and self-serving?
� Why does our history repeat itself after every 10 years?

The answers to all these questions require a thorough study of history, not mythology. But history unfortunately is a discipline that has never been taken seriously by anyone in our country. It�s time things changed.


The myth of history -DAWN Magazine; March 27, 2005

This is not scholorship this is drivel. As someone who was educated here (something the author obviously did not enjoy)

1) Corrrection the history portion of the subject "Pakistan Studies" begins with Muhammad Bin Qasim, the history before that is taught in normal History. I remember having to do a project on the Mauryas in 4th grade.

2) No **** sherlock? We know who sent him, Hajjaj Bin Yousaf, so it could'nt have been for widows and orphans. We also know that Ameer Mauwiya pushed up to the Indus.

3) Everyone knows whats written here, and everyone knows that Ghazni broke idols and withrew.

4) Auregnzeb was the simplest of Mughals that is true. He is'nt liked much here anyway, due to his operations against the Kabul Province specifically Khushaal Khan Khattack, if there is a Mughal who the history books promote, its Shah jahen.

5) Which is why both Rani of Jhansi and Nan Sahib are considered heros in Pakistan Studies books?

6) It is an established fact as attested by contempory accounts by British officers, that muslims were held out by the British after 1857-58. not to say Hindus were not attacked. And the partition of bengal and the Simla mission are popularly called the start iof the Pakistan movement. Hardly unknown

7) Again true, and again it is taught that the elections of 1936 was a defeat. No one says otherwise

8) So? Iqbals idea came at a time when independance was being seriously thought of as possible, not when it was a pipe dream. ANyhow, Pakistan today takes its shape from "Now or Never" by Chaudry Rehmat Ali, Khattack brothers, Inayatullah Khan.


9) Learning the text of the resolution is standard for students, I think they would notice that.

10) 1940 resolution was the first time muslim league committed itself to an idea of autonomy/independance. as a party platform .By this token we should not celebraten independance day, since it was not celebrated as a full holiday till Zias time.

11) Jinnah dismissed the Government of the Frontier under the advie of LAK, as was his right, its debateable it was the right thing. But Jinnah was very ill he hardly had any influence and his successor K Nazimuddin was a figurehead as well. It was GM who moved the power firmly to the Govenor General.

As for the unanswered questions.

i) read the objectives resolution, passed in 1950, that might enlighten you as to "Pakistans ideology"

ii) Yes he was murdered because of that since he wanted Pakistan to have its share and that has been mentioned in books, not to mention something like a hundred documentaries on independance on PTV.

iii) They wanted to break up the country thats what for real or percieved injustices. No Pakistani will ever have any symphaty for there aims.


iv) dud! The Civil War


v) because he was a meglomanic who made one too many enemies.


vi) you think!

vii) you tell me.
 
The point is that Indians do feel that their land was violated by Islamic invaders for a long time and that culminated in the partition. And now pl. do not claim that India was not a united country then! It does not matter at all and it does appear self serving to prove some point.

It is said that the seeds of patition were sowed when the first Islamic invader set foot in India and perhaps it is true. It is surprising for Indians when they see Pakistanis praising their own invaders who possibly looted and murdered their forefathers and people who are universally recognized as being cruel and looters. It seems that they do not consider themselves as sons of the soil but part of the invaders. And in that case, some people can definitely conclude that they deserve no part of our land and should go back to where they came from.

Your starting premise is incorrect - Indians today may feel that "their land was violated" because they are projecting the sentiments of nationalism and identity created after 1947 backwards in time to encompass the lands and peoples that composed the "region known as the Indian sub continent". The basic flaw is that at that time there were several small nations, Kingdoms, empires what have you - not a nation called India ( the Word India itself was coined by Europeans, and initially referred to the parts of the subcontinent that compose Pakistan today). Individual peoples may choose to hold grudges against the alleged "destruction of their ancestors" or they may not, but it is not "India's burden" - however you can choose to make it yours, as an Indian, I think it is simply incorrect.

What happened in the subcontinent is no different from what happened elsewhere during those ages - the Mongols, Romans, Vikings, Europeans in the New World, in Africa etc. It was a time when Emperors and Kings embarked on grand campaigns to expand their empires, and within the sub continent itself there was fighting between various Kingdoms. It just so happened that stronger "rulers" came about and managed to conquer those small states and expand their empires. The locals were not wiped out, indeed even the culture was not wiped out considering Hinduism exist to this day, but in certain areas the culture and customs of the "invaders" took root and supplanted the existing ones. So what? That is what has happened in nations throughout history.

The entire world cannot sit back and lament that what they are today was the result of some invader or the other at some point in history impacting their land and culture - events such as those are what shape nations and societies. Before Islam, perhaps there was Hinduism, and before that whatever the Indus Valley Civilization practiced, and before that who knows. In Europe before Christianity there were the Druids, the Greek, Roman and Viking Gods and Goddesses - should the Europeans lament the "destruction and invasion of their lands by alien beliefs"? Its part of the evolution and development of societies and cultures.

You must be knowing that some Muslims considered doing Hizrat to Afghnaistan during the Khilafat and they were pushed back violently. I read somewhere that Turkey did not allow some Indian Muslims to land there and imposed some restrictions on them while at the same time Hindus in Kerala were being butchered, their temples destroyed and cow meat was stuffed in their mouth as a show of support to Turkey Khalifa (The Moplah masaacre)!

I am not familiar with those events, and I am unclear about the point you are making here...

It is not just a simple matter of some people choosing to go their own way (I wish it was as simple as that). Otherwise it won't have been accompanied by so much bloodshed and the abiding hatred thats still persists on both sides.

People with your kind of thinking are few and far in between. Most of them consider it to be a continuation of the old hatreds. So you have organizations like LET who still declare their aim as the balkanization of India and its dissolution in pakistan. Is that only a simple matter of choice?

You are correct that I am simplifying to the extreme by suggesting that "people decided to go their own way" - however while the reasons and dynamics behind the eventual creation of two states, India and Pakistan, are many, the eventual outcome can indeed be expressed as two communities (or at least one - a large section of the Muslim population of the subcontinent) deciding that they wanted to exist as a separate nation.

I would argue that people such as the ones you mentioned are in the minority, and exist with their own peculiar prejudices in both countries. There are Indians still who would like nothing better than to see Pakistan divided and destroyed, if not merged into India (such posters can be found on the WAB - you don't even have to go to the more bigoted forums like BR). But I hope they are not in the majority.
 
In my opinion, the idea of Great India is more of a cultural one than a political ideology. Right from Kandahar to the far flung areas of Indonesia societies are dominated by our ways of life, epics - lets just call is culture.
afghanistan and northwestern pakistan inhabitants have a culture of their own. they are of central asian stock, Greco-Bactrian, Kushan, etc. let's not even get into this.
The whole of Indo-China barring Islamic countries continues to be dominated by what was taken from mainland India. Mahayana Buddhism is thriving in Japan. Have you ever wondered as to how our epics reached as far as Laos, Cambodia and Thailand ?
I can say the same about islamic civilizations.
The idea of a Akhand Bharath - a civilizational entity that did have a little bit of its origins in present day Pakistan is very much alive and kicking.
well, you can claim this ideology of yours, but you don't have the military might to enforce it, if that's what you really want. it's too late for the akhand bharat dream.
The two nation theory on the other hand evolved into a three nation theory - its exclusive, discriminative on the basis of religion and does not offer anything beyond religion. It can claim all the Indus valley civilization but with one religion becoming the predominant feature of the society there is little scope left for culture to evolve and other religions to flourish.One religion continues to suffocate civilization.
But see, we are doing fine with pakistan. why does it matter to you whether our religion is prohibiting our growth? You can protest the two-nation theory all you want, but it's not going to even matter. there's just nothing you can do about it. we can also say the same thing about religion in india. should we spend time discussing hindu aggression against minorities?
INDIA More then 300 tribal forced to reconvert to Hinduism - Asia News
The torch bearer of the Indus valley civilization is India. We continue to cherish the values, the belief systems and ways of life of those who lived in ancient Harappa and other Sindhu-Saraswathi sites.
typical akhand bharat fanatic, making claims that distort history. get it through your head, indus valley has nothing to do with present day india.
It is we who offer continuity - the other side offers submission to Arabian values through Islam.
we're pretty much fine with that, it doesn't really matter, we could care less. But you also thrive for the same. madrassas in india are now being forced to adopt hindi. they must now write urdu through the devanagari alphabet. hindu fanatics now even talk of getting muslims and christians to assimilate more hindu rituals and customs in their life. hindu fanatics are have a belief that muslims stole their people long ago and that they, the muslims, should be forced to convert back. I have never seen such extremism rise from other religions, even islam.
It is we who offer wealth, power and might - the other side continues to achieve simple political stability at the federal level.
unfortunately, it's a shame, you don't offer it to your children. more than half of india's children are malnourished, many won't survive. even with the indian economy growing rapidly at 7-8%, poverty was barely reduced.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/asia/10india.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
It is the Republic of India that continues to remain the guiding beacon of democracy and freedom in the Asian continent - relatively speaking. The other side still debates the extent of freedom with which the last elections were held.
Maybe you think that democracy has the answers for every nation, but some people don't. there is still a silent part of the public in pakistan that could care less about democracy and care more for stability. there are still plenty of people who support musharraf. pakistan has made it this far without democracy, i don't think it will even make a difference whether we have a democratic govt. or not.
The last one much of which is out of our hands continues to remain a spectacle of terror and religious bigotry thanks to the jihad.
yes thanks to jihad and there's nothing you can do about it.:tongue: get used to it because as long as muslims are there, this will continue. Our baby production factories are multiplying and it's only a matter of time when we will be calling the shots.
 
Your starting premise is incorrect - Indians today may feel that "their land was violated" because they are projecting the sentiments of nationalism and identity created after 1947 backwards in time to encompass the lands and peoples that composed the "region known as the Indian sub continent". The basic flaw is that at that time there were several small nations, Kingdoms, empires what have you - not a nation called India ( the Word India itself was coined by Europeans, and initially referred to the parts of the subcontinent that compose Pakistan today). Individual peoples may choose to hold grudges against the alleged "destruction of their ancestors" or they may not, but it is not "India's burden" - however you can choose to make it yours, as an Indian, I think it is simply incorrect.

What happened in the subcontinent is no different from what happened elsewhere during those ages - the Mongols, Romans, Vikings, Europeans in the New World, in Africa etc. It was a time when Emperors and Kings embarked on grand campaigns to expand their empires, and within the sub continent itself there was fighting between various Kingdoms. It just so happened that stronger "rulers" came about and managed to conquer those small states and expand their empires. The locals were not wiped out, indeed even the culture was not wiped out considering Hinduism exist to this day, but in certain areas the culture and customs of the "invaders" took root and supplanted the existing ones. So what? That is what has happened in nations throughout history.

The entire world cannot sit back and lament that what they are today was the result of some invader or the other at some point in history impacting their land and culture - events such as those are what shape nations and societies. Before Islam, perhaps there was Hinduism, and before that whatever the Indus Valley Civilization practiced, and before that who knows. In Europe before Christianity there were the Druids, the Greek, Roman and Viking Gods and Goddesses - should the Europeans lament the "destruction and invasion of their lands by alien beliefs"? Its part of the evolution and development of societies and cultures.

Logical answer.:agree:

Muslims (who are invaders according to Indians) have a very big role in developing India. Akbar was not the only Mughal who developed India Shah Jahan developed Taj Mahal which generates a lot of revenue for Indians.Qutub-ud-din Aibak developed Qutub minar etc.
 
Logical answer.:agree:

Muslims (who are invaders according to Indians) have a very big role in developing India. Akbar was not the only Mughal who developed India Shah Jahan developed Taj Mahal which generates a lot of revenue for Indians.Qutub-ud-din Aibak developed Qutub minar etc.

The Mughals did precious little to develop India. They were, I have said before, just imperialists, and a lot more cruel than their British successors.

Their monuments, were again, simply a mark of imperial and/or religious strength.

The revenue generated by Taj Mahal can hardly be counted as nation building.
 
Your starting premise is incorrect - Indians today may feel that "their land was violated" because they are projecting the sentiments of nationalism and identity created after 1947 backwards in time to encompass the lands and peoples that composed the "region known as the Indian sub continent". The basic flaw is that at that time there were several small nations, Kingdoms, empires what have you - not a nation called India ( the Word India itself was coined by Europeans, and initially referred to the parts of the subcontinent that compose Pakistan today). Individual peoples may choose to hold grudges against the alleged "destruction of their ancestors" or they may not, but it is not "India's burden" - however you can choose to make it yours, as an Indian, I think it is simply incorrect.

What happened in the subcontinent is no different from what happened elsewhere during those ages - the Mongols, Romans, Vikings, Europeans in the New World, in Africa etc. It was a time when Emperors and Kings embarked on grand campaigns to expand their empires, and within the sub continent itself there was fighting between various Kingdoms. It just so happened that stronger "rulers" came about and managed to conquer those small states and expand their empires. The locals were not wiped out, indeed even the culture was not wiped out considering Hinduism exist to this day, but in certain areas the culture and customs of the "invaders" took root and supplanted the existing ones. So what? That is what has happened in nations throughout history.

The entire world cannot sit back and lament that what they are today was the result of some invader or the other at some point in history impacting their land and culture - events such as those are what shape nations and societies. Before Islam, perhaps there was Hinduism, and before that whatever the Indus Valley Civilization practiced, and before that who knows. In Europe before Christianity there were the Druids, the Greek, Roman and Viking Gods and Goddesses - should the Europeans lament the "destruction and invasion of their lands by alien beliefs"? Its part of the evolution and development of societies and cultures.

Agno, I agree with you from a certain perspective.

However, this isn't about the large picture, but the smaller, more subjective one. Heck, if we go even larger, then history itself is of no consequence bcause man has existed for less than 50,000 years. A blip in time.

Indian society is different from other societies, and handled invasions differently. The current state of India, some historians comment, is a direct result of the invasions over a period of time.

There is something called a "civilizational wound", which tends to linger, in spite of what historians might have to say.

Classical "pagan" europeans were completely supplanted by the Christian ideology. As a result, these societies have little memory of their pre-abrahmic days. On the other hand, hinduism survived, and would definitely react adversely.

Of course, on top of this is the secular layer, which makes it all the more complicated. Indeed, civilizational wounds need to be absorbed, especially since chauvinism is becoming outdated pretty fast.

I guess I'm rambling...but ah well....no time to polish my replies.
 

Pakistan Affairs Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom