Dec 13, 2008

Must-read.

The world is alive with the sound of war. Do we see another 65 or 71? Or another cold war with both countries gearing up their nuclear weapons on the opposite sides of the border?

Geez. Just when Indian movies had begun to come to Pakistani cinemas.

Even though a majority of us think in that aforesaid shallow manner, I was very happy to read the following article by Karamatullah K. Ghori who has struck gold yet again. This time he seems angrier than you would want to see a veteran diplomat which is pretty cool actually. Sometimes life's better when it's out of the natural order of things.

You can read the entire article here. The following are my favorite points of the article.

  • ... what was so sacrilegious to suggest that Manmohan Singh saw in the Mumbai drama the chance of a life-time to shore up his electoral fortunes? Did he have a divine revelation that told him the terrorists had come from Pakistan? But a section of the Indian intelligentsia isn’t prepared to countenance the possibility that their PM took them on a flight of fantasy and was guilty of triggering a schizophrenic hate campaign against Pakistan.

  • Take, for instance, the mystery surrounding the actual count of the alleged terrorists involved in the episode. The official brief says there were only ten, out of which one — still alive and in captivity — was overpowered at the railway station. That leaves nine of them. Two are said to have held the inmates of Nariman House, the Israeli enclave. That leaves just seven. These seven must have divided themselves into two groups. Let’s assume they split 4:3. It couldn’t be 3 ½ for each of the two giant hotels invaded and occupied by them.

  • Can anyone in their right mind perceive, for a moment, that three or four people could hold up a huge 600-plus room hotel like Taj, and an equally cavernous hotel like Oberoi, for more than 60 hours, fight off hundreds of counter-insurgency commandoes, terrorise and kill scores of their hostages, trash the hotels from inside (as subsequent television footage so graphically displayed for the world)? They had to be supermen to accomplish all that.

  • Independent analysts and terrorism experts are at one in their prognosis that to carry out so many tasks simultaneously, over such a long period of time, there had to be at least 50 to 60 terrorists actively engaged in this episode. The question that India’s self-righteous intelligentsia refuses to answer is, who were the people assisting the impugned terrorists? They had to be local facilitators and accomplices, if they had not descended from the ethereal world that vanished in a UFO as soon as the job was done.

  • But they close their eyes to the stark reality that for well over the past two decades the Indian polity has been sliding, at an alarming pace, into the abyss of Hindutva, which not only pursues a philosophy of unremitting hate toward all minorities — exceptionally the 180 million Muslims of India — but also subscribes to the use of force as part of their dharma or belief to achieve its goals. It should be a matter of shame to most Indians, intellectuals or not, that their commitment to the ideals of a saint like Mahatma Gandhi is now only skin-deep. In actual fact, the heroes of many Indians, Hindus in particular, today are persons like LK Advani and Narendar Modi — with the latter’s hands soiled with the blood of thousands of innocent Muslims of Gujrat. What else could explain the rise of BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal and such others of their ilk in a supposedly secular India?

  • In the latest bout of chauvinism and skewed nationalism, these NRIs in the US have embarked on a campaign to enlist official American support to sponsor a resolution in the UN Security Council to grant India a carte blanche to strike Pakistan’s alleged ‘terrorist sites’ if Pakistan fails to act on the Indian diktat.

  • As per India’s own statistics, eight Kashmiris have been killed every day over the past 18 years since they rose in revolt against Indian hegemony of their land. This makes it a cool 55,000 Kashmiris — at the very least — killed at the hands of 600,000 trigger-happy Indian soldiers encamped in the valley. The mahan Indians are wailing to the world for the loss of 170 lives in Mumbai. But why haven’t these mahan people ever shed a tear for the Kashmiris murdered in a blind frenzy of arrogance of power by India’s ‘brave soldiers’?

  • The Pakistanis are not a mahan people and don’t claim to be one. They have umpteen weaknesses but have at least one great quality: they never hide or cover up their appalling weaknesses. It’s hard to come by a Pakistani intellectual that would be condescending to the rise of militancy and fundamentalism in their polity. There is zero tolerance among the Pakistani intelligentsia for a militant Islam or its purblind practitioners.

  • The Pakistanis may be nationalistic but they aren’t chauvinists and don’t take the words of their leaders for gospel truth. In fact, Pakistan’s ruling elite have an abiding grouse against their intelligentsia for being their harshest critics and detractors. Just take the recent example of a dictator like Pervez Musharraf who was chased out of his powerful niche by the combined strength of the people and what he and his cronies disdained as the ‘chattering class’ of Pakistani intellectuals.

  • Thank God the Pakistanis, in general, aren’t self-righteous like their eastern neighbours. A self-righteous people are niggardly and self-centred. Pakistanis give credit, generously, where it’s due and admire India’s great achievement in consolidating democracy and democratic institutions, something they haven’t been so successful at themselves. But that doesn’t mean they will take Indian dictation or accept Indian hegemony, physical or intellectual.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear!

Anonymous said...

i see no difference in pakistanis or indians though ... i really don't see the differences that the author sees. we're all the same. same culture, same ethnic background and even the same genetic make up so to speak.

Anonymous said...

a piece that should be quoted:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/15/mumbai-terrorism-india-pakistan

Anonymous said...

aap janab nay meray bachay ka dil tore kar acha nahi kiya. pechlay do dino se zarokatar ro raha hay mera bubloo. ye zalim samaj kuun meray jigar kay gooshay ko par gaya hay. jawab do zalimoon!

Anonymous said...

LOL! Hahah, that's hilariously gross.

Majaz said...

Forget gross. Someone has a wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy lot of free time.

Anonymous said...

I religiously agree with you on that.

Majaz said...

so let's stick to discussing international terrorism eh?

Anonymous said...

zaheen main kami kya hay? yeh to bata do anarkali...haan thora nata hay or thora takla bhi...lekin koi chor, daku ya jansi janooni to nahi jo namanzoor kar dia...barai meherbani apnay faislay par nazarsani karain...ye bhi bata doon hum log jahez nahi letay, ab to maan jao meri bachi...

Majaz said...

Aunty, you need to stop watching Star Plus.

Roop, I agree with you... perhaps the difference exists in agendas of the head honchos.

Anonymous said...

You write such long posts. Banda dekh ke hi dar jaaye!

Majaz said...

Parhe likhon ka blog hai. Chalo. Bhago yahan se.

Anonymous said...

lol yea SAWJ tumhara kaam nai hai koi :P

@ Mahwash's post
yea thank God we are a lil different from indians. we arent self centered at all. we can appreciate the good things done by indians. that is just so evident during indo-pak matches being played in india.

Majaz said...

I think the writer implied difference in foreign policy. :)

Anonymous said...

*sniff*

Anonymous said...

but the foreign policy is pretty much a reflection of how the society thinks in general. i dont think we have ever been so harsh with indians and perhaps that is the reason why we still have indian movies being shown on our cinemas...with all the support from pakistani government

Majaz said...

The foreign policy, like any other governmental principle, is only partly the reflection of people and partly the vested interest of the social elite. Which is, of course, in no way representative of the giant mass we call the 'people'.

Being harsh with Indians isn't really the point. The point is to coexist peacefully and civilly.

Anonymous said...

*sniff*

Anonymous said...

@ SAWJ
wats wrong with you SAWJ?

@ Mahwash
i think the idea of coexisting peacefully needs to be somehow advocated in a manner a lil different from just saying 'hum sab ek jaisey hain, sirf beech main border hai'

Majaz said...

KW, we kind of aren't any different culturally. The dividing line, religion, has been tarred too ... a lot of Hindu customs are a part of Muslim lifestyles, which has been a result of 'coexisting' with them for the past 1000 odd years. And now we have their terribly titanic media influence. You'll see Kusums and Kumkums everywhere on Tariq Road, will you not? So we can't really find ourselves as separate as we want to. Having said that, it is definitely true now that the border creates a sense of independence and identity (which is again a hard feat to manage since Pakistan is more of a melting pot of subcultures than a singular culture itself).

My point is that the advocation of sovereignty can occur even if people accept the similarities AND the differences. The idea is to understand that whatever solution the two countries want to achieve, they must do it through peaceful dialog and rational decisions rather than threatening invasions of airspace and nuclear armament.

Majaz said...

SAWJ is probably crying because he isn't getting any of the political mumbo jumbo AND is out of a job.

Ch. Ch. Ch.

Anonymous said...

*sniff*