Twosome Troubles of Troublesome Two

Ref ali1 #: 10

You say {Drink all the vodka you can and date as many dalit/brahmin/banya/thakur/rajput girls as you wish, you`ll always be a `musla` and a `malich` in the eyes of Brahmin bigots. Nothing (least of all your Banglore yatra) will change that.}

Must have touched a raw nerve, eh? You mean to tell us that your family ISN`T claiming to be descendants of Babar or perhaps some of the early Arab invaders of Sindh? Wow! What honesty!

Tell you what. Why don`t you change your last name to Butt? At least, you can make the claim that you were once Kashmiri Pandits!

Umairr #192 in the `hegemony...`thread

your thinking...

[`The big problem is with missiles. Countries seem to go berserk when the name missile. Pakistan seems to be countering India, in the name game. Pakistan has an advantage here because historically Muslim rulers/invaders/kings (pre-British days) generally were able to beat up on the local Indian generals, etc. in the Sub-Continent. So everytime India names a missile after one of the historic Hindu generals, Pakistan names its new product after the Muslim general who defeated the corresponding Hindu general. I think India has realized this, and has now changed its naming scheme to names like, `Nag` etc]

what else could one expect from the one-track, confrontational , reactive and unimaginative pakistani establishment.

agni, prithvi, akash, trishul, nag, sagarika and surya.

you (and the pakistani establishment) perhaps do not know the meaning of these words.

Re: temporal # 9

Dear Temporal,

Drink all the vodka you can and date as many dalit/brahmin/banya/thakur/rajput girls as you wish, you`ll always be a `musla` and a `malich` in the eyes of Brahmin bigots. Nothing (least of all your Banglore yatra) will change that.

Have a safe flight to Banglore.

Ali

Re: Ras Siddiqui # 3

``Where there are Indians and Pakistanis, there is hope...``

baqool shair...unki khush gumani per qurban jai-yay. Siddiqui sahib, with the current level of mass hysteria and hatred in India, where exactly do you see hope?

Ali

Ref wiseguy #: 5

You ask {Your quaint ideas touch my soul. However let me tell you about what my father used to mention. That when he was a school stdent in U,P. he had to leave the class room when water was brought for his hindu teacher. Please tell me my father was lying. Nasir}

You mean to tell us your father actually went to school with idolaters? Isn`t that haram? In fact, isn`t going to anything other than a madrassah haram? So, what kinds of punishments did your father get from the Muslim community for his transgressions? Were they milder than being asked to leave the classroom for fear of polluting the drinking water of the high-caste teacher when your father had already polluted the entire classroom by his mere presence (according to the beliefs of those days)? Did the Hindu teacher refuse to teach your father?

Oh, yeah? Your father was psychologically scarred by being singled out as a polluting agent? How about the fact that the Hindu teacher`s forebears were forced to live under the thumbs of the local Muslim thugs (jagirdars, subedars, nansubdars, etc.) of the sultans for six centuries, that their lives and religion were not safe, that they had to pay the jizya? I suppose these are all prescribed in the Quran and therefore halal?

Does your father have 4 wives? Does he beat them? Does he keep them in tent-like burquas? Does he sequentially divorce his wives so he can marry fresh women and ``pop the cherry``?

Your image of India (as told to you by your father, about whose veracity I have no doubts) is frozen in time, just like the image of India in the minds of early Indian immigrants to the Caribbean, Sri Lanka, Malaysia or Fiji. You can throw that in our face and you get in return my taunt back to you about the behavior of Muslims. Just like my classmate from France had nothing but contempt for the backward-looking French-Canadians, most of us would treat this piece of historic information with contempt and amusement.

You did choose your handle, wiseguy, correctly: you make wisecracks. Except that some of us will pay you back in kind, with interest!

PS. I have a suggestion for all of you who shed crocodile tears for the plight of low-caste Hindus in India: marry a nice Dalit girl. You will gain merit in the eyes of Allah by getting a convert to Islam. The girl would (according to y`all) get immediate equality with the sayyeds and other Arab descendants living in the Land of the Pure.

Do I see any takers?

As long as the likes of Atal and Nawaz get elected and the military and civil bureaucracies remain leached the chances of a breakthrough are dim indeed.

wiseguy #5

Capital punishment for those who say the unauthorized greeting `Salaam ...` may be the real problem, actually.

Your quaint ideas touch my soul. However let me tell you about what my father used to mention. That when he was a school stdent in U,P. he had to leave the class room when water was brought for his hindu teacher. Please tell me my father was lying. Nasir

Very nice and idealistic, but how will it work in practice -- people leading and governments following ?

One way people can interact is via trade. But how will trade work if when a fight breaks out between India and Pakistan (e.g., Kargil) , the people who were trading are branded traitors ?

The next thing is that e.g., Indians may not believe the Indian government in all that it says about Pakistan, but they are going to believe the Pakistani government even less. So, while Indians may not believe all that Minister Advani says about the recent hijacking, they are nevertheless not going to believe Pakistani officials claims of non-involvement. The mirror-image situation will exist in Pakistan. Even not following the governments` lead will not lessen mistrust between people.

-arun gupta

I agree with the spirit of the article. The idea of something like a South Asia Poor People`s Party is a good one but needs to be developed further. Let us start with the question: What will be the goals of such a movement? Possible answers would be (a) to make elimination of poverty the overriding priority of governments in both countries; (b) let the governments have fun shadow boxing one another, and work independently to eliminating poverty (using imaginative solutions like the micro-credit movement); (c) something else. We would then need to have a realistic action plan: e.g. set goal = (a) and set action plan = place open letters in 3 prominent newspapers in each country to BOTH GOVERNMENTS to end their war of words and do something for their poor.

A very timely and sensible article by S. P. Udeyakumar. He has beautifully laid out his case for a peaceful coexistense in the best interest of the people of India and Pakistan.

(In the case of India and Pakistan, the bilateral relations have been rooted in negative feelings and emotions: desertion, partitioning, betrayal, domination, subjugation, non-acceptance and so forth.)

The bilateral relations have been rooted in the experiences of past generation(s). Most of the new generation have not experienced many of these negative feelings. There should have been more goodwill among the younger generation based on common heritage and in the best interest of the people instead of following in the footsteps of the previous generation(s) and their experiences. Should the current generation of Germany, France and Britain should base their interactions solely on the feelings of previous generation during the second world war? We should have tried to learn from these negative feeling as an aberration in the long history of coexistence instead of being bogged down with them.

(The overall emphasis on the bilateral relations is on intractable conflicts and differences rather than on socioeconomic development and avenues of cooperation.)

It is standard motif for any government to have at least one nemesis in order to focus their energies on the larger and more important issues of improving the living standards and poverty. Unfortunately our governments are stuck with the nemesis part of the equation. All they think and act about are the differences and hardly any efforts or energies are dispensed towards pointing out the similarities among both people. For a peaceful coexistense and the socioeconomic development, it is necessary to acknowledge the problems yet agreeing to non-interference in the affairs of each other and a no-war pact is a necessary first step.

I hope this thread will be used preferentially to discuss concerns common to the people of India and Pakistan instead of differences, with each respondent generally toeing the line of the governments of their motherlands and soon back to TNT, Kashmir and religious differences to score points against each other.