Pssst...This is Rest of South Asia speaking

Where have all the flowers gone... ?

F_K #261

``poor Sadna`` may or maynot be getting paid to write, who can tell, but it seems ``poor F_K`` has to read it all for free.

Sadhana

DragonSlayer:#259

Thank you for a very interesting post.

Most of those who ``know`` are really bemused at the adolescent & the under-graduate `seriousness` of some of the contributors here.Heck,I won`t be surprised to find out that some of these fancy themselves as embryonic Jinnahs or Gandhis.

If poor Sadna does all this for no money then I really pity her.If she gets paid for this then I can ``understand``.

I agree with you.Nothing is going to change.The real power,anywhere,would always lie with those who live their lives oblivious to the ``Plans`` & ``Policies`` of the oppressors.It is always better to seek shelter during a tornado or a snow-storm rather than hurl verbiage or throw bombs at it.Umbrellas,Raincoats,Snowshoes,Lean-tos and many other methods have always proven to be better alternatives than confronting evil with an eviler alternative---where individuals(or groups) apparently `win` but their progeny loses.The demon of ill-begotten power,fraudulently earned wealth and plagiarised scholarship always haunts at least two generations.Look around,you`ll see the proof.Look back,and the history is replete with such examples.The presence of museums is a living proof that tyrants do not last & their own children are ashamed to admit their lineage.

``Burra hua tho itnaa burra,jaisay laambi khujoor

Punchhi ko sayya naa milay,aur phul laagay itnee door``

Kabeer.

(no trans: it is for you to savour)



Sometimes the best solution to `solve` problems is to walk away from them.Migration,asylums,refuge-seeking is a far more `beneficial` solution than trying to `convert` thieves,robbers,& tyrants.Once skilled & talented manpower abandons the tyrant its fall is always hastened.Bringing about a `revolution` for material gains will always replace one tyrant by the other---under the guise of `protection`.

``Zamaam e kaar gar mazdoor kay hathon mein ho phir kya

Tareeq e koh kun mein phir vohee heelay hain chungaizi``

A L L A M A IQBAL.

tr: Even if the labourer is holding the reins of power then so what

Even he adopts & acquires the chicanery of Chungaiz khan.

__________________________________________________

This was a `casual` post,hence a bit `wayward`

wassalaam.

Dragon Slayer #259

``I have never seen or heard a diplomat avoid answering a direct,denotative, question as deftly as you did some weeks ago on the Chowk. I chuckled on reading it. And then I became serious. The same way as in our dastaans and K`thas an imprisioned-by-a-rakshasa princess first smiles on seeing the handsome prince-liberator, and then cries, on thinking of his fate at the hands of the rakshasa!]``

Which question? Try asking it again, but you`d agree, this is a public forum where posters use real names(like me) vs pseudonyms(like you). In the matter of knowing other personal details, you seem the winner (with even your gender being a mystery to me) So who should be paranoid here? Do all chowk posters have to supply personal particulars for others satisfaction, or only a chosen few?

``Pakistan``

I have never thought that Pakistan was not a ``necessity``. Never come across another Indian who thought the addition of another 140 million people would solve India`s many problems.

``commentary``

Surely, events in Pakistan are of great interest to you.

``godhuli``

Your post appeared late in the N.American evening, I thought.

``Saigal``

If ever an emperor had a singing voice, it would have been Saigal`s.

Sadhana

Dragon Slayer #257

Given your interesting and picturesque address(really) and given the dateline of the news item(Pakistan), the real masala will come from YOUR commentary.

Sadhana

PS: I have always thought that `Godhuli` was a wonderfully evocative term, but surely it applies to dusk and not dawn?

http://www.jang.com.pk

May 17 2000

Musharraf restores old procedure of lodging FIR

FIR to be filed with SHO; CE to contact Ulema

ISLAMABAD: Chief Executive Gen Pervaiz Musharraf, responding to the unanimous demand by Ulema and people, on Tuesday announced to restore old procedure for lodging an FIR with SHO under the blasphemy law.

``As it was the unanimous demand of the Ulema, Mashaikh and the people, therefore, I have decided to do away with the procedural change in registration of a First Information Report (FIR) under the blasphemy law,`` said Gen Musharraf while talking to reporters at PAF Base here on his return from a 2-day official visit to Turkmenistan.

Now an FIR, under the blasphemy law, will be registered with SHO as earlier, and not with the deputy commissioner, he said.

The chief executive said, on his return he was told that Ulema, Mashaikh and the people wanted that there should not be any change in the procedure of lodging an FIR under the blasphemy law hence he had decided to restore the old procedure. ``It is better if the FIR is registered directly with an SHO. It should be the same as it was earlier,`` he told a questioner. Gen Musharraf said he had asked the concerned authorities to consult all the Ulema and Mashaikh on the issue and have their views on this matter. He had a lot of reverence for all of them, he added.

The government had decided last month that an FIR under the blasphemy law should be registered with deputy commissioner instead of SHO. He said blasphemy law is part of PPC 295 C. ``There cannot be either any change nor any Muslim can change it. No one can even think of changing it. No change was ever brought into this law,`` he said.

The matter came to the fore only on the minor procedural change under which it had been decided that such a matter would be first brought to the notice of the deputy commissioner. He was supposed to decide or otherwise about the registration of an FIR under the blasphemy law. To a question, if he wanted to have a meeting with the Ulema and Mashaikh, Gen Musharraf said his government wanted to take along all the people, Ulema and good politicians. ``I was thinking since long to find a way out to have a dialogue with them so that we all move along together. I intend to contact them directly in future,`` he said. ...``

Our Indian friends response should be taken seriously in the same spirit it is written.

If Muslim fundamentalist are on rise they are Jehadist.

If BJP-RSS is in power they are being tamed.

If Vietnam fights it is freedom.

If Kashmir fights it is terrorism.

If Pakistan proposes non Nuclear South Asia that is bad.

If India proposes No first strike it is right.

It reminds me of poster.

If I am slow, I am lazy. If Boss is slow he is thorough---------

SameerJB #246

Thank you for providing us with a true piece of categorical art; what the statisticians call a ``nominal scale`` at the level. Your categories are well thought out, organized and humorous. Thanks once again from a reader of some devotion to your posts and the Chowk.

Now tell me, where did you get the reference to Neelam valley, and abc@myself.com? I just came back from the Neelam Valley. It was meant to be a sort of escape from the world but not much. Half of my family is on the other side and two young cousins were killed within a matter of three days. It was said they were buried alive, or half-alive, by the security forces. Whether that is true or not, their bodies were dug up and then buried properly. It was a sad journey too. Well…

The e-mail address is mine. Do you have khufia police tailing me? Here is the interesting thing though: the ISP has refused me permission to use it. I wrote to them but haven`t heard from them. Your hand may be in this whole thing, for all I know, what with the khufia tailing and such. knows.

Mithuna: # 253

Thanks for your post. Soft and gentlemanly, as always. As I thank you, I also must apologize for forgetting to include your name in category 8 [Gentle, courteous]. Similarly, I neglected to include Shankar`s name but that was for a reason. I couldn`t think of an appropriate category for a devar whose bhabhi is a Muslim. He is understanding and decent but needs a category that calls for some thinking. Perhaps, if SameerJB doesn`t mind and does not exercise proprietary and copy rights on his contribution [#146] I could combine the two and share the credit: right down the middle, seventy thirty!

Thirty mine, seventy his!

Re: Rachna`s classification.

A note about the ``reproducer of published material`` category.

I think a further distinction needs to be made. macgupta is a ``fact`` reproducer; mohajir is an ``opinion`` reproducer.

Both categories stimulate discussion and contribute immensely to the quality of chowk interact. But I personally prefer macgupta`s style. (You can disagree with the opinions/views collected and posted here by mohajir. But when macgupta posts ``factoids`` with sources, it is hard to argue with that.)

-mithuna

Fuzair #247

``Who was the COAS then?``

While looking for the answer to your question, I happened upon reviews of a book at:

http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/ses/acadak/book1.htm

Militarism in India: The Army and Civil Society in Consensus. By Apurba Kundu

According to one review of this book, the name of the COAS at the time of Emergency was TN Raina.

There is heresay about the other theory, too, that Mrs G. did not want the name of the Nehru dynasty associated with dictatorship, someone told me BK. Nehru put forward this thesis.

How conclusive any theory is, maybe only the present Mrs. G can tell :-).

Sadhana

Ferozk,

This seem to be the classifying and grouping season on the chowk. I am one of the few who believes that individuals can make a difference, and may be some of you pakistanis could come together, come up with some out line of an identity and vision for pakistan.

May be you should join with zeemax, iahmed and two-nation. You all seem to share that disinterested passion for Pakistan, which is very rare. As can be expected, the three in my list appear to have vanished, to do something better.

Your last post was from your heart, I won`t defile it with a response.

regards and best wishes.

jay.

Envy will make one say the most ridiculous things...

Re: Jay # 239

Jay, I would agree with your assesment, but we, Pakistanis, dare not hasten the decline, because we do not know what will replace Pakistan. It is the vacuum of uncertainity, which concerns us. The vast majority of our countrymen do not share this viewpoint, because they are willing to enter Paradise(whether they are welcome or not) and in the process are only too eager to drag the rest of us too. You have said that Pakistan should reach the nadir of its decline and then it will start to go up. That is a really naive and optimistic assumption. Being a cynic, I think that when Pakistan hits rock bottom, it will, given its miserable luck, slide off into a trench or will fall off within the cracks and will never trully rise again!

The basic problem is that we are still waiting for a mircle and we are not willing, as a nation, to admit that we are facing a real crisis of national cohesion. Pakistan has problems from A to Z and each is worse than the other in the degree of its hopelessness. Between the confronting interests, which make up the present mess of Pakistani polity, there is only an apphrension of egoism, but no sense of amor patria, Latin for love of country; patriotism, and we are haunted by the ghosts of sectarianism, intolerance, corruption, nepotism, provincialism, ethnic animosity and the blind naked pursuit of a Green Card or immigration anywhere out of Pakistan.

What are our main exports by which the entire world judges us? Brain drain and the net export of capital, which we pay to meet our external financial obligations. We have already defaulted finacially to the Bretton Wood insitutions: World Bank, IMF, Paris and London club though we were not officially called a defaulter, but we are bankrupt and our finance minister travels the world begging for money. We are a nuclear power, whose sovereinity is mortaged to the IMF.

Yet we still pursue the same blind path, which is leading us religiously to our ruin, because we do not have the moral courage to tell ourselves that we are, like Lemmings, destined to walk over the cliff to our mutual deaths. The irony is that the nation, which was created in the name of Islam is slowly, but surely being destroyed in the name of Islam.

As a tangent to history, it is has been our singular misfortune that we never could identify ourselves with a historic idenity. Pakistani history has seen more meanders than the five rivers of Punjab combined! Having being spurned by the Americans, and the Europeans and being ignored by our Muslim brothers in the Middle East, we are still hoping for an ``indian summer`` in our national fortunes.

Do we have a chance of climbing out of this pit of our own myopia?

Only time will tell and judging by the way the nation is steadily progessing towards an awaiting disaster, its verdict will not be a beneign one. Whatever may happen, we have had a good innings and all good and bad things have to end sometimes. When the historians will gather together to afix a date for the start of the rot in Pakistan, which finally asundered it politically, they will invaribly settle on August 14, 1947. Pakistan has been on slippery slope ever since then and now, 53 plus years later, it is becoming increasingly clear the slide is nearly over.

The only question, which remains is whether this nation will rise up again and ``rage against the dying of the light`` or it will sullenly disappear into the fogs of time forver and will never be heard again.

Ciao!

Re: Sadna #241

Thank you for the information about the Indian Army. That makes the decision to hold elections more understandable. Who was the COAS then? Surely FM Manekshaw had retired?

Regards.

Sameer re:246

Shouldn`t you receive a trophy yourself? Something along the lines of arts/mauseeqi/classic subcontinental movies.. somebody who knows more suggest a name! :-)

Rachna (for fun only): Here are few other winner.

Most continuous posts by the same person: AD (#29-36 at Eqbal Ahmad by Hoodbhoy thread).

Longest post: temporal (#27 at Eqbal Ahmad.....).

Most Attractive female name (or penname): Sobia, Rachna and the winner is Fatima Bin...).

Real Shangri-la: Neelam Valley, AK.

Rabia Basry Trophy: Zahra

Iran Trophy: Krashid

Z. A. Bhutto Memorial Trophy: YLH

Mulla Shor Bazar Trophy: Asif Naqshbandi

Singapore trophy: Pu Li

Lion of Kashmir Trophy: Umairr

Gulkandh Trophy: Kafir K Khan

Ibn Warraq Trophy: Pssssst...

Encyclopedia Brittainica Award: Gymnosophist (not Gynosophist)

Most shortest posts: taimurmalik

(still for fun only)

Most Abstract e-mail address: abc@myself.com. One could easily be mistaken about myself.com to be a self-employed people, or catholic priests and nuns, or brahmacharyas, or desi youths website.