Taliban : An Analysis

Look out for the new movie (forgot the name) about the american war in somalia. I bet my life it will be proven that the US military helped make this film - remarkably on time considering the COWARDLY Americans will now go after Somalia.

I cant decide what I hate more America or Islam? How bout an American Muslim...

Sameer: The product of ``american democracies`` should tell us why they`re not trusted.

Khmer Rouge vs Taliban is an odd analogy. They didn`t live by the principals of communism. I have yet to see how medieval the Taliban was. Were they not (largely) following the hadis of Muhammed?

The problem is ISLAM. What is true islam? Islam the system is an annoyance and a disease. Islam of the spirit is not. The taliban were following Islam, whether moderates like it or not. U cannot divorce the taliban from Islam without being HERETICAL.

The taliban are perhaps the stupidest leaders in human history - However, a LOT of their beliefs are demonstrably islamic. This is the real problem. U can imagine where the west would be if it stuck to the fairy tales in the bible.

Religion must remain absolutely unadvertised and completely private. Anything else is an abhorrance (only someone who doesnt know a damn thing about it would disagree)....

hamidm #38,

``and first of all remove prohibition which, along with kite flying and hairy armpits, would be most visible sign of recovery from this insidious disease..``

you think men should shave their armpits? how revolutionary. i`m beginning to like your ideas.

i agree with the rest of your post, we really need to get religion out of politics and social structures to get anywhere in this world.

Excellent article as usual Sameer Sahib.

urstruly:

A true gem from the Lance Naik in Detroit:

``Third world countries cannot have capitalism because they don`t have capital``

.......Wah saain Wah...

But can you be Islamic without Islam????

later

-sac

sameer

i agree with every thing you say, except:

``For Pakistanis, their interests are better served by an amalgamation of rich native cultural heritage with only a sprinkle of Islamic civilization``

..... even a sprinkle of islam (the political kind) is a receipe for disaster ... can you imagine having a ``little`` bit of communism or fascism or plain and simple madness as part of a political system .... this approach is rife with danger ... islam must be confined to the mosque, personal hygiene and annual firework festivals - anything more than that will leave the doors open for the high priests to sneak back in ........ we must start by removing (slowly) all vestiges of official islam from public life ....let`s start by shutting down ptv channel-4 which spouts meaningless arabic all day long; do away with the AH calender which nobody can figure out; eliminate the parallel sharia court and throw out the silly hadood and blasphemy laws; ban polygamy and the burqa; drop the handle ``islamic republic`` and go back to being plain old pakistan ......... and first of all remove prohibition which, along with kite flying and hairy armpits, would be most visible sign of recovery from this insidious disease .........

....... i know the politically correct thing to say is, `` oh, but the problem is not with islam `` and ``it is a great religion which has been hijacked`` and other such mealymouthed phrases to smooth the islamist feathers .... the fact of the matter is that political islam, like medieval christianity and twentieth century communism, is a totalitarian nightmare that cannot be allowed to fester .....

.... of course, this has to be done slowly and carefully so as not to stir up the snakes nest ....

...... does this sound radical? of course - but then look at what we are up against ...........

Sameer:

You should take English 101 again.

Do you understand concept of thesis sentence?

May be you should keep any future articles under 30 lines.

Some food for thought for muslims & munafiques alike.

_________________________________________________

Islam

Let us now examine Islam. Why is lslam so astonishingly successful? Why is it resistant to secularization? I shall begin by offering a model of what traditional Islam was like (without going into the early History of Islam). To put it simply, Islam, at least that of the arid zone between the Hindu Kush and the Atlantic and the Niger bend, was divided between a high culture and a low culture - a high Islam and a low Islam - and these two coexisted in an unstable way. Most of the time they were peaceful, but nevertheless had conflicts at fairly regular intervals. The chief difference between the two is that high Islam does not permit mediators (it has a special name for the sin of mediation: Shirk), while the world of low Islam is full of them. High Islam encourages a direct relationship between a unique deity and the individual believer; it is not attached to ritual, contains little magic and supernatural belief, and is heavily moralistic, scripturalist, puritan, monotheistic and individualistic. It is the Islam of the scholars - the high Islam recognized as valid by the believers but not practiced by them. It is not practiced because it does not correspond to the needs of the lower classes and above all the rural Muslims, who for obvious reasons require a much more Durkheimian religion - i.e., a religion in which the sacred has its mediators, its incarnation, and which mirrors the social structure. Most of the rural Muslims were encadrés, incorporated in rural autonomous or semi-autonomous congregations, village lineages, tribes, clans and the like. For their internal organization and life they had a Durkheimian religion where the sacred is incarnated in periodic rituals, in sacred objects, sacred practices, sacred persons. One can say that an upper-class, urban, individualistic, puritan, ``protestant`` Islam (which is strangely united by the theologians and jurists who are its main carriers, despite the lack of a central organization and any kind of central secretariats and hierarchy) coexisted with a fragmented, ``catholic`` Islam which had the ``catholic`` characteristics of hierarchy, ritualization, employment of the sensuous forms of religion, of mystical exercises etc. One can see how this fits well with Durkheim`s theories of religion having the function of underwriting, rendering visible, and legitimating the communal organization in which Muslims lived. During periodic attempts of self-reformation these two forms came into conflict, but most of the time they coexisted harmoniously. On this issue I agree with the theory best formulated by David Hume about the oscillation in the religious life of mankind between protestant-type and catholic-type religions. In periodic outbursts of zeal and self-reformation the puritans would temporarily prevail, but the exigence and the demands of social life would again lead to a swing-back to a personalized, hierarchical, ritualized, non-scriptual religion with an ethic of loyalty rather than an ethic of rules. Thus Islam existed in a permanent oscillation between unsuccessful reformations and reversions to the old cultural habits. And, of course, there is a specific difference between Islam and West-European Christianity in this matter: in Western Europe the hierarchical, ritualized loyalty-ethics is at the center and carried by an institution rather than by abstract doctrine, while the individualist, scripturalist, puritan version is fragmented and relatively marginal. In Islam it is the other way around; the central tradition is individualist and scriptual, and the fragmented deviationists are hierarchical, ritualistic, etc. - a kind of mirror image.

As far as I can see there is nothing to stop Islam oscillating between these two forms. The oscillation was noted by the superb Muslim sociologist lbn Khaldun around 1400, and echoed by Friedrich Engels in a passage where he obviously uses lbn Khaldun without actually quoting him. He says‹contradicting the main thesis of Marxism - that all classes and class-societies are inherently unstable and due for internal destruction through their internal contradictions. In this passage the dreadful ethnocentrism of the two founding fathers of Marxism comes out as he specifies that the instability of classes and class-societies applies to ``us`` Europeans, whereas ``those`` Orientals, especially Arabs and Muslims, are locked in a kind of cyclical world which never manages to break out. And, admittedly, our social conflicts are distorted through the prism of religious language, but at least when the religious conflict is over something new emerges and we reach a higher level. All the orientals do is go around in a circle.

My theory of why Muslim fundamentalism has the astonishing strength that it does is the following: modern conditions unhinged the pendulum of this unstable oscillation and permanently and definitively shifted the center of gravity away from the pluralistic, hierarchical, organizational, Durkheimian style to that of high Islam. Of course, the reason why this happened is that the process of modernization, the political and economic centralization employed by the colonial and post-colonial states destroyed those communities that had provided the basis for the Durkheimian or low culture style of Islam. By turning clansmen, lineage members, villagers, and tribesmen into labor migrants and shantytown dwellers, it atomized the population and prompted them to find their identity in a high religion, in a high culture, that provides an identity shared by all Muslims, uniting them against the outsiders. Previously there did not exist a national identity in Muslim countries. Most people were first and foremost members of a local community under a local authority. Modern Muslim nations, especially in ex-colonial countries, are simply the summation of Muslims in a given territory. But this does mean that lslam provided the identification against the other.

It provided a ratification of their transition from a rural to an urban world, and it provided an idiom for expressing their change of status from that of rustic ignoramuses to people aspiring to urban sophistication. It also provided them - as is presently visible in the bitter and tragic conflict in Algeria - with a means of criticising their current rulers. It provided an idiom for those non-westernized people who take their Islam seriously, as against the technocrat Mamlukes who govern them in virtue of their access to western technology. I think it is in these terms - the reaction of recently urbanized, disoriented Muslims who are separated from their previous saint cults and local structures but who need to define themselves against an exploitative, semi-westernized upper class - that the wave of Muslim fundamentalism should be understood.

[This article is based on the transcription of a lecture Gellner gave in October 1995 in Heidelberg at a conference organized by the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut on ``Religion als Kultur und Antikultur`` (Religion as Culture and Anti-Culture). This was most probably Gellner`s last lecture as he died early November 1995 in Prague. The eminent anthropologist and philosopher had been an active participant in many events of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna.In the framework of the TERC-Program he served as the first European Chair in Social Sciences and Humanities at Warsaw University, and he was a contributor to Transit.

The lecture was originally transcribed by Caroline Schmidt Hornstein and published in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie ed., Günter Figal and Enno Rudolph, No. 1/1996 ].

Rest at:

[http://www.eurozine.com/article/2000-08-28-gellner-en.html]

Reply #: 13

babu

All your assertions about RIGHTS of U.S.A. are right

But only if USA had kept itself on the western shores of Atlantic & eastern shores of Pacific.

When U.S.A. ventures out to form relation ship with any other country & expects to be taken seriously as a BIG brother it is a member of the community , NOT an island

Your Rights can only be right ,if U.S.A. were an island which like any human it isnt.

Yes, legally you may deny food to your neighbour claiming police protection while you Eat & rest starve .

BUT ARE WE TALKING JUST OF LEGALITY OR HUMANISM,RELIGION(ANY),COMMUNITY,SOCIETY,HUMAN RIGHTS.......?????????????????????????????????

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

EST Reply #: 9

jay

``When a country is created by the TNT, ``]]

If you want to be educated on various reasons why Pakistan came into being as an ADULT & not sophmoric teachings of Indian NCERT which will teach you b/c muslims fought it our ,then read your own press

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1826/18260810.htm





Volume 18 - Issue 26, Dec. 22, 2001 - Jan. 04, 2002

India`s National Magazine

from the publishers of THE HINDU



Table of Contents REVIEW ARTICLE

The Partition of India

A.G. NOORANI

THE Partition of India ranks, beyond a doubt, as one of the 10 greatest tragedies in human history. It was not inevitable. India`s independence was inevitable; but preservation of its unity was a prize that, in our plural society, required high statesmanship. That was in short supply. A mix of other reasons deprived us of that prize - personal hubris, miscalculation, and narrowness of outlook.

While Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League bear heavy responsibility - since they demanded and pressed for Pakistan - the Congress cannot escape blame. Least of all the hypocritical Sangh Parivar. Its chief mentor V.D. Savarkar formulated the two-nation theory in his essay Hindutva, published in 1923, 16 years before Jinnah came up with it. The Hindu Mahasabha leader Lala Lajpat Rai wrote in The Tribune of December 14, 1924:

``Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province or the North-West Frontier; (2) Western Punjab (3) Sindh and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a province, they should be similarly constituted. But it should be distinctly understood that this is not a united India. It means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Mulsim India.`` This was 16 years before the League adopted the Pakistan Resolution in Lahore, on March 23, 1940 (emphasis added, throughout). Prof. Muhammad Aslam Malik claims: ``The present study concentrates only on how the resolution was shaped. It deals with the subject exhaustively and explains some of the intriguing questions objectively... Nevertheless, it is not the last word on the subject.`` This stroke of modesty is preceded by a sustained belittling of all others who wrote on the subject. In bringing to light important archival material, the author renders high service. In proceeding to analyse them, however, he only amuses the reader when his aim, apparently, is to enlighten him. One who can confidently assert that B. Shiva Rao was ``the proprietor of The Hindu``, that the hill-station Matheran, which Jinnah loved, was an ``island``, and that Sir Chimanlal Setalvad was a Parsi, can assert anything. He draws freely on his imagination. ``It can be imagined that Jinnah would have agreed to favour Sir Sikandar only when the latter agreed to support the League`s Pakistan proposition, which he had vehemently opposed at the Delhi meeting of the Working Committee. It can also be visualised that, for the sake of saving his face, Sikandar should have demanded the inclusion of some of his suggestions in the `outline`...``

The author is out to prove a thesis which some people in India also espouse - Jinnah was for Partition from the mid-1930s and the Lahore Resolution was not a bargaining counter. He thinks that his leader is belittled if the contrary is averred. One is reminded of the judge who said ``this court may often be in error, but it is never in doubt.``

There were four forces at work then. The historians of the Hindu Right, R.C. Majumdar and A.K. Majumdar, refer in Struggle for Freedom (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; 1969; page 611) ``to one factor which was responsible to a very large extent for the emergence of the idea of Partition of India on communal lines. This was the Hindu Mahasabha...`` Recently, the veteran socialist Prem Bhasin wrote: ``The ease with which a large number of Congressmen and women - small, big and bigger still - have walked into the RSS-BJP boat and sailed with it is not a matter of surprise. For, there has always been a certain affinity between the two. A large and influential section in the Congress sincerely believed even during the freedom struggle that the interests of Hindu Indians could not be sacrificed at the altar of a united Independent India. Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai had, for instance, actually broken away from the Congress and founded the Nationalist Party which contested elections against the Congress in the mid-twenties`` (Janata; Annual Number, 1998). G.B. Pant was the architect of the Ayodhya problem.

Gandhi and Nehru opposed such elements doggedly, but they were not prepared to relent on their preference for a centralised federation. Meanwhile, the Muslim Right had begun to play with the Partition idea since Iqbal`s famous address to the League session in 1931. But his group of Muslim provinces was confined to western India as a member of the Indian Union. Jinnah did not subscribe to such schemes. He was a belated convert and for tactical reasons.

Both the Congress and the League were opposed to the federal part of the Government of India, 1935. Nehru wrote to Rajendra Prasad on July 21, 1937: ``During the General Election in U.P. there was not any conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League. It was the decision of both the parties to avoid conflict as much as possible and to accommodate each other.`` In October 1937, the League adopted as its objective complete independence and became a mass party. That that round of the Congress-League parleys for coalition failed was bad enough. Far worse, as Tej Bahadur Sapru wrote to Shiva Rao, was the behaviour of Congress Ministries. Jinnah`s talks with Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose failed dismally. The Congress took a fateful step. It began advocating the establishment of a Constituent Assembly as a solution to the problem. As K.M. Panikkar pointed out in a brilliant memorandum, dated October 10, 1945, no such Assembly can succeed except on the basis of a Congress-League accord and unless ``a procedure of bringing the parties together on some minimum basis of agreement is evolved before the Constituent Assembly meets.``

In 1939 the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, asked Jinnah whether he had ``a constructive policy``, any alternative to the Assembly which Jinnah dreaded because he was certain to be outvoted there. The Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on March 2, 1939. In these talks, Jinnah, despite his opposition to federation, presented his conditions for accepting it. He told the Viceroy that ``the only form of federation which would appeal to him would be one that contained what he described as an equipoise.`` By this he meant, as Jinnah himself explained, ``an adjustment of votes and of territorial division which would give a Hindu-Muslim balance.`` He added that this equipoise was to be ``obtained by a certain degree of gerrymandering`` - weightage of votes or seats. Various variants of the Pakistan scheme were then under active consideration within the Muslim League. The Premier of Punjab Sir Sikander Hayat Khan`s scheme sought the division of India into autonomous ``zones`` within a federal India.

The League appointed two bodies. A foreign committee was set up in December 1938 and a constitutional subcommittee was set up in March 1939. Authors of the various schemes cooperated with both. Jinnah ``told the Muslim League Council, on April 8, 1939, `There were several schemes in the field including that of dividing the country into Muslim and Hindu India`, but the (Sub) Committee was not pledged to any particular scheme.``

On September 11, 1939, the Viceroy announced suspension of the federal part of the Act. Jinnah, true to form, kept his counsel to himself. For the first time he propounded the theory that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations in India. In an article in the journal Time and Tide of London (January 19, 1940) Jinnah asserted that ``there are in India two nations, who both must share the governance of their common motherland``. This implied clearly a pact to govern a united India. The theory was aimed at asserting a claim to equality in standing. Only two months later in Lahore on March 23, 1940 the Muslim League demanded Partition in a Resolution which did not mention the two-nation theory at all. The omission is all the more remarkable for the fact that the theory very much figured in the Resolution adopted by the League`s Working Committee on February 6, 1940. Its five points provided ``the outline`` of the Pakistan proposal.

It was based on draft prepared by the Foreign Committee on February 1, 1940 at a meeting with the authors of schemes. The Constitutional Sub-Committee had apparently gone into hibernation. The text of the League`s draft is appended to the book (Appendix C). When Jinnah met the Viceroy on February 6 he argued that ``he and his friends were disposed, on the whole, to take the view that to publish in full their fundamental opinion as to the constructive steps to be taken for the future, would at this stage, from their standpoint, be inadvisable since it would needlessly expose surface (sic) to criticism``. But Linlithgow pressed him to provide his alternative scheme.

THE League`s historic Lahore session met in Lahore on March 21. The next day proved crucial as the Working Committee deliberated on the Pakistan resolution. The first preliminary draft, which the Subjects Committee discussed on March 23 for adoption by the session in the plenary, provided for an All-India Centre. The provisions read thus: ``(e) That the regions may, in turn, delegate to a Central agency, which for the convenience may be designated the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India, and on such terms as may be agreed upon, provided that such functions shall be administered through Committee on which all regions (dominions) and interests will be duly represented and their actual administration will be entrusted to the Units. (f) That no decision of this Central Agency will be effective or operative unless it is carried by at least a two-thirds majority. (g) That in the absence of agreement with regard to the constitution, functions and scope of the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India, cited above, the regions (dominions), (9) shall have the right to refrain from or refuse to participate in the proposed Central structure... (i) That the peace-time composition of the Indian Army shall continue on the same bases as existed on the 1st April, 1937.`` (Appendix D).

The author need not have lost himself in reverie, as he does on the fate of this draft. He should have consulted Evolution of Pakistan edited by Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (Royal Book Co, Karachi; 1995). He has reproduced in facsimile the draft prepared by Sir Sikandar with corrections therein by Jinnah, Malik Barkat Ali, an opponent of Sikandar, and others. There is a bracket suggesting omission of clauses (e) (f) and (g) concerning the Centre.

This explains Sikandar`s speech in the Punjab Assembly on March 11, 1941. ``I have no hesitation in admitting that I was responsible for drafting the original Resolution. But let me make it clear that the Resolution which I drafted was radically amended by the Working Committee, and there is a wide divergence between the Resolution I drafted and the one that was finally passed. The main difference between the two Resolutions is that the latter part of my Resolution, which related to the Centre and coordination of the activities of the various units, was eliminated.`` He, however, continued to remain a Leaguer.

But the Resolution as adopted contained a significant paragraph at the end. ``This session further authorises the Working Comm-ittee to frame a scheme of constitution in accordance with these basic principles, providing for the assumption finally by the respective regions of all powers such as defence, external affairs, communication, customs and such other matters as may be necessary.`` In his masterpiece Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar reproached Gandhi for not putting searching questions to Jinnah on the text when they met in 1944. ``What does the word `finally`, which occurs in the last para of the Lahore Resolution, mean? Did the League contemplate a transition period in which Pakistan will not be an independent and sovereign State?`` (page 411)

Ayesha Jalal holds: ``By apparently repudiating the need for any centre, and keeping quiet about its shape, Jinnah calculated that when eventually the time came to discuss an all-India federation, British and Congress alike would be forced to negotiate with organised Muslim opinion, and would be ready to make substantial concessions to create or retain that centre. The Lahore resolution should therefore be seen as a bargaining counter, which had the merit of being acceptable (on the face of it) to the majority-province Muslims, and of being totally unacceptable to the Congress and in the last resort to the British also. This, in turn, provided the best insurance that the League would not be given what it now apparently was asking for, but which Jinnah in fact did not really want`` (The Sole Spokesman; page 57).

Meanwhile, the Foreign Committee soldiered along to produce the ``scheme of constitution`` promised in the last para and submitted its Report dated December 23, 1940 to Jinnah. It said:

``The Lahore resolution of the League does not look forward to the proposed regional states assuming immediately, as they are formed, powers of defence, external affairs, communication, customs, etc. This argues that there should be a transitional stage during which these powers should be exercised by some agency common to them all...

Jinnah disowned it and even repudiated the Committee`s locus standi. (For the text of the Report vide The Pakistan Issue edited by Nawab Nazir Yar Jang Bahadur; Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore; 1943; pp 73-92). It was not unanimous. A leak to the press created a sharp controversy. But these lines in the Report showed keen perception: ``A common coordinating agency would be necessary...; for, under the third principle of the Resolution, it will be impossible to implement effectively the provisions of safeguards for minorities without some organic relationship subsisting between the States... an agreed formula has to be devised whereby the Muslims shall share the control at the Centre on terms of perfect equality with the non-Muslims`` (page 88). In plain words, Pakistan would spell the ruin of Indian Muslims unless it had an ``organic relationship`` with the rest of India.

Jinnah did not wish publicly to concede a Centre. Confident of his tactical skills, not unjustifiably, he thought he would, when the chips were down, ``pull it off``. He miscalculated. The Congress was not interested in sharing power. His abrasive rhetoric impaired his credentials as an interlocutor. Nehru wrote in his jail diary on December 28, 1943: ``Instinctively I think it is better to have Pakistan or almost nothing if only to keep Jinnah far away and not allow his muddled and arrogant head from (sic) interfering continually in India`s progress`` (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; First Series; Vol.13; page 324). He accurately predicted: ``I cannot help thinking that ultimately the Muslims of India will suffer most`` (ibid; page 24).

That Jinnah`s adherence to the Resolution of March 23, 1940, with its tantalising last para, was tentative emerges clearly from a consistent record of concessions on his part. Muslim leaders in U.P. like Chaudhury Khaliquzzaman and the Nawab of Chhatari expressed disquiet. On October 22, 1940, Jinnah asked Chhatari to come out ``with a definite scheme of his own`` and promised that he would bear that scheme in mind while making a final decision in this regard (page 200). Chhatari suggested that ``We must get as many Hindus out of the Congress as possible to join hands with us``. His suggestion clearly implied establishment of an all-India federation. The League was not unanimous on Pakistan even after the Lahore resolution.

Chundrigar, a Leaguer close to Jinnah, told H.V. Hodson, the Reforms Commissioner, in April 1940 that the object of the Lahore Resolution was not to create ``Ulsters`` but to achieve ``two nations... welded into united India on the basis of equality``. It was, he added, an alternative to majority rule; not a bid to destroy India`s unity. Jinnah himself told Nawab Mohammed Ismail Khan, one of the few who thought for himself, in November 1941, that he could not come out with these truths ``because it is likely to be misunderstood especially at present``. But, ``I think Mr. Hodson finally understands as to what our demand is``. Hodson regarded it as a bid for a set-up on ``equal terms`` motivated by the fear that Muslims might be reduced to being ``a Cindrella with trade union rights and a radio in the kitchen but still below stairs.``

UNFORTUNATELY, the author`s work does not take note of Prof. R.J. Moore`s work Endgame of Empire published in 1983, in which he refers to a file in the Jinnah Papers in the Government of Pakistan`s archives containing his correspondence with Cripps in 1942 on ``the creation of a new Indian Union``. Significantly it is still embargoed.

Jinnah emerged from the polls in 1946 with his representative status established. At his very first meeting with the British Cabinet Mission on April 4, 1946, he demanded Partition; but only to concede foreign affairs, defence and communication to the centre.

On April 25, 1946, he was offered two alternatives - the Pakistan as it came to be established in 1947 and an Indian Union superimposed on groups of Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected the first and said he would consider the second if Congress did the same. His own proposals of May 12, 1946 envisaged, not Pakistan, but a confederation. If pressed he would have accepted a federation. He did so. He accepted the Mission`s Plan.

The Mission propounded its plan on May 16, 1946 rejecting Pakistan and plumping instead for a Union confined to defence, foreign affairs and communication and based on three groups of provinces. It was, an ``organic`` union with enormous potential for growth.

Jinnah accepted it. Gandhi condemned grouping immediately and persisted in the opposition till the end. The Congress professed to accept the plan but so quibbled on grouping as to wreck the proposals.

THE Cabinet Mission`s plan of May 16, 1946, envisaged an Indian federation based on three groups of provinces. The provinces were free to secede from the groups in which they were placed by a vote in the first general election after the scheme took effect. But they could not secede from the Union. India`s unity was preserved. All they could ask for was ``reconsideration of the terms of the Constitution`` - a Sarkaria Commission - after 10 years and no more. It would have been open to provinces of Group A (the States which now form the Union of India) to confer on the Union voluntarily subjects beyond the minimum subjects of defence, foreign affairs and communication. Group B comprised Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP. Far from establishing a ``weak`` Centre, it would have yielded a strong centre for India of today in a federal union with Pakistan, in which India though had a majority, though confined to defence, foreign affairs and communication.

The plan broke down because the Congress refused to accept this grouping formula. It had 207 members in the Constituent Assembly against 73 of the League. In the crucial Group C, comprising Bengal and Assam, it had 32 members against 36 of the League, in a House of 70, with two Independents. Since the League would have had to provide a chairman to work the group, it would have been left with 35 members against 32 of the Congress. How could the League possibly have prevented Assam`s secession? Yet it was this bogey which destroyed the last best chance for preserving India`s unity.

As late as March 19, 1947 - less than three months before the Partition plan - the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, wrote to the Secretary of State for India, Pethick-Lawrence, that, having met Jinnah recently, Colin Reid, correspondent of The Daily Telegraph ``got the impression that he might accept the Cabinet Mission`s plan if the Congress accepted it in unequivocal terms``. Mountbatten tried to secure that and failed. The Congress preferred India`s partition to sharing power with the League in a united India.

In an interview with Jalal in 1980, a Punjab League leader, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, said that Jinnah never wanted a Pakistan which involved the Partition of India and was all in favour of the Mission`s proposals. The Cabinet Mission`s Plan was wrecked by the Congress as Chimanlal Setalvad rightly held.

The Congress was not consistent on the Partition. On April 2, 1942, the Congress Working Committee criticised the secessionist idea - only to add: ``Nevertheless, the Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in the Indian Union against their declared and established will...`` Its election manifesto of 1945 reiterated this principle, thus setting at naught the Jagat Narain Lal resolution, adopted by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) on May 2, 1942, which ruled out ``liberty to any component State or territorial unit to secede.``

Rajaji`s formula, in March 1944, accepted plebiscite on Partition in areas ``wherein the Muslim population is in absolute majority.`` On September 24, 1944 Gandhi himself offered Jinnah his plan for ``two sovereign independent States`` with a Treaty of Separation on defence, foreign affairs, etc. Thus, from 1940 onwards, the trend was unmistakably against India`s unity. Both Gandhi and the Congress had accepted the principle of Partition, based on consent of the areas concerned. Time was fast running out on India`s unity.

THE British government`s statement on December 6, 1946 rejected the Congress interpretation of the grouping formula and ended with these words: ``There has never been any prospect of success for the Constituent Assembly except upon the basis of the agreed procedure. Should a Constitution come to be framed by the Constituent Assembly in which a large section of the Indian population had not been represented, His Majesty`s Government could not, of course, contemplate - as the Congress have stated they would not contemplate - forcing such a Constitution upon any unwilling parts of the country.`` This gave the Congress one of two choices - unqualified acceptance of the Mission`s Plan or Partition. It preferred the latter. Once again, Gandhi rejected the Plan. He advised Assam not to join the Group (c) with Bengal, retire from the Constituent Assembly and frame its own constitution. ``Each unit must be able to decide and act for itself`` (Harijan, December 29, 1946).

Richard Symonds describes graphically the havoc that followed Partition. He was a relief worker among the refugees when the massacres took place in Punjab at Independence. Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, academics at the University of Singapore, describe the aftermath and its lasting impact on Punjab, especially on Sikhs. The opening chapter on ``the celebration of independence`` in both countries is, like the rest of the scholarly work, excellently documented. Their comments on Radcliffe`s work are devastating. ``The Radcliffe Award for the Punjab, a six-paragraph document describing the dividing line between the east and west of the province, `wobbled from communal to economic to strategic factors`, followed no natural dividing features such as rivers or mountain ranges, cut across villages, canal systems and communication lines, in the process separating communities and bisecting homes. Large populations of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs found themselves on the wrong side of the border. It was the same for Bengal, where the boundary created large pockets of minorities in East Pakistan as well as West Bengal. Its impact was tremendous, and the trauma of Partition has left an indelible mark not only on Indo-Pakistan relations but upon the lives of millions of Indians and Pakistanis.``

The last chapter is on ``the legacies of Partition``. They write: ``Since the late 1940s Muslim political leaders have realized that `partition proved positively injurious to the Muslims of India, and on a long term basis for Muslims everywhere`. However, since the 1980s, the community has faced new challenge to its political status as political parties, raising the banner of Hindu majoritarian cultural nationalism, have questioned the very basis of India`s secularism. The Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Mosque controversy and the larger, continuing mobilization for Hindutva have profound implications for the future of the community, as several scholarly studies have shown.``

The Sangh Parivar`s ancestors existed even in the 19th century as Joya Chatterjee`s superb work Bengal Divided (1995) establishes. Partition weakened the cause of secularism in India and all but destroyed it in Pakistan.



http://www.flonnet.com/fl1826/18260810.htm

Babu-----#13

Despite your disclaimer(perhaps to s/uck a hapless reader into reading it) is nothing but a litany of apologies for the Great Satan.

Laanut upon amreekaa!The Roguest country in the world!

InTERESTING FACTS ABOUT LONE ALIVE SUSPECT IN THE 9-11Tragedy HIJACKING INCIDENT.

http://member.compuserve.com/news/content.jsp?floc=NT-slot2&file=news/slot2/moussaoui.jsp

..........Moussaoui`s mother, Aicha el-Wafi, came to the United States from France last week and said her son told her he could prove his innocence. She didn`t appear in the courtroom Wednesday The defendant, 33, is a French citizen of Moroccan descent who received a master`s degree in England.

Although Moussaoui has been in federal custody on immigration charges since August, when he aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school, the indictment says he conspired with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill and maim victims in the United States. While accusing him of links to Osama bin Laden`s terrorist network, the indictment does not explain his role in the terror attacks.

Nonetheless, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Moussaoui an active participant with the 19 hijackers who crashed four jetliners in New York, Washington and Western Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.

The indictment accuses Moussaoui of pursuing some of the same activities as the hijackers by taking flight training in the United States, inquiring about crop dusting and purchasing flight deck training videos.

Moussaoui received money in July and August from Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, an alleged member of a German terrorist cell who was a roommate of Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader in the attacks, the indictment charges. The FBI contends Bin al-Shibh may have been planning to be the 20th hijacker.

The indictment alleges that Moussaoui was present at the al-Qaida-affiliated Khalden Camp in Afghanistan. By the end of September 2000, he was making parallel moves to some of the hijackers with his flight lessons, crop-dusting interest and training video purchases.

A clear indication of the case`s importance was Senate passage of legislation to broadcast the trial on closed-circuit television in the cities most affected by the hijackings.

The House has not acted on the measure, which is modeled on a similar privilege granted to Oklahoma City bombing victims and families.

Cameras usually are not permitted in federal courtrooms, but Court TV has challenged the rule as unconstitutional and filed a motion to broadcast the proceedings. Brinkema set a Jan. 9 hearing for Court TV`s motion and gave the prosecution and defense until Friday to make their positions known.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without prior written authority.





[] Copyright ©2002 CompuServe Interactive Services

Popular Islam of our times

Philosophies dealing with the betterment of human kind can never be challenged. Why? Because the principles on which such philosophies are based are generic in nature. How a philosophy is defined in a particular age indicates the popular face of that particular philosophy.

So, there is Islam and then there is the popular Islam of our times: the way Islam has been interpreted by the religious leaders of this age. It will be very foolish to not understand that the recent events call for a thorough reformation of that popular Islam. You would have imagined the process of reformation starting somewhere. It hasn`t, and I don`t understand why.

Urstruly 21:

Secularism is needed to prevent tensions in multi-ethnic Muslim societies. A lot of Muslim countries - Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan are multi-ethnic.

Otherwise one ethnic group will use Islam as a easy vehicle to impose their power on other groups. In the process you start a civil war undermining the whole society. Afghanistan under Taleban was a classic example.

Free Market Economics involves multiple concepts - stable currency, reasonably balanced budgets, prudent taxation, supply-demand to determine prices, minimal amount of subsidies etc.

There is a lot of capital among third world elites. But they put their money in safe places. The question to ask is simple - where is it safe to put your money. USA ?? Pakistan ?? Somalia ??

Pakistan`s problems are very simple. Pakistan overspent in the past using borrowed money. Now they have a hard time repaying old debts.

IF IT AINT BROKEN DONT FIX IT.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1826/18261180.htm

GENDER ISSUES

Dubious choice

A U.S.-based company`s advertisement campaign in an Indian newspaper to market a pre-conception sex selection technique, exploiting the son-preference in Indian society, runs into rough weather. PARVATHI MENON

SROBONA ROY CHOUDHURY

in Bangalore INDIAN women, under social and familial pressure to produce sons, are very often forced to find ways to do so, often at great risk to their health. Commonly available techniques such as ultrasound scanning make it possible to determine the sex of the foetus within the first trimester of pregnancy. The demand for this relatively simple and inexpensive technique is so high that unregistered mobile diagnostic clinics have mushroomed, and female foetuses are often aborted. The status of the girl child in India is reflected in the juvenile sex-ratio, which has registered a sharp decline over the last decade - from 945 females per 1,000 males in the 1991 Census to 927:1,000 in 2001. COURTESY: VIMOCHANA

Women and child rights groups demonstrating outside the office of a newspaper in Bangalore on November 26. Cashing in on son-preference, a value that is entrenched in Indian society, a new sex-selection procedure has entered the market. A United States-based company recently ran a series of advertisements in The Times of India for a gender selection approach that is ``safe``, ``easy-to-use`` and ``upto 96 per cent effective``. ``Gender Selection is now a reality,`` the advertisement read, along with a photograph of a bonny baby boy. The advertisement provoked immediate protests from women`s and child rights groups in Bangalore that are fighting retrograde social attitudes and practices that discriminate against the girl-child. The groups were equally critical of the newspaper that carried the advertisement, for allowing commercial objectives to overshadow its social responsibilites. Vimochana, a city-based women`s organisation, held a demonstration outside the newspaper`s office, which it followed with a letters-to-the-editor campaign. In this it was joined by the Network to Empower Women Journalists (NEWJ), a Bangalore-based women journalists` organisation. The Times of India subsequently stopped running the advertisement, but not before it had made its editorial judgment on the matter. In an editorial entitled ``Sophie`s Choice``, it acknowledged the widespread misuse of sex-determination techniques and the failure of legislation to bring new and questionable technologies for sex-selection within its ambit. However, it also justified its decision to carry the advertisement by arguing that women must be given the ``freedom of choice``, a fundamental tenet of democracy. ``Can we abridge an individual`s right to choose the gender of her child before conception?`` the editorial asked. The newspaper`s stand has added a new dimension to the ongoing controversy. What are the ethical and social responsibilities of the media with respect to social issues, and in this specific case, a blatant form of discrimination that women face? ``Almost every day, newspapers publish at least one case of a woman being murdered or driven to suicide because she failed to produce a male child,`` Dona Fernandes of Vimochana told Frontline. ``The toll-free international number for India provided in the advertisement clearly shows that the company is trying to exploit the Indian market. Allowing Gen-Select to market its product will mean giving encouragement to the obsession for male babies that is widespread in our country,`` she added. Vimochana has filed a complaint against the product with the Health and Family Welfare Department, stating that it violates the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994. Gen-Select, the company, provides sketchy details about its product both in its advertisement and on its website. Frontline contacted the promoters, Jill and Scott Sweazy, who offered through e-mail information on the procedure and the reasons for promoting it in India. The Sweazys` claim that it was not the commercial opportunities India offered which led them to market the product in India, but a deeper moral and ethical urge. The procedure, they emphasise, is not a pre-natal, but a pre-conception one. ``We found that the people of India have a strong desire to choose the sex of their children and frequently go to the extreme of foeticide to achieve this goal,`` Jill Sweazy said, side-stepping any mention of the fact that it is the female foetus that is inevitably aborted. ``With our product, the freedom to choose the gender of your next child is preserved, while the moral, ethical and legal issues of foeticide are put at ease,`` said Sweazy. Hardly anyone will incur the expense and make the effort to acquire a kit, unless they are desperate. The Indian experience (``the strong desire of the people of India`` that Jill Sweazy alludes to) shows that it is the desperation for sons that drives couples to commit female foeticide. She claims that a part of the proceeds from the sale of every Gen-Select kit sold in India would be donated to the cause of prevention of foeticide. The website received thousands of hits in the first week of the product`s advertising, she said. While she did not disclose the actual number of requests for the kit from India, Jill Sweazy said that they were ``encouraged by the favourable response to their product in India`` and were `` already processing requests for both boy and girl kits``. Claiming scientific validity for the method, which is known as the ``Fully Integrated Programme,`` she said that they had put in a patent application for it a year ago. The method, ``as simplistic as it is intricate,`` is dressed up in pseudo-scientific jargon. It has four components as described by its developers. First, there is a prescribed dose of ``carefully formulated gender specific nutriceutical supplement``. The nutriceuticals include ``specific univalent and divalent cationic elements`` which ``combined with appropriate vitamins and herbal extracts``, can create the ``strongest bias possible for successfully accomplishing a conception of the requested gender``. The nutriceuticals are produced in Food and Drug Administration-approved facilities in the U.S., they add. The second aspect of the method is monitoring monthly ovulation cycles by recording changes in body temperature (here the kit helpfully provides a digital thermometer) and charting instructions for timing sexual union. Here the Sweazys offer a proposition that effectively knocks the bottom off their method. ``Strong evidence exists,`` Jill Sweazy notes, ``which shows that the ratio of viable `y` carrying (male) sperm and `x` carrying (female) sperm differ in concentration in the female reproductive tract depending upon when they were deposited.`` The third element of the method lies in the use of external sprays or douches which will alter the acidic/alkaline environment of the female reproductive tract. The mysterious ```x` carrying (female) sperms have a survival advantage in acidic secretions while the `y` carrying (male) sperms have motility advantage in more alkaline solutions.`` The last component recommends ``specific dietary guidelines`` that will change the ``critical elements in the male and female reproductive fluid``. The kit is ``specially priced`` at $196 (approximately Rs.5,800) for India. DR. LEELA PAI, a leading obstetrician and gynaecologist in Bangalore, told Frontline that pre-conception sex-selection technologies are not scientifically validated. A procedure such as the Fully Integrated Programme would fall in the category of ``hit or miss`` techniques. According to Dr. C.M. Francis of the Community Health Cell, Bangalore, altering the alkalinity of the body through the use of external sprays is risky and can lead to infertility. The Gen-Select method and kit, Dr. Francis said, was designed in such a way that the company will have the least legal accountability. ``In case the method fails, the company can get away by saying that the instructions were not followed, or that they only promised `up to 96 per cent` effectiveness,`` he added. Gen-Select cannot be prosecuted under the provisions of Indian law, Jill Sweazy told Frontline in an e-mail. According to her, the relevant law (the PNDT Act, 1994) only applies to pre-natal diagnostic techniques, not to pre-conception techniques. ``Our product is a pre-conception product and is subsequently not governed by provisions addressing pre-natal concerns,`` she said. Anitha Shenoy, a Delhi-based lawyer, disagrees. She is part of the Lawyers Collective, which is representing the petitioners in a public interest petition filed in the Supreme Court, seeking changes in the PNDT Act. Since the Act aims to prohibit the use of modern medical techniques in ways that discriminate against women, Shenoy said, it can be interpreted widely. In fact, in medical dictionaries, the word `pre-natal` includes the pre-conception period as well. She said that the newspaper that carried the offending advertisement also violated the PNDT Act. Section 22 of the Act prohibits any advertisement that relates to pre-natal determination of sex. The Supreme Court is monitoring the implementation of the PNDT Act. Drawing a link between the declining juvenile sex ratio and the proliferation of sex determination diagnostic clinics, the Supreme Court had, on May 4, 2001, issued a directive to the Centre and the State governments to ``monitor and review the implementation of the PNDT Act`` (Frontline, June 22, 2001). On August 6, the apex court issued summons, to appear on August 10, to the Chief Secretaries of the 13 States which had failed to submit progress reports on the implementation of the Act. The court directive came after a public interest petition was filed jointly by the Centre of Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT), Mumbai; the Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM), Pune; and Dr. Sabu M. George, a health policy expert and activist in the campaign against female foeticide. The petitioners have asked for the inclusion of pre-conception sex-selection techniques within the purview of the Act. They have also asked for a ban on advertisements promoting the use of sex-selection techniques. ``It is significant that apart from Bangalore, few other cities had any objection to the advertisement,`` Dr. George told Frontline. He was also critical of the media in general for having remained silent on the Gen-Select issue. ``Despite seeing the effects of discriminatory technologies like these on India`s demographic pattern, it is tragic that people are still willing to endorse the product. When pre-natal sex-determination techniques became common, there was an alarming increase in the number of foeticides. Now if pre-conception sex-selection technologies become easily available, the possibilities are frightening,`` he said.

Hindu Sena men fire at New Year revellers









UCKNOW: Two New Year eve revellers were injured when Hindu Sena activists opened fire with home-made revolvers to disrupt the celebrations at a fun club in Indira Nagar locality on Faizabad Road late on Monday night, police sources said here on Tuesday.

The activists, allegedly led by their state unit president Alok Dube, reached the Super Fun and Food Centre and broke the window panes and tried to disrupt the New Year bash there, the sources said adding the security guard posted at the centre also fired from his licenced weapon to disperse the mob.

A case has been registered in this connection and investigations were on, the sources added.

Earlier, the Hindu Sena had through a letter to the district authorities warned that it would stall all programmes organised in the city`s hotels and clubs on the New Year eve because they are against the Indian culture.

( PTI )







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