The Panel of Vendettas at UC Berkley
Aisha Sarwari March 4, 2002
#194 Posted by Prem on March 16, 2002 3:30:48 am
RSaxena # 200
BTW, what gave you the impression that I ever thought you felt an animosity toward the U.S.?
BTW, what gave you the impression that I ever thought you felt an animosity toward the U.S.?
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#193 Posted by Prem on March 16, 2002 3:30:48 am
re: RSaxena # 200
That kind of omnibus comparison doesnt tell much. For most people the ``best`` country is either the country of their birth or the country of their dreams.
Instead of adjudicating who is better and who is the best, we ought to focus on specific, potentially verifiable facts and hypotheses. We can evaluate the validity of the statement: the unsatisfactory reputation of country X is merely because of its image problem. But there is no friggin` way we can decide what is ``best`` for others. People have to figure that out by themselves.
That kind of omnibus comparison doesnt tell much. For most people the ``best`` country is either the country of their birth or the country of their dreams.
Instead of adjudicating who is better and who is the best, we ought to focus on specific, potentially verifiable facts and hypotheses. We can evaluate the validity of the statement: the unsatisfactory reputation of country X is merely because of its image problem. But there is no friggin` way we can decide what is ``best`` for others. People have to figure that out by themselves.
#192 Posted by rsaxena on March 15, 2002 11:51:44 pm
re: prem
{{People who for whatever reasons feel animosity toward America focus on these aspects of American life, rather than first confronting huge fires burning in their own backyards. That is precisely what Indians and Pakistanis (and everyone else) do(es). }}
uhh, genius, i feel no animosity towards america...as you seem to now understand, my point was that every country has its faults, but that doesn`t mean some countries aren`t better than others...america, despite its faults, is the best democracy on earth...similarly, india, despite its faults, is a far better country than the banana republic to its West....not perfect, but better...
{{People who for whatever reasons feel animosity toward America focus on these aspects of American life, rather than first confronting huge fires burning in their own backyards. That is precisely what Indians and Pakistanis (and everyone else) do(es). }}
uhh, genius, i feel no animosity towards america...as you seem to now understand, my point was that every country has its faults, but that doesn`t mean some countries aren`t better than others...america, despite its faults, is the best democracy on earth...similarly, india, despite its faults, is a far better country than the banana republic to its West....not perfect, but better...
#191 Posted by Prem on March 15, 2002 8:41:15 pm
re: Ali2 # 197
`` India is good, pakistan is good... the whole world is good ``
That is not my position. My position is that ``India is good, Pakistan is good...the whole world is good,`` with a great deal of potential for silliness, and sometimes downright evil. To assert that India is ``just good`` after what has happened recently will require some absurd logical acrobatics. Let`s quit thinking in these black and white terms.
re: Saxena # 193
You do get my point, RSax. You and I will agree that the U.S. is as good a country as one is likely to find. Yet, you will also acknowledge that in America there ARE cases of race riots, discrimination against minorities, sikh gas station owners being killed, and that America does splurge money on NASA when her inner cities keep crumbling.
People who for whatever reasons feel animosity toward America focus on these aspects of American life, rather than first confronting huge fires burning in their own backyards. That is precisely what Indians and Pakistanis (and everyone else) do(es).
The correct response to this situation is not to revel in victimhood, but to focus on solving one`s real problems that give rise to ``adverse image.``
re: hobbyty # 196
``And don`t you agree that significant numbers of Indians see ``hostility`` of Pakistan Army towards India as structural in Pakistan? And don`t you agree that significant numbers of Indians hold Pakistan not being ``secular``, as a major theme.``
You have put your finger on the nub of the problem. I have myself noticed this thinking spread far and wide in India in recent years, far beyond the Hindutva coterie. Indians do not view Pakistan as inheritors of the Mughal tradition (in fact, that will be very offensive to most Indians). But they have begun to feel that Pakistani army itself has a combination of the Mughal ruler and ghazi mentality that views itself as superior to Hindus (whom Pakistani military men rarely describe in flattering terms). And it is very difficult for a non-Muslim to believe that anyone who fancies themselves as being a ghazi will not be determined to harm them.
So you see why Indians see the ``hostility`` of Pakistan Army towards India as structural in Pakistan. And the fact that depite less than spectacular results each time, a relatively smaller Pakistani force has repeatedly fought wars with India (except in 1971 when Pakistan did not want a war) only strengthens this view.
`` India is good, pakistan is good... the whole world is good ``
That is not my position. My position is that ``India is good, Pakistan is good...the whole world is good,`` with a great deal of potential for silliness, and sometimes downright evil. To assert that India is ``just good`` after what has happened recently will require some absurd logical acrobatics. Let`s quit thinking in these black and white terms.
re: Saxena # 193
You do get my point, RSax. You and I will agree that the U.S. is as good a country as one is likely to find. Yet, you will also acknowledge that in America there ARE cases of race riots, discrimination against minorities, sikh gas station owners being killed, and that America does splurge money on NASA when her inner cities keep crumbling.
People who for whatever reasons feel animosity toward America focus on these aspects of American life, rather than first confronting huge fires burning in their own backyards. That is precisely what Indians and Pakistanis (and everyone else) do(es).
The correct response to this situation is not to revel in victimhood, but to focus on solving one`s real problems that give rise to ``adverse image.``
re: hobbyty # 196
``And don`t you agree that significant numbers of Indians see ``hostility`` of Pakistan Army towards India as structural in Pakistan? And don`t you agree that significant numbers of Indians hold Pakistan not being ``secular``, as a major theme.``
You have put your finger on the nub of the problem. I have myself noticed this thinking spread far and wide in India in recent years, far beyond the Hindutva coterie. Indians do not view Pakistan as inheritors of the Mughal tradition (in fact, that will be very offensive to most Indians). But they have begun to feel that Pakistani army itself has a combination of the Mughal ruler and ghazi mentality that views itself as superior to Hindus (whom Pakistani military men rarely describe in flattering terms). And it is very difficult for a non-Muslim to believe that anyone who fancies themselves as being a ghazi will not be determined to harm them.
So you see why Indians see the ``hostility`` of Pakistan Army towards India as structural in Pakistan. And the fact that depite less than spectacular results each time, a relatively smaller Pakistani force has repeatedly fought wars with India (except in 1971 when Pakistan did not want a war) only strengthens this view.
#190 Posted by hobbyty on March 15, 2002 4:20:28 pm
Prem, Sarwari
While Prem may pity and worry - shouldn`t he first acknowledge the problem, after all, you can`t fix a problem if you do not acknowledge it it exist. Examine the themes in this piece in the Editorial section of the ``Hindustan Times`` - see if you can tell how the psychological need for significant numbers of Hindu Indians is satisfied in positing the following: Muslim ``Invader``, Muslim ``Defiler``, Muslim ``freeloader``, Muslim irrational. Hindu ``coward`` - and how vengence in the present must be taken for alleged wrongs in the past - The Hindu ``Victim`` must awaken and avenge is Reason:
``Secularist Be warned
May I make a sincere request to my fellow Hindus to give a respite to the use of the word ‘secular’ for the next five years? The word stinks to high heavens.
It smells of hypocrisy, cowardice, an attitude of holier-than-thou and a singular ignorance of history unparalleled in the annals of our sorry times.
There were no secularists around when Ghazni invaded India 13 times, smashed the lingam in the Somnath Temple and took the pieces to be scattered in front of a masjid in his hometown for his kinsmen to merrily trample over. Nor were there any secularists living when, during the long Islamic reign in India, 3,000 temples were demolished. It was considered part of medieval behaviour and so to be taken in one’s stride.
If not Babar it was his general who destroyed a temple in Ayodhya, and despite the hysterical denials of our demented historians, a temple did exist where the Babri masjid once stood and there are enough records — and architectural evidence — to prove the fact. Only the determinedly blind will refuse to accept the testimony of writers like Mirza Jan (1856), Mohammad Asghar (1858), Mirza Rajah Ali Beg Sarur (1787-1867) and Sheikh Md Azmat Ali (1869) who have had no reason to tell a lie.
But even if, for the sake of argument, there was no temple in Ayodhya, it ill-behoved anybody, let alone a murderous marauder like Babar, to build a masjid in what is considered a Hindu holy city any more than a theoretical Hindu invader of Saudi Arabia would have in building a temple in Mecca close to or on the site of the Kaaba. Ram is as much meaningful to Hindus as Allah is to Muslims. The Babri masjid was raised in Ayodhya to tell the Hindus who the rulers were. The VHP does not have to be apologetic to anyone, least of all to the secularists, for wishing to raise a temple to Ram at a site they believe he was born.
The real issue is not Ayodhya as much as it is the secularists’ dogged determination not to face up to history. The attitude of the average secularist is either to bury his head, ostrich-like, in the sands of time in the face of embarrassing facts or to say that the Hindus deserved what they got. By their cowardly behaviour, the secularists have both directly or indirectly encouraged the hardliners among Muslims to refuse to consider any sensible compromise with the VHP, and if anybody is to be blamed for all the disturbances of the past decade, it has to be the secularist with his contempt for Hinduism.
What happened in Ahmedabad is no different from what happened in Delhi when Indira Gandhi was assassinated or what happened in Punjab following Partition. The Gujaratis are as law-abiding as anyone else and don’t deserve to be maligned. Does anyone remember Rajiv Gandhi’s remarks about the killings of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s death? Did the Congress pull him up for his thoughtless comment? The Ahmedabad rioting was not pre-planned unlike the Godhra killings by Muslim fanatics or the killings of innocent Kashmiris by ISI-supported jehadis.
The Ayodhya issue is not for the court to decide but for the Muslim community to concede to the VHP what rightfully belongs to the Hindus — graciously. And who will believe this community when it says it will abide by a court verdict? What happened in the Shah Bano case? For the Muslim community, it is a win-win situation. If it wins the case, it can have the last laugh. If it loses the case, it can always say that the BJP government has bought the judges.
Such is the power of blackmail that the secularists, in their blind hatred of the BJP and the VHP, wield. Why should anyone blame the VHP? Hasn’t it shown exemplary patience for 10 long years?
The blame for the VHP’s and the kar sewaks’ militancy lies entirely at the doors of the secularists. It is not the kar sewak who is destabilising the country. The fault is that of the secularist and a weak and indecisive government which is afraid of its own shadow. Ten years is a long time to wait. That is why the kar sewak is blandishing his trishul.
How long are we going to appease the irrational among the Muslim community to show how secular and law-abiding we are as a people? It serves the rabid among the Muslims to see how the BJP is being reduced to a joke. And the secularists’ stand has only served to strengthen the rabid Muslims to hold on to their own and watch the tamasha.
The Babri masjid was of no great architectural wonder. Masjids are routinely levelled to the ground in Muslim countries including in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to make way for development. No Hindu protested when ancient temples had to be submerged in the course of raising dams. The VHP would have happily agreed to build a special masjid for Muslims to pray in peace in Ayodhya — but in some other location, away from the janmabhoomi site.
But that wouldn’t convince the secularists, who would rather see the country reduced to ashes than worship at the altar of reason. For them, bashing the Sangh parivar has become an end in itself. The nation is heading for a major crisis of unprecedented proportions that would make the Ahmedabad riots pale into insignificance. The secularists are warned.
They are driving a frustrated people to desperation. And when that comes to pass, logic and good sense are stood on their head and the entire nation will suffer. And then let not the kar sewaks be blamed for what is not their fault. There has to be a limit to secular pig-headedness.``
While Prem may pity and worry - shouldn`t he first acknowledge the problem, after all, you can`t fix a problem if you do not acknowledge it it exist. Examine the themes in this piece in the Editorial section of the ``Hindustan Times`` - see if you can tell how the psychological need for significant numbers of Hindu Indians is satisfied in positing the following: Muslim ``Invader``, Muslim ``Defiler``, Muslim ``freeloader``, Muslim irrational. Hindu ``coward`` - and how vengence in the present must be taken for alleged wrongs in the past - The Hindu ``Victim`` must awaken and avenge is Reason:
``Secularist Be warned
May I make a sincere request to my fellow Hindus to give a respite to the use of the word ‘secular’ for the next five years? The word stinks to high heavens.
It smells of hypocrisy, cowardice, an attitude of holier-than-thou and a singular ignorance of history unparalleled in the annals of our sorry times.
There were no secularists around when Ghazni invaded India 13 times, smashed the lingam in the Somnath Temple and took the pieces to be scattered in front of a masjid in his hometown for his kinsmen to merrily trample over. Nor were there any secularists living when, during the long Islamic reign in India, 3,000 temples were demolished. It was considered part of medieval behaviour and so to be taken in one’s stride.
If not Babar it was his general who destroyed a temple in Ayodhya, and despite the hysterical denials of our demented historians, a temple did exist where the Babri masjid once stood and there are enough records — and architectural evidence — to prove the fact. Only the determinedly blind will refuse to accept the testimony of writers like Mirza Jan (1856), Mohammad Asghar (1858), Mirza Rajah Ali Beg Sarur (1787-1867) and Sheikh Md Azmat Ali (1869) who have had no reason to tell a lie.
But even if, for the sake of argument, there was no temple in Ayodhya, it ill-behoved anybody, let alone a murderous marauder like Babar, to build a masjid in what is considered a Hindu holy city any more than a theoretical Hindu invader of Saudi Arabia would have in building a temple in Mecca close to or on the site of the Kaaba. Ram is as much meaningful to Hindus as Allah is to Muslims. The Babri masjid was raised in Ayodhya to tell the Hindus who the rulers were. The VHP does not have to be apologetic to anyone, least of all to the secularists, for wishing to raise a temple to Ram at a site they believe he was born.
The real issue is not Ayodhya as much as it is the secularists’ dogged determination not to face up to history. The attitude of the average secularist is either to bury his head, ostrich-like, in the sands of time in the face of embarrassing facts or to say that the Hindus deserved what they got. By their cowardly behaviour, the secularists have both directly or indirectly encouraged the hardliners among Muslims to refuse to consider any sensible compromise with the VHP, and if anybody is to be blamed for all the disturbances of the past decade, it has to be the secularist with his contempt for Hinduism.
What happened in Ahmedabad is no different from what happened in Delhi when Indira Gandhi was assassinated or what happened in Punjab following Partition. The Gujaratis are as law-abiding as anyone else and don’t deserve to be maligned. Does anyone remember Rajiv Gandhi’s remarks about the killings of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s death? Did the Congress pull him up for his thoughtless comment? The Ahmedabad rioting was not pre-planned unlike the Godhra killings by Muslim fanatics or the killings of innocent Kashmiris by ISI-supported jehadis.
The Ayodhya issue is not for the court to decide but for the Muslim community to concede to the VHP what rightfully belongs to the Hindus — graciously. And who will believe this community when it says it will abide by a court verdict? What happened in the Shah Bano case? For the Muslim community, it is a win-win situation. If it wins the case, it can have the last laugh. If it loses the case, it can always say that the BJP government has bought the judges.
Such is the power of blackmail that the secularists, in their blind hatred of the BJP and the VHP, wield. Why should anyone blame the VHP? Hasn’t it shown exemplary patience for 10 long years?
The blame for the VHP’s and the kar sewaks’ militancy lies entirely at the doors of the secularists. It is not the kar sewak who is destabilising the country. The fault is that of the secularist and a weak and indecisive government which is afraid of its own shadow. Ten years is a long time to wait. That is why the kar sewak is blandishing his trishul.
How long are we going to appease the irrational among the Muslim community to show how secular and law-abiding we are as a people? It serves the rabid among the Muslims to see how the BJP is being reduced to a joke. And the secularists’ stand has only served to strengthen the rabid Muslims to hold on to their own and watch the tamasha.
The Babri masjid was of no great architectural wonder. Masjids are routinely levelled to the ground in Muslim countries including in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to make way for development. No Hindu protested when ancient temples had to be submerged in the course of raising dams. The VHP would have happily agreed to build a special masjid for Muslims to pray in peace in Ayodhya — but in some other location, away from the janmabhoomi site.
But that wouldn’t convince the secularists, who would rather see the country reduced to ashes than worship at the altar of reason. For them, bashing the Sangh parivar has become an end in itself. The nation is heading for a major crisis of unprecedented proportions that would make the Ahmedabad riots pale into insignificance. The secularists are warned.
They are driving a frustrated people to desperation. And when that comes to pass, logic and good sense are stood on their head and the entire nation will suffer. And then let not the kar sewaks be blamed for what is not their fault. There has to be a limit to secular pig-headedness.``
#189 Posted by ali2 on March 15, 2002 4:20:28 pm
Re: Prem 192
Now that you have won a few friends nad boosted your self esteem, can you give your `` India is good, pakistan is good... the whole world is good `` a little rest?
Now that you have won a few friends nad boosted your self esteem, can you give your `` India is good, pakistan is good... the whole world is good `` a little rest?
#188 Posted by hobbyty on March 15, 2002 4:20:28 pm
Prem
I certainly regret the tone and contnent of your post. Your pity and worry should be directed to more deserving peoples who while citizens of India, Indian school children are taught to regard tehm as ``Invaders``, as responsible for ``Hindu Holocaust``, for ``breaking OUR country`` - are the historical ``bad guy`` of India. Charity begins at home, don`t you agree?
Do you agree that relations between Pakistanis and Indians should be viewed primarily thru the lens of the media? I think you agree with me, that while media perceptions are important, what is more important is to see if such attitudes and perceptions reflect reality - don`t you agree?
And don`t you agree that significant numbers of Indians see ``hostility`` of Pakistan Army towards India as structural in Pakistan? And don`t you agree that significant numbers of Indians hold Pakistan not being ``secular``, as a major theme.
If Indians ``discover`` that these perceptions do not reflect reality, SHOULD, they reconsider these perceptions?
Mine is a position rooted in realism, that relations between countries are deeply influenced by the underlying intellectual/ideological constructs that animate players, stake holders. The intellectual constructs that hold Muslim as ``Invader``, as responsible for devastation of Hindus and Hinduism and India, hurts Indians foremost. Intellectual constructs that hold Pakistan army as structurally ``hostile`` and that hold the right of Pakistan to exist as Pakistanis see fit, as anti-thetical to the idea of India - hurts first and foremost, Indians. If it takes time or not, for Indians to admit this, is funadamentally, for Indians to decide and perhaps the basis for arriving at such a conclusion should be whether or not such perceptions actually help or hinder Pakistanis and Indians from finding common ground.
#187 Posted by harimau on March 15, 2002 4:20:28 pm
Ref scout #: 191
[achieving anything while smelling like a pakora with coconut grease in your hair is just plain wrong and unhealthy.]
Tell me about it! We got to get these guys out of their green polyester pants and into something nicer and make them wear some deodorant!
[achieving anything while smelling like a pakora with coconut grease in your hair is just plain wrong and unhealthy.]
Tell me about it! We got to get these guys out of their green polyester pants and into something nicer and make them wear some deodorant!
#186 Posted by rsaxena on March 15, 2002 4:20:28 pm
re; spout
{achieving anything while smelling like a pakora with coconut grease in your hair is just plain wrong and unhealthy.}
fine, so take a bath and stop using your head as a zero-friction frying pan...what do you want us to do about your problem?
{achieving anything while smelling like a pakora with coconut grease in your hair is just plain wrong and unhealthy.}
fine, so take a bath and stop using your head as a zero-friction frying pan...what do you want us to do about your problem?
#185 Posted by rsaxena on March 15, 2002 4:20:28 pm
re: prem
you wearing horse blinkers? let`s see...for each of your inane examples, i have a comparable one for america...so let`s use your inane logic and make some general conclusions about america too...shall we?
{Hindu Muslim riots}
black white riots
{Caste-based discrimination}
race-based discrimination
{Christian missionaries under threat}
sikh gas station owners in AZ under threat
{Poor nation burning money on nuclear toys}
nation with homeless people burning money on NASA
The world has become too integrated and information flows too quickly these days for the world to not differentiate between incidents and institutionalized trends. That is the only point I wished to make to you.
you wearing horse blinkers? let`s see...for each of your inane examples, i have a comparable one for america...so let`s use your inane logic and make some general conclusions about america too...shall we?
{Hindu Muslim riots}
black white riots
{Caste-based discrimination}
race-based discrimination
{Christian missionaries under threat}
sikh gas station owners in AZ under threat
{Poor nation burning money on nuclear toys}
nation with homeless people burning money on NASA
The world has become too integrated and information flows too quickly these days for the world to not differentiate between incidents and institutionalized trends. That is the only point I wished to make to you.
#184 Posted by Prem on March 15, 2002 4:29:26 am
re: RSaxena # 190
Poverty and corruption...plus all those good things you cited...plus -
Hindu Muslim riots
Caste-based discrimination
Christian missionaries under threat
Poor nation burning money on nuclear toys
Galloping population
The world has become too integrated and information flows too quickly these days for the world not to find out our ugly side. That is the only point I wished to make to sarwari and hobbyty.
Poverty and corruption...plus all those good things you cited...plus -
Hindu Muslim riots
Caste-based discrimination
Christian missionaries under threat
Poor nation burning money on nuclear toys
Galloping population
The world has become too integrated and information flows too quickly these days for the world not to find out our ugly side. That is the only point I wished to make to sarwari and hobbyty.
#183 Posted by scout on March 15, 2002 4:29:26 am
Raveena #190, ``being Indian is a boon...helps your image...similarly, in business circles, being Indian is great..``
achieving anything while smelling like a pakora with coconut grease in your hair is just plain wrong and unhealthy.
achieving anything while smelling like a pakora with coconut grease in your hair is just plain wrong and unhealthy.
#182 Posted by rsaxena on March 14, 2002 11:02:32 pm
Re: prem
{India and Pakistan do not have merely an image problem.}
the image problems are completely different in nature...india`s image problem is in the global media viz-a-viz poverty and corruption...pakistan`s image problem is that too, but also islamic terrorism, dictatorships, bankruptcy, and lack of any redeeming qualities..
india has a favorable image when it comes to academic circles...Stanford, MIT and CalTech professors love Indian graduate students from IIT...being Indian is a boon...helps your image...similarly, in business circles, being Indian is great...go snoop around in America`s top technology, financial, and management consulting firms and you will see them teeming with Indians...people assume you will fit a great, positive stereotype....
{India and Pakistan do not have merely an image problem.}
the image problems are completely different in nature...india`s image problem is in the global media viz-a-viz poverty and corruption...pakistan`s image problem is that too, but also islamic terrorism, dictatorships, bankruptcy, and lack of any redeeming qualities..
india has a favorable image when it comes to academic circles...Stanford, MIT and CalTech professors love Indian graduate students from IIT...being Indian is a boon...helps your image...similarly, in business circles, being Indian is great...go snoop around in America`s top technology, financial, and management consulting firms and you will see them teeming with Indians...people assume you will fit a great, positive stereotype....
#181 Posted by Prem on March 14, 2002 9:24:10 pm
re: sarwari # 187 hobbyty 188
As in the case of his long-standing intellectual support to Pakistani ``military involvement`` in Kashmir, Ejaz Haider has got this wrong again.
Neither Pakistani press nor the Indian press likes the ``enemy country.`` Both highlight issues that are ``uncomfortable`` for the other country. In some cases, they are not even professionally honest, but Indians and Pakistanis both invariably believe that the other country`s press suffers from that failing more.
India and Pakistan do not have merely an image problem. When passionate young patriots articulate such views of self-righteous victimhood, one is charmed and affectionately amused. For, what is youth without passion? But when supposedly older and wiser people hold such views, one pities them, and worries for our countries.
As in the case of his long-standing intellectual support to Pakistani ``military involvement`` in Kashmir, Ejaz Haider has got this wrong again.
Neither Pakistani press nor the Indian press likes the ``enemy country.`` Both highlight issues that are ``uncomfortable`` for the other country. In some cases, they are not even professionally honest, but Indians and Pakistanis both invariably believe that the other country`s press suffers from that failing more.
India and Pakistan do not have merely an image problem. When passionate young patriots articulate such views of self-righteous victimhood, one is charmed and affectionately amused. For, what is youth without passion? But when supposedly older and wiser people hold such views, one pities them, and worries for our countries.
#180 Posted by hobbyty on March 14, 2002 3:20:36 pm
Sarwari
That itt took Ejaz Haidar and TFT this long to catch on to something most Pakistanis visiting on Chowk become aware of rather quickly. Mr. Haidar and TFT types should visit Chowk more often.
Recall When Mr. Musharraf first took over, ther was an article on these boards by a Indian Hindu writer who had married a Muslim Pakistani girl - This writer while calling for greater understanding between school children from both Pakistan and India, also identified the Pakistan Army as the manin cause for tensions between the two countries.
And of course the ``secular`` thing - does anyone need anymore evidence about just how ``secular`` India is??
India winning the image war? Pakistan losing the image war? Possibly, but is that the best way to think about getting across to Indians who we as Pakistanis are? Are we to nothing more than a media image? I`m not suggesting that media perceptions are not important, but are they that important that we should be focusing on media over substance. I say by all means lets engage Indians, but in a clear headed, sober, manner. We don`t need the Indians to like us or think of us as ``just like us``. We need to concentrate more on ourselves, not what Indians think of us or TFT.
``Praise Whor//es`` is a term used by a section of sociologists who study behaviour in organizations, this term refers to individuals who are best motivated with doses of praise - in my opinion, TFT has lost is edge, it has become identified not with a number of intellectual or ideological positions, but a single ideological position - and now of course the praise from the Indian, well, it`s one more reason you will rarely read genuine or harsh criticism of Indian intellectual trends in the TFT.
Let the Indian come to their own conclusions, whatever these may be, about the nature of and validity of, their attitudes about Muslims and Pakistanis.
#179 Posted by Aisha_Sarwari on March 14, 2002 1:59:50 pm
India’s carefully crafted myths about Pakistan
Ejaz Haider
says India is winning the image-war
here is nothing jocular or light-hearted about the statement that war is too serious a matter to be left to generals. This is a truism and applies especially and disturbingly to prolonged adversarial relations. In such cases, the conflicting sides, after alternating between hot and cold war, may even settle down to an understanding that aggression can be committed without actually coming to blows. In fact, possession of nuclear weapons can play a major part in pushing adversaries into such restive calm. And if it is presumed that militarily the adversaries have acquired a certain equality of destructive power, then conflict will have a natural tendency to move to less violent, though not necessarily less destructive, means and battlefronts.
The multiplicity of battlefronts, which also adds to the complexity of conflict, is what the above-mentioned truism seeks to highlight. A good example of such conflict is the India-Pakistan adversarial dyad. One of the battlefronts in this conflict that Pakistan has ignored to its peril is mythmaking and image projection. A perusal of Indian opinion (just the letters received by TFT from its Indian readers would make a great study), the Indian media and official statements will highlight to a discerning Pakistani the near unanimity of views emanating from India.
These views present an image of Pakistan and then offer a stark contrast by presenting an image of India. Two myths particularly stand out in this regard (we will eschew discussion of how many more myths they spawn). The first relates to the fact that the conflict between India and Pakistan is perpetrated and perpetuated by the Pakistan Army. The second holds that Pakistan’s obscurantism (read, Islamist extremism) is a necessary corollary of the communal politics of the Muslim League which led to India’s partition. If Pakistan were to become pluralistic, democratic and secular, it would lose its rationale because then it would come to resemble India, they imply.
Clearly, these myths do not exist separately but are part of a package meant to present a certain image of Pakistan. Resultantly, they share the same premise and serve to complement each other. But let us begin with the first.
If the Pakistan Army is indeed responsible for perpetrating and perpetuating the conflict, then one can conclude that: There are no structural reasons for India-Pakistan conflict; by getting rid of the Pakistan Army, India-Pakistan conflict will come to an end; the issues that hang fire between the two countries are part of the Pakistan Army’s agenda to keep the conflict alive; there is a chasm between the perception of the Pakistan Army and the rest of Pakistan; the Pakistan Army would not allow the civil society in Pakistan to get in the driving seat because it wants to keep the conflict with India going on and therefore it is not in its interest to do so.
None of this is true, of course. But much of it sticks because the Pakistan Army is all too eager to take decisions internally that serve to reinforce this carefully constructed myth. India-Pakistan conflict is owed to structural reasons and it is ridiculous to think that a civilian ruler, with or without the army breathing down his neck, would be more amenable to making friends with India. The umbilical chord of history, the geographic contiguity, India’s perception of itself and its place in the world, its mercantilist nationalism (born of a coercive, majoritarian consensus and channeled through democratic means), the processes through which India has tried to convert a state-nation into a nation-state, the reaction to all this in Pakistan, Pakistan’s own quest for a place on the map of the world and a host of other factors are the structural constraints that serve to keep the conflict going on. The Pakistan Army itself is born of that conflict. To blame it for being the perpetrator of it may be great mythmaking but it is not a fact.
To a large extent, of course, the Pakistan army has no one but itself to blame for this image. Its constant interventions into the system, its desire to become the makers of policy rather than its implementers and its passion for intervening in, and influencing, national security decisions is what has kept the myth alive. Yet, some of the most important security decisions in Pakistan have been taken by civilian leaders rather than military generals. For instance, after the Soviet invasion, General Ziaul Haq basically followed the contours of a policy that was begun by Mr Bhutto. Of course, later events inflated the process much beyond anything that Mr Bhutto could possibly have visualised.
Similarly, the Taliban policy, a shift from the earlier policy, was formally effected by a civilian government, not the army. The decision to test the nuclear weapons was also formally taken by a civilian prime minister rather than by the army chief. The then chief of the army staff, General Jehangir Karamat, simply gave the military’s assessment of the situation and left the decision to the government. So too, in 1958, it was Mr Bhutto who tried to convince a military dictator of the necessity of Pakistan acquiring a nuclear-weapon capability. The idea was dismissed by Ayub Khan, who absurdly said that Pakistan could buy a weapon off the shelf if it so wanted. Again, it was Mr Bhutto who initiated Pakistan’s nuclear programme in 1972. In all these cases, however, the penchant of the army to appropriate national security polices led it to become their guardian after they were kicked off. The best example of this is the Taliban phenomenon after Ms Bhutto was removed from power.
The second myth is worse. It deliberately ignores the context in which the Muslim demand for a separate homeland was made. Not only that, this myth by implication absolves the Indian Congress party of all blame for the exclusionary discourse that created the communal divide and which continued to deepen in the run-up to the creation of Pakistan. The myth therefore thrives on a complete ignorance of the history of Partition and cannot even be extenuated on grounds of a simplistic reading of it. What is dangerous is that it is perpetuated by Indian secularists, many of whom are also part of the peace movement. This fact creates a major problem for the Pakistani intelligentsia. Who does one talk to in India? The BJP and the Sangh Parivar, or the secular-liberals?
Clearly, the correlation between Partition and Pakistan’s obscurantism is part of the effort to present an image and contrast it with India’s. Again, the image sticks not because India does not have its extremists (Gujarat is just a recent example), or the Sangh Parivar is not trying to turn Hinduism into a dogmatic, political religion, or there is any less corruption among the politicians or the army-wallahs, it is because the Indian propagandists are more savvy, understand the market better, can sell a democracy even with the Sangh Parivar and Jay Lalitas, and the Indian Army does not consider itself the repository of all wisdom.
The point of all this is neither to absolve Pakistan of its follies nor to run India down – which is doing what it has to given the conflict — but to put the record straight and to point to policymakers in Pakistan the imperative of fighting the war on the image front more effectively. It’s laughable for anyone to think that the image-war can be fought by PTV on the basis of the poppycock it generates in the name of carefully scripted interviews and strategic evaluations.
Ejaz Haider
says India is winning the image-war
here is nothing jocular or light-hearted about the statement that war is too serious a matter to be left to generals. This is a truism and applies especially and disturbingly to prolonged adversarial relations. In such cases, the conflicting sides, after alternating between hot and cold war, may even settle down to an understanding that aggression can be committed without actually coming to blows. In fact, possession of nuclear weapons can play a major part in pushing adversaries into such restive calm. And if it is presumed that militarily the adversaries have acquired a certain equality of destructive power, then conflict will have a natural tendency to move to less violent, though not necessarily less destructive, means and battlefronts.
The multiplicity of battlefronts, which also adds to the complexity of conflict, is what the above-mentioned truism seeks to highlight. A good example of such conflict is the India-Pakistan adversarial dyad. One of the battlefronts in this conflict that Pakistan has ignored to its peril is mythmaking and image projection. A perusal of Indian opinion (just the letters received by TFT from its Indian readers would make a great study), the Indian media and official statements will highlight to a discerning Pakistani the near unanimity of views emanating from India.
These views present an image of Pakistan and then offer a stark contrast by presenting an image of India. Two myths particularly stand out in this regard (we will eschew discussion of how many more myths they spawn). The first relates to the fact that the conflict between India and Pakistan is perpetrated and perpetuated by the Pakistan Army. The second holds that Pakistan’s obscurantism (read, Islamist extremism) is a necessary corollary of the communal politics of the Muslim League which led to India’s partition. If Pakistan were to become pluralistic, democratic and secular, it would lose its rationale because then it would come to resemble India, they imply.
Clearly, these myths do not exist separately but are part of a package meant to present a certain image of Pakistan. Resultantly, they share the same premise and serve to complement each other. But let us begin with the first.
If the Pakistan Army is indeed responsible for perpetrating and perpetuating the conflict, then one can conclude that: There are no structural reasons for India-Pakistan conflict; by getting rid of the Pakistan Army, India-Pakistan conflict will come to an end; the issues that hang fire between the two countries are part of the Pakistan Army’s agenda to keep the conflict alive; there is a chasm between the perception of the Pakistan Army and the rest of Pakistan; the Pakistan Army would not allow the civil society in Pakistan to get in the driving seat because it wants to keep the conflict with India going on and therefore it is not in its interest to do so.
None of this is true, of course. But much of it sticks because the Pakistan Army is all too eager to take decisions internally that serve to reinforce this carefully constructed myth. India-Pakistan conflict is owed to structural reasons and it is ridiculous to think that a civilian ruler, with or without the army breathing down his neck, would be more amenable to making friends with India. The umbilical chord of history, the geographic contiguity, India’s perception of itself and its place in the world, its mercantilist nationalism (born of a coercive, majoritarian consensus and channeled through democratic means), the processes through which India has tried to convert a state-nation into a nation-state, the reaction to all this in Pakistan, Pakistan’s own quest for a place on the map of the world and a host of other factors are the structural constraints that serve to keep the conflict going on. The Pakistan Army itself is born of that conflict. To blame it for being the perpetrator of it may be great mythmaking but it is not a fact.
To a large extent, of course, the Pakistan army has no one but itself to blame for this image. Its constant interventions into the system, its desire to become the makers of policy rather than its implementers and its passion for intervening in, and influencing, national security decisions is what has kept the myth alive. Yet, some of the most important security decisions in Pakistan have been taken by civilian leaders rather than military generals. For instance, after the Soviet invasion, General Ziaul Haq basically followed the contours of a policy that was begun by Mr Bhutto. Of course, later events inflated the process much beyond anything that Mr Bhutto could possibly have visualised.
Similarly, the Taliban policy, a shift from the earlier policy, was formally effected by a civilian government, not the army. The decision to test the nuclear weapons was also formally taken by a civilian prime minister rather than by the army chief. The then chief of the army staff, General Jehangir Karamat, simply gave the military’s assessment of the situation and left the decision to the government. So too, in 1958, it was Mr Bhutto who tried to convince a military dictator of the necessity of Pakistan acquiring a nuclear-weapon capability. The idea was dismissed by Ayub Khan, who absurdly said that Pakistan could buy a weapon off the shelf if it so wanted. Again, it was Mr Bhutto who initiated Pakistan’s nuclear programme in 1972. In all these cases, however, the penchant of the army to appropriate national security polices led it to become their guardian after they were kicked off. The best example of this is the Taliban phenomenon after Ms Bhutto was removed from power.
The second myth is worse. It deliberately ignores the context in which the Muslim demand for a separate homeland was made. Not only that, this myth by implication absolves the Indian Congress party of all blame for the exclusionary discourse that created the communal divide and which continued to deepen in the run-up to the creation of Pakistan. The myth therefore thrives on a complete ignorance of the history of Partition and cannot even be extenuated on grounds of a simplistic reading of it. What is dangerous is that it is perpetuated by Indian secularists, many of whom are also part of the peace movement. This fact creates a major problem for the Pakistani intelligentsia. Who does one talk to in India? The BJP and the Sangh Parivar, or the secular-liberals?
Clearly, the correlation between Partition and Pakistan’s obscurantism is part of the effort to present an image and contrast it with India’s. Again, the image sticks not because India does not have its extremists (Gujarat is just a recent example), or the Sangh Parivar is not trying to turn Hinduism into a dogmatic, political religion, or there is any less corruption among the politicians or the army-wallahs, it is because the Indian propagandists are more savvy, understand the market better, can sell a democracy even with the Sangh Parivar and Jay Lalitas, and the Indian Army does not consider itself the repository of all wisdom.
The point of all this is neither to absolve Pakistan of its follies nor to run India down – which is doing what it has to given the conflict — but to put the record straight and to point to policymakers in Pakistan the imperative of fighting the war on the image front more effectively. It’s laughable for anyone to think that the image-war can be fought by PTV on the basis of the poppycock it generates in the name of carefully scripted interviews and strategic evaluations.
#178 Posted by hobbyty on March 14, 2002 12:11:34 pm
``In Pakistan`s Squalor, Cradles of Terrorism
Village Illustrates Challenge as U.N. Prepares to Address Poverty as Root Cause
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A01
SACHADINO SHEIKH, Pakistan -- In a country where economic misery provides a fertile environment for terrorist groups, the crumbling one-room school in this village is a testament to the conditions that keep millions of Pakistanis impoverished.
Sitting on battered benches, their feet scuffing the dirty concrete floor, two dozen boys and girls listen as their teacher reels off the school`s main problems, which are common to many in this country: no working latrine, no drinking water, no electricity. The students have no textbooks for math or Urdu, Pakistan`s main language, because the government doesn`t provide them and parents say they can`t afford them. A few months ago, the situation was worse, because the teacher wasn`t bothering to show up.
The abysmal state of Pakistan`s education system is the sort of problem that must be addressed if the international community is to wage a successful war on terrorism by attacking the root causes, according to many experts and world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. Since Sept. 11 they have called for mobilizing great amounts of money aimed at reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in developing countries, and they are stepping up their rhetoric in advance of a U.N. meeting on the subject next week in Mexico that President Bush plans to attend.
``Poverty is the war we must fight,`` Wolfensohn said in a speech last week exhorting rich countries to double the $50 billion that is currently spent on aid each year. ``Rarely has there been an issue so vital to long-term peace and security.``
If only reducing poverty in places like this were as simple as, say, toppling the Taliban. Pakistan is a depressing case study of how hard it is to eradicate the economic circumstances that foster terror.
The links between deprivation and terrorism are particularly glaring in Pakistan. The shortcomings of the nation`s public schools, combined with low living standards, have helped drive more than half a million students to enroll in religious seminaries, called madrassas. Supported by Muslim charities around the world, madrassas provide pupils with food, shelter, training in the Koran and, in some cases, a heavy dose of anti-Western ideology that helps produce Islamic holy warriors.
Given such problems, pouring aid into Pakistan might seem to be an obvious solution. But the history of foreign assistance is discouraging in Pakistan, where efforts at economic development have been thwarted by a quasi-feudal system that entrenches a corrupt elite and oppresses the poor. Pakistan`s record offers plenty of ammunition for the Bush administration, which is resisting calls by Wolfensohn and others to double aid.
Over the past four decades, Pakistan has gotten more aid than any country except India and Egypt. ``Yet after all this, social indicators like infant mortality and female primary and secondary enrollment are among the worst in the world in Pakistan,`` William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Center for Global Development, writes in a soon-to-be-published study.
That is true, Easterly adds, even in comparison with other countries that have similar incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), such as India, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Bolivia and Lesotho. Pakistan`s 55 percent illiteracy rate, for example, is 24 percentage points greater than the average figure for other countries with roughly the same per capita income.
Pakistan`s social indicators have remained poor despite a concerted effort to improve them over the past eight years: the multibillion-dollar Social Action Program, backed by the World Bank and other international donors.
In a report issued in late January, the World Bank admitted that the program`s ``gains have been marginal, and especially so in education which has been the main area of focus.`` School enrollments among lower-income groups fell in the 1990s; today only about half of Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 attend classes, and of those who graduate from primary school, ``perhaps as many as half`` are functionally illiterate, the World Bank said.
At the World Bank and other development agencies, Pakistan is viewed as an illustration of a principle that officials have learned the hard way: Aid works well only in nations with good policies -- that is, prudent control over budgets and money supplies, respect for the rule of law, and reasonably clean government. Conversely, in countries with bad policies and bad governance, foreign assistance produces few lasting benefits and is often largely wasted.
For Love of Islam
For Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, a 35-year-old tenant farmer with six children and one grandchild, home is a dank mud-walled hut with a straw roof. Some family members sleep in less luxurious surroundings consisting of lean-to structures with straw walls fortified with ragged sheets of burlap.
Similar living quarters are inhabited by most of the residents of Sachadino Sheikh, a rural village along a bumpy dirt road a couple of hours` drive from the port city of Karachi. Cattle, goats and chickens roam around the houses, and in the event of medical emergencies, villagers are piled into donkey-drawn carts for long, grueling rides, during which some have died.
Mending a fishnet in the afternoon sun, Sheikh grimaced when asked whether anyone in his family is educated. One of his five sons attends primary school, but that is all. ``If I were educated,`` he said without looking up from his net, ``I wouldn`t be sitting here doing this.``
For anyone wishing better circumstances for their male children, the Darul Uloom Islamiamadrassa in Karachi offers a number of benefits. The 10,000 boys there receive proper meals and medical care at a clinic staffed by doctors. The youngest boys -- ages 5 to 7 -- mostly sleep at home, but older students stay in rooms that usually sleep three or four. Tuition and room and board are free.
The teachers and scholars at the madrassa were held in high esteem by Afghanistan`s Taliban leadership and by Osama bin Laden -- so much so that bin Laden invited half a dozen members of its faculty to attend his son`s wedding in February 2001. The madrassa is believed by Pakistani experts to be a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. Violentanti-American demonstrations erupted near it after the United States began bombing Afghanistan last October.
In a carpeted, brightly lighted room, Maulana Mufti Mohammed Niaz, the madrassa`s administrator general for internal affairs, said ``we don`t generally discuss with the students`` issues such as the events of Sept. 11. ``But the general impression here is that what happened in America was a result of its tyranny against Muslims`` around the world.
Not all madrassas encourage their students to join a jihad against the United States; many of them simply teach the Koran. And their appeal is not entirely economic. ``It is the love of Islam for which students come here,`` Niaz said.
But many Pakistanis say it simply stands to reason that madrassas will thrive in a society where schools fail so miserably at providing a way out of poverty. ``If the government had been able to provide decent education, we would have been able to avoid the diversion of these kids,`` said Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank economist who heads the nation`s central bank.
Abdul Qayum runs a small madrassa in a village outside of Islamabad. Asked what sort of students he gets, he replied: ``The really poor. And orphans.``
Abuse of Power
Why is Pakistan such a developmental disaster? This is a country whose expatriates flourish in business and the professions around the world. And it is a country whose economy has grown at a respectable rate -- an annual average of 2.2 percent per capita from 1950 to 1999.
The problem most widely cited by experts here is the power of the nation`s elites to rig markets and political contests for their own benefit at the expense of the poor. That power stems from the corruption pervading the society -- especially the civil service, where appointments and promotions are heavily influenced by political factors -- and from the feebleness of institutions such as courts that are supposed to protect individual rights.
Among the most egregious examples is the clout exerted by rural landlords, redolent of the feudal systems that disappeared centuries ago in most countries.
Almost all elected Pakistani presidents have come from the class of large landowners, and landlords dominate local governments, winning elections by dispensing patronage and protecting their supporters in legal disputes. Although their power has been diluted in some parts of the country, they maintain oppressive control in Sindh province (home to nearly a quarter of Pakistan`s 140 million people) and the southern portion of Punjab province, Pakistan`s most populous.
A village down the road from Sachadino Sheikh, which is in Sindh province, illustrated how landlords engage in what social scientists call the ``elite capture of public goods`` -- in this case, the takeover of school buildings and the appointment of friends and relatives to teaching and administrative jobs, where they can earn salaries and pensions without exerting themselves.
A cluster of buildings in the village is supposed to serve as a boys` and girls` primary school, middle school and a library. But on a recent school day, only the girls` primary school was in session, with a single teacher. One school building was being used as an autaq,a sort of public meeting hall, by the landlord, who is also a local politician, and the library was being used as his guest quarters, according to local people. At the girls` middle school, no students were enrolled and no teachers were teaching, according to the headmistress, who was sitting in her office with nothing to do. She is one of the landlord`s two wives.
Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani social scientist, is all too familiar with such cases. Gazdar conducted a survey of 125 Pakistani village schools in which he and his associates showed up unannounced to find out how the schools were functioning. His study, published in late 2000, cited landlords using school buildings as farm sheds and for keeping goats, and schools where teachers who enjoyed the protection of powerful ``patrons`` (one, for example, being a landlord`s son-in-law) weren`t reporting for class.
The worst-performing schools were in regions where landlord power was strongest. But landlords are by no means the only culprits, according to Gazdar. ``Every single part of the system has to be viewed as being at fault,`` he said.
Gazdar`s researchers found a wide variety of problems that couldn`t be pinned on landlords -- for example, teachers using classrooms to store timber for sale in side businesses. They recorded cases of teachers who confided that local education officials were demanding bribes to keep them from being transferred to remote schools.
The researchers also found evidence of how education can run afoul of the myriad rivalries that divide Pakistanis along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. In some villages, communities had organized to establish reasonably well-run schools, but often, those schools excluded children of less powerful rival groups.
The overarching finding was that only 38 percent of the schools were deemed to be ``functional,`` which meant that all teachers were present or accounted for, children were organized in classes, active teaching was being conducted, and efforts had been made to provide minimal infrastructure such as drinking water and usable blackboards.
Foreign Assistance
``I think we all agree that Pakistan is a hurry-up case,`` a senior World Bank official wrote in a July 1993 memo to his superiors urging prompt approval of a loan for a project that was stirring the enthusiasm of many on the bank`s staff.
Thus was born the Social Action Program, or SAP. The hope of those who conceived it was that Pakistan would finally make significant progress in fostering human development after decades of repeated flops. As far back as Pakistan`s founding in 1947, a national conference had set a goal of universal primary education within 20 years. A series of initiatives to improve education in the years that followed likewise set grand aims that were never achieved.
The SAP was based on seemingly sensible reasoning: Pakistan needed to spend much more on education and other social services, which had been badly squeezed because the government was pouring so much money into the military. Under the SAP, about $8 billion would be spent on education, health and improving water supplies, with the World Bank and other foreign donors putting up $2 billion in loans and grants, provided the Pakistani government fulfilled its responsibility to spend $6 billion of its own money.
But realities in Pakistan resulted in substantial ``leakage`` (World Bank-speak for money going where it wasn`t supposed to). A major scandal erupted in 1998 over the discovery of thousands of SAP-financed ``ghost schools`` and ``ghost teachers`` -- payments to contractors for school buildings that were never built, and payment of salaries to people who weren`t teaching.
A revamped SAP II incorporated elaborate financial controls at the insistence of indignant donors, but it fared little better. The rigidity of the controls generated other problems for honest public servants.
The World Bank ``stipulated these major headings under which money could be used by schools, such as repair of buildings and repair of furniture,`` said Themrise Khan, who worked at a quasi-government agency involved in the program. ``But some of the schools didn`t need those particular things.`` If a school with ample furniture desperately needed teachers, she recalled, ``we would say to the bank: `Can you please allow money to be used for hiring teachers? We`ll show you accounts to prove the money won`t be misused.` But they would say, `Sorry, that isn`t one of the categories.` ``
A World Bank official conceded that so much energy went into ensuring the proper accounting of vouchers and invoices that the Pakistani government and its foreign backers lost sight of the ultimate goal -- improving indicators such as enrollments.
``We underestimated, quite frankly, what it takes to fix a broken-down public institutional system,`` the official said. ``There has been a recognition that the [education] system was totally broken, and pumping in more money would just not do the trick in terms of getting kids to school.``
Another Opportunity
This time, it`s going to be different. That`s the message from Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan`s finance minister, as he explains why the government led by President Pervez Musharraf will far surpass its predecessors in making effective use of the money provided by the international community.
Reaping economic rewards for its staunch support of the U.S.-led coalition against terror, the military regime in Islamabad has successfully appealed for a substantial aid package that includes a $1.3 billion, three-year anti-poverty loan from the International Monetary Fund and several billion dollars more in loans and grants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and a host of friendly governments.
Aziz has all the credentials -- and the reputation for integrity -- that might be hoped for in an official responsible for Pakistan`s economy. The former Citicorp executive has already impressed Washington with economic and budget policies that enabled Islamabad for the first time to meet the fiscal conditions set by the IMF for a one-year loan. He has also won plaudits from the World Bank for the government`s plan to tackle Pakistan`s most pressing social problems.
``We know that putting money into bottomless pits doesn`t get results, so we are all focusing on outcomes rather than just spending more,`` Aziz said. ``We now have a tracking and monitoring matrix to see what we`re getting for the money we`re spending, like the number of schools, absenteeism and dropout rates.``
Aziz and other top officials are particularly enthusiastic about an initiative launched by Musharraf that, they say, will help ensure that the foreign aid being showered on Pakistan ends up producing benefits. The initiative involves shifting a substantial amount of decision-making authority from the central government to elected local governments, the idea being that communities are far better suited to decide their priorities than Islamabad and that officials will feel a much greater sense of accountability to voters.
Yet skeptics wonder whether ``devolution`` of power to local officials will achieve much. ``The devolution effort can be expected to succeed only to the extent that it solves fundamental governance problems that have bedeviled earlier efforts,`` the World Bank said in its January report. ``In particular, devolution will succeed if local government officials exhibit a notably greater interest in improving the provision of public goods than in targeting private goods.``
Nowhere is the skepticism deeper than in places like Sachadino Sheikh. The latest dollop of foreign aid ``is not going to do any good,`` scoffed Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, the tenant farmer. ``That sort of thing never reaches the poor.``
Village Illustrates Challenge as U.N. Prepares to Address Poverty as Root Cause
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A01
SACHADINO SHEIKH, Pakistan -- In a country where economic misery provides a fertile environment for terrorist groups, the crumbling one-room school in this village is a testament to the conditions that keep millions of Pakistanis impoverished.
Sitting on battered benches, their feet scuffing the dirty concrete floor, two dozen boys and girls listen as their teacher reels off the school`s main problems, which are common to many in this country: no working latrine, no drinking water, no electricity. The students have no textbooks for math or Urdu, Pakistan`s main language, because the government doesn`t provide them and parents say they can`t afford them. A few months ago, the situation was worse, because the teacher wasn`t bothering to show up.
The abysmal state of Pakistan`s education system is the sort of problem that must be addressed if the international community is to wage a successful war on terrorism by attacking the root causes, according to many experts and world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. Since Sept. 11 they have called for mobilizing great amounts of money aimed at reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in developing countries, and they are stepping up their rhetoric in advance of a U.N. meeting on the subject next week in Mexico that President Bush plans to attend.
``Poverty is the war we must fight,`` Wolfensohn said in a speech last week exhorting rich countries to double the $50 billion that is currently spent on aid each year. ``Rarely has there been an issue so vital to long-term peace and security.``
If only reducing poverty in places like this were as simple as, say, toppling the Taliban. Pakistan is a depressing case study of how hard it is to eradicate the economic circumstances that foster terror.
The links between deprivation and terrorism are particularly glaring in Pakistan. The shortcomings of the nation`s public schools, combined with low living standards, have helped drive more than half a million students to enroll in religious seminaries, called madrassas. Supported by Muslim charities around the world, madrassas provide pupils with food, shelter, training in the Koran and, in some cases, a heavy dose of anti-Western ideology that helps produce Islamic holy warriors.
Given such problems, pouring aid into Pakistan might seem to be an obvious solution. But the history of foreign assistance is discouraging in Pakistan, where efforts at economic development have been thwarted by a quasi-feudal system that entrenches a corrupt elite and oppresses the poor. Pakistan`s record offers plenty of ammunition for the Bush administration, which is resisting calls by Wolfensohn and others to double aid.
Over the past four decades, Pakistan has gotten more aid than any country except India and Egypt. ``Yet after all this, social indicators like infant mortality and female primary and secondary enrollment are among the worst in the world in Pakistan,`` William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Center for Global Development, writes in a soon-to-be-published study.
That is true, Easterly adds, even in comparison with other countries that have similar incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), such as India, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Bolivia and Lesotho. Pakistan`s 55 percent illiteracy rate, for example, is 24 percentage points greater than the average figure for other countries with roughly the same per capita income.
Pakistan`s social indicators have remained poor despite a concerted effort to improve them over the past eight years: the multibillion-dollar Social Action Program, backed by the World Bank and other international donors.
In a report issued in late January, the World Bank admitted that the program`s ``gains have been marginal, and especially so in education which has been the main area of focus.`` School enrollments among lower-income groups fell in the 1990s; today only about half of Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 attend classes, and of those who graduate from primary school, ``perhaps as many as half`` are functionally illiterate, the World Bank said.
At the World Bank and other development agencies, Pakistan is viewed as an illustration of a principle that officials have learned the hard way: Aid works well only in nations with good policies -- that is, prudent control over budgets and money supplies, respect for the rule of law, and reasonably clean government. Conversely, in countries with bad policies and bad governance, foreign assistance produces few lasting benefits and is often largely wasted.
For Love of Islam
For Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, a 35-year-old tenant farmer with six children and one grandchild, home is a dank mud-walled hut with a straw roof. Some family members sleep in less luxurious surroundings consisting of lean-to structures with straw walls fortified with ragged sheets of burlap.
Similar living quarters are inhabited by most of the residents of Sachadino Sheikh, a rural village along a bumpy dirt road a couple of hours` drive from the port city of Karachi. Cattle, goats and chickens roam around the houses, and in the event of medical emergencies, villagers are piled into donkey-drawn carts for long, grueling rides, during which some have died.
Mending a fishnet in the afternoon sun, Sheikh grimaced when asked whether anyone in his family is educated. One of his five sons attends primary school, but that is all. ``If I were educated,`` he said without looking up from his net, ``I wouldn`t be sitting here doing this.``
For anyone wishing better circumstances for their male children, the Darul Uloom Islamiamadrassa in Karachi offers a number of benefits. The 10,000 boys there receive proper meals and medical care at a clinic staffed by doctors. The youngest boys -- ages 5 to 7 -- mostly sleep at home, but older students stay in rooms that usually sleep three or four. Tuition and room and board are free.
The teachers and scholars at the madrassa were held in high esteem by Afghanistan`s Taliban leadership and by Osama bin Laden -- so much so that bin Laden invited half a dozen members of its faculty to attend his son`s wedding in February 2001. The madrassa is believed by Pakistani experts to be a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. Violentanti-American demonstrations erupted near it after the United States began bombing Afghanistan last October.
In a carpeted, brightly lighted room, Maulana Mufti Mohammed Niaz, the madrassa`s administrator general for internal affairs, said ``we don`t generally discuss with the students`` issues such as the events of Sept. 11. ``But the general impression here is that what happened in America was a result of its tyranny against Muslims`` around the world.
Not all madrassas encourage their students to join a jihad against the United States; many of them simply teach the Koran. And their appeal is not entirely economic. ``It is the love of Islam for which students come here,`` Niaz said.
But many Pakistanis say it simply stands to reason that madrassas will thrive in a society where schools fail so miserably at providing a way out of poverty. ``If the government had been able to provide decent education, we would have been able to avoid the diversion of these kids,`` said Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank economist who heads the nation`s central bank.
Abdul Qayum runs a small madrassa in a village outside of Islamabad. Asked what sort of students he gets, he replied: ``The really poor. And orphans.``
Abuse of Power
Why is Pakistan such a developmental disaster? This is a country whose expatriates flourish in business and the professions around the world. And it is a country whose economy has grown at a respectable rate -- an annual average of 2.2 percent per capita from 1950 to 1999.
The problem most widely cited by experts here is the power of the nation`s elites to rig markets and political contests for their own benefit at the expense of the poor. That power stems from the corruption pervading the society -- especially the civil service, where appointments and promotions are heavily influenced by political factors -- and from the feebleness of institutions such as courts that are supposed to protect individual rights.
Among the most egregious examples is the clout exerted by rural landlords, redolent of the feudal systems that disappeared centuries ago in most countries.
Almost all elected Pakistani presidents have come from the class of large landowners, and landlords dominate local governments, winning elections by dispensing patronage and protecting their supporters in legal disputes. Although their power has been diluted in some parts of the country, they maintain oppressive control in Sindh province (home to nearly a quarter of Pakistan`s 140 million people) and the southern portion of Punjab province, Pakistan`s most populous.
A village down the road from Sachadino Sheikh, which is in Sindh province, illustrated how landlords engage in what social scientists call the ``elite capture of public goods`` -- in this case, the takeover of school buildings and the appointment of friends and relatives to teaching and administrative jobs, where they can earn salaries and pensions without exerting themselves.
A cluster of buildings in the village is supposed to serve as a boys` and girls` primary school, middle school and a library. But on a recent school day, only the girls` primary school was in session, with a single teacher. One school building was being used as an autaq,a sort of public meeting hall, by the landlord, who is also a local politician, and the library was being used as his guest quarters, according to local people. At the girls` middle school, no students were enrolled and no teachers were teaching, according to the headmistress, who was sitting in her office with nothing to do. She is one of the landlord`s two wives.
Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani social scientist, is all too familiar with such cases. Gazdar conducted a survey of 125 Pakistani village schools in which he and his associates showed up unannounced to find out how the schools were functioning. His study, published in late 2000, cited landlords using school buildings as farm sheds and for keeping goats, and schools where teachers who enjoyed the protection of powerful ``patrons`` (one, for example, being a landlord`s son-in-law) weren`t reporting for class.
The worst-performing schools were in regions where landlord power was strongest. But landlords are by no means the only culprits, according to Gazdar. ``Every single part of the system has to be viewed as being at fault,`` he said.
Gazdar`s researchers found a wide variety of problems that couldn`t be pinned on landlords -- for example, teachers using classrooms to store timber for sale in side businesses. They recorded cases of teachers who confided that local education officials were demanding bribes to keep them from being transferred to remote schools.
The researchers also found evidence of how education can run afoul of the myriad rivalries that divide Pakistanis along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. In some villages, communities had organized to establish reasonably well-run schools, but often, those schools excluded children of less powerful rival groups.
The overarching finding was that only 38 percent of the schools were deemed to be ``functional,`` which meant that all teachers were present or accounted for, children were organized in classes, active teaching was being conducted, and efforts had been made to provide minimal infrastructure such as drinking water and usable blackboards.
Foreign Assistance
``I think we all agree that Pakistan is a hurry-up case,`` a senior World Bank official wrote in a July 1993 memo to his superiors urging prompt approval of a loan for a project that was stirring the enthusiasm of many on the bank`s staff.
Thus was born the Social Action Program, or SAP. The hope of those who conceived it was that Pakistan would finally make significant progress in fostering human development after decades of repeated flops. As far back as Pakistan`s founding in 1947, a national conference had set a goal of universal primary education within 20 years. A series of initiatives to improve education in the years that followed likewise set grand aims that were never achieved.
The SAP was based on seemingly sensible reasoning: Pakistan needed to spend much more on education and other social services, which had been badly squeezed because the government was pouring so much money into the military. Under the SAP, about $8 billion would be spent on education, health and improving water supplies, with the World Bank and other foreign donors putting up $2 billion in loans and grants, provided the Pakistani government fulfilled its responsibility to spend $6 billion of its own money.
But realities in Pakistan resulted in substantial ``leakage`` (World Bank-speak for money going where it wasn`t supposed to). A major scandal erupted in 1998 over the discovery of thousands of SAP-financed ``ghost schools`` and ``ghost teachers`` -- payments to contractors for school buildings that were never built, and payment of salaries to people who weren`t teaching.
A revamped SAP II incorporated elaborate financial controls at the insistence of indignant donors, but it fared little better. The rigidity of the controls generated other problems for honest public servants.
The World Bank ``stipulated these major headings under which money could be used by schools, such as repair of buildings and repair of furniture,`` said Themrise Khan, who worked at a quasi-government agency involved in the program. ``But some of the schools didn`t need those particular things.`` If a school with ample furniture desperately needed teachers, she recalled, ``we would say to the bank: `Can you please allow money to be used for hiring teachers? We`ll show you accounts to prove the money won`t be misused.` But they would say, `Sorry, that isn`t one of the categories.` ``
A World Bank official conceded that so much energy went into ensuring the proper accounting of vouchers and invoices that the Pakistani government and its foreign backers lost sight of the ultimate goal -- improving indicators such as enrollments.
``We underestimated, quite frankly, what it takes to fix a broken-down public institutional system,`` the official said. ``There has been a recognition that the [education] system was totally broken, and pumping in more money would just not do the trick in terms of getting kids to school.``
Another Opportunity
This time, it`s going to be different. That`s the message from Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan`s finance minister, as he explains why the government led by President Pervez Musharraf will far surpass its predecessors in making effective use of the money provided by the international community.
Reaping economic rewards for its staunch support of the U.S.-led coalition against terror, the military regime in Islamabad has successfully appealed for a substantial aid package that includes a $1.3 billion, three-year anti-poverty loan from the International Monetary Fund and several billion dollars more in loans and grants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and a host of friendly governments.
Aziz has all the credentials -- and the reputation for integrity -- that might be hoped for in an official responsible for Pakistan`s economy. The former Citicorp executive has already impressed Washington with economic and budget policies that enabled Islamabad for the first time to meet the fiscal conditions set by the IMF for a one-year loan. He has also won plaudits from the World Bank for the government`s plan to tackle Pakistan`s most pressing social problems.
``We know that putting money into bottomless pits doesn`t get results, so we are all focusing on outcomes rather than just spending more,`` Aziz said. ``We now have a tracking and monitoring matrix to see what we`re getting for the money we`re spending, like the number of schools, absenteeism and dropout rates.``
Aziz and other top officials are particularly enthusiastic about an initiative launched by Musharraf that, they say, will help ensure that the foreign aid being showered on Pakistan ends up producing benefits. The initiative involves shifting a substantial amount of decision-making authority from the central government to elected local governments, the idea being that communities are far better suited to decide their priorities than Islamabad and that officials will feel a much greater sense of accountability to voters.
Yet skeptics wonder whether ``devolution`` of power to local officials will achieve much. ``The devolution effort can be expected to succeed only to the extent that it solves fundamental governance problems that have bedeviled earlier efforts,`` the World Bank said in its January report. ``In particular, devolution will succeed if local government officials exhibit a notably greater interest in improving the provision of public goods than in targeting private goods.``
Nowhere is the skepticism deeper than in places like Sachadino Sheikh. The latest dollop of foreign aid ``is not going to do any good,`` scoffed Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, the tenant farmer. ``That sort of thing never reaches the poor.``
#177 Posted by hobbyty on March 14, 2002 12:11:34 pm
``In Pakistan`s Squalor, Cradles of Terrorism
Village Illustrates Challenge as U.N. Prepares to Address Poverty as Root Cause
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A01
SACHADINO SHEIKH, Pakistan -- In a country where economic misery provides a fertile environment for terrorist groups, the crumbling one-room school in this village is a testament to the conditions that keep millions of Pakistanis impoverished.
Sitting on battered benches, their feet scuffing the dirty concrete floor, two dozen boys and girls listen as their teacher reels off the school`s main problems, which are common to many in this country: no working latrine, no drinking water, no electricity. The students have no textbooks for math or Urdu, Pakistan`s main language, because the government doesn`t provide them and parents say they can`t afford them. A few months ago, the situation was worse, because the teacher wasn`t bothering to show up.
The abysmal state of Pakistan`s education system is the sort of problem that must be addressed if the international community is to wage a successful war on terrorism by attacking the root causes, according to many experts and world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. Since Sept. 11 they have called for mobilizing great amounts of money aimed at reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in developing countries, and they are stepping up their rhetoric in advance of a U.N. meeting on the subject next week in Mexico that President Bush plans to attend.
``Poverty is the war we must fight,`` Wolfensohn said in a speech last week exhorting rich countries to double the $50 billion that is currently spent on aid each year. ``Rarely has there been an issue so vital to long-term peace and security.``
If only reducing poverty in places like this were as simple as, say, toppling the Taliban. Pakistan is a depressing case study of how hard it is to eradicate the economic circumstances that foster terror.
The links between deprivation and terrorism are particularly glaring in Pakistan. The shortcomings of the nation`s public schools, combined with low living standards, have helped drive more than half a million students to enroll in religious seminaries, called madrassas. Supported by Muslim charities around the world, madrassas provide pupils with food, shelter, training in the Koran and, in some cases, a heavy dose of anti-Western ideology that helps produce Islamic holy warriors.
Given such problems, pouring aid into Pakistan might seem to be an obvious solution. But the history of foreign assistance is discouraging in Pakistan, where efforts at economic development have been thwarted by a quasi-feudal system that entrenches a corrupt elite and oppresses the poor. Pakistan`s record offers plenty of ammunition for the Bush administration, which is resisting calls by Wolfensohn and others to double aid.
Over the past four decades, Pakistan has gotten more aid than any country except India and Egypt. ``Yet after all this, social indicators like infant mortality and female primary and secondary enrollment are among the worst in the world in Pakistan,`` William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Center for Global Development, writes in a soon-to-be-published study.
That is true, Easterly adds, even in comparison with other countries that have similar incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), such as India, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Bolivia and Lesotho. Pakistan`s 55 percent illiteracy rate, for example, is 24 percentage points greater than the average figure for other countries with roughly the same per capita income.
Pakistan`s social indicators have remained poor despite a concerted effort to improve them over the past eight years: the multibillion-dollar Social Action Program, backed by the World Bank and other international donors.
In a report issued in late January, the World Bank admitted that the program`s ``gains have been marginal, and especially so in education which has been the main area of focus.`` School enrollments among lower-income groups fell in the 1990s; today only about half of Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 attend classes, and of those who graduate from primary school, ``perhaps as many as half`` are functionally illiterate, the World Bank said.
At the World Bank and other development agencies, Pakistan is viewed as an illustration of a principle that officials have learned the hard way: Aid works well only in nations with good policies -- that is, prudent control over budgets and money supplies, respect for the rule of law, and reasonably clean government. Conversely, in countries with bad policies and bad governance, foreign assistance produces few lasting benefits and is often largely wasted.
For Love of Islam
For Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, a 35-year-old tenant farmer with six children and one grandchild, home is a dank mud-walled hut with a straw roof. Some family members sleep in less luxurious surroundings consisting of lean-to structures with straw walls fortified with ragged sheets of burlap.
Similar living quarters are inhabited by most of the residents of Sachadino Sheikh, a rural village along a bumpy dirt road a couple of hours` drive from the port city of Karachi. Cattle, goats and chickens roam around the houses, and in the event of medical emergencies, villagers are piled into donkey-drawn carts for long, grueling rides, during which some have died.
Mending a fishnet in the afternoon sun, Sheikh grimaced when asked whether anyone in his family is educated. One of his five sons attends primary school, but that is all. ``If I were educated,`` he said without looking up from his net, ``I wouldn`t be sitting here doing this.``
For anyone wishing better circumstances for their male children, the Darul Uloom Islamiamadrassa in Karachi offers a number of benefits. The 10,000 boys there receive proper meals and medical care at a clinic staffed by doctors. The youngest boys -- ages 5 to 7 -- mostly sleep at home, but older students stay in rooms that usually sleep three or four. Tuition and room and board are free.
The teachers and scholars at the madrassa were held in high esteem by Afghanistan`s Taliban leadership and by Osama bin Laden -- so much so that bin Laden invited half a dozen members of its faculty to attend his son`s wedding in February 2001. The madrassa is believed by Pakistani experts to be a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. Violentanti-American demonstrations erupted near it after the United States began bombing Afghanistan last October.
In a carpeted, brightly lighted room, Maulana Mufti Mohammed Niaz, the madrassa`s administrator general for internal affairs, said ``we don`t generally discuss with the students`` issues such as the events of Sept. 11. ``But the general impression here is that what happened in America was a result of its tyranny against Muslims`` around the world.
Not all madrassas encourage their students to join a jihad against the United States; many of them simply teach the Koran. And their appeal is not entirely economic. ``It is the love of Islam for which students come here,`` Niaz said.
But many Pakistanis say it simply stands to reason that madrassas will thrive in a society where schools fail so miserably at providing a way out of poverty. ``If the government had been able to provide decent education, we would have been able to avoid the diversion of these kids,`` said Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank economist who heads the nation`s central bank.
Abdul Qayum runs a small madrassa in a village outside of Islamabad. Asked what sort of students he gets, he replied: ``The really poor. And orphans.``
Abuse of Power
Why is Pakistan such a developmental disaster? This is a country whose expatriates flourish in business and the professions around the world. And it is a country whose economy has grown at a respectable rate -- an annual average of 2.2 percent per capita from 1950 to 1999.
The problem most widely cited by experts here is the power of the nation`s elites to rig markets and political contests for their own benefit at the expense of the poor. That power stems from the corruption pervading the society -- especially the civil service, where appointments and promotions are heavily influenced by political factors -- and from the feebleness of institutions such as courts that are supposed to protect individual rights.
Among the most egregious examples is the clout exerted by rural landlords, redolent of the feudal systems that disappeared centuries ago in most countries.
Almost all elected Pakistani presidents have come from the class of large landowners, and landlords dominate local governments, winning elections by dispensing patronage and protecting their supporters in legal disputes. Although their power has been diluted in some parts of the country, they maintain oppressive control in Sindh province (home to nearly a quarter of Pakistan`s 140 million people) and the southern portion of Punjab province, Pakistan`s most populous.
A village down the road from Sachadino Sheikh, which is in Sindh province, illustrated how landlords engage in what social scientists call the ``elite capture of public goods`` -- in this case, the takeover of school buildings and the appointment of friends and relatives to teaching and administrative jobs, where they can earn salaries and pensions without exerting themselves.
A cluster of buildings in the village is supposed to serve as a boys` and girls` primary school, middle school and a library. But on a recent school day, only the girls` primary school was in session, with a single teacher. One school building was being used as an autaq,a sort of public meeting hall, by the landlord, who is also a local politician, and the library was being used as his guest quarters, according to local people. At the girls` middle school, no students were enrolled and no teachers were teaching, according to the headmistress, who was sitting in her office with nothing to do. She is one of the landlord`s two wives.
Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani social scientist, is all too familiar with such cases. Gazdar conducted a survey of 125 Pakistani village schools in which he and his associates showed up unannounced to find out how the schools were functioning. His study, published in late 2000, cited landlords using school buildings as farm sheds and for keeping goats, and schools where teachers who enjoyed the protection of powerful ``patrons`` (one, for example, being a landlord`s son-in-law) weren`t reporting for class.
The worst-performing schools were in regions where landlord power was strongest. But landlords are by no means the only culprits, according to Gazdar. ``Every single part of the system has to be viewed as being at fault,`` he said.
Gazdar`s researchers found a wide variety of problems that couldn`t be pinned on landlords -- for example, teachers using classrooms to store timber for sale in side businesses. They recorded cases of teachers who confided that local education officials were demanding bribes to keep them from being transferred to remote schools.
The researchers also found evidence of how education can run afoul of the myriad rivalries that divide Pakistanis along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. In some villages, communities had organized to establish reasonably well-run schools, but often, those schools excluded children of less powerful rival groups.
The overarching finding was that only 38 percent of the schools were deemed to be ``functional,`` which meant that all teachers were present or accounted for, children were organized in classes, active teaching was being conducted, and efforts had been made to provide minimal infrastructure such as drinking water and usable blackboards.
Foreign Assistance
``I think we all agree that Pakistan is a hurry-up case,`` a senior World Bank official wrote in a July 1993 memo to his superiors urging prompt approval of a loan for a project that was stirring the enthusiasm of many on the bank`s staff.
Thus was born the Social Action Program, or SAP. The hope of those who conceived it was that Pakistan would finally make significant progress in fostering human development after decades of repeated flops. As far back as Pakistan`s founding in 1947, a national conference had set a goal of universal primary education within 20 years. A series of initiatives to improve education in the years that followed likewise set grand aims that were never achieved.
The SAP was based on seemingly sensible reasoning: Pakistan needed to spend much more on education and other social services, which had been badly squeezed because the government was pouring so much money into the military. Under the SAP, about $8 billion would be spent on education, health and improving water supplies, with the World Bank and other foreign donors putting up $2 billion in loans and grants, provided the Pakistani government fulfilled its responsibility to spend $6 billion of its own money.
But realities in Pakistan resulted in substantial ``leakage`` (World Bank-speak for money going where it wasn`t supposed to). A major scandal erupted in 1998 over the discovery of thousands of SAP-financed ``ghost schools`` and ``ghost teachers`` -- payments to contractors for school buildings that were never built, and payment of salaries to people who weren`t teaching.
A revamped SAP II incorporated elaborate financial controls at the insistence of indignant donors, but it fared little better. The rigidity of the controls generated other problems for honest public servants.
The World Bank ``stipulated these major headings under which money could be used by schools, such as repair of buildings and repair of furniture,`` said Themrise Khan, who worked at a quasi-government agency involved in the program. ``But some of the schools didn`t need those particular things.`` If a school with ample furniture desperately needed teachers, she recalled, ``we would say to the bank: `Can you please allow money to be used for hiring teachers? We`ll show you accounts to prove the money won`t be misused.` But they would say, `Sorry, that isn`t one of the categories.` ``
A World Bank official conceded that so much energy went into ensuring the proper accounting of vouchers and invoices that the Pakistani government and its foreign backers lost sight of the ultimate goal -- improving indicators such as enrollments.
``We underestimated, quite frankly, what it takes to fix a broken-down public institutional system,`` the official said. ``There has been a recognition that the [education] system was totally broken, and pumping in more money would just not do the trick in terms of getting kids to school.``
Another Opportunity
This time, it`s going to be different. That`s the message from Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan`s finance minister, as he explains why the government led by President Pervez Musharraf will far surpass its predecessors in making effective use of the money provided by the international community.
Reaping economic rewards for its staunch support of the U.S.-led coalition against terror, the military regime in Islamabad has successfully appealed for a substantial aid package that includes a $1.3 billion, three-year anti-poverty loan from the International Monetary Fund and several billion dollars more in loans and grants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and a host of friendly governments.
Aziz has all the credentials -- and the reputation for integrity -- that might be hoped for in an official responsible for Pakistan`s economy. The former Citicorp executive has already impressed Washington with economic and budget policies that enabled Islamabad for the first time to meet the fiscal conditions set by the IMF for a one-year loan. He has also won plaudits from the World Bank for the government`s plan to tackle Pakistan`s most pressing social problems.
``We know that putting money into bottomless pits doesn`t get results, so we are all focusing on outcomes rather than just spending more,`` Aziz said. ``We now have a tracking and monitoring matrix to see what we`re getting for the money we`re spending, like the number of schools, absenteeism and dropout rates.``
Aziz and other top officials are particularly enthusiastic about an initiative launched by Musharraf that, they say, will help ensure that the foreign aid being showered on Pakistan ends up producing benefits. The initiative involves shifting a substantial amount of decision-making authority from the central government to elected local governments, the idea being that communities are far better suited to decide their priorities than Islamabad and that officials will feel a much greater sense of accountability to voters.
Yet skeptics wonder whether ``devolution`` of power to local officials will achieve much. ``The devolution effort can be expected to succeed only to the extent that it solves fundamental governance problems that have bedeviled earlier efforts,`` the World Bank said in its January report. ``In particular, devolution will succeed if local government officials exhibit a notably greater interest in improving the provision of public goods than in targeting private goods.``
Nowhere is the skepticism deeper than in places like Sachadino Sheikh. The latest dollop of foreign aid ``is not going to do any good,`` scoffed Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, the tenant farmer. ``That sort of thing never reaches the poor.``
Village Illustrates Challenge as U.N. Prepares to Address Poverty as Root Cause
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A01
SACHADINO SHEIKH, Pakistan -- In a country where economic misery provides a fertile environment for terrorist groups, the crumbling one-room school in this village is a testament to the conditions that keep millions of Pakistanis impoverished.
Sitting on battered benches, their feet scuffing the dirty concrete floor, two dozen boys and girls listen as their teacher reels off the school`s main problems, which are common to many in this country: no working latrine, no drinking water, no electricity. The students have no textbooks for math or Urdu, Pakistan`s main language, because the government doesn`t provide them and parents say they can`t afford them. A few months ago, the situation was worse, because the teacher wasn`t bothering to show up.
The abysmal state of Pakistan`s education system is the sort of problem that must be addressed if the international community is to wage a successful war on terrorism by attacking the root causes, according to many experts and world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. Since Sept. 11 they have called for mobilizing great amounts of money aimed at reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in developing countries, and they are stepping up their rhetoric in advance of a U.N. meeting on the subject next week in Mexico that President Bush plans to attend.
``Poverty is the war we must fight,`` Wolfensohn said in a speech last week exhorting rich countries to double the $50 billion that is currently spent on aid each year. ``Rarely has there been an issue so vital to long-term peace and security.``
If only reducing poverty in places like this were as simple as, say, toppling the Taliban. Pakistan is a depressing case study of how hard it is to eradicate the economic circumstances that foster terror.
The links between deprivation and terrorism are particularly glaring in Pakistan. The shortcomings of the nation`s public schools, combined with low living standards, have helped drive more than half a million students to enroll in religious seminaries, called madrassas. Supported by Muslim charities around the world, madrassas provide pupils with food, shelter, training in the Koran and, in some cases, a heavy dose of anti-Western ideology that helps produce Islamic holy warriors.
Given such problems, pouring aid into Pakistan might seem to be an obvious solution. But the history of foreign assistance is discouraging in Pakistan, where efforts at economic development have been thwarted by a quasi-feudal system that entrenches a corrupt elite and oppresses the poor. Pakistan`s record offers plenty of ammunition for the Bush administration, which is resisting calls by Wolfensohn and others to double aid.
Over the past four decades, Pakistan has gotten more aid than any country except India and Egypt. ``Yet after all this, social indicators like infant mortality and female primary and secondary enrollment are among the worst in the world in Pakistan,`` William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Center for Global Development, writes in a soon-to-be-published study.
That is true, Easterly adds, even in comparison with other countries that have similar incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), such as India, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Bolivia and Lesotho. Pakistan`s 55 percent illiteracy rate, for example, is 24 percentage points greater than the average figure for other countries with roughly the same per capita income.
Pakistan`s social indicators have remained poor despite a concerted effort to improve them over the past eight years: the multibillion-dollar Social Action Program, backed by the World Bank and other international donors.
In a report issued in late January, the World Bank admitted that the program`s ``gains have been marginal, and especially so in education which has been the main area of focus.`` School enrollments among lower-income groups fell in the 1990s; today only about half of Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 attend classes, and of those who graduate from primary school, ``perhaps as many as half`` are functionally illiterate, the World Bank said.
At the World Bank and other development agencies, Pakistan is viewed as an illustration of a principle that officials have learned the hard way: Aid works well only in nations with good policies -- that is, prudent control over budgets and money supplies, respect for the rule of law, and reasonably clean government. Conversely, in countries with bad policies and bad governance, foreign assistance produces few lasting benefits and is often largely wasted.
For Love of Islam
For Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, a 35-year-old tenant farmer with six children and one grandchild, home is a dank mud-walled hut with a straw roof. Some family members sleep in less luxurious surroundings consisting of lean-to structures with straw walls fortified with ragged sheets of burlap.
Similar living quarters are inhabited by most of the residents of Sachadino Sheikh, a rural village along a bumpy dirt road a couple of hours` drive from the port city of Karachi. Cattle, goats and chickens roam around the houses, and in the event of medical emergencies, villagers are piled into donkey-drawn carts for long, grueling rides, during which some have died.
Mending a fishnet in the afternoon sun, Sheikh grimaced when asked whether anyone in his family is educated. One of his five sons attends primary school, but that is all. ``If I were educated,`` he said without looking up from his net, ``I wouldn`t be sitting here doing this.``
For anyone wishing better circumstances for their male children, the Darul Uloom Islamiamadrassa in Karachi offers a number of benefits. The 10,000 boys there receive proper meals and medical care at a clinic staffed by doctors. The youngest boys -- ages 5 to 7 -- mostly sleep at home, but older students stay in rooms that usually sleep three or four. Tuition and room and board are free.
The teachers and scholars at the madrassa were held in high esteem by Afghanistan`s Taliban leadership and by Osama bin Laden -- so much so that bin Laden invited half a dozen members of its faculty to attend his son`s wedding in February 2001. The madrassa is believed by Pakistani experts to be a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. Violentanti-American demonstrations erupted near it after the United States began bombing Afghanistan last October.
In a carpeted, brightly lighted room, Maulana Mufti Mohammed Niaz, the madrassa`s administrator general for internal affairs, said ``we don`t generally discuss with the students`` issues such as the events of Sept. 11. ``But the general impression here is that what happened in America was a result of its tyranny against Muslims`` around the world.
Not all madrassas encourage their students to join a jihad against the United States; many of them simply teach the Koran. And their appeal is not entirely economic. ``It is the love of Islam for which students come here,`` Niaz said.
But many Pakistanis say it simply stands to reason that madrassas will thrive in a society where schools fail so miserably at providing a way out of poverty. ``If the government had been able to provide decent education, we would have been able to avoid the diversion of these kids,`` said Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank economist who heads the nation`s central bank.
Abdul Qayum runs a small madrassa in a village outside of Islamabad. Asked what sort of students he gets, he replied: ``The really poor. And orphans.``
Abuse of Power
Why is Pakistan such a developmental disaster? This is a country whose expatriates flourish in business and the professions around the world. And it is a country whose economy has grown at a respectable rate -- an annual average of 2.2 percent per capita from 1950 to 1999.
The problem most widely cited by experts here is the power of the nation`s elites to rig markets and political contests for their own benefit at the expense of the poor. That power stems from the corruption pervading the society -- especially the civil service, where appointments and promotions are heavily influenced by political factors -- and from the feebleness of institutions such as courts that are supposed to protect individual rights.
Among the most egregious examples is the clout exerted by rural landlords, redolent of the feudal systems that disappeared centuries ago in most countries.
Almost all elected Pakistani presidents have come from the class of large landowners, and landlords dominate local governments, winning elections by dispensing patronage and protecting their supporters in legal disputes. Although their power has been diluted in some parts of the country, they maintain oppressive control in Sindh province (home to nearly a quarter of Pakistan`s 140 million people) and the southern portion of Punjab province, Pakistan`s most populous.
A village down the road from Sachadino Sheikh, which is in Sindh province, illustrated how landlords engage in what social scientists call the ``elite capture of public goods`` -- in this case, the takeover of school buildings and the appointment of friends and relatives to teaching and administrative jobs, where they can earn salaries and pensions without exerting themselves.
A cluster of buildings in the village is supposed to serve as a boys` and girls` primary school, middle school and a library. But on a recent school day, only the girls` primary school was in session, with a single teacher. One school building was being used as an autaq,a sort of public meeting hall, by the landlord, who is also a local politician, and the library was being used as his guest quarters, according to local people. At the girls` middle school, no students were enrolled and no teachers were teaching, according to the headmistress, who was sitting in her office with nothing to do. She is one of the landlord`s two wives.
Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani social scientist, is all too familiar with such cases. Gazdar conducted a survey of 125 Pakistani village schools in which he and his associates showed up unannounced to find out how the schools were functioning. His study, published in late 2000, cited landlords using school buildings as farm sheds and for keeping goats, and schools where teachers who enjoyed the protection of powerful ``patrons`` (one, for example, being a landlord`s son-in-law) weren`t reporting for class.
The worst-performing schools were in regions where landlord power was strongest. But landlords are by no means the only culprits, according to Gazdar. ``Every single part of the system has to be viewed as being at fault,`` he said.
Gazdar`s researchers found a wide variety of problems that couldn`t be pinned on landlords -- for example, teachers using classrooms to store timber for sale in side businesses. They recorded cases of teachers who confided that local education officials were demanding bribes to keep them from being transferred to remote schools.
The researchers also found evidence of how education can run afoul of the myriad rivalries that divide Pakistanis along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. In some villages, communities had organized to establish reasonably well-run schools, but often, those schools excluded children of less powerful rival groups.
The overarching finding was that only 38 percent of the schools were deemed to be ``functional,`` which meant that all teachers were present or accounted for, children were organized in classes, active teaching was being conducted, and efforts had been made to provide minimal infrastructure such as drinking water and usable blackboards.
Foreign Assistance
``I think we all agree that Pakistan is a hurry-up case,`` a senior World Bank official wrote in a July 1993 memo to his superiors urging prompt approval of a loan for a project that was stirring the enthusiasm of many on the bank`s staff.
Thus was born the Social Action Program, or SAP. The hope of those who conceived it was that Pakistan would finally make significant progress in fostering human development after decades of repeated flops. As far back as Pakistan`s founding in 1947, a national conference had set a goal of universal primary education within 20 years. A series of initiatives to improve education in the years that followed likewise set grand aims that were never achieved.
The SAP was based on seemingly sensible reasoning: Pakistan needed to spend much more on education and other social services, which had been badly squeezed because the government was pouring so much money into the military. Under the SAP, about $8 billion would be spent on education, health and improving water supplies, with the World Bank and other foreign donors putting up $2 billion in loans and grants, provided the Pakistani government fulfilled its responsibility to spend $6 billion of its own money.
But realities in Pakistan resulted in substantial ``leakage`` (World Bank-speak for money going where it wasn`t supposed to). A major scandal erupted in 1998 over the discovery of thousands of SAP-financed ``ghost schools`` and ``ghost teachers`` -- payments to contractors for school buildings that were never built, and payment of salaries to people who weren`t teaching.
A revamped SAP II incorporated elaborate financial controls at the insistence of indignant donors, but it fared little better. The rigidity of the controls generated other problems for honest public servants.
The World Bank ``stipulated these major headings under which money could be used by schools, such as repair of buildings and repair of furniture,`` said Themrise Khan, who worked at a quasi-government agency involved in the program. ``But some of the schools didn`t need those particular things.`` If a school with ample furniture desperately needed teachers, she recalled, ``we would say to the bank: `Can you please allow money to be used for hiring teachers? We`ll show you accounts to prove the money won`t be misused.` But they would say, `Sorry, that isn`t one of the categories.` ``
A World Bank official conceded that so much energy went into ensuring the proper accounting of vouchers and invoices that the Pakistani government and its foreign backers lost sight of the ultimate goal -- improving indicators such as enrollments.
``We underestimated, quite frankly, what it takes to fix a broken-down public institutional system,`` the official said. ``There has been a recognition that the [education] system was totally broken, and pumping in more money would just not do the trick in terms of getting kids to school.``
Another Opportunity
This time, it`s going to be different. That`s the message from Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan`s finance minister, as he explains why the government led by President Pervez Musharraf will far surpass its predecessors in making effective use of the money provided by the international community.
Reaping economic rewards for its staunch support of the U.S.-led coalition against terror, the military regime in Islamabad has successfully appealed for a substantial aid package that includes a $1.3 billion, three-year anti-poverty loan from the International Monetary Fund and several billion dollars more in loans and grants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and a host of friendly governments.
Aziz has all the credentials -- and the reputation for integrity -- that might be hoped for in an official responsible for Pakistan`s economy. The former Citicorp executive has already impressed Washington with economic and budget policies that enabled Islamabad for the first time to meet the fiscal conditions set by the IMF for a one-year loan. He has also won plaudits from the World Bank for the government`s plan to tackle Pakistan`s most pressing social problems.
``We know that putting money into bottomless pits doesn`t get results, so we are all focusing on outcomes rather than just spending more,`` Aziz said. ``We now have a tracking and monitoring matrix to see what we`re getting for the money we`re spending, like the number of schools, absenteeism and dropout rates.``
Aziz and other top officials are particularly enthusiastic about an initiative launched by Musharraf that, they say, will help ensure that the foreign aid being showered on Pakistan ends up producing benefits. The initiative involves shifting a substantial amount of decision-making authority from the central government to elected local governments, the idea being that communities are far better suited to decide their priorities than Islamabad and that officials will feel a much greater sense of accountability to voters.
Yet skeptics wonder whether ``devolution`` of power to local officials will achieve much. ``The devolution effort can be expected to succeed only to the extent that it solves fundamental governance problems that have bedeviled earlier efforts,`` the World Bank said in its January report. ``In particular, devolution will succeed if local government officials exhibit a notably greater interest in improving the provision of public goods than in targeting private goods.``
Nowhere is the skepticism deeper than in places like Sachadino Sheikh. The latest dollop of foreign aid ``is not going to do any good,`` scoffed Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, the tenant farmer. ``That sort of thing never reaches the poor.``
#176 Posted by pennathur on March 13, 2002 3:02:30 pm
ylh,
No problems about sources. I just used yours wrt population, partition exodus etc. (which you attribute to The Times) And thanks for providing me the information!
Re Bangladesh you will find enough if you search thru the web.
Re ethnic minorities in UK it is a 140 page report in pdf - very elaborate - reported by the Guardian. the link is available in the Bharat Rakshak archives. Will try to get it for you.
And the name is Pennathur - not the way you have spelt it.
Pennathaur,
Unlike you I presented sources. I can present them again.
#175 Posted by hobbyty on March 13, 2002 1:27:19 pm
And Yet another Call to turn Muslim Shrime to Hindus - from ``The Hindustan Times`` editorial:
``Why is he splitting hairs?
This paper would not have commented on the completely irresponsible claim made about the hair of a ‘Nimnath Baba’ — as opposed to that of Prophet Mohammed, as commonly believed — being preserved at the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar. But then, the claim has been made by none other than VHP leader and BJP MLA Vinay Katiyar. One doesn’t expect Mr Katiyar to talk sense.
But for him to assert that the shrine should be “returned to Hindus”, especially at a juncture when a real estate dispute at Ayodhya between Hindus and Muslims is being thrashed out, reveals more than Mr Katiyar’s strong sense of ‘historical propriety’. It simply shows how far those bent on playing with religious sentiments are willing to go to undermine the secular and pluralistic principles of this country.
What takes one’s breath away is the way in which Mr Katiyar has argued his case. What is the basis, he says without batting an eyelid, of Muslims believing that the relic at Hazratbal is actually that of Prophet Mohammed? For a moment, one is left dumbfounded — not by his argument but by where he leads it to. It is in the same tradition as the claim made by self-styled ‘historian’ P.N. Oak who once insisted that the Taj Mahal was actually built by a Hindu ruler, historical evidence be damned.
While the ‘Hindu Taj’ canard thankfully failed to gain momentum, Mr Katiyar’s ‘Hindu Hazratbal’ comes at a time when the sectarian ball is already rolling. Even for argument’s sake if one is to historically follow up his claim, what could be the intent in suddenly picking a shrine and trying to turn it into an ‘issue’? Surely, not something noble. Considering that Mr Katiyar goes to Parliament as a representative of the BJP, perhaps someone high up in the ruling party should tell him that he should utilise his innumerable talents for matters other than manufacturing communal rifts.``
#174 Posted by Layman on March 13, 2002 4:11:11 am
ylh #180:
``India`s problems are because it is a democracy. Pakistan`s problems are because it isn`t.``
Dude, that may seem like a smart thing to say, but it is not true. I think India`s problems are LESS because it is a democracy. There is a SHARING of power. If it had been a dictatorship or some other form of concentration of power, India would have broken up. In fact, some of our insurgency problems are because there is not ENOUGH democracy.
Pakistan, OTOH, seems to have managed fairly well despite not being a democracy. I think its problems are due to poor policies by whoever is heading the govt.
``India`s problems are because it is a democracy. Pakistan`s problems are because it isn`t.``
Dude, that may seem like a smart thing to say, but it is not true. I think India`s problems are LESS because it is a democracy. There is a SHARING of power. If it had been a dictatorship or some other form of concentration of power, India would have broken up. In fact, some of our insurgency problems are because there is not ENOUGH democracy.
Pakistan, OTOH, seems to have managed fairly well despite not being a democracy. I think its problems are due to poor policies by whoever is heading the govt.
#173 Posted by ylh on March 13, 2002 1:00:03 am
Pennathaur,
Unlike you I presented sources. I can present them again.
#172 Posted by ylh on March 12, 2002 10:05:19 pm
India`s problems are because it is a democracy. Pakistan`s problems are because it isn`t.
#171 Posted by ylh on March 12, 2002 10:05:19 pm
Chunkey Pandey,
Oh so now you are going to tell us what is right and what is wrong. If preferring a Pakistani Hindu over an Indian Muslim is Racist... then I am proud to be a RACIST!
#170 Posted by ali2 on March 12, 2002 10:05:19 pm
YLH,
I know why you took your mothers last name .. so that you could brag about being related to the prophet ...but I have got it from reliable sources that you had to pay through your nose to get that reference to your mother added in the Kabir Ali Baba Hamdani book.
I know why you took your mothers last name .. so that you could brag about being related to the prophet ...but I have got it from reliable sources that you had to pay through your nose to get that reference to your mother added in the Kabir Ali Baba Hamdani book.
#169 Posted by pennathur on March 12, 2002 10:05:19 pm
ylh,
The population of present day Pakistan at the time of Independence was about 35 million? So 3.5 million Hindus (who were booted out) is about 10%? And Hindus today in Pakistan number about 1.4 million out of 140-150 million overall i.e., 1%?
The latest pogrom of Hindus in Bangladesh is fairly well documented by independent groups. Journalists reporting on the massacre have been jailed.
Ethnic cleansing of ``Muslims`` in East Pakistan``? Haww Haw. That`s a good laugh! East Pakistan remember is what the place was called when Pakistan ruled (or rode roughshod over) present day Bangladesh. So Indians entered EP and killed Muslims while Pakistan ruled the place? Bangladeshis have accused India of many things in the highest standards of Kuwaiti ungratefulness - but never ethnic cleansing. It is hard to do that and get away as for the 30 days that the Indian Army spent in Bangladesh are exhaustively documented. ylh of course could come up with facts that we don`t know of?
As for the rest of ylh`s statements ``Indian government - choking Pakistan`` etc. it is mere phillipic.
As for Shah Re:Aisha Sarwari - Western Ghats and all that I maintain what I said. Make what you will out of it.
Coming back to Hindus and Muslims in India, why did Muslims decide to stay back in India? And why do they still do? And why is it that Muslims in India do better wherever they go than Muslims from any other country? The recent study commissioned by the UK government is interesting. Indo-Britons of course are vastly better off (education, employment, professional achievements) than Pakistani or Bangladeshi Britons. We need a little more than facile explanations.
The population of present day Pakistan at the time of Independence was about 35 million? So 3.5 million Hindus (who were booted out) is about 10%? And Hindus today in Pakistan number about 1.4 million out of 140-150 million overall i.e., 1%?
The latest pogrom of Hindus in Bangladesh is fairly well documented by independent groups. Journalists reporting on the massacre have been jailed.
Ethnic cleansing of ``Muslims`` in East Pakistan``? Haww Haw. That`s a good laugh! East Pakistan remember is what the place was called when Pakistan ruled (or rode roughshod over) present day Bangladesh. So Indians entered EP and killed Muslims while Pakistan ruled the place? Bangladeshis have accused India of many things in the highest standards of Kuwaiti ungratefulness - but never ethnic cleansing. It is hard to do that and get away as for the 30 days that the Indian Army spent in Bangladesh are exhaustively documented. ylh of course could come up with facts that we don`t know of?
As for the rest of ylh`s statements ``Indian government - choking Pakistan`` etc. it is mere phillipic.
As for Shah Re:Aisha Sarwari - Western Ghats and all that I maintain what I said. Make what you will out of it.
Coming back to Hindus and Muslims in India, why did Muslims decide to stay back in India? And why do they still do? And why is it that Muslims in India do better wherever they go than Muslims from any other country? The recent study commissioned by the UK government is interesting. Indo-Britons of course are vastly better off (education, employment, professional achievements) than Pakistani or Bangladeshi Britons. We need a little more than facile explanations.
#168 Posted by Urstruly on March 12, 2002 2:31:57 pm
Oy Hinduo
#171 reminds me to ask uou, where is this Dr. Choonawala dude and that Beyuda Latrine guy.
#171 reminds me to ask uou, where is this Dr. Choonawala dude and that Beyuda Latrine guy.
#167 Posted by scout on March 12, 2002 1:43:28 pm
raveena #173,
me stealing your lines? oh please give it up already. it`s usually the other way around. but it`s ok, i forgive you beti.
me stealing your lines? oh please give it up already. it`s usually the other way around. but it`s ok, i forgive you beti.
#166 Posted by supreet on March 12, 2002 12:46:59 pm
what gibberish!!! perhaps u should have thought twice before putting this up. how on the earth can u dispute the fact that india is a democracy and pak. isn`t???
#165 Posted by rsaxena on March 12, 2002 12:46:59 pm
re: scout
{that explains why you look into the mirror all the time. and you have to replace them quite frequently too.}
dear, stealing my lines once again?..look, it is OK to do that, but don`t steal them...pay the license fees and use them legally...i`ll take the check whenever it is ready...
{that explains why you look into the mirror all the time. and you have to replace them quite frequently too.}
dear, stealing my lines once again?..look, it is OK to do that, but don`t steal them...pay the license fees and use them legally...i`ll take the check whenever it is ready...
#164 Posted by Chunkey Pandey on March 12, 2002 12:46:59 pm
YLH 169
`I would rather marry a Pakistani Hindu than marry an Indian Muslim`.
I think it not only an unfair statement without reason but prejudice & rascist
If Bhartiya musalman or Dr.Poonawalla were hindu gujju on purpose character assasinated muslims of india in there deception arn`t the muslims of india being victimized twice ?:-)
`I would rather marry a Pakistani Hindu than marry an Indian Muslim`.
I think it not only an unfair statement without reason but prejudice & rascist
If Bhartiya musalman or Dr.Poonawalla were hindu gujju on purpose character assasinated muslims of india in there deception arn`t the muslims of india being victimized twice ?:-)
#163 Posted by ylh on March 12, 2002 12:12:16 am
By the way, I never said Aisha is not Indian because her mom is an Indian and her father is not. I said `she is not Indian because she has had a Pakistani Passport all her life and she is a Karachite to the bone.` As I have said before I have nothing against Matrilineal systems as my own last name is from my mother`s side.
Chowk, hope you won`t censor my posts any more. Thankyou.
#162 Posted by ylh on March 12, 2002 12:12:16 am
``You are a passionate Paki but you will marry an Indian``
Wah bhai Khawab suhanay...! Indians do wish that would happen don`t they? Like Aisha said her mother was Kenyan, so her father didn`t marry an Indian.
As for Aisha ... let us quote from her own post:
`I would rather marry a Pakistani Hindu than marry an Indian Muslim`.
So becharay YLH ki fiqar naa karo.
#161 Posted by Ras Siddiqui on March 11, 2002 10:41:35 pm
Getting back to the original point of this article (what happens to us here on CHOWK?), I think that Sumit Ganguly should be taken seriously in spite of his public posturing.
It would be a mistake for Pakistanis to overlook his agenda.
Ras
#160 Posted by ali2 on March 11, 2002 5:12:50 pm
Re; Sarwari #165
Ok now I get it. Your father was a passionate Pakistani but he married an Indian ... You are a passionate Paki but you will marry an Indian.. But YLH ka kya hoga ? bechara
Ok now I get it. Your father was a passionate Pakistani but he married an Indian ... You are a passionate Paki but you will marry an Indian.. But YLH ka kya hoga ? bechara
#159 Posted by Aisha_Sarwari on March 11, 2002 12:23:14 pm
To put the matter to rest. My nana and nani moved from Kokan when hey were 16 and 12 to Kenya. All their grandkids call themselves Indians essentailly because they have no identity and wear arab attire to a cricket match. In any event My siblings and I don`t because fortunately our father was a passionate Pakistani.
I haven`t been in Pakistan more than 2 years. Goes to show I will be Pakistani if when where I want to. And I am one. There should be no question about any Indianess in me. Its something I have surgically removed in a clean slate for various practical reasons.
Aisha
I haven`t been in Pakistan more than 2 years. Goes to show I will be Pakistani if when where I want to. And I am one. There should be no question about any Indianess in me. Its something I have surgically removed in a clean slate for various practical reasons.
Aisha
#158 Posted by Shah on March 11, 2002 12:21:17 am
=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts
view this users filtered interacts
#157 Posted by ylh on March 10, 2002 9:34:33 pm
Shah,
`Aisha is indian muslim by origin ...she is fromwestern Ghats of India .`
Oh so now you have taken it upon yourself to assume that. Boy you`ve done it now...
I wonder if say Aisha`s mom was from the Western Ghats of India, how does that make her (Aisha) an Indian Muslim?
`Aisha is indian muslim by origin ...she is fromwestern Ghats of India .`
Oh so now you have taken it upon yourself to assume that. Boy you`ve done it now...
I wonder if say Aisha`s mom was from the Western Ghats of India, how does that make her (Aisha) an Indian Muslim?
#156 Posted by scout on March 10, 2002 11:19:33 am
suxena #159, ``if he doesn`t learn to look in the mirror and accept reality now, he will have a lot of problems when he grows up...``
that explains why you look into the mirror all the time. and you have to replace them quite frequently too.
``go back to watching levar burton and don`t bother me...``
awwwwwww, you remembered....do you usually remember and research my posts ;) i`m humbled.
that explains why you look into the mirror all the time. and you have to replace them quite frequently too.
``go back to watching levar burton and don`t bother me...``
awwwwwww, you remembered....do you usually remember and research my posts ;) i`m humbled.
#155 Posted by rsaxena on March 10, 2002 3:57:39 am
re: spout
{relax, don`t bug yasser ok...bacha hai}
bacha hai tau seekhne do...uski bhalai ke liye hai...if he doesn`t learn to look in the mirror and accept reality now, he will have a lot of problems when he grows up...speaking of which, go back to watching levar burton and don`t bother me...
{relax, don`t bug yasser ok...bacha hai}
bacha hai tau seekhne do...uski bhalai ke liye hai...if he doesn`t learn to look in the mirror and accept reality now, he will have a lot of problems when he grows up...speaking of which, go back to watching levar burton and don`t bother me...
#154 Posted by Lajwanti on March 10, 2002 2:34:11 am
This board i s like Lou Reed song, Iam thinking.
OK, tata everybody!
Taking wal k on wildsi de.
(do do do dododo do do do dodododo dooooooooo!)
OK, tata everybody!
Taking wal k on wildsi de.
(do do do dododo do do do dodododo dooooooooo!)
#153 Posted by MaheshG on March 10, 2002 1:14:44 am
a society which has bred fundamentalism for the lack thereof democracy --- Pakistan.
a society which has bred fundamentalism exactly because of democracy --- Pakistan.
a society which has bred fundamentalism exactly because of democracy --- Pakistan.
#152 Posted by scout on March 10, 2002 1:14:44 am
Chowk Staff #143,
(sigh) alright, i believe you
Raveena #146,
relax, don`t bug yasser ok...bacha hai
(sigh) alright, i believe you
Raveena #146,
relax, don`t bug yasser ok...bacha hai
#151 Posted by hobbyty on March 9, 2002 12:43:28 pm
Lately we have become accustomed to hearing from the Indians that they are ``angry``, ``frustrated``, ``dismayed`` - perhaps now more Indians are coming to the conclusion that India needs to pursue polices with regard to Pakistan that are realistic and offer hope:- From ``The Hindu`` - an editorial calling for reason:
``Cold-shouldering peace
THE PREDICTABLY NEGATIVE response of the Vajpayee administration to the latest peace overture by the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, suggests an absence of creativity in its diplomatic thinking. New Delhi`s stony attitude is bad enough, surely, as a baffling sign of inept public diplomacy. Much worse, in fact, is official India`s unwise inflexibility as policy towards Pakistan. Now, Gen. Musharraf`s new initiative is undeniably a question of subtle timing rather than anything intrinsically innovative. Yet, the truth is that there can be no forward movement towards the normalisation of India-Pakistan relations without a de-escalation of the present warlike tensions on the bilateral front. It is this aspect that Gen. Musharraf has deftly invoked while inaugurating a South Asian conference of Information Ministers in Islamabad on Thursday. At a basic level, New Delhi seems angry that he should have utilised a forum of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to articulate a formula to ease the escalating estrangement between India and Pakistan. In taking a dim view of this development, New Delhi is allowing itself to be guided by a blinkered vision of the technicality that the SAARC Charter prohibits any discussion of contentious bilateral issues. Lost sight of in the process is the substance of Gen. Musharraf`s offer.
Given the abnormally high tensions along the India-Pakistan frontier since the savage terrorist attack on Parliament House in New Delhi on December 13, Gen. Musharraf appears to have outlined his proposals in a noticeably non-provocative style. One of his suggestions, aimed at reviving the languishing people-to-people contacts on the margins at least of the bilateral front, relates to Pakistan`s stated readiness to restore air links between the two countries on a quick and reciprocal basis. In a sense, it is quite natural that the Pakistan President should have called for the restoration of flight paths whose absence had forced the SAARC Ministers, including India`s Sushma Swaraj, to take time-consuming alternative routes to reach Islamabad. The air transportation links in question were suspended in tit-for-tat decisions in the context of the terrorist strike on India`s Parliament House.
New Delhi has often found itself dismayed over what it tends to regard as Gen. Musharraf`s penchant for designer diplomacy. But the Vajpayee administration should know that the gravity of the current India-Pakistan standoff brooks no complacency on any count, real or imaginary. Anchored to the unexceptionable idea of a cohesive SAARC is Gen. Musharraf`s call for reciprocal withdrawals of troops from strike-threatening forward locations along the India-Pakistan border. In his reckoning, ``both sides have the potential to indulge in adventurism``. While this underscores the need for a military de-escalation by the two countries, he thinks that the pullback itself can be accomplished only through ``mutual understanding``. New Delhi`s response is a waffle in the form of Ms. Swaraj`s flat insistence that the ground situation remains unchanged. Within the past several weeks, the Vajpayee administration has consistently cold-shouldered all well-meaning calls from within India itself for a military de-escalation. Although New Delhi deployed military forces within striking distance of Pakistan in the wake of the outrage on December 13, several factors emphasise the need for an Indian pullback that might lead to a matching demobilisation by Pakistan. It is heartless to play a chess-game of ``coercive diplomacy`` by keeping troops in battle-readiness for long. A complete stoppage of cross-border terrorism from Pakistan — a stated objective of India`s military deployment — is a qualitative index that will take considerable time to measure. The way forward is to de-escalate and re-engage Pakistan, given Gen. Musharraf`s reported willingness to respond. His strategic moves are being watched by the international community, and this is a factor that New Delhi should not ignore.``
#150 Posted by roohi on March 9, 2002 12:33:52 pm
Sarwari #144
Here is a Sikh account of the events of 1947 in Punjab. It may help expand your understanding of the cost in human suffering for the creation of Pakistan. Apart from human suffering, the price for Pakistan has also been trust - between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs - the current relationships between Hindus and the Muslim Minority in India seem to be, even now, directly impacted by the creation of Pakistan and the traumas of Partition. This is a book I would never ask any Indian to read - for fear that the muslims that two generations ago chose to put their faith in India would be unfairly held accountable for Pakistans crimes. But Sarwari, you might benefit from a different version of history than what you have been taught.
This is a link to the online text of a book called
``Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947``.
It was compiled in 1947 by Sardar Gurbachan Singh Talib, Principal of the Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jullundur, and published in 1950 by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/mla/
Note : I am not a fan of Ram Swaroop or Bharatvani books but this book is an exception.
This is the original preface written in 1947 by Sardar Gurbachan Singh Talib. For the entire text, visit the link above.
PREFACE
This book is intended to reveal the grim and tragic story of the uprooting of more than seven million Hindus and Sikhs from their homes in West Punjab, in the North-Western Frontier Province, in Sind and in raider-occupied Kashmir. The outlines of this story are well-known all over the world, and have formed the subject of debate before the representatives of the major portion of mankind, assembled in the United Nations. This biggest mass migration of humanity in history under extreme duress has received the attention and active sympathy due to it from the rest of India, and the world is keenly aware of the existence of this large portion of uprooted humanity.
What, however, is not very well-known or fully borne in mind is the fact that this tragic migration was the last culminating episode in a conspiracy that had been under planning for more than a decade before it actually occurred-the conspiracy of the Muslim League in India to establish a Muslim State which should not be encumbered with any such non-Muslim populations- as, would be a likely factor in diluting to any extent its purely Muslim character.1 This conspiracy needs being unmasked by recalling the history of the Indian Muslim League over the period in which its inception and maturing occurred-so that responsibility for this tragedy is fixed where it properly belongs.
Muslim League propaganda has sought to blame the Punjab happenings of 1947 on the Sikhs and in a secondary degree on the Hindus. A distorted and fragmentary picture, drawn up with completely bare-faced lying, has been presented to the world of a Sikh “Plan”2 to attack and drive out Muslims from the Punjab. And for a time a part of the world swallowed the lie, and the Sikhs got an unenviable reputation. But the pendulum of opinion slowly swung round in the right direction, and the Sikh name now has been fairly cleared of the supposed crime of a “Plan” against Muslims. That the Sikh (and Hindu) attack on the Muslims in East Punjab was retaliation under terrible and unbearable provocation is now admitted to be a fact by all impartial people; though it is not known everywhere of what horrible nature, of what prolonged duration and diabolical character was the provocation offered to Sikhs by Muslims over a period of several agonizing months-beginning from December, 1946. There was a war unleashed by the Muslim population of the Punjab to cow down Sikhs, and as a means to that, to carry on among them a total campaign of murder, arson, loot and abduction of women. Sikhs passed through the experience of this war as a people for months; and not thousands, but millions of them were forced to quit their homes for safety in the process. Without a clear knowledge of this part of the story a just and balanced view of the situation cannot be formed.
The details of atrocities committed on Sikhs and Hindus given in these paces are not full or even a fairly large proportion of what actually befell. They are only representative episodes of what happened in a few villages and towns all over West Punjab and other West Pakistan areas. Imagine such things happening in thousands upon thousands of villages and hundreds of towns, and you will then be able to take in the proportions somewhat close to what the reality was-which, in the last analysis must, however, remain inexpressible in its full horror. The facts drawn upon are statements of sufferers of these horrors, recorded from complaints made to the authorities, from reliable press reports and from statements recorded with scrupulous fidelity and signed by those who made them, in the refugee camps in East Punjab.
Sikhs left behind their homes, the richest land in the Punjab, their factories and prosperous businesses, their holy shrines, schools and colleges-all under the pressure of the Pakistan terror, so that according to unbiassed estimates 40% (and these perhaps the most enterprising section of the community) were rendered refugees. They came out of their homes-hammed, despoiled and in unending trudging caravans. This vast human tragedy is too large even for the imagination to take in without the help of facts presented in a telling way.
This record is intended in the first place to rehabilitate the Sikh name, maligned by false propaganda of the leaders and press of Pakistan, and secondly to serve as part of the material for anyone who should set out to write a full history of the Punjab of these terrible 1947 months.
COMPILER
Here is a Sikh account of the events of 1947 in Punjab. It may help expand your understanding of the cost in human suffering for the creation of Pakistan. Apart from human suffering, the price for Pakistan has also been trust - between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs - the current relationships between Hindus and the Muslim Minority in India seem to be, even now, directly impacted by the creation of Pakistan and the traumas of Partition. This is a book I would never ask any Indian to read - for fear that the muslims that two generations ago chose to put their faith in India would be unfairly held accountable for Pakistans crimes. But Sarwari, you might benefit from a different version of history than what you have been taught.
This is a link to the online text of a book called
``Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947``.
It was compiled in 1947 by Sardar Gurbachan Singh Talib, Principal of the Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jullundur, and published in 1950 by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/mla/
Note : I am not a fan of Ram Swaroop or Bharatvani books but this book is an exception.
This is the original preface written in 1947 by Sardar Gurbachan Singh Talib. For the entire text, visit the link above.
PREFACE
This book is intended to reveal the grim and tragic story of the uprooting of more than seven million Hindus and Sikhs from their homes in West Punjab, in the North-Western Frontier Province, in Sind and in raider-occupied Kashmir. The outlines of this story are well-known all over the world, and have formed the subject of debate before the representatives of the major portion of mankind, assembled in the United Nations. This biggest mass migration of humanity in history under extreme duress has received the attention and active sympathy due to it from the rest of India, and the world is keenly aware of the existence of this large portion of uprooted humanity.
What, however, is not very well-known or fully borne in mind is the fact that this tragic migration was the last culminating episode in a conspiracy that had been under planning for more than a decade before it actually occurred-the conspiracy of the Muslim League in India to establish a Muslim State which should not be encumbered with any such non-Muslim populations- as, would be a likely factor in diluting to any extent its purely Muslim character.1 This conspiracy needs being unmasked by recalling the history of the Indian Muslim League over the period in which its inception and maturing occurred-so that responsibility for this tragedy is fixed where it properly belongs.
Muslim League propaganda has sought to blame the Punjab happenings of 1947 on the Sikhs and in a secondary degree on the Hindus. A distorted and fragmentary picture, drawn up with completely bare-faced lying, has been presented to the world of a Sikh “Plan”2 to attack and drive out Muslims from the Punjab. And for a time a part of the world swallowed the lie, and the Sikhs got an unenviable reputation. But the pendulum of opinion slowly swung round in the right direction, and the Sikh name now has been fairly cleared of the supposed crime of a “Plan” against Muslims. That the Sikh (and Hindu) attack on the Muslims in East Punjab was retaliation under terrible and unbearable provocation is now admitted to be a fact by all impartial people; though it is not known everywhere of what horrible nature, of what prolonged duration and diabolical character was the provocation offered to Sikhs by Muslims over a period of several agonizing months-beginning from December, 1946. There was a war unleashed by the Muslim population of the Punjab to cow down Sikhs, and as a means to that, to carry on among them a total campaign of murder, arson, loot and abduction of women. Sikhs passed through the experience of this war as a people for months; and not thousands, but millions of them were forced to quit their homes for safety in the process. Without a clear knowledge of this part of the story a just and balanced view of the situation cannot be formed.
The details of atrocities committed on Sikhs and Hindus given in these paces are not full or even a fairly large proportion of what actually befell. They are only representative episodes of what happened in a few villages and towns all over West Punjab and other West Pakistan areas. Imagine such things happening in thousands upon thousands of villages and hundreds of towns, and you will then be able to take in the proportions somewhat close to what the reality was-which, in the last analysis must, however, remain inexpressible in its full horror. The facts drawn upon are statements of sufferers of these horrors, recorded from complaints made to the authorities, from reliable press reports and from statements recorded with scrupulous fidelity and signed by those who made them, in the refugee camps in East Punjab.
Sikhs left behind their homes, the richest land in the Punjab, their factories and prosperous businesses, their holy shrines, schools and colleges-all under the pressure of the Pakistan terror, so that according to unbiassed estimates 40% (and these perhaps the most enterprising section of the community) were rendered refugees. They came out of their homes-hammed, despoiled and in unending trudging caravans. This vast human tragedy is too large even for the imagination to take in without the help of facts presented in a telling way.
This record is intended in the first place to rehabilitate the Sikh name, maligned by false propaganda of the leaders and press of Pakistan, and secondly to serve as part of the material for anyone who should set out to write a full history of the Punjab of these terrible 1947 months.
COMPILER
#149 Posted by harimau on March 9, 2002 12:33:52 pm
Ms. Sarwari:
This is just FYI, not meant to rub anything in the face of Pakistanis.
[From hinduonnet:
Gang-rape accused get jail term doubled, on appeal
By Our Staff Reporter
CHENNAI March 7. The sentence awarded to six of the 10 persons, charged with gang-raping a teenaged girl at Tuticorin in 1990, has been enhanced from five-year rigorous imprisonment to 10 years by Justice M. Karpagavinayagam of the Madras High Court. It was the accused who had come on appeal against a lower court verdict.
``It is an irony that while we are celebrating women`s rights in all spheres, we show little or no concern for their honour. A rapist not only violates a victim`s privacy and personal integrity but also causes serious psychological and physical harm in the process,`` the judge observed.
The case relates to the rape of Kalaiselvi (19) by 10 persons when she was returning home from the Esakkiamman temple festival at Tuticorin on April 13, 1990. The assistant sessions court found all of them guilty and awarded each of them five-year RI on July 2, 1999. The sentence was confirmed by the principal sessions court of Tuticorin on December 9, 1999.
When six of the accused moved the High Court, Justice R. Balasubramanian issued suo motu notices to all petitioners asking why the sentence should not be enhanced to 10 years, minimum award for those found guilty of charges punishable under Section 376(g) of the IPC. On receiving the notice, the petitioners offered to withdraw the appeals but the plea was disallowed.
When the appeals and the suo motu notice proceedings came before him, Mr. Justice Karpagavinayagam, said, ``the offences under Sections 366 and 376(2)(g) are clearly made out. Consequently, the conviction is liable to be confirmed, and accordingly confirmed``.
Rejecting the lower court reasoning for awarding the accused only five-year RI, the judge said the point that the offenders were youngsters could not be concluded as an adequate or special reason.
``The facts of the case are such that they would not permit this court to show any sympathy to the accused.
Hence the petitioners are liable to be sentenced for 10 years, and pay a fine of Rs. 1,000; in default they would undergo a sentence of one-year RI``.]
Perhaps the Pakistani judges could cite judgments of various Indian High Courts and Supreme Courts as precedents in awarding appropriate punishment to rapists and ignore the Hudood ordinances. After all, the Criminal Procedure Code of Pakistan is derived from the CrPC of India and I am sure that pre-1947 judgments are used in Pakistan as precedents. Why not use post-1947 judgments as well particularly to protect the honor of Pakistani women?
This is just FYI, not meant to rub anything in the face of Pakistanis.
[From hinduonnet:
Gang-rape accused get jail term doubled, on appeal
By Our Staff Reporter
CHENNAI March 7. The sentence awarded to six of the 10 persons, charged with gang-raping a teenaged girl at Tuticorin in 1990, has been enhanced from five-year rigorous imprisonment to 10 years by Justice M. Karpagavinayagam of the Madras High Court. It was the accused who had come on appeal against a lower court verdict.
``It is an irony that while we are celebrating women`s rights in all spheres, we show little or no concern for their honour. A rapist not only violates a victim`s privacy and personal integrity but also causes serious psychological and physical harm in the process,`` the judge observed.
The case relates to the rape of Kalaiselvi (19) by 10 persons when she was returning home from the Esakkiamman temple festival at Tuticorin on April 13, 1990. The assistant sessions court found all of them guilty and awarded each of them five-year RI on July 2, 1999. The sentence was confirmed by the principal sessions court of Tuticorin on December 9, 1999.
When six of the accused moved the High Court, Justice R. Balasubramanian issued suo motu notices to all petitioners asking why the sentence should not be enhanced to 10 years, minimum award for those found guilty of charges punishable under Section 376(g) of the IPC. On receiving the notice, the petitioners offered to withdraw the appeals but the plea was disallowed.
When the appeals and the suo motu notice proceedings came before him, Mr. Justice Karpagavinayagam, said, ``the offences under Sections 366 and 376(2)(g) are clearly made out. Consequently, the conviction is liable to be confirmed, and accordingly confirmed``.
Rejecting the lower court reasoning for awarding the accused only five-year RI, the judge said the point that the offenders were youngsters could not be concluded as an adequate or special reason.
``The facts of the case are such that they would not permit this court to show any sympathy to the accused.
Hence the petitioners are liable to be sentenced for 10 years, and pay a fine of Rs. 1,000; in default they would undergo a sentence of one-year RI``.]
Perhaps the Pakistani judges could cite judgments of various Indian High Courts and Supreme Courts as precedents in awarding appropriate punishment to rapists and ignore the Hudood ordinances. After all, the Criminal Procedure Code of Pakistan is derived from the CrPC of India and I am sure that pre-1947 judgments are used in Pakistan as precedents. Why not use post-1947 judgments as well particularly to protect the honor of Pakistani women?
#148 Posted by Shah on March 8, 2002 11:49:02 pm
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#147 Posted by friend on March 8, 2002 9:13:37 pm
Chowk editors,
It appears that you read posts only on this board. I am reproducing two posts from your ``featured item`` board, would you care to read them
It appears that you read posts only on this board. I am reproducing two posts from your ``featured item`` board, would you care to read them
#146 Posted by ylh on March 8, 2002 9:13:37 pm
pennathaur,
Time to give some sources for those inaccurate figures that you have put up. The fact is that you can`t.
The only reason India has so many minorities is because India had lots of them to begin with. The total number of Hindus moving east is put at 3.5 Million, the total number of Muslims moving west is at 5.6 Million according to Times of London.
The fact is that the whole exodus happened because the Indian government wanted to choke Pakistan at inception forcing Muslims to go to Pakistan which was based on Muslim Majority areas and not exchange of populations...
These are facts that you can`t deny. Indian Government was complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in East Punjab whereas your own high commissioner `Sri Prikasa` praises Pakistan Government`s efforts to protect the Hindus.
If you can`t talk on facts, then don`t talk.
Sincerely
YLH
#145 Posted by ylh on March 8, 2002 9:13:37 pm
Rsidhar,
My dear dear Rsidhar, Don`t flatter yourself by assuming that we are trying to compare ourselves with you. That is sacrilege for us.
In essence the question that Mr.Sethi is asking is which society is better, a society which has bred fundamentalism for the lack thereof democracy or a society which has bred fundamentalism exactly because of democracy.
I hope you will see the MAJOR difference between Pakistan and India with a clarity in abundance.
Sincerely
YLH
#144 Posted by ylh on March 8, 2002 9:13:37 pm
NAJAM SETHI`S ARTICLE IN ESSENCE ADDRESSED DIFFERENCES NOT SIMILARITIES.
Najam Sethi`s basic premise is that fundamentalism in Pakistan has been caused by lack of democracy and the fundamentalism in India has been caused because of democracy. So in essence Pakistan`s polity is the moderate one and its the suppression of its expression which has led to our problems.
India is an intolerant society the democratization of which has led to intolerance.
Ylh
Najam Sethi`s basic premise is that fundamentalism in Pakistan has been caused by lack of democracy and the fundamentalism in India has been caused because of democracy. So in essence Pakistan`s polity is the moderate one and its the suppression of its expression which has led to our problems.
India is an intolerant society the democratization of which has led to intolerance.
Ylh
#143 Posted by pennathur on March 8, 2002 1:35:54 pm
Aisha,
You can hate India, I can hate Pakistan and all of us can hate Madagascar for all the world cares. All of us can feel smug like a bunch of frogs getting sloshed inside a well.
I am glad that India ``divested`` itself of Pakistan and Bangladesh after winning Independence. But I pity those Hindus still left behind. IIRC Hindus constituted 15% of the population of Pakistan around 1947 - today it is about 1%? In Bangladesh they made up 18% of the population which dwindled to 10% within the first decade of independence. While Pakistan drove out its Hindus; the Hindu minority in Bangladesh has been butchered and pillaged and pulverised - the latest pogrom happened when Khaleda Zia took over power in late 2001. Pakistan isn`t mature enough to manage linguistic and geographical diversity within its borders - what to talk of religious diversity. Your country must first become a constitutional democracy however imperfect it may be.
In India regardless of who you are you get to compete as an individual - and thankfully the sane folk greatly outnumber the insane ones. You do not know the Muslims of India - I do.
You can hate India, I can hate Pakistan and all of us can hate Madagascar for all the world cares. All of us can feel smug like a bunch of frogs getting sloshed inside a well.
I am glad that India ``divested`` itself of Pakistan and Bangladesh after winning Independence. But I pity those Hindus still left behind. IIRC Hindus constituted 15% of the population of Pakistan around 1947 - today it is about 1%? In Bangladesh they made up 18% of the population which dwindled to 10% within the first decade of independence. While Pakistan drove out its Hindus; the Hindu minority in Bangladesh has been butchered and pillaged and pulverised - the latest pogrom happened when Khaleda Zia took over power in late 2001. Pakistan isn`t mature enough to manage linguistic and geographical diversity within its borders - what to talk of religious diversity. Your country must first become a constitutional democracy however imperfect it may be.
In India regardless of who you are you get to compete as an individual - and thankfully the sane folk greatly outnumber the insane ones. You do not know the Muslims of India - I do.
#142 Posted by rsaxena on March 8