Train to Pakistan 2004: La, Hore?

#387 by bongdongs

It is the cricketers, and they alone, who are asked to redeem these failures, to make one forget, at least temporarily, the harsh realities of endemic poverty and corrupt and brutal politicians
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Since India is still a poor country, it is always possible to pull out articles which point out ``the harsh reality of endemic poverty``. Even today, one can point out, for example, that there have been suicides by farmers in Andhra Pradesh. However, let us remember that 50 years ago, in similar situations, there would have been mass starvation in the millions. I myself have posted extracts from articles in the 50s and 60s (just after Independence) which predicted that India would have negative population growth due to mass famines, and which called for restricting food supply to India so that the population could be reduced (by starvation) to what the writers considered a reasonable level.

Definitely, when a whole country is making slow but steady progress, it is possible to mock and make fun of the efforts of that country by focussing on the negatives which still exist. When somebody does that, what does that tell one about that person?

#391 by kkkandk

The most repressive regimes, as far as Muslims are concerned, are Israel and India.
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Do take an opinion poll among Muslims in India about this point. 140 million of them have proved (by staying in India when they have a chance to migrate to Pakistan) about which country they prefer. Don`t talk only to the success stories like President Abdul Kalam and Azim Premji or Irfan Pathan; talk to the others and find out. And also make sure to talk to people like Adnan Sami.

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LtCOl.Rathore alias gujjubania alias shamsul alias muslimextremistonwesternboards: You damned moron, trying to be clever again by posing as a pakistani. ha! ha!

This post proves my point - lacking any pakistanis to match the convenient stereotype, gb tries to create one. Of course there is never any need to create indian stereotypes - weirdos like gb and thakeray and cheapsters like arjun are a dime a dozen on chowk.

I assign gujjbuania alias rathore a new category: Creep Number 415 (a step before number 420) defined as following ``Takes on a Pakistani nick in attempt to provide basis for the self-serving delusions of the chowk indians.``

Would this classification be OK with you, hon`ble members of the CREIP Category Assignment Committee (kkandk/HP)?

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We don`t grumble about Indians. If we don`t like them we kill them. Simple. Oh I am sorry. it is 3:00Pm. Time to wake up the Indians. LOL
And Pakistan has done alot. Well, for starters, the assasination of Indira Gandi, then Rajeev gandhi, then around 65000 bomb blasts in India, then attack on the Indian parliaments, and then The whole Khalistan project, which will some day become a reality.Also, we broke Russia. So we have been busy. Not at creating democracy, with such thugs as Lalu Prasad yadav who is a shame to the name of the land he belongs to, but by strengethening our military. See, lets stop ranting and have a war. lets see what you have!
By the way, Lalu Ji, in his ``sandu banyaan``, depicts a true picture of Democracy and development that is going on in India specially on fodder for the buffalos for which he got a $4Million loan. When asked what he did he pointed to his buffalos and said, ``Ask them why me``. The stupid Bihari is hillarious, un-educated thug who depicts the true picture of India. Trust me one squadron with 50 planes and there will be no Bihar in about say 20 minutes.

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sunlight #389 Please read the posts carefully, and you will see that it is NOT India vs Pakistan. It is putting the mirror to the face of on individual (arjun) who has spent years on chowk doing nothing but writing posts on a single subject: india is wonderful, pakistan is backwards and tossing insults and ridicule about pakistan.

I see that while decrying this india-pakistan exchange, you could not resist the temptation to pull out an article complimentary to india. how about pulling out articles from the western press that decry some of the many problems - communal riots, abuse of medical technology to identify and kill female foetuses, bride burning, and so on??

Of course there is much that is good that is happening in India. That is something for all to celebrate. But the fact is that all of South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh) remains one of the most backward regions of the world. And the quality of education received by many of the ``educated`` people is quite uneven - just look at the number of posters from India who come to chowk not to have a friendly discussion, but to exchange insults (of whom arjun is just one).

There is one major cultural difference that is clearly noticable on chowk between indians and pakistanis: The undeniable fact is that you just dont find pakistanis with this need to prove themselves better than indians on chowk or to convince indians that they are doomed. but a significant number of chowk indians seem to suffer from this disease, rooted no doubt on inferiority complexes.

bongdongs: that is the kind of cut-and-paste one rarely sees from an india (the kind i just referred to in my post to sunlight). congratulations. i am glad you dont feel the need to prove anything.

next step: what the western commentators say is fine. no one can make generalizations like what this man you quoted made and expect it to be anything more than a casual observation that is not the whole truth in any case: while cricket is a refuge for people in india as he says, e.g., so are movies; so are family ties; so are hopes for a better future.

Posts 376-386 by arjun_m, tahmed32, morad, kkkandk.

Since there is so much India vs Pakistan here, perhaps I should post the final word on the subject (by Thomas Friedman). An old, but great, article; my apologies for pasting the whole thing.

Where Freedom Reigns

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India — The more time you spend in India the more you realize that this teeming, multiethnic, multireligious, multilingual country is one of the world`s great wonders — a miracle with message. And the message is that democracy matters.

This truth hits you from every corner. Consider Bangalore, where the traffic is now congested by all the young Indian techies, many from the lower-middle classes, who have gotten jobs, apartments — and motor scooters — by providing the brainpower for the world`s biggest corporations. While the software designs of these Indian techies may be rocket science, what made Bangalore what it is today is something very simple: 50 years of Indian democracy and secular education, and 15 years of economic liberalization, produced all this positive energy.

Just across the border in Pakistan — where the people have the same basic blood, brains and civilizational heritage as here — 50 years of failed democracy, military coups and imposed religiosity have produced 30,000 madrassahs — Islamic schools, which have replaced a collapsed public school system and churn out Pakistani youth who know only the Koran and hostility toward non-Muslims.

No, India is not paradise. Just last February the Hindu nationalist B.J.P. government in the state of Gujarat stirred up a pogrom by Hindus against Muslims that left 600 Muslims, and dozens of Hindus, dead. It was a shameful incident, and in a country with 150 million Muslims — India has the largest Muslim minority in the world — it was explosive. And do you know what happened?

Nothing happened.

The rioting didn`t spread anywhere. One reason is the long history of Indian Muslims and Hindus living together in villages and towns, sharing communal institutions and mixing their cultures and faiths. But the larger reason is democracy. The free Indian press quickly exposed how the local Hindu government had encouraged the riots for electoral purposes, and the national B.J.P. had to distance itself from Gujarat because it rules with a coalition, many of whose members rely on Muslim votes to get re-elected. Democracy in India forces anyone who wants to succeed nationally to appeal across ethnic lines.

``Even when Gujarat was burning, practically the whole of India was at peace — that is the normal pattern here,`` said Syed Shahabuddin, editor of Muslim India, a monthly magazine, and a former Indian diplomat. ``India is a democracy, and more than that, India is a secular democracy, at least in principle, and it does maintain a certain level of aspiration and hope for Muslims. . . . If there were no democracy in India, there would be chaos and anarchy, because so many different people are aspiring for their share of the cake.`` It is precisely because of the ``constitutional framework here,`` added Mr. Shahabuddin, that Indian Muslims don`t have to resort to terrorism as a minority: ``You can always ask for economic and political justice here.``

It is for all these reasons that the U.S. is so wrong not to press for democratization in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Is it an accident that India has the largest Muslim minority in the world, with plenty of economic grievances, yet not a single Indian Muslim was found in Al Qaeda? Is it an accident that the two times India and Pakistan fought full-scale wars, 1965 and 1971, were when Pakistan had military rulers? Is it an accident that when Pakistan has had free elections, the Islamists have never won more than 6 percent of the vote?

Is it an accident that the richest man in India is an Indian Muslim software entrepreneur, while the richest man in Pakistan, I will guess, is from one of the 50 feudal families who have dominated that country since its independence? Is it an accident that the only place in the Muslim world where women felt empowered enough to demand equal prayer rights in a mosque was in the Indian city of Hyderabad? No, all of these were products of democracy. If Islam is ever to undergo a reformation, as Christianity and Judaism did, it`s only going to happen in a Muslim democracy.

People say Islam is an angry religion. I disagree. It`s just that a lot of Muslims are angry, because they live under repressive regimes, with no rule of law, where women are not empowered and youth have no voice in their future. What is a religion but a mirror on your life?

Message from India to the world: Context matters — change the political context within which Muslims live their lives and you will change a lot.

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/comment/0,10070,783864,00.html

``The historian Tony Mason once remarked of the craze for football in Brazil that it provided a ``breathing space between a horrific immediate past and an anxiously uncertain future``. One could say much the same of cricket in India. As in Brazil, sport has become a vehicle for the unfulfilled aspirations of everyday life.

Meanwhile, the integration of the world through television has made comparisons with other countries more obvious and less palatable. India will never be a tiger to match the other Asian tigers. India ranks at about 150 in the World Development Report, just below Namibia and just above Haiti. It is the cricketers, and they alone, who are asked to redeem these failures, to make one forget, at least temporarily, the harsh realities of endemic poverty and corrupt and brutal politicians``

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and so the mighty US-visa man arjun speaks again!! in response to some good advice from fellowcountryman morad, he provides the obvious response to be expected from a superficial, delusional man like him. i.e., arjun responds that he does not care about what pakis think of him?

his self-delusions are evident once again: of course you care about what pakis think you, you self-deluding little worm. otherwise why have you spent countless hours on chowk, writing post after post, trying to convince pakis on how great indians are and how pakistanis are nothing. unless you believe that there are goras secretly reading your posts on chowk all your links and forming their views on pakistan as a result. you burning hatred for pakistanis is your own punishment.

well, you can continue to smolder in your hatred. you were born a worm, raised to be a hate-filled worm, and have graduated to become a delusional hate-filled worm as a result of getting a US visa that has enabled you to escape the hole you grew up in.

there is nothing your hatred can do to us pakistanis. as for your self righteous claims about terrorism, go talk to your own damned murderous Modis in Gujerat, then wash your face, then come to chowk talk about terrorism.

as for your stupid links that you think substitute for your inability to write two lines of intelligent post, go ahead and keep spending your employer`s time providing those links.

piaara-love #384 well said, my friend. now practice what you just said, and tell us three things that you most dearly love. and three things that you least dearly love.