Musharraf: Excerpts from an Interview in NYT

Mahesh G2
you are welcome to check up the numbers just like our friend HP wanted to do more research to conform whether maneckshaw was the CnC during the emergency, i.e. he wanted to extend the tenure of the COAS from 3 to 7 years.

by the way absolute numbers havent gone down in bangladesh either, though the percentage of hindus has certainly slipped, due to the lower income groups i.e. the ones with higher fertility being muslim.

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hindvi, Mahesh:
Muslims never disappeared from Delhi during the partition. Yes, there were some mohallas like Karolbagh and Paharganj from where muslims were totally wiped out. Many of them fled to Pakistan or to even parts of old Delhi like Jama Masjid area, Urdu bazaar, Sadar and Bara which retained their muslim character.

Hindvi is probably correct about the 20-25% figure of muslims in the undivided India. I was reading somewhere that with the higher birth rate and illegal migration from Bangladesh, the proportion of muslims in India is now the same as it was in the pre-partition period in the areas which now constitute India (i.e., after excluding the areas which are now Pakistan and Bangladesh). If true, this would mean that the pre-partition proportion of muslims in the states that now form India was 14-15%.

HP:
You are presuming that Isphahani is a real name and not a nick. Other than that, yes, Suhrawardi and Nawab of Dhaka were urdu-speaking bengalis, as were the descendants of mughal soldiers who went to Bengal.

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Hindvi,

Pre-partition India had 25% Muslim population and post-partition it was reduced to 12%? Really? This I would like to see.

BTW, if we limit ourselves to post-partition numbers India`s minority population has actually increased whereas that of Pakistan and Bangladesh has gone down drastically.

the discussion among nakhok, HP, hindvi etc is very important. this is one area where there are clearly many allegations, statistical mysteries, even claims by some that 15% pakistanis are christians. a casual reader (like me) cannot even figure out the time-line of populations-percentages. some folks seem to obfuscate the numbers without accounting for creation of bangla desh, which had a large non-muslim population, and therefore post 71 non-muslim percentage of west pakistan is much lower than pre-71 non-muslim % of pre-surgery pakistan. i dont understand what is to be gained by such a lie. HP is right on that we rarely have heard large massacres in west pakistan past 47 riots. so, in absence of such reports of large genocides, hindu victim wallas need to present a clean numbers line, wihout bania tactics like fuzzying pre-bangladesh numbers etc., to even have a victimhood case. a nice time-line or graph will be more persuasive, (as opposed to just two data points), as we can perhaps correlate changes in populations with events. so while the hindu victimwallas potentially have a very important grouse, to me its a mere allegation, fostered and nurtured during ``bouddhik`` sessions apparently.

people have relatives..who have memories.

#106 by harish_hyd

Harish,

That moron Nakhok has put down in one of his post that there were 25% Hindus in Pakistan population at partition. The correct number was probably 21% in 1947 Pakistan that included Bangladesh.
But 1947 numbers are too fluid as the transfer of population was still taking place at that time. Even in Punjab there were both Hindu and Sikh families that did not leave until sep-oct of 1947. A majority of Muslims from UP or Rajasthan came to Pakistan in Late `47 or early `48. (abt 7 Million and all settled in Sindh.)
The current Pakistan never had more than 4-5% percent of minority population in Pakistan after the 1951 census.

There is a link to the latest population census somewhere on chowk( may be on Veeresh’s La, hore thread) that clearly shows that there is not a significant change in minority population numbers in (the current) Pakistan since 1951.

I was just going by Nakhok’s claim that Pakistan population was 25% percent Hindu in 1947. Assuming that Pakistan was at 100 million at the time of the partition that 25% would be 25 million.

You have to realize that 25 million is a significant number and any mass murder or even conversion of this kind of numbers would attract international media attention or at least Indian media attention. Nobody can hide these things any more.

Pakistan has not seen any communal riot in the last 57 years. Most of the Hindus are concentrated in Sindh and yes there may be some discrimination but conversion or mass murder is totally out of question.
No matter what RSS propaganda may say, the reality is that there is no evidence of large scale or even small scale religious riots or conversions in the current Pakistan and specifically in Sindh.

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#101 by dost-mittar on September 27, 2004 3:12am PT

DM,

There were Bengali Muslims families in Calcutta and even in Dacca before the partition that spoke Urdu at home. Isphahanis were one of those families. I went to school with one Isphahani in Karachi and I am aware of at least one prominent Isphahani who was a financier of Muslim League from Calcutta. He later moved to Pakistan.
I think the Suharwardis of Calcutta were also Urdu speaking and I am not aware of any Bihar connection except may be for jobs or business.
One prominent Muslims family from Dacca that spoke Urdu at home was the Nawab of Dacca family. Nawab Salim Ullah was the first president of the Muslim League in 1906.

#100 by HP

[Just show me a single piece of evidence that shows that 50 Hindus are being killed in Pakistan every hour.]

Just where is it being said that the Hindus were being killed? There can be a whole lot of other reasons, don`t you think?

Nakhok
earlier I thought you were just BSing, but i fear now that you take yourself seriously, pal get a handle on your self before you become a laughing stock. Like Gujjuhyena you seem to be getting your numbers right off the VHP website. muslim percentage in India today is 12% as per the govts own data, in prepartition India they were by varying estimates between 25 and 30%. And faar more muslims have been killed in communal riots in India than in Pakistan. there was not a single state in west pakistan which had 25% hindus, Sindh came the closest and speaking with sindhi hindus who are doiminant in several towns, such as Jacobabad, they claim discrimination but they also state that the govt has always put down any majority violence with brute force which is far more than you can ever say of India.

You could ascribe the perversities of Indias police, politicians and administrators to the legacy of a colonial administrative setup responding to a mob democracy but dont asume moral superiority for a second, I have stayed in UP and seen the justice meted out by the PAC, it comes second only to the gujrat state police. infact the sindhi hindus feel sad for the indian muslims and fear the Indian govt more than the Pakistani one, because of Indias consistent antimuslim riots which they fear may spark a response.

As regards ethnic cleansing, than Muslims were cleansed out of Indian Punjab Haryana and North Rajisthan. Infact even in Delhi, they were emptied the ones you see today have come only after 47.

Nakhok

Even though I am no sympathizer of Palestine, since I believe people should concentrate on improving their own lands, it must be said that your VHP data is quite amusing. So Now Hindus are ethnically cleansed from pakistan but palestinians joyfully leave their lands and run away to medclub class refugee camps?

pal do a bit of serious reading before you comment on something. Even jews acknowledge they cleansed the palestinians, they massacred villages, raped their women, the rest naturally fled because once raping started they knew the jews meant business. by the way you are also under some misimpression about jews being there since the old man with shining beard created adam. Jews moved into that land by cleansing earlier settlers such as Phoenicians etc, and thy were cleansed by Romans not arabs, they started trickling back only when the zionist movement gained steam around the turn of the century, initially they bought lands but once arabs realised what they were doing they stopped selling land, and then the jews used their political/economic clout in the west and the post holocaust sympathy to get half of historic palestine.

The jews were happy because before that they had none, but the arabs didnt accept it because before thay had all, they attacked and the jews snatched 80% of historic palestine. than they fought three other wars 56, 67 and 73 alternately attacking each other, the end result of which was that the jews took over 100% of historic palestine, which they still posses till date.

So please get a check on these victim hood tales. but in all fairness it must be said that the jewish treatment of muslim arabs is far superior to that of Russians in chechenya where they wiped out a quarter of the population and stupidly layed the country to waste for which they now suffer.

India followed a far wiser strategy in Kashmir after the first couple of years under Jagmohan. but India`s treatment of muslims in Gujrat pales all other barberities seen under an organised state in recent times (milosevic`s serbia being an exception, but then the area in which the barabarities took place were nominally outside serbia.)

the horors the gujrati muslims suffered areny yet over, they still suffer an economic boycott, blockade of justice and their women are still suffer the taunts of the men that raped them.

HP #100,

Why are you jumping up and down and disputing actual statistics just because you have not heard of Hindus being massacred at the rate of 50 per hour?

There are other ways for minority population to dwindle. First and foremost is conversion. Second is migration. Both attest to how lop sided Pakistan is in terms of the treatment of its minorities.

On the other hand, minority population in India increased in terms of percentage of the total population. Says a lot, don`t you think so?

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HP#96:
MBZI`s #98 seems to be quite consistent with his personna and, for a change, comprehensible. I used to interact with him in his earlier Studebaker avtar when he was somewhat more comprehensible. He is intimately familiar with Bihar, Urdu poetry and films and film songs of the fifties and sixties, something that is very rare among bengalis, even muslims. He is much less knowledgeable about Pakistan than yours truly and he may not have even visited the country. His logic is as faulty as his communications skills; he hates Jinnah for creation of Pakistan and yet seems to be passionate in his defense of that country. Logically, he should be a follower of Rafique Zakaria.