Wapsi (The Returning)

Review by Veeresh is good.But the statements of Ajay about differences and similarities among punjabis on both sides are vague.He quotes just 2 or 3 similarites--how they talk and how they react emotionally and strong feeling for those on the other side of the border.Which similarites will be bigger than these?

And he lists ``so many`` differences

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about the religeosity,rituals,impact of urdu,different script etc....which are understandable.

About Maler Kotla...Ajay ji people (muslims and non muslims) speak punjabi in malvai accent in their day to day life and not urdu.Even within the small portion of Punjab,their is so much variation in the dilects spoken if you move from Pathankot down to Bathinda.

Effect of religeon in east Punjab is not limited to Golden Temple.Haven`t you heard loud speakers honking every evening and morning from gurudwaras and mandirs and Ram lila in every mohalla before dassehra and jagraatas during navratras,not to talk about the shobha yaatras every now and then in all cities of punjab on various gurpurabs.Understandably,the rituals and colour of religeosity on both sides is different but that does not make punjabis different.

veeresh: try to go beyond indian propaganda. most of this is a load of bs: minorities? nothing even closely comparable to gujerat has happened in pakistan. you complain about pakistani movies showing indians as bad guys - films is hardly an industry in pakistan anymore, it is TV dramas which deal with family issues and stuff and not india-pakistan relations anyway. and even pakistani films (to the extent they are produced) as i recall deal more with panjabi culture and so forth.

anyway, enough said. i realize you are not capable of going beyond this, so wont challenge you to rise above this petty stuff.

let the usual indian brigade come in with its usual crocodile tears and its monotonous harping on the only theme they seem capable of harping about (i.e. india good, pakistan bad). duh!!

A few facts.

Number of muslims who died in Gujarat : 1500-1800.

1950 : Hindus comprised of 12% of (the then) West Pakistan`s population .
Today : Hindus comprise of hardly 1% of Pakistan`s population.

1950 : Muslims comprised of 8% of India`s population.
Today : Muslims comprise of nearly 16% of India`s population , or 165-170 million.

But Tahmed Chachu says , ``minorities? nothing even closely comparable to gujerat has happened in pakistan. ``

Okay...

``minorities? nothing even closely comparable to gujerat has happened in pakistan. ``


No..and the Pakistan army did not massacre 3 million of its own people in the span of a few months just because they spoke spoke a different language....


Gujarat , year 2002 : 1500-1800.

East Pakistan , year 1970-71 : 3 million.

Tahmed Chachu : ``nothing even closely comparable to gujerat has happened in pakistan. ``

Absolutely.

About the ``Differences``

There are bound to be differences. Evolution of languages and cultures is a continous process. They continue to evolve within their own social milieu, education systems etc.

There is no doubt that all Pakistani languages have been Urduized - and culture has more religious fervour than, say, 30 years back.

Having said that, it should be appreciated that the lanuage and culture varies in Pakistan after every 50 miles. In a city like Lahore, the culture and dialect of Bhatti Gate wallas is different than Lahore Defence society. Sargodha culture and dialect is different than Mianwali or Pindiwallas or karachi and so on.

In Sind, people greet each other with palms clasped. In any other part of the country, it would give an impression that he has come from India. In NWFP. women wearing a chaddar is a norm rather than exception.

Somehow, the use of Turban in West Punjab has dwindled. When I was small, it was much more common. In fact, all old photographs of earlier generation, has Turbans with, surprisingly, a three-piece suit (some local fashion to look elite). Indian Punjab also freely uses colourful Turbans whereas Pakistani Turbans are almost always white.

When we talk of similarity in culture, it is on a much broader context. Like a comparison with Java, Portugal or South of France. Against that context, there are linguistic and cultural similarities.

nhk

Tahmed, jyst fyi

Pakiland govt has consistently committed atrocities against its own people.

47-50`s - almost all the hindus converted or killed (or some managed to escape to India)
50`s onwards - anti-ahmadi ideology and violence (www.persecution.org)
70`s - Bangladesh genocide
Late 70`s - thousands massacred by Paki Army in Balochistan
80`s - thousands killed in Karachi
90`s - large scale killings by paki army in the northern areas.
2004 - Balochistan again.

Hi, this is just a review of a movie I heard about and then saw. There are no assumptions or propaganda issues, there is only what the camera sees and hears.

# In context with the status of minorities in Pakistan, numbers have always spoken. (Hindus and Sikhs down from 20% at time of partition to 1% now) and now you have an opportunity to see the realities on film too.

# I would buy tahmed32 and his constant refrain about Gujarat if and only if he chose to sit through a dispassionate analysis of the realities there. However, all he does is he trots out Gujarat as some sort of rallying cry for the long extinct Mustaphas.

# NHK Sir, the big difference I see in India & Pakistan is that in India we seem to have moved on from our colonial legacy of ``everything is banned unless mai-baap sarkar authorises``. In Pakistan our colonial heritage is still allive and doing very well.

# Please appreciate:- this is the first time a film has been made based on unsupervised and independent camera work in Pakistan by Indians.

# On the issue of Hindus being shown as virulent villians, I will request people to get a copy of the movie ``Ladji Panjaban``, it is apparently the reigning block-buster in Pakistan with its simple message of how good Muslims & silly Sikhs are one against the bad Hindus. And if you don`t believe it is a block-buster then please see WAPSI for the shots of the crowds breaking the gates of BABAR cinema trying to get in.

People who want copies of this movie WAPSI may please send me an eMail at . . . veeresh@chowk.com . . . with the postal address where they want it dispatched.

Veeresh,

It is unfortunate that Chowk allows you to represent Chowk despite your lies and outright prejudicial statements.
Please you or anybody on this site and It is challenge to all so called Hindutva hatemonger and followers to bring in stats to prove that there were 20% Sikh or Hindu in the current Pakistani population after the partition riots in 1948. In 1947 and 1948, transfer of population took place in both Punjab. While Muslims were killed and made to leave East Punjab, Hindu and Sikh were killed and made to leave Pakistani Punjab.

Don’t just keep repeating the RSS propaganda line as NO RSS or Hindutva follower had ever produced any document to substantiate the false claim.

I ask you a simple question: 20% of Pakistan population a after the partition riots would be about 5 to 6 million. Can anybody tell me if Pakistanis had killed 5 to 6 million people in a short span of time, why nobody in the world said any thing about it? No UN resolution, no protests from the Indian Government. Also consider this: when Hindutva followers, RSS goons and BJP PM and CM killed 2000 odd Muslims in Gujarat, the whole world knew about it right away and condemnation was heard in every corner of the world. There is not a single statement from anywhere in the world condemning Pakistan on alleged killing of 5 to 6 million people. Why the world kept mum? Any Newspaper story, any book, any study to prove that any Hindu Muslim or Muslim-Sikh riots took place anywhere in Pakistan after the mutual destruction in 1947-48. Don’t just keep making up stories bring in some evidence or keeping rubbing your favorite aftershave on your face. (No RSS site please. Show something with any merit)

Why people bring Gujarat in to the discussion? Gujarat is the most recent killing field of Muslims in India. Before that and after the partition every single small and big town in UP, Bihar, MP, AP, and Maharashtra among others had seen many Muslims massacres. Small scale attacks go on pretty much in every town that has Muslim population even today. Most of the India appears to be a living hell for minorities.

HP...the world may or may not have kept mum when Pakistan Army massacred 3-4 million bengali speaking Pakistani civilians...I dont know , wasn`t around then , will take your word for it.....(if the world kept mum , it reflects the hyprocritical nature of the world).....but obviously , the bengalis didn`t keep mum. They broke off from Pakistan to register their protest and formed their own country , with help from India. But then , by your reckoning , they must be rss wadis....

World may or may not have kept mum , but these pictures say a lot...

Bengali man and boys massacred by the West Pakistani regime....





http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html

The Bangladesh events can be classed as a combined gendercide and elitocide, with both strategies overwhelmingly targeting males for the most annihilatory excesses.

Younger men and adolescent boys, of whatever social class, were equally targets. According to Rounaq Jahan, ``All through the liberation war, able-bodied young men were suspected of being actual or potential freedom fighters. Thousands were arrested, tortured, and killed. Eventually cities and towns became bereft of young males who either took refuge in India or joined the liberation war.`` Especially ``during the first phase`` of the genocide, he writes, ``young able-bodied males were the victims of indiscriminate killings.`` (``Genocide in Bangladesh,`` in Totten et al., Century of Genocide, p. 298.) R.J. Rummel likewise writes that ``the Pakistan army [sought] out those especially likely to join the resistance -- young boys. Sweeps were conducted of young men who were never seen again. Bodies of youths would be found in fields, floating down rivers, or near army camps. As can be imagined, this terrorized all young men and their families within reach of the army. Most between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five began to flee from one village to another and toward India. Many of those reluctant to leave their homes were forced to flee by mothers and sisters concerned for their safety.`` (Death By Government, p. 329.) Rummel describes (p. 323) a chilling gendercidal ritual, reminiscent of Nazi procedure towards Jewish males: ``In what became province-wide acts of genocide, Hindus were sought out and killed on the spot. As a matter of course, soldiers would check males for the obligated circumcision among Moslems. If circumcised, they might live; if not, sure death.``

Robert Payne describes scenes of systematic mass slaughter around Dacca that, while not explicitly ``gendered`` in his account, bear every hallmark of classic gender-selective roundups and gendercidal slaughters of non-combatant men:

In the dead region surrounding Dacca, the military authorities conducted experiments in mass extermination in places unlikely to be seen by journalists. At Hariharpara, a once thriving village on the banks of the Buriganga River near Dacca, they found the three elements necessary for killing people in large numbers: a prison in which to hold the victims, a place for executing the prisoners, and a method for disposing of the bodies. The prison was a large riverside warehouse, or godown, belonging to the Pakistan National Oil Company, the place of execution was the river edge, or the shallows near the shore, and the bodies were disposed of by the simple means of permitting them to float downstream. The killing took place night after night. Usually the prisoners were roped together and made to wade out into the river. They were in batches of six or eight, and in the light of a powerful electric arc lamp, they were easy targets, black against the silvery water. The executioners stood on the pier, shooting down at the compact bunches of prisoners wading in the water. There were screams in the hot night air, and then silence. The prisoners fell on their sides and their bodies lapped against the shore. Then a new bunch of prisoners was brought out, and the process was repeated. In the morning the village boatmen hauled the bodies into midstream and the ropes binding the bodies were cut so that each body drifted separately downstream. (Payne, Massacre [Macmillan, 1973], p. 55.)
Strikingly similar and equally hellish scenes are described in the case-studies of genocide in Armenia and the Nanjing Massacre of 1937.

Atrocities commited by West Pakistanis against East Pakistani women

As was also the case in Armenia and Nanjing, Bengali women were targeted for gender-selective atrocities and abuses, notably gang sexual assault and rape/murder, from the earliest days of the Pakistani genocide. Indeed, despite (and in part because of) the overwhelming targeting of males for mass murder, it is for the systematic brutalization of women that the ``Rape of Bangladesh`` is best known to western observers.

In her ground-breaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller likened the 1971 events in Bangladesh to the Japanese rapes in Nanjing and German rapes in Russia during World War II. ``... 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped. Eighty percent of the raped women were Moslems, reflecting the population of Bangladesh, but Hindu and Christian women were not exempt. ... Hit-and-run rape of large numbers of Bengali women was brutally simple in terms of logistics as the Pakistani regulars swept through and occupied the tiny, populous land ...`` (p. 81).

Typical was the description offered by reporter Aubrey Menen of one such assault, which targeted a recently-married woman:

Two [Pakistani soldiers] went into the room that had been built for the bridal couple. The others stayed behind with the family, one of them covering them with his gun. They heard a barked order, and the bridegroom`s voice protesting. Then there was silence until the bride screamed. Then there was silence again, except for some muffled cries that soon subsided. In a few minutes one of the soldiers came out, his uniform in disarray. He grinned to his companions. Another soldier took his place in the extra room. And so on, until all the six had raped the belle of the village. Then all six left, hurriedly. The father found his daughter lying on the string cot unconscious and bleeding. Her husband was crouched on the floor, kneeling over his vomit. (Quoted in Brownmiller, Against Our Will, p. 82.)

``Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty,`` Brownmiller writes. ``Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted ... Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use.`` Some women may have been raped as many as eighty times in a night (Brownmiller, p. 83). How many died from this atrocious treatment, and how many more women were murdered as part of the generalized campaign of destruction and slaughter, can only be guessed at (see below).

Tahmed, are you forgetting Bangladesh? Surely, Gujarat is nothing compared to that.

Moreover, how can anything like Gujarat happen in current day Pakistan? There are no minorities left in Pakistan to hack down. Surely, that is not an argument to trotted around in favour of Pakistan.

HP, the media attention in current times has gotten much better than in the past.

Another obvious thing is that for minorities to reduce it doesn`t have to be in the form of genocide. It can be in the form of minorities simply converting to Islam or them leaving the shores of Pakistan to find a better life elsewhere. This, however, doesn`t change the conclusion one can draw from the decrease in numbers.

More on the genocide of East Pakistanis by the Pakisitan Army :

How many died?

The number of dead in Bangladesh in 1971 was almost certainly well into seven figures. It was one of the worst genocides of the World War II era, outstripping Rwanda (800,000 killed) and probably surpassing even Indonesia (1 million to 1.5 million killed in 1965-66). As R.J. Rummel writes,

The human death toll over only 267 days was incredible. Just to give for five out of the eighteen districts some incomplete statistics published in Bangladesh newspapers or by an Inquiry Committee, the Pakistani army killed 100,000 Bengalis in Dacca, 150,000 in Khulna, 75,000 in Jessore, 95,000 in Comilla, and 100,000 in Chittagong. For eighteen districts the total is 1,247,000 killed. This was an incomplete toll, and to this day no one really knows the final toll. Some estimates of the democide [Rummel`s ``death by government``] are much lower -- one is of 300,000 dead -- but most range from 1 million to 3 million. ... The Pakistani army and allied paramilitary groups killed about one out of every sixty-one people in Pakistan overall; one out of every twenty-five Bengalis, Hindus, and others in East Pakistan. If the rate of killing for all of Pakistan is annualized over the years the Yahya martial law regime was in power (March 1969 to December 1971), then this one regime was more lethal than that of the Soviet Union, China under the communists, or Japan under the military (even through World War II). (Rummel, Death By Government, p. 331.)
The proportion of men versus women murdered is impossible to ascertain, but a speculation might be attempted. If we take the highest estimates for both women raped and Bengalis killed (400,000 and 3 million, respectively); if we accept that half as many women were killed as were raped; and if we double that number for murdered children of both sexes (total: 600,000), we are still left with a death-toll that is 80 percent adult male (2.4 million out of 3 million). Any such disproportion, which is almost certainly on the low side, would qualify Bangladesh as one of the worst gendercides against men in the last half-millennium.


Who was responsible?

``For month after month in all the regions of East Pakistan the massacres went on,`` writes Robert Payne. ``They were not the small casual killings of young officers who wanted to demonstrate their efficiency, but organized massacres conducted by sophisticated staff officers, who knew exactly what they were doing. Muslim soldiers, sent out to kill Muslim peasants, went about their work mechanically and efficiently, until killing defenseless people became a habit like smoking cigarettes or drinking wine. ... Not since Hitler invaded Russia had there been so vast a massacre.`` (Payne, Massacre, p. 29.)

There is no doubt that the mass killing in Bangladesh was among the most carefully and centrally planned of modern genocides. A cabal of five Pakistani generals orchestrated the events: President Yahya Khan, General Tikka Khan, chief of staff General Pirzada, security chief General Umar Khan, and intelligence chief General Akbar Khan. The U.S. government, long supportive of military rule in Pakistan, supplied some $3.8 million in military equipment to the dictatorship after the onset of the genocide, ``and after a government spokesman told Congress that all shipments to Yahya Khan`s regime had ceased.`` (Payne, Massacre, p. 102.)

The genocide and gendercidal atrocities were also perpetrated by lower-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers. These ``willing executioners`` were fuelled by an abiding anti-Bengali racism, especially against the Hindu minority. ``Bengalis were often compared with monkeys and chickens. Said Pakistan General Niazi, `It was a low lying land of low lying people.` The Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that [should] best be exterminated. As to the Moslem Bengalis, they were to live only on the sufferance of the soldiers: any infraction, any suspicion cast on them, any need for reprisal, could mean their death. And the soldiers were free to kill at will. The journalist Dan Coggin quoted one Punjabi captain as telling him, `We can kill anyone for anything. We are accountable to no one.` This is the arrogance of Power.`` (Rummel, Death By Government, p. 335.)

HINDUS IN EAST PAKISTAN WERE SPECIAL TARGET OF PAK ARMY

In the summary of his report dated November 1, 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy writes (6):

`Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). HARDEST HIT HAVE BEEN MEMBERS OF THE HINDU COMMUNITY WHO HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED, AND IN SOME PLACES, PAINTED WITH YELLOW PATCHES MARKED ``H``. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..` (emphasis added by author of this article).

Sydney Schanberg, pulitzer prize winning journalist (of `Killing Fields`) was New York Times correspondent in Dhaka in 1971 at the time of army repression and during the 1971 Bangla Desh war. In his syndicated column `The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored` Mr.Schanberg writes:

``I covered the war and witnessed first the population`s joyous welcome of the Indian soldiers as liberators .. Later I toured the country by road to see the Pakistani legacy firsthand. In town after town there was an execution area where people had been killed by bayonet, bullet and bludgeon. In some towns, executions were held on a daily basis.``

This was a month after the war`s end (i.e. January 1972), ... human bones were still scattered along many roadsides. Blood stained clothing and tufts of human hair clung to the brush at these killing grounds. Children too young to understand were playing grotesque games with skulls. OTHER REMINDERS WERE THE YELLOW ``H``s THE PAKISTANIS HAD PAINTED ON THE HOMES OF HINDUS, PARTICULAR TARGETS OF THE MUSLIM ARMY.`` (7) (emphasis added by the author of this article).

Thus two independent observations one dated prior to November 1, 1971 and other in January 1972 confirm that Hindu houses in East Pakistan were marked with yellow ``H``s and that Hindus were particular targets of the Pakistani army. The situation thus bears an uncanny resemblance to the predicament of Jews targeted by Nazis from 1939 to 1944, with similar out come.

``Another obvious thing is that for minorities to reduce it doesn`t have to be in the form of genocide. It can be in the form of minorities simply converting to Islam or them leaving the shores of Pakistan to find a better life elsewhere. This, however, doesn`t change the conclusion one can draw from the decrease in numbers.``

Exactly. Simple threats of rape , torture and murder work excellent inducements for one to become a Believer and join the Ummah....

MaheshG2

“HP, the media attention in current times has gotten much better than in the past.”

This is the lamest statement I have heard in a while. So are you saying the media just ignored all that alleged killings in Pakistan? Nothing on the scale of Gujarat ever happened in Pakistan.

“It can be in the form of minorities simply converting to Islam or them leaving the shores of Pakistan to find a better life elsewhere. This, however, doesn`t change the conclusion one can draw from the decrease in numbers.”

Just saying it doesn’t prove any thing. You need to show exactly how people were converted without any trace. Both Punjab were left with no minorities’ right after the partition. Only Sindh had substantial Hindu population. Hindus still are about 7 to 8% of Sindh Population. There has never been a Hindu Muslim riot in Sindh after 1948 when 6 Hindus and three Muslims died. There is no evidence that any conversions took place in Sindh after the partition. If you have some info on conversions why is it not available to anybody else?