What Does Negative Campaigning Really Mean? You can always trust HP to weight in with a full-throated defense of what's opposite of Chowk motto: unflinching cynicism.

This Pyre Will Burn…! Fuzair:

I must remind you that MQM is a product of the '80s. There was no MQM for the first 40 years of Pakistan. So it is not very useful to cite personal anecdotes of MQM badmaashi to substantiate your wild generalizations about Mohajirs.

I consider MQM to be a bunch of street thugs who have acquired political power by a combination of violence, demagoguery, and exploiting some legitimate discontent. Unfortunately, violence and intimidation has been a part of Pakistan's political culture for a long time. The difference between MQM and others is that in other parties, the decision-makers are separate from the "jiyalas" who carry out the violence. In MQM's case this distinction was partly removed, and the local thugs and mafiosos found their way into important decision-making roles. The thuggery and dada-giri and intimidation of which you accuse MQM is also quite common -- as per some of my relatives who live in the interior of Sindh -- in Nawabshah, Sukkur, Jacobabad, Umar Kot, etc. against non-Sindhis who live there as a minority. And Karachi being a very big city, the spoils are bigger as well.

I truly believe that Karachi, being the biggest city, and the center of Pakistani commerce, is a city for everyone. And historically, it has been the most diverse and cosmopolitan city in Pakistan. MQM's biggest crime is that it has alienated non-Mohajirs living in the city through intimidation and violence.

This Pyre Will Burn…! Bubba:
Whenever I see "Mohajir" and MQM used interchangeably, I smell the foul, rancid stink of a bigot. Baaqi sab is bakvaas. Your point that Mohajirs are the first to kill in the name of ethnicity is utter BS. That's all I had to show.

It sounds like the word "Mohajir" irritates the living daylights out of you. Fine. Let's use "Gattarpanchoo"; or does this also have some religious connotation?

This Pyre Will Burn…! Dost Mittar:
Are you an economist or do you just like to blow hot air?

This Pyre Will Burn…! Dost Mittar miaN jumps in with his own racial agenda. Dost Mittar, you are truly a disgusting man. So Sindhi Muslims killed one guy who's soft on Hindus. That's proof that there was some religious intolerance among Sindhis. Then, confronted with the inconvenient fact that Punjabi Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus slaughtered each other by the thousands, you blame it all on IMMIGRANTS? This has to be the most over-the-top post I have ever seen. I used to have some respect for you because you seemed to be one of those Indians who do not hate Pakistan. I didn't realize that your love for Pakistan is really your Punjabi chauvinism. You are just another ugly racist.

As I said..this is a coming-out party.

This Pyre Will Burn…! Bubba 118:
You are really full of venom, and nothing else.

No one I know even thinks about Mohammad's migration when they use the word "Mohajir". Maybe someone who coined this term back in the 1940's thought about that, but now it is just a proper noun without any religious connotation or meaning. I have never understood why this stupid and ridiculous point keeps getting brought up.

The other myth that gets propagated is that no one but UPite Urdu speakers call themselves "Mohajir". This is another one of those Urban legends. Gujratis and Memons are not Urdu speakers, yet they are Mohajirs. Some Gujrati speakers happen to be Aga Khani and Bohri. For them, their religious identity supercedes any ethnic affiliation, but make no mistake -- most of those guys too, consider themselves mohajir.

Urdu speakers were the last ones to even politically raise the ethnic card. Others did it before the "Mohajirs" did. Remember, the first time MQM won the elections was in 1988. Before that, Karachiites voted for Jamaat-e-Islami, JUP, and PPP. Next thing I would hear is that Muhajirs have a tail and carry a fork.

This thread is turning out to be the coming-out party for racists and bigots.

This Pyre Will Burn…! Salim:

My father came to Karachi in 1953. After living in a hut, and with relatives for a year or two, he was alloted an 80 sq yard plot in Laalookhait. This is where he, his mother, and five other siblings lived; and after his marriage, his wife and two children as well. He moved out of there in around 1969. See my ilog :)

This Pyre Will Burn…! Re: # 104

I was born in Karachi in 1971. So no, I am not from Lucknow. :P And no, I did not loot and pillage anyone's home in Karachi.

This Pyre Will Burn…! Fuzair:

I grant you the point that Hindus in Karachi should not have been driven out. This was a crime.

Why was it that the pre-partition Sindhi middle class in Karachi was so over-whelmingly Hindu that once the Hindus were gone, no Sindhi middle class was left? Maybe the Sindhi Hindus were pulling the same tricks on Sindhi Muslims that Muhajirs pulled later on? Maybe it was not a good idea to be a part of Pakistan, in the first place?

Explain to me how a Sindhi tilling the land in Sukkur has automatic right (over someone else's right) to get land or opportunity in Karachi? Maybe you believe in collective ethnic ownership of stuff. I don't.

Punjabis and Pathans have both migrated to Karachi, en masse. They don't seem to be particularly unwelcome. They have availed all the opportunities that Karachi had to offer. Sindhis are welcome to do the same, and I am sure some do. But if you are trying to say that Sindhis have a greater right to the city of Karachi just because it was in the same administrative entity, then I'm sorry I don't buy that at all. See my question above on collective ethnic ownership.

Whatever you might want to say, Mohajirs -- whether or not they were responsible for expelling the Sindhi middle class -- had little to do with the plight of the Sindhi farmer in Nawabshah. It isn't like the farmer was ready to migrate to the city, had it not been for the huge influx of Mohajirs. There was no Qaaroon ka khazaana buried in karachi that Mohajirs decided to dig up. The city experienced economic growth, at least in part due to the large influx of high-productivity labor (the salariat) from across the border, together with Pathans, Punjabis, and Sindhis who gravitated towards the urban center. If a Pathan can leave Charsadda to come and work in Karachi, what's stopping a Sindhi from leaving his home town?

To the extent that you want some affirmative action type policies to alleviate the lot of the Sindhi under-class, I am in favor of that. But the only solution is not to lay down a red carpet from Jacobabad to Karachi. There has to be some emphasis on creating opportunities (esp. educational opportunities) within the interior of Sindh. Unfortunately that is not something over which Mohajirs have any control. You too, have to stop this Al Sharpton brand of politics and focus more on getting some economic investment in interior Sindh (businesses, industries, infrastructure). But that would require you to do something instead of blowing hot air.

I will not dignify your poisonous comparison with South Africa with a response. You have truly hit rock-bottom with that.

This Pyre Will Burn…!
I can commence by saying that Pakistan became possible by Mohajir vote. If Mohajirs had not made the questionable decision of voting for All India Muslim League (breaking their families and condemning themselvesto a weakened position in a Hindu India) there would be no Pakistan. I am ready to accept an argument against the Partition itself; that it destroyed Sindhi nationalism; that it caused forced exodus of Hindus; or that it caused an arrival of (in your terms) the masses of maurauding, plundering Mohajirs. But for anyone who cherishes PAKISTAN, cannot complain about the arrival of Mohajirs without sounding hypocritical. For better or for worse, Muslims in central India gave you this country with their votes. So a small fraction of them being let into Pakistan --remember that the Muslims staying back in India outnumber the population of all of Pakistan -- is not some charity for which they should be grateful. And it makes me quite angry when I hear revisionist bakvaas about how bad it was to let these paupers within the borders of Pakistan.

Second: it is a bad idea to base your historical narrative on just your own personal experience. I do not question for a minute that some (maybe a large number) of immigrants drove the Hindus out of Sindh. This was a great, awful crime. (And many immigrant Hindus dished the same to Muslims in India, which kept the "Mohajirs" trickling into Pakistan until the mid 1950s.) But this is not the whole story. If a hundred people robbed the locals, 500 started from scratch.

Third: Initially, the political discourse in Pakistan was dominated by the Punjab/Mohajir perspectvie, as this was the Pakistani establishment. Any alternative to that -- Bengali, Balochi, Sindhi, etc. -- was considered fringe, secessionist, ethnicist, and dangerous. The powerful often dismiss the protests of the powerless as divisive rabble-rousing, and portray themselves as being above all these petty squabbles, and as the custodians of something sacred (usually religion or country) which itself exists primarily to guard the interests of the powerful. This cynical, and self-serving ploy is employed in almost every political conflict in the world. In the earliest days of Pakistan, the establishment trained this tactic on Bengalis, Pushtoons, Baluchis, and Sindhis. (Sheikh Mujib, GM Syed, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, were regularly labeled as "muta'assib" leaders, while no one said the same of Ghulam Mohammad, Iskandar Mirza, or Ayub Khan.) "Mohajirs" are no more a part of the Pakistani establishment, and dared to voice their grievances (with a very sad choice of spokespeople I must admit). So now Altaf Hussain is an ethnic partisan (which he is, for sure) but no one says the same of Nawaz Sharif of Imran Khan. (For the record, I do not buy into the politics of any of these people.)

Fourth: Maybe given the current state of affairs, and our historical baggage, it's impossible to rise above ethnicity, but events are forcing us to make a different choice. We can try to change the fault-lines of our politics from ethnicity to ideas. Unfortunately, the idiots that we have as political leaders are utterly incapable of thinking beyond building personality cults and ethnic armies. What kind of country do we want to live in, is a far more urgent question for us to answer than what language we will speak in the Sindh assembly, or how much quota should Karachi have in Federal Government jobs. To me, there are two fundamental questions. One, whether we are going to have a country which is ruled by the people, or one that is an oligarchy ruled by a few. And second, whether or not we are going to live in the current world, or are we going to recreate sixth century Hijaz within the boundaries of Pakistan. The Jihadis (MMA, Taleban, various lashkars, etc.) have understood the urgency of the second question, and have basically formed a united front that transcends ethnicity. The other side is still bogged down in squabbles and power-grabs within itself.

Benazir Bhutto Killed in an Attack the second picture: you think the picture was taken after the shot? if yes, why is there no blood in it?

Benazir Bhutto Killed in an Attack Has anyone come up with an explanation of why the government would lie about this? And why did they wash the car so quickly and destroy evidence?

Benazir Bhutto Killed in an Attack Jang is reporting that Farhatullah Babar has rejected the govt's claim that Baitullah Mehsud was behind the assassination. This wouldn't be so important except for the additional revelation that (according to Babar) had twice sent a message to Benazir saying that he had no intentions of killing her! Make what you can of this!

Sins of Our Fathers Kulharee goes off on another tangential rant. Kulharee sahib, just a gratuitious spray of profanities at Arabs does ot make you either smart or enlightened. I did not give out a ranking list for genocides. I do not see the article equating the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust. All that the author did was to draw a parallel, at which you started getting bent out of shape. This is not a rational reaction; it is the reaction of someone with an agenda, like ADL office-bearers.
No one mentioned anything about the raid of Badr (your reference to the 300 whacked). Going off on tangents about Arabs and Islam is not going to serve a purpose here. Please leave that aside. (By the way, people thump their chest at the 72 killed in Karbala, not the 300 killed in Badr.)

Your mendacious accusation that I belittled the Holocaust does not deserve the dignity of a response. It'd suffice to say that all you have is a ghissa piTa dried out brush, with which you paint everyone who disagrees with you. It shows the shallowness of your intellect.

Finally, "holocaust" was a common noun before it became a proper one. So no, the word "holocaust" is not DEFINED as the genocide of the Jewish people by Nazis. The fact that "Holocaust" as a proper noun is used to refer to the largest genocide (deliberate, systematic destruction of a particular race) in recorded history, does not vitiate the use of "holocaust" in its pre-Holocaust context.

Sins of Our Fathers I was almost completely ignorant of this issue until recently when I read Robert Fisk's "War for Civilization". He provides graphic accounts of massacres, and is firmly convinced that was genocide, and should be acknowledged as such. I would love to read the Turkish point of view.

Kulharee of course is parroting the ADL line, that the Jewish people are khuda of suffering; even mentioning another people, let alone comparing their plight with the suffering of Jews is blasphemy. ADL types get particularly angry when the Armenian "genocide" is discussed with the Holocaust. Part of it is because they seem to covetiously guard the exclusiveness of their victim status; part of it is also because Israel has good ties with Turkey.

Urstruly is the other extreme, going off on a rant in favor of his Musalman bhai. Americans, by the way are firmly on the Turks' side on this. The resolution in the House of Representatives did not pass the Senate, thanks to vociferous protests by Turkish officials, tacitly backed by their Israeli friends in Washington.

Abdul Latif Khalid (1944-2007) Yasser,

First and foremost: I am sorry for your loss. People say move on, and get on with your life. I hope that such a sad thing never happens. I hope you remember him for ever. I hope that every triumph in your life rekindles in you, your dad's memory and gratitude for what he did for you. That will be the best tribute to him. I hope you care for, and respect your mom, and make her life a bit more bearable after such a shattering loss.

People might not know your dad, but everyone knows something about loving a parent, a sibling, a child. Everyone can relate to that loss. We have all either faced it, or once in a while think about such an awful prospect. That's why we sympathize and empathize with what might be going through. This is not a sign of stupidity or weakness, but of humanity.