The Barbarians Within The Gates! I think its clear that Pakistan must abandon the last 25 years of Islamisation and return to the original promises of Jinnah through constitutional reform. Now is the best chance to do it, with a military autocratic dictator who has the power to change the constitution at will. Unfortunately the chance that democracy will create a secular society in Pakistan is negligible due to the governments insistence on linking Nationalism with Islam through backward educational policies and the like.

Pakistanis must reconstruct their national identity outside of religion. Certainly there was a valid reason for Pakistan`s creation outside of a move towards Islam...the fear of being an oppressed minority.

All religious texts are by their very nature vague and subject to interpretation. Therefore the Quran cannot serve as a valid legal doctrine.

Unfortunately the secular liberals are not a majority in Pakistan, so a democracy will not create secularization. While having a dictator is unfortunate, I`d suggest that all influential Pakistanis take advantage of this golden opportunity to push for fundamental change. Since Mussharaf can keep control of the army he can maintain order during a transition to the civilian government and guarantee secularism a la Turkey.

The Autonomy is for India I agree with the poster here. India needs a federal system, a union of fairly independent states. In fact this type of system is even more appropriate for India due to the linguistic difference between the states. Each state of India has vastly different economic and social considerations....some are rich, industrialized and orderly and others are poor, agricultural and lawless. The current state of affairs inherently causes seperatist tendencies, as the cultures of each state are unique. For example I can understand that Tamilians are wary of the imposition of Hindi as the one and only official language. The current system tries to FORGE a unified national spirit. Instead the government should look to DEFINE a national spirit based on the entire heritage of territories under government control.

The governments role in the states should be limited to protecting certain individual rights that all Indians deserve...i.e. freedom of Religion, Movement, Speech, etc....as defined in the constitution. Some responsibilities may be sub-contracted to individual state governments, such as a state court system etc. Outside of the states the government must provide for the common defense and conduct all foreign relations.

Permitting a special status for Kashmir will necessarily create tension amongst other `fringe` states for similar status. Therefore the only way to solve the Kashmir issue, along with other cultural seperatist movements, is by granting aditional freedoms and responsiblities to all the states equally.

One advantage of this is that it will allow the government to concentrate its effort on backward states like Bihar, while allowing richer states to continue economic liberalisation unhindered. This will increase government revenue through taxes, which it can put to use in uplifting the poor states.