Miscellaneous Topics on Indian History

[ramana]

OK then. The titles please?

[Guest]

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Raid on the reactor-israel attack on iraq
science of super human strength
Churchill Vs Rossevelt
New al qaeda
Nuclear Jihad (A Q Khan story)
Mystry of Bible
Moments in Time-Crusaders
American Founding Fathers
Europe In Mddle science of medival weapons
Secrets of Aegean
alexander
Extream senses-sense of taste
Extream senses-sense of touch
lost world Atlantis
Military machine-Tanks
Secrets of Archiology-Pompeii
What the ancients knew-Chinese
What the ancients knew-Egypt
What the ancients knew-Japanese
What the ancients knew-Romans
Wings of the war- history of helicopters.

[acharya]

http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/interview.htm


Integrating Asia into World History

World history is increasingly being included in numerous state and district curriculum standards. The EAA guest editors invited three teachers to discuss their experiences and insights on how best to integrate Asia in a world history course. Alison Kaminsky, who holds a master’s degree in Asian Studies, teaches at a middle school in Long Beach, California and is also a mentor teacher in her district. Her school follows the California frameworks where world history is taught in the sixth, seventh and tenth grades. Colleen Kelly is a veteran Connecticut high school teacher who holds a Ph.D. in International Education and an M.A. in Teaching Asian Studies. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to India, and has traveled extensively in Asia. She has also written numerous curriculum materials and is an active member of the Association of Asian Studies Committee on Teaching About Asia. Colleen’s school has not implemented a world history course. Gwen Johnson is a veteran teacher in New York State who has earned graduate degrees in Teaching Asian Studies and has studied in Asia. Her school is in the middle of a two-year transition from Western Civilization and area studies to world history. As Gwen remarks: "It’s not easy." Here are their responses to our questions that focus on teaching about Asia in world history.




DON JOHNSON: How do you try to fit Asia into the major world history themes such as cross-cultural borrowing, the spread of universal religions, and world trade?

ALISON: Asia is inseparable from these major world history themes. Cross-cultural borrowing, or diffusion, is a great thematic approach to the topic of world history. Certainly the Silk Road is an ideal "vehicle" as there was trade occurring from the Han to the Mongol eras. Integrating Southeast Asia into the curriculum, as Long Beach has done, flows nicely following units on India and/or China. One can see how migration and trade brought about the intermingling of rich traditions in the strategically placed region of Southeast Asia.

COLLEEN: How could you teach these concepts and not teach Asia? Think of all of the scientific inventions from both India and China, think of the Silk Route, think of the great philosophies and religions of Asia!

GWEN: Asia is vital throughout a world history course and must be seen as an equal partner in world history. Putting Asia in a world history context offers you the opportunity to view this area of the world, not as one where poverty-stricken developing countries exist (the stereotype many students have), but one where nations with incredibly rich histories and philosophies existed long before Western Civilization as we know it developed.

Likewise, the notion that Asian nations are not exotic places of traditionalism that should be held in time and space (capture the native) for all to view, but are vital societies that are important on the world stage. Furthermore, a world history course must view Asia not as one entity, but as many individual societies all interacting with each other and the rest of the world. Focusing on the idea of interaction throughout history may be a way to help eliminate the idea of initiator and responder that becomes such an unequal equation between the West and the rest of the world in the modern era. Asia has been intimately involved from the earliest of times when trade routes brought people into contact with one another and established the process of cross-cultural borrowing as peoples, religions, and goods met without reference to the East or West dominating this exchange.

[acharya]

USING FICTION OF THE INDIAN SUBCONINENT FOR SOCIAL SCEINCE CLASSES



http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/kempf.htm

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There is a publishing boom in fiction by authors from the Indian subcontinent. Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi authors are being discovered almost daily. The literature from India is several thousand years old. However, following the notoriety of Salman Rushdie, the meteoric success of Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things, and the Oscar-winning screen adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, it is almost impossible to open the New York Times Book Review without reading of another new highly-praised novelist from the region. Most of these authors write in English. Many are expatriates, living in Canada, England or the United States. These novels, with the variety of experiences described, in settings that are exotic and often unknown to the average high school or college student, are ideal for a "Reading Across the Curriculum" assignment in the social sciences. In the assignments, each student reads a work of fiction from an approved bibliography and writes a book review that applies the sociological, political, historical, and/or economic concepts that have been covered in class to the contents of the novel. Often the student is also required to research the cultural, ethnic, or national milieu in which the novel is written.

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The Reading Across the Curriculum assignment has been developed to meet many educational objectives. First, because students are reading less, it is important to encourage them to read. Any librarian can cite statistics to document the problem. In my own library, periodical usage is down almost 80 percent from pre-Internet days. Book circulation has taken a 30 percent dive. In addition, textbooks that prepackage excerpts from larger works are the sine qua non of most courses. The days when a student was required to read several complete works in the course of a semester largely exist in the memories of aging baby boomers. It is easy to blame the Internet or television, either of which, with quick hits and sound bites, encourages the short attention span of high school and young undergraduate students. It is also possible to craft reading assignments to counter this trend.

Second, many educational institutions are including international education and diversity initiatives in their mission statements. At my own college, the Liberal Arts Division mission statement says, "Johnson County Community College will actively promote the understanding and appreciation of diversity . . . through the implementation of curriculum initiatives and activities as a natural part of the educational process in order to create an environment that values all people." Using an international or multicultural reading assignment allows an instructor to incorporate an international or diversity component into a course without substantially altering the teaching syllabus.


An Annotated Bibliography of Fiction in English from the Indian Subcontinent

Ali, Ahmed. Twilight in Delhi (New York: New Directions, 1994)
This novel, which was originally published by the Hogarth Press in 1940 after Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster fought the printers who viewed the text as subversive, chronicles the life of a Moslem family, living in Delhi at the beginning of the twentieth century, who see their fortunes fading as the British work to eradicate Islamic culture. (Delhi, Moslem)

Baldwin, Shauna Singh. What the Body Remembers (New York: N. A. Talese, 1999)
The brutal story of the partition of India and Pakistan is told through the eyes of two unusual Sikh women who are the co-wives of an engineer. He is also a prominent landowner in the Moslem part of the Punjab. (Kashmir, Sikh)

Desai, Anita. Baumgartner’s Bombay (London: Penguin, 1988)
A German-Jewish refugee from the Holocaust ends up in India where he is no more accepted as a European in India than he was as a Jew in Germany. (Calcutta, Mumbai)

Desai, Anita. The Clear Light of Day (London: Penguin, 1990)
Members of an old Delhi family come to terms with their past and reconcile the differences that parted them during the summer of Indian independence in 1947. (Delhi)

Desai, Anita. In Custody (New York: New Harper & Row, 1984)
After a poor and unsuccessful college lecturer is manipulated into interviewing an old man known as the greatest living Urdu poet, he learns that he has taken on much more than he bargained for. (Delhi)

Desai, Kiran. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998)
A misunderstood young man escapes his family and community by climbing a tree in a guava orchard and refusing to come down. This action causes the villagers to venerate him like a saint.

Deshpande, Shashi. The Dark Holds No Terrors (India: Penguin, 1990)
A successful woman doctor flees her abusive husband. In the solitude of her father’s home, she is forced to face the various problems in her life with which she had never dealt. (Karnakata)

Deshpande, Sashi. A Matter of Time (New York: Feminist Press, 1999)
A woman and her daughters must cope with their unexpected abandonment by her husband, an act that mirrors her father’s behavior many years earlier. (Karnakata)

Deshpande, Shashi. That Long Silence (India: Penguin, 1989)
After her husband, a government official, is faced with possible disgrace and dismissal, the unhappy author of an advice column reassesses her career, her marriage, and her life. (Mumbai)

Divakaruni, Chitra Bannerjee. An Arranged Marriage (New York: Anchor Books, 1995)
These short stories examine the difference between the lives of women in India and the United States.

Divakaruni, Chitra Bannerjee. The Mistress of Spices (New York: Anchor Books, 1997)
A wonder-working Indian woman, who runs a spice shop in Oakland, discovers that in order to keep her vows, she must give up love. However, love matters more.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Calcutta Chromosome (New York: Avon, 1996)
This is a futuristic novel about the transmigration of souls through the bites of certain mosquitoes, bites that may provide eternal life. (Calcutta)

Hamid, Moshin. Moth Smoke (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2000)
This Pakistani version of The Great Gatsby follows the downfall of a former bank employee whose descent into drug abuse and crime takes place during the explosive summer when India and Pakistan both test their atomic weapons. (Lahore)

Kamani, Ginu. Junglee Girl (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1995)
These short stories are about the difficult role of women and about very difficult women, most of whom live in the state of Gujurat. (Gujurat)

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Interpreter of Maladies (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000)
This collection of short stories, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, describes the cultural dislocation of Indian immigrants to the United States, no longer at home in India, but not quite a part of their new home. (Bengal)

Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve (New York: John Day, 1955)
The lives of a tenant farmer and his family are irrevocably altered by the arrival of a tannery in their village.

Mehta, Gita. A River Sutra (New York: N. A. Talese, 1993)
A bureaucrat flees from life by taking a position as the manager of a guesthouse on the banks of the Narmada River. There he discovers the meaning of life through the tales of the travelers he meets. (Narmada River)

Mishra, Pankaj. The Romantics (New York: Random House, 2000)
A young man, who is preparing for the civil service examination, becomes friends with members of the expatriate community, all of whom are searching for a deeper meaning to life and hope to find it in India. (Varanasi)

Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balance (New York: Vintage, 1997)
A group of refugees, fleeing religious and ethnic violence, forge an unlikely community in the apartment of an independent widow. (Mumbai, Parsi)

Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey (New York: Vintage Books, 1992)
The fortunes of a Parsi family in Mumbai diminish as Hindu supremacy, economic change and entanglement in a secret service plot during a war with Pakistan effect their lives. (Mumbai, Parsi)

Mistry, Rohinton. Tales from Firozsha Baag (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989)
These interlocking short stories describe the life of the Parsi residents of an apartment house in Mumbai. (Mumbai, Parsi)

Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine (New York: Grove Press, 1989)
A young woman from India makes her way in the United States, despite the fact that she is an illegal immigrant.

Naipaul, V. S. A Bend in the River (New York: Knopf, 1979)
An Indian merchant, living in an unnamed country in Africa, attempts to survive as his country goes from one revolution to another.

Naipaul, V. S. A House for Mr. Biswas (New York: Knopf, 1983)
An Indian living in Trinidad seeks to achieve the true happiness of owning a house of his own. Many critics view this novel, originally published in 1961, as Naipaul’s finest work and the outstanding fictional account about the life of Indian expatriates in the Caribbean.

Narayan, R. K. The Guide (New York: Viking, 1958)
A tourist guide who lives by his wits meets his downfall through his adulterous love of a dancer, yet inadvertently ends up venerated as a holy man. The plot of Kiran Desai’s Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard bears an uncanny resemblance to The Guide. (Tamil Nadu)

Narayan, R. K. A Horse and Two Goats (New York: Viking, 1970)
This is a collection of stories about village life in the Tamil-speaking region of southern India. (Tamil Nadu)

Narayan, R. K. The Painter of Signs (New York: Viking, 1976)
An educated young man, who prides himself on his logic, falls in love with a militant family planner. (Tamil Nadu)

Nigam, Sanjay. The Snake Charmer (New York: Morrow, 1998)
When his beloved snake bites him, a snake charmer, in a fit of rage, bites back, killing the snake and achieving his fifteen minutes of fame in the Indian media. (Delhi)

Ondaatje, Michael. Anil’s Ghost (New York: Knopf, 2000)
A forensic pathologist returns to her home in Sri Lanka to examine the corpses of presumed torture victims during the civil war. (Sri Lanka)

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things (New York: Random House, 1997)
A twin brother and sister watch their world fall apart when their mother dares to love outside her caste. This novel won the Booker Prize. (Kerala)

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children (New York: Knopf, 1981)
This satiric novel about the creation of the modern Indian state is narrated in magic realism style. It follows the fortunes of those children who were born at midnight of the day independence was declared. This novel won the Booker Prize.

Rushdie, Salman. Shame (New York: Knopf, 1983)
This is the author’s fanciful retelling of the history of modern Pakistan.

Seth, Vikram. A Suitable Boy (New York: Harper Collins, 1993)
This more than 1,300-page-long novel relates the interconnected stories of four Indian families during the 1950s. The central theme is the attempt to find a suitable husband for a young woman with several suitors. (Calcutta)

Tharoor, Shashi. The Great Indian Novel (New York: Little Brown, 1989)
The epic story of the Mahabharata is updated to tell the story of twentieth-century Indian history and politics.

Tharoor, Shashi. Show Business (New York: Arcade, 1992)
The novel follows the rise and fall of an ambitious actor/politician in "Bollywood," Mumbai’s film industry. The author intends the novel to be a metaphor for what is wrong in Indian society. (Mumbai)

ANDREA CARON KEMPF is a Professor and Librarian at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. She earned a B.A. in Literature from Brandeis University, an M.A.T. in Literature from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.S.L.S. from Simmons College. She is an alumna of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center, and a regular reviewer of fiction for Library Journal.

[acharya]

BRINGINING CHINA TO THE HIGH SCHOOLS
http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/wood.htm

Starting in 1985, I instigated negotiations to attract a teacher for the Chinese language and literature courses. Believing that a person from the People’s Republic of China would have the greatest cross cultural value, I enlisted the aid of a Shanghai graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. It was important that this person have extensive connections within the Shanghai middle school community. The graduate student identified three appropriate middle schools. We then solicited one nominee from each of the Chinese schools for the Shady Side language and literature courses. From those three applications, we selected an experienced female teacher of English at the Shanghai Number Three Girls School (see note1). We believed this woman, because she was a high school English teacher, could deal effectively with teenage students and be experienced in foreign language teaching techniques. We arranged for this teacher to come to the United States on a J-1 visa through the United States Information Agency Exchange Visitor Program (see note 2). Three Shady Side families served as hosts to the teacher during the first year. The school provided meals and housing in subsequent years. The Shady Side Benedum Foundation (a private fund devoted to faculty study projects and visiting scholar financial support) funded airplane travel and a minimal stipend during the first year. Compensation from the regular school budget gradually replaced Benedum funds, resulting in a permanent teaching slot for a teacher of Chinese language and literature.

During the initial years of this program, the Chinese teacher and I consistently visited and contributed to each other’s classes in order to establish firm interdisciplinary connections. For teaching Chinese language we adopted the Pinyin version of Princeton University’s Chinese Primer. In addition to participating as a regular student, I presented a lecture which treated the following issues: oracle bones and the origins of Chinese language; differences between Mandarin and other dialects and the geographic/historical implications; Chinese language as a unifying force in Chinese history. The Chinese literature course included the analysis of widely varying materials: selections from Sima Qian’s Historical Records; various poems by Du Fu (Tu Fu), Li Bai (Li Po), and Wang Wei; portions of some novels, e.g., Journey To The West; one complete novel, Family; and a number of choices from Short Stories Of Chinese Contemporary Writers. As with the language course, I regularly attended the literature class, developing a lecture which attempted to place the study of Chinese literature within a framework meaningful for American students. Topics covered included the following: two thousand years of Chinese literature . . .what is comparable for America?; importance of Chinese religion and imported religions for understanding Chinese literature; and problems posed by studying translated works.

Our new Chinese teacher attended my history course and participated by answering questions during daily class discussions and after films. She taught an introduction to the Chinese language and joined me in leading small discussion groups whenever students read different books, e.g., Born Red and Son Of The Revolution. Therefore, we were familiar with each other’s pedagogy and classroom materials and were able to capitalize on connections between Chinese history, language, and literature.

[Guest]

India's feat worth more than footnote
By Mihir Bose (Filed: 17/08/2006)

<b>This week marks the 70th anniversary of perhaps the most remarkable match in hockey's history, the 1936 Olympic final between India and Germany</b>. It is not as well known as Jesse Owens' feats at the same Games, but deserves more than a mere footnote in this most notorious Olympics. If Owen proved the 'sub-humans', as the Nazis called African-Americans, could beat the 'master race' then the Indians provided another test.

Historically, the German intelligentsia, led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had a long love affair with Indian culture, and the Nazis had taken the old Hindu symbol and inverted it to form the swastika.

The Indian hockey team, was however, playing as part of the British dominions, and there was another curious subtext here. After India's emergence as a major hockey-playing country in 1928, winning Olympic gold in Amsterdam, Britain had stopped playing Olympic hockey. Olympic historian David Wallenchinsky writes: "Ever since India first appeared in international field hockey, Great Britain had studiously avoided playing the Indian hockey team, apparently afraid of the embarrassment of losing to one of its colonies."

In Germany, the British ambassador received them at Berlin railway station, and there was even a reception at the embassy. <b>But in the dressing room, just before going out to face the Germans in the final, the Indian team saluted the tricolour, the flag of the Congress fighting for Indian freedom and later to become the flag of free India</b>.

Forty thousand Germans, including Hitler, had gathered to see the match - the Germans confident, having beaten the Indians in a practice match. But in the second half the Indians scored four in 12 minutes, setting up an 8-1 win.

With the ground wet, India's captain, Dyan Chand, took off his shoes and socks and played in bare feet, mesmerising the Germans with his stick-work and scoring six goals. The Germans played rough and the goalkeeper, going for Chand, removed one of his teeth.

<b>Chand would later write that after the match he met Hitler, who asked him what he did. When Chand explained he was an ordinary soldier, Hitler is said to have replied: "If you were a German, I would have made you at least a major-general"</b>.

[acharya]

Statehood in South Asia.
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst;jsessionid=G...=o&d=5001526317

by Ainslie Embree

In the vast region now known as South Asia at the beginning of 1997, most of the major states--including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka--have some form of democratic government for the first time since the formal British withdrawal in 1947. All of these nations are engaged in measures of economic liberalization, moving away from government control of resources toward a market economy. All are also seeking, however tentatively, to increase and strengthen interregional relationships.(1) Although democracy, economics and foreign policy have been important, the overarching concern in all the states and the one that shapes all the other issues is the quest for national unity. The process of decolonization that led to the formation of the separate states of South Asia meant that the externally imposed unity of the colonial state had to be replaced by policies that required the assent of the governed.

It is this theme of the search for national unity that will be analyzed in this article through brief examinations of three of the states, with a fourth, Bangladesh, being noted in relation to India and Pakistan. More attention will be given to India, since the same factors that give India a special prominence within the region make it an excellent starting place for considering the South Asia region in general.

The first factor that explains India's prominence in the region is its overwhelming dominance in population, industrial development and military power. Equally important is the geographical factor. Since the state of India comprises almost three-quarters of the subcontinent, which is bound by mountains and seas, it is an "intelligible isolate." A third factor is that the civilizations and cultures of India have made an impression on all the states of the region, despite the other states' own strong indigenous cultural and religious characteristics, such as Islam and Buddhism. A fourth factor giving India a special importance is that all the states in the region, especially the four largest ones, have experienced political trends rooted in what is now the state of India. Beginning with the Mauryan Empire in the fourth century B.C. and continuing into the modern era, political forces have emanated from India throughout the region.

India had a special importance for the British empire and had a legal and political status different from any of the other colonies. It was regarded as the dominating power in the region. Lord Curzon, as governor general, expressed a grandiose but widely held vision of India's hegemony in 1909 when he wrote:



On the west, India must exercise a predominant influence over the destinies
of Persia and Afghanistan; on the north, it can veto any rival in Tibet; on
the north-east it can exert great pressure upon China, and it is one of the
guardians of the autonomous existence of Siam.(2)

This was a dangerous legacy for the Government of India to leave to its successor state, the Republic of India, as the world discovered when India and China quarreled over the borders that had been left by the British. Upon British departure in 1947, India's influence in the area continued when it began to interact with the new border states of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Sikhim. The word "empire" is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the aggregate of many states under one common head." The British viewed their empire in these terms. Britain had conquered and brought under one rule what was a hackneyed congeries of states and kingdoms in the geographical area that Europeans had called "India" since ancient times. That the official and legal documents usually referred to the "Government of India" and not "India" reflects that the British perceived India as a government, but not a state and certainly not a nation.

Looking back over 50 years of independent statehood in South Asia, one can identify dominant issues and concerns in each of the states. First, a variety of economic strategies emerged, all of which required an active role for the national government. These strategies were devised to address age-old problems of poverty while providing for the infrastructure of a modern state, including defense, communications, education and health services. These strategies were a post-colonial rejection of the laissez-faire economic policies that had characterized British rule.

Second, dominant trends have emerged from the function of religion in national life in all the countries of South Asia. Religion has been closely related to the question of national language. Third, democratic forms of government according to the Western model were established in all the states, although with many modifications. Fourth, foreign relations have been a constant preoccupation. Only recently has cooperation been embraced with the creation of the functionally-limited South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 1983. Despite South Asia's limited independent history, post-independence regional animosities and the fear of Indian hegemony have prevented the growth of normal economic and cultural contacts. Relations with the wider international community during the Cold War era were focused on the United States, the Soviet Union and China. As noted above, however, all of these concerns of the different South Asian states were deeply affected by the necessity of maintaining territorial integrity while fostering a sense of national consciousness.

India

During India's half-century of independence, the concern for national unity has had two broad aspects. One is the preservation of territorial integrity; which has been tested by wars with China and Pakistan and by internal insurgencies. The other aspect is the creation of a unifying national consciousness and this, in India as elsewhere, has been far more difficult than defending territorial integrity

Indian territorial integrity was challenged first in 1962 when China and India went to war over territories in the Himalayan borderlands. In 1959, Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai suggested that the borders of India were not legitimate because they were drawn by foreign imperialists. He told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in an accurate and elegant phrase that the border issue was a complicated question left over by history."(3) This was unacceptable to Nehru, who believed the borders were integral to India's sovereignty and to its sense of nationhood.(4) In an official note, the Government of India declared its northern frontier "has lain approximately where it now runs for nearly three thousand years," and that the people within the area it enclosed have always regarded themselves "as Indians and remained within the Indian fold."(5) After the war started, Nehru told a New Delhi audience that it would begin "pushing us into the modern world and make us realize the hard realities."(6)

One of the hard realities for India was that it would be forced to reconsider its non-aligned status in foreign affairs, in order to obtain outside pressure to deflect the Chinese advance. Nehru wrote to U.S. President John F. Kennedy that India's situation was desperate, and asked for large-scale military assistance, including squadrons of supersonic fighters and B-47 bombers.(7) The Chinese ceased their advance, either because of the threat of American involvement, or because they believed they had humiliated India and proved that China, as they put it, "was one head taller than India imagined herself to be."(8)

The 1962 war with China was a turning point in defining India as a nation. Nehru spoke of it as a blessing in disguise because internal disunity had been swept aside by the Chinese threat and the new mood could be used to achieve industrial advances as well as military preparedness.(9)

A variety of militant insurgent movements within India also placed severe strains on the government during the past 50 years. By threatening to secede or demanding a degree of autonomy that the government felt would destroy the nation's unity, insurgencies challenged the government's legitimacy. Countering rebellions was expensive in material and human resources and left bitter memories of alleged brutalities and grave human rights abuses. All Indian administrations since 1947 have believed, however, that violent and secessionist movements should be crushed quickly. Although the numerous insurgencies had different local origins and agendas and affected widely separated areas, the common threads among them were a sense of grievance, often rooted in perceived economic discrimination.

Bonds of language and religion became important characteristics among insurgents because of their belief that the government, in seeking national unity; was trying to replace local traditions with a Hinduized culture. The longest-lasting example of rebellion began soon after independence in the hilly area in the northeast against the tribal people known as Nagas and was occasioned by what the Nagas saw as an attempt to erode their customs, language and religion by the Government of India. Eventually, the government succeeded in forcing a peace settlement, including the creation of a new federal state, Nagaland, in 1963. However, groups of rebels continued to fight until 1978 when they realized defeat was inevitable and consequently agreed to make peace.

The current insurgencies in Kashmir and Punjab are on a much larger scale. The insurgents are far better armed, have more support from a wider constituency, and are given more ideological coherence by potent appeals to loyalties based on religion, language and history. Furthermore, the insurgents in Kashmir and Punjab have allegedly received support from Pakistan, which has fought India three times since 1947. According to conservative estimates, India had committed a quarter million of its armed forces to quelling armed insurrections in the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. The insurgencies are carried on by many separate groups with different aims and without a unified command. Some want a union with Pakistan, some want independence, and others might settle for a high degree of autonomy within India. This is not an open war between India and Pakistan, but two previous wars between the two countries involved in Kashmir. There is always a danger that a new war may ensue, now with the added peril that both nations could develop and use nuclear weapons.

India's insistence that the accession of the state of Jammu and Kashmir is a closed issue and that its partition or secession cannot be discussed as part of any solution to the problem has angered Pakistan. However, this stance reflects India's fundamental view of its statehood. Indian leaders argue that permitting self-determination to the Kashmiris would lead to a demand from ethnic groups within India to secede, destroying the fabric of the nation's unity. Indian leaders, including Nehru, have argued repeatedly that a concession to a Muslim majority in Kashmir would lead to a new outburst of communal violence against Muslims in India, especially now that Hindu nationalism is ascending. One thing is reasonably certain: In the foreseeable future, India will violently resist any secessionist attempts or movements for greater autonomy that threaten the state's territorial integrity and stability

While the Kashmir situation attracted more international attention because of the threat of war from Pakistan's involvement, armed insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s probably affected the people of India more directly Punjab has historically been part of the Indian heartland. It is also one of the most prosperous and progressive Indian states. The conventional explanation of the insurgency was that it originated in a power struggle between political leaders in the Akali Dal party and the ruling party, the Indian National Congress. The Akali Dal represent Sikhs.

However, the element that gave the insurgency its violence and passion was the dynamic leadership of a militant young religious leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and his followers who began a crusade against the enemies of Sikhism. These were identified as the elderly Sikh leaders who had grown weak in the faith and, above all, the external enemy, the Government of India, which was seen in religious terms as a Hindu power inimical to Sikhism. What has been called "the logic of religious violence" took over and a religious cause legitimized violence, "for the language of warfare, of fighting and dying for a cause, is appropriate and endemic to the realm of religion."(10) As elsewhere, the opportunity for religiously sanctioned violence appealed strongly to young men who felt marginalized by the economic and social changes taking place in the Punjab. They became recruits for a campaign that led to the murder of many thousands of civilians and, in the attempts by the authorities to end the insurgency, the death or disappearance of thousands of militants.(11) Human rights groups, both in India and abroad, have reported that the security forces adopted brutal methods, including torture, detention without trials, and summary killings of suspected militants and of civilians who may have helped them. However upsetting, the authorities now point to a return to elected government and normal conditions throughout the state by 1992 to justify their harsh actions during the insurgency.

While preservation of its territorial integrity from external enemies and internal insurgencies taxed the nation's energies and resources, conflicts over the creation of a sense of a national identity consensus through language and religion have also strained the unity of the nation. In regions, both language and religion have been rallying points for national unity, but in India as elsewhere in South Asia, they also have often been divisive.

The choice of Hindi, the most widely spoken of India's 12 major languages, as the national language provoked bitter debates in the Constituent Assembly and throughout the country in 1948 and 1949. But the demand in the 1950s for the creation of linguistic states posed an even greater threat to Indian unity The states, or provinces as they had been known during British rule, had been formed largely for administrative convenience or as a result of conquests at different periods, but in 1920 the Indian National Congress demanded that the country be divided into states that reflected the language and culture of the different regions.

The subject was raised again shortly after independence, but Nehru postponed action, seeing that the formation of linguistic states posed a threat to Indian unity by emphasizing regional, not national, loyalties. There were serious outbreaks of violence as powerful groups in the different regions pressed for linguistic states. In a revealing statement, Nehru said how dismayed he was as he watched what was happening in the country. The struggle that had gone on for a free and united India seemed to be endangered and he was, "face to face with the centuries old India of narrow loyalties, petty jealousies and ignorant prejudices engaged in mortal conflict and we were simply horrified to see how thin was the ice upon which we were skating."(12)

The process of reorganization was finally resolved, with most of the country eventually divided on the basis of the dominant language group in the different regions. Those involved in the process were aware of how potentially dangerous this was to the unity of the country The States Reorganization Commission noted in its report that a unitary form of government with the divisions based on purely administrative considerations would have been the best solution, but, mindful of the violence the demand for linguistic states had created, the report concluded in laconic understatement that, "in the existing circumstances, this approach would be somewhat unrealistic."(13)

The issue of religion is potentially more divisive than language. A carefully worded statement on the right to freedom of religion was included in the constitution of India. In 1977, a constitutional amendment interpreting the freedom of religion clause declared that India was a secular state. In the Indian constitutional usage, a secular state is defined as one that guarantees freedom of worship, treats individuals as citizens irrespective of religious affiliation, and does not support any particular religion.(14) This insistence on India as a secular state was a recognition of the religious pluralism of Indian society, which includes 700 million Hindus, 125 million Muslims, 21 million Christians, and 18 million Sikhs. The partition that created Pakistan on the basis of religion led in a few months to the killing of half a million people, both Hindus and Muslims, and a migration from one country to the other of perhaps 12 million people. Beyond that trauma, numerous communal riots have led to the deaths of many hundreds of people. Because of the bitter realities of violence associated with religious identity, a secular identity seemed necessary.

Nonetheless, in a direct challenge to the secular state, many well-organized groups argued that secularism undermined the only true basis of Indian nationality, Hinduism. The overwhelming majority of Indians, these groups argued, identified themselves as Hindu--participants in the culture that deeply molded Indian civilization, not just in terms of religious practices, but in art, literature and styles of living. The most vigorous exponent of this definition of Indian nationality was a powerful organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, and its many related groups, most notably the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which in the past 15 years has emerged as a major force in Indian electoral politics.

The leaders of such groups are often referred to as "Hindu fundamentalists," suggesting a primarily religious motivation, but this term is misleading. "Hindu nationalists" is a more accurate description, for their aim is not to create a theocratic state, run by priests as spokesmen for a deity Rather, it is to create a modern nation-state in which the ideology of Hindu nationalism, to which they have given the name "Hindutva," would be the guiding force for national unity. The proponents of this nationalism identify as its enemies the religious and cultural traditions of Islam and Christianity, aided by the advocates for secularism in what they regard as the denationalized, Westernized Indian elites.(15)

This conflict over the nature of Indian nationalism was dramatized in December 1992, when a mob of militant Hindu nationalists destroyed the Babri Masjid, a mosque believed to have been built by the Mughal Emperor Babur between 1526 and 1530 on the site of the birthplace of Lord Rama, a widely venerated deity The destruction of the mosque was seen as a dramatic assertion of the victory of the Hindu nation over the Muslims, who had once conquered India centuries earlier. In the next few days, riots broke out in a number of towns and cities, most notably in Mumbai (Bombay), where hundreds of people, mostly Muslims, were killed. India is unhappily accustomed to violence, but these events appeared to signal "a shift away from the fragile political consensus of religious neutrality, the secular state, that held together the diverse ethnic, religious, and social communities since independence, toward the new configuration of a Hindu nation."(16)

Cultural symbols deeply rooted in the dominant cultural tradition have a powerful unifying potential, but, given the diversity of Indian society, Hindu nationalism has difficulty finding a unifying voice. Many members of the Hindu upper classes view Hindu nationalism as a deeply divisive force, while the lowest classes view it as an attempt to restore historic patterns of upper caste dominance and the Muslims see it a threat to their existence as a community. For these reasons, a careful political analyst concludes, "unless the democratic system breaks down, or there is a major external crisis, Hindutva nationalism cannot sweep the country."(17) While this is probably true for immediate electoral prospects, there can be little doubt that Hindu nationalism will continue to have enormous appeal, even if it does not express itself overtly in the electoral victory of a specific party.

Pakistan

Shortly after the secession of Bangladesh in 1971, Professor Rounaq Jahan summarized the problems of Pakistan by noting that the difficulties of nation-building were compounded by the fact that the ruling elites had to perform simultaneously the two independent, and at times contradictory, tasks of state-building and nation-building.(18) India inherited a functioning state when it became independent, symbolized by the grandeur of New Delhi, while Pakistan had to make do with the hastily cobbled together facilities in the temporary capital of Karachi.

In terms of state-building, the first 10 years of Pakistan's existence can be characterized as an attempt to govern a country with a population of about 75 million (in 1950) divided into two areas separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory, with an unstable power structure. The structure consisted of a Constituent Assembly of 79 members as a central government, a governor-general with great executive power, elected provincial assemblies in the four provinces in West Pakistan and one in East Pakistan, a civil bureaucracy and a military establishment.

From the beginning, three issues posed a challenge to both state-building and nation-building. The first was the position of Islam as the dominant ideology of Pakistan. The second issue posing a challenge to state- and nation-building was the existence of regional differences within Pakistan. A third source of conflict was how power was to be shared within the governing structure.

The irony of the nation-building process was that Pakistan, unlike India, seemed to begin with an accessible and easily comprehended unifying ideology of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims in South Asia. This was the point Muhammad Ali Jinnah made in 1943 when consolidating his claim to be spokesman for India's Muslims. Envisioning a Muslim homeland, he declared, "Never before in the history of the world, has a nation rallied around a common platform and a common ideal in such a short time as the Muslims have done in this vast subcontinent.... Never before has the mental outlook of a nation been unified so effectively."(19)

Why was the outcome so different from this vision, which had some basis in reality? The answer is surely that an appeal to found a nation on Islam, or indeed on any religion, in a region as complex as the Indian subcontinent would face enormous difficulties. What was wrong with Jinnah's vision was spelled out with brutal clarity by Maulana Maududi, a powerful theologian, when he reminded Jinnah that true Muslims did not believe in government by the majority, but rulership by God under the laws of Islam, not those made by a democratic majority: "In the sight of God, Muslim nationalism is just as cursed as Indian nationalism."(20)

The failure of Islam as a political ideology to create a unified nation was shown with shattering force in the secession of East Bengal and its emergence as the new nation of Bangladesh in 1971. Even before this, however, Islam became a source of disunity as attempts were made to spell out its place in the national life. There were a number of contentious issues that illustrated the divisiveness of Islam in South Asia. One was defining the nature of the new state. Pakistan has enacted four constitutions in 30 years, with many revisions. The first one, adopted in 1956, saw Pakistan as a modern, democratic state. Yet, it was also to be an Islamic Republic, with no laws repugnant to Islam. As one scholar has noted, ideologically Pakistan was suspended, "between the ambiguity of her founder's call for a Muslim homeland and the varying expectations of the majority of the populace for an Islamic state."(21)

The regional conflicts that emerged after the formation of Pakistan were related to the new political arrangements, but as Stephen Rittenberg has shown in his study of the independence movement of the North-West Frontier Province, they were rooted in ethnic and tribal differences within the region itself as well as with the larger arena of the nation. The major tribal group in the province, the Pakhtuns, had ethnic loyalties and social organization that "have given provincial politics a stability which has survived the periodic upheavals in Pakistani politics since independence."(22) This was true in large measure of the other three divisions of West Pakistan--Sind, Baluchistan and Punjab--but stability for dominant groups within each of them meant friction with each other and with the central government. The largest of the provinces, East Pakistan, with a greater population than the rest of the provinces combined, was to become the test case for national unity, since from the beginning this region was marked from the beginning by a sense of alienation from West Pakistan.

There were many complaints of unequal treatment in the allocation of government resources and of positions within the military and the civil bureaucracy, but the clearest indication of the depth of this bitterness came, as it had elsewhere in South Asia, over the issue of a national language. East Pakistan was the most linguistically homogenous region in South Asia, with the overwhelming majority of the people speaking Bengali. But the central government decided to make Urdu, widely regarded as an "Islamic language," the national language of Pakistan. Student groups protested the imposition of Urdu and demanded that Bengali also be recognized as a national language. This student activism represented a wider unrest in society and, in 1956, Bengali was declared a national language along with Urdu. By this time, however, more than a sub-nationalism had developed: Articulate leaders were demanding social change and autonomy for East Pakistan. This first phase of Bangladeshi separatism, dependent upon free elections and political representation was halted when "the established political institutions were swept aside, and the civil-military bureaucracy, in which Bengal representation was minimal, assumed power in the country."(23)

The abrogation of civil power was the result of the third source of conflict within Pakistan, a struggle for power within its governing structure, particularly after the new constitution came into force in 1956, giving elected representatives more power. General Ayub Khan, who assumed power, justified the military takeover in 1958 on the grounds that the state was in danger of collapse, as it was torn by regional animosities, religious strife and racial differences. In their mad rush for power, the elected politicians whom he had overthrown, had shown that "the country and the people could go to the dogs as far as they were concerned."(24) The ulema, or Muslim religious leaders, were also to blame, for instead of Islam promoting the unity of the country, their version of the faith was dividing it. The ulema, Khan argued, were against the creation of a modern state because they feared power would pass from them to the educated classes. Khan asserted that what was needed to unify the country was a strong central government that would encourage industrialization in order to raise the standard of living of the poor, give Pakistan a place in the world and end the bickering of corrupt politicians.(25)

A somewhat different, and persuasive, reading of the reasons for military rule has been given by Ayesha Jalal. While not denying the effect of politicians on the political process, she suggests that the alliance of civil bureaucrats and the military was stretching the "ambit of central authority in order to give a long delayed impetus to their ambitious plans to industrialize and militarize Pakistan, while at the same time nurturing their own recently forged links in the international arena."(26) Ayub was forced from office, however, partly because of the failure of his regime to meet the economic needs of the masses and partly because he was unable to maintain an alliance among the military, the bureaucrats and the industrialists whom he had encouraged.

Ayub was succeeded not by a civilian but by another military leader, General Yayha Khan, against whom East Pakistan revolted. Yayha Khan's government responded with startling brutality, killing perhaps a million civilians, but India's intervention led to the defeat of the Pakistan Army and the emergence of a new country, Bangladesh. Pakistan is not and never was, in the pejorative phrase attributed to Henry Kissinger, a "basket case," but its simultaneous search for statehood and national identity has been a daunting task.

Pakistan's military defeat in East Pakistan by India in 1971 led to the fall of Yayha Khan and the establishment of a civilian government under Zulfiqar Bhutto, who attempted to move the state away from its heavy dependence on the military. His failure was dramatized by the seizure of power by the military in 1977 under General Zia, again on the grounds that the civilian politicians did not have the ability to maintain law and order. Bhutto was arrested and executed in 1979 on a murder charge.

General Zia's regime attempted to give unity to a dispirited and divided country through a vigorous program of Islamization, combined with economic development and strict control of the press and political parties. Islamization meant an attempt to introduce traditional Islamic law and social customs, as spelled out in detail in an ordinance in June 1988, making shari a (revealed law) the supreme law of the land.(27) This met little resistance from the masses, who followed such customs in any case, but the educated elites regarded such efforts as a futile attempt to impose standards that ran counter to the thrust of modernity. General Zia's death in an airplane crash in 1988 led to a return to civilian government and the re-emergence of electoral politics, which resulted in the election in 1988 of Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the executed former prime minister. The president of Pakistan, Sardar Leghari, dismissed her from office during her second term in 1996 for misgovernence and corruption. To some observers, her subsequent electoral defeat in February 1997 seemed to replicate the fate of other civilian governments at the hands of the military, even if behind the scenes. Others, more optimistic about electoral politics, saw it as the ability of the president, in a use of constitutional powers validated by the Supreme Court, to safeguard the state.

Sri Lanka

While the danger of disunity in South Asia from religious, linguistic and ethnic differences have always been stressed in the rest of South Asia before independence, there seems to have been little perception of such danger in Sri Lanka, either by the British rulers or the leaders of political parties, until it became independent in ! 948. In contrast to the fearful communal killings that marked the birth of statehood in India, Pakistan and eventually Bangladesh, the transfer of power in Sri Lanka was remarkably peaceful. The government of the first prime minister, D.S. Senanayake, concentrated on the economic development of a society characterized by high literacy, a developed political system and a social order where the division between rich and poor was not as striking as elsewhere on the subcontinent.(28)

There were, however, very powerful forces at work within the island that combined to threaten the existence of the unitary state established in 1948. Economically, the country was faced with growing unemployment and the inability of the government to pay for the extensive social welfare programs. These problems became involved with ethnic, religious, and linguistic issues as well as struggles for power between the two families that dominated Sri Lankan politics, the Bandaranaikes and the Senanayakes.

The most explosive issue was the question of making Sinhala, the language of the ethnic majority, the Sinhalese, the national language. The appeal of Sinhala--and its potential for disunity--was increased by the fact that it was closely identified with Buddhism, the religion of the Sinhalese majority. If this came to be the case, English would cease to play its traditional role in government, education and business. The disadvantaged group would be the Tamil-speaking minority, about 18 percent of the population, which was mainly Hindu by religion. The Tamils had originated in Tamilnadu in south India, some having come to Sri Lanka many centuries before, while others had come in the 19th century during the period of British rule. They form the majority of the population in Jaffna, the northern district of the island.

Perhaps the clearest way to summarize the development of fierce ethnic antagonism leading to violence that threatened to overwhelm the state is through a brief chronology. In 1956, Bandaranaike's government moved to fulfill election promises to make Sinhala the only official national language and to recognize Buddhism as the national religion. This movement received militant support from the bhikkhus, the monks who had great influence in the countryside. Rioting broke out in 1958, in which hundreds of Tamils were killed.

In 1971, a serious insurrection that had no direct connection with the language issue exploded when bands of students, known as the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), who were not supported by any major political party, began an attack on government institutions. The government had inadequate arms to fight back, but quickly received help from India, the United States and Great Britain. The insurrection was halted only after an estimated 15,000 insurgents were killed. Although the government won, in the judgment of two scholars with exceptional access to sources in Sri Lanka, there is no mistaking the historical significance of the insurrection: "It was the harbinger of political violence on an unprecedented scale ... of which groups of Tamil activists (in the period 1975 onwards) have been the most prominent exponents."(29) Furthermore, the JVP was not fully crushed, and in the 1980s continued to assassinate political leaders.

Groups of young Tamils, melding language grievances and claims of economic discrimination, became increasingly violent and, appealing to ethnic separatism, they demanded independence for the Jaffna region. After 13 soldiers were killed by the Tamil militants in 1983, fierce riots broke out in other areas of the island, and thousands of Tamils were killed. From this point on, the Tamil insurrection ceased to be an internal affair and became a regional one, with India as a major player. It was well known that the militants, especially the most violent group, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were being trained and armed into a formidable guerrilla force in the Indian state of Tamilnadu, a few miles across the Palk Strait from Jaffna, with the knowledge of the Indian government.(30) Out of desperation, but with considerable political courage given that there was intense anti-Indian sentiment in Sri Lanka, President J.R. Jayawardene sought an accord with India governing the deployment of Indian armed forces known as the Indian Peace Keeping Force. However, this well-armed force had little success in controlling the LTTE. In the face of strong criticism from within Sri Lanka, the Indian government withdrew the Indian Peace Keeping Force, with memories of the problems that the Soviet Union encountered in Afghanistan and the United States in Vietnam when fighting determined guerrillas.

Sri Lanka's long agony continued, despite high hopes raised by peace talks in early 1995 between the LTTE leaders and the Sri Lankan government. In the summer of 1996, the LTTE, although driven out of the towns and into the jungles, killed more than 1,000 soldiers at an army base. According to Marshall Singer, the model for the LTTE leaders is the situation in Israel: The Israelis' only hope for peace was to agree to a settlement in Gaza and on the West Bank, which they may see as "something short of a separate country," but "the Palestinians see it as an independent state."(31)

Conclusion

Is there any conclusion that can be drawn from 50 years--which is a long time in the life of any modern notion--of the dual quest for statehood and nationhood by the major states of South Asia, with their vast populations, material resources, and immensely rich legacy of civilization? One is, of course, that none have succumbed to the pressures of insurrections, civil wars and militant movements for secession. This is true even of Pakistan, which lost half of its population but retained the framework of the original state. Another conclusion is one drawn by an Indian analyst, Bharat Wariavwalla. Surveying the insurrections and secessionist movements in India, he argues that they have resulted from the attempt to impose a concept of "nation" upon India's many ancient communities, leading ironically to disunity, rather than the unity that was sought. According to this view, Kashmir and Punjab are the price paid for trying to create "an imaginary nation" out of South Asia's deeply rooted multiculturalism.(32) One may sense the validity of this argument looking at the history of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, while at the same time recognizing that the loose federalism that it suggests may be unacceptable to their leaders after half a century of striving to create unitary states and to impose nationhood upon them.

(1) The term "South Asia" apparently first used by the U.S. State Department after the Second World War to designate all the newly independent states of the area, also includes the three smaller states of Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives.

(2) Lord Horace Curzon, The Place of India in the Empire (London: John Murray, 1909) p. 12.

(3) Zhou Enlai to Nehru, 8 September 1959, White Paper No. II (New Delhi: Indian Ministry of External Affairs, 1959) p. 27.

(4) ibid.; Nehru to Chou En-Lai, 26 September 1959, White Paper No. II (New Delhi: Indian Ministry of External Affairs, 1959) p. 27.

(5) ibid., Appendix I.

(6) Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), vol. 3, p. 227.

(7) ibid., p. 228. These letters were not published by the State Department in the documents included in Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, Volume XIX, South Asia (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), because the letters have not been declassified by the Indian government.

(8) Gopal, p. 230.

(9) ibid., p. 240.

(10) Mark Juergensmeyer, "The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism," Journal of International Affairs, 50, no. 1 (Summer 1996) p. 15.

(11) U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1990 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990) p. 1426.

(12) Selig Harrison, "The Challenge to Indian Nationalism," Foreign Affairs, 34, no. 3 (April 1956) p. 621.

(13) Report of the States Reorganisation Commission (New Delhi: Government of India, 1955) p. 230.

(14) Donald E. Smith, India as a Secular State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963) p. 4.

(15) Ainslie T. Embree, "The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation," in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Accounting for Fundamentalism (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994) pp. 617-652.

(16) ibid., p. 645.

(17) Bharat Wariavwalla, "Die Zerstorung des Muslimtempels und die Problematik des Nationalstaats," Comparativ, Heft 6, (4 January 1994) p. 87 (Author's translation).

(18) Rounaq Jahan, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration (New York: Columbia University, 1972) p. 3.

(19) Muhammad Ali Jinnah, "The Thrust Toward a New Muslim Nation," in Stephen Hay, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) pp. 231-232.

(20) Anwar Syed, Pakistan: Islam, Politics, and National Solidarity (New York: Praeger, 1982) p. 35.

(21) Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner, eds., The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986) p. 335.

(22) Stephen Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns: The Independence Movement in India's North-West Frontier Province (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1988) p. 256.

(23) Jahan, p. 49.

(24) ibid., p. 55.

(25) Muhammad Avub Khan, Friends, Not Masters: A Political Autobiography (Lahore, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1967) pp. 194-201.

(26) Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence (Lahore, Pakistan: Vanguard Books, 1991) p. 194.

(27) Golam W. Choudhury, Pakistan: Transition from Military to Civilian Rule (Buckhurst Hill, England: Scorpion, 1988) pp. 245-249.

(28) Howard H. Wriggins, Ceylon: The Dilemmas of a New Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960).

(29) K. M. de Silva and Howard Wriggins, J. R. Jayawardene of Sri Lanka: A Political Biography (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), vol. 2, p. 213.

(30) ibid., p. 607.

(31) ibid.

(32) Wariavwalla, p. 87.

Ainslie T. Embree is professor emeritus of history at Columbia University During his tenure at Columbia, he has been chairman of the History Department, director of the Southern Asian Institute and associate dean of the School of International and Public Affairs. Mr. Embree also served as president of the Association of Asian Studies. From 1978 to 1980, he was counselor for cultural affairs at the American Embassy in Delhi and was special consultant to the Ambassador between 1994 and 1995. His books include India's Search for National Identify; Imagining India: Essays on Indian History and Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in India. He was also editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Asian History.

-1-

[Guest]

Hello Friends,

Here is a beautiful yet very tragic tale from the Annals
of Jaisalmer.

http://hindurajput.blogspot.com/#Rajput_Chivalry

Please let me know if you like it.

Regards,
-Digvijay

[ramana]

From Deccan Chronicle, 29August 2006.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->AP site yields new Buddhist school based on Dakini
 
Archaeology: By Naresh Nunna

Amaravathi: Archaeological explorations at a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district by the Archaeological Survey of India have led to a find that could have major implications for the study of Buddhism.The ASI archaeologists have come across an inscription from the first century AD that makes a mention of the Dakiniyana (Dakini is the name of the goddess, yana means school). This is said to be the first mention of the school based on a goddess, predating other mentions by about 700 years.

The inscription was discovered at a site that the ASI is excavating 42 km from Vijayawada and 70 km from Guntur in the Amaravathi belt that is world renowned for its Buddhist sites.
Disclosing the details of the astonishing find, Dr. Jitendar Das, superintending archaeologist of ASI Hyderabad, said the site at Kantamanenivari Gudem is 2 km from the famous rock cave temple complex at Guntupalli. Tipped off by shepherds and mulberry farmers, the ASI team made excavations at the site and hit paydirt. Among their initial finds were a vandalised image of a seated Dhyana Buddha, Padma Peetha, decorated pillars and a good number of early historic pottery shreds, Dr Das said.

Besides, they found an inscription in Prakrit language using Brahmi characters dated to the 1st century AD. Mr D. Kanna Babu, assistant superintending archaeologist and officer of Amaravathi Museum, who was on the team, interpreted the three-line inscription as saying “...gift of bowl full of coins (masakas) given to the Arya sangh (Buddhist intelligentsia) and all adherents of Dakiniyana, who were residing at Jinanagamahaparvatha, by the householder Nagaputa hailing from Sakuda along with his wife, Bodhi and daughter.”

<b>Mr Kanna Babu said, “It was being hypothesised that the worship of goddesses in Buddhism was not seen till the 8th century AD. But this inscription shows that worship of goddesses was in place within five centuries after Buddha attained nirvana.” Mr Babu said that Dakini is mentioned as one of the four principal mother goddess in the Vajrayana (Tantrayana) in the 7th century. Dakini plays a major role in rituals of Vajrayana. The name is found Vajrayana literature of the 10th century. The new excavations revealed for the first time a yana (school) named after Dakini. She was placed the first stage in three stage process leading to nirvana. Dakini  is believed to be the introducer to the path.</b>

At the Kalachakra that the Dalai Lama held earlier this year in Amaravathi, Dakiniyana was a prominent deity. <b> Dr Das said the planning of the pillars, quality of chiselling, execution of the theme, decorative features bore the mark of the Amaravathi school of art.</b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


The location of the find shows the extent of the Buddhist influence in Andhra region.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.inquiring-mines.com/lost_contin...tlan_tis_01.htm


Patala was described in ancient Hindu mythology as a place of abundant water soaked in the ground, under it, above it, and falling from the sky. The Mexican Atlantis more than fits such a description.
    A Hindu myth states that the God Vishnu (just another name of Shiva) once went to Patala-Loka (The Underworld or America) to help the people recover from a huge flood which had destroyed their society. The myth states that a worldwide fire once reduced the surface of the earth to ashes. I have interpreted this part of the myth to mean that Man himself destroyed his environment through slash-and-burn farming, along with other unscientific agricultural practices.
    The God Vayu then blew huge rain clouds all over the earth, causing torrential rains to fall. After the rains had washed away the once-fertile topsoils in the Vera Cruz area, God Vishnu went there and fought a war with the demons who had caused this severe deluge. Then he drained away the excess water, causing the earth to rise above the water again. In other words, he just educated the natives in correct agricultural practices.
    Vishnu expressed his desire to reside on the Earth to protect its people. He commanded his vehicle, Garuda (a Divine Eagle) to fetch Kridachala (an extensive mountain chain with lofty peaks, embedded with gold and precious stones) to America. Although this part of the myth may be incomprehensible to many people, it just means that God Vishnu ordered the ancient Meso-Americans to diversify their economy. If mining was to be included in this new, diversified economy, as the myth appears to suggest, we can reasonably infer that God Vishnu was none other than the Phoenician Cabeiri who had decided to extend their operations in America to include mining and manufacturing.
    God Vishnu’s representative on earth had to be none other than the Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl. I say this because Vishnu’s Vimana (modes of transportation) were an eagle and a raft of snakes. Quetzalcoatl’s Vimana were also an eagle and a raft of snakes. The eagle signified the ability of those ancient travellers to traverse long distances, heedless of obstacles. The raft of snakes was just the Phoenician Nagas on their ships, the prows of which resembled snakes and dragons.
    The following description of the world’s first truly civilized race from India, the Nagas, was taken from the Encyclopedia Brittanica:

    Sanskrit NAGA ("serpent"), in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, a member of a class of semidivine beings, half-human and half-serpentine. They are considered to be a strong, handsome race who can assume either human or wholly serpentine form. They are regarded as being potentially dangerous but in some ways are superior to humans. They live in an underground kingdom called Naga-loka, or Patala-loka, which is filled with resplendent palaces, beautifully ornamented with precious gems. Brahma is said to have relegated the nagas to the nether regions when they became too populous on earth and to have commanded them to bite only the truly evil or those destined to die prematurely. They are also associated with waters -- rivers, lakes, seas, and wells -- and are generally regarded as guardians of treasure. Three notable nagas are Shesa (or Ananta), who in the Hindu myth of creation is said to support Vishnu-Narayana as he lies on the cosmic ocean and on whom the created world rests; Vasuki, who was used as a churning rope to churn the cosmic ocean of milk; and Taksaka, the tribal chief of the snakes. In modern Hinduism the birth of the serpents is celebrated on Naga-pañcami in the month of Sravana (July-August).
        The female nagas (or nagis), according to tradition, are serpent princesses of striking beauty, and the dynasties of Manipur in northeastern India, the Pallavas in southern India, and the ruling family of Funan (ancient Indochina) traced their origin to the union of a human being and a nagi.
        In Buddhism, nagas are often represented as door guardians or, as in Tibet, as minor deities. The snake king Mucalinda, who sheltered the Buddha from rain for seven days while he was deep in meditation, is beautifully depicted in the 9th-13th century Mon-Khmer Buddhas of Siam and Cambodia. In Jainism, the Jaina Saviour (Tirthankara Parshvanatha) is always shown with a canopy of snake hoods above his head.
        In art, nagas are represented in a fully zoomorphic form, as hooded cobras but with from one to seven or more heads; as human beings with a many-hooded snake canopy over their heads; or as half human, with the lower part of their body below the navel coiled like a snake and a canopy of hoods over their heads. Often they are shown in postures of adoration as one of the major gods or heroes is shown accomplishing some miraculous feat before their eyes.

    The above description of the Nagas stated that because they had become too populous in India, they were sent to other parts of the world, especially to Patala. These Nagas were the ones who built the beautiful floating gardens in Kashmir. The Kashmiris produced the world’s first great civilization, even antedating the Sumerians. They brought their expertise to America.

    Originally, the Asuras or Nagas were not only a civilized people, but a maritime power, and in the Mahabharata, where the ocean is described as their habitation, an ancient legend is preserved of how Kadru, the mother of serpents, compelled Garuda (the Eagle or Hawk) to serve her sons by transporting them across the sea to a beautiful country in a distant land, which was inhabited by Nagas, The Asuras (Nagas) were expert navigators who possessed very considerable naval resources and had founded colonies upon distant coasts." (The Encircled Serpent, by M. Oldfield, p. 47.)

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[Guest]

Can anybody kindly post the Winston Churchill quote of how British army should not be used to subjugate Indian muslims blah blah ...supporting the partition ?

Thanks much.

[Guest]

Gus,
Are you looking for this?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Did Jinnah betray Congress to UK in ’46 riots?

SUDHI RANJAN SEN
Posted online: Monday, August 08, 2005 at 0344 hours IST
Updated: Monday, August 08, 2005 at 0921 hours IST

New Delhi, August 7: Was Winston Churchill in secret communication with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and was he tipped off about ‘‘Direct Action Day’’, August 16, 1946, which saw brutal killings by Muslim League activists in Kolkata?

Correspondence recently declassified by the British government indicates a close link between Jinnah and Churchill. The letters relate to the second half of 1946, when Churchill, having lost the 1945 election, was Leader of Opposition.

In the letters, Jinnah seems to warn Churchill about imminent violence. As riots broke out all over India and the Labour government—lead by Churchill’s rival Clement Atlee — sought to hurriedly transfer power, Churchill played counsellor to Jinnah, but privately. He advised Jinnah that they should not meet in public. Instead, correspondence was to be addressed to ‘‘Miss E.A. Gilliatt, 6 Westminster Gardens, London.’’ Gillaitt was Churchill’s private secretary.

The intriguing letters will figure in a documentary made by media firm News Watch Asia to be telecast by Zee News on August 14.

The letters reveal Jinnah saw Churchill as an ally against ‘‘caste Hindus’’. The Conservative wartime leader — hostile to the ‘‘liquidation of the British Empire’’ — was told by the Muslim League leader on July 6, 1946, that the Cripps Mission had ‘‘shaken the confidence of Muslim Indians and shattered their hopes for an honourable and peaceful settlement’’.

Jinnah wrote: ‘‘If power politics are going to be the deciding factor in total disregard for fair play and justice, we shall have no other course open to us except to forge our sanctions to meet the situation which, in that case, is bound to arise. Its consequence, I need not say, will be most disastrous and a peaceful settlement will then become impossible.’’ Less than six weeks later came the bloodbath of Direct Action.

Replying to Jinnah on August 5, Churchill <span style='color:red'>‘‘espoused the right of Moslems and the Depressed Classes to their fair share of life and power. I feel that it is most important that the British Army should not be used to dominate the Moslems, even though the caste Hindus might claim numerical majority in a constituent assembly’’. </span>

On August 22, Jinnah wrote again to Churchill, focusing his ire on Churchill’s domestic opponents, the Labour Party, which Jinnah felt was Congress-friendly. ‘‘You admit the tendencies in England to support the Congress are very strong in the Government Party,’’ Jinnah wrote, ‘‘we have had a bitter taste of it. The Muslim League was progressively betrayed by the Cabinet Delegation and the Viceroy and was being gradually steam-rolled. When the Secretary of State for India and his collegues and the Viceroy finally disclosed their hands, undoubtedly, there could be only one result and that is a general revolt against the British. For who else is responsible to force down and thrust upon 100 million Muslims of India terms which the Congress alone will be pleased to accept.’’

The argument on the British-Muslim relationship was an old one. On August 3, Churchill had written to Jinnah: ‘‘I was... surprised to read all the insulting things that were said about Britain at the Moslem Congress in Bombay, and how the Moslems of India were described as undergoing British slavery. All this is quite untrue and ungrateful.’’

But on December 12, a wary Churchill turned down a lunch invitation at the Claridges’s, advising that the two should not be ‘‘associated publicly”.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

It is amazing that government of India does not teach what actually happened in Kashmir just after independence. Here is a brief write up.


Soldiers of Pakistani army on leave, aided by tribesmen of NWFP, led by Pakistani army officers attacked Kashmir on 22 October 1947, along the Jhelum valley road. The chief of operations was Major-General Akbar Khan of the Pakistan army using the pseudonym General Tariq. [1]. There objective was to celebrate Id on October 26 at Srinagar, with Jinnah riding in triumph into the capital of Kashmir. The undefended city of Domel was the first to fall. Brigadier Rajendra Singh, Chief of Staff of Kashmir State, organized a force of 150 men at Garhi and checked the advance of Pakistani army. By 26 October Pakistani army had only managed to reach Baramulla instead of Srinagar. Pakistani troops committed horrendous crimes against Hindus and Europeans living in the valley. Robert Trumbull, of New York Times sent this dispatch, published on 10 November:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The city had been stripped of its wealth and young women before the Pakistanis fled in terror, at midnight friday, before the advancing Indian army. Surviving residents estimate that 3000 of there townsmen including four Europeans and a retired British army officer, Colonel Dykes, and his pregnant wife were slain. St Joseph Franciscan Convent and the convent hospital was stormed and four nuns were shot.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Pakistan kept insisting that it was not involved but foreign journalists quickly exposed there lie. Alan Moorehead of the Observer (London) reported that recruitment for the invasion had been going on not only in NWFP but all of Pakistan[2]. Trumbull secretly interviewed American mercenary, Russell K. Haight Jr. who fought along with Pakistanis[2].:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mr Haight also found Pakistan army personnel running the Azad Kashmir radio station, relaying messages through there own Pakistan army receivers, organizing and managing Azad encampments in Pakistan, and supplying uniforms, food, arms and ammunition which, he understood, came from Pakistan army stores through such subterfuges as the 'loss' of ammunition shipments..Mr Haight charaterized the Azad Kashmir provisional government, headed by Sardar Mohammed Ibrahim Khan, as 'Pakistan puppets'. He also deeply implicated Pakistan government officials, notable the Premier of the NWFP.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Evidence emerged from within Pakistan itself, Michael Brecher quotes an appeal made by the Minister of Health for Sind:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->to all trained and demobilized soldiers to proceed as volunteers to the Kashmir front.[3].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

British officers and officials working in Pakistan had got wind of the impending invasion some time before it happened. A letter Sir George Cunningham, governor of the NWFP, wrote to General R.M.M Lockhart, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, before the attack ended with the postscript:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Some people up here have been acting very foolishly. You will know what I mean by the time this letter reaches you.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

General Frank Messervy, Commander-in-Chief in Pakistan, formally advised Liaqat against such adventurism, and repeated his advice before flying to London on work.

Indian Government launched Operation JAK to defeat the Pakistan army. V.P.Menon wrote:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Never in the history of warfare has there been an operation like the airlift of Indian troops to Srinagar on 27 October and on subsequent days, an operation put through with no previous thought, let alone organized planning, and at such remarkably short notice... In the early hours of morning of 27 October over a hundred civillian aircraft and R.I.A.F (Royal Indian Air Force) planes were mobilised to fly troops, equipment and supplies to Srinagar. The R.I.A.F and civillian pilots and ground crews rose to the occasion and worked heroically to make the airlift a success.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Lord Mountbatten wrote:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->in all his war experience he had never heard of an airlift of this nature being put into operation at such a short notice and he complimented all concerned on the astonishing performance.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

When Jinnah learnt that Indian troops had reached Srinagar, he ordered Sir Francis Mudie, Governor of Punjab, to phone General Sir Douglas Gracey, acting chief in absence of General Douglas Messervey, to send Pakistan army into Kashmir via the Banihal pass and Rawalpindi Srinagar route. Gracey refused to take orders from Jinnah and told him that he would need orders from Field Marshall Auchinleck, the Supreme Commander. Auchinleck told Jinnah on 28 October that Kashmir was legally part of India and sending the Pakistan army would amount to a formal declaration of war. And if Pakistan went to war, Auchinleck said, he would withdraw every British officer serving in the Pakistan army. Jinnah was stumped[2].

By morning of 8 November Major General Kalwant Singh and Brigadier L.P.Sen had reached Shalteng the stronghold of Pakistani army and showed them what war was all about. Battle lasted eight hours and the Pakistanis were routed. They left 300 dead behind. Soon winter snow helped Pakistanis as Indian army could not advance any further. Next spring and summer Indian army had major successes and Pakistan gave up its pretencce and formally entered war. Major-General K.S.Thimmaya, who succeeded Kalwant Singh, was confident--and he would nurse this complaint all through his life--that he would have taken Muzaffarabad had he not been stopped by the politicians[2] (Jawahar Lal Nehru was the politician who stopped General Thimmaya. Nehru had taken the matter to U.N. and United Nations mandated that Pakistan should leave POK and after that happens India should hold referendum in ENTIRE kashmir. Since Pakis never left India never held a referendum. But it was blunder of himalyan proportions in not flushing out the Paki rats from POK and balme falls squarely on Nehru and every Indian should know this).

1. Hodson, H.V. (1969). The Great Divide: Britain, India, Pakistan.
2. Akbar, M.J. (2002). Kashmir Behind the vale.
3. Brecher, Michael (1953). The Struggle for Kashmir.

[ramana]

From DNAindia.com, 14 Sept. 2006

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Roman relics found near Elephanta

Ninad D Sheth
Friday, September 15, 2006  00:37 IST

New Delhi: <b>The marine branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has discovered Roman artefacts dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries from the inter-tidal zone (the area between the high-tide and low-tide lines) of Elephanta Island.</b>

The find, made last winter, includes artefacts like wine amphorae (vases), pot sheds, storage devices, and stone anchors.

The discovery shows that trade between Rome and India continued much later than previously thought.

<b>Historians believed that the trade, which was conducted via Arabia in the early period of the Roman Empire, declined by the turn of the first millennium.

The discovery indicates that contacts between India and Rome flourished well into the late Roman era.</b>

Alok Tripathi, ASI’s head of underwater archaeology, said, “<b>The entire Maharashtra coast has evidence of Roman contact on a large scale. We are particularly interested in Elephanta, Sindhudurg, Malvan, and Vijaydurg. The Roman artefacts that we have found in Elephanta include some that have survived in excellent condition. The find points to robust trading contact in the late Roman period. This is a first-of-its-kind find on the West Coast.”</b>

The ASI underwater unit plans to carry out fresh excavations in November with the navy. The joint effort will look at sites in Gujarat and Mahabalipuram, besides Elephanta. Come winter and the Indian seas could yield more surprises.
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[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Sep 15 2006, 12:55 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Sep 15 2006, 12:55 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->From DNAindia.com, 14 Sept. 2006


<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Ramana,
Do you know what happened to the Dwarka discovery and its dating?
-Digvijay

[Guest]

Ethiopia unveils 3.3 million-year-old girl fossil <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference.

He said the fossil was older than the 3.2 million year old remains of "Lucy" discovered in 1974, and described by scientists as one of the world's greatest archaeological finds.

"<b>The new bones belong to a three year old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago</b> -- 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<!--emo&:argue--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/argue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='argue.gif' /><!--endemo--> It's all about:
Overall, he wrote in a Nature commentary, the discovery provides "a veritable mine of information about a crucial stage in human evolutionary history."

Well, I am the last person to believe Darwin's Evolution 'coz.
evolution as known to us has no meaning because human life begins with two half cells i.e.ovum and sperm;which then become one cell(unicellular) and this carries on in utero to evolve as neonate.There is no need for us to seek evolution from Amoeba(unicellular) to monkeys and so on.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Capt Manmohan Kumar+Sep 22 2006, 03:12 AM-->QUOTE(Capt Manmohan Kumar @ Sep 22 2006, 03:12 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--emo&:argue--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/argue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='argue.gif' /><!--endemo--> It's all about:
Overall, he wrote in a Nature commentary, the discovery provides "a veritable mine of information about a crucial stage in human evolutionary history."

Well, I am the last person to believe Darwin's Evolution 'coz.
      evolution as known to us has no meaning because human life begins with two half cells i.e.ovum and sperm;which then become one cell(unicellular) and this carries on in utero to evolve as neonate.There is no need for us to seek evolution from Amoeba(unicellular) to monkeys and so on.
[right][snapback]57679[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Natural selection says <b>nothing</b> about evolutionary direction, species progress or any other teleological motives/goals attributed to it, AFAIK. Humans are just extremely good at reproductive success in a given environment. Evolution theory does not have a ladder of evolutionary progress that places humans at
the top.

[Shambhu]

Vedic Prophesies

(Could not find a thread to put this in..sorry)

By the way, Islam says that Islam will end when Man puts foot on the moon..its in the link above.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->surinder wrote:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9&section=0&...&d=9&m=9&y=2006

<b>
Now Dr. Israr finds a disturbing portent for the future of Pakistan. “I am worried. The reasons why Pakistan was created (‘wajh-e-jawaaz’), its raison d’etre, are being questioned now. This worries me. ‘Why Pakistan?’ the younger generation keeps asking. It is becoming a chorus now. ‘Why did you go for partition?’ they ask. ‘What was the reason?’ Is that not a worrying factor?”

Dr. Israr elaborated. “There were two reasons (for the creation of Pakistan) — one positive and one negative. The negative factor was the fear of the Hindu: the Hindu will finish us off; the Hindu will suppress us (‘Hindu hum ko dabayega,’ ‘Hindu hum ko kha jayega’... etc., etc.) The Hindu will take revenge. It will finish our culture. It will strangle our language. This was the negative issue that became a rallying cry for the Muslim League. Remember, at this stage the Muslim League was not a party. It was just a club of nawabs and jagirdars. In his address of 1930 in Allahabad (‘Khutba-e-Allahabad’), the legendary poet Iqbal gave an ideological injection to this movement. During the address, Iqbal said: ‘It is my conviction that in the north of India an independent Muslim state will be established.’ It was a prophesy — not a proposal. Iqbal went on to say: ‘If this happens, we will be able to project the true picture of Islam to the world.’ This was the positive reason.
When Dr. Israr thinks back to the creation of Pakistan, he marvels over the consensus that formed it. “It was a miracle. Can there be any bigger stupidity from the political standpoint as to why a UP Muslim should support the Muslim League? It was an emotional atmosphere. Bombay Muslim, Madrasi Muslim, CP (Central Provinces) Muslim — what did they have to do with Pakistan? But they were the real creators of Pakistan. In Punjab, there was never a Muslim League ministry even for one day. It was either in East Pakistan or Sindh. Until the end, it was the Congress ministry in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The real creators of Pakistan then were the Muslims of the minority provinces. They generated a wave in 1946. It was because of this wave that when the elections took place, they established beyond a shadow of doubt that the Muslim League was the sole representative party of the Muslim community.”

Dr. Israr said that what started right, soon went wrong. “The creation of Pakistan was a good thing. It was created with good intentions; there was a long historical background to the movement, but we failed badly. There is one quote from Quaid-e-Azam worth remembering: ‘God has given us a golden opportunity to prove our worth as architects of a new state, and let it not be said that we didn’t prove equal to the task.’ Unfortunately, we proved that we were not equal to the task. Where is Pakistan? We divided it into two countries (in 1971). What do we have now? There is no such thing as ‘qaum’ in Pakistan.

“Only a miracle can save Pakistan,” Dr. Israr said. “To me, the creation of Pakistan was in itself a miracle, and I see optimism only in the form of a miracle. In 1946, Quaid-e-Azam had given up on the demand for Pakistan. When you had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, what did it mean? It meant that the country would remain united for 10 years. There were to be three zones. Yes, after 10 years any zone would have had the option of secession. All this meant that for 10 long years, there was no question of an independent country. It was only after Nehru issued a statement saying ‘Who lets anybody separate after 10 years?’ that is when Quaid-e-Azam got adamant. He took a step back. ‘Agar yahi niyat hai to ye Cabinet mission plan hamen manzoor nahi hai’ (If these are what your intentions are, then we don’t accept this Cabinet Mission Plan). It was Nehru who created Pakistan.

</b>



It was Nehru who created Pakistan. (A common Paki refrain. I think this type of statement needs Piskological focus. It seems strange that a Pakis would credit their hated adversary for creating their beloved country. There is a deep down feeling among Pakis that Pakistan was merely a mistake, and Nehru, and all the other Hindus, should be blamed for it. It seems like that girl in the movie Excorcist when she is shouts "Help me.")


There is a funda behind this.
Jinnah and ML were working on a escalation ladder with Nehru and congress with the demand for Pakistan. What was the final goal. The goal was to get a large electrorate dominance in the united India Parliament for Muslims in India. The idea was that Nehru and congress would back down in that confrontation and accept a larger influence of Muslims in the legislature of a united India.

But Nehru and Patel made a larger decision based on British influence with the ML and future potential for breakup and chaos in a united India. They also beleived that Jinnah would back down later and then ask for merger with India since Indus water and kashmir was still to be resolved. They beleved that Pakistan would cease to be proxy for the master after a period of realization. But master used UN and other tricks to keep the game going for 60 years.

This uncertainity of Pakistan is showing up in Israr Ahmed statement in this way.

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->