Wednesday, January 14, 2009
ON ZULFIQAR ALI BHUTTO
Here are a couple of interesting tidbits about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto from an article Remembering a Governor by V.K.Kapoor (http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040817/edit.htm -- AUG 17, 2004). Mr.Kapoor was ADC to Mr.B.N.Chakravorty who was the Governor of Punjab at that time.
Mrs. Indira Gandhi was on her way to Shimla for a conference with Mr ZA Bhutto. On landing at Chandigarh she was informed by the IAF that her helicopter can’t take off due to bad weather and she’ll have to wait for 3-4 hours. The Governor persuaded her to come to Raj Bhavan for a cup of tea. On the way to Raj Bhavan Mr Chakravorty related to Mrs Gandhi when Bhutto had used the expression “Indian Dogs” in the UN. Mr Chakravorty was then India’s permanent representative to the UN. Mr Chakravorty recounted that Mr Bhutto had conveniently forgotten that he had an Indian “Hindu” mother. And by using this expression he had qualified himself to what the Americans gleefully call ‘S O B’. Mrs Gandhi clapped her hands and laughed heartily.
Many years later when I went to Lahore I heard another story about Bhutto. Bhutto’s mother Nirmala, a Hindu dancing girl, who became Khurshid after marrying Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, was extremely worried about her very sick child’s survival. She asked a Hindu astrologer to cast Bhutto’s horoscope. The astrologer after reading the horoscope told her that for the coming 50 years there was lot of brightness and sunshine but after that there was complete darkness. The relieved mother remarked that she would not be around after 50 years. After 50 years General Zia-ul-Haq put Bhutto in a dark cell from where he never came out.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
HINDUS - PACK UP, LEAVE INDIA AND GO TO USA OR THE MOON.
Is the Subject line shrill, alarmist or sensation mongering? Read the following two articles published by Time Magazine within the last few months, and form your own judgement.
The two articles are captioned "Pakistan: Divided by Faith" (Thursday, Aug. 02, 2007) and "India's Muslims in Crisis" (Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008) (just a day after the Mumbai terror attack began). Anybody who is conversant with Carnatic music knows every song in the Carnatic style has three parts - Pallavi, Anupallavi and Charanam. Using the same analogy, these two articles dealing with 'Faith in Pakistan' and 'Indian Muslims' have different Pallavis (a couple of paragraphs) dealing with the specific topics, followed by almost identical long Anupallavis and Charanams extoling the status of Muslims during Mughal rule of India and bemoaning their current position after India's independence. I will reproduce below the Pallavis of the two articles and then give a bit of Anupallavi and Charanam.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1649060_1649046_1649032,00.html
Thursday, Aug. 02, 2007
Pakistan: Divided by Faith
By Aryn Baker
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650,00.html
Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008
India's Muslims in Crisis
By Aryn Baker
Pallavi for "Pakistan: Divided by Faith".
-----------------------------------------
A few weeks before Abdul Rashid Ghazi died in a shootout with Pakistani special forces, he told me about a young woman who had asked him to make her a suicide bomber. I was drinking tea with Ghazi, the deputy leader of Islamabad's radical Red Mosque, in his small office just off the mosque's main entrance. Outside, a man — a boy really, with barely a beard — paced nervously, an AK-47 gripped tightly in his hands. Inside, one of Ghazi's assistants updated the mosque's website, which promoted his campaign to spread Shari'a, or Islamic law, throughout the land. Another assistant was affixing labels to a stack of newly burned DVDs portraying American "aggression" in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was these heinous acts, said Ghazi, that inspired his young female acolyte to seek martyrdom. "Had I wanted to use her, I could have, because she was completely ready. But I sent her back, saying we don't need her, inshallah [God willing]."
On July 3, Pakistani forces laid siege to the mosque complex, which had housed some 5,000 students, teachers and clerics — plus a host of heavily armed militants. On the eighth day, after many had fled or surrendered, the soldiers raided the compound. Ghazi was killed, along with 11 soldiers, some 80 militants and a dozen women and children who may have been used as human shields. (The Red Mosque remains a magnet for violence: last Friday, a suicide bombing at a restaurant behind the mosque killed at least 13.) After the July 11 assault, the President, General Pervez Musharraf, addressed the nation. This was not a day of celebration, he said: "We have been up against our own people ... They strayed from the right path and became susceptible to terrorism." Then Musharraf posed wider questions meant for Pakistan but relevant, too, to the rest of South Asia: "What kind of Islam do these people represent? What do we want as a nation?" Today, 60 years after partition created Pakistan and India, Islam on the subcontinent is in the grip of a crisis whose central dilemma is the religion's place and role in modern society. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.
Pallavi for "India's Muslims in Crisis".
---------------------------------------
The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in the Oberoi Trident hotel in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country, but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one.
The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, who make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindus, who hover at around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels and lower-paying jobs. Add to that toxic brew the lingering resentment over 2002's anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat. The riots, instigated by Hindu nationalists, killed some 2,000 people, most of them Muslims. To this day, few of the perpetrators have been convicted. (See pictures of the terrorist shootings in Mumbai.)
The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt India's — and neighboring Pakistan's — progress toward peace and prosperity. But before intercommunal relations can improve, there are even bigger problems that must first be worked out: the schism in subcontinental Islam and the religion's place and role in modern India and Pakistan. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.
Beginning of the Anupallavi
---------------------------
On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, mustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment in Barrackpore, near Kolkata, attacked his British lieutenant with a musket, then a sword. At his trial Pandey swore that he acted alone, but his hanging a week later sparked a subcontinental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in Delhi, who bore the brunt of British rage. The remnants of the Mughal Empire were dismantled, and Bahadur Shah, the last Indian Emperor, was exiled to Burma. Five hundred years of Muslim supremacy on the subcontinent was brought to a halt.
Final stanza of the Charanam.
-----------------------------
Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to preeminence as a single whole. "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us," says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies. "In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s, and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule.
That sense of injustice is at the root of Muslim identity today. It has permeated every aspect of society, and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. "People are hungry for justice," says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of the seminal book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. "It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran." These twin phenomena — the longing many Muslims have to see their religion restored as the subcontinent's core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears — reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. Pervez Musharraf asks Pakistanis what they want. But the real question is what they, as well as Indians and Bangladeshis, Muslims and non-Muslims, believe.
HOW ARTFUL FOR THE ARTICLES TO SAY THAT THE PAKISTANIS AS WELL AS INDIANS AND BANGLADESHIS, MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS, BELIEVE THAT THEY SHOULD ALL BE UNITED AGAIN UNDER ISLAMIC RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please read the two articles in full to get the full import of what they say. Is the Time Magazine reporting news or acting as a Muslim Mouthpiece, Pakistani mouthpiece to propogate such pernicious thoughts?
The two articles are captioned "Pakistan: Divided by Faith" (Thursday, Aug. 02, 2007) and "India's Muslims in Crisis" (Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008) (just a day after the Mumbai terror attack began). Anybody who is conversant with Carnatic music knows every song in the Carnatic style has three parts - Pallavi, Anupallavi and Charanam. Using the same analogy, these two articles dealing with 'Faith in Pakistan' and 'Indian Muslims' have different Pallavis (a couple of paragraphs) dealing with the specific topics, followed by almost identical long Anupallavis and Charanams extoling the status of Muslims during Mughal rule of India and bemoaning their current position after India's independence. I will reproduce below the Pallavis of the two articles and then give a bit of Anupallavi and Charanam.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1649060_1649046_1649032,00.html
Thursday, Aug. 02, 2007
Pakistan: Divided by Faith
By Aryn Baker
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650,00.html
Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008
India's Muslims in Crisis
By Aryn Baker
Pallavi for "Pakistan: Divided by Faith".
-----------------------------------------
A few weeks before Abdul Rashid Ghazi died in a shootout with Pakistani special forces, he told me about a young woman who had asked him to make her a suicide bomber. I was drinking tea with Ghazi, the deputy leader of Islamabad's radical Red Mosque, in his small office just off the mosque's main entrance. Outside, a man — a boy really, with barely a beard — paced nervously, an AK-47 gripped tightly in his hands. Inside, one of Ghazi's assistants updated the mosque's website, which promoted his campaign to spread Shari'a, or Islamic law, throughout the land. Another assistant was affixing labels to a stack of newly burned DVDs portraying American "aggression" in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was these heinous acts, said Ghazi, that inspired his young female acolyte to seek martyrdom. "Had I wanted to use her, I could have, because she was completely ready. But I sent her back, saying we don't need her, inshallah [God willing]."
On July 3, Pakistani forces laid siege to the mosque complex, which had housed some 5,000 students, teachers and clerics — plus a host of heavily armed militants. On the eighth day, after many had fled or surrendered, the soldiers raided the compound. Ghazi was killed, along with 11 soldiers, some 80 militants and a dozen women and children who may have been used as human shields. (The Red Mosque remains a magnet for violence: last Friday, a suicide bombing at a restaurant behind the mosque killed at least 13.) After the July 11 assault, the President, General Pervez Musharraf, addressed the nation. This was not a day of celebration, he said: "We have been up against our own people ... They strayed from the right path and became susceptible to terrorism." Then Musharraf posed wider questions meant for Pakistan but relevant, too, to the rest of South Asia: "What kind of Islam do these people represent? What do we want as a nation?" Today, 60 years after partition created Pakistan and India, Islam on the subcontinent is in the grip of a crisis whose central dilemma is the religion's place and role in modern society. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.
Pallavi for "India's Muslims in Crisis".
---------------------------------------
The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in the Oberoi Trident hotel in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where some 40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in India. "We love this as our country, but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he asked via telephone. No answer came. But then he probably wasn't expecting one.
The roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, who make up 13.4% of the population, and India's Hindus, who hover at around 80%, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels and lower-paying jobs. Add to that toxic brew the lingering resentment over 2002's anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat. The riots, instigated by Hindu nationalists, killed some 2,000 people, most of them Muslims. To this day, few of the perpetrators have been convicted. (See pictures of the terrorist shootings in Mumbai.)
The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt India's — and neighboring Pakistan's — progress toward peace and prosperity. But before intercommunal relations can improve, there are even bigger problems that must first be worked out: the schism in subcontinental Islam and the religion's place and role in modern India and Pakistan. It is a crisis 150 years in the making.
Beginning of the Anupallavi
---------------------------
On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, mustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment in Barrackpore, near Kolkata, attacked his British lieutenant with a musket, then a sword. At his trial Pandey swore that he acted alone, but his hanging a week later sparked a subcontinental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in Delhi, who bore the brunt of British rage. The remnants of the Mughal Empire were dismantled, and Bahadur Shah, the last Indian Emperor, was exiled to Burma. Five hundred years of Muslim supremacy on the subcontinent was brought to a halt.
Final stanza of the Charanam.
-----------------------------
Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to preeminence as a single whole. "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us," says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies. "In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s, and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule.
That sense of injustice is at the root of Muslim identity today. It has permeated every aspect of society, and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. "People are hungry for justice," says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of the seminal book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. "It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran." These twin phenomena — the longing many Muslims have to see their religion restored as the subcontinent's core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears — reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. Pervez Musharraf asks Pakistanis what they want. But the real question is what they, as well as Indians and Bangladeshis, Muslims and non-Muslims, believe.
HOW ARTFUL FOR THE ARTICLES TO SAY THAT THE PAKISTANIS AS WELL AS INDIANS AND BANGLADESHIS, MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS, BELIEVE THAT THEY SHOULD ALL BE UNITED AGAIN UNDER ISLAMIC RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please read the two articles in full to get the full import of what they say. Is the Time Magazine reporting news or acting as a Muslim Mouthpiece, Pakistani mouthpiece to propogate such pernicious thoughts?
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