Pakistan: Illegitimate Child of Two Empires
Editorial Team
To
understand the roots of Pakistan, one has to go back at least a few centuries,
to the beginnings of the British Empire in India. Robert Clive, one of the early
de facto viceroys, established the standard British practice of divide and rule,
playing off local princes against one another. Moving into the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, this practice evolved into a more refined
practice of favoring Indian Muslims against the majority Hindus in the colonized
nation. While many secular-minded Hindu leaders worked hard to dissuade Muslims
from falling for the British ploy, the Muslim leadership gradually started to
see the seeds of the carving of their own homeland from India, in accordance to
their religious beliefs of ruling by the Shariah....More...
Vajpayee's
Headache
Dr.
Subodh Atal
In a recent speech during his visit to South
East Asia, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called Jammu and
Kashmir a "headache". Now a headache is an annoyance that tends to
debilitate an otherwise perfectly healthy human being, and can come back
repeatedly to take away one's quality of life. Did Vajpayee
understand the significance of what he was saying? Or was it a Freudian
slip of the tongue that reveals his own state of mind? Let's look at
Vajpayee’s dealings on Jammu and Kashmir since he was elected.....More...
The Taliban Rises - Again
Syed Saleem Shahzad
The
Taliban
movement has widely regrouped itself in Afghanistan, mostly along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. The social, geographical and
political characteristics of the whole of this tribal belt favor the
Taliban fighters, and the Pakistani, US and Afghan authorities just
cannot control the Taliban in this specific region.....More...
Hindu Money In India Co-opted for Islam
Vinod Kumar
The revelations in Sandhya Jain's article " Nationalization of the Hindu
temple" (Pioneer, Oct 7, 2003) about using money from Hindu temples for
Madarasas development and Haj subsidy (and churches development) are no
doubt disturbing but are they a surprise?
Not really. May be to a certain extent but is this a new phenomenon?...More...
The Culture of
Anti-India Tirades
K.N. Pandita
Pakistani
President’s anti-India invective in the UN General Assembly reflects the
hate-India culture deeply and extensively embedded in the psyche of the
Pakistani ruling class. I have had occasions of talking to many ordinary
Pakistani citizens. To my surprise I found them equally influenced by
the bad logic of hate India. This makes me doubt the rationale of such
groups in India who are exuberant about people to people contact
exercise....More...
Shah Wali-Ullah and Jihad
Vinod Kumar
A contemporary of Abdul Wahhab of Saudi Arabia,
Shah Wali-Allah's influence on Muslim thought in India cannot be
overemphasized. Shah Wali-ullah was a man of encyclopedic
learning. He was not one of those scholars who keep different branches
of knowledge in different chambers of their mind. Shah Wali-Ullah is regarded as one of the
greatest Muslim thinkers of all times. This is just to emphasize what
position Shah Wali-Ullah holds in Islam and what his views about Hindus
and jihad were?....More...
J&K: Withering Roses - The Peace
Process Melts Down
Praveen Swami
It is perhaps a sign of
the extraordinary desperation that has gripped policy-making on Jammu
and Kashmir (J&K) that the blossoming of every single rose is heralded
as evidence that summer has arrived. The unremitting violence that has
followed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's August visit to Srinagar
has shown yet again that roses can be easily cut down, or can simply
wither away in the relentless heat of the real world. Amidst the usual
hand-wringing provoked by the violence, however, few have asked the real
question that needs to be addressed: just why has peace-making proved so
difficult a business in Jammu and Kashmir?...More...
The Gulf is in Serious Turmoil
K.N.
Pandita
After the bizarre Anglo-American imperialist
re-visitation of Iraq, the heat has been turned on Iran, the immediate
western neighbour of Iraq. Iran has conceded that she has a nuclear
programme but for peaceful means. It means that she is pursuing the
programme of establishing nuclear power stations to produce electricity.
The objection raised by the US is that Iran has sufficient hydrocarbon
resources to meet her power requirements. Why then should Iran invest
large amount in nuclear power production which is much more risky?....More... |
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