Bangladesh and now Independent Baluchistan

by Syed Atiq ul Hassan

Pakistani politicians and army officials blamed people of East Pakistan as being burden on Pakistan’s treasury. They were called coward and beggars. Today, Bangladeshi economy is better than Pakistan’s. Today Bangladeshi Taka is better than the Pakistani Rupee in international market. Today, Pakistan is begging Bangladesh to play cricket in Pakistan with assurance to provide them full security so that the Pakistani image can be restored for holding international cricket events in Pakistan.

“There is no question that the situation in Baluchistan is alarming and needs urgent attention….Military operation cannot be the solution – Pakistan should not forget what happened in East Pakistan.”

First East Pakistan to Bangladesh and now towards Baluchistan to Independent Baluchistan, political reasons may be un-identical but the tale of injustices; ignorance and autocratic behaviour of Pakistani establishment and civilian federal bureaucracy remain the same.

In Unstable Fields

Comment by Omar Ali

The writer is a former Secretary of the Indian intelligence agency RAW (an agency no more capable than other arms of the Indian government, but thought in Pakistan to possess superhuman powers and very beautiful female agents who trap Pakistani patriots, or so we hope).  His views on things to come..

To read the article » In unstable fields by Vikram Sood » CLICK HERE

Via » Brown Pundits

FACTS ARE FACTS – The Untold Story of India’s Partition. By WALI KHAN

Translation by Dr. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed

Second Edition, November 2004

Excerpt;

[ page 194 & 195] … Pakistan was a different story. The Muslim League had taken no part in the country’s freedom. They never launched any movement or struggled for freedom. So engrossed were they in opposing the Congress Party that they sought British help in fulfilling their objective. The British were aware that in the whole of Pakistan there was only one organisation which had participated in the struggle against British imperialism, the Khudai Khidmatgars of the North West Frontier Province. The British and the Khudai Khidmatgars were naturally not kindly disposed towards each other. On these two scores, the MuslimLeague and the British were on common ground; therefore, whoever opposed the British, was also opposed to the Muslim League. Consequently, a Muslim League Government was expected to fall in line with the British, and would allow the British to use it in taking revenge on behalf of the allies. The British viewed Pakistan as a totally new country, which would take a while to stand on its own. For years to come the Government of Pakistan would have to look up to the British for assistance. Another reason for British complacency about Pakistan was that her rulers were not locally born, but had migrated from India. They were immigrants who did not have their roots in the new country. Their authority was derived from the Muslim League. Based on empirical evidence the British realised thatthe Muslim League could not acquire political power even inMuslim Punjab. It is axiomatic that if a political party is not properly organised and disciplined, the political power slips outof its hands and passes on to the bureaucracy. The Governmentof Pakistan did precisely what the British had expected them to do. Almost all key positions were given to the British. Whenthe names of the new Governors of the Provinces were announced, with the exception of Sind all the provinces hadBritish Governors: (1) Sir Frederick Bourne, East Bengal; (2)Sir Francis Mudie, Punjab; (3) Sir George Cunningham, NWFP; and (4) An Englishman as Agent in Baluchistan. Sir Ghulam Husain Hidayatullah was the only Pakistani, who was appointed the Governor of Sindh. This appointmentwas made because the capital of Sind was Karachi which alsohappened to be the capital of Pakistan. The Government Houseof Sind was occupied by Jinnah, the Governor-General of Pakistan. Therefore another residence had to be arranged for the Governor of Sindh!The British were appointed the Chiefs of the PakistanArmy, Air Force and Navy: (1) General Sir Frank Messervy,Commander-in-Chief, Army; (2) Air Vice-Marshal Perry Keane, Chief of Air Force; and (3) Rear Admiral Jefford, Chief of Naval Staff …

[page 199] It is curious logic that when we participated in thestruggle for freedom with the Congress against the British rule, the gutless Muslim League leaders used to taunt us by calling us the children of the Hindus. Now when the Hindus have left behind properties worth crores of rupees, those very leaders are the first to arrive, take possession of them, and assert their right on them. ….

Courtesy: scribd

http://www.scribd.com/doc/73921691/Wali-Khan-s-Book-Facts-Are-Facts-The-Untold-Story-of-India-s-Partition-in-1947

Fikr-e-G.M. Syed Aur Aaj Ka Pakistan

 

KARACHI – SINDH, Aug 12: Speakers clarified the misconceptions regarding Sindh’s famous politician G.M. Syed and touched on his philosophy of life at the launch of the book Fikr-i-G.M. Syed Aur Aaj Ka Pakistan by Abdul Khaliq Junejo at the PMA House on Friday.

The book is an Urdu translation of three of the politician’s known speeches.

Dr Jaffer Ahmed, who presided over the event, read out a few excerpts from the preface. He said two different behaviours and attitudes vis-à-vis the state’s functioning had existed from the time Pakistan came into being. The first (which had turned into an ideological paradigm) was to do with a strong centralised system, which was usually considered necessary for the country’s unity and progress. Those who held this view often used religion and patriotism to support their standpoint. He said in 1951 no less than 32 religious scholars came up with a programme in favour of that kind of rule, despite the fact that East Pakistan was also part of the country at that time. They were doing so in a country which was multiethnic and multilingual.

Dr Ahmed said the other view that ran parallel to the first one was in favour of provincial and regional autonomy.

The Centre often labelled those who held that view as separatists. He said G.M. Syed was unfortunately one of those politicians who after partition became a victim of the Muslim League’s wrath and was not only ignored in the national discourse but was also dubbed as a ‘negative force’. Such politicians were often accused of something that they never committed or believed in.

He said the book contained some predictions made by G.M. Syed which were now proving true. In the book, he’s seen welcoming those who’d migrated from India to Pakistan and in a speech delivered in Vienna in 1952 he condemned the western powers for adopting the policy of supporting religious forces to counter communism. G.M. Syed had pointed out that if the West continued doing that, the religious extremists and regressive forces would take advantage of the situation and reach the corridors of power — something that later happened.

Prof Dr Tauseef Ahmed said time had proved G.M. Syed right on the things that he disagreed with Mr Jinnah. It was in 1946 that he first took issue with Mr Jinnah and his ‘confederation’ approach was not liked by the Muslim League. He said his address at the formation of the Pakistan People’s Organisation indicated that G.M. Syed wished for a state where there’d be a socialist system, where there’d be protection of everybody’s basic rights.

MQM’s leaders on PML-N, Nawaz Sharif & Ch. Nisar Ali Khan

Courtesy: → ARY NEWS TV, YouTube

Like army, like nation – by Nadeem F. Paracha

Excerpt:

The basic socio-political mindset of the Pakistani society is the outcome of various faith-based experiments conducted by the state and the armed forces.

The party

In 1995, sometime in May, an uncle of mine (an ex-army man), was invited to a party of sorts.

The invitation came from a former top-ranking military officer who had also worked for the Pakistan intelligence agency, the ISI. He was in the army with my uncle (who now resides abroad) during the 1960s.

My uncle, who was visiting Pakistan, asked if I was interested in going with him. I agreed.

The event was at a military officer’s posh bungalow in Karachi’s Clifton area. Most of the guests (if not all) were former military men. All were articulate, spoke fluent English and wore modern, western clothes.

I was not surprised by this but what did surprise me was a rather schizophrenic aura about the surroundings. Though modern-looking and modern-sounding, the gathering turned out to be a segregated affair.

The men’s wives were placed in a separate room, while the men gathered in a wider sitting area.

By now it become clear to me that I wouldn’t be getting served anything stronger than Pepsi on the rocks!

I scratched my head, thinking that even though I was at a ‘party’ in a posh, stylish bungalow in the posh, stylish Clifton area with all these posh stylish military men and their wives and yet, somehow I felt there very little that was ‘modern’ about the situation.

By modern, I also mean the thinking that was reflected by the male guests on politics, society and religion. Most of the men were also clean-shaven and reeking of expensive cologne, but even while talking about cars, horses and their vacations in Europe, they kept using Arabic expressions such as mashallah, alhamdullila, inshallah, etc.

I tried to strike up some political conversations with a few gentlemen but they expected me to agree with them about how civilian politicians were corrupt, how democracy can be a threat to Pakistan, how civilian leaders do not understand India’s nefarious designs, et al. …

The experiment

The Pakistan Army was once a staunchly secular beast. All across the 1950s and 1960s it was steeped in secular (albeit conservative) traditions and so were its sociological aspects.

In fact, until the late 1960s, Pakistani military men were asked to keep religion a private matter and religious exhibitionism was scorned at as well as reprimanded – mostly during Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s dictatorship (1959-69).

No Surprise, they can deny the 18th constitutional amendment but they cannot hide themselves from the people of oppressed constituent units of Pakistan

Dar resigns as deputy chief of commission

By Amir Wasim

ISLAMABAD: In what appears to be a face-saving move, Senator Ishaq Dar of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N resigned on Wednesday as deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on Implementation of 18th Amendment.

In a five-page letter to Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, Senator Dar cited differences over the devolution of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and transfer of assets and services of federal employees to the provinces as the main reasons for his decision.

Last week, the PML-N senator found himself in a difficult situation when reporters took him on during a news conference with the chairman of the commission, Senator Raza Rabbani, for defending the planned HEC devolution which was against the stance of his party. “I am not responsible for everybody in the party,” he said at the time. …

Read more : DAWN

Interview with Pratap Mehta on Pakistan

– Pratap Mehta: Pakistan’s Perpetual Identity Crisis

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political theorist and intellectual historian based in New Delhi, is leading us through another reflection on the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan.

The reconsideration of partition is a critical, current existential question not only for South Asians, but also for Americans who watch the continuous outrages from Taliban and CIA sanctuaries inside Pakistan. It’s a question on many levels — terrorism, geopolitics, ethnicity and religion — but, Pratap Mehta says, “it’s fundamentally the question of the identity of a country.”

In his telling of the partition story, the contemporary reality of Pakistan grew out of a failure to answer a core challenge of creating a nation-state: how do you protect a minority? It’s Mehta’s view that the framers of the modern subcontinent — notably Gandhi, Jinnah & Nehru — never imagined a stable solution to this question. He blames two shortcomings of the political discourse at the time of India’s independence:

The first is that it was always assumed that the pull of religious identities in India is so deep that any conception of citizenship that fully detaches the idea of citizenship from religious identity is not going to be a tenable one.

The second is that Gandhi in particular, and the Congress Party in general, had a conception of India which was really a kind of federation of communities. So the Congress Party saw [the creation of India] as about friendship among a federation of communities, not as a project of liberating individuals from the burden of community identity to be whatever it is that they wished to be.

The other way of thinking about this, which is to think about a conception of citizenship where identities matter less to what political rights you have, that was never considered seriously as a political project. Perhaps that would have provided a much more ideologically coherent way of dealing with the challenges of creating a modern nation-state. – – Pratap Bhanu Mehta with Chris Lydon at the Watson Institute, April 12, 2011.

Unlike many other Open Source talkers on Pakistan, Pratap Mehta does not immediately link its Islamization to the United States and its1980s jihad against the Soviets. Reagan and his CIA-Mujahideen military complex were indeed powerful players in the rise of Islamic extremism in Pakistan, he agrees, but the turn began first during a national identity crisis precipitated by another partition, the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Suddenly, Mehta is telling us, Pakistan could no longer define itself as the unique homeland for Muslims in the subcontinent. In search of identity, and distinction from its new neighbor to the east, Pakistan turned towards a West Asian brand of Islam, the hardline Saudi Wahhabism that has become a definitive ideology in today’s Islamic extremism.

Mehta is hopeful, though, that in open democratic elections Islamic parties would remain relatively marginalized, that despite the push to convert Pakistan into a West Asian style Islamic state since 1971, “the cultural weight of it being a South Asian country” with a tradition of secular Islam “remains strong enough to be an antidote.”

Click here to listen Radio Open Source interview with Pratap Mehta, it is much more in depth than the text summary

Courtesy: http://www.radioopensource.org/pratap-mehta-pakistans-perpetual-identity-crisis/

HEC issue to end up in the Supreme Court

By Zubair Shah

KARACHI: It is true that after the passage of 18th Constitutional Amendment, the Pakistani federation is inching towards the constitutional sketch made public in the Muslim League’s famous 1940 Lahore Resolution. However, this journey is not without a tough resistance by the country’s entrenched pro status quo centripetal forces, who would like to see a strong centre at the expense of federating units. Nothing highlights this phenomenon better than the drama around the planned devolution of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) announced recently.

Soon after the announcement, a smear campaign was launched by centripetal forces, who have been advocating and supporting the status quo based on numerous technical and legal grounds with apocalyptic predictions. …

Read more : Daily Times

Whither Pakistan

by Syed Ehtisham

Excerpt:

The leadership of the Muslim League came mostly from provinces which were not parts of Pakistan. Jinnah, like all autocrats did not tolerate difference of opinion and had excluded the bright and the intelligent like Suharwardy and Fazal Haque while promoting Liaquat and Nazimuddin …

…. Jinnah, in a singularly misconceived move towards national integration, declared that Urdu and only Urdu will be the official language of Pakistan. That, I believe, was the first nail.

Jinnah, while he lived, kept all the levers of power in his hands. Liaquat, PM in name, did not even enjoy the powers White House chief of the staff does.

Jinnah died. Liaquat did not have the authority to embrace his legacy. The power brokers in West Pakistan would not allow the drafting of a constitution which would give representation proportional to the population of East Pakistan. I recall mullahs gave the argument that if you took out 20% of the population of the East who were Hindus, the numbers between the two wings would be equal. Some even suggested that Hindus be made to pay Jazya. Finance minister Ghulam Muhammad pointed out that they would in that case be exempt from taxes. That shut the mouth of the religious lobby.

Liaquat was reduced to offering a basic principles resolution (Qarardad e Maqasid), which declared Pakistan to be an Islamic State. That put paid to Jinnah’s legacy of separation of faith and state. ….

…. Yahya arranged an election on the basis of adult franchise. Mujib got overall majority and could garner two third majority with the help of smaller provinces. There was no problem with making Mujib the PM, except personally to Bhutto, but he wanted autonomy of the kind Jinnah had insisted on in pre-independence India. ….

….. Pakistan was further burdened by immense military expenditure, which necessitated an unholy mass of debt. All nation building measures remained in the limbo. Infra-structure, education, health, research and industry remained stunted. ….

To read complete article : ViewPoint

ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY INVITING ARMY & JUDICIARY TO PLAY UNCONSTITUTIONAL ROLE AGAINST ELECTED DEMOCRATIC GOVT.

‘N’ reaffirms judiciary, army proposal

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (N) on Wednesday said it considered the army and the judiciary major stakeholders in the country’s national affairs as it justified Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s controversial call for inviting representatives of the two institutions at a proposed all-party conference to prepare a broad-based national agenda to steer the country out of crisis.

“Since the country’s constitution has assigned roles to both the judiciary and the army, besides the executive, the call for inviting the army chief and the chief justice for consultation on national issues is not something extra-constitutional,” PML-N spokesman Ahsan Iqbal told a joint news conference with the party’s former information secretary, Siddiqul Farooque, and MNA Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry at the party’s central secretariat here.

The PML-N leaders announced that if the government did not stop recruitment in state-owned corporations on ‘political grounds’, their party’s parliamentarians would ‘gherao’ (besiege) these institutions.

The Punjab chief minister told journalists after inaugurating a three-day polio campaign in Lahore on Monday that the deteriorating situation in the country demanded that all stakeholders, including the political leadership, army and the judiciary, sat together and discussed the challenges facing the country.

He also said he had already contacted Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani “on the advice of (party chief) Nawaz Sharif to suggest to him to sit together with the army and the judiciary and discuss a strategy to steer the country out of the current situation”.

Wednesday’s news conference seemed aimed at countering criticism of Mr Sharif’s statement from the federally ruling Pakistan People’s Party and various sections of society and media, with some political observers terming the call as an open invitation to the army for a direct intervention in the country’s political matters.

Read more : DAWN

Doctor of Shame: Secrets revealed!!! Must Watch

Faisal Raza Abidi & Samina Khawer Hayat revealed secrets of the doctor of Shame in program Khari Baat – 28th Feb 2011 -!!! The language of the program is urdu/ Hindi. Must Watch!

Courtesy: DunyaTV (Khari Baat with Mubashir Lukman, 28 Feb. 2011)

via – Siasat – via- Punjab Rang – You Tube

When it comes to PPP, even judiciary acts somewhat differently!?

The language of the discussion is urdu/ Hindi.

Courtesy: ARY News (11th hour with Waseem Baadaami, guest Faouzia Wahab)

via – Siasat – You Tube Link

DHA: authority within authority

PML-N to oppose DHA bill in parliament

“This draft is not only repugnant to basic tenant of the constitution but is also against the provincial autonomy, laws of Pakistan and international agreements,” said PML-N leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

ISLAMABAD: The Defence Housing Authority (DHA) bill may not be enacted into law as the main opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), has decided to vehemently oppose the bill whenever it comes to the parliament.

“Whenever this bill is tabled before the National Assembly, Muslim League (N) will play its historic role by opposing it,” said the N-League spokesman on Thursday. …

Read more : DAWN

GM Syed’s birth anniversary today

KARACHI – The sleepy town of Sann in Dadu district lights up twice every year for GM Syed, the founder of the Sindhi nationalist movement – on January 17 for his birth anniversary and in April for his death anniversary.

While Syed and his followers are branded as traitors now in the mainstream narrative on account of their demand for an independent Sindh, few are aware of the fact that in 1940, as then-Sindh education minister, Syed was the first person from the Muslim League to table the Pakistan Resolution. As such, the Sindh Assembly was the first to demand the creation of Pakistan in as many words. He later dissociated himself from the party over disagreements with the leadership, including Muhammed Ali Jinnah.

Disillusioned eventually with what he referred to as the hegemony of certain ethnicities and classes over the polity of the newly-formed country, Syed distanced himself from the idea of Pakistan, and thus began a movement for the ‘independence’ of Sindh. Today, if one goes by the sheer number of people who visit Sann every year to pay homage to him, one would understand how much currency GM Syed’s ideology that combines nationalism with communism and Sufism has in Sindh. He also warned followers against sectarianism, and preached international peace and harmony: begin with your homeland and liberate it; then liberate the rest of the country; and then spread your ideas to the rest of the world, he said. …

Read more : Pakistan Today

Times we live in

In order to make sense of the atmosphere of fear, it is important to distance oneself from essentialist readings of Muslim culture as being inherently intolerant.

By Ammar Ali Jan

It is difficult to point out what is more painful to witness; the brutal murder of a Governor of the largest province of the country because he had dared to express dissent on a controversial law or the public celebration of this violent act by extremist forces, with complete impunity from the state. What is particularly shocking, however, is the muted response of secular political parties in the country in the wake of this assassination. Despite enjoying complete electoral hegemony over religious forces in Pakistan, mainstream parties are finding it increasingly difficult to speak out against discriminatory practices in our society, owing to the growing domination of religious forces in setting the contours of our cultural discourse.

Alleged plot to assassinate LHC CJ: ‘Special Branch officials sought to create political rift’

ISLAMABAD: The three-member judicial commission that probed into the alleged plot to kill Chief Justice Lahore High Court Khwaja Mohammad Sharif, has revealed in its report that the apparent objective of the Special Branch report, authored by additional Inspector General, Colonel Ehsanur Rehman and his deputy Shahid Mahmood, was to malign and defame persons associated with the ruling party and the party itself.

This was done, the Commission said, to pitch the Punjab government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) against the federal government of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

The Commission also questioned the move by the Special Branch Punjab to send one copy of the source report to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif when he was in Murree. The Commission wondered why the report was sent to Nawaz Sharif, who did not hold any official position in the Punjab government. …

Read more : The Express Tribune

Pakistan : Honesty Among thieves – Exposing each other!

– MQM against its rivals : To read in urdu CLICK HERE

Courtesy: SAMAA TV ( Tonight with Jasmeen, 29 December 2010)

via – ZemTV – You Tube Link

The Man Who Knew The Future Of Pakistan Before Its Creation – Abul Kalam Azad’s predictions about Pakistan – all correct

THE MAN WHO KNEW THE FUTURE

by Shorish Kashmiri, Matbooat Chattan, Lahore

Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad gave the following interview to journalist Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine, Chattan, in April 1946. It was a time when the Cabinet Mission was holding its proceedings in Delhi and Simla. Azad made some startling predictions during the course of the interview, saying that religious conflict would tear apart Pakistan and its eastern half would carve out its own future. He even said that Pakistan’s incompetent rulers might pave the way for military rule. According to Shorish Kashmiri, Azad had earmarked the early hours of the morning for him and the interview was conducted over a period of two weeks. This interview had published Kashmiri’s own book Abul Kalam Azad, which was printed only once by Matbooat Chattan Lahore, a now-defunct publishing house. Former Union Cabinet Minister Arif Mohammed Khan discovered the book after searching for many years and translated the interview in English.

Excerpt :

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: The Man Who Knew The Future Of Pakistan Before Its Creation

Muslims must realise that they are bearers of a universal message. They are not a racial or regional grouping in whose territory others cannot enter. … But today the situation is worse than ever. Muslims have become firm in their communalism; they prefer politics to religion …

The factors that laid the foundation of Islam in Indian society and created a powerful following have become victim of the politics of partition….

Read more : Scribd

Nawaz Sharif’s billions of dollars corruption exposed in “Off The Record” program of Kashif Abbasi

The language of Talk show is urdu/ Hindi.

Courtesy: ARY News (Off The Record with Kashif Abbasi, 16 November 2010)

via – ZemTV – YouTbue Link 1, 2, 3

Judiciary is not non-partisan, it tilts towards Muslim league (PML-N) – says Fauzia Wahab; Chief Justice has characteristics of military generals – says Abbas Athar

The language of talk show is urdu/ Hindi.

Courtesy: – Express TV – Front Line (Kamran Shahid, Abbas Athar, Fauzia Wahab, Kazi Anwar)

Via- ZemTv, – You Tube- Link

The burden of history

– Partition, 1947: The burden of history

By Mahir Ali

“I have considered from every possible point of view the scheme of Pakistan as formulated by the Muslim League”, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad proclaimed in a crucial statement issued some 16 months before India was partitioned in August 1947. “As an Indian, I have examined its implications for the future of India as a whole. As a Muslim, I have examined its likely effects upon the fortunes of Muslims in India… I have come to the conclusion that it is harmful not only for India as a whole but for Muslims in particular. And in fact it creates more problems than it solves”.

Read more >> Deccan Chronicle