Saturday, April 30, 2011

Hindutvas thieves of history

By Robert Lindsay

First of all, in its present form, the state of India has no right to exist. Prior to 1947, there was no India. Prior to British colonialism, there was no India. There was really no Hinduism either.

It was British colonizers who made note of the varying South Asian forms of religions and collated them into a supposedly uni-variate object called "Hinduism". It was British anthropologists, colonizers and cartographers who invented this thing called "India".

The whole blasted Hindutva lie is based on the ludicrous notion of a "Bharat India". This Bharat India is a fake nation that has supposedly existed for at least hundreds and usually thousands of years. Its borders vary, but always include all of Pakistan and Bangladesh, not to mention the entirely to the failed state of India.

Yes, you have it right, Hindutvas and Indian nationalism in general rejects the right of either Bangladesh or Pakistan to self-determination. Both are "organic" parts of the Indian nation torn loose from the bosom of the bloody soil of Bharat, in need of a fascist irredentist war of national consolidation to bring them back into the fold.

Surely they claim Sri Lanka too.

There are many other places that lack an independent history. Hindutvas claim Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia and sometimes the Philippines. Bharat India extends past Pakistan, through Afghanistan to Iran and all the way to Azerbaijan. Why Iran and Azerbaijan, you ask sensibly? Because "Hindu" fire temples have been found there, that's why. Everyone else seems to think that these are Zoroastrian fire temples, but whatever.

One theory of the name of Azerbaijan is that jan is a word in Urdu, Farsi and Turkic meaning "life". In many Middle Eastern cultures (except Semitic), fire symbolized life. A burning fire meant a full, living life, and a dead fire meant death.

Azerbaijan had abundant oil and gas deposits even back before drilling was known. Apparently, the oil and gas bubbled to the surface and caught fire in places. Azerbaijan was "land of the fires". This is also the area where Zoroastrianism was said to have originated.

None of these lands have a history of their own. Hindutvas, thieves of historical dreams, claim their histories for them.

In fact, it incredibly extends even further. Hindutvas actually claim to have built Greek and Roman civilization! Yet somehow these brilliant Indians were unable to transport this great knowledge back to India where it could have done some good.

Hindutva lies and propaganda are nasty things. There are over 1 billion people in India, and if the most brilliant of them fall for the Hindutva trash (And they do!) you can imagine what fertile soil the minds of average ignorant Indian is for this garbage.

Pakistan was created by Britain, the evil colonist, they scream. It must be returned to the bosom of Bharat! But no, Chaudhry Rehmat Ali coined the name and the idea, and Ali Jinnah pushed for it. But these two were Islamic fundamentalists, the Hindutvas screech, ready to put 50 million more Hindus to the flames and finish the job the Mughals started.

But no again. Jinnah, the whiskey-loving Muslim, and Iqbal, were secular men. Jinnah was committed to equal rights for all, especially the Hindus of Pakistan. That his successors spat on his dreams is no fault of the great man. Instead of being an evil British plot to tear the heart of Bharat from its bloody chest, the notion of Pakistan was opposed by the sober and worried British.

Yes, Pakistan is a new state, but it is an old civilization. Italy was formed in the 1800's, but it is the inheritor of Roman civilization. The Greeks were not freed from the Ottoman yoke until the same century, yet they are children of Socrates and Plato. Iran did not become a state until 1935, yet it is properly recognized as the descendant of ancient Persian civilization.

Pakistan had a history before 1947 and even before Islam, and it was not necessarily entirely cognate with India's history (however defined!) at all.

Let us keep in mind that in 1947, the colony of India was freed from the British. As a fake new country with no history at all, the parts of that country had a right to self-determination.

At that time, India was composed of about 3,000 princely states. This was the nature of the Indian region before British colonialism, and the British never entirely dismantled it. 3,000 princely states were never incorporated into any kind of non-colonial entity remotely called "India" at any time.

A number of these states refused to join India, and India immediately dragooned an army together and attacked every one of these states full force, causing many deaths and injuries. All recalcitrant states were dragged into the fake new state kicking and screaming.

Kashmir, almost 90% Muslim, wanted to go to the new state of Pakistan, but it's governor was a Hindu who told the people to go to Hell and ordered Kashmir to be part of India. Kashmir had never been an integral part of any non-colonial entity called "India".

In 1947, the UN ordered India to hold a plebiscite on Kashmir so the people could have the right to self-determination. To this day, India has refused to implement this resolution. India must be placed, alongside Turkey, Israel, Indonesia and Morocco, as a colonial international scofflaw.

The entire Northeast of India is made up for the most part of East Asians or Mongoloids. Many are Buddhists and same are animists. In neither race, nor culture, nor history, nor religion do they resemble most Indians. The no-man's land of the Northeast was forcibly incorporated into India by British colonialists in the late 1800's, long after they first colonized India. The area is not even an original colony.

From the start, the entire northeast has refused to join India, and most of the region has been up in arms ever since. It's clear that India has no right whatsoever to this entire region. I include the states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and even parts of Assam.

As the fascist Jewish nationalists run amok, turning their corner of Wikipedia into Judeopedia, so their fascist Hindutva allies run amok in their corner of Wikipedia, transforming it into Hindupedia. See the article on the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh for example. Who knew that the tracts, not to mention all of Bangladesh, are really part of India?

As Pakistani nationalists seek to assert their right to construct their own national identity free from fascist Hindutvas, so too to Bengalis from Bangladesh seek to assert their own history. Pakhub is a good spot for young Bangladeshi and Pakistani patriots, mostly secular, seek to ownership of their national narratives from Hindutva hegemony.

The liars of the Right are so wrong to marry fascism and Communism. The Left has always been about national sovereignty, cultural and linguistic freedom and even at the extreme, the right of self-determination.

The Bolsheviks were the originators of these themes, which now play out across our world, especially in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Colombia, where indigenous peoples and linguistic minorities are granted freedom ranging from cultural and linguistic freedom all the way to tracts of land where they have significant political rights of governance.

On the other side is the Right and fascism and imperialism. All nation-building and wars of national consolidation are objectively imperialist or fascist. Where the Left seeks autonomy of nations, the fascists and imperialists wish to consolidate them all into a single land, crush everyone but the most numerous, and force everyone into one organic nation-state, eradicating centuries of linguistic and cultural history.

Where the Left fights colonialism and imperialism, the Right wages endless rhetorical and actual irredentist and revanchist wars to reclaim the lost lands of yore and subjugate or toss out the new owners.

Where Stalin and Mao crushed nations and imposed Russian and Han hegemony on languages and cultures, they were veering into fascist territory. There can be no progressive claim to such things.

Looking through a slanderous campaign against ISI

By Momin Iftikhar

With the smoothly whizzing major engines of international media at their command, the US has considerable power of conducting no holds barred dirty campaigns in pursuit of its national objectives. This power is at full display, in all its perfidy, as the US focuses on the endgame in Afghanistan where despite the much-heralded surge , a convincing American comeback seems as distant as ever. Following a spate of derogatory articles in major US papers, the latest fusillade has come from the Guardian in UK which, with exquisite timings, has released the extracts from WikiLeaks, alleging that the US ranks the ISI alongside al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The campaign against the ISI has been rumbling in the corridors of US powers for quite some times now. It started with muffled accusations that there were rogue elements within its ranks who were surreptitiously supporting Afghan Taliban factions who were at cross purposes to the US strategy in Afghanistan. This propaganda has continued for considerable time now oblivious of the fact that no agency worth its salt can allow things to come to such a level of deterioration because without effective and unimpeachable institutionalized controls, placed over conduct of operations, no agency can exercise its designated mandate. Knuckles seem to be off now with Mike Mullen stating these stark accusations, sitting right in Islamabad in his choreographed interviews to the local media.

Intelligence agencies, the world over are a covert instrument for conduct of state policies in the realm of foreign affairs. In this regard the ISI is no different from the CIA; it has its own national interests foremost and at priority one while it plans and conducts its operations. In this context, while there may be common grounds (interests) where cooperation may be possible but inevitably there would be areas of discord where a clash of interest is bound to arise. As the situation in Afghanistan turns murky with the US dithering over which route to adopt at a number of fast approaching policy forks, the adverse implications for Pakistan are obvious. The propaganda tirade against the ISI is indicative of the clash of Pak-US interests in Afghanistan and a US desire to turn the agency totally subservient to its own interests and desires. This situation calls for serious deliberations upon the consequences of losing our national sovereignty over vital organs of national defence. A failure to do so will unleash catastrophic consequences in relations to our capability of shaping the course of future events in line with our national priorities.

The Raymond Davis affair is a watershed that defines the degree to which the CIA wants Pakistan to succumb while defining the terms of intelligence cooperation. That a CIA contractor, whom President Obama called our diplomat in Islamabad could kill two men in broad daylight in one of the busiest intersections of Lahore and then get away scot-free has bared the extent of CIA unaccounted operations inside Pakistan and the degree of immunity it wants to enjoy. It also indicated how ruthless intelligence operations can be and the extent to which the US moral values are prominent through their absence in shaping of CIA operations. This is a unique situation where the US wants to conduct carte blanche operations on Pakistani territory without restraints; a scenario that perhaps can t be replicated anywhere else in the world. The CIA has gradually expanded its envelope to Pakistan s detriment, and the ISI must do its duty to arrest the situation from further deterioration, notwithstanding the ire that comes forth from the US propaganda machinery.

Conduct of the drone strikes campaign by the CIA, with bare minimum intelligence sharing with the ISI, has also emerged as a caveat where the US agency is overstepping limits. There was a leak in the press recently that boasted of the CIA having developed spy rings in Fata to support the drone attacks independent of interference from the ISI. It ought to be noted though that the brazen and cavalier manner in which the CIA is conducting the drone strikes, unmindful of the tremendous loss of innocent lives, is causing a strong backlash in Pakistan. The number of suicide bombings in Pakistan registers an upsurge in tandem with the frequency of drone strikes, a lamentable and sad phenomenon in which victims on both locations happen to be innocent Pakistanis paying the price for CIA arrogance and lack of respect for human life. The ISI needs to circumscribe the liberty of action demanded, and exercised, by the CIA to counter the trigger happiness of CIA operators which bear an unacceptable price tag for Pakistan. The irresponsible and un-accounted for manner, in which the CIA drone campaign spills innocent blood, makes it a fit case for earning the epithet of a terrorist agency by CIA itself.

The CIA s brouhaha against the ISI maintaining contact with Haqqani faction is pointless as well. An intelligence outfit needs to be in touch with a wide spectrum of entities across the political divide. The CIA is known to be maintaining contacts with all shades of organizations on both sides of the Pak Afghan border, including Taliban leadership, and should not grudge similar practices by the ISI. If Haqqani is causing difficulties for the US military why don t they corner him using their formidable spy rings in combination with awesome technological prowess of which the drones are but one manifest. If they can t seal the Afghan border to stop infiltration by Haqqani led insurgents how do they expect the Pakistan Army and ISI to do it for them when Pakistan has already shed more blood in two years than the combined US casualties in Afghanistan over the span of last ten years.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Afghan refugees celebrate Indian cricket victory by killing a Pakistani nurse

PESHAWAR: One staff nurse of Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) was killed in aerial firing opened by cricket fans in various parts of city as gloom and despondency was written large on the face of Peshawarites at the news of Indian victory in World Cup Semi Final 2011.

While Peshawarites were in a state of shock due to the defeat of the national team the Afghan refugees were celebrating the Indian victory and opened aerial firing and took out rallies to celebrate the occasion.

In another incident, a resident of Sethi Town area pelted stones at his TV set after the defeat of the Pakistani team and felt pain in the chest. He was taken to nearby hospital for treatment but he expired due to heart attack.

Separately, a petition has been started to expel Afghan refugees from Pakistan and can be found here.
All Pakistani loyal to their country are urged to sign the petition.