What Constitutes a Stable Society?
By Adnan Syed Pakistan is passing through a vicious negative feedback loop that is beginning to gather momentum. The vicious circle is a result of country’s inability to provide for the basic individual rights of its citizens. Combine that with a burgeoning population, and the rampant nationalist tensions within the society that have been suppressed in the name of religious identity, Pakistan is staring at a nightmarish scenario in the coming decade. Pakistan needs to realize that the existential threat is coming from the failure of its society and not due to the external influences that consume majority of the resources of our nation. Unless we start spending on providing for the four basic rights to our citizens, the chaos will just feed on itself in the years to come. This is … Read entire article »
Filed under: Democracy, human rights, Identity, India, Islamabad, Islamism, musings, Pak Tea House, Pakistan, Religion, Rights, violence
Water Dispute Increases India-Pakistan Tension
The article from today’s New York Times highlights the water problem that will increasingly take center stage as populations in Pakistan and India grow in the coming years. For the first sixty years, we have lived under the shadow of the Kashmir dispute which to this day is unresolved. Hopefully water problem will not grow into another problem between the two nations over the next few decades. … Read entire article »
Devising a new framework for Indo-Pak peace
Raza Rumi Today the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India will meet. This major development should be welcomed. Sceptical noises of distrust in both countries have been heard and the Kashmiri leaders have issued rejectionist statements. Subcontinental leaderships have time and again floundered peace. Sometimes it is the recklessness on the Pakistani side and at other times the Indian officialdom chants the trust-deficit mantra. But this must end. Media wisdom about the BJP and the Pakistan … Read entire article »
Filed under: India, Pakistan, Pakistan-India Peace Process, strategy
Daily Times: Nationalism: inclusive versus exclusive — III
Cross Post from Daily Times Published July 13, 2010 By Ishtiaq Ahmed Rather than hate India, we should learn from India. It has five times a greater population, far greater ethnic and linguistic variation and myriads of religious faiths and cults. It is not a democracy in the social sense but it is a sophisticated democracy in the political sense I have presented, mainly, the exclusive model of nationalism and state-nationalism that I have argued emerged in Pakistan, notwithstanding the very bold attempt of Jinnah to supplant it with inclusive nationalism. Exclusive nationalism — whether based on race or religion or some other cultural factor — discriminates, constitutionally, people who do not qualify as members of the community because they do not share the specific cultural ties that have been chosen to define the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Democracy, Identity, India, Islam, Islamabad, Islamism, Jinnah, Liberal Democratic Pakistan, minorities, Pakistan, Religion, secular Pakistan
Was Gandhi Secular ?
Shahran Asim’s contribution for PTH I know in our Pakistan Studies we have always read that Mahatma Gandhi was not secular and he did ‘nt want Muslim minority to have their share in the post partition scenario. When I raised these questions, someone suggested me to listen to his speeches which have been posted by an organization called Gandhi Server Foundation (www.gandhiserve.org). It is a great historical resource of information related to Mahatma Gandhi, contains his audio library , his letters to Quaid-e-Azam, Nehru and others, etc. I have selected this speech which was addressed to Hindus but is is mostly related to create peace and harmony among the Hindus and Muslims. Please listen to Gandhi on Muslims, start from 3 mins and I would suggest to listen it completely. How he praised … Read entire article »
Daily Dawn: Failure of dictatorship and democracy
Cross Post from Daily Dawn By Niaz Murtaza Friday, 09 Jul, 2010 http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/editorial/failure-of-dictatorship-democracy-970 HOW would you feel if you lived in a poor neighbourhood and your neighbours started getting rich while you became poorer? Angry, envious, depressed, suspicious? Pakistanis have experienced these emotions collectively as East Asia and the Middle East developed. Now even countries down the road in South Asia are developing. Dubai and Korea are already rich, India is moving and, to add insult to injury, unconfirmed rumor has it that even Bangladesh is on to something since the familial break-up. Thank God for Afghanistan and Nepal! We can still walk around in the neighbourhood with some semblance of self-respect. Perceptively concluding that our failure has something to do with governance, we tried both dictatorship and democracy, but neither worked. This calls for an … Read entire article »
Fatal obsession
Raza Rumi It is a matter of public record that the founder of Pakistan had stated that Indo-Pakistan relationship will resemble that of the USA and Canada. Even before the Partition, Jinnah in a 1946 press conference stated, “the two states (Pakistan and India)… will be friends and will go to each other’s rescue in case of danger and will be able to say ‘hands off’ to other nations. We shall then have a Munroe doctrine more solid than America…” This vision along with other pronouncements by Jinnah is buried in the debris of Pakistan’s national security paranoia. The spectre of India and its ‘hegemonic designs’ to use an oft-quoted phrase remain central to Pakistan’s security paradigm. The unwavering view on India is what explains the context for the discussion paper entitled, … Read entire article »
Filed under: India, Liberal Democratic Pakistan, Pakistan, Politics, public policy, south asia, violence, war, Zardari
One Myth, Many Pakistans
Cross Post from The New York Times By ALI SETHI Published: June 11, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13sethi.html?pagewanted=all FOR many Pakistanis, the deaths of more than 80 members of the Ahmadi religious sect in mosque attacks two weeks ago raised questions of the nation’s future. For me, it recalled a command from my schoolboy past: “Write a Note on the Two-Nation Theory.” It was a way of scoring easy points on the history exam, and of using new emotions and impressive-sounding words. I began my answer like this: The Two-Nation Theory is the Theory that holds that the Hindus and Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent are Two Distinct and Separate Nations. It is a Theory that is supported by Numerous Facts and Figures. During the War of Independence of 1857 the Muslim rulers of India were defeated by the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Army, Democracy, FATA, Identity, India, Islam, Islamabad, Jinnah, minorities, Pakistan, Religion, The New York Times, Writers
The GT Road Blog
NPR correspondents are taking the historic Grand Trunk Road from the Bay of Bengal in the east to the Hindu Kush mountains in the west, across the Indian subcontinent. They talk about life along the route. This is the first post from when they arrived in Pakistan, last month. We hope to reproduce, over the next few days, here on PTH, their thoughts and impressions on the journey through Pakistan. In Pakistan, The Grand Trunk Road Is ‘An … Read entire article »
Filed under: culture, Heritage, Identity, India, Pakistan, Travel
India’s Young and Poor Rally to Another Gandhi
Reproduced from The New York Times By JIM YARDLEY Published: June 4, 2010 AHRAURA, India — Rahul Gandhi’s helicopter descends out of the boiling afternoon sky and a restless, sweat-soaked crowd of 100,000 people suddenly surges to life. Men rush forward in the staggering heat. Teenage boys wave a white bedsheet bearing a faintly cheeky request: We Want to Meet the Prince of India. … Read entire article »
Lahore Carnage Investigation and a Story of Valour
Below, we are posting two relevant stories about the massacre at Ahmadi mosques in Lahore. This massacre will be a especially ugly chapter in the sordid history that Pakistan has created when it comes to its treatment and protection of minorities from the religious zealots that are found aplenty in the majority sect that inhabits Pakistan. But more importantly, many Islamist guests on the PTH, as well as countless on outside media and blogs have conveniently accused RAW, MOSSAD, CIA (pick your favourite intelligence organization) behind the massacre. Self delusion seems to run rampant in Pakistani right wing. They are most welcome to indulge in their mass manufacture of hidden hands and twisted conspiracy theories. As one of the Ahmadi leader recently pointed out while answering who may be responsible for the immense … Read entire article »
Filed under: Al Qaeda, India, minorities, Punjab, Religion, state, strategy, Taliban, Terrorism
Blowback in Lahore
We have posted Omar Ali`s previous post titled “The Dead Parrot” a few weeks back. Below we reproduce his comment on the Lahore massacre. Dr. Ali discusses compelling reasons why we are here and where we are heading towards from here. We did not get into this mess overnight and we will not get out of it soon enough. Too many innocent Pakistanis are losing their lives as Pakistan struggles to overcome its previous policy errors. PTH may not necessarily agree with all points raised in the following post (AZW) Blowback In Lahore By Omar Ali http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265617 Terrorists (Punjabi Taliban) simultaneously attacked two Ahmedi sect mosques in Lahore during Friday prayers and killed over 80 people. First thoughts on this evil attack: The choice of target is easy to understand. Ahmedis are a persecuted and vilified minority in Pakistan … Read entire article »
Filed under: Al Qaeda, Army, FATA, History, Identity, India, Islam, Islamabad, Islamism, minorities, Pakistan, Religion, Rights, state, strategy, Taliban, USA, violence, war
The Journey of a Pakistani Muslim
I was born into a Sunni Muslim family in a northern city in the UK. The city is home to a large Muslim minority from Pakistan. I come from an educated and broad minded family with middle of the road type of values. Religion was never really a huge issue but I did the usual cultural thing of learning how to read the Quran in Arabic till I was 10 years old. At around the age of 14, I became interested in Islam and joined the Young Muslims UK. This was my first real exposure to practical Islam. We would attend camps and have weekly meetings usually to discuss the Quran and the Hadith of Muhammad. For all intents and purposes everything was going well and my family was happy that … Read entire article »
Filed under: Activism, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Citizens, culture, Democracy, Egalitarian Pakistan, Europe, human rights, India, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamism, Pakistan, Philosophy, Religion, Rights, violence, war, Women, youth
THE GREAT RECESSION, THE EUROPEAN FISCAL CRISIS AND LESSONS FOR PAKISTAN. Part 2: The US Sub-Prime Crisis and the Great Recession
By Kashan Wali, exclusive to the PTH As the United States economy took off for most of the 1990s, the new found wealth across the world was staring at the best of both worlds; high economic output due to technological advances, cheaper labour entrance into the global economy from India and China, entrance of Eastern Europe and Latin America in the democratic capitalist system, all combined with a lower inflation. What could go wrong? In some ways, the situation was similar to the roaring 1920s of the United States. 90 years ago, the US economy was expanding rapidly. New technological advances in automobile and telephone technology were erasing geographical distances within and outside of the United States. Rising productivity was increasing wealth and the signs of prosperity were evident in the stock market and … Read entire article »
Filed under: China, Economy, India, New Writers, Pakistan, USA
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