Managing Pakistan's failure

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Rudradev
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Rudradev »

Karna_A wrote:
However I don't agree with the use of the word pure in the above context.
Its a self defeating argument to say that somehow Kalam and Abdus sattar Edhi are less pure Muslims and the pure muslims means backwardness. Self defeating because the goal of most religionists is to become purer, but people like Edhi have defined what being a pure muslim means which is at variance with other thinkings.
I have used the word "Pure" for convenience because it is BR-speak for certain characteristics of intensely religious Islam and the socio-political identity of isolationism and extremism that goes along with it. Obviously that nomenclature will not be used to sell such an agenda if and when it practically comes to fruition! Using the word "Pure" was a shorthand to communicate the idea to BRF-ites.

Both types are pure muslims in their own way. So instead of saying that Pure Muslims need to become Dharmic muslims which almost is like a religious conversion and is nearly impossible, what is required is for Indian Traditionalists to become Originalists i.e. instead of taking the traditional interpretation, think of the original interpretation.
Again, this is a semantic question. If and when the agenda is enacted it will not be publicized in the terms I am using here on BR... but that is exactly what the goals will be. To make the Originalist interpretation of Islam, as you call it, something that dovetails exactly with Dharma, the ethos of the land they inhabit and the people who live in it.

The Dharmic Muslim may found his belief system on the Quran in exactly the same way as the Vaishnava founds his values on the teachings of Chaitanya or the Sikh on the teachings of his Gurus. Islam will be one more Dharm among many... e pluribus unum as our subcontinent has always been. We may call it "religious conversion" or not, but that will be the reality.
Prem
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Prem »

Hoping against hope and day dreaming aside, Have there been any example of Muslim turning inclusive instead of being exclsuive as per dogma ? By the time impotant son of barren woman get to enjoy little grand kids , Dharmics will be long gone to Baikunthloke. These are plans to do Ram naaam Sat hai, ik hor pao Aath hai.
Rudradev
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Rudradev »

Prem wrote:Hoping against hope and day dreaming aside, Have there been any example of Muslim turning inclusive instead of being exclsuive as per dogma ?
Has there been any example of a society which has systematically incentivized Muslims to be inclusive, and disincentivized in the other direction?

These are not weekend projects, the data isn't out yet. But France has made a bold move with its ban on headscarves, and the associated social dynamic pressure applied at the level of government. This is an over 10% Muslim society. Let us see what they look like in a generation.
Dharmics will be long gone to Baikunthloke
Who is going to send them there, and how?
Vril
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Vril »

dharmic muslims? rich & poor divide? inclusion?? are the learned members delusional or pasting the forum with classic dhimmitude?

it has harmed us enough to ignore the nature of the beast. will do no good if we continue to repeat mistakes of last 1000 years.
Rudradev
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Rudradev »

Vril wrote:
it has harmed us enough to ignore the nature of the beast. will do no good if we continue to repeat mistakes of last 1000 years.
Excellent.

So please. Let us hear what you would like to do instead about the beasts of this nature.

Not your opinions on the suggestions of others. Not your opinions about the political will of the Indian government, or the inaction of its Dhimmi people, or the indifference of its soft state. That stuff, anybody can post as easily as scratching their musharrafs.

You are beyond that. You have recognized the mistakes of the last 1000 years and understood the nature of the beast.

So I request you to set down for us, on this forum, what your solution is exactly and how you think it can be practically implemented. It can't be that hard. I took about 20 minutes to put down an idea I had in some detail. Surely, it is not too much to ask of you, that you articulate your own (better) idea in similar detail. I am sure we will all learn from it.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

Very well thought out series of posts from you rudradev and nothing dhimmic about them. Any person who is able to think this thing through to the detail that you have gone will agree.
Dhiman
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Dhiman »

Rudradev wrote: The vast mass of Indian Muslim janata falls into one of the two broad Categories... Backward Pure Muslim, and Advanced Integrated (dare-I-say Dharmic) Muslim.
Rudradevji,

One needs to give due credit to civilized western missionaries for civilizing the uncivilized world. Barring the fact that the rest of the world did not really need any civilizing and that the western world wasn't really civilized itself in the first place. However, the fact is that as a result of massive funding and efforts of western missionary organization that marched hand-in-hand with western armies and were often supported by the state, the rest of the world became more "western" in its thinking and hence in many cases gave up its thought leadership to the western world in order to wait for the next coolest piece of garbage yet to come out of western world.

So irrespective of whether it is called "backward/dharmic", "uncivilized/civilized", politicall correct/incorrect, I certainly recognize the value of of a well-funded and well staffed (say around 1,000,000 members) NGOs into furthering national interests, whatever they may be, on (hostile) foreign soils and making those not attuned to our interests more attuned.

Perhaps a better way would be to fund those in TSP who seem to be more attuned to our interests and influence them into setting up schools to "educate" the rest of the population into a more Indo-centric compatible model rather than the middle-east centric model that is currently being funded out of Saudi Arabia using petro dollars. Otherwise, many in Muslim world seem to be hell-bent upon giving up their thinking in order to accept middle-eastern Muslim mentality and thought leadership backed by Saudi petro dollars.
Last edited by Dhiman on 01 Jul 2010 11:58, edited 1 time in total.
amit
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by amit »

Rudradev wrote:Has there been any example of a society which has systematically incentivized Muslims to be inclusive, and disincentivized in the other direction?

These are not weekend projects, the data isn't out yet. But France has made a bold move with its ban on headscarves, and the associated social dynamic pressure applied at the level of government. This is an over 10% Muslim society. Let us see what they look like in a generation.
I think Rudradev's point is very important.

In many ways what is happening or will happen in India will be pathbreaking. Where ever Islam has gone as a conquering religion (as opposed to surreptitious entry via migration as in the case of France) one of two things happened.

Either Islam totally wiped out the pre-Islamic religions and rebuild society as an Islamic one or one dominated by Islam, case in point (in the early period) Egypt and Iran and (in more recent history) Indonesia and Malaysia.

The other outcome has been the annihilation/defeat of Islam after a period of dominance, eg Spain - many of the more famous churches in that nation have been built on the ruins of old mosques.

India, especially post partition India, is probably the only place where Islam did not triumph and dominate. Yet at the same time it was not/has not been defeated either. It's neither the dominant tenet which shapes society nor is it an abused minority religion. Islam has been forced to live as an equal with another more dominating (as in number of followers) religion because that religion refused to annihilate or subjugate it.

As a result, I think how the cookie eventually crumbles in India as far as the development of modern Islamic society will be very important in shaping the future destiny of the world's youngest major global religion.

It's a pity that the rest of the world does not realise it but they have a lot at stake and should pray that the Dharma of this land can temper the predatory nature of this Arabic religion and turn it into one with which the world can live with; one that is syncretised with Dharmic traditions.

If Dharma is defeated and we end up in Baikunthloke, as Prem says, God help the rest of the world. The blood and flesh of this land of Dharma would then feed an unstoppable monster.

Already the terrorists that are coming out of the section of Mother India where Dharma was defeated are more blood thirsty and dangerous than anything the sands of Arabia threw up earlier. Imagine if the whole of India became another Sunni-Wahibi dominated Pakistan churning out thousands of suicide bombers with a blinding rage against every one! Where will the world hide?

JMT
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Manish_Sharma »

Rudradev wrote:
The gradient, however, is not only about prosperity. It has naturally occurred that a large number of Muslims who travel from Pure Backwardness to Upward Mobility, become of necessity subject to influences beyond the Pure Islamic. This is a result of the free marketplace of ideas, traditions and ethos that Indian society is. A Muslim, like anybody else, is subject to the pressures and imprecations of his environment. If that environment is essentially a Dharmic and tolerant one, and most importantly is responsible for affording him prosperity, that alone is a countervailing force to the compulsions of an atavistic religious identity that demands domination, subjugation etc. If integration becomes a necessity for advancement, the countervailing force becomes increasingly powerful; and if the crucial importance of such integration for advancement is made even more emphatic by subtle and deliberate means, then the countervailing force has a chance of dominating the identity equation.

Will some Muslims who climb to the top of the plateau, diligently nurse the dagger of jihadist identity in their hearts? Very likely. The point is to ensure that the critical mass of the Advanced Muslims, however, has too much invested in an essentially Hindu-defined status quo, in economic and social terms, to want to rock the boat.

It is not a perfect solution by any means. As I have said it is sub-optimal. But what are the alternatives? 170 million Indian Muslims cannot be wiped out, and cannot be directly compelled to abandon their faith; neither can they be brainwashed out of it.

Is it impossible? I don't think so. Within a few decades, a mere handful of Britishers managed to successfully create a dominant class of Indians who were " Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect." If a Dharmic civilization vastly more learned and experienced than the Anglo Saxons, completely outnumbering and encompassing Indian Muslims, cannot accomplish this type of goal, do we really deserve to survive?

Many may share in the perception that they are being deprived from the legitimate privilege of subjugating the Non-Muslim. But that number will decrease as long as ascent along the gradient is systematically coupled with erosion of the atavistic, pan-Islamic identity that nurtures this perception.

In an ideal situation: the Dharmic Muslim will have equal opportunity to seek political power as any other citizen of the subcontinent, and the nature of the polity itself will require him to emphasize his Dharmic identity in order to secure it; meanwhile, he will find (because of our systematic elimination of the Agencies inimical to the Gradient) that emphasizing an atavistic "subjugate others" Islamic identity is a liability rather than an asset. Unlike today, when such an atavistic Islamic identity can count in one's favour in vote-bank politics.
The problem experienced with muslims is that a moderate, modern, pork sandwich eating Jinnah in his old age can suddenly turn around and demand pureland and "Saare jahan se achha hindustan hamara" poet Iqbal will suddenly support him. So these Rich, modern, progressive muslims are also bound to turn around at certain point and start the jehad.

As you say what other solution there is. I would say there is no solution at all ........... at least to my mind :(
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

I was doing some reading/viewing (videos) on the history of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has no history of being a nation minus foreign aid. It has had virtually no economy, no industry, no crops other than opium. Its rulers have always been fed by foreigners - mostly the Brits, but later by the Soviets and the Americans.

There is no history of a "stable Afghanistan" minus foreign aid feeding some ruling monarch or government.

Afghanistan has also not tolerated outsiders despite massacres of Afghans, and the land is defensible by the Afghan people and their mode of war. They cannot be bombed back to the stone ages of obvious reasons. They are already in the stone age.

If the US leaves Afghanistan, the government will not survive unless someone takes over funding and feeding them, and without security assistance there will be war between factions. Even in the past, whoever occupied the throne in Afghanistan got the money and the power to give it to others. If he was knocked out someone else got the money - so there has always been incentive for war.

The Pakistan army is clearly interested in Afghanistan for many reasons. The India excuse may be a bogey. India is a big zero in Afghanistan. There is no way India can touch Afghanistan without going through PoK either by conquest or making borders irrelevant. India's popularity among Afghans probably has much to do with this fact. India's work in Afghanistan today is courtesy the US.

So what is the Paki army's interest in Afghanistan?

1) Self preservation. Pakistan does not exert full control over its Paktunkhwa/FATA border regions and faces an insurgency in Balochistan - both of which can take shelter in Afghanistsn.

2) To control the flow of oil/minerals from Central Asis which will have to go via Pakistan in the absence of any other viable route.

3) "Strategic depth" - which I think is balderdash. This is a non reason. But I mention it for completion

But tell me folks. If no power can defeat Afghanistan, how can Pakistan control Afghanistan? Especially given that Pakistan is disliked? So Pakistan "control" of Afghanistan will only be to keep the country in turmoil, while feeding someone or the other to support Pakistan. The funds have come partly from the US, but opium crops will do nicely. So funding is not an issue for paying off Afghan vassals. Pakistan's real problem will be control and stability in Afghanistan. Being brutal is one thing - but clearly the Taliban which is in "factions" cannot be expected to unite behind Pakistan.

But I doubt of the US will lose interest in Afghanistan this time. If US troops leave the US will want a proxy force exerting their interests - and they might be hoping that the Paki army will somehow rid itself of its anti US jihadis and then take over the role of stabilizing Pakistan. In turn the US may fund and support the Pakistani army. Before I talk about the feasibility of this far fetched plan it is worth looking at what stakes anyone else may have in Afghanistan.

Russia has faced insurgencies that have come out of Af-Pak and instability in Afghanistan is bound to make the Russians support some faction or other. China is a mystery. The Chinese will probably quietly pay Pakis to be ruthless about any anti-Chinese activity, but this may not work with radical Islamists. Not sure if Iran would get involved - because Iran is already under pressure. India is a zero here.

Getting back to what the US might do if it pulls out of Afghanistan, it will live up to its promise of not losing interest in Pakistan. The US will remain involved with Pakistan. As long as there is no overt presence and fighting by US forces they may be able to extract some promises from the Pak army that US interests - i.e a suppression of Islamists and anti US forces will be performed by the Paki army with the US in the background.

The real "dark horse" right now are the Islamists of Pakistan. Are they merely looking for the US to get out? Will the Islamists just live happily ever after once the US is out? Will they then unite with the Paki army to start targeting India? The worst outcome of this for India will be an India-Pakistan war.

According to conventional wisdom, Pakistan will face defeat in a hot conventional war and may want to avoid that but they may risk a short war hoping to be rescued by the US. To that end there may be a ramping up of terrorism. Interestingly I believe that the Pakistani army may not want teh Kashmir issue solved by "soft borders" etc. That would put Pakistan at a disadvantage, and it might give Inda access to Afghanistan via PoK if thise "soft border" business got too lovey dovey. So Pakistan's best bet would be to keep Kashmir on the boil.

But that is nothing new for India. If Pakistan tries to calibrate tensions to avoid hot war and avoid peace also - then it is a situation that India has managed for two decades. Pakistan of course will use opium money here as well and aid money from the US. I see little chance of Pakistan reducing defence spending, little chance of changing its education or working for democracy or development. That will only mean "more of same" and chaos in Afghanistan until some new crisis occurs.

In short, the reason why I put this post in this thread is that the US exit will be an embarrassment for the US and may be bad in the long term. For Afghanistan it will be a disaster. For India it will be "more of same". It is not going to help Pakistan much either, Pakistan will remain on life support for some more time.

India will have to be innovative to thwart the destructive plans of the Paki army.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by lsunil »

Rudradev wrote:It is not a perfect solution by any means. As I have said it is sub-optimal. But what are the alternatives? 170 million Indian Muslims cannot be wiped out, and cannot be directly compelled to abandon their faith; neither can they be brainwashed out of it. These are simply not practical choices. The only option, as I see it, is manipulation of the social, political and economic environment in such a way that economic and social advancement for Muslims becomes inextricably linked to adopting a more Dharmic vision of Islam
This is a valid argument. One of the changes i would like to see is the banishment of the mullahs and types. The structure of islam is such that their are watchmen at various levels who monitor the herd. Every time someone wanders away from the community for various reasons and brings in new thoughts, these "islamic watchmen" track those down and undo whatever the outside "environment" has done.

Simple put, their are systems in place in islam that "decontaminate" the muslim from the outside environment. Plus they sow the seeds of animosity within a muslim against anything non-islam. One of the reasons why the muslims of the west are more radicalised and the more they witness the "unislamic" ethics in the western world, the more they yearn to concur it.
brihaspati
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by brihaspati »

Rudradev ji,

I thought along similar lines some years ago. I still advocate targeting the ideology and not its common followers for erasure. What you are proposing is the "dilution" method for "identity" through so-called transition to "stakeholder" in extra-identity processes. I will tell you why I am skeptical about this particular route.
Brihaspati ji, it is certainly possible that a certain proportion of Muslims, once economically empowered will drift towards jihadism.

The gradient, however, is not only about prosperity. It has naturally occurred that a large number of Muslims who travel from Pure Backwardness to Upward Mobility, become of necessity subject to influences beyond the Pure Islamic. This is a result of the free marketplace of ideas, traditions and ethos that Indian society is. A Muslim, like anybody else, is subject to the pressures and imprecations of his environment. If that environment is essentially a Dharmic and tolerant one, and most importantly is responsible for affording him prosperity, that alone is a countervailing force to the compulsions of an atavistic religious identity that demands domination, subjugation etc. If integration becomes a necessity for advancement, the countervailing force becomes increasingly powerful; and if the crucial importance of such integration for advancement is made even more emphatic by subtle and deliberate means, then the countervailing force has a chance of dominating the identity equation.
I will list what the problems in the assumptions being made, are:

Sociological studies of "in-group" and "out-group" interactions show that two very different types of reactions are possible when two dissimilar groups face each other or come in contact : either they allow mixing and adopt or absorb elements of the others idntity - or - they sharpen the "divide". This crucially depends on how much self-esteem is attributed to belonging to the group.

When to start with, there is a very high self-esteem attributed to belonging to a certain group, then typically this group hardens its identity when it comes in contact with another identity which is perceived is being potentially an agent for dilution. The closer become the identity, the greater will be the efforts and stress to maintain differences. In fact almost all radicalization in muslim communities are observed exactly at the point of contact with "non-Muslim" societies which otherwise offer much greater opportunities in the modern economic or educational sense than Muslim societies themselves.

In studying and suggesting methods of tackling Jihadization of Islamics, we usually make three fundamental errors :

(a) we assume that the early conditioning of a Muslim child and in the formative years inculcate values to evaluate "reason" or "rationality", which are the same as in non-Muslim societies. "Rationality" of a certain degree is common to all humans, which implies that logical process will be similar in most humans. But the axioms on which that nearly universal logical process will be applied can make completely contradictory conclusions from the same logical method. Because of little deep interaction with Muslims not just in "peace time" but also in "conflict" situations, and lack of familiarity with Islamic "records" - non-Muslims can be duped as to the fascinatingly delusional inner thought process in many seemingly "normal/moderate" Muslim minds.

From this error comes the fatal misconception that the "incentives" and "tempting deviations" that could be induced in say "Dharmic" "Hindu" Indians by the British social engineering project could work along similar lines on the Muslim society on the subcontinent. Not that the British did not try - but they actually failed to win "converts" in significant numbers. Many excuses are given - that the Muslims were "hurt" from "loss of pride" in being removed from "lording it over non-Muslims", so they shut themselves off. But, well, actually Hindus were defeated too, Sikhs were defeated too - but apparently similar "loss of pride" phenomenon did not happen. At the time, the Brits "won" - the Muslims were already on the retreat, and their loss of power could not have been more evident than in their failure to defend Delhi from storms from the NW. So given very similar conditions otherwise, they did not take the "bait" - at least not on condition of diluting their core values of Jihad, Ghazwa and subjugation of all else - as proved in the ease with which riots could be organized and the violent preparations for 1947 could be undertaken.

In fact every Muslim who partially or wholly joined the incentivization scheme ultimately contributed to the revival of the violent traditions. Jinnah the "westernized" legal luminary who fought on Tilak's behalf ultimately used that association to gain political prominence to stake a claim of British favour to carve out an Islamist state. The common foot soldier who joined the BIA, returned and took up training duty under secret ML organizations to prepare for Ghazwas by Muslim villagers and townsmen on unsuspecting neighbouring Hindus when the org gave the signal. Those who opposed the Partition did so on the fear that it would make the task of subjugating the whole of the subcontinent under Islam more difficult.


(b) The second fundamental error is that we fail to go deeper into the reason why Islamism appeals to a certain section of the population. The modern society is an increasingly complex society with a phenomenal load of knowledge on the individual brain. Moreover, the type of upward mobility that we are discussing here, and will be the norm for most developing economies - will be the knowledge based one. So increasingly youth are coming under pressure to face up to this complexity and absorb it in order to get a stake in the economic and other fruits of modernization.

Islamism however offers an escape route from facing up to this complexity. It provides the principal provider of coercion in any society - the young male - the complete ideological and philosophical justification to claim fruits of others labour, and women, without the need for obtaining a complicated set of qualifications and a huge knowledge load. The faith aims to be micromanaging and rule-based, which also reduces the load of knowledge and complexity in dealing with society. Pure coercion, and ability to inflict pain audaciously, without having to invest a lot in gaining productive skills relevant for the economy concerned, has always been a profitable business - the foundation perhaps for all royalty - and the "rajasya" virtually a protection tax. Islamism thrives and survives on this basic principle.

Thus the modern knowledge based economic prosperity model that India has taken could actually intensify this trend within Islam, and the indirect "environmental" signals could actually force accelerating radicalization rather than any "change of heart".

Will some Muslims who climb to the top of the plateau, diligently nurse the dagger of jihadist identity in their hearts? Very likely. The point is to ensure that the critical mass of the Advanced Muslims, however, has too much invested in an essentially Hindu-defined status quo, in economic and social terms, to want to rock the boat. Jihad is after all a choice, and it comes with an opportunity cost. If that opportunity cost is maximized for the overwhelming number of Muslims ascending to the top of the gradient, the chances of Jihad are minimized, and the transformation of Indian Islamic identity into something more consonant with Dharma is advanced.
This is a crucial question. What is that "essentially Hindu-defined status quo"? What makes the "Hindu defined status quo" as we see in practice essentially against "Jihadism"? if there were any elements of that "status quo" that opposed growth of eventual Jihadism then there would be the need for Islamics to rock the boat. However what we see - is complete lack of opposition to any dance that any Islamic claim of distinction and atrocity makes on India. Actually, the "status quo" as we see today sets no restraint on Islamism so no need to rock the boat.
It is not a perfect solution by any means. As I have said it is sub-optimal. But what are the alternatives? 170 million Indian Muslims cannot be wiped out, and cannot be directly compelled to abandon their faith; neither can they be brainwashed out of it. These are simply not practical choices. The only option, as I see it, is manipulation of the social, political and economic environment in such a way that economic and social advancement for Muslims becomes inextricably linked to adopting a more Dharmic vision of Islam, and distancing oneself from the atavistic Islamic identity. Syncretion defined in Dharmic terms and pursued by Dharmic means.
I will not make any comments on the "practicality" of the three solutions you first mention. Let us suppose that they are not "practical" (or "practicable"?) so that the only option left is "dharmicization of Islam". Now how would you propose dropping core items of the Quran? What gives the guarantee that in that reformulation those particular elements of the Quran are declared anti-Quran and "qufr" - for example the passage from "al Baqara" where the God of Muslims makes it explicit about "right hand possessions"? Something used to justify enslavement of non-Muslims? Contradicting and rejecting any part of the Quran will be acceptable to Muslims? Without such modifications can you have a syncretism?
Is it impossible? I don't think so. Within a few decades, a mere handful of Britishers managed to successfully create a dominant class of Indians who were " Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect." If a Dharmic civilization vastly more learned and experienced than the Anglo Saxons, completely outnumbering and encompassing Indian Muslims, cannot accomplish this type of goal, do we really deserve to survive?
I am not so sure - as pointed out in my earlier passage on how Brit attempts failed to "incentivize" the subcontinental Muslims, and even when there were partial responses, it was ultimately used to carve out an Islamist state.
No doubt there will be difficulties to overcome, mostly posed by such Agencies as I have mentioned. These Agencies must be ruthlessly and relentlessly crushed even as we help the Pure Backward Muslim to improve his lot. As Rajesh A-ji has mentioned, the education of Muslim women will have to be advanced and control over the finances of "charities" and "social welfare concerns" that serve Indian Muslims will have to be concentrated in Indian hands. The Muslim criminal underworld, its ties to politicians and jihadi interests locally and abroad, will have to be exhaustively eliminated. Many battles will have to be fought, but the carrot... promise of ascension through the gradient, will always have to be held out convincingly enough that the majority of Indian Muslims continue to buy into it.
What do studies on the effect of education on Muslim women show? It does not show essential improvements where it matters, for example population growth rates. There are studies which show panel studies indicate that Muslim women support or prefer larger progeny when discounted for educational level and economic background compared to non-Muslim women of similar factors.
In the case of integrating Pakistani Muslims, again, this appears the only viable option. Since the centre of mass of Pakistani Muslim population is of the Pure Backward Variety, similar in many ways to the Pure Backward section of our own Muslims, we are offered an opportunity for sociological jiujitsu. If the Pure Backward Muslims of Pakistan (or POGWI, or ex-PO WI, in the future) buy into the gradient, the recalcitrant P-type Muslims above them will be marginalized, and can be dealt with by harsher means. The alternative is that this overwhelming mass of Pure Backward Pakistani Muslims becomes the footsoldiers for the recalcitrant P-type Muslims in resisting Syncretion on Dharmic terms. It is just that many more we will have to fight.

The Bifurcation that created these two Categories of Muslims, and established the Gradient between them, has taken shape in a self-evident manner, mostly without deliberate interference by any social or political power in our land. However, it must now be nurtured and strengthened so as to make it profound and definitive. All Agencies and interest groups that threaten to disrupt it must be deliberately and systematically suppressed. It has to become an overwhelmingly stable working model for the Muslims of India, because we may not have much time before it also has to accommodate the Muslims of what is now Pakistan.
A lot will depend on the mode of absorption. The process of absorption itself may be part of the solution.
Many may share in the perception that they are being deprived from the legitimate privilege of subjugating the Non-Muslim. But that number will decrease as long as ascent along the gradient is systematically coupled with erosion of the atavistic, pan-Islamic identity that nurtures this perception.

Today we live in a world of pan-Islamic global jihad. We are trying to plug the bursting dike one finger at a time, busting that particular terrorist cell, engaging in XYZ talks with Pakistan, accommodating US concerns in PQR ways, building bridges in Afghanistan, allowing this Mahdani or that Dawood Ibrahim associate to walk free because of political patronage or votebank compulsions. If we keep this up, exerting our efforts in a random and ad-hoc manner, we don't stand a chance.

We urgently need to organize our efforts towards the accomplishment of an overarching strategic goal. That goal must be to redefine, for the Indian subcontinent, the entire paradigm of what it means to have an Islamic identity... to shape that identity into something consonant with Dharma... and to defend it from the assaults of global pan-Islamism.

To do this the Indian subcontinental Muslim must become a partner in the project with a real stake in its success. The Indian subcontinental Muslim defined by this means will himself be the faction of Muslim standing against the adharmic, atavistic Muslim who seeks to disrupt the system.
Maybe. But it will need an initial coercive step that will have to eliminate the capacity to retaliate andd jeopardize this assimilation attempt. Which means targeted elimination of all institutions of ideological continuity and dissemination, as well as personnel already committed to those structures, as well as the potential military strength of the community. All that this implies.

On a separate but related note: I don't believe that the picture of global pan-Islamism that exists today, is going to remain unchanged permanently. It has had its heyday in the previous decade, and that heyday might last for a while longer, especially if the US withdraws in a shambles from Afghanistan. But it is not permanent. Nothing is.

Consider this post that I made in the West Asia thread. viewtopic.php?p=894290#p894290 It may be fanciful, and represents only one possible shape of things to come. But ultimately I believe that the various strata of identity subscribed to by the world's Muslim population, particularly in West Asia where all the trouble comes from, will collide catastrophically in the not too distant future. The scenario I posted on the West Asia thread depicts a WWI-type situation of conflicts between two alliances in numerous theatres, ultimately leading to all-out war. Like the Great War did for Europe, it will have profound impact on the nature of Islamism as we know it today. Maybe the implications will not be suddenly felt or realized in the immediate aftermath of such a war... there may need to be another war before that happens completely. However, I sense the denouement is beginning.
That is an interesting post you made. Definitely one possibility. But I think another route is coming, and the "northern" alliance you mention is going to lose out. Dramatic changes in both Iran and PRC within the next 20 years. That will alter equations completely radicalizing the whole Ummah to an unprecedented level.
You are right. What I am proposing is a social engineering project to reshape that identity, not only within our borders but in a manner that can be extended to occupied Western India as well. To achieve syncretion with subcontinental Islam on Dharmic terms. If any civilization in the world can pull off something like that, it is ours. But given the scale and degree of ideological commitment and organization required, it will have to be handled as no project has been handled in independent India to date.
syncretism, perhaps, but even for that the ground has to be cleared first with coercion. Otherwise it will fail, and the resources put up to "incentivize" will be used to build a future much larger Islamic state.
Rudradev
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Rudradev »

brihaspati wrote:Rudradev ji,

I thought along similar lines some years ago. I still advocate targeting the ideology and not its common followers for erasure. What you are proposing is the "dilution" method for "identity" through so-called transition to "stakeholder" in extra-identity processes. I will tell you why I am skeptical about this particular route.
Brihaspati ji,

The transition to stakeholder that I propose, is only one facet of how to pursue erasure of the ideology, with the ultimate aim of eroding the identity so that economic prosperity and furtherance of national interest is no longer perceived by the stakeholders as an "extra identity" process.

There are other facets to what I propose... identification of those aspects of that ideology most inimical to syncretion, and ruthless elimination of the Agencies who for one reason or another exploit these inimical aspects, even at the sort of systemic level that plagues the Indian judicial and political system today.
Brihaspati ji, it is certainly possible that a certain proportion of Muslims, once economically empowered will drift towards jihadism.

The gradient, however, is not only about prosperity. It has naturally occurred that a large number of Muslims who travel from Pure Backwardness to Upward Mobility, become of necessity subject to influences beyond the Pure Islamic. This is a result of the free marketplace of ideas, traditions and ethos that Indian society is. A Muslim, like anybody else, is subject to the pressures and imprecations of his environment. If that environment is essentially a Dharmic and tolerant one, and most importantly is responsible for affording him prosperity, that alone is a countervailing force to the compulsions of an atavistic religious identity that demands domination, subjugation etc. If integration becomes a necessity for advancement, the countervailing force becomes increasingly powerful; and if the crucial importance of such integration for advancement is made even more emphatic by subtle and deliberate means, then the countervailing force has a chance of dominating the identity equation.
I will list what the problems in the assumptions being made, are:

Sociological studies of "in-group" and "out-group" interactions show that two very different types of reactions are possible when two dissimilar groups face each other or come in contact : either they allow mixing and adopt or absorb elements of the others idntity - or - they sharpen the "divide". This crucially depends on how much self-esteem is attributed to belonging to the group.

When to start with, there is a very high self-esteem attributed to belonging to a certain group, then typically this group hardens its identity when it comes in contact with another identity which is perceived is being potentially an agent for dilution. The closer become the identity, the greater will be the efforts and stress to maintain differences. In fact almost all radicalization in muslim communities are observed exactly at the point of contact with "non-Muslim" societies which otherwise offer much greater opportunities in the modern economic or educational sense than Muslim societies themselves.

You have hit upon the exact sociological dynamic that is in play here... self-esteem.

First we have to consider that self-esteem in India of today is defined by very different parameters than India of even ten years ago. Self-esteem can come in various forms. It can come solely by virtue of belonging to a group, because of the lore and traditions and narrative of that group. However, the aspirational ladder that beckons to all classes of Indians in this age of post-globalization consumerism, is another route to self-esteem that never existed before.

During my childhood in the early 1980s, social mobility in India crawled at a snail's pace. There were a few very rich, masses of poor, and a substantial middle class that glacially improved its lot. People took it for granted that the next generation of a family may incrementally advance their economic status but by and large, they would remain in the same social class, with the limited range of trappings and possessions, that their parents inhabited. In those days, self-esteem came largely from identity... caste, religion or otherwise... because in a world with two kinds of cars, one kind of black-and-white TV, one kind of rotary phone, there was no other means to externalize it.

This is not the case today. Money is abundant, particularly in urban centres, and the opportunities for externalized evidence of wealth is plentiful in a new consumerist culture. The son of a slum-dwelling roadside vendor (of any religion) can quite realistically aspire to owning a motor vehicle, perhaps even a flat with a fridge and TV. The sudden appearance of opportunity strengthens the attraction of an aspirational route to self-esteem as opposed to a purely identity-based one.

This is why I think it is possible that the Gradient will in any case start to have a stronger effect than before, and can potentially be strengthened to have a profound effect. The pure backward Muslim always had his Islamic group status as a source of self-esteem. However, that means less and less as he sees that he lives in the cesspools of Mumbra or Dharavi while others arising from similar environs own motorcycles and have, in many ways, a chance of getting out. The question before the pure backward Muslim will be, what does he want for his children? Which self-esteem will they prize more dearly... that of pure Islamic identity or that of ascension up the social and economic gradient?

The trick is to ensure that self-esteem acquired via the gradient overwhelms and neutralizes the self-esteem that came from a pure Islamic identity. The forces of economic and social change favour this dynamic, but it will have to be reinforced with considerable deliberate effort.
In studying and suggesting methods of tackling Jihadization of Islamics, we usually make three fundamental errors :

(a) we assume that the early conditioning of a Muslim child and in the formative years inculcate values to evaluate "reason" or "rationality", which are the same as in non-Muslim societies. "Rationality" of a certain degree is common to all humans, which implies that logical process will be similar in most humans. But the axioms on which that nearly universal logical process will be applied can make completely contradictory conclusions from the same logical method. Because of little deep interaction with Muslims not just in "peace time" but also in "conflict" situations, and lack of familiarity with Islamic "records" - non-Muslims can be duped as to the fascinatingly delusional inner thought process in many seemingly "normal/moderate" Muslim minds.
This is true. But I present again the unique situation of the Indian Muslim. In no other nation of the world, at no other time in history, has the Indian Muslim found himself faced with the opportunity for socio-economic upward mobility as he does in India today.

In most Muslim countries, the pure backward Muslim will remain pure and backward all his life. In the West, the Indian Muslim has the opportunity to pursue upward mobility but he will never be treated as an equal, and his isolation gets the better of him so that he retreats further into his Islamic identity as a source of self-esteem. In the Gulf he has it even worse, as his Arab "brothers" openly scorn him as inferior. Only in India does he have the option of acquiring social and economic status on par with a nation full of people with whom he can blend invisibly, where his ethnicity and race will not be a detriment to him.

As for non-Muslims in India, we have the advantage of experience to realize what kind of mindset we are dealing with in no uncertain terms. If we are duped by the nature of the Muslim mind into believing that everything is OK, that no agenda of social-engineering need be enacted, and that things will turn out all right on their own... it would certainly be our own fault! The onus is ours to strengthen the gradient and prevent poaching en-route by inimical Agencies, through all necessary means.
From this error comes the fatal misconception that the "incentives" and "tempting deviations" that could be induced in say "Dharmic" "Hindu" Indians by the British social engineering project could work along similar lines on the Muslim society on the subcontinent. Not that the British did not try - but they actually failed to win "converts" in significant numbers. Many excuses are given - that the Muslims were "hurt" from "loss of pride" in being removed from "lording it over non-Muslims", so they shut themselves off. But, well, actually Hindus were defeated too, Sikhs were defeated too - but apparently similar "loss of pride" phenomenon did not happen. At the time, the Brits "won" - the Muslims were already on the retreat, and their loss of power could not have been more evident than in their failure to defend Delhi from storms from the NW. So given very similar conditions otherwise, they did not take the "bait" - at least not on condition of diluting their core values of Jihad, Ghazwa and subjugation of all else - as proved in the ease with which riots could be organized and the violent preparations for 1947 could be undertaken.
I had brought up the British social engineering as a very general example of what was possible to achieve... but let us not forget that they had a vastly different overarching strategic goal than we do, and of course, employed very different means to get there.

To say that they tried and failed, seems an oversimplification to me. As you can surely narrate with more erudition than I, the process of British social-engineering among Muslims of India was a complicated business. Broadly, the recalcitrant elite were culled in the reprisals following 1857; of the remainder, "Macaulayization" necessarily pursued a significantly different tack than it did among Hindus, because of critical differences between Hindu and Muslim societies.

A key difference was that unlike Hindus, among whom an educated middle class already existed, Muslim society was with few exceptions polarized between an elite class and abject masses. Even among Hindus the British only sought to influence groups from the middle class upwards, not the "hewers of wood and drawers of water," but the Macaulayite ladder of aspiration did not seek only to recruit the landed wealthy or the aristocracy... it also beckoned to clerks, munshis and the like from strata of society economically and politically less privileged than the rajas.

In Muslim society on the other hand, wealth, political power, social status and education were all concentrated together in the hands of a rarefied elite, and belonged not at all to the tradesmen, craftsmen and peasantry who were a very long distance further down the scale. It was a proto-Pakistani society... no true Muslim Middle Class has existed in India until after independence, with the few exceptions (Dawoodi Bohras and so on) simply retaining a status and wealth-generating capacity by carrying forward almost unchanged the traditional socio-economic roles and occupations of their Hindu antecedents. So of course, different techniques were employed by the British for social engineering of Indian Muslims.

However, to say that the British failed in their social engineering of Indian Muslims, I would personally not agree with. Indeed, the fact that Syed Ahmed Khan appealed to the British as being preferable masters compared to Hindus who were not "people of the book", reflects an attitude that was very successfully inculcated among the section of Muslims Macaulayized by the British. The British agenda was never integration or syncretion... once they had learned the lay of the land, it was divide et impera at all levels.

You certainly know far more than I do about Morley-Minto, Partition of Bengal and all that, so no point my going into it... but you see what I am saying.

Ultimately the proto-RAPE of Rehmat Ali Chaudhrys, Jinnahs etc. were exactly what the British were aiming to create by their Macaulayization of the Indian Muslim, as opposed to their Macaulayization of the Indian Hindu, so where was the failure? Without such proto-RAPEs, what would have fed the Muslim League which served the British so well in their time of retreat?

The British used limited means and resources to effect changes in both Non-Muslim and Muslim societies in India. Had their priorities for success or their overarching strategy been different, they might have invested more effort in changing the Muslim society as profoundly as they changed the Non-Muslim... in altering the core values of ghazwa, jihad etc. that you mention. But it was not to their benefit to do so. In fact, the preservation of Muslim radicalization was to the benefit of the British so long as it did not threaten the British. What they needed came readily to them from the Muslims.
In fact every Muslim who partially or wholly joined the incentivization scheme ultimately contributed to the revival of the violent traditions. Jinnah the "westernized" legal luminary who fought on Tilak's behalf ultimately used that association to gain political prominence to stake a claim of British favour to carve out an Islamist state. The common foot soldier who joined the BIA, returned and took up training duty under secret ML organizations to prepare for Ghazwas by Muslim villagers and townsmen on unsuspecting neighbouring Hindus when the org gave the signal. Those who opposed the Partition did so on the fear that it would make the task of subjugating the whole of the subcontinent under Islam more difficult.

That's precisely the point. Muslims socially engineered by the British did exactly as the British wanted them to do... turned violently against Hindus, to the extent of precipitating partition and creating Pakistan. They were an effective means of sabotaging the Congress' vision for India. And they engendered a client state which sustained the geopolitical interests of an empire freshly bankrupted by war.

The British technique was not "incentivization" in the direction that I am proposing. It was not implemented by appealing to Muslim socio-economic aspirations (except among the rareified elite layer of Muslims). To the British, all these values of jihad, ghazwa and so on were an asset as long as they never threatened the security of the Empire. They were a fulcrum of divide et impera.

So I would not say that the British experience of social engineering among Indian Muslims, in specific terms, was even oriented towards the sorts of goals that we seek to pursue today. The British did not try to encourage syncretion by enjoining socio-economic aspiration to a systematic erosion of Islamic identity. It was not worth their while, once they had administered the drubbing post-1857... the Muslims were in Taqqiya mode anyway, and the British were confident (as the West is today) that Muslims would be subservient to Britain as long as they were given some free rein to bully the Hindu.
(b) The second fundamental error is that we fail to go deeper into the reason why Islamism appeals to a certain section of the population. The modern society is an increasingly complex society with a phenomenal load of knowledge on the individual brain. Moreover, the type of upward mobility that we are discussing here, and will be the norm for most developing economies - will be the knowledge based one. So increasingly youth are coming under pressure to face up to this complexity and absorb it in order to get a stake in the economic and other fruits of modernization.

Islamism however offers an escape route from facing up to this complexity. It provides the principal provider of coercion in any society - the young male - the complete ideological and philosophical justification to claim fruits of others labour, and women, without the need for obtaining a complicated set of qualifications and a huge knowledge load. The faith aims to be micromanaging and rule-based, which also reduces the load of knowledge and complexity in dealing with society. Pure coercion, and ability to inflict pain audaciously, without having to invest a lot in gaining productive skills relevant for the economy concerned, has always been a profitable business - the foundation perhaps for all royalty - and the "rajasya" virtually a protection tax. Islamism thrives and survives on this basic principle.

Thus the modern knowledge based economic prosperity model that India has taken could actually intensify this trend within Islam, and the indirect "environmental" signals could actually force accelerating radicalization rather than any "change of heart".
You are right, and that is the ultimate reason why the Agencies I have described manage to siphon off Muslims en route from the Pure Backward Category to the Upwardly Mobile Category... the existence of this escape route that Islamism offers.

There is no denying that a large section of Muslim youth start their journey up the Gradient; some are taken away and radicalized by Muslim underworld gangsters in the neighbourhood, others by opportunistic politicians, and still others during a tenure as migrant labour in Gulf countries. In each case the seduction of Islamism plays a role. If uncontested, it could play a role at the top of the Gradient as well.

That is exactly why the "environmental" signals cannot be left to occur as natural manifestations of the aspiration ladder in a knowledge-based economy. That is why they must be engineered, manipulated and focused, to disincentivize as well as incentivize in a systematic fashion. The rewards of upward mobility along a Gradient which simultaneously leaches Islamist tendencies must be balanced by a maximized opportunity cost that offsets the allure of the Islamist "escape route." No question about that.

How that can be achieved, is a matter to think about, once the goal itself can be established as desirable.
Will some Muslims who climb to the top of the plateau, diligently nurse the dagger of jihadist identity in their hearts? Very likely. The point is to ensure that the critical mass of the Advanced Muslims, however, has too much invested in an essentially Hindu-defined status quo, in economic and social terms, to want to rock the boat. Jihad is after all a choice, and it comes with an opportunity cost. If that opportunity cost is maximized for the overwhelming number of Muslims ascending to the top of the gradient, the chances of Jihad are minimized, and the transformation of Indian Islamic identity into something more consonant with Dharma is advanced.
This is a crucial question. What is that "essentially Hindu-defined status quo"? What makes the "Hindu defined status quo" as we see in practice essentially against "Jihadism"? if there were any elements of that "status quo" that opposed growth of eventual Jihadism then there would be the need for Islamics to rock the boat. However what we see - is complete lack of opposition to any dance that any Islamic claim of distinction and atrocity makes on India. Actually, the "status quo" as we see today sets no restraint on Islamism so no need to rock the boat.
Of course, it does not, because what exists today is NOT a "Hindu defined status quo" at all... it is something that came about by default and has been preserved by the relentless assaults of Agencies inimical to the eventual goal of syncretion on Dharmic terms (including your Thaparites, Samajwadi Parties and so on.)

To clarify, I am not talking about the status quo that prevails today. I am talking about one that must be built up with definitive, broad public understanding of what a Dharmic identity implies on a socio-political level, of what Dharmic interests are on a socio-political level. Only then can we define specifically what syncretion on Dharmic terms means, and choose the specific incentives/disincentives to achieve that syncretion.

Even though the strategy plays on existing strengths of Bifurcation and aspirational Gradient, there remains a lot of work to do!
I will not make any comments on the "practicality" of the three solutions you first mention. Let us suppose that they are not "practical" (or "practicable"?) so that the only option left is "dharmicization of Islam". Now how would you propose dropping core items of the Quran? What gives the guarantee that in that reformulation those particular elements of the Quran are declared anti-Quran and "qufr" - for example the passage from "al Baqara" where the God of Muslims makes it explicit about "right hand possessions"? Something used to justify enslavement of non-Muslims? Contradicting and rejecting any part of the Quran will be acceptable to Muslims? Without such modifications can you have a syncretism?
To employ an analogy, there are two ways in which an individual can be made to lose the use of his limbs.

The first is by catastrophic amputation... something analogous to the "impractical" options detailed above.

The second is by induced atrophy. If something is not used for a sustained period of time it withers. Islam is codified in a book, but Indian Muslims are a living society. The key is to render vestigial the aspects of Islamic religious tradition that threaten syncretism on Dharmic terms without making the entire process contingent on primary disavowal of those aspects (which will destroy the impression of a free choice between Categories, and will only win us a temporary Taqqiya at best).

This can be achieved by precise and ruthless application of disincentives when those aspects of Islamic religious tradition are specifically acted upon, and rewards for migrating to a position of having a stake in the system, where the opportunity costs for indulging those aspects are maximized.

Of course nothing gives us any "guarantee"... but I contend that of all options, this is our best bet.
Is it impossible? I don't think so. Within a few decades, a mere handful of Britishers managed to successfully create a dominant class of Indians who were " Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect." If a Dharmic civilization vastly more learned and experienced than the Anglo Saxons, completely outnumbering and encompassing Indian Muslims, cannot accomplish this type of goal, do we really deserve to survive?
I am not so sure - as pointed out in my earlier passage on how Brit attempts failed to "incentivize" the subcontinental Muslims, and even when there were partial responses, it was ultimately used to carve out an Islamist state.
Yes it was, and that suited the agenda of the Brits perfectly! As I discussed previously, the Brits never "incentivized" the subcontinental Muslims towards syncretion... rather, after 1857 they took all measures to pre-empt the possibility of such syncretion because it posed a threat to their hold on power.
No doubt there will be difficulties to overcome, mostly posed by such Agencies as I have mentioned. These Agencies must be ruthlessly and relentlessly crushed even as we help the Pure Backward Muslim to improve his lot. As Rajesh A-ji has mentioned, the education of Muslim women will have to be advanced and control over the finances of "charities" and "social welfare concerns" that serve Indian Muslims will have to be concentrated in Indian hands. The Muslim criminal underworld, its ties to politicians and jihadi interests locally and abroad, will have to be exhaustively eliminated. Many battles will have to be fought, but the carrot... promise of ascension through the gradient, will always have to be held out convincingly enough that the majority of Indian Muslims continue to buy into it.
What do studies on the effect of education on Muslim women show? It does not show essential improvements where it matters, for example population growth rates. There are studies which show panel studies indicate that Muslim women support or prefer larger progeny when discounted for educational level and economic background compared to non-Muslim women of similar factors.
I have not seen those studies, but I will take your word for it that this is the case. With a caveat, however, that the specific nature of that education, what type of influence it is designed to inculcate over Muslim women (to what extent it is PC-"culturally sensitive" or otherwise) should be taken into consideration. So should the overall nature of the society where those studies are being conducted.

I mentioned in another post the French ban on headscarves in schools. That by itself is a small symbolic step, but it would be interesting to see whether Muslim girls are being manipulated towards paradigms of Western-style female "emancipation", subtly and systematically, in other ways by the French educational system. And to monitor what effect that has over time.
In the case of integrating Pakistani Muslims, again, this appears the only viable option. Since the centre of mass of Pakistani Muslim population is of the Pure Backward Variety, similar in many ways to the Pure Backward section of our own Muslims, we are offered an opportunity for sociological jiujitsu. If the Pure Backward Muslims of Pakistan (or POGWI, or ex-PO WI, in the future) buy into the gradient, the recalcitrant P-type Muslims above them will be marginalized, and can be dealt with by harsher means. The alternative is that this overwhelming mass of Pure Backward Pakistani Muslims becomes the footsoldiers for the recalcitrant P-type Muslims in resisting Syncretion on Dharmic terms. It is just that many more we will have to fight.

The Bifurcation that created these two Categories of Muslims, and established the Gradient between them, has taken shape in a self-evident manner, mostly without deliberate interference by any social or political power in our land. However, it must now be nurtured and strengthened so as to make it profound and definitive. All Agencies and interest groups that threaten to disrupt it must be deliberately and systematically suppressed. It has to become an overwhelmingly stable working model for the Muslims of India, because we may not have much time before it also has to accommodate the Muslims of what is now Pakistan.
A lot will depend on the mode of absorption. The process of absorption itself may be part of the solution.
Yes, definitely. My point was only that the process of social engineering should be initiated, and got under way if possible, within India before such time as the absorption even takes place. Then we will have a model for how to deal with the aftermath of absorption. After all it is the failure of Islamism engendered in pre-partition India that we need to crystallize and manage. Pakistan is only a symptom of that Islamism.

Many may share in the perception that they are being deprived from the legitimate privilege of subjugating the Non-Muslim. But that number will decrease as long as ascent along the gradient is systematically coupled with erosion of the atavistic, pan-Islamic identity that nurtures this perception.

Today we live in a world of pan-Islamic global jihad. We are trying to plug the bursting dike one finger at a time, busting that particular terrorist cell, engaging in XYZ talks with Pakistan, accommodating US concerns in PQR ways, building bridges in Afghanistan, allowing this Mahdani or that Dawood Ibrahim associate to walk free because of political patronage or votebank compulsions. If we keep this up, exerting our efforts in a random and ad-hoc manner, we don't stand a chance.

We urgently need to organize our efforts towards the accomplishment of an overarching strategic goal. That goal must be to redefine, for the Indian subcontinent, the entire paradigm of what it means to have an Islamic identity... to shape that identity into something consonant with Dharma... and to defend it from the assaults of global pan-Islamism.

To do this the Indian subcontinental Muslim must become a partner in the project with a real stake in its success. The Indian subcontinental Muslim defined by this means will himself be the faction of Muslim standing against the adharmic, atavistic Muslim who seeks to disrupt the system.
Maybe. But it will need an initial coercive step that will have to eliminate the capacity to retaliate andd jeopardize this assimilation attempt. Which means targeted elimination of all institutions of ideological continuity and dissemination, as well as personnel already committed to those structures, as well as the potential military strength of the community. All that this implies.
Agreed. The ruthless destruction of inimical Agencies is a must.

On a separate but related note: I don't believe that the picture of global pan-Islamism that exists today, is going to remain unchanged permanently. It has had its heyday in the previous decade, and that heyday might last for a while longer, especially if the US withdraws in a shambles from Afghanistan. But it is not permanent. Nothing is.

Consider this post that I made in the West Asia thread. viewtopic.php?p=894290#p894290 It may be fanciful, and represents only one possible shape of things to come. But ultimately I believe that the various strata of identity subscribed to by the world's Muslim population, particularly in West Asia where all the trouble comes from, will collide catastrophically in the not too distant future. The scenario I posted on the West Asia thread depicts a WWI-type situation of conflicts between two alliances in numerous theatres, ultimately leading to all-out war. Like the Great War did for Europe, it will have profound impact on the nature of Islamism as we know it today. Maybe the implications will not be suddenly felt or realized in the immediate aftermath of such a war... there may need to be another war before that happens completely. However, I sense the denouement is beginning.
That is an interesting post you made. Definitely one possibility. But I think another route is coming, and the "northern" alliance you mention is going to lose out. Dramatic changes in both Iran and PRC within the next 20 years. That will alter equations completely radicalizing the whole Ummah to an unprecedented level.
Please do elaborate, though perhaps on another thread. I would be very interested to read how you envision that panning out.
You are right. What I am proposing is a social engineering project to reshape that identity, not only within our borders but in a manner that can be extended to occupied Western India as well. To achieve syncretion with subcontinental Islam on Dharmic terms. If any civilization in the world can pull off something like that, it is ours. But given the scale and degree of ideological commitment and organization required, it will have to be handled as no project has been handled in independent India to date.
syncretism, perhaps, but even for that the ground has to be cleared first with coercion. Otherwise it will fail, and the resources put up to "incentivize" will be used to build a future much larger Islamic state.
Agreed, again with a caveat... the nature of that coercion must resemble a PGM assault rather than saturation bombardment, which would be self defeating. Whatever the truth, the perception must prevail that the coercion is being applied to inimical Agencies and not to the community... otherwise it will only end up strengthening the influence of the Agencies themselves.

Of course there are interests (other Agencies) in India today who would portray any such attempt at coercion as being directed against the community... to save their own skin. As I said, there is much work to be done first.
brihaspati
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by brihaspati »

The PGM attempt will not happen because the required infrastructure to put that PGM attempt in place - itself is impossible without a saturation bombing.

This is what I see to be the main difficulty in the practical implementation of your policy. You surely realize that even to start building the infrastructure to carry out the "PGM" assault, you will need to fight against two strong centres of resistance : first of course are the various Islamist structures, based on a network of theologians, mosques, seminaries and Islamic political groupings. Second, and more importantly the "Hindu" political as well as "socio-cultural" groupings that see Islamism as an effective tool in controlling the "Hindu" itself.

How do you propose overcoming this entrenched combination through "peaceful" means? Even the PGM argument is perhaps a subconscious recognition of this difficulty, and seen in so many. Perhaps a construction of the "invincibility" of the "fundoo" in open conflict, which I have come across in a spectrum of opinions - "there will be violent riots and bloodshed- we who live in India will have to face it, and blast you who propose such things from afar", "it is impossible to eliminate millions of fundoos", "we cannot enforce conversion/brainwash of millions".

Targets have to be set higher, so that scaling down from such heights in compromises with concrete situations can be claimed as concessions.
JE Menon
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by JE Menon »

Awesome posts guys. Thanks.
brihaspati
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by brihaspati »

Rudradev ji,
here is a "populist" link:
socio-economic factors like poverty, status of women and access to education and health care are largely responsible for the higher numbers.

But these don't account for the full story.

THE X-FACTOR: "Even if you take factors like education and income into account, Muslims have a slightly higher fertility," says demographer Kamala Gupta.

In a recent book, demographers P N Mari Bhat and A J Francis Zavier pointed out that the fertility of Muslims is higher than the bottom-most groups in the caste hierarchy, namely scheduled castes and tribes.

The National Family Health Survey 1998-99 shows the Muslim fertility rate to be 3.59 compared to scheduled tribes' 3.06. It also cites two studies in Karnataka andGujarat in 1995 which showed Muslims with higher fertility after accounting for education, land, income, media exposure and female autonomy
.
I have a few sociologist-articles, which I will try to filch out [I am mired in migrating old files in between tablet, mac and lappie!].

One of the crucial factors not mentioned is that most of these dismissals are based on certain statistical modeling assumptions about the shape of the growth curve. So that even after observing the fact that education and "incentive" factors still do not explain the growth differentials - they try to pacify and downplay the fundamental ineffectivity of socio-economic measures in slowing down the demographic "conquest" by Islamists.

Crucially, no study tests for presence of any accelerative component. I know the difficulty in even raising the issue - it is seen as an attempt by "H**** Right Wing Fascists" to malign the innocent and "repressed" Islamic. The models mostly use an essentially constant gradient regenerative process that typically leads to logistic type growth curves - which are asymptotically flat, and hence the claims of stable population numbers and eventual slowing down of growth rate.

Those interested, do look into the mathematical and probabilistic models of demographic growth [preferably the Cox's Logistic type models which build in factor contributions] and see for yourself the fundamental derivations. Most sociologists and "covert politicians" in the social sciences have little understanding of the assumptions made in deriving the models they use to have such loud-mouthed political-rally-speech mode trivializations.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by A_Gupta »

There is a similar problem in a friendlier context. This is that of the ultra-orthodox in Israel. The BBC, NPR, etc., have carried stories about them recently. Look up "haredi", "haredim". Like the madrassa student in Pakistan, the typical haredim in Israel studies nothing but religious text. Like the typical family in Pakistan that supplied the madrassa, the haredim multiply prodigiously - they see it as a religious duty. In Israel, the haredim are increasingly a financial burden on the state.

e.g.,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/10369998.stm
For thousands of years the way that ultra-orthodox Jewish children are taught has changed little and is based almost entirely on study of the Torah - the Jewish Bible.

But now a group of leading secular Israelis wants to force the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, education system to modernise and adopt standard subjects like maths, science and English.

The reason, they say, is that thousands of Haredi students are unable or unwilling to participate in wider Israeli society and are becoming an increasing economic burden.

Last week, in ultra-orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, more than 100,000 devoutly religious men took to the streets in protest.

On this occasion the men, clad in the traditional plain black clothing and distinctive headgear of Ashkenazi Jews, were campaigning for the right to educate their children separately from other Israelis - even from other Jews....

....About 10% of Israelis are ultra-orthodox, or Haredi - a figure that is growing, partly because they have very large families. .....

...Zammi Kobalkin went through the Haredi education system, but found himself totally unable to integrate outside that community.

"I didn't start doing my A,B,Cs until I was 23," says Zammi, who has now joined mainstream education and is a law student at Herzliya, but at the cost of being disowned by his ultra-orthodox family in Jerusalem.
....

But the increasing number of ultra-orthodox students, funded by the state, is a dynamic problem that has to be addressed, says Professor Amnon Rubenstein. He is a former minister of education in Israel and now lectures at IDC.

"If you don't teach them maths, English or computing they cannot be integrated into Israeli society," says the professor, who has co-sponsored a petition before the Israeli Supreme Court which would force ultra-orthodox schools to teach some core, secular subjects.
Secular Israeli school in Tel Aviv Most Israelis study a secular curriculum in mixed schools

"A growing number of Haredim, who don't know anything about the outside world is a real burden on the economy and wider society," he adds.
Basic point is that we have something to learn about this from Israel. Israel is fortunate that there is no violence associated with this ultra-orthodox movement; but you can never tell. There is a long tradition of Jewish militancy as well.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by A_Gupta »

Jinnah's condition for a united India was complete Muslim parity with Hindus (or more accurately, complete Muslim parity with all non-Muslims. Any space for Sikhs, Christians, etc., was to come out of the 50% Hindu space). It was kind of obvious that this parity was unworkable, and utterly unfair to the non-Muslims. Hence he had to have Pakistan, and the means to obtain Pakistan, we all know, starting with "Islam is in danger". After the Lahore Resolution Jinnah consistently took up the theme that Islam and Muslims would be wiped out of a united India, and hence Pakistan was a necessity.

Had the European Union been invented back then, Jinnah might have suggested something similar to that union - the sovereign states of the Lahore resolution bound together by EU-like ties - perhaps common currency, visa-less travel across borders, but with independent national parliaments and heads of state. However his imagination did not extend that far, nor did that of the Congress. In any case, it is not clear that a EU-like arrangement would have met the needs of that time.

But think about it - even statehood within the context of India is an emotional issue that can provoke violence, even though no one is being severed from anyone else. To put international boundaries between people immediately raises the temperatures among minorities stranded on the wrong side of the international boundaries, whereas they feel secure if there is some common structure above the provinces even if there are provincial boundaries. Add to that some seven years of propaganda that Pakistan was a matter of survival for Muslims, that without it they would go extinct.

Had the 1970s not seen OPEC and oil crisis and hence Saudi Arabia rise in influence with its burgeoning cash flow; and had the West not sponsored jihad as an answer to the Soviet Union, we would be in a much milder situation today with respect to Islamism.

I think when you think of it in that context, then the problem of the fundamentalist Muslim in today's India may seem a little more tractable.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by svinayak »

A_Gupta wrote:
Had the 1970s not seen OPEC and oil crisis and hence Saudi Arabia rise in influence with its burgeoning cash flow; and had the West not sponsored jihad as an answer to the Soviet Union, we would be in a much milder situation today with respect to Islamism.

I think when you think of it in that context, then the problem of the fundamentalist Muslim in today's India may seem a little more tractable.
An entire generation in India has woken up to this global change and threat. But the question I have is that did they have to get the mujahid that radicalized to take care of Soviet Union or was there an ulterior motive to change the middle east and in that process change South asia and central asia.

This is kind of a large scale social engineering done on the Middle east over a 30-40 year period.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by ramana »

Re-Arabising Islam is over a century old project of the British Empire to remove the threat of Ottomon Empire to Europe. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt writes very clearly in "The Future of Islam", the project which was executed faithfully over the last one hundred years.
The implementors got changed from British to Amercians due to the global shift in economy and hence power to the US. Anatol Leiven etc are the torch bearers/keeper of the keys of the quest and periodically interject when the Americans waver in the project.

The creation of Pakistan is a key milestone of the project and its erasure will set off a firestorm of backlash on the West.

Before anyone wants to reply read the book quoted. Its easy download form archives text site. For a book written in 1880s he clearly identifies the role of the Pakjabis in the project.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by RamaY »

Quoting in full to not to lose the context...

Mind of a "liberal".
Why Live In Kufristan? Go To Pakistan; It Was Created For The Likes Of You

Quoting a press release of Majlis-e-Ahrar, Punjab, the Daily Sahafat, Delhi (18 May 2010) reports that Muslims are proud of the fact that, with the intervention of Majlis-e-Ahrar chief Maulana Amanullah and the Shahi Imam of Punjab Maulana Habeebur Rahman Saani Ludhianawi, they were able to raise their heads high in this Kufristan, the land of Kafirs. Ahrar volunteers raised the war cry of Allah-o-Akbar when the local administration removed the film shooting apparatus of a movie company that was trying to shoot a film “Tanu weds Manu” reportedly without any permission inside the premises of a mosque. [Urdu paper report published below]

It is possible that, as reported, the movie-makers were doing something unauthorised. If so, local Muslims were right to protest and Majlis-e-Ahrar was right to come to their aid if the administration was reportedly not listening to them as there are few Muslims in Kapurthala.{If there were enough muslims, authorities would have listened} It is quite possible that the administration went into action only when they apprehended a law and order problem following the involvement of Majlis warriors{Majlis warriors? Where did they come from, especially in Kapurthala where there are few muslims to start with?}. If true the administration should be taken to task by the higher authorities for allowing this unauthorised shooting to continue within the mosque premises despite the local Muslims’ protest.

But the proud victory celebration in this “Kufristan” was amazing. As reported, this victory “not only stopped the shooting of the film but restored the prestige of the few Muslims who live in Kapurthala{Prestige for what?}, said Dr. Abdur Rasheed and other Muslims thanking the Shahi Imam of Punjab Maulana Habeebur Rahman Saani Ludhianawi and Majlis-e-Ahrar. They said: “we are proud of our lion-hearted leader whose courageous intervention raised our head high with pride in this Kufristan.”

Clearly there are people in our community who are not happy living in what they call Kufristan, the land of infidels, even though the overwhelming majority of people in India are believers. But a believer for them is one who believes in their narrow interpretation of a religion that had come to this world as a blessing to the entire world. Not for them is the Quranic dictum lakum deenakim waleya deen (For you your religion and for me mine). The only Deen for them is the one they think they possess. There are no other deens in the world. God has sent to this world no prophets other than Prophet Mohammad (S) as far as they are concerned. It means nothing to these people that the Holy Quran has repeatedly demanded that we believe in all the prophets (1, 24, 000, according to one account,) {So after 1,24,000 prophets, the heavens suddenly dried up with Muhammed?}as a part of our basic faith and give them equal respect as Prophet Mohammad (S) and treat their followers as Ahl-e-Kitab (People of the Book) and have close social interaction with them including establishing marital relations{What about prophets after Muhammed? Is Ramakrishna Paramahamsa / Ramana Maharshi etc are prophets?}. Indeed even within that Deen, for them the only correct interpretation is the one they believe in. No one else has the right to interpret Islam according to his own light and live by it.

These Kufristanis apparently believe they are living in the Mecca of Prophet Mohammad’s early years of prophethood. But if that is the case, should they not be following the policy of Prophet Mohammad in those days. Are they aware what horrendous atrocities the Prophet and his followers had to face day in and day out? {If there was no fear of retribution, the liberal also behaves like his other brother; as we have seen in Pakistan and Bangladesh}And do they know what the Prophet and his followers did? They did not even raise a finger in their defence{Is this true? What about killing of Jews under Muhammed's nose?}. So, if you believe you are a Muslim living in early seventh century pre-Hijri Kufristan of Mecca, behave like one. Don’t go to the administration protesting shooting of a movie in your masjid precincts. Be grateful for having a masjid in the first place. Muslims in Kufristan Mecca didn’t have a mosque at all.

However, the question for us, the mainstream Muslims, to ponder is: do we want people like this living in our midst? Can we live peacefully in this multi-cultural, multi-religious Darul Aman with some in our midst treating it as Darul Harb? Would the confrontationist behaviour of these people not embroil us all in a conflict with other people in our multi-religious, multi-cultural society? How would people from other religions distinguish between mainstream Muslims and these Kufristanis? How would they know this Muslim is a HIndustani and this one is a Kufristani? Is it not time we asked the few Kufristanis among us to leave us and migrate to the land that was specifically created for them? Obviously when Pakistan was created it was clear that it would not be able to accommodate all Indian Muslims. So who was it created for? Apparently the founders of Pakistan, whether they were Muslims or Hindus{Who are these hindu founders of Pakistan?}, must have thought this new country will be a haven for those who were uncomfortable living among Kafirs and want to live among the “pure.” How come we still have people among us who consider this land Kufristan? What are they doing here? What is there motive in living in our midst? How come they are allowed to run major warrior organisations, mosques and newspapers?{What are these Hindustani muslims doing for the past 60 years?}

A popular Dawn columnist Nadeem F. Paracha writes in a recent column: “A few weeks ago I got an email from a reader about a Pakistani in the US who (on Facebook) accused me of being a “Zionist-backed agent of secularism”. When someone asked the gentleman that, if he hated the US so much why was he living there, he conveniently (and without any hint of irony) claimed that his mission was to convert (to Islam) as many Christians and Jews in the US as possible.” Now, is it possible that these Kufristanis are living in India with a similar motive? After all, Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat-ul-Ulema did not support the creation of Pakistan with a similar motivation.

But can we mainstream Muslims, who are proud of and happy living in multi-religious India, allow these Kufristanis to live in our midst? Should we not ask them to leave for the “land of the pure,” where there would be no kafirs (they have been practically weeded out), only Shias and Sunnis, Deobandis and Barelwis, Salafis and Ahl-e-Hadeesis and, of course, Ahmadias, both the Lahoris and the Qadianis?

{I have a better suggestion: Why don't the mainstream Hindustani-Muslims start mass-converting into Indic religions until Islam itself transforms into a pluralistic-faith? Perhaps that is a better solution as it is in the hands of these mainstream Muslims than asking others to move to Pakistan, which is Indian land to start with. I would have appreciated if the author asked these Kafristanis to go to lands of Muhammed instead of Pakistan - as if it is bap's land.}

Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

Christine Fair must have the most morbid sense of humor on earth, for a person whose views have the ears of the leaders of the world's only superpower. She says Pakistan is not failed or failing. Ok let us take it for what it is worth - it just astounds me thinking of where a nation would have to go to make Ms Fair think it might be failing.

But I am beating about the bush. Pakistan has multiple power centers and no power center has total control over everyone else. I think everyone is able to see and accept this much. But we may need to look at the "mosaic" that Pakistan forms in a little more detail.

We know for instance that the Paki army does not control vast areas of Pakistan. We also know that the Paki army is unable to control the TTP and sundry terrorist groups from carrying out their attacks in Pakistan. And again, the Pakistan army has never exerted enough power to either bring Paki feudals into line, or make Pakis pay income tax.

Then we look at what passes for the civilian government. Taking once again from the Anatol Lieven article, the civilian government is corrupt rich and feudal and hardly represents "the masses". The Paki army has contempt for the civilian feudal government but is unable to remove them. The latter are necessary for the Paki army itself to survive.

In the "good old days" Pakis army officer cadre came from the rich feudals.The quintessential RAPE one brother in the army and another in the civil services. As per Lieven and other reports, this has now changed. A new class of officers from humbler backgrounds have appeared on the scenes. But that does not stop the army from doing some land grabbing and business ventures of its own.

Then there are the sundry terrorist groups - each having areas of interest and influence that neither the government or army can change.

Finally there are the Paki people who are nominally "ruled" by all the above groups. The rule is hardly complete and Pakis end up having enough freedom to do pretty much what they like.

All this can seem like utopia but for a nation-state to function coherently you have to have the coordination and cooperation of a huge majority of people. And for that to happen there has to be a common law for all to follow and a common law enforcing apparatus. In the absence of that huge organizational structure human societies end up fragmenting into small "manageable" groups with their own rules. And this sets the stage for all sorts of exploitation. Men exploiting women. Rich exploiting poor. Adults exploiting children. Nothing new in all this - these are all age old "rules" in society which many political system have sought to change.

Even as I type this I am frightened by the mess that Pakistan has got itself, and possibly the world into.

The most dangerous item that has fallen into Paki hands is nuclear weapons. Right now the single most powerful, disciplined, self serving and self preserving organization in Pakistan - the army has control of the weapons ( as far as is known). It is for this reason, and this reason alone that the US s interested in ensuring the health and unity of the Pakistan army. Every argument can me made to show that breaking up the Paki army might actually help Pakistan become less dysfunctional, at the cost of splitting up ino more than one state. But the big question is "What happens to the nukes after the Paki army?"

If the above issue can be accepted as correct, then the US will ask India to help preserve the Pakistani army on the grounds that 2-3 nuclear armed states or groups can each serve as an irrational threat that is worse than a disciplined Paki army on life support. But, as pointed out earlier this becomes a 3 way game with the US and India walking with one arm in a handshake and the other arm with a finger up the other nation's backside. Unlike the commonly held view that the US dictates and India complies. I believe that there is now an element of India US cooperation in which India demands certain concessions from the US in exchange for following a hands of policy with regard to Pakistan. India has to rely on US pressure on the Pakistan army to hold back attacks on India while the US asks that India does not do anything that destroys the unity and integrity of the Pakistani army. I believe parleys to achieve this have now been going on for years - which would explain the statements from various GoI people from George Fernandes to more recent Army Chiefs who have all said that the nuclear weapons are currently safe.

If the nuclear weapons issue is is set aside and the US and India cooperate to keep the Pakistani army intact you still find that Pakistan is totally unstable and chaotic and is spiralling into a darker future where terrrist groups get shelter in a failed land to create chaos for others.

Military action to weed out those groups is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is millions of Abduls. Not all have received indoctrination (because the education system is so inefficient an inadequate), and many are just too young - about a fourth are probably less than ten years old. Whether anyone in Pakistan likes it or not and whether they allow it or not we have to reach out and control the minds of these people before they grow older and become a bigger monster for our children. That means that we simply must put in the effort to interfere with the indoctrination and change viewpoints by "exchanges" of some sort.

The opponents of this from Pakistan will basically try and create war (conflict, terrorism), but we have no option. It has to be done. Quarantining Pakistan is not an option because it has a rapidly expanding population who need a different sort of social engineering. We cannot cop out. We have to see Pakistan as a mosaic of people - some of whom do not have indoctrination (yet) and some of whom are too screwed up to do much. We have to reach out to those Pakistanis we can get - and we need to reach out to them before the various half-in control groups of Pakistan get them.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Pranav »

Rudradev ji, Islamism has militarism built into its DNA, and aspirations for economic upward mobility do not really contradict that. They do compete for mind-share maybe, but they don't oppose Islamism.

The Yahoo India employee who was part of the "Indian Mujahideen" is the prototypical example.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Pranav »

shiv wrote:US asks that India does not do anything that destroys the unity and integrity of the Pakistani army.
But India does not, in any case, have enough power to do that sort of thing, at present.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by RajeshG »

Great posts. Thankyou guys.

One of the best threads imho.

A long time BR member had once also suggested another interesting category. The suggestion was that India's main strength and weakness is the proliferation of micro-identities. Islamism as well as EJism's strength and weakness is the formation of super-identity. In practical terms the suggestion was to bolster the muslim-yadav, muslim-ghanchi, muslim-rajput identities. Our politicos/bureacracy know how to use these tools for management.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by ramana »

what do you think Capt Amarinder Singh is doing?
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by darshhan »

ramana wrote:what do you think Capt Amarinder Singh is doing?
Ramana ji. Can you please elaborate?
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by brihaspati »

Thinking back on the previous two pages :

(1) micro and macro identity itself is not necessarily the problem or the solution. The thing to consider is where or in what context the micro and macro are salient. No society is homogeneous in only one identity. Both many microidentities as well as a superidentity can coexist. For example even within Islam many microidentities subsist. Over time and space, microidentities become dominant macro ones or previous macros become micros.

Most of the problems happen when one microidentity is trying to usurp or create a macroidentity, while at the same time the previous macro is being pushed back to become a micro. This is the point when both the micro and the macro are in conflict and therefore they engage on common points to fight it out.

So if the mirco-method is employed to split Islam, then those mircos need to be chosen that can have contradictory elements compared to the macro of Islam. This will be the difficult feature to find. the reason the micro-movements against the "macro" identity of "Hindu" succeeded partially, like the invention of the "Dalit" - was because it conflicted on the question of "status" and "position in a social hierarchy" as measured along a new ideological value system. This value system as imposed by the colonial regime established social hierarchies based on non-Christian religion and non-European ethnicity - as invalid. Therefore while at the same time the colour and race based hierarchies were okay - the so-called Hindu varna/caste hierarchy [not going into the debate about real or imagined] was "bad" and "inhuman".

So if the same route is taken, need to establish also and impose also a "value system" that puts the micro and the macro of Islam in sharp conflict.

(2) Any attempt at social engineering has to keep in mind that it needs at least two things : the coercive power of a state and the will to do that re-engineering.

Within India, state power is there but re-engineering IM requires the "will" to do so. This is tricky, for the fundamental drive in post-Independence "secularism" has been an inordinate fear and hatred of the Islamic. Hence the supreme effort to keep them "distinct" and in fact sharpen their identity as distinct from the majority. If they were really seen as an integral part of India, then there would have been serious attempts at "integration" by trying to reach common grounds and creating conditions under which IM leadership would have been forced to abandon the unacceptable portions of the Islamist claims of exclusivity and distinction. No such thing has happened, and in fact what appears as "appeasement" is actually a cover for intense dislike and hatred and an attempt to keep them separate.

We don't hesitate to intervene in the lives of those whom we consider family if we see them as growing habits that can bring both them, us and the neighbours to trouble. Indian "secularists" who viciously fight to preserve Islamist distinctions and exclusivities do not consider IM to be family. IM are treated as "guests" - who by Indian tradition are to be "appeased", even at the cost and suffering of the "host", but never to be treated as "family".

Now when we talk of re-engineering the PORKIM, without capturing state control over PORKIM, we also lack state power as it stands. Engagement with PORKIM, when their state power - however weak and dissolute is still intact, is a non-starter.

We have been talking of British social engineering. Looking at the history of the British grip over Indian society, we can clearly see that they had a policy of destruction of the older feudal powers, adoption and recruitment of those willing to change sides and lick Brit boots, and a severe and planned campaign to delegitmize and destroy the power base of those who didn't. Moreover they were not subject to any electoral pressure from the Indians for most of the period where they did try out the re-engineering. The Brits had a suffocating military grip on the subcontinent when they carried out their re-engineering.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by RajeshG »

Valid points. But I am still a bit skeptical about the neccesity of identities being in stark contrast. I read somewhere the huge reversal between the first caste-based census and a later one where wholesale jatis who said they were forward jatis in the former wanted to be called backward jatis in the latter.

On the second point, we might have reached a stage where there are just too many suitors. Perhaps the split will come. What if caste-based-census is carried out this year which also records jatis (not varna) of all religions ? Not that I have opinion one way or the other but just wondering.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by Airavat »

Rise of the poorer castes in Swat
Pakistan failed to provide the people of Swat the standard of governance that the erstwhile state did. Though the people of Swat stoically put up with everything else, what they could not fathom was the new justice system. Whereas in the Wali’s Swat, a case could be decided within weeks, under the new system it took years and even decades to reach its logical end. An elderly man in Mingora was spot on when he recently said, ‘If we don’t have enough food, we make do with what we have and survive. But no one can live without justice.’

It was this essential need of the people that Sufi Mohammad, the bigoted and ignorant founder of the Tehrik e Nifaz e Shariat e Mohammadi played upon. His mission was taken up by his son-in-law Fazalullah. A drop out from a seminary in Swabi, he became famous as Mullah Radio for his broadcasts on an illegal FM radio. His focus was on doing good which appealed to the masses. This person of no means was soon riding an SUV worth five million rupees. Presently he had an escort of, first two, and then four vehicles loaded with armed hoodlums.

Those who flocked under the banner of Fazalullah were known to the people of Swat as the Parachgan and the Naian – the Parachas and the Nais (barbers). The former are poor labourers who collect sand from the Swat River for the construction industry and the latter, as the name indicates, a rank considered to be the lowest among the working classes. Though they spoke Pashto and affected the Pakhtun mannerism and dress, neither caste was Pakhtun. They were therefore on the lowest rung of the social order.

They were fired not by Islamic zeal but by unremitting envy and hatred for those whom fortune had placed above them. And so they went into a frenzy of destroying the social order. The homes of the rich were bombed and their elders murdered. One informant in Swat said, "Those who once never dared look up to the windows of the homes of the rich, now swaggered into those same houses and took away young women to be 'married' to some talib or the other. This was organised rape, but no one raised a voice because the State of Pakistan had abandoned us."
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

The IED mubaraks that we are seeing in Pakistan are only an extension of the work given to suicidal "fidayeen" type attackers who used to concentrate on India to much cheering and celebration in Pakistan. Intuitively it would seem that the idea of Pakistanis getting their own asses bitten off by the terrorists that they have trained and supported should cause us some cheer.

The question that intrigues me is whether we should be wanting to see more of same in Pakistan, or should we been looking at a winding down of such activities.

I visit a Paki site and I find that the focus is entirely on Islam, and the overuse of Islam in extremism and the idea that rabid mullahs have been given too free a hand leading to such extremism.

From this stem two questions:
1) Does India gain from supporting Pakistanis in suppression of rabid mullahs?
2) Will the suppression of rabid mullahs alone address the issue of long term security for India against Islamic extremism?

If you have only rabid mullahs - would there be extremism? The answer can only be yes because once you have an instigator who conjures up grievances, it is only a matter of time before he locates one disgruntled yob who can commit violence.

If we removed all Mullahs would there still be Islamist violence? Yes. Because mullahs are not a limited resource, like oil. They like anti-social yobs they too emerge from the population. Access to guns and explosives are an added factor in the brutality of attacks instigated by the mullah-yob combination.

What I am getting at is that extremist violence from Pakistan that targets India has 3 origins:

1) Rabid Mullahs (and their Pakistani sponsors)
2) An endless supply of disenchanted men to join training camps for salary and food and later go kill themselves.
3) Adequate access to guns and bombs. I am going to ignore this point - it is a worse problem in Pakistan than in India and hopefully we can keep it that way.

1) Rabid Mullahs (and their Pakistani sponsors): From the Indian viewpoint what do we gain from either supporting or opposing these people? Rabid Mullahs in Pakistan have not arisen from a vacuum. They are an evolution of the idea of purification of Muslim society that started with partition. As long as Islamic extremism was cleaning out kafirs, Pakistanis found it fine and dandy. But when the same purification is demanded from Pakistani society it has become an issue. Is this good or bad for India?

If purification continues in Pakistan, then there will be murders and mayhem and we can gloat. But that may not protect us from terror. If the rabid mullahs are opposed and defeated, we have no guarantee that the focus will not be turned back on kafirs.

So with regard to rabid Mullahs, India is in a <i>"Tails we lose, heads they win" </i>scenario. Under the circumstances it may be better for us to see continuing mayhem in Pakistan. Let the purification proceed uninterrupted and accept the risk that we will get hit by the crossfire from time to time.

But by not interfering in Pakistani internal affairs we lose an opportunity, so I believe we must intervene on the side of someone or the other. Or all sides if need be. But even using this argument it is clear that we can play almost no role in cleaning up Pakislam.

The second factor in terrorism is:

2) An endless supply of disenchanted men to join training camps for salary and food and later go kill themselves. Is this good or bad for India?

The short answer IMO is that this is uniformly bad for India. A prime example is Saint Ajmal Kasab. This moron was basically poor and uneducated. All he wanted to do was be a criminal in Pakistan. he ended up being a criminal in India courtest group 1 - rabid mullahs and their sponsors.

Pakistan has - at the very least - 60 million very poor. More likely to be 80 million. Of these at least 30 million are male. Of those 10 million or so are under 15 years. Even if 1 % of those turn criminal/suicidal we have one hundred thousand terrorists and criminals. They may attack Pakistan and I don't really care if they keep attacking Pakistan. But they may attack India and I don't like that. These people are going to be a problem for India.

Pakistan has to be forced to spend resources on giving these people a sensible education.

What are the hurdles to this?
Pakistan is not putting enough effort into education and the infrastructure for that. This is partly because the military swallows up a a huge part of the budget. But outside of the military feudal lords swallow up development/education funds.

I am not at all sure if there is any way this can be forced on Pakis. It appears more corruption and lack of will than inability or lack of funds. .Maybe a few more IED-mubaraks will need to happen before Pakis start coming to their senses?
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by RajeshA »

Poverty is a social and economic condition that needs to be tackled across the board, regardless of religion, caste or any other social differentiator. It needs to be tackled by all programs, relevant to economic upliftment - education, jobs, community work, political empowerment, wealth redistribution (not necessary the socialist kind), law & order enforcement, etc.

Poverty would be fought in the same way anywhere else in the world.

What we have to be careful with, is that we do not make the same Pakistani arguments that poverty is the cause of terrorism. There are poor people everywhere and they do not become terrorists. It is the agents of political Islam in Pakistan who churn out terrorists from the raw materials of poor kids. Humans cannot be used in the same way one uses arguments to ban weapons, "Guns kill!"

One cannot get rid of terrorists by getting rid of poor people, by getting rid of the raw materials. One would have to get rid of factories. One would have to get rid of the agents, the madrassas, the terrorist training camps, the Jihad camps.

Last but not least, India cannot make Pakistan's social problems go away.

Secondly I want the Pakistani Muslim to be the poorest Muslim in the Indian Subcontinent, with the RAPE either lynched by the Taliban or having emigrated. The system needs to fail and fail terribly. I would I wish something like on anybody? Because, it would help the Rudradev Gradient in India.

The more the Laboratory of Islam, Pakistan looks like Somalia, the more would the other Laboratory of Islam, India be willing to learn from the experiments of unbridled Islam in Pakistan, and do some more secularization experiments in India.

An Indian should be able to tell an Indian Muslim, "it is not the Hindus, who are keeping you down, it is your Mullahs! Just look at Pakistan. There were no Hindus there, and it was a country with lots of water and a fertile delta, and it still went down the shithole! Because of the Mullahs!"
shiv
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

RajeshA wrote: An Indian should be able to tell an Indian Muslim, "it is not the Hindus, who are keeping you down, it is your Mullahs! Just look at Pakistan. There were no Hindus there, and it was a country with lots of water and a fertile delta, and it still went down the shithole! Because of the Mullahs!"
The only problem I see with this would be what Pakistan achieved for years until 2001 - and that is to calibrate hatred against Hindus alone. This end point would suit a lot of people. Pakis, and other geopolitical players who want Paki nukes pointing away from them and the gleatest fliends.

I see only one positive sign with regard to Islam of the Pakistan variety and that is to use it as an example to ask "So this is Islam? Murder, hatred and mayhem LOL"

As long as Islam is used to promote violence against others Islam needs to be smeared as a violent faith. If there is a model community of Muslims that can preach, teach and practice Islam minus the violence and coercion, then only that can serve a an example of what is acceptable. This of course is already happening in various ways in the world. But before it happened there were a lot of semantics and whining. First the excuse was the violent people are not Muslims. Then there were semantics about what is islam and who is Muslim - i.e don't smear Islam, there are bad people in every religion. But all these are beside the point. If a Muslims is violent in the name of Allah, he is the follower of a violent faith. Violence must end. Pakistanis are only just beginning to see what violence means. Islam itself can become respectable when it is practised without violence. The nonsense that was spouted that it is the mot rapidly spreading faith is balderdash. Thanks to Pakistan it is the faith that is most rapidly gaining ridicule and mockery.

Pakistan will not become non violent soon. It has many issues and I stated only 3 of them above -those 3 being mullahs, a screwed up population and guns.

The screwed up population needs to be exposed to counter propaganda - and the ideal counter propaganda is to expose them to movies, TV serials/stories of Muslims - especially Indian muslms living lives of prosperity, peace and tolerance. These stories do occur in India. India is a remarkable society. It is practically the only society in the world that tolerates the fully covered up Muslim woman and the fully naked Jain saints or the people who are seen at the Kumbh - naked and smoking pot. It combines the atmosphere of Saudi with the atmosphere of Woodstock. Not even "liberal" Western societies come close.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by brihaspati »

Education while the mullah-cracy survives in full glory, does not add to modernization in any islamic society. It almost surely generates more radicalism in every Islam dominated society. The modern education loads the student with a barrage of information that provides a much more challenging and complex picture of the world than what the omnipresent Mullahcracy is also simultaneously bombarding the student with - as part of his or her daily life.

For Pakistan, nothing will work unless the mullahcracy is physically removed from existence, land-reforms redistributes land away from feudal control, and the old army disbanded or destroyed in conflict. In fact all three can be part of the results of a war, if carefully planned from before. But basically the Pakistan state is a protector of all three agents of regression - the mullahs, the feudals and the army - so without overthrowing the state itself, none of the standard socio-economic wisdoms will work.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

brihaspati wrote: basically the Pakistan state is a protector of all three agents of regression - the mullahs, the feudals and the army - so without overthrowing the state itself, none of the standard socio-economic wisdoms will work.
This is correct. But the Army will not be overthrown - its survival is in the interest of the US and the US is protecting the army better than Allah protects Pakistan.

Anti Hindu mullahs are and were fine and dandy in Pakistan. Only when the mullahism started killing fellow Pakis are they squealing. I would be happy to see if Pakis can create a special breed of mullahs who love Jews, Christians shias and ahmedis and hate Hindus, which is what would be ideal for the state of Pakistan and its 3.5. There will be plenty of IEDology en route to this version of jannat

Overthrow of the feudals is another matter that I am not getting into - it is not a subject that I have paid attention to. It requires a functioning democratic or communist government. The latter will not come. The former hasnever come and has little hope with the US protecting the army caste.

Under the circumstances India's choices are Total war or no war. If the choice is no war, then the sub choices are do nothing or do something and who in Pakistan we might specifically be able to target.

Since I believe that India has already chosen "No war" , I prefer do something over do nothing. At least some of my ruminations are focused on what can be usefully done if we must do something, rather than nothing.
brihaspati
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by brihaspati »

shiv wrote
Overthrow of the feudals is another matter that I am not getting into - it is not a subject that I have paid attention to. It requires a functioning democratic or communist government. The latter will not come. The former hasnever come and has little hope with the US protecting the army caste.
McArthur did it in Japan, at a time when it was really not a democracy, nor sovereign, or communist. It was done under "iron-grip occupation" by a "foreign military force".
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by RajeshA »

shiv wrote:Since I believe that India has already chosen "No war" , I prefer do something over do nothing. At least some of my ruminations are focused on what can be usefully done if we must do something, rather than nothing.
shiv ji,

you of all people should not doubt the worth of your contributions/ruminations!
shiv wrote:If the choice is no war, then the sub choices are do nothing or do something and who in Pakistan we might specifically be able to target.
Actually, as some big-honchos like to say, "all options are on the table"! What we know is, that the present GoI has decided not to go to war with Pakistan for the level of provocations, that India has to put up to till date! Governments will change in India in the future, and provocations by Pakistan probably also, so WAR is not fully discounted!

In case of No War, there is of course a multitude of actions, India and GoI can take! Many of which, you yourself are have been exploring!

Some things that come to my mind:

1) One thing I would like to see, is India making a lot more films centered around Muslims in India, and how they casually intermingle with people of other faiths in India and grapple with the challenges of life but also enjoy their lives. Faith need not even be a factor.

I have no stats, but Indian films in Pakistan must be having something over 80% penetration into the Pakistani "market". Indians are probably earning nothing from it, but subtle Indianness messages are getting through. No amount of Mullacracy would be able to control this flood. If India really wants to make a difference, then what we can do is to ensure that TVs and DVDs players in Pakistan are as cheap as bullets. May be generators too! Every family in Pakistan, no matter how poor should have access to Indian films on DVDs or cable.

2) Whatever may be the opinion about WKKs on BRF, I have lately bought into their propaganda about 'Aman', 'people-to-people' contacts, etc. The more the better!

Taqiya is old stuff! Everybody knows that a Pakistani is always in taqiya mode! How does taqiya help, when the other already knows that you are lying? In fact it only harms the taqiya-doer as he gets a false-sense of comfort. They can do all the taqiya they want, India will do taqiya using neutrinos, totally subtle and invisible, but on a atom-bum scale!

My theory is that all Muslim societies and countries are being fcuked by the great powers and the Muslim anger is being channelized, call it a pressure relief valve, call it exhaust pipe, towards somebody else, some other power! The British are past masters in this, and Muli-in-Bund was a student of this school. It is a game of maximizing Muslim anger towards somebody else.

I will be happy if the Pakistanis hate Americans and British and anybody else, and of course themselves more than they hate Indians or Hindus. I want the Pakistani National Bird to fly more often, and get some relief while in flight. I want Poodle cartoons to appear more often. I want more Facebook drawing events. I want GUBO to be second most used phrase in Pakistan, right after AoA!

Last but not least, I want the 60,000 Pakistanis, who used to earn a living sewing footballs, to know that all their jobs have all gone to Tall Mountain Fliend, and now they can only pick their noses. I want the pious in Pakistan to know the truth, about the bura-bura-bura haal of the Ooi-goors. The Pakistanis should know, that they cannot travel in Pakistan and meet Ammi jaan, because Deep Ocean Fliends take money but only provide useless train-cars.

Last but not least, do they know that Iran is Shia?! Heyn ji?

Man, have I got a wish-list!
shiv
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by shiv »

There is piskology in what you say Rajesh.

I believe it can be understood by seeing how we respond to WKKs on here - with anger, horror, consternation etc. The reaction is "How can these people even think of being friendly with those fanatical terrorists"

The counter argument made is "There are sane Pakistanis who wish for friendship with India"

And the counter to that is that "A Paki will be all friendly and nice until you talk about terrorism, when you find that he supports terror against india and thinks Hindus are dogs"

All these arguments are valid and correct viewpoints. In fact regarding the Paki tendency to support violence in India has definitely been true for decades.The only question is whether the attitude of "We will stop talking to you until you change your attitudes or vanish from the earth" is a good line to follow.

One can ask: "Why is this not a good line to follow?" There is nothing to talk to Pakis. If we talk it must be with guns alone and that is not being done by our netas. This too is a perfectly valid argument, so the only question remains is, can there be any benefit to India in talking to Pakis and can those benefits outweigh the obvious and attractive logic of not dealing with Piggystan.

As far as I can see the logic of engaging with Pakistan is convoluted and targeted at squeezing some benefit. Back to the question "WTF is this so called benefit of talking with Pakis"

You will find that most educated Pakis whom we BRFites tend to "talk" to, either one on one or on the internet are educated Pakis. All educated Pakis have been exposed to indoctrination to hate India. In other words we of BRF are talking to only hate filled indoctrinated Pakis.

From this arises the question "Are all Pakistanis indoctrinated?" Who will answer this question and how can you answer it?

Pakistanis will not answer this question. They do not admit to indoctrinating anyone, but yet too many insist that Indians are rapist piss drinking penis worshipping dogs. But such talk itself is an indicator of indoctrination, and that cannot come from birth. It has to start later and be reinforced continuously. For example a 5 year old child can be made to recite "Hindu kutta. Hindu kutta" but will not understand the significance. Teaching the child to think differently can change her views. A child who is ten will have internalized the words without knowing the meaning. But after 10 or so the hatred becomes more real and can be used to create grievances and fidayeen.

The other question is "Has Pakistan managed to indoctrinate everyone?"

Indoctrination comes from education and at best Pakistanis are educating only 33% of Paki children. Pakistan has about 70 million children below 15 (40%) and it is likely that at 40 million of them may not have received much indoctrination. That is a huge percentage - 25% of Pakis. Many of them are too young, many will be too poor and many will belong to ethnic groups who are less exposed to mainstream Paki education and indoctrination. This is a failure of the Pakistani education system that we must exploit.

India must somehow get a handle inside Pakistan to reach out to these groups and fill them with counter propaganda. By not dealing with Pakis at all we lose any chance of doing that. WKKs may be an obvious route of reaching areas that we cannot reach and the goal is a goal that WKKs can fulfil without complaint. Every Paki child fed with the truth today will be an asset (or at least will not be an opponent) for India as an adult tomorrow. We too need to think in the long term.

If nothing else we create an opinion/thought split in Paki society, which is great to prevent a fascist "single view" that Pakis are trying to create.

And never forget that things are moving. The Paki kids who were born when BRF was started are now 12-13 years old. BRFites who are in their teens will not even understand this. They were in their chaddis when we started studying Paquistan.
KLNMurthy
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by KLNMurthy »

RamaY wrote:KLN Murthy garu,

Isn't that exactly what this quote says
Every empire—indeed, every state that wishes to project dominant influence beyond its borders—sooner or later runs into the question of how to manage client states: states which imperial powers can closely influence without having to incur the expense, risk and unpopularity of occupying and ruling them directly.
Added Later

The fit is being created very carefully -

US/West - thru excess focus on materialism, individualism, secularism, EJism = destroy Varnasrama (will write on this later in GDF), Media, humiliation & politicization of local customs/traditions, Education, Governance structures, calling second largest party as terrorist-organization and so on...

...
I don't have any broad disagreement but generally I don't like the framing of the issue as an activist USA (or any imperial power) molding the passive clay that is the potential client state etc. Usually there is a confluence of historical trends and interests that facilitate different kinds of client relationships. WRT India, we should remember that anti-Hindu trope basically has an indigenous origin, arising from the still-ongoing redefinition of Hinduism in the context of a free and modern India. The differences between the BJP and Congress are marginal when it comes to India's US policy--there is more continuity than difference.

Coming back to TSP, from its inception, it was designed to survive as a feudalistic military outpost servicing America for money which was to be used to re-establish Muslim supremacy in the subcontinent. We know on this forum that they run a classic mafia-style protection racket for the Americans, and are hardly subservient to them. So, the term 'client state' may be a misnomer.
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Re: Managing Pakistan's failure

Post by A_Gupta »

shiv wrote: WKKs may be an obvious route of reaching areas that we cannot reach and the goal is a goal that WKKs can fulfil without complaint.

Shiv, most WKKs interact only with RAPE and come back full of stories of how great RAPE are, just like us, except taller, fairer, etc., and with better goat meat.

There was one chap, Viresh Malik, if I remember correctly, who interacted with non-RAPE Pakistanis and wrote about it on chowk.com. If I remember correctly, he too was subject to great abuse for some inconvenient truths he highlighted. If you find any such Indians who connect to non-RAPE, you don't want to publicize it at all, IMO.

Returning to the point - WKKs are useless in reaching the non-indoctrinated Pakistanis. Instead they serve to propagate RAPE propaganda in India and elsewhere. Further, they provide alibis to the RAPE - "see, we have such good Indian friends, it must be RSS-BJP-ultranationalist-Hindu-type Indians who have a problem with us and that poison the atmosphere and the water".

That Sarojini Naidu or similar twit named Jinnah the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity - rather unjustified and perhaps simply being polite - and see the mileage extracted from that. Anyone who disagrees with Jinnah's demands becomes anti-secular, illiberal and a stinking Hindu bigot - whether it be Nehru or Gandhi or Ambedkar or Patel.

If conceived of as a soccer match, the encouragement of WKKs is simply the concession of self-goals. The damage they do is not worth the possible benefit. And anyway, one good Bollywood movie probably reaches more unindoctrinated Pakistanis than all the WKKs put together.
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