Indo-UK: News & Discussion

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 10 Apr 2009 21:00

Terror plot: Neighbours surprise that 'such nice ordinary lads' had been arrested

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 10 Apr 2009 21:13

Britain is unnecessarily harrassing these 'misguided youth' I say. What about political correctness? Waht about human rights? And civil liberties? For all I know these lads might be innocent 'freedom fighters' demanding their 'disputed' homeland of Britainistan.

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 10 Apr 2009 21:19

Hey... use the right term

The homeland to be carved out of the UK is called Pakdesh.

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 10 Apr 2009 21:32

Sorry Gerard saar. I must be careful about these statements. So I will follow one of those statements made by the redoubtable Mr. Miliband to Indians on Kashmir.

"Resolution of the dispute over Pakdesh would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow British authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat in Iraq and Afghanistan."

vsudhir · Post by **vsudhir** » 10 Apr 2009 22:30

AlQaeda plot to bomb Easter shoppers in the UK

The one that just got foiled. Well, Easter's not far away, so the cops would've acted soon anyway.

An al-Qaeda cell was days away from carrying out an "Easter spectacular" of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on shopping centres in Manchester, police believe.

Well, well... I cannot forget how an orchestrated chorus of 'concern' for IMs was played out in UKstani press and by Miligand himself at the Taj soon after 26/11. Shouldn't the UK now be cautioned about ill-treating boor bakistani istudents onlee??

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 10 Apr 2009 22:53

Sanjay M wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00467.html

The simultaneous raids were originally scheduled for dawn Thursday but were bumped up after Quick inadvertently flashed the documents, according to a police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Telephoto lenses captured such details as "AQ driven attack planning within the UK" and "Merseyside -- Dynamic entry, firearms."
Sounds like someone was planning another Mumbai - or at least some kind of shoot-and-scoot incident, in contrast to the previous tradition of bomb attacks.

I guess the spectacular success of Mumbai has opened up a whole new avenue for jihadis to consider in event-planning. Expect fidayeen assaults to figure much more prominently in future scenarios.

Not to discount the theory, but 'dynamic entry, firearms' is a reference to the tactics of the operation to arrest the suspects. This is one of the reasons why Slow's carelessness in document handling was such a potentially serious breach of security.

The advantage of the standard jihadi model for attacks in the EU is that everything you need to build an IED is legally available - the variable is the depth of experience/training in bomb-building.

Getting in the no. of automatic weapons and the significant amount of ammunition and grenades seen in Mumbai in to the UK is not easy. If you're going to send more thoroughly trained jihadis (and unconnected to local networks under surveillance in the UK) straight from Pakistan instead of the leaky, lazy lot recruited in the UK, the IED model still makes more sense.

pgbhat · Post by **pgbhat** » 11 Apr 2009 00:47

Pakistan: origin of three-quarters of all terror plots
Apologies if it was posted earlier

Latest estimates suggest 4,000 young British Muslims have been trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan, and with 400,000 British citizens visiting Pakistan each year , there are fears that many more will become radicalised.

Correct me if I am wrong but 4000 BRITISH citizens training ??!!! Isnt that more than the number of Jihadis present in J&K right now?? and 400,000 Brits visiting pakistan means jihadis can have enough fodder to start mini insurgencies throughout europe.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 11 Apr 2009 01:18

Gerard wrote:Terror plot: Neighbours surprise that 'such nice ordinary lads' had been arrested

It is sad to see liberal country like UK supressing the free expression of Islam. Why cant they leave these nice lads alone to enjoy the liberty of following their religious obligations and duty. They should be allowed exercise their right of spreading and imposing islam .

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 11 Apr 2009 23:09

vsudhir wrote:Is there no poll carried out by any media house etc on what the average Briton thinks of poopostanis in their midst? Wouldn't be surprised if the % of positive ratings are exactly == the % of poopis in the general population.

i think the politically correct authorities are afraid to run this poll. the answers would be pretty clear. general conversation with people leaves you in little doubt. also the media have switched from "asian" to "pakistani" over the past few months - come to your own conclusions

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 12 Apr 2009 10:38

Sadiq Khan says US foreign policy on Pakistan is damaging Britain

Young Pakistanis 'blame UK for drone deaths'

* Jamie Doward and Rajeev Syal
* The Observer, Sunday 12 April 2009

The UK must distance itself from American foreign policy if Pakistani youths are to be prevented from growing up hating Britain, according to the government's social cohesion minister.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 12 Apr 2009 13:48

X posting from Paki thread:
http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image= ... us0169.jpg
Hi-res picture of Bob Quick carrying the document. Contents of that page are clearly readable.

sum · Post by **sum** » 12 Apr 2009 18:41

pgbhat wrote:
Latest estimates suggest 4,000 young British Muslims have been trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan, and with 400,000 British citizens visiting Pakistan each year , there are fears that many more will become radicalised.

Simple message from MI-6 liaison in UK Isloo embassy to UK:

Whitehall, we have a problem....

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 13 Apr 2009 17:54

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09 ... ipulation/

Whitehall officials will train pro-West Islamic groups to manipulate their Google search ranking in an attempt to drown out extremist voices online, The Register has learned.
The policy is being developed despite recent warnings from a group of international experts on radicalisation that such strategies are likely to be "largely ineffectual".

harbans · Post by **harbans** » 13 Apr 2009 18:21

That’s just sweeping the dirt in the carpet. Not only is it ineffectual, but it will create imbalances in public opinion which will translate to a victory for Islamist forces in the long run. Sweeping dirt under the carpet won’t resolve matters. 80% of pro Paki voices on line are from white sounding names. Ok maybe not 80% but 77%. Paki’s use white or Indian sounding names so often to confuse naïve visitors on sites, it’s amazing (check rediff comments too). Deception is a tool used by Paki’s a lot on the net. Honesty on their side of the battle won’t win them anything. So they rely on this. Well now they have the Brits with them.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 13 Apr 2009 22:04

>>>train pro-West Islamic groups to manipulate their Google search ranking

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 13 Apr 2009 22:49

its DBM I'm afraid. the policy as i heard it on the radio, was to give more airtime to moderate muslim groups

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 14 Apr 2009 02:31

ArmenT wrote:X posting from Paki thread:
http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image= ... us0169.jpg
Hi-res picture of Bob Quick carrying the document. Contents of that page are clearly readable.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 14 Apr 2009 02:36

JE Menon wrote:>>>train pro-West Islamic groups to manipulate their Google search ranking

They have created their own Islamic groups which have penetrated the extrimist groups inside Afg-Pak.The question is have they used them for other purpose.

aditya · Post by **aditya** » 14 Apr 2009 03:19

Acharya wrote:
ArmenT wrote:X posting from Paki thread:
http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image= ... us0169.jpg
Hi-res picture of Bob Quick carrying the document. Contents of that page are clearly readable.

The operation was successful and the British police stopped the Pakistanis from killing innocent people. In spite of this, Bob Quick was thanked for his meritorious service but sacked or resigned anyway.

Did any heads roll in India over the miserable failure in Mumbai, beginning with the higher echelons of MK Narayanan to Hassan Gaffoor and co? The same people are still in charge, and the latest news is that the revamp of the Maharashtra Police has also been botched.

sum · Post by **sum** » 14 Apr 2009 09:36

Link

A terror “plot” that wasn’t?

Hasan Suroor

Thanks to the police, we have another “alienated” young Muslim out there. Which is exactly what the extremists need.

Last week’s dramatic anti-terror raids in north-west England in which nearly a dozen Pakistani nationals, living in Britain on student visas, were arrested for allegedly plotting what Prime Minister Gordon Brown breathlessly described as a “very big” attack was — it now increasingly appears — prompted by half-baked intelligence based on “fragments” of chatter and some intercepts.

Other so-called “leads” included sightings of some of the alleged suspects taking photographs of a fashionable shopping centre and a popular nightclub in Manchester. They were also apparently overheard discussing certain dates that led the MI5 sleuths to jump to the conclusion that not only an attack was being planned but that it was “imminent”— and indeed even dates had been settled.

The media quoted anonymous “sources” as saying that a “devastating” attack might have been planned for the Easter weekend. One newspaper dubbed it an “Easter spectacular.”

Yet, no hard evidence has surfaced so far despite extensive searches and there is a growing sense that it could all end up in a wild-goose chase. The much-talked about “bomb factory” where, it was claimed, the Pakistanis were assembling explosives remains elusive; and the computers seized from their homes have failed to yield anything incriminating until now.

Police sources are quoted as saying that “nothing of huge significance” has been found.

“There is lots of material that when put together may take us somewhere. It will be a long and drawn out investigation,” one source told a Sunday newspaper.

The Times claimed that there was already talk of deporting the detainees back to Pakistan as chances of charging them appeared to recede. It also reported “terrible infighting” among the different security forces as to who was to blame for the botched operation.

So, what went wrong?

One theory being touted is that the investigations are still in an early stage and something could yet turn up. But the problem is that the police cannot hold the alleged suspects indefinitely in the hope that they might stumble on something at some stage. The maximum period for which a person can be held without charge is 28 days after which they must either be charged or released. And the time is running out.

Another explanation for the failure to find any evidence is that the raids were conducted prematurely. The raids had to be brought forward after a senior police officer Bob Quick, who has since resigned, was photographed openly carrying a confidential document containing details of the operation. As the exposure of those details threatened to compromise the operation the police decided to move in immediately.

But, frankly, that’s being disingenuous. The fact is that the operation was advanced only by a few hours. Originally, the raids were to have taken place on Thursday morning but were brought forward to Wednesday afternoon after Mr. Quick’s blunder.

At the time, the BBC reported security sources as saying that the plot was in its “final stages.” Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the buzz was that the bombs were all primed to go off at the Easter weekend.

But, then, we have been here before and, as The Observer’s security analyst Jason Burke recalled, there were the “ricin ‘plot’ raids which found no ricin; or the ‘airline plot’ raid, which a jury decided last year, did not feature any airlines; or the ‘cyanide on the tube’ plots, which involved neither cyanide nor the tube...”

So, there is a history of terror “plots” turning out to be, in Mr. Jason’s words, “bunkum.”

Conspiracy theorists see a “pattern” in hyped-up terror raids on Muslim homes every few months and the alacrity with which the identities of the alleged suspects are leaked to the media although the law forbids disclosure of names and nationality until a person is formally charged with a crime.

Questions have also been raised about Mr. Brown’s intervention, blaming Pakistan in rather strong words, even as the investigations had just begun. His remarks that Pakistan was not doing enough to tackle terrorism sparked a diplomatic row as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the U.K. Wajid Shamsul Hasan pointed out that all applicants for student visas were vetted by the British High Commission and the Pakistan government had nothing to do with it.

Mr. Hasan said Britain needed to improve its own vetting system instead of blaming Pakistan.

“It’s at your end, you have to do something more ....If [the U.K. government] allow us to make inquiries first, if they ask us to scrutinise those people who are seeking visas, we can help them. But the thing is they have their own regime,” he said.

Meanwhile, two of those detained have already been released. Among them is Muhammad Adil, a 27-year-old Pakistani student of John Moores University in Liverpool, who has given a harrowing account of how he was arrested while he was chatting to a friend outside the university building.

Adil said officers with machine guns told him to put his hands up, grabbed his wrists and tied his hands behind his back while pointing guns at him. They told him he was being arrested as a terror suspect. He was taken to police station where he was kept for several hours before being released.

Adil, who came to Britain two years ago, said his experience had changed his view of Britain.

“They are clearly identifying Muslim students. It’s a big insult…The first thing I will do is leave this country as soon as possible,” he told The Guardian.

So, thanks to the police, we have another “alienated” young Muslim out there. Which is exactly what the extremists need.

The more i read Hasan Suroor, the more i am convinced that he is a Paki in disguise masquerading as a Indian.

I have no doubt he will be the first to cheer on when the Talibs march down Bradfordabad.

Chinmayanand · Post by **Chinmayanand** » 14 Apr 2009 18:47

The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government:

Keshav · Post by **Keshav** » 15 Apr 2009 20:35

Lalmohan wrote:the policy as i heard it on the radio, was to give more airtime to moderate muslim groups

That's actually a good idea. If the government feels it can be put together credible groups with solid ideas on how the alienated Muslims can integrate into society then it doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Gaffes like "training pro-West" groups are silly, but it would be interesting to watch what the moderate Muslim programs are talking about.

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 15 Apr 2009 22:16

Muslim population 'rising 10 times faster than rest of society'

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 16 Apr 2009 06:03

vsudhir · Post by **vsudhir** » 16 Apr 2009 06:08

Disappointing to see BRF focusing on a mere 3% of UK's popn to the detriment of the other 97%......

Keshav · Post by **Keshav** » 16 Apr 2009 09:05

vsudhir wrote:Disappointing to see BRF focusing on a mere 3% of UK's popn to the detriment of the other 97%......

I keep telling people its not a big deal but everyone here seems to have bought into this looney right-wing conspiracy nutjob theory about Eurabia and other Mark Steyn non-sense.

Seriously, are white Brits just sitting around doing nothing?

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 16 Apr 2009 11:18

Keshav wrote:Seriously, are white Brits just sitting around doing nothing?

It appears to be so.

vsudhir · Post by **vsudhir** » 16 Apr 2009 15:48

What to do, miyan - corpse==corpse onlee.

shav aakhir shav hi hota hai, dimaagi ho ya shareeri.

Keshav · Post by **Keshav** » 16 Apr 2009 21:29

Dilbu wrote:
Keshav wrote:Seriously, are white Brits just sitting around doing nothing?
It appears to be so.

Still, I don't think we should be spending so much time on Eurabia. There's certainly a loss of credibility when people feel that such topics are somehow important to the politics of Europe, as a whole.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 17 Apr 2009 00:54

The Labour Force Survey only samples 65,000 private households (it used to be 60,000) and is designed to look at the working age population.

It has problems looking at both broader and micro-level demographic issues, which is why the LFS has to be reweighted every few years based on census results.

The interpretation of discrepancies being offered by the Times commissioned tudy is that Muslims in the 2001 census (conducted in April, before 9/11) were not willing to identify themselves as such back then, but are more willing now. This seems highly implausible for a number of reasons.

The 2011 Census is not far away, and will give us a far more complete and accurate demographic picture.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 17 Apr 2009 17:54

but one thing is for sure, islam is much more visible and much more vocal than it used to be in the UK

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 17 Apr 2009 19:43

The Islamist big bang was the Rushdie/Satanic Verses affair in 1989 - no one was was prepared for the demonstrations and riots that followed. Or the massive expansion of Islamist activity on university campuses that followed in the 1990s. That's when a lot of people were forced to recognise Muslim as distinct from 'Asian' or even 'coloured'.

Is Islam more vocal in 2008 than 2004? I'm not sure about that.

Its more visible largely because the media, the public and the state have been looking at Muslim communities (particularly the Pakistani ones) harder than ever since 7/7 and all the failed plots that have followed. During the Troubles the same thing happened to Irish Catholics in Ulster, especially housing estates like Ballymurphy that were Republican strongholds. No community enjoys being under that kind of burning spotlight. The reaction is often of defiant bluster in public, while behind closed doors parents are desperately trying to figure out how to keep their kids from ending up in prison or dead.

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 18 Apr 2009 22:35

Liberty boss Shami Chakrabarti was targeted by Damian Green probe detective

The detectives who arrested Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, were after information on Shami Chakrabarti, one of the country's leading human rights campaigners

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 21 Apr 2009 04:38

London arbitration court opens in India

JwalaMukhi · Post by **JwalaMukhi** » 22 Apr 2009 05:49

Well not exactly about bon-homie of Indo-UK; but a datapoint about UQ.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephill ... stan.thtml

the Obama administration finally did the only decent thing – while perfidious Albion has lived up to its name once again .

What does that tell us about Britain’s concern for human rights and the defeat of Jew-hatred?

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 22 Apr 2009 06:48

JM,

The article is out of date.

The UK, France and all other EU countries attending agreed beforehand that they would walk out of the UN conference if anyone tried to drag in Israel and Zionism in to the picture.

That is exactly what they did when Ahmadinejad opened his mouth on Israel - you can hear the applause and cheering when they strode out; There are video and audio clips here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8008572.stm

As I understand it Indian representatives attended and sat through Ahmadinejad's speech - one is not going to suggest that is a datapoint about India? At the UN in 1975 the GoI voted in favour of the resolution that Zionism was Racism helping it pass, and in 1991 it changed its mind and voted to overturn the resolution when a number of other countries reconsidered following the Soviet Union's collapse and the defeat of Iraq.

Similarly at the Durban conference in 2001 the UK and EU rejected Arab-Islamic pressure to declare Israel racist. The US and Israel as usual had refused to attend. Who would have remained to defend Israel?

India has pursued good relations with Israel for many years, but it has seldom been willing to take as high profile a stance in defending Israel. It just doesnt have as much at stake as the UK or EU.

surinder · Post by **surinder** » 22 Apr 2009 07:40

I did not know abou them before, if I am posting stale well-known news, then I apologize. I was shocked to read that Tuskagee experiments were carried out on the Indians. Oh, the wages of slavery.

The Rawalpindi experiments were experiments involving use of Mustard gas carried out on hundreds of Indian soldiers by the British scientists from Porton Down. Experiments were carried out before and during the second world war in a military installation at Rawalpindi. These experiments began in the early 1930s and lasted more than 10 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawalpindi_experiments

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 24 Apr 2009 04:19

Gurkhas not able to settle in Britain, despite court victory

Tens of thousands of Gurkhas will be refused the right to settle in Britain despite a landmark court ruling, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Stan_Savljevic · Post by **Stan_Savljevic** » 24 Apr 2009 18:12

Perfidy, thy name is albion
http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/0 ... j-pakistan

Legacy of the Raj --- Mihir Bose

At one point during the recent general election campaign in India, the leader of the BJP opposition, L K Advani, accused the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, of being “weak”. Singh and his colleagues reacted with fury. This was an abusive term, they said, that insulted both the office of the prime minister and the country itself. Not to be outdone, Advani reacted by claiming he was “hurt” by the attacks on his record, and for good measure then failed to attend an all-party dinner in honour of the departing speaker of the Indian parliament.

Such exchanges suggest that levels of debate in the Indian political class are not particularly elevated. But to be fair to the participants, they have not been helped by the historical inheritance the new state received at its birth. It may be hard to credit now, as 700 million voters go to the polls in the world’s biggest elections, but back in the 1940s the wise men of the British Raj predicted that while Pakistan would prosper, India would soon be Balkanised. Pakistan, it was thought, would become a vibrant Muslim state, a bulwark against Soviet communism. India’s predominantly Hindu population, however, was presumed to be a source of weakness and instability.

Nobody expressed this view more forcefully than Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Tucker who, as General Officer Commanding of the British Indian Eastern Command, had been in charge of large parts of the country. His memoirs, While Memory Serves, published in 1950, the year India became a republic, reflected the view of many of the departing British. Hindu India was entering its most difficult phase of its whole existence. Its religion, which is to a great extent superstition and formalism, is breaking down. If the precedents of history mean anything . . . then we may well expect, in the material world of today, that a material philosophy such as Communism will fill the void left by the Hindu religion.

Tucker was hardly alone among Raj officials. By then, it was almost an orthodoxy to believe that Hinduism was, if not an evil force, at least spent and worthless. Islam, on the other hand, was a religion the west could understand and with whose political leaders it could do business. Rudyard Kipling, the great chronicler of the Raj, had long made clear his fondness for Muslims and his distrust of Hindus. He was appalled by the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the two great Hindu classics, and repulsed by the jumble of the faith’s beliefs. In contrast, Kipling claimed that he had never met an Englishman who hated Islam and its people, for “where there are Muslims there is a comprehensive civilisation”.

The British had seized power in the subcontinent mainly from Muslim rulers, and the crushing of the 1857 revolt, after which the last Mughal emperor was removed, put paid to any chance of Muslim revival. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the Muslims had become the allies of the Raj as it struggled to quell the agitation for freedom led by the Indian National Congress. The Raj encouraged the formation of the Muslim League and determinedly portrayed the INC as a Hindu party, despite its constant promotion of its secular credentials and advertisement of its Muslim leaders. (True, the party was mostly made up of Hindus; but as India was overwhelmingly Hindu, this was hardly surprising. The Raj just could not believe that a party made up largely of Hindus could be truly secular.)

Such was the hatred for the Hindus, particularly Brahmins, that the Raj could not be shaken from this fixation – even when the Congress Party had political victories in diehard Muslim provinces, the most remarkable of which was in the North-West Frontier Province. Today, parts of the province (which voted to join Pakistan in 1947) are adopting sharia law, but in the 1930s a secular Muslim movement had grown up there, led by Ghaffar Khan and his brother Khan Sahib. They joined the Congress Party and won successive election victories from 1937 onwards, defeating established Muslim parties.

But the Raj pictured these secular Muslims as dupes of the wily Hindus. The only consolation for Sir Olaf Caroe, considered to be the supreme Raj expert on the local Pashtuns, was that they would soon come to their senses, “It is hard to see how the Pathan [Pashtun] tradition could reconcile itself for long to Hindu leadership, by so many regarded as smooth-faced, pharisaical and double-dealing . . . How then could he [the Pathan] have associated himself with a party under Indian, even Brahmin, inspiration . . .”

What would the west not give now for such secular Muslims to return to power in this playground of the Taliban and al-Qaeda – even if under the spell of “pharisaical Brahmins”? Such caricatures of Hindus were not uncommon (featuring, for instance, in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop), but it was when this view was espoused by major politicians such as Winston Churchill that it became truly dangerous. When Churchill argued vehemently against Indian independence in the 1930s, his fire was directed mainly at the Hindus (in contrast, he praised Muslims, whose valour and virility he admired). As the Second World War neared its close, the British prime minister was so consumed by hatred of the Hindus that he told his private secretary John Colville that he wanted extraordinary destruction visited upon them. Colville’s The Fringes of Power records the extreme nature of his master’s feelings in February 1945, just after his return from Yalta:

"The PM said the Hindus were a foul race “protected by their mere pullulation from the doom that is due” and he wished Bert [Bomber] Harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them." Clement Attlee, who came to power within months, did not share Churchill’s Hindu-phobia. There were also historic ties between Labour and Congress. Yet his government nevertheless agreed that a separate Pakistan was vital to Britain’s global interests. By early 1947, British policymakers realised they had to withdraw from the subcontinent, but still wanted a military presence there: to protect Britain’s position in the century-long Great Game with Russia, and to protect the sea routes to Arabian oil wells. Partition, the foreign secretary Ernest Bevin told the Labour party conference that year, “would help to consolidate Britain in the Middle East”.

British strategy was also shaped by Pakistan’s wish to remain in the Commonwealth, while India wanted out. By the end of the war, what little love there had been between the Raj and Congress had long evaporated, as most of the party’s leaders spent much of the war inside British jails. They had refused to co-operate with the war effort unless their masters promised freedom when peace came. Regarding this as blackmail during the empire’s “darkest hour”, the British made mass arrests and banned the party. In such circumstances, it was understandable that the pleas of both Churchill and Attlee that the king-emperor should remain as head of state were ignored.

British hopes for the country that emerged were not high. Just before he left India in 1943, the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, forecast that it would take Indians at least 50 years to learn how to practise parliamentary democracy. Even then, he felt it would require much tutoring from the British and other Europeans, whom he thought could be tempted to the subcontinent by the arrival of air-conditioning. (Once they didn’t have to worry about the heat, he reasoned, some six million Britons could be persuaded to settle in India to take on the task.)

That democracy took root so quickly and successfully owes much to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first and longest-serving prime minister of India, who was in office from 1947-64. So well did the system embed itself that when his daughter Indira imposed emergency rule in the 1970s – the closest India has come to a dictatorship – it was ended not by tanks rolling down the streets of Delhi, but through the ballot box. That election showed, as have many since then, that ordinary Indians, many of them poor and illiterate, value their vote (perhaps even more than the rich, who feel money can buy them influence). They queue for hours in the baking heat to cast their ballots.

Before the Second World War, the Raj’s relationship with India was like a father promising to allow his stepson to come into his inheritance at some unspecified date in the distant future. It never quite believed that there could ever be a time that this brown person would be capable of managing the estate.

This general election campaign may have exposed just how fractured the political classes are today, with numerous caste, religious and communal groups competing and doing deals with each other. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance may have completed its five-year term of office, but many of its allies, including cabinet ministers, are opposing Congress at local level. Some of them make no secret that they aspire to the prime ministership, and all of them are aware that, as the Times of India put it: “Opportunistic post-poll equations will be more important than the pre-poll pitch of the parties.”

Yet the patchwork quilt that is made up of British India and the hundreds of princely states united and survived, and still manages to do so despite all the challenges that could have led to that Balkanisation predicted by old Raj hands. The likes of Tucker, Churchill and Kipling were proved wrong: constructing the new nation of India was not, after all, beyond the Indians.

vsudhir · Post by **vsudhir** » 24 Apr 2009 19:28

Stan,

That piece by Mihir Bose is gold. Must read for every Indian, nay, every native of the commonwealth.

The likes of Caroe and Kipling weren't superhuman geniuses but small minded souls wrapped in delusional thinking, who grossly and thoroughly misunderstood, mistreated and and mis-underestimated an ancient faith and a civilization they were fortunate enough to subdue and loot for decades.

How plain wrong they have been is genuinely heartening to see.

Perhaps Col Puri's letters could have included this in as an attachment onlee

And again, I reiterate - Among the nation states that have most and most consistently harmed India and Indians, UKstan and its prodigy Pakistan top the table, by far. No Indian need feel any misplaced sympathy or goodwill for these entities.

Their eventual decline and consequently that of their ability to continue to harm us, can and should be welcomed onlee.