Can the World's Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government? BY AATISH TASEER MAY 9, 2019
Cheers

anishns wrote:Following is an article by the same Aatish Taseer during the scamgress days
Why My Father Hated India
Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: "Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice."
My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India's misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan's unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.
Though my father's attitude went down well in Pakistan, it had caused considerable tension between us. I am half-Indian, raised in Delhi by my Indian mother: India is a country that I consider my own. When my father was killed by one of his own bodyguards for defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, we had not spoken for three years.
To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge—its hysteria—it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan's animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.
The idea of Pakistan was first seriously formulated by neither a cleric nor a politician but by a poet. In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal, addressing the All-India Muslim league, made the case for a state in which India's Muslims would realize their "political and ethical essence." Though he was always vague about what the new state would be, he was quite clear about what it would not be: the old pluralistic society of India, with its composite culture.
Iqbal's vision took concrete shape in August 1947. Despite the partition of British India, it had seemed at first that there would be no transfer of populations. But violence erupted, and it quickly became clear that in the new homeland for India's Muslims, there would be no place for its non-Muslim communities. Pakistan and India came into being at the cost of a million lives and the largest migration in history.
This shared experience of carnage and loss is the foundation of the modern relationship between the two countries. In human terms, it meant that each of my parents, my father in Pakistan and my mother in India, grew up around symmetrically violent stories of uprooting and homelessness.
But in Pakistan, the partition had another, deeper meaning. It raised big questions, in cultural and civilizational terms, about what its separation from India would mean.
In the absence of a true national identity, Pakistan defined itself by its opposition to India. It turned its back on all that had been common between Muslims and non-Muslims in the era before partition. Everything came under suspicion, from dress to customs to festivals, marriage rituals and literature. The new country set itself the task of erasing its association with the subcontinent, an association that many came to view as a contamination.
Had this assertion of national identity meant the casting out of something alien or foreign in favor of an organic or homegrown identity, it might have had an empowering effect. What made it self-wounding, even nihilistic, was that Pakistan, by asserting a new Arabized Islamic identity, rejected its own local and regional culture. In trying to turn its back on its shared past with India, Pakistan turned its back on itself.
But there was one problem: India was just across the border, and it was still its composite, pluralistic self, a place where nearly as many Muslims lived as in Pakistan. It was a daily reminder of the past that Pakistan had tried to erase.
Pakistan's existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.
Pakistan had better roads, better cars; Pakistani businesses were thriving; its citizens could take foreign currency abroad. Compared with starving, socialist India, they were on much surer ground. So what if India had democracy? It had brought nothing but drought and famine.
But in the early 1990s, a reversal began to occur in the fortunes of the two countries. The advantage that Pakistan had seemed to enjoy in the years after independence evaporated, as it became clear that the quest to rid itself of its Indian identity had come at a price: the emergence of a new and dangerous brand of Islam.
As India rose, thanks to economic liberalization, Pakistan withered. The country that had begun as a poet's utopia was reduced to ruin and insolvency.
The reversal in the fortunes of the two countries—India's sudden prosperity and cultural power, seen next to the calamity of Muhammad Iqbal's unrealized utopia—is what explains the bitterness of my father's tweet just days before he died. It captures the rage of being forced to reject a culture of which you feel effortlessly a part—a culture that Pakistanis, via Bollywood, experience daily in their homes.
This rage is what makes it impossible to reduce Pakistan's obsession with India to matters of security or a land dispute in Kashmir. It can heal only when the wounds of 1947 are healed. And it should provoke no triumphalism in India, for behind the bluster and the bravado, there is arid pain and sadness.
This joker is one seriously confused individual; and I will apportion part of the blame on his mother. She should have given him amrit, named him Akashdeep Singh and brought him up on Sikhi, and essentially cut out his father from the records. (Or she should have moved to Pakistan and been in the vicinity of her lover. Just to be clear, this is not about religion, it's about Pakiness.) So he says he is Indian, then he says he is half Indian, half Pakistani and cr@p like that. Equal-equal just doesn't work, never did. The rules are clear and he stands no chance if has pissed off the government.
Yes, he's got it all backwards. ( No pun intended !)yensoy wrote:This joker is one seriously confused individual
Actually it does... sort of...Rahul M wrote:taseer's sexual orientation has nothing to do with this. whether you find it distasteful or not. keep it out of this thread or warnings will be issued.
Aapko shat shat pranam for the yeoman service to keep us up-to-date!!Peregrine wrote: ritesh Ji & nam Ji :
The Illegitimate Male Offspring Aatish of a Single Mother cannot FORGET HIS MENTAL TORTURE AND JEERING BY HIS SIKH COUSINS, UNCLES & AUNTS :
Present In Our Memory Games A self-identifying, dispiriting tour of Islam's extremities inlaid with personal history - KHUSHWANT SINGH13 APRIL 2009
Aatish was brought up by Tavleen’s parents and spent his childhood with his Sikh cousins. The discovery of his being different from them makes amusing reading. One afternoon playing with his cousins he went to a quiet corner of the garden to empty his bladder. A cousin who joined him to do the same stared at Aatish’s penis with awe and wonder. He came back to announce to his assembly of uncles and aunts: "Aatish ka susu nanga hai!" They broke into hysterics. He was the only boy in the family who had been circumcised. He was Muslim.
Cheers
Agree with Yensoyji on this:yensoy wrote:Actually it does... sort of...Rahul M wrote:taseer's sexual orientation has nothing to do with this. whether you find it distasteful or not. keep it out of this thread or warnings will be issued.
1. He has made India look like some kind of terrible place for gay individuals
2. He has used this to support his gay marriage and some immigration benefits
But I agree, attacking his gayness itself should be off-limits. Our own culture is highly inclusive when it comes to sexuality, sexual identification and orientation.
You can rebut whatever you want, but somewhere else. When a mod says a certain topic is off-limits, it is off-limits.Rsatchi wrote:Agree with Yensoyji on this:yensoy wrote:
Actually it does... sort of...
1. He has made India look like some kind of terrible place for gay individuals
2. He has used this to support his gay marriage and some immigration benefits
But I agree, attacking his gayness itself should be off-limits. Our own culture is highly inclusive when it comes to sexuality, sexual identification and orientation.
What two people get to within the confines of 4 walls is their business![]()
But if you use that to tar the whole community/state then it is the state's business to rebut!! Doesn't state/community have that right
ANI
@ANI
PM Modi at Dera Baba Nanak: I would like to thank the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan Niazi for respecting the sentiments of India. #KartarpurCorridor
g.sarkar wrote:Gentlemen: I looked in to this OIC thing
Gautam
Being born in Britain doesn't guarantee citizenship at birth. He could have got it legitimately though after having an indefinite leave to remain, but what passport was he on preceding that? Does his father have dual nationality? Babus either due to their wilful ignorance, or phone calls from above made them overlook T&C.g.sarkar wrote:Gentlemen: I looked in to this OIC thing about Atish. The rules say that a child whose one parent/grandparent is Pakistani or Bangladeshi is not eligible. A child of a single parent from India, while the other parent's nationality is unavailable is not eligible. Foreign born children born out of live-in relationships with one parent Indian and the other foreign are also not eligible. See https://nriinformation.com/articles7/oc ... igible.htm
As far as I know, Atish says that he was born in UK of an Indian mother who was not married to his Pakistani father. These rules are quite water tight and he is not eligible in every category. If he got the OCI, it was a mistake made by the Indian Consulate.
Gautam
Sirji, that is the current law, the past law was different and guaranteed UK citizenship at birth. The new law does not apply to him. Our Atish was born on 27 November 1980. You’re automatically a British citizen if you were born in the UK before 1 January 1983, unless: your father was a diplomat working for a non-UK country. All he had to do was to apply. Please see https://www.gov.uk/apply-citizenship-born-uk.mmasand wrote:Being born in Britain doesn't guarantee citizenship at birth. He could have got it legitimately though after having an indefinite leave to remain, but what passport was he on preceding that? Does his father have dual nationality? Babus either due to their wilful ignorance, or phone calls from above made them overlook T&C.g.sarkar wrote:Gentlemen: I looked in to this OIC thing about Atish. The rules say that a child whose one parent/grandparent is Pakistani or Bangladeshi is not eligible. A child of a single parent from India, while the other parent's nationality is unavailable is not eligible. Foreign born children born out of live-in relationships with one parent Indian and the other foreign are also not eligible. See https://nriinformation.com/articles7/oc ... igible.htm
As far as I know, Atish says that he was born in UK of an Indian mother who was not married to his Pakistani father. These rules are quite water tight and he is not eligible in every category. If he got the OCI, it was a mistake made by the Indian Consulate.
Gautam
Sirjig.sarkar wrote:Sirji, that is the current law, the past law was different and guaranteed UK citizenship at birth. The new law does not apply to him. Our Atish was born on 27 November 1980. You’re automatically a British citizen if you were born in the UK before 1 January 1983, unless: your father was a diplomat working for a non-UK country. All he had to do was to apply. Please see https://www.gov.uk/apply-citizenship-born-uk.mmasand wrote: Being born in Britain doesn't guarantee citizenship at birth. He could have got it legitimately though after having an indefinite leave to remain, but what passport was he on preceding that? Does his father have dual nationality? Babus either due to their wilful ignorance, or phone calls from above made them overlook T&C.
This is definitely my last post on Aatish Taseer. Time to move on.
Gautam
Please Sirji,abhijitm wrote:From now on lets call the moron with his real and apt nick name - Imran Khan Niazi.
NSFW/NSFL Pics: https://twitter.com/regsecadvisory/stat ... 1199788034Five policemen were killed on Sunday after they were ambushed by fugitives in Punjab’s Rajanpur district, police said. Officials said a police team was dispatched to the Arbi Tibba area for the arrest of some fugitives. The miscreants opened fire on the police van as soon as it reached there, the officials said. As a consequence, they said, five policemen were killed.
A policeman was also among four people killed in a separate encounter in Dera Ghazi Khan. Unknown men riding a motorbike opened indiscriminate fire after they were signalled by the police to stop at a checkpoint near Kot Mubarak, District Police Officer Asad Sarfraz said. An Elite Force man, a passer-by and two suspects were killed in the exchange of fire that ensued, the official said. Another cop sustained gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, additional contingents were called in for the arrest of miscreants in both Rajanpur and DG Khan districts.
At least two policemen were killed after unidentified men opened fire on them in the Kulachi tehsil of Dera Ismail Khan on Saturday, police confirmed. According to the law enforcers, the policemen were on their way to their duties at a check-post when the unidentified motorcyclists attacked them. The policemen were identified as constables Bilal and Yousuf. The attackers fled the scene after the incident and stole the policemen’s service weapons.