Today, August 14, Pakistan marks the anniversary of its independence. Over the weekend the Pakistani diaspora celebrated, although this report from Devon Street in Chicago suggests the party was a muted and anguished one.
This morning, I took a tour of the Pakistani blogosphere and found it, as usual, disappointing. A few bloggers offered bombastic statements of national pride. Others commented on the party preparations, or lack thereof. There don’t seem to be that many Pakistani bloggers to begin with, nor Pakistani-American bloggers for that matter (a fact that we deplore here at the Mutiny), so I wasn’t really expecting anything in particular; even so, the paucity of offerings, in both quantity and quality, struck me as symptomatic of, well, something.
We get a lot of anti-Pakistan mudslinging here on the comment threads, and though we try to keep up with and get rid of the most egregious and bigoted statements, the best way Pakistan’s image could improve would be through a flood of free, contentious, provocative, educative speech by Pakistanis and their friends. The Web is only one venue, of course, and it is obviously biased toward those with access to computers and the Internet, but to not make better use of such a ready resource is really a shame.
So it’s with pleasure that I introduce you, on this Pakistan Independence Day, to Watandost, the weblog of Hassan Abbas, a Pakistani former government official and writer who now lives in Boston. It’s a one-stop shop for news stories and web links that will be of interest to anyone who wishes for a democratic and peaceful Pakistan within a democratic and peaceful South Asia.
Abbas doesn’t write original content at his blog: he posts useful stories and lets them do the talking. However, he is the author of a book that I wish I’d heard of earlier. It’s called PakistanÂ’s Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and AmericaÂ’s War on Terror, and here is part of the review in the Boston Globe by Farah Stockman:
Although it is a political history, parts of Hassan Abbas’s new book, “Pakistan’s Drift Into Extremism,” reads like someone whispering family secrets. Instead of the crazy old aunt or the secret adoption, Abbas speaks intimately about the dizzying array of generals deposing presidents and presidents plotting against prime ministers that have whirled through the country’s 57-year existence. …
But this 267-page history is also part psychological profile of the larger-than-life personalities of the Pakistani army and their convenient love affair with extremist religious elements who gave birth to the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. …
Abbas’s book is unique in that he is speaking as a Pakistani to his own people. In its most important form, the book is a truth-telling, undressing heroes, myths, and psychologies that school textbooks in Pakistan lionize. …
Abbas shows how, hours after its tumultuous birth as a nation separate from the largely Hindu India, Pakistan faced an identity crisis that has plagued it to this day. He shows how the two great tug-of-wars — between being Muslim or secular, being a democracy or a dictatorship — intertwined.
This, one senses, is the point of all the drama and history that Abbas regales his readers with, across the decades and fiascoes of Pakistan’s often back-stabbing, and occasionally virtuous, political and military leaders. …
The last chapter reads like a doctor writing a prescription. If Pakistan is to be saved from intolerant mullahs, it must make peace with India on Kashmir and reduce the role of the military in politics, despite the strong US support for Musharraf, a key ally in the war on terror.
“The people of Pakistan yearn for true democracy,” Abbas writes. “For this dream to become a reality, Pakistan’s military establishment has to take a back seat.”
If you are genuinely interested in the path to peace in South Asia, I recommend you bookmark Abbas’s page. I would love to know if readers have other resources to share. I would obviously love to hear from Pakistani-Americans reading this post. And if you have read Abbas’s book, I’d love to know what you thought of it.
Pakistan is a country in tough shape, for reasons that don’t need much repeating here. To the Pakistani political and military elite, I can’t wish much of anything good. To ordinary Pakistanis and the Pakistani diaspora, I wish a happy independence day and much fortitude.
Peace.
manju, i’m going to take your comment above as grudging agreement with my points.
one point though: pakistanis have always been invited into the conversation at Sepia Mutiny, even when we or some of our commenters have been graceless at expressing the invitation.
I love the way Al Gore has infiltrated his ideological opponents – these days pretty much everybody on the right has an inconvenient truth they want to discuss. Brilliant coinage Al!
I would like to submit a link of Dawn columinst Irfan Hussain’s writings. He is pretty darn good at seeing things at all perspectives.
Siddhartha Paki government alone cant be blamed for an intolerant society. Islam by default cant co-exist alongside other religions. Heres why: According to the Quran every non-muslim is committing a sin by following other religions and it is considered the sacred duty of a muslim to show the right path ie islam to the non-believers.
if you say so. i’ve been around muslims on four continents, including countries with muslim majority, and no one has ever tried to convert me, threaten me or kill me. but hey, maybe i wasn’t paying attention.
Topcat,
I disagree. I believe that at its peak the Ottoman Empire was more tolerant of different religions than was Christian Europe. For instance, I am certain that the Jews of Spain fled to the Ottoman Empire when they were expelled by Isabella. Foreigners regularly worked for the sultans and were not treated badly or forced to convert.
Besides which, I have a difficult time believing that the Mughals could have ruled a majority Hindu population for eight hundred years without exhibiting a great deal of tolerance from time to time. Furthermore, no religion is free from the taint of intolerance. The fundamentalists who shut down Deepa Mehta’s Water or who beat up little lovebirds on Valentine’s Day in Mumbai have far more in common with Wahabhi clerics than with their more tolerant brethren.
Dharma Queen:
OF COURSE the Mughals could have ruled a Hindu majority place for 800 years without ‘tolerance’ having anything to do with it…it’s called ruling with an iron fist, in addition to having an outlook that confers various advantages when it comes to dominating a disunited people who were severely handicapped by their own culture and mental universe to offer effective resistance.
Ethnic cleansing does not necessarily imply killing the minority. It can also imply creating unfavorable circumstances for the minorities to flourish. Imagine being called a kafir(infidel) at your work place.
Mughals were anything but tolerant. If they had converted all the population (which is very difficult) who would they collect Jezia tax from? BTW Mughal rule lasted 400 years
paranoia is bad for the health.
Amitabh,
You are incorrect on a number of points. Firstly, Mughal religious policy was quite liberal until Aurangzeb (during whose reign, interestingly, Mughal power began to decline). Akbar abolished the poll tax on non-Muslims, allowed equal opportunities for persons of all faiths (recruited Hindu chiefs to the highest ranks of government), permitted public worship for all faiths, personally oversaw the building of new temples, and is recorded as having participated in Diwali celebrations. His son Jahangir, the next ruler, had a Hindu mother. The Mughals regularly intermarried with Rajputs. And from Babar’s will to Humayun: “My son take note of the following: Do not harbour religious prejudice in your heart. You should dispense justice while taking note of the people’s religious sensitivites, and rites. Avoid slaughtering cows in order that you could gain a place in the heart of natives. This will take you nearer to the people. Do not demolish or damange places of worship of any faith and dispense full justice to all to ensure peace in the country. Islam can better be preached by the sword of love and affection, rather than the sword of tyranny and persecution. Avoid the differences between the shias and sunnis. Look at the various characteristics of your people just as characteristics of various seasons.”
Secondly, you are mistaken that there was no effective resistance to Mughal power. The Marathas offered very stiff resistance at various times. But the time this resistance was most effective, was right after the reign of Aurangzeb. Why? Partly, at least, because Aurangzeb antagonized his Hindu subjects.
You can’t rule with an iron fist over a large territory for eight hundred years solid. The Romans were hardly pussycats, but would incorporate local gods into their pantheon to accomodate the natives, besides making alliances with local chiefs and warlords, and would allow various matters to fall under their jurisdiction. They would go out of their way not to interfere with local customs. That was one of the main reasons why their reich lasted a thousand years.
I haven’t personally experienced racism, so I guess it doesn’t really exist then, despite others experiences…
vikram: exactly! you must have read my mind!
From Mohammed Ghori to Bhadhur Shah Zafar
My understanding is that all this period belongs to Indian subcontinent as a whole from Khyber Pass to Kayna Kumari. Lodhis, Sher Shah Suri, Mughals were loose federations in Indian subcontinent with alliances with hundreds of Hindu kings, Hindu/ Muslim warlords. There was always a power struggle within brothers, half-brothers, and alliances were constantly changing. The Rajputs and Mughals had a very close love-hate relationship. Also, Mughals emporers were of all kind – Akbar, Shah Jahan to Aurengzeb.
Everyone was looking for piece of action and zone of influence – Hindus kings, Mughals, and later Sikh Kings too.
Wasn’t Mohammed Ghori aided by Prithviraj Chauhan’s brother-in-law?
Siddhartha, Don’t see anything from your bio on your personal blog that indicates you were anything more than an interloper/journalist/academic in the Muslim countries you visited. Try putting down roots, getting a job, fair representation in court, running for office, living openly as a Hindu in one of these countries before casually dismissing these concerns as paranoia.
Dharma Queen, Akbar was indeed an enlightened ruler despite what the Hindu fundies might say, but he was not a practioner of Islam either. Nor was Tipu Sultan.
Louiecypher, I don’t see anything from your comments on this site that indicates you are anything more than an interloper on the blogs you visit. Try having a respectful conversation and refraining from blanket generalizations and damn-near bigotry before casually telling me what to believe and say.
Louiecypher,
By what criteria was Akbar not a practitioner of Islam? He had a court full of Islamic scholars, and was particularly close to an Islamic sufi mystic. He is said to have tried to follow the Islamic principle of sulahkul(‘universal tolerance’) in all administrative matters. True, he tried to establish a new religion, inviting members of all religions to debate its elements (interestingly, the Jesuits screwed up that plan, wanting to convert everyone in sight) – but this religion was founded on Islam and the idea of a unified,singular God. If we say he was not really a Muslim, is this not akin to saying Gandhi was not really a Hindu, since he quoted from the Bible and hung out with Harijans?
Dharma Queen,
Akbar was a syncretist and Sufis are Muslim in the same way Unitarian Universalists are Christian. The UU has figured out there is no place at the table for them among the Xtian mainstream and have now conceded that they are freethinkers who follow a Christ based ethical system. A similar split will happen with Sufism.
That being said, if your interpretation of Akbar’s relationship to Islam has some utility in creating communal harmony in India, I’m all for it (no sarcasm intended..this is me being sincere)
Akbar was a syncretist and Sufis are Muslim in the same way Unitarian Universalists are Christian. The UU has figured out there is no place at the table for them among the Xtian mainstream and have now conceded that they are freethinkers who follow a Christ based ethical system. A similar split will happen with Sufism.
That being said, if your interpretation of Akbar’s relationship to Islam has some utility in creating communal harmony in India, I’m all for it (no sarcasm intended..this is me being sincere)
A damn smart interloper I’d say! No sarcasm intended..
“I took a tour of the Pakistani blogosphere and found it, as usual, disappointing.”
“As usual”?
Who on earth are you reading? The Pakistani blogosphere is quite opinionated, lively, and interesting usually.
One may have to take off the Indo-centric goggles first to see that though.
Not to sound too disgruntled though, thank you!
And a very happy Indian independence day to you too!
Sidarath!
Glad to find your post and accept my greetings on your big day today.I do hope it would be less surprising in future. True that there are very less presence of Pakistan in blogging world but things getting changed slowly.We do discuss issues and identify them and expose them on different forums.I also did make a post and I was not being too emotional about the day anyway.
someone asked about Feroz Khan.No frankly speaking we are not ready to welcome any moron on our land while there are already many residing here.
Pakistan actually splitted in two school of thoughts.One is ultra liberal who is copycat of West and your culture,which is again very much clone of West(Your drams taught me this) and other is community who thinks that they are muslims and others r not.While both are curse for us and more harmful than any army or fudal system.We are still unable to cope with both communities.
Dharma Queen,
I’ll try to keep this brief as I can, as it is off-topic.
Actually the major portion of Mughal rule was for approximately 200 years, from Babur’s rule in 1526 to the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. Their rule did of course continue on a considerably reduced scale for another 150 years.
The collaboration of local Hindu rulers, especially most (not all) of the Rajputs, and the fact that they were massively outnumbered by the local Hindu population (most of whom refused to convert to Islam), probably had something to do with it.
Aurangzeb’s predecessors were not as orthodox as he was but it is inaccurate to say they were liberal, with the exception of Akbar (during his latter years if not necessarily earlier on). Jahangir encouraged mass conversion to Islam, he persecuted the followers of Jainism and he executed the 5th Sikh Guru Arjun Dev for refusing to make changes to the Guru Granth Sahib w.r.t removing all references to Islam and Hinduism (although it was also due to political reasons as the Guru had supported Prince Khusro, Jahangir’s rebel son).
Quote from Jahangir’s own memoirs, the Tuzak-i-Jehangiri: “At Goindwal on the banks of the river Beas, lived a Hindu, Arjan by name, in the garb of a Pir or Sheikh. Thus, many innocent Hindus and even foolish and ignorant Muslims he brought into his fold who beat the drum noisily of his self-appointed prophethood. He was called Guru. From all sides, worshippers came to offer their homage to him and put full trust in his word. For three or four generations, they had warmed up this shop. For a long time I had harbored the wish that I should set aside this shop of falsehood or I should bring him into the fold of Islam.”
Jahangir’s relationship with Guru Arjan Dev’s successor Guru Hargobind was better although still fairly erratic.
However, Shahjahan’s relationship with the successor Guru Har Rai was positive, especially due to Dara Shikoh and the Guru’s assistance when the prince was ill.
It was due to overstretched resources as well as the Emperor’s religious intolerance, which as you have correctly stated, aggravated not only his Hindu subjects but also alienated his Rajput allies. It also caused huge problems with the Sikhs.
It was during the tail-end of Mughal rule over the subcontinent — there was comparatively little resistance by anyone until then. The simultaneous escalation of warfare with Sikhs in the north, especially under Guru Gobind Singh, played a significant part in catalysing the collapse of the Emperor’s power; indeed, the Guru’s continuous efforts played a huge role in finally changing Aurangzeb’s mind about his own religious fanaticism during the twilight of his life. Once the Rajputs started withdrawing their support too, it was essentially “game over”.
It wasn’t just about “accomodating the natives”. They wanted everyone within their empire to be a Roman. Turning local deities into Roman deities was one way to facilitate this. Some of the Mughals certainly wanted all their subjects to convert to Islam but, Islam being the way it is, syncresis was not an option.
He followed multiple religious customs from other faiths which are technically not permitted within Islam. The religion he crated, Din-i-Ilahi, was a mixture of Hinduism, Sufi Islam, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. The Islamic clergy of the time were strongly opposed to it.
The definitions of what constitutes a Hindu and a Muslim are quite different and, in many ways, not analogous concepts. Islam itself is fairly explicit with regards to the basics of the faith. People undertaking religious practices which contradict some of the fundamentals of Islam are not Muslims in the strict sense of the term.
Jai’s post was very informative..
Labelling rulers/kings/sultans as “liberal”/”secular” according to today’s standards is naive and laughable at best. These folks took care of their own interest or their religion’s interest first. Akbar tried to start his own (kinda coinciding with 1000 years of Prophet Mohammad).. People invent these stories for some kind of “communal harmony” now..
It is more like how this blog is named “sepia mutiny” as the first fight of the browns against Whites.. Real history says Sikhs aided the Brits in thrashing the Muslims and Hindus who had petty reasons for their revolt (jihad against ‘British Kafirs’ and bringing back their local kingdoms..).. But that event is hyped up as ‘First war of independence’ etc.. It should be funny next year to see Manmohan Singh celebrating as premier ar the 150 years celebration of Sepoy mutiny.. Actually I am thankful to the Sikhs for aiding the Brits in killing the jihad..
I guess we do have a wealth of information from the Mughal time period in Persian. If someone translates it in full and publish, it will be very interesting I guess.. We need not fall for ‘selective translations’ used by ‘secular’ and ‘communal’ historians respectively..
Moreover Mughal rule was not all over India at any point of time.. Akbar ruled from Kandahar to Bengal and above the Vindhyas.. Aurangazeb pushed further down to Hyderabad and that’s about it.. souhtern most tip was never under any sort of Muslim rule.. Otherwise you won’t see 1000 year old temples standing in the south even now..
We need not fall for ‘selective translations’ used by ‘secular’ and ‘communal’ historians respectively..
Marxist and Nationalist historians. A Nationalist historian like Nilakantha Sastri or RC Majumdar can be secular, they just don’t believe in the Commie grand narrative and attendant meta-narratives.
The Romans were hardly pussycats, but would incorporate local gods into their pantheon to accomodate the natives, besides making alliances with local chiefs and warlords, and would allow various matters to fall under their jurisdiction.
The Romans were polytheists, and did not make a fetish out of the Truth, viz., One True God, which allows for far more flexibility. The polytheistic substrate in India allowed for much syncretism too.
adnan,
quote of the day!
baraka,
taking off the goggles is precisely the point of this post. thanks for writing in.
prope//er,
i appreciate your answer and, most of all, your willingness to back it up with a name and contact info. you asked “what if this [argument] were happening in real life,” and of course the answer is that in real life we’d have more of a sense of who the other people in the conversation were, such that a/ it might not get into an argument in the first place, and b/ such argument might turn out to be productive.
as you know there is an approach to blog commenting that consists of taking potshots that repeat a single idée fixe from behind a mask of anonymity. this is extremely tiresome to blog hosts. like every religion, every blog seems to have its extremists, and here we get people who can’t talk about a topic that involves in some way pakistan without bringing up partition, jinnah, the mughal empire, etc., in simplistic and inflammatory ways; and can’t talk about a topic that involves muslims without getting damn near to religious bigotry.
and so we react, and we try to shape the conversation so that those views remain featured and heard but don’t hijack conversations. i know there is room for improvement in how i or the rest of us manage a conversaiton, but we do a pretty good job overall, i think.
you say you didn’t spell out that you hated pakistanis. that is true. what you did in your post earlier in this thread was basically to reduce the india vs. pakistan contrast to indra nooyi vs. the (many of them british) suspects arrested in the bomb plot. surely your view of the two societies and their diasporas takes into account that each has its success stories and each has its crazies?
peace to all, and happy independence day.
Jai and others,
I appreciate the details you bring out, but they don’t in the least undermine the position I was defending, which was a refutation of Topcat’s view that Islam cannot co-exist with other religions. Akbar identified as a Muslim and everyone at the time identified him as a Muslim (except for, perhaps, a few Islamic scholars – but there’s always a few religious scholars ready to take aim at any specific individual’s ‘authenticity’), and he ruled over an India where Islam was well able to co-exist with other religions. The Ottoman Empire (at certain periods) is another example. This does not mean that every Ottoman or Mughal ruler was tolerant. Nor does it mean that these Muslim reigns were liberal or secular in a modern sense, but they were liberal for the times, and certainly allowed for the peaceful co-existence of Islam with other religions.
Btw, some Islamic clergy were opposed to Akbar’s new religion, not all – a few actively participated in its creation and development.
Jai, It’s also incorrect to say that Romans ‘wanted everyone to be a Roman’. They wanted everyone to be under Roman rule, certainly. But they made no efforts to ‘civilize’ the Germanic tribes or the English, among others, and weren’t exactly extending citizenship rights to them. They let them be as long as they obeyed Roman orders and paid up at tax time. It should be obvious that I was not saying the Romans were ‘nice’ in accommodating local mores and customs, but that they were wise to do so.
Sid wrote “I took a tour of the Pakistani blogosphere and found it, as usual, disappointing.”
You toured all Pakistani blogs in existance and found that they do not meet your high standards? Forget about independence day, call a national day of mourning! A Bandh! Cancel all weddings, turn off your TVs! We need a commission of inquiry — what caused this national tragedy?
To all Pakistanis — next year, try harder to not disappoint Sid.
Dharma Queen Just visit Hampi and you will see the disrespectfully disfigured idols by your benevolent muslim rulers. Idol worship is considered a sin in islam and any act of abolishing this practice is considered halal(legitimate). There are numerous other examples of destruction of temples even post-partition in Pakistan.
don’t be ridiculous. pakistani blogger adnan himself said earlier in this thread that pakistani blogosphere is under-populated. in my experience, using such aggregators as bloggers.pk or the lahore and karachi metroblogs, i’ve been surprised at how few the blogs are and how narrow their content is. you do the same exercise and tell me if you agree. if you disagree, that’s fine, but i’m telling you how i got to this conclusion.
NOW i have learned about a number of blogs by pakistanis and pakistani-americans that weren’t listed at the places i looked — and that i couldn’t find on technorati either despite using a number of pakistan-related search terms. i am happy to have found these sites and i suspect a lot of our regular readers are too.
so you can call off your bandh, and direct your sarcasm somewhere more useful.
Let me see.. This is what you said in the blog..
and later in the comments
Does that mean you want a flood of free, contentious, provocative and educative speech only from the Pakistanis..? and not from others.. I don’t see people lying to show the Pakistanis in bad light. It is true that Pakistan arrested Pakistanis (not just those who are British citizens ) in the bomb plot..
Maybe, comparing the percentages of minorities in Pakistan now with the data in 1951 (to show the ethnic cleansing) may sound simplistic and inflammatory to you, but not for me (and I believe a lot of others)..
Jai, you expressed my argument far better than I could have. Dharma Queen, obviously this is a complicated topic with lots of nuances and shades of grey… I don’t subscribe to a simplistic black and white view of the Mughals (or their predecessor Islamic regimes, which when taken together with the Mughals is where people get the figure of 800-1000 years of Islamic rule in the sub-continent). However, on balance, when I look at the death and destruction of non-Muslim lives and cultural heritage over a very extended period of time and in a fairly systematic way, overall I strongly feel that the whole experience was a net minus for Indians. Yes I love Mughlai cuisine, I can enjoy an Urdu couplet, I find the Taj Mahal and other Mughal buildings beautiful(including gurudwaras and the Rajput forts in Rajasthan, which are basically inspired by Islamic architecture to a large extent), I know they enriched our classical music and our dance forms, plus many many other contributions to our composite culture…but when I think about the subjugation and pain that was caused, and the repurcussions of their presence which are affecting the region to this day, then I don’t think any of those positive outcomes were worth it. Overall, all those rulers were grotesque tyrants. Even your beloved Akbar was so unbelievably, unspeakably cruel to the Rajputs at Chittaurgarh, the loss of tens of thousands of valorous Rajputs, the carnage is something I don’t think we can easily imagine. The two holocausts that the Sikhs went through at the hands of Mughal nobles (Sikh history is one long saga of persecution at both Muslim and Hindu hands)…the destruction of every major temple complex in northern India…the list goes on and on…
Ponniyin — Does that data compensate for Pakistan’s shrinkange. I had thought religious warfare in Punjab pretty completely wiped out minority groups in both sides of the border. What was the percentage of religious minorities in west pakistan in 1951?
Ikram:
This is what I got.. link
Ponniyin Selvan
This is a tricky discussion, the reality is that there was extensive and open ethnic cleansing on both indian and paki sides of the border. If you look at the muslim population of punjab, haryana, jammu and delhi between 1945 (25%?) and 1955 (5%?), I think you would see changes similar to those in pakistan.
Here are the stats just for west pakistan:
Tabelle 3: Religionszugehörigkeit (in %) 1951 1961 1972 1981
Muslime 97,1 97,1 96,8 96,7 Hindus 1,6 1,5 1,4 1,5 Christen 1,3 1,4 1,5 1,6 Sonstige 0 0 0,3 0,2
Quellen: Census of Pakistan 1951, 1961, 1972; Pakistan Statistical Yearbook 1991 : 62.
http://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/abt/intwep/zingel/hdw3pak.htm
Looks like in 1951 Hindu population was 1.6% of Pakistani population.
So today, PK’s non-muslim pop is about 3%, same as in 1951, and its Hindu pop is about 1.5%, about the same as in 1951 (for West Pakistan).
Which means that the false information posted by Topcat, and supported by Ponniyin, was, as Sid noted, inflammatory.
Al beruni,
First the link doesn’t work.. Second, I was trying to get ‘official figures’ from ‘official websites’ or atleast references to official documents.. Anyone who knows such info. can help..
Ikram,
If you have the right information, you are free to post it.. You can add that Pakistan is benevolent to the minorities in the sense that it creates “new minorities” by declaring one group as non-Muslims.. I don’t know, maybe pointing that fact would constitute “inflammatory” speech by the folks here..
The ethnic cleansing of hindus at the hands of muslims made it to http://www.answers.com/topic/ethnic-cleansing
It is true that hindu population is declining. When all of them will be gone, Al Beruni can claim that hindu population never existed in Pakistan. Anyways, who can answer these questions better than an ex-muslim. Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Sina
Incase you cant open the link here is what it says under the subject: Early examples of ethnic cleansing During the Islamic invasion of the Indian subcontinent, several million Hindus were either murdered or forcibly removed from regions constituting modern-day Pakistan. Famous Indian historian, K.S. Lal estimated in his book The Growth of Muslim Population in India that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million.
Apologies for the broken link. This was functional not too long ago. I believe we should be able to find the figures from the 1951 census of Pakistan (that was the intent of the link). But I do believe the figure of 1.5% is correct.
My understanding is that the census of 1941 showed approx 20% hindus in west pakistan and about 30% hindus in bangladesh.
The first link is from the US library of congress which shows that 50 % of Hindus in Bangladesh were wiped out since 1971. The second website confirms it.
http://countrystudies.us/bangladesh/36.htm http://in.news.yahoo.com/050714/139/5zc7r.html
Siddhartha,
Here is a link to Pakistan’s Blog Aggregator. May it’s a help to some.
A link to A letter to the Indian people by a Pakistani Blogger named KO.
Most Hindus who are still living in Pakistan are Dalits.
In a book “Let us Also Live: The Situation of the Untouchables in Pakistan” by Pirbhu Lal Satyani he says.
.
Pirbhu Lal Satyani, the author of the book, is a Pakistani Hindu social activist based in Lahore, working among the Dalits in his country.
Neena Surely Hindu community had and still has some problems but throughout history there have been people from within the community like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Mahatma Gandhi etc worked hard to eradicte them. (Plus the gentleman you have mentioned in your post) The problem with muslims is that they feel there is nothing wrong in the way they practice their religion and a few people from within the muslim community who tried to bring it up were either expelled from their own country or were shut up. I am talking about Tasleema Nasreen, Salman Rushdie etc.
Neena
Most Hindus who are still living in Pakistan are Dalits. So, your point being ???
That “letter to the Indian people” makes no sense..
Topcat,
While living in Santiniketan, I once dropped into the house of a villager who I didn’t realize was a Muslim. Trying to be on my best behaviour, I immediately ‘namaste-d’ everyone. It’s a Hindu gesture, but every Muslim in that house namaste-d me back. None of them took issue with me. I ate with them, chatted with them, religion was just not an issue. I should add that I showed up with a white guy and dressed in jeans. I was a bit ignorant, I guess, but I only realized they were Muslims when they told me their names. There are little Muslim villages like that all over West Bengal, which exist side by side with Hindu ones. It’s flatly wrong to use phrases like ‘Islam can’t coexist’ with other religions and ‘the problem with Muslims’; there are as many kinds of Muslims as there are Hindus. I’d rather be neighbours with kind-hearted, easygoing Muslims, than with those supposed ‘Hindus’ who think beating up young kids who kiss in parks is a defense of Hinduism.
Dharma Queen
Congratulations on having a white boyfriend but thats a nonissue here. I dont know where you heard that hindus alone beat their kids for kissing in parks and how it ties into the discussion. It goes without saying that a human being is a human being but there are certian ideologies that are incompatible to the human society. For example Nazism. Would you ask a jew to be friendly with a Nazi after all the atrocities? My point is liberal communities must assertively tell the muslims that it is NOT OK to flourish at the expense of other religions. Heres a link to a video that makes the same point as I am. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/86767/modern_attitude/
Topcat,
Comparing Islam to Nazism is pretty to close to hate speech, in my opinion. I don’t know if you intended this, but it is implied in your post.
The ‘white guy and jeans’ comment was to indicate that I sailed into a Muslim’s home violating all sorts of social norms, that is why it was part of the issue. I certainly did not say that only Hindus beat their kids for kissing. There’s a section of Hindu society, as you well know, which supports the harassment of young couples in public in the name of ‘culture’.
I guess you are intentionally misquoting me but thats ok. It was the risk I took while I spoke my mind. If you see all my posts, I have only brought to your notice the population statistics and the factual reasons why islam is incompatible with other religions. I have even quoted certain captions from the holy quran itself that support my arguement. As for your above quote that hindus harrass young couples, I honestly think you are confusing it with islamic sharia punishment.