Kabir: Lastly, KGS and other schools like it are never going to replace English with anything else. English is the way to get ahead in Pakistan (as it is in India to a large extent). The real divide in Pakistan is between those who are Urdu-educated vs. those who are English-educated.
As Kabir states, correctly, that Pakistan’s real divide is between those educated in English and those in Urdu. But what’s startling is that the English-educated class who should, in theory, be intellectually equipped to think critically often recycles the same tired tropes, increasingly unmoored from history or reflection.
The irony is sharp: those schooled in Pakistan’s vernacular languages, closer to the soil, are often more grounded in the idea that Pakistan should not be an alien implant, but a natural outgrowth of the subcontinent. It’s the Anglo-Urdu elite, disconnected from both India and the Ummah, that has imposed a post-colonial ideology designed to obscure origin and suppress complexity.
Let’s call this what it is: a mimic elite with settler instincts. Like Israel’s Ashkenazi founders or apartheid South Africa’s Anglo-Afrikaner elite, Pakistan’s ruling class sought to distance itself from the land it governed while claiming divine or ideological legitimacy to rule it. The mass displacement of Pashtun nationalism, the long war against Baloch identity, the obsession with Kashmir, the suppression of Bengali, the toppling of Afghan regimes—these were not accidents. They were acts of statecraft designed to fracture any natural civilizational or ethnic continuity that could threaten the state’s ideological foundations.
By contrast, Indian nationalism, especially that of the Congress, was pluralistic, even if patronizing. Its flaws were real: Brahminical bias, Hindu cultural dominance, an elitist bent. But it emerged organically from within the civilizational matrix. Nehru and Gandhi, despite their faults, belonged to the land in ways Quaid-e-Azam never did or, rather more tellingly, never wanted to. A fifth generation Hindu convert, QeA cosplayed as a brilliant British barrister with Muslim sympathies (the Pakistani elite are so proud of his pork-eating proclivities). QeA’s creation was brilliant—possibly a poker bluff played to perfection. But it came at enormous cost.
Partition wasn’t merely territorial—it was a civilizational rupture, most violently felt in Punjab, the Urland of South Asia: once serene and syncretic, peaceful and prosperous, suddenly shattered.
None of this is to say Pakistan is illegitimate. Pakistan is not Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia by any stretch of the imagination, but it is more Israel than it is Palestine. Pakistan is built on rupture, not continuity. The Indus Valley Civilization would scarcely recognize its modern geographical contemporary—culturally, linguistically, or spiritually—as kin. But Pakistan, like Israel, has a very real right to exist. But so too is its obligation: to accommodate the deep indigeneity of the land it claimed, much like how South Asia has done.
Nations can be born in violence and grow into maturity. But only if they confront their origins honestly. As the Bahá’í Faith teaches, “truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues.” The longer Pakistan denies its Hindic origins—linguistic, cultural, historical—the more it remains suspended in mimicry: a state modeled on others, sustained by others, and haunted by what it chose to forget.
This is why debates over language are so revealing. As I asked in my previous post on Persianate Pakistan; if it is truly a Persianate society, why is Norouz absent? Why is Persian not taught in elite schools like Karachi Grammar School? Iranians may no longer be Zoroastrians, but they revere Zoroaster and the Achaemenids. Even Kurdish schools in Syria teach Arab children about Zoroaster, to the chagrin of their parents. Norouz binds Iranians, Tajiks, Kurds, and Afghans across sect and script. But in Pakistan, the festival is erased. Why? Because Persianate identity is claimed, not practiced. It’s a fantasy without foundations.
Sanskrit is disowned as “Hindu.” Persian is claimed but forgotten. Arabic is idealized but not understood. The result? A nation fluent in English, deaf to its mother tongue, and allergic to its ancestral heritage. Until Pakistani elites reclaim the languages and holidays of both their mother and father—Sanskrit and Norouz—they remain civilizational orphans.
Now imagine an alternative. Had Partition never occurred, Muslims in undivided India would number over 650 million today—by far the world’s largest Muslim population. Maybe Karachi would have been like Dubai?
Persian language rights could have been pursued with real political force. Muslim power would have been embedded, pluralistic, and homegrown. Instead, what was chosen was rupture. And from that rupture has emerged repression: of language, of history, of self.
There’s a reason Indian Muslims, despite facing Hindutva pressures, remain one of the best-integrated minorities in the global South. They never abandoned their place in the civilizational arc. Pakistan did—and now finds itself a logistical appendage of the Belt & Road, not a sovereign nation but a province in waiting.
To understand this fully, we must also recognize the broader currents of South Asian civilization. The AASI (Ancient Ancestral South Indians), Dravidians, Aryans—all arrived in layers. The Dravidians came likely from the Iranian plateau. The Aryans from the steppes. Each wave brought some violence, but also fusion. Shiva, a Dravidian god, came to eclipse Indra, an Aryan one. Sanskrit, born in the north, married Tamil philosophy in the south. A compact was formed.
Each era of South Asian history has brought its own form of colonization—each more invasive than the last by an order of magnitude. The proto-Dravidians displaced or assimilated the AASI. The Aryans followed with a more structured, caste-based imposition. The Turkic-Islamic conquests layered over both. Then came the British, who surpassed them all—bringing not just foreign rulers but a foreign epistemology. And finally, in the post-1947 world, Pakistan emerged as perhaps the most extreme form: a nation founded on rupture rather than continuity. It internalized the colonial instinct not just politically but civilizationally—rejecting its past wholesale to craft a purified future.
This is why the dissonance feels deeper in Pakistan than in India. Whatever India’s imperial tendencies, its arc remained tethered to the soil—through language, memory, or ritual. Pakistan severed those tethers. And in doing so, it became the most radical post-colonial experiment in the region: neither Arab nor Persian, no longer Indian, and increasingly Chinese. Its elite oscillates between fantasies of the Ummah and lure of global capital, all while suppressing its own origin story.
Ironically, the most natural state to emerge from the subcontinent may be Bangladesh. Despite its flaws, it remains anchored: ethnically, linguistically, and culturally. Bengal never sought to forget itself. It rebelled against erasure—first by resisting Urdu imposition, then by refusing to be ruled as a colonial hinterland. Bangladesh may be fragile, but it is not rootless. And in that, it offers a contrast that Pakistan—and perhaps even parts of India—would do well to study.
The Muslim invasions disrupted but did not sever this arc. Over centuries, Islam became deeply nativized. Sufism, Urdu, Indo-Islamic architecture, and the shared saints of dargahs reflect this fusion. Yet the Mughal elite still looked westward—to Persia, Arabia, Turkestan. And post-1947, this longing for the foreign became national ideology.
That’s the tragedy. Pakistan’s elite wants to be Persian, Arab, or British—anything but Indian. It seeks legitimacy from others, while denying its own soil. Meanwhile, Indian nationalism, flawed and fraught, continues to evolve with its people. Yes, there are Hindu supremacists. Yes, caste still scars the land. But the nation remains a palimpsest of overlapping civilizations & cultural strains. In Pakistan, the past is rewritten. In India, it’s reinterpreted. That’s the difference.
Let’s be clear: we can love Pakistan and still interrogate it. Just as we critique America while believing in its potential. Truth is not betrayal. It’s the precondition of rebirth. And until the mimic elite of Pakistan learns to speak truth—its own truth, not someone else’s—it will remain a nation that borrowed a past, leases a future, and fears its own reflection.
“Civilizational rupture”
Once again, there was no united South Asian civilization ever, in history. Empires are not civilizations and even empires spanning the continent only existed under foriegn rule. Why do Indians keep on repeating the ‘sem2sem’ nonsense? When you actually look at local cultures in India and Pakistan, you will see more differences than two polar opposite countries in Europe, and I would say Europe has less diversity than South Asia.
All apparent similarities are due to the British. The British spread Urdu/Hindi to the entire continent. The British instituted the legal code in both countries. The British established both armies. The British are the reason why we even speak English.
Remove these influences and you will eliminate the bulk of similarity. Rest can all be explained by geography.
Both states of India and Pakistan are multi ethnic artificial states. You note that Bangladesh is a natural state, well duh! They are an mono ethno-state so obviously they are natural. Ideally that would Pakistan would have at least 4 and India at least 20 ‘natural states’.
In order to justify their existences, both India and Pakistan use ideology. Pakistan has used TNT (which is a semi-failure) and India sells everyone the “civilizational state” chooran which is preposterous.
However Pakistan is not actually expansionist like India. Even though Muslim centre of power was in North Central India, Pakistan has given up on ever reclaiming it and the TNT is satisfied with the territorial gains of Pakistan. Eventually Indian Muslims will claim it for themselves. Most Pakistanis don’t even care about TNT because most don’t see Hindus as a problem in Pakistan
However India is expansionist and have designs over Pakistan – always did whether that was Nehru or Modi (Ironically Vajpayee was the only one who wanted to truly accept Pakistan). The reason is simple: when you sell yourself as a ”civilizational state” but then find out that almost all your civilization originates in Pakistan or is based there, then you have created a generation of Indians who keep lamenting about 1947 and dreaming about the past and reunification. BJP is just another face of the reunification movement and these fantasies always come out in times of war.
Pakistanis have no such dreams of being or associating with India, Afghanistan, Arabia etc. Pakistan has it’s own land, own culture, own way of living.
And please stop calling Sanskrit ‘mother tongue’ – it’s cringe. Most non-Brahmins and especially lower castes were forbidden to speak Sanskrit at the pain of death. Indian languages are related to it just like all European languages are related to it, simply because of the Steppe conquests in Eurasia.
If it were not for the iconoclasts India’s civilizational reach would be double what it is today. Even now, all of south east Asia has temples and deities familiar to indians. Small towns in Japan have idols where they have traced the original god to obscure Vishnu Avatars.
Thai is written in an Indic script, any high flown concept in Bahasa, Tagalog, Lao uses a Sanskrit root word.
I don’t know what delusion you are smoking but this is a civilization.
No indian king ruled inner Cambodia, but every indian tourist sees the giant friezes of the Ramayan with awe and joy.
Sanskrit is a parent language, so is ancient Tamil. Concepts of karma, moksha, dharma, are exclusively expressed in Sanskrit terms. Every indian language gets Sanskritized as it moves from the spoken vernacular to the written formal (Tamil too, but to a far lesser degree).
Caste control and norms are very variable, you can pretty much find an example of anything in the giant matrix of time, region and social strata, and very prevalent amongst all the religions (to differing degrees).
Maybe you would see more similarities if you weren’t so blind to your past.
Some of what you are referencing took place due to the influence of Buddhism. Did you know that for a large period of Indian history, Buddhism was the majority religion, and that Hinduism did not regain this status until the first few centuries AD?
Pakistani cope. Pakistan came into being in 1947.
Republic of India is the successor state to British India hence the handing over of the Olympics and cricket records.
\\“Civilizational rupture”
Once again, there was no united South Asian civilization ever, in history.\\
What nonsense is this? The Indus Valley Civilisation was a united civilisation, and the overwhelming majority of ancestry of those in the subcontinent is from the IVC. There is a common civilisational foundation. From caste to curry, and other cultural quirks, these are things rooted in the IVC.
“Shared ancestry” or shared ancestral components does not mean shared history or shared achievements. If my second cousin became a neurosurgeon, it does not mean ‘I’ achieved something of note. Indians tend to overstate the similarities with Pakistanis but consider this: if I list down the food dishes I ate in the last 10 days and you list down yours, will they match? Most likely no. Cultural quirks are also not very similar. There are huge variances within Pakistani ethnic groups themselves.
@xperia2015 here thinks that common religious concepts or some common root words define a civilization.
By that logic, you can literally claim half the world is one civilization. I have actually seen Hindus see the world through this prison and it’s just divorced from reality.
Here are similarities of culture between Russian, Iranian and Indian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3hIvFQyTs8
But are they one civilization now? No.
People in Pakistan generally do not think they are part of the same civilization as Moroccans or Libyans or Albanians just because its the same religion they follow. Infact our religious rituals are so similar that any non-Muslim would be hard pressed to find more than 5 different beliefs held by each group here. And yet, we don’t consider them the same civilization as us. Furthermore, nobody in Pakistan wants to lay claim to territory of those countries.
The concept of Ummah is pioneered by Islam, no other religion had it before Islam and even this concept was idealistic and fell apart in the first generation after the Prophet’s death. However since this is a Quranic concept, it remains. And it’s failure did not stop others. Hindutva is basically a rip off of the late 19th & early 20th century pan-Islamist movements that sprung out in the East. The idea of uniting disparate groups and social castes of Hindus ‘as equals’ under one title: ‘Hindu’ is a ripoff of the Ummah concept. Wanting an Hindu Rasthra is a ripoff of the Muslim Khilafat. However you guys go further and want the territories of those nations who in your mind were once Hindus. And there in lies the rub.
Yes, Hindu and Muslim South Asians belong to the same civilization. Why then do several South Asian restaurants and business establishments have a poster of the Taj Mahal? Also, the jalebi, now a staple of several South Asian diets, was a Mughal invention.
Pakistanis don’t want to be Persian or Arab (at least most don’t). We are content with what we are: South Asian Muslims. The whole reason we founded a country was to have a homeland for South Asian Muslims with no fear of being ruled by the Hindu majority.
I take offense to comparisons between Pakistan and Israel. Israel Occupies Palestinian land. Whose land is Pakistan occupying? (Indians will now scream about “POK” but that is only their point of view. Otherwise it’s Azad Kashmir).
Also, shouldn’t it be up to the citizens of a country to determine which aspects of their history and culture they think are relevant? Pakistan is based on the Two Nation Theory so why would Sanskrit be emphasized? It’s the Hindu liturgical language. A people who are 97% Muslim are not likely to be interested in it.
I share your admiration for Congress’s version of Indian nationalism. However, I think you underplay the extent to which Hindutva wants to create a pure Hindu nation with Muslims as second class citizens.
“I think you underplay the extent to which Hindutva wants to create a pure Hindu nation with Muslims as second class citizens”.
Since you don’t like Modi so much, I feel the need to clear up a few misconceptions. The ideological fountainhead, i,e the RSS, is primarily nationalistic, not Hindu per se, you are completely free as a Muslim, christian, parsee to join. The “hindutva” people you refer to are a very vocal segment of the population, those who will publicly assume the identity do it mainly as a way to enhance street or political credit. Right wing movements like this exist in every nation. Integrate, or be shunned seems to be the common message, unfortunately with race or religion you can never fully do so.
The congress, while ideologically secular has a dynastic problem which needs to be broken before it can return to power. At this point its entire political goal is about getting the Rajivs and Priyankas back into power.
The choice is between a nationalist and a dynast. Not Hindu and Secular.
Modi himself has a lot of problems, mainly he is ferociously anti press, years of being blamed for the Gujarat riots (needs a lengthy write up on its own) has hardened him to focusing on putting out an image and turning the media into a cacophonic circus. It’s unhealthy and as the latest mini war proved very detrimental.
Long before Modi, the founders of the RSS were directly inspired by Nazism. They believe Hindus are the “master race” and that Muslims and Christians can only live in India on sufferance provided they don’t ask for political rights.
I’ve read a lot of South Asian history. So unfortunately, I can’t be convinced that “the choice is not between Hindu and secular”. At the time of Partition, Hindutva type people were represented by the Hindu Mahasabha. At that time Pandit Nehru was strong enough to overrule them and insist on a secular state of all Indians instead of a Hindu state.
Don’t be daft. Indians are visibly not racially similar. Even before genetics came along it is extremely obvious that there is no “Hindu” race, how are you supposed to be a master race? The further south you go the more preservation there is of native cultures, none of those people are “Aryan”, a lot of Dravidians could convincingly argue that they are far more “Hindu” than the north. Movies in the south have much more iconology than Bollywood.
I have no idea why you are talking about genetics. Are you seriously going to deny that the RSS was inspired by the Nazis treatment of the Jews?
100 year old history written by people after the abomination of the Holocaust is not particularly meaningful to the RSS of today. It’s like talking about how the Israelis started off by being the refugees from Europe, I doubt you recognize them as such today.
Never thought I would be defending the RSS, but here we are. They are much maligned in the press, but in the same way you read about Mughal history being eradicated in textbooks, the reality is very different.
Here’s an article by Yogendra Yadav hating on the RSS in the liberal press.
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-nationalism-thats-anti-national/article25041762.ece
Try to look past this history bit, yes the RSS has some Nazi inspirations and was actually pretty useless during the freedom struggle ages ago. It isn’t so meaningful now, pre holocaust everyone had Nazi-like movements, the blackshirts in UK, the america first movement in US.
But while he really hates the RSS, he also has some understanding of what it is, it is foremost a nationalist organization.
The press does what it always does, Hindu Muslim tensions sell copy, branding the BJP and RSS as fascist right wing hindu extremists, calling Modi “the butcher of Gujarat”. These views resonate with foreigners and the english press reading western oriented Indians and so there is no room for objectivity anymore.
The RSS is very anti-caste, going so far as to training dalit priests, as they feel divisions within society hurt the nation. I cannot remember an RSS trained politician ever splitting away from the BJP, jumping ship or forming a breakaway party. There is heavy indoctrination about unity and national interest. You will not read about any of this in the press.
Personally, I do not agree with either the BJP or the RSS on many issues, but the order they bring to a factious nation makes me look past the faults.
I’m sure if you were a Muslim or a Christian you wouldn’t be “looking past the faults” of the RSS.
You guys love to blame Pakistan but your own Hindu nationalism is certainly contributing to the conflict.
Here is a Christian with his take.
https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/the-rss-from-the-lens-of-a-christian-layman-1503422849.html
And what about Bin Qasim and his ilk and what they did to the Hindus and Buddhists during the first invasion? Pray tell their motivation and inspiration? Whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
If anything, the RSS has been deeply maligned, if it was what you claimed it to be, there would be no Muslims left in India.
Seriously? You’re talking about Muhammad bin Qasim, someone who lived in the 8th century as opposed to a movement alive and well in India today (a movement of which your PM is a member)? You’ve lost the plot.
At this point it is clear you are a rabid Hindutva follower. Basically you are trolling.
Those living in glass houses should not throw stones at others. You refuse to address the ideological basis that has led to this current day situation. Been happening for the last 1400 years.
You can say what you want and delude yourself, doesn’t change the reality.
“You can say what you want and delude yourself, doesn’t change the reality”
Same applies to you sister.
Yup, true. At the risk of repeating myself, finally India has woken up to the reality that you cannot go for dinner with a cannibal and live to tell the tale.
“Remarks like these also reveal something more troubling—the kind of mindset even representatives of people can carry. To reduce someone entirely to their identity, to casually associate them with terror because of their Muslim Identity, shows how deep this thinking runs. And the truth is, we shouldn’t act surprised. Derogatory generalisations about Muslims have, over time, not only become common—they’ve become fashionable. We see it during prime time debates, and hear it from social media influencers and people with education and platforms. The idea that every Muslim who follows Islam is somehow part of a violent ideology is pushed so often, so casually, that it no longer shocks anyone.”
https://theprint.in/opinion/vijay-shahs-comment-col-qureshi-mindset-gone-unchecked-for-years/2627164/
This is an Indian Muslim writing in “The Print”. She can’t be accused of being “anti-National” or a “Pakistan sympathizer” etc.
Indians need to introspect themselves as much as they are asking Pakistanis to introspect. You are quite right ‘Those living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. But that applies to you as well.
It is pointless to cherry pick hate. It is a very wide world, you will always find some idiot saying something stupid. Vijay Shah immediately caused a lot of outrage within India, he not only has a court case against him but has also apologized publicly over his remarks.
The whatabout game is endless and meaningless.
What is significant is societal attitudes, here is the pew survey on muslims.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/
80%+ want sharia law as the official law, 95% believe you need to believe in god to be moral (i.e atheists are immoral), 88% believe a wife must always obey her husband, less than half believe a son and daughter should have equal rights. 45% want democracy over a dictator, only 30% accept evolutionary theory.
These are all the stats for Bangladesh+Pakistan+Afghanistan where they did the survey. Btw Bangladesh had 39% saying suicide bombings were justified. Pakistan having actually experienced a lot of the same has much less support, 13%.
There is a very genuine fear in India that the moment a state turns majority muslim suddenly sharia law will kick into play for everybody and that is the end of secularism, you might consider this islamophobia but that is exactly what happened with Kashmir and exactly what you have been demanding on this forum.
For obvious reasons there isn’t really an equivalent survey of Hindus
There is one about religious attitudes in India
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/
Everyone seems to be pretty much in sync with each other as to levels of tolerance, or lack of, caste discrimination (which is across religion and not as bad as the press likes to highlight)
Overall I would say that the report seems to be far better than press coverage implies.
I have never demanded sharia law on this forum. Either you can’t read or you are putting words in my mouth.
The point about Vijay Shah is that his remark reflects the RSS’s thinking. When an officer of the Indian military is labeled “the sister of terrorists”, it shows that in the minds of the Hindu Right the problem is not–and never has been–Pakistan. The problem is Muslims tout court. You seem to be in denial of that fact.
On Kashmir, I only advocate for a plebiscite according to UN resolutions. That has nothing to do with sharia law. If there ever were an independent Kashmir, the Kashmiri people would have the right to determine their own laws. Whatever those laws end up being is not my problem. I am a Pakistani. I’m not going to go live in a free Kashmir.
We don’t even have sharia law in Pakistan.
You seem to have a lot of very strange ideas about Pakistan. I’m bored of this conversation now. I don’t feel that anything is gained by my continuing to engage the Hindu Right.
It looks like people aren’t even paying attention to the condemnation of this incident by several Islamic countries. It’s a good thing the United Nations doesn’t have an accountability mechanism, or else India’s proclamantions of having fully abolished casteism would be dismissed as groundless.
I meant the bit where you are demanding Kashmir is given over to Pakistan.
Sharia law runs in India for Muslims, not the criminal bits but the civil parts, don’t lie about Pakistan not having it.
Feel free not to respond, but you completely ignored the surveys and what they say about Muslim (and Hindu) attitudes.
You ignored the Christian gentleman’s salutation of the RSS where he talks about their focus on national pride and secular nature.
Instead you fall back on cherry picking some idiot who has apologized for a horrible comment as proof of something.
Here is a Pakistani artist, part of your intelligentsia expressing his deep desire to make sex slaves of Indian actresses after conquering India.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jFfLeDug700?feature=shared
See how easy it is to play the pick a clip game. It goes on forever.
If you want to debate, debate on actual surveys/ testimonies of people who don’t have skin in the game, are neutral or against your side.
I’m happy to dis engage, you can live with your mis conceptions and believe I live with mine, frankly nothing you say has been impactful.
I tend to self edit that when a Pakistani says let the Kashmiris decide on their ‘freedom’ it really just means give it over.
No one in their right mind thinks that the Kashmiris are going to be able to run or maintain a free landlocked state in between India China and Pak.
Pakistan is always free to take the lead and turn POK into true “Azad” Kashmir and cut Gligit Baltistan and Ajk loose by holding an independence referendum on their side.
“Self-editing” leads you to misinterpret other people’s words. It’s not smart. I never demanded Sharia Law and frankly you should apologize for asserting I did so. I am a centre-left Pakistani.
The Kashmiri people were promised a plebiscite. That promise was not conditional on their ability to run a state. This attitude of yours reflects a colonial mentality. Frankly a lot of Indians care about the land of Kashmir and nothing about the wishes of the people. However, the plebiscite as currently constituted doesn’t even have independence as an option, just India or Pakistan.
The people of AJK and GB would of course vote in a plebiscite. I’m confident that they would never choose to be part of a Hindu majority country.
For your information, GB and AJK are not constitutionally part of Pakistan. Their status is pending a resolution of the Kashmir Dispute. This contrasts with India which as annexed its portion, taken away statehood and divided it into “Union Territitories”.
Everyone self edits, you do too, I never said you demanded Sharia, you haven’t, why does that enter your brain?
I said you have been demanding Kashmir in this forum because it is Muslim majority. Muslims by an overwhelming (almost 90%) desire Sharia law.
Stop ignoring the pew survey on Muslim attitudes.
The ‘islamophobia’ in India is less a ‘phobia’, more a legitimate fear. Once a region is majority Muslim calls go out to turn it into an Islamic state.
You can’t demand just for the plebiscite which suits just you and if you are quoting the UN resolution, step 1 to plebiscite is pull your army out of AJK completely. The Indian army then gets to walk in and request the UN to hold the plebiscite.
Ball is in the Pakistani court, execute step 1 before demanding it.
You can also set an example of majority self determination in a region and let Balochistan and AJK/GilgitB vote on the whether they wish for independence or not.
Kashmir had 75 years under article 370, statehood, autonomy, no rights for indians apart from passport free travel to the area. They failed on state building and just chewed up time, money and attention.
On a side note to illiterotard, do you have a point? India was Buddhist under Ashoka, Hinduism has had multiple revivals, I might not be a history expert but this is pretty basic knowledge. It’s also wholly unimportant, every Hindu reveres the Buddha as an enlightened being. The Hinduism of today is wholly influenced by the Buddha (who was probably influenced by Mahavira), from the vegetarianism to the pacifism.
Buddham sharanam gatchami.
Now you are walking back your statement that I “demanded Sharia”. That “enters my brain” because your English implied that. Either you’re walking it back or you are incapable of writing clear English.
You are once again equating Kashmir and Balochistan. There is no analogy. Balochistan is unequivocally part of Pakistan, just as say Tamil Nadu is unequivocally part of India. No one ever went to the UN and stated that the Baloch were entitled to a plebiscite. Pandit Nehru promised that for the Kashmiris.
Anyway, there will probably never be a plebiscite. But what is your issue with the Musharraf-Manmohan Plan? Neither country would lose any territory. The LOC would be a permanent border. Kashmiris would have freedom of movement. This is probably the most viable solution to the dispute as even India’s own Dr. Radha Kumar has stated.
The point is that the dispute needs to be settled. If India wants to pretend that there is no dispute and the only thing that remains is “taking back POK” then we are going to be militarily striking each other’s countries sooner rather than later. The next round will be worse.
Forgive me, I could not comprehend how profound your ability to take insult is. Given that I introduced Sharia law into the discussion (and muslim attitudes on it, citing that repeatedly ignored survey) it is bizarre that I would then accuse you of demanding Sharia and that would be your take away. At this point it just feels like deflecting.
As to the Musharraf-Manmohan plan, you rightly put Musharraf first disregarding the alphabet because it was primarily his brain child, the Indian side hasn’t agreed to it. Not even getting into the plan, it was derailed by the 2008 Mumbai Attacks. Prior to that there was the Sharif-Vajpayee detente (derailed by Musharraf’s own Kargill war).
There will not be a viable solution until Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim not only find safe haven in Pakistan but are compensated for losses and funded for ops.
Even if India completely capitulates and agrees to everything Pakistan wants, suddenly there are a whole lot of armed people in Pakistan heavily incentivized to derail the peace, what happens then?
The good friday agreement worked because the IRA was made part of the peace talks, if the Irish went around claiming the IRA doesn’t exist there would have been no solution. Either kick them out/ hand them to India/ bring them to the table.
Forget the Pakistani govt, which will do the negotiation but doesn’t have the power to honour any part of it.
You yourself do not accede that the Indian govt targeted LET and JEM sites only, those might be mosques and seminaries and charitable trusts in Pakistan but they are used for ideological indoctrination to supply and train terrorists to attack India. The evidence is publicly available, in photos and speeches and Musharrafs own testimony in exile.
Can we agree on this as a common truth or are you going to ignore it and deflect to Modi and Gujarat 2002 and Kashmir all the other grievances with India.
https://youtu.be/0um1LxvjwdM around the 4:00 minute mark.
India may have struck so-called “terrorist sites”. However, it is undeniable that civilians were killed and mosques were struck.
Many of your own analysts have pointed out that no “deterrence” was established. Ram Guha told Karan Thapar that this latest “war” has succeeded in re-hyphenating India and Pakistan (a huge diplomatic setback for India). He quoted “The Financial Times” which had a headline “Two Religious Strongmen Clash” or something to that effect. Your PM was compared to General Asim Munir–certainly not a flattering comparison from the Indian perspective.
You are free to believe whatever you like. But you don’t seem interested in ending the conflict in any way.
Personally, I would be least bothered with India as long as your government is not threatening Pakistan or conducting strikes on our territory.
That’s fine. You don’t want to solve the conflict, then you need to be prepared for worse and worse rounds of military confrontation. It seems you are OK with that.
The Musharraf-Manmohan plan is the best scenario that Pakistan will ever present India. You have seen that now we have gone back to our hardline position on the plebiscite according to UN resolutions. India has no chance of ever taking “POK” unless you are able to completely defeat and dismember Pakistan. Given that we are a nuclear weapon state, that is never going to happen. Even you did succeed in taking “POK”, why would you want millions of additional Muslims who are going to be resentful and hostile to you?
There is a complete political consensus in Pakistan that we will never abandon the Kashmir cause. I believe that our support to the Kashmir cause should be limited to the diplomatic realm but of course others believe in “jihad”.
Terrorism is certainly an issue and I am not in support of proxy wars–whether terrorism is used by Pakistan in Kashmir or by India in Balochistan (which is what we believe however much you may deny it). We have to discuss terrorism in a comprehensive dialogue but we also have to discuss Kashmir.
Pakistan doesn’t claim any other parts of India only the disputed territory of Kashmir.
I’ll let you have the last word if you like but I feel this is now becoming an extremely repetitive conversation.
I’m not lying about not having Sharia law in Pakistan. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
We have the Pakistan Penal Code, which is largely based on British law.
There is a Shariat court in Islamabad which deals with explicitly religious issues and advises the government but it is subordinate to the Supreme Court.
I wonder why people seem to hold the Muslims to one standard of conduct and Hindus to another. It’s startling that people don’t want to talk about the migration of Indo-European tribes 3500 years ago to the Indian subcontinent.
Bin Qasim was a general sent by Hajjaj bin Yusuf. You should read up on the actions of Hajjaj bin Yusuf, against Muslims.. and not just any Muslims but the direct companions of Prophet Muhammad. He even laid siege to the Kaaba and destroyed it. But obviously you wouldn’t know about that because Hindutva worldview is strictly to present Hindus as victims of Muslims, there is no actual understanding of History.
Lest we forget, the vast majority of South Asian Muslims are the descendents of natives who converted to Islam, and have no foreign ancestry. Islam was primarily spread by iterant Sufi mystics who inadvertantly initiated a Hindu revival in the form of the bhakti movement.
Lala land much? You guys are the ones holding on to one book from the 7th century. Lol!
The RSS want to resurrect a historical Hindu warrior culture, claiming that contemporary Hinduism has left the Indian population docile and pacifists. What they conveniently ignore is the fact that several Muslims fought and died in the defence of South Asia, from the 13th century Mamluk Dynasty all the way up to the Mughals.
Your attempt to wish away the speciation is admirable but futile.
Resistance is futile used to haunt me as a kid..
I have noticed that the common Pakistani – the salwar wearing 70cc bike riding variety doesn’t really care too much about India.
It’s the English speaking Americanized DHA elite who burn in envy seeing India rise and getting to have things they will never have but want – Coldplay concerts, Lollapalooza festivals, F1 races, Apple stores, moon missions etc.
They will get to grow old watching India rise further – manned space missions, hosting Olympics, spread of pop culture, transform into a developed nation while they remain the same – weak passport, less than sub-saharan HDI etc.
A fate worse than death.
Well written XTM!(I forgot your name)
Nevertheless,
We have a saying in Telugu, “No use blowing a conch in a deaf person’s ears”.
Xerxes will do..
Dammit, I violated the 2 link rule and went into limbo again. Pls recover. 🙏
done
it is a strange paradox being seen in the islamic world today. in turkey, even ramzan fasting is not insisted very hard. the general dress is western. yesterday on arabian soil, we saw young girls swing their hair welcoming trump. mind you there was, no hijab, nikab or burka.
east asian islam is in a category of its own.
only south asian muslims and muslim migrants to west are struck in 10th century.
Meta-comment on the discussion thread here. Indians and Pakistanis talking past each other once again. One problem is that Pakistanis have very little concept of how pluralistic India is, like, they might be smart and have data about religious and linguistic demographics, but if you don’t live it, you don’t get it. An average Hindu is not floating around like an entitled pak punjabi in Islamabad and Lahore. They are interacting with christians, jains, muslims in a completely unconscious way. I’m american and even into a 3rd BJP term, headed by a supposed hardliner, the de facto segregation in this society is nothing compared to the black-white divide in 2025 USA.
The converse is also probably true that Indians think that Pakistan must be a bigger version of their city’s largest muslim-majority neighbourhood, but even more burkha-maxxed. They don’t get that the Indian analog to pakistan’s leadership class of punjabi landowners is probably hindu landed castes not the urban muslim tradesman. The historical process of achieving muslim majorities is by the dominant middle/OBC strata changing over. So we in India barely interact with that specimen of muslim, and we assume we understand them better than we do. In that regard also, the muslims of the Kashmir valley are much more likely to find social counterparts in Pakistanis than with Indian muslims.