Perveen Bibi, tied her daughter, Zeenat, to a bed, doused her with fuel and then set fire to her in Lahore, police said.
Family members stopped neighbours from entering the house as the girl screamed for help, said Nighat Bibi, who lives nearby.
As her daughter burned, Perveen Bibi ran into the street shouting that she had killed the teen for bringing shame on her family.
Sheikh Hammad, a local police official, said Perveen Bibi had confessed to killing her daughter with the help of her son Ahmar. He quoted the woman as saying “I don’t have any regrets.”
Another police officer, Ibadat Nisar, said the body also showed signs of beating and strangulation.
Last week a schoolteacher, Maria Bibi, was set on fire for refusing to marry a man twice her age. The prime suspect in the case – the father of the man she refused to marry – and the other four are in custody.
A month earlier, police arrested 13 members of a local tribal council who allegedly strangled a girl and set her on fire for helping a friend elope. The charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van.
Locals said after killing her daughter, Perveen went out on the street, took off her shawl and started beating herself on her chest. She shouted that she had killed her daughter for bringing shame to the family. However, the police did not confirm the statement.
On the directive of CM Shehbaz Sharif, a 3-member probe committee was formed. The committee will review every aspect of the incident and submit its report within 48 hours. Deputy Commandant Punjab Constabulary Abu Bakar will be the convener of the committee while Additional Secretary Judicial Home Department and an officer of Punjab Forensic Science Agency will be its members.
The Parliament of Pakistan passed the Anti-Honour Killing Laws (Amendment) Bill 2014 in March 2016. The laws bind the law enforcing agencies to treat the honour killing as heinous crime and the state would act against the killers in case they would be pardoned by the relatives of the victim.
According to Human rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 1276 incidents of honour killings were reported in the country from Feb 2014 to Feb 2016.
The United States leads the world (or at least the world outside the Middle East) in mass shootings (defined as an attack in which multiple random people are shot by one or more gunmen).Most of these shootings have been carried out by deranged (or semi-deranged) loners intent on acts of revenge against society at large or against specific institutions (like a school, a workplace they were fired from, and so on) but several in recent years were carried out by Muslims claiming to be acting as soldiers in the worldwide Islamist-Jihadist war against the West and its “dupes” (aka Muslims who have not joined this jihad).
The horrific attack on a gay nightclub on Sunday the 12th of June in Orlando seems to overlap several categories (psychologically unstable attacker, Islamist motivation, homophobia (possibly allied with secret homosexuality)), and more details may emerge in the days to come. But there is no doubt about the fact that a young Muslim, born in the US and with a history of Jihadist comments (and two FBI investigations) attacked a Gay nightclub and claimed to be acting on behalf of ISIS. The following tweet pretty much sums up what we know so far:
Though I hasten to add that I personally think it would be even more accurate to say “classical shariahist Islam that endorses violence against gays motivated a possibly psychologically disturbed gunman to make use of lax gun laws for what he believed to be a Jihadist act” After all, Islam (in practice much more so than in theory) is not limited to what is in the major Shia or Sunni schools; they may all endorse violent punishment of gays, but actual practice and the beliefs of individual Muslims or of non-traditional Islamic groups can vary considerably from the shariah-ist ideal of killing gays if they are found guilty of homosexual acts. In fact, practical tolerance of homosexuality has been VERY high in the Islamicate world for centuries, with everyone from famous poets to famous caliphs and famous kings being openly or near-openly homosexual and with some areas where keeping a (usually much younger) homosexual partner is almost routine. . In fact. the Ottoman empire decriminalized homosexuality long before Great Britain did. But this does not mean that society generally accepted Gays as “normal people” in the way modern liberals consider ideal. As far as I know, public attitudes towards homosexuality remained, at a minimum derisive, and in many cases actively hostile. There is also a distinction between a “passive homosexual” (generally a term of abuse) and a “masculine” older person who has his way with effeminate adults or young male children (the second carrying much less of a stigma). In any case, the hardline theological position remained harshly homophobic and reasserts itself whenever Shariahist Islam is imposed.
https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-road-to-orlando-jihadist-inspired-violence-in-the-west-2012-2016 Jihadi violence against the West
Such a large and vicious massacre has immediately energized the debate about what danger may be posed by the Muslim population as a whole or sections of the Muslim population, in Western countries? I have written before about the background to this issue, and will just copy and paste a slightly edited version of the last section here:
Can any Muslim can become radicalized and fall victim to spontaneous jihad syndrome at any time?
This is the right-wing fringe’s mirror-image of the liberal belief that Islam never causes jihad and all of it can be explained by âinequalityâ or âSykes-Picotâ or some such story. Both mirror-images are clearly false. The real situation is that we can look at the Muslims of the world and see several disparate groups; Shias, Ismailis and Ahmedis are outside the contemporary Sunni Jihadist universe and so are not going to spontaneously take up arms in the war between shariah-based Islam and other civilizations. They are all relatively small minorities, but they are the most obvious examples of âMuslims who will not get radicalized and join the Sunni Jihad”; foreign policy, Israel, Sykes-Picot and Picketty-inequality notwithstanding. These supposedly powerful motives for hating America will not cause these groups to go postal.
Coming to Sunni Muslims, we have a very large number who are âmoderate Muslimsâ, which is shorthand for Muslims who do not practice or try to practice all that is in the classical shariah. Their numbers vary from country to country, but one can say with a lot of confidence that they are not spontaneous jihad material either. They can covert to jihadi Islam, but it is a slow process, and it is observable and even preventable (if they are kept away from hardline preachers). In short, they are potential recruits, but not easy or likely recruits and their recruitment is highly context-sensitive. In a setting where leaders of the community are insistent on moderation and hardline preachers are not around, they tend to stay “moderate”. But placed in and around hardline Jihadists (physically or virtually) they may convert to that ideology. In case of conversion, there are always going to be signals, but who will pick up the signals and what to do if there are signals remains unclear. This is the group the Trumpers and assorted “Islamophobes” want to do something about but it is by no means clear that anything can be done..
Then there are the shariah-compliant Muslims who believe that the Shariahâs orders for Jihad are meant for very specific situations where a Sunni state has declared Jihad and those situations (fortunately) do not exist. So they get on with life in all parts of the world. Many of them are model citizens because they avoid intoxicants, deal honestly and follow the law. A very tiny fraction of them may âradicalizeâ but most will not. The same applies to converts. So yes, about these (small) groups one may say âthey can radicalizeâ , but very rarely. And even then, there are warning signs and it is never an overnight process. Finally, there are the true-believer Jihadists. They have obvious links with Jihadist schools, groups and teachers. They are small in number and they are not hard for the community to identify, if is so chooses. And they are indeed high risk. Liberals see none of them, right-wingers see too many. Both are wrong.
I guess what I am saying is that notions of Muslim hordes just waiting for a chance to attack are far outside the bounds of reality. Common sense can actually be a guide here. There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and equally there is no need to be willfully blind to warning signs. Biased agenda pushers on BOTH sides of this debate have obscured common sense options. And while Liberals may underestimate or misrepresent the threat from radical Muslims, conservatives frequently generalize the threat to all Muslims.
Last but not the least, all nutcases cannot be stopped beforehand. Some surprises will always happen in a large and complex society . There is no risk-free society, with or without Muslims. But this is not World-War Three. Not in the United States. In parts of Europe the proportion of jihadists is likely higher (for various reasons, including racism and multiculturalist liberalism). Meanwhile, in the core of the Muslim world itself, all bets are off. There is no well-articulated theology of liberal Sunnism. Other organizing ideologies (like Marxism and pan-Arab nationalism) have manifestly failed. The authoritarian regimes that exist are (for now) the only game in town. These authoritarian elites, who disproportionately benefit from the modern world, impose their will using a combination of force, persuasion and foreign support. But they lack a deep legitimating ideology. This crisis of ideology is extremely serious, and it may devour some of those countries (though the survival of Jordan is a good example of the fact that even the most arbitrary modern states have more strength than we sometimes imagine). Those Muslim states that are further away from the Arab heartland (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) may do better. They can frequently rely on other identities to maintain the legitimacy of their states and new Islams can arise in them with time. But even they will not be compltely free of Jihadist conflict. No state is completely free of conflict of course, and many conflicts unrelated to Islam or Jihad could easily kill millions and destroy whole countries. But predominantly Islamic countries do have the added burden of the conflict of Classical Islamic ideals with modern civilization (not justWestern civilization), and it will take time to resolve this conflict.
– See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/12/san-bernadino-terror-attack.html#sthash.DxJdBKHm.dpuf
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/american-society/wages-non-judgmentalism/ Since social pressures to avoid being seen as hypercritical, paranoid, orâworst of allâbigoted are acute, and the rewards for keeping an eye out for the next terrorist plot are virtually non-existent, the vigilant are often inclined to keep their concerns to themselves.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/14/admit-it-these-terrorists-are-muslims.html
Admit It: These Terrorists Are Muslims
Thereâs a lot of special pleading about Orlando from Muslims and liberals. Itâs time to do away with that. If not, we give the issue away to Trump.
Mangal Panday â The Rising is a big budget Indian film and good research has been done about the history of this incident. Generally, a lot of cinematic license is used in most historical films but Mangal Panday has kept core historical facts intact. As expected, a lot of additional fictional material has been added to make it interesting. Films are essentially about entertainment and not substitutes for history books. There is quite a large body of written material available on the events of 1857. Colonial literature, post independence nationalist literature and leftist writers provide different interpretations of the events of 1857 uprising. Iâll limit myself only to the historical context.
Adrenaline vs. Accuracy
Scene 1– In the beginning of the movie, there is a scene of Afghanistan where Mangal saved his officerâs life during a fire fight. This is not correct. First Anglo-Afghan war was fought in 1839-42 and Mangalâs regiment 34th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) didnât serve in Afghanistan. In addition, Mangal was born in 1831 and joined his regiment in 1850, long after the first Anglo-Afghan war.
Scene 2– There is a scene of a British officer of 34th BNI saving a Hindu girl from burning at her husbandâs funeral pyre (satti). There is no evidence of an officer of 34th BNI involved in such an affair; however there are reports of such incidents. The most famous one is related to founder of Calcutta Job Charnock. He saved a beautiful Bengali Hindu girl from the satti pyre and later married her. He adopted local customs often wearing native loin cloth (lungi) in public. George Lawrence (brother of famous John and Henry Lawrence) served for forty three years in India and as a young officer serving with 2nd Bengal Light Cavalry he was witness to a satti ceremony in Neemuch. The poor girlâs husband had died in a far off land and his body was not even there at the pyre. She was to be burned alive on the pyre while her departed husband was represented by some of his clothes. Young Lawrence was perturbed and seeing some of his own troopers among the crowd asked them if they would help him if he decided to rescue the girl. Lawrence approached the pyre and told the young girl that he was willing to save her life. The girl thanked him but refused the offer stating that she was willing to die.
Scene 3– Mangal using the new cartridge during firing practice biting it with his teeth. Practice for new cartridges was done at School of Musketry at Dum Dum and soldiers from different regiments were sent to Dum Dm. Drill Havaldar of 34th BNI Mookta Prasad Panday showed his reservation. On March 02, Major John Bontein of Dum Dum School of musketry wrote a letter that few Hindu sepoys have refused to use new cartridge. Soldiers of 2nd BNI (Grenadiers) and 7th BNI had no objection to use of cartridges but one sepoy Petum Singh showed hesitation.
There was serious reservation by many soldiers about new cartridges and reports started to appear in early January 1857 that sepoys were apprehensive about this issue. Many feared that it contained cow and pig fat and some thought it was a deliberate attempt to break their caste and ultimately convert them to Christianity. This feeling was strongest among high caste Hindu sepoys. They talked to British officers and suggested that either wax or oil be used instead of other material.
The Regiment
Film has done very good job at portraying the regimental uniforms and insignia as well as regimental life of the time period. A brief history of Mangalâs regiment 34th BNI can help to understand the background.
Mangal Panday; sepoy number 1446 belonged to the 5th Company of 34th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI). This regiment was raised in 1786. In 1844, several Bengal infantry regiments showed signs of unrest and protested about bhatta (Foreign Service allowance) when ordered to garrison newly conquered Sindh. Five regiments; 4th, 34th, 64th & 69th Bengal Native Infantry and 7th Bengal Light Cavalry showed signs of unrest. Authorities dealt leniently with all other regiments but it was decided to disband 34th BNI as it held on the longest and finally it was disbanded on March 27, 1844 at Meerut.
34th BNI was re-raised in July 1846 at Ludhiana. In 1857, this regiment was about a decade old and not as cohesive compared to an old regiment. In early 1857, the garrison of Barrackpore consisted entirely of native troops from four regiments; 34th BNI, 70th BNI (commanded by Colonel J.D. Kennedy), 43rd Light Infantry (Commanded by Major Matthews) and 2nd Native Infantry (Grenadiers). Garrison commander was Brigadier Charles Grant. Barrackpore was also headquarters of presidency division and commanded by Major General J.B. Hearsey. Native infantry regiments consisted of ten companies of about 100 soldiers each. Companies were mixed in contrast to later class companies.
Total strength of 34th BNI in March 1857 was 1089. Three companies were stationed in Chittagong while some small detachments were on guard duties at other stations. Class composition consisted of 335 Brahmin Hindus, 237 Khatri (spelled Chuttrees in old documents) Hindus, 231 inferior caste Hindus, 200 Muslims, 74 Sikhs and 12 Christians. Subedar Major was a Brahmin Ram Lall and out of four Subedars, two were Brahmins (Sewumbar Panday; Iâm unable to find the name of the other Brahmin Subedar), one inferior caste Hindu (Lala Gopal) and one Muslim (Muddeh Khan). Regiment was commanded by Colonel Stephen Glyane Wheler (he didnât belong to the regiment and had been posted recently to command the regiment). Battalion Adjutant was Lieutenant Bempde Henry Baugh, Quartermaster and battalion interpreter was Lieutenant F.E.A. Chamier and senior British Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) was Sergeant Major James Thornton Hewson.
Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Glyane Wheler
Captain C.C. Drury
Captain W.W. Aubert
Captain P.H.K. Dewaal
Lieutenant Bempde Henry Baugh
Lieutenant F.E.A. Chamier
Lieutenant Stewart Allen
Lieutenant J.T. Liscombe
Lieutenant G.R. Hennessy
Lieutenant A.C. Bunbury
Dr. James Allen
James Thornton Hewson
Ram Lall
Sewumbar Panday
Lala Gopal
Muddeh Khan
Commanding Officer
Commanding Chittagong detachment of 3 Cos.
Adjutant
Quartermaster and Interpreter
5th Company Commander
Commanding Fort William detachment
Assistant Surgeon of the regiment
Sergeant Major
Subedar Major
Subedar
Subedar
Subedar
Table: 1 List of Officers of 34th Bengal Native Infantry. Not all officers were present at regimental headquarters. Some were commanding detachments at other stations while others were away.
34th was disbanded on May 06 after Mangal Panday incident. European soldiers consisting of 84th Foot (commanded by Colonel Reed), a wing of 53rd and two batteries of artillery surrounded the parade ground where 34th was disbanded. Only seven companies of the regiment were disbanded. On the day of disbandment, 414 soldiers were discharged. Three companies (2nd, 3rd & 4th) were stationed at Chittagong and survived disbandment. Soldiers who were not present with the regiment as well as many Muslims and Sikhs of the regiment survived the disbandment. After mutiny, Indian army was reorganized as large number of Bengal infantry regiments ceased to exist. Old numbers were allotted to newly raised irregular regiments during the mutiny and those who remained loyal. In 1861, Fatehgarh Levy raised by Captain Shakespear Sage was designated 34th BNI but this regiment was also disbanded in 1882. In 1885, 34th was re-raised by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur W. Crookshank.
The Spark
Scene 4 â The scenes of 34th refusing to use cartridges on a full parade, Colonel Wheler ordering artillery guns to be brought against the regiment, Mangal firing repeatedly at assembled British and native troops, 34th breaking the kote of arms and attacking British officers are all fictional. Some of these events are related to another regiment 19th BNI stationed at Barhampore. Captain William Gordon is also a fictional character and his duel with Mangal is also part of cinematic license.
There have been reports informing British officers that sepoys of different regiments were gathering and discussing their fears and rudimentary plans of how to protect their faith. Colonel Wheler was accused of preaching gospel to natives; a fact which he admitted later during inquiries. An anonymous letter to Commanding Officer of 43rd BNI Major Matthews summed up the fears of the sepoys. Sepoys expressed their fear in this letter that government was mixing bones in salt, flour and sugar, forcing people to eat together to break the castes, allowing Hindu widows to marry and all this was considered as an assault on the religion. The letter warned that âwe will not give up our religionâ and that majority of the sepoys of Barrackpore garrison were of this opinion. A Jamadar of 34th BNI had warned his officers about general feelings among sepoys. General Hearsey had ordered a court of inquiry asking sepoys to express their grievances. Majority of soldiers expressed their suspicions about cartridges. These feelings were significant enough as General Hearsey wrote that âwe have at Barrackpore been dwelling upon a mine ready for explosionâ. Many British officers discussed frankly with their men at parades and in cantonment that British were not planning to interfere with their religion.
Immediate cause of trouble was 19th BNI. This regiment was stationed at Barhampore and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel W. St. L. Mitchell. Regimentâs Adjutant was Lieutenant J.F. McAndrew, Quartermaster and Interpreter Lieutenant James Vallings and Subedar Major was Shaikh Murad Bux. On February 25, an escort of 34th came from Barrackpore to Barhampore bringing convalescing Europeans and they had allegedly incited soldiers of 19th BNI. Earlier on February 18, another escort of 34th BNI had brought some stallions to Barhampore.
Soldiers of 19th refused to accept greased cartridges on February 27th and in view of absence of any European troops nothing could be done. Later, some soldiers broke into kote and took arms to their lines. Later, at the insistence of their officers arms were returned. This was a serious offence but there were no other troops available at Barhampore to tackle 19th BNI therefore regiment was ordered to march to Barrackpore to be disbanded on March 31st. (Ironically, orders were issued that regiment should be disbanded in the same manner that 34th was disbanded in 1844 in Meerut. In one of the strange coincidences of history, 34th was disbanded second time merely five weeks later and the fire of rebellion started in Meerut). 19th BNI was disbanded while surrounded by European and native troops and soldiers were escorted by a wing of 84th Foot to Chinsura from where soldiers went to their homes. They openly accused soldiers of 34th BNI for inciting them. 19th and 34th had been stationed together recently in Lucknow prior to their move to Bengal.
The incident of Mangal Pandayâs firing on his officers occurred on Sunday March 29, 1857 between 4 and 6 pm. Mangal was high after having more than fair share of intoxicating âbhangâ. Mangal was in front of the lines holding a loaded musket and a native sword (tulwar). He was wearing his red uniform jacket but loin cloth (dhoti) instead of uniform pants. He ordered drummer John Lewis to sound assembly. This sequence is accurately portrayed in film. Naik Emam Khan of the quarter guard rushed to Sergeant Major James Hewsonâs quarters to inform him and he was the first European to reach the site. Mangal shot towards him but missed. Hewson took shelter behind the bell of arms. Havaldar Major Madhoo Tiwari rushed to battalion Adjutant Lieutenant Baughâs residence to inform him. He arrived on the scene riding his horse. His orderly Sepoy Shaikh Paltoo of the Grenadier Company of the battalion was running after the horse. When Mangal saw Baugh approaching, he took cover behind the artillery gun in front of the quarter guard and fired his musket at Baugh and hit the horse. The horse fell and Baugh after disentangling himself fired his pistol but he also missed. Mangal didnât have time to reload his musket as Baugh along with Sergeant Major Hewson with drawn swords were now almost on him. Mangal wounded both officers with his sword and the lives of both officers were saved by the heroic act of Sepoy Shaikh Paltoo who held Mangal from his waist. This gave enough time to both officers to retreat from the scene. During all this time, Mangal yelled at his fellow sepoys telling them to get ready. When no one joined him, angry Mangal abused them and said, âyou have excited me to do this, and, now, you ban chutes (sister f******) you will not join meâ. Jamadar Ganness Lalla and Color Havaldar Macklar Prasad Panday (both belonging to Mangalâs 5th Company) shouted at Mangal to throw his weapon and give himself up.
The guard of twenty sepoys under their Jamadar Ishwari Panday didnât move. A crowd of about 400 sepoys in various dresses had gathered at the scene by this time. Only Sheikh Paltoo struggled with Mangal and held on him. Mangal had reloaded his musket by this time. Many soldiers of the regiment stood and none of them intervened to help their officers. Major General J. B. Hearsey arrived on the scene accompanied by his two sonsâ Captain John Hearsey (38th BNI) and Lieutenant Andrew Hearsey (57th BNI) along with Assistant Adjutant General (AAG) Major Ross. Mangal shot himself but was wounded only in the right side of the chest ripping only muscles and also damaging shoulder and neck. His red coat caught fire at the entry wound that was put out. This minor detail is shown elegantly in the film with some close camera shots. Mangal was arrested and put in the quarter guard of 70th BNI. Later, he was treated by assistant surgeon of 53rd Foot Dr. T.B. Reid. Hearsey took his pistol out and ordered the guard to get back to their duty. He also promoted Shaikh Paltoo to Havaldar on the spot (he retired as Subedar). Most of the soldiers of the regiment simply watched the whole incident and did not make any attempt to restrain Mangal. However, few hit two British officers with musket butts when they were on the ground.
Mangal was tried on April 06 by a fourteen member native general court martial. All members were native officers and court was headed by Subedar Major Jawahar Lal Tiwari (43rd BNI). One member Subedar Sewambar Panday was from Mangalâs own 34th BNI. Mangal was charged with inciting mutiny and using violence against officers. Mangal did not cross examine witnesses and only said that âI did not know whom I wounded and whom I did not. What more shall I say. I have nothing more to sayâ. Court gave a unanimous guilty verdict and eleven out of the fourteen members recommended death penalty for Mangal. Mangal was kept in the quarter guard of HM 53rd Foot. After the announcement of sentence, field officer of the week, Major W. A. Cooke and Ensign Chamier (interpreter) visited him and asked him whether he acted of his own free will. He stated that he acted on his own free will and expected that he will die. He also stated that he had no specific grudge against any officer and would have shot anyone who came near him. He also admitted that he had been taking opium and bhang recently and previously he didnât use these drugs. He said that he was not aware at that time what he was doing. Mangal was hanged on 08 April 1857.
Scene 5- In the end of the film, it is mentioned that an officer of 34th named Gordon was seen fighting alongside Indian sepoys. In the film, Gordon is the main English character. There was no officer named Gordon with 34th BNI. This is also a fictional tale. Mangalâs 5th Company commander was Lieutenant Stewart Allen. However, there were some Englishmen and many Anglo-Indians who fought alongside rebels. Some may have sympathized with rebel cause while others may have joined them to save their lives. One Scottish named Sergeant Major Robert Gordon fought alongside rebels at Delhi. Gordon was born in Scotland and came to India in 1840. He joined Bengal Artillery and rapidly rose through the ranks because he was literate. In 1852, he was appointed Sergeant Major of 28th BNI. In 1857, 28th BNI was stationed at Shahjahanpur (about forty seven miles from Bareli) and Captain Marshal James was the acting Commanding Officer. 28th BNI mutinied on May 31 killing their commanding officer and left for Bareli (about 100 Sikh soldiers remained loyal). Later, it arrived at Delhi along with the mutinous contingent from Bareli (18th BNI, 68th BNI and 8th Irregular Cavalry) under the command of Bakht Khan. 28th BNI came marching on the tunes played by the Anglo-Indian band of the regiment. In Delhi, Gordon was put in prison along with a handful of English and Anglo-Indians who had survived the massacre. Some accounts suggest that Gordon had converted to Islam and named Abdullah Khan. He served with rebel guns due to his training as a gunner. After the fall of Delhi, he surrendered to Brevet Major William Hodson at the tomb of Humayun. Hodson executed all Anglo-Indian band members after their surrender at Humayun tomb. A lengthy inquiry followed to ascertain whether Gordon worked with rebels under duress or willingly. Finally, it was recommended to discharge him from the army. In July 1859, he was put on a ship under arrest but after arriving in England, he was released. He disappeared from the pages of history after his arrival in England.
Sex & Raj
Scene 6- Film has a scene of the bazaar of prostitutes of the cantonment. A European doctor examining prostitutes is correct portrayal as these measures were taken to decrease sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers. In 1850s, there were seventy five military districts and in every district prostitution was supervised by authorities. All prostitutes were registered, minimum age for prostitutes was fifteen and women were provided with their own living quarters or tents that were regularly inspected. Some establishments were quite large and brothel in Lucknow had fifty five rooms. Prostitutes infected with sexually transmitted diseases were removed and not allowed to practice their trade until recovered. Both native and European soldiers used these bazaars; however sepoys were discouraged to visit those prostitutes preferred by European soldiers. Most British soldiers were from lower strata of the society and were not held to the standard of a British officer. British soldiers visited prostitutes more often than sepoys. One reason was that British soldiers were not married while sepoys were usually married men. These bazaars were called âlal bazaarsâ (red streets). Both heterosexual and homosexual relations were common in mid nineteenth century. British regiments spent several years in India and many a times children were born of such relationships. Special houses and schools were assigned as early as eighteenth century for these children.
Scene 7- In the film, Captain William Gordon has an affair with an Indian girl Jawala. By the middle of nineteenth century, this trend had almost died down. In late seventeenth and eighteenth century, many Europeans kept native concubines as well as legally married local women both Muslim and Hindu. These women were kept in a separate house named Bibi Ghar. The practice was common enough that surviving wills from Bengal in the years 1780-85 show that one in three record bequest to Indian wives and companions. Some Englishmen retained their own religion and culture while others converted to Hinduism or Islam and became completely ânativeâ. Some children of such unions roamed in two worlds comfortably while others drifted to one side. Some were educated in England and finally settled there while others grew up as natives in India. Few of the off springs of these unions even became celebrated poets and scholars of Urdu and Persian (Farasu, Shaiq, Sufi etc.).
Most Company employees both civil and military joined the service at the age of sixteen. Several factors such as very young age, prolonged stay of decades in India, posting to a far off station with very little contact with Europeans and influence of native consorts and wives resulted in complete ânativizationâ of some of these Englishmen. Near the end of eighteenth century, Company laws and rise of Evangelical Christian activity severely restricted such encounters and by the middle of nineteenth century, it was a rare phenomenon.
British Resident in Delhi Sir David Ochterlony lived like an oriental nawab and had thirteen native consorts; the most famous one being Mubarak Begum. British Resident to the court of Marhattas in Pune General William Palmer married Begum Fayze Bakhsh of a prominent Delhi family. British Resident at Hyderabad Lieutenant Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick married Khair un Nissa; great niece of the Prime Minister of Hyderabad. Jamesâs half brother William lived with his consort named Dhoolaury Bibi.
Major General Charles Stuart had practically became a Hindu and lived with his Hindu wife. He was nicknamed âHindu Stuartâ and âGeneral Panditâ. He was buried in Christian cemetery in Calcutta but with his Hindu gods. The commander of British troops in Hyderabad Lieutenant Colonel James Darlymple married the daughter of Nawab of Masulipatam Mooti Begum. William Linnaeus Gardner married the daughter of Nawab of Cambay Begum Mah Manzel un Nissa. After freelance service with Marhattas and Nizam of Hyderabad, he raised irregular cavalry regiment named Gardnerâs Horse for East Company. This regiment still survives as 2nd Lancers of Indian army. Gardner lived happily on his wifeâs estate near Agra (Mah Manzal was adopted daughter of Mughal Emperor Akbar Shah II). His son James married Begum Malka Humanee; a niece of Mughal Emperor (she was also sister in law of Nawab of Lucknow). Williamâs granddaughter was married to a Mughal prince Mirza Anjum Shikoh Bahadar. Another soldier of fortune Hercules Skinner married a Hindu Rajput lady and several children were born from this union (she committed suicide when Skinner tried to take their daughters out of purdah to be educated and married to Englishmen). Their son James Skinner raised the famous irregular cavalry regiment Skinners Horse nick named âYellow Boysâ. This is now the senior most cavalry regiment of Indian army; Ist Lancers. James had fourteen Hindu and Muslim wives and consorts. He lived like a Muslim but later in life regularly read Bible and buried in St. James Church in Delhi.
One of the last story of such love affairs is Colonel Robert Warburton of Bengal Artillery and Shah Jahan Begum; allegedly a niece of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan of Afghanistan. Warburton fought in First Anglo-Afghan war (1839-42) and was captured by Afghans. He fell in love with Shah Jahan Begum and married her. The offspring of this union was Robert Warburton; born in a fort near Gandamak in 1842 when his mother was on the run. He was fluent in English, Persian and Pushtu and served as Political Agent of Khyber Agency for eighteen years. In a strange irony, Warburton senior was born in Ireland and buried in Christian Cemetery of Peshawar while Warburton Junior was born in Afghanistan and buried in Brompton cemetery near London.
References:
1- George Bruce Malleson. The Mutiny of The Bengal Army: A historical Narrative (London: Bosworth and Harrison, 1857).
2- History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857â8, in six volumes.
Volumes I and II by Sir John William Kaye, edited by Colonel G. B. Malleson
Volumes III, IV, V and VI by Colonel G. B. Malleson, 1864
3- Appendix to Papers Relative to the Mutinies in the East Indies. Presented to both houses of parliament 1857 (London: Harrison & Sons, 1857)
4- Rosie Llewellyn Jones. The Great Uprising in India: Untold Stories; Indian and British (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007)
Of course the
collapse of the colonial order (itself built upon the collapse of the Ottoman
empire) is key here. Most Arab
countries were spectacularly
unsuccessful in creating a consistent metanarrative that justified their own
existence AS countries. In fact, most of them taught their newly
schooled populations about Arab nationalism or Islamic nationalism (or both),
both of which were not really explanations for why Jordan (or even Egypt) were
states worth defending. Egypt may be moving towards some sort of return to
Egyptian identity (though these are early days), but in Syria, Iraq and the
Arabian peninsula the game is wide open. Who will fill the vacuum? There are at
least three contenders:
“For India, it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times.”
It is a staple Western left-liberal talking point (picked up and used by Islamists and by other imperial powers like Russia as needed) that British and French imperialists created the modern Middle East via the Sykes-Picot agreement and messed it up, leading to all or most current problems.This is obviouslynot true in any strong sense. Britain and France did not look at some blank piece of paper and convert it into the modern Middle East. They grabbed and missed opportunities galore (as did the Turks, who chose the losing side in world war one when they didnt have to do any such thing), worked around existing populations and structures (many of them Imperial Ottoman in origin), argued and tried to double-cross each other before and after Sykes-Picot, were resisted by new forces, adjusted to the results of world wars and local wars, and so on..in short, history happened; not just two people meeting and making up what they wanted and determining all that has happened since then. But let us leave details for another day. Let us use Sykes-Picot as short hand for the modern post World War II Middle Eastern system of nation-states that arose after the brief British and French colonial interlude, primarily (but not always) under the control of local elites groomed or put in place by those two powers.
These elites ruled what were formally (if not very deeply), “Westphalian” nation-states on the “European model”. What that means and why that is so bad (or such an improvement) over past models is another debate we can leave for another day. But the modern Middle East came into being. The states that were created were like most postcolonial states, a mixture of past divisions and new creations, some of them more arbitrary and artificial than others (Pakistani nationalists, take a bow).
Israel was the obvious outlier. With a more Westernized/modern population and with a direct (and at least temporarily, mostly sympathetic) connection to the Western world, it was an order of magnitude more capable (in terms of knowledge, organization, sophistication, ability to fight) than it’s unfortunate neighbors and it’s own aboriginal inhabitants. Even though the physical infrastructure of the state (and the weapons it was able to acquire) were not (at least initially) that much superior to those of its enemies, the software was so much better that they were able to whip larger opponents with some regularity. Even so, an order of magnitude is still only an order of magnitude. It may have reached or exceeded the limits of it’s superiority by now. Or it may not. In a battle, it does not matter who is absolutely good at fighting, just who is relatively better. In purely military terms, the Israeli advantage may yet grow; and if present trends accelerate and the Sunni-Shia-Wahabi-Whatever shit totally hits the fan, they may well annex some more territory. History can be cruel. Vae Victis and all that. But moving on..
What about the Arab states of the region? what becomes of them if Sykes-Picot finally dissolves? let us start with the worst cases:
1. Iraq has splintered after the American invasion and is unlikely to see peace in the immediate future. Some sort of three way division seemed possible, but with ISIS taking over the role of “Sunni resistance”, enough Sunnis may prefer cohabitation with Shias, so maybe the split is not totally final. On the other hand, with Saudi Arabia trying to consolidate as a Sunni hegemon in the region, anti-Shia forces will get enough weapons and money to keep fighting for a very long time. The safest bet is “more of the same”. But whatever happens, in the near future it will not be able to contend for regional hegemon, that much is given.
2. Syria has totally crashed and burned. Neither the Assad regime nor its various opponents(including irreconcilable Sunni-Jihadists) are in a position to win completely anytime soon. Continuing violence seems to be the near and medium-term future.
3. Yemen is in flames and has now been invaded by a multi-national coalition led by Saudi Arabia (ostensibly in support of the last “elected” government of the state). Conquering North Yemen has never been an easy prospect and great powers from Rome to the Ottomans have tried and failed to impose their authority over the whole country. The British took control of Aden (all they really wanted?) and managed the surrounding tribes with bribes and punitive policing, but never controlled the whole country. The Egyptian adventure in the 1960s also ended up being “Egypt’s Vietnam”, so the chances that the Saudis will prevail completely are pretty much nil. Stil, in the near-term it is likely that the people of Yemen will pay the heaviest price, not the people or the elites of Saudi Arabia. Yemen is broken and no policy, no matter how sensible (a faint possibility in any case) will put it together again in the foreseeable future.
For some (mostly White or Desi (as in Indian-ish) Leftists, this is time to say “I told you so”. Some of them have reacted to these implosions with barely disguised glee, celebrating the collapse of the borders and states they had always decried as a colonial imposition, and throwing in formula appeals for a “revolutionary” or “pro-people” program to build a new future, blah blah blah. We can ignore this lot. Other Leftists (especially those with family and friends in the region, who do not have the luxury of simply enjoying being “right” about Sykes-Picot) are more confused. They know there is no leftist hegemon or potential hegemon in view that has a reasonable chance of building a new peace out of this chaos, and they have too much local knowledge to blithely generate fantasy stories about the heroic Syrian regime, tor the Yemeni rebels for that matter. Between Asad and Sisi and ISIS, who is one to root for? Many of them will likely end up rooting for the existing “Sykes-Picot” states and forget the dream of erasing those hated borders? But in many ways, that order was neo-colonial and will not return to status quo ante even if many people wish it were so. As colonial and new-colonial order fades, what will replace it (in the region as a whole)? With little local knowledge and limited book knowledge, it is not for me to attempt a detailed prediction, but even with limited knowledge, we can say this much: as in any region, the powers that impose order will have to possess sufficient solidarity and ideological clarity to be able to ensure the loyalty of their own core and to compel the loyalty of a critical mass of those they incorporate into their system of rule. What ideal will provide that glue and that motivation?
The death of arabia http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18224
Good summary http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/08/tragic-cycle-western-powers-and-middle-east
Arrogant meddling caused the problem http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/01/18/terrorism-paris-sydney-legacy-colonial-blunders/oEY5qPo1uGRIZDC8UfNEyH/story.html#
Sykes picot is a myth http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0322-mcmeekin-middle-east-sykes-picot-boundaries-20150322-story.html
The map is durable http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141934/steven-simon/the-middle-easts-durable-map
State system should survive http://www.dw.de/opinion-not-the-end-of-the-sykes-picot-order/a-17728749
Sykes picot myth making http://blog.oup.com/2015/02/dont-blame-sykes-picot/
ISIS as cancer of capitalism http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/cancer-modern-capitalism-1323585268 The arc of Muslim state-failure
In Iraq and Syria, where IS was born, the devastation of society due to prolonged conflict cannot be underestimated. Western military invasion and occupation of Iraq, replete with torture and indiscriminate violence, played an undeniable role in paving the way for the emergence of extreme reactionary politics. Before Western intervention, al-Qaeda was nowhere to be seen in the country. In Syria, Assadâs brutal war on his own people continues to vindicate IS and attract foreign fighters.
The continual input of vast quantities of money to Islamist extremist networks, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of material resources that no one has yet been able to quantify in its totality – coordinated by the same nexus of Western and Muslim governments – has over the last half century had a deeply destabilising impact. IS is the surreal, post-modern culmination of this sordid history.
The Westâs anti-IS coalition in the Muslim world consists of repressive regimes whose domestic policies have widened inequalities, crushed legitimate dissent, tortured peaceful political activists, and stoked deep-seated resentments. They are the same allies that have, and are continuing to fund IS, with the knowledge of Western intelligence agencies.
Yet they are doing so in regional circumstances that can only be described as undergoing, in the last decade, escalating converging crises. As Princetonâs Professor Bernard Haykel said: âI see ISIS as a symptom of a much deeper structural set of problems in the Sunni Arab world⊠[It has] to do with politics. With education, and the lack thereof. With authoritarianism. With foreign intervention. With the curse of oil ⊠I think that even if ISIS were to disappear, the underlying causes that produce ISIS would not disappear. And those would have to be addressed with decades of policy and reforms and changes – not just by the West, but also by Arab societies as well.â
Yet as we saw with the Arab Spring, these structural problems have been exacerbated by a perfect storm of interlinked political, economic, energy and environmental crises, all of which are being incubated by a deepening crisis of global capitalism.
With the region suffering from prolonged droughts, failing agriculture, decline in oil revenues due to domestic peak oil, economic corruption and mismanagement compounded by neoliberal austerity, and so on, local states have begun to collapse. From Iraq to Syria, from Egypt to Yemen, the same nexus of climate, energy and economic crises are unravelling incumbent governments.
Alienation in the West
Although the West is far more resilient to these interconnected global crises, entrenched inequalities in the US, Britain and Western Europe – which have a disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities, women and children – are worsening.
In Britain, nearly 70 percent of ethnically South Asian Muslims, and two-thirds of their children, live in poverty. Just under 30 percent of British Muslim young people aged from 16-24 years are unemployed. According to Minority Rights Group International, conditions for British Muslims in terms of “access to education, employment and housing” have deteriorated in recent years, rather than improving. This has been accompanied by a “worrying rise in open hostility” from non-Muslim communities, and a growing propensity for police and security services to target Muslims disproportionately under anti-terror powers. Consistently negative reporting on Muslims by the media, coupled with grievances over justifiable perceptions of an aggressive and deceptive foreign policy in the Muslim world, compound the latter to create a prevailing sense of social exclusion associated with British Muslim identity.
It is the toxic contribution of these factors to general identity formation that is the issue – not each of the factors by themselves. Poverty alone, or discrimination alone, or anti-Muslim reporting alone, and so on, do not necessarily make a person vulnerable to radicalisation. But together these can forge an attachment to an identity that sees itself as alienated, frustrated and locked in a cycle of failure.
The prolongation and interaction of these problems can contribute to the way Muslims in Britain from various walks of life begin to view themselves as a whole. In some cases, it can generate an entrenched sense of separation and alienation from, and disillusionment with wider society. This exclusionary identity, and where it takes a person, will depend on that personâs specific environment, experiences and choices.
Prolonged social crises can lay the groundwork for the rise of toxic, xenophobic ideologies on all sides. Such crises undermine conventional mores of certainty and stability rooted in established notions of identity and belonging.
While vulnerable Muslims might turn to gang culture, or worse, Islamist extremism, vulnerable non-Muslims might adopt their own exclusionary identities linked with extremist groups like the English Defence League, or other far-right extremist networks.
For more powerful elite groups, their sense of crisis may inflame militaristic neoconservative ideologies that sanitise incumbent power structures, justify the status quo, whitewash the broken system that sustains their power, and demonise progressive and minority movements.
In this maelstrom, the supply of countless billions of dollars to Islamist extremist networks in the Middle East with a penchant for violence, empowers groups that previously lacked any local constituency.
As multiple crises converge and intensify, undermining state stability and inflaming grievances, this massive input of resources to Islamist ideologues can pull angry, alienated, vulnerable individuals into their vortex of xenophobic extremism. The end-point of that process is the creation of monsters.
Dehumanisation
While these factors escalated regional vulnerability to crisis levels, the US and Britainâs lead role after 9/11 in coordinating covert Gulf state financing of extremist Islamist militants across the region has poured gasoline on the flames.
The links these Islamist networks have in the West meant that domestic intelligence agencies have periodically turned blind eyes to their followers and infiltrators at home, allowing them to fester, recruit and send would-be fighters abroad.
This is why the Western component of IS, though much smaller than the number of fighters joining from neighbouring countries, remains largely impervious to meaningful theological debate. They are not driven by theology, but by the insecurity of a fractured identity and psychology.
It is here, in the meticulously calibrated recruitment methods used by IS and its supporting networks in the West, that we can see the role of psychological indoctrination processes fine-tuned through years of training under Western intelligence agencies. These agencies have always been intimately involved in the crafting of violent Islamist indoctrination tools.
In most cases, recruitment into IS is achieved by being exposed to carefully crafted propaganda videos, developed using advanced production methods, the most effective of which are replete with real images of bloodshed inflicted on Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian civilians by Western firepower, or on Syrian civilians by Assad.
The constant exposure to such horrifying scenes of Western and Syrian atrocities can often have an effect similar to what might happen if these scenes had been experienced directly: that is, a form of psychological trauma that can even result in post-traumatic stress.
Such cult-like propaganda techniques help to invoke overwhelming emotions of shock and anger, which in turn serve to shut down reason and dehumanise the âOtherâ. The dehumanisation process is brought to fruition using twisted Islamist theology. What matters with this theology is not its authenticity, but its simplicity. This can work wonders on a psyche traumatised by visions of mass death, whose capacity for reason is immobilised with rage.
This is why the reliance on extreme literalism and complete decontextualisation is such a common feature of Islamist extremist teachings: because it seems, to someone credulous and unfamiliar with Islamic scholarship, to be literally true at first glance.
Building on decades of selective misinterpretation of Islamic texts by militant ideologues, sources are carefully mined and cherry-picked to justify the political agenda of the movement: tyrannical rule, arbitrary mass murder, subjugation and enslavement of women, and so on, all of which become integral to the very survival and expansion of the âstateâ.
As the main function of introducing extreme Islamist theological reasoning is to legitimise violence and sanction war, it is combined with propaganda videos that promise what the vulnerable recruit appears to be missing: glory, brotherhood, honour, and the promise of eternal salvation – no matter what crimes or misdemeanours one may have committed in the past.
Couple this with the promise of power – power over oneâs enemies, power over Western institutions that have purportedly suppressed oneâs Muslim brothers and sisters, power over women – and the appeal of IS, if its religious garb and claims of Godliness can be made convincing enough, can be irresistible.
What this means is that ISâs ideology, while important to understand and refute, is not the driving factor in its origins, existence and expansion. It is merely the opium of the people that it feeds to itself, and its prospective followers.
Ultimately, IS is a cancer of modern industrial capitalism in meltdown, a fatal by-product of our unwavering addiction to black gold, a parasitical symptom of escalating civilisational crises across both the Muslim and Western worlds. Until the roots of these crises are addressed, IS and its ilk are here to stay.
Shit, meet fan. Hayat Alvi http://projects21.com/2015/03/28/millions-in-us-military-equipment-lost-as-yemen-heads-down-syrias-path/
Pakistan in coalition http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/30/uk-pakistan-saudi-arabia-yemen-idUKKBN0MQ1G520150330
Chinese options http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/chinas-middle-east-choice/?singlepage=1
I disagree enough that I am thinking of writing something about it…not disagreeing that it is a cancer. Just disagreeing with the non-seriousness of the historical and sociological “analysis”. its not that he dislikes this “system” (which I dont think is even a good way to describe “all that is”) and I, God Forbid, like it. Or that I understand it better than he does. I make no such claim. But at least I dont take some superficial and shallow talking points from some fashionable left wing writers and pretend that they explain or even accurately describe the world as it is. ….I am not too optimistic either. And maybe you are actually more pessimistic than he is. But you KNOW more about history than he does., so when you say things, we have to take them seriously. This guy…not so much…. . Until i manage to better write the rant rattling around in my head right now, this will have to do… . Blowing off steam. Not to be taken too seriously. And of course, he has several good points scattered within the overall varguely “left wing” framework. ..see what i have done? I have dug a hole from which i cannot emerge unless I write a clearer explanation of my reaction to this guy
I understand what you’re saying, and probably agree with it. I don’t put any store in this “wages of capitalism” crap. However, I agree with him on two points. First, that the West’s lovefest with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar is incredibly hypocritical and counterproductive – and is at least partly driven by an oliocentric worldview. Second, and more importantly, that this entire “we have a plan to fix things because we’re cleverer than reality” approach – e.g., as embodied in the Iraq invasion, the Libya affair, and now the Yemen adventure – is a ludicrous one. The situation is too complex to be addressed through linear thinking and plans seeking short-term gratification. This problem will get far, far worse before it gets any better, but the “solutions” being suggested, both by the Right and the Left, often make things even worse. The time constants of political campaigns may make anything else impossible, but the need is for very long-term strategies and great patience. Perhaps someone up there in the NSC is playing a deep game that we don’t understand, but if so, the game is so deep that most of its steps so far appear as disasters to the naked eye.
I also think – as the author seems to imply too – that, for whatever reason, an obsession with Iran has distorted a lot of Western policy in the region. The Iranian mullahs are no saints, but really no worse than the Saudis or our other esteemed allies. By so decisively taking sides with the Arab establishment against Iran, the US has put itself in a weaker position in the region, actually strengthened Iran’s political stature, and taken short-term steps that clearly hurt our long-term interests (again, such as the Iraq invasion). It is politically incorrect to say this, but a big part of the problem is that the US-Israel relationship has been taken hostage by the neocon-Likudnik paranoid wing of the foreign policy universe. As we know, the stalwarts of this viewpoint are spectacularly short-sighted and idiotic in their understanding of both history and politics – as exemplified by the “Always Wrong” Bill Kristol, who thought that the road to Middle East peace went through Baghdad where we would be greeted as liberators. Obama’s current negotiations with Iran are the first sustained attempt to counter this trend, but it will almost certainly fail. This is what I mean by short-sighted actions that make things worse. Appeasing Sheldon Adelson is far more important to the idiots in Congress than actually making things better on the ground.
Robert Fisk http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-battle-for-the-middle-easts-future-begins-in-yemen-as-saudi-arabia-jumps-into-the-abyss-10140145.html
Myths of Yemen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/decipher-yemen_b_6965564.html?ir=India
The Saudi view (Salman Doctrine) http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2015/04/01/The-Middle-East-beyond-Decisive-Storm-.html
UAE upset at Pakistan http://www.khaleejtimes.com/mobile/inside.asp?xfile=/data/nationgeneral/2015/April/nationgeneral_April110.xml§ion=nationgeneral#.VShDJgcrwvx.twitter
