Shoaib Malik, the captain of the Pakistan cricket team had this to say after his team lost to India in the T20 World Cup Final: “I want to thank you back home in Pakistan and where the Muslim lives all over the world”. By itself, the statement is innocuous and needs to be dismissed as an isolated aberration. Some have gone to the extent of defending this statement as the comment of someone who is uncomfortable with English, implying that Shoaib actually did not mean to include Indian Muslims in his thank you from Pakistan!
Shoaib Malik’s words have not appeared out of nowhere. They are the product of a mindset, a concept which defines Pakistan so loudly that it is a complete wonder that India has been ignoring it for so long, despite the mounting costs and despite the clear and present danger the Indian nation faces. This is not an isolated incident. Earlier too, when the Indian cricket team toured Pakistan, the tickets printed by the Pakistan Cricket Board had the Indian flag upside down, with the green on top and the saffron at the bottom. The same thing had happened during the last visit of Pakistan President Musharraf to India, when his plane on landing in Jaipur displayed the India flag in the same manner. Some would argue that these were innocent errors not meriting any attention.
Well, it would be worth mentioning here that the colour green symbolizes Islam. While the colours on the Indian flag are not based on any religious symbolism whatsoever, for the Pakistanis saffron represents Hinduism. Placement of Islamic green over Hindu saffron is a graphic manifestation of the deep rooted mindset of Pakistan to reclaim the rest of India in the name of Islam, like it was sometime before the British landed here. Pakistan views itself as the continuation of the Muslim rule over India, unacceptably ‘truncated and moth eaten’ for now, as Jinnah put it.
As part of that grand endeavor, Pakistan has systematically and relentlessly attempted to project itself as the nation of not only the Muslims living in Pakistan, but also of the large number of Muslims who stayed back in India after Partition, beseeched by Nehru to do so. Many ploys and methods have been used, the most visible, violent and dangerous one being terrorism based on extreme intolerance and ruthless religious fanaticism.
Our policy makers and learned analysts continue to say that a strong and stable Pakistan is in India’s best interest and that the consequences of Pakistan breaking up are too horrible to imagine. This defies logic completely and is really no more than the stance of a weak mind which has pushed itself into a helpless corner from where it can do nothing else but to appeal to the non-existent goodness of a bully trying to create an opening to deliver a fatal blow. Pakistan did break up in 1971. Net result? Although we have failed to keep Bangladesh firmly in our sphere of influence, at least the threat from the east has been neutralized. Most importantly, Bangladeshis no longer have the hostility towards India that they had as East Pakistanis, as they are now a country based on ethnicity rather than religion, the sole basis of creation of Pakistan.
Pakistan is the only multi-language, multi-ethnic state in the world created from nowhere on the basis of Islam. Even the Arabs, the race to which the Prophet belonged, have not been ever able to form one ethnic nation state with the glue of Islam, the religion that they have taken almost all over the world. They remain divided into many countries and kingdoms. The glue of Islam has worked only in West Pakistan so far. East Pakistan quickly realized that Islam was no reason for a political arrangement and, at the first available opportunity, chose race over religion.
Pakistan has four major native ethnic groups, Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis and Pathans. Then there are the Mohajirs, Muslims who migrated form various parts of India to Pakistan during Partition. The Mohajirs include the westernized, well educated and aristocratic elite who gave wing to the idea of Pakistan before Independence. Having no ethnic affinity or roots in their adopted land, they are the real soul, the backbone, the glue of the mindset, concept and continuance of a Pakistan based solely on Islam.
That is why a Shoaib Malik incites Indian Muslims through cricket to consider Pakistan, not India, their real country, and thanks them for it; that is why Pakistan is the only place in the world which can safely host and encourage the likes of Laden and his Al Qaida. What the Arabs had never been able to achieve in the name of Islam is alive and kicking in Pakistan and was so in Afghanistan too, when Pakistan was ruling it through its creation, the Taliban. The perfect, multi-ethnic Muslim setting needed to launch a global war on Christianity and Hinduism in the name of Islam.
I had earlier written that Pakistan has to be taken out if terror has to be tackled successfully. I had also written about how India is losing the war on terror due to what I call ‘The Prithviraj Chauhan Syndrome’. In a joint Indo-Pak show telecast on NDTV24/7 on Independence Day, one young Pakistani had the courage to say on camera what is known to all. He said that right since birth he had been taught to hate India and consider it as an enemy. This indoctrination was in his blood, he said, adding that it was impossible for him now to start harboring feelings of friendship towards India. This has been known to most Indians for long. Yet, as a nation we argue in favor of the strong, stable Pakistan which has been trying to rip us open for sixty years.
The creation of a Bengali Muslim Bangladesh has reduced the menace posed by Pakistan considerably. Just imagine if Bangladesh was still East Pakistan what troubles India would have been facing in the East. Similarly, the only way to end the global menace that the mindset and concept of Pakistan has become is to create similar ethnic states in present day Pakistan. An independent Sind or Baluchistan is not likely to exhibit the pathological hatred and destructive religious fanaticism that Pakistan does.
Ethnic states carved out of Pakistan are also not only not likely to fall into the mindless trap of becoming the breeding ground of global terrorism based on Islamic fundamentalism, but will also better integrate with non-Muslim nations. Is that not what the world wants? And fast?
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Readers may also like to read:
1.
It is India, not Pakistan US needs to win terror war
2. 'A thousand cuts' bleeding Pakistan
3. A vote to save Jinnah's Pakistan. Will it?
4. Musharraf mauled: Jinnah's Pakistan next?
2 comments:
I dont see Bangladesh as Pro-India. They are harboring anti-India terrorists and they are denying that fact. Atleast Pakistan is saying that they are only giving political help to the terrorists.
The fact is that, none of the countries bordering India are helping us except for Bhutan and Myanmar.
I agree to the theory that a united Pakistan is of India's advantage. Think of the situation where Pakistan fails and Mullah's take over and there are 100% chances of one of the mad mullah's getting an idea to lob a nuclear weapon into India.
For the sake of India atleast, Pakistan should be stable.
Regards,
Madhav
You are right. Bangaldesh is not pro India. But it is not openly anti India either. It also does not ahve this paranoid obsession to always try to be equal to or greater than India in everything , including military might.
Had it still been East Pakistan, imagine the multiplier effect Pakistan's policy of 'bleeding India through a thousand cuts' would have had in the Eastern part of our country and the additional armed forces and police that would have needed along that huge border too. So, effectively the harm that Pakistan could have caused in the east has been almost nullified. that Bangladesh still creates a bit of trouble is a reflection of our political and diplomatic weakness and failure to build on the goodwill created by freeing that country.
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