Would a "cleaner" partition of India have been a good thing ?

[Dr Strangelove]

If I understand the question, the only way that partition could have been cleaner would have been if the British had polled every village and had assigned villages to each country on an individual basis. This would have resulted in a Pakistan that would have been composed of isolated communities scattered across the Indian subcontinent and therefore hopelessly fragmented. India would have been a relatively contiguous state as it is now, but would have enclosed numerous small enclaves belonging to Pakistan. There might have been smaller rump states along the Indus river and in eastern Bengal, but what are now the nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh would be somewhat smaller than they are now, and they too would have enclosed a number of enclaves belonging to another nation, India.

Would this solution have avoided the internecine warfare that plagued India's independence day? Maybe, or it might have magnified the problem as surely there were numerous villages of mixed population. Neighbor would still havce fought neighbor, but in smaller pockets of conflict. Afterwards would have come conflicts over water, utilities, and right-of-ways. I suppose that under these conditions India would have gradually absorbed the majority of muslim communities, perhaps leaving only a rump Pakistan smaller than today's nation. We can only guess at how much residual resentment would exist.

[fed1943]

I think this are subjects to be solved by their own peoples.
With the adicional advantage to let the peoples from Europe and North America free to solve their own problems.
Best regards,

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by aneeshm


When Kashmir acsended to India , it had its population of Hindus at 25 % . Why is it that you ignore that ? Those 25 % have to be returned to their homeland , which is Kashmir . Muslim barbarians have driven them out .

And again - I challenge your assumption that India has no moral right to keep territories which are majority-Muslim . On what do you base it ?

territorial integrity isn't about moral rights. Land doesn't really belong to anybody in any moral sense. not with the history of every tiny scrap of land being as layered with theft as it is. It's all stolen property. Some more freshly stolen than others perhaps but surely none unambiguously belonging to any particular group of people beyond the limited ownership of individual living private owners who lawfully purchased or otherwise lawfully received land.

Issues of territorial integrity should be decided first on existing international consensus wherever one can clearly be identified so as to reduce the risk of violent conflict and upheaval of constant swapping of territories between sovereign states as circumstances (such as demographics) on the ground shift. When such consensus clearly has not existed then the matter should be decided by plebiscite as the simplest means of approximating the ideal of greatest good for the greatest number.

There really isn't any sort of identifiably more "moral" way to approach the matter.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by DaShi
My students in China would do the same thing. I'd have to spend the first class telling them where to put the period. Drawing little arrows. Making jokes on how it confused me so much. Yet, they still did it. Even when I told them I would give them a zero on any papers containing those errors. Arrrrggghhhhh!!!!!!

it looks funny but it seems harmless enough. They probably do it because it seems more aesthetically "correct" to them that way so the "correct" spacing is difficult to drill into their heads. I've never seen the point of rigorous enforcement of language rules that do not effect comprehension.

[joncha]

That doesn't affect comprehension? Are you kidding? Those posts are incredibly hard to read.

[Jaguar]

Given the content of his posts, a lack of comprehension is not necessarily a bad thing...

[joncha]

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by joncha
That doesn't affect comprehension? Are you kidding? Those posts are incredibly hard to read.

do you have trouble reading text upside down as well? do you really find it hard to read or do you just think it's fuggin' ugly?

[Sava]

nuke them from orbit

it's the only way to be sure

[joncha]

Originally posted by Geronimo


do you have trouble reading text upside down as well? do you really find it hard to read or do you just think it's fuggin' ugly?

I have no problem reading upside down.

His obnoxious punctuation habits, on the other hand, make the sentences hard to parse. I end up reading everything as run-on sentences.

Also, it's fuggin' ugly.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by joncha


I have no problem reading upside down.

His obnoxious punctuation habits, on the other hand, make the sentences hard to parse. I end up reading everything as run-on sentences.

Also, it's fuggin' ugly.

hard to parse? just use the punctuation marks as they are intended. They are still there and you can't miss them. I think it more likely that you don't want to have to read ugly text and reading ugly text is uncomfortable so you tell yourself it's difficult. Upside down text surely requires more mental gymnastics to interpret than text with an extra space in front of each punctuation mark and yet AFAIK nobody has trouble reading text upside down.

[joncha]

Yes. Hard to parse. Just as when someone posts huge text blocks or refuses to capitalise properly.

The conventions are there so that writing is easier to read. Straying from them just to be cute is obnoxious and - shock of shocks - makes posts more difficult to read.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by joncha
Yes. Hard to parse. Just as when someone posts huge text blocks or refuses to capitalise properly.

The conventions are there so that writing is easier to read. Straying from them just to be cute is obnoxious and - shock of shocks - makes posts more difficult to read.

The extra spaces before punctuation should actually serve to make them easier to read in exactly the same way that breaking up a block of text makes it easier to read. Including the extra space is like capitalizing the start of each sentance vs the default spacing which would be more like not capitalizing the start of each sentance. It would be possible to devise countless conventions to make text easier to read so it seems a bit absurd to declare that only the official conventions could be helpful.

Your point would be more valid for random punctuation and use of conventions (like in my own posts) than in
aneeshms posts.


Bottom line is there is nothing objectively more difficult about this particular punctuation convention.

[joncha]

That is the most moronic thing I've heard in a long time.

Conventions are arbitrary by their very nature. That doesn't make them irrelevant. By convention, we drive on the right-hand side in North America. England has an equally valid convention for driving. Now try using it in the States.

[Jaguar]

Hey jon, did you know that there's a broken link in your sig?