Pakistan

[aneeshm]

Let us not get blinded by ideology. In theory, I agree that the most desirable outcome would be Hindus and Muslims living in peace, like some sort of hippie dream. But unfortunately, this is reality, and we have to make trade-offs. One of the costs of ideology was, in this case, the sort of nonsense we see today.

Would riots happen (it doesn't matter who you blame, it matters that they happen, and many innocent people from both communities get killed) in India if there were no Muslims? No.
Would ethnic cleansing and other atrocities happen in Pakistan and Bangladesh if they had no Hindus? No.

It doesn't matter whose fault it was or could have been, but a properly implemented partition, with a peaceful transfer of populations over an extended time-frame would have led to less, or probably even no, people getting needlessly killed.

To hell with ideology, it would at least have worked! No riots and deaths during partition, no terrorism in India, no ethnic cleansing of 4,00,000 Hindus in Kashmir, no anti-Hindu rhetoric in Bangladesh and Pakistan, no problem of cross-border terrorist infiltration and illegal immigration from the Bangladesh border (we'd have had the political will to simply build a big fat fence and either detain or deport anyone who tried to come through), no problems with rioting, no rise of militant Hindu idiots, no pollution of our ideological landscape with foolish ideas of the equivalence of all religions, no political pandering to minority groups, no Haj subsidy, no hatred between Hindus and Muslims (you can't hate something which doesn't affect you), no schizophrenic personal law codes, no nothing.

But no, we had to go and act like hippies. When history has proven, time and again, that Muslims in any significant numbers simply cannot live peacefully with any other community, why the hell didn't the leaders of the country take the golden chance offered to them and do what worked instead of what merely sounded good? The Muslims themselves would have been more than happy at their being granted a "pure" state - a "Paki"stan.

It would have worked. And it's not as if I'm saying that it would apply only to Hindus or Muslims - it would apply to both. I don't really see an anti-Muslim bias there. I simply see the fact that some communities simply cannot live with others. Instead of ranting about it, why not simply work around it? It would have involved a hell of a lot of dislocation - but it would have solved the goddamned problem once and for all, much more amicably that the way we actually did it.

And consider - do we have a working system right now?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Excuse me, Bangledesh.

And it is far less stupid than 500,000 dead and 10,000,000 displaced it would seem.

Bangladesh came out of East Pakistan, which was formed from East Bengal and districts of Assam.

There were other ways to prevent the killings and displacement than leaving Punjab and Bengal under colonial occupation.

Also, despite the various and serious flaws of its political system, calling India "fundi" does both it and the victims of true fundamentalism a huge disservice.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Let us not get blinded by ideology. In theory, I agree that the most desirable outcome would be Hindus and Muslims living in peace, like some sort of hippie dream. But unfortunately, this is reality, and we have to make trade-offs. One of the costs of ideology was, in this case, the sort of nonsense we see today.

Would riots happen (it doesn't matter who you blame, it matters that they happen, and many innocent people from both communities get killed) in India if there were no Muslims? No.
Would ethnic cleansing and other atrocities happen in Pakistan and Bangladesh if they had no Hindus? No.

It doesn't matter whose fault it was or could have been, but a properly implemented partition, with a peaceful transfer of populations over an extended time-frame would have led to less, or probably even no, people getting needlessly killed.

To hell with ideology, it would at least have worked! No riots and deaths during partition, no terrorism in India, no ethnic cleansing of 4,00,000 Hindus in Kashmir, no anti-Hindu rhetoric in Bangladesh and Pakistan, no problem of cross-border terrorist infiltration and illegal immigration from the Bangladesh border (we'd have had the political will to simply build a big fat fence and either detain or deport anyone who tried to come through), no problems with rioting, no rise of militant Hindu idiots, no pollution of our ideological landscape with foolish ideas of the equivalence of all religions, no political pandering to minority groups, no Haj subsidy, no hatred between Hindus and Muslims (you can't hate something which doesn't affect you), no schizophrenic personal law codes, no nothing.

But no, we had to go and act like hippies. When history has proven, time and again, that Muslims in any significant numbers simply cannot live peacefully with any other community, why the hell didn't the leaders of the country take the golden chance offered to them and do what worked instead of what merely sounded good? The Muslims themselves would have been more than happy at their being granted a "pure" state - a "Paki"stan.

It would have worked. And it's not as if I'm saying that it would apply only to Hindus or Muslims - it would apply to both. I don't really see an anti-Muslim bias there. I simply see the fact that some communities simply cannot live with others. Instead of ranting about it, why not simply work around it? It would have involved a hell of a lot of dislocation - but it would have solved the goddamned problem once and for all, much more amicably that the way we actually did it.

And consider - do we have a working system right now?

I think partition was a bad idea for exactly the reasons you think a more complete partition would have been a good idea.

Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Bangladesh are powerful because there aren't many non-Muslims there. Similarly, Hindu fundamentalists do well in India because Muslims are so few in number.

Neither would be possible in a democratic system with a sizable segment of the population around to oppose it.

[Patroklos]

Bangladesh came out of East Pakistan, which was formed from East Bengal and districts of Assam.

So my orignial statment was correct

[Ramo]

Partitions are stupid, throw rocks at 'em.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Ramo
Partitions are stupid, throw rocks at 'em.

QFT

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Patroklos


So my orignial statment was correct

It would have been, if instead of "Bengal became its own country," you'd said "A country was formed out of parts of Bengal and other states"

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
The funny thing is in places removed from that tension, like the US or Britain, most Pakistanis and Indians see each other as comrades, sharing a similar culture, rather than enemies.

Exactly correct. I see Indi-Paki restaurants and markets all over the place.

[Shrapnel12]

Is there anyone that Muslims get along with except other Muslims? Is there any other combination of religions that don't get along like Muslims don't get along with every religion? Do Christians and Hindus for example fight like that? Christian and Jews? Jews and Buddists? Maybe Protestants and Catholics, but for the most part, all I hear about is Muslims. I'm not saying no other religion commits violence, but the worst seems to be between Muslims and some non-Muslim religion.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by East Street Trader And I travelled through Yugoslavia several times before that country fragmented and the various racial groups separated themselves out.

In neither case did I detect the sort of underlying insecurities and hatreds that later surfaced.

Things were indeed peaceful, with no ethnic violence to speak of. The problem was that nationalism happened prior to formation of Yugoslavia and because of that its peoples weren't easy to amalgamate into "Yugoslavs", something Tito and his communists wanted.

As a boy you didn't notice tensions, but were you older you could have told a person's nationality from his/her first name. It was always visible. The percentage of mixed marriages was pretty low considering that the country existed for almost half a century before it broke apart.

Few multinational countries exist in today's world. Switzerland, Belgium, not many more. Those are also countries with very developed democracy. Yugoslavia was created not by will of its people but by a dictator. Those lamenting its demise (I'm not pointing to you, just saying generally) should remember that.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Few multinational countries exist in today's world. Switzerland, Belgium, not many more.

Well, those and almost the entire western hemisphere.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by LordShiva


I think partition was a bad idea for exactly the reasons you think a more complete partition would have been a good idea.

Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Bangladesh are powerful because there aren't many non-Muslims there. Similarly, Hindu fundamentalists do well in India because Muslims are so few in number.

Neither would be possible in a democratic system with a sizable segment of the population around to oppose it.

I think aneeshm is right on this one. Ethnic cleansing is not a popular word, but in today's world sizeable minorities are not a bridge among neighbours, nor a damper for extremism -- they're a source of tension, useful scapegoats and so on.

Had India and Pakistan been created as ethnically (OK, religiously) clean countries, I think that today there would be peace between them.

Where I disagree is in that I can't imagine a completely bloodless transfer of entire populations. Some wouldn't have wanted to go, so there would inevitably have been some bloodshed.

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=VetLegion]Had India and Pakistan been created as ethnically (OK, religiously) clean countries, I think that today there would be peace between them.[/q]

Or as LS postulates (correctly, I believe), it would have concentrated the extremism even greater and led to just as much, if not more, conflict.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Had India and Pakistan been created as ethnically (OK, religiously) clean countries, I think that today there would be peace between them.

But this assumes that religion is a population's only defining characteristic.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by LordShiva

I think partition was a bad idea for exactly the reasons you think a more complete partition would have been a good idea.

Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Bangladesh are powerful because there aren't many non-Muslims there. Similarly, Hindu fundamentalists do well in India because Muslims are so few in number.

I don't think that 130+ million Muslims count as "few". India has the second-largest Muslim population of the world - after Indonesia (another formerly Indic country). There is no way in hell that you can call 13%+ of the population "few".

And when votes are fragmented, and Muslims can provide the swing vote, we get ridiculous things like minority appeasement (the Haj subsidy, different laws for different people, the special status of Kashmir, the list goes on and on and on.....) and a complete neglect of things like the invasion of illegal aliens into Assam and other states bordering Bangladesh.

And the number of Hindus in Pakistan at the time of partition were greater than the percentage of Muslims living in India now (higher than 13%). But now, it's dropped down to 2%. There is no way this can be a natural drop. So no, significant percentages of each community in each country did not, in fact, help with anything except fomenting more hatred.

Originally posted by LordShiva

Neither would be possible in a democratic system with a sizable segment of the population around to oppose it.

Centrist political parties are forced to pander to the Muslim vote precisely because they are significant enough to swing the vote, and because, till relatively recently, they could be conned into voting as a bloc (the word of the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid in Delhi was law).