Indians should stop trying to excuse Pakistan, feeling that its break-up would be dangerous, and face the fact that since Independence, with more jihadi and tactical nuclear weapons, Pakistan has only become worse. … Pakistan as a terrorist state now threatens the entire world. – Dr David Frawley
Pakistan is always in an existential crisis, a deep-seated doubt as to its ability to endure as a nation.
A product of India’s Partition, not of its own natural identity, Pakistan suffered another major partition in 1971. It is remains afraid of further divisions.
To keep itself together, Pakistan has to manufacture a perpetual war against India. Pakistan’s only real identity is negative, not being Indian, not being Hindu, not even being tolerant to Islamic minorities like Shia and Ahmadiyya, being the land of the Islamic Pure, which has drawn it into jihadi violence on a massive scale.
Identity
Pakistan was constituted from disparate states of British India. Balochistan was an independent kingdom.
The North West Frontier Province was historically a part of Afghanistan. Punjab, though the homeland of Pakistani nationalist sentiment and Islamic identity, was under Sikh rule before it came under British rule.
It had to be partitioned to remove its large Hindu and Sikh population. Yet Pakistan Punjabis still share more of a heritage with Hindu and Sikh Punjabis, than with other groups in Pakistan. Sindh was part of Bombay Presidency under British rule.
While it initially opted to join Pakistan on religious grounds, many Sindhis including its main leader GM Syed soon regretted the decision.
Balochistan, which became an independent nation in 1947, was soon annexed by Pakistan, which many Balochis did not accept and actively challenged, resulting in an extensive and enduring insurgency that Pakistan has ruthlessly tried to crush, though so far without success.
Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan were taken by Islamabad after its invasion of the Kashmir in 1947. Yet they hold very different cultures than Punjab, and have been suppressed accordingly.Pakistan was formed by the demand of Indian Muslims mainly in Uttar Pradesh, the majority of which never migrated to Pakistan.
Those who did migrate become another disparate group, the Mohajirs who mainly displaced Sindhis, creating a further division in Sindh and an unclear identity of their own.
Pakistan’s dominant language became Urdu, a language none of its provinces had as their mother tongue.
So, Pakistan is not a nation but a conglomeration of contrary elements moving in different directions, held together only by a state-enforced religious fanaticism and military aggression.
Pakistan reminds us of the sad state of affairs in the Middle East where the British and French created artificial nations by drawing lines on maps according to their convenience. Modern Iraq and Syria were created in this manner.
Some regions that had a historical unity like Kurdistan were partitioned among the new nations.
Iraq and Syria share a same Islamic religion, divided into Sunni majority and Shia minority groups, like Pakistan. Their common Islamic background has not resulted in any internal unity, but instead now a Shia-Sunni civil war devastating the region.
It has given rise to the brutal Islamic State (ISIS). Pakistan is facing similar divisions but is becoming its own Islamic State.
Religion
Pakistan was created by a religious demand. Since Muslims and Hindus existed throughout India, it required an artificial division of the entire country and a displacement of millions that could only remain incomplete.
But India as a country and a culture has a millennial existence honoured since ancient Greece and ancient China. It has a great influence, extending to Indochina and Indonesia, now worldwide with the spread of its yogic and meditation traditions.
In spite of having a larger population and separatist movements notwithstanding, India has sustained a greater national unity, democratic rule and economic development than Pakistan.
This is because of its dharmic roots that promote tolerance and respect. Yet many Indians have wanted to undo Partition. This has sadly made India soft on Pakistan, like a long lost brother. Others feel that if Pakistan broke up, the resultant instability would be worse for India.
Separatism
Pakistan has emphasised the Kashmir issue to sustain its national identity as an Islamic state against India.
Under the pretext of reclaiming Kashmir, it has tried to create a common cause with its different provinces that are only kept together by religious motivations.
But even so, its Kashmir jihad has not been sufficient to calm the separatist feelings of Pakistan’s different regions.
India has strangely ignored these separatist movements within Pakistan, though Pakistan has continued to blatantly foster separatist and terrorist movements in India. Such a policy did not help India or restrain Pakistan.
Only this year did Prime Minister Narendra Modi first raise the cause of Balochistan. His statements sent shock waves through Pakistan, forcing it to see its own inherent contradictions.
The conclusion is clear: Indians should stop trying to excuse Pakistan, feeling that its break-up would be dangerous, and face the fact that since Independence, with more jihadi and tactical nuclear weapons, Pakistan has only become worse.
Pakistan is already the most dangerous country in the world and is not likely to get better. Pakistan as a terrorist state now threatens the entire world.
Most terrorists visit Pakistan, are trained in Pakistan or are associated with Pakistanis.
Arising from its original identity as a jihadi state, Pakistan has made itself into the centre of global terrorism. Pakistan must be dealt with accordingly, not with Gandhian sympathies but with Arjuna’s resolve. – Daily-O, 29 September 2016
» Dr David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is the director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the author of more than 30 books on yoga and vedic traditions.
Filed under: india, pakistan | Tagged: india, india-pakistan relations, islam, islamic terrorism, jihad, kashmir, kashmiri separatists, pakistan, state-sponsored terrorism |
BHARATA BHARATI 
Nearly 1,000 bodies of activists, separatists found in Balochistan: Pak govt – Rezaul Hasan Laskar – Hindustan Times – December 29, 2016
Nearly 1,000 bodies of political activists and suspected separatists have been found in the restive Balochistan province over the past six years, according to the Pakistan government’s official figures.
Most of the bodies were dumped in the regions of Quetta, Qalat, Khuzdar and Makran, areas where Balochistan’s separatist insurgency has its roots, BBC Urdu reported citing figures from the federal human rights ministry.
“According to the Federal Ministry of Human Rights, at least 936 dead bodies have been found in Balochistan since 2011,” the report said.
Rights activists said the figures pointed to large-scale extrajudicial killings, the report added. Relatives said most victims were picked up by security agencies.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks about rights violations in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir created a furore in Pakistan, which said he had crossed a “red line”.
Baloch activists have for long accused Pakistan’s intelligence and security agencies of adopting a “kill-and-dump” policy in the resource-rich but impoverished region.
Thousands of people have disappeared without trace in Balochistan since a separatist insurgency gained momentum in 2007, BBC reported. A military-led operation was launched in early 2005 to counter the uprising by ethnic Baloch groups, who want a greater say in decision-making and exploitation of natural resources such as minerals and gas.
The BBC report said one of the more prominent cases of “kill-and-dump” was that of political activist Jalil Reki, who lived in Quetta’s Saryab neighbourhood. He was arrested at his home in 2009, and his body was found two years later in Mand area near the border with Iran, some 1,100 km south of Quetta.
“They came to our house in three vehicles. These were the vehicles of agencies. They took away Jalil,” his mother said. “The police did not take our report. Our male relatives later approached the then chief minister’s office, but we could not get any response.
“Two years later some people found his body in Mand. He had one bullet in the head and three in the chest. His arms were fractured and there were cigarette burns on his back.”
The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) said it recorded 1,200 cases of dumped bodies and there are many more it had not been able to document.
VBMP chief Nasrullah Baloch said most of the bodies “are of those activists who have been victims of ‘enforced disappearances’ – people who are picked up by authorities and then just go missing”.
His allegations were largely in line with a 2013 report by the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) that noted “credible reports of continued serious human rights violations, including disappearances of people, arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings”.
Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Haq Kakar denied that state agencies were involved in such acts. “There are several explanations. Sometimes insurgents are killed in a gunfight with law enforcement agencies but their bodies are found later,” he said.
“Militant groups also fight among each other and don’t bury their dead fighters. Then there are tribal feuds, organised crime and drug mafia.”
There have been frequent protests by relatives of victims and Baloch nationalist organisations over the years, and many activists have fled to foreign countries or safer locations within Pakistan.
Naveed Baloch, who was briefly held by German police for the December 19 truck attack in Berlin, left Pakistan in February to “escape persecution” in his village in Mand region.
An activist of a nationalist party, he was arrested and tortured by Pakistani forces in Balochistan last year, and his home in the village was raided again recently, his cousin, also named Naveed Baloch, told BBC Urdu.
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