opinion

some people don't have an opinion on the most important things. its too much effort for them to have one.

Sunte hain ki

Sunte hain ki mil jaati hai har cheez dua se,

ek roz tumhein maang ke dekhenge khuda se.

jab kuchh na mila haath duaon ko uthakar,

fir haath uthane hi pade humko duaa se.

tum saamne baithe ho, to hai kaif ki baarish

woh din bhi the jab aag barasti si ghataa se

aye dil tu unhein dekh ke kuchh aise tadapna,

aa jaaye hansi unko, baithe hain khafa se.

Duniya Bhi Mili Hai Gham-e-Duniya Bhi Mila Hai

Vo Kyun Nahin Milta Jisay Maanga Tha Khuda Se

Aeene Me Vo Apni Adaa Dekh Rahe Hain

Marr Jaaye Ke Jee Jaaye Koi, Unki Bala Se

Gandhi vs Jinnah?

wrote this, sometime somewhere.

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Gandhi & Jinnah, both were towering personalities. Both men were well read and smart enough to know, that a nation state cannot survive solely on the basis of religion, especially in today's pluralistic environment.

And somebody on this thread commented the Two nation theory was Jinnah's brainchild and he executed it. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

Those who do not read & learn from history, are bound to repeat it. The idea of a muslim nation state was that of Syed Ahmed Khan, and later Allama Iqbal (who, incidentally, penned India's national song "Saare Jahaan se achha" )

The idea was brought to fruition by scheming behind the scenes actors, who had vested interests in real estate, but needed a facade. Mr Jinnah was a very sophisticated and secular Indian, who lived most of his life in Bombay, but was convinced into the idea of Pakistan, exactly at the moment when he had a disagreement with Nehru over seat sharing in the provincial govt. under the british. Jinnah wanted a loose indian federation with equal and protected rights for all communities, including the muslims, and never a separate country.

Few pakistanis would know that the quaid recruited a Hindu poet to write Pakistan's first national anthem, thus wanting to sow the seeds of secularism in his new country. The country set out as a democratic and secular nation, but soon fell to the pressures of the zamindaars who needed the religion alibi to keep going with their feudalism.

And all this was still 70-80 YEARS ago!

Mark my words. Borders of nation states are not static. They change. The lines we've drawn on the subcontinent were not there 200 years ago. 200 years from now these won't be there. There might be a different set. Or, i pray, there may be none.

Religion:

We've all witnessed comments flying from both sides saying Hindus are that and Muslims are this.

After reading all those comments, do you not feel it is high time we just grew up.

There is nothing that we don't know. Every single person on this thread knows and believes we are humans first and hindus/muslims/christians later. If that is what it is, if that is what you know, why is it so difficult to act on this knowledge that you already have.

The venom that this Raj guy was spewing in a few posts above mine, is a result of the conditioning we give our children. We tell our children that the hindu majority schemes against the muslim minority, OR, the muslims are the in-bred lot, not nice people and what not.

You know, it is not really difficult to just stop telling your children how other religions are bad and your own is the best. Why don't we just tell them whats good about our own faith (Both the Hindu and Islamic faith, by the way, are inclusive and loving)

Let them go out and discover for themselves whats good and bad. Trust me, they'll do a better job than you can imagine, and a far better job than what we ourselves managed to do with the conditioning our parents gave us.

And the ones who are out to 'PROTECT' their faith (every religion has its bunch of nincompoops who've taken upon themselves to DEFEND their faith), please let me tell you, the day your faith starts 'needing' your protection, is the day that faith has lost its place in human consciousness. Your faith does not need you to protect it. It is far greater and taller in stature and its message to people so profound and so noble, that it has and will stand through all the tests it has to go through.

All us enlightened souls know that the whole universe and all that is contained in it, came from a single source (i'm sure you've all read 'the big bang' theory, but never thought of it in this light) then why create your own artificial differences and fight and kill over those?

Apologies for the sermonising. And about the theme of this post - india (ill)treating its minorities - and specific reference to muslims. There has to be some merit to the fact that a majority of the community's religious leaders are not doing a brilliant job. The victim paranoia, education and health of the community in general has alot to do with what is taught at the religious congregation. I mean what response would you give to the mullah, who in his friday sermon asks muslim parents to not give their children polio immunity drops because it was the hindu govt.'s 'chaal' to hurt their children. (never mind that the same medicine was being administered to all children who were brought to the healt centres, irrespective of faith)

If minorities, in general, have been ill treated and deliberately kept away from economic opportunities, what explains the the rise in fortunes of the Christian and Sikh minorities in India? In spite of the fact that both have suffered similar instances of discrimination and been at the receiving end of violence and rioting by a few fundamentalist bigots?

No nation is perfect and neither are India or Pakistan. There was and will always be crime and deviation from moral behaviour (in this case, religious discrimination). But we've to decide what is the standard deviation we want to allow in a country of one and a half billion people.

I believed the problem in India is quite the opposite. The successive governments and the system itself, is so aware of the possibility and incidence of discrimination, that to nullify the effect the past behaviour, that it has pro-actively created checks, balances, safe guards, provisions and reservations for minorities (not just religious, but also regional, ethnic, and caste based). And that, today, has become counter productive, to the extent that if any individual finds himself in the sorry state of being absent in any of the classified minorities, he is at such a disadvantage, for he will not find a reserved seat for himself in either an instititution of higher learning or for a govt employment opportunity.

The situation is such that people are fighting and rioting to have themselves classified as 'Backward Class' (it doesn't matter that they've been at the higher spectrum of the societal structure for centuries).

I think it is highly unfair to sit on a higher pedestal and judge India, and summarily declare that it systematically ill treats the minorities.

Not one country in this world is a perfect model for religious pluralism, but if you were to list out the countries who've actually done something to acknowledge and accept multiple systems of religion withing one nation state and also prevent discrimination and systematically create opportunities on the basis of merit and not an individual's subscription of a particular faith, i'd say India figures on top of that list.

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