Belief, not bargains: Did Jinnah really want Pakistan?

 

Belief, not bargains: Did Jinnah really want Pakistan? Asad Rahim Khan: Published August 14, 2022

 

Seventy-five years on, it is unjust to continue attributing this country to a sleight of hand, rather than the Quaid's supreme will.

We start, though one never should, with an alternative universe: imagine if Gandhi didn’t really want freedom for India. Go further afield: imagine if Churchill didn’t want to win the war. Or if that avatar of modern evil, Adolf Hitler, was lukewarm about racial supremacy.

 

Now imagine if all of the above was conventional wisdom in real life. It doesn’t work, because it’s just not true — we have endless data that tells us otherwise, as well as the express words and deeds of these men, bent on doing the exact opposite.

 

Yet that same sense of obviousness isn’t always extended to Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Mountains of evidence are ignored, dozens of speeches forgotten, alternate universes imagined out of thin air.

 

But some universes merit deflating more than others — like the one where Jinnah never wanted Pakistan or Partition; where he never wanted, right to the end, a separate country at all.

 

Per this version, Jinnah was a poker player, with Pakistan no more than a bargaining chip — all he really wanted was a better deal for everyone in an undivided India. As explained by historian Ayesha Jalal, “Jinnah was from a province where Muslims were in a minority. He wanted to use the power of the areas where the Muslims were a majority, to create a shield of protection for where they were in a minority.”

 

Jalal’s theory is that the Pakistan demand was a bluff; a mere play for India as a loose federation. “The Lahore resolution should therefore be seen as a bargaining counter,” she writes, “which had the merit of being acceptable (on the face of it) to the majority-province Muslims, and of being totally unacceptable to the Congress and in the last resort to the British also. This in turn provided the best insurance that the League would not be given what it now apparently was asking for, but which Jinnah in fact did not really want.”

 

In sum, Jinnah didn’t want what he was saying he wanted, and wasn’t trying to do what he ended up doing. He was fighting for the rights of Muslims across India, and sought to leverage the strength of Muslim-majority areas into a kinder place for the overall minority. A string of perfect accidents later, Pakistan was born.

 

This idea caters to many constituencies — it strokes the conceit that Pakistan was an amputation of Mother India; it appeals to locals who believe separation a bad business from the beginning; and it denies Jinnah any responsibility for Partition.

 

Yet all the facts point elsewhere. It’s of course true that Jinnah desired a united India as a young man, before changing his mind. But the idea that he was secretly holding out for a better, tamer deal right up until separation is neither rich enough nor coherent enough to explain the creation of a country.

 

Nor is it novel: far from the daring new revisionism it’s made out to be, the theory that Pakistan was a botched trump card is very much an old British take, first muttered by the viceroy and his lieutenants after the Lahore Resolution. Thus, just a week after Jinnah made his bid for a separate state on March 23, 1940, British officials riled themselves up into an echo chamber of their own.

 

In his telegram to the viceroy, the chief secretary of the United Provinces huffed that the Pakistan plan was “merely put forward as a counter-demand to that of the Congress as a bargaining move.” The governor of Bombay piled on, “The best that any Muslim has said about it is that Jinnah cannot mean it and is only using it as a bargaining weapon.”

 

The viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, wrote back to London on 6 April with the same conclusion as his peers, “I am myself disposed to regard Jinnah’s partition scheme as very largely in the nature of bargaining … my impression is that … there is a good deal of feeling that it is bargaining in character.”

 

The viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, featured on the cover of Time magazine. — Photo: Time magazine

That Linlithgow’s arguments are the same as Jalal’s is unsurprising, given how much her work relies on colonial archives. “[T]he bargaining counter theory was a favourite one with British officials,” writes Indian historian Mushirul Hasan. “In fact, one is constrained to suggest that Ayesha Jalal has probably borrowed the idea from, among other sources, the British documents at the India Office Library.”

 

But the context should have been considered — that these were the private papers of men that had put down Jinnah as a dangerous gambler, and who felt the sun would never set on the Raj. Described by Nehru as “heavy of body and slow of mind, solid as a rock and with almost a rock’s lack of awareness,” Linlithgow thought India wouldn’t win its freedom for another fifty years, and that thanks to the wonders of air-conditioning, it was now possible for millions of Britons to settle in places like Dehra Dun.

 

That same sense of permanence coloured his views. “The Hindus have made the mistake of taking Jinnah seriously about Pakistan,” wrote Linlithgow, “and as a result they have given substance to a shadow.’ This was rehashed by pro-Congress papers like the Hindustan Times, caricaturing Jinnah as a lone warrior against the world.

 

Yet beyond the biases of British bureaucrats, long proven incorrect, the Pakistan-as-poker-chip theory fails to find much material in its support. If Jalal’s work represents any orthodoxy, it is that of empire — the Raj trying to shrug off Pakistan as ‘bargaining in character.’

 

After all, when was that bargaining ever in play? As Indian critics would later shake their heads, Jinnah never once changed his mind, never once backpedalled, never once bargained away the basic point in all future negotiations — that unless the parties agreed to Pakistan in principle, there could be no further talks.

 

Even contemporaries like the Dalit genius B.R. Ambedkar dismissed such theories as “wishful thinking” as early as 1940. “The Mussalmans are devoted to Pakistan and are determined to have nothing else,” he wrote. The Raj wasn’t so discerning; it refused to accept Lahore for what it was — the final curtain on a united India.

 

How highly Jinnah himself thought of this bargaining chip theory is apparent in speech after speech. “The Hindus must give up their dream of a Hindu Raj and agree to divide India into a Hindu homeland and Muslim homeland,” he said on September 21, 1940. “Today we are prepared to take only one-fourth of India and leave three-fourths to them. Pakistan was our goal today, for which the Muslims of India will live for and, if necessary, die for. It is not a counter for bargaining.”

 

Some months later, he warned his party again, “It would be a great mistake to be carried away by Congress propaganda that the Pakistan demand was put forward as a counter for bargaining.”

 

If that wasn’t clear enough, he told the Muslim Students Federation in Lahore on March 2, 1941, almost a year after the resolution, “The only solution for the Muslims of India … is that India should be partitioned so that both communities can develop freely and fully according to their own genius … the vital contest in which we are engaged is not only for material gain, but also for the very existence of the soul of the Muslim nation. Hence I have said often that it is a matter of life and death to the Mussalmans and is not a counter for bargaining.”

 

When another year went by, Jinnah was asked at a press conference on September 13 whether there was still room to compromise. “If you start by asking for sixteen annas, there is room for bargaining,” he replied, “… Hindu India has got three-fourths of India in its pocket and it is Hindu India which is bargaining to see if it can get the remaining one-fourth for itself and diddle us out of it.”

 

Year after year, Jinnah was making the same point all the way to independence — that division was necessary, and to say he was bargaining for anything else was plain wrong.

 

His landmark presidential address to the Muslim League in Delhi, on April 24, 1943, put such arguments to rest for good. To the question Jalal would also raise, about the Muslims that would be stuck in India even after division, he was as clear as day:

 

Do not forget the minority provinces. It is they who have spread the light when there was darkness in the majority provinces. It is they who were the spearheads that the Congress wanted to crush with their overwhelming majority in the Muslim minority provinces. It is they who had suffered for you in the majority provinces, for your sake, for your benefit and for your advantage. But never mind, it is all in the role of a minority to suffer. We of the minority have suffered and are ready to face any consequences if we can liberate the 75 millions of our brethren in the north-western and eastern zones.

 

As Jinnah saw it, Pakistan meant the greatest good for the greatest number. To liberate the majority, the minority provinces would have to suffer. Yet his opinion, stark as it was, remained unchanged — to achieve Pakistan, they were ready to face the consequences.

 

Though the minority Muslims were “the pioneers and first soldiers of Pakistan”, Jinnah would say elsewhere, “we are determined that, whatever happens to us, we are not going to allow our brethren to be vassalised by the Hindu majority.”

 

As for the second plank of Jalal’s argument — that the Quaid’s real goal was a loose federation, with protections for the overall minority — Jinnah dismissed the idea in the same speech:

 

We are opposed to any scheme, nor can we agree to any proposal, which has for its basis any conception or idea of a central government – federal or confederal – for it is bound to lead in the long run to the emasculation of the entire Muslim nation, economically, socially, educationally, culturally, and politically and to the establishment of the Hindu majority raj in this subcontinent.

 

Therefore, remove from your mind any idea of some form of such loose federation. There is no such thing as a loose federation. Where there is a central government and provincial governments they will go on tightening, tightening and tightening until you are pulverised with regard to your powers as units.

 

Jinnah knew this to be true years before Indian-occupied Kashmir was turned into an open prison — the idea of a loose federation would be of no help to the Muslims, who would soon be overpowered by the logic of a brute majority.

 

The Ismail letters

Having seen how glaring the record is over the years, we now turn to the material favouring the other side — that is to say, the idea that Pakistan was a cunning card trick.

 

In her book The Sole Spokesman, Jalal’s key piece of evidence is a letter from 1941 — Jinnah’s reply to a Nawab Ismail of Patna (not to be confused with the more prominent Muslim leader, Nawab Ismail Khan of Meerut). Ismail had been pestering Jinnah for weeks to send him some notes on the Pakistan demand, so that he could prep for his meeting with H.V. Hodson, the viceroy’s adviser.

 

Hodson was an old-school imperialist, in the middle of writing a rather dense report on the communal problem. He’d once dubbed Jinnah “a conceited person, afraid that events may lose him the power that he craves,” and that the Muslim League was “first and foremost communal, and can never be anything else.”

 

The report, when it did come out, was as damp about the Pakistan demand. “The most interesting point was that every Muslim Leaguer, with but one exception, interpreted Pakistan as consistent with a confederation of India,” wrote Hodson.

 

Hence his conclusion: “My impression was that among the Muslim Leaguers in the provinces visited there was no genuine enthusiasm for Pakistan.” Instead, the Raj needed a new vocabulary, “one which recognises that the problem is one of sharing power rather [than of] qualifying the terms on which power is exercised by a majority.”

 

Here were again the same bad takes, recycled from one Raj paper-pusher to another. But all that would come later — in the run-up to the report, Nawab Ismail was in a tizzy. He was excited to see Hodson (as was usual when the landed gentry met their imperial overlords), and again asked the Quaid for instructions.

 

Jinnah responded to Ismail that the Lahore resolution was their guide, and refused to say more. To read Ayesha Jalal, however, that reply may have been the smoking gun:

 

As [Jinnah] told Nawab Ismail in November 1941, he could not openly and forcibly come out with these truths “because it is likely to be misunderstood especially at present”. In a line which reveals more than a thousand pages of research and propaganda, Jinnah admitted: “I think Mr Hodson finally understands as to what our demand is.”

 

To sum up, since Hodson was busy pooh-poohing the idea of Pakistan, and insisting that the real problem had to do with sharing power, Jinnah’s nod to the man — that Hodson finally understood their demand — was proof that the Quaid felt the same way.

 

But that’s quite the reach, especially if one were to read his actual letter to Ismail. With winter setting in, Jinnah had fallen ill and taken to his bed. His reply of November 25, 1941, was cold and curt, and is set out here in full:

 

For starters, Jinnah had said that Hodson “fully understands” the demand, a degree less dramatic than the mistype of “finally understands” — more a passing comment than some grand admission.

 

At any rate, the need for such detective work disappears when one goes through his papers from that time. In late 1941, Jinnah was copying out parts of his Lahore speech to magazines: “The only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into autonomous national States,” he had said. (He had also sent a League paper to Linlithgow a while before, calling for the “division of the India and the creation of independent Muslim states.”)

 

In yet another recent letter, to a Jam who had similar apprehensions as Ismail, Jinnah had again pointed to the Lahore resolution. “You will observe from this that it does not contemplate any form of central government or legislature,” Jinnah wrote on March 21, 1941, “and has for its basic principle that Muslim zones in the northwest and the east, while being vested with full responsible government, will continue in direct relationship with the British parliament as the Indian states, and the scheme will provide for the assumption, finally, by the respective regions of all powers…”

 

To anyone interested, Jinnah’s outbox was making as clear a case for total separation as possible. The same was true of his public messaging — just months after Jinnah’s letter to Ismail, his working committee’s resolution of April 11, 1942, spelled it out again, “So far as the Muslim League is concerned, it has finally decided that the only solution of India’s constitutional problem is the partition of India into independent zones.”

 

There’s also the fact that Jinnah hadn’t even read Hodson’s report — what to say of agreeing with his views — because it didn’t exist at the time; the Quaid had written to Ismail in November, when Hodson was still conducting his interviews. Even otherwise, Hodson’s eventual report may have sniggered at Pakistan as a project, but it never once doubted the Quaid’s motives.

 

There’s also an interesting postscript — the fact that Hodson himself would come around to the contrary. As a middling Raj official, he’d played it safe, reporting to his superiors what they were used to hearing. In retirement, however, he could afford to be more relaxed. In his own account of Partition titled The Great Divide, written over a quarter-century later, he saw the Lahore resolution for what it always was: “contiguous Muslim-majority regions were … to become fully sovereign States.” A confederal India, per Hodson, “was neither the two-nation theory nor the true idea of Pakistan.”

 

And that is where the matter of Henry Vincent Hodson, and Ismail’s letters to the Quaid, must rest.

 

Cabinet Mission finale

There’s a final climax to the poker chip theory, and it happened in the summer of 1946. Even as the Raj was getting ready to bolt for the door, it made one last effort to keep India together. Charged with the impossible were three of the empire’s old boys, each with names more elaborate than the last — A.V. Alexander, Stafford Cripps, and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence. They were dubbed the Cabinet Mission, a reference to the Attlee government’s hope that India could still remain whole.

 

Jinnah with the Cabinet Mission. — Photo: Mahmud Husain Library

So it was that the mission made their way south, if with issues of their own. (“Summer in New Delhi is not the best time and place for negotiations,” sniffed the posh Cripps.) They arrived in India, ironically enough, on March 23, and brought the natives to the table.

 

Long story short, the mission’s grand plan was a three-tiered wedding cake of a country — provinces at the bottom, federations in the middle, and then a union with limited powers on top. The idea was that India would stay intact, while the middle layer — smaller sub-countries of Hindus and Muslims — would enjoy total autonomy.

 

These would be the three federations, or groups, as the mission called them, roughly consisting of the areas that would later become Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. There was also an escape hatch — if the fear of Hindu domination hadn’t died down by then, the Muslim groups were free to secede after 10 years. Much to the shock of the mission, Jinnah accepted the plan.

 

But Nehru didn’t. “When India is free, India will do just what it likes,” he said at a Congress meeting on July 7. “We are not bound by a single thing.” He doubled down at a press conference the next day: “It is our problem,” he said of the minorities, “… We accept no outside interference in it, certainly not the British government’s interference in it.”

 

Nehru’s bombshell had the intended effect — Jinnah broke out of the plan at once, while Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad called it “one of those unfortunate events which changed the course of history … [Nehru] is at times apt to be carried away by his feelings.”

 

The mission failed, and would be mourned by Partition’s critics forevermore: “Arguably,” wrote one Indian scholar, “Jinnah, with his liberal, free market, pro-Western policies, would have been a far more successful Prime Minister for us than Nehru, with his socialist controls and his pro-Soviet brand of non-alignment.”

 

But counterfactuals are a risky business, and are best not indulged too much. We turn instead to the most popular take on the Cabinet Mission: that it was the last hurrah for a united India, as well as the final proof of the poker chip theory — since Jinnah had assented to the union, we’re told, this was clearly what he’d always wanted, not Pakistan. It was Nehru and the Congress that were to blame for Partition. Had they not behaved so badly and wiggled out of the deal, India could have come out of all this in one piece.

 

That, too, isn’t borne out by the facts. It’s true that Nehru did everything he could to make a mess of the plan (though Gandhi’s role as a spoiler is underrated). But to hold Nehru’s surliness, over a single summer in 1946, as one of the reasons for Partition, is to miss the forest for the trees.

 

First, the plan itself was some badly-drawn bureaucratese. Per one observer, “[Jinnah] sought nothing less than 50 per cent parity for 33 per cent of the populace, and a confederation of states with a weak centre. Such a heterogeneous super-state would have been unworkable in South Asia, and has never been operational in history.”

 

Second, the mission gave the League just about everything it wanted — parity with a far larger population (what Sardar Patel called “national suicide” for the Hindus), a button to secede, and the prospect of an undivided Punjab and Bengal to tear along with it; Jinnah had been dead set against their division, and would rue the day when they were cut in two.

 

Third, the poker chip theory finds no support here either — the Muslim League had always dubbed the plan a stepping stone to total separation; the text of its acceptance is grounded in “the establishment of a complete, sovereign Pakistan.” Seated before the mission’s bemused members in April, Jinnah told them that his starting point was “a Hindustan and Pakistan, each one of them a completely sovereign State.”

 

He was just as blunt to his party members; at a session of the Muslim League council on 5 June, he likened the mission plan to a ship, “we can work on the two decks, provincial and group, and blow up the topmast.” Having suffered the Congress regime of the 1930s, Jinnah knew just how important it was not to leave the ship deck open to his rivals.

 

Fourth, his plans to “blow up the topmast” went beyond mere lip-service. When the League finally did join India’s interim government that same year, Jinnah’s finance minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, moved to tax the industrial barons backing Congress, and frustrate the centre in any way he could. The implications of League control, especially over Punjab and Bengal, began dawning on Nehru with even greater force.

 

Fifth, the Muslim movement had already proven with its votes — in the election of 1946 — that it was Pakistan or bust, with the leadership actively working toward secession. Throw in Nehru, with his need for a strong centre, and the odds that a viable coalition could have emerged had already been blown to smithereens. Hence, ultimately, the mission’s return to London.

 

To lament that it all could have worked out, had Attlee’s boys succeeded, is to be looking at it backwards. The Cabinet Mission came to Delhi with a single goal — keeping India intact. By that metric, failure was only a matter of time; Nehru just sped up what Jinnah would have ensured.

 

A promised land?

Seventy-five years in, how we’ve dealt with the founding father is rather shoddy. This is quite aside from the facts of Pakistan itself – where generals win war after war against elected governments, where politicians think the country is an internship for their unemployable children, where judges bolt the doors to the assembly in less than a few paragraphs, and where civil servants are as redundant as their fax machines.

 

Amid so much waste, the least that could be done was to remain faithful to the founder’s memory. Instead, one school of thought puts him down as a bluff expert who got swept up in the tide; a premise that contradicts almost everything he said or did in the last decade of his life.

 

But there’s also the other school, Pak Studies lite, that’s equally rooted in unreality: that Pakistan was a successor state to the glorious Islamic lands of the past, populated by foreign races near and far: from the frozen steppes to the desert sands. And Jinnah was just one of many deliverers, as were Qasim, Ghori, and Babur.

 

That theory may be even less fair to the Quaid — Pakistan was the dream of Muslim modernists, against the backdrop of colonial rule and a world war. It was powered by messy mass politics, and brought to life by Jinnah. As noted by Penderel Moon, a British civil servant long critical of the Raj:

 

There is, I believe, no historical parallel for a single individual effecting such a political revolution; and his achievement is a striking refutation of the theory that in the making of history the individual is of little or no significance. It was Mr Jinnah who created Pakistan and undoubtedly made history.

 

And it is in that history where the story of Pakistan truly begins — the Arab invasion of Sindh no more foretold the republic than the Ghaznavids that defeated the Arabs, than the Ghorids that set up the sultanate, than the Mughals that defeated the sultans. As far as today’s Pakistan is concerned, those were a thousand battles that settled nothing.

 

Nor was Islam imposed on India battle by battle. Had the old Muslim kings wished to spread the faith, their seats of power, from Delhi to Mysore, would have had far larger Muslim populations. That their fellow believers were instead concentrated along India’s flanks — today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh — points to a more gradual process; one that hews toward the persuasive powers of Sufi saints, as well as hopes of a better life that came with converting.

 

Most important, though these rulers are painted as just and generous now, they rarely touched the lives of the natives that had actually embraced Islam. Over two-thirds of the imperial services under the Mughals were manned by foreign-born Muslims. The ruling class “did not merge with the local converts, rarely recruited them to higher posts, refused to marry into them, and generally looked down on them,” wrote the Pakistani historian K.K. Aziz. “… At the end of five hundred years of continuous Muslim rule, only a minimal number of local Muslims had managed to climb high on the ladder of preferment.”

 

Put another way, the old kings lived in an age that had yet to conceive even the outer limits of an idea like Pakistan. It thus wasn’t the sultans, or their Mughal successors, that presaged it. That honour belongs to the growing number of Muslims on the ground — the ones their kings were indifferent to, and had little hand in converting anyway. By the time Pakistan was formed, those converts had mushroomed into the largest body of Muslims in the entire world, and had greater claim on the country’s creation than any medieval sultan ever had.

 

Jinnah’s own view of the Muslim experience was as holistic. “The Mussalmans came to India as conquerors, traders, preachers, and teachers,” he said while marking Eid in 1942. “… Today, the hundred millions of Mussalmans of India represent the largest compact body of Muslim population in any single part of the world.”

 

He persisted with this bottom-up view of the Pakistan idea, centring it not on the first conqueror, but the first convert. Dawn reports from a speech he gave at Aligarh Muslim University in 1944:

 

Tracing the history of the beginning of Islam in India, [Mr Jinnah] proved that Pakistan started the moment the first non-Muslim was converted to Islam in India, long before the Muslims established their rule. As soon as a Hindu embraced Islam, he was outcast not only religiously but also socially, culturally, and economically … Throughout the ages, Hindus had remained Hindus and Muslims had remained Muslims, and they had not merged their entities — that was the basis for Pakistan. In a gathering of high European and American officials, he was asked as to who was the author of Pakistan. Mr Jinnah’s reply was “Every Mussalman.”

 

Two years later, Jinnah told the Cabinet Mission trio “that he readily admitted that 70 per cent of Muslims were converts from Hindus. A large body were converted before any Muslim conqueror arrived.”

 

As for the old kings, Jinnah had little patience for their lessons. When Westminster’s Leo Amery revealed he was studying the reign of Akbar, Jinnah mocked him at length, “The British government in India, too, is constituted like Akbar’s government. Akbar had Hindu ministers and Muslim ministers. Akbar knew he had to rule over both. He was eminently concerned with his own autocratic rule, and that was no rule at all.”

 

He would also disdain advice offered by foes as different as Lord Mountbatten and C. Rajagopalachari — that he emulate Akbar, Aurangzeb, and other Muslim icons. “These great men might have differed from one another in many respects,” said Rajagopalachari, “but they agreed in looking upon this precious land and this great nation as one and essentially indivisible.”

 

“Yes,” Jinnah replied, “naturally, they did so as conquerors and parental rulers. Is this the kind of government Mr Rajagopalachari does still envisage? And did the Hindus of those days willingly accept the rule of the “great men”? I may or may not be suffering from a diseased mentality, but the statement of Mr. Rajagopalachari … indicates that in him there is no mind left at all.”

 

Each time he was confronted with the kings of the past, Jinnah centred the Muslim in the street. In a rapidly changing India, yesterday’s rulers were no longer the yardstick; in some cases, like Akbar’s, they were self-serving autocrats.

 

Besides, it was the absence of Muslim kings, rather than their long-ago presence, that was in play. At the Muslim League’s inaugural session in Dhaka, its first chairman, Viqar-ul-Mulk, had said, “Woe betide the time when we become the subjects of our neighbours, and answer them for the sins, real and imaginary, of Aurangzeb, who lived and died two centuries ago, and other Mussalman conquerors and rulers who went before him.”

 

That Mulk’s words marked the birth of the party that created Pakistan was no coincidence — it was rooted in anxiety for the future, of an India where the locus of power had shifted dramatically from a Muslim elite to a Hindu majority. While most native Muslims fell in neither category, they could now be expected to answer to the Hindus for the sins of the past (one in which they’d been dressed up as temple-sacking jackals by British authors).

 

Hence, also, Jinnah’s own evolution. Though easy to forget now, India’s pre-eminent young nationalist in the 1910s wasn’t Gandhi; it was Jinnah, the apostle of unity. By injecting religion into the freedom movement, Gandhi stole the stage and rooted it in religious tropes — satya, ahimsa, dharma, and the majoritarian flood that came with it. Jinnah’s calls for sanity were shouted down by a populist beast he could no longer recognise. After much heartbreak, public and private, he realised there was no way out but a separate state.

 

Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi pictured together. — Photo: File

And who better than the reformed Hodson to explain that voyage of discovery: “One thing is certain. It was not for any venal motive that he changed. He could be bought by no one, and for no price … He was a steadfast idealist as well as a man of scrupulous honour. The fact to be explained is that in middle life he supplanted one ideal by another, and having embraced it, clung to it with a fanatic’s grasp to the end of his days.”

 

This also ties in with one of the most popular myths about the Quaid, if from the other end of the spectrum — that India was an ageless union where Hindus and Muslims made merry together, until the British divided them, incited them, and abandoned them. The imperial hand, in cahoots with Muslim collaborators like Jinnah, tore the union asunder.

 

The same line would be rehashed by liberal nostalgics, even onscreen. “My passport is Pakistani, my roots are in India,” says a teary-eyed grandmother in the superhero series Ms Marvel. “And in between all of this, there is a border … marked with blood and pain. People are claiming their identity based on an idea some old Englishmen had when they were fleeing the country.”

 

That myth, too, falls away fast. It’s true that the British enjoyed demonising the Muslim rulers they had torn down and replaced. And it’s also true that colonial power in India rested on the art of divide and rule. (“Strict supervision, and play them off against the other,” goes one of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories. “That is the secret of our government.”)

 

But tensions between Hindus and Muslims weren’t the Raj’s main means of control by the nineteenth century — if only because that risked exploding far larger religious blocs. The Raj preferred safer subdivisions, ever more fragmented along ethnic, linguistic, and political lines. Per leftist historian Perry Anderson:

 

For the British, the ideal arrangement was rather to be found in Punjab, the apple of the imperial eye: interconfessional unity around a strong regional identity, loyal to the Raj, against which neither Congress nor Muslim League made any headway in the interwar years. During the Second World War, when Congress came out against participation in the conflict, the League was favoured. But once the war was over, Britain sought to preserve the unity of the subcontinent as its historic creation, and when it could not, tilted towards Congress far more decisively than it ever had to the League. Popular conceptions in India blaming the creation of Pakistan on a British plot are legends.

 

When it came down to it, most British mandarins did everything they could to keep India in one piece — the ultimate drivers of the split were “indigenous, not imperial.”

 

To then argue that Pakistan was the result of butchering Mother India is equally faulty: as per the Quaid, no such realm even existed before the British showed up. “India of modern conception, with its so-called geographical unity, is entirely the creation of the British,” Jinnah would say, “… whose ultimate sanction is the sword.”

 

Indian nationalists rebut this with an ancient pedigree; of a Hindustan as old as the hills. But one can cut Jinnah some slack, seeing as India’s varied Hindu populations had never formed a subcontinental state of such dimensions. Jinnah put it more plainly, “When did the Hindus rule India last and what part of it? It is a historical fact that for nearly one thousand years, the Hindus have not ruled any part of India worth mentioning.”

 

The same can be said for coexistence — as wrong as the trope of the foreign Muslim oppressor was the rival fantasy that all was peace and love between the faiths at the local level. While hard to admit, the Hindu-Muslim problem was in evidence well before the colonisers wrote tall tales about it, and well before Jinnah arrived at the same, unmistakable conclusion.

 

That the subcontinent was becoming the theatre of two major, incompatible faiths finds mention over the course of a millennium. For the celebrated Persian polymath al-Biruni, writing in 1030, the real-life interaction between the two was like fire and ice. “First,” al-Biruni said of the Hindus, “they differ from us in everything which other nations have in common.”

 

… Secondly, they totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and vice versa … They … forbid having any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby, they think, they would be polluted.

 

… In the third place, in all manners and usages they differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs, and as to declare us to be devil’s breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper.

 

Well before the predations of the East India Company, before Hindu sectarians like the Arya Samaj, before Muslim reactionaries boiled over with resentment, the idea of a single Indian nation — unreal at any time before 1947 — was being rebutted by the lived experience of two communities with two very different confessions.

 

That such deep legacies of conflict could be wished away as British intrigues or, alternatively, as Jinnah’s bargaining counters, in a secular paradise that had never once existed, soothed those denying the logic of Partition — that is, until they became willing parties to the same outcome.

 

In any event, the poker chip school spends most of its time on Delhi’s parlour games, and none at all on the groundswell in the distance — the ideologues of UP, the progressives of Dhaka, the vanguard of Sindh, the rebel scouts of Gilgit, and millions more. In short, it ignores the men and women who gave their heart and soul over to the idea of Pakistan.

 

Most importantly, it does a disservice to that movement’s core. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s last years were so consumed by his pursuit of a new nation-state, he destroyed his lungs and lost his life. Seventy-five years later, it is unjust to continue attributing this country to a sleight of hand, rather than his supreme will. https://www.dawn.com/news/1704480/belief-not-bargains-did-jinnah-really-want-pakistan

All you need to know to power your home with solar

 

All you need to know to power your home with solar

Solar panels generally have a life of 25 years so they may be lighting up your toddler’s wedding functions.

Fatima S Attarwala Published July 4, 2022

Did the world turn black when you saw your latest electricity bill? If so, you are not alone.

                                                     

The heat demands air conditioning, electricity providers demand fistfuls of money, the International Monetary Fund demands higher tariffs and Russian President Vladimir Putin demands Ukraine’s annihilation.

 

But it is impossible to explain the concoction of reasons to a toddler who just wants to sleep with a teddy bear while the AC is running. Harnessing solar power is a happy solution for those who can afford it.

 

Here are some factors to consider before opting for a solar solution:

                                                                      

Quality

One can take a gander down Regal Chowk in Karachi and pick up a solution that costs a few hundred thousand rupees compared to a million-plus option that a branded supplier could provide but it comes with its set of drawbacks.

 

The solution providers at the lower price end tend to import a container of solar paraphernalia and hire an everyday electrician to install it. Given its technical nature, the lack of support may create some issues.

 

Shoddy-quality solar panels can cause short circuits and sparks. In the best-case scenario, the system will shut down and you will be chasing after the supplier that may or may not be able to provide after-sales service.

 

“Even if a top-tier branded solar solution was installed in your house, it can act up a year or two after purchase,” says Musa Khan Durrani, the head of business and planning at SkyElectric. “You call up your local supplier but he may have switched his business to real estate and suggests you contact the manufacturer directly.”

 

“In the worst-case scenario, the sparks from inferior quality panels can start a fire,” cautions Mujtaba Raza, CEO of Solar Citizen.

 

Read: The imminent solar revolution

 

Registration

Reputable solar providers are registered with the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB). While AEDB in no way vets or guarantees the quality of the panels or service, its registration allows the supplier to set up the net metering system which is where all the cost savings lie.

 

Compare it to buying a car: given the price tag and longevity of the purchase, you would opt for a trusted name such as Toyota or Honda rather than an unknown entity, if your budget permits. Solar panels generally have a warranty of 10-15 years and a life of 25 years so they may be lighting up your toddler’s wedding functions.

 

Solar panels installed at a park in Peshawar. — White Star/File

Net metering

Cost savings lie in net metering, which is a billing mechanism that credits solar energy system owners for the electricity they add to the grid.

 

A company registered with AEDB can set up the net metering process on behalf of its customer. According to its website, KE processes applications received by AEDB-listed vendors only though this may not apply to all electric supply companies.

 

For example, you have a bungalow in Defence, Karachi, with a photo voltaic system on your terrace. It may generate more electricity than you need during the day, allowing you to sell the surplus to K-Electric.

 

Using the numbers of your annual electricity consumption, some companies can offer you a package that will bring down your electricity bill to zero. If your household consumes Rs1,000 of electricity at night on average, you can sell Rs1,000 worth of credits while the sun shines that can be availed after the sun goes down.

 

So during the day, you would use your own generated solar energy and KE would purchase the excess. Without batteries, at night, you would shift back to using electricity by KE which means load shedding at night requires the use of the good old generator running on the ever-pricey diesel.

 

To avoid power outages completely, you will need batteries to store the electricity generated while the sun is shining. There are different kinds of batteries, from the tubular batteries you are familiar with from the UPS system to the more expensive solar-specific solutions that can cost a further Rs250,000 per kilowatt for a home solution from a reputable company.

 

Solar solutions are less feasible for apartments because there is not enough open space that gets direct sun exposure. Though arguably, common areas such as parking can theoretically be solarised which may not take a complete load of all the apartments but can subsidise electricity bills.

 

Solar panels installed, near Mithi, in one of the approximately 480 reverse osmosis plants across Tharparkar. — White Star/File

Upfront cost and maintenance

Ali Karimjee, a resident of DHA in Karachi, installed an 11kW solar system in 2018 that cost him about Rs1.1m. “With the credits I earn through solar, I don’t pay electricity bills during the cooler months from November to March,” he says.

 

At the previously lower tariffs, at the peak of summer, his bill did not exceed Rs7,000-8,000 per month though three air conditioners, two fridges and an assortment of household appliances run on electricity. As electricity tariffs climb, he expects higher savings.

 

All this is peachy keen but the cost of solar is a hefty one and rises with the exchange rate. “As a rule of thumb, a normal household with three to four ACs and the usual appliances requires a solution of 10kW which now costs roughly Rs1.3m without batteries,” says Raza.

 

However, it can go as high as Rs2m, says Durrani. A 10kW system, including batteries, can cost between Rs1.8m to Rs3m but while the panels can last decades, the batteries may have a life of only a couple of years.

 

Being completely independent from grid electricity entirely is not the wisest of options. Batteries are expensive and need to be replaced frequently, so it could be upwards of an extra Rs300,000 every two years. If the purpose of the PV installation is to decrease the electricity bill, then a hybrid solution adds up to the most savings. If the purpose is to thumb your nose at KE, than by own means, go ahead.

 

A small additional cost is related to maintenance which involves washing the solar panels frequently. “A man comes to service my solar panels every week,” says Karimjee. “I pay him Rs3,500 per month.”

 

Read: Solar financing — push needing a shove

 

Financing

How can one afford a Rs1m-plus solar system? The State Bank offers financing at a flat six per cent rate, which is not linked to the Karachi Interbank Offered Rate. Generally, the tenure of the loan is three to five years with a down payment of 20pc equity.

 

Depending on electricity consumption and the amount spent on the solar solution, what you owe the bank could tally up to a smaller figure at the end of the month compared to your bill. For example, if you spend Rs25,000 a month paying off the bank when your electricity consumption is at Rs40,000, you will be saving money, even with a loan.

 

Keep in mind that while electricity tariffs increase, the amount of instalments remains constant so your savings will increase in proportion to the rise in energy rates.

 

However, banks take months to process solar loans, industry insiders complain. Given the technology involved, panels and assorted parts are imported and the rapid depreciation of the rupee jacks up prices. A few months down the road when the loan is finally processed, the cost of the package could have risen as well.

Udupi Hijab Row: Hopefully, Sanity Will Prevail Dr. Javed Jamil

 Udupi Hijab Row: Hopefully, Sanity Will Prevail

 

Dr. Javed Jamil

 

Thanks for the designs of the communal forces; the Hijab issue of Udupi (Karnataka) schools has become an international issue now. The welcome part is that most of the Indian political leaders of the country are supporting the right of Muslim girls to wear Hijab in schools. What needs to be understood however by the analysis as well as the courts is that Hijab for Muslim women is not a religious symbol but is the acceptance of high morality standards prescribed by Islam to suppress the lusts of the human beings and to safeguard the life, health and honour of women. Hijab is the antidote of nakedness being pursued by the forces of modern ideologies governed by Economic Fundamentalism, which seeks to market all the human susceptibilities irrespective of their disastrous effects on individuals’ health, family peace and social order. In today's world, women are lured to show as much of their skin as possible even in the public places to satisfy the lust of men. As I have been arguing for quite some time, so called “freedom of women” is in truth the freedom to men to enjoy women and market their services. The results are specifically destructive for women and children. Not only rapes are abounding with every passing day, more and more girls in modern societies become pregnant and either abort their children (in most cases) or become unwed mothers with their Children robbed of fatherly protection and love. “Freedom” is used selectively by the forces (both political and economic) to advance their own agenda. Where their interests are threatened, they immediately forget Freedom of Choice either in the name of uniformity or discipline.

 

Heads and hair of women have become the big beauty symbols and it is the provocation all round, with increasing nakedness in media, which is primarily responsible for unhealthy sexual relationships and sexual assaults. All kinds of provocations need to be strongly dealt with if the people are to be saved from Sex Transmitted Diseases, sex related problems like rapes, prostitutions, sexual assaults, abortions and children living with single parents. All these are huge problems worldwide with figures in each category in hundreds of thousands, often in tens of millions. But thanks to the dominance of market forces, the enormity of these issues is never highlighted in the media or social and political discourses. Ideally, the schools should make it compulsory for all students to cover their heads in whatever way they want, (even with a full cap if they find it easy to handle), and baring of legs and arms should be banned. This will make girls much safer and mentally peaceful in the schools. Both boys and girls will be in a better frame of mind to concentrate on their studies.

In India communal forces have an added agenda to keep harassing Muslims as much as possible and this becomes highly accelerated whenever elections are near. Hopefully the future India will be able in a much better way to combat the designs of communalist forces as well as atheistic and Western liberalists. 

 

The Concept of Human Rights in Islam; Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai ; February 3, 2022

The Concept of Human Rights in Islam

Part II

 

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

 February 3, 2022

 

A summary of how the Qur’an deals with the concept of human rights as covered in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) follows: Article 1, 2, UDHR: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

 

Islam teaches the ethic of reciprocity, which entails treating others as we would wish them to treat us:

 

"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (See Hadith no. 13 in Imam Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths). From this extends the principle that each individual is of equal worth, simply because they are human. As such, every human being should be considered of equal value despite superficial differences.

 

As mentioned above, the following verse lays the blueprint for brotherhood between people:"O mankind, We created you from the same male and female, and rendered you distinct peoples and tribes, that you may recognize one another. The best among you in the sight of GOD is the most righteous. GOD is Omniscient, Cognizant.." (Qur’an, 49:13)

 

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, or a non-Arab over an Arab, or a black person over a white, or a white over a black person except by being more righteous.” (Prophet’s Farewell Sermon).

 

It has been reported that during the Caliphate of Umar ibn-ul Khattab, the son of Amr ibn al-As, the governor of Egypt entered into a horse race with a native Egyptian Christian. The Egyptian won the race, which angered Amr’s son who slapped the Egyptian. The Egyptian brought the issue before Umar, who ordered the father and son to Medina and reprimanded him by saying, “Why do you enslave people whose mothers have given birth to them as free human beings.”

 

Professor Arnold Toynbee, the British historian who completed a twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, remarked: “The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the extraordinary moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is as it happens a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.”

 

The Qur’an also contains numerous verses which beautifully capture what it means to behave in a spirit of brotherhood as it encourages the uttering of kind words, honesty, restraining anger, avoiding greed, practicing forgiveness, giving due measure, condemning fraud and bribery, behaving humbly, admonishing mockery and sarcasm, honoring one’s promises and commitments, and encouraging peace, reconciliation, charity, tolerance, generosity and respect.

 

Article 3, UDHR: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

 

The ethic of reciprocity clearly covers this right too (as well as most of the articles in the UDHR). The Qur’an also states: “Because of this did we ordain unto the children of Israel that if anyone slays a human being unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth-it shall be as though he had slain all mankind; whereas, if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind.” (Qur’an, 5:32).

 

From this, we not only take cognizance of the fact that every individual has the right to life, but that every life is sacred and that the killing of one life is as atrocious as the destruction of the entire human race. In Islam, the first and foremost basic right is the right to life.

 

Article 4, UDHR: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

 

All the spiritual teachings found in the Qur’an address the topic of slavery in one way or another. For example, the Qur’an encourages the ethic of reciprocity, the spirit of brotherhood, protects the sanctity and dignity of human life, and calls for ending oppression of others. All these dictates stand in stark contrast to the institution of slavery. Here is one very clear passage: “… the way of blame is only against those who oppress [other] people and behave outrageously on earth, offending against all right: for them there is grievous suffering in store!” (Qur’an, 42:41).

 

God even specifically encourages the freeing of slaves in the following passage:

 

“And it is not conceivable that a believer should slay another believer, unless it be by mistake. And upon him who has slain a believer by mistake there is the duty of freeing a believing soul from bondage and paying an indemnity to the victim's relations.” (Qur’an 4:92)

 

And while the reader will note that the verse stipulates the victim of the crime being "another believer", it should be emphasized here that “believers” referred to in the Qur’an are all peoples that believe in God, including the followers of the 25 prophets mentioned in the Qur’an as well as the followers of all the thousands of Prophets not mentioned in the Qur’an. This is evident in the following Qur’anic verse:

 

“Behold, We have inspired thee [O Prophet] just as we inspired Noah and all the prophets after him- as We inspired Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants, including Jesus and Job and Jonah, and Aaron, and Solomon; and as We vouchsafed unto David a book of divine wisdom; and as [We inspired other] apostles whom We have mentioned to thee before this, as well as apostles whom We have not mentioned to thee; and as God spoke His word unto Moses: [We sent all these] apostles as heralds of glad tidings and as warners, so that men might have no excuse before God after the coming of these apostles, and God is indeed almighty, wise.” (Qur'an 4:163)And:

 

“Verily, those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians - all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds - shall have their reward with their Sustainer and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.”(Qur'an, 2:62).And:

 

“Say: "We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed by their Sustainer unto Moses and Jesus and all the other prophets: we make no distinction between any of them. And unto Him do we surrender ourselves.” (Qur'an, 3:84).

 

Article 5, and 6, UDHR: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

 

Again, the golden rule is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The following Qur’anic verse alludes directly to the subject of torture and other inhuman treatment of others:“…the way of blame is only against those who oppress [other] people and behave outrageously on earth, offending against all right: for them there is grievous suffering in store!” (Qur’an, 42:41).

 

Moreover, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) laid down the ground rules for engagement in warfare during the battle of Badr, which took place on March 17, 624 CE: Non-combatants cannot be killed, prisoners of war cannot be tortured, temples and churches cannot be demolished, green trees cannot be uprooted, standing crops cannot be destroyed and the wounded people cannot be attacked. Some of these ground rules are evident from the following Prophetic directives:

 

"Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman." (Sunan Abi Dawood).

 

"Do not kill the monks in monasteries."

 

"Do not kill the people who are sitting in places of worship." (Musnad ibn Hanbal).

 

It is an historical fact that during the battle of Badr, no prisoner of war was tortured, because of these specific orders given by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), nor were there any custodial killings or kidnappings. Not surprisingly, when Umar came with the suggestion that all prisoners of war should be killed because they had fought against Muslims, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) chose to release them instead.

 

  

Stoke White Investigations; India's War Crimes in Kashmir: Violence, Dissent and the War on Terror;and other legislation Jan 20 2022;

 

Stoke White Investigations; India's War Crimes in Kashmir: Violence, Dissent and the War on Terror; Jan 20 2022;

A selection of new and detailed evidence gathered from over 2000 testimonies offered by civilians forms the basis of our report into human rights abuses by India in Jammu and Kashmir, including torture, extrajudicial killings, and the detention of minors.  Although the violence inflicted on Kashmiri Muslims by the Indian army has been well documented, this report provides new evidence-based insights into the extent of the abuse based on 2000 testimonies gathered over one year. The report forms the basis of an appeal to the UK Metropolitan Police unit for the arrest of perpetrators of violence against civilians in this context.  Within the framework of the Global War on Terror and counterterrorism, acts of abuse are directed against those Muslims dissenting against Indian occupation by conducting legitimate protest, seeking legal recourse through the law, and embarking on peaceful civil society advocacy.  These individuals, and those who are uninvolved in any of the above activities but who have been swept up as innocent bystanders, feature as the subjects of this report. Of particular concern is the kidnapping at age 15 of Zia Mustapha and his 18-year detention without charge that culminated in his extrajudicial killing, as well as the torture of human rights defender Mohammed Ahsan Untoo. This report also provides unique evidence of the presence of Israeli intelligence operatives during interrogations and torture of Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, the culture of impunity in the region has been enabled by a global environment in which torture has become acceptable under Western complicity. Nearly three decades have passed and not a single member of the Indian military has been prosecuted, despite growing evidence of unlawful conduct. It is hoped this documentation will start a process of accountability and justice for survivors, through a more appropriate and rigorous implementation of international human rights law. https://www.swiunit.com/post/india-s-war-crimes-in-kashmir-violence-dissent-and-the-war-on-terror; complete report ; India's War Crimes WOT.pdf.

Zia Mustafa’s extra-judicial ; Jan 22 2022;

The Legal Forum for Kashmir (LFK) has launched a comprehensive dossier on Zia Mustafa’s extra-judicial execution in a staged encounter at Poonch in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). According to the dossier, 15-year-old Zia from Rawalakot in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) inadvertently crossed the Line of Control (LoC) on January 13, 2003, and was arrested by Indian occupying forces. The family members of Zia lodged a missing report before the relevant police station. The army and IIOJK police, led by the then Director General of Police A K Suri, gave a joint press conference to the Indian media on April 11, 2003, projecting and presenting Zia as a "foreign militant", allegedly involved in the so-called terror incident. However, the dossier reported that Zia was a minor when he crossed the border unknowingly and later, was falsely implicated in militancy by the Indian forces and agencies.

The report further stated that the trial court in Shopian in IIOJK framed charges against Zia under Sections 302, 120b, 450, 395, of IPC; 7/27 PACT; 2/3 IMCO. However, the state out of prosecution witnesses failed to produce a single piece of evidence against Zia. Accordingly, the court closed the prosecution evidence. The state of IIOJK filed a criminal appeal before the occupied region's high court, which was meritless and accordingly dismissed by the court.The state again approached the Supreme Court of India and filed a criminal appeal 39899/2018 with the condonation of delay application which was still pending. Zia’s lawyer Mubashir Gattoo, while talking to local media, said that there was no evidence for his conviction. The dossier highlighted the extra-judicial execution of an under trial who was in judicial custody when the joint counter-insurgent group including the Indian army without following the mandate of law took Zia outside the jail and killed him in a staged encounter.  The dossier also revealed the important documents showing Zia, a minor boy, at the date of his arrest. Moreover, the prisoners' list exchanged by the foreign offices listed Zia as an undertrial prisoner. It highlighted the 111 fake encounters and the alleged perpetrators involved in these war crimes. The LFK held a roundtable debate inviting law experts and key stakeholders on the ‘universal jurisdiction’ case submitted before the metropolitan war crime unit in the United Kingdom. Hakan Camuz said that he hoped that the request to British police seeking the arrest of Indian officials would be followed by other legal actions also focusing on Kashmir. He added that Stoke White was sure that it was not going to be the last one, there would probably be many more applications.

Towards the end, Executive Director Nasir Qadri said, "This is the beginning of lawfare against the occupier and his organisation would further pursue the war crime cases to different available forums so that the perpetrators involved were apprehended for their crimes." https://tribune.com.pk/story/2339777/lawsuit-filed-against-modi-others-in-uk-for-kashmiris-extra-judicial-killing

 

The Hindu Right; Jan 17 2022;

 

                                                        The Hindu Right 

 At a conference in India last month, a Hindu extremist dressed head-to-toe in the religion's holy color, saffron, called on her supporters to kill Muslims and "protect" the country."If 100 of us become soldiers and are prepared to kill 2 million (Muslims), then we will win ... protect India, and make it a Hindu nation," said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha political party, according to a video of the event. Her words and calls for violence from other religious leaders were met with a roar of applause from the large audience, a video from the three-day conference in the northern Indian city of Haridwar shows.  Pandey and several others are being investigated by local police for insulting religious beliefs, a charge that carries a possible sentence of up to four years in prison, Haridwar police officials told CNN. Late Thursday, police in Uttarakhand state, where Haridwar is located, arrested a man who spoke at the event, senior Haridwar Police official Shekhar Suyal told CNN. It is unclear what the man said at the event. Police have not formally charged anyone with any crime. Analysts say the Hindu Mahasabha is at the tip of a broader trend in India which has seen an alarming rise in support for extremist Hindu nationalist groups since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power nearly eight years ago. Although these groups aren't directly associated with Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his own Hindu nationalist agenda, and the lack of repercussions for these groups' previous vitriolic comments, has given them tacit support, making them even more brazen, analysts say. Analysts fear this rise poses a serious danger to minorities, especially Muslims -- and worry it may only get worse as several Indian states head to the polls in the coming months. "What makes the Hindu Mahasabha dangerous," said Gilles Verniers, an assistant professor of political science at Ashoka University near India's capital, New Delhi, "is that they have been waiting for a moment like this in decades." Founded in 1907 during British rule at a time of growing conflict between Muslims and Hindus in the country, the Hindu Mahasabha is one of India's oldest political organizations. The group didn't support British rule, but it didn't back India's freedom movement either, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was particularly tolerant of Muslims. Even now, some members of the group worship his assassin, Nathuram Godse. The Hindu Mahasabha's vision, according to the group's official website, is to declare India the "National Home of the Hindus." The website says if it takes power, it will not hesitate to "force" the migration of India's Muslims to neighboring Pakistan and vows to reform the country's education system to align it with their version of Hinduism.   was in 1991. According to Verniers, their "strength is not to be measured in electoral terms." And in the past eight years since Modi came to power, they appear to have expanded in numbers and influence based on the size and frequency of their meetings, he said. While the group does not publicly disclose how many members it has, Verniers said they are "comfortably in the tens of thousands." Hindu Mahasabha targets rural communities in northern states, where there is a large BJP presence, encouraging them to vote for parties that align with their Hindu-nationalist ideology, including Modi's BJP, Verniers said. Modi, in turn, has publicly honored the Hindu Mahasabha's late leader, Veer Savarkar, for "his bravery" and "emphasis on social reform."  And as Hindu Mahasabha has grown in recent years, it has become more outspoken. In 2015, Sadhvi Deva Thakur, then a senior member of the group, caused widespread controversy when she told reporters Muslims and Christians should undergo forced sterilization to control their population growth. CNN has reached out to her for comment. Pandey, who spoke at the December conference in Haridwar, was arrested in February 2019 after a video showed her shooting an effigy of Gandhi Photos uploaded to her official Facebook page last May show her worshiping a statue of Gandhi's assassin. CNN has not been able to confirm whether she was formally charged over the February 2019 incident. Hindu Mahasabha isn't the only right-wing Hindu nationalist group to espouse violent sentiment toward liberals and minorities -- including India's 200 million Muslims, who make up 15% of the country's 1.3 billion population. At last month's conference, several speakers called on India's Hindus to "defend" the religion with weapons. Another called for the "cleansing" of India's minorities, according to video from the event. But according to Verniers, Hindu Mahasbha one of the largest right-wing political groups aiming to make India the land of the Hindus. And while the group's campaigns and ideas are decades old, they're more bold about them now. "The escalation of their hate speech is reflective of the state of affairs in India," said Verniers. "But they are able to get away with it more."  The reason extremist groups appear to be on the rise is clear, according to experts: they have impunity and support. India prohibits hate speech under several sections of its penal code, including a section which criminalizes "deliberate and malicious acts" intended to insult religious beliefs. According to lawyer Vrinda Grover, any group inciting violence is barred under Indian law. "Police, states and the government are responsible to ensure (inciting violence) doesn't happen," she said. "But the state, through its inaction, is actually permitting these groups to function, while endangering Muslims who are the targets." Pandey's rant and some of the other calls for violence were the "worst form of hate speech," according to Verniers. "This is the first time I find myself using the term 'genocide' in Indian politics," he said, referring to the comments made at last month's conference. "They have tacit support in the form of government silence." That's because Modi also has a Hindu nationalist agenda, experts say. Starting from his first term as Prime Minister, minority groups and analysts say they began to see a significant shift in India's ideology from a secular to a Hindu nationalist state. The BJP has its roots in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right wing-Hindu group that counts Modi among its members. Many RSS members are adherents of the Hindutva ideology that the Hindu Mahasabha preach -- to make India the land of the Hindus. In 2018, India's current Home Minister Amit Shah said Muslim immigrants and asylum seekers from Bangladesh were "termites" and promised to rid the nation of them. The BJP's Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of the north Indian state Uttar Pradesh, known for his anti-Muslim views, once compared Muslim Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to Hafiz Saeed, the alleged planner of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks . Between 2015 and 2018, vigilante groups killed dozens of people -- many of whom were Muslims -- for allegedly consuming or killing cows, an animal considered sacred by Hindus, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. Modi publicly condemned some of the killings, but the violence continued, and in 2017, his government attempted to ban the sale and slaughter of cows --currently illegal in several Indian states -- nationwide. Human Rights Watch said many of the alleged murders went unpunished in part due to delayed police investigations and "rhetoric" from ruling party politicians, which may have incited mob violence. In 2019, India's Parliament passed a bill that would give immigrants from three neighboring countries a pathway to citizenship -- except for Muslims. It led to extended protests and international condemnation. In December 2020, Uttar Pradesh enacted a controversial anti-conversion law, making it more difficult for interfaith couples to marry or for people to convert to Islam or Christianity. Other states, including Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Assam, introduced similar laws, leading to widespread harassment and, in some cases, arrests for interfaith couples, Christian priests and pastors.  All of this has only served to encourage extremist groups like the Hindu Mahasabha, say experts. Zakia Soman, a women's rights activist and co-founder of the Muslim group Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, said "a failure of governance" had given rise to more right-wing extremists. "Our community is realizing that we have become second-class citizens in our own country," Soman said. "Minority bashing and hate is becoming regular and normalized. As the intensity increases, the venom and violence in their language also increases." A 21-year-old Muslim student in Delhi, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of backlash from right-wing groups, said Muslims are filled with "a sense of fear" every time right-wing Hindu groups make hateful comments."It gives us a sense that we don't belong here," he said.  Despite police investigations and public outrage, legal action against those who spoke and were present at December's event have been slow. In a letter submitted to Modi on Friday and seen by CNN, students and faculty of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and Ahmedabad said his silence "emboldens" hate, adding there is "sense of fear" among minority groups in India. Some experts agree the government's silence has only emboldened these groups further. "Hate speech precedes hate crimes," Grover, the lawyer, said. "And we are witnessing a crescendo of hate crimes. These groups are rapidly spreading poison through society." A 2019 US intelligence report warned that parliamentary elections in India increase the possibility of communal violence if Modi's BJP "stresses Hindu nationalist themes." It added that state leaders "might view a Hindu-nationalist campaign as a signal to incite low-level violence to animate their supporters." Analysts fear the BJP's divisive politics will could lead to increased violence against minority groups in the lead up to pivotal state elections this year. And reported episodes of violence against Muslims have already increased ahead of this year's state elections. In December, crowds of India's Hindu-right confronted Muslims praying on the streets in the city of Gurugram, just outside of Delhi. They prevented Muslims from praying, while shouting slogans and carrying banners in protest. "It is an electoral strategy," said Verniers, the political scientist. "Create religious tension, activate religious polarization and consolidate on the Hindu vote." Grover, the lawyer, said criminal laws are "weaponized" in India, adding anyone who challenges those in power "face the wrath of the law." "Muslim lives in India are demonized," she said. "The Indian state is in serious crisis." On January 1, Pandey held a live broadcast for her more than 1,500 Facebook followers. The subject was "Religious Parliament," her post said. For the 21-year-old student, it is difficult to "expect any sense of justice" for Indian Muslims. He says even having a Muslim name is enough to make him feel unsafe. "It is really scary to carry the Muslim identity in India today." https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/14/asia/india-hindu-extremist-groups-intl-hnk-dst/index.html