08-14-2017, 10:48 PM
*** 15-Aug-17 World View -- Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is
****
![[Image: g170814b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g170814b.jpg)
A government building in Lahore is illuminated in the colors of Pakistan's national flag in celebration of independence (Reuters)
August 14, 1947, was the day that the state of Pakistan was created,
the result of splitting the Indian subcontinent into two states, India
and Pakistan. The concept devised by the two founders, Hindu leader
Mahatma Gandhi and Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was that people
of the two religions would live separately, and so at peace.
India was to be a secular state, albeit with a Hindu majority, but
what was Pakistan to be? Another secular state? What is Pakistan?
Jinnah in 1947 must have looked at Saudi Arabia and Turkey as examples
of Muslim states. Turkey was a Sunni Muslim majority secular state,
while Saudi Arabia was a Sunni Muslim majority Muslim state.
Apparently, Jinnah didn't like either of those examples. He didn't
want Pakistan to be a secular state like Turkey, because then it would
be just another India, but he also didn't want Pakistan to exclude
other religions, as Saudi Arabia does.
The result today is that Pakistan still doesn't know what kind of
state it is. It's a Sunni Muslim state, but it still has a sizable
Shia Muslim minority, and smaller minorities of other religious
faiths, including Sufis and Ahmadis, which are Islam spinoffs, and
Christians.
The vast majority of Pakistanis are accepting of all of these
religions, but there is a significant minority that support terror
groups associated with Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP, Pakistan Taliban) that
want to exterminate the other religions, particularly the Shias, the
Sufis, and the Ahmadis, and conduct frequent terror attacks on their
mosques, their schools, and their markets.
Many Pakistanis blame Jinnah himself for these problems, for allowing
the seeds of these problems to be sown in 1947, rather than finding a
way to prevent.
However, what Jinnah didn't foresee -- what nobody foresaw, not the
Britons, not Gandhi, nor Jinnah, nor anyone else -- was the Partition
War that followed. Since this war was so unexpected, it's almost
impossible to believe today not only that it occurred, but how
incredibly bloody it was, filled with all kinds of sadistic atrocities
by both Hindus and Muslims, including mass murder, mass rapes, burning
down entire villages, mass slaughter, and forced migration.
One thinks of World War II ending in 1945, but not for Pakistan and
India. The Partition War of 1947-48 was at least as bloody and
horrific as any battle of the world war that proceeded it, resulting
in two million people killed and over ten million displaced from their
homes.
Pakistan since then has been completely haunted by the Partition War.
Pakistanis want to blame India, but they know that they're to blame as
well. Officially, Pakistan wants to live in peace with India, but
large segments of the government, particularly the army, anticipate a
new war with India, often in revenge for the Partition War. Living
with such schizophrenia, no Pakistani president in 70 years has ever
completed the full five-year term described by the constitution.
Every president has been thwarted by assassination or a coup. Just in
recent weeks, Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered president Nawaz Sharif
to step down because of unproven allegations of corruption, and now
Pakistan has a new acting president, Mamnoon Hussain, until elections
are held next year.
By the way, my understanding is that the name "Pakistan" is a hybrid.
It was formed in the 1930s from the name of the largest region,
Balochistan, by removing the "Baloch" part, and replacing it with P
for Punjab, A for Afghanistan, and K for Kashmir. A later
interpretation of the name says that I is for Indus, S is for Sindh,
and T is for Turkestan, leaving only the "AN" as the remains of the
original name, Balochistan.
Today, Kashmir is an open sore in the India-Pakistan relationship.
The worst fighting in the Partition War was in Punjab Province, which
contains Kashmir, and which was split into two parts by new
Pakistan-India boundary. Dawn (Pakistan) and Al Jazeera and Pakistan Today
Related Articles
****
**** Generational history of the 1947 Partition War that created Pakistan and India
****
![[Image: g170814c.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g170814c.jpg)
Muslims on a train from New Delhi to Pakistan in 1947 (AP)
The Partition War was the last generational crisis war for both India
and Pakistan, but you can't understand it unless you go back at least
as far as the previous generational crisis war, the bloody 1857 Indian
Rebellion, also called India's First War of Independence from the
British colonial power.
As I described in detail last year,
Hindu veneration of cows, and apparent British disrespect for
cows, was a major trigger for the 1857 Rebellion. This disrespect,
and the alleged defiling of Indians' bodies, led to riots and mutinies
that spread across India. The war lasted over two years and resulted
in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
During the generational Awakening era that followed by 1857 Rebellion,
there were renewed protests and demands for independence from Britain.
Cow protection had already started again as a symbol of Hindu
nationalism as early as 1882, as cow protection societies began to be
formed at that time. Cow protection became more and more important as
a nationalist symbol in the following decades.
Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian peace activist, launched a "non-cooperation
movement" against the British, involving civil disobedience. The
Awakening era climax occurred on April 10-12, 1919, with the horrific
Jalianvala Bagh Massacre (Amritsar Massacre), when British troops
opened fire on 10,000 Sikhs holding a protest meeting, killing
hundreds. That event, which is still remembered with shock to this
day, convinced both the British and the Indians that Britain should
completely give up control of India.
As the discussion of independence evolved over the following decades,
led by Gandhi and Jinnah, the principal debate was whether there
should be a single Indian state, or two states living side-by-side in
peace, and in the latter case, how the boundary should be drawn.
The argument that won the day was that Muslims can't stand pigs and
Hindus can't eat cows, and so they can't live together, leading to the
decision to have two separate states, India and Pakistan.
However, drawing the boundary has led to enormous problems that
haven't been resolved to this day. The most difficult problems were
the provinces of Punjab in the west, and Bengal in the east, both of
which had heavily mixed populations, and both of which were split down
the middle.
Punjab was the epicenter of the Partition War. Millions of people
left their homes, with Hindus and Sikhs moving from Pakistan Punjab to
India, and Muslims moving from India Punjab to Pakistan. Today, the
tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir, which is part of
Punjab, have not been resolved, as we've reported many times in the
past year, and the region is headed for another war, essentially
re-fighting the Partition War.
However, the story is quite different for Bengal province. It too was
split down the middle, but that region in the east was on a different
generational timeline than Punjab, so the Partition war was a
non-crisis war for Bengal. The province was split into West Bengal,
which became part of India, and East Bengal, which became a completely
separate part of Pakistan known as East Pakistan, while the Pakistan
we know today was called West Pakistan.
East and West Pakistan really had almost nothing in common. The
population of West Pakistan was mostly ethnic Punjabis, Pashtuns, and
Sindis, and Urdu was the official language. East Pakistan consisted
mostly of Urdu-speaking Biharis and Bengali-speaking Bengalis, as I described in detail
last year.
So Bengal's turn for a generational crisis war came 2 1/2 decades
later in 1971. The Bengal war was a bloody civil war, repeating the
rapes, beheadings, mutilation and other atrocities of the 1947
Partition war in the west. Pakistan's army supported the Biharis,
while India's army supported the Bengalis. In the end, the Bengalis
won. East Pakistan gained independence in 1971, and called itself
Bangladesh, while West Pakistan just became plain Pakistan.
So on Monday of this week, Pakistan celebrates the 70th anniversary of
its independence. On Tuesday, India celebrates the 70th anniversary
of its independence. What seems to be clear is that neither country
is really celebrating independence. What they're really doing is
commemorating the horrors of the 1947 Partition War, and wondering how
they'll get past it. In view of all that's happened in the last 70
years, it's hard to see that either country has a great deal to
celebrate, especially since they're headed for a new generational
crisis war in the next few years. Dawn (Pakistan) and Pakistan Today and Al Jazeera and Dawn
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, India, Pakistan, Punjab,
Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Hindus, Sikhs,
Sufis, Ahmadis, Partition War, Nawaz Sharif, Mamnoon Hussain,
East Pakistan, Bengal, Bangladesh, Biharis, Bengalis, 1857 Rebellion,
Jalianvala Bagh Massacre, Amritsar Massacre,
Tehrik-e-Taliban, TTP, Pakistan Taliban
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is
- Generational history of the 1947 Partition War that created Pakistan and India
****
**** Pakistan celebrates its 70th birthday, wondering what Pakistan is
****
A government building in Lahore is illuminated in the colors of Pakistan's national flag in celebration of independence (Reuters)
August 14, 1947, was the day that the state of Pakistan was created,
the result of splitting the Indian subcontinent into two states, India
and Pakistan. The concept devised by the two founders, Hindu leader
Mahatma Gandhi and Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was that people
of the two religions would live separately, and so at peace.
India was to be a secular state, albeit with a Hindu majority, but
what was Pakistan to be? Another secular state? What is Pakistan?
Jinnah in 1947 must have looked at Saudi Arabia and Turkey as examples
of Muslim states. Turkey was a Sunni Muslim majority secular state,
while Saudi Arabia was a Sunni Muslim majority Muslim state.
Apparently, Jinnah didn't like either of those examples. He didn't
want Pakistan to be a secular state like Turkey, because then it would
be just another India, but he also didn't want Pakistan to exclude
other religions, as Saudi Arabia does.
The result today is that Pakistan still doesn't know what kind of
state it is. It's a Sunni Muslim state, but it still has a sizable
Shia Muslim minority, and smaller minorities of other religious
faiths, including Sufis and Ahmadis, which are Islam spinoffs, and
Christians.
The vast majority of Pakistanis are accepting of all of these
religions, but there is a significant minority that support terror
groups associated with Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP, Pakistan Taliban) that
want to exterminate the other religions, particularly the Shias, the
Sufis, and the Ahmadis, and conduct frequent terror attacks on their
mosques, their schools, and their markets.
Many Pakistanis blame Jinnah himself for these problems, for allowing
the seeds of these problems to be sown in 1947, rather than finding a
way to prevent.
However, what Jinnah didn't foresee -- what nobody foresaw, not the
Britons, not Gandhi, nor Jinnah, nor anyone else -- was the Partition
War that followed. Since this war was so unexpected, it's almost
impossible to believe today not only that it occurred, but how
incredibly bloody it was, filled with all kinds of sadistic atrocities
by both Hindus and Muslims, including mass murder, mass rapes, burning
down entire villages, mass slaughter, and forced migration.
One thinks of World War II ending in 1945, but not for Pakistan and
India. The Partition War of 1947-48 was at least as bloody and
horrific as any battle of the world war that proceeded it, resulting
in two million people killed and over ten million displaced from their
homes.
Pakistan since then has been completely haunted by the Partition War.
Pakistanis want to blame India, but they know that they're to blame as
well. Officially, Pakistan wants to live in peace with India, but
large segments of the government, particularly the army, anticipate a
new war with India, often in revenge for the Partition War. Living
with such schizophrenia, no Pakistani president in 70 years has ever
completed the full five-year term described by the constitution.
Every president has been thwarted by assassination or a coup. Just in
recent weeks, Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered president Nawaz Sharif
to step down because of unproven allegations of corruption, and now
Pakistan has a new acting president, Mamnoon Hussain, until elections
are held next year.
By the way, my understanding is that the name "Pakistan" is a hybrid.
It was formed in the 1930s from the name of the largest region,
Balochistan, by removing the "Baloch" part, and replacing it with P
for Punjab, A for Afghanistan, and K for Kashmir. A later
interpretation of the name says that I is for Indus, S is for Sindh,
and T is for Turkestan, leaving only the "AN" as the remains of the
original name, Balochistan.
Today, Kashmir is an open sore in the India-Pakistan relationship.
The worst fighting in the Partition War was in Punjab Province, which
contains Kashmir, and which was split into two parts by new
Pakistan-India boundary. Dawn (Pakistan) and Al Jazeera and Pakistan Today
Related Articles
- New report examines terrorism and religious extremism in Pakistan (26-Apr-2012)
- 'Hindutva' terrorist violence against Muslims shocks Indians (06-Nov-2008)
- Generational history of Karachi Pakistan since World War II (27-Aug-2015)
****
**** Generational history of the 1947 Partition War that created Pakistan and India
****
Muslims on a train from New Delhi to Pakistan in 1947 (AP)
The Partition War was the last generational crisis war for both India
and Pakistan, but you can't understand it unless you go back at least
as far as the previous generational crisis war, the bloody 1857 Indian
Rebellion, also called India's First War of Independence from the
British colonial power.
As I described in detail last year,
Hindu veneration of cows, and apparent British disrespect for
cows, was a major trigger for the 1857 Rebellion. This disrespect,
and the alleged defiling of Indians' bodies, led to riots and mutinies
that spread across India. The war lasted over two years and resulted
in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
During the generational Awakening era that followed by 1857 Rebellion,
there were renewed protests and demands for independence from Britain.
Cow protection had already started again as a symbol of Hindu
nationalism as early as 1882, as cow protection societies began to be
formed at that time. Cow protection became more and more important as
a nationalist symbol in the following decades.
Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian peace activist, launched a "non-cooperation
movement" against the British, involving civil disobedience. The
Awakening era climax occurred on April 10-12, 1919, with the horrific
Jalianvala Bagh Massacre (Amritsar Massacre), when British troops
opened fire on 10,000 Sikhs holding a protest meeting, killing
hundreds. That event, which is still remembered with shock to this
day, convinced both the British and the Indians that Britain should
completely give up control of India.
As the discussion of independence evolved over the following decades,
led by Gandhi and Jinnah, the principal debate was whether there
should be a single Indian state, or two states living side-by-side in
peace, and in the latter case, how the boundary should be drawn.
The argument that won the day was that Muslims can't stand pigs and
Hindus can't eat cows, and so they can't live together, leading to the
decision to have two separate states, India and Pakistan.
However, drawing the boundary has led to enormous problems that
haven't been resolved to this day. The most difficult problems were
the provinces of Punjab in the west, and Bengal in the east, both of
which had heavily mixed populations, and both of which were split down
the middle.
Punjab was the epicenter of the Partition War. Millions of people
left their homes, with Hindus and Sikhs moving from Pakistan Punjab to
India, and Muslims moving from India Punjab to Pakistan. Today, the
tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir, which is part of
Punjab, have not been resolved, as we've reported many times in the
past year, and the region is headed for another war, essentially
re-fighting the Partition War.
However, the story is quite different for Bengal province. It too was
split down the middle, but that region in the east was on a different
generational timeline than Punjab, so the Partition war was a
non-crisis war for Bengal. The province was split into West Bengal,
which became part of India, and East Bengal, which became a completely
separate part of Pakistan known as East Pakistan, while the Pakistan
we know today was called West Pakistan.
East and West Pakistan really had almost nothing in common. The
population of West Pakistan was mostly ethnic Punjabis, Pashtuns, and
Sindis, and Urdu was the official language. East Pakistan consisted
mostly of Urdu-speaking Biharis and Bengali-speaking Bengalis, as I described in detail
last year.
So Bengal's turn for a generational crisis war came 2 1/2 decades
later in 1971. The Bengal war was a bloody civil war, repeating the
rapes, beheadings, mutilation and other atrocities of the 1947
Partition war in the west. Pakistan's army supported the Biharis,
while India's army supported the Bengalis. In the end, the Bengalis
won. East Pakistan gained independence in 1971, and called itself
Bangladesh, while West Pakistan just became plain Pakistan.
So on Monday of this week, Pakistan celebrates the 70th anniversary of
its independence. On Tuesday, India celebrates the 70th anniversary
of its independence. What seems to be clear is that neither country
is really celebrating independence. What they're really doing is
commemorating the horrors of the 1947 Partition War, and wondering how
they'll get past it. In view of all that's happened in the last 70
years, it's hard to see that either country has a great deal to
celebrate, especially since they're headed for a new generational
crisis war in the next few years. Dawn (Pakistan) and Pakistan Today and Al Jazeera and Dawn
Related Articles
- Generational history of cow protection in India and Hinduism (07-Aug-2016)
- Bangladesh tries to recover from Dhaka terror attack, the worst in 40 years (03-Jul-2016)
- India's 'Operation All-Out' brings Kashmir closer to all-out war (24-Jun-2017)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, India, Pakistan, Punjab,
Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Hindus, Sikhs,
Sufis, Ahmadis, Partition War, Nawaz Sharif, Mamnoon Hussain,
East Pakistan, Bengal, Bangladesh, Biharis, Bengalis, 1857 Rebellion,
Jalianvala Bagh Massacre, Amritsar Massacre,
Tehrik-e-Taliban, TTP, Pakistan Taliban
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
