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Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Pakistan — a bit of history to understand the present
Listen to article Around the middle of the eighteenth century, traders from the islands of Britain were attracted to the land they were to call "India", named after the Indus River. The river originated in Tibet and then flowed through Kashmir into Pakistan. In a vast delta south of Karachi, now Pakistan's largest city and once its capital, the river emptied itself into the sea. The British did not come to India to conquer but to trade. They came to India to buy handicrafts from the skilled workers who produced delicate fabrics from the locally grown cotton. As they established their businesses, the areas' weak rulers offered some resistance which the British traders were able to overcome, sometimes with the help of local chiefs. Over time the British merchants were able to establish themselves as the rulers, laying the foundation of the British imperial raj. Their dominion over the vast land lasted for a couple of centuries. It was finally challenged by local politicians who took advantage of the way Britain had been weakened by its participation in the two world wars, the first fought from 1914 to 1919 and the second from 1939 to1945. The Indian independence movement was led by Mohandas Gandhi, a London-trained lawyer who launched a non-violent campaign against British rule after having tried the approach in South Africa. Gandhi's life as an ascetic and his pursuit of nonviolence as a weapon against the British colonisation of the country to which he originally belonged, became the model that other activists like Martin Luther King were to follow. In the early 1940s, the government in London headed by the Labor Pary leader Clement Attlee decided to leave India and transfer power to the leaderships of the Hindu dominated Congress Party and the Muslim dominated All-India Muslim League. This transfer took place after Attlee had agreed to divide the Indian colony into two states, India and Pakistan. India was to be a predominantly Hindu country while Pakistan was to have a Muslim population. The partition of the British colony led to what was to be later called "ethnic cleansing". As I estimated in my first book on Pakistan, fourteen million people moved from one country to the other. Eight million Muslims who were left on the Indian side of the border gave up their homes and headed towards Pakistan, while six million Hindus and Sikhs went in the other direction. They traveled mostly on foot and there were attacks on them by the members of the other communities. About a million people died in this mass transfer, some because of exhaustion and some because of communal killing. Khushwant Singh, a popular writer who wrote in English, published a widely read book on these moves. He called it The Train to Pakistan. More than half of the Muslim migrants headed to Karachi, which was chosen to be the new country's capital. The new arrivals spoke mostly Urdu while those who went to the Pakistani part of the province of Punjab were mostly Punjabi speaking. Punjabi was the language of the area they came from and settled on the lands the Sikh farmers had tilled before they pulled out their roots and headed to India. The majority of British India's Muslim population was concentrated in two areas: one in the northwest and the other in the northeast. The two together had a total of 65 million people, equally divided between the two regions. For a quarter century, these two areas were parts of the new state of Pakistan, mostly called the "wings" of the two countries. The wings were separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory. The remaining 35 million Muslims stayed in India, scattered in several areas in the vast domain. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the founder of the Pakistani state. He belonged to the Khoja community, which was concentrated in the city of Karachi. This was one reason why that city was chosen to be Pakistan's first capital. It became what Stephen Inskeep, an American social scientist, called the Instant City. He called Karachi the instant city since within a matter of a few years, it was turned from a small port to a mega capital of millions of people. It was to remain Pakistan's capital for fourteen years. In 1961, General Ayub Khan threw out the civilian-led government and replaced it with the one dominated by the military. Ayub Khan's military rule was the first of four that were to govern Pakistan until 2008. In a long interview I had with him a few months before he died in Islamabad in 1974 at the age of 66, he asked me about the book I was writing on Pakistan. "Would you deal with the period when I governed Pakistan?" he asked me. I answered by saying no serious work on Pakistan would ignore his period. I said that in my view his eleven years in office, from 1958 to 1969, were the "golden years of Pakistan's nationhood". When I was a graduate student at Harvard University for several years, a number of books appeared on Pakistan written by Harvard economists who had served in the country's Planning Commission. They were of the view that the success achieved by Pakistan in the Ayub period could serve as a model for other developing countries to follow. Visibly pleased with my response, he said, "but Zulfie doesn't think so." This was a reference to the campaign launched by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had served in his cabinet for several years, first as Commerce Minister and then as Minister in charge of Foreign Affairs. It was in the second position which he had that Pakistan become a close ally of China, accusing Ayub Khan of having become an American slave. Ayub Khan responded to this accusation by titling his memoirs, Friends Not Masters. India's Hindu population were not happy that a large number of Muslims over whom they would have liked to rule managed to get away and create a state of their own. However, there are 200 million Muslims who still live in India, the country the Hindu nationalists now like to call Bharat. To dominate this segment of the Indian population is seen as an unfinished business. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has abandoned its effort to be an inclusive place, tolerant of diversity. Its preference is to identify itself as primarily a Hindu state and changing the country's name from India to Bharat.
Economist
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Economist
Narendra Modi has kept his vow to make India like Gujarat
THE TWO most consequential South Asians of the 20th century were Gujarati: Mohandas Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, respectively the 'father of the nation' of India and of Pakistan. So was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who as India's first home minister cajoled (or bullied) 565 'princely states' into joining the union.
Chicago Tribune
12-03-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Nazi Germany annexes Austria
Today is Wednesday, March 12, the 71st day of 2025. There are 294 days left in the year. Today in history: On March 12, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, as German troops crossed the border into the country. Also on this date: In 1912, the Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia, founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides. In 1928, the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles, California failed, sending over 12 billion gallons of water into San Francisquito Canyon and killing over 400 people. In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi began his 24-day, 240 mile (387 kilometer) 'Salt March' to the Indian village of Dandi (then called Navsari) as an act of non-violent civil disobedience to protest the salt tax levied by colonial Britain. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his 'fireside chats,' a series of evening radio broadcasts to the American public. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman announced what became known as the 'Truman Doctrine' to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism during the Cold War. In 1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.) In 2003, Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. (Mitchell is serving a life sentence for kidnapping Smart; Barzee was released from prison in September 2018.) In 2009, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to the largest Ponzi scheme in history, having defrauded his clients of nearly $65 billion; he would later be sentenced to 150 years behind bars. (Madoff died in prison in April 2021.) In 2021, the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd's family over Floyd's murder by police. Today's Birthdays: Politician and civil rights activist Andrew Young is 93. Actor Barbara Feldon is 92. Actor-singer Liza Minnelli is 79. Politician Mitt Romney is 78. Singer-songwriter James Taylor is 77. Author Carl Hiaasen is 72. Actor Lesley Manville is 69. Singer Marlon Jackson (The Jackson Five) is 68. Actor Courtney B. Vance is 65. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., is 57. Actor Aaron Eckhart is 57. TV journalist Jake Tapper is 56. Actor Jaimie Alexander is 41.
Boston Globe
12-03-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Today in History: March 12, Gandhi begins ‘Salt March'
In 1912, mill owners in Lawrence ended what was known as 'Bread and Roses'' strike, restoring much of the pay cuts to their low wage workers after congressional hearings exposed brutal factory conditions. In 1912, the Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Ga., founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides. Advertisement In 1928, the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles failed, sending 12 billion gallons of water into San Francisquito Canyon and killing over 400 people. In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi began his 24-day, 240 mile 'Salt March,' to the Indian village of Dandi, as an act of non-violent civil disobedience to protest the salt tax levied by colonial Britain. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his 'fireside chats,' a series of evening radio broadcasts to the American public. In 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, as German troops crossed the border. In 1947, President Truman announced what became known as the 'Truman Doctrine' to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism during the Cold War. In 1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (He was executed in May 1994.) In 2003, Elizabeth Smart, a girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. (Mitchell is serving a life sentence for kidnapping; Barzee was released from prison in 2018.) Advertisement In 2020, with COVID-19 cases rising, the Boston Marathon was postponed for the firs time in its history.
