Hindus Quotes
With the partition of India forming an independent Pakistan, ethnic riots broke out and millions of people were killed. This joint statement was issued to try and quell the violence but it had progressed too far. Jinnah as a political ploy to obtain the partition organized Muslims and threatened violence—see {627153} and {627169}. Things got out of hand with ethnic cleansing being an objective in many localities—see {627146} and {627149}.
He was echoing proposals that he made in the Delhi Emergency Committee that had been called to cope with the butchery and murder when the Hindus and Sikhs were trying to leave the areas that were to be part of Pakistan under the Partition and the retaliations against the Delhi Muslims who were trying to flee to the new Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Muslim leadership did not want such a truce as while the land had been partitioned, Indian Money, military equipment, and other resources were yet to be divided and the Muslim leaders who had been so successful playing the violence card to gain and independent Pakistan, did not want to give up that option in the remainder of the division of India. Also, it was not at all clear that the Muslim political leaders could even then control the mobs who they had already whipped up to violence.
Churchill was reported to be so angry and exasperated that his face turned red and he was sputtering. During World War II, Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian Nationalists were leading protests against British control of India. This not only bogged down British soldiers surprising the nationalists rather than fighting in Burma or in other war theaters, but India supplied a huge number of battalions to the British Army the world over and if that manpower dried up, the allied war effort would suffer. The American State Department wanted Churchill to announce that after Japan was defeated, there would be a process toward self-government. This way, they thought, the Indians would redouble their effort to defeat the Japanese and stop the then current protests and strikes. Churchill was strongly opposed to any diminution of the British Empire, but beyond that, he knew India quite well and realized that at any hint of Independence the large Muslim minority in India would insist on autonomy or a partition of the country and use sectarian violence and terror to intimidate the Indian Congress party and the British, but the major victims of the terror—the Hindus and the Sikhs would not remain passive, but would retaliate in kind. President Roosevelt was in the midst of planning the Normandy Landings of the D-Day invasion and did not want to pressure Churchill and the British at this point in time, so the door to independence was not opened during the war and Britain had to deal with the protests throughout. However, when, after the war, the Labor Government, started a process toward Indian independence which resulted in exactly what Churchill predicted. At least 2 million Indians were slaughtered in the internecine terrorist cycles of fear and retaliation motivated terror attacks what were so extensive that the British military could not really control it.
The Punjab had been partitioned into a Pakistani part and an Indian part. The latter was a major province of the new state. But in the political process of drawing the boundaries, Jinnah and other Muslim leaders had used fanatic Muslim terrorists to massacre Sikhs and Hindus to ethnically cleanse areas and intimidate the ruling Indian Congress Party and the British government to obtain more area and resources for the Muslim state. However, at this point he had to govern, and there were still many Sikhs and Hindus as well as Christians and Buddhists in the new Muslim state. Jinnah's new state needed all the help it could get from the U. S. and others, and Jinnah started sounding like a passionate democrat. On paper religious freedom was guaranteed in Pakistan. However Pakistan became one of the most dangerous countries in the world for non-Muslims. Most historians agree that the Muslim terrorism in the short run had worked, as it would have been unlikely that India would have been partitioned in the absence of violence. However, it set in motion a cultural pattern of religious hate, bigotry, intolerance, violence and murder which would plague Pakistan thereafter. The politicians throughout the country's history have tried to use the Muslim religious, fundamentalist, extremists for their purposes only to find that the fanatics were out of control and the entire Pakistani population has lived in fear, lest an extremist decide that what they did or say was inimical to Islam and assassinate him or her. They have assassinated even the highest levels of politicians—President, Governors of Provinces, National Legislatures as well as Journalists, writers and academics. But the average Pakistani citizen has always been at risk of brutal murder with hundreds killed every year in an atmosphere of total impunity for the murderers. They have even murdered married women who had been raped on the grounds that they were adulterers and were therefore stoned.
The "enemies" were many of the Muslim and Hindu Maharajas of the independent Indian states who were afraid of losing their kingly powers under an Indian democracy, some of the wealthy businessmen and large landowners, many of the Bureaucrats of the Indian Civil Service who feared politicization, and many leaders of the smaller religious minorities, Buddhists, Christians, Baha'is, Zoroastrians, and others. And most of all, there were English Conservative politicians including Winston Churchill who did not want to see the British Empire diminished. They often played on the religious fears of Indians—never far from the surface. Jinnah strongly opposed this until he wanted the Partition of independent India into 2 countries—Muslim and Hindu. Then he not only plaid to these religious fears, but stoked then to a feverish pitch and did nothing to stop Muslim religious violence and in some cases even supplied private Muslim groups with arms, ammunition, transport, and intelligence to put pressure on the Congress Party leadership and the British to get more land and other resources for Pakistan.
“Mussalman” was another name for a Muslim. Jinnah was arguing for a separate Muslim state within India. 7 years later he got is wish and Pakistan was born. However many Muslims chose to remain in India even though it was a majority Hindu state. Jinnah was right for many Muslims and wrong for many others who have integrated into Indian society and there is some intermarriage in India, which has 120 million Muslims, almost as many as Pakistan with 160 million.
Kufr and Kaffir are two Arabic words for infidels and unbelievers. Sufi’s are often characterized as by some as “moderate” Muslims because they do not favor terrorism, However, some Sufis are rabid in their dislike and disrespect for any who are not Muslim. Sirhindi is a very important Muslim Imam and is credited with breathing new life and energy into the 2nd millennium of Islam.
They were the “untouchables”. Under English rule and law, they had more opportunity, equality and protection than ever before. They opposed the idea of home rule and passing rule to an Indian parliament and ministers as ol the upper castes would dominate and control the government and would discriminate against them as they had always done before English rule. What they worried about came of to pass, but the Congress Party which dominated much of Indian politics was opposed to the Caste system and went out of their way to make it illegal and to institute affirmative action. However, regardless of the law, the Cast System still exists, and the discrimination is a current problem for India and the untouchables.
The source was in the form of an autobiography but was written later by someone unknown. Prior to WWII and the German killing of over 25 million people, Tamerlane was responsible for more killings than any other ruler in the world. 17 million is generally given as the number if one analyses the Persian, Indian and other literature. He controlled the Middle East, the Ottoman States, a part of Russia and Eastern Europe, Persia and much of China and India. Although he himself was a Muslim he warred against other Muslim states and warlords defeating them all. Muslim nations are historically very ambivalent about Tamerlane. Pride as a conqueror is eclipsed by this excessive rapine and murder. In one case, the Persian city of Isfahan, he actually built a giant pyramid of 70,000 decapitated heads of prisoners. Also, the fact that he attacked and defeated major Muslim empires violates a current Muslim notion that there is a unity of Islam. He attacked, conquered and butchered the Ottomans, Syria, Iraq, Persia and the Muslim (Mugal) states of India.
Although a conservative, he had a great tolerance for and understanding of other points of view. For this some people thought him a radical.
The attitude of the non-Muslims at that time was based on the Muslim attacks in the Punjab on Sikhs where entire Sikh villages and neighborhoods in towns and cities were murdered—every man woman and child. In many cases women were first raped. The Muslims had been whipped up by the leaders of the Muslim League to put terrorist pressure on the Sikh, Hindu and British to meet the League's political and territorial demands for an Independent Pakistan. Soon there was retaliation in kind and there were many Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims engaged in internecine slaughter and behaving "little better than animals".
The throwing of flaming torches to burn out members of the other religion got out of control and the fires spread to the homes of all residents. The fires were so prevalent that the riot was then and has since been referred to as the "Shahalmi Gate Blaze". At the time Jinnah was horrified at the violence, but by the following year he and other Muslim League leaders were aiding and abetting Muslim terrorist attacks to put pressure on the government to create a separate Muslim state upon Indian independence—Pakistan. Most historians agree that the Muslim terrorism in the short run had worked, as it would have been unlikely that India would have been partitioned in the absence of violence. However, it set in motion a cultural pattern of religious hate, bigotry, intolerance, violence and murder which would plague Pakistan thereafter. The politicians throughout the country's history have tried to use the Muslim religious, fundamentalist, extremists for their purposes only to find that the fanatics were out of control and the entire Pakistani population has lived in fear, lest an extremist decide that what they did or say was inimical to Islam and assassinate him or her. They have assassinated even the highest levels of politicians—President, Governors of Provinces, National Legislatures as well as Journalists, writers and academics. But the average Pakistani citizen has always been at risk of brutal murder with hundreds killed every year in an atmosphere of total impunity for the murderers. They have even murdered married women who had been raped on the grounds that they were adulterers and were therefore stoned.
The following year India was partitioned and millions of Hindus were slaughtered by Muslims and vice-a-versa.
Arguments against the Partition of India at the time centered around the poor economic viability of a separate Muslim state. However Iqbal and others placed the cultural issues in the forefront. They eventually prevailed.
