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Posted by admin in Pakistan-A Polaris of Earth on December 3rd, 2014
Posted by admin in Pakistan-A Polaris of Earth on December 2nd, 2014
By
Major General Janaka Perera
In all probability those who caused the horrifying bomb explosion at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad and those behind the bomb blast in several Indian cities this month share the same extremist politico-religious objectives even if they are not members of the same group. The nature of the explosions especially the one at the Marriot clearly reflect the technical expertise that only a mafia gang like the LTTE can provide may be on payment because the Tigers seem to be running short of funds nowadays.
At the same time there is no question that Prabhakaran is plotting and dreaming of doing a ‘Marriot’ in Colombo, even as the Security Forces are moving towards the gates of the last remaining town of his mythical Tamil Eelam.
During this year’s SAARC summit Indian delegates agreed on the urgency on combating terrorism. If they are sincere then they cannot afford to pick and chose but go all out to convey a clear message not only to terrorists of all hues who are deliberately and willfully targeting unarmed civilians and non-combatants but also to their ardent supporters within and outside India. And these terrorist-sympathizers include the Norwegians whose dubious peace-making India too endorsed, although it lost all credibility among the Sinhalas.
The majority of Sri Lankans therefore do not want to hear Delhi’s or any other government’s pontifications about the need to win over the Tamils and ensure their safety in the Wanni before dealing with the Prabhakaran’s terrorist outfit. Perhaps by the same token Pakistan has every right to tell India to ensure the security of India’s Muslims against periodic Hindu extremist violence – before going after Muslim zealots for blasting bombs there.
We however need to recall here that the Sinhala majority by and large had a great regard for India in the years before Indira Gandhi got the bright idea of ‘disciplining’ Sri Lanka with the LTTE ‘rod’ which eventually turned out to be a viper. Even today Hindi movies, music, songs and dances are popular among the Sinhalas far more than Tamils. North Indian languages like Bengali have close ties with Sinhala.
As a school boy I witnessed the very warm welcome that large crowds gave Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he arrived at the then civilian airport of Ratmalana in 1962 during Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s first term as Prime Minister. Contrast it with the visit of his grandson Rajiv Gandhi in 1987 when he was nearly hit on the head with a rifle butt by an enraged Sri Lankan sailor. Eventually the PM was destined to die at the hands of a group which his mother nurtured.
It appears that since 1983 Delhi has caught a Tiger’s tail which it cannot now let go lest the animal turns around and attacks especially because the Tamil National Alliance and Tamil Nadu jingoists are riding the brute. Even when GOSL is trying to convince India to let go off the tail she is hesitant to do so. In this context in if ever President Mahinda Rajapaksa succeeds in handing over a captured Prabhakaran to India it would be no surprise if he is not put on trial, after all the Gandhis (Sonia and Priyanka) seem to have slowly developed perhaps for political expediency – a soft corner for Nalini and other convicts who plotted Rajvi’s assassination.
Delhi’s mistake has been to imagine that Kautilyan methods would always work in India’s favour in the region. Kautilya alias Chanakya was Indian Emperor Chandragupta’s Chief Minister who developed a strategy of destabilizing and weakening neighbouring states around 320 B.C. His methods proved advantageous to both Chandragupta and his successors including Emperor Asoka (who later gave up wars of expansion after embracing Buddhism and adopted the Dharma Chakra as the State symbol).
India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW ) subsequently researched, developed and used these Kautilyan methods for expanding Delhi’s power in the region including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In fact this is the Indian Government’s real reason to adopt the Saranath Lion Capital and the Asoka Chakra or Dharma Chakra as India’s National symbol – which appears on her national flag – more than out of respect for a great Buddhist Emperor and his religion as many Buddhists believe, according to Bangladeshi writer and Barrister M.B.I. Munshi (The India Doctrine published by Bangladesh Research Forum)
– Asian Tribune –
Posted by admin in Pakistan-A Polaris of Earth on December 2nd, 2014
A page from an under-pen book on civilizations
Civilization, or culture if you wish, emerges out of knowledge. It is the quality of knowledge that decides weight of civilization/culture –its demerits and merits, its rise and fall, its chances of survival and demise. Stable and timeless knowledge raises a strong and universally beneficial civilization; transient and unhinged matter-based knowledge produces a dusky, oppressive and fleeting civilization. Purpose of this (under-pen) book is to explain this statement.
A simple human condition to understand which one need not be Plato is that, for example, human dwellings exist in African rainforests and deserts, ravines of central Indian 
hills and northeastern ranges, east European rural settlements, ice-covered swathes of northern Canada, yet these communities do not appear on world civilizational records of the past or news of the day. These peoples have dress codes, cook and relish food, build houses, have ceremonies for birth, marriage and death. Nevertheless, these societies are devoid of creative ability and inventive skill; they do not have strong natural urge or social arrangement to develop those qualities. They live on instincts and ephemeral experiences which are their guide in life.
However, a civilization does not develop on the basis of life’s mundane experiences. Conurbia is not a product of people having familiarity with ebb and flow of life. Instinct itself does not strike wonders without abiding by laws of nature. Chengiz and Hulagu, Hajjaj and Saffah, are not noted for contributing to civilization and culture. Abbasi Harun and Mamun and Mu‘tasim of Baghdad, Umawis and Ahmaris and Berbers of Andalus, Seljuki and Ottoman Turks of Persia, Anatolia and Eastern Europe, Mughals of Uzbekistan and Transoxania and India, emerged as architects of high levels of civilization which however are hardly the standard for their modern counterparts and in the newer world. All those human groups were guided by the Quraysh and Ansar of the seventh and eight centuries who had laid foundation of The Civilization that became model for future nations.
These examples confirm that civilization is not defined by sky-kissing towers, sprawling palaces, delicate or demonic machines, wealthy but eternally hungry economies, savage wars and weapons that burn and evaporate millions of people in just a few moments. Civilization and culture is an ethereal rather than material statement, a character. Buildings, gadgets, implements, material comforts, civic amenities are not civilization per se, but only the expression of workman’s quality of knowledge which proves man to be a species primarily concerned with the welfare of fellow human beings. Edifices, machines, tool and appliances, means of comfort and comfort itself, are labels of man’s artistic talent which, inter alia, decide the nature of a people’s civilization. However, since those who know do not equal to those who do not know (The Qur’an Az-Zumar/The Troops 39:9), one can find a sky of a difference between the demeanor of civilized and uncivilized, cultured and coarse societies.
So knowledge or its absence differentiates one community from other. This simple truth was candidly declared in The Qur’an: “And He taught Adam all the names” (The Qur’an Al-Baqarah/The Cow 2:31), thus asserting that the honor of First Human Being – Adam – was his knowledge which is inherited as an innate merit by all his progeny ever to come and that because of that merit man deserved superiority over all other creations.
This is a significant statement because no other book or philosopher ever said it so succinctly – in just five Arabic words. Unfortunately, man divinely honored thus, failed to realize his own status in Universe and on Earth to begin with. Modern men, including Muslims, believe that man is just another animate species, having no distinction over other species. Charles Darwin could have derived his theory of evolution from misquotes of the Bible. Critical interpreters of the Bible like Robert Jamieson (1829-1878), Andrew R Fausset (1821-1910) and David Brown (1803-1897) said in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible / 1871 that The Torah does not have a direct mention of knowledge as man’s distinction but it is talked about in biblical interpretations. The commentators are unable or avoid to disclose the source of that explanation, because The Bible says that Adam and Eve were specifically forbidden from tasting fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:8, 3:5). The tree whose fruit would make man sinful – vide doctrine of Original Sin – could not add to his honor and reputation. It is intriguing how can it be described as a human merit even in interpretation. This may be the reason why education is more fun than quest for knowledge in the west.
The Qur’an declared knowledge as man’s greatest merit that the angels had prostrated to Adam just because he was knowledgeable and they were not. In this setting if knowledge is not accepted as his exclusive honor all human civilizational endeavors and his scholarship, intellectual finesse, creative and inventive contribution suddenly becomes illogical. From materialist standpoint this theory establishes that man can achieve all that he did over several millennia without the merit and knowledge, just by being one of the many other animate species.
Now, if being animal-like is enough for achieving civilizational and cultural perfection, then forget wolves, hyenas, vultures, turtles, crocodiles, and mice, and think about noble animals like lions, cows, lambs, falcons and doves who too could not create wonders like ziggurat of Ur/Iraq, pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, Colosseum Amphitheater of Rome, Taj Mahal of India, cities like London and Tokyo, edifices like Empire State Building of New York, plane like jumbo jet, rockets like Saturn and space shuttle; and wasn’t knowledge required in concept, draft and construct of these wonders which man possessed, other species didn’t.
012 Pointers / Sunday 30 November 2014
Articles in this series are also published by e-newspaper The Caravan Daily of the world renowned journalist Aijaz Zaka Syed and the Canadian Dream edited by Asma Khan.
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Are we wrong about Pakistan? – Telegraph
When Peter Oborne first arrived in Pakistan, he expected a ‘savage’ back water scarred by terrorism. Years later, he describes the Pakistan that is barely documented…
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It was my first evening in Pakistan. My hosts, a Lahore banker and his charming wife, wanted to show me the sights, so they took me to a restaurant on the roof of a town house in the Old City. My food was delicious, the conversation sparky – and from our vantage point we enjoyed a perfect view of the Badshahi Mosque, which was commissioned by the emperor Aurangzeb in 1671.
It was my first inkling of a problem. I had been dispatched to write a report reflecting the common perception that Pakistan is one of the most backward and savage countries in the world. This attitude has been hard-wired into Western reporting for years and is best summed up by the writing of the iconic journalist Christopher Hitchens. Shortly before he died last December, Hitchens wrote a piece in Vanity Fair that bordered on racism.
Pakistan, he said, was “humourless, paranoid, insecure, eager to take offence and suffering from self-righteousness, self-pity and self-hatred”. In summary, asserted Hitchens, Pakistan was one of the “vilest and most dangerous regions on Earth”.
Since my first night in that Lahore restaurant I have travelled through most of Pakistan, got to know its cities, its remote rural regions and even parts of the lawless north. Of course there is some truth in Hitchens’s brash assertions. Since 2006 alone, more than 14,000 Pakistani civilians have been killed in terrorist attacks. The Pakistan political elite is corrupt, self-serving, hypocritical and cowardly – as Pakistanis themselves are well aware. And a cruel intolerance is entering public discourse, as the appalling murder last year of minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti after he spoke out for Christians so graphically proves. Parts of the country have become impassable except at risk of kidnap or attack.
Yet the reality is far more complex. Indeed, the Pakistan that is barely documented in the West – and that I have come to know and love – is a wonderful, warm and fabulously hospitable country. And every writer who (unlike Hitchens), has ventured out of the prism of received opinion and the suffocating five-star hotels, has ended up celebrating rather than denigrating Pakistan.
A paradox is at work. Pakistan regularly experiences unspeakable tragedy. The most recent suicide bombing, in a busy market in northwestern Pakistan, claimed 32 lives and came only a month after another bomb blast killed at least 35 people in the Khyber tribal district on January 10. But suffering can also release something inside the human spirit. During my extensive travels through this country, I have met people of truly amazing moral stature.
Posted by admin in Malala Yousufzai-Daughter of Pakistan, Pakistan-A Polaris of Earth on October 24th, 2014
Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize — and was shot in the head by the Taliban — for advocating girls’ education, told President Barack Obama he could “change the world” if only he’d send books instead of guns to other countries, she said Tuesday.
“My message was very simple,” Malala, who is now 17, said Tuesday at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, speaking of her recent meeting with the president. “I said instead of sending guns, send books. Instead of sending weapons, send teachers.” Asked by the host, Ronan Farrow of MSNBC, how Obama reacted, she said simply that his response was “pretty political.”
Malala said she tries to live as close to a normal life as she can amid the attention that has come her way since a Taliban gunman shot her two years ago in northwest Pakistan. Thinking back on it now, Malala sometimes compares her story to the plot of a movie. “At the end, the villain loses and the hero wins, and there is a happy ending,” she said to applause.
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