Indo-Pak Leadership

[Anwaar]

The Myopic Vision of Indo-Pak Leadership

This is an article I wrote back in December 2003.

FIFTY SIX years of living together as neighbors after being born of the same womb, we Indians and Pakistanis have nothing to show for it except fighting on and off the battlefields the full duration. After 56 years of engagements on the battlefields, in conference rooms and in international forums, what has our leadership come up with?

Some measly bus and rail ride concessions across the borders, stingy over-flight and fishing rights to each other and medical treatment to a paltry half dozen children out of a burgeoning population of well over a billion. They had the gall to go announce these to the world too as Confidence Building Measures. For the thinking ones, these are instead confidence shattering ones. That we have become a laughing stock of the world community in the process goes without saying. What a shame.

With a delivering leadership we should have been able to resolve issues that are the sources of conflicts, or at least avoided conflicts while diplomacy was at work, and developed a sense of good-neighborly manners when interacting with each other. None has happened. On each count we draw a miserable blank. If any thing, the diet of hatred has been increased manifolds by these leaders to a population already dying of malnutrition.

A CBS reporter, covering one of the SAARC meetings reported that the presidents of India and Pakistan would be at the same conference but would not be talking directly to one another. The reporter said something like "that void of diplomacy has been filled by violence and hatred." From Gandhi and Nehru to LK Advani and George Fernandez it has been as steep a fall in quality of leadership in India as it has been from Quaid-e-Azam and Liaquat Ali Khan to the Choudhries of Gujarat in Pakistan. What have we come to fellow South Asians?

While present just below the surface, hatred and violence are not the natural condition of mankind. Only by manifest polarization do these geyser to the surface in societies. For petty gains, some unwise rulers and diplomats use controversial means and end up dividing large segments of regional societies. In case of India and Pakistan this polarization has now gone so deep that the very existence of one has become a chronic insult and unceasing irritant to the other. Our leadership has not done us exactly proud.

Thanks to the substandard sub-continental leadership, common Indian and Pakistani perspectives, while steeped in poison, stand diametrically opposite to each other today.

A very common Indian perspective is that, "Pakistan represents the only serious national security challenge." To the east are thick jungles and scrawny countries. To the north, the Himalayas offer quite strong security from any viable threat from the Chinese, and that the Chinese were never serious in threatening India any way, dispute over McMohan Line not withstanding. To the south is the Indian Ocean, dominated militarily by the United States, which doesn't present a threat to India. Only Pakistan is a real threat.

Likewise, Pakistani leadership has pumped up a paranoia in the common man that, Kashmir or no Kashmir, dismembering Pakistan is the ultimate Indian agenda. Thus they view any concession to India as a step toward helping India reach that goal and that each such step would further weaken Pakistan’s ability to resist the next step.

Both extremes of the Indian and the Pakistani perceptions represent a dismal failure of the leadership of these countries. At the same time it shows what staple diet the two nations have been sustained on by their leaders for the past 56 years.

Not very far back, India amassed a million man army on Pakistan’s frontiers and projected a muddled case for pre-emptive strikes against Pakistan. Pakistan responded by rattling its nuclear hardware with a certainty that ran a chill up the collective spine of not only the Indians but the peace mongers the world over.

Fear and hatred go hand in hand. These are born of suspicion and mistrust, which in turn are born of lack of communication and understanding of the issues, and realization of the related facts. The fact that fanatics and vested interests on both sides directly clash to keep the two countries from ever reaching a stage of mutual accommodation need not be overstated. The continuous failure of leadership of both Pakistan and India to condemn these elements and break out of their strangulating hold is the worrisome part of it. 56 years of incessant fighting and bickering has left us weak, getting weaker and at the mercy of powers not exactly known to be on call for serving milk of human kindness.

The games that the leadership of both the countries has been playing have made these countries ever more susceptible to great powers’ manipulations. Pakistan openly pushes for an increased US role, while India continues to resort to rounds of coercive diplomacy to which it falsely believes it owes some past successes.

And while the leadership in Pakistan fails to realize its fast dwindling 'frontline' status fortunes in the war against terrorism, the Indian leadership is yet to display the requisite measure of maturity and confidence in their country's democratic system and credentials. Every once in a while a George Fernandez shoots off at tangent inviting an equally spectacular response from his Pakistani counter-part. Especially while in audience with Western diplomats, the leadership of both the countries continues to behave like hillbillies newly visiting a city, in awe yet blustering.

A shameless competition for American attention has become the only shining feature in the diplomacy of the leadership in both Islamabad and Delhi. It is not simply a lack of diplomatic attention from the great powers that leads to conflicts in the sub-continent. Intense focus from these powers has never been the supreme cure for the disease of hostility between any two sovereign nations. Getting used to such medicinal doses from responsible world powers in itself means an addiction and even more irresponsible behavior from the patients than a permanent cure. Let there be no doubt about that.

In sum, both nations continue to suffer from the myopic vision of a leadership forever trapped in acts of power equations and playing to the galleries. If we are to have any hope at all of building a more peaceful South Asia, it is important to acknowledge this fact. The sub-continent’s leadership needs to break out of this mind set. With the change in mind set will come the change in method as a natural accompaniment. Thereafter, they can take their countrymen on a never-ending, and oft-promised, trip of bliss and prosperity without ever having to look back over their shoulders.

By Anwaar Hussain

[michelle]

Ambassador of India to Hold News Conference Feb. 21 in Washington

2/10/2006 8:42:00 AM

To: Assignment and International desks, Daybook Editor

Contact: Peter Hickman, 301-530-1210 or 202-662-7540 or [e-mail] for the National Press Club; or Venu Rajamony of the Embassy of India, 202-939-7041

News Advisory:

Ranendra Sen, ambassador of India to the United States, will hold a Morning Newsmaker news conference Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 10 a.m. in the National Press Club's Zenger Room, 529 14th St., N.W., in Washington.

The topic will be "The Forthcoming Visit of President George W. Bush to India -- Strengthening the India-U.S. Partnership."

President Bush plans to visit India and Pakistan in March. The United States and India are working on implementing an Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement, and Washington hopes to make some progress on it before President Bush arrives in New Delhi.

[michelle]

Looks like the U.S. has a new fold in the flock.
If only Pakistan could cough up more money to defense industries, then, maybe, they'd still hold favor.
Moral of the story: Sheep should never make deals with the wolf....Michelle

India more important than Pakistan, says US official
By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Oct 31: A senior US official has categorically said that in a long-term perspective India is a more important ally for Washington than Pakistan.

On Wednesday The Washington Post quoted senior US officials as saying that Pakistan’s failure to crush militants has frayed America’s relations with the country.

“India simply must, as a long-term consideration, matter more for us than Pakistan,’’ James Clad, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, told a group of journalists in a conference call from the Pentagon.

“The US-India strategic potential is very, very profound,” Mr Clad said. “It’s been slow in coming -- I think it will be slow in coming in the future -- but it is steady. The trend lines are unmistakable,” he said.

Mr Clad said even Pakistan’s leading role in the US-led war against terrorism does not affect India’s strategic significance as a long-term US ally.

Referring to the growth of the Indian economy in the past one decade, he said: “India, I think, is seen as a potentially power with global reach.”

Mr Clad noted that Indo-US defence ties have continued to grow along with commercial and economic ties between the two countries.

India is on a major course to ramp up its military infrastructure, Mr Clad noted, with a multi-billion budget at they ready to purchase, among other equipment, 126 multi-role combat aircraft.

“It is the largest external-announced defence procurement budget in the world,” Mr Clad said. “And people are obviously interested in this.”


Source: www.dawn.com/2007/11/01/top10.htm

[michelle]

Herding Humans For Profit

I purposely avoided posting of the Mumbai attack and bombings because I am of the firm belief that vigilant attention through the media on world events [particularly destructive happenings] intensifies them by harnessing human focus and negative feelings generated by such an event...And through my scanning of past news, there was plenty of anger and fear generated by this event. What I have here today, are the effects of Mumbai attack and bombings and thoughts on how violence is fueled in this area of our world.

The title of the highlghted article speaks for itself. It also brings attention to a quote from Anwaar's essay, The Myopic Vision of Indo-Pak Leadership, where the light of reason shone forth:

While present just below the surface, hatred and violence are not the natural condition of mankind. Only by manifest polarization do these geyser to the surface in societies. For petty gains, some unwise rulers and diplomats use controversial means and end up dividing large segments of regional societies. In case of India and Pakistan this polarization has now gone so deep that the very existence of one has become a chronic insult and unceasing irritant to the other. Our leadership has not done us exactly proud.


Herding Humans For Profit
By: Peter Chamberlin

December 26, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- - Basically, the Pentagon and the CIA are working in tandem to force targeted nations like India and Pakistan to accept the decision which has been made to "outsource" the terror war to them and other patsy nations like them. Agency contract hits like the Mumbai attack and bombings in FATA are blamed on "al Qaida" by the government-controlled media in the West and in the media controlled by the "patsy" foreign governments. Biased, hate-based reporting serves to drive patriotic fervor to a frenzied state. The duplicitous leaders in those countries then carry-out America's will, to set them upon a path to war, in effect, driving their own people into a "kill trap" where unwanted war is forced upon them. This pattern prevails all over the earth, wherever the US has imperial designs. We are all being herded into a global war trap, some call it world war III.

American mini-dictator generals and crime bosses knew that their global war plans would require massive numbers of committed killers, a goal that a volunteer force could not fulfill. A conscripted army of unwilling, underpaid, over-committed soldiers, who might follow orders to commit genocide, would be unsatisfactory for the task, especially when the focus of the killing turns to their own homelands. No, the committed killers who have volunteered to be underpaid and overworked in order to gain the right to kill were too few in number, so they had to be supplemented. This is the reason that the US has created massive armies and navies of high-paying "civilian" contract killers (mercenaries).

But even the combination of federal troops and private armies is not great enough to fulfill the mission of global conquest. This is where the plan incorporates co-opted foreign armies, like those of India and Pakistan. Where NATO has failed to serve as a second American force, to command at will, these co-opted foreign armies under indirect US control are meant to fill the gap.

The CIA is using all the tricks of its dark and bloody trade to harness these foreign forces.

It continues to carry-out the trademark of its craft, the creation and arming of local warlords, criminal gangs and militias, to commit the acts of terrorism that will justify the government crackdown and drive the local population to support it. In the conflict building between India and Pakistan, American patsies on both sides are driving the two nations to serve America's violent interests in the region, that of containing both China and India, eliminating the "Islamic bombs" held by Pakistan, seizing pipeline routes and setting the stage for the next phase of the war plan, countering Russia and Iran.

American foreign aid and military assistance are twin traps for erasing national sovereignty and entrenching US interests within the aid-receiving governments. Targeted governments, like India and Pakistan are made so dependent upon the inflow of US dollars that they see the cut-off of that aid as an existential threat to their existence, equal to or surpassing the threat of war. What these leaders (who have all grown wealthy from skimming these dollars) either fail to realize or to consider at the cost of losing that wealth, is that the aid itself represents the greatest threat that their nations have ever faced. Their leaders, just like our leaders, whom they emulate, represent only themselves, as they continue to hoard the lifeblood of our nations.

American leaders and all the foreign leaders who work with them represent the greatest evil that this world has ever known. They are carrying-out and cooperating with the bloodiest, most devious plan ever devised by human minds, to grab all the wealth from all nations, regardless of the cost in human and animal life. Hitler and Stalin were mere "pikers," compared to our neocon/Zionist overlords. No previous tyrant or would-be dictator ever came as close to snuffing-out human freedom and individualism as these "Neo-American" dreamers have positioned themselves to do.

Collective human nature has never been so ready to surrender all rights for the privilege of working, eating or obtaining health care as it now stands prepared to do. Desperation remains the key to the warlords' success. The more desperation spreads, and the more desperate that people become to obtain the most basic of human needs, the more easily they will volunteer to become killers and to forsake all those insignificant things like human rights and morality that all of us resisters consider sacred.

What's at stake, besides the massive loss of life, is the massive reversal of all the gains and inroads made by human rights advocates throughout history and the complete elimination of the concepts of freedom and inalienable rights professed by America's founding fathers, for the sake of preserving the profit margins of today's robber barons.

[e-mail]

Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21538.htm


The following article mirrors the darkend soul of the leadership in my country, the USA, and how citizens here are led into support of the US weapons industry:

The USA Would Profit from a War Between India and Pakistan
Nov. 4 2008

India and Pakistan are nations which spend a great deal of money on imported weapons and weapons systems, and the USA is the world's biggest manufacturer and exporter of weapons systems. The US weapons industry is huge, and its profits usually have a positive impact on the US economy.

When the USA is at war, increased spending on weapons and warfare can be hard on the US taxpayers, because it means that their tax money will go into the coffers of the weapons industry instead of into health care, education, and public works within the USA. Overall, however, the US economy usually improves during wartime because of US 'Defense' industry profits and expansion.

The ideal 'set-up' for the USA is to supply other nations with weapons and weapons systems without the USA having to go to war itself. The USA has done that very thing many times; for example, the USA encouraged and supplied both sides in the Iran/Iraq War of the 1980s. More than a million people died in the Iran/Iraq War, during which the USA supplied illegal chemical weapons to the Iraqis.

So where and how could the USA provoke another war between two countries which the USA could then provide with weapons and weapons systems? A war between India and Pakistan could provide handsome profits for the US weapons industry. An effective way to proke a war between India and Pakistan would be for the US CIA to perpetrate a wave of 'Terrorist bombings' in Indian cities, such as Hyderabad, Ahmedebad, Jaipur, Delhi. Or in Assam.

Just blame the bombings on 'Moslem extremists', and keep up the bombings until anti-Moslem and anti-Pakistani hysteria within India leads to the enactment of Police State measures within India and a war between India and Pakistan. War between India and Pakistan will be very good for the US economy, because the USA is the world's leading exporter of weapons, systems, security, and surveillance systems, and both India and Pakistan are big customers for such systems.

From the USA's perspective, Benazir Bhutto had to die because she might not have cooperated with or allowed a continuing US influence on the Pakistani government, military, and the Pakistani ISI. It is likely that Bhutto would have moved Pakistan toward increased democracy and domestic liberty, and also toward better relations between Pakistan and India, neither of which would serve the unscrupulous interests of the USA.

-- Gregory F. Fegel

Source: gregoryfegel.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/11/the-usa-would-profit-from-a-war-between-india-and.htm

The above article, rightly so, points out the the instigation and interference by American and other foreign leaders [other articles also point to the UK and Israel] for profit and power. But one must also take into account that existing hatred between the countries of Pakistan and India opens this area to manipulation from outside sources. Those tensions are exacerbated by the bitter nuclear arms race between these two still-impoverished nations. When it comes to geopolitics of nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan behave worse than two school boys in a pissing contest.

This article thinks the unthinkable. Please, please, give it a read:

The Consequences of Nuclear Conflict between India and Pakistan
NRDC's nuclear experts think about the unthinkable, using state-of-the-art nuclear war simulation software to assess the crisis in South Asia.
www.nrdc.org/nuclear/southasia.asp


There is another instigator that lies within both these countries; it is the educational system. Here we see similarities to school textbooks read by children in Israel and Palestine, which demonize one another:

Attitudes of Teachers in India and Pakistan : Texts and Contexts
Posted September 10th, 2007
by Rene WadlowAll Book Reviews NGO: Conscience and Cooperation Zahid Shahab Ahmed and Michelle Antonette Baxter (New Delhi: WISCOMP, 2007, 102pp)

This cooperative research carried out by a young Pakistani and a young Indian, both working for international non-governmental organizations, explores how textbooks help determine political and social attitudes, especially attitudes toward India and Pakistan. Through an in-depth analysis of history and social studies textbooks from India and Pakistan, the authors highlight how certain textbooks have been modified to serve political ends. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) governments in India wanted history texts to reflect their Hindutva agenda of a Hindu civilization, while the Islamization efforts of General Zia ul Haq in the 1970s -1980s eliminated the teaching of history at the secondary school level and replaced history with social studies stressing the Islamic nature of the Pakistani State.

As the authors note “History has often been distorted to create an ‘enemy’ image in the school textbooks of India and Pakistan. These textbooks feed the minds and imagination of millions of children in both countries. They play a major role in generating hatred and animosity between the two countries. Indeed, history textbooks have become victims of the official ideologies and foreign policies of both countries.” As the authors stress “While Indian textbooks have a highly slanted and prejudiced view of minorities, particularly Muslims, Pakistani textbooks are no different. They are so designed as to promote hatred against Hindus and India. The powers that be, in both the countries, have vested interests in keeping the hatred between the communities alive so as to benefit politically from it. The textbooks are not simply written by prejudiced minds but with a particular purpose.”

Of course, textbooks are not the only source of influence: family and friends, childhood experiences, literature, films, television, and other forms of mass media also play a role. However, textbooks present information in a structured way and being able to repeat textbook information is necessary to pass examinations.

As the authors point out “Beyond textbooks, teachers are also a crucial element in the system of education. So far, in India and Pakistan, there hasn’t been any significant study on the role of teachers in shaping mindsets (enemy images, hatred of others etc) of young generations, the way they want or the way the national education system forces them to. However, the role of teachers in the nation-building process cannot be neglected because they are the artists of young minds.”

In order to analyse the impact of textbooks and the attitudes of teachers, 30 teachers and 30 students were interviewed in each country in three cities in each country: Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai in India, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar in Pakistan. These were teachers and students in the governmental school system in each country. In both India and Pakistan, there are religiously-inspired schools, the madrassahs of Pakistan and the Hindu-inspired schools of the RSS in India. In addition, both countries have elite private schools, originally inspired by the English system. A follow up study of the attitudes of teachers and students at all three types of schools would be useful.

The conclusions of the research indicate clearly the difficulties faced to introduce an objective and balanced view of history. “According to this research study, the growth of intolerance, fundamentalism and extremism, while having many other sources, is strengthened by educational curricula and teaching systems operational in the large number of public schools in India and Pakistan.”

Fortunately, there are efforts on the part of State education authorities to modify these negative practices. The 2005 National Curriculum Framework for School Education has stressed that “peace education must be a concern that permeates the entire school life— curriculum, co-curriculum, classroom environment, school management, teacher-pupil relationship, teaching-learning processes, and the entire range of school activities. Hence, it is important to examine the curriculum and examination system from the point of view of how they may influence children’s sense of inadequacy, frustration, impatience and insecurity.”

This study is a good example of what cooperative research between Indians and Pakistanis on sensitive subjects can achieve. It is the first of the WISCOMP Collaborative Research Studies — the first of what we hope will be a long and productive series.

Rene Wadlow is the Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens. Formerly, he was professor and Director of Research of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva. In the early 1960s, he was an advisor in the Ministry of Education of Gabon, at the time of the transition from a colonial education system to one adapted to the needs of a newly independent country.

Source: www.theoservice.org/node/156


The independence of India and the birth of Pakistan whose history begins only after decolonization is a sad commentary on the political condition of South Asia. Even though the region has been independent for over half a century, it is still not free.

Today, both India and Pakistan are gripped in the frenzy of religious fervor that is fundamentally negative in its orientation. Religious anger, activism and mass mobilization in both nations is mobilized against some thing rather than standing for something.

Religious zealots have only contributed to the destabilization of South Asia and heightening the prospects of a nuclear disaster. As religious extremists jockey for positions of power in India and Pakistan, their past record and the prospects of seeing their murderous hands on nuclear triggers is rapidly becoming a source for nightmares for security experts in the region and elsewhere....Hence, in steps outside interference from superpowers and a buildup of local military powers.

I do not follow a conventional religion, that is my choice; just as it is the choice for the people of India and Pakistan to follow their own prospective religions. However, I am in agreement with the following:

There is nothing inherently wrong with conventional religions, teachers and beliefs. If a conventional religion is followed with compassion, wisdom and heart, it can be a fantastic vehicle on the spiritual path. That said, most people do not choose to follow a conventional religion, they are born into it. This means that the religious drive is likely to be more unconscious, with the result that fundamentalism — "my religion is right/good and yours is wrong/evil" — is more likely to raise its destructive head. Fundamentalism in any form is counterproductive to spiritual growth and has led over our history to huge suffering, repression and countless wars. Many of us today are tried of conventional religion precisely because of the fundamentalism associated with it, which is why we are attracted to more conscious and peaceful alternatives [although fundamentalism can follow us into any belief system because it is more a product of our psychology and personality than belief systems]. If you decide you want to go down a conventional spiritual path, we would recommend you find a teacher that respects other paths and faiths, and one that always puts loving-kindness to others before dogma and ideology. www.energygrid.com/spirit/guide/index.html


The following book review highlights one of my basic beliefs, that the real struggle one must wage is a struggle within the individual. This is something we all must face, every human, if we are to live in unity and oneness.

The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence and India’s Future - by Martha C. Nussbaum
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
pp403
29.95 euros

Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She worked for eight years (1985-93) with the Research Project of the UN World Institute for Development in Helsinki, focusing on the economic and cultural problems of India. She chose India when she wanted to write on human rights norms for women’s development worldwide. She was a consultant with the UN Development Programme’s New Delhi Office and in 2004 was a visiting Professor at the Centre for Political Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She lectured in various parts of India and wrote extensively on India’s legal and constitutional traditions. She travelled so many times to India that it now feels like her second home.

Her relationship with India is intensely political, focussed on issues of social justice, and she has had close contacts with Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988. Three personalities in particular feature, namely, Nehru, Tagore and Gandhi. In her Preface she states: “This is a book about India for an American and European audience”. But it is not only about India but also about the present clash between Islam and the West.

She writes: “… that the real clash is not a civilisational one between ‘Islam and the West’, but instead a clash within virtually all modern nations – between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition”.

At a deeper level the thesis of this book is the Gandhian claim that the real struggle that democracy must wage is a struggle within the individual between the urge to dominate and defile the other, and to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.

Nussbaum deals extensively with the ethnic/religious pogrom in Gujarat in February-March 2002 when approximately 2,000 Muslims were killed by Hindus. She analyses the Hindu nationalistic personality and finds sufficient hatred within to explain the Gujarat events. Her conclusion – based to a great extent on Gandhi’s thinking – is worth quoting:

“The ability to accept differences – differences of religion, of ethnicity, of race, of sexuality – requires first, the ability to accept something about oneself: that one is not lord of the world, that one is both adult and child, that no all-embracing collectivity will keep one safe from the vicissitudes of life, that others outside oneself have reality. This ability requires, in turn, the cultivation of a moral imagination that sees reality in other human beings, that does not see other human beings as mere instruments of one’s own power or threats to that power.”

She argues, in this highly passionate study, that ultimately the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilisations, but from a clash within each of us.

Piet Dijkstra
Source: gandhifoundation.org/2008/07/01/the-clash-within-democracy-religious-violence-and-indias-future-by-martha-c-nussbaum/


One out of every six persons on this planet is from India. Imagine what a force for good this country could be. From Buddhism to Gandhi to the New Age movement, Indian culture and thought has had an important impact on the West. Some of the important westerners who were deeply influenced by Indian thought and wrote extensively about this included: Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Schrödinger, Jung, to name but a few. How did such an apparent increase of religious and communal fanaticism in India happen? What ever happened to the generation that marched with Gandhi for a tolerant, nonviolent, independent and national spirit?

In 1986 India’s department of education issued a remarkable document that acknowledged, among other things, that "India’s political and social life is passing through a phase which poses the danger of erosion [of] long-accepted values. Not only are the young ignorant of, and often contemptuous of, ancient Hindu visions of life, but the ‘modern’ values of secularism, socialism, democracy and professional ethics are coming under increasing strain."

That statement is from the "Draft National Policy on Education," an attempt to chart directions for the 5,200-some institutions of higher learning that have arisen in India during the past century. The document speaks explicitly of "values education." It calls for the fostering of values that "have a universal appeal" and that could help to "eliminate obscurantism, religious fanaticism, violence, superstition, and fatalism."

As in others parts of Asia, what happens in Indian colleges and universities is decisive for the future. The median age in Asia is about 17 and going down; in the West it is about 35 and going up. With well over half the globe’s population in Asia, it can be regarded as the world’s kindergarten, with the West being the world’s old-folks home.


Now, let us look at the cultural system in Pakistan, its values and disvalues . The cultural system is authoritarian and oppressive. It is said that Pakistanis believe that all problems can be solved by the use of force, and if it did not succeed, it is because enough was not used. So use more force!

Another cultural trait is addiction to slogans and clichés where many prefer to talk in generalisations instead of in operational terms, spelling out the method of doing something. A third characteristic is to find scapegoats and blame others for their own faults instead of taking personal responsibility to admit them and correct them. A fourth characteristic is the lack of objectivity. Problems and needs are known more from rumours called, ‘reliable sources’, then from cool, scientific analysis of situations. Subjective and personal views are preferred to objective facts. The vacuum of information is filled up with falsehoods.

The family in Pakistan has a strong influence but it could also prove to be negative. The sense of honour or dignity or respect is necessary for any person or society but it can be very superficial. If someone is a scoundrel but nobody says so, he keeps his izzat though everyone knows he has none. But dare someone say he lacks it, then izzat is lost, and people even kill for this false kind of izzat.

Revenge is another evil rampant in the culture. People practice the law of revenge, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’; forgiveness and mercy are considered weakness.

In addition to these negative influences, there are some positive cultural traits as well in Pakistani culture. One is the widespread love for, and skill in, composing poems and songs. Hospitality is another good trait. Even the poor will welcome a guest and go out of their way to honour him. Solidarity is seen when people gather together round those suffering and in distress due to accidents or sickness or death.


In both India and Pakistan the social system is feudal. The feudal lord is king, judge and executioner all rolled in one. Except for his family, all others are treated as slaves. There are not merely classes in society [rich, middle and poor] but castes where people are categorised by birth as high or low-born. Colour is a deep-seated social value. The fair-skin is preferred. Gender is a big problem since it is a male-dominated society. Work has value and disvalue, certain jobs are seen as respectable, others as a disgrace. Religion is also a social value or disvalue, depending on whether the believer belongs to the majority in society or the minority.

The new human dream is one of unity, joy, forgiveness and peace.
Humans have long forgotten how to forgive. As a result, brutality and force reign in civilization. The only way one can work one’s way out of the dance of destruction is to forgive. Forgiveness requires understanding. Humans must learn to love again; they must open their hearts and learn to forgive again. The path of real forgiveness is not an easy path; one faces one’s largest innermost demons and the greatest darkness of one’s ancestry. As one faces one’s own darkness and forgives, the dance of love extends outward again allowing love to be the reigning force rather than fear. It can only occur if one is willing to go inward and seek; seek to understand what one’s ancestry has done that is non-loving and caused pain unto others; and then to forgive. In the forgiveness, the brutality currently playing out on the world mirror can begin to fade, as love will emerge as a more powerful force than fear.

Forgiveness is an act of internal love in which one states: “I understand how you and your ancestry have trespassed upon me; I also understand that my ancestry has trespassed upon yours in parallel manners many times; I choose to forgive; I choose to open my heart and love what is unlovable."

The only way off the merry-go-round therefore is to understand; and through understanding to forgive. Love is the most powerful force in the universe; love can transmute and transcend any difficult pattern or dense level of thought-form [negativity]. Love however is only powerful in the act of forgiveness. Outside of a state of forgiveness, love becomes less powerful than brutality and force.

This is the key to ending the violence here and in all parts of the world. In a world where people depend on parents, clergy, and even governmental figures it is hard for humans to accept that they hold the answers. However, those that act as the "voices" for the community will NOT be leaders! Leaders must stop being perceived as saviors by the masses. The reality is that no one can save another. Each must do their own inner homework to understand and forgive. In the forgiveness the patterns change, the density lifts, the joy returns, and hope is reborn anew. No one can do this for another.

My opening statement to this post was: I purposely avoided posting of the Mumbai attack and bombings because I am of the firm belief that vigilant attention through the media on world events [particularly destructive happenings] intensifies them by harnessing human focus and negative feelings generated by such an event.

I offer this post to all in India and Pakistan in order to shine a light upon the spiritual lessons they are learning from the violence in their area....It is a hard lesson indeed, but has been necessary so that they can understand and can forgive.

Love, and Deep Peace,
Michelle

Post Note from Michelle: Regarding another unfortunate series of events between groups of people, you might note my comments at today's post:

Re: Your Next Target, Dear Americans
« Reply #40 Today at 7:45pm »
Gaza strikes: About the current escalation
airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=anwrart&action=display&thread=50&page=3#3252

Insanity roams our planet. You, as individuals, hold the solution.....M

[michelle]

Our world is abound with examples of human brutality between peoples and nations. I'm sure many have struggled with the question, "If as humans we are basically the same, how is that we are able to rain violence, destruction, and death upon one another?" The answer to that, and the solution, lies within the individual.

Refer to:

Welcome to International Psychohistory
Today's Lesson:
Splitting and Projection
Before, During and After World War Two
airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=oneness&action=display&thread=211&page=1#3257