<Many in Pakistan seem to think that they have more in common with Arab culture than the Indian subcontinent, in an attempt to avoid acknowledging overpowering Indian cultural influence. >
Dear Ramesh sahib, I thought you missed this one, I for one don't have any doubts about my very Indian roots..
<Pakistan and its rulers encouraged terrorism. Its President/CEO/dictator/army general is a person who encouraged terrorism and now he is changing face. IMO.>>
Dear Tony,
Do you remember your exchanges with me during the Kargil episodes in which you asked me why our then Prime Minister agreed to such an intrusion into India so soon after the Lahore declaration when Mr Vajpayee visited us?
At the time I had replied that the then government had little knowledge about the front and this was an operation carried out in retaliation to the old loss of the Quaid post (by the famous Indian Subedar Singh who was awarded the highest medal of gallantry and our General Zia, then military C-C at the time, was sent a ‘burkha’ by Benazir Bhutto on that loss) in the Siachin. That loss and ridicule was never forgotten by the generals on our side!!
These are two professional armies that were originally one. These professional armies have a certain conduct and carry out their operations to show each other down. Soon after the fall of Dhaka, when General Niazi laid down his arms with 92,000 soldiers, instead of being butchered by the ‘Mukhti Bahinis’ (freedom fighters of the Bengal), these soldiers were saved by Indian forces and in the evening, General Aurora (Commander of the Eastern Command) and General Niazi were sharing a gin tonic at Calcutta Gymkhana. They both were a product of Daredoun (military academy).
These Generals who attend war courses and plan strategies to overcome each other do make serious errors of judgments when war games are played in life. Kargil was one such war game and ultimately wa not successful. However, from a military standpoint, this was a continuation from the Siachin dispute and they wanted to show themselves equal to the task and pulled a quick one vis-a-vis India. We can discuss it as neutrals and distance ourselves from vain patriotism but you have to give some credit to the Generals who are paid to do what they do. Much as I condemn Kargil, I believe that India and Pakistan have in the course of last 54 years not been the greatest of friends. They have fought 3 wars and countless border skirmishes and all this dates back to cruel Muslim invasions of India where the invaders from the north pillaged the subcontinent at will. The remnant hatred in the subcontinent finds its roots in history and unfortunate tendency of stamping authority on past subjects.
Until we do not have objective analysis of the background, we are not going to tear ourselves from our ugly past. I can see that the Muslim invaders of India over the peaceful Hindus were invasions for bounty. Imagine Ghaznavi invading Somnath 17 times with the only incentive being to recover the gold in the temple, not Islam; they were bandits.
ATTACK ON SOMNATH TEMPLE
Date: January 8, 1026 Weather: Cold
TERRAIN: Flanked on one side by sea and a lightly wooded forest on the other. Desert less than 50 miles northwest (direction taken by the attacking force).
STRATEGY: Mahmud of Ghaznavi marched from Multan with 30,000 cavalry and a multitude of volunteers eager for plunder. Mahmud employed a combination of swordsmen and archers on horseback in an arc with a deep defensive force in the middle. The surprise attack resulted in a shower of arrows from archers and was followed by a ladder-borne mounting of the temple amparts. The king of Somnath fled with his entourage while the temple was protected by 50,000 poorly armed faithful with little military training. Mahmud scored with surprise, cavalry charge, better logics and motivation of Jihad; it was not Jihad but robbery and banditry.
SIGNIFICANCE: The temple's ruthless plunder was a psychological setback to Hindustan. It set an example of India as a very rich but very poorly defended place, ripe for loot.
The 200 million Muslims of united India are a product of these following invasions as a result of coercive conversion or some others being descendants of these invaders.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF TARAIN
Date: 1192 Weather: Moderate
TERRAIN: Flat. Western extremity of the Gangetic plains.
STRATEGY: Prithviraj Chauhan, the king of Delhi was complacent after his success in the First Battle of Tarain in 1191 where he had defeated Mohammed Ghauri. This time Prithviraj was hamstrung as his two chief generals were unavailable. Ghauri attacked the rear lines of Prithviraj which were completely outflanked. Though Prithviraj's cavalry launched a very effective counter-attack, forcing Ghauri's retreat, the Rajput ruler didn't press home the advantage. The flanks of Prithviraj's forces were attacked by Ghauri's light cavalry. The sideways disruption caused a sudden halt and hesitation in Prithviraj's advance, and chaos in the rear which was moving forward. Tactically it was brilliant – it resulted in denial of space to Prithviraj, which neutralised his numerical superiority. Once boxed in, his troops were massacred.
SIGNIFICANCE: The battle established the sultanate in Delhi.
ATTACK OF TAIMUR THE LAME
Date: 1398 Weather: Cold
TERRAIN: River-crossing Attock – the same place where Alexander had crossed the Indus 1,700 years earlier. Slightly hilly.
STRATEGY: The attack was in line with the Turkish-Mongol style of massed waves of attacks. Estimates vary but with 92 squadrons of cavalry the number could have been as high as 60-80,000. The Mongols who attacked Delhi were cavalrymen of a different order who could virtually live on horseback. This force, drawn by news of weak sultans in Delhi (the Tughlaq dynasty had ended and Delhi was ruled by Nusrat Shah), simply steamrolled all opposition till its destination. Nusrat Shah fled after weak resistance. The victory was followed by the sacking of Delhi and a general massacre of the population.
SIGNIFICANCE: Taimur's raid ended the supremacy of the sultanate in India. In the aftermath of the attack the influence of the sultanate remained only for 200 miles around Delhi. It also marked a power shift from Afghans to Turks and Mongols.
FIRST BATTLE OF PANIPAT
Date: April 21,1526 Weather: Hot
TERRAIN: Flat alluvial plain near the city of Panipat.
STRATEGY: Babar, the invader from Samarqand, had 25,000 infantry and cavalry while Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi had a massive army of 100,000. For the first few days neither army moved. Then Babar sent 5,000 men swung in night attack. Although they were beaten, the momentum of battle swung in favour of Babar-Lodhi's armies moved the next day. Babar employed his cannons with great effect and induced terror in Lodhi's ranks. The well-defended middle of Babar's army pressed forward in flanking 'flying column' attacks with his cavalry. The attack from the left showered Lodhi's forces with accurate musket fire while the right absorbed the brunt of Lodhi's counter-attack and pounded his defences with artillery fire. The battle ended by late afternoon with at least 20,000 of Lodhi's troops dead, including Lodhi himself.
SIGNIFICANCE: First major battle to be won by artillery and against such superior numbers. The battle led to the establishment of the Mughal Empire in India. "Not for us the poverty of Kabul again," Babar records in his diary.
SECOND BATTLE OF PANIPAT
Date: November 5, 1556 Weather: Cold and windy
TERRAIN: Flat alluvial plain.
STRATEGY: Hemu (Hemchandra), the King of Delhi had lost most of his artillery in an earlier battle where his advance guard had been defeated. However, his 50,000 soldiers struck rapidly at Akbar's force at 25,000 and were turning the battle into an easy victory for Hemu. Suddenly, Hemu was struck in the eye by an arrow which also pierced his brain. As in many medireview battles, the loss of the leader caused panic among the troops and the tide turned the other way. At his point a concentrated artillery attack by Akbar's general-and mentor-Bairam Khan turned the tide of the battle. Later, Akbar beheaded Hemu and exhibited his head on a spike outside the gates of his fort in Agra.
SIGNIFICANCE: The battle gave the Mughal Empire a firm base. This was the first empire which ruled with the capability to aggregate as many as 500,000 troops at short notice and, therefore, had a qualitatively firmer grip on its empire than the preceding sultanate.
The geographic situation of the Indian subcontinent, where Pakistan is situated in the north, historically demanded that all these invasion routes run through these northern parts of India. This is the same land of King Porus who fought against Alexander the Great. This was a total Hindu land that was converted by these multiple invasions from the north. The central Asian republics and Afghanistan were converted to Islam in the time of Omar bin Khatab. These invaders from barren lands made the Indian subcontinent a land where they would just run across, rape, pillage and loot at will. WE were a riparian society, hence peaceful and timid people; the invaders were rough hardened nomad people who found this peaceful people as great objects to embezzle and loot. This is the history of our subcontinent.
You ask me to justify why Musharraf is a dictator and why the Pakistan army does what it does and throws away democracy. Can you disassociate the ideology, habits, custom of people and the habits of people of the past where we rise from? You cannot, since we are slaves of history! Gentlemen, democracy is a habit and its very nature requires tolerance. We have none of it in our strain of ideology practiced in the land we call Pakistan. We are a product of abuse of power over centuries.
King Sher Shah Suri, the ruler of India who made the GT road from Calcutta to Peshawar, and who had forced the mogul emperor Humayun to abdicate, used to say that Afghans will always be warriors and will always fight and will be at each other throats. How prophetic! In his memoirs, you will find that he wanted to destroy Afghanistan and rehabilitate all the Afghans in the subcontinent. Today, the subcontinent is the way it is as the ideological divide created two different ideologies. Unfortunately, Pakistan and the Islamic world are still caught up with carrying forward the standard of Islam. As such, it is prone to far more mistakes that are only natural when governance is mixed with religion.
When someone asks me why Pakistan is not democratic. I spin the question around. Which other Islamic country from Morocco to Malaysia has a democratic government?
The sad truth is that the people of my country are of the same stock as you are, but the difference is the ideological intolerance and inbred Islamic system that encourages a strong man to lead them, has brought intolerance with democracy being sacrificed.
Caliphate was one such institution. Until Ata Turk came and destroyed the Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire was the centre of worship by the entire Indian Muslims. The Turkish caliphates names were a part of the daily 5 time prayers of all the Muslims in the world. Dictatorship, Intolerance, the emergence of a strong man is part and parcel of the Islamic society as a whole that is not just prevalent in Pakistan. Islamic societies do create demons and we have to live with them. Saddam is one; Ghaddafi another, to name a few. We are now facing one intolerant man in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar. There is a galaxy of villains around and I have been fair to myself by acknowledging the problems within the Islamic world and trying my utmost to address these issues in my analysis.
When I am faced with Omar, Saddam, Asad and Ghaddafi as compared to someone reasonable like Mahathir or Musharraf, I take it as a blessing in disguise. In Kargil, I had totally opposed his policy but at this juncture, when we are fighting a far greater evil, to fight Musharraf, or to discredit him, does not help the delicate situation to retrieve the real culprits.
The issue boils down to whether we are going to carry the cross for the whole world? Yes, the Indian hijacking was wrong but India should not have allowed, once the plane landed in Amritsar, to take off to its eventual journey to Kabul. That would have sorted out a lot of complications, which arose as a result of the hijackings. Your ‘black-cats commandoes’ could have done a clean job when the plane was still on Indian Territory. To send it to Pakistan or let it fly to Afghanistan was a strategic error.
These very terrorists are friends of no-one. Today they are chanting death to Musharraf. The point is what does the world coalition achieve by hitting Pakistan or its dictator? That is not the issue of the day. Unfortunately in politics, the very national interests are far superior to justice. I can see your point and justice demands that all these people who have been involved in committing these atrocious acts should and must be brought to justice.
Talking of politics, when Kemal Ata Turk fought the last battle in this century for the enlightenment of the Islamic world by destroying the intolerant institutions of the Ottoman Islamic Empire, do you know who led the movement in India for the restoration of this distorted institution? It was the Ali brothers (Muhammad and Shaukat Ali) and Mr. Gandhi who told the Indian Muslims that they should all fight this western attempt to abolish the Caliphate (Khilafat) of Islam. This was expediency, but the strongman image in Islamic society was condoned by Mr Gandhi although he himself was a great democrat. He himself realised that without a strong man or centre, these societies seem to wither. Imagine that! Hindu Mahatma Gandhi leading the restoration of Khilafat movement with Ali brothers. Thousands of Muslims sold everything and wanted to fight for the re-establishment of Caliphate. What majority of Turks had rejected, Indian Muslims assumed; assumed their dutiful and God-given right to restore.
A prime example of contemporary history is when Saddam was left off the hook by Colin Powell. The Allied forces could have flushed Saddam out of Baghdad, but again, Mr Powell thought that this was not an objective and they could not create a vacuum in the region only for Iran to regain initiative and conquer the spoils. They wanted a strong Iraq as a counter balance between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. I understand your concerns as to why Musharraf and Pakistan are not being punished? But imagine, as I have explained to you above, the issue between India and Pakistan is a historical dispute between estranged cousins and people of the same stock. Who wants a vacuum in the north of India at confluence of China, Russia, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics?
Strategic realities require that Pakistan should have fallen in place and provided all the facilities that they have so that they can be a part of future stable nations of the earth. I just don’t buy this blind attack by some strategists to take Pakistan out. The only strength I feel in myself is my ability to see the weaknesses of my nation. You denounce my country as a beggar nation, and I see your point, but history also tells me that Mahatma Gandhi gave his life for the sake of Pakistan. He was martyred by a Hindu extremist because he was keeping “Mohanbrath” (which means fasting till death) so that the Indian government may judicially fulfill its obligations to pay 80 crores rupees due to Pakistan on its independence from India. Do you know that the sum was never paid?
This is one of the reasons Mahatma Gandhi is my model. He was a man above these artificial boundaries. Blind hatred of any nation is not good. I want every good that India has for my nation, and I pray that all the bad that my nation has should not even go near India. The only way this world can survive is to appreciate each other’s position and form a greater alliance and understanding of human beings that should use history of the past as its tool for our future conduct. With all my faults and shortcomings, I have overcome vain national pride and patriotism in favour of realisation that one should love his country but not at the expense of others. I wish India all the best but I know that a fragmented Pakistan would be a nightmare for India from which India can never recover. |
