The Art of Begging

[The Outsider]

You are assuming that we would have continued to have a strong center that would dictate policy. What I'm saying is that the muslims of the North West' date=' who would have identified themselves more with the Arab world, would have happily take up arms against the Russians to form the Mujahideen.[/quote'] A strong center is a valid assumption - Congress was not in favor of any significant autonomy to individual states and rightly so. Gandhi and Nehru, in fact, rejected one such proposal of a unified India with a lot of autonomy to West and East Pakistan in matters of pretty much everything except defense, finance, and foreign policy. I don't see how or why the Muslims of North West would have identified with the Arab world. NWFP's most popular leader and figure was Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He had nothing to do with Saudi Arabia or fundamentalist Islam. How would the CIA, Saudis, and USA funnel money and resources into India to form Mujahideens(Iran has always been pro India)? Where would training camps for these Mujahideens be set up? On the other hand, the more realistic possibility was Afghanistan falling to the Soviets in the absence of any buffer support and becoming a satellite Soviet state or even a part of the USSR.

[yoda]

People who think that the Islamic world is capable of integrating with the non-Islamic world live in a parallel world. In real world this is a rare occurence and happens under stringent conditions.

What do you call India then?

[Guest Gunner]

a large sample of people living in the parallel world that I was talking about in my post ... someone said the other day that we have never had a 9/11 type episode in our country .... someone else said that Tippu was a hero and secular .... someone else said Aurangzeb used to collect Jizya in lieu of charity. Someone else said so what if an entire region called Kashmir has now been cleansed of any traces of Hinduism we shoud never ever use the gun and get justice thru court kacheri by going after millions of armed Kashmiris. Someone else said so what if majority of them voted for ML circa 1940s .... the list goes on and on and on ... and such bakwaas can only happen in India the largest producer of utterly clueless, gutless people with no sense of history or reality nor the capacity for crystal clear thinking based on real events that unfold right infront of them on a near daily basis. Thats what India is IMO.

This point is not correct. The ML did not win the 1940 elections even in modern day Pakistan, congress did. NWFP was not aligned to the ML, Maulana Fazlur Rehman's father (Maulana Mufti Mohammed) was vehemently opposed to ML so the ML did not even win in NWFP.

[The Outsider]

ML won 425 out of 496 seats which is a whopping majority and that is what I meant by majority in my previous post. Forget NWFP thats not even in Pak today :--D but lets look at something thats closer to home ... In Mumbai the ML won all seats in which it contested IIRC.

In Bombay Muslim League won 30 out of 175 seats! Whoopie Doo! In Central Provinces 13 out of 112. It did not have an absolute majority in any province and only with coalition partners had majority in Sind.

[seedhi]

In Bombay Muslim League won 30 out of 175 seats! Whoopie Doo! In Central Provinces 13 out of 112. It did not have an absolute majority in any province and only with coalition partners had majority in Sind.

The point he is trying to make is that the Muslim League won, for example in the 1946 elections, 95% of all the Muslim seats. And by that I mean the seats reserved for the Muslim electorate under the separate electorate system, i.e. seats in which only Muslims voted.

[The Outsider]

These numbers dont look right because ML won a vast majority (over 80% IIRC) of seats in Provincial elections. In the assembly elections ML won every single seat it contested on a ONE SINGLE point agenda of separate nation for muslims. This is the reason why Jinnah embarked on far bolder ( read violent ) moves the Direct action day being one of them.

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/schwartzberg/fullscreen.html?object=110

[The Outsider]

The point he is trying to make is that the Muslim League won' date=' for example in the 1946 elections, 95% of all the Muslim seats. And by that I mean the seats reserved for the Muslim electorate under the separate electorate system, i.e. seats in which only Muslims voted.[/quote'] That's not a point being made. Those are facts, though you've got them slightly wrong in the sense that Muslim League won about 85% of the Muslim electorate seats. A point would be made if you happen to think analytically and critically and draw some sort of a logical conclusion based on those results.

[seedhi]

That's not a point being made. Those are facts' date=' though you've got them slightly wrong in the sense that Muslim League won about 85% of the Muslim electorate seats. A point would be made if you happen to think analytically and critically and draw some sort of a logical conclusion based on those results.[/quote']The point is implicit and rather straightforward, that an electoral majority of the Muslim electorate approved of the two nation theory since that was the MLs core and clear agenda in 1946.

[The Outsider]

It doesnt say how many seats ML contested in ... AFAIK ML won all seats it contested in Mumbai ... especially the central assembly seats [ the ones that were contested under the one-point agenda of division ] .The total tally of 425 seats is the same that I mentioned and as per wiki these were out of the total 496 that ML contested throughout the undivided country.

What is the relevance of the number of seats contested? It's not as if Muslim League would have won those seats if they chose to contest them, because the only reason a political party does not contest seats is when they know they have no chance of winning the seat. Bottom line is that they won 30 out of 175 total seats in Bombay and did not have an absolute majority in any province.

The point is implicit and rather straightforward' date=' that an electoral majority of the Muslim electorate approved of the two nation theory since that was the MLs core and clear agenda in 1946.[/quote'] Nothing wrong with that statement. However, it says nothing about what Muslims, in areas which later became India, wanted as is sometimes incorrectly deduced. A relatively small percentage of the number of seats that the Muslim league contested and won are part of India today. Considering that even a 25-40% of the polling vote is sufficient to win a seat in multi cornered contests there is no data to support any conclusions about Muslims who became part of India after independence.

[The Outsider]

This is the sort of mind numbery that only us are capable of .... the core issue here is that of Muslim role in division of India and the allegiance of majority Muslims ... the Nehruvian revisionst history tries to spin the events surrounding partition based on the large numbers of Muslims that stayed back in India as some sort of Moral victory of its agenda of un-divided India. The truth is congress contested all those 30 seats alongside ML and lost soundly simply because of demographics. That lays to rest the claim that majority Muslims were against partition because those constituencies represented majority Muslim opinion on the matter of division. [ again keep in mind that the election had a binary agenda of Partiion or no-partition ] This is the ONLY reason why Jinnah gained importance and bargaining power which he systematically used to divide the country.

So there were no Muslims outside those 30 seats? What percentage of vote did Muslim League get in those 30 seats? What happened in NWFP? In multi cornered contests even a 30-40% vote is enough to win a seat. Regarding moral victory of an undivided India, it has already been achieved with the creation of Bangladesh.

[The Outsider]

And their opinion would have been exactly opposite on what logic ?

I don't know. You are the one making the claim. The onus is on you to prove it. Just because Muslims in Lucknow might vote for Vajpayee (BJP) does not mean they would not vote for Mulayam Singh (SP) in Etawah.

Polling was heavy and no-one disputes that ML got vast majority of votes upwards of 80%. There is a reason why Mount batten was forced to accept Jinnah as the sole leader of Muslim voice.

Any sources for the 80% figure? What percentage of the population did not even have the right to vote? Are you even aware of that?

And what happened in Mumbai, Hyderabad, UP ... the supposed shining pillars of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Irrelevant. NWFP was offered as a counter example to your simplistic claim that Muslim = Muslim League = Pro partition. Goes to show things were not as simple as you make out in your binary mind.

Why did Congress - with major maharathis in its rank - not manage to win a singly piddly seat whereever ML contested if only 30% vote is needed to win a seat ? Are you trying to tell me that Jinnah achieved what he did thru just 30% ?

Muslim League was whitewashed just 10 years back. So 10 years back Muslims were all patriotic and within 10 years the vast majority of them became traitors?

followed by a prompt eviction of a certain community kya mast secularism :cantstop:

India hasn't lost a single square inch since independence.

[seedhi]

India hasn't lost a single square inch since independence.

Just to correct you: India lost the entire Aksai Chin area to China, and our great PM Nehru dismissed it by saying that no one lives there anyway.

[The Outsider]

Just to correct you: India lost the entire Aksai Chin area to China' date=' and our great PM Nehru dismissed it by saying that no one lives there anyway.[/quote'] Aksai Chin was never a part of India except on paper. Even before independence, it was just a drawing on the map made by the British. There were no army posts, roads, or settlements made there. Just having a region drawn in your boundary on a map does not make it part of the country. China also had the region on their maps and in addition built roads and put army posts there. Fair and square to them.

[seedhi]

Aksai Chin was never a part of India except on paper. Even before independence, it was just a drawing on the map made by the British. There were no army posts, roads, or settlements made there. Just having a region drawn in your boundary on a map does not make it part of the country. China also had the region on their maps and in addition built roads and put army posts there. Fair and square to them.

The area was part of the Ladakh kingdom, which passed on from the British to India. India had a legal claim on that are and it is still a part of our maps. The British did a better job of safeguarding Aksai Chin from the Chinese than our post independent PM Nehru. The fact is that after India detected Chinese intrusion in Aksai Chin, it was one of the main reasons we went to war with China. Our soldiers laid down their lives to regain that territory, but we lost.