Terrorist attack in Kashmir

I think this recent escapade by India against Pakistan is a Deep State test to see what kind of man Imran Khan is... Somewhere about mid-way between Trump (pre-co-opted) and uncle Vlad, I'd say.

Conclusion: I don't think Deep State likes Imran Khan very much... Imran Khan's days are numbered.
 
Recent India Pakistan spat made me wonder how Pakistani's think. I know lot of nut case arguments, but wide spread repetition of same arguments from common man/supposed to be rational Celebrity made me wonder where did these ideas came from. This raised some questions.
- When searched what Pakistani's think of MK Gandhi, either neutral or slight negative tone
- They keep saying Nehru split the country
- Muslims are safe in Pakistan than in India, so India is not secular
- Since they raise Kashmir issue, that is good cause. If their terror kills muslims it is "collateral damage".
- I can understand the antagonisms but the Extreme hatred in the comments like 'split the country to pieces' from supposed rational people is pretty different.
- If Muslim die of terrorism, it is discrimination. but if some body else dies of their action that doesn't apply (believer and non-beliver logic)

My impressions were not matching with what i am reading. If I am wrong, then what is truth?. If two nations are born out of the same country, how can the narrations be so different?. Fine, propaganda is there, does it mean every thing is propaganda?.

This made me to read series of books. the latest one is 'Tinder Box : past and future of Pakistan' by MJ Akbar. I like his way of analysis, taking the widely used concepts, going to historical roots of arguments and how these arguments of the day morphed over the time to the politics of the time and how the Muslim mindset became Identity which became identity crisis, how education system is changed after 1971 war loss( Bangladesh Creation) so that Feudal rulers( Wealthy Army, politicians ) of the country continue to control it. After reading this, I started realizing how hopeless the situation is.

This book goes into history of the Muslim angle of outside interventions in India and political( emperors, politicians, mullah's etc.) dynamics of the times. Some times I feel like just put the points, but putting comments reduces the complex meaning author trying to convey, but sentences can be long. I will try my best to shorten it with quotes and comments.
Introduction
...
Muslims of British India had opted for a separate homeland in 1947,destroying the possibility of a secular India in which Hindus and Muslims would coexist, because they believed that they would be physically safe, and their religion secure, in a new nation called Pakistan. Instead, within six decades, Pakistan had become one of the most violent nations on earth, not because Hindus were killing Muslims but because Muslims were killing Muslims.
...
The indisputable stature of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a master of the endgame, has led to a notion that Pakistan emerged out of a resolution passed in March 1940 at the Muslim League session in Lahore. The reality is more complicated. Pakistan emerged out of a fear of the future and pride in the past, but this fear began as a mood of anguish set in among the Muslim elite during the long decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century. The embryo had a long and turbulent existence, particularly during the generations when it remained shapeless. This book is a history of an idea as it weaved and bobbed its way through dramatic events with rare resilience, sometimes disappearing from sight, but always resurrected either by the will of proponents or the mistakes of opponents.
...
Pakistan is a successor state to the Mughal Empire, the culmination of a journey that began as a search for ‘Muslim space’ in a post-Muslim dispensation, nurtured by a dread that became a conviction: that a demographic minority would not be able to protect either itself or its faith unless it established cultural and political distance from an overwhelming majority Hindu presence. Muslims, who had lived in India for five centuries with a superiority complex, suddenly lurched into the consuming doubt of an inferiority complex which became self-perpetuating with every challenge that came up during different phases of turbulent colonial rule.
...
Mistrust of Hindus, fundamental to the theory of distance, became the catechism of Muslim politics when it sought to find its place in the emerging polity of British rule in the early twentieth century. The very first demand made by Muslim notables, when Indian representation was proposed in the legislature, was unique: that Muslims should be elected only by fellow Muslims. This was the ‘separate electorates’ scheme which the British happily endorsed into law. A perceptive young man, who would later be honoured as the father of Pakistan, recognized the implications immediately, even as he dissociated himself from the demand. Jinnah said, as early as in the first decade of the twentieth century, that separate electorates would lead to the destruction of Indian unity; and so they did.
...
Between 1919 and February 1922, Gandhi became the first non-Muslim to be given leadership of a jihad. Gandhi accepted the ‘dictatorship’ (a term that clearly had different connotations then), but on one condition: that this jihad against the British would be non-violent. Muslim leaders, including the most important ulema, accepted, and absorbed Gandhi into what is known as the Khilafat movement, or the Caliphate movement, since it was launched in support of the Ottoman caliph of Islam and his suzerainty over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The caliph was the last symbol of Muslim power against the sweeping tide of British and European imperialism, which is where it intersected with Gandhi’s needs. He saw in this the opportunity to unite Hindus and Muslims against the British Raj, irrespective of their starting points. Having achieved Indian unity, Gandhi promised swaraj within a year. Instead, by February 1922, he realized that he could not contain the violence that was bursting in corners across the country. Gandhi arbitrarily abandoned the movement, to the shock of his Muslim supporters.
Gandhi is secular idealist. He strongly believed that without Hindu-Muslim unity the country will devolve into civil war much worse than British. There are occasions he reminded virtues of British, when people are going crazy with nationalism. His words, a century old warning bells still rings when madness of communal violence erupts even to this day.

The bitterness of failure was so deep that Muslims never really returned to Gandhi’s Congress. But this did not take them directly to the Muslim League either; suffice it to say that the search for ‘Muslim space’ did not catch fire until it was converted into a demand for ‘Islamic space’, and Gandhi was successfully converted by Muslim League leaders into an insidious Hindu bania whose secularism was nothing but a hypocritical term for Hindu oppression and the consequent destruction of Islam in the subcontinent. Islam was in danger, and Pakistan was the fortress where it could be saved. With an advocate as powerful as Jinnah, enough Muslims were persuaded that the man who had spent his life caring about their welfare and eventually lost it in their cause was actually their sly enemy.
...
Jinnah’s forensic skills were at their finest in the court of public opinion, even when his sarcasm was devoid of finesse, as when he described Gandhi as ‘that Hindu revivalist’. Jinnah, who drank alcohol, went to the races for pleasure, never fasted during Ramadan, and could not recite a single ayat of the Quran, created such a hypnotic spell upon some Muslims that they believed he got up before much before dawn for the Tahajjud namaaz, the optional sixth prayer which only the very pious offer. Jinnah clearly believed that he could exploit a slogan he had once warned against, ‘Islam in danger’, and then dispatch it to the rubbish bin reserved for the past when it had outlived its utility.
...
Both Jinnah and Gandhi died in 1948, the first a victim of tuberculosis and the second to assassination. India had clarity about the secular ideology of the state, completed work on an independent Constitution by 1950, and held its first free, adult franchise elections in 1952. The debate in Pakistan, about the role of Islam in its polity, began while Jinnah was still alive. The father of Pakistan was challenged by the godfather of Pakistan, Maulana Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and accurately described as the architect of the Islamist movement in South Asia and the most powerful influence on its development worldwide. Islamism did not, and does not, have much popular support in Pakistan, as elections prove whenever they are held; but its impact on legislation and political life is far stronger than a thin support base would justify. Maududi’s disciple, General Zia ul Haq, who ruled Pakistan from 1976 with an autocratic fist for a decade, crippled liberals with a neat question: if Pakistan had not been created for Islam, what was it, just a second-rate India? Zia changed the motto of the Pakistan army to ‘Jihad fi sabil Allah’ (Jihad in the name of Allah) and worked to turn governance into ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (Rule of the Prophet) through a rigorous application of the Sharia law, as interpreted by the most medieval minds in the country. But the ‘Islamization’ of the Constitution preceded Zia, and efforts to reverse his legacy have not succeeded, because a strain of theocracy runs through the DNA of the idea of Pakistan. The effort to convert Pakistan into a Taliban-style Islamic emirate will continue in one form or the other, at a slow or faster pace.
...
Indians and Pakistanis are the same people; why then have the two nations traveled on such different trajectories? The idea of India is stronger than the Indian; the idea of Pakistan weaker than the Pakistani. Islam, as Maulana Azad repeatedly pointed out, cannot be the basis of nationhood; perhaps it required a scholar of Islam to comprehend what an Anglophile like Jinnah could not. Islam did not save the Pakistan of 1947 from its own partition, and in 1971 the eastern wing separated to form Bangladesh.
...
At the moment of writing, Pakistan displays the characteristics of a ‘jelly state’; neither will it achieve stability, nor disintegrate. Its large arsenal of nuclear weapons makes it a toxic jelly state in a region that seems condemned to sectarian, fratricidal and international wars. The thought is not comforting. Pakistan can become a stable, modern nation, but only if the children of the father of Pakistan,Jinnah, can defeat the ideological heirs of the godfather, Maududi.
To be continued...
 
To be continued...
At what point in their history of more than a thousand years did Indian Muslims become a minority? The question is clearly rhetorical, because Indian Muslims have never been in a majority. The last British census, taken in 1941, showed that Muslims constituted 24.3 per cent of the population. Five years later, in 1946, provoked by fears that they and their faith would be destroyed by majority-Hindu aggression after the British left, Indian Muslims voted overwhelmingly for the Muslim League, a party that promised a new Muslim nation on the map of the Indian subcontinent, to be called Pakistan. In August 1947, Pakistan, a concept that had not been considered a serious option even in 1940, became a fact.
...
Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, from the Khyber Pass to the borders of Burma, claim a unique history spanning more than a thousand years in which their political power has been remarkably disproportionate to their demographic limitations. An Arab invader, Muhammad bin Qasim, established the first Muslim dynasty, in 712, in Sind (now in Pakistan), but it faltered and stagnated. Muslim rule in a substantive sense is more correctly dated to 1192, when Muhammad Ghori, at the head of a Turco-Afghan army, defeated the Rajput king Prithviraj at Tarain, about 150 km from Delhi, near Thaneswar, to establish a dominant centre of Muslim power in the heartland. Ghori soon returned to Afghanistan, but his successors, Turco-Afghan generals, set up a Delhi Sultanate that became independent of Afghanistan in 1206. By this time, with astonishing rapidity, they held an empire that stretched from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east. Delhi, or its alter ego Agra, remained a Muslim capital for over six centuries. The Khiljis (1288-1320), Tughlaqs (1320 -1413), Sayyids (1414-51), Lodis (1451-1526), Suris (1540-56) and Mughals (1526-40 and 1556-1857) won or lost power in wars that were as bitter as any other, but the fact that succession never went out of the Islamic fold created a comfort zone that seeped down to even those Muslims who had little to gain from that moveable feast called monarchy. There were powerful Muslim domains even during British rule, the most important being the state of Hyderabad, founded .. in1725; the dynasty survived till 1948. There were only three million Muslims in a population of twenty-three million in his state, but did Muslims consider themselves a minority as long as their ruler was a Muslim? No.

Minority and majority are, therefore, more a measure of empowerment than a function of numbers.
For Muslims under shahanshahs, nawabs and nizams, power translated into positive discrimination in employment, within the bureaucracy, judiciary and military; and it ensured that their aman i awwal (liberty of religion) was beyond threat.
...
This changed in 1803, when victorious British troops marched into Delhi. ... Indian Muslims entered an age of insecurity for which they sought a range of answers. One question fluctuated at many levels: what would be the geography of what might be called Muslim space in the post-Mughal dispensation? The concept did not begin as a hostile idea, but it certainly had the contours of protectionism, buoyed by an underlying, if unspoken, assumption that Muslims would not be able to hold their own. Political power had made their 'minority' numbers irrelevant; without power, they would be squeezed into irrelevance or subjugation. They sought, therefore, reservations or positive discrimination of all kinds, in the polity, in preferential treatment for their language, in jobs, and eventually in geographical space. Pakistan emerged as the twentieth century's answer to a nineteenth-century defeat. So far, it has merely replaced insecurity with uncertainty.

The British
built their Indian empire in small, careful steps, choosing one adversary at a time, and using exceptional diplomatic skills to sabotage an enemy alliance to the extent they could. They were brilliant at provoking dissent through the effective expedience of promising power to the rebel. The sequence of military victories encouraged hope in potential rebels and kept potentates off balance; reputation became a pre-eminent British asset. The British advance was helped by the implosion of the Mughal Empire, and the rise of regional princes who paid nominal homage to the emperor in Delhi. Individually, they could not withstand the discipline, will and competence of British officers, soldiers and the inactive army they raised, trained and turned into a splendid fighting force.

The vulnerability of Indian Muslim communities increased in direct proportion to the gradual erosion of their empire between 1757 and 1857. As they struggled to find new equations with fellow Indians and the foreign British, they were squeezed from both sides: Hindus, who had the advantage of numbers, and the British, who had the advantage of power. An assertive Hindu elite claimed preference under British rule after centuries of a sense of feeling denied. The British were also wary of any revival by those they had displaced, the Muslim nobility; unsurprisingly, it was marginalized.

After 1857, Muslim leadership actively courted British for concessions in religious liberties, Islamic education etc, which served British interests of Divide and Rule. Bengal region is the biggest of all, By 1906 , Congress leaders in Bengal were making bigger and bigger demands for freedom, so British split Bengal into two ( Muslim Bengal and secular Bengal). It naturally increased agitations of Bengali Hindu's and started showing signs of spreading it to all over India and it also increased Bengali Muslims demands too. So British merged both the Bengals back again in 1911. The biggest factor is linguistic/cultural affinity Bengali speaking people enjoy over religion. In Late 60's, Pakistan will do the similar mistake of antagonizing Bengali's that lead to the creation of Bangladesh with no rollback.

The British created a new set of landed and commercial elites in Bengal. In stages, the traditional Muslim establishment of the Gangetic belt between Calcutta and Delhi was either whittled down, as in the case of the old landed nobility, or eliminated, as happened to the military aristocracy. Muslims retreated into a sullen despondency. But one group, the ulema, or the clergy, surprised the British with its determination, ideology and persistence, and shocked them with a newly acquired military skill.

The ulema have always had a special place in Muslim societies, not merely as leaders of prayer but as judicial and educational bureaucracy. Ulema is the plural of alim, meaning a wise man. Alim is a derivative of ilm, or knowledge. There are three degrees of knowledge: ain al-yaqin, certainty derived from sight; ilm al-yaqin, certainty from inference or reasoning; and haqq al-yaqin, the absolute truth, which is the eternal truth contained in the Quran. As scholars, the ulema extended their expertise to the arts and sciences, and their seminaries became schools that stored and disseminated knowledge to Muslims. The high status given to knowledge in Islam has been transferred to the keeper of knowledge, the cleric-teacher. Imam Abu Abdullah Muhammad Bukhari (810'70), who culled some 7,000 sayings and stories about Prophet Muhammad from a mass of about 600,000, reports the Prophet as saying that envy is permitted in only two cases: when a wealthy man disposes of his wealth correctly, and when a person of knowledge applies and teaches it. Another Hadith says that he who goes on a search for knowledge is treated as being on jihad.
This Jihad definition is thinking that Quran is a sacred text revealed by divine appointed prophet.

If Islam is created for War mobilization effort ( as in Mecca Mystery ) to conquer receding Roman populace, its meaning is different. Now a days, Jihad became acts of brain washed/programmed( poor or educated) to become primitive Manchurian candidates (who blew themselves for a place with Allah or 70 virgins because they feel victim of some injustice) manipulated by layers of power hierarchy ( Poor people who sell their children ( as in Children of Taliban), Feudal rulers of the location( mullahs,land lords,politicians,local intelligence agencies), Financed by (external actors like Saudi's), and Powerful Western Intelligence agencies (CIA, Mossad for their geopolitical games and booty, intermixed with weapon sales) ).
The Indian clergy energized despondent Muslims across the subcontinent, from Peshawar to Dhaka, and inspired, between 1825 and 1870, what is best described as a people's war. By the time this insurrection was defeated, it had planted seeds of a fierce anti-West, anti-colonial sentiment that prepared the community for the nationalist movement lead by Gandhi. Gandhi recognized the importance of such allies, and wooed Muslims through the ulema.
Gandhi's attempt didn't translate to Hindu-Muslim peace, though it gave necessary trust for muslims to stay back in India( in 1947), if they were living in non-front-line to Pakistan. This number is huge given every village (even remote areas) and city has minority muslim population.

To be continued...
 
Current news in Pakistan ...

Pakistan's new interior minister, appointed in a major cabinet reshuffle this month by Prime Minister Imran Khan, is a former spy chief and close ally of the country's last military ruler who has long been accused of deep ties to militant groups.

April 27, 2019 - Khan's interior minister pick raises questions about 'new' Pakistan

Brigadier Ijaz Ahmed Shah, Minister of the National Assembly (MNA), meets with Prime Minister Imran Khan at the Prime Minister Office in Islamabad, Pakistan in this photo released by Press Information Department on December 11, 2018. Press Information Department (PID)/Handout via REUTERS
Brigadier Ijaz Ahmed Shah, Minister of the National Assembly (MNA), meets with Prime Minister Imran Khan at the Prime Minister Office in Islamabad, Pakistan in this photo released by Press Information Department on December 11, 2018. (PID)/Handout via REUTERS

The appointment of retired Brigadier Ijaz Shah has been heavily criticized by the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), whose slain former leader Benazir Bhutto regarded him as a deadly enemy.

Some analysts said it suggested Pakistan’s powerful military continued to wield heavy influence over the civilian administration - a persistent allegation since Khan took office eight months ago that both his government and the generals deny.

In an interview with the BBC after his appointment, Shah said: “What power can I give the military as interior minister? I left the army a long time ago, I am a civilian and have participated in elections.”

Shah was among four members of the civilian-military establishment named by Bhutto in a letter written to then President Pervez Musharraf months before her assassination as suspects who should be investigated if she was killed.

Many Pakistanis have long suspected that elements of the intelligence agencies colluded with militants in Bhutto’s assassination in a gun and bomb attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi in December 2007. An investigation at the time blamed an al Qaeda-allied Pakistani Taliban leader.


“Are you trying to send a message to the world that we have terrorists and the abettors of terrorists in our cabinet?” Bhutto’s son and chairman of the PPP, Bilawal Bhutto, told the country’s parliament this week, referring to Shah’s appointment. “This cannot happen.”

Spy Chief -
The sweeping cabinet reshuffle comes as Pakistan is trying to attract foreign investment and present itself as a reformed country. But critics say the inclusion of an “old school” figure such as Shah in the government shows little has changed.

Under Musharraf, who as army chief seized power in a 1999 coup and ruled until 2008, Shah served as head of the military’s leading spy agency in the Punjab province, and was later appointed the head of the civilian Intelligence Bureau.

He oversaw the surrender of wanted militant Omar Saeed Shaikh, who masterminded the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002.

That contributed to allegations he had been close to Islamist groups based along lawless border with Afghanistan, where Pakistan’s security services have long been accused of playing a double game.

“The biggest controversy is his links with the Afghan jihad and figures like Omar Saeed Sheikh,” author and analyst Ayesha Siddiqa told Reuters, a longstanding critic of Pakistan’s military. “Looks very much like the army chief’s choice.”

The military did not respond to a request for comment on this article, but in the past has said it does not interfere in politics. The military has also repeatedly denied allegations leveled by the United States, Afghanistan and others that is has covertly sheltered militants based along its borders.

Under Khan’s government, Islamabad has been trying to convince the outside world that it will not tolerate militants operating from inside Pakistan.


Pakistan currently finds itself on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “grey list” for inadequately dealing with money laundering and terrorism financing, a designation that makes it harder for the country to access international markets at a time when its economy is stumbling.

Convincing the FATF that it is making sufficient efforts to crack down on militancy will be harder with a controversial figure such as Shah in the cabinet, said PPP Senator Mustafa Khokhar.

Some analysts agree. “Ijaz Shah’s appointment just reinforces the perception that nothing has changed in Pakistani politics,” political analyst Aamer Ahmed Khan told Reuters.

April 24, 2019 - Gunmen in Pakistan kill policeman guarding polio eradication team
Gunmen in Pakistan shot and killed a police officer guarding a polio immunization team on Wednesday, the latest attack on efforts to protect children from the crippling and sometimes deadly disease.

April 22, 2019 - Iran and Pakistan to form rapid reaction force at border: Rouhani
FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a news conference with Iraqi President Barham Salih (not pictured) in Baghdad, Iraq, March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani/File Photo
Iran and Pakistan will form a joint quick reaction force to combat militant activity on their shared border, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday during a televised news conference with Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan.

April 21, 2019 - Pakistan's Prime Minister Khan in Iran to talk security, ties
FILE PHOTO: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan attends talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, November 2, 2018.  REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan arrived in Iran on Sunday to discuss security and regional issues, Iranian state TV reported, a day after Islamabad urged Tehran to act against militants behind killings in Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

April 20, 2019 - Pakistan asks Iran to act on militants behind Baluchistan killings
The Baloch insurgents who killed 14 people along Pakistan's coast this week are based in neighboring Iran,
Pakistan's foreign minister said on Saturday, heightening tensions ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan's trip to Tehran on Sunday.

April 19, 2019 - Pakistan PM hints at further cabinet changes after 'batting order' shuffle
FILE PHOTO: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks at the opening ceremony for the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, China, November 5, 2018.  REUTERS/Aly Song/Pool/File Photo

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Friday that he would not hesitate to make more changes to his cabinet if required a day after a major reshuffle that saw the appointment of a new finance minister and nine other ministerial switches.
 
Current news in India ...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi staged a show of strength on Thursday in the city of Varanasi, one of the most sacred places for India's majority Hindu population, as the country's 39-day staggered general election neared its mid-point.

April 25, 2019 - Huge crowds greet India's Modi in his sacred city seat

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, president of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attend a ritual known as Aarti during evening prayers on the banks of the river Ganges, after Modi's roadshow in Varanasi, India, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, president of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attend a ritual known as "Aarti" during evening prayers on the banks of the river Ganges, after Modi's roadshow in Varanasi, India, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

Dotted with ancient temples and sitting on the banks of the Ganges river, Varanasi was one of two seats that Modi fought and won at the last election in 2014. He has so far chosen to represent Varanasi in parliament and is not likely to pursue any other seat.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of supporters, Modi, who is seeking a second term as premier, bowed to the crowd with folded hands from an elevated podium.

He then toured the city in an SUV, standing to greet supporters through the sunroof. His security forces prevented the crowd from getting too close even as the vehicle moved slowly through the narrow alleys.

Modi was accompanied by senior BJP leaders, including the party President Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, where Varanasi is located. The northern state is India’s most populous and has the largest number of MPs. In 2014, the BJP won 71 seats there out of 80.

Modi is expected to file his nomination papers on Friday. India’s election is being held over 39 days from April 11 to May 19, with votes due to be counted on May 23. Varanasi will vote on the last day.

"Namo Again" - The city was decorated with BJP flags and saffron-colored balloons. Sounds of drums and songs praising Modi grew louder as the prime minister arrived.

Supporters wore “Namo Again” t-shirts or masks with Modi’s photograph, while others dressed as Hindu gods and goddesses.

“I think this time he’s trying to send the signal that he’s now far more confident, he doesn’t need the Gujarat seat and therefore he’s standing only from UP,” said Sudha Pai, referring to the other seat Modi won and gave up in 2014. Pai, a former political science professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, closely tracks politics in Uttar Pradesh.

But weak jobs growth, distressed farm incomes because of low crop prices, and charges of economic mismanagement have boosted the opposition. And in Uttar Pradesh, two formidable regional parties have allied to take on the BJP.

Modi often refers to “Mother Ganga” in his speeches, and his government has committed nearly $3 billion of funds to a five-year clean-up of the heavily polluted sacred river. That program is due to be completed in 2020.

At the end of his roadshow, Modi went to an ornately decorated riverside, where many priests prayed, burned incense, chanted, and tolled bells. He stood inches away from the water, made offerings including flowers, and prayed before leaving amid loud chants.

Slideshow (22 Images)
Huge crowds greet India's Modi in his sacred city seat

April 26, 2019 - India's Modi faces fight in Maharashtra state that could decide majority
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi reacts during a roadshow in Varanasi, India, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party and a Hindu nationalist ally face a big electoral challenge in the critical western state of Maharashtra where rural distress, unemployment and drought may hurt Modi's bid for a second term.

April 24, 2019 - Indian court moves to lift ban on Chinese video app TikTok

FILE PHOTO: The logo of TikTok application is seen on a mobile phone screen in this picture illustration taken February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/Illustration/File Photo
An Indian state court on Wednesday moved to lift a ban on popular video app TikTok in the country, two lawyers involved in the case said, in a boost for its developer Beijing Bytedance Technology Co.

April 23, 2019 - Indian PM votes in general election, trumpets national security
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi shows his ink-marked finger after casting his vote outside a polling station during the third phase of general election in Ahmedabad, India, April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave
Millions of Indians voted in the third and largest phase of a staggered general election on Tuesday, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi who cast his ballot in his home state of Gujarat and again underlined his focus on combating terrorism.
 
To be continued...
Secularism of Muslim Rulers in India: Not every ruler is same, but secularism do exist during muslim rule. All the quotes below are not from same time or same place . These are few of many listed, but it gives the hints of secularism, that made Hinduism survive.
These 'Muslim' armies did not could not consist only of Muslims. It is estimated that there were only about 20,000 Turkish families who had stayed in India after Ghori's victory. Ziauddin Barani (c.1280'c.1360) records in Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi that Hindu infantry, from both high and low castes, was recruited into the sultanate force. Barani emphasizes that the sultans were respectful of Hindu sentiment. Jalaluddin Khilji, to give one instance, complained about the noise made by Hindu processions passing by the walls of the palace each morning, with drums and trumpets, on their way to worship on the banks of the Jumna, but never stopped them. 'They do not care for our power and magnificence, said the sultan, according to Barani. The sultan added, not without, it seems, a tinge of regret, 'During our rule the enemies of God and the enemies of the Prophet live under our eyes and in our capital in the most sophisticated and grand manner, in dignity and plenty, enjoying pleasures and abundance, and are held in honour and esteem among the Muslims.' Any regret was private; state policy was more prudent. It did not interfere with local custom and practice. The co-option of the local Hindu nobility gave the administration depth and stability:
...
The sultans, however, kept the ulema out of statecraft, and resisted continual pressure to make forcible conversion a state enterprise. Iqtidar Hussain Siddiqui quotes Barani to affirm that Alauddin Khilji (ruled 1296-1316) held firm to the viewpoint that kingship is separate from Sharia (the holy law) and religious tradition. The affairs of the state concern the King while the enforcement of Sharia comes within the jurisdiction of the Qazis and the Muftis (the expounders of the law). The chronicler lists Khilji's most notable achievements. Cheap grain, cloth and basic necessities for the people are at the top; and although Khilji defeated the feared Mongols and described himself as a second Alexander, his military achievements come afterwards. The repair of mosques is placed eighth, and there is no mention that Khilji earned any earthly or heavenly merit by destroying idols or spreading the faith. He did loot temples and reward converts, but neither was considered worthy of mention. 'They (Turkish Sultans) appear to have realized the need for cooperation between the Sultan and hereditary land chiefs, Hindu and Muslim alike,' writes Siddiqui.
...
For example, Muhammad bin Qasim is said to have sanctioned the privileges of the high castes and the degradation of the low castes. The Brahmans [sic] were granted full religious freedom and also appointed to important positions in Sind and Multan regions'It suggests by implication that the Sultan should foster cordial relations with the hereditary local potentates, for they constituted an important element in Indian polity.
...
Alauddin Khilji gave priests their due, but no more. The sultan limited his interference in the courts of qazis and muftis to rare emergencies. He might dine with the four leading ulema ' Qazi Ziauddin, Maulana Zahir Lung, Maulana Mashayed Kuhrami and Qazi Mughis ' but when Qazi Mughis once suggested to the sultan that the wives and sons of rebels could not be held guilty of a man's crimes, Khilji crisply replied that while the qazi was undoubtedly wise, he had no experience of administration. To what extent was Sharia, the law of Allah, applicable in a multi-faith state? The sultans took a pragmatic rather than a theological view. Alauddin declared, says Barani, 'I do not know whether such commands are permitted or not in the Sharia. I command what I consider to be of benefit to my country and what appears to me opportune under the circumstances. I do not know what God will do with me on the Day of Judgment.'
...
The sultans had reason to be apprehensive about Sufis, who fused divine power with mass popularity, placed ethics above the law and made little distinction between Hindu and Muslim devotees. The influential fourteenth-century divine Sheikh Sharf ud Din Ahmad bin Yahya Maneri ' a contemporary of Feroz Shah Tughlaq ' who was born near Patna in Bihar, ridiculed political zealots who wanted to massacre all infidels. Faith, he argued, was the antonym of conceit, while power was synonymous with it. The Sharia, in his view, had to be interpreted according to the emerging needs of Muslims. The intellectuals of the time could be found as often at the feet of a Sufi as the sultan:
Emperor Akbar's time( 1542-1605) is considered to be height of secularism by a Indian muslim ruler, which it looks, shown as the bad light after the rewiriting of Pakistanis text books in early 1970's. Even the Akbar's successor son thought this is too much, though he didn't went to full anti-hindu. But, it will change to opposite during Aurangzeb time (1658-1707)
Akbar discovered soon that orthodoxy was the big obstacle to his vision of a more shared culture in court. Or, as that superb, if obsequious, intellectual and historian Abul Fadl (author of Akbarnama and Ain-i-Akbari) put it: did the religious and worldly tendencies of men have no common ground?
In 1564, Akbar abolished the jiziya, a radical step towards justice, and banned cow slaughter to promote emotional integration. He further mollified Hindu angst by halting interfaith marriages, since Hindus felt that the traffic generally went in one direction; there was rarely an instance of a Muslim girl being wed to a Hindu boy. But social reform affected Hindus as well: child-marriage, a traditional Hindu practice, was banned and the ages sixteen and fourteen were set as the legal age for wedlock for boys and girls. Polygamy was prohibited, unless the wife was barren. Widow remarriage, another taboo among upper-caste Hindus, was permitted, while marriage between cousins, a Muslim practice, became taboo.
...
The most controversial Akbar innovation was an ideology known as Din-i-Ilahi, literally, Faith of God. But which God was he talking about, or had he invented a new one altogether? Abul Fadl, the careful chronicler, treats it, in Akbarnama, as an interfaith dialogue between Sunnis, Shias, Ismailis, Sufis, Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Jains, Sikhs and Portuguese priests, rather than an epiphany.
I will skip all intermediate period, as it was already hinted previous quoted.

1947: For Jinnah who is secular by makeup, Islam is a political expediency to use the sentiments of the time for a new country. Soon

One of his Parsi friends, Jamshed Nusserwanjee, told Hector Bolitho, on 10 March 1952, ‘Mr Jinnah wanted the minorities to stay in Pakistan. He promised them full protection, and he kept his promise. But, unfortunately, trouble began in West Pakistan and most of Hindus left. I saw him in tears on 7th January 1948, when he visited a camp of minorities in Karachi…Mr Jinnah had no friendliness for the activities of Muslim priests or ulema. He had never any kind of outward show for religious ceremonies or prayers. He had no ill feeling towards Hindus. He was a type of Constitutional ruler. Jinnah was deeply distressed by anti-Hindu riots. His famous icy reserve is said to have broken down in public only twice; once, on 22 February 1929, at the funeral of his young but estranged wife, Ruttie, at the Khoja cemetery in Mazgaon, Mumbai, after he had sat in tense silence for five hours. The second occasion was when he visited a Hindu refugee camp in Karachi on 7 January 1948. He told an aide, Mohammad Noman, bitterly, ‘They used to call me Quaid-e-Azam but now they call me Qatil-e-Azam [The Great Killer].’ There is sufficient textual as well as anecdotal illustration to indicate that Jinnah did not fully understand the theocratic forces that would claim Pakistan.
...
Jinnah’s antithesis was a powerful intellectual and ideologue, Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (1903–79), founder of the Jamaat-e- Islami, who developed a model independent of both Gandhi’s plural India and Jinnah’s secular- Muslim Pakistan. ‘Maududi,’ writes Francis Robinson, ‘was the founder of Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ – or, better put, the Islamist movement – in South Asia, and the most powerful influence on its development worldwide.

1953: While India created his constitution by 1950 , Pakistan struggled with "ideological confusion" w.r.t what their constitution should be - Jinnah's vision of secular with Muslim Majority OR Pure Islamic republic with Sharia OR does religion has any role in governance and Does the democracy is possible under Islamic law OR status of minorities etc. thus delaying the creation of constitution to 1956.

This is the instance Pakistani Army gets the credit over its role in controlling disturbance over civilian governance.
Islamists fought their first street battle for the future of their dreams in 1953 through a question: who is a Muslim? The Jamaat-e-Islami, in collusion with some Punjab politicians who were playing their own games, initiated the first communal riots in Pakistan. Their target was a sect called the Ahmadiyas who professed to be Muslims.5 The most important Pakistani Ahmadiya of the period was the brilliant Zafarulla Khan, a Cabinet minister who argued persuasively in the United Nations on the Kashmir dispute.
The Jamaat-e-Islami formed a coalition of religious groups and began a campaign in 1953 to pressurize the state to declare Ahmadiyas non-Muslims, to dismiss them from government, and seize the assets of their businessmen. Over 2,000 Ahmadiyas were killed before the federal government called out the armed forces, who imposed limited martial law and quickly restored peace
...
But it was inevitable that when Pakistan adopted its Constitution on 23 March 1956, it would describe itself as an ‘Islamic Republic’. Few politicians cared (or dared) to examine what such a republic might mean.

Iskander Mirza (56-58) : First president after constitution is created and coup
In 1956, West Pakistan was combined into a single province, called One Unit, and given parity with East Pakistan, since elections could not be postponed for ever. As Ian Talbot writes, this could ‘be understood as an attempt to safeguard the center from a populist Bengali challenge. Indeed one reading of the causes of Pakistan’s first military coup in October 1958 is the need to postpone elections which would have endangered Punjabi class and institutional interests’. Military rule came on the evening of 7 October 1958, when President Mirza and General Ayub Khan abrogated the Constitution, abolished legislatures, banned political parties, and imposed martial law. Reflecting the temperament of the time, the coup was civilized.

Authority is rarely shared in a dictatorship. Mirza, having used Ayub Khan, now tried to get rid of him. The army was ahead of civilians; it had tapped Mirza’s phone. Brigadier Yahya Khan (later Ayub’s successor) intercepted a call made by Mirza to Syed Amjad Ali, whose son was scheduled to marry Mirza’s daughter, in which the president said he would ‘sort Ayub Khan out in a few days’. Ayub Khan moved first. On 27 October 1958, three generals were sent to get Mirza’s resignation. He had retired to bed when they arrived. Summoned, he turned up in his dressing gown and promptly signed on the dotted line. He was packed off to comfortable retirement abroad. Pakistan settled down to a decade of what its first dictator described as a ‘revolutionary’ regime..

Ayub Khan (58-69): Even at this stage, Military is still interested in ruling keeping the Islamists at distance, though use it whenever they want to go against 'Hindu' India. But Ayub gets the ire of the people for 1965 war for not changing and forced to resign.
Ayub Khan and the military brass, still steeped in Sandhurst culture, made clear their dislike for Maududi and his socio-political agenda.

Yahya Khan ( 69-71): Yahya conducts first elections to calm the public and miscalculates the election expectations. Bengali Muslims are considered inferior due to their secular nature and Sanskritian origin of the language and their cultural affinities. For their shock, Bengali Muslim gets the majority, but West Pakistani Muslims don't want to give the control. This leads to 1971 war and Bangladesh born. Yahya resigns and conducting Elections again.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ( 71-73) : in 1973, After modifying constitution, first signs of Islamisation of education system starts.

God's General Zia-ul-Haq (78-88): Disciple of the
One of Zia’s most important projects was an intensified conversion of school history into anti-Hindu and anti-India distortions. India and the Hindu were converted into caricatures, with two outstanding features: cowardice and deviousness. The old chestnut, that one Muslim Pakistani soldier was equal to ten Indians, was revived, although fantasy valour never did translate into fantasy victory.

Pakistan’s most curious assault, in the process of distancing itself from India, has been on its own past. Some rewriting of history was self-serving, as for instance when Bhutto added a chapter on ‘Islamic history’ to eighth-grade textbooks, linking the Prophet’s benediction to the ‘victory’ of brave Pak soldiers in the 1965 war with India. Perhaps such an exalted alibi was needed for psychological confidence after Ayub and Bhutto promised triumph in Kashmir and delivered only a depressing status quo.

Zia’s manipulation of education, however, introduced deep, communal distortions from the primary-school level that no successor, civilian or military, has had the courage to correct. ... Professor Shahida Kazi, writing in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper (27 March 2005), notes, ‘So deep is this indoctrination that any attempt to uncover the facts or reveal the truth is considered nothing less than blasphemous.’

Pakistan is home to Mehrgarh, one of the world’s oldest excavated settlements dating to 7,000 BC, located in Baluchistan, Harappa and Mohenjodaro, urban cities of the Indus valley civilization which flourished in the millennium between 2800 BC and 1800 BC. But, as Professor Kazi notes, ‘Our [official] history begins from AD 712, when [Arab invader] Mohammad bin Qasim arrived in the subcontinent and conquered the port of Debal. Take any social studies or Pakistan studies book, it starts with Mohammad bin Qasim. What was there before his arrival? Yes, cruel and despotic Hindu kings like Raja Dahir and the oppressed and uncivilized populace anxiously waiting for a “liberator” to free them from the clutches of such cruel kings. And when the liberator came, he was welcomed with open arms and the grateful people converted to Islam en masse. Did it really happen? This version of our history conveniently forgets that the area where our country is situated has had a long and glorious history of 6,000 years.

Forget Mohenjodaro. We do not know enough about it. But recorded history tells that before Mohammad bin Qasim, this area, roughly encompassing Sindh, Punjab and some parts of NWFP, was ruled by no less than 12 different dynasties from different parts of the world, including the Persians (during the Achamaenian period), the Greeks comprising the Bactrians, Scythians and Parthians, the Kushanas from China, and the Huns (of Attila fame) who also came from China, beside a number of Hindu dynasties including great rulers like Chandragupta Maurya and Asoka. During the Gandhara period, this region had the distinction of being home to one of the biggest and most important universities of the world at our very own Taxila. We used to be highly civilized, well-educated, prosperous, creative and economically productive people, and many countries benefited a lot from us, intellectually as well as economically. This is something we better not forget. But do we tell this to our children? No. And so the myth continues from generation to generation.’

Yvette Claire Rosser, who has specialized in education in South Asia, points out that ‘this blinkered approach to history was not always the case’. Till 1972, textbooks included sections on the history of the subcontinent, describing the Hindu era, the Muslim era and the colonial era. History textbooks, such as Indo Pak History, Part I, published in 1951, had chapters on the ‘Ramayana and Mahabharata Era’, ‘Aryans’, ‘The Era of Rajputs’. But the two-nation theory, the fundamental premise of partition, demanded different histories as well, even if one had to be invented in the name of Pakistan’s ideology.

It is only with Bhutto and then with the active intervention of Zia ul Haq that non-Islamic history has been discarded, and worse still ‘vilified and mocked and transformed into the evil other’, so much so that Gandhi, whom a textbook published as late as 1970 eulogized and mentioned having died for Pakistan, began to be referred to as a ‘conniving bania’. Islamiyat was made a required subject up until class eight.’

This is Big Aha! moment for me.
It's not the change in education, it is depth and breadth of change towards hatred(based on religion) and taught in elementary schools to high school. Now we have 2 generations of Pakistani educated in it. This is not even in Madrassas, it is in the national schools. Vilification takes the many forms which I will skip.

This explains intense antagonism. What type of logic can change their mindset after all this time?

How can one explain to them about the past that separation of land in 1947 exist only British administered locations not princely states(they have choice). Neither Kashmiri King and People's representative Sheiq Abdullah wanted to be part of Pakistan, King wants independence, Abdullah wants to be with India (at least 40's and later 60's). Even today, they want independence, not with Pakistan. Even for this to happen, they have to vacate 1/3 of Kashmir. They know it Kashmiri's never agree for it, that's why have send mercenaries ( They called First Jihad) in 1947.

Zia repeatedly stressed (including in interviews with the author) that Pakistan and Israel were the only two nations that had been created for the defence of a faith. Pakistan, therefore, could not survive except as a model Islamic state on the lines of Nizam-e-Mustafa (Rule of the Prophet). The social order had to be driven towards the ‘perfection’ of the golden age of the Prophet. Zia claimed legitimacy from the Quran and the Hadith: as long as a head of state followed the injunctions of Allah, it was mandatory for subjects to be obedient. This was the logic of a caliph.
Interesting parallels. it is like convincing Jews in Israel that Israel is some body's land.

Zia often wondered what would happen to his purification regime after his departure, and could be piously pessimistic. More than a decade and a half after his death, the reformist Pervez Musharraf scrapped the Hudood ordinances in 2006, and in 2009 the Federal Shariat Court, reflecting a similar spirit, declared that drinking alcohol was only a minor offence. It decreed that punishment for this
offence should only be light strokes from a date-palm stick, rather than Zia’s eighty heavy lashes. But despite some correction of Zia’s puritanical excesses, no one could, in theory, challenge the march towards Sharia as the logical goal of an Islamic state.
...
Zia nurtured the 1980s as the pregnant decade for future jihad, encouraging seminaries that subscribed to the hardline Salafi ideology. South Punjab became the biggest reservoir for recruits to the Kashmir jihad, thanks partly to organizations like the Tablighi Jamaat which had seeded the area with their rabid version of religion. The LeT even began to permit women among its jihadis, giving them a twenty-one-day course in ideological and military training. The explanation was that these women would be able to defend Pakistan if their men were on jihad abroad.

It was estimated that by 2010 at least a million Pakistani children from the ‘lower rungs of society’ were studying in over 20,000 madrasas. The growth of jihadis from this resource seemed immune to the highs and lows of the roller-coaster ride from the Soviet defeat and Taliban rule in Kabul, to the Taliban collapse of 2001. They were sustained by the belief that faith made them invincible. As a Taliban spokesman famously told a Western journalist, ‘You have a watch; we have time.’ If the 1980s were manipulated by General Zia, the 1990s belonged to the Taliban, a group created in Pakistan for operations in Afghanistan by Zia’s successor, Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfiqar Bhutto. Benazir, who once described the Taliban (literally, students) as ‘my children’, put the Taliban amir, Mullah Omer, into the field to halt spiralling chaos and bring Kabul into Islamabad’s fold.
It is mind boggling to read that Million kids are trained in these madrassas from early childhood. What for they will be used for is any body's guess. No logic will work.

This is reminds me
1996-08-03
Q: (L) Okay, we have the 3600 year comet cluster cycle, the Sun twin is another cycle altogether, and then we have the wave, which is a Grand Cycle. So, we have three things causing a transition in nature?

A: Like "biorhythms."

Q: (T) And we have a triple bad day coming up! Or a good day, depending on which way you look at it.

A: Bad day if you are John D. Rockefeller, good day if you are Mahatma Gandhi.
When I read this C's comment for the first time, I wondered Did Gandhi really felt hopeless and what is the scope of his impress( Indian subcontinent or the World in general) and why C's used Gandhi name ( Didn't they find any body else other than Gandhi?). Yes, Gandhi was heart broken when the nation was split and worst violence witnessed.

After reading all this, it looks to me that C's comments have different meaning. I will leave this book's comments here.
 
Last week, UN declared Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar (Who lives in Pakistan, which Pakistan agrees and denies it as per its needs) as a global terrorist. India had been trying for this UN declaration for 10 years and China had blocked it until now. Recently, China had agreed for the UN resolution for facilitating the ban. Reasons China given is there is change of wording in the resolution,( resolution was raised 4 or 5 times during last decade, if the wording is the issue, they would have raised long time back) while other press is saying it is due to pressure from US, UK and France. It is up to Pakistan to implement it and they can prop another one from their numerous organizations.

The reality is, Even with the pressure from others, Chinese won't do it unless they want it. In this case, Chinese might have thought noise US is making not worth the risk ( accused of double standards - complaining of Muslim terrorism in its eastern front, but supporting Pakistani muslim terrorist organization) . It looked China removed its contested areas ( Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir) from Indian map in its BRI summit.

As usual Modi, depicted it as a victory of his foreign policy and suggested more to come on this. These elections has to be closed before this polticisation stops and leaders starts talking responsible.

On the other end, All Indian parties promised to remove( or considering for removal) the special status given to Kashmir. So special status is bound to go out. Kashmiri politicians warned/complained about it, but not much reaction from public as such.

Ruling BJP claimed that Special status is not a issue with J &K people. Recent interview, Modi claimed that " These Jammu & kashmir politicians talk one thing in Kashmir and another thing in Delhi". He claims that last local village level election, there is no violence at all and 75% percent voter turn out( Well, it is in 83% hindu dominated Jammu and 30% in Muslim dominated Kashmir Valley). He also hinted that Delhi's Aid will directly flow to the local administration instead of through state elected leaders. It is common (In India) that any special benefit that is given to a underprivileged group is taken by the few members from top layer of that group. Only time will tell what will happen.

Mean while, Kashmir people stuck between Pakistani militants and Indian forces and there are some reports the militants are losing the support. It is not clear whether it is isolated incident or common pattern. It is reasonable to assume that independent minded kashmiri's lived in secular state through out history doesn't like militant sharia.

Once my son asked me why can't India give Independence to Kashmir or to Pakistan. Answer is not that simple as giving independence to any body comes with a gun and identity (god or religion or victim hood or historical discrimination or supporter of certain powerful empire ).

Well, Kashmir(short name for Jammu and Kashmir) has 3 parts muslim dominated densely populated Kashmir Valley, Jammu (hindu dominated, here is many instances terrorists killed huge number of hindu and declared to get rid of Hindu's from Jammu) and Buddhist dominated Ladakh . This itself is dived across India, Pakistan and China. This is assuming that Pakistan, a country known as "Army with Nation" will be satisfied with it and abandons of terrorism supply chain and Kashmiri's like sharia that comes with it. Kashmir doesn't help Pakistani's other than satisfy the ego of "religious identity" ingrained for generations to continue to support the other Warrior adventures else where on the behalf of other wealthy players, so that Deep state can maintain the legitimacy among its poor citizen to avoid the fate of Ayub Khan. Pakistan has its own internal problems in Baluchistan, North West Frontier provinces, new powerful out of control Taliban(which wants its own sharia state) to deal with and Kashmir will be another one if given and its resources are meek. Kashmir is a side is issue to keep pacifying average Pakistani's to support its adventures elsewhere.

The Recent 20 billion from Saudi's to surround Iran and recent complete replacement of Imran Khan cabinet with Deep state players tells a different story itself.

I will review the next book I read "India: Siege within The challenges to Nation's Integrity" which talks about its internal challenges.
 
A group of armed militants stormed a five star hotel in Gwadar port city located in South-western coast of Balochistan province of Pakistan on Saturday afternoon.

Government and security officials have confirmed that the gunmen attacked the Pearl Continental five star hotel in Gwadar, triggering a gun battle that lasted for several hours, leaving at least three people dead and four others wounded.

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistani military has confirmed that a group of three militants were involved in the attack.

According to a statement released by ISPR, the militants initially shot dead the security guard of the hotel and then entered the building of the hotel.

Earlier reports emerging from the area suggested that five armed militants have taken position inside the hotel.

Baluchistan Liberation Army, a separatist group operating in the province claimed responsibility for the attack.

“After more than 10 hours of continuous battle and achieving all their targets the BLA fighters have used their last bullets on them and have left this world,” the group said in a statement.

Kandahar Governor said that 19 armed Taliban have been arrested, including a commander of the ISIS group by the National Security
Forces in this province.

Kandahar province, Hayatullah Hayat, told a news conference on Saturday, 21th of a news conference: "The terrorist 20-year-old network arrested during the last ten days by the narcotics and veteran officials of Kandahar National Security Department. So, they had two plans to organize and carry out their activities against the government and Afghan oppressed people in the city of Kandahar and in some districts to visit Ramadan's month of Ramadan. "

"The members of the Yadi network are 3 types; a group targeting terrorist activities in the city (tribal leaders and government officials) is targeted and terrorized," said the Kandahar office's news paper. The group is armed Taliban, arrested during a clash in some districts, and the third group is the opposition, to launch terrorist acts in other provinces. "

According to the newsletter, one of these insurgents, a terrorist commander of the Islamic Emirate of the Islamic Emirate, was named as Abdul Salaam, who was responsible for the recruitment of the ISIS group in Kandahar.

Kandahar Governor Hayatullah Hayat said in the media that all the arrested suspects have also acknowledged their crimes and will be punished in the light of law.
 
Kandahar Governor said that 19 armed Taliban have been arrested, including a commander of the ISIS group by the National Security

Pakistan security forces kill attackers after raid on luxury hotel
A general view of the Pearl Continental (PC) hotel in Gwadar, Pakistan April 11, 2017. Picture taken April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

Pakistani security forces have killed three separatist insurgents who had stormed a luxury hotel in the port city of Gwadar 24 hours earlier, the military said on Sunday.

Gunmen storm five-star hotel in Pakistan, killing at least one
Gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Pakistan's southwestern port city of Gwadar on Saturday, killing at least one guard and battling security forces inside, officials and the army said.

Islamic State claims 'province' in India for first time after clash in Kashmir
FILE PHOTO: A member of the Iraqi rapid response forces walks past a wall painted with the black flag commonly used by Islamic State militants, at a hospital damaged by clashes during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Wahda district of Mosul, Iraq, January 8, 2017.  REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo

Islamic State (IS) claimed for the first time that it has established a "province" in India, after a clash between militants and security forces in the contested Kashmir region killed a militant with alleged ties to the group.

~~~
Factbox - Who's with whom: Indian parties seek partners as election nears end
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati (L) speaks as Akhilesh Yadav, chief of Samajwadi Party (SP), looks on during a joint news conference to announce their alliance for the upcoming national election, in Lucknow, January 12, 2019. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar/Files
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling coalition is confident of a second term in office but opposition parties are talking to each other to seal an alliance, hoping to topple him after general election results are announced on May 23.

Indians vote in penultimate phase of seven-round general election
A man holding a child reacts behind a voting compartment as he prepares to cast his vote at a polling station during the sixth phase of the general election, in New Delhi, India, May 12, 2019. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis

Voters in north India lined up early on Sunday to cast their ballots in the second-to-last round of a seven-phase general election, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi facing a diverse group of opposition parties seeking to deny him a second term.
 
The election campaign ended for the final phase. This election is considered to be the bitterest during recent decades. Modi doesn't have wave, while the Anti-Modi scared of his anti-corruption drive that is in pipeline, if he gets elected. So both camps are desperate. Indian elections are fought with calculations of Voter identity ( caste, regional, religion, language etc.) at the constituency by constituency, Region by Region etc. This identity politics during election season creates strong identity appeals, competing reactionary postures and sequence of controversies. Nothing is out of bound for controversy.

Last week, there is good amount violence in the state of West Bengal, the current Anti-Modi chief Minister was desperate to hold on to her control and to block the inquiries of financial misdeeds. BJP used its Hindu card to create a viable opposition in the state( where old ruling communist govt which ruled for decades disappeared from the scene) making this campaign more bitter and desperate.


Here is one popped up this week, Whether MK Gandhi's killer is a Patriot or not.

After the election campaign season, Modi went for a break. Whether it is called political or not depends on the viewer.

Declaration of opinion poll results are banned during the Polling duration( 1.5 months). Due to the bitter rivalries, Election season is spread across 1.5 months so that security forces can be moved across the country for election conduct.

After this Sunday's poll is over, Opinion polls will start flowing.
 
Indian elections are fought with calculations of Voter identity ( caste, regional, religion, language etc.) at the constituency by constituency, Region by Region etc. This identity politics during election season creates strong identity appeals, competing reactionary postures and sequence of controversies. Nothing is out of bound for controversy.

India's election process is confusing - to someone who is not educated in their Voter Identity system.

Warships and wives: debate in Indian election turns increasingly ugly
FILE PHOTO: India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves towards his supporters during a roadshow in Varanasi, India, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo

From jibes over the prime minister's wife to criticism of the main opposition leader's family holiday three decades ago, one trend stands out in this year's general election campaign in India: this time, it's personal.

At least 10 wounded in grenade blast in India's northeastern Assam state
At least 10 people were wounded in a grenade explosion in the northeastern Indian state of Assam on Wednesday but no militant group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, police said.

Farm loans and ports on Indian opposition's post-election agenda
N Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, poses for a picture after an interview with Reuters in Amaravthi, India, May 16, 2019. REUTERS/Krishna N. Das

A loan waiver programme for farmers and privatisation of air and sea ports will be among the post-election priorities if India's opposition parties pull off an unexpected victory in the national vote, Telugu Desam Party leader N. Chandrababu Naidu told Reuters.

Nine killed in gun battles in Indian-controlled Kashmir
People offer funeral prayers for Naseer Ahmad Pandit, a separatist militant, after he was killed in a gun battle with Indian soldiers, in Karimabad village in south Kashmir's Pulwama district May 16, 2019. REUTERS/Younis Khaliq

Indian troops and separatist militants clashed in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday and nine people were killed, officials said, the latest casualties in a new phase of violence in the 30-year insurgency.

Modi faces backlash for backing terror accused candidate Pragya Thakur
Pragya Thakur, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate in the parliamentary election, gestures atop a car during her election campaign rally in Bhopal, India, April 30, 2019.  REUTERS/Raj Patidar

For nearly a decade, Pragya Thakur was known mostly as the saffron-clad Hindu ascetic shuttling in and out of Indian courts, flanked by police, facing charges under an anti-terrorism law for plotting a bomb attack on Muslims.

Lawbreakers to lawmakers? The 'criminal candidates' standing in India's election
FILE PHOTO - An electrician tests LED-light fitted boards with symbols of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and main opposition Congress party at a workshop in Ahmedabad, India, April 15, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave

India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has one unwanted lead in this month's general election race - according to data from an electoral watchdog it is fielding the most candidates among the major parties who are facing criminal charges. Its main rival, Congress, is just a step behind.

Two Indian climbers die on Mount Kanchenjunga in Nepal
FILE PHOTO:  A view of the Kanchenjunga mountain along the Himalayan mountain range on the frontier between Nepal and Sikkim is seen March 14, 2005

Two Indian climbers died near the summit of Mount Kanchenjunga in Nepal and a Chilean mountaineer was missing on the world's third highest mountain, their hiking company said on Thursday.

Two Indian climbers dead, Irishman missing in Nepal's Himalayas
FILE PHOTO: A tourist is silhouetted as he takes pictures of Mount Nuptse (C) as Mount Everest (L) is covered with clouds in Solukhumbu district, also known as the Everest region, in this picture taken November 30, 2015.  REUTERS/File Photo

Two Indian climbers died and an Irish mountaineer is missing on the Himalayan peaks of Nepal, officials said on Friday, taking the number of climbers dead or missing this week to six and raising questions about safety and training standards.
 
India's election process is confusing - to someone who is not educated in their Voter Identity system.
Yes, it is confusing. One way to look at India's diversity is like looking at EU. India has 29 states while EU has 28 member states, India had more than 22 languages( numbers widely vary) while EU has 28 languages. In Western political system where every thing is harmonized by the Post WW II pentagon/Multinational corporation dominated dollar system, so you don't see the distinctions that much for outsiders.

If I understand correctly, Russia, China also has diverse population, but central government has full control in those countries. Stalinist Communism in Russia and Chinese culturally trust their leadership, but in India, given the democratic nation, these divisions comes out much more open.

Warships and wives: debate in Indian election turns increasingly ugly
From jibes over the prime minister's wife to criticism of the main opposition leader's family holiday three decades ago, one trend stands out in this year's general election campaign in India: this time, it's personal.
Modi left his wife 50 years back and never saw her. During this election, to appeal to the Punjabi Sikh voters ( north western state) , Modi accused Rajiv Gandhi ( father of Rahul Gandhi) as being "India's Most Corrupt Politician". Sikh's have lot of grievances against Gandhi family for "Post Indira Gandhi Assassination" violence against Sikh's in 1984. BJP doesn't have much presence in Indian Punjab, but that is how voter splitting appeals go.

In 1984, When his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh body guard in revenge for her military operation to enter their holy place. In the immediate aftermath of riots, LOT of Sikhs were killed in Delhi and adjacent states while there enough accusations of ruling party deliberately doing it. Rajiv Gandhi, a airline pilot who doesn't have interest in politics reluctantly came into politics before that. After Indira Gandhi's death, Rajiv Gandhi became PM, first few years were very promising, but soon he started to make series of political mistakes that contributed for the losing of trust in public. His Son Rahul Gandhi, who doesn't fit into Politics still in the lime light because if they are not in politics, they may end up in Jail due to many corruption which is endemic in Indian Politics.

Farm loans and ports on Indian opposition's post-election agenda

A loan waiver programme for farmers and privatisation of air and sea ports will be among the post-election priorities if India's opposition parties pull off an unexpected victory in the national vote, Telugu Desam Party leader N. Chandrababu Naidu told Reuters.
This guy is from my home state and his CM seat is under serious threat. These types of promises are pretty normal pattern in Indian democracy.

Modi faces backlash for backing terror accused candidate Pragya Thakur

For nearly a decade, Pragya Thakur was known mostly as the saffron-clad Hindu ascetic shuttling in and out of Indian courts, flanked by police, facing charges under an anti-terrorism law for plotting a bomb attack on Muslims.

These Hindutva gang tend to make sensational comments to stir up and project themselves or some times appeal to people( 80% of country is Hindu's and out of which 90% secular ) who thinks minority appeasement went too far. There is some truth to it.

In a way, Rajiv Gandhi in late 80's tried to appease Muslim against the supreme court decision by changing Constitution (Shah bano case) and to appease Hindu voters, he decided to open the gates of controversial Babri Musjid for Hindu's who claims that it is Birth place of Rama ( These gates were closed for more than 40 years). This is one of the series of blunders politically novice Rajiv gandhi did during his short tenure before his assassination by LTTE( That is a different story in itself). It is this incident that gave the much needed weapon for the Hindutva gang and subsequent nationwide marches, riots, arrests, counter agitations that lead to 1991 Babri Mosque demolition. It is this controversy that gave raise of BJP that has mere 2 seats in 1980 elections to raise to ruling power in 2014.

But, BJP knows it can't win any election just based on just religion given the secular nature of the nation and scars of communal violence that works against them. That is why, they need person like Modi who is good at many fronts including Economy. By its nature of huge population of 1.3 population and decades of corruption, any thing one does, you will have 3 persons who haven't benefited for every person got benefit.

But, For national appeal, these type of sensational comments tend to backfire. So, low level or medium level Politicians can make these type of comment, but If the Senior level people makes these sensational comments, the person needs to be rolled out. So generalizing is some what tricky. It is dirty politics in general every party does it whether call themselves religious or secular.
 
But, For national appeal, these type of sensational comments tend to backfire. So, low level or medium level Politicians can make these type of comment, but If the Senior level people makes these sensational comments, the person needs to be rolled out. So generalizing is some what tricky. It is dirty politics in general every party does it whether call themselves religious or secular.

seek10,

You give a unique and in-depth view of India/Pakistan politics. Maybe you could write a SOTT article. :thup:
 
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