Re: India admits to break up of Pakistan
See, this weak and passive mentality is the problem here. Most countries have adopted zero tolerance approach to foreign proxies that exploit internal differences (including India). They condemn it in absolute terms, whereas some Pakistanis think they are doing their country a favour by making it seem like how it is just ‘expected’ for enemies to wreck havoc in their country. That’s not the right attitude. Every time the name India is mentioned, they think they have to mention fifty other reasons to undermine such a massively important factor, and go back to same old self pitying and obsessive and excessive auto-critiquing. Why so much defensiveness and passiveness over the issue of Indian involvement?
I’m astonished at such sad levels of insecurity that just because if the role of India in breaking up Pakistan is examined, somehow the whole narrative on Bangladesh history will change. I’m sorry I don’t believe in such stuff nor I have such insecurities. History is history, and it should be written as it happened. If India played a role in breaking up Pakistan, their role needs to be identified, examined and analysed. You don’t ignore such massive chunk of historical fact for some wishy washy desire for ‘introspection’. You can have all sorts of introspection on how the heavy handed League of Nations sanctions ‘created the German problem’, but the fact is that Nazis also wanted a Second World War since day one, simply cannot be ignored. This logic of either you raise your collective fists at India or you totally undermine the damage they had caused makes no sense!
As with Bengali problem, by virtue of geographical detachment and sectarian differences, the Irish Question lasted for centuries. I fail to see how in post colonial Subcontinent with such deeply rooted cultural and socio-economic differences coupled with all anxieties of being under a fragile nation state order how Pakistan could have avoided the Bengali Problem all together. Though, that is not to say that would have never been able to sorted out or control it some extent had they avoided a war. I have no such Utopian fantasies of seeing Pakistan free of any sort of divides and differences. In all so civilised and equality packed West, you still have problems of separatist/nationalist campaigns in Catalonia, Basque, Bavaria, Sardinia, Frisia, Silesia, Latgale. I can give you 50 more examples of separatist campaigns from all over Europe. In my own backyard, we have issue of Scotland, Cornish and Welsh nationalism. So just because socio-economic, ethnic/lingua/religious exist in your country, doesn’t mean you take such passive attitude towards external interference, and rationalize it. Good for Europeans countries for drawing line on cross border interference long time ago. Imagine if Brits start fanning the Catalonian movement?
Of course Pakistan hasn’t learned anything from Bangladesh debacle. How many people in the country still think that stealing a electoral mandate is wrong, electoral injustice is recipe for a national scale disaster, electoral reforms are an absolute necessity and bureaucracy infested with politicized bureaucracy is a grave problem? Yes the question also applied to hypocrites who pretend to mourn East Pakistan.
The racist bickering that’s going in this thread over the pathetic notion of ‘Punjabi Army’ is the one the many toxic legacies so called ‘introspection’ of Bangladeshi crises. The punching bag culture putting the whole blame of certain ethnicity and a national institution has furthered the divides and mistrust in Pakistan. Time to re-write proper History as it happened, and examine all the internal and external factors that resulted in absolute catastrophe.