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The Cossack hug means real friendship

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The PPP has shamefully buckled to external pressure and joined the obsequious Arab League in supporting Anti-Assad resolutions. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto would be turning in his grave as the despicable stand taken by the Zaradri coterie. The founder of the PPP sent fighters aircraft to defend Damascus in 1973 and guarded the citadel of Islam. Haafez Al Assad supported his friend ZAB to the very last. Today the Zardari cabal stands against those who sheltered Murtaza Bhutto and many Palestinians.

Ellen Barry Has written an article in the NY Times titled “As Nations Line Up Against Syrian Government, Russia Sides Firmly With Assad” in which she laments the fact that Putin has taken a stand firmly in favor of Assad.

“There are not many world capitals today where President Bashar al-Assad of Syria can count on unstinting support. But diplomats who passed through Moscow this week hoping to secure Russia’s help in forcing him from power were met with cold refusal” she writes. Western powers dislike the resurgence of Russian defiance an they dislike any country that has taken a rejectionist stand against Israel.

Ellen correctly describes the situation “Moscow entrenched itself as Mr. Assad’s political bulwark on Friday, declaring that it would, with China, oppose a Security Council resolution calling on Mr. Assad to step down. A deputy foreign minister, Gennadi Gatilov, told the Interfax news agency that the resolution was “doomed to failure” unless the demand for Mr. Assad’s ouster was dropped and a call for opposition forces to renounce violence was included.”

There seems to be consensus in Pakistan in building relations with Moscow. Several high level trips have set the ground work beyond detent.

Ellen highlights the fact that Moscow is still supplying Assad with $550 million worth of fighter planes.

“I do not understand why we should justify ourselves for that, constantly blush, turn pale, be damp with sweat,” Mr. Ryabkov told the radio station Ekho Moskvy on Thursday. “We are acting within our rights.”

However Ellen and other Western observers fail to notice the history– that Russia stands by its friends through thick and thin and the seminal fact that Russia has a naval base in Syria which it does not want to give up.

The reality is that Moscow is “deeply distrustful of the West’s intentions both in Russia and in the Middle East. He has accused the United States of orchestrating uprisings in both regions.”

It is also true that Beijing feels the same way. That’s why it is holding the line in Syria.

Moscow and Beijing feel betrayed by the antics in Libya. 35000 Chinese operatives had to leave Libya because of the Western campaign against Qaddafi.

“Libya is a particular grievance. Mr. Putin seethed over the aftermath of the United Nations resolution establishing what was supposed to be a no-fly zone in Libya, which China and Russia last March agreed not to veto. Many in the government contend that President Dmitri A. Medvedev was deceived by Western allies who then used the resolution to justify airstrikes to drive Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power.”

“We were naïve and stupid,” said Mr. Satanovsky, an influential analyst. “The Chinese were the same. Trust this: That was the last mistake of such type.”

Ellen brilliantly describes the other reasons for Russian recalcitrance.

She says “Some Russian analysts warn that if Mr. Assad falls, it will lead to a broader war pitting Arab nations against Iran. Mr. Satanovsky said that Russia could see “maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of refugees coming from Iranian territory into Azerbaijan and Russia” if that were to occur, as well as ethnic violence against Christian minorities and the spread of terrorism. He said Russia supported not Mr. Assad, but stability.”

“After Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan, why should Russia once more look at all this with the idea that everything will be all right..This is not a choice between good and bad, this is a choice between bad — which we have now — and terrible and apocalyptic.”

These are the thoughts of Moscow encapsulated by Ellen.

Other countries are watching. In Pakistan, Washington has conducted more than 250 drone strikes against the citizens of an “ally”.

While the Pakistani parliament evaluates its relationship with Washington, Pakistan is building bridges with Moscow. With Islamabad’s membership in the SCO imminent–Islamabad is leaning away from the US. There are reports that Moscow will be selling arms to Pakistan–first under the umbrella of “Anti-terror”. Mr Putin is slated to visit Islamabad in September and will ink energy and mining deals–including an upgrade of the Russian built Pakistan Steel Mills.

The Cossack hug means real friendship

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'Dead Reckoning' redefines history of 1971

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‘Dead Reckoning’ redefines history of 1971

Sarmila Bose’s book ‘Dead Reckoning’: This ground-breaking book chronicles the 1971 war in South Asia by reconstituting the memories of those on opposing sides of the conflict. 1971 was marked by a bitter civil war within Pakistan and war between India and Pakistan, backed respectively by the Soviet Union and the United States. It was fought over the territory of East Pakistan, which seceded to become Bangladesh. Through a detailed investigation of events on the ground, Sarmila Bose contextualises and humanises the war while analysing what the events reveal about the nature of the conflict itself. The story of 1971 has so far been dominated by the narrative of the victorious side. All parties to the war are still largely imprisoned by wartime partisan mythologies. Bose reconstructs events via interviews conducted in Bangladesh and Pakistan, published and unpublished reminiscences in Bengali and English of participants on all sides, official documents, foreign media reports and other sources. Her book challenges assumptions about the nature of the conflict, and exposes the ways in which the 1971 war is still playing out in the region.

Product code: 455601, ISBN13: 9781849040495, 288 pages, paperback
Published by C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd in 2011

SARMILA BOSE is Senior Research Fellow in the Politics of South Asia at the University of Oxford. She was a political journalist in India and combines academic and media work. She was educated at Bryn Mawr College and Harvard University.

Ms. Sharmila Bose in her paper entitled “Losing the Victims: Problems of Using Women as Weapons in Recounting the Bangladesh War”  paints a picture of the Pakistani military as a disciplined force that spared women and children. She writes:

During my field research on several incidents in East Pakistan during 1971, Bangladeshi participants and eyewitnesses described battles, raids, massacres and executions, but told me that women were not harmed by the army in these events except by chance such as in crossfire. The pattern that emerged from these incidents was that the Pakistan army targeted adult males while sparing women and children.

She also quotes the passage from the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report that I cited above to support her assertion that so many rapes could not have occurred. 20,000-34,000 could not have raped 200,000 to 400,000 women in the space of nine months.

She states in the introduction:

That rape occurred in East Pakistan in 1971 has never been in any doubt. The question is what was the true extent of rape, who were the victims and who the perpetrators and was there any systematic policy of rape by any party, as opposed to opportunistic sexual crimes in times of war.

To try to bolster her argument that the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh could not have raped so many women, she claims:

The number of West Pakistani armed forces personnel in East Pakistan was about 20,000 at the beginning of the conflict, rising to 34,000 by December. Another 11,000 men — civil police and non-combat personnel — also held arms.

For an army of 34,000 to rape on this scale in eight or nine months (while fighting insurgency, guerrilla war and an invasion by India), each would-be perpetrator would have had to commit rape at an incredible rate.

There are numerous reports out there now which negates the well established beliefs. The declassified US reports, Indian military officers account, Pakistan military officers account, General Niazi’s memoirs, Sharmila Bose, Hamoodurahman commission report.

Pakistan Military officers fought hard. Many foreign correspondents speak well of their bravery. It is the bravery of a Muslim soldier that Indian Military got tough fight. These Pakistani Mard-e-Momin fought so hard that they had almost regained the control of East Pakistan from the dirty hands of Mukt-Bahini. When India saw this, She then started the military action which resulted in the fall of Dhaka.

Then  Mujib showed his true colors after the formation of Bangladesh with his BAKSAL party. How he became authoritative and usurped democracy is not a secret anymore. He was going to make Bangladesh part of India that he was killed timely by the Pakistani military officers (yes those Bengalis who never gave up allegiance to Pakistan. I stand in honor for them).

References:
1) Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULpCroezFrY
2) Read “RAW in Bangladesh by ZainulAbidin (an ex-Mukti Bahini member) on 1971 war.
3) Read Blood and tears by a Pakistani writer about 1971 war.
4) Check the website of Federation of American Scientist on 1971 war
5) Read “East Pakistan Tragedy” by L.F. Rushbrook Williams.

Related articles

• Truth about 1971 comes out: Sarmila Bose (timesofislamabad.com)
• 1971: Pakistan soldiers could not have raped so many women (thedawn.com.pk)
• Truth about 1971 (pakistanindependent.com)
• Let the Stranded Pakistanis come back home (thedawn.com.pk)
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan should apologize (teabreak.pk)

'Dead Reckoning' redefines history of 1971

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Liaqat Ali Khan a Pakistani legend

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Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan was, of course, the Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 15, 1947, but it was in the wake of the Quaid’s demise that his leadership capabilities were put to test, And it is during the next three years (1948-51) that his multi-faceted and compelling personality emerges the most conspicuously.
To say that Liaquat was the first PM means saying a great deal. It means that he enjoyed Jinnah’s confidence to the optimal level – a no mean achievement in itself. His confidence meant that Jinnah had found him sincere, able, hardworking and true to the cause Jinnah espoused. Hence, Jinnah’s description of Liaquat as his “right hand” man and, by implication, his political heir.

It also means that except for the Quaid himself, Liaquat stood foremost in the galaxy of Muslim leadership in India at that forking moment in history. Jinnah had picked out Liaquat in 1936 when he got him elected as General Secretary of the All India Muslim League at its Bombay session. This office Liaquat held for 11 years, the most critical period in Muslim India’s history since 1857. He was also the longest serving General Secretary of the AIML, even out-serving the legendry Sir Wazir Hasan.

This was, however, only the beginning of his career as an all-India leader, next only to Jinnah. He would become Deputy Leader of the Muslim League Party in the Central Assembly and member of the Committee of Action, both in 1943, Chairman of the Central Parliamentary Board in 1945 and leader of the Muslim League bloc in the interim government in October 1946, before being named as Pakistan’s Prime Minister in August 1947.

These were some of the highest offices a Muslim could occupy in pre-partition India. What is remarkable about Liaquat is that he did it with singular success and distinction. The 1937-47 decade was, however, a period of apprenticeship for him, a period when his abilities, his intellectual prowess and honesty, his steadfastness to the cause he avowedly stood for, were tried and tested. And he did make the grade. That’s why he was catapulted into the highest executive slot.

In terms of his political acumen, three major events stand out. First, at the Meerut Divisional Conference in March 1939, he propounded partition as the most rational solution to India’s constitutional problem. Coming on the heels of the Sindh Provincial League Conference’s resolution of October 1938, this came as a shot in the arm to the proponents of partition, especially since a more concrete sense, Liaquat represented Central League’s thinking as the issue.

Second, in his interview with Sir Stafford Cripps in December 1939, he proposed three options – the provincial option (i.e, each province be given the option to join in Indian federation or not), a loose confederation with a limited centre, and outright partition between Hindus and Muslims. Remarkably though, these three options constituted the basics of the three major British proposals during the 1940s – the Cripps Plan (1942), the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) and the Mountbatten Plan (1947).

Third, in his talks with Bhulabhai Desai, leader of the Congress Party in the Central Assembly in 1944, he proposed parity between Congress and the League in any future set-up at the centre, and it became the core point in the Desai-Liaquat formula. This was the first time this cardinal principle which the League had long demanded in any coalition set-up, but was stoutly denied, had been conceded by the Congress at any level. Once lifted beyond the pale of controversy, this key provision became the basis for the quota of seats for Hindus and Muslims/Congress and the League in the subsequent Wavell (1945) and interim government (1946) proposals. Thus, Liaquat’s contribution assumes a milestone status in getting the principle of parity accepted.

Jinnah was, reportedly, a little “unhappy” about Liaquat having contracted the “Pact” behind his back (since he lay ill at Matheran), but was fully alive to both its significance and its long-term implications. He therefore, accepted Liaquat’s “explanation’’ and exonerated him of any “breach of trust”, which Sir Yamin Khan alleges in his Nama-i-A’amaal. This was in sharp contrast to the treatment that Bhulabhai Desai had received at the hands of his Congress colleagues. Though blessed by Gandhi in his talks with Liaquat at the time, and despite his critical contribution in the INA trials (1945) and getting the prosecution charges of “treason” quashed, Desai was even denied a Congress ticket in the 1945-46 elections. Soon after, Desai, despite his great services to the Congress, died, broken-hearted – unwept, unsung, and unhonoured.
However, the acid test for Liaquat came in the wake of Jinnah’s death in September 1948. Some American circles, for instance, speculated whether the desire for a separate existence among Muslims would survive the catastrophic event, Even George Bernard Shaw wrote to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on September 18, l948: “I am wondering whether the death of Jinner (Jinnah) will prevent you from coming to London. If he has no competent successor you will have to govern the whole Peninsula.” But during the next three years Liaquat proved to be more than a competent successor. He belied the assumption that Pakistan would collapse once it had to face the problems by itself without the guidance of the Great Leader.

Liaquat was, of course, the political heir, but to fill in the vacuum caused by the founding father’s death was by no means easy. More so, because in the wake of his death came the Indian invasion and occupation of Hyderabad. The nation was downcast, in view of India’s consistently aggressive track record coupled with Pakistan’s deficiency in respect of armour and armed forces, but Liaquat raised its dropping morale by taking a bold stand at this juncture. “In the event of an attack on Pakistan,” he declared, “myself, my colleagues and every Pakistani will shed his last drop of blood in defending every inch of the soil of Pakistan.” Thus, the nation came to regain its self-confidence.

During the next three years, India, besides mounting a war of attrition, created several problems, designed to throttle Pakistan. In September 1949, came the Indian refusal to recognise the unaltered value of the Pakistani rupee when India devalued its own currency. This led to a trade deadlock, and Pakistan was put to severe economic strain since India was then by far the largest buyer of Pakistani jute, the country’s premier cash crop.
Then, early in 1950, the repercussions, though mild, in East Pakistan to large-scale communal riots in West Bengal soured relations between the two dominions all the more. The Indian PM talked of using “other methods” to pressurise Pakistan into accepting the Indian viewpoint; India also got its troops massed within easy striking distance of Pakistan. Despite lurking dangers and uncalled for provocation, Liaquat remained calm and unruffled, proceeded to New Delhi for direct talks with Nehru, and drew up the Minorities Pact of April 1950.

Again, in July 1951, India massed its troops on West Pakistan’s borders, without any ostensible reason or provocation. While Liaquat galvanised the people internally to stand as a solid phalanx against Indian designs, he simultaneously induced several western countries to pressurise India into pulling back its troops.

Meanwhile, he consolidated what had already been accomplished in Jinnah’s lifetime, enlarged upon it and carried forward the process of building Pakistan. Thus, he accomplished a good deal in making Pakistan a going concern and growing enterprise. Internally, Pakistan was politically stable, and though still short of resources, economically buoyant and burgeoning. Internationally, it had carved out for itself a place in the comity of nations and at international fora, it was courted by the big powers, as indicated by an invitation to Liaquat by both Moscow and Washington. “Three years of Liaquat Ali Khan’s leadership,” said Sir Olaf Caroe, one-time Governor of the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtukhwa), “carried Pakistan through difficulty and crisis to the achievement of a degree of political stability rare in any democratic country…of economic prosperity beyond her rosiest dreams, and of an honoured placed in the affairs of nations.” Liaquat Ali Khan: Hero and legend By Prof Sharif Al-mujahid | Published: October 17, 2010.

Liaqat Ali Khan a Pakistani legend

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Bharat should disband RAW: No peace talks without Kashmir solution

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Akhand Bharat remains a dream of many in the Bharati establishment. There is documented proof that Jawhaarlal Nehru sent letters out in the 40s proclaiming that “Pakistan” would be reabsorbed. Even so called “secular” leaders like Indira Gandhi wanted it. Modi, Adhvani and tackery hold a large vote in the Lok and Rajha Sabha. The RSS and the BJP of course proclaims it from the highest roof tops and the biggest loud speaker. Sites like Hinduunity.org are there for all to see.

All these proclamations are not just against Pakistan–they are also against Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, China, Lanka, Maldives and Mayanmar. All neighbors hate Bharat. This does not bode well for the future of Bharat as a regional power. No world power can rise to prominance without peace with her neighbors.

Unless and until this concept of “partition” is dumped into the dustbin of history, Bharat and South Asia will remain the only island of penury in South Asia. Bharat’s meager success in the past decade does not guarantee future robust growth. Nor does it bode for military ascedency or regional hegemony.

If Bharat wants to grow it has apologize for the Mukti Bahni, repudiate the Rakhi Bahni, and stop the policy of taking over weak neighbors like Sikkim and Bhutan. Bharat also has sto pits policy of exproting terror to its neighbors; Tibet & Zinjiang in China, LTTE in Pakistan, terrorists in Nepal, militants in Maldives, Chakmas in Bangladesh, and the TTP in Pakistan.

• How can you have peace with a country that is bent upon your destruction?
• How can you have peace with a country that contantly tries to break you down?
• How can you have peace with a country that against you at every international forum?
• How can you have peace with a country whose entire media is arrayed against you?
• How can you have peace with a country that constantly spews venom against your founding fathers and your leaders?
• How can you have peace with a country that occupies your territory?
• How can you have peace with a country that stops your water and then floods your villages?

Pakistan first: The devastating affects of appeasing India and kowtowing to the USA

Have you ever read a positive story about Pakistan on any Bharati media outlet? ever?

India intelligence: “‘the aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region.”

Have ever read anything positive from Delhi about Paksitan–ever?

THE PAKISTANI RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF THREATS: Mountbatten, Nehru, Indira, Kruschev, Johnson, Carter, Kissinger (Nixon), Gobachov, Clinton, Armitage (Bush), Karzia (Bush and Vajpayee/Sing) have all threatened Pakistan: The Pakistanis are used to it…so what else is new?!! Pakistan’s Nuclear Program should be seen in the backdrop of these threats.

RAW at War-Genesis of Secret Agencies in Ancient India

“‘the aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region.”

‘Pakistan should be so destabilized internally that it could not support the ‘Kashmir cause even morally, diplomatically or politically’

Background

Espionage, euphemistically called the second oldest profession of the world finds a mention in the Indian Vedas, one of the most – if not the most – ancient of the human texts. References to espionage are also discernible in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece and China. The Chinese sage Sun Tzu is considered by European scholars to be the first to study and analyse the whole question of espionage on scientific lines, and to set it down in a text book Ping Fa, The Art of War. This view is, however, not substantiated by cogent facts since there is ample proof of the greater antiquity and soundness of the system of Secret Services enunciated by the early Indians.

Varuna, one of the chief gods of the Vedic pantheon is considered to be a forerunner of Secret Services.

Magha, one of the most erudite and lucid poets and pragmatic thinkers, unequivocally asserted that statecraft cannot exist without the assistance of espionage. He writes:-

‘The statecraft in which even a single step is not taken in contravention of the science of dandaniti {(i.e. the law of danda (the rod)} which provides decent living (to the officers) and in which liberal grants are given in recognition of services rendered, does not shine to advantage without (the employment of ) spies, just as the science of grammar does not shine without Papasa Bhasya (the introductory portion of Patanjali’s Mahabhasya), though it is provided with Nyasa (a commentary of that name) which strictly follows the words of the Sutras (of Panini), a good vrtti (explanatory work) and an excellent Bhasya (advance work of explanation, discussion and criticism)’. – (Sisupala – vadha, 2.112)

Secret Agencies in ancient India were not conceived of as an instrument of oppression but as a tool of governance. Secret agents were considered as ‘eyes of the king’.

Indian history illustrates that ancient Indians had gained great expertise in this secret art. The techniques and operational methods adopted by them were highly advanced, and can be usefully emulated today. From the spasas of Varuna, the fore-runners of the modern globe-trotting spies (the etymological affinity of the two terms is noticeable) to Chanakya’s final manifestation of this art in the Arthasastra which is in fact a systematic codification of a wide variety of scattered information copiously found in the Epics, – the Mahabharata and the Ramayana – the Puranas and literary works of Bhasa, Kalidasa, Magha and Bana; and the Tamil Sangam literature, transcends unprecedented heights in this discipline.

US attack over Afghanistan in 2001 provided a big opening to RAW to accomplish its objectives of destabilizing Pakistan. Since 9/11, Indian influence has increased tremendously. RAW has established Consulates and Trade Missions along the Pak-Afghan border to destabilize Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Several agents of RAW captured in FATA, Waziristan, and other Southern Eastern areas provided that Indians had managed to penetrate deeply in collaboration with Indian allies in the region. As per media reports, recently a spy had been killed by Taliban in Afghanistan. Reportedly that spy disclosed that an Indian intelligence official named C. R. Garg working as Attaché and PS to Indian ambassador had offered as much as US $ 2000-3000 per foreigner killed in Pakistan. The world perception particularly US authorities have strongly being changed now that RAW and some other Indian intelligence agencies have been the only source of terrorism in Pakistan. India intelligence: The other aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region.

According to the leading media reporters on world’s intelligence have disclosed that RAW and the Israeli spy agency Mossad have created five new agencies to infiltrate Pakistan to target important religious and military personalities, journalists, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats. In addition, bombs would be exploded in trains, railway stations, bridges, bus stations, cinemas, hotels and mosques of rival Islamic sects to incite sectarianism. Black Cats group is one of the main implementing tools of said subversive actions.

Hindu Dharma Raksha Samiti (HDRS), Bajrang Dal (BD) Rashtria Sawayamsevak Sankh (RSS) Shiv Sena (SS) etc enjoy complete backing and support of RAW. These Hindu extremists are asking public and others political forces to support LK Advani as future prime minister since Former Indian minister doesn’t believe in secularism and remained famous for taking stern actions against Muslims and others minorities living there. More over RAW is also supporting anti congress elements and those opposing forces that have pure nationalist approach and believe in extremisms. It is also notable here that RAW is already working 180 degree opposite to ruling party’s policy. LTTE issue, Lt Col Prouhit case , and Prabharkaran Escape ( LTTE Chief remained involved in Rajiv’s murder case ) were clear cut examples of RAW’s strokes against Congress policies.

Manvendra Singh wrote in the report “Even while Indian soldiers were dying in the jungles of north and eastern Sri Lanka, New Delhi was still engaging the LTTE in talks, and Chennai was allowing the militants to rest, recoup and refit in Tamil Nadu. And some intelligence agents were ambushed in the company of LTTE by the IPKF, unaware that New Delhi`s operatives were even there and, above all, moving with the militants. He further accused RAW of orchestrating ambushes against Sri Lankan Army which even the IPKF was unaware of.” “Similarly, the intelligence agencies even organised an ambush in Amparai by the Indian-raised Tamil National Army on a Sri Lankan Army brigade commander without the knowledge of the IPKF leadership. Pak Press Alert

The vision of the Arthashastra, is truly breath taking, its practical utility timeless and the clarity of its exposition unique. The techniques of manipulating public opinion and creating disinformation, propounded by Chanakya anticipated modern intelligence systems by several centuries. No wonder then that the nearly 2500 years old lessons in deceit, guile, hypocrisy, machination, and gore taught by that Master strategist, Chanakya alias Kautilya (literally meaning ‘crooked’) was adopted in toto by India and its chief intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

While laying the foundation stone of RAW, India’s late Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi approvingly quoted Louis F Hallis, when she said that its objectives should be the ‘Ability to get what one wants by whatever means: eloquence, reasoned arguments, bluff, tirade, threat or coercion, as well as, by arousing pity, annoying others, or making them uneasy’.

RAW is basically a Secret Service established to perform clandestine operations based on the Chanakyan principles of deceit and guile. It has successfully destabilised neighbouring countries, disintegrated independent states and backed the most notorious guerrilla organizations to achieve its ends. If it is compared to other intelligence agencies of the region, it emerges as an aggressive, cold-blooded and ruthless institution, engaged in the most macabre deeds.

The organization and structure of RAW will be discussed in the second part of this paper. But to appreciate its working we must, first examine the origin and organization of India’s ancient secret agencies.

Origin and Organization of Secret Agencies in Ancient India

The origin and development of Secret Agencies in ancient India is linked to the geopolitical conditions of the times when India was dotted with small states attempting to grab each other’s territory and wealth. The art of espionage was thoroughly mastered, and almost all ancient Indian literary sources exhaustively dealt with this system. Spying came to be regarded as an indispensable feature and integral part of an efficient administration and of a sound foreign policy. It kept the rulers posted with the activities, afflictions, and operations of political adversaries: their disloyal and disgruntled elements, fifth columnists and foreign agents in their midst, also the strength and intentions of all foreign power. Espionage was considered to be as important an institution as diplomacy, and was sought to be governed by certain definite rules and usages. In Chanakya, the secret service department became a permanent feature of the state and was organised in the most ‘uninhibited manner’.

While Chanakya presents a highly developed and complicated system of governance including an all-pervasive espionage system, references to it are found in pre-Mauryan literature, too. The Mahabharata refers to a mythological tradition on the origin of the dandaniti and the art of espionage, which was handed down from the past. It expounds ‘Brahma, the creator, himself composed a work comprising 1,00,000 chapters relating to dharma (religion), artha (economy), kama (sexual desire) and moksa (spiritual salvation) – the four aspects of life.’ Brahma’s compilation, according to the Great Epic, included subjects of behaviour towards counsellors, of spies, the indication of princes, of secret agents possessed of diverse means, of envoys, and agents of other kinds, conciliation, fomenting discord, gifts and chastisement; deliberations including counsels for producing disunion; the three kinds of victory, first, that which served righteously, secondly, which was won by wealth, and, thirdly, the one obtained by deceitful ways; chastisement of two kinds, namely, open and secret; the disorder created in the hostile troops; inspiring the enemy with fear; the means of winning over persons residing in the enemy territory; and finally, the chastisement and destruction of those that are strong.’

No other civilization can claim such an antiquity for the techniques of war, diplomacy, intrigue and espionage and on such compulsive terms.

In short, Varuna and other deities of the Vedic pantheon heavily depended on their secret agents. Manu, Kamandaka, Yajnavalkya and Chanakya, besides the later digest writers, deliberated on the art of espionage, while Chanakya perfected the art and recommended the organisation of secret agencies in the most unabashed manner. Professor Ghoshal suggests that the Mauryas followed the Arthasastra tradition in four respects, i.e. precautions in recruiting spies, countrywide espionage, safeguards against false reports by secret agents and enlistment of the services of loose women.

Organization

The modest origin of secret agents in the form of Varuna’s spasas brought about the imperative need for effective and vigorous espionage in an institutionalized form. The blue-print on espionage prepared by Chanakya has remained a model for successive generations. Various aspects of the organization of a secret agency as discussed in complete detail in the Arthasastra are briefly touched upon here.

• * Category of Agents. The Arthasastra mentions two wings of ‘secret service’, viz. ‘samstha’ and ‘sancara’. The agents belonging to ‘samstha’ were stationed in the Establishment financed by the State, whereas the ‘sancaras’ moved from place to place depending on professional requirements. The spymasters of the two wings headed their respective cadre of agents, and controlled their operations. The members of one group were not aware of the existence of the other. This classification of Chanakya has been followed in India throughout the successive centuries.
• * Recruitment of Secret Agents. A study of Arthasastra, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Manusmriti, Kamandaka and Sukra reveals that there was no fixed source of recruitment of secret agents. Modern intelligence services generally resort to three main sources of recruitment, the academic world, the armed services and the under-world. This was also the pattern followed in ancient India.
• * Training. After recruitment, the secret agents were put through a rigorous training in the techniques of adopting disguises, changing appearances, science of signalling, secret writing, detection and identification of criminals, manipulating public opinion and creating dissensions in the enemy ranks.
• * Control and Supervision. The complicated, comprehensive, all-pervasive and ubiquitous institution of spies in ancient India necessitated very close and personal supervision of the ruler or his most reliable officers. It must have been difficult for the king to personally handle the comprehensive and complicated department of intelligence. According to the Arthasastra, the department of external affairs, which was covering military intelligence was managed by the king with the help of his foreign minister and the Commander-in-Chief. The agents detailed to cover the senior officers of the central government certainly reported to the king directly. In the far-flung areas of extensive kingdoms and in view of poor means of communication, the action specially in times of war had to be taken by men on the spot and not by the king who may be at a place far distant from the field of action. In foreign countries the spies were kept under the control and supervision of ambassadors who scrutinised their reports and directed intelligence operations. According to Chanakya, the institution of spies as an organization did not function under a unified command. The spies and secret agents worked under their respective heads of department, and also directly under the king.

Techniques of Espionage

Before discussing the working of RAW, it would be worthwhile to briefly examine some of the techniques of espionage employed by the ancient secret agencies of India.

• * Motivation and Recruitment of Sources. Motivation of persons to cater intelligence is directly proportionate to their weakness for sex and money, besides the burning desire of revenge or insatiable hunger for power. The Spymasters of ancient India exploited these weaknesses to their fullest advantage, and even the modern intelligence agencies heavily depend on these considerations. Chanakya advocated that the weak should be subjugated by means of conciliation and gifts, the strong by means of dissension and force.
• * Selection and Infiltration of Targets. Chanakya, in a very subtle manner and with an intimate knowledge of human psychology, selected his targets in foreign lands depending on their weaknesses and motivation. He advised secret agents to concentrate on targets:-
• * Among those who are dissatisfied with the rulers or had been humiliated or exiled;
• * Who have not been compensated for their expenditure;
• * Those who have been deprived of their rightful inheritance to office;
• * Whose women have been molested by force;
• * Who were wrongly imprisoned;
• * Whose property had been confiscated;
• * Who are prone to blackmail due to some weakness.

Double-Agent Operation .

A ‘Double-Agent’ is a spy who works for the opposition while pretending loyalty to those who employ him. this technique is an indispensable facet of agent-running and was extensively practised in ancient India. Chanakya suggested that secret agents should not refuse pay from the targets for working with them as their employees. This was to allay the misgivings on the part of the targets. ‘Double-Agents’ were used for creating dissensions and confusion among the confederates of the enemy. They floated false documents, got them seized from the possession of the enemy’s army chiefs, and thus weakened the enemy. ‘Double-Agents’ were used to winning over the confidence of their adopted masters by sacrificing a few exposed, treacherous, disaffected or inefficient spies.

• * Payment of Sources Encouragement of secret agents with money and honour was considered an imperative necessity. The sources were paid both in cash and kind, besides receiving extraordinary courtesies and favours. It was also recommended that secret agents not only be rewarded for the job done by them but, also, in the event of repeated mistakes, silent punishment-death-be awarded to them.
• * Communication of Intelligence Intelligence not properly and promptly conveyed and which cannot be acted upon loses its value and validity. Besides this, the Arthasastra, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Kamandaka and Kathasaritasagara all recommend the use of coded language and signals.
• * Interception of Mail Interception of messages, signals and letters by postal censorship; monitoring and tapping telephones; and breaking codes is the standard practice of modern intelligence agencies. In the ancient period, since intelligence was communicated through pre-determined signals and with the assistance of pigeons, secret agents must have made elaborate arrangements to intercept these messages.
• * Assessment of Information. The Arthasastra cautions against the placing of reliance on agents without proper corroboration. It is repeatedly emphasised that all aspects of a report must be gone through, including the source of information, the mode of its collection and the past performance of a source before it is accepted. Briefing and debriefing of secret agents was an elaborate exercise, and they were trained to be precise, accurate and truthful in reporting.
• * Working Under ‘Cover’. The institution of espionage in ancient India, like modern times, required secret agents to work under some kind of ‘cover’ to preserve secrecy. Chanakya institutionalized the art of working under the most ingenious ‘covers’. The most common disguises recommended by him were those of ascetic, mendicant, merchant, artisan, wandering minstrel, artiste, cook, barber and shampooer, bath and toilet attendant, deaf, dumb, eunuch and prostitute. Chanakya recommends the use of women as effective tools of espionage particularly those who were engaged in harlotry.
• * Counter-Intelligence. A counter-intelligence operation is directed at discovering the identities and methods of foreign spies and intelligence officers working for the opposition. One of the most important duties of the Secret Service in ancient India was to counteract the activities of such agents operating within the country. Chanakya recommends that secret agents should discover foreign spies by operating at the places of entertainment, conclaves of people, among beggars, in gardens and public places, and the houses of prominent citizens.

Disinformation and Dissension.

Manipulation of public opinion is as important an object of the State today as it was in ancient India. It is used to create disharmony and distrust among the enemy’s friends, ill-will among his allies, loss of confidence in their leadership and disruption by psychological means his capacity and will to fight. Chanakya had perfected the technique of disinformation and highly eulogised the use of dissension in enemy’s ranks for winning a battle without any military action. His winning an extensive empire for his student Chandragupta Maurya without fighting any mentionable battle is aweÑ, and one may be excused to add: admirationÑ, inspiring feat, unparalleled in history. The Sanskrit Classical drama Mudrakshasa has tried to depict it dramatically but, at best, has only partially succeeded.

• * Sabotage. The technique of sabotage, which the political strategists consider as the penultimate means to vanquish an adversary, had been greatly perfected in ancient India. Secret practices for sabotage were advocated by Chanakya to ensure victory. As a preface to sabotage, he suggests the creation of an atmosphere congenial to arousing terror, fear, demoralization, disappointment and loss of confidence among the enemy ranks. Prior to launching a full-scale assault on the enemy fort, Chanakya suggests implementation of secret measures to weaken its defences not only physically but in all respects. These include prevention of sowing the fields, destruction of the standing crops and cutting of the enemy’s supply lines.

He also advises free and uninhibited use of poison in the articles used by the enemy. His detailed and scientifically valid knowledge of the subject has earned for him a place in Arabic medical literature, that knows him as Ibn Shanaq (son of Chanak). Some of the secret stratagems advocated by Chanakya include the use of smoke with properties seriously affecting the vision, and, arson or setting fires within the enemy fort.

• * The employment of Visakanyas (Poison-damsels). Secret Agencies in ancient India had perfected very ingenious techniques to subserve the interests of their monarchs. Besides using the nascent technological advancement available to them, they exploited human weakness for sex to achieve royal objectives. Visakanya is a unique feature of the Indian genius to poison the monarch. These venomous beauties can be classified, as follows:-
• * A damsel whose body is saturated with gradual doses of poison, and who is likely to transmit poison from her body to another person coming in contact with her;
• * A woman who treacherously captivates the heart of a person, and then mixes poison in his food or drink;
• * A girl who is, one way or the other, so much poisoned or infected with disease that she is likely to convey her poison or disease to the person coming in contact with her. A woman suffering from Venereal disease or, in the latest situation one suffering from Aids is a Visakanya of this kind.

What is not possible by deployment of force is possible by the use of stratagem.The black cobra was defeated by the stratagem of the crow and the golden chain. — Chanakya

Origins

The first part of this article briefly traced out the history of secret services in ancient India. Its chief progenitor was Chanakya, whose classic, the Arthasastra, not only provides a fairly graphic account of the activities of spies in the Mauryan and post-Mauryan polity but lays the foundation for the ‘statecraft’, guile and unscrupulous practices advocated by this master strategist.

He goes on to recommend, ‘In the work of espionage, all methods are admissible Ñ snooping, lying, bribing, poisoning, using women’s wiles and the assassin’s knife. To a weak king menaced by strong neighbours, Chanakya’s advice was to rely chiefly on spies and wage what he described as a ‘battle of intrigues’ (mantra yuddha) and ‘secret wars’ (kuta yuddha). The spies, in order to achieve their objective, were to practice all kinds of fraud, artifice incendiarism and robbery. Their objective was to demoralize the enemy’s troops by circulating false news, and seduce the allegiance of his minister and commanders. The underlying idea seems to have been to keep the strong neighbour preoccupied with domestic troubles thus making it impossible for him to launch a foreign expedition. From the days of Chanakya, the rules of business of espionage have not changed, at least the basic principles remain as before. The development of science and technology has only given fresh impetus and tools to the art of spying.

Evolution of RAW

Origins in the Directorate of Intelligence Bureau, created by the Raj in November 1920 during the Khilafat and Swaraj movements out of the old Criminal Intelligence Department (CID). In 1933, sensing the political turmoil in the world which eventually led to the Second World War, the bureau’s responsibilities were increased to include the collection of intelligence along India’s borders. In 1947, after Independence, Sanjeevi Pillai took over as the first Indian Director. Having been depleted of trained manpower by the exit of the British and Muslims, Pillai tried to run the bureau along MI 5 lines. Although in 1949, Pillai organized a small foreign intelligence set-up, the inefficacy of it was proved by the Indian debacle in the Indo-China War of 1962, and the cry of ‘not enough intelligence available’, was taken up by the Indian Chief of Army Staff, General Chaudhry, after the 1965 Indo-Pak war.

It was towards the end of 1966 and the beginning of 1967 that the concept of a separate foreign intelligence agency began to take concrete shape. In 1968, after Indira Gandhi had taken over, it was decided that a full-fledged second security service was needed. R. N. Kao, then a deputy director of IB, submitted a blueprint for the new agency. Kao was appointed as the chief of India’s first foreign intelligence agency named as ‘the Research and Analysis Wing’ or RAW.

RAW takes shape

Having started humbly as a Wing of the main Intelligence Bureau with 250 personnel and an annual budget of Rs 2 crore (by a rough estimate), in the early seventies, its annual budget had risen to Rs 30 crores while its personnel numbered several thousand. In 1971, Kao had persuaded the government to set up the Aviation Research Centre (ARC). The ARC’s job was aerial reconnaissance. It replaced the Indian Air Force’s old reconnaissance aircraft and by the mid-70s, RAW, through the ARC, had high quality aerial pictures of the installations along the Chinese and Pakistani borders. By 1976, Kao had been promoted to the rank of a fullfledged Secretary responsible for Security and reporting directly to the Prime Minister. His rise had raised RAW to become India’s premier intelligence agency. RAW agents operated in virtually every major embassy and high commission.

RAW’s objectives

The objectives of RAW according to Asoka Raina’s famous book Inside RAW (Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1981) have been:-

• * To monitor the political and military developments in all the adjoining countries, which have, direct bearing on India’s national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy.
• * Secondly, RAW watched the development of international communism and the schism between the two communist giants, the Soviet Union and The Republic of China. For as in other countries both the powers had direct access to the Communist Parties in India.
• * Thirdly, the supply of military hardware to Pakistan mostly from European countries, the USA and China, was of high priority.
• * And last but not the least, the presence of a large ethnic Indian population in foreign countries, provided a powerful lobby. These countries could back a favourable policy in international councils, motivated by the ethnic Indian group.

The Organization

RAW has been organized on the lines of the CIA. The following chart (source: Inside RAW by Asoka Raina) signifies the organization of RAW and is self-explanatory.

Training of RAW Agents

Recruitment: Initially, induction in RAW relied primarily on trained intelligence officers who were recruited directly. These belonged to the external wing of IB. However, quite a few were taken from police and other services to fill the cadres of RAW owing to its sudden expansion. Later RAW began recruiting promising fresh graduates from the Universities directly. The criteria for selection are fairly stringent.

Basic Training: Basic training commences with ‘pep talks’ to boost the morale of the new recruit. This is a ten days’ phase in which the fresh inductee is familiarized with the world of intelligence and espionage and alienated from the spies of fiction. Common usages, technical jargon and classification of information are taught. Case studies of other agencies like CIA, KGB, Chinese Secret Agency and ISI are presented for study. He is also taught that an intelligence organisation does not basically identify a friend from a foe, it is the country’s foreign policy that do.

Phase – II: The fresh recruit’s training continues and he is now posted in some remote outpost, attached to a Field Intelligence Bureau (FIB). His training here lasts for a period of six months to a year. He is given a first hand feeling of what it was to be out in the cold, in the danger area conducting clandestine operation. During night exercises, under conditions of absolute realism, he is taught infiltration and exfiltration. He is instructed to avoid capture and if caught, how to face intensive interrogation; the art of reconnoiter, making contacts, and, the numerous skills of operating an intelligence mission. At the end of the field training, the new recruit is brought back to the School for final polishing. Before his deployment in the field, he is given exhaustive training in the art of self-defence, an introduction to martial arts and the use of technical espionage devices. He is also drilled in various administrative disciplines so that he could take his place in the foreign missions without arousing suspicion. He is now ready to operate under the cover of an Embassy to gather information, set up his own network of informers, moles or operatives as the task may require.

Functions of RAW

The functions of RAW vary according to the target. Some functions for obtaining strategic intelligence are outlined below:-

Collection of Information: Emphasis is laid on obtaining information essential to Indian interests. Both overt and covert means are adopted.

Collection of Information : The vast myriad of data is sifted through, classified and filed. The modern computer network in the 13-storey bombproof building situated at Lodhi Road, New Delhi, is a great help.

Aggressive Intelligence: The primary mission of RAW includes aggressive intelligence which comprise espionage, psychological warfare, subversion, sabotage, terrorism and creating dissension, insurgency and, ultimately, insurrection to destabilize the target country.

Modus Operandi

Foreign Missions: Foreign Missions provide an ideal cover and RAW centres in a target country are generally located inside the Embassy premises.

Multinationals: RAW operatives find good covers in Multinational organizations. NGOs and Cultural programmes are also popular screens to shield RAW activities.

Media: International media centres can easily absorb RAW operatives and provide freedom of movement.

Collaboration with other agencies: RAW maintains active collaboration with other secret services to meet its ends in a particular target country. Its contacts with KGB of the former Soviet Union, KHAD, the erstwhile Afghan agency, Mossad, CIA and MI6 have been well-known. A common interest being Pakistan’s Nuclear Programme.

Third Country Technique: RAW has been very active in obtaining information and operating through third countries like the Middle East, Afghanistan, UK, Hong Kong, Mayanmar and Singapore.

Spotting and Recruitment: RAW operatives are on the lookout for local recruits to serve their ends. Acting on the Chanakyan principles, they tend to exploit human weaknesses for wine, women and wealth, and, at times resort to blackmail. Separatist tendencies and ethnic or sectarian sensitivities are also well-known grounds for manipulation. Armed Forces personnel remain a primary target. Those journalists, intellectuals and politicians harbouring and preaching goodwill and better Indo-Pak relations also make suitable targets for inadvertent and unconscious recruitment by RAW agents.

Major successes of RAW

Creation of Bangladesh: The Bangladesh operation, beginning with sowing seeds of dissension, leading to the Agartala Conspiracy, creation of Mukti Bahini and under its cover sneaking into East Pakistan for guerrilla operations to blow up bridges and other installations damaged the morale of Pakistani troops and India won the war even before the battle began, thanks to RAW as its agents had infiltrated every nook and corner of erstwhile East Pakistan. The paragraph entitled: ‘RAW takes shape’, in the initial part of this article, amply demonstrates the causal chain of events.

Plan to assassinate General Zia-ur-Rahman: According to the September 18-24, 1988 issue of the weekly Magazine Sunday (Calcutta), RAW was on the verge of assassinating Bangladesh’s President General Zia-ur-Rahman (with Mrs Gandhi’s approval) when the Congress government fell. RAW briefed the new Prime Minister Morarji Desai about it who was appalled at the idea and stopped the murder. General Zia continued to rule Bangladesh for many more years. He was assassinated after Indira Gandhi returned to power but RAW pleads innocence.

Poornima: Project Poornima was the name given India’s Nuclear Programme. The task to keep it ‘under tight wraps of security’ was given to RAW. This was the first time that RAW was involved in a project inside India. The rest is history as India managed to surprise the world on 18 May, 1974 by detonating a 15-Kiloton plutonium device at Pokharan.

Kahuta’s Blueprint: According to the September 18-24, 1988 issue of the weekly Indian Magazine Sunday, RAW agents claim that in early 1978, they were on the verge of obtaining the plans and blueprint for Kahuta nuclear plant that was built to counter the Pokharan atomic blast, but the then Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai not only refused to sanction the $ 10,000 demanded by the RAW agent, but informed Pakistan of the offer. According to the report, Pakistanis caught and eliminated the RAW mole.

It must be noted that the author of ‘Ham Jang Nahin Hone Denge’ held the external affairs portfolio at that time.

Sikkim: Encircled by Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and West Bengal in the Eastern Himalayas, Sikkim presented a lucrative target to the Indians. It was ruled by a Maharaja. The Indian Government had recognized the title of Chogyal (Dharma Raja) for the Mahraja of Sikkim. After their kill in East Pakistan, in 1972, RAW was given the green signal to go ahead with the operation of installing a pro-Indian democratic government there. In less than three years, with the manipulation of RAW, Sikkim became the 22nd State of the Indian Union on April 26, 1975.

Maldives: To bring the smaller Independent States/countries in the Indian sphere of influence with the use of RAW, the case of Maldives makes an important example. In November 1988, the Eilam Peoples’ Liberation Front comprising about 200 Tamil secessionists on the pay roll of RAW were tasked to stage the drama of an uprising on that peaceful island. At the request of the President of Maldives, Mr Mamoon Abdul Qayyum, Indian Armed Forces ‘quelled’ the insurgency engineered by themselves and thus tried to sneak into the administrative mechanism of that peace-loving country.

Operation Chanakya: This was the codename given to the RAW operation in Occupied Kashmir to create rifts among the various Kashmiri Mujahideen groups, suppress the uprising and bring the Kashmiris under total Indian subjugation. According to Tariq Ismail Sagar’s book RAW, (Milli Book Depot, Lahore, 1997) in 1991, RAW operatives entered the Srinagar Valley in the guise of freedom fighters. They resorted to loot, rape and arson of Kashmiri Pundit families to give the popular non-communal uprising a bad name. Operation Chanakya gained momentum when Mossad provided its experienced Katsas to train RAW operatives. They did gain initial successes but when later actions of Operations Chanakya failed, RAW commenced an intensive propaganda to blame ISI.

Monitoring Pakistani Telecommunication: Raw operatives boast that at one time its monitoring complex had managed to break through Pakistani Telecommunications and were listening in to all telephonic conversations held by important Pakistani leaders.

RAW’s Failures

Although RAW has had many successes, it has also committed a number of blunders. Some of these are discussed below:

Promulgation of Emergency: Whereas the IB Director, A. Jayaram had advised Mrs Indira Gandhi against promulgating the Emergency, Kao, Mrs Gandhi’s handpicked man and RAW’s head, supported it. This proved to be a fatal mistake. He continued to feed the PM reports of its popularity and that no excesses were committed. How disastrous it proved for Kao’s benefactor is a matter of history.

Operation Blue Star: This was the codename given to the storming of the holiest Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple of Amritsar in 1984. Although it was a domestic matter and IB’s concern, yet RAW was pulled in under the pretext of a foreign element’s (allegedly Pakistani) involvement. RAW failed miserably as it could not assess the strength of Bhindranwale’s forces. What was to be a 5 hours’ operation stretched to 5 days and tanks had to be brought in and Indian Army suffered heavy casualties. Ultimately Indira Gandhi had to pay with her own life as she was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguard in retaliation to Operation Blue Star. Kao, the Prime Minister’s Security Adviser resigned within 24 hours of her assassination.

Kee us ne mere qatl ke ba’d Jafaa se tauba,
Haae! Us zood pashemaan kaa pashemaan honaa.

Ah! The remorse of the one
Who after finishing me,
Took the vow never to be cruel again.
So soon did he repent!
Bravo!

— Ghalib

Mujib-ur-Rahman’s Assassination: RAW operatives claim that they had advance information about Shaikh Mujib-ur-Rahman’s assassination but they failed to prevent it. It is interesting to note that despite its role in the creation of Bangladesh, RAW failed to annex it.

It was a classic case of the cropping up of a double dilemma: Yak na shud do shud.

: Mrs Gandhi was so keen to see Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam continue as the Prime Minister of Mauritius that RAW was tasked to oversee his reelection campaign. Despite heavy investments, RAW failed by a wide margin.

Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka had been marked for special attention after it had permitted Pakistani aircraft to land for refuelling there after India had stopped the over flight rights of Pakistani flights to and back from East Pakistan. Sri Lankan President Junius Jaywardhene’s aim of turning his country into an Asian Tiger did not suit India at all. Stung by its failures in the Indian Punjab, RAW attempted to make up in Sri Lanka. RAW started training militants to destabilize the Pearl Island but in the bargain, such a monster was unleashed that even the landing of Indian troops as a peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka failed badly. Eventually, Rajiv Gandhi became a victim of the muddling in Sri Lanka.

RAW seems to be a congenital enemy of the Gandhi family.

Soft Target: Zuhair Kashmiri and Brian Mac Andrew’s well-known book Soft Target (James Lorimer and Comp., Publishers, Toronto, 1994) provides details of RAW’s botched operations in Canada to malign the Sikhs there for their role in the Khalsa movement and make them suspect in the eyes of the Canadian authorities. On 23 June, 1985 Air India’s Flight 182 was blown up near Ireland and 329 innocent lives were lost. On the same day another explosion took place at Tokyo’s Narita airport’s transit baggage building where baggage was being transferred from Cathay Pacific Flight No CP 003 to Air India’s Flight 301 which was scheduled for Bangkok. Both aircraft were loaded with explosives from Canadian airports. Flight 301 got saved because of a delay in its departure. Initially RAW was successful in pointing the finger at Canadian Sikhs but the Canadian authorities soon concluded that it was a RAW ploy.

RAW’s Primary Target: Pakistan

Pakistan remains RAW’s primary concern. It runs thousands of agents and spends millions of rupees in its operations against Pakistan. It has made a three-pronged attack against Pakistan in an attempt to destabilise it:-

* Propaganda

* Espionage, and

* Subversion

RAW is totally committed on all these three fronts and is engaged in launching covert operations in consonance with India’s hostile foreign policy. The Jain Commission Report, released by India in 1997, acknowledges that RAW did sponsor the terrorist activities of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eilam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and violent intervention in Bangladesh. All aspects of Pakistani activities, economic, military, industrial and cultural receive a close scrutiny of RAW. It considers Sindh as the soft under-belly of Pakistan and has therefore made it the prime target for sabotage and subversion.

Ashok A Biswas, a Delhi-based research scholar, in his recently compiled study RAW – An Unobstructive Instrument of India’s Foreign Policy, (as quoted by Pakistan Observer in ‘A RAW deal for South Asia, 03 May, 1998) states that ‘the aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region.‘ He concludes, ‘RAW over the years has admirably fulfilled its task of destabilizing target states through unbridled export for terrorism.

The ‘Indian Doctrine’ spelt out a difficult and onerous role of RAW. It goes to its credit that it has accomplished its assigned objectives. The Indian government spelling out the task for RAW in this regard has stated, ‘Pakistan should be so destabilized internally that it could not support the ‘Kashmir cause even morally, diplomatically or politically’. Keeping the size of Pakistan in view, the task seems a difficult one for RAW. But it appears, RAW has taken it as a challenge and is working assiduously and speedily to accomplish this task’.

No wonder, with the wily Chanakya as its mentor and the machinations preached in his Arthasastra as their bible, RAW is well equipped to continue waging its war of propaganda, sabotage and subversion. It is for its prime target ‘Pakistan’ to be wary of its macabre game plan of continuing war by ‘other means’ and continue exposing RAW’s heinous designs against us, which are a blatant, utter and naked violation of all human values. And not the least the people and the leadership of India; for as the great poet Ghalib said:

Hue tum dost jiske,
Us ka dushman asman kiyun ho

With a friend like you,
Who needs a foe! http://www.defencejournal.com/feb-mar99/raw-at-war.htm

Columnist Gp Capt (Retd) S M Hali of Pakistan Air Force examines the historical capacity of Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) of India to conduct clandestine operations

Contributed by Isha Khan, Rupee News Dhaka based regular columnist who can be reached at bdmailer@gmail.com

Pakistan is the next targeted Muslim Domino: Does the Obsequious Zardari and the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again Tubelight called Nawaz Sharif realize the dangers. Democaracy as a tool against Muslims. Has the invasion already begun. If one counts the drone attacks, the answer is yes. The US invasion of Pakistan starts! Another Green Domino is being destabilized and now needs to be pacified with American boots. The Pakistani reaction will be vocal and bloody!.

Bharat should disband RAW: No peace talks without Kashmir solution

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Jinnah's ghost bares bigots of the BJP

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It is amazing that that the events of sixty years ago are so fresh in the minds of at least two generations of South Asians. The happenings of the British Raj are being discussed like Americans discuss sport events or Indians dissect the last soap or movie out of Bollywood.

Vibrant democracies project different opinions and create possibilities about the future. Fascist societies spout one “company line”that is then shoved down the throat of a docile and subjugated populace. Only one version of history exists in Bharat (aka India). All opinions contrary to the events transcribed by the Congress are rejected and sidelined. The fact that there is only one book written in Bharat in the past fifty years that  provides some semblance of balance about the life and times of Mohammad Ali Jinnah is ample proof of the bigotry and racism that exists in the Brahmanic society that rules from Delhi.

“The writing of the book was not the only, but one of the several reasons, for his expulsion by the party,” …He too indicated that Jaswant Singh’s criticism of the party after the parliamentary poll debacle was also among the issues that led to his expulsion.

In June, Jaswant Singh stated at the party’s core group meeting at the residence of party veteran L.K. Advani that there should be a connect between ‘parinaamaurpuraskar’ (results and rewards) in the aftermath of the party’s disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha elections.

His reference was to Arun Jaitley who was the chief poll manager for the party and was later made the leader of the opposition in the upper house of parliament, a post which Singh held before being elected to the Lok Sabha. The BJP earlier in the day expelled Singh from the primary membership of the party.  BJP president Rajnath Singh on “Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence”. IANS. August 20th, 2009 – 1:01 am ICT by IANS -

Loving Jinnah in BJP is hazardous to your career. The expulsion of Mr. Singh may be tied to the series of expulsions from the BJP.

There has been a series of expulsions of BJP leaders over the years, including of Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Babulal Marandi and Shankersinh Waghela. BJP expels Jaswant Singh Neena Vyas, Parliamentary Board’s stern message against ideological deviation, The Hindu

It is amazing that those who opposed the Quaid in the 40s are now being discarded by their own people. It is fantastic that the most ardent opponents of Jinnah are now being targeted for eulogising him. The ghost of Mohammad Ali Jinnah has already ended the political aspirations of one Bharatya Janata Party leader, Mr. L.K. Adhvani. This week the ghost of  Quaid e Azam destroyed the ambitions of another leader of the BJP.

“I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon,” … “We needed a demon because, in the 20th century, the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country.”the book’s author, Jaswant Singh, a veteran politician, told the CNN-IBN

Jawant Singh’s book is not available in Pakistan and is not available in the US yet, so the response to the book from Pakistan has been muted and is based on reports in the Bharati press.

• ‘Jinnah gets approval from an unlikely Indian admirer’
• “a significant addition to material on Partition.”
• ‘Book on Jinnah likely to change discourse in India.’ “Conventional wisdom in India that holds Mohammed Ali Jinnah as a communal leader who caused the bloody partition of the subcontinent is expected to receive a body blow when a new book on the Quaid-i-Azam by former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh is released here,” Dawn frontpaged a story
• ‘A new look at Jinnah,’ … “Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a man whose true character appears to have become lost through the chapters of history, has re-emerged in a new light in the pages of a book, Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence, by none other than BJP leader Jaswant Singh. This is particularly ironic given that Mr Singh’s own party and its ‘mother organization’ so to speak, the RSS, have for the past six or so decades painted Jinnah as India’s greatest villain.” …”Any fresh look at history and the characters who played a part in its making is always welcome. This is perhaps especially true in the case of Jinnah. Jaswant Singh’s book will, undoubtedly, create waves in India. But it may also help to create some much-needed balance. Writing a fully objective history is difficult – some argue impossible. The beliefs and biases of the writer always play a part. For this reason, having as many different points of view as possible is important. They offer an opportunity to break free of uniformity and reach conclusions after examining various possibilities. For this reason the book is a significant addition to material on Partition,” The News International said that
•  ”an apt corrective by a top BJP leader to the make-believe history of Partition. Without mincing his words, Jaswant Singh has squarely put the blame for partition of India in 1947 on Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and the Congress rather than Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.”  N Sattar of the Dawn
• “When the BJP is in government, it is far more Pakistan friendly. But once, in opposition, its attitude becomes totally different,” Nusrat Javed, a well known TV anchor.
• similarly, BJP was also critical of L K Advani when he visited Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore when he came to Pakistan. The reaction which BJP has shown by sacking Jaswant Singh from the party membership has proved how it thinks. Secretary General of Pakistan Muslim League, Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q) Mushahid Hussain Syed.
• Some Pakistani historians also share Singh’s line that Nehru was responsible for the partition of India. To justify their argument, they quote Abul Kalam Azad’s book — India wins freedom, in which he argued that partition of India could have been avoided if Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel had shown some flexibility over the Cabinet mission plan.
• Political analyst Amir Mateen has a different view on the issue. Being critical of BJP’s extreme step, Mateen said, “The book endorses BJP’s viewpoint of greater India. I don’t understand why there is so much of resentment among BJP ranks over the book written by Jaswant Singh.” ‘Major saab’ and his tome are the toast of Pakistan media, TNN 20 August 2009, 03:33am IST

It is amazing that the country that bills itself  “the worlds largest democracy” has been unable to have a civilized discussion on one of the greatest leaders of Muslims anytime anywhere. No Muslim leader in the history of mankind has been able to guide and affect the destiny of of more than 450 million Muslims and about 450 million Dalits and Untouchables. Those who listened to the Quaid gained independence and and liberation. Those who did not remain in bondage, slavery and Untouchability.

AHMEDABAD: On a day the BJP leadership expelled senior leader Jaswant Singh from the party, Narendra Modi’s government banned the book ‘Jinnah India, Partition, Independence’, in Gujarat. The book, released on Monday, lauds the founder of Pakistan and holds India’s first PM JawaharlalNehru and its first home minister Vallabhbhai Patel responsible for the country’s partition in 1947.

A notification issued by the Gujarat home department on Wednesday banned the book on the grounds that it tarnishes the image of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. According to the notification, the book presents incorrect historical facts regarding the partition and questions Patel’s patriotism.

“The book aims to tarnish the image of the architect of the country’s unification and son of Gujarat. The state government has decided to ban the book in public interest,” says a press release issued by the state government. Patel is held in high esteem by people across Gujarat and rest of India for his role during India’s freedom struggle against the British rulers. The move came as a surprise for many as Modi had remained completely silent when L K Advani made favourable comments about the creator of Pakistan while on a visit to the neighbouring country some years back.

Modi was in Shimla to attend BJP’s three-day brainstorming session, ‘chintan baithak’, starting Wednesday. While the party had distanced itself from Singh’s views expressed in the book soon after it was released, Modi has gone a step ahead. Modi bans Jaswant’s book over Sardar insult TNN 20 August 2009, 03:45am IST

The manner in which Mr. Jaswant Singh has been ignominiously drummed out of the BJP says a lot about how the party treats its leaders. But that is Bharat today. The new pantheon worthy of Hinduist worship is the troika of Mohandas Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and of course Jawaharlal Nehru. Like the Fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany, only those leaders belonging to the Indian National Congress have a right to be inducted into the Bharati Hall of fame. In today’s Bharat those who oppose them are worse than Belzebub and those who supported him are the arch angels of love and saintliness.  This should not have been the only book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. There should have been others that portray him in black, shades of grey and in white. No such spectrum exists in Bharat. There is universal condemnation of a man, his dream and his spiritual progeny.

The urbane and cultivated Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, has most often been cast as the villain, unyielding in his demand that the Muslims required a separate country.

Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of the British Indian empire, whose wife is widely believed to have had a long-running affair with Nehru, once remarked: “I tried every trick I could play to shake Jinnah’s resolve. Nothing would move him from his consuming determination to realise the dream of Pakistan.”

But the 71-year-old Singh, a former foreign minister, argues that far from being set on a separate Pakistan, Jinnah’s overwhelming concern was the well-being of his fellow Muslims. He wanted to ensure Muslims would have “space in a reassuring system”.New Zealand Herald. Hindu overhauls Jinnah’s legacy 4:00AM Thursday Aug 20, 2009

All South Asian freedom fighters like Subash Chandra Bose, Dr. Ambadekar and Jinnah are either marginalized or simply demonized by the Bharati historians, politicians and the media. It is rumored that Jaswant Singh was thrown out to the party not because he loved Jinnah, but because he criticised the spiritual leader of the BJP Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3fI0Te-oFI&feature=player_embedded

“Kya karein, naseeb mein jab yahi likha tha (What can I do if this was destined)… I got a call from Rajnath Singh who informed me about the decision, but that’s hardly the way to treat someone who was once described as Hanuman to Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Have I suddenly become Ravan in today’s BJP?”Jaswant Singh told The Indian Express.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3fI0Te-oFI&feature=player_embedded]

“Thirty years of my political life with the BJP and (being expelled) on this note… saddened me and on the ground for writing a book, that saddened me even more, immensely more… The day India starts questioning thought, it starts questioning reading, writing, publishing, we are entering a very very dark alley,” Indian Express

According to news reports emanating from the land of the Ganges the expulsion of Mr. Jaswant Singh heralds the break of the party into smaller factions that cater to the moderate and extremists elements of the party. This report from the Indian Express describes the inner workings of the BJP and how the loss in the recent elections have affected the bearings of the party.

More than praising Jinnah, it’s Jaswant Singh’s criticism of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that’s touched many a raw —and politically strained — BJP nerve.

For, while the Congress has always tried to appropriate the legacy of the national movement, it’s through the strand in the Congress represented by India’s first Home Minister, Sardar Patel, that the BJP has tried to connect itself to the freedom movement. Sardar Patel was referred to as the Iron Man — for uniting the princely states. This was the imagery L K Advanitriedto invoke with portrayals of him being a Loh Purush as India’s Home Minister during the NDA rule.

Subsequently, in Patel’s home state, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has always cultivated the image of Chhote Sardar. JaswantSingh’s 669-page book (Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence) refers to Patel at about six places, the theme being that Jinnah’s interpretation (false, in JaswantSingh’s opinion) of India being two nations, was finally acceded to by both Nehru and Patel.

The key excerpts from Jaswant Singh’s references to Patel:

1. Page 417: Leaders like Patel accepted partition “in order to seek relief from the torments of the past many years and in the process offering many ingratuitous suggestions.” Singh quotes from a letter written by Sardar Patel to Kanti Dwarkadas on March 4, 1947: “I am not, however, taking such a gloomy view as you… before next June, the Constitution must be ready, and if the League insists on Pakistan the only alternative is the division of Punjab and Bengal.”

Patel, in the letter, goes on to say that in his view, the British would not agree to such a division and would not help the minority secure a division and a strong centre (subsuming minority demands) would ultimately prevail.

This letter, Jaswant Singh writes, “is a revealing letter for quite apart from how far off from the mark Patel was in respect of so many of his projections about the future, he was also for the first time, even if by implication, accepting partition on condition of a division of the Punjab and Bengal.”

2. Page 418: Jaswant Singh goes on to suggest that the formal adoption, accepting the partition of the country by the Congress party on March 8, 1947, was done in the absence of Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad who, “Nehru and Patel had known would oppose the resolution.” Singh quotes Patel explaining the resolution to Gandhi later as “that you had expressed your views against it, we learnt only from the papers.”

There is a strong suggestion here that Nehru and Patel acted as one in changing the long-held position of the Congress, one of opposing partition to agreeing to it overnight. Jaswant Singhconcludes that within a month of Mountbatten’s arrival, the Congress’s view on partition had changed.

3. Page 489: “it is in this, a false ‘minority syndrome’ that the dry rot of partition first set in, and then unstoppably it afflicted the entire structure, the magnificent strand of an united India. The answer (cure?) Jinnah asserted, lay only in parting, and Nehru and Patel and others in the Congress also finally agreed. Thus was born Pakistan…” Indian Express.Loh Purush and Chhote Sardar: Two reasons why BJP can’t take Jaswant’s criticism of Patel, Posted: Thursday , Aug 20, 2009 at 0341 hrs, New Delhi:

They call it “partition“– as if South Asia was a single monlithic country that was lost its unity in 1947. Amazingly the indpendence of Sri Lanka is not called “partition“. Neither is the sovreignity of Burma called a vivisection of the Bharatmata. The separation of Nepal is not called “partition”. For some reason the indpendence of the Muslim majority areas of the the Subcontinent is called “partition” by the Hindu Mahasaba. There was no “PARTITION”: It was Separation or independence.

Lord Meghnad Desai, emeritus professor of the London School of Economics, said Mr Singh’s -expulsion represented the deep disarray within the BJP, which has been riven by infighting since the May elections when it was reduced to 116 seats, its worst performance in years.

“It’s a battle for the soul of the BJP and it’s going the wrong way,” he said. “The BJP needs to get itself to the centre, and instead it’s shifting to the right.”

Lord Desai said the furore will “make it very difficult for the BJP to reconstruct itself as an electable party”.

He warned that it was likely to alienate young -voters, who will wonder “why are they so hung up on who said what to whom in 1946, when there are other things to discuss about India like drought and economic reform”.

Lord Desai also said the move displayed the BJP’s “ideological totalitarianism”.

India’s political elite has long demonised Mr Jinnah, a secular, pork-eating Muslim, for the partition that resulted in up to 1m deaths and created millions of refugees. However, Mr Singh found that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and other revered Indian independence leaders, backed partition to settle difficult debates over protecting minority rights. Financial Times. BJP expels MP for sympathetic portrayal of Pakistan’s founder By Amy Kazmin in New Delhi…Published: August 20 2009 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2009 03:00

One has to look into the seeds of time to see why Mr. Patel garnishes such fealty from the likes of Mr. Modi. The Congress used to be a moderate party, and Jinnah was an aspiring and senior leader of the party. Millionaires like Birla brought Gandhi who introduced religious symbolism into the body politics of South Asia. Jinnah warned Gandhi not to inject religious symbols of Ashram and Satyagarh into a secular system. The Indian National Congress instituted a big tent philosophy. This big tent policy brought in the extremist elements like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. These fundamentalist were not only responsible for the partition of the Indian National Congress, they were responsible for the drumming out of Mohammad Ali Jinnah from the party. When Jinnah was booed for referring to Mohandas Gandhi as Mr. Jinnah instead of the religious appellation “Mahatma”, the die was cast for the partition of the Indian National Congress. The seeds of a powerful Muslim League had been sowed.

The Indian National Congress of Motilal Nehru was secular and could nurture the likes of Mr. Jinnah to grow and flourish. Tokenism aside, the Congress of Mr. Jawahlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had no place for Muslims, Dalits, Christians and voices of dissent. This view clearly enunciated by Jinnah when he resigned from the Congress was later  endorsed by Maulana Azad who was a poor substitute for Jinnah as the figurehead of the Congress. Jinnah was a leader, Azad was minority candidate placed there as a prop. Too scared to rebuff the policies of Nehru, Patel and Gandhi, he published “India wins Freedom” without the chapters which criticised Nehru for bungling the Cabinet Mission Plan proposal. Fearing reprisals from the Congress, Mr. Azadstipulated that the offnedingparagraphs be added to the book 25 years after his death. The paragraphs lamblast Nehru for being stubborn and power hungry and criticized Gandhi for his religious symbbology.

In a sense the fate that befell Jaswant Singh — his marginalisation within the rightwing BJP followed by his ideological disengagement withtheparty— had similarities with the denouement as it evolved for Jinnah. The difference was that while Singh may have moved from the communal politics of the BJPtowardsareaffirmation of secular historiography, the insidious caste politics of the Congress behemoth had forced an agreeably liberal Jinnah to resort to patently communal agitation. Jawed Naqvi dawn.com

The Quaid e Azam after an electoral loss used the tactics laid out by Liaqat Ali Khan. The Congress claimed to represent all of South Asia. The Qauid through Separate Electorate refuted the claim and got the British to agree that the Muslim League and the Muslim League alone represented the Muslims. They did this through brilliance and fortitude. The Muslim League team went out and “franchised” the various regional parties under the banner of the All India Muslim League. Thus leaders like G.M. Syed, Suhrawardi and others all came under the umbrella of the All India Muslims League. This gave Mohammad Ali Jinnah the legitimacy to position the Muslims League as the representatives of all Mussalmans of South Asia.  This is why Ayesha Jalal  endows the title of the ”the sole spokesman” of the Muslims to Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

 The expulsion of Mr. Singh from the BJP is part and parcel of the corrective action taken by the BJP. This is borne out by this prodigious report by Mr. Jawed Naqvi who is a regular contributor to the liberal and obsequious paper called dawn.com  

After his expulsion from the BJP ahead of the party’s brainstorming session in Simla on Wednesday, Jaswant Singh told reporters that he regretted his party’s decision to remove him from the organisation’s primary membership but he was not about to vacate the political space he has nurtured. What does that mean?

To begin with, he has created a royal mess for India’s two main parties. Who would have thought that the BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, would find themselves defending their main quarry Jawaharlal Nehru, over the arch quarry Jinnah? Jaswant Singh’s clever, almost impish, juxtaposition of the two stalwarts has all but achieved the hitherto unimaginable. In one stroke he has put the Congress and the BJPonthesameideological plane. It would require an extremely delicate surgery, which neither party appears equipped for, to separate the arguments that he has made for and against Jinnah and Nehru, Gandhi and the British. He has studded his book with references rare and familiar that disturbs the neat communal historiography, which the establishments in India and Pakistan had been used to.

Jaswant Singh feared that the book Jinnah: India — Partition — Independence would create problems in Pakistan more than in his own country. He believed the dichotomy that emerged between the Quaid’s vision and the evolution of a sectarian state in Pakistan would invite state-sponsored censure. But the first barbs came from within India. Early reactions from the BJP and the Congress to his research verged on intolerance of intellectual inquiry. This is not new. Books have been burnt and banned, artists and writers sent into exile even earlier in India.

 But Jaswant Singh is not quitting politics, much less the country. In fact an endorsement of his quest will be palpable as early as this weekend when Ramazan, the month of fasting for Muslims, begins. In Lutyens’ Delhi, the hub of India’s power dynamic, the circus of feasts will see robed clerics from diverse Islamic clusters getting invited to the prime minister’s house to break bread. Government ministers, party leaders, MPs, power peddlers, middlemen, in a nutshell everyone who lives by the 13 per cent Muslim vote in India or those who need to flaunt their secularism will take turns to rustle up an appetising Ramazanmenu. Of course, only a minority of India’s 150 million Muslims are mullahs and so a few of the less pious variety would also be given a slot in the meandering queue to rub shoulders with the high and mighty.

Had Jinnah had his way, there would be no need for the pathetic lottery of Ramazan invitations. There would be no need for the Justice Sachchar Committee, set up to investigate why Indian Muslims continue to be economically and socially backward six decades after independence from colonialism.

In other words, had there been no partition there would not be a need for communally driven dinner invitations, even though they are usually claimed to strengthen secularism. Indians would be less self-consciously tolerant and eating or not eating with each other of their free will in an India that Jinnah had dreamt of. Jaswant Singh has been penalised for implicitly asserting this.

As a matter of fact, Justice Sachchar offered remedies that reminded me of the crisis once faced by the International Committee of the Red Cross when its representatives visited prisons in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. They recommended hot water baths for the inmates, which startled the jail warden who hadn’t had the luxury of one in a fortnight himself.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules in this. Political power does not flow from the numerical superiority of a community over another. The partition of 1947 wrote this in blood. As a maverick college friend remarked, in capitalism man exploits man and in socialism it was the other way round.

In predominantly Muslim Pakistan, Muslims are exploiting, and now killing, Muslims. Hindus have fared no better in India. Seventy per cent of India — predominantly Hindu India — has been marginalised to create the illusion of a superpower for the 30 per cent, possibly less. More Hindus — if the tribespeopleinhabiting Chhattisgarhand Jharkhandorthose fighting pitched battles in West Bengal with paramilitary men are considered Hindu — are the next targets of the state’s neocon agenda.

JaswantSinghmaynothave listed these examples to make his case, but they do underscore the unacceptable failures of the founding fathers and their heirs in both countries.

If Jaswant Singh is lucky and has got the proposed Urdu translation of his controversial book on Jinnah out before the weekend, there is a good chance that the Ramazan iftars would become the battlegrounds between status quo and refreshing new ideas for India, and also possibly for Pakistan, to explore.

A Bengali edition of the book is expected to ignite debate in a region that has revelled in questioning everyone that we easily worship, be he Jinnah, or Gandhi, Nehru or Suhrawardy.

In this sense Jinnah’s inspiration may well have come from Rabindranath Tagore’s song: Jodi tor daak shuney keoo na ashey tobey ekla chalo rey. (If none heeds your cry to march together, just walk alone, no if or whether.)

JaswantSinghmaywellhave embarked on a lonely journey to begin with.Going Jinnah’s way By Jawed Naqvi Thursday, 20 Aug, 2009 | 12:46 AM PST. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.jawednaqvi@gmail.com

In July 2001, when the Agra summit between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf ended without an agreement because the RSS took the view that elections in Uttar Pradesh, due in February 2002, required a continued state of hostility with Pakistan, Jaswant Singh was targeted in whisper campaigns for allegedly drafting a weak agreement from India’s point of view.

The RSS, or less accurately the BJP, anyway lost the Uttar Pradesh elections. The massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened four days later and can be seen as a panic reaction by the RSS to similar signals of looming defeat for the BJP after several preceding contests in the state. The clinically supervised pogroms turned the tide for the party.

It was stated that initially the party leadership was of the view that Mr. Jaswant Singh should be merely stripped of his membership of the Parliamentary Board. But tempers ran high among senior leaders. They viewed his praise of Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and his adverse comments on India’s first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as ideological heresy. They called for the sternest action.

L.K. Advani, also a member of the Parliamentary Board, was himself held guilty of ideological deviation in 2005 when he praised Jinnah during a visit to Pakistan and was forced to exit as party president. On Wednesday, however, he concurred with the decision to expel Mr. Jaswant Singh, informed party sources indicated.

BJP president Rajnath Singh conveyed the decision to mediapersons outside the Peterhoff state guest house and hotel, the venue of the brainstorming conclave.

Mr. Rajnath Singh noted that he had issued a statement in Delhi on Tuesday dissociating the party from the contents of Mr. Jaswant Singh’s new book Jinnah: India-Partition Independence that was released on Monday. The Board, he said, “decided to end his primary membership. So he has been expelled. From now onwards he will not be a member of any body of the party or be an office-bearer.” Mr. Rajnath Singh said he had conveyed the decision to Mr. Jaswant Singh.

Party sources said the BJP would inform the Lok Sabha Speaker of the expulsion. He would, under the rules, now be an unattached MP representing Darjeeling. The Speaker is expected to be told that the BJP wishes to revoke his nomination as a member and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

Seemingly responding to Mr. Jaswant Singh, who has charged the party with jumping procedures as he was not issued a show cause notice, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekarsaidhere that the Parliamentary Board had the authority to take “immediate decisions on urgent matters” without issuing show cause notices. “This is the decision of the Board, which means that the party will not compromise with ideology and discipline is paramount.” There has been a series of expulsions of BJP leaders over the years, including of Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Babulal Marandi and Shankersinh Waghela. BJP expels Jaswant Singh Neena Vyas, Parliamentary Board’s stern message against ideological deviation, The Hindu

Will Mr. Singh be sent tothe Siberia of politics, or will be rise like a phoenix with another political party that opposes the legacy of not only the Brahamanic legacy of Nehru, and Gandhi but also the racist legacy of Mr. Patel.

SHIMLA: He had gone from being the party’s Hanuman to its Ravana, a tearful Jaswant Singh said on Wednesday shortly after he got a phone call from Senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh gestures during a press conference after his expulsion from the party in Shimla on Wednesday.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh that he had been expelled from the party. ( Watch Video )

Saying that he was “sad and regretful”, the 71-year-old former union minister, who has held the portfolios of defence, finance and external affairs, said he got a phone call at 1pm from Rajnath Singh informing him that he had been expelled from the “basic membership of the party”.

“It is sad and I regret it for a number of reasons, which I cannot explain in detail,” Jaswant Singh said in Shimla where the BJP began its three-day introspection meeting Wednesday.

The expulsion comes two days after the release of his controversial book praising Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, “Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence”.

He referred to a cartoon in India Today magazine that had portrayed him as Hanuman and said he had now become the Ravana of the BJP.

“I have been a member of the BJP since it was formed (in 1980),” he said.

“I had never imagined that 30 years of my service would have ended this way. It’s regretful,” the visibly emotional Jaswant Singh added.

He said he also “regretted” that the party president informed him about the decision over the phone and not personally.

“I would have stepped down had they informed me in person,” he said.

“I am worried and sad that just one book has led to my expulsion,” he added, wondering what would happen if “soch, vichar and chintan” (thinking and introspection) stopped in Indian politics.

He, however, said he didn’t regret writing the book.

“They (BJP leaders) have not even read it completely.” BJP’s Hanuman, I am now its Ravana: Jaswant IANS 19 August 2009, 02:38pm IST

India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party expelled a senior leader Wednesday for writing a book about the founder of archrival Pakistan _ an indicator of bitter infighting within the party and increasing control of its more radical ideological parent organization.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah is widely reviled in India as the man responsible for the partition of the continent that created predominantly Muslim Pakistan at the end of British colonial rule in 1947.

The book, by Jaswant Singh, says that Jinnah has been “demonized” in India, according to news reports- a reference the party apparently found too kind.

On Tuesday, the party issued a statement disassociating itself from the book, “Jinnah India, Partition, Independence,” which was released Monday.

“The important role of M.A. Jinnah in the division of India, which led to a lot of dislocation and destabilization of millions of people, is too well-known. We cannot wish away this painful part of our history,” the BJP statement had said.

Singh’s expulsion was announced after a meeting of senior party leaders in the north Indian hill town of Shimla. The 71-year-old, who has served as finance and foreign minister in previous governments, said his removal calls into question the party’s commitment to freedom of speech.

“What I have written is my account of a chapter of India’s history,” Singh told reporters. “You can dispute what I write but the day in India we start questioning thought, we start questioning reading, writing, publishing, you’re entering a very, very dark alley.”

Political analysts say the move reflects internal differences within the party, which lost the last two national elections.

“It shows a party in disarray,” said political commentator Neerja Choudhary. “It also shows that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is going to be calling the shots much more in the affairs of the party.”

The RSS, or the National Volunteers Force, which is the parent organization of the Bharatiya JanataParty, has been widely accused of stoking religious hatred with its aggressively anti-Muslim views.

This is the second time the mention of Jinnah has created ripples in the right-wing party, which forms the main opposition in India’s Parliament.

In 2006, another senior leader, Lal Krishna Advani, was forced to resign as party president for praising Jinnah, during a visit to the neighboring country. He remained a member of the party. Taiwan News. Indian party expels leader for book on Pakistan. Associated Press, 2009-08-19 08:16 PM

The reaction from Pakistan to Singh’s expulsion is as expected. Bharatis need to learn the history of Pakistan and the history of Jinnah. They need to shed their racist bigotry and move forward towards the next century. Unless Bharat understands the leadership of the Pakistan movement, it can never comprehend the inner thinking of the Pakistanis. Bharat cannot be a regional power unless it mends fences with all her neighbors, Nepal, Lanka, Bhutan, Sikkim, Maldines, Mayanmar, Bangladesh China and Paksitan. 

For 5000 years South Asia has always been a conglomeration of more than 570 states even during the British Raj.
History of Pakistan on “Pakistan Historian” website Was Pakistan inevitable?

What if there was no Pakistan?

There was no “Partition”
The Geographic Two Nation Theory. Pakistan existed 5000 years ago as the “Indus Valley Civilization”

Pakistan is a child of the Indus like Egypt is a child of the Nile: The Pakistani 7000 year old Indus Valley Civilization

What if Pakistan did not exist? For answers please visitPakistan Historian

http://www.pakhistorian.com

The historical basis of the sovereignty of Muslim Provinces

The Pakistan Ideology

Pakistan Day: A reminder “Pakistan manzil nahin–nishan e manzil hai”

Not comfortable with sectarian party rivals dominating politics in his native state of Rajasthan, Jaswant Singh fought the April-May Lok Sabha polls in the communist bastion of West Bengal, which he breached to become the only BJP MP to do so in decades. I still remember his reassuring voice at the post-summit news conference in Agra, when rightwing hawks were having a field day. ‘The caravan of peace has stalled, but not overturned,’ he cautioned famously as Gen Musharraf’s plane headed for Islamabad.

Having held the portfolios of defence, foreign affairs and finance as federal minister Jaswant Singh wouldn’t want to be seen as anything but an Indian patriot. It is thus that he makes for an unlikely admirer of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the creator of Pakistan. His book Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence  The following excerpts from an interview he gave to a private TV channel reveal as much about the author as about his least likely muse.

Did he subscribe to the popular demonisation of Jinnah in India?

‘Of course I don’t. To that I don’t subscribe. I was attracted by the personality, which has resulted in a book. If I was not drawn to the personality I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality, of great character, determination.’

Did he see Jinnah as a great man?

‘Oh yes, because he created something out of nothing and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress Party and against the British who didn’t really like him … Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?’

Did he see Jinnah as a nationalist?

‘Oh yes. He fought the British for an independent India but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India … the acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.’

What did he admire about Jinnah most?

‘I admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) – Nehru and others – were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. He was so poor he had to walk to work … he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but there’s no lift. And he never sought a lift.’

Did he believe the common Indian lore that Jinnah hated Hindus?

‘Wrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not … his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party. He had no problems whatsoever with Hindus. I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon … we needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country.’

Jaswant Singh said had Congress accepted a decentralised federal country then, in that event, a united India ‘was ours to attain.’ The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘highly centralised polity.’

He said: ‘Nehru believed in a high centralised policy. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.’

Was it wrong to see Jinnah as the villain of partition as Indians are taught?

‘It is. It is not borne out of the facts … we need to correct it…Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their political demands) …For example, see the 1946 election. Jinnah’s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don’t have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government. So it was realised that simply contesting elections was not enough… All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economy destiny.’

Speaking about Jinnah’s call for Pakistan, Jaswant Singhsaid: ‘From what I have written, I have found it was a negotiating tactic because he (Jinnah) wanted certain provinces to be with the Muslim League, he wanted a certain per centage of (seats) in the central legislature. If he had that there would not have been partition.’

Nehru’s heirs and the Congress party could find his claims unacceptable, he was told.

Jaswant Singh said: ‘I am not blaming anybody. I am not assigning blame. I am simply recalling what I have found as the development of issues and events of that period.’

Had Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji or Azad –rather than Nehru – taken the final decisions a united India would have been attained?

‘Yes, I believe so. We could have (attained a united India).’

On Jinnah’s relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, he said: ‘Jinnah was essentially a logician. He believed in the strength of logic. He was a parliamentarian. He believed in the efficacy of parliamentary politics. Gandhi, after testing the water, took to the trails of India and he took politics into the dusty villages of India.’

Jaswant Singh explained that Jinnah had two fears of Gandhi’s style of mass politics. First, ‘if mass movement was introduced into India than the minorities in India could be threatened and we could have Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence.’ Second, ‘this would result in bringing religion into Indian politics and he (Jinnah) didn’t want that.’

Jaswant Singhpointedout that Jinnah’s fears were shared by Annie Besantandadded that events had shown that both were correct.

At the end of their lives both Jinnah and Gandhi died failed men?

‘Yes, I am afraid I have to say that … I cannot treat this (the outcome of their lives) as a success either by Gandhi or Jinnah … the partition of India and the Hindu-Muslim divide cannot really be called Gandhiji’s great success … Jinnah got a moth-eaten Pakistan but the philosophy that Muslims are a separate nation was completely rejected within years of Pakistan coming into being.’

Not too long ago when BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani visited Jinnah’s mausoleum in Karachi and scribbled something about his secularism, the RSS tore him apart.

Jaswant Singh rang me up the other day to invite me to the book launch. ‘I have said objectively what I had to say in the book about Jinnah, now I am ready for the noose.’

The verse about the pitfalls of war seems equally apt for the seekers of just peace. I can’t wait to read the book.

An unlikely Indian admirer By Jawed Naqvi Monday, 17 Aug, 2009 | 07:06 AM PST, jawednaqvi@gmail.com

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Pakistan-Japan Civilian Nuclear Deal?

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President Asif Ali Zardari on his official trip to Japan is pitching for a Civilian Nuclear deal with Japan. Tokyo seems open to the suggestion and is willing to talk to Islamabad about it. The old reservations seem to have been put to rest and Tokyo does not want to lose its foothold in Islamabad. It does toe s slightly different line than that of Washington.

According to Kyodo News President Zardari and the Pakistani establishment is well was aware of age old Japanese concerns about contributing to nuclear proliferation through Nuclear exports. However the Indo_US Nuclear deal has changed the topography. The Bharati deal with America is very dependent on Japanese parts and equipment Bharat’s intention to construct 20 additional nuclear plants within the next decade has created hopes among Japanese companies for selling requisite materials and technology to the South Asian state.

The Global Security Network is reporting on a possible Islamabad-Tokyo deal

Pakistan-Japan Civilian Nuclear Deal?. Image via Wikipedia

• Japan should pursue civilian atomic trade with Pakistan in light of the island nation’s consideration of such an arrangement with India, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said on Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 3).
• “If Japan is willing to cooperate with India in nuclear technology and (is) giving nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, I do not see any reason why we should not deserve the same,” Kyodo News quoted Zardari as saying ahead of a planned three-day trip to Japan (see GSN, Jan. 24).
• “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear-weapon state with impeccable credentials and custodial controls of its strategic assets,” spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said. “We are mindful of our responsibilities in the context of global peace and security and in particular in our larger Asian neighborhood” (Rezaul Laskar, Press Trust of India/Indian Express, Feb 20).
• Zardari dismissed news reports that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was larger than India’s stockpile (see GSN, Feb. 18). “There is always a difference between facts and fantasy,” he said.
• Questioned on Pakistan’s possible intention to build new nuclear weapons, Zardari said his country favors a nuclear weapons-free South Asia and does not favor an arms buildup in the area (see GSN, Feb. 10; Kyodo News/Japan Times, Feb. 21).

Islamabad wanted a Nuclear free South Asia but had to taek steps to survive. Pakistan’s position is of self-defense and deterrance. It had to establish a Nuclear program for self-preservation to prevent the existential threats from Delhi’s Nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998.

Whether Tokyo will help Pakistan in Nuclear Technology depends on many factors. It knows that if it won’t sell the plants to Pakistan, China will. This reduces Japanese clout in Islamabad. Tokyo won’t make a bold move, but eventually it will come around and sell Nuclear Technolgy to Pakistan.

Pakistan-Japan Civilian Nuclear Deal?

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Why “Raymond Davis” is not a diplomat

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Why "Raymond Davis" is not a diplomat. He was carrying a GPS tracking device and arms

The Pakistani Government has never accepted Mr. “Raymond Davis” as a diplomat. Former Foreign Minister who was on the post has refused to declare Mr. “Davis” as a diplomat because he was not designated as such on the rolls. Mr. “Davis” was not performing his duties in the slums of Lahore. What was he doing? His visa clearly shows him on a business visa. The US Embassy has changed its story several times. Mr. “Davis” has admitted on tape that he was a contractor. He was declared Persona Non-Grata in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.

The Pakistani government has never accepted the diplomatic credentials of Mr. “Davis” and he is not a diplomat. In fact the Information Minister Ms. Fauzia Whab who made a nonsensical statement about “Davis” in her personal capacity was fired yesterday.

Filing a request does not mean automatic confirmation. What type of diplomat carries guns, GPS equipment and all sorts of heavy arms? What type of diplomat shoots motorcyclists through the window of his car, then steps out and pumps five bullets into the civilians and then makes a video of it laughing about his act!

How many of these mercenaries disguising themselves as diplomats are out there?

If this is the definition of a diplomat, certainly Pakistan doesn’t need 300 of them running amok in the cities.

A diplomat has to use his real name and his credential and identity has to be approved. The State Department has publicly stated that Mr. “Davis” was using a pseudonym. This is clearly a violation of any Vienna Conventions.

http://rupeenews.com/?p=35639

A diplomat is not allowed to carry arms. Mr. Davis did not have a license to carry arms in Pakistan.

http://rupeenews.com/?p=35732

A diplomat has “immunity” during the course of his work assignment. Mr. “Davis” was going to strange places on the border, took pictures of sensitive military establishments, utilized a GPS tracking devise and was armed to the teeth.

The Vienna Convention and “diplomatic immunity” is not universal and it is not a license to kill. The US itself has arrested Eastern European diplomats and prosecuted them in a court of law for committing murder. The UK tried and placed a Saudi diplomat in jail for abusing and then killing his servant.

In fact Mr. “Davis” demeanor, mannerisms, body build and actions are that of a trained mercenary and killer. Mr. Munter is a diplomat–and looks it. Mr. “Davis” (or whatever his real name is) has none of the qualifications of a diplomat.

The area from which Mr. “Davis” was arrested in a slum area in Lahore. No decent diplomat would be caught dead in the area during the day or night. Mozung is like Harlem or Bronx at night. Why would a diplomat be present in such an area in the wee hours of the night? What was he doing there and in the sensitive border areas of Pakistan.

Imagine a Venezuela diplomat taking pictures of Marine Camps,  Fort Knox, Nuclear power-plants, and tunnels to the Mexican border. Imagine what the US reaction would be if he killed two people in New York and then tried to run away?  Imagine if he was arrested with several guns and a GPS homing device.

How many diplomats in the world are co-owners of Hyperion Security Agencies (a pseudonym for soldiers for hire). What are the educational qualifications of Mr. “Davis” Perhaps a degree in International Relations, or a “Political Science” would make sense. Mr. “Davis” credentials show a military background and his experience displays working for security agencies.

It is quiet obvious that Mr. “Davis” and his acolytes are spies, and agents who were part of the drone operations. It is pedagogical to note that since his arrest several days ago, there have been no drone operations and no suicide bombings in Pakistan.

Mr. “Davis” is not a diplomat. He has abused his stay in Pakistan. The court will decide whether he fired in self-defense or not. The Foreign Office of Pakistan has clearly stated that his name is not present on the list of diplomats that is kept in the Foreign Office. See statements of the Foreign Minister at the time.

The US Embassy has not turned over the driver of the vehicle that came to rescue Mr. “Davis”. That vehicle drove rashly on the wrong side of the road and then mowed down an innocent bystander. The Embassy has not handed over that vehicle not revealed the identity of that driver either. Was he a diplomat too? Clearly these types of “diplomats” need driving lessons! are not needed in Pakistan.

Bob Woodward in his book clearly describes the 3000 strong “CIA Army” present in Pakistan. Mr. “Davis” is part and parcel of that army that has been subcontracted to unsavory characters like Mr. “Davis”. Several times during the past months, characters like Mr. “Davis” have scuffled with the local police and then gotten away. This time he was caught. If 3000 of these are running around in Pakistan–then there will be many more incidents like these.

Related articles

• What’s in store for ‘Raymond Davis’ after Kerry mission failure? (timesofislamabad.com)
• Lahore High Court adjourned on Tuesday without decision on ‘Raymond Davis’ (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Keep ‘Davis’ behind bars – drone attacks have stopped (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Kerry’s mission fails: What’s next? (newpakistantimes.com)
• Pakistan ignores US threats on ‘Davis’ (kashmirpunch.com)
• US mercenary sent ot 14 day police remand – threats ignored (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Facts about ‘Raymond Davis’ (timesofsrinagar.com)
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• Pictures of ‘Raymond Davis’ visas (timesofislamabad.com)
• Can Salman Bashir survive? (pakistanakhbar.com)

Why “Raymond Davis” is not a diplomat

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Strategic Pakistan Oman relations: Revitalizing 5000 year old Indus Gulf trade

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Our history books gloss over the details of the links of blood and kinship between Oman and Pakistan. The Omanese were responsible for the spread of Islam in Sindh. The links go further back, when Oman was part and parcel of the 7000 year old Pakistani Civilization.

The Melhullan Pakistanis five thousand years ago traded with Muscat Oman, Abu Dhabi, and Somalia on a regular basis. The Pakistanis of Moenjadaro, and Harappa had commercial contact with the business folks of Muscat in 3500 BC. The Indus Pakistanis used the “kauris” as currency. The “Kauri” was a specific sea shell which was found on the coast of Mekran, then known as Mekan. Indus Pakistani seals were found all over the Gulf states, and as far as Hawaii.

From the third century BC to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD, Oman was controlled by Iranian dynasties, the Parthians and the Sassanids.

If you dig deep enough, one will realize the the Omanese are part and parcel of the Indus Valley Civilization. The main Omanese tribe “Al Lawati” (Al-Lawaeeya, Al-Lawatia or Al-Lawati) has origins in Sindh (Run of Katch area).

The Al Lawatis lived and prospered in Oman and in the year 23 Hijri they were part and parcel of  Mohammed Bin Qasem’s Al-Thaqafy’s army which conquered Sind, Multan and Makaran during the reign of Hazrat Omar bin al-Khattab. Other tribes that helped in the invasion were the Banu Tamim, Thaqeef and Abdel Qays tribes.

After Sindh was settled  some of the Al-Lawati settled in Sind and Multan. Some remain in Sindh, while many returned to Oman. Today, they can be found in The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar.

French “India” included Vietnam and Cambodia. Dutch “India” included “Indo-nesia”. Columbus “India” was America–thus he found “Indian” on the West Indies. The term “British India” varied during the two centuries of Crown rule. At times Iraq and Somalia were part of British “India”. At other times Somalia and Aden were part of “British India”. British rule ended in South Asia on August 15th, 1947, but vestiges of the crown remained on the Arabian peninsula.

When the British East India Company established itself in South Asia, Napoleon invaded Egypt to cut of the sea links between London and Delhi. Muscat and Oman were part of  the same Franco-British rivalry which ravaged the Mideast during 18th century.

The Omani Sultante actually existed beyond the Arabian Peninsula and actually had a foothold in Iran, and along the African coast. In 1856 Oman was divided into two parts. One came under the control of the Muscat seyyid Said (1807-1856), who also retained his hold on a number of islands in the Indian Ocean like Zanzibar, and other territories on the coast of Iran and East Africa. In 1861 France objected to the partition of Oman into two parts.

Trucial Oman (the other part of Oman) was split up into a number of small “pirate” sheikhdoms. Both Omans were under the control of the British resident ensuring British domination all along the African coast–even Madagascar. A conglomeration of small sultanates in Southern Arabia survived as the Gulf Sheikhdoms. The UK possessed the colony of Aden and Muscat could not wrest it from London.

In 1951 the UK recognized the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman as a fully independent state. The country was ravaged by political instability, family feuds, tribal insurrection, and faced a Marxist threat with its neighbors in Yemen.

Oman has nominal control over Gwader at the end of the British rule. The issue was resolved amicably, and Gwader was handed back to Pakistan in the Sixties. Today Oman is strategically important to Pakistan as it was centuries ago. Oman links the Arabian peninsula to Pakistan. Oman is on the mouth of the Gulf and sits diametrically opposite the Gwader Seaport. It is thus one of Pakistan’s nearest neighbors. Relations with Oman have traditionally be very close.

The PPP government has paid special attention to the relations with Oman.

• Gilani’s visit also saw the establishment of a joint business council between the Chambers of Commerce and Industries of Oman and Pakistan.
• “You can see the number of Pakistanis in Oman has doubled; the amount of remittances being sent home has doubled and even volume of bilateral trade has doubled in recent years.” Gilani.

Prime Minister Gilani’s trip to Muscat and Oman should not be taken lightly. The reinvigoration of trade between the two countries revives the centuries old trade. The Arabian business reports that the Pakistanis are working closely with the Government of Oman.

“The ferry service will operate between Gwadar and Muscat and will transport goods between the two countries, Yousuf Raza Gilani told a press conference in Muscat.

‘Reinvigorating our bilateral relations would help in further expanding economic and trade cooperation,’ Gilani was quoted as saying by Times of Oman newspaper.”

The importance of Oman to Pakistani security cannot be underestimated. Oman sits next to the volatility of Yemen and faces Iran. Its independence and sovereignty is threatened by its neighbors and there is concern about Iran.  Oman cannot remain isolated from the trouble in Yemen. The Sunnis are in a majority in Oman dominated by the Ibadhi clan and they have coexisted with the Al Lawatis tribe.

The Guardian reports that, at least a section of the Omanese establishment is weary of Iran’s intentions in the Middle East.

• “1. (S/NF) Minister of the Royal Office and head of the Office of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Ali bin Majid al-Ma’amari, reviewed Oman’s view on Iran from a security perspective, highlighting Omani awareness of Iran’s deceptive tactics and expansionist ideological desires in the region. During an introductory meeting with NAVCENT commander VADM William Gortney, accompanied by the Ambassador, General Ali addressed the Iranian nuclear file, security in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian interference in the region. Ali Majid’s suspicious view of Iran stands in stark contrast to conciliatory if not obsequious public comments of Omani Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin ‘Alawi regarding Iran and its role in the region. End summary.”
• “6. (S/NF)… Elaborating on his theme of “Iranian expansionist” ideology, he noted that the Iranian national radio broadcast commenced with the prelude “the voice of the Islamic Republic from Tehran.” Focusing on “from Tehran,” he astutely raised Omani concerns that such language revealed Iran’s true intentions: a “greater Islamic Republic” with Tehran at its center. He further speculated that Iran wanted to give the impression that the Islamic Republic might already encompass “Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and even the Gulf.”
• 8. (S/NF) Acknowledging Iran’s revolutionary zeal, the General attempted to put Iranian public statements in perspective when he described as exaggerations those comments by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmed-I Nejad or other Iranian figures, particularly regarding military capabilities. “Countries that believe they have some specific military weapons advantages usually keep them secret,” he averred. He asserted that in the end, all power resided with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
• 9. (S/NF) Ali Majid portrayed Shi’a ideology as another factor complicating possible military conflict with Iran. Iranian leaders would not balk at sacrificing a quarter of their 60 million citizens in a military conflict. The Shi’a tradition of martyrdom spanned 14 centuries. The annual self-flagellation of Shi’a over 1,400 years served as an example of this martyr psychology. Beyond its Shi’a ideology, pride in its Persian national identity compelled Iran to demand international recognition and respect.
• 11. (S/NF) Punctuating his comments about Iran’s irrationality, Ali Majid pointed to Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi’s recent comment that “Iran is crazy” not to pay attention to the history of Yugoslavia and Iraq, whose ignoring of U.S. pressure resulted in their collapse. Interestingly, he referred to Qadhafi’s transformation from pariah to emerging member of the international community by noting that Qadhafi had once been “our enemy.”

If the Wikileaks are to be believed then Oman’s closeness with Pakistan can be understood in the perspective of the regional issues, especially the threats that it faces from Iran.

According to Oman Confidential “the number of Shi’a mosques in Oman probably doesn’t exceed a dozen. It makes no sense for them to build them except in areas with big Shi’a concentrations. Shi’a are the smallest muslim group in Oman.”

All Lawatia are originally from Katch which is a place on the Sindhi-Gujrati border in Pakistan. The Shi’a in Oman are called Ajam (Non-Arab) and are originally from Iran. They make up a very small minority among the Bahranis. Some Ajam families use the name Al Bahrani.

Today, Oman needs Pakistan more than ever.

Oman is home to over 175,000 Pakistanis, majority of them working as labourers. However there are a significant number of Doctors and Engineers in Oman. According to a recent APP report “the skilled manpower export from Pakistan to Oman has increased significantly in last three years with total remittances almost doubling to US dollar 287 million. According to data available with Pakistan embassy in Muscat, the remittances have risen from US dollar 130 millions in 2005-06 with a skilled workforce from Pakistan comprising doctors, engineers and lecturers.” In real terms, these numbers are small, but there is an exponential rise in the numbers.

Oman supports the Pakistani stand on Afghanistan and according to the Wikileaks as reported in the Guardian “the U.S. would be wise to support talks with moderate members of the Taliban, which Oman encouraged as a way toward achieving security in Afghanistan.”

Oman has security and defense needs, and has to build alliances with its neighbors. There is a sizable number of Pakistanis working in Oman. Those bonds are now becoming more crucial to Oman. Oman is part of the Pakistani sphere of influence and will defend Oman from all foreign and domestic threats. Pakistan has very close relations with Saudi Arabia and the UEA. It has close links with Iran. The recent visit of Prime Minister Gilani is part of the growing Omanese-Pakistani alliance which will benefit the entire region. The military relations between Pakistan and Oman are much deeper than what people know about. These relations are continuing to grow.

Related articles

• The Indus and its water (timesofislamabad.com)
• The Himalayan water and the Indus people (pakistanakhbar.com)
• The Indus people of Pakistan and the Himalayan water (moinansari.blogspot.com)
• Gilani and Turkey: Beginning of something great? (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Kashmir’s Himalayan water (timesofsrinagar.com)
• Pakistan and China accept Kashmir as disputed (timesofsrinagar.com)
• China’ growing influence in Turkey and Pakistan (azadkashmirtimes.com)
• Strategic ally: Muscat and Oman (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Tajiks want access to the sea through Gwader (rupeenews.com)
• Pakistan China closeness: A message to the USA (pakpunch.com)
• You: Pak community in Oman bringing dividends to economy (nation.com.pk)
• US embassy cables: Omani official wary of Iranian expansionism (guardian.co.uk)
• Italians to build Iran-Pakistan pipline (azadkashmirtimes.com)

Strategic Pakistan Oman relations: Revitalizing 5000 year old Indus Gulf trade

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PAF strategies for the next half century

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In the next decade all Air Forces are focusing on the Stealth Technology available in the 5th Gen aircraft. The IAF burnt by colossal failures with reference to indigenous aircraft and engine manufacturing was left with a huge gap. It has tried to fill the void which was left by the inability of the IAF to produce the LCA. That void is being filled by three level of purchases, the MCRC, the purchase of Russian PAKFA (called FGFA in Bharat) and possible direct purchase of aircraft from the US.

Within the next quarter century, the IAF is projected to have many 5th generation fighter aircraft. The Chinese Ari Force is Light Years ahead and faces no threat from Delhi. The PAF has taken note of the IAF numbers and is taking appropriate measures to deal with the situation.

The IAF in 2025 will have the PAKFA in service, provided the Russians can produce the aircraft and provided that they are not another generation of Flying Coffins.

The IAF Countermeasures are as follows:

1. Begin the slow progress of mastering the technology so that it can be inculcated into existing Aircraft.
2. Jointly design and build Aircraft with China with approach 5th generation and beyond.
3. Purchase US aircraft with a bit older technology, and then upgrade those aircraft at lesser cost.
4. Work with Indonesia, and Turkey in developing local military technologies to counter the threats.
5. Use less expensive ways to deal with the incoming threat.
6. Bank on Missiles to counter the threat.
7. Bring incremental improvement to the JF-17 Thunder in Blcoks of fifty. This will keep the JF-17 thunder infused the latest technology for the next fifty years.
8. Start production of the FC-20s based on the J-10B and work with the Chinese on the production of the J-11s.
9. Enhance the UAV technology to the next level and design and produce Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs),
10. One expensive option is to build X-47 Pegasus class, to counter India’s military aviation threat to Pakistan.
11. Work with the Chinese to jontly build the WS-13 engine so that it can be used on the UCAV’s.
12. Continue development of the Babur Cruise missile and use to to build UCAV’s.
13. This mixture of response will not only be a potent defense against the IAF, but it will be eliminate the attempt of the IAF to intimidate Pakistan.

The first UCAV’s were autonomous cruise missiles, something that the U.S. and Germany have been fielding since the 1940′s. In Europe, several UCAV’s are known as robotic warplanes ( the Neuron, the Barrakuda and the Corax) are under development. These UACV concepts had their origins in the US,  and Europe wants to remain competitive with the American Aviation industry. All the programs have stealth features playing in the same league as the American J-UCAS (Joint Unmanned Combat Aerial System). The US  program includes the Boeing X45C and the Northrop Grumman X47B Pegasus . These European projects are the first foreign competitors for the American UCAV’.

These major UCAV’ systems are in play:

1. The six nation $480 million European effort has a produced a flying prototype.
2. The joint German-Spanish, Swiss, Barrakuda conducted its first taxi tests on the 26 January 2006
3. The British Corax UACV. The UK perceives the Joint Strike Fighter as the last manned platform for its Air Force, which will eventually replaced by an UCAV. The Corax, which undertook its maiden flight already in 2004.
4. China is making UCAV by adopting the old F-7 designs. China is using the J-6 and J-7 into target drones. Pakistan which already has the old F-7s can to this cheaply.

The UACVs have the following advantage:

• Greater maneuverability – in modern day fighter aircraft human tolerance is the limiting factor for the number of g forces the plane can pool during rapid manoeuvres, with UACV this bottleneck is eliminated so they can be very manoeuvrable indeed.
• Less weight – this can affect many things like endurance time, acceleration, payload and so on. One or two pilots and all the stuff you put in the cockpit can weight quite a bit.
• Better aerodynamics – you don’t need the cockpit canopy.
  Situational awareness – as Clerik said you can create very good virtual cockpit on ground that is superior to anything you can fit in an aircraft. SA is most important for air superiority missions, I think, and as air-to-air battles are pushed to BWR there is no benefit of having your Mark I eyeball on the actual aircraft.
  No crew fatigue – on the ground pilots can control their UACVs in greater comfort and rotate during mission.
• Lower price – often the flying unit can be made cheaper. All that fancy plane-human interface gear, life support, ejection seats and whatnot costs big $, but in case of UACV you only need the plane-human interface part and with that it is one for many planes and can bee cheaper as it doesn’t have to endure all the stresses and such. You need gear for communicating with UACVs instead, but some means of communication are already in place, so no big change there.
• Pilots are out of harms way – UACVs will save pilots lives. Pilot is very expensive to train and hard to replace quickly.
• Long Range Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Combat
• Short Range within Visual Range Combat:
• Low Costs:
• Quantity versus Quality:
• Kamikaze possibilities

The Disadvantages of UCAVs

• Tackling the Problem of Jamming:
• Human Element
• Lag – radio communications can travel only so quickly but reaction time is critical for air engagements.
  Single point of failure – if the enemy takes out the command centre, all the UCAV’ are neutralized too.

Those who espouse following the C-47 route for the PAF are living in a fools paradise. The US will not share that technology with Pakistan and it will be too expensive for the PAF. The best route for the PAF will be to work with the Chinese and the Europeans to develop these unmanned systems.

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• Hi-res pictures of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft [FGFA], PAK-FA [T-50] (aame.in)
• Russain PAKFAs to be sold to India after 2020 (newpakistantimes.com)
• Russia sells PAKFA fighters to India (viewstimes.com)
• India to buy PAKFA T-50s after production begins in 2020 (pakistanindependent.com)
• Turkish Pakistan defense cooperation grows (pakistanindependent.com)
• Unmanned aerial vehicles changing the face of war (canada.com)
• MMRCA : Why is India leaning towards Euro fighters? (moinansari.livejournal.com)
• Pakistan increases defense production with China (pakistanindependent.com)
• Held hostage to CISMOA, MMRCA forced towards Euro fighters (militarystrat.wordpress.com)
• Jf-17 Thunders ready for exports (rupeenews.com)
• Blind and deaf American cannot see Pakistan rising. China can! (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Pakistani-Chinese jointly developed ZDK-03s to suppliment Swedesh AWACs (pakistanledger.com)
• 8 export customers for JF-17 Thunders (rupeenews.com)
• Is the MMRCA the right strategy for the IAF? (rupeenews.com)
• Pakistan China arms exports get firm foothold (pakistanakhbar.com)
• Pakistan, China making customers in arms market (newpakistantimes.com)
• J-10 fighters to shine in Airshow China 2010 (militarystrat.wordpress.com)
• You: Chinese AWACS to modernise air defence (nation.com.pk)
• Killer Drones Get Stealthy (wired.com)

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• Killer Drones Get Stealthy (wired.com)

PAF strategies for the next half century

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There were no mass rapes in 1971: Sarmila Bose

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Image via Wikipedia

New impartial evidence debunks 1971 rape allegations against Pakistan Army

A study of the 1971 conflict by an Indian academic, Prof Sarmila Bose, says the Pakistan army personnel did not rape Bengali women as has been widely alleged by Indian and Bangladeshi writers. While Prof Bose’s study focuses on certain specific cases, the finding is very interesting, based as it is on extensive interviews with eyewitnesses. The study also determines the pattern of conflict as three-layered: West Pakistan versus East Pakistan, East Pakistanis (pro-Independence) versus East Pakistanis (pro-Union) and the fateful war between India and Pakistan.

As Prof Bose has noted, no prior study of the conflict has been done. What we have are narratives that strengthen one point of view by rubbishing contending viewpoints. The Bangladeshi meta-narrative, for instance, focuses on the rape issue and uses that not only to demonise the Pakistan army but also exploit it as a symbol of why it was important to break away from (West) Pakistan. Indeed, the sheer number of Bangladeshi women raped is placed in the millions, a fact to which the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report also referred and declared as absurd. Even so, over the years the charge of rape has stuck to the Pakistan army and weighed it down in moral terms. Prof Bose, a Bengali herself and belonging to the family of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, has done a remarkable job of investigating the charge and paving the way for independent scholars to probe the issue further.

Prof Bose, who unveiled her study at a US State Department conference convened to mark the release of declassified US government documents from that period, also spoke about the violence generated by all sides. “The civil war of 1971 was fought between those who believed they were fighting for a united Pakistan and those who believed their chance for justice and progress lay in an independent Bangladesh. Both were legitimate political positions. All parties in this conflict embraced violence as a means to the end, all committed acts of brutality outside accepted norms of warfare, and all had their share of humanity. These attributes make the 1971 conflict particularly suitable for efforts towards reconciliation, rather than recrimination,” says Prof Bose.

It goes to Prof Bose’s credit that while studying the conflict she retained her professionalism and integrity, two essential traits normally absent in studies done of that period by all sides. Under the circumstances, if she wants to explore the issue further the Pakistan army should not hesitate to give her access to raw material in its archives so that she can expand her work. Indeed, here’s the Pakistan army’s chance to wash this stigma off it once and for all. We are reasonably sure that elements within Bangladesh — and even India — will criticise Bose’s study because it goes against the grain of Bangladeshi nationalism. But this will not take away from its impartialness and significance.

Related Links

• Sarmila Bose’s original paper (published in EPW..one of the previous version which caused the major firestorm in Bangladesh was taken down after the writer sent legal threat to the hosting company of this website without corresponding with us.)

News articles from Pakistan supporting her views:

• New impartial evidence debunks 1971 rape allegations against Pakistan Army
• Allegations of Pakistani army personnel raping Bengali women were grossly exaggerated – Sarmila

There were no mass rapes in 1971: Sarmila Bose

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