Originally my reply to Jaffna, I think it is better than my usual stuff, which is not surprising considering Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
While I do like page hits for narcissistic pleasure (which will partially answer sandeep's question , who has banished me from his kingdom), my main interest behind blogging is to explore and organize my thoughts and express them in a coherent manner.I am still trying.However I am not even 1% of other bloggers.
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What I have found in debates about british colonism , is that most of people assume (incorrectly in my opinion) that absence british rule , there would have been no interaction.
I disagree with this, british were basically traders (as opposed to Spanish who were religious fanatics or Belgians who were marauders) and in my opinion trade is a much more effective tool to spread technology and ideas (Indonesia and Malaysia a case in point),
so even if British were not ruling India, there would have still been interaction.
I think more important than counting the positive that British rule might have caused (intentionally or otherwise), we should compare it with alternative scenarios (or "What If", as Isaac Asimov put it ). In my view most of what we attribute to british would have happened otherwise also.I may be wrong in that, and even if I am correct I have not yet thought about good which could not have happened without british rule (that is other than "most").
Here I admit that I am biased against British partly because of the region I come from and partly because of hearing lamentation of "How british were better than present rule" while growing up
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Regarding Punjab politics the problem is exactly that it leads to seperation of Sikh identity from Indic identity and this is the same thing which happened in 1980's.
In order to assert Sikh identity it was deemed neccessary not only to seperate it from Hindu identity, but also to negate it, that is "Not Hindu".
This negationism, this obsession with the difference was (while it was lots of manure) a shock to Hindu and Indic ethos, as this antagonism between Sikhism and Hinduism was unprecendented.
In other words, what happened in Punjab in 1980, was repeatition of partition.
That it (the insurgency ) ultimately failed, is testimony to spirit of Sikhism (the credit is due to Punjab police, who to this day is hounded by pimps of Human right).
However, while it existed it caused grief to both Sikh and Hindu, and the only winner was ISI.
My discomfort with Present situation is that previous insurgence started identically.
It had "Secular" Congress trying to undermine "Communal " Akali Dal with "Sant" Bhinderwaale, who with support well of heeled NRIs became Frankenstein Monster and the rest is history.
Present situation (that is vying for religious votes) while not going 1980 way, still has a distant possibility to mutate and cause lots of mischief and grief.That's what is generally called Slippery Slope.I think it is only prudent to learn from history, than to repeat the tragedy.
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I concur with the view that "Pakistan is a failed state", infact, I will go further and argue (ofcourse with benefit of hindsight) that it could not have turned otherwise.
