Last week while I was going through the morning newspaper, I happened to see this picture showing the Indian Cricket team Captain Rahul Dravid on the right, Pakistan cricket team captain Shoaib Malik on the left and Prince Charles standing in between them. This photo made me think about an ironical situation. On the extremeties one could find two young men looking quite 'similar', who for sure would be called by someone unfamiliar with the game of cricket,as brothers or as cousins or as neighbours or even as collegemates. I am sure that such a person would be puzzled to learn that these two young men represent two completely different countries with completely different political, social and religious ideologies, two countries which have fought several wars in the past! And in the middle one finds a 'completely different' person, whose predecessors split the young men asunder for ever.
Celebrating 60 years of Indian Independence, Jai Hind.
10 comments:
Gotta say, great point made!
The pic is ironic in more than a few ways for sure...
Thank you very much gairik :)
Hey Arvind!
My pleasure!
How are you doing?
Ya I have finally started seeing some point in blogging too...
But I am still not sure how to read other's blogs on blogspot... I have tried blog.co.uk earlier and its was easier there as it had a search bar.
Anyways, glad you liked my blog too... stay in touch!
It IS indeed a profound picture. Very bitter-sweet in some ways. Bit it would be a little wrong to blame partition on Prince Charles!
If my hostory is correct - the conpirators in chief were Atlee, Mountbatten and Jinnah.
Yes..u are right shatto...it would be incorrect to point out just one person or his predecessors...just meant to say that Prince Charles represents the British royal family and hence symbolizes the erstwhile British empire to an extent..
What do you do when two people (Nehru and Jinnah) want to be Prime Minister and there's only one country? Split the country in two! It must have been a horrifying thing to imagine when it happened sixty years ago, and it's beyond my imagination how they pulled it off. In retrospective, I think it was a good idea. At least India has that much less number of Islamic fundamentalists now. Whoever wanted an Islamic country left India for good with the Partition. Let's celebrate that!
By the way, welcome to the club! :-)
-->>Jayanth(Icarus),
u are right in saying that both nehru and jinnah were power hungry. but the partition of India cant be attributed to just two persons! One of the main reasons for the demand for pakistan was the cumulative effect of the years of Divide and Rule policy followed the British.The Indian Muslims were misguided and were given the impression that India would be a Hindu Country and Muslims would have no say in power, thus they tried to divide the Hindu and Muslim communities! And Jinnah, who was just an ordinary leader even during the 1930's took full advantage of this apprehension in the minds of the Indian muslims and he became 'The Leader'of the Musims. Call it islam fundamentalism, but I think the biggest culprits are the British!
Jinnah and Nehru were the executors of the crime orchestrated by the British!
It's easy to blame others for whatever happens to us. Why did the Indians let the British split us based on religion? Why did the Muslims and the Hindus trust the British more instead of their fellow countrymen? It was just another manifestation of the mistrust between the two communities that has been extant for hundreds of years. More than five hundred years of Muslim rule in India had done nothing to change that mindset. The British empire was merely the catalyst, and maybe the initial spark. The fuel was always lying there, waiting to be burned. Indians would have had to deal with Hindu-Muslim confrontations sooner or later, irrespective of whether the British colonised India or not.
As for me using the term 'Islamic fundamentalists', that was in reference to the descendants of those who went to Pakistan, the current people of Pakistan, at least a big section of them. If they were in India now, India would be considered a threat to world peace by other countries. As you can see, from the days of the Prophet, the Muslims always had problems with other religions - the Crusades against the Christians, the clashes with the Hindus, and now global terrorism. As far as I know, Islam is the only religion in which the big kahuna (Muhammad) himself took to arms to convert people. That's pretty strange for the 'Religion of Peace', one would think.
For the record (I don't want to be blown up by some terrorist), I'm not just anti-Muslim, I'm anti-religion, so that includes Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and the rest of them.
:-)
Ah, wilkommen! Nice post! I came across this blog at http://delanceyplace.com
through Wordsmith (http://wordsmith.org) and thought I'd suggest it to you, especially after doing VR's course. The blog is mostly excerpts from literary works, and has almost exactly the kind of analysis of history that VR does :) Do check it out.
You're using Google Reader, yes?
good observation..ingenious inferences..i cant agree more with arvind..british authored the partition...but dat doesnt warrat harbouring any ill feeling against dem...something which happnd sixty years ago should influence our present attitude against them..lets exorcise the demons of past..
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