Pakistan, Bharat, British India - What came first, what came after?

[indushek]

Permit me this quibble - Pakistan's heritage and identity is Islam. It need not be the only facet of a Pakistani's heritage. To an individual, as distinct from an individual, there are several affilliations which need to be acknowledged. A Pakistani, depending on his or her exact circumstances, may be a Muslim, a Sindhi, a Shia, all together. There is no contradiction.

There is a contradiction, when u created something out of a whole based on the premise that u cannot get along with that part of the whole; u cannot say later on that the 'part' which u left long back is also yours.

 

[Rig Vedic]

How is this different from India claiming to be the cradle of Buddhism when there are precious few Buddhists in India today compared to elsewhere?

Buddhism is one of the strands of the Indic / Dharmic civilization.

The Buddhist tradition incorporates Indic concepts like Karma, Reincarnation, Moksha / Nirvana, and Yoga, as do Sikhism and Jainism.

There are indeed some philosophical differences - for example the the Buddhist concept of "Shunyata" (emptiness) vs. the Advaita concept of the Upanishads.

But it's all within the family.

 

[KS]

Pakistan's raison d'être is to be a safe haven for Muslims from fear of persecution. It does not imply rejection of pre-Islamic heritage.

Pakistan's raison d' etre was that there are two mutually exclusive sub-nationalities in the sub-continent. Mussalmans and non-Musslmans and that their way of life is nothing similar and they cannot live together.

For the sake of debate brownie points, don't chop at the very roots of your country.

There is a contradiction, when u created something out of a whole based on the premise that u cannot get along with that part of the whole; u cannot say later on that the 'part' which u left long back is also yours.

Exactly. They rejected this country, this civilization, said that their way of life is in-compatible with our way of life and demanded a place to live life the way their religion prescribed.

Good..be happy with what you got, with your identity and don't try to claim what you rejected before after trying, albeit unsucessfully, to be associated westwards.

 

[Black Widow]

@Buddhism:

• Buddha, the ascetic prince is listed as an avatar of Vishnu in many Hindu scriptures including Bhagavata Purana, Bhavishya Purana, Narasimha Purana etc.[8][9] With the departure of Krishna, Kali Yuga sets in, in this age, the true devotion to Vedas was replaced by empty rituals. To enlighten the world in such times, Vishnu descended the earth as Buddha, the enlightened one


Lord Budhha is considered as one of the Incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The prophet system is copied from Incarnation system. Incarnation system is borrowed from Sumerian Incarnation system. As Muslim believe in number of prophets, we believe in Number of Incarnation.

So buddhism is considered to be part of Dharmic religion and at least in India it is considerd as Hinduism. The Marriage relation with Bussist is not prohibited.

 

[Joe Shearer]

@Buddhism:

• Buddha, the ascetic prince is listed as an avatar of Vishnu in many Hindu scriptures including Bhagavata Purana, Bhavishya Purana, Narasimha Purana etc.[8][9] With the departure of Krishna, Kali Yuga sets in, in this age, the true devotion to Vedas was replaced by empty rituals. To enlighten the world in such times, Vishnu descended the earth as Buddha, the enlightened one


Lord Budhha is considered as one of the Incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The prophet system is copied from Incarnation system. Incarnation system is borrowed from Sumerian Incarnation system. As Muslim believe in number of prophets, we believe in Number of Incarnation.

So buddhism is considered to be part of Dharmic religion and at least in India it is considerd as Hinduism. The Marriage relation with Bussist is not prohibited.

This is wholly off-topic. Let us leave Buddhism per se out of the discussion. The Buddha is not universally accepted as one of the Dashavatars, anyway. We need to get our facts correct.

There is a contradiction, when u created something out of a whole based on the premise that u cannot get along with that part of the whole; u cannot say later on that the 'part' which u left long back is also yours.

This is fundamentally wrong, whether or not you get support from a section of Pakistanis for your statement.

Pakistan was formed not to reject or to destroy the Hindu heritage, but to protect the Muslim heritage. It was to preserve not to destroy, no matter what untutored zealots tell you.

 

[Developereo]

Fine, to remain on-topic, I won't go into the details of Buddhism's decline in India, starting from the 2nd century and including the names of Hindu rulers long before the Muslim arrival.

The point remains that the decline or disappearance of a religion does not invalidate the region's claims to its genesis.

 

[Joe Shearer]

How is this different from India claiming to be the cradle of Buddhism when there are precious few Buddhists in India today compared to elsewhere?



There is a difference. What you are describing is how a Cambodian Hindu or a Chinese Buddhist might act in India.

What we are talking about is removing the misapprehension that Harappa and Mohenjodaro are in "India".

The Brits value Stonehenge as well as St. Augustine. The Swedes value Vikings as well as Christian saints.

Why does it have to be either/or?

In fact the cultural legacy of India lies distributed over a very wide area. Until the recent Wahhabi influences came in, most prominently in Aceh, Indonesians had Indian first names. The temples distributed over Cambodia and Indonesia were dedicated to Indian deities, Hindu deities, to be specific. The heritage of Thailand is enormously influenced by Buddhism and by Pali and Prakrit. Burma is intimately linked with India in cultural terms on many axes.

If the fact that an ancient monument lies beyond the boundary of modern nation-state India is to take it out of the Indian cultural legacy, we are then asked to give up all this. Nobody in these countries wishes India to change her name so that they can the better protect their own cultural legacy. This is a problem unique to Pakistan. Why?

 

[Developereo]

It does invalidate if the raison d' etre of the existence of the entity was rejection of the heritage saying they were incompatible with that. It does invalidate if they glorify kings who did all their level best to destroy the very heritage they try to claim now.

Again, Pakistan's reason was to provide a safe haven for Muslims. There were no calls to expel Hindus from Pakistan to create a pure, Muslim-only state.

It does invalidate if they glorify kings who did all their level best to destroy the very heritage they try to claim now.

History is full of bad decisions and displays of bigotry. At some point, people have to move on.

It does invalidate when their own Prophet rejected jahiliya so emphatically.

Again, you are confusing practicing a religion with historical respect. The Brits respect druid culture as a historical part of their culture; it does not mean they have to spiritually accept druid deities. Swedes can be devout Christians and still accept Thor as part of their cultural heritage.

 

[meghdut]

In fact the cultural legacy of India lies distributed over a very wide area. Until the recent Wahhabi influences came in, most prominently in Aceh, Indonesians had Indian first names. The temples distributed over Cambodia and Indonesia were dedicated to Indian deities, Hindu deities, to be specific. The heritage of Thailand is enormously influenced by Buddhism and by Pali and Prakrit. Burma is intimately linked with India in cultural terms on many axes.

If the fact that an ancient monument lies beyond the boundary of modern nation-state India is to take it out of the Indian cultural legacy, we are then asked to give up all this. Nobody in these countries wishes India to change her name so that they can the better protect their own cultural legacy. This is a problem unique to Pakistan. Why?

Joe, cultural identity is not something bound by national border. Culture expands as it wishes. Why should others bother about us stealing their cultural legacy, if not they are themselves unsure of what it exactly is? I'm inclined to believe, if this forum is any indication, that Pakistanis themselves are soul searching about their identity and there are divergent opinions about it. Well that's but natural, but it would not be solved by blaming others for stealing their identity. The identity is still their for them to claim. Whether they would, and how they would incorporate it to their nation's Islamic foundation is the problem they should find solution to.

 

[Developereo]

In fact the cultural legacy of India lies distributed over a very wide area. Until the recent Wahhabi influences came in, most prominently in Aceh, Indonesians had Indian first names. The temples distributed over Cambodia and Indonesia were dedicated to Indian deities, Hindu deities, to be specific. The heritage of Thailand is enormously influenced by Buddhism and by Pali and Prakrit. Burma is intimately linked with India in cultural terms on many axes.

If the fact that an ancient monument lies beyond the boundary of modern nation-state India is to take it out of the Indian cultural legacy, we are then asked to give up all this. Nobody in these countries wishes India to change her name so that they can the better protect their own cultural legacy. This is a problem unique to Pakistan. Why?

That is for them to answer; we can only speak for ourselves. However, Pakistan does not ask (Saudi) Arabia to change its name since we accept that any contribution to Islam from Pakistan was distinct from Islam's genesis in Arabia.

There are key aspects of a religion, Arabic or Sanskrit, which bear a distinct spatial stamp.

 

[newdelhinsa]

This is complete nonsense. Pakistan as a homeland, as a separation out of India, had NOTHING to do with the Indus or with the Indus Valley Civilisation. What was sought with the creation of Muslim homelands was the preservation of Muslim culture and society, an insulation of these from the impact of majoritarian abrasion in a free India.

If the fears and misgivings of the Muslim community had not crystallised at the time of the first Partition of Bengal, there might have been no Pakistan. Irrespective of the IVC. Irrespective of the Indus.

If the concentration of Muslims had not been high in the north-west in particular, there might have been no Pakistan there, and no effort therefore to sequester whatever cultural heritage and legacy was available in that geography and claim it to be exclusively Pakistani.

By this token, if Pakistan had been constituted in the UP and Bihar, we would now be informed that the temples of Varanasi, the heritage of the Buddha and Mahavira, the Maurya and Gupta Empires were all Pakistani, not Indian. The Ganges and the Yamuna would have then found their true place as icons of Pakistani history, and alien to India.

Does that even begin to sound reasonable to you? If not, what sanctifies the identical posture taken about the IVC and about the river Indus?

Original posted by Joe Sheare

Now this is the right antidote doc.

Joe,

To me, the use of 'India' as the name lies at the core of the debate.

We accept that India legally took the name of British India, but my contention is that, by doing so, it implicitly stole Pakistan's share of the heritage because the world equates that heritage with the word 'India'.

I am an Indian and I have no problem If Pakistanis share and celebrate the heritage of India. I remember one of the elite Pakistani member badly insulting Sanskrit language which I think originated in Pakistan.

I also agree with KS that practising a culture makes one (more) ethereal custodian of a heritage. I remember talking to a gracious Tamil gentleman in Australia when he proudly said that one may argue on what come first or which language is better but Tamil is oldest and still in practise on street and academic level.

 

[vsdoc]

The crux of the identity dissonance here is simple, and its frankly churlish on the part of us Indians to deny those Pakistanis who are increasingly seeing the light and wanting to embrace their roots.

Truth be told, a Pakistan that is comfortable in its Indian skin and lifeblood, becomes a muslim India. We can live with that much better than an Arabic vassal state on our borders.

That obviously does not mean we have to give up our birth-right so that they can reclaim theirs.

60 years is not even the blink of an eye in the history of our civilization.

 

[Developereo]

From MA Jinnah's Lahore speech :

We are going in circles. The basic fact that I keep stressing, and you keep discounting, is that respect and acknowledgement of a culture or spirituality is not contingent upon believing it.

I will refer you again to the examples of druids in Britain and vikings in Scandinavia. The OP mentioned Egypt and Greece. The same logic applies to Vedic culture and Pakistani Muslims.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Fine, to remain on-topic, I won't go into the details of Buddhism's decline in India, starting from the 2nd century and including the names of Hindu rulers long before the Muslim arrival.

The point remains that the decline or disappearance of a religion does not invalidate the region's claims to its genesis.

It is my duty to inform you - and I hope you will not find it too rude a shock - that your last dozen or so posts more and more reflect my thinking on the subject of identity. I am not sure how to tackle this disconcerting situation, but trust that you will be courageous and brave and will not panic. There must be ways to overcome this, and we should work on finding those together.

It is clear that residents of geographical India share a common cultural heritage,as well as retaining exclusive aspects of their own. It is clear that artifacts relating to this heritage lie scattered over a very wide area. It is clear that individual nations within India, even within Greater India, are nettled by an all-embracing Indian claim of intellectual and cultural ownership of these artifacts. In this case, in this thread, it has been argued, not very convincingly, that the problem arises from our aligning our national name with the name of our common geography and our common shared cultural domain. As a result, the unwary are misled into believing that cultural artifacts belonging to the Indian cultural domain are inevitably to be found within the physical boundaries of the present nation bearing the common name.

The solution to this is not at all obvious. It is easy to understand the pique and irritation of those who find their treasures of the past sliding away into quite another country, which just happens to be the largest single physical mass, the country with largest number of inhabitants, and the country whose geographical extent covers many of the key civilisational nodes which formed the cultural legacy. The question is - what do we do about it? What can we do about it?

Frankly, I don't have a clue. Even after acknowledging that there is a problem, it is difficult to see any solution to that problem.

On another note altogether, for nearly three years and over 14,000 messages, a small group of us, refugees from the Internet wars on PTH' have been discussing these issues, although there is a broad mix of topics; currently, for instance, the Indians have been reduced to silence as the Pakistanis look at the legality of the Pakistan Supreme Court's direction to the Pakistani Prime Minister to violate the constitution of Pakistan. The debate is keen, the cut and thrust of argument is hypnotic, but the intensity is high, and it is a good discussion to watch from a prudent distance. That apart, this question of identity has been a major theme. It is now consensus that we are people of geographical and cultural India, and citizens of different countries, one being political India. The cultural heritage is held in common, except for those aspects that individuals have discarded in the light of their own value systems. As it is a small but mature group, it is not a forum where the theft of identity finds much resonance. That is not to say that this is not an issue; merely to say that perhaps this equanimity is a desideratum.

As for the rest, I don't know how to solve the problem.

 

[Developereo]

The solution to this is not at all obvious.

If your hardliners had held sway during independence and managed to reject the foreign name India, that would have been that.

As it is, ...

I truly believe that one of the reasons why some Pakistanis reject the ancient heritage is precisely because the name India now belongs to you, so any acceptance of "Indian" heritage is seen as acquiescing to Republic of India. If your name were Bharat and the term India remained neutral, more Pakistanis would be open to the ancient heritage. Anyway, that is not India's problem; that is something for these Pakistanis to come to grips with.