Missionary in Victorian Britain

The role of missionaries was well known in late Victorian Britain. As one contemporary writer remarked, the boys at the St Mary's Redcliffe School in Bristol were asked one day to write an essay on a British colony. One of the boys wrote,
'Africa is a British colony. I will tell you how England makes her colonies. First she gets a missionary; when the missionary has found a specially beautiful and fertile tract of country, he gets all his people round him and says, "Let us pray," and when all the eyes are shut, up goes the British Flag!' The commentator realized that the 'great mass of the people of Nigeria [had] come under the protection of the British flag with their eyes shut'.

Excerpt from 'Ghosts of Empire' by K Kwarteng

White Man's burden

Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go, bind your sons to exile
To wait, in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child

R. Kipling

Wall Street Bail Out Plan

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys!

Now you have a better understanding of how the WALL STREET BAILOUT PLAN WILL WORK !!!!

The Kashmir collage

Excerpts from Chapter 7 of 'Ghosts of Empire' by K Kwarteng

It took the British more than three hundred years to build up their Indian Empire. They dismantled it in just seventy days in 1947.

Nehru, a Kashmiri Brahmin, loved Kashmir like a supremely beautiful woman whose beauty is impersonal and above desire.

Muslim League in Punjab and NWFP are making preparations to enter Kashmir in considerable numbers. Nehru.

Arrangements are in train to send immediately supplies of arms and ammunition to Kashmir. Sardar Patel.

It would be a very good thing if Kashmir could be filled up with armed Muslims to the greatest possible extent, out line here must be that all officers and our police etc. give no support or sympathy to the movement. Abdul Qayum governor NWFP.

The invading Pathans had sensed an opportunity of gaining both religious merit and rich booty.

If there is going to be a plebiscite, then obviously we have to work in such a way as to gain the goodwill of the majority of the population of the State, which chiefly means Muslims. Nehru

Direct action against Kashmir (by the tribal Pashtuns) now would tend to make the Maharajah join Pakistan than otherwise. Abdul Qayum.

Jinnah is conscious of having made a blunder (of sending the Tribals into Kashmir). Cunningham.

A unique situation had arisen, in which both the opposing armies were led by nationals of a third country.

British Government seemed to be divided, with Attlee etc favouring Pakistan and a group led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Cripps, supporting India.

Whatever errors may have been committed by both sides since the trouble started, the basic cause was the action of the Hindu ruler in suppressing popular agitation in favour of Pakistan. British Indian Gov. memo.

It was disingenuous to say, as was said subsequently, that Kashmir had the option to accede to either Dominion, as the India was divided on communal grounds and the only rational course was for a state if it decided to accede, to assure itself first whether its population would support the accession.

Religious enthusiasm, and the strong identification people have with their religion, was a phenomenon which the Congress party, in its secular liberal way, had never really confronted.

It was Lord Mountbatten's idea to refer the dispute to the UN's, and he urged Nehru to take the step.

On 1 January, India took the issue to Security council. The received wisdom among Indians is that this was a mistake. They have always felt that they have failed to get a fair hearing at the UN.

It has become part of the Indian mythology that Pakistan, in Sir ZafarUllah Khan, had a 'superbly gifted orator', and that Philip Noel-Baker, a member of the British delegation at the UN, was a 'vigorous' supporter of Pakistan.

One enterprising Indian historian has even stated that British support for Pakistan's position was somehow 'compensation' for the recent creation of the state of Israel, after which there was need to placate Muslims world wide.

The simpler explanation was that, on the face of things, the Pakistanis had a powerful case.

The Maharajah was an embarrassment to the Indian case....

• his wisest policy, is to do nothing at all. Nehru writing to Patel.
• he believed UN Security Council will take an adverse decision and that the state will eventually have to accede to Pakistan.
• he felt he could have had better terms from Pakistan.
• he complained to Sardar Patel that the Indian army had been hopeless in its military engagements in the Kashmir dispute.

By 1956, Kashmir had been integrated into India, and Nehru had abandoned his earlier commitment to a plebiscite.

By the end of 2010, Kashmir was one of the most militarized regions in the world, although the aspirations for greater independence remain largely unrealized.

The Kashmir dispute from the very beginning has been a battle of different ideas of what constitutes a state. Pakistan was built as an avowedly Muslim state, whose basis is the religion which, it believed, united the country. India, under its Congress leaders, has always proudly maintained its secular status. According to one writer, the battle of Kashmir is an 'uncompromising struggle of two ways of life, two concepts of political organization, two scales of values, two spiritual attitudes'.

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war -- which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms. George Orwell 1941.

It is ironic that revisionist historians have pointed to Indian democracy as the British Empire's greatest legacy. Democracy in Kashmir never existed; the system of Indian princes, was absolute opposite of democracy.

To which Dominion the state should accede -- strictly speaking, according to the Government of India Act, I alone am the authority to decide. Hari Singh.

L'Etat, c'est moi, Louis XIV

The Seyyed

Once there was an itinerant, an improvised old man who squatted in a derilct house and made ends meet singing laments in the street about the Imam Hossein. They called him the Seyyed because he wore an old black turban -- it was an ironic name, for no one believed he actually was a decedent of the Prophet. The Seyyed was known to frequent prostitutes. They would sit on his knee, it was rumoured, and weep for their lost grace. Some suggested that the Seyyed's interest in them was more than pastoral.

I confronted him one day, 'I have been told that you spend time with women of ill repute. Why do you do this?'
'I see women for their purity.'
'You mean they benefit from your status as a cleric,' I offered him an olive branch.
'No, I mean that I benefit from their purity.'
'Where is this purity?' I replied rather crossly.
'Its in their belief that there exists nothing so insignificant as them on the face of earth. They have been so crushed under the weight of sin, there remains no trace of pride in them. And when they say they are sinners and worth no more than the cur which sits on my door, I know they are not like the charlatans we see around us.'
He put a hand on my shoulder, 'They're a step ahead of us. they know they're nothing before God, where as we persist in thinking that we are something.'

The Buddha of suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

I thought about the difference between the interesting people and nice people. And how they can't always be identical. The interesting people you wanted to be with -- their minds were unusual, you saw things freshly with them and all was not deadness and repetition. I longed to know what Eva made of things, what she thought of Jamila, say, and the marriage of Changez. I wanted her opinion. Eva could be snobby, that was obvious, but if I saw something, or heard a piece of music, or visited a place, I wouldn't be content until Eva had made me see it in a certain way. She came at things from an angle; she made connections. Then there were the nice people who weren't interesting, and you didn't want to know what they thought of anything. Like Mum, they were good and meek and deserved more love. But it was the interesting ones, like Eva with her hard, taking edge, who ended up with everything, and in bed with my father.
Page 93.

I hate work

i hate work
i hate working
it stops socializing
it stifles relationships
it is boring and monotonous
it is unrewarding


i hate work
i hate working
it is humiliating
it is slavish
it is unhealthy
it is lame

i hate work
i hate working
work is meant for donkeys
work is meant for geeks
work is meant for retards
no wonder work is prescribed in penitentiaries


i hate work
i hate working
i'd rather be playing
i'd rather be idolizing
i'd rather be chatting
i'd rather be not working


i hate work
i hate working
as I sit here wondering
and looking eagerly to my next toilet break
and then they wonder why so many people smoke?

October 1983, suicide bomb on UN Beirut barracks.

'I believe that among the many surprises that came out of the war in Lebanon, the most dangerous is that the war let the Shi'ites out of the bottle. No one predicted that but if as a result we replace Palestine Liberation Organisation terrorism in Southern Lebanon with Shi'ite terrorism, we have done the worst thing in our struggle against terrorism. In twenty years of PL0 terrorism, no one PLO terrorist ever made himself into a live bomb.'

Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's defence minister in Feburary 1985.

Death of Ibn Taymiyya

Ibn Taymiyya died after an illness in September 1328. His affiliation to the Qadiriyya mystical order then earned him burial in the capital's Sufi cemetery. That was an ironic twist - and what followed was a cosmic joke. Tens of thousands of people jostled for a view of his shrouded body. His personal effects were in such demand that bidders for his lice-killing camphor necklace pushed its price up to 150 dirhams; his skullcap fetched a full 500. A few eager mourners even got to drink the water used for bathing his corpse. And once underground, the erstwhile scourge of tomb visitors was destined to receive pilgrims and sightseers for another six centuries.

Excerpt from Heave on Earth by Sadakat Kadri

Abu al-Hasan and God

A well conveyed by a story Sufis told about an eleventh-century mystic, whose prayers had once been interrupted by a familiar voice. 'Oh, Abu al-Hasan!' God had boomed. 'Do you want me to tell people what I know about your sins, so that they stone you to death?'
'Oh, Lord,' he had whispered back.
'Do you want me to tell people what I know about your mercy, so that none will ever feel obliged to bow down to you again?'
'Keep your secret,' came God's conspiratorial reply. 'And I will keep mine.'

Excerpt from Heaven on Earth by Sadakat Kadri.

Putin and Chechnya

At a press conference, a reporter for the French Newspaper Le Monde asked a question about the use of heavy artillery against the civilians in Chechnya. Putin looking calm and even smiling slightly with the corners of his mouth, said, 'If you are ready to become a radical adherent of Islam and you are ready to be circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow. We are a country of many faiths. We have specialists in this. I will recommend that the operation be preformed in such a way that nothing will ever grow there again.'

Excerpt from A man without a face by Masha Gessen.

Russian matchmaker and the tailor's daughter

A matchmaker calls on an aging tailor to discuss the possibility of arranging his middle daughter’s marriage to the heir to the Rothschild empire. The tailor puts up several objections: he has no business marrying off his middle daughter before the older ones have found a match, he does not want his daughter to move far from home, he is not so sure the Rothschilds are as pious as his daughter’s husband ought to be. The matchmaker counters each argument with his own: this is, after all, the heir to the Rothschild fortune. Finally, the old tailor relents. “Excellent,” says the matchmaker. "Now all I have to do is talk to the Rothschilds."

Tenth December, 1971

On the 10th of December 1971, at Jamalpur, near Dhaka, East Pakistan an Indian brigadier, Hardit Singh Kler, surrounded a Pakistani unit led by Lt. Colonel Ahmed Sultan. The two officers exchanged letters on the fateful day. The first, written by the Indian brigadier, was taken across the front line by an elderly man who delivered it by hand.

To,
The Commander Jamalpur Garrison
1 am directed to inform you that your garrison has been cut off from all sides and you have no escape route available to you. One brigade with full compliment of artillery has already been built up and another will be striking by morning. In addition you have been given a foretaste of a small element of our air force with a lot more to come. The situation as far as you are concerned is hopeless. Your higher commanders have already ditched you. I expect your reply before 6.30 p.m. today failing which I will be constrained to deliver the final blow for which purpose 40 sorties of MIGs have been allotted to me. In this morning's action the prisoners captured by us have given your strength and dispositions, and are well looked after.
The treatment I expect to be given to the civil messenger should be according to a gentlemanly code of honour and no harm should come to him.

An immediate reply is solicited.

Brigadier HS Kler. Comd.

The reply was sent a few hours later:

Dear Brig,
Hope this finds you in high spirits. Your letter asking us to surrender had been received. I want to tell you that the fighting you have seen so far is very little, in fact the fighting has not even started.
So let us stop negotiating and start the fight. 40 sorties, I may point out, are inadequate. Ask for many more.
Your point about treating your messenger well was superfluous. It shows how you under-estimate my boys. I hope he liked his tea. Give my love to the Muktis. Let me see you with a sten in your hands next time instead of the pen you seem to have such mastery over.

Now get on and fight.

Yours sincerely
Commander Jamalpur Fortress.
(Lt. Colonel Ahmed Sultan)

The next morning the fight did indeed begin when Lt. Colonel Sultan tried to break out of his garrison. Over 230 of his men were killed.
They died in vain. When the Indian brigadier had written 'your higher commanders have already ditched you', he was absolutely right. The military and political leadership in Dhaka already knew that the war was lost.


Excerpts from Pakistan, eye of the storm by Owen Bennet Jones.

The dervish and his BMW.

A dervish was leading a simple life in Paris. He did not really have personal
possessions, except for a BMW motorcycle. He was very happy with his BMW.
One day it so happened that he returned to the parking garage where he had left his BMW and saw that it was gone. He immediately started to reflect on it. He tried to see it as a test. He thought to himself: "Does it really
matter that I no longer have got it? Can I live without it?" He then realized that he did not mind at all and could live without his BMW. A minute or two later on he suddenly realized that he was standing on the wrong floor of the parking garage and he found his BMW easily by going to the correct floor.

Pakistanis, the most critical nation in the world

In the preface of Owen Bennet Jones 'Pakistan, eye of the storm.'

Pakistan is an easy place for a journalist to work. Most Pakistanis, from policemen to politicians, shopkeepers to soldiers, love to talk about politics.Admittedly, the more they know the less willing to speak on the record but nevertheless Pakistan remains a very open country. Indeed, Pakistan's willingness to tolerate the scrutiny of local and foreign journalists is one of the reasons it has an image problem. Countries such as Saudi Arabia manage to avoid hostile media coverage simply by refusing to grant journalists sufficient access to do their work.
My first thanks, then, are to the many Pakistanis who were so willing to share their views with a foreign visitor........

More evidence on how critical Pakistanis are....

Excerpt from Breaking the curfew by Emma Duncan

Page 6, paperback edition

More than anywhere I have been -- much more than India -- its people (Pakistani) worry about the state of their country. They wonder what went wrong; they fear for the future. They condemn it; they pray for it. They are involved in the nation's public life as passionately as their small private dilemmas.  I did a small experiment with an English friend who does not believe that politics matters much to people.

A chatty hotel waiter sat down with us to share a bottle of local whisky.  My friend asked him question about his family; I about the dead president. I won hands down. My friend got monosyllabic answers, and I got florid, threatening images of the vengeance which mistreated children wreak on a dictatorial father.
 To a political journalist, a politicised country is thrilling. You begin to believe that what you are writing about matters not just to small coterie of heavy-lunching politicians and journalists but to everybody who lives there.
 If the rest of the world didn't care, that would begin to be depressing. But Pakistan gets headlines because It is at the centre of some of the world's biggest uncertainties, involved in them as an actor and a potential victim.....