Partition 1947
I am not sure what I mixed up in my letter as Shafi Ahmed mentions in his letter (June 14). My argument is simple. The Muslims ruled India for 800 years but with very few exceptions, the Muslim rulers seldom made religion an issue in governance. Conversion to Islam under Muslims was without coercion from lower caste Hindus to escape the caste system. However, Hindu historians have depicted Muslim rule in a way that paints a different picture. Muslim rulers have been depicted as mainly religious bigots and from such depiction the Muslims of South Asia have been seen as non-secular fundamentalists.
The truth is, the Muslims of South Asia generally have been more secular. For example, a Muslim does not lose his religion sitting and eating with his Hindu neighbour. The Hindu does. But history and literature of South Asia written mainly by Hindus depicts the reverse. The division between the Hindus and the Muslims was always there even before the British. But while Delhi was under Muslim rule, the Muslims did not use that to dominate the society. From the Hindu mind, they always viewed the Muslim rule as alien rule and they bore contempt in their hearts over this at the point of British entry into South Asia. It was this reality that the British exploited and successfully by encouraging the Hindus over what they had to offer in terms of education and commerce. The British, if you ask me, did this deliberately and laid the foundations of the two-nation theory in full knowledge of the consequences.
The British policy of divide and rule was not a simplistic explanation as Shafi suggests but a serious one; a policy that was at the cornerstone of their long colonisation of South Asia. I did not say there was no division between the Hindus and the Muslims before the British as Shafi suggests. Definitely there was. The British exploited that division against the interests of the Muslims as a strategy of governance. The Hindus benefited from this strategy that was the real cause of the partition in 1947.
Shahjahan Ahmed
Dhanmondi, Dhaka
Imperialist UN targeting Sudan
The merits of any governing body are reflected in its internal structure, and how it applies its authority over its own subjects.
On the first point, the UN is principally governed by the permanent members of the Security Council (the ‘mafia’), made up of the five most powerful nations in the world. From their privileged position, the ‘mafia’ bosses preach about the sanctity of international law to the rest of the peasants in the General Assembly; which has no legislative or executive powers. The bosses make and then enforce international laws upon the peasants, but not upon themselves and the power of the veto guarantee that.
This is why when I hear Bush citing UN resolutions or international law it sounds as sincere as Ariel Sharon on the same subject. For is it not warped US foreign policy and their veto, that has made a mockery of both International Law and UN resolutions?
As for the second point of assessing how the UN has applied its authority, we need to ask the following two questions:
a) Does the organisation show consistency by bringing the strong as well as the weak to account?
b) Has the organisation treated each case in a chronological order instead of being selective?
The UN has failed miserably on both accounts. Just compare the selective enforcement of the UN resolutions in Iraq with the vast number of UN resolutions that have been sitting on the shelf since the inception of the UN.
The western media have painted a simplistic picture of the events in Darfur: the Sudanese government and the Arab militia called the Janjaweed are persecuting the non-Arab Africans. It makes scant reference to the initial uprising by the inhabitants of Darfur, as if the rebellion is somehow legitimate. Nor is there any mention or refuting of the Sudanese claim that foreign powers, like Israel and the US, providing support to the rebels to continue the fighting, fanning the flames. By making one-sided demands upon the Sudanese government to cease military operations, against the rebellion, the UN is openly supporting the rebels and consequently division of the country.
What other interest lies in the remote region of Darfur? It’s that favoured precursor to regime change, oil (Texas ‘T’ for our good ole boys). Even CNN is referring to Darfur as oil-rich [2]. Yes, a Swiss company has already begun drilling for oil in Darfur, where preliminary studies showed there were ‘abundant’ quantities of oil and other precious minerals.
According to Mohamed Issam, a Sudanese political analyst, he also refers to oil as being an underlying factor for the conflict: ‘If you look back to the original demands made by the rebels at the start of the rebellion, they were asking for 80 percent of Darfur’s oil wealth’. Work on the first Darfur oil well, southwest of El-Fasher in North Darfur State, is under way.
Hence, the oil is an important underlying reason [3] for the conflict and it has acted as a catalyst increasing the existing tensions in the region. Another reason is strategic, an independent Darfur, could nicely accommodate a US base, that has access to so many targets in the region, all aiding the US in its war against Islam (terror). There may be other reasons but what is for certain, is that the US has exaggerated the conflict and none but the most gullible believe that the US desire to act is for altruistic reasons.
Yamin Zakaria
London, UK
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