Happy Birthday

Sixty years ago, India and Pakistan gained their independence. Again, Ethnic Cleansing is my topic of this post. I think all of you have seen Sir Richard Attenborough’s movie, Ghandi. If not, stop reading and watch that movie and read the rest later.

I can very well remember the trails of Muslims fleeing India and the Hindi fleeing Pakistan leading parallel away from their homes to an uncertain future. And of the fight between the two groups starting because of nothing. Twelve million refugees, one million murdered because of race, religion and greed.

Ghandi, who was against the separation, was murdered himself half a year later by a radical Hindu. Not even he could stop the killing.

Those events were not too much different between Turkey and Greece. But I want to know, what we can learn from those events for, say, Kosovo.

I don’t know if India and Pakistan are in a state of war or peace. We know about the more or less constant fighting in Kashmir. And we know, that both countries acquired nuclear weapons even though the cost politically as well as economically was very high.

And we have heard all about the regular terror attacks in India by Muslims and the racist and radical Hindus in high political posts.

On the other hand, India has not fallen apart, even thought there are 22 official languages and ballot-lists are in 114 different languages! Tata Steel, an Indian company paid 13 billion dollar for Corus, formerly known as British Steel. Thousands of programmers are working for Western companies but still half of the Children in India are malnourished.

Pakistan on the other hand is not much better. If at all better. Ruled by a General, Democracy has a difficult stand. There is a huge difference between Islamabad where people go to jail because their fight for democracy and the North-West Provinces, where support for the Taliban runs high. There seem to be some hope, that Pakistan will become more democratic. There were demonstrations in support for the Courts, because they tried to keep the Army’s influence out of the judicial system.

But, as in Turkey and probably Palestine, Muslim orientated parties have to prove, if Islam and Democracy can be combined or not. Personally, I still have some doubt.