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* G * O * A * N * E * T **** C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S *
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Two new showrooms/office spaces, double height (135 sq m each with bath)
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Jinnah - Learning from the Past
Views on Jaswant Singh's book "Jinnah: India-Partition Independence" appears to
miss the lessons from the past. As I read the fight for Indian independence,
the 64-dollar question is whether some aspects of the struggle should have been
done differently? And what can we learn from those mistakes?
Some political leaders of both Hindu and Muslim community, in an attempt to
emotionally charge the uneducated masses, wrapped their "freedom message" with
a religious flag (since there was no Indian flag). That religious-nationalistic
fervor soon crept into secular leaders, at the local and national levels. There
was little effort to encourage the various subgroups in communities to interact
with and accommodate each other. Thus there was no local or national
power-sharing, leading to the unraveling of the Lucknow Pact; which was the
climax of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity.
We see the same scenario of communal disharmony unfolding today in India. Local
ethnic discord is fanned by national religious and political leaders. A society
that does not learn from its history will repeat the same mistakes.
Regards, GL
