India 's National Language, Pakistan

Michael, Shelly and Manpreet’s presentation on Sikh immigration to Canada was a thorough historical overview of all the push and pull factors that resulted in Sikhs migrating from India. The presentation covered the three major periods of immigration and the push and pull factors that saw Sikhs wanting to migrate. In doing so, the group looked at some of the structural inequities that made it difficult for people to migrate. Michael looked at some of the struggles faced by Sikhs in preserving and maintaining their culture in Canada by shedding light on the Sikh identity and some components of their religion that often are misconstrued in the media. As such, this review will discuss some of the main topics covered in the presentation, and highlight and raise some questions that

“India has never been a symbol of unity of Hindu-Muslim civilization. It is not possible for the British Government to create homogeneity between Hindu and Muslim culture and civilization as the two systems are distinctively opposed to each other. There is no way other than the partition of India”

In story there are three main characters. Tariq is a young Muslim gentleman who dreams of going to Oxford so that he can receive a Western education like many other recent leaders of India. His family is preparing to move into Pakistan when the country splits for India. If he moves with them, he will most likely not be able to ever go to Oxford, just like his late daadaa (grandfather) wanted him to do. Tariq has been recommended by his teacher to assist an English cartographer by the name of Mr. Darnsley. Mr. Darnsley has been sent by the British government to help draw the borders between India and Pakistan.

Kashmir is the history of struggle, oppression, displacement, killing, murder mystery, rape etc. It was an independent state, having its own prime minister until 1953. The book details, how in the 1990s conflict and war in Kashmir, providential and innocent families crumpled, how their life became a hell, how young boys were arrested and disappeared, how mothers and wives were not allowed to meet their sons and husbands in jail, and how they were molested, raped and tormented. How families went from pillar to post in search of their relatives but walked back with ‘ big No’, how every politician consoled them, how others even don’t listen to them and how mothers, like Haleema, went to look for their sons till their last breath.

In Toba Tek Singh, because of their religion, the Muslisms, Hindus and Sikhs have to leave their hometown and move to place they have never been before “ for theirs’ good “. The government used the difference between religion to justify its action on jailing these people and moving them around. They drew a random line on the map, called it a border and move people around unconsciously. Since they are the

An event that has relation to war today is the tension in the northern region of India, Punjab, where the Sikh holy book was ripped up and thrown. Many Sikhs gathered in a peaceful protest, trying to bring to justice the people who were responsible, but the police ended up shooting and killing two peaceful protestors. Simran Jeet Singh, is one of the authors, who writes on this topic. He takes up this topic, because it represents part of the unjust that happened to Sikhs in 1984 where they were killed and murdered in the thousands by the Indian government. Singh says, “I was born in the United States in the summer of 1984, during the height of the anti- Sikh violence in Punjab” (Singh 1). He goes on to say how he feels the pain of his Sikh brothers and sisters who were killed in the year 1984, for their religious beliefs. Background about Singh shows us the importance of mediated narratives, as they show that Singh is trying to raise awareness about the issues going on in Punjab in an attempt to try to avoid the destruction that happened in 1984. Another one of these authors is Nirmala Ganapathy, who is part of The Straits Times. She takes up the same interest as Singh, as she works to raise awareness on the issues affecting her homeland of India. She writes about why Sikhs have been blocking major roads in India and the influence this has. Her curiosity is what has

This chapter gives the meaning of postcolonialism and post-colonialism. It introduces the partition of India in order to make a clear understanding about the subcontinent as independent state and how their leaders struggled to get freedom and independence as post-colonial India. It also displays the main changes and strategies adopted by the Indian constitution in the economic field to challenge the agricultural difficulties.

If a movie had all of the content of The True Diary of a Part Time Indian, such as unseemly language, masturbation refrences, and in it, would it be considered appropriate to play in school? Would parents approve of their children watching this material on a school assignment with their classmates? The answer is no, because the images and language in the movie most likely wouldn’t receive a rating allowed in school. Words can be just as damaging as images, and sometimes more in the case of vulgar language. You might walk through any middle-upper school hallway, and hear loads of language like the words mentioned in the book. But if the book the school assigns contains this language, 7th graders will begin to think the school condones or even encourages behavior like this, which is not an image the school should be placed in. One example of the language aforementioned is “major league assholes” which is just one of many examples in the book.

In the short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” by Jhumpa Lahiri, Lilia, her parents, and Mr. Pirzada react differently to Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 because of the different cultures in which they grew up. Lilia is a ten-year-old girl growing up in Boston, Massachusetts. The civil war affects her vicariously when she sees her parents and Mr. Pirzada upset. Lilia’s parents are from India and moved to Boston before Lilia was born. They show concern when watching the news of their homeland in peril. Mr. Pirzada is from Pakistan and moves to Boston for one year on a research grant while his wife and seven daughters still live in East Pakistan. The civil war affects him the most because it is his personal property and his direct loved ones that are in the midst of it all.

War raged from 1918 to 1947 and over 18 million were displaced however no one was left unaffected (Press Information Bureau, Military Evacuation Organisation.). Neighbors of the Indian ethnicity worried for their loved ones at home, families separated not knowing where or when they’d ever see each other again, and others trying to recover after being severely injured in an attack. The Partition, or splitting of India forced people out of their homes to try and relieve religious tension between the warring states, India and Pakistan. Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian author, writes about the struggles of the people before, during, and after the Partition in her books Interpreter of the Maladies and The Namesake. In the Interpreter of the Maladies, Lahiri introduces the readers to Mr. Pirzada, an Indian man who endures much turbulence after being awarded a grant to study in New England while a civil war is occurring in his home country, and Boori Ma, an elderly woman who struggles to find stability after being reluctantly migrated to Calcutta because of the Partition. In Lahiri’s The Namesake, Ashoke Ganguli was traveling to see his family when the Pakistani Army had placed a terror attack and turn his and his family life upside down. The Partition of India impacted anyone and everyone of India and largely effected the lives of these characters in many ways.

In this essay I hope to look at the issues of conflict in South Asia focusing on India and in particular the continuing Hindu-Muslim tensions, and look at possible reasons for the continuing conflict which appears to have escalated since the withdrawal of British Rule from India. Multiple events had shaped the Indian subcontinent with

The Partition of India in August, 1947 was a significant event in history that accounted for the separation of one of the world’s oldest civilization into two, independent nations – Pakistan and India. Like many other wars in history, The Partition of India was instigated by religious, political and social conflict. This resulted in violence, discrimination and the largest human displacement in contemporary history. While the Partition was well-studied, much of our understanding was focused on the political side of history, not the human side of it. This was why oral history played an important role in manifesting the complexity of a historical event. Our focus here is Maya Rani’s testimony from Butalia’s book, The Other Side of Silence:

It is not a revelation that the first chapter is focused on the identification of problems that the Muslims and “other foreigners” have been facing in understanding the Indian culture. However, in addition to defining the specific problems – such as pitfalls in language and the community’s resistance against foreigners, Al Biruni also elaborates on his personal encounter and approach to those problems. In his language analysis, for instance, he describes the physical difficulty in pronouncing and understanding some of the Sanskrit words as “our tongue and uvula could scarcely pronounce them” and “in order to fix the pronunciation we must change our orthographical points and signs.” From this effort to establish a personalized connection to the reader’s native language and accent, it can be inferred that he is trying to provide a foundational reference to the readers, to eventually ease their intrusion into the Hindu mindset.

Before the Partition of India, in 1947, India was considered a country with a reasonably peaceful history. However, during and after the Partition, sexual violence, both towards men and women, escalated, resulting in the rape and abduction of over 80,000 women. Cracking India, by Bapsi Sidhwa, tells a story that highlights these violent acts by both Muslims and Hindus, through the eyes of a disabled young Parsi girl named Lenny, who witnesses first hand the violence of Partition when she mistakenly participates in the abduction of her ayah, Shanta. Throughout Cracking India, Lenny observes as the religions involved in Partition become increasingly violent towards both men and women, within their own religions and against others.

19.3.1 Gandhi, Extremists and British Colonialism 19.3.2 Gandhi, Moderates and British Colonialism 19.3.3 Gandhi on Swaraj