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Sorry but that's still an extremely simplistic take, if not to say ignorant. The poor bullied minorities™ went on to genocide Bangladeshis in East Pakistan for

Sorry but that's still an extremely simplistic take, if not to say ignorant. The poor bullied minorities™ went on to genocide Bangladeshis in East Pakistan for wanting independence and raped hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women, only a few years after Pakistan itself had seceded. I know many Westerners love a good minority story but Islamists aren't that.

oa335 4y ago
Lol now you are doing the same type of generalization but for the other side, sarcastically labeling Muslims in Pakistan as “poor bullies minorities” and “Islamists”. The point isn’t that one side is inherently better the other, the point is that people feared minorities wouldn’t fare well in a United India due to longstanding communal issues. Bangladesh war for independence is just supporting that point, as is RSS/Hindutva, etc.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > The point isn’t that one side is inherently better the other, the point is that people feared minorities wouldn’t fare well in a United India due to longstanding communal issues. Bangladesh war for independence is just supporting that point, as is RSS/Hindutva, etc. This is nonsensical. The Liberation War is absolutely not an example of how "minorities won't fare well". For starters, the group targeted by the genocide was not an ethnic minority: they constituted the majority of the population of Pakistan! If anything, the Liberation War is a story of people coming together across ethnic and religious divides in order to stop a genocide - literally the antithesis of "communal divides".
  - oa335 4y ago
    How would you characterize the genocide in East Pakistan, if not driven by communal divides?
chimeracoder 4y ago
> The poor bullied minorities™ went on to genocide Bangladeshis in East Pakistan for wanting independence and raped hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women, only a few years after Pakistan itself had seceded. A correction: they committed genocide against Bengalis in East Pakistan. Bangladesh did not exist yet, so "Bangladeshi" is an anachronism here. Also, an extremely disproportionate number of Bengalis targeted in the killings were actually Hindu[0]. The place that is now Bangladesh used to have a much larger Hindu Bengali population than it does today, but many were killed during the genocide, and many of the survivors fled to India or other countries (either then or in the following years). [0] Contemporary accounts place Hindus as the outright majority of victims, despite Hindus being a minority among Bengalis within East Pakistan. There's plenty of evidence that Hindus were specifically targeted by the military, although it would not be correct to say that it was a genocide [solely] against Bengali Hindus, because Bengalis at large were targeted, and the primary motivation was a suppression of Bengali national identity.
mtalantikite 4y ago
The definition of minority shifts depending on who the dominant power is.
simonh 4y ago
Just as not all Hindus are bullies, surely not all Muslims are Islamists? As an atheist I could give a single crap about these labels. Can we all agree that because some people there in category A did something bad to some people in category B, doesn’t mean it’s right for some other people in category B over here to hurt some other people in category A. Right?

oa335 4y ago

Lol now you are doing the same type of generalization but for the other side, sarcastically labeling Muslims in Pakistan as “poor bullies minorities” and “Islamists”. The point isn’t that one side is inherently better the other, the point is that people feared minorities wouldn’t fare well in a United India due to longstanding communal issues. Bangladesh war for independence is just supporting that point, as is RSS/Hindutva, etc.

chimeracoder 4y ago
> The point isn’t that one side is inherently better the other, the point is that people feared minorities wouldn’t fare well in a United India due to longstanding communal issues. Bangladesh war for independence is just supporting that point, as is RSS/Hindutva, etc. This is nonsensical. The Liberation War is absolutely not an example of how "minorities won't fare well". For starters, the group targeted by the genocide was not an ethnic minority: they constituted the majority of the population of Pakistan! If anything, the Liberation War is a story of people coming together across ethnic and religious divides in order to stop a genocide - literally the antithesis of "communal divides".
- oa335 4y ago
  How would you characterize the genocide in East Pakistan, if not driven by communal divides?

chimeracoder 4y ago

> The poor bullied minorities™ went on to genocide Bangladeshis in East Pakistan for wanting independence and raped hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women, only a few years after Pakistan itself had seceded. A correction: they committed genocide against Bengalis in East Pakistan. Bangladesh did not exist yet, so "Bangladeshi" is an anachronism here. Also, an extremely disproportionate number of Bengalis targeted in the killings were actually Hindu[0]. The place that is now Bangladesh used to have a much larger Hindu Bengali population than it does today, but many were killed during the genocide, and many of the survivors fled to India or other countries (either then or in the following years). [0] Contemporary accounts place Hindus as the outright majority of victims, despite Hindus being a minority among Bengalis within East Pakistan. There's plenty of evidence that Hindus were specifically targeted by the military, although it would not be correct to say that it was a genocide [solely] against Bengali Hindus, because Bengalis at large were targeted, and the primary motivation was a suppression of Bengali national identity.

mtalantikite 4y ago

The definition of minority shifts depending on who the dominant power is.

simonh 4y ago

Just as not all Hindus are bullies, surely not all Muslims are Islamists? As an atheist I could give a single crap about these labels. Can we all agree that because some people there in category A did something bad to some people in category B, doesn’t mean it’s right for some other people in category B over here to hurt some other people in category A. Right?