Results 1 to 4 of 4

Thread: Talibanization, feudalism, and Republics( jat Khap Panchayats)

  1. #1

    Talibanization, feudalism, and Republics( jat Khap Panchayats)

    This class difference is often overlooked.

    In most of Pakistan we have a feudal system- medieval, back to dark ages system, where feudal landlords control the wealth and exploit everyone else, in conjunction with the priests( here the mullahs).
    You have a movement growing that offers to the exploited, survival, and also glory with religious backing.

    Feudalism in Pakistan was much like Feudalism in India, and the effects of the latter could be seen, in the feudalist, princely states in Rajasthan, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra.
    In India the feudalists were replaced by a contractor class, who still had the power in their hands. Power that denied education, and the means to upliftment to a majority of the population.
    The poor kept being exploited, and the recent surfacing in the shape of the Naxalite, and the Maoist movements that are engulfing the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa etc.

    The same forces are in play in Pakistan.
    This can be contrasted with the republican systems in Place in Punjab, Haryana, West Rajasthan, and Western UP, where the Republics (Khap Panchayats) of the Jats, Gujars etc held sway.
    The elimination of the Jagirdari system by Chaudhary Charan Singh in the fifties, brought emancipation of millions of the exploited. Access to Education and opportunities did the rest.
    Naxalism, and similar movements did not get off the ground.

    Ravi Chaudhary

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/wo...l?pagewanted=2


    Supporters of Islamic law on Thursday in the Swat Valley, a Pakistani region where the Taliban exploited class rifts to gain control.

    By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
    Published: April 16, 2009
    PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.
    Taliban's Regional Threat
    What are the implications of the Taliban's spread in Pakistan and the surrounding region?
    Join the Discussion »
    The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.
    In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.
    To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
    The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
    “This was a bloody revolution in Swat,” said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.”
    The Taliban’s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal.
    Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient, the officials and analysts said. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.
    Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to Punjab, saying that the province, where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas.
    Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama’s, said, “The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution.”
    Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan, he said. “The militants, for their part, are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,” he said. “They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.”
    The Taliban strategy in Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile orchards, vast plots of timber and valuable emerald mines, unfolded in stages over five years, analysts said.
    The momentum of the insurgency built in the past two years, when the Taliban, reinforced by seasoned fighters from the tribal areas with links to Al Qaeda, fought the Pakistani Army to a standstill, said a Pakistani intelligence agent who works in the Swat region.
    The insurgents struck at any competing point of power: landlords and elected leaders — who were usually the same people — and an underpaid and unmotivated police force, said Khadim Hussain, a linguistics and communications professor at Bahria University in Islamabad, the capital.
    At the same time, the Taliban exploited the resentments of the landless tenants, particularly the fact that they had many unresolved cases against their bosses in a slow-moving and corrupt justice system, Mr. Hussain and residents who fled the area said.
    Their grievances were stoked by a young militant, Maulana Fazlullah, who set up an FM radio station in 2004 to appeal to the disenfranchised. The broadcasts featured easy-to-understand examples using goats, cows, milk and grass. By 2006, Mr. Fazlullah had formed a ragtag force of landless peasants armed by the Taliban, said Mr. Hussain and former residents of Swat.
    At first, the pressure on the landlords was subtle. One landowner was pressed to take his son out of an English-speaking school offensive to the Taliban. Others were forced to make donations to the Taliban.
    Then, in late 2007, Shujaat Ali Khan, the richest of the landowners, his brothers and his son, Jamal Nasir, the mayor of Swat, became targets.
    After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and now lives in Islamabad. Mr. Nasir also fled.
    Later, the Taliban published a “most wanted” list of 43 prominent names, said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being killed, he said. “When you know that they will hang and kill you, how will you dare go back there?” Mr. Khan, hiding in Punjab, said in a telephone interview. “Being on the list meant ‘Don’t come back to Swat.’ ”
    Skip to next paragraph
    Multimedia
    Map
    Swat
    Related
    Times Topics: Taliban | Pakistan
    Taliban's Regional Threat
    What are the implications of the Taliban's spread in Pakistan and the surrounding region?
    Join the Discussion »
    One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact that Mr. Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more pressure on the landowners, Mr. Hussain said.
    According to Pakistani news reports, Mr. Amin was arrested in August 2004 on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and was released in November 2006. Another Pakistani intelligence agent said Mr. Amin often visited a madrasa in North Waziristan, the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, where he apparently received guidance.
    Each time the landlords fled, their tenants were rewarded. They were encouraged to cut down the orchard trees and sell the wood for their own profit, the former residents said. Or they were told to pay the rent to the Taliban instead of their now absentee bosses.
    Two dormant emerald mines have reopened under Taliban control. The militants have announced that they will receive one-third of the revenues.
    Since the Taliban fought the military to a truce in Swat in February, the militants have deepened their approach and made clear who is in charge.
    When provincial bureaucrats visit Mingora, Swat’s capital, they must now follow the Taliban’s orders and sit on the floor, surrounded by Taliban bearing weapons, and in some cases wearing suicide bomber vests, the senior provincial official said.
    In many areas of Swat the Taliban have demanded that each family give up one son for training as a Taliban fighter, said Mohammad Amad, executive director of a nongovernmental group, the Initiative for Development and Empowerment Axis.
    A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.
    The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year’s price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.
    Last edited by ravichaudhary; April 17th, 2009 at 11:06 PM.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by ravichaudhary View Post
    This class difference is often overlooked.


    .
    Sir, I hope you would have explained or (you should) the parallel Similarties of Talibanic and feudal Fatwas issued with their sheer significance by the oldest Republics (Jat Khap Panchayat) in cotemporary times. Esp considering their ineffective role in bringing Jats of various state together and their utter failure in creating a political movement for Jat community.

    Why a youth like me often look at them as just Fatwa producing machines?

    Are they still significant is fastedly transitiong village to urban culture?

    Thanks!
    "All I am trying to do is bridge the gap between Jats and Rest of World"

    As I shall imagine, so shall I become.

  3. #3
    Sir, I hope you would have explained or (you should) the parallel Similarities of Talibanic and feudal Fatwas issued with their sheer significance by the oldest Republics (Jat Khap Panchayat) in cotemporary times. Esp considering their ineffective role in bringing Jats of various state together and their utter failure in creating a political movement for Jat community.

    Why a youth like me often look at them as just Fatwa producing machines?

    Are they still significant is fastedly transitioning village to urban culture?

    ***************

    Dear Samar

    Thanks

    There are many important questions raised in your note.

    1) Can the Taliban setup be compared to the Jat khap ?
    2) Are decisions by the Khap the same as Fatwa ( orders) issued by the Taliban ?
    3) Is the Khap Panchayat able to play an effective role in the current( inevitable) transition from rural areas to urban?

    Both the Jat Khaps and the Taliban represent social forces, that seek to create and develop group relationships to develop a society.

    A society requires structures. And rules. They make rules and make law.

    Both the Taliban and the Jat Khaps do that.


    The similarities pretty much stop there.

    The Jat culture and traditions as we know it would not be there without the Khaps, the Sarv Khaps.

    It is they who created the structures, shaped our traditions.

    Our Jat traditions are a love for justice, equality, fairness, respect for our women and children. Couples with this are the love for education, and traditionally over the centuries our Jat Khaps have created schools, pathshalas, ashrams, where such learning was nourished.

    The spiritual pursuits have been along Vedic lines, and politically along republicanism.

    The Taliban ethos is rooted in religious theocracy of the backward kind, designed to keep the population in the dark, and governed by edicts from priesthood, not from the members of the society.

    Jat Khaps today


    The Jat Khaps’ role in making and setting of law has been declining for the last 150 years.

    It is now basically a social organization, though it can organize and display political power at times.

    The questions we should be asking is should the Khaps play, more than a social role and also continue to make law.

    Questions of marriage, living together in close proximity, are social, and these matters are best settled in the same environment. If there is injustice, then higher law should intervene, and that avenue is there.

    What does happen, practically, that the losing party in the Panchayat decisions, will simply go to the civil court, and ignore the Panchayat decision, as it does not suit him/her?

    It is not possible to draw similarities between decisions of the Taliban and those of the Panchayat of the Khaps, using the term Fatwa. That would be simplistic.

    Should the khaps play a greater role, and if so what?

    Ravi Chaudhary
    Last edited by ravichaudhary; April 18th, 2009 at 12:06 AM.

  4. #4

    Arrow

    Sir

    I assume that the major difference between Talibanism and Khap republics is very well explained by you. So, i am more interested in the significance of the Khap Republics in today's World.

    Significance of these Khaps was obvious in the past when law and order system was not that good and most of the social issues used to be settled at the village and Khap level. Even court used to substantiate their decsion at first hand.

    If we look at the contribution of Khap Panchayat's since last 50 years or so, they are not doing justice to their existance for which they used to be known in the past. For an educated youth, these khaps seems an orthodox structure where some people are forcing their thousand years old traditions on the mass. Youth always believe in the change or modification of the tradition with respect to the advancement of technology, urbanization, education, nucleus families and globalization. But these Khaps seems reluctant to change their views which are based upon the moral values of ancient times and most of that seems insignificant in today's world.

    Morever, with the political penetration in almost every shpere of our lives making the scenario much worse than it should be. Power games are being played between the diferent Khaps as well as within the respective Khaps. I came across so many cases where the some influensive people of any Khap practice to settle some personal scores with their rivals.

    These days, generally, the Khaps are mainly involved in producing fatwa's and used as vote banks by the politicians. Morever, the decision made by these Khaps are not universally accepted within the Khaps leave aside the mass acceptance. Influencive people in the Khaps try to show their power to the less effective people and people who felt being neglected or unheard goes to the court.

    In the present scenario of Globalization, these khaps need some modification in the thousand years old traditions and should ammend the certain rules by inducing some flexibilities according the norms of present society to make them more significant and more acceptable to the mass.

    Regards
    Vijay
    It's better to be alone than in a bad company.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •