Three Cups Of Tea; by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin.

Strangely enough the jacket shows girls who look far too dark to be from the regions described in the book as those where the whole story is taking place, Kashmir and Afghanistan, while the writers not only notice but painstakingly mention the people with light eyes and often with light hair as well; this shows a dual racism, that of noticing such colours and then putting out a book with a cover showing people far too dark to be of this region but complying with expectations of west from other (assumed lesser) people who could not possibly be shown in their true colours.

And while in regions close to the equator people do acquire a sunburn, the picture on the book cover shows skin that is not dark merely due to sunburn but began with a dark gold hue if not darker, either from east Africa or closer to Indonesia. People of Kashmir and central Asia are much fairer, in fact the name of the race of fair skin is Caucasian. And before a further racist discriminatory classification was put in place in US people of Asia east of China - that is, including India - were classified as Caucasian. Which in fact is perfectly true, a sunburn being acquired through life depending on circumstances and fast.

Such a false cover is not unique here, it is on more than one book about India and neighbourhood, and in fact a painting in Amsterdam with a very dark male is named "An Arab .." which I remember pointing out as a false picturisation. The then host I remember had said it did not matter since the picture was artistic, which I thought an exaggeration in the latter part - the painting is mediocre at best - and atrocious as to former sentiment. Truth always matters.

Greg Mortenson has done good work to repay the people he came into contact with during his mountaineering days, carrying on the tradition established by Edmund Hillary in Nepal, helping regions that are under Pakistan administration (legally or by force) and without schools and hospitals by establishing them at a record speed and without strings attached. That he is nominated for Nobel peace prize twice already is not entirely undeserved.

Irony is that Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi who was largely responsible for British being able to leave India without being butchered (it cannot be said people of India had the same privilege, what with Dyer and his ilk, and later partition bloodbath), who established the way to independence without violence around the world by achieving it in India, was never given this honour. This is a shame for the world, for the Nobel peace prize and for those powers that allowed this travesty to happen thus reducing it to a political recognition depending on whim of those in power.

Irony also is that of the nation of Pakistan being unable to provide its citizens with even primary schooling, while one of the oldest universities of the world is in the region that is now called Pakistan post partition of India. The clue here is that these oldest universities of the world belonged to the ancient land named India throughout history by those not of India, and India was as famous for her traditions of knowledge and teaching of intellectual and spiritual matters as she was for her manufacture of goods from silk to metal and more; which is why the trade routes bothered to take the trouble to include India, not easy even in the difficult old days of caravans through central Asia trading from China to Arabia. But centuries of Islamic pillage and plunder included hitting at precisely the excellent traditions until education became limited to home schooling, universities were gone as were schools for general population, and this Islamic tradition is what Pakistan took up the flag for. Hence the dismal state of education for its poor while education thrives in India even as Pakistan officials taunts India on television for her poverty, and for India helping Afghanistan in spite of the said poverty. Pakistan would prefer to control Afghanistan, and makes no bones about saying so to US, insisting all aid to Afghanistan be channeled through Pakistan. And we all know what happens to such money channeled through Pakistan.

Mortenson's persona as his work being good and honest, beyond any possible doubts, nevertheless his politics is that of a blinkered horse in need of a clear vision for running his path through fire; it is molded by his childhood, his life, his work, and his limitations. Relin's, on the other hand, is that of a chef attempting to serve a rotten fish covered with a fancy sauce. Moretnson's life work is the sauce, and the politics that aims to target India with everything from false accusations to distortions of history to being wiped out is the rotten fish served in this dish of Relin's .

Just one example - they remark that Bangladesh women are better off in education, compared to those in Pakistan. They choose not to recognise that these are parts of India torn off only comparatively recently, even as they remind the reader that Bangladesh used to be east Pakistan; but the latter fact is merely political and the former reality (of the two being parts of India torn for political gain of a few) is an ancient unity of culture and tradition.

Bangladesh is better off for education and general status of women partly because Islamic rule was far more hard hitting in northern parts of India, and northwest part that separated to become Pakistan was where the assaults came from - the Khyber pass in fact being the route of aggressors arriving for lawless and limitless plundering and murdering in India. Naturally that was the part where all ancient civilisation was rooted out and wiped out, the last vestiges being driven out with the bloodbath at the partition.

But the larger picture is that India has a strong tradition of worship of divine in its forms of Durga, Saraswatie, Laxmie, forms of Divine that are symbols for Divine Victory, Learning and Education, and Wealth in its true form, respectively; and this worship of Goddesses is strong in Bengal as it is in rest of India. Bangladesh is rooted in culture that is ancient and deep, and while worship of Durga, Kaalie (symbol of the Divine power in its aspect of destruction of evil), Saraswatie and Laxmie is officially out of question and superficially eradicated, the respect for women and Divine Mother is deeper in psyche, and as such the Islamic-nazi creed of limiting women to physical and low slave roles is not as strong in Bangladesh as it is in Pakistan with its Islamic rule to prove its credentials to west Asia.

Imposed faiths do not succeed in eradication of culture, else Europe would be full of Jesus figures instead of Nazis, pogroms or colonial conquistadores destroying and plundering the continents of the world, imposing a new set of nations on land "discovered" across Atlantic - never mind it was well populated and had various ancient civilisations of great stature - and even wiping out the names of the continents so "discovered", and instead Europe would be preaching peace and turning the other cheek to the world.

Fortunately for Bangladesh faith imposed in that part of India with conversion and killing was as superficial as the faith claimed by Rome in name of the king of Jews executed by Rome, and hence the deep rooted traditional values of India surviving in Bangladesh that help education of women there. Ignoring such truths and questioning the differences of why two parts of the erstwhile Pakistan are so different is merely a central blindness to the truth of India, the fact that it is all parts of what was always India.

But Relin's vision is blinded to the central reality that is India the whole land with her culture, her traditions, her knowledge and and her spiritual heights, much like someone with a detached retina he can only see the peripheral lands and wave his weapons at the centre in fear of that which he is incapable of seeing or comprehending.

Or it could be merely a republican and evangelical zealot comfortable with yet another faith that would convert, plunder, kill, until nothing is left on earth; uncomfortable with knowledge, peace, light, life itself.

Greg Mortenson is by now known through US and I suspect through central Asia as well, or at any rate through the nations that have governments, elected or otherwise, that failed their citizens and have no intention of hiding it or trying better.

This to a large extent describes Afghanistan; and all the more so Pakistan, a piece torn out of India so India as it was until then could never get up and be well ever again, what with a guaranteed strife with a determined enemy biting it from both ends and India unable to do anything about it without giving up ways of Gandhi, and being a ridicule.

This did succeed to a considerable extent, in that Pakistan did attack India almost immediately even as bloodbath in western Pakistan left that part almost completely free of all those that were not Muslims, they were either killed or driven out, women kidnapped, raped, forced into conversion, and children butchered. This bloodbath of well over half a million was not enough, not for the demons let loose by demanding and getting a nation simply by butchering a few thousand people in one city (Calcutta, 1946), in one day named and declared "action day" by Pakistan's later to be declared founder; so, to add to all the bloodbath with butchered Hindus and Sikhs and all other non Muslims, Pakistan ordered armies into Kashmir.

Kashmir was a royal state until then, a state which was uncertain like many other such states about whether to join India or stay as an independent state under British protection, a choice for all royals states in India. But it was a decision made easy for Kashmir - and one suspects most others as well - when Pakistan armies attacked Kashmir, which speedily resolved the issue, and the state indeed joined India officially, pleading for defence of the state against the attackers pillaging and raping and plundering.

Pakistan did not admit to being in control of the attack, of course, pretending they were tribals of northern parts of the state unwilling to live under a Hindu rule, and had nuns in Kashmir raped and murdered by the said army pretending to be tribals. Indian army then went in and routed the attackers, but were not allowed to finish the job once for all and to throw them out as they could then have done, and were instead stopped halfway, making a mess for ever for India and for people of Kashmir, and for others just as unwilling to live in Pakistan too.

This defence of Kashmir by India stopped halfway due to the single fact of the then prime minister of India then being not Patel the iron man but Nehru who was truly, genuinely, a friendly man of intellect and heart, who would rather have a round table talks with gentlemen to convince them of the legality of Kashmir belonging to India.

Since then in India Kashmir along with the rest of India has had several elections, and several dire situations with Pakistan attempting to take it all one way or another, any mutual accords being only good enough to have India bound to her word but not Pakistan so.

What is more, India has had to deal with a rising tide of refugees from both sides - Pakistan and now Bangladesh - who either arrive with tales of torture, by Pakistan in the then east Pakistan or now by Taliban in northern Pakistan; and a few hundred thousand arrive on a visitor's visa and simply vanish into the woodwork, what Germany would derisively call "economic refugees", since the situation in India has always been better with democracy and hence a possibility of using hard work and talent to do well, while in Pakistan the only possibility of doing well is in being a Punjabi (so one is not oppressed as lesser sort, as all non Punjabi residents of Pakistan are) and either being well connected or being in the top echelons of the military, preferably the army.

Yet, with all the demands of Pakistan being met, the piece torn off Mother India has never been happy, never done well, and is reduced to a being a nation that is a beggar with a grenade, siphoning off billions of US dollars from US in name of aid and arms for helping Afghanistan while bulging pockets of those that could steal out of that money and meanwhile striking India with terrorism fully intended and deliberate, denying it when US intelligence is as fully aware of it as India is. And to top it all browbeating US publicly when questioned by US about the missing billions of dollars unaccounted for. And telling off the US authorities at state level to not ask for accounts but instead give the latest weapons, drones, to Pakistan. US is not as unaware of the purpose of this demand as to not know that it will save a few terrorists from Pakistan having to enter India to butcher more people - during last few years, say two decades or so, the number of Indians killed in various terrorist attacks including that on the Parliament and on Taj, various city markets in various cities and trains in Mumbai, and so on, is well over fifty thousand. Drones given by US to Pakistan will simply make it easier for Pakistan to murder more people in India. All this butchering is simply so Pakistan can prove its Muslimhood by competing with Nadir Shah (hundred thousand killed in Delhi till the river ran red for over a month) and Changez Khan and others. Or else, people of the world might still remember that Pakistan after all was a part of India torn arbitrarily off to satisfy the demand of some people about not living with those of other religions.

All this is without even beginning to account for the Hindus butchered in Kashmir, driven out with instructions given over loudspeakers to either leave or be killed, till the valley is emptied of all Hindus and Sikhs that lived there and had been historically more a part of Kashmir than the Muslims who often can and do trace their ancestry to marauding central Asian or Mongolian hordes including Changez - spelt Genghis in English mistakenly - Khan. So the Hindus and others from Kashmir are refugees in their own nation, with no recognition from the world - say UN - since they have not crossed an international border, which is sort of salt rubbed in wounds; the refugees from Kashmir in their own nation would like recognition, they are not holding a begging bowl to the world thank you very much.

As for the legitimacy of Kashmir belonging to India, the state was signed over by its ruler before India assumed responsibility of it as of any other part that joined India; but Pakistan claiming that people of Kashmir would elect to join them is a double fraud.

Double, since the northwestern frontier regions that were included in Pakistan by the British never did wish to be part of Pakistan, they were livid at being not a part of India, angry at British and Pakistan equally. Which means that if Pakistan questions the legitimacy of Kashmir being a part of India on basis of "the will of the people of the state" then Pakistan ought to have begun by allowing the regions included in Pakistan to vote on the question of whether they wished to join India rather than Pakistan.

And as for Kashmir, those Kashmiris that are fooled by Pakistan still have no intention of joining them, but instead have a dream of being a Switzerland of Asia, an impossible dream where a neighbour to the west and another to the east is ever ready to use all means to swallow them (China has occupied a part of Kashmir after occupying Tibet, and attacked India in 1962 on a quest of wrestling away more of India and proving China's power in the region as in the rest of the world).

Reality is, that not only a Kashmiri, but a person from Pakistan or Bangladesh can live in India and expect a fair deal, but not so in Pakistan or Bangladesh, often not even their own citizens. Those people of Kashmir that do live in Pakistan due to Pakistan occupying part of the state, such as Chitral or Baltistan or Hunza or other parts of northwestern Kashmir (northeastern part being under Chinese occupation), are not treated on par with Punjabis of Pakistan any more than are the Sindhi, Baluchi, or any other of the citizens.

Badshah Khan of NWFP was respected and honoured in India both before and after partition, but was imprisoned in Pakistan for major part of his life with no respect for his role in fight for independence from British - after all, Muslim League had collaborated with British rulers all along while the struggle for independence had gone on with the freedom fighters (who were mostly the non-Muslim League) suffering imprisonments and fastings and taking beatings without hitting back in Gandhian struggle with determination.

If today Pakistan government is, as they claim often, indeed unable to control the nation and the fanatic element therein, the fault is entirely in the initial building of the nation on the premise that merely plundering India will be enough, there is no need of any other ideology or principle of building and governing a nation except that of Muslims not willing to live with others constituting a nation. But in India Kashmir is only a small part of the Muslim population still living in security and equal opportunity with the rest as indeed do any other people of various faiths, including those that now exist only or majorly in India - Parsi (called Zorostrian by west) and Jewish and Tibetan, Jain and Sikh and many, many others.

It is strange that Pakistan being a beggar, rogue, blackmailing, terrorist nation is a matter of shame for India, as it was when west Pakistan was butchering its eastern part after losing an election and the new president who happened to be eastern rightly demanding that his language, his people be recognised as equals; it takes a thicker hide to pains of others to forget that women of east Pakistan were jailed and bound by chains with not a stitch of clothing - so they could not escape or drown themselves for honour - by army of western part for use of the army men. Refugees that poured into India from east were not then Hindu alone, although with the new nation of Bangladesh becoming more and more fanatically Islamic and proving its legitimacy by torturing their own Hindu citizens till they were driven out came later.

And all this, any of it happening anywhere in what is called a subcontinent in what is an obvious falsehood but is in reality India as it used to be known from borders of Persia to Himaalaya to the oceans, any of this wrong behaviour by any of these new pieces of India is a shame for the mainland that chose to bear the name of India, simply because it is a shame to the land of such ancient rich tradition of knowledge and spiritual heights, of wealth generated and not merely mined, of rule of law and fair behaviour even in war. The torn pieces much like wayward teenagers on drug are waving guns and begging bowls at the world, giving up the rich traditions of the land they are part of including hygiene (west thinks Indians bathe only because it is hot or because it is a superstition, and I have experienced church instructing its flock in India to not bathe except on Sunday since bathing every morning before beginning a day is considered Hindu and so must be discouraged!) only in order to be taught be the west to bathe, to use some criteria of cleanliness and so to have children not die of disease. And while this gives a proof to west of how Pakistan is poor and in need of basics such as elementary schools, hospitals, and people being taught to keep clean, it is for anyone with slightest measure of non blinkered vision a matter of evidence of what damage the over a thousand years of destruction of Hindu even basic traditions has done to the country and its pieces.
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Some of the small but important mistakes by the authors of this work include such seeming trivia - seeming because ultimately it all builds up and is far more difficult to correct - is, for example, when they explain that Tara means star in Urdu. There are two mistakes there, one obvious and the other of assumption.

The obvious one is, Tara is a word from Sanskrt, meaning star, and as such is so understood in most Indian languages, of which Urdu is but one of many; Urdu is born and grown in India, and while in Pakistan officially the language is supposed to be Urdu with a strong suppression of all other languages except that of Punjab (which was divided into the two nations, a part being in Pakistan and rest in India), reality is that not only Urdu speakers are from area mostly between Delhi and Lucknow (pronounced Lakhnau) but those of the Muslims that are in fact Urdu speaking and migrated to Pakistan were an object of not only derision and hostility unofficially but discrimination when it came to life's needs, as are those that speak Sindhi or Baluchi or Pashto or any other language. Officially Pakistan suppresses all other regional languages in name of Urdu, but in reality the dominance is of Punjabi over Urdu.

Urdu was born in India under the various Islamic rules in northern parts through centuries with court languages varying between Farsi (from Persia), Turkic and Arabic, while the people spoke Indian languages, so the lower echelons of court spoke a mix with Indian foundation of language and words from the court languages imposed thereon. Tara is a word from Sanskrt, and in Urdu in India (where the language originates) the word used in Urdu for star is sitara. As has been known in learned circles in west for a couple of centuries or more now, Sanskrt is the mother language of most Indo-European languages, and in fact I used to have an atlas of History that showed even semitic languages as originating from Sanskrt. Finnish, Basque, and Hungarian perhaps do not, I don't recollect at the moment.
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Most such mistakes in the book, whether deliberate or otherwise, help the politics of an anti Indian stance that won't help anyone, whether the reader or the world; for, when you find a wolf at the door feeding it with your sheep (or billions of dollars for free in name of aid) or the neighbour's children (or the people of India) won't appease or tame the wolf, it will merely whet its appetite, and it is certain to return for your children next. To deliberately encourage the wolf to devour the children of neighbours while you wait to deal with it says something about you as a partner of the wolf in killing the neighbours' children.
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There is no doubt that good people live everywhere, including Pakistan or Germany (under a nazi regime or its more obvious revival of today) or anywhere else; that people of Kashmir living under Pakistan rule need help and more, having little redress in the nation that claims them; that same is true of Afghanistan, and that good people can have a dialogue across borders and it helps to a large extent. But a dirty politics, say targeting India under a pretext of helping poor of Pakistan or targeting Jewish people anywhere under a cloak of sympathy to Germany or to any other antisemitics, is dirty politics.

And again, while Mortenson's work being good and his intentions being entirely honest and his persona good, honest, noble, cannot be doubted - this much comes through clear in spite of the dirty politics clouding the book - the fact of this dirty politics of targeting India obscuring the goodness described herein is just as obvious to those that can see.
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