Talk:Pakistan/Archive 7

message: Nearly every country that has been created fairly recently DOES have a history (except to some extent the USA, cananda, australia, new zealand etc etc). Meanwhile countries like the peoples repuclic of china(PRC), russia, iran, former yugoslavia have or have had a dominant ethnic group which more/less controlled the country and contributed the most prime ministers and improtant govt offcials to that country, han chinese, russian, persian and serbian are the biggies respectively. And when they would talk about the history of the PRC for example, people wouldnt shout "ANCIENT PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA, HARDY HAR HAR, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT WTF?" they'd assume your talking about the history of the han chinese (and leaving out the histories of all the other glorious ethnic groups) rather than talking about a time in 600 BC when people used to call that particular area the PRC. But pakistan is amazingly different; MOST people think punjabis control all, but others think its the muhajirs who have a hand in everything, others think pashtuns are influencing/controlling the country by spreading the increasingly popular(and curious) concept of blowing one self up called "islamic fundementalism" or whatever (even though islam says "killing is wrong", somepeople intrerpret this as "killing is wrong, except when its not wrong, ive just had a siffing though, i'll blow my self up, and this will spread happiness through the world). Anyway...  i dont think there is a dominant ethnic group in pakistan, weve had such a magnificeint mix of leaders, sindis (jinnah, the bunch of bhuttos) punjabis (nawas sharif) muhajirs (musharaf, zia ul huq) pathans (ayub khan) and even a prominent baloch (jamali). Anyway the point im trying to get across (something i nearly forgot!) is that leave Ancient pakistan be, just accept we seperated from the india! (and "live with it innit" as so many idiots seem to say). and when you talk about it divide it up into ancient sindh, anceint punjab, ancient pashtun areas(pashtunistan?), and baloch areas(balochistan), the histories of last three are inter-twined with india, afghanistan and iran respectively. Aarandir 23:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I think we should put more emphasise on the fact this country has a natural mix of ethinic groups; that means we have a variety of cultures, traditions and languages etc...AlimOnline 16:30, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pakistan

message: There should be a section here about the Mughals. Lahore was one of the most important cities of the Mughal era and was the capital of the empire for a time. Anarkali's story took place in Pakistan (Lahore) and should be mentioned, too. I'll try to start this, and please try to help as much as possible! Thanks. Stallions2010 22:41, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please keep it brief and succinct. Some of the sections on this article need to be trimmed down, especially the history and the foreign relations. Actually, really only those two. The article is at 59KB right now, and while everything in the article is important, the article is an overview of the important parts of the country and I don't know how important the Mughal era was in relations to the entire history of Pakistan. I guess just write it, but try to keep it to a minimum. Much of the history section must be trimmed. The History section as it is now is 13KB, while the Foreign relations section is 7KB. Pepsidrinka 23:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes a breif text on Mughals should also be there, since that is the history of Pakistan, may be it can be a subsection in the history area. digitalSurgeon 09:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mughals? 

message: In an effort to bring the size of the article down, I have started to prune some links. Remember, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of links. We don't need to list every single English newspaper, just the most notable and the most popular ones. I found this site, which list the top 10 most visited newspapers sites, and I kept the English ones from the list. I removed the entire IT section because the links did not add anything and were not necessary for someone to learn additional knowledge of Pakistan. Perhaps they are better suited for a IT Industry of Pakistan article. I tried to be indiscriminate in the photos and the government section, keeping only those picture sites that had many available and removing government sites that were redundant and not neccessary (i.e. President of Pakistan website). Pepsidrinka 15:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link Pruning 

message: I rewrote the Foreign relations section here because the section is unnecessarily long. If someone could go through my revision and see if there was anything of grave importance that was either not included in the original or that I failed to include. Please feel free to edit, add, comment, and/or remove from my revision. There is a main article located at Foreign relations of Pakistan where much more information could be listed. Pepsidrinka 16:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your rewrite is definitely an improvement because the section as it is now is almost as long as the main article on foreign relations. If nobody disagrees, I think it should be replaced by your revision. Green Giant 22:22, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foreign relations section 

message: Swerveut has twice replaced the picture of Jinnah with what s/he calls a better picture. I disagree with this because most people will know Jinnah by the photo taken when he was older. If you were to show a picture of George W. Bush, would you show a picture of him taken during his Presidency or a picture taken when he was at college? It has to be the picture that most people would identify as being George Bush, i.e. the Presidency one. In the same way Jinnah's picture should be the one taken when he was heavily involved in the creation of Pakistan, not a picture of when he was a student. That picture better belongs in the article on Jinnah. Green Giant 21:50, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Incidently, that picture (which is a duplicate of another picture already uploaded; but a better picture) is already on the Mohammad Ali Jinnah article, which has about five unique pictures of him. Pepsidrinka 22:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Jinnah picture 

message: I don't remember much details, but probably one of the cricket world cups was called "Benson and Hedges Cup". I know for sure that the 1986/7 one in the subcontinent was "Reliance cup". But the 1992 one may be called Benson and Hedges as they were the sponsors. My 2 cents. --Ragib 03:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Turns out, I was right ... see 1992 Cricket World Cup. Thanks. --Ragib 03:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake, because in England there was a domestic tournament called Benson and Hedges Cup, but Cric Mania informs me that the 1992 cup was called the Benson & Hedges World Cup. I'll change it now. Green Giant 03:25, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The current version is fine. It is hardly ever called the Benson and Hedges World Cup (unlike the Reliance Cup]]. Tintin (talk) 03:28, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Benson & Hedges Cup 

message: According to the website of the Pakistani government, Urdu is the official language of Pakistan. English is not even mentioned. GerardM 16:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: good point, although I understand English has been fairly widely used in government for a long time. Green Giant 21:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Official language 

message: Come on guys if the conflict of Greate Middle east and Central Asia wasnt enough we now have this confusing statement. Please guys resolve this issue, the current state is really comic. Lets just settle on South Asia or if really necessary add Greater Middle east as well but atleast lets not specify location of Pakistan in terms of tectonic plates. --digitalSurgeon 10:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, leave the location as it is now without confusing readers with tectonic plates and what-not. Green Giant 23:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I put the tectonics into the geography section so as to avoid confusion. Tombseye 02:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  country located along the border of the Eurasian tectonic plate and the Indian tectonic plate 

message: I propose to change the following paragraph:
:The region was the site of one of the earliest towns in the world at Mehrgarh and later much of the Indus Valley Civilisation. That civilisation went into decline prior to the arrival of Indo-Aryan tribes from Central Asia. The two cultures mixed to produce the Vedic Civilisation that existed from Gandhara to the valley of the Ganges River, in what is now modern India, around 1500 BCE and helped shape subsequent South Asia cultures. However, this Aryan Invasion Theory has been challenged on the basis of new evidence which suggests that South Asian history shows continuity of progress from the earliest times to today and that changes brought by other cultures were not a major ingredient in the development of the Vedic Civilisation.
This version has a number of problems:
* It omits the view, once almost universal and still widely-held, that invaders from Central Asia were responsible for the decline of the Harrapan civilization.
* Whether, and to what extent the two cultures mixed or not is not known. One view is that the culture of the invaders largely replaced that of the natives. One widely-held view is that the caste system in India stems from an institutionalization of the racial differences between the new Caucasian rulers and the dark-skinned natives. This is supported by DNA analysis, which has found European genetic markers in the Y chromosomes of Brahmins, but not in other castes.
* The text could be construed as claiming that the whole region from Gandhara to the Ganges is in modern India. However, Gandhara is not in modern India.
* Whether the Vedic Civilization existed as early as 1500 BC is a matter of dispute between Hindu nationalists, who say that it did, and the vast majority of secular scholars who say that it evolved later. The text not only claims unequivocally that the Vedic civilisation is that old, but also that it extended from Gandhara to the Gangetic plain. I believe the preponderance of scholarly opinion is that the latter was heavily forested at that time, and was settled much later.
* The text suggests that "new evidence" largely supports the indigenous-origin theory, and fails to mention that much new evidence tends to support the exogenous-origin theory. 
* It fails to mention the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, the most likely origin of the invaders.
* It fails to mention that the vast majority of secular scholars worldwide believe that the origin of Indo-European languages was not in India, and that Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages are relatively recent arrivals in India. Dating methods such as glottochronology have been used to estimate the date of origin of the Sanskrit language. Sanskrit probably evolved out of proto-Avestan in or around the area of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex.
In conclusion, the existing text has factual errors, and at many points, presents one view, to the exclusion of other views that have more support in the peer-reviewed literature, especially among those who are not motivated by religious or nationalistic chauvanism.
Would anyone like to propose a factually-accurate neutrally-worded text here? SkepticalContrarian 04:04, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vedic Civilisation and the non-Indian origins of Indo-European languages

message: I've just followed the links on the official government website and found that on the Infopak Basic Facts page it gives Urdu as the national language and English as the official language. Does anyone know if this is correct or not? Green Giant 21:55, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's correct. Pakistan's constitution and laws are written in English, which is the language of its bureaucracy. So by the definition of the term official language, English is an official language in Pakistan. PKDubey 06:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The language problem