Talk:Pakistan/Archive 1

message: ------
The National Sport of Pakistan is Field Hockey and not the widely expected Cricket. I know this is right. You might get different opinions from elsewhere but I'm absolutely sure. Also, the only official languages are Urdu and English while urdu is the only national language. The other languages written are all popular in their areas (Like Punjabi in the province of Punjab) but they are not the official languages. I'm not aware of any new laws that would change this. I apologize if I'm wrong.
Ghanchi
/Temp - Please help out in getting this page up to template standard if you have the time. Thanks, Metz 18:09, 26 Dec 2002
Moved lots of history stuff to History of Pakistan, removed and edited a bit for NPOV. The article was strangely negative to Pakistan, compare to India, which was much more positive...
Guppie
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Removed:
:A full 205% of the government's revenue comes from foreign aid, but all of this and more is needed to pay off the interest on previous loans.
This probably belongs on bad jokes and nonsense.  You can't have more than 100% of the government's revenue coming from *any* source.
This article is rather down on Pakistan, to be honest.  Yes, the place has got some severe problems, but the problems aren't the whole country, presumably. --Robert Merkel
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Removed, this needs better attribution of exactly who says these things.  who are the "many in the world community" and which Muslums is this talking about?
Many in the world community view Pakistan as a failed state along the lines of Somalia,FYugoslavia and the FSoviet Union. Pakistan is viewed as a western lackey in the Islamic world toeing the line of the United States of America. Post 9-11, the Pakistani government has received billions of dollars in aid from the US and in return has ceded some vital military bases as well as 1/3rd of it's airspace to the US as part of Operation Anaconda.
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Muslums, interesting choice of words...Anyway, I believe I have transliterated the motto of Pakistan, but I may be incorrect.  It is hard for me to read the Urdu script on the image files of the National Emblem of Pakistan.  If anyone can fix it, that would be good.  And if anyone can put it into Urdu text, that would be better.  They can use the National Emblem of Pakistan as a guide since the bottom scroll contains the national motto.
DigiBullet 07:47, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues 

message: An anonymous user removed the following, stating that it was POV and used weasel words:
:Terrorism was a factor in Musharraf's rise to power. As head of the army, he worked with Pakistan's ISI to allegedly foment rebellion in neighboring India. This seems to have subsided in the post-9/11 world, partly because of increased world attention on Pakistani affairs, and partly because of a more aggressive stance on the part of India in the 1990s
Does anyone know if the info is accurate? Is there a way to put this info in in a NPOV way?  – Quadell (talk) (help) 18:45, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)
Musharraf still is the head of the Pakistan Army (official title Chief of Army Staff). But as far as the removed text is concerned there is no way to corroborate such information. I work in a magazine that is actively non-Musharraf friendly and even we wouldn't go so far as to claim something that ludicrous. I can't see an NPOV way of posting it and am under the impression that it is probably best left out.
Hulleye 21:55, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed text 

message: Would appreciate it if you could discuss whether a link should be removed. AmeriDesi (Talk) (News links - removed links added by 203.170.77.254, because BalochVoice appears to be a supporter of the terrorist Baloch Liberation Army)
BalochVoice happens to contain a listing of violent attacks that have taken place within Balochistan over the last few years. It's one of the very few places on the web where such information is available. Please do not arbitrarily remove material from an article based on your own point of view.
Hulleye 11:04, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok. Maybe I was a little impulsive in removing the links. I'm willing to discuss it. I felt the links were added in bad faith by the same anonymous user who added the POV text that you removed. 1) The other news links were for well-known, widely read, real newspapers with phone numbers and known physical addresses. Does BV belong in that list? 2) Its information appears to be specific to Baluchistan, so does it belong on the main Pakistan page? AmeriDesi 11:59, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  BalochVoice 

message: A recent edit by 69.196.113.86 replaced the previous text with an outdated, inaccurate paragraph from the CIA World Factbook, about which I'd like to comment. Firstly, Pakistan is a developing country with a growing economy and a society that is, in many ways, being transformed. Analyses relating to Pakistan need continual updating and quantitative grounding. Let me go through some of the parts that struck me as inaccurate and/or outdated:
* GDP growth is heavily dependent on rain-fed crops. Agriculture is now only 23% of the GDP. Pakistan's crops have three major sources of water: 1) rivers, which are mostly fed by meltwater from the snows and glaciers of the northern mountains; 2) wells, which increasingly are electrically-powered tubewells rather than the old traditional wells; and 3) rain. The canal de-silting of 2000 increased river-water throughput in the extensive irrigation system. The electrification of the majority of the villages has facilitated the installation and use of tubewells. So the severe 4-year drought did not affect the economy as much as it might have in earlier years. Not only did it not destroy the economy or cause a depression, there was not even a recession during the drought years. The World Bank and other global financial institutions praised the country for its increased resilience.
* impoverished. Definition: reduced to poverty. Looking at the use of the word in the Factbook, I found only two other instances where impoverished could be construed to apply to the current economic condition of a whole country: Rwanda ("The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda's fragile economic base, severely impoverished the population, ..") and Haiti ("Extensive civil strife in early 2004, marked by the flight of President Aristide, further impoverished Haiti.") In both Rwanda and Haiti the economy actually shrank - GDP growth was negative - so it would be accurate to say that they became impoverished. Pakistan, on the other hand, started out poor but has not had a single year of negative GDP growth since the recession of 1951. The characterization of Pakistan as impoverished is thus questionable.
* costly, ongoing confrontation with neighboring India. Pakistan spends 4.6% of its GDP on defence. That is indeed a cost, but not an exceptional one. The world average is 3.64% . Pakistan spends 1% more than the average, but many other countries spend much more, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of their GDP. Without context, this phrase seems to imply exceptionally high costs, which is debatable.
* IMF-approved government policies. The IMF's role in the developing world has been criticized - for example, by Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics - for advocating economic measures that were, according to him, counterproductive. Suffice it to say, it could be said that Pakistan's economic growth accelerated in spite of, and not because of, IMF involvement. Pakistan booted the IMF out this year, ending 15 years of unwelcome meddling. (Pakistan ends 15-year ties with IMF; Daily Times, September 7, 2004)
* renewed access to global markets since late 2001 [led to] macroeconomic recovery. The beginning of Pakistan's economic acceleration predates 9/11, and economic growth continued to trend upward despite adverse post-9/11 factors such as the U.S. invasion of neighboring Afghanistan and war-surcharges on insurance for shipping. Also, Pakistan never lost its access to global markets in general, so perhaps "renewed access to global markets" should have been "renewed access to global capital markets." 
* energy sector reforms. The text fails to convey the actual progress of the energy-sector reforms, and even the IMF's own report  paints a more positive picture. 68.20.34.28 11:42, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economy section 

message: If anyone thinks the title of the article Discrimination against non-Muslims in Pakistan is not neutral .. please go there and vote OneGuy 00:57, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: non-Muslims in Pakistan

message: I have corrected the misinformation regarding Pakistan's standing in terms of population in the muslim world. Current standings of Pakistan's population is between 145-159 million. Indian muslim population is 120-125 million. omerlivesOmerlives 12:37, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, India isn't a Muslim-majority country, so the claim "Pakistan is the 2nd largest Muslim country" is true even if you believe that India has more Muslims. 68.20.222.41 16:27, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: While I am not a party in this tug-of-war between Indian and Pakistani supporters, I would like to point out that census data are facts, books (e.g. "Muslim World after 9/11") cannot always be assumed to be facts. Anyone can write a book without proving a point (I do not say anything for or against the aforementioned book, though), whereas census data can be considered scientific tools for comparing the ranks of countries in terms of population. And that is what should be considered instead of continuing this endless Edit war. Let the facts win, not anyones POV. --Ragib 07:40, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Population Size

message: Why is Pakistan said to be the third largest muslim country in the world?  According to CIA.gov figures, the muslim population of Pakistan is 0.97 x	159,196,336 = 154,420,446, which puts it behind Indonesia.  India's muslim population is much smaller than Pakistan's:  0.12 x 1,065,070,607 = 127,808,473.
India may have had a greater muslim population 10 years ago, but the latest figures indicate that Pakistan has 27 million more muslims, a substantial difference.
--Hausa 22:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pakistan is the second largest muslim country 

message: Here are the links for the CIA Factbook data for Pakistan  and India . 
2001 Census of India estimates from Milli Gazette, an Indian Muslim newspaper .
It's clear that Pakistan has a much larger population of Muslims than India. The persistence of this opposite claim is surprising and IMHO ideologically/politically motivated. Criticforaday 18:47, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, India isn't a Muslim-majority country, so the claim "Pakistan is the 2nd largest Muslim country" is true even if you believe that India has more Muslims. 68.20.222.41 16:27, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: While I am not a party in this tug-of-war between Indian and Pakistani supporters, I would like to point out that census data are facts, books (e.g. "Muslim World after 9/11") cannot always be assumed to be facts. Anyone can write a book without proving a point (I do not say anything for or against the aforementioned book, though), whereas census data can be considered scientific tools for comparing the ranks of countries in terms of population. And that is what should be considered instead of continuing this endless Edit war. Let the facts win, not anyones POV. --Ragib 07:40, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  True. Pakistan has more Muslims than India, according to the Census of India and CIA Factbook data 

message: It is  seen that the User Ragib is strongly against Pakistan and is writing his opinions and his version of history in this text with references to a Bangali website.This is unsubstatiated and besides not reliabley sourced.Also This is just and intro to Pakistan not were you may edit historically inaccurate and unsupported info and not the proper place to put it.At the same time you suggest vandalism by another member to this article where as you yourself have been doing this all along.Also I see you have voiced your opinion (Anti -Pakistan) on the Bangladesh Article in wikipedia again you sway from neutrality to anti pakistani sentiments in that article.I can understand your greviances but history has two sides of the story and you constantly want only yours to be heard.You should refrain from that as a Bengladesh citizen and a member of wikipedia.My suggestion to you is to refrain from touching articles in this portion plus try to have less animosity towards Pakistan in writing if you cant I suggest you not edit anything on wikipedia at all,its an encyclopedia not a newspaper.Otherwise I will have all articles and work written by you checked and removed if appropriate.--Herst1 22:13, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Independence Topic

message: There have been many edits in recent days without any summaries, and from anon users. Please leave edit summaries when editing pages. It takes a second to write a brief sentence, but benefits others as to why you made the edit. Also, please sign up for an account. Thanks. --Ragib 02:41, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit Summary 

message: Plz consider the fallowing passage:
:"The women chosen by the BBC on its web page  are special people... the common Saudi women are living a life beyond our imagination... Under the global pressure, if the Saudi regime is opening the doors of freedom of thought, speech and expression in that conservative society, it will not only benefit the common people but will nip the roots of terrorism around the world as well. We the common Muslims in Pakistan are directly affected by the traditional conservative policies of the Saudi Arabian and Iranian regimes... Both Saudi Arabia and Iran have been financially supporting their agents in Pakistan and thus sectarianism and terrorism has been nourished in our land. These terrorists never let us common Pakistani women to walk around freely and try to through acid on our faces or stop marathon races by force and they want to show us the model of Saudi Arabia and Iran... (Sick). If Saudi Arabia and Iran are motivated by the world community to be a part of the world community then the world can get rid of terrorism and extremism. 
:The Saudi man has all the privilege...they can have 4 wives at a time... many trips around the world, especially 'moral holidays' in the West but their women live a life less than human beings...it should change now! 
:Just 4000 princes (from the King to the police officer) of a family are ruling the poor Saudi people with tyranny and it is not only affecting them but every one in the region, especially in the Muslim world…
:These things should be included in the main article of Wikipedia in a balanced way!"
:*The above message was posted by anonymous user from IP 203.82.48.54
Dear Anonymous poster, please sign your messages before you hit save. I also want to add that wikipedia is aimed at removing PoV, and your view seem quite extreme and quite full of PoV. An encyclopedia needs to be full of facts, not any sort of activism, rhetoric and racial/national bias. So, please stick to the facts and not any kind of opinions. 
PS: I am not a Pakistani, but the above message is quite disgusting to any neutral person as well. Besides, it seems to be about Saudi Arabia and not about Pakistan ... more of a Islamophobic reaction. I just hope people become more tolerant of others. --Ragib 17:23, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Terrorism

message: It is our common goal here to build articles about Pakistan that are neutral, well-informed and objective. In these times, however, much of what is said about about Pakistan is not neutral, well-informed, or objective. I am starting a section here to discuss the prevalent misinformation and possible remedies that may be adopted. Here is a very brief outline of the types of misinformation. This is intended only as a beginning. MartinGardnerFan 17:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  On the nature of misinformation about Pakistan 

message: Some of the contributers remind me of an article I read in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, titled Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments .
Before anyone chews my head off for being insulting, let me say here that it is only mentioned here to provide objective evidence in support of something we all know: that people who are woefully uninformed are often also blissfully unaware of the depth of their deficit. (to be continued later) MartinGardnerFan 17:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uninformed, and unaware of it 

message: (to be added) MartinGardnerFan 17:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sensationalism or "good news is no news" 

message: (to be added) MartinGardnerFan 17:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sytematic bias - the demographics of the editors 

message: (to be added) MartinGardnerFan 17:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misinformed by biased information sources 

message: User:24.126.17.155 commented in a recent edit, "No evidence that commonwealth acknowledges progress towards democracy." 
Here's evidence: 
:8. CMAG noted the adoption by Parliament of the Legal Framework Orders, thus bringing them into Pakistan's Constitution. The Group welcomed the progress made in restoring democracy and rebuilding democratic institutions in Pakistan as well as the restoration of the 1973 Constitution, as amended by the 17th Amendment, and decided therefore that Pakistan should no longer remain suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth. 
This user has made many changes, and I suspect his knowledge of the subject matter leaves much to be desired. 68.20.223.178 17:22, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Commonwealth acknowledges democracy

message: User:24.126.17.155 changed the following,
:Qalandars (wandering Sufi saints) from Central Asia preached a mystical form of Islam that appealed to the Buddhist population of Pakistan, and the orders they established gradually converted the majority of the population to Islam.
to the POV
:Turkish, Afghan and Arab aggressors converted the majority of the Hindu population to Islam.
Let's discuss it. I'm restoring the original for now. Pakistanist 17:56, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pakistan in the Middle Ages

message: in a recent edit, User:24.126.17.155 commented, "The claim that ancient pakistan was not Hindu is disputed at best."
AFAIK, nobody here claimed that ancient pakistan was not Hindu before the Greco-Buddhist period, only that it was predominantly Buddhist from the Greco-Buddhist period to the early Middle Ages. There is an enormous weight of evidence to support the latter assertion. Pakistanist 18:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *24.126.17.155 (talk · contribs) -->'s lack of interest in discussing this matter is interesting. Also, the derogatory comments in the edit summary are unfortunate. Without being a party to any disputes (I'm not from, for or anti-Pakistan), I do think that wikipedia contributors from India or any other country would rise up against petty nationalism and value facts more rather than falling prey to rhetoric. Also, further blanking by the user 24.126.17.155 (talk · contribs) --> should be reported to Vandalism in progress Page. --Ragib 01:30, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ancient Pakistan

message: User:24.126.17.155 deleted the history section titled, "Greco-Buddhist period" with the comment, "no evidence for any such time period." He's not adhering to the "make it better, don't delete it" rule. I've restored all his deletions. 68.20.35.67 06:33, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *24.126.17.155 (talk · contribs) -->'s lack of interest in discussing this matter is interesting. Also, the derogatory comments in the edit summary are unfortunate. Without being a party to any disputes (I'm not from, for or anti-Pakistan), I do think that wikipedia contributors from India or any other country would rise up against petty nationalism and value facts more rather than falling prey to rhetoric. Also, further blanking by the user 24.126.17.155 (talk · contribs) --> should be reported to Vandalism in progress Page. --Ragib 01:30, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Greco-Buddhist period

message: User:24.126.17.155 deleted an entire section, "Technology and the Internet", without discussion here. I have restored the section. I think it is about 95% good, and only minor changes are required. Don't delete it, improve it. Pakistanist 19:13, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Technology and the Internet

message: I added a section, but someone removed that section citing possible flame war. Well, why don't we be civil and discuss it here? User IP: 24.126.17.155 has repeatedly removed some sections. While the objections may or may not be valid, there is no justification in removing sections without any discussion here. Over the last hour, User IP: 24.126.17.155 has reverted more than twice. Wikipedia has this little rule called 3RR rule which definitely prohibits more than 3 reverts on a single day by a user. I would again call for a discussion on this page about the disputed sections. Please come forward here instead of reverting again and again. Thanks. --Ragib 05:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Changes 

message: King1 (talk · contribs) blanked a section, I think such blanking needs to be justified more in the talk page before doing so. A brief comment in the Edit summary is really not enough to justify drastic blanking. I would revert the section, until the discussion is done on this from all sides. --Ragib 21:47, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blanking of sections, please show restraint 

message: The block of text inserted by Gandolf (talk · contribs) --> --> --> has numerous errors and prejudicial statements -
For example, he says -
:According to Pakistan Government census figures, the population of non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan has fallen from 18% of the population after Partition in 1947, to 0.1% today.
This is untrue, as even casual examination of the evidence shows. At the time of partition, large numbers of people moved both ways. East Pakistan had the vast majority of Pakistan's Hindus. When it seceded, Pakistan lost over nine-tenths of its Hindu population. In West Pakistan, the only Hindu-majority district was Tharparkar. When the Indian army withdrew from Tharparkar, it took most of the Hindu population with it. Today, religious minorities make up about 3% of the population of Pakistan, not 0.1% as Gandolf incorrectly states.
He goes on to say,
:According to reports, non-Muslim minorities, especially Hindus, are subject to kidnapping, extortion, robbery, and murder on a regular basis. A lot of Hindu families report that their daughters have been kidnapped, converted to Islam by force, and kept as wives or concubines by Pakistani Muslim men.
No authoritative source is quoted, or any source at all.
AnalyticHistorian 19:33, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Status of religious minorities

message: The block of text inserted by Gandolf (talk · contribs) --> --> --> has numerous errors and prejudicial statements - AnalyticHistorian 19:54, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Status of women

message: A section and block of text inserted by SamTr014 (talk · contribs) is POV and non-neutral, and contains factual errors, Factually inaccurate is the statement, "Christians account for 2.5% of the population" however, Census data, puts the percentage at 1.59%.
The following statement is non-NPOV and uses weasel words: "However, there have been numerous allegations that Christians in Pakistan have been subject to systematic persecution." 68.20.214.76 12:46, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Status of Christians

message: A recent edit by Gandolf (talk · contribs) --> --> --> has inserted statements that are inaccurate, prejudicial, POV, non-neutral. Even the true statements need context and perspective. I'll work on a revision later. If someone else wants to do it sooner, please go ahead. AnalyticHistorian 19:33, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Form of government

message: I am moving it to a new page and putting a reference to it in the Politics section. Right now, the issue has boiled down to the point that a large amount of material, unverified news etc are just copied off the web and being posted here. The whole article looks a huge mess, and needs to be cleaned up. Please comment on my proposal on moving the page here, (see also the discussion on this above). Thanks. --Ragib 07:05, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving the status of religious minorities and women page to new 

message: As the recent Newsweek story illustrates, inflammatory material can have real-world effects. If it is something that tends to increase hatred and prejudice between groups, or serves as an incitement to "revenge" for real or imagined wrongs, then I think it should be removed first and discussed later. For many sensitive subjects, it takes time to put up a balanced and well-researched essay. Fabricating sensationalist hate speech, on the other hand, seem to come easily to many people. Often they can just copy it off the internet. 
Let's give the upper hand to goodwill, sound evidence, reasoned discourse, and civilized speech. 68.20.17.95 12:08, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The last statement is the most correct; the others are misleading. While there was some room for statistical error before, in the last few years, the government set up the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and the numbers are much firmer. Everybody now has a National ID Card from NADRA, and in the application process, NADRA collects personal data, including religion. The most recent information should therefore be quite accurate. 68.20.31.13 13:03, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Material that is not just biased & inaccurate, but inflammatory hate-mongering as well, should be rapidly removed

message: I had to remove the section on "Status of Christians". No, I have no opinions on the content's veracity. The text is copyrighted, and it was simply cut and pasted from a website. I have removed the text and listed the source in the copy vio tag, according to standard wikipedia copyright violation procedures (see copyvio). Thanks. --Ragib 06:23, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The 'disputed' tag was placed there when there was a lot of copyrigthed and somewhat dubious content placed there. At the current state of it, the information there is confirmed fact, and I do not think there is much POV there except for the last sentence, which probably needs a few references. In any case, I think this small content of the subsection doesn't really deserve a subsection by itself and may be moved/merged with other sections. Thanks. --Ragib 01:30, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyrighted text