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South
Asia faces diversity
By Jo Appleton
On-line Forty-Niner
Several South Asian
diplomats met Wednesday at Cal State Long Beach for a panel
discussion with students and faculty on current issues and
challenges facing the religiously diverse South Asia.
Consulates of Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh presented
in the Alamitos Bay Rooms at the University Student Union
as part of the first CSULB South Asia Day. The Consul General
of Pakistan, Raana Mumtaz Rahim, also scheduled to appear
was unable to attend.
"The greatest achievement and challenge for India right
now is the consolidation of a democratic center," said
Akhilesh Mishra, the consul for political and commercial affairs
of India and the most vocal member of the panel.
Taking advantage of Rahim's absence, the consol to Pakistan,
Mishra later uses the opportunity to attack Pakistani Muslim
groups remaining in India and to criticize Pakistan for its
lack of enforcement in banning suspected terrorists within
its borders.
Mishra said that India has successfully survived the "drama
of the partition" from Pakistan in 1947, when Britain
withdrew from the subcontinent of India leaving it divided
along two religious lines: the Hindus and Muslims, and emerged
as a strong, independent country.
"The literacy rate in India is 66 percent, compared to
1947 when it was only15 percent," he said.
During that time, there was a huge dependency on food imports
from other countries in the past, today the country's food
surplus has increased more than 150 percent. The GDP, which
he said is remarkably consistent," is up every year by
5.4 percent.
The now 50-year conflict between India and Pakistan is not
a religious one, Mishra said and added there are groups of
Pakistanis in India that do not belong there.
Hindu Professor Maria Heim who lived in Sri Lanka and India
was in the audience and shook her head in disagreement.
"In the last month, Hindus have murdered 800 Muslims
in the Indian state of
Gujarat," she later told reporters.
Mishra further complained about the Pakistani's handling of
suspected terrorists since the attack of September 11, saying
that Jihadians operating from Pakistan are banned in India.
There is a "lack of cooperation from our neighbor,"
in the handling of suspected terrorists and said "these
blamed terrorists are being put up in guest houses" in
Pakistan.
George Mark Pappas, the consul general of Nepal, spoke earlier
of the poor conditions in the small Hindu kingdom of Nepal,
which is land-locked between India and China.
As a result, Pappas
said, its economy is largely reliant on the economy of India
making it difficult to establish trade lines for exporting
goods for sale across its borders. Marred with poverty and
insecurities of its own government, the future of Nepal is
up in the air, he said.
Later, Sayed Shah Mohammad Ali, the consul general of Bangladesh
discussed how furthering economic development is the most
difficult challenge facing the country, which broke away from
India in 1971 and formed its own small region. He expressed
that the country has a large work force and a growing middle
class and said that Bangladesh "wants to catch up with
the rest of the world."
The two-hour panel discussion was opened with a welcome speech
by Dorothy Abrahamse, dean of the college of liberal arts.
CSULB President Robert Maxson, stopped in briefly to welcome
the panel and give congratulations to the South Asia Committee
for helping to organize the event.
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