Quite to the contrary I was suggesting the opposite. A fatigued Gen Z population addicted to the fantasy of India as portrayed in Bollywood would be completely at ease to an Indian annexation. This has happened in the case of the territories of Goa, Daman, Diu, Pondicherry, Chandanagore, whose populations fatigued under Portuguese and French colonial rule decided to support Indian military "liberation ". Sikkim too was annexed by India when the population was tired of the despotic regime of the ruler ( Chogyal). Hyderabad was annexed in 1948 because the population was fed up of the despotic Nizam rule, Hence a similar annexation of a bankrupt war weary Pakistan is theoretically feasible if the "urban professionals " want it. The question is what is the reality? Sometimes a population's nationalist sentiment is misread
Example : It was assumed that a similarly fatigued and religiously ethnic divided Iraqi population would welcome liberation from Saddam Hussain's regime. A similar experiment may be underway in Iran
How do we know there is no broad desire to merge with India? Is there any Pew research or Gallup poll that supports this view? Were the sentiments of the Bengali population in our erstwhile Eastern wing accurately read in 1971 ? Did the Bengali population of East Pakistan view the Indian military incursion as an invasion or liberation?
That is very good news for India , that has long maintained that Pakistan is an illegal entity carved from sovereign Indian territory by a combination of foreign colonial intrigue and a false religious identity of a population forcibly converted to a religion that is foreign to the sub-continent.
So only the weak Pakistani army has to be defeated for Pakistan to be easily annexed, and the population integrated.
In fact India effectively demonstrated this course of action when it defeated the Portuguese Army and took Goa. For the record the Portugal ( a NATO power by the way ) had ruled Goa for 600 years and the people of Goa were officially Portuguese citizens. Today the urban professionals of Goa would have been EU nationals with full employment and travel rights with the EU ( but that is another issue) .
If you read my post I was comparing the desire of the newly liberated secular population of East Pakistan to merge with India. If you study the history of the left wing movement in adjoining West Bengal and its counterpart in what is now Bangladesh, you can see how back then the call for merger with India echoed by Maulana Bhashani and Tiger Siddique, was taken up by their left wing West Bengali Indian counterparts, Azizul Haque, Hannan Mollah, and Gani Khan Chowdhury, Bangladesh didn't merge back into India because the Brahmin lobby in the West Bengal Congress did not want a merger of the population that would inevitably elect a Muslim Chief Minister.
The word Pakistani itself is a fairly recent definition ( since 1947) , prior to which we were all Indian Muslims, So it's not what-aboutism, The definition of Pakistan in the Pakistan Declaration of 1940 defines it as a "Homeland for Indian Muslims " so we can't de-hyphenate Pakistanis from Indian Muslims, ...at least not until India annexes us when there will be no Pakistanis ( just as there are no East Pakistanis today ) .
Question:
What does being apathetic and neutral to an Indian invasion of Pakistan ( exactly like the Indian Muslims are today ) mean? Desire for annexation or resistance?
It's not a "hypothetical upgrade" to Indian citizenship. India has demonstrated these upgrades to the people of Goa, Daman, Diu, Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Chandan Nagore, Pondicherry, Sikkim and Lakshadweep ( forgot that one). India annexed Hyderabad in 1948 to make it the Silicon Valley of South Asia. Isn't that upgrade real and attractive?
Quite the reverse I pointed out the potential for economic security, female empowerment, a secular democratic environment, and personal safety for the people of Pakistan if they revert to becoming Indian Muslims ( which we all were before 1947 ) .
Read my responses above. An annexation by India is the solution to all the problems faced by urban professionals in Karachi.
Ask the urban professional in Hyderabad and Goa how their lives improved beyond their wildest dreams after India annexed their territory. Believe me the Karachi urban professional will be way better off getting employment in Mumbai, Pune, or Hyderabad. If he or she changes her/his name, eating habits and religion, housing will never be a problem.
I agree, You have made a powerful argument. Resistance is futile. The Pakistani Armed Forces will be defeated yet again and must not be supported. An Indian annexation is the best option for the economic prosperity, and personal safety of our people. I agree to give up my Chapali kababs as I revert to becoming an Indian Muslim
Would like our Indian members to comment on this
@Vkdindian1 @Raj-Hindustani.
I maintain - whataboutism and cherry picking at best.
You are trying to equate reactions of a
few small, colonially ruled enclaves or micro‑states to a nuclear‑armed country of 240 million with its own national identity, army, and political history.
I wonder in what logical pretense do you take Goa which is small colonial possession ruled by a distant European empire with no popular democratic legitimacy and with a visible local pro‑integration movement. Their populations were counted in the hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of millions. They were not a sovereign post‑colonial nation that had already fought multiple wars with India and built an entire national narrative around “1947” and “independence from India”
Then there is Hyderabad, another limited democratic legitimacy, surrounded by Indian territory. The conflict there was about integrating an internal princely enclave into the newly independent Indian Union, not about crossing an international border to dismantle a neighboring sovereign republic that has existed for 80 years(which is at the end a fictional scenario you both created and are building a crow out of feathers for as the crux of this debate). The poorly fitted example of Goa or Hyderabad and their relative prosperity completely ignores being relatively small polities that could be integrated without overwhelming India demographically and it is wildly misleading to imply that Goans, or Hyderabadi Muslims, simply lived “happily ever after.” These societies have their own grievances about language policy, discrimination, unequal development, land grabs, gentrification, and Hindu–Muslim tension. They are not advertisement posters for painless annexation.
Using them as a template for “Pakistani Gen‑Z will accept annexation” is like saying “Crimea happened, therefore Japan would calmly accept Chinese annexation of Hokkaido.”
Ironically, your example of Iraq is even worse for your argument because a huge amount of punditry claimed that a “fatigued” Iraqi population, divided by sect and ethnicity, would greet US troops as liberators. we know exactly what happened after Saddam collapsed with the Iraqi Army going into insurgency mode and the general population half divided in support, survival and eventually Iraq sans the US literally butchered itself under extremism or sectarian violence - that is actually a more likely outcome than some 1000 year war of liberation you Romanize - Gen Z or X or Millennials be damned.
Trying to ask for specific polls on a hypothetical niche questions tells me your argument has no other logic to stand on. Why don't you produce a poll then that shows significant pro‑annexation sentiment in Pakistan.
When Pakistanis are polled on their top concerns, India is not on the list EVER. inflation, unemployment, corruption, security inside Pakistan, health, education, electricity, etc. Not “I want to become an Indian citizen or "I will fight for Pakistan till death!!".
All of these movements in BLA, PTM and even the Bahni - framed their demands in terms of rights within Pakistan, or autonomy from Islamabad, not joining India. This back and forth emotional gambit you are trying to insert flies best with a different type of poster. What you see is anger at local elites and the military, resignation, or escapism (emigration to the Gulf, the West, or at best Dubai), not coherent mass longing for Indian passports.
The entire 71 sage you are trying to frame your house of cards on has no basis other than your opinion. Bangladeshi nationalism in the late 1960s and 1971 was driven by linguistic and economic grievances (Bengali language status, under‑representation, resource extraction) which led to
self‑determination and ultimately
independence as Bangladesh, not for permanent union with India. Lets ask Bengalis as well whom you are acting as ghost writer for
@Afif .
India may have exploited the situation but despite token intellectuals and radicals throwing out many ideas in revolutionary moments. What matters is what the
mass national project became, and that project was independence. To reduce the entire Bangladeshi struggle to “they wanted to merge with India, but Brahmins in Calcutta blocked them” is sectarian,
evidence‑free(please provide some), and ignores 50 years of Bangladeshi politics post‑1971, which has never moved toward union with India.
To the last point - "We were all Indian Muslims" is another aspect of irrelevant whataboutism and not what is relevant today. Just as Jinnah's Pakistan sank in the Bay of Bengal there is very little similarity remaining between Pakistani muslims, Bengali muslims or Indian muslims.
“Indian Muslim” itself is not a single identity; Indian Muslims today are fragmented by language, region, caste, sect, and politics. The notion that 240 million Pakistanis will just say “oh well, let’s revert to being Indian Muslims” assumes that identity is a toggle you flip, not something reproduced daily in schools, institutions, and lived experience.
Yet, you seem to think cultural crossovers through popular media will make this(
I repeat and maintain as some alarmist fictional idea) an easy task. Indians watch Pakistani dramas and Coke Studio, Pakistanis consume Bollywood and Indian YouTube. Cultural consumption does not equal political preference and it is clear here on PDF as well - people who like Indian songs but also cheer Pakistan’s cricket team and repeat standard national narratives about Kashmir, independence, and the army (even if they hate the army politically).
The last bit gets even more desperate - because you're saying that Pakistanis as economic NPCs who will trade sovereignty for a job in Pune if they “change their name, eating habits and religion.”. Real Pakistanis emigrate to Canada, Australia, the Gulf, the UK, sometimes the US or Europe. They do this as
individuals or families, not as a collective political project to dissolve their state. At second they look for remote work and then when they do participate politically they vote, protest, or disengage, but they do not organize around “please conquer us so we become someone else’s middle class."
As for your lame attempt to tag Indians - please do.
@Vkdindian1 @SoulSpokesman - Do Indians overwhelmingly do want to import 240 million more people from a politically volatile neighbor??.
Even Indian hardliners who like to talk about “Akhand Bharat” get very nervous if you ask them whether they are personally willing to share jobs, welfare, and political power with 240 million additional, mostly Muslim, citizens. Their own example text even admits this in passing when talking about West Bengal politics and the fear of a Muslim chief minister.
The crux of your post however is your attempt to shoot tangents and gaslighting statements -
“What does being apathetic and neutral to an Indian invasion … mean? Desire for annexation or resistance?”
There are more than these two options if you actually did study how occupation in Iraq or Algeria panned out in either active insurgents, supporters of insurgents , collaborators with the occupation force and then the majority is usually people who try and keep their heads down, avoid both sides and focus on their family and safety. Most fragile or divided societies under invasion show a messy mix of all four. So when I say “Apathy” it is not evidence of longing to merge; it is evidence that people are exhausted, scared, or distrustful of
everyone (their own state and the invader).
If Pakistanis have low enthusiasm for a war with India, that supports your original point: they prioritize survival, not jihad or glorious national struggle. It does not convert into “please annex us.” . Conversely, “Indian Muslims are apathetic” toward India’s wars does not prove that they secretly wish to be invaded by Pakistan or China. It just shows that minorities often prioritize survival and staying out of the line of fire.
At the end what you have only proven is that you are defensive in your weak argument and then using a combination of gaslighting and whataboutism to try and change goalposts consistently. Using phrases like “an illegal entity carved from sovereign Indian territory.” or “I agree to give up my Chapli kababs as I revert to becoming an Indian Muslim." are sheepish statements trying to incite some support for what is a weak argument.
An argument btw - that you began as weak under your apocalyptic romanticism, where Pakistan is fated to be exposed, broken, occupied and then perhaps “redeemed” through one last insurgent epic. In reality, states do not collapse or get conveniently pounded into submission just because their air defence is leaky or their elites are incompetent; they muddle through, bargain, blunder, and adapt in ways that rarely match tidy war‑porn scripts. India, for its part, is not an omnipotent juggernaut that can wage an unlimited long war, ignore global economic and diplomatic pressure, absorb the fallout of destabilizing a nuclear neighbour, and then casually walk away from the wreckage. The future here is not binary between glorious resistance and total annexation; it is a messy mix of domestic reform, regional deterrence, external constraints and sheer survival instinct, all of which make your “imminent merciless pounding leading to occupation and insurgency” far less inevitable than it sounds in your prose.
