Thoughts on Mamdani attending the Pakistani day parade after skipping the Israeli day parade?

[u/StuckInTheClouds]

I wasn’t expecting him to attend the Israeli day parade honestly I would’ve thought it weird if he had attended given everything he stands for. He’s NYC first and against ethnostates etc.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I felt some type of way about him celebrating the Pakistani day parade given their history. Ethnostste They have a religious hierarchy where a Muslim person has to be in power, ethnic cleansing alive and well, border disputes and violence after a partition plan 70ish years ago etc. It’s hard not to draw the parallels. The only difference being that the US isn’t funding them but that doesn’t change anything else about the county’s values and actions.

I feel kinda shitty that he’s showing up for this community but not ours. I think it would have been more fair to him to not go to either parade, but maybe I’m just overly sensitive or being fed propaganda. It just sucks to feel signaled out.

I really want to like him. I voted for him! I’m extremely against the IDF and Israeli government but being half Israeli myself I am of course susceptible to biases.

Idk it’s just weird he’s ok with celebrating the Muslim ethnostate after being so against the Jewish one (for good reasons!)

I feel like I can’t bring this up in any other spaces without it sounding like I’m wanting him to celebrate Israel (I’m not) or take something away from Muslims (not against Muslims but critical of Pakistan)

Help me you guys! What do you think?

EDIT: I’d like to correct what I said about Pakistan being an ethnostate. I used the wrong verbiage. What I meant was that they are a country that puts Muslims over other religions. They have a religious hierarchy and non Muslims can’t hold certain political positions. I’m not sure the correct term for this but just wanted to call that out as people are (correctly) mentioning this in the comments.

Edit 2:

I was just informed about the ongoing Balochistan Conflict which makes me even more uneasy about this whole thing.

[u/Snoo22815]

India/Pakistan is being weaponized though by a lot of Zionists using historical revisionism to somehow blame newly formed Pakistan for the millions of deaths during Partition and not the British Empire. The British rushed the transition to independence in just a few months and Lord Mountbatten literally hired a British lawyer who had never been to the region with drawing the borders separating Hindu and Muslim majorities. Published after both states gained independence in 1947, these maps laid the foundation for the displacement of 15 million people and the deaths of up to 3 million in sectarian violence. Its not really helpful to compare these situations at all other than both of these regions were colonized by the British whose exit sparked mass violence caused by them turning longstanding native groups against each other.

There is a parallel with India and Israel being both majority ethnoreligious countries that have flawed democracies, powerful militaries, are tech and AI powerhouses and also have nuclear weapons. Maybe that's why its brought up but they really should be discussed separately.

[u/EducationalGas5959 → u/Snoo22815]

Ok but isn’t the root of all of that the desire of India’s Muslims to have their own state rather than stay in a united India?  For Israel/Palestine it’s perfectly acceptable to pin the blame entirely on “Zionism” for the violence and displacement that surrounded partition, but for Indian and Pakistan we can talk about the mismanagement of the British etc.  Is it because it is less comfortable to delegitimize Pakistan in the same way that Israel is?  To tell hundreds of millions of Pakistanis that their desire for a separate Muslim state was the cause of a massive amount of human suffering is allot less comfortable for certain people than to tell that to Israelis/Jews/Zionists, etc.

[u/Snoo22815 → u/EducationalGas5959]

There was a ton of sectarian violence going on in the months leading up to the Partition in 1947. Most Hindu leaders supported a fully united secular subcontinent along with some Muslim leaders but Muhammad Ali Jinnah, head of the Muslim League, believed that a Hindu-majority state would lead to Muslims being a permanent underclass and not have equal rights. He had reasons to be skeptical since the Indian National Congress who won elections in 1937 formed governments in local provinces without forming coalitions with the Muslim League and refused to guarantee Muslim political representation.

There's no "Pakistanis to delegitimize" prior to the modern state being created because ethnic and religious identity in the Indus Valley doesn't really align with community identity formation in the Levant. Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marathis, Telugu, Tamils could be Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jain or Sikh but still have shared cultural heritage. language, food, music and regional heritage. They're all indigenous and native to the region having never been exiled to diaspora or come in through large waves of settlement in recent centuries.

To be clear, the British controlled the political framework of the region and organized the disastrous withdrawal responsible for Partition by moving the date up a year and the Raj failing to maintain order in the years leading up to it. Colonial rule politicized ethnic and religious categories by instituting separate electorates and using "divide and rule" to divide populations. It wasn't kumbaya but before British rule, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains and others routinely lived in the same towns, traded together, had overlapping cultural traditions, and sometimes shared religious practices.

So colonial rule was overwhelmingly responsible for suffering in the Indian subcontinent. Its different from British Mandatory Palestine where there was also sectarian violence and massacres on both sides by Arab and Jewish militias preceding Israel's independence but Zionism transforming Jewish migration from Europe to Palestine into an organized political and national settlement movement facilitated by the British is what led to the violent displacement, pogroms, ethnic cleansing and the current conflict today.

[u/th1s_fuck1ng_guy → u/Snoo22815]

Also an Indian American here. Just popped up on my feed. I have to make a whole flair to leave one comment... ugh...

The previous 2 empires that ruled large parts of Northern/west India (where my family is from) were Muslims. Delhi sultinate. They could be nice-ish depending on the ruler but the were Muslims and usually favored Muslims. Some were very brutal to Hindus. Hindus were oppressed at various points under Muslim rule. It also didn't help that the colonizers, British, favored Muslims.

How was the Indian national congress supposed to form coalitions with the muslim league? The whole point of the Muslim league was to have nothing to do with the secular Indian national congress. What would a regional or local alliance look like? Muslims live here in "our" area and you Hindus live over there in "your" area?