INDIA and Pakistan, seldom friendly and ever acrimonious with each other, are currently passing through interesting times. Their mutual suspicions are deep-rooted. Both are in a state of no-peace no-war with their ground, air and sea forces on red alert and concentrated, ready for yet another combat in their turbulent history of the last fifty-five years. Since 1947, they have spent more time on overt and covert operations against each other than on negotiating durable peace for the poverty- ridden masses in underdeveloped South Asia.

People with radical beliefs exist in every religion and in every society, India and Pakistan included. But it is unwise to malign any religion or society for reasons self-serving for the accusers. Not infrequently, the deprived and oppressed people act in frustration to achieve their rights denied to them by their more powerful usurpers. The ongoing struggles for independence and survival in Palestine and Kashmir against occupation countries are two examples.

Islam, a peaceful faith, puts premium on human dignity and equality of individuals. It teaches its followers to respect all faiths including those that are not divine or ordained. Hinduism falls in this category. Many notable Hindus claim that Hinduism is not a religion but a set of dogmas and rituals pieced together for its followers. Whatever the truth, India’s unity is eroded by its deeply ingrained and widely practised caste system that divides Hindu society into haves and have-nots based on the accident of birth of individuals. Such division is against the norms of natural justice. One leader of the backward castes, R L Chandapuri of Bihar, calls Brahmanism the “father of terrorism”. V T Rajshekar, editor of the magazine Dalit Voice published from Bangalore, writes that Brahmanism is the “father of fascism, racism and Nazism”.

India claims to be a secular and democratic country. It is to its credit that despite some glaring imperfections, democratic institutions have developed there since 1947 and elections held at regular intervals. It is equally true that all elections held in the disputed state of Kashmir by India’s autonomous Election Commission were blatantly rigged to achieve ‘desired results’. This exposes the facade of autonomy that this body enjoys. Also, India’s secular and democratic credentials have been selectively practised. Fifty five years down the lane of independence the abhorring caste system remains strong. Religious hatred persists. Communal riots frequently erupt in parts of the country in which minorities become victims of Hindu fundamentalist extremists.

India promotes communalism as a matter of state policy under the name of Hindutva. Indian columnist Praful Bidwai writes that the BJP “rejects the foundational premise of the multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic character of Indian society. It is profoundly illiberal, intolerant and parochial”. The minorities, Dalits, Muslims, Northeastern ethnic minorities, Sikhs and Christians subsist in India in a state of perpetual fear and danger. A civil society is based on equality of human beings irrespective of their religious, political, ethnic and sociological beliefs. India’s democracy and secularism do not measure up to the commonly accepted norms of a civil society.

Democracy and human rights go together, like two sides of the same coin. India rules Kashmir with state-sponsored acts of terrorism. The ongoing anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat tarnish India image. The Indian government claims that 850 people have so far perished in the gory riots but impartial observers place the death toll at closer to 2000, and mostly Muslims. Reportedly, the ruling BJP government in Gujarat looked the other way and connived with Hindu fanatics to play ‘holi’ with the blood of their fellow Muslim citizens. The law enforcing agencies remained silent spectators. The culprits remain at large. No one has been punished. The chief minister of Gujarat, stays in office since he enjoys the support of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, projected by the Indian media as the soft face of the ultra-right BJP.

Mr Vajpayee says: “Hindus stay in millions but never hurt other’s religious feelings. But wherever Muslims are, they don’t want to stay peacefully. It is happening in Indonesia, Malaysia, everywhere.”

This undiplomatic and explosive statement is widely off the mark and unworthy of an experienced head of state. Mr Vajpayee might have enhanced his own image if he had condemned the destruction of the Babri mosque, desecration of the Hazratbal shrine and the Golden Temple, burning of churches and killing of nuns, killing of thousands of Sikhs in New Delhi and elsewhere, the massive Bombay riots and the ongoing human carnage in Gujarat.

The foreign office in Islamabad commented: “The remarks reveal Mr Vajpayee’s anti-Muslim bias. They are a pathetic attempt to divert attention from the recent massacre of hundreds of Muslims by Hindu fanatics in Gujarat. The government of Pakistan is seriously concerned at the bigoted and extremist message contained in the Indian prime minister’s remarks.”

The battle of words between both the two neighbours continues unabated. Regional tension remains high. Its intensity is frequently raised by the incendiary statements made by the minister of defence in India. He deserves sympathy. The game of power demands a quid pro quo from him — to remain in the vanguard of Hindu chauvinism for launching tirades against Pakistan.

Manoj Joshi, writing in The Times of India on July 26, 2001, depicts the Indian mindset thus: “India seems unwilling to deal with the consequences of acknowledging the real problem. Kashmir is not the central issue in Indo-Pakistan relations — it is the Islamic republic of Pakistan.” Viewed in this context the tone and tenor of fiery statements made by top-level Indian rulers and the concentration of Indian forces against Pakistan cannot be brushed aside as innocent acts of coercive diplomacy. Their ramifications can be serious and sinister.

India is not the sole spoiler of peace in South Asia. It is aided and perhaps abetted by her strategic partners who are not unconcerned bystanders. They urge both the countries to avoid conflict and withdraw their military forces to peace locations. Hostilities in South Asia are against their own national interests. Regional tension falls in a different category. It is significant that they have not condemned India for concentrating troops and creating regional tension. Their honeymoon with India is more important to them than the right of self-determination of the long-oppressed people in Kashmir. They criticize human rights violations in India in undertones to avoid annoying the violators.

Deployment of forces hurts India and Pakistan alike. Their withdrawal shall benefit both. To restore normal bilateral trade ties in the present abnormal regional scenario would be counter-productive. Trade ties have remained on the backburner in the past and can safely stay there for a while.

An uneasy calm prevails in South Asia. The need of the hour demands Pakistan to put its own house in order and unify its people against any direct or indirect threat from India, where the ruling coalition has recently suffered electoral defeats in four states and in New Delhi. The Vajpayee government is currently weak and wavering. To seek durable peace with Pakistan is remote on its political agenda. Here lies the danger to regional peace.

An internally cohesive and economically strong Pakistan can face the challenge that its adversary poses to its security. India and Pakistan have no durable option but to live in peace based on mutual trust and sovereign equality. Any other course may be futile and unworkable. The time is rapidly running out for Vajpayee in the declining years of his long and often controversial political career.

The writer is a retired general of the Pakistan army.

THE Indian communalists do not have any compassion for the religious sensitivity of their Muslim compatriots. After two months of communal rioting in Gujarat Madhav Govind Vaid, a spokesman of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) put it quite plainly in an interview that the safety of the Muslims in India “lies in the goodwill of the majority community”.

In other words the Muslims should not expect safety or security as a matter of right. Vaid also contends that for a person to be accepted as a bona fide Indian he has to be a Hindu.

The RSS has been at the back of the ruthless killing of the Muslims in Gujarat. According to official estimates some 800 Muslims have been killed in the past eight weeks mostly in the state capital, Ahmadabad. Unofficial estimates put the number of the Muslims killed between 2000 and 2500. In a frenzy of ethnic cleansing it has been a brutal, relentless hunting down of the Muslims. Ahmadabad has been under curfew off and on but it has made little difference to the intensity of the killing.

The proceedings of the Indian parliament have been held up for days together with the saner elements in the majority community demanding the dismissal of the state chief minister, a demand which Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has firmly resisted. The two Indian communist parties have also held public rallies and demonstrations in New Delhi. It is also widely known that the state authorities in Gujarat have been colluding in the orgy of killing of the Muslims. The police and paramilitary forces have been called out and have been patrolling the streets of Ahmadabad. But that has made little difference to the situation.

The leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi, while addressing a conference of the chief ministers of the 14 states where her party is in power, declared the other day: “The fact that Gujarat continues to burn is a most dangerous assault on our secular polity; an India that is not secular will not survive, let alone progress.” But her words have fallen on deaf ears.

The 20-party coalition government at the centre headed by Mr Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is threatened by the revolt of some of the smaller parties allied to it. The southern India-based Telegu Desam Party (TDP) which has 28 members in the Lok Sabha has warned Mr Vajpayee of its intention to breakaway from the coalition. The BJP is attempting to survive the crisis by entering into an alliance with some other parties.

In Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India, where also the BJP is precariously placed, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), appears close to firming up an alliance with the BJP. However, the TDP leader, Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, has made it clear that he would not stay in partnership with the BJP unless the incumbent government of Gujarat is dismissed. (Initially he was believed to be reluctant to make the demand but has been under severe pressure from some of his senior colleagues in the TDP, including H D Deve Gowda, former prime minister of India. (Mr Deve Gowda also joined a protest march led by the opposition members of the Lok Sabha).

India has been facing criticism from certain foreign organizations for its failure to grant security to the Muslims in Gujarat. However, the Indian government has taken exception to such criticism calling it “interference in the country’s internal affairs”. The Indian foreign office spokesperson was particularly resentful, of a statement by the Finnish foreign minister, Erki Tuomiojaa, appearing in an interview in a major Indian daily. The same paper also carried a European Union report drawing a parallel between Gujarat and the Nazi Germany of the 1930s. The European Union has also sent a fact-finding mission to Gujarat and reportedly drawn up a declaration describing mission to Gujarat and reportedly drawn up a declaration describing the happenings in the Indian state as “a kind of apartheid”. The declaration is stated to bear the signatures among others of the representatives of Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium.

The redeeming feature of the situation in India is the apparent erosion of the BJP’s popular base in recent times. The BJP’s stronghold has been the state of Uttar Pradesh but there too it failed to emerge as the majority party in the recent state assembly elections. Reports appearing in some of the leading Indian news media have maintained that the prime minister’s office has had to accept “brazen manipulation” by a “clutch of bureaucrats and powerful business houses” forcing the government to take critical economic decisions to suit their vested interests. This does not bother the Hindutva hardliners who enjoy the support of big business but have alienated Vajpayee from the more liberal and progressive elements in Indian society. Statements by RSS leaders suggesting that the Indian Christians should be brought under a state-encouraged indigenous church, free fo the “divisive control” of foreign missionaries, and that the Indian Muslims should recognize Ram and Krishna as national heroes “and join the mainstream” have nevertheless embarrassed Mr Vajpayee as a professed secularist and undermined his position as prime minister in a 20-party coalition government.

However, statements such as the one attributed to the Imam Sahib of Delhi’s Jama Masjid expressing the fear that the situation in India could lead to a civil war cannot be regarded as helpful. Reports emanating from Indian sources said that Syed Ahmed Bukhari, in a speech after the Friday prayer some days ago, said that the Muslims would have to think of ways for their “self-protection”. While he did not exaggerate when he called the happenings in Gujarat as the “genocide” of Muslims, his reported declaration that “we will also show our strength (and) India will be broken into pieces” was needlessly rhetorical and could not be regarded as prudent.

Many Indian Muslim intellectuals themselves are of the view that the Indian Muslims as a community have not always been lucky in the quality or calibre of their leaders. For instance, a number of organizations comprising prominent Muslims became active after the demolition of Babri Masjid but there was little harmony or coordination in the various strategies that they wanted the community to follow in the aftermath and even functioned at cross purposes. However, it appears that a section of what were called “secular modernists” among the Indian Muslims did organize themselves under the nomenclature of the “Muslim Intelligentsia Meet” which held meetings from time to time in different important cities of India. As a leading Indian Muslim scholar and author, Prof Mushirul Hasan, has recalled, the efforts of the “Meet” were “to locate the trauma caused by the Ayodhya episode in the wider context, to seek remedies within a democratic and secular order, to propose composite nationalism as an alternative to emotive religious appeals, and to resolve minority issues outside the communitarian framework”.

While those primarily responsible for the lack of tolerance for the minorities in India are the fundamentalists of the Hindutva organizations such as RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the rise of militant Muslim fundamentalism in Pakistan in the 1980s also made the plight of the Indian Muslims worse. It has given a handle to the Hindutva-dominated government of Atal Behari Vajpayee to blame Pakistan for the social and economic problems which India has had to face.

PAKISTAN is chock-full of well-meaning do-gooders. Only no one is able to understand what they mean. The result is that all their noble ideas and the sincerity with which they want to implement them come to nought. They find no takers.

For example, take those angelic chaps in the organization called “Public Help Programme, Pakistan” (PHPP) who now tacitly admit that it was they who launched the campaign in Punjab to call corrupt officials bad names like “zaleel” and “kameena” — roughly translated as iniquitous and depraved — and to confess that this effort to reform these bad guys had failed.

Neither the fellows who were labelled zaleel or kameena in advertisements and street banners felt any pang of conscience on being thus named, nor were the people at large willing to address them by these appellations. In fact, most Pakistanis wanted to emulate them, act in their footsteps, and become dirty rich themselves, no matter if they were called zaleel or kameena, or even worse names.

Basically the problem was that you couldn’t point your finger at the really corrupt among the public servants because there were so many who were given to graft and kickbacks and commissions and defalcation of state funds. You could, however, point your finger at the few who were honest, but that was not the same thing.

Now the PHPP wants to launch a new programme to fight the corrupt and seeks your help and mine for this noble endeavour. The words in the advertisement it published some time ago in a widely circulated Urdu daily carry no clue to the identity of the idealistic men behind it. Like genuine Good Samaritans they want to remain incognito, or they feel that the thick-skinned people of this country will laugh at them if they disclose their names.

I have purposely used the word ‘laugh’, because the programme is so revolutionary in nature that (I am ashamed to admit) I laughed out aloud on reading it. If it could be meticulously and honestly followed, and if the corrupt do not take it over themselves (of which there is always the possibility) no bribe- taker would be left in Pakistan. In fact, no public servant would be left, and new ones would have to be imported — probably from paradise!

No, I am not being sarcastic. According to the advertisement, every day at least 1,000 corrupt officers and clerks would be pensioned off and blacklisted under the new plan. In one month the number would be 26,000. In a year about three lakhs and in five years 1.5 million vacancies would be created by throwing out the bad hats. These vacancies are proposed to be filled by “educated, unemployed and hard-working young men.” The ad does not require them to be honest.

I had half a mind to utilize my contacts in that Urdu daily to find out who or what the PHPP was. Is it one genius or a group of deep thinkers who have drawn up the madly radical plan? But if I did come to know their names it would tell me nothing, unless I got to know them first hand. That would have been too much of a hassle, so I gave up the idea. I may tell you, however, that the whole thing is just not verbiage. It includes the use of truly ingenious methods and electronic gadgetry to catch the culprits red-handed.

Just look at the instruments that are proposed to be employed:mini automatic remote cameras, mini telephones, audio and video recordings, finger-printed coded gifts, and of course plain cash. It has been suggested that to trap officers in Grade 17 and above, experts would be imported from Europe, but preferably from Muslim countries, and, after training, they would be given a Pakistani look and identity to fool the corrupt.

The trouble with all anti-corruption measures is that if a charge is proved against a public servant he merely loses a lucrative job and goes to prison. PHPP says the prisons are already full and punishments to those found guilty should be of a social nature. Their faces will be smeared with indelible ink — red, blue, green, yellow, etc. According to the department they belong to, and they will then be allowed to go their way. The plan does not say what will be done about those who will go and hide in their homes and not come out till the ink wears off. Maybe the ink will last a lifetime.

The very corrupt, the big fish, will have their heads shaved and rubbed with luminous paint, also indelible. Here again the plan fails to deal with growing hair which may hide the paint. Maybe by shaving the head the PHPP means removing the scalp altogether, as Red Indians used to do with white settlers in the Wild West. No scalp, no re-growth.

At this point comes the fate of corrupt maulvis. Coloured bits of straw will be inserted in their beards and fixed there with the aid of Elfy, that terrible adhesive. The plan doesn’t say so, but I suppose an operative from the Anti-Corruption Department will keep each of them company to ensure that he doesn’t shave off his beard.

One unique feature of the plan is that the police will not be there at all. To enforce its plan the PHPP envisages the employment of retired army personnel and commandos. Also, “Highly educated ulema, khateebs and imams will be inducted into the department.” I am sure the poor chaps will live in constant danger of their own beards being Elfied. Another punishment for the corrupt is to cut off half of the little finger of the left hand. This should reduce their capacity for further grabbing by at least one-tenth, if they are retained in their jobs after that.

I strongly commend the plan to the military government and the NAB. By the way the primary base for anti-corruption operations will be “secret cellars in the basements of mosques, where, after congregational prayers, the corrupt will be pointed out by informers”. Which means that the plan may have to be put off till the construction of such cellars.

The HQ of the entire operation and programme will be located “underneath the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad.” so, whether the corrupt in the federal capital are caught or not, they will be saying jokingly to one another, “See you at the Faisal Mosque on Friday, but be ware of informers!”

THE unexpected result in the first round of the French presidential election last week appears to confirm a decade-long trend whereby western European electorates have been drifting steadily to the right.

In many countries, neo-fascist or ultra-right factions form an integral part of the ruling coalition. Were Jean-Marie Le Pen to evict Jacques Chirac from the Elysee Palace next Sunday, in the second round of the contest, France would have a head of state whose “Work, Family, Fatherland” slogan is shamelessly borrowed from the pro-Hitler Vichy regime that briefly ruled the country 60 years ago, and which views the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history”.

It is not going to happen, of course. With most of those who couldn’t be bothered to cast their ballots on April 21 — more than 28 per cent of the electorate — and the Socialists, Communists, Greens and most other political forces on the left urging their supporters to vote for Chirac on May 5, the incumbent is likely to be re-elected by a massive landslide.

It’s a rate of approval that Chirac does not deserve, particularly in view of burgeoning evidence of fairly widespread graft during his long stint as the mayor of Paris. Yet one can hardly disagree with the left’s “hold your nose and vote for Chirac” strategy: mainstream conservatism is certainly not a cause worth fighting for, but it is under almost any circumstances vastly preferable to the prospect of right-wing extremism acquiring too much of the respectability it craves.

Europe-wide, the signs thus far have not been encouraging. The participation of Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria’s ruling coalition elicited howls of derision from many continental capitals and the threat of sanctions from the European Union. But Haider’s ascendancy can now be seen as part of a pattern.

Extremist parties currently share power in Denmark, Portugal and Norway too. In Belgium the Vlaams Blok, which advocates the repatriation of all non-European foreigners, became the largest political force in Antwerp two years ago. In Italy, the so-called “post-fascist” leader Gianfranco Fini as well as Umberto Bossi, who heads the xenophobic Northern League, hold key positions in the cabinet of the reactionary media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar was re-elected in 2000 with that nation’s first outright conservative majority since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. There have also been signs of an ultra-right resurgence in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The renewed soul-searching prompted across the continent as well as in Britain by Le Pen’s ability to sneak into the second round by obtaining more votes than Prime Minister Lionel Jospin is a healthy sign. However, its worth depends not only on whether the pundits come up with the appropriate answers, but even more so on whether they ask the right questions.

First of all, to put Le Pen’s limited “success” into perspective, it is worth pointing out that in terms of absolute numbers, the 17 per cent of the vote he garnered last week is not vastly larger than his score seven years ago, when he gained 15 per cent on a decidedly higher voter turnout. Yes, it’s true that it wouldn’t have come to this had even a fraction of the notional Socialist supporters who didn’t vote felt differently on the polling day. It’s also true that most of them would have been more than willing to line up outside polling booths had they any inkling of the threat posed to Jospin by the Front Nationale leader, but opinion polls had been telling a rather different story.

But it’s somewhat unfair to heap the blame either on those who were insufficiently motivated, or on the 12 per cent or so of voters who opted for one of the three Trotskyite candidates in the fray — in many cases because they felt, reasonably enough, that Jospin and his party had drifted too far to the right.

Since at least the mid-1990s, social democracy and mainstream conservatism have been becoming increasingly indistinguishable. This is largely the consequence of a rightward slide by the former rather than a movement towards the centre from both sides. There is, in most cases, not yet a complete confluence, yet there is sufficient confusion to disillusion large numbers of voters, who fail to see how solutions to their uncertainties and insecurities can be located within the context of the free-market consensus.

Some of the better educated non-believers turn further to the left. Many of the others are attracted by demagogues who blame the nation’s woes on globalization, immigrants and high taxes, and who invariably propose extreme solutions. What’s perhaps the most odious aspect of this trend is that mainstream politicians then adopt parts of the extremist agenda in order to shore up their vote banks. This is easier for conservatives, but the supposed social democrats are often determined not to be outdone.

A classic example of this phenomenon is offered by the British government’s response to recent developments across the channel. Across the ideological spectrum, every newspaper in the country was scathing in its criticism of Le Pen. Tony Blair commiserated with Jospin over the phone. But when the cabinet met to consider the implications of the sudden Socialist demise, it came to the conclusion that the Labour Party must maintain a strong stance on law and order as well as asylum-seekers, lest voters be tempted to turn to the British National Party.

As Gary Younge commented in The Guardian: “The Labour Party has decided that the best way to respond to fascism, and the racism that produces it, is not to confront it without equivocation but to pander to it without shame. Blair’s answer to Le Pen’s triumph is not to trumpet the benefits of equality or inclusion or sing the praises of multiculturalism.

“They do not like the bigotry in Le Pen’s language, but like [Margaret] Thatcher, who saw off the National Front only to implement some of the most racist immigration and policing practices, they do not mind it in their own legislation. Their strategy is not to protect those targeted by organized racists, but to target them first: not eliminate racism, but to embrace it and enshrine it in law. Having rejected the man, they are now adopting his rhetoric.”

The trouble with politics in much of Europe — and, for that matter, the rest of the developed world — is the inability of all mainstream parties, regardless of their antecedents, to contemplate a break with the tyranny of the market. Too high a level of unemployment would be considered a symptom of inefficient “economic management” — the catchword of the new order — but it is considered perfectly normal for it to hover just under the 10 per cent mark. Multinationals can merge more or less at will; there are hardly any laws to prevent them from “downsizing” their workforce in order to maximize profits. Yet the jobless are expected to “assume responsibility” for their own plight — state benefits have sharply declined in recent years, and free education and health care, where still available, are under threat.

An underclass is inevitably being created — this is the collateral damage caused by unfettered capitalism. The non-white populations are among the foremost victims, but they are by no means the only ones. Were all the victims to unite, they could pose a challenge to the system. It is therefore necessary to divide them, and racism, whether overt or subtle, admirably serves the purpose. Rising crime? Blame it on alien cultures, on people of Asian or African origin. Demonize asylum-seekers as nothing but economic migrants, even if they happen to be refugees from Saddam Hussein or the Taliban.

But after all that, why be surprised when a thoroughly unpleasant character such as Le Pen manages to break through the glass ceiling? Although he may not have increased his vote dramatically since 1995, it is pertinent to recall that the first time the former paratrooper (accused of torture during his tour of duty in Algeria, he also served in Indochina) entered the presidential race, in 1974, he won less than one per cent. The electoral value of narrow-minded nationalism, protectionism and racism has evidently increased manifold in the past quarter century. That can hardly be construed as an attractive advertisement for western democracy. Nor is there any solace to be derived from the realization that were Le Pen somehow to enter the Elysee Palace, he wouldn’t find it all that simple to match the extremism of his counterpart in the White House.

The only consolation is that he doesn’t stand a chance. That has been made clear by the hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens who have relentlessly been pounding the pavements of French towns and cities every day to drive home the message that Le Pen isn’t mightier than the collective will of his compatriots. Most of them are at least embarrassed, if not repulsed, by the fact that one-fifth of the voters could opt for the far right. In Paris today, the traditional May Day rallies will be imbued with a special sense of purpose — although it must be hoped that clashes can be avoided with Le Pen supporters who are expected to gather in the capital for their annual Joan of Arc commemoration.

The popular cri de coeur more or less guarantees a crushing victory for Chirac on May 5. It obviously makes sense, in the circumstances, to choose Supermenteur (the Superliar) over Superfacho (the Superfascist). But the profound unease, the sense of outrage ought not to lightly be squandered afterwards. The parliamentary elections scheduled for June should offer evidence of whether France has indeed shaken off its insouciance. And if it has, watch out for ripples across the rest of the continent.