Why Arabs hate Israel: Israel, Iraq and the United States-II

IT is worth mentioning that second to Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the largest oil reserves on earth, and the roughly 1.1 trillion dollars worth of oil — much of it already committed by Saddam to Russia, France, and a few other countries — that have been available to Iraq are a crucial aim of US strategy, something which the Iraqi National Congress has used as a trump card with non-US oil consumers.

A good deal of the bargaining between Putin and Bush concerns how much of a share of that oil US companies are willing to promise Russia. It is eerily reminiscent of the 3 billion dollars offered by Bush Senior to Russia. Both Bushes are oil businessmen after all, and they care more about that sort of calculation than they do about the delicate points of Middle Eastern politics, like re-wrecking Iraq’s civilian infrastructure.

Thus the first step in the dehumanization of the hated Other is to reduce his existence to a few insistently repeated simple phrases, images and concepts.

This makes it much easier to bomb the enemy without qualm. After September 11, this has been quite easy for Israel and the US to do with the Palestinians and the Iraqis respectively as people. The important thing to note is that by an overwhelming preponderance the same policy and the same severe one, two, or three stage plan is put forward principally by the same Americans and Israelis.

In the US, as Jason Vest has written in The Nation (September 2/9), men from the very right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security (JINSA) and the Centre for Security Policy (CSP) populate Pentagon and State Department committees, including the one run by Richard Perle (appointed by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld). Israeli and American security are equated, and JINSA spends the “bulk of its budget taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel.” When they come back, they write op-eds and appear on TV hawking the Likud line. Time magazine ran a piece on the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board, many of whose members are drawn from JINSA and CSP, in its August 23 issue entitled “Inside the Secret War Council.”

For his part, Sharon has numbingly repeated that his campaign against Palestinian terrorism is identical with the American war on terrorism generally, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in particular. And they, he claims, are in turn part of the same Terrorist International that includes many Muslims all over Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, even if Bush’s axis of evil seems for the moment to be concentrated on Iraq, Iran and North Korea. There are now 132 countries with some sort of American military presence, all of it linked to the war on terror, which remains undefined and floating so as to whip up more patriotic frenzy and fear and support for military action on the domestic front, where things go from bad to worse.

Every major West Bank and Gaza area is occupied by Israeli troops who routinely kill and/or detain Palestinians on the grounds that they are “suspected” terrorists and militants; similarly, houses and shops are often demolished with the excuse that they shelter bomb factories, terrorist cells, and militant meeting places. No proof is given, none asked for by reporters who accept the unilateral Israeli designation without a murmur.

An immense shroud of mystfication and abstraction has therefore been laid down all over the Arab world by this effort at systematic demonization. What the eye and ear perceive are terror, fanaticism, violence, hatred of freedom, insecurity and, the ultimate, weapons of mass destruction (WPD) which are to be found not where we know they are and never looked for (in Israel, Pakistan, India and obviously the US among others) but in the hypothetical spaces of the terrorist ranks, Saddam’s hands, a fanatical gang, etc.

A constant figure in the shroud is that Arabs hate Israel and Jews for no other reason except that they hate America too. Potentially Iraq is the most fearsome enemy of Israel because of that country’s economic and human resources; Palestinians are formidable because they stand in the way of complete Israeli hegemony and land-occupation. Right-wing Israelis like Sharon who represent the Greater Israel ideology claiming all of historical Palestine as a Jewish homeland have been especially successful in making their view of the region the dominant one among US supporters of Israel.

A comment by Uzi Landau, Israeli internal security minister (and member of the Likud Party), on US TV this summer that all this talk of “occupation” was nonsense. “We are a people coming home.” He was not even quizzed about this extraordinary concept by Mort Zuckerman, host of the programme, also owner of US News and World Report and President of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

But, Israeli journalist Alex Fishman, in Yediot Aharanot of Sept 6, describes the “revolutionary ideas” of Condoleeza Rice, Rumsfeld (who now also refers to “so-called occupied territories”), Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle (who commissioned the notorious Rand study designating Saudi Arabia as the enemy and Egypt as the prize for America in the Arab world) as being terrifyingly hawkish because they advocate ‘regime change’ in every Arab country. Fishman quotes Sharon as saying that this group, many of them members of JINSA and CCP, and connected to the AIPAC affiliate the Washington Institute of Near East Affairs, dominates Bush’s thinking (if that’s the right word for it); he says, “next to our American friends Effi Eitam [one of the Israeli cabinet’s most remorseless hardliners] is a total dove.”

The other, more scary side of this is the unchallenged proposition that if “we” don’t pre-empt terrorism (or any other potential enemy), we will be destroyed. This is now the core of US security strategy that is regularly drummed out in interviews and talk shows by Rice, Rumsfeld, and Bush himself.

The formal statement of this view appeared a short time ago in the National Security Strategy of the United States, an official paper prepared as an over-all manifesto for the administration’s new, post-cold war foreign policy. The working presumption is that we live in an exceptionally dangerous world with a network of enemies that does in fact exist, that it has factories, offices, endless numbers of members, and that its entire existence is given up to destroying “us”, unless we get them first. This is what frames and gives legitimacy to the war on terrorism and on Iraq, for which the Congress and the UN are now being asked to give endorsement.

Fanatical individuals and groups do exist, of course, and many of them are generally in favour of somehow harming either Israel or the US. On the other hand, Israel and the US are widely perceived in the Islamic and Arab worlds first of having created the so-called jihadi extremists of whom Osama Bin Laden is the most famous, and second of blithely overriding international law and UN resolutions in pursuit of their own hostile and destructive policies in those worlds. David Hirst writes in a Guardian column datelined Cairo that even Arabs who oppose their own despotic regimes “will see it [the US attack on Iraq] as an act of aggression aimed not just at Iraq, but at the whole Arab world; and what will make it supremely intolerable is that it will be done on behalf of Israel, whose acquisition of a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction seems to be as permissible as theirs is an abomination” (Sept. 6).

I am also saying that there is a specific Palestinian narrative and, at least since the mid-1980s, a formal willingness to make peace with Israel that is quite contrary to the more recent terrorist threat represented by Al Qaeda or the spurious threat supposedly embodied by Saddam Hussein, who is a terrible man of course, but is scarcely able to wage intercontinental war; only occasionally is it admitted by the administration that he might be a threat to Israel, but that seems to be one of his grievous sins.

None of his neighbours perceives him as a threat. The Palestinians and Iraq get mixed up in this scarcely perceptible way so as to constitute a menace which the media reinforces time and time again. Most stories about the Palestinians that appear in genteel and influential mass-circulation publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times magazine show Palestinians as bomb-makers, collaborators, suicide bombers, and only that. Neither of these publications has published anything from the Arab viewpoint since 9/11. Nothing at all.

So that when administration flaks like Dennis Ross (in charge of Clinton’s side of the Oslo negotiations, but both before and after his stint in that job a member of an Israeli lobby affiliate) keeps saying that the Palestinians turned down a generous Israeli offer at Camp David, he is flagrantly distorting the facts, which as several authoritative sources have shown, was that Israel conceded non-contiguous Palestinian areas with Israeli security posts and settlements surrounding them all and with no common border between Palestine and any Arab state (that is, Egypt in the south, Jordan in the east). Why words like “generous” and “offer” should apply to territory illegally held by an occupying power in contravention of international law and UN resolutions, no one has bothered to ask. But given the power of the media to repeat, re-repeat and underline simple assertions, plus the untiring efforts of the Israel lobby to repeat the same idea — Dennis Ross himself has been singularly obdurate in his insistence on this falsehood — it is now locked into place that the Palestinians chose “terror instead of peace.” Hamas and Islamic Jihad are seen not as (a perhaps misguided) part of the Palestinian struggle to be rid of Israeli military occupation, but as part of the general Palestinian desire to terrorize, threaten, and be a menace. Like Iraq.

To be concluded

Whither democratic system?

PAKISTAN opted for parliamentary democracy at the dawn of independence. Eleven years later, with the full knowledge of the American ambassador and the British high commissioner in Pakistan, President Iskandar Mirza and Ayub Khan, his army chief, conspired to abrogate the constitution and stab Pakistan’s fledgling democracy in the back. The country’s flirtation with democracy ended in a puff of smoke. There was not a ripple of protest nor any sign of agitation.

Mohtarama Fatima Jinnah, the revered sister of the Quaid-i-Azam, issued a statement: “A new era has begun under General Ayub Khan and armed forces have undertaken to root out the administrative malaise and the anti-social practices to create a sense of confidence and stability and eventually to bring the country back to a state of normalcy. I hope and pray that God may give them wisdom and strength to achieve their objectives”.

“To plunge the army into politics”, Ayub Khan wrote in his diary, “was like exposing my own child to unpredictable hazards”. Ayub Khan committed the original sin. He knew that if the army once got drawn into the political life — and this he knew was inevitable — it could not withdraw itself easily. It was Ayub khan who inducted the army into the politics of Pakistan. He set a bad precedent; others followed his example. Why did Pakistan lapse into military dictatorship? Why has parliamentary democracy failed to hold the field in Pakistan? Let us go back to the beginning, so to speak, and look at the question from a historical perspective. Perhaps we can find a precise answer if we glance at what has happened in India after independence.

The success of parliamentary democracy in India stands out in contrast to its failure in Pakistan. “If one is travelling in Asia”, Professor Arnold Toynbee said in a lecture delivered at McGill University in 1961, “and enters India after having visited some of the other South Asian countries, one becomes conscious of a difference in human climate... Here is a country with a vast area, with a great and growing population, with the narrowest margin of production over the requirements of bare subsistence, with a low percentage of literacy, and with an experience of parliamentary government that was only 30 years old in 1947 — the year in which India’s independence was achieved.

“There has never before been an electorate on the Indian scale”, Toynbee said, adding “yet general elections in India appear to be efficiently organized and honestly conducted. The polling is heavy; the public interest in the political issues is keen. The practical difficulties arising from illiteracy have been surmounted by ingenious polling devices. In present-day India, parliamentary democracy is a reality. This is greatly to the credit of the Indian people as a whole, but even greater credit is due to the modern-minded minority in India that has been serving the country as a political leaven...”

Pakistanis and Indians are inhabitants of the same subcontinent. We were exposed to the same western influences under the same western colonial regime. We became independent states at the same time. “The difference in the political outcome”, Toynbee said, “is a consequence of the difference in the respective reactions of Hindus and Indian Muslims to the impact of the West over a preceding period of nearly 200 years, beginning with the establishment of the British East India Company’s rule over Bengal”.

Democracy, in the sense in which it is understood in the West, is almost foreign to Pakistan and has very few supporters. Not many in this country — neither all politicians, nor the judiciary nor the bureaucracy, nor the army — believe in it. Democracy in the West means a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, an independent election commission, a neutral civil service free from politics, the protection of basic freedoms of speech, assembly, religion and of ownership of property.

In Pakistan, democracy means a political system marked by rigged elections, bogus voting absence of rule of law, breach of electoral pledges, corruption and cronyism. Constitutional liberalism, as it is understood in the West, is foreign to Pakistan. Free, fair and impartial elections are rarely held in this country. The resulting governments are democratic only in name. No tears are shed when they are toppled. In fact, often people heave a sigh of relief and welcome the usurpers.

The military has cast a long shadow over politics in Pakistan — even during short spells of civilian rule. Repeated army interventions in the politics of Pakistan have been a recipe for disaster. They have thwarted the growth and development of parliamentary democracy and destroyed whatever little faith people had in their political institutions. What is worse, Bonapartism has eroded people’s faith in themselves as citizens of a sovereign, independent, democratic country. Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of power which they believe to be illegitimate and by obedience to rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.

The army has struck at Pakistan’s nascent democracy four times and has been in power for nearly half the country’s existence. It has shown a greater willingness to grasp power than to give it up. None of the first three army chiefs to have ruled Pakistan — Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Ziaul Haq — gave up power voluntarily. There is no reason to believe that General Musharraf will act differently.

After taking over, the first task of any military ruler is to address the nation on radio and television. On each occasion, the coup leaders have feigned as much sincerity as they could muster and have delivered carbon copy speeches. Ayub Khan pledged: “Our ultimate aim is to restore democracy”. Yahya Khan insisted: “I have no ambition other than the creation of conditions conducive to the establishment of a constitutional government”. Ziaul Haq, the least democratically-minded of the lot, gave the clearest assurance of all: “My sole aim is to organize free and fair elections which would be held in October this year”. Most recently, General Pervez Musharraf has claimed: “The armed forces have no intention to stay in charge any longer than is absolutely necessary to pave the way for true democracy to flourish in Pakistan”.

A few days after the 1999 coup, Gen Musharraf’s spokesman insisted that, while “Others may have tried to hang on to power, we will not. We will make history”. Gen Musharraf agreed: “All I can say”, he assured a television interviewer in January 2000, “is that I am not going to perpetuate myself... I can’t give any certificate on it but my word of honour. I will not perpetuate myself”. Later that year, Musharraf went a step further and said, he would respect a Supreme Court judgment that stated that he could remain in office for just three years. In June 2001, however, Musharraf performed a complete U-turn. Following the examples of Ayub, Yahya and Zia, he made himself president. And in May 2002, he held a dubious referendum that is supposed to be the basis of his rule for further five years.

Pakistan’s military rulers have had other traits in common. All of them have placed great emphasis on constitutional reforms for better governance of the country. Ayub Khan devised the system of basic democracy which he dismantled with his own hands before he fell from power. Forty three years after Ayub’s coup, Gen Musharraf said he wanted to create a more stable political system by giving the army a permanent role in decision-making, but there is no reason to believe that in this he will succeed any more than his predecessors did in similar enterprises.

His idea of a National Security Council on which the politicians and service chiefs work together is bound to fail. Like Ayub Khan before him, Gen Musharraf is unwilling to accept that trying to create a hybrid of military and democratic rule simply cannot and will not work. The danger is that President Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, far from being temporary, will, unless checked in time, acquire the mantle of legitimacy and permanence. The country will then settle into a form of government with a democratic facade and a hard inner cure of authoritarianism — an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Ultimately, the true guardians of democracy are the people of Pakistan. The lesson of history is that the only defence against military usurpation are strong political institutions and nothing else. A democratic government can be given to any people, but not every people can work and maintain the system. If people have no faith in their political institutions, if they have no respect for their political leaders, if they do not value representative government; if they are not prepared to make any sacrifice for its sake, if they are unwilling to defend it and if they are unable to do what it requires, then they would not be able to maintain it.

Isn’t it a sad commentary on our chosen representatives that at the sight of a gathering storm, they all abandon the ship and swim ashore to safety? With such leaders, is it surprising that parliamentary democracy has failed to strike roots in Pakistan and can be thrown out by the military any time it likes? “Perhaps no form of government”, said the historian and diplomat Lord Bryce, “needs great leaders so much as democracy”.

Fifty-five years after its creation, Pakistan’s quest for a stable political order remains elusive. Our history can be summed up in one sentence: it is the sound of heavy boots coming up the stairs and the rustle of satin slippers coming down. Will it ever be possible for Pakistan to break out of this vicious cycle? The argument that democracy has failed in Pakistan or that Pakistanis are not ready for it just does not wash. The truth is that democracy was never given a fair chance to prove its worth. Democratization is a long and complex process marked by trial and error. The process of genuine democratization is gradual and long-term, in which election is only one component. Without appropriate preparation, it might even be a false step. “Democracy is not just setting up elections. It is a way of life,” Margaret Thatcher observed wisely. “Only then is it irreversible”.

Politicians elected during military rule face a difficult choice: they can either cooperate with the army, thereby losing all their credibility, or they can insist that the generals call it a day, restore full parliamentary democracy and go back to the barracks, thereby perhaps forcing a temporary political crisis. The future of parliamentary democracy in Pakistan will depend on the choice they make.

We live in a democratic age. Democracy or freedom of choice is not a luxury. It is intrinsic to human development. Military dictatorships are an anachronism in a world of global markets, instant information and media. There are no longer any respectable alternatives to democracy; it is part of the preferred attire of modernity. Can it be believed that democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings and fascist dictators, will retreat before Bonapartism in Pakistan in the 21st century? Time is on the side of democracy everywhere. And time will win.

The melting pot of our politics

EVERY time there is a resurgence of democracy in Pakistan the media wilfully exaggerates the importance of marginal figures like Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan.

Summoned out of the wilderness whenever there is a stirring in the political wind, this great mandarin of depression, frosting in provincial torpor and aristocratic disdain and conscious of the desperate ambitions of rival politicians, says his piece about civilians not wanting to share power with the army and returns quietly and unobtrusively to political obscurity. This time, however, he appears to have stirred up a hornet’s nest.

The most striking feature of the recent national election, which was held against rising wave of uncertainty, was the utter unpredictability of the result. All parties without exception have cried foul, and expressed the view that their achievements fell short of expectations. The charges of selective rigging and the indictment of EU observers that the elections were flawed, have not helped. In fact, some contestants, like the PML(N), have asked for a recount in 294 constituencies.

The significant aspect of this exercise, however, is that the vote went against the establishment. The king’s party, largely undistinguished and florid with platitude, did not secure the majority it expected. Nor did the PPP, a direct beneficiary of the unfortunate but inevitable PML split, which spearheaded the opposition. But it must be said in the latter’s favour that, despite the heavy odds stacked against it , with its leader continuing to display a defiant, perky insouciance in exile, the PPP has established its credentials as a popular political force in the country. To a far lesser extent Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the PML has demonstrated that it still has a presence, even though the party workers noted with that icy politesse that a hatchet was about to fall in Punjab.

The dramatic surfacing of the religious parties’ alliance, as a significant force in the country, was unexpected only in terms of the size of its victory. Reports of the growing popularity of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Aaml, particularly in the NWFP and Balochistan, had filtered through to the intelligence gathering networks in western embassies, weeks before the elections. Some measure of success was expected in view of the anti-American and pro-Taliban stance of the clergy.

Three reasons have been cited for the huge success of this movement which in previous Pakistani elections never achieved any notable success.

The establishment’s inordinate preoccupation with attempts to ensure that the PML (Q) group was significantly ahead of others at the polls , and that the PPP and the PML (N) were in disarray, leaving the field wide open to other parties.

The low voter turnout favoured the MMA’s remarkable organizational skills and ability to galvanize its followers. The fact that considerable anti-American and anti-establishment sentiments had spread in the country after the carpet bombing of Taliban targets in Afghanistan proved an electoral boon for the Islamic alliance, particularly in the NWFP and Balochistan.

The MMA is now the only political formation with a power base in two strategic provinces bordering Afghanistan, and a presence in all four provinces and the federal capital.. Aware of the reaction in the western press after their triumph , they have softened their stance towards the United States and Britain in an attempt to gain acceptance. Critics believe that their unprecedented success at the polls might lead to greater sectarian harmony as the grouping is made up of all denominations of the Muslims.

Party leaders are now trying to cobble together a workable coalition. But this has not been easy and they keep hitting hidden reefs. Despite differences on other issues, the PPP, PML (N) and the MMA have rejected the constitutional amendments, while the MMA is still opposed to the government’s pro-US foreign policy.

These three parties and groupings have won over 130 National Assembly seats. On the other hand, the parties supporting the government, such as the PML (Q), NA, PML (F), PML (Z) and PPP (S) could gather only 101 seats. The latter may have to hold major negotiations with independents and the MQM for support. Even then the coalition may not be able to indemnify the 1999 coup and many of the subsequent government actions.

In a desperate attempt to form a government, the leaders of various parties are trying all sorts of combinations and permutations, and the political kaleidoscope keeps changing its hue every time a new name is tossed up for the prime minister’s slot. But the time is running out, and so is the patience of the people who have no illusions about any of the contenders.

Two rounds of the PML rule and two rounds of PPP rule ended in disaster, and neither government tackled the real issue facing the country, like the protection of the life and property of the poor, which should be the primary concern of any government.

All that the two parties did was to reinforce the theory that the only permanent feature of politics in Pakistan is a constant state of uncertainty.

Now that the president, with an air of conscious rectitude, has divested himself of the onerous duty of selecting a prime minister, the leaders of the major parties should not waste any more time playing musical chairs, and immediately agree on forming a national government, with the prime minister elected through a secret ballot.

The politicians have once again been given an opportunity. And it might be their last chance, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan notwithstanding. Let them not blow it this time

The religious virus

ANY untoward happening in Pakistan gives India some kind of fiendish satisfaction. The reaction to the victory of religious parties in that country has been no different. As if it had to happen to a country which was founded on the two-nation theory.

But Pakistan did not have so much religion when it was created. True, religion was the basis on which it was constituted. However, its founder, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had second thoughts on the two-nation thesis. He told his people that the two nations did not represent Hindus and Muslims but Indians and Pakistanis.

This took the wind out of the sails of religious parties. What they did in the united India to create divisions was no more relevant. They could not harness support on the slogan that Islam was in danger. The preponderance of Muslims in Pakistan had made such a cry futile. Religious parties realized this to their dismay when they failed at one poll after another.

It was General Ziaul Haq’s drive for the Islamization, even in the armed forces, which contributed to revivalism. The absence of democracy only strengthened the self-proclaimed fanatics. The field became open. Political parties, on the other hand, were too complacent and too confident. They dismissed religious outfits as a nuisance. But the mullas and the maulvis never gave up and made their questionable and divisive activities felt from the sinecure of mosques and madressahs. Today’s Pakistan is a product of those efforts operating over decades.

I can see the beginnings of what happened in Pakistan in my own country. The one-nation ideal, which animated our national struggle, is still there. But, without spelling out the two-nation theory, some political combinations are foisting it on the country under a different terminology: The Hindus are one nation and the minorities another.

The phenomenon is more visible in the fields of information and education. In the name of tradition and heritage, India’s multi-cultural society is sought to be pawned to the demagogues of one culture. Information Minister Sushma Swaraj and Human Resource Minister Murli Manohar Joshi are the worst culprits. The first is peddling a particular point of view, the majority community’s religious beliefs and superstitions to the detriment of pluralism and clear thinking. The second is introducing new textbooks in schools and appointing the Sangh parivar men in government or government-aided institutions to disseminate prejudice and distortion in the name of history. Both defend themselves by contending that their purpose is to ensure that our “national values” stay intact. The Sangh parivar-inclined intellectuals, journalists, historians and others are being broken into saffronization and organized.

Both Sushma and Joshi stop at nothing. I was horrified to see on Doordarshan the other day F.M. Hussain, Shabana Azmi and Tabu saying individually: “I am an Indian.” If after so many years they, who represent the best in our secular ethos, are forced to make such statements, there is something definitely wrong with our rulers. The history books that Joshi’s men have rewritten omit the assassination of Gandhi because the killer represented the Hindutva forces.

Like Pakistan, political parties in India avowing secularism indulge in the same kind of complacency. They argue that religious parties can never succeed in a country which is traditionally rooted in pluralism. They may be absolutely wrong. But this is their point of view. However, the reality is that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena have already occupied a large space by playing the religious card. The two are in a more advantageous position than the religious parties in Pakistan. For example, the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam were never in the corridors of power in Islamabad.

Unfortunately, both the BJP and the Sena are partners in governance at the centre. This gives them a cover and also immunity. While they are there, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal can never be banned although their record is worse than that of the SIMI. Pro- BJP state governments cannot be dismissed, whatever their acts of omission and commission. The BJP has been able to cobble together, with the help of pseudo-secularists, a coalition which gives it clout.

If this had not been the case, Chief Minister Narendra Modi would have been dismissed soon after the carnage in the Gujarat state. Bal Thackerey of the Sena would have been tried after the Srikrishna Commission report implicated him in the Mumbai riots and, more recently, arrested when he threatened the Muslims. And Ashok Singhal of the VHP would have been behind bars after his announcement that there can be more Gujarats.

Today’s Modi, Thackerey and Singhal will be tomorrow’s Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani and Fazlur Rahman of Pakistan. This is what we have to guard against. The three Muslim leaders are important figures. They have emerged from the mosques and the madressahs, in elections under the banner of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (United Forum for Action). They have gained substantial strength in Pakistan’s National Assembly and in the legislatures in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan.

These religious parties were of no consequence till now. They never won more than three or four seats in the National Assembly. India too was a haven of secularism before 1977. Till then the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP, did not have even a two-digit figure in the Lok Sabha. Now they have 181 in the 545-member house.

What saved India soon after independence was not the irrelevance of religious parties. The Hindu Mahasabha and others came into the field in August 1947 itself to incite Hindus that the Bharatmata had been cut into pieces. Anger had begun building up against the Muslims who had supported the demand for Pakistan.

It was Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination by an extremist Hindu that came to strengthen our secular ethos. The RSS was banned and religious leaders went into hiding. People would literally beat up those who even vaguely mentioned Hindutva. They associated them with the Mahatma’s murderer.

The question that Pakistan is facing today may be more acute than India’s. Pakistan is a country where religion has played an important role. India’s saving grace is that it is a secular democratic society that has never been threatened by any military coup. People believe in the constitution and have respect for democratic traditions.

India’s strength also lies in the fact that certain institutions act independently, whatever the political or ideological colour of the government. For example, the election commission withstood all pressures and threats on the Gujarat election. But the Hindutva elements are dismantling our secular edifice, brick by brick. Institutions are under pressure.

Saffronization is being pushed in all fields. The middle class appears more contaminated than the rest because it is beginning to find in Hindutva its long-lost identity. What most of them do not seem to realize is that no one identity represents India. It is the combination of different identities that makes India.

The saffronized elite must also keep in mind that militant organizations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal are going to replace the BJP one day. This is how fascism rose in Germany and took over. Secular forces are too complacent about fighting the danger. I remember Atal Behari Vajpayee, long before he became the prime minister, telling me that they might be able to stop the storm that was brewing in the country. He did not elucidate what he meant. Probably, he had in mind the storm of fundamentalism. I wonder whether he can stall it if L.K. Advani goes on building up persons like Modi and does not utter a word against a new contraption called Parveen Tagodia.

The writer is a freelance columnist bused in New Delhi.

New UN resolution on Iraq

NEARLY six weeks have passed since President Bush challenged the United Nations to act to enforce its resolutions on Iraq. Yet there has been no action.

Instead, in its attempt to build support in the UN Security Council, the Bush administration has made a series of significant concessions. Though renewed UN inspections almost certainly would not ensure Iraqi disarmament — and might provide Saddam Hussein with months or years of additional time to build up his arsenal — the United States has agreed to try them again.

It has also dropped its demand that a new UN resolution explicitly authorize force in the event of continued Iraqi noncompliance, and removed some of the toughest elements from its proposed inspection scheme. In effect, President Bush has risked the indefinite delay or evisceration of his campaign to eliminate the Iraqi threat in order to build a broad international coalition and preserve the authority of the United Nations.

We believe the risk was worth taking. Yet the US resolution is being resisted, still, by France and Russia, two permanent Security Council members that appear determined to block or fatally weaken any American-led initiative. It is time to call their bluff and ask the Security Council to vote.

The Franco-Russian obstructionism cannot be understood as a response to the Bush administration’s hawkishness on Iraq, its doctrine of pre-emption or its drift toward unilateralism. Paris and Moscow have been championing the cause of Saddam Hussein in the Security Council since long before the election of George W. Bush.

—The Washington Post