Preaching moderation

A good deal has been said in these columns, congratulatory as well as sceptical, about General Pervez Musharraf's article on "enlightened moderation," carried by the Washington Post on June 1 and, curiously enough, by all of the major English language newspapers in Pakistan the next day. But there may still be room for a few additional observations.

It would be appropriate first to identify the essential ingredients in the general's exposition. These are: (1) Terrorism has made the world unsafe, and life difficult, especially for Muslims, because even though the perpetrators are currently coming from their ranks, they are, more often than not, its victims. (2) The force that the terrorist has at his disposal is "all but impossible to counter." (3) Terrorism emerges among people who are poor and ignorant and, at the same time, victims of injustice.

(4) Injustice will be found in the transactions of the western powers, especially the United States, with these poor people, and (5) in the "political disputes" they have with others who are cleverer and stronger. (6) The United States and other western powers must help resolve these disputes on a just and equitable basis if the most potent cause of terrorism is to be removed. (7) The poor and ignorant people (Muslims in this context) must do everything possible to pull themselves out of the hole in which they have fallen. They should also learn to be enlightened, moderate, tolerant, and peaceable.

(8) The western powers should help them get out of their poverty and ignorance. (9) While exercising self-restraint and moderation, Muslims should understand also that the world in which we live is not always fair. (10) Islam, as a religion, has nothing to do with terrorism. (11) Muslims should seek enlightenment by embarking upon a mission of renaissance.

No one, whose heart is in the right place, can object to any of these propositions. Trouble comes when they are all put together in one composition, because together they make the whole internally inconsistent. Let us identify a few cases in point. (a) If the force available to the terrorist is "all but impossible to counter" (2 above), there is little prospect then of our being able to stop him. (b) Terrorism is caused by injustice involved in unresolved political disputes (4 above), but Muslims must realize that the world in which we live is not always fair (9 above). In other words, some amount of injustice will always remain and we must learn to live with it.

The "prong" of this anti-terrorist strategy that the general has assigned to Muslims requires them to pull themselves out of their present poverty, ignorance, and incompetence, and embrace enlightenment, tolerance, and moderation. He must know, as many of the rest of us surely do, that even if Muslims got started on this project with the utmost seriousness, and gave it all available resources, it would take anywhere between twenty and fifty years to be accomplished. It follows that until then his prescription will remain consigned to the "cold storage," so to speak.

Notwithstanding the difficulties noted above, we must concede that "enlightened moderation," as a phrase, sounds good, and the general is to be commended for having brought it into our public discourse. That it sounds good may also be the reason why he has adopted it. He is now learning to be a politician, and we all know that politicians will often say things in order mainly to sound good.

But since General Pervez Musharraf's "thesis," and the phrase, "enlightened moderation," are likely to remain in the public domain for a time, they would seem to merit further consideration. We can agree that injustice is likely to arouse resentment, even anger, among its victims. But our historical experience does not sustain the conclusion that resentment and anger will always get translated into acts of terrorism. The Sindhi "hari" has been at the receiving end of unspeakably cruel injustice for generations but there are still no signs of his readiness to resort to terrorism. History is replete with similar cases of passivity.

The case of the Palestinians may be unique in some important respects. The state of Israel has been killing them, even the non-combatant among them, throwing them out of their homes, and bulldozing their neighbourhoods for the last 56 years. A few of them choose to pay the Israelis back in an outmoded and much less effective copy of their own coin.

Terrorist acts in Kashmir have been committed more often by outsiders than by the direct victims of Indian oppression. These outsiders belong to the clan whose other members have been perpetrating political assassinations and mass murders in Pakistan.

General Musharraf is in error when, in preaching enlightened moderation, he addresses himself to Muslims at large. The vast majority of them in every Muslim country have nothing to do with terrorism. This holds even for those who are not enlightened and those who are not altogether moderate in their views on theological, moral, or political issues. It may well be that no more than one in a thousand among them favour terrorism as a strategy for dealing with the more powerful adversaries.

Before going further in this discussion, let us pause to consider how the terms, "enlightened" and "moderation," are best understood. In an elementary sense one is enlightened if he/she is well informed, and aware of the implications and ramifications attaching to any given issue or proposition. In some of its uses, the term also has a connection with the "enlightenment," which was an eighteenth century intellectual movement, led by men such as Voltaire and Rousseau in France, John Locke in England, and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine in America.

It urged the use of reason, common sense, and observation to combat superstition. It called for questioning of traditional doctrine and values, empiricism in science, cultural relativism and pluralism, and belief in the possibility of universal human progress.

Some of its spokesmen approached conventional wisdom with a degree of scepticism, opposed repression carried out in the name of absolute truth, and maintained that there could be numerous ways of being a good human other than those preached in Europe. Wanting to undermine the power of the Church by undermining its credibility, Voltaire attacked some of the fundamental Christian beliefs, such as divine origin of the Bible, incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and eternal damnation of the unbelievers.

What does Gen Musharraf have in mind when he asks us to be "enlightened"? Assuming that he knows what he is talking about, he must mean that we should let go of the premise that as Muslims, or as members of a particular sect within the fold of Islam, we possess absolute and final truth, that all other persuasions are false, possibly wicked, and that they and their adherents deserve to be eradicated.

The attitude of mind he is commending to us necessarily includes a certain degree of reservation, or doubt if you will, about the absoluteness of our own belief system. We are to be open-minded, willing to accept the possibility that other belief systems may contain some merit, and that therefore they deserve respect. They have the right to exist, even flourish, alongside our own faith. This is moderation, and the disposition towards others that it generates is tolerance. Moderation and tolerance are, thus, children of enlightenment.

It will not do to claim that the generality of Muslims are enlightened, moderate, and tolerant all the way. They partake of these dispositions in varying measure. It may, however, be said that even when they are not fully tolerant of the dissident, even if they do not wish to have close relations with him, they have no desire to go out and kill him or burn down his home.

It follows that Gen Musharraf is addressing the wrong audience when he commends moderation to Muslims at large. Many of us are already enlightened, moderate, and tolerant. He should find ways of reaching those who equate moderation with infirmity of faith, those who are extremists and militants and violent. They are convinced that theirs is the only way of serving and pleasing God.

They believe also that pleasing God is much more important than peace on earth, much more important than the well-being of individual Muslims, nations, and countries. In their reckoning Muslims who insist on being different do not deserve to live in any case.

Their terrorism has nothing to do with issues of justice. When they bomb a Shia or Sunni place of worship, they are not avenging injustice. Pakistani Shia and Sunni, as communities, have done no known injustice to each other. In executing these murders the extremists are simply venting their hatred of the dissident, and they are asserting their own presumed right to prevail to the exclusion of all others. Survival, prosperity, and stability of Pakistan, or any other Muslim country, are of no consequence to them. In their view, these are all fit objects of sacrifice at the altar of their version of the truth.

It would be foolish to expect them to heed Pervez Musharraf whom they regard as a puppet of the American infidel and whom they have already attempted, at least twice, to assassinate. How are they then to be reached? Send Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman to speak with them.

They and the extremists are kinfolk, they understand each other's terms of reference, they speak the same language. Let Qazi Sahib and the Maulana do something by way of service to Pakistan for a change. A brief holiday from desk thumping in the assemblies, and sloganeering out on the streets, will not hurt them any.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.

E-Mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

Riddles of current politics

Is Prime Minister Jamali staying or going? It wouldn't matter either way. All power emanates from the president and he decides how it is to be exercised, and by whom.

We have the testimony of no other than Jamali himself for it. He told a news reporter the other day that President Musharraf is above everybody else and above board to boot, hence all his orders have to be "respected, honoured and implemented".

The prime minister claims to enjoy the president's full trust as also of the chairman of his party Chaudhry Shujaat who, Jamali concedes, should have been the prime minister. Jamali is thus the prime minister not because of his own public standing or party support but because of the indulgence of the party chief.

His impending departure is not just rumour-mongering as Jamali makes it out to be. The MMA leaders - Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman - have been alleging for quite some time that plans were afoot to remove Jamali. Now the ARD component of the opposition too has joined the MMA in that refrain led by Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan. Though felt betrayed by the religious alliance in the leader of opposition contest, the PPP is still prepared to make common cause with it when it deems it necessary.

It is puzzling to watch the opposition going against its role and parliamentary tradition in supporting Jamali when he himself is committed to honour and implement all of the president's orders and, further, is willing to leave it entirely to Musharraf when to hang up his general's cap.

The opposition suspects Musharraf's motives and intentions all the way - his constitutional scheme, his war on terror (which now extends to Pakistan's own tribes) involvement of the army in civil administration and even the National Security Council the MMA helped to create. Jamali supports all that and more. He lets Musharraf exercise powers much beyond those he has acquired under his own amendments to the Constitution.

Factually speaking, the president's constitutional powers are restricted to a few key appointments and dissolution of the National Assembly in a situation where either the prime minister loses its majority support or when "the government of the federation cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and an appeal to the electorate is necessary".

The second riddle, thus, is why would the President seek, or intrigue as the opposition alleges, to replace Jamali. It is unpredictable but unlikely that any other member of the parliament who has the making of a chief executive would concede to Musharraf the expanded role that Jamali has conceded so willingly. An instance in point is Musharraf's persuasion of the parliamentarians of the ruling coalition by direct contact. Any other leader of the house would have resented it. Jamali has thanked him for it.

Musharraf may have been disenchanted with Jamali's hectoring ability but could not, perhaps, be doubting his loyalty despite his having drifted uncomfortably close to the orthodox MMA alliance. But the path to that drift has been paved by Musharraf's own policies and choice of friends as soon as he took over the control of the country.

Chaudhry Shujaat, Musharraf's first chosen ally and the pivot of his politics, by his own declaration is also a "natural ally" of the religious parties. In fact neither Shujaat nor Musharraf had any other choice. Musharraf had dismissed and tried Nawaz Sharif and Shujaat had deserted him. Both of them loathed Benazir Bhutto for their own reasons.

To bolster the military administration to begin with and to cobble together a political government after the elections, Musharraf and Shujaat, thus, had no option but to rely on the religious parties and on defections from the parties of Nawaz and Benazir. This strategy built up and consolidated the religious groups into an alliance (which had eluded them in the past) and at the same time weakened and split the dominant moderate parties.

Musharraf's own scheme of politics has doomed his "enlightened moderation". It remains an empty rhetoric. The tide of extremism continues to rise to hurt the people and the economy. The blame for instability and violence lies where it belongs - the founders of the regime. It admits of no alibi.

While the forces of moderation are kept on the run, obscurantism is spreading fast in search of ever new niches to arouse passions and create disorder. It has found its latest and unwary victim in the Aga Khan's Ismaili followers. The orthodox assault ominously describes them as a religious minority and not as a sect of Islam.

Alongside attempts are being made to detract from the political services of the Aga Khan III (Sir Sultan Shah Mohammad Khan) in the cause of the Muslims of the subcontinent before independence and now by the reigning Aga Khan in the fields of rural development, education and charity.

A glimpse of these services spread over half a century is to be found in the Round Table Conferences of London (1930-32). The Aga Khan led the Muslim delegation which introduced M.A. Jinnah (he was a member of the delegation) to the British government and the public as the emerging statesman of India.

All gates opened to the delegation, says a contemporary account, because the Aga Khan was its leader. In his memoirs the Aga Khan ranks Jinnah among the greatest statesman of the twentieth century alongside Bismarck, the founder of the German Empire, and Clemenceau of France who led the Allies to victory in the First World War. Now it has fallen to the detractors of Jinnah also to run down his admirer, the Aga Khan.

The above was a diversion from the main theme only to draw attention to the new areas of conflict being opened by the politics of religion. It has already taken enough toll of life and property. The people must not be further exposed to its vagaries of hate.

A country that is inhabited by 95 per cent Muslims (some would say 97 per cent) does not need Islamic parties. The citizens themselves can take care of their faith and resolve the differences inherent in the interpretation of its precepts and principles. It has nothing to do with politics.

The Islamists have brought only strife in the life of a peaceful community. Jinnah knew it all and that is why he never courted the religious groups even in the most desperate hour of his lone struggle against the twin forces of the British and the Congress. In fact alongside he fought against the clerics of Islam with the Muslim masses at his back.

Whatever the aims and ambitions of the political players, the country cannot be abandoned to rumours, intrigues and blackmail. Jamali who stands helplessly at the centre of this unedifying scene, ironically, has all the power to change it. He can advise the president to dissolve the National Assembly. Unless sooner dissolved, says article 58(i) of the Constitution, it shall "stand dissolved at the expiration of forty-eight hours after the prime minister has so advised". There is no qualification, no judicial review that must accompany the dissolution when it is ordered by the president.

Jamali thus has to sign his own death warrant to be born again as a leader in his own right ceasing to be a proxy of Musharraf or Shujaat. In the elections that under the Constitution must follow within 90 days of the dissolution, all parties and citizens should be enabled to participate on equal and fair footing but none allowed to summon Islam to its aid for that stands above politics.

This article was written before Mr Jamali's resignation.

The Middle Kingdom alliance

Political facts are volatile and vulnerable, as they should be in a democracy, so when they sustain they command attention. The most durable political fact of the last fifteen years and some half a dozen decisive elections has been the remarkable alliance between the Backwards and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, led by the two eclectic Yadavs, Mulayam and Laloo.

This alliance has marginalized the Congress along the banks of the Ganga and Jamuna, and more often than not kept the BJP at bay. This is the Middle Kingdom of the Indian polity.

This, more than any other factor, has prevented the Congress and the BJP from forming a national government on their own, or as the dominant power in any coalition. Understandably, both the Congress and the BJP have tried to damage or destroy this alliance, by direct challenge or subterfuge, and so far failed. Mulayam and Laloo Yadav can take justifiable pride, but the reasons go far deeper than individual credibility.

The roots of Yadav-Muslim friendship lie in a history of antagonism.

The story goes back to the reform movements in Hindu society that took wing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the parallel rise of the Arya Samaj, led by Swami Dayanand, in the north of India. In essence it was an effort to restore the self-confidence of Hindu society by eliminating practices that were thought to have vitiated the strength of a once powerful faith.

The movement coincided with the rising economic well-being of what are now called the Backward Castes as agriculturists (tenant-cultivators, or even independent landholders) and herders: Ahirs, Koeris, Khushwahas and, in western United Provinces and Punjab, Jats. For these castes the Arya Samaj provided a double opportunity, because they were also in search of self-esteem within a caste-ridden Hindu society.

The Arya Samaj (Aryan Society) of Swami Dayanand might be called artificial by modern secular academics, but its myth served a deep need because caste in Aryavarta was a function of merit, not birth or karma. And so the Aryas who came from 'Tibet' or 'Central Asia' did not discriminate among themselves but distributed vital functions between various sections of the community. Those in charge of worship were shown the highest respect and called Brahmins.

Those who handled administration and fought wars became kshatriyas. And those who were given the vital responsibility of providing food and milk were the vaishyas. Each function - prayer, war, food - was vital and therefore equal. It was only the greed and injustice of the later Brahmins and Kshatriyas that corrupted the ideal and deformed society to the point where it became defenceless.

The fourth category, of menials, consisted of those who were stupid. IQ was the justification for untouchability. This is important, because the Shudras were not included in any reform movement until Mahatma Gandhi took up their cause.

Self-esteem also needed a relationship with the divine in the sense that Thakurs linked themselves to the sun and the moon, and Brahmins were children of the Rishis. The Koiris claimed Kshatriya status through descent from Indra. Kurmis associated themselves with Lord Rama. For the Ahirs, the relationship with Lord Krishna was logical, for he was both a Kshatriya (in his Dwarka manifestation) and protector of cows.

In the early teens of the 20th century, huge mahasabhas (that was how the word became part of the political dialectic) were held by Yadavs in Bihar in which they took an oath to wear the sacred thread as Kshatriyas, and stop doing "lowly work" for the castes higher than them. It was at this period that they dropped the appellation 'Ahir' or 'Gowala', which had become a pejorative, and took on the caste title of 'Yadav'.

Great play was made of heroes in the Mahabharata who were agriculturists to challenge those who argued that the Kshatriya status could not be given to farmers. For instance, Maharaja Janak and his queen (foster parents of Sita) were venerated as farmers, and three sons of Kush (therefore, Lord Rama's grandchildren) were said to be skilled in the noble arts of handicrafts and architecture.

Resistance from Brahmins, Thakurs and Bhumihars towards such upward mobility renewed their determination to prove that they could be as superior Hindus as anyone else. The cowherd also became the advance infantry of a parallel conflict that served, implicitly, to reinforce the new 'Kshatriya' status.

The cow-protection (gauraksha) agitations of the late 19th century were the perfect means to establish the new identity for Ahir-Yadavs. It was an idea with in-built reinforcements, for the cow was not only venerated as a holy mother in Hinduism, but also had economic benefits for the cowherd. The killing of a cow was therefore a double wound. Muslim butchers were the natural targets of this agitation, and the sacrificial feast of Baqrid - Eid-ul-Azha - the focal point of the calendar for tension.

In 1893, Ahirs led widespread attacks on Muslim mohallas. In a subtext that still echoes in the politics of Uttar Pradesh, however faintly, untouchables were also targeted for being the chief conduits through which butchers bought cows for slaughter. (Since leather was a source of income for untouchables, this was logical.)

The age of communal riots over Baqrid had begun. The Gowala-Yadavs of Bhojpuri-speaking eastern UP and Bihar were especially militant as the agitation steamed or stuttered through many decades. Districts like Patna, Gaya, Madhepura and Purnea find repeated mention in the official records.

The pattern of Backward-Muslim confrontation found other reasons for sustenance as politics became first shrill and then violent with the approach of partition. Freedom did not change the pattern. The last great outpouring of communal blood in Bihar, in Bhagalpur in 1989, was a brutal one-sided war between Yadavs and Muslims.

The first politician to identify the benefits of an alliance between the devotees of Allah and Lord Krishna was not a Yadav but a politician who has been much maligned in the English press for his weakness and rarely recognized for his strengths, Chaudhry Charan Singh - an ardent Arya Samaji, by the way, in his personal beliefs, so he knew where he was coming from. Chaudhry Charan Singh never understood power, but by God he understood politics.

Others before him, particularly the Lohia socialists, had advocated a Backward Caste-Muslim alliance as the answer to the Congress, but the Chaudhry (with active assistance from a forgotten man of the province, Dr Faridi, during the assembly elections of 1974) was the first person to achieve it, in his little patch of the state, western UP. His son Ajit Singh is still reaping the benefits, which in turn indicates its intrinsic strength.

You have to remember the ferocity of the 1989 Bhagalpur riots to appreciate what Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Yadav have achieved in UP and Bihar. The change did not come about merely because they wished it to happen. They took a stand, and delivered in moments of crisis. The turning point in UP was when Mulayam protected the Babri mosque against karsevaks when he was chief minister and V.P. Singh was prime minister.

Laloo won the affection of Muslims when he stopped L.K. Advani's rathyatra. But this by itself would have been insufficient. The alliance is far more than electoral arithmetic. It works in daily life, because Yadavs are now the protectors of minorities in the villages of the north. They are often accused of not giving jobs to Muslims; but before you need a job, you need a life.

The irony of course is that they could have been far bigger than the sum of the parts if they had worked together, because the Middle Kingdom in their grasp can become the central fact of a national coalition. Their mutual antagonism, for personal rather than political reasons, has prevented this from happening.

It is fascinating that an icon of urban, industrial India, Anil Ambani, has chosen to enter politics through the secular space of this rural Middle Kingdom. The younger son of Dhirubhai Ambani, an authentic genius who deserves more posthumous honour than he has been given, could have become a member of parliament on the ticket of either of the two national parties, BJP and Congress. He describes himself as an independent, but his close friend Amar Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav's number two, is effectively managing his Rajya Sabha election.

Now add Amitabh Bachchan and his family to this combination. Amitabh is as close as India has to an international icon, and Jaya Bachchan is the official candidate of Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party to the Rajya Sabha. At one level of course the personal friendship between Anil, Amitabh and Amar has brought the three of them to one place. But that is not reason enough. All three are old enough, and mature enough, to know that sentiment has a respectable but only a marginal place in politics. There has to be a much better reason to bring Anil Ambani and Jaya Bachchan to Mulayam Singh Yadav's Lucknow.

The politics of the future has begun.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.