| 31 October 2004 | Sunday | 16 Ramazan 1425 |
From plebiscite to partition
BJP: the Janata is missing
In adversarial encounters it is fit and proper to identify the other side's weaknesses and exploit them to one's advantage. In war, it is legitimate also to create weaknesses in the enemy's ranks. But it is not right for one team in a cricket match to hurt and disable the other side's players deliberately. The same rule applies to democratic politics, for here the opponent is not to be treated as an enemy.
In Pakistani practice, rules have been violated more than they have been followed. The powers that be have both taken advantage of existing weakness and created new ones in the political system.
Khwaja Nazimuddin became the prime minister following Liaquat Ali Khan's assassination. He was soft-spoken, gentle, almost meek of manner, moderately competent and, left to himself, inclined to be indecisive. His political base in East Pakistan was weakening and he had none in the western wing.
Taking advantage of his weakness, Ghulam Mohammad, the governor general, inclined to be arrogant and abrasive, dismissed Nazimuddin and added to the system's existing weaknesses by appointing Mohammad Ali Bogra as the new prime minister. Bogra, our ambassador in Washington at the time, had no political base anywhere in Pakistan. After the formation of a new Constituent Assembly, Chaudhry Mohammad Ali, who had never been a politician, was called in to replace Bogra. These were cases of creating political weakness.
Iskander Mirza, who replaced Ghulam Mohammad, had gained considerable proficiency in the art of political intrigue during his tenure as a political agent in tribal areas in the northwest. He summoned this art to his aid in dealing with politicians. He thrust Dr Khan Sahib (the pre-independence Congress party chief minister of NWFP) as the chief minister of West Pakistan upon a reluctant PML.
He responded to its continuing protest by breaking it up: with the assistance of Governor Mushtaq Gurmani, he seduced nearly half of the PML assembly members to defect and form the Republican Party. After making and unmaking prime ministers and the coalitions that supported them, he brought in Ayub Khan, the army chief, to seize the government and outlaw politics.
When it transpired that some kind of democratic politics had to be readmitted, Ayub Khan instituted his system of basic democracies that disenfranchised the people of Pakistan for all but elections to municipal and rural local councils.
Ziaul Haq ruled as a military dictator, with the aid of martial law, for nearly eight years. He did all he could to destroy the PPP but failed in spite of the stark brutality his agents visited upon its leaders and workers. Intelligence agencies split some political groups and merged others. When he decided to allow politics to return, he amended the Constitution to provide for an authoritarian president possessed of a great deal of discretionary authority.
After the elections of 1985, he chose a relatively obscure politician, Mohammad Khan Junejo, as prime minister, expecting that being politically weak he would be pliable. But when it became apparent that Mr Junejo had a mind of his own, Ziaul Haq dismissed him and the assemblies.
The present situation in Pakistan replicates the one that Ziaul Haq had created. Before returning the country to a quasi-civilian regime, General Musharraf too disfigured the Constitution by adding provisions that would enlarge his role and authority.
The grossly unethical practice of instituting bogus or unviable criminal cases against selected members of the opposition continues. These cases go on for years on end, possibly because the government itself does not want to bring them to a conclusion, causing the impression that its purpose is not to have justice done but simply to exhaust and weaken uncooperative politicians.
Following Ziaul Haq's example, General Musharraf sent out his men to disrupt and destabilize the political system. They seduced a majority of the notables belonging to PML-N to defect and set up a rival group (PML-Q). They intervened in the elections of October 2002 to advantage the nominees of this faction, enabling it to emerge as the largest single group in the National Assembly. PML-Q is thus in General Musharraf's debt, and many of its MNAs owe their positions to his exertions in their behalf.
His agents also went after the PPP. All kinds of hurdles were placed in the way of its leading men and women before, during, and after the elections. The party won a plurality of seats in the Sindh assembly, but intrigue sponsored by the higher powers prevented it from putting together a coalition to form the provincial government. Several persons who had won the election as its nominees were persuaded to defect, form a separate group, and join the government. Held in relatively low esteem because of their opportunism, they too are now weak and in the general's debt.
Having spread all this weakness around, the general should feel secure in his position as the "king of the castle," regardless of the fact that the "castle" is in a state of terrible disrepair. Actually, he doesn't. He believes that his hold on power will remain shaky unless he continues to be the army chief at the same time that he is president. This is an interesting proposition and it deserves to be explored,
Let it first be noted that several heads of state in our experience - namely, Ghulam Mohammad, Iskander Mirza and Ghulam Ishaq Khan - were influential in government decision-making even though none of them headed the army. Each of them had a reasonably good working relationship with the army chief. It is appropriate then to ask how the retention of the army post will bolster Musharraf's effectiveness as president. In other words, what exactly is it that he can do if he keeps both posts that he will not be able to do if he gives up his uniform?
The answer is by no means apparent. It has become fashionable to say that if Musharraf gives up the army post his policies (e.g., those with regard to extremism and terrorism, relations with America, peace-making with India) might be discontinued. The reasoning behind this apprehension is not clear. The implication here may be that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, and his colleagues in PML-Q may then no longer be amenable to his advice or direction. If that indeed is the reasoning, it is not sound. These men and women seem to be doing well under the present dispensation and they would appear to have no incentive for disrupting it.
It may not be inappropriate at this point to ask what the nature of the general's hold on Shujaat Hussain and other PML-Q MNAs is. As I have said above, many of them are in his debt inasmuch as government officials and the "agencies" went beyond the bounds of law in helping them win their electoral contests. But this is something that happened the day before yesterday. Consider also that they are not accustomed to repaying their debts. Left to themselves, they will want to know what Musharraf has done for them lately.
On the other hand, it may be just as appropriate to ask what it is that he is refraining from doing which, if done, could work to their great discomfiture. He is putting NAB's fearsome investigators to sleep so far as the PML-Q leaders and legislators are concerned. He is keeping them from probing the wrongdoing of which many of these politicians may be guilty. Is the general then holding sway through the politics of intimidation? Yes, but that is nothing new in our experience. Each successive government has resorted to these gruesome practices - at least since 1972.
Let us suppose for the sake of advancing the argument that somewhere along the line Mr Shaukat Aziz, or another person who replaces him as prime minister, develops his own policy preferences and decides to heed the views articulated in parliament, the advice of his cabinet, and his own judgment instead of simply implementing Musharraf's directives. What can the general do if he does not like this turn of events?
Even if he is still the army chief at the same time that he is president, he cannot move troops against the prime minister or other recalcitrant politicians. Acting in his capacity as president, he can do nothing other than what General Ziaul Haq did in a like situation: he can dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss the prime minister. He has the authority to do so under Article 58 (2-b) of the Constitution, and his retention of the army post has no bearing on the subject whatsoever.
It is possible that Musharraf's authority to deploy troops against certain hostile forces within the country, and his ability to get the intelligence agencies to make and break politicians and political parties, will diminish if he quits his army post. He will then have to proceed in concert with the new army chief if he wants to requisition the personnel and resources under the latter's command. The new chief may, or may not, go along with him, depending upon what his purposes are. But this development, if it does materialize, cannot be regarded as a loss to the country.
I can think of only one situation in which Pervez Musharraf's retention of the army post may come handy. Let us postulate a situation in which he has dissolved the National Assembly but the Supreme Court has invalidated his action (as it had done in the case of Ghulam Ishaq Khan's dismissal of Nawaz Sharif and the assemblies in 1993).
There is nothing he can do as president except to comply with the court's verdict. But acting as the army chief he can make another coup, set aside the Constitution, impose martial law, and rule as a military dictator. This is the only use to which his retention of the army post can be put.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net
From plebiscite to partition
For President Musharraf to turn a page both on warfare and plebiscite in Kashmir may have come as a surprise, but is wholly understandable. He was the last of the generals who tried to wrest Indian-held Kashmir by force but could not.
Further, the obvious lesson that he has learnt from his five adventurous years in international politics - untrammelled by a parliament or diplomatic conventions - is that neither the United Nations nor the Muslim world he hopes to lead, not even Pakistan's best friends and allies, were prepared to lend support to a plebiscite in Kashmir.
Kargil was a covert and limited operation. The two operations preceding it were more covert and extensive but ended in a bigger fiasco. Soon after the partition of the subcontinent, as the Maharajah dithered and his subjects grew restive, Brig. (later major general) Akbar Khan, under the inspiring nom de guerre of General Tariq, led a tribal lashkar, which the Kashmiri dissidents and deserters from the Maharajah's forces were expected to join on its march, to capture Srinagar. The Indian army, however, landed in Srinagar before the ill-organized, assorted marchers, diverted by the lure of plunder could occupy its airport. That gave the Maharajah enough time and excuse to announce the accession of the state to India.
In 1965, too, a more elaborately planned covert operation commanded by Lt. Gen Akhtar Malik failed to convert a widespread simmering discontent in Kashmir against the Indian occupation into an open insurrection. Akhtar Malik was removed from the command just when he was in sight of the vital bridgehead of Akhnur across the ceasefire line. Indian forces then invaded Pakistan.
All the three operations were launched to secure the accession of Kashmir to Pakistan or, at least, to compel India to let the people of the state determine its future status. These operations, instead, produced negative results. India's military grip on Kashmir tightened, the Indians made it a part of the Indian Union, and the dissenters were either bribed or bludgeoned into submission.
Besides failing to achieve the objective, the three operations had two other common features: the commanders fell foul of their political bosses; and, second and more far-reaching, the army made deep inroads into the politics and civil affairs of Pakistan.General Akbar was cited as the principal accused and sentenced to the longest prison term in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy trial in 1951. That conspiracy, it was convincingly established years later by Hasan Zaheer, a former cabinet secretary, on the basis of official records, was no more than frustration expressed in drawing-room discussions on the government's Kashmir policy by some military officers joined by left-leaning intellectuals - Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Sajjad Zaheer among them.
General Akhtar Malik, after removal from the command, was sent off by Ayub Khan to a Cento sinecure job at Ankara. Both Akhtar and Akbar were widely held to be brilliant but maverick commanders who had the making of chiefs. That Akbar had some political inclination was borne out by his joining Z.A. Bhutto's cabinet some years after he was pardoned and released. Akhtar showed no such inclination but made no secret either of the contempt in which he held his superiors for conducting the 1965 war the way they did after sidelining him.
In soldiering, the mastermind of Kargil, General Musharraf, may be held somewhat in similar light as generals Akbar and Akhtar - the planners of the 1948 and 1965 operations - but in political skill, when it came to it, he outwitted them both by sending his political boss into exile and himself assuming absolute and stern control of politics and administration of the country. He shows but little sign of relenting that even after the elections.
President Musharraf's latest exhortation to look for a solution to the Kashmir dispute in ways other than military conquest or plebiscite has unleashed both hostile rhetoric and paeans. It deserved detached and critical consideration divorced from the politics and even the legality of his government. The solution that Musharraf has outlined rather imperfectly and in an off-hand manner should be viewed as just one of the many alternatives to plebiscite. The debate that ensues not in Pakistan alone but in India and in Kashmir might throw up some other solution more practicable and also acceptable to all three.
By rejecting it outright and threatening to resort to street agitation the opposition has sent a signal to the government and people of India that Pakistan would rather live with the Line of Control than seek a better dispensation short of plebiscite. Nothing would have suited India better. The Kashmiri leaders who have a much better understanding of the realities of life are prepared to consider any settlement which ends oppression and brings peace. If the people of Kashmir do not view Musharraf's idea or proposal as a betrayal of their cause why should the people of Pakistan?
By their thoughtless vitriol, the opponents of Musharraf have only provided an opportunity to India to restate its position that no proposal which calls into question the sovereignty of India over Kashmir can be considered. And Musharraf's proposal despite all its gusto and many flaws does that. Even Pakistan's track-two columnist friend Kuldip Nayar has cautioned that all that Pakistan can hope for is softening of the Line of Control, for no Indian government would ever be able to muster the two-thirds majority in the two houses of the parliament required to abolish its sovereignty on any part of Kashmir. A Musharraf-like LFO does not work there.
Emotions on Kashmir and animus for the present regime aside, the opposition leaders should put forward their own proposals unless they wish to live in the vainglorious hope of annexation. That would only impel the Kashmiris to seek their own settlement with India. In any case, life and liberty in Pakistan have not been an inspiring example for them. The aim is to end their agony. Any gain to Pakistan is incidental but important.
The politicians as a class have a selfish angle to consider: So long as the dispute on Kashmir lasts, the army will remain in the driving seat in Pakistan. For the nation their worry should be that with charges of terror and nuclear proliferation swirling around it, Pakistan will remain vulnerable to international blackmail or sanctions if we insist on playing truant.
BJP: the Janata is missing
Politicians can survive a great deal - plague (corruption charges), pestilence (electoral defeat), famine (not made a minister) - but very few survive a sense of humour. That may be one reason why there isn't much of it around. After all, if you want to laugh at others all the time you have to also laugh at yourself some of the time, which is difficult to reconcile with ego. There is a very thin line between cracking a joke and becoming a joke.
Laloo Prasad Yadav, for instance, is now expected to entertain at every public meeting and at many private ones. He succeeds because he does have the sense to laugh occasionally at himself, although he takes care never to joke about corruption just in case the boomerang effect gets him squarely on the nose. When a joke falls flat it takes the joker down with it.
The just-removed BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, never quite got his jokes right. He fashioned an image as the bluff, hearty, alliterative leader who could demolish deathly demons with devastating daring - you see the point. Bad alliteration is like the flu. You catch it easily and it lays you down.
Naidu was always shooting off some homily or the other about those opposed to the BJP, and since his relationship with the English language was at best quaint, the combination was often hopelessly funny for all the wrong reasons. He overdid himself during the press conferences in the general elections. Correspondents are too polite to snicker in front of the high and mighty, but behind his back was another story. The slippage on the credibility graph was significant.
This may, in the history books, end up as a very minor reason for the BJP's troubles this year, but when the going is bad everything adds up. A more important reason could lie in another verbal statistic. The BJP has a large research division. It should put together a team to find out just how many times the party president used the words "poverty" or "poor" and compare it to other words in his repertoire. Even a rudimentary analysis would prove that the BJP had slipped to its Jana Sangh roots and returned to a middle class political culture.
It might be of interest to the party, as it struggles once again to find a road map, that communalism and communism emerge from the same concept: commune. In theory, both communalism and communism accept the rationale of conflict. But whereas the first seeks to advance its cause through the demonization of the minorities, the second seeks to expand its base through a challenge to the rich. This is what makes the first ephemeral and the second sustainable.
The BJP rose in the late 1980s because L.K. Advani struck a chord with the poor. He did not do so with an economic agenda, but a religious one. He took the Ram temple construction movement into the villages, where the party had insufficient presence, and to women, whom the party had never wooed. The strength of an emotional upsurge can at best be limited, and much of the steam exhausted itself with the destruction of the Babri mosque. But Advani had something else to offer his party: a rational analysis of weaknesses and strengths when opportunity presented itself at the end of the 1990s.
The BJP leadership took the unsentimental view that if it wanted power in Delhi then it could only be through partnerships. This meant that it would have to cede space in parliamentary calculus, and withdraw from the confrontational heart of its ideological compulsions. This was not without internal pain, for there were always the Murli Manohar Joshis to push the envelope at inconvenient moments.
However, it was implicit that both concessions were temporary. Neither did the party have any qualms about exploiting crass communalism, as for instance in Gujarat. One faction, offered shelter in the Vajpayee wing, did begin to believe after 1999 that power would diffuse the original ideology, but it was a minority (pun intended).
Very adroitly, Atal Behari Vajpayee used Pakistan, an antithesis of the BJP, to redefine the thesis of his years in power. It was not another political game. He genuinely believed in peace with Pakistan, and sustained that belief through the Kargil war, the turmoil of terrorism and the expensive failure of Agra.
When push came to shove, as in Gujarat, the Atalites had to retreat. Power, however, provided this faction with sufficient cover, and the prospect of continued power made it complacent. Defeat has marginalized the Atalites to the point where the Maharashtra election campaign scheduled only one Vajpayee meeting, and that too in the company of Bal Thackeray.
Nor is Vajpayee the only "traitor" to the hardliners. Narendra Modi has greeted Advani's return as party president with deafening silence. It is pertinent to note that Advani is a sitting MP from the capital of Gujarat. Equations have changed in Modi's calculations. Two years ago, he needed Advani. Today, he believes that Advani needs him.
Pramod Mahajan, belligerent in victory but astute in defeat, has made a very perceptive point in one of his mea culpa interviews offered to the media as part of the atonement process. He learnt to play bridge, he says, while under arrest during the Emergency. One of the basic rules of the game is "When in doubt, lead a trump". The BJP, he explained, has pulled out its trump card, Advani, since it is trapped once again in the uncertainties of the 1980s.
The mention of the Emergency was incidental, but has a deeper relevance. The doubts of the 1980s were a direct consequence of three years of power after the Emergency, and the extraordinary compromise that the party made in 1977 when it merged its identity into the Janata Party. Three years of power led to seven years of doubt, until the mishandling of the Shah Bano crisis provided a route back to relevance. How many years of doubt will emerge from six years of power?
The nub is this: can Advani of the 2000s be the Advani of the 1980s? Or is Narendra Modi going to be the Next Big Thing? There is little doubt that Modi sees himself as the future of his party. He has positioned himself as the incorruptible soul of Hindutva, both ideologically and financially, untainted by the temptations of body, bank account or ideological compromise.
He believes that he does not have to wait for more than a couple of years before the call comes. Ironically, he needs the Manmohan Singh government to last the course, so that he can campaign against both incumbency and "pseudo-secular-minority" rule. However, windows of opportunity in public life tend to be flirtatious. They beckon. But a sudden breeze can also shut them. Events change life more than intentions.
The tried and still trusted Advani has an obvious immediate challenge: how to energize the base that keeps slithering away. The Bharatiya Janata Party is still Bharatiya, and still a party, but the Janata has disappeared.
Politics is never static. If you do not grow, you slide; you do not remain stagnant. The base has two dimensions, the party and the electorate, and to an extent they are interdependent. It is obvious though that a party depends more on the voter than the voter does on a party. The Modis may not believe it, but the voter is not going to return through the brutal mechanism of communal riots. The spirit of democracy dies each time a Modi thrives.
A story from a favourite source might prove instructive. Hazrat Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi is well known. But his father, Bahauddin Veled, was also a famous divine. Sultan Alauddin, ruler of Qonya, once took the elder sage to his palace and fortress, and showed him the splendid new roof, walls and towers that had been built to protect the kingdom.
Bahauddin Veled remarked to the Sultan: "You have raised an excellent defence against the hordes and horsemen of the enemy. But what protection have you built against the unseen arrows, the sighs and moans of the oppressed who live inside the kingdom? They can sweep whole worlds away to destruction. Strive to obtain the blessings of the poorest of your subjects. They are a stronghold compared to which the finest turrets and strongest castles are nothing."
Venkaiah Naidu concentrated on building castles, at least some of them in the air. Lal Krishna Advani needs to find those subjects.
The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.