| June 9, 2005 | Thursday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 1, 1426 |
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Welcome realization
The Caribbean tour
WHETHER or not Mr L. K. Advani is persuaded to take back his resignation as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, he has managed to bring into sharp focus the dilemma of religio-political parties in today’s rapidly globalizing, and inevitably secularizing, world. The politics of extremism and of exploiting religious sentiments for political purposes may become irrelevant even in limited, regional contexts. Mr Advani may be considered an unlikely catalyst for a debate on this issue, but again he may be just the person. It was Mr Advani who led the notorious ‘rath yatra’ that mobilized both urban and rural Hindus and culminated in the cruel destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992. He now says that the mosque’s demolition was the “saddest day of my life”, but he had expressed no such feelings at that time. His belated remorse may sound unconvincing. Similarly his discovery of the Quaid-i-Azam as a secular leader flies in the face of long-held Hindu nationalist creed that owes its revitalization to Mr Advani himself. But if even a person like him believes that it is time to reevaluate the role of revivalist parties and to change policies, it is as much political realism as an intelligent realization of the irresistible forces that now confront many traditional political notions and practices.
This is not only an Indian or a BJP problem. Pakistan too faces similar issues, perhaps in an acuter form because our Constitution specifically provides for a state based on religion and is thus a durable point of reference for religious parties. They consider the Quaid’s August 11 speech, to which Mr Advani referred, as something best forgotten or treated as an aberration. Much of the BJP leadership appears to feel that its Hindu card, which paid it dividends in the ‘90s, has lost its magic. The party is widely believed to have been trounced in the last general elections because of its preoccupation with religious politics to the exclusion of the bread-and-butter concerns of ordinary Indians. It now seeks to move to a middle ground and become something of the kind of multi-denomination church that Congress has been since its earlier socialist leanings. The BJP’s more extreme Hindutva allies resist the new likely orientation, and it should be interesting to see how long they will be able to maintain their present position.
In Pakistan, the religious factor in politics assumed a dominant character under Ziaul Haq’s military regime but was perhaps beginning to be pushed back in subsequent years till sections of our establishment discovered the utility of employing the Afghan jihad remnants for purposes of state policy. The events of 9/11 not only gave new life to religious parties — partly in response to America’s own crusading extremism — but also precipitated dangerously warped forms of assertion that are reflected in acts of terrorism. When a process of introspection will begin within our own religious parties is a pressing question. Equally pressing is when the government, party leaders and state agencies will stop extracting mileage out of religious politics and stop conducting the political debate in a religious vocabulary. The establishment of a genuinely democratic and participatory system, based on the bedrock of electoral accountability, is ultimately the only way to remove angularities from our politics and make our political parties more responsive to temporal realities. Otherwise, we can easily become an anachronism in a world changing around us.
a NWFP governor Khalilur Rehman has advised tribal leaders in Orakzai agency to ensure sectarian harmony so that development work going on there can progress. This he did in a statement on Monday and it speaks of a realization that the neglected tribal areas will not progress until they are pacified and gradually integrated into the national mainstream. For the past few weeks, there has been much trouble in the tribal belt: bomb blasts in schools in Bajaur and the assassination of a pro-government tribal leader in Wana, not to mention the continuing raids and skirmishes in search of foreign militants who have sought refuge there and who are now engaged in acts of terror and lawlessness in the country. On the very day that Mr Rehman was asking feuding tribes to resolve their differences through dialogue, a military convoy survived a bomb blast in North Waziristan. The presence of foreign militants opposed to Pakistan’s support of the US-led war on terror is clear, as is Pakistan’s determination to flush these terrorists out. However, what is not so clear is the government’s strategy on how it plans to “cleanse” the area as previous attempts to ferret out foreign militants have failed. Lately, tribal leaders’ assistance has been sought in spreading the message that anyone giving shelter to foreign militants will be dealt with under the law. But in an area that is seen as a ‘no-man’s land’, such warnings may not have the desired effect.
What will make a difference is development work that can change the people’s lives. Mr Rehman spoke about planting olives in the area and exploring new ways to exploit the area’s mineral wealth, both of which would provide people with better means of livelihood. At the moment the government is spending Rs 500 million on various development projects but judging by the lack of basic amenities like electricity, roads, schools and hospitals there, the government will have to allocate more funds for uplift work if it wants to see any substantial change. All projects will have an impact on the prevailing mindset which, so far, has played a major role in keeping this area backward and troubled.
PAKISTAN rounded off their Caribbean tour by a resounding victory in the second Test match at Kingston, Jamaica, on Tuesday. This enabled them to draw the two-match series. In the first game at Barbados, they were outplayed by the hosts because skipper Inzamamul Haq and Shoaib Malik were sitting out, nursing a one-Test ban. In Jamaica, both were back in the side and both played important roles in Pakistan’s victory — the 17th in which Inzamam has scored a hundred. Impressive as the victory was, there still are chinks in our armour. We have still to find a dependable pair of opening batsmen, buttress the middle and the lower middle order. In Kamran Akmal, we appear to have found a wicketkeeper of exceptional merit who can also be pretty handy with the bat. His 16 dismissals behind the stumps in just two Test matches must be some sort of a national record.
Earlier on the tour, Pakistan whitewashed the West Indies 3-0 in the one-day series in which superstar Brian Lara was rested. The master batsman came back strongly in the Test matches with two magnificent hundreds to emerge as the Man of the Series. Medium pacer Colleymore took 11 wickets in the Jamaica Test and yet found himself on the losing side because he had little or no support from the other end. Both against India and the West Indies, Pakistan have done enough to do us proud, especially in one-day matches which gives the impression that we are a better side in the shorter version of the game than in the Test matches. They will face a much tougher opposition when England visit this coming winter. The second Test will be remembered also for David Shepherd’s retirement after standing in 92 Test matches. Cricket fans across the world will miss his amiable, portly figure.