GUJARAT and Punjab are the two states in India which are ill at ease most of the time. Their problem is not economic but narrow thinking. Most of the blame lies on the governments because they do not allow people to rise above their limited and personal agenda dinned constantly into their ears. The result is that the two states are often absorbed in non-issues and suffer the consequences of mixing religion with politics.

When it comes to mixing politics with religion, none is more adept in it than Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat. It was generally felt that he would leave the 1992 killings aside and appeal to the voters in the name of development which was impressive.

Instead, he has reignited the embers of communal bias from the days of rioting. Once again his agenda is Hindutva.

He has told even the few Muslim leaders who have stuck to the BJP not to take part in campaigning in the state. On the other hand, the BJP has fielded no Muslim candidate in Gujarat. One Muslim in the party’s top leadership has recalled how the minority leaders were also kept aside in the UP assembly elections a few months ago.

This indicates how hypocritical was the BJP’s support to Taslima Nasreen, an author from Bangladesh, for asylum in India.

If Modi manages to have a majority in the assembly election later this month — reports are that he may scrape through — he would have proved that he has brainwashed the Hindus in Gujarat to such an extent that despite their intelligence and dynamism, they have not been able to overcome the tug of religion.

If after five years of pogrom where thousands of Muslims were murdered and looted and the bulk of the Hindu community remains unrepentant, it is more than a shame.

The situation is tragic because the centre does not dare to move against Modi despite an array of reports of his involvement. The Supreme Court has also described him as Gujarat’s Nero when the state was burning. The inquiry committee, sitting for the last five years, has not yet given its report. It looks as if the commission does not want to say anything about Modi’s role before the polls.

At least, the Central Election Commission, independent as it is, should do something. Granted it cannot take action against him, it can at least see that Modi’s campaign follows the code of conduct in spirit as well. A campaign, however regional in character, cannot degenerate into a diatribe against the minority community through innuendos, or indirect references.

The commission has to ensure free and fair polls. That the BJP or Modi does not mention the Muslim community directly is a technicality. The whole tone and tenor of the campaign is against Muslims. The commission should be able to see through it. And what about the Muslims who are on the electoral rolls but cannot be traced?

Yet the most objectionable part of Modi’s observation is his description of Gujarat as the ‘Hindutva laboratory’. The BJP also rules in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, apart from being the coalition partners in Bihar and Punjab. If Gujarat is a laboratory, the BJP should be pleased with the experiment of ethnic cleansing. When does it duplicate it in the states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh?

If the Centre remains a mute spectator in the case of Gujarat, what is the guarantee that the future of minorities in the other BJP-run states would be in any way better?

The only redeeming factor is the media’s relentless effort to expose Modi’s doings and to insist on the state and the central governments to rehabilitate the Muslim victims at the very places where they lived before the planned rioting. NGOs are also another hope. They have done a tremendous job in the last few years.

What depresses me is that the Gujaratis, outside Gujarat, have done little to put those living in the state to shame. Nor have they contributed to help rehabilitate the state Muslims. They too are Gujaratis.

Politics in Punjab has been caught for years in the battle that controls the gurdwaras which have offerings of millions of rupees, with a retinue of employees who come in handy during elections. The ruling Akali Dal has never abandoned its control of gurdwaras, however indirect.

The management of the gurdwaras is by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), an elected body by the electoral college of Sikhs. Yet it is an open secret that the Akalis have their own men elected to the SGPC and use the body as an instrument of agitation for its demands — political, religious or social. In return, the Akali Dal gives the SGPC members many facilities, a vicarious satisfaction to govern. Recently, the state government gave every member two gunmen and beacon light on their vehicles, symbols of authority.

The installation by the SGPC of militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s portrait at the Golden Temple cannot be without the knowledge of the Akali Dal. Was the party forced by the hardliners to do so or was it meant to frighten the Centre to cough up more money in the name of fighting terrorism? Such questions are difficult to answer. But they reflect a particular outlook which had embraced Punjab by militancy some 10 years ago.

The hanging of the portrait on a wall of Sikh museum within the gurdwara cannot be considered a relic of an unhappy past and dismissed lightly.

Some in the Akali Dal and the SGPC may have a nefarious plan but they do not realise that both Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab have moved away from 1984 when the misunderstanding between the two was at its peak.

However, more debatable than the portrait is the text written below it: “The great Sikh General of the 20th century and the 14th chief of the Damdami Taksal, Sant Giani Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale, who along with numerous valiant Sikhs, attained martyrdom on Wednesday, June 6th, 1984, fighting against the Indian Armed Forces for the honour and prestige of Sri Harminder Sahib and Sri Akal Takht Sahib.”

The wordings are unfortunate because the Indian armed forces represent India. The government and India are two separate entities. What happened at the Golden Temple was at the instance of the government which can be defeated at the polls.

India is a different, independent, a cumulative entity which has Sikhs as much citizens as people from other communities.

What is unfortunate is that Bhindranwale representing fundamentalists has been honoured. This is yet another instance of mixing religion with politics. Punjab cannot progress unless the two are separated. Nor can it attract the much-needed investment until secularism prevails.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

PAKISTAN’S recent history will include many villains. But it will not be entirely devoid of heroes either. The justices under house arrest and the detained top leadership of the lawyers’ movement will top that list.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s bold refusal to resign from his post on that fateful day of Mar 9, which triggered a countrywide protest, may well have turned the tide lastingly in favour of civil supremacy over the military. One of the key figures of this movement is the widely respected and admired Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Ahsan and the honour of sharing the podium with him in Washington, DC in 2004. We were both invited, along with the PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal and the PML-Q’s Tariq Azeem, by a group of concerned Pakistani physicians to speak on the prospects of democracy in Pakistan.

Mr Ahsan’s eloquent speech, peppered with heart-rending couplets from Faiz, enthralled the overcrowded hall. His main emphasis was on two ideological shifts in Pakistan’s history. First, the shift from a welfare oriented state to a national security state in the late 1950s. Second, the shift in the 1970s in which the military defined itself as the guardian of both territorial and ideational boundaries which created a symbiotic bond between it and the mullahs. In the end, Mr Ahsan presciently stressed the importance of reviving civil society to break this bond.

That was then, this is now. Mr Ahsan’s struggle for the rule of law landed him in jail in the wake of the ‘emergency’ and he is now under house arrest. Other senior lawyers such as Munir Malik, Ali Ahmed Kurd, and Justice (retd.) Tariq Mehmood, have also been detained and treated with appalling cruelty.

Some analysts have cast doubts on their motivations, wondering if they are driven merely by their rational calculations to protect their personal, professional or class interests. Rationality is a complex subject. But as Max Weber has noted, there are two types of rational behaviour: instrumental and value-based. Instrumentally rational behaviour is produced by narrow cost-benefit assessments which can be changed if the costs are high. In contrast, value rationality entails behaviour driven by beliefs regardless of the costs, similar to the goal directed but value rational behaviour of the lawyers and the honourable judges who refused to take oath under the PCO.

No matter what their motivations, however, we should not belittle their convictions and contributions. As civil society’s committed soldiers, they seem to have rekindled the hope in the people that civil and political rights are inalienable. Their undying struggle has shown to the world that despite decades of repression and authoritarianism, democratic aspirations in Pakistan are alive and thriving.

Their fight has not been easy. They have all paid a heavy price in their personal well being and the life and liberty of their loved ones. Mr Malik’s house was sprayed with machine gun fire. The message was clear: shut up or die. He refused to cow down and was eventually placed in solitary confinement which resulted in him suffering from renal failure. But he remains defiant even on his hospital bed.

Mr Kurd’s fierce speeches were the bane of the government’s existence. The way he was maltreated and kidnapped on Sept 29 during protests outside the election commission showed clearly how fearful the state was of this seemingly frail individual. Justice (retd.) Mehmood remains locked up like Mr Kurd, in sub-human conditions without access to his family. These men were also subjected to baseless accusations by the government and its opportunistic lawyers for being funded by foreign powers out to destabilise the government.

But false patriotism, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, is the last refuge of the scoundrels. If money was the issue, the government would have bought them off in no time. In fact, it was their refusal to put a price on their beliefs that has irked the government so much.

Leadership assumes a critical role especially when institutions of political and civil society are weak vis-à-vis the state. By showing their resolve to stand up for the rule of law no matter what the costs, these few good men have shown us the importance of ‘speaking truth to brute power’. They have also shown us that reclaiming the authority of civil institutions from the stranglehold of the military may be difficult, it is not impossible. This has been their singular contribution to the cause of democracy and the rule of law in Pakistan. However things turn out in the end, these judges and lawyers deserve the highest appreciation, solidarity and support of our civil society and political parties, as do the thousands of other lawyers who have had to bear the brunt of state repression.

as2552@columbia.edu

ON Dec 3 Kevin Rudd was sworn in as Australia’s 26th prime minister. It was after fourteen years that the Labour party won a decisive electoral victory against the Liberal party which ruled the country for almost eleven years. On a short visit to Australia during the elections, I learnt quite a few things from the polls.

There were three very interesting issues which I will discuss here. First, it is compulsory for all Australians to vote. The right to vote is a political privilege, which must be exercised, and those choosing not to do so are fined by the state. The good news is that there is even room for cynical voters who, in case they don’t like any candidate, have an option to tick a ‘no’ or not vote for any candidate. So, even general dissent gets recorded. The benefit of this system is that no potential usurper of power can then claim that the elections were not representative of people’s opinion.

The second interesting observation is that there is also space for smaller political parties to operate on the basis of a specific political agenda such as the Greens and the Democrats whose main emphasis is on the environment. The Democrats started as environmentalists but were later taken over by the Greens. In the 2007 elections the Democrats were completely wiped out mainly because they failed to get noticed as a party with a distinctive agenda.

Third, and the most important observation, the electoral process performs the task of representing the aspirations of the general public. In this regards, it is not surprising the Liberal party lost power after ruling the country for over eleven years. According to the election results, the Labour Party won 80 out of 150 seats followed by the Liberal Party with 60 seats. Interestingly, the Liberal Party’s leader John Howard could not retain his own seat.

These results are significant in what they say about the choices common people make. The results indicate the common man’s fatigue with a pro-rich party and a desire for pro-poor or pro-common man policy options. The politics of the two parties represents their different perspectives on politics, the economy and society. For instance, the Labour Party, which grew out of a movement of workers, is linked with low to middle class earners. The Liberals, on the other hand, are related more closely with capital and employers or the so-called white-collar workers. Resultantly, the policies of the two parties differed, at least, in principle.

One of the gripe of the less-privileged Australians was that not sufficient resources were being injected into health and education. In fact, the Labour Party campaigned strongly for investing in an ailing health and education system. Since taking over, the party has promised to provide computers in every public school. Its programme will increase the public sector spending which the Liberals do not support. Their perspective is more in line with the neo-liberal approach to socioeconomic policymaking according to which the corporate sector should be allowed to play a greater role in providing services.

The entire debate about reducing the size of the government, which means the public sector, is driven by the neo-liberal notion of allowing the private sector or the free market institutions to play a larger role. The free-market formula is seen by the neo-liberals as an apt answer to reducing the inefficiencies of the public sector. However, the government cannot really shed its responsibility for providing certain facilities and opportunities to the under-privileged.

Sectors such as health and education cannot be reduced because the government should have the responsibility of providing certain basic facilities to its people. The private sector works on the premise of profit-maximisation and it is unfair for this sector to provide affordable service to the general public in the social sectors.

To diverge from the debate on Australian elections, it is a fact that wherever the common man is allowed a say by the political system, the decision is in favour of a more vibrant public sector. The poor people all over the world strive for a system where they can get some breathing space. Australia and India’s elections prove this point. Even in India’s case, the vote against the BJP government, which talked of ‘India shining’, was actually a verdict against a set of policies that meant very little to the man on India’s streets.

The skeptics would argue, that a smaller government is meant to bring about greater efficiency and reduce corruption. But who says that the private sector is less corrupt or the neo-liberal approach does not encourage deliberate financial mismanagement? Let’s look at Australia’s case where the Howard government was accused by the National Audit Office of the country for using Australian $328m of regional projects fund for buying votes. Furthermore, the private sector definitely does not have the capacity to deliver according to the needs of the common man who, in any case, does not have the strength to compete with the privileged white-collar workers and the elite. So, the Australians, like the Indians, went for a political option, which they believed might provide them protection against aggressive neo-liberalism.

It is just another story that in both India and Australia the alternative in the form of the Congress and Labour parties do not any longer have a pro-working class perspective. India’s socio-politics continues to struggle to find the right balance between a pro-free market and corporate sector or a pro-people approach. Australia will be confronted with a similar dilemma of providing privileges to the under-privileged without impeding the growth of the free-market. The changes in the politics of the Australian Labour Party bears witness to the issues confronting the country’s new political managers.

The Labour Party, which traditionally pursued a policy of big expenditure budgets, now talks about fiscal conservatism. This is one of the reasons why the party is considered centre-left rather than left. Moreover, there is convergence of policies of the Labour and Liberal parties on a number of issues. For instance, earlier in 2007 the Labour controversially overturned its historic ban on uranium mine expansion. It was mainly the minority parties, which castigated Canberra for its decision to sell uranium to India that is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This does not mean that fundamental differences do not exist between the two parties. For instance, Labour’s policy is friendly towards workers and allows them legal entitlements which Howard’s party wanted to strip. Kevin Rudd has also signed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change which Howard had refused to do.

Whatever the policy approach, the political future of the Rudd government now depends on its ability to balance between its neo-liberal options and responding to the needs of the poor. One hopes that the new prime minister remembers that the election results basically represent the call of the under-privileged for a better future and attention which they did not get from John Howard.

The writer is an independent analyst and the author of the book “Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy”.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com