The rise of the religious parties

IT IS easy to make too much of the emergence of the maulvis as an electoral force by conjuring up visions of Taliban-type edicts. It is equally easy to make too little of it by believing that the dynamics of a democratic or quasi-democratic system will lead to mollification in their views. It is a serious development that has changed the country’s political map and needs to be watched with great care and with a certain detachment.

For decades, the argument was that the religious parties were organized, could mobilize street power, and had a certain nuisance value as a pressure group, but that they did not have electoral strength and were always rejected by the people at polling time. This argument will no longer be valid; the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal is the third largest group in the National Assembly, with 45 seats, and will also probably have a strong presence in the Senate. So much for the scoffing riposte that we used in reply to allegations of fundamentalism in Pakistan. We have our own right wing to contend with now in both parliament and the provincial assemblies and, in the case of the Frontier, in government. We might, after all the combinations have been tried, have Qazi Husain Ahmad as prime minister.

There are several theories about why this has happened. There is the belief that the MMA was clobbered together by the military government when it saw that its own PML(Q) was not making the desired headway against the PPP and the PML(N). The PPP and the MQM have said that the military wanted a sizeable MMA strength in order to increase General Pervez Musharraf’s bargaining power with the United States. There have been accusations of ballot stuffing and rigging that helped the MMA. Some constitutency delimitations might have led to concentrations of the ethnic vote. There is no reason to doubt that all these factors too were at play in varying degrees. But perhaps the most important factor was the tendency on the part of the more moderate and liberal elements to take the religious right for granted and, post 9/11, their inability to correctly read the depth of feeling of the people of the Frontier and Balochistan about events in Afghanistan.

A lot of things were happening quietly which did not attract much attention. It was easy for us city-bound people in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi to say that the Islamization of Gen Ziaul Haq had driven people away from religion. But we failed to take more than token notice of the rise of such organizations as the TNSM in the Frontier or the zealous setting up of a network of religious schools in the Punjab, not all of them funded from abroad or affiliated with jihadi parties. Most people noticed that mosque congregations were getting bigger even in cities like Lahore and Karachi, and that more women, even without being forced to, were taking to the veil.

The voice of a Karachi-based preacher was heard on cassette throughout the country and even among Pakistanis abroad, with the so-called fashionable set being amongst the preacher’s more ardent admirers. The official patronage of militant organizations because of Kashmir kept stoking the fire, and the tolerance if not active support of Taliban rule, despite the Bamiyan Buddha atrocity, no doubt sent out its own signal. “Modern” leaders like Nawaz Sharif contemplated bringing in Shariat laws.

When the war on terror began in Afghanistan, the liberals in Pakistan were on the whole confused. They were against American intervention and its exercise of military power. But they were relieved that the Pakistani establishment had finally been forced to move against sectarian organizations and eventually, when it was no longer tenable for the Musharraf government to make a distinction between domestic violence and cross-border terrorism, against militant outfits.

The ANP in the Frontier, the nationalists in Balochistan, and the PPP, the PML(N) and the MQM in the rest of the country did not stand up to denounce the US bombing of Afghanistan. On the other hand, the religious parties clearly saw the popular sentiment in the border provinces and cashed in on it. What we are now seeing is the result, therefore, of a gradual process that had been slowly unwinding before our eyes but which we had failed to see or understand. Actually, it’s a wonder that in a state that is constitutionally an Islamic republic, the religious parties had not scored electoral and political successes much earlier.

Much ink will now be spent on discussing how we are going to grapple with the situation. If we can somehow create a durable democratic culture, then there is hope that many political angularities might not only be smoothed out but find their own balance. It is also necessary that we should realize that the perpetually antagonistic Indo-Pakistan relationship is helping to feed reaction and extremism on both sides of the border and particularly in Pakistan, retarding democratic progress.

Can the poll verdict lead to a tripartite coalition?

AS was widely expected, the general election last week did not throw up a political party with an absolute majority that could singly form a national government. Instead, the verdict showed a distinct three-way split in the federation about which party should govern Pakistan and, thus, the kind of domestic and foreign policies it should follow.

The election broke the see-saw pattern of alternate dominance of the PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s PML of the last four general elections. This see-saw pattern began with the PPP winning the largest number of seats in the 1988 election and forming the government, ending with the PML (N) winning the most seats in the fourth polls in 1997 and forming the government.

The PML (N)’s devastating defeat last week — it got 14 seats only in the National Assembly as compared to 137 seats in the 1997 polls — was inevitable after the creation of the breakaway PML (Q) comprising a large number of the original PML (N)’s main vote earners in the Punjab. This “new” PML (Q) won the maximum number of seats in the National Assembly and also in the Punjab Provincial Assembly but not enough for it to form a government on its own, both at the national and provincial levels.

A similar creation of the breakaway PPP-Sherpao party in the NWFP did not cripple the PPP as a whole as the PML (Q)’s creation did to the PML (N). Neither has the couple of breakaway PPP factions in Sindh made much of a dent in the PPP’s vote bank in the southern province, where it won the largest number of seats last week but not enough to form a government on its own.

In fact, despite many restrictions put in the PPP’s way, the most damaging being the disqualification of its leader from contesting in the elections, the new PPP minus Benazir Bhutto has fared relatively well this time compared to the 1997 elections, winning 62 seats in the National Assembly as compared to only 18 seats the last time. But the establishment of the PML (Q) and the ascent of the MMA coalition have combined to ensure that the PPP did not emerge (or the PPP re-emerge) as the party with the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.

Although governments past and present, civilian and military, have had to reckon with the religious parties, individually the latter has never been able to achieve the kind of electoral success as the MMA has done now. The MMA’s success in the National Assembly —third largest after the PML (Q) and the PPP — and its success in the NWFP Assembly and Balochistan Assembly elections (winning the largest number of seats in both although not enough to form provincial governments single-handedly) make this nascent conglomerate of once divisive religious parties a formidable collective third force to be reckoned with in national politics after the PML (Q) and the PPP.

The MMA’s success is concomitant with the general rise of Islamism that is a result of, as a noted Eastern Muslim scholar has written, “marginalization, real or imagined, and a reaction against Western dominance in various fields in a world in which Muslims are often perceived (or perceive themselves to be) the underdog”. Palestine and Afghanistan are major examples that justify this perception.

In this sense, the same scholar continues, Islamism is reactionary not so much in the backward or unworldly sense, but reactionary in relation to abiding dominant worldly realities. The US war against terrorism in Afghanistan and its spillover effects in Pakistan, felt most in the NWFP and Balochistan, have ironically contributed in no small way to the MMA’s electoral success.

Since the MMA came into power on the promise that it will implement the Shariat system of governance, one significant effect in Pakistan of the MMA’s electoral success could well be the implementation of the Shariat in the NWFP and Balochistan — the two provinces where the MMA have won the maximum number of seats.

Such a scenario where the Shariat is implemented in only one or two states or provinces of a Muslim country can already be found in Malaysia. Out of the eleven states in this parliamentary democracy headed by a sultan, two neighbouring states, viz. Kelantan and Trengganu, had introduced in 1990 and 1999, respectively, the Shariat system of legal government and other social and cultural reforms as part of the process of Islamization after the Islamic party came into power in these states.

This move towards Shariat was made despite vocal objection and condemnation from the Malaysian federal government which regarded the move as a direct provocation against the state. This Islamization has also complicated Malaysia’s relations with the US.

Introduction of a similar process of Islamization in the NWFP and Balochistan by the MMA will definitely put Pakistan at risk of being marginalized in the world. This kind of Islamization will also complicate Pakistan’s relations with the pro-Western Karzai government in Kabul, particularly since the NWFP and Balochistan border Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan’s relations with India, where hardline Hindus are leading a coalition government.

The MMA’s electoral success in the NWFP and Balochistan is a lesson for both the liberals and conservatives alike. The rise in political fortunes of the MMA shows just how much liberal parties like the PPP and the ANP, and conservatives like the various the PML factions are out of step with the mood and preferences of the Pathan- and Baloch-Muslim masses. An American attack on Iraq will only help to further increase the MMA’s popularity in these two provinces and isolate the PPP and the PML (Q) more if these two do not come out strongly against such an attack.

It would be a miracle if a tripartite coalition government of the PML (Q), the PPP and the MMA can be formed, let alone one that can sit out its tenure of four years. For all three major parties advocate contradictory and irreconcilable polarities — the MMA’s Shariat, the PPP’s modern liberal democracy as enshrined in the 1973 Constitution and the PML (Q)’s military-guided democracy as enshrined in the LFO.

A tripartite coalition would require the PPP and MMA to come down to some common ground with the PML(Q), with one or two or all three re-prioritizing their main objectives. Whether the PPP and the MMA decide to join in forming the federal government or to sit in opposition singly or together, their future political fortunes will depend on whether their decisions are reflective of the mood and wishes of their electorate.

Mishtake was not a spelling error; it was the way we agreed to go wrong

ONE or two years ago Indian troops killed a few men in Kashmir and claimed they were the culprits behind the Chati Singhpora massacre of Sikh civilians during president Clinton’s visit. Subsequent DNA tests showed up the horror of the incident as the state government confessed the suspected militants were, in fact, innocent residents of one of Kashmir’s numerous troubled villages. They had been wrongly targeted.

The episode resembled, in more ways than one, some of the foul things that we did to each other during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent. Sadat Hasan Manto’s story about the Mishtake comes to mind.

In Khalid Hasan’s translation of Manto’s cynical disgust at the horrors of partition, the following dialogue between a vaguely identified man and a vaguely identified mob takes place:

Who are you?

And who are you?

Har Har Mahadev, Har Har Mahadev, Har Har Mahadev!

What is the evidence that you are what you say you are?

Evidence? My name is Dharm Chand, a Hindu name.

That is no evidence.

All right, I know all the sacred Vedas by heart, test me out.

We know nothing about the Vedas. We want evidence.

What?

Lower your trousers.

When his trousers were lowered, there was pandemonium ‘Kill him, kill him’.

Wait, please wait ... I am your brother ... I swear by Bhagwan that I am your brother.

In that case why the circumcision?

The area through which I had to pass was controlled by our enemies, therefore, I was forced to take this precaution ... just to save my life ... this is the only mistake, the rest of me is in order.

Remove the mistake.

The mistake was removed ... and with it Dharam Chand.

Last year, on Dec 13, as he came out of the badly rattled Parliament House, Sanjay Nirupam observed that the assorted armed terrorists lying outside in four or five separate pools of blood could be mistaken for ordinary Indians. Nirupam is a deputy in parliament for the Shiv Sena party, seen as a jingoistic club of Pakistan-haters who are not given easily to discreet, balanced approach to an emotive issue such as the outrage he had just witnessed.

Nirupam’s remarks were ironical but spontaneous. There was no clever calculation involved when he spoke. Soon afterwards the official verdict was out. The men were not Indians. They were Pakistanis. The claim may well be true. But how did we arrive at the conclusion? Anyone carrying guns and grenades and who forces his way into a parliament building and kills the security guards must come close to the description of a common terrorist?

But how do we extrapolate that the men were Pakistanis, and if they were Pakistanis how do we know that they were handpicked by President Pervez Musharraf to eliminate India’s leaders? If my question is bizarre, then the questions raised by Chati Singhpora or Manto or Nirupam, about the pitfalls of quick conclusions, must be equally outlandish.

Here is a claim over which the Indian nation has been galvanized to get ready for a war which has a serious and real nuclear dimension. Here is a claim whereby the entire world has been terrorized by the possibility of the unthinkable responses it could trigger from India, and here we have more questions than answers to explain the genesis of it all.

Surely there are alternative ways of looking at the same story. The Chinese told Dilip Padgaonkar of Times of India only last week that the terrorists who target India may well be the ones who target Pakistan. Is there any wisdom in the Chinese suggestion and the equally tempting conclusion by Richard Armitage that there are groups who may not be within Pakistan’s control, who want India and Pakistan to go to war?

And we as a mature nation fall into the trap? Whose trap? The trap of the terrorists who want to damage India and Pakistan in the name of Islam or the terrorists who are gnawing away steadily at India’s soul in the name of pulp Hinduism, or both?

Now that India is braced to review the deployment of the troops on Pakistan’s border which it dispatched in a fit of anger in the wake of Dec 13, the decision may go either way since we know that the decision-makers have incorrigible hawks among them.

Other than a compulsion to comply with a widely welcomed foreign fiat, is there a cogent argument from within the Indian establishment that vindicates the massing of troops in December and their withdrawal, if the hawks permit, now?

If the attack on the parliament was the justification for threatening war, is there any guarantee that the worst is behind us and that there would not be a repeat attack on government buildings? And if there is an unfortunate incident in the future, would it not become a ruse to attack Pakistan?

Going by the shifting Indian arguments that began with the parliament attack and quickly included the deportation of alleged terrorists sheltered in Pakistan, to ending of cross-border infiltration, to the destruction of the terrorist infrastructures supposed to be located across the LoC, to the Kashmir elections, it is difficult to assign any one valid reason for whatever decision is taken about troop re-deployment on Wednesday.

Using the Kashmir election as a reference point in this circular argument was perhaps the flimsiest and least tenable justification for either deploying troops or removing them. Eight hundred people were killed, according to Prime Minister Vajpayee’s own admission, in the run-up to the polls. And yet they are called a success.

The government’s credibility is low not only in its foreign policy, but over issues of wider public interest such as basic probity in governance. The media has done a wonderful job in exposing corruption as it has done indeed in revealing and thereby stalling a fascist assault on the minorities in Gujarat.

However, the media’s attention span does not seem to be uniformly spread to all the relevant and urgent issues that matter to the survival of democracy in the country. The myth of national security as a holy cow was demolished by tehelka.com at high personal cost to its team and organization. And yet there is a certain degree of acceptance of the state’s version of the narrative on security matters in other branches of the media.

It is here that several questions have either not been asked or they have been suppressed, possibly out of misplaced notions of patriotism or gullibility or sheer ineptitude.

To take just one of several instances, the following questions are among many that needed to be asked but weren’t with regard to the Dec 13 outrage. I have tried to follow the proceedings in the courtroom where four accused are facing various charges of involvement in the crime. They include a university professor, a Kashmiri man by the name of S. A. R. Jilani who was better known as a peace activist before he fell foul of the law.

According to the investigating agencies, what proved Jilani’s involvement was a phone call that he received from his younger stepbrother, Faizal, a day after the attack.

A probe into the phone records of another co-accused, Showket Guru, also threw up Jilani’s mobile phone number, the prosecution has claimed.

The police translated from Kashmiri to Hindi the conversation between Jilani and his cousin, and this is what it allegedly said:

Caller [Faizal]: What did you do in Delhi?

Receiver [Jilani]: It was important (laughs).

Last Tuesday, the taped conversation was played in the courtroom and two translators produced by the defence counsel challenged the police translation. They contended that both the questions and their respective answers were incorrectly translated.

One of the experts produced by the defence counsel was award- winning Delhi-based filmmaker Sanjay Kak, a Kashmiri Pandit. This was his translation:

Caller: What has happened?

Receiver: What, in Delhi?

Caller: What has happened? In Delhi?

Receiver: (laughing) By God...!

“The phrase ‘It was important, or yeh zarrori tha’, does not appear in the taped conversation. I know Kashmiri, as it is my mother tongue. I do translation on a regular basis from several languages. It requires a certain specialized skill and I claim expertise in deciphering the tape conversations because of my experience,” Kak told the court.

These arguments will inevitably continue and the case will drag on to its bitter denouement. But, in the meanwhile, has anyone tried to figure out how come the young terrorists, for that is what they must be, those who tried to blow up the parliament and nothing less, how come they were actually headed for the airport before they changed their mind to instead raid the parliament?

No one seems to have questioned this strange public claim by the then Delhi police chief Ajai Raj Sharma. Does this claim not neutralize the thesis that the so-called conspiracy to attack the parliament was hatched months in advance? Normal questions, never asked. Similarly, did anyone probe and report eventually what happened to the conjecture of a sixth man that the police commissioner had hinted at?

Mumbai Police Commissioner M. N. Singh says he had alerted New Delhi about a terrorist conspiracy to attack the parliament following a tip-off. Was there a follow-up to guard the parliament better? If there was, how come very soon afterwards a car with a fake security sticker whose boldly inscribed label number did not tally with that of the terrorists’ licence plate, the most obvious check, was allowed in? These are questions that could help avert a tragic conclusions a la Manto or Chati Singhpora. Nay. They could, in the not too distant future, claim credit for averting, who knows, a nuclear war!

Political parties and democratic culture

All the major political parties, genuine or otherwise, which always love to lecture others on democracy and democratic culture, seem little interested in implementing freedom of expression and thought — virtues considered prerequisite of democracy — in their own ranks and files.

Most of these parties usually revolve around one are two persons who have the final say in all crucial matters. This phenomenon has turned them parties into a family club or an elites’ forum.

Despite experiencing defeat in the successive elections, these parties have failed to learn any lesson from their mistakes. Their entire political record is blended with an autocratic behaviour towards democracy in party ranks.

In the recent elections, these parties amassed a huge amount in the name of ticket allotment fee, but most of them didn’t deposit it in party’s accounts. They didn’t spend even a single penny on electioneering of their candidates. In other words, the candidates were forced to buy their tickets.

The Election Commission has advised the candidates to submit their election expenses with the commission, but it has never asked the parties to submit their accounts after the elections. No one knows where these party funds go. Neither party worker nor office-bearers can see party’s balance-sheet. If they ask for this, they are served with show-cause notices.

After the election results, none of the successful parties dared to convene meeting of their parliamentary boards for the election of parliamentary leaders.

Pakistan Muslim League (Q) chief Mian Azhar, who lost both seats, made an abrupt decision and named Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain as party leader in the parliament. It reflects the attitude of the PML(Q) towards democratic and parliamentary traditions.

The People’s Party Parliamentarians also behaves in similar manner when it comes to democratic values. In the PPP, no one can dare to hold his/her views which are different from that of party chief. The PPP has nominated Makhdoom Amin Fahim as parliamentary leader without seeking the opinion of its so-called parliamentary board and MNAs-elect.

After suffering a humiliating defeat in the province, Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan and provincial chief Begum Nasim Wali Khan resigned immediately from the party slots, saying they don’t like to remain stuck with top posts after being rejected by the masses.

But, a day later, a three-member family delegation — Asfandyar Wali, Begum Nasim Wali and Azam Hoti — visited Akora Khattak and held a meeting with Ajmal Khattak. Despite having no official post, Mr Khan and Begum Wali vowed to unite all nationalists.

The ANP has nominated Bashir Ahmed Bilour as party parliamentary leader in the NWFP Assembly without bothering to consult its parliamentary board. It is right that Chaudhry Shujaat, Amin Fahim and Bashir Bilour deserve to be parliamentary leaders of the PML(Q), PPP and ANP, but they must come through a democratic process.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which has emerged as a king-maker at the centre and the majority party in the NWFP and Balochistan, is silent on this issue. The MMA central body has decided to discuss the issue at its Islamabad meeting.