Saddam & Suharto are same people, so are Pakistani & Indian zealots

THE election results in Pakistan sent many a liberal soul into a tizzy on both sides of the border. There were all manner of rational as well as preposterous reactions. One letter to Dawn took the cake for its undiluted acid. Anis Haroon of Karachi was probably responding sympathetically to a previous writer who may have expressed a desire to dump the country and leave rather than face the arriving mediaeval doom.

Haroon, evidently a moderate, non-impulsive kind of a person, warns us against the temptation of easy answers, but not without throwing in a bit of itching powder into the subject thus: “Though this letter reflects the feelings of many Pakistanis, I believe that the remedy lies in staying back and fighting it out. Migration is an easy option. But if people are inclined that way, then may I request the last person leaving this country to please switch off the lights.”

Rightwing mullahs may appear forbidding, even menacing in their heavily-bearded and deep-set visage, but they are essentially the same people as India’s less eye-catching rabid lot that make up the core of Hindu revivalism. In fact, the more lethal rightwing Hindus are usually clean-shaven people who may even look dapper as several ministers in the present administration do. The camouflaged fanatic can be more dangerous than the one who wears his warnings on his shirtsleeves.

The late Prof K. M. Ashraf of Aligarh University used to apply a strange yardstick to measure the degree of obscurantism one was capable of reflecting from a distance. He claimed that the tableeghi jamaat and their other assorted groups of proselytizing Muslims, including the ones from the Jamaat-i-Islami, could be recognized from a distance by their short pyjamas and long kurtas, whom he described as badey bhai ka kurta aur chhotey bhai ka pyjama phaney huey log.

In Prof Ashraf’s view it was easier to win a rational argument with a more doctrinaire bigot, on occasions by simply choosing not to have a pointless discussion at all. On the other hand, winning a rational point against the far less shrill, even musically endowed Sufis, for example, who couch their beliefs in charming humane idioms, was a more uphill task, according to him.

True enough. Sufism, like Buddhism,is mistaken for a pacifist religion, which neither of them really seem to be when it comes to the real crunch. How shall we explain the turmoil in the predominantly Sufi Kashmir or the Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka if the axioms were not to be challenged? In Pakistan it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the dapper liberal Muslim, who banned the public consumption of alcohol years before the advent of the more Wahabi-ized form of Nizam-i-Mustafa was envisaged.

In a very essential way the arrival of the doctrinaire Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal as the dominant party in Pakistan resembles the arrival of the rightwing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, literally astride a chariot of obscurantism. That was 15 years ago. In India the rightwing bigots gained ground with the assassination of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In Pakistan they got a toehold first after eliminating Z. A. Bhutto, and later after getting rid of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, at different intervals and in different ways.

The other common characteristic of the rightwing religious groups in India and Pakistan is their feigned anti-Americanism. For example, after constructing the whole thesis around the atom bomb and militarism and his more infamous “a jaw for a tooth” incendiary fulminations, which ostensibly riled the United States, India’s top ideologue of Hindutva, Arun Shourie, had this to say:

“We may have atomic weapons but if we do not manage our governmental finances well, or if we let our foreign exchange reserves slip and have to turn to the IMF, we will be squeezed into submission.”

Shourie, a former World Bank buff, said darkly last week: “We will be vulnerable and not in spite of our atomic weapons but because of them. The way the Soviet Union collapsed yesterday, the way Russia and Pakistan can be pressurised today are ready warnings.”

In plain English, what Shourie is saying is that we need religious bigotry and rabble rousing to win elections and keep the pretence of democracy for that is where we start our political careers. But really what we need are free-market reforms, which the Congress party by its demise has shown to be innately unpopular things and which, therefore, require an authoritarian system to implement them. And that system would be delivered in India by Hindutva, just as it being licked into shape by the MMA-types in the neighbourhood.

For what did the MMA, a patchwork of at least six diverse apparently hard-line parties, some of whom had deep links with the Taliban, say in a post-election statement? “We are ready to cooperate with the United States in the war against terrorism, but the Americans should not expect support from us in the war against Islam or Muslims.” That was a small squeak after threatening a mighty roar.

Senior Pakistan officials have affirmed on their part that the fundamentals of Pakistan’s cooperation with the US in the war in Afghanistan would remain unaffected by the outcome of the elections. And Ameerul Azeem, spokesman for the alliance, told the Associated Press in Islamabad that the MMA would show flexibility regardless of its pronouncements in the heat of the election campaign, and would like to cooperate with the US in Afghanistan.

Anis Haroon’s dilemma is not unique. The same dilemma has visited a host of global thinkers and political analysts, including, of course, the renowned Professor Noam Chomsky. In a more immediate context though it was best explained, in my opinion, by the inimitable Arundhati Roy although her reasons for arriving there are rooted in her belief that the so-called free market seeks not to just undermine the sovereignty of developing nations but it targets democracy itself as is happening in much of South Asia.

“Today corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies,” Roy wrote recently.

“It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to make sure that it’s only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized — not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, or God forbid, justice. It’s as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.”

Because of her strong views against the controversial Narmada dam, her anti-Hindutva essays and various other positions that have riled the establishment, the ubiquitous whisperers have sought to brand Arundhati Roy as some kind of a self-propagandist. But don’t fear, the term has been used to trash other forms of dissent, including the one that came from the tehelka.com team.

Yet is it not true that, as she says, close to one year after the War Against Terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy?

“All kinds of dissent is being defined as ‘terrorism’. All kinds of laws are being passed to deal with it. Osama bin Laden seems to have vanished into thin air. Mullah Omar is said to have made his escape on a motorbike. The Taliban may have disappeared but their spirit, and their system of summary justice is surfacing in the unlikeliest of places. In India, in Pakistan, in Nigeria, in America, in all the Central Asian republics run by all manner of despots, and of course in Afghanistan under the US-backed Northern Alliance.” That’s not just Arundhati’s pleadings, it’s becoming widely shared point of view today.

When someone asked Prof Chomsky recently if he regarded Saddam Hussein as a dictator, he said yes, as much of a dictator as Gen Suharto, the American protege, was. The remark opens up many clogged yet connected issues from recent events.

If we look at all the so-called former frontline Arab states in the Middle East that were ranged against Israel, all of them without exception were headed by non-doctrinaire Islamic leaders. If we look at the early leadership of the Palestinians themselves, we find George Habash, Nayef Hawathmeh, and of course who can forget Leila Khaled. Yasser Arafat, though a secular leader in his later days, had risen from the ranks of the Ikhwan- i-Muslimeen, the Muslim Brotherhood, and may be that’s why he is still there and can find a common ground with the more religious fundamentalist groups like Hamas.

If we take the formative days of the revolution against the Shah of Iran, the Tudeh Party and other assorted left and secular groups indubitably led it. All of them were decimated or neutralized. In other words someone used the religious clergy in Iran to pre-empt a secular takeover that would threaten the oil- yielding medieval sovereigns. Clearly someone used the Shahs and the Suhartos to eliminate the Mosaddeghs in Iran and their Indonesian equivalents and beyond.

The events between Oliver North, the Iranian mullahs and the Contra rebels were only a minor blip that subsequently gave the story away. The US government sold weapons to the Iranians, of all the people, to raise money for their own little private war. They actually helped to arm people they publicly denounced as the fundamentalist mullahs of Iran.

On a smaller scale, but along essentially the same pattern, there was a glimpse of the same subversion of the liberal secular voice in Gujarat by a religious rightwing, where contrary to the stereotype of Indian Muslims, those at the receiving end were liberal Muslims like Prof J. S. Bandukwala, a senior member of the state chapter of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, and Ehsan Jaffri, a deeply democratic writer and former MP who wrote maudlin patriotic songs about his motherland.

It seems to be a myth that the Hindu right is a sworn enemy of the Muslim right. They admire and need each other more than what they are publicly willing to confess. And who is applauding them both shall remain an abiding mystery for several good reasons.

Restoration of parliament

IBRAT writes that 18 days have passed to the election but the government has failed to call assemblies into session. Although no party has secured the simple majority to form a government at the Centre, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, the People’s Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League(Q) have secured majority seats in the provincial assemblies of the NWFP, Punjab and Sindh, respectively. Until a party / alliance secures a majority at the Centre, the government should invite the three parties to form governments in the three provinces so that the deadlock is broken to some extent.

The deadlock is creating apprehensions in the minds of the voters, adds Tameer-i-Sindh. The prevailing political activities suggest that the leaders of the parties are only interested in power and not in the restoration of democracy. If they put the latter on the top of their agenda, many problems will be solved automatically. At least the parties should develop a consensus on the restoration of the Constitution. For the time being, the parties are moving in a circle. They should abandon this approach and instead of focussing on their differences, they should consider the points of consensus to pave the way for the restoration of democracy.

Kawish says that the Sindh government has promulgated the Sindh Water Management Ordinance 2002. By the promulgation of the law, the control of the Sindh Irrigation Development Authority (Sida) has been extended to more canals and drought-hit areas, as well as to schemes to combat floods. According to the target, the provincial irrigation department will be scrapped, and Sida will replace it by 2005.

On the advice of foreign donors, preparations to privatize the irrigation system in the country had begun seven years ago. In the first phase, pilot projects based on growers’ participation in running the irrigation system were launched in the provinces after the establishment of the provincial irrigation authorities.

In Sindh, the Nara Canal was given under the authority of Sida four years ago. Since then a tug-of-war between Sida and the Sindh irrigation department has led to an acute water shortage in the Mirpurkhas area, which has cost farmers billions of rupees in losses. According to the pilot project, farmers’ organizations were to be formed to help in the management of the irrigation system but only 20 per cent organizations have been established so far and most of them do not seem to be effective.

However, without critically evaluating the failure of the Nara pilot project, the authority of Sida has been extended to four out of 14 major canals in Sindh. Moreover, the affairs of the barrages and floods have also been given under its authority, without considering whether it has the technical expertise, financial resources and the ability to make decisions.

Worse still, it has been decided that anybody can be the chairman of Sida, whether he has the irrigation background or not. Now that only days are left to the formation of the new Sindh government, the haste with which the ordinance has been promulgated says a lot about it.

Awami Awaz writes that the railway authorities have launched a selective operation against the so-called encroachments in Sindh. Earlier, the railways tried to eject some residents of the Khairpur city, which led to a massive protest and law and order problem, on the one hand, and opposition from the district government, on the other. Now the railway authorities have opened a new front at Sukkur, where their demolition squads were met with stiff resistance from the residents. This situation has also led to tension between the Sukkur district government and the rail authorities. Is there nobody to ask the railway officials why they have singled out Sindh and the colonies of the indigenous people for their demolition spree?

Petty issues hold no interest for people

IF Qazi Hussain Ahmad has his way, Governor Lt-Gen Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah would soon be out on the street looking for an accommodation for himself. For that is what the Jamaat-I-Islami leader has promised, turning the sprawling colonial-era Governor’s House into a university. A commendable lofty goal indeed.

That’s not all. Qazi’s Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal has made other promises too to the bewildered people of the NWFP. Watch out. The MMA is going to ban combined education. It will give a boot to the Americans and throw them out of the ‘Land of the Pure. It wants to see an administration that looks and behaves like ‘true’ Muslims. It will ban riba no matter what the superior court says or does not say. And it will change the weekend holiday from Sunday to Friday, even if its dream of forming a government at the centre turns sour.

God willing, the people of the NWFP will have two holidays in a week, a provincial holiday on Friday and federal holiday on Sunday. Would it not be fun, two holidays in a week and specially if your boss is a good human being (rare though) and lets you enjoy a long weekend by granting a perennial leave on Saturday. How’s that!

It’s one thing making promises and quite another implementing them. Good for us, if it refuses to pay interest on all the billions of rupees cash development loans this resource-rich but cash-strapped province owes to the federal government — Rs74 billion in all.

Who would not support more schools, colleges and for that matter universities for girls in the NWFP where women’s literacy rate remains one of the lowest in the country, 12 per cent according to Unicef. But for that the government would need money. Where would the MMA get the wherewithal to implement its agenda, when only a fraction of the Rs48 billion annual budget goes into education and the lion’s share of Rs8.67 billion is eaten up by debt-servicing.

And if the MMA believes it can stop the hunt for Al Qaeda and militants in the NWFP and adjoining tribal areas, it needs to think again. The federal government amended the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 last week and inserted a new section 131 (A) to it. Read carefully what it says:

“Power to the military force for public security and maintenance of law and order: (1) if the Provincial Government is satisfied that, for the public security, protection of life and property, public peace and maintenance of law and order, it is necessary to secure the assistance of the armed forces or civil armed forces, the Provincial Government may require, with the prior approval of the Federal Government, or the Federal Government may on its own or on the request of the Provincial Government, direct any officer of the armed forces or civil armed forces not below the rank of a JCO equivalent to render such assistance with the help of the forces ...”

Rhetoric and reality are two different things. Power politics is a different ballgame and it has its own dynamics. It would be naive to think that the MMA would take on the federal government, form its own little fiefdom and refuse to implement its policies. Forget it. More than 95 per cent of the NWFP budget is funded through federal receipts. Law and order, though hitherto a provincial subject, has now become a federal subject too by virtue of the amendment to the CRPC.

As things stand, sooner or later, the MMA would find itself facing the odds. And finding it difficult to deliver on those promises, it may take the relatively safer course of turning towards cosmetics, attacking cinemas and banning cable television operations, for instance.

The time for the truth has come. The MMA did not expect it but come it has and in a big way. It’s time to deliver and extricate our hapless masses of social and economic injustices and create a ‘true’ Islamic society where the haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the deprived stand together, shoulder to shoulder.

But much as the non-religious parties would want the MMA to fail soon and crumble under the weight of its own internal contradictions, the time has come for the so-called ‘secular and liberal’ forces too to do some soul-searching and introspection.

It was their failure that turned into a gain for the MMA. It was their disappointing performance that has emboldened the MMA and given it a shot in the arm to catapult to the corridors of power. Mere resignations from party offices, therefore, would not serve any purpose.

People have grown weary of their policies and politics that have led them nowhere. Times have changed and they must realize that they are dealing with a new generation of literate and educated people who are more concerned about their future economic well-being and social justice than petty issues.