0
A GROUP of battle-scarred peace activists from Pakistan was in Delhi last week. They included fighters for human rights, champions of free media, politicians who take on military dictators and freethinkers who work for democracy at home and peace in the neighbourhood. The unflappable and courageous Musarrat Hilali, vice-chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in the NWFP, who has lost friends and associates battling the Taliban`s stranglehold in her homeland, particularly struck me as one who needed to be heard and seen in India.
It is tempting to compare her with Sharmila Irom of Manipur. Her fast unto death now on for over six years against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act in her state will inspire future generation of rights workers across India. Or Musarrat`s challenges could be even as threatening as Geetaben`s, the brave Hindu woman who was stripped and lynched in the streets of Gujarat by members of her own faith, because she was married to a Muslim, or Teesta Setalvad who fights religious bigotry in Gujarat and in the den of Shiv Sena in Mumbai.
Musarrat shared her experiences of a region where only the other day the bullet-ridden body of Shabana, the renowned dancer, was thrown in the centre of Mingora`s Green Square with two messages to the locals in the Swat Valley`s largest town “un-Islamic vices” will no longer be tolerated, and the Taliban is now effectively in control.
Shabana`s body was found slumped on the ground, strewn with bank notes, CDs of her dance performances and pictures from her photo album. In case someone missed the point the Taliban commander Maulana Shah Dauran broadcast a warning on one of its FM radio stations in the valley that his men had killed her and if any other girls were found performing in the city`s Banr Bazaar they would be killed “one by one”.
The fact that Musarrat was largely ignored by Indian TV and newspapers during her two or three days in Delhi speaks more for the self-absorbed Indian media and its blinkered views about Pakistan, than about the insights she could have shared about an inaccessible region that has become a fountainhead of zealotry, a painful bout of which India experienced recently in Mumbai. Asma Jehangir, Salima Hashmi, I.A. Rehman were the other main interlocutors in the 24-member delegation that came here as South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR).
The group mostly included individuals who work in different fields in Pakistan under extremely adverse conditions, who have faced authoritarian governments and religious fanatics alike, and if I am not wrong most of them have been to jail at some point in their endless battles with state and non-state actors who cross their path. They are a truly laudable lot and there`s no one I can think of in India among the so-called civil society folks, who match their gutsy resolve to fight for democracy and liberal ideals as they do in Pakistan.
It was heartbreaking that with so much to offer in the cause of our shared fight against religious terrorism, the group was not given the audience they deserved. I am inclined to believe that it had to do with the mythology the Indian media nurtures about its notions of Pakistanis. Indian channels are happy to show repeated looped shots of a mullah on a Pakistani channel ranting that India be destroyed, if necessary with nuclear weapons. The mullah-stereotype fits snugly with the image needed to whip up hysteria with Indian audiences whenever it is needed, as we saw happening when Mumbai was attacked. Voices of sanity of the kind that SAHR or ANHAD or SANGAT, the groups that hosted the visit, bring to an India-Pakistan discourse are sought to be drowned chiefly because they question the stereotype.
Part of the blame for the low exposure the visitors received - and blame should be apportioned to avoid future hiccups must go to the habit of sectarianism that contuse to stalk the left and liberal groups in India. That alone may have prevented several major groups in Delhi from actively participating in the peace mission. I asked the Pakistanis if they faced a problem like it in their country. “Thank God, in Pakistan the mullahs are victims of their own sectarianism,” was the cheerful reply. Thank God for small mercies, indeed. I am sure, therefore, that if the net were cast wide enough and everyone who had a track record in speaking up for peace, democracy and fundamental rights was posted an invite, it would have made a big difference to the ambience, if not necessarily the outcome of the visit. The only group that brought 15,000 people on the streets of Delhi to condemn the war drums after Mumbai, and which, true to form, was ignored by the Indian TV channels, was the Communist Party of India (ML). They appeared to be shunned, though not by design surely, from the discussions that were organised with the Pakistani peace mission. It`s unforgivable.
At another level, there is a mismatch between the spaces that civil society groups have forged for themselves in Pakistan and their Indian groups who are getting increasingly marginalised from the mainstream struggles. The Pakistanis have thrown out a military dictator, restored the dignity of their judiciary and generally created a consensus for democracy to strike roots in an otherwise difficult terrain in their country. They are standing tall even in the unequal battle against religious fundamentalism. Indians were way ahead of their Pakistani counterparts in having a better-choreographed struggle, like the one they displayed in the overthrow of the emergency regime.
Moreover, they always have the inherent advantage of getting even with the government, or even the system, thanks to a degree of stable democracy that exists, although democracy by ballot alone can be harnessed to nefarious objectives as we see happening in Gujarat. At any rate, there is a greater need for Indian left and liberal groups to come together to fight for their spaces before it is too late. Their Pakistani counterparts and those from other surrounding countries equally engaged in struggles against religious tyranny and economic emancipation can thus join a more robust struggle in India.
Asma Jehangir led the group from Pakistan. It made all the right observations, though the logic of peace quite evidently failed to pierce the armour of jingoism. They indicated this to be the case. Some of the groups the peace mission met were “negative and untrusting”, some called for “surgical strikes”, but “the overwhelming voices we have heard have expressed a strong need for peace and understanding, despite the sorrow and anguish they continue to have regarding the Mumbai attacks”, an end of visit statement said. This brings me to an observation once made by Arundhati Roy, another person who was not invited to last week`s discussions, that civil society groups or and NGOs are not an effective substitute for a political movement. In the absence of a vibrant political campaign, well-meaning visits like SAHR`s would amount to no more than Band-Aid to help heal a hemorrhage. The answer perhaps does not lie in engaging rightwing hawks, as key members of the delegation tried to do, but in fortifying the shrinking liberal political space, and expanding it. That`s a lot tougher than finding grudging space on TV channels or newspapers.
