Indian Muslims and Mumbai

THE agonising memories of the disintegration of Pakistan have returned to haunt at a time when rebels freely roam vast swathes of our territory in the northwest and India is growling in anger from across the eastern border.

Can it happen again? Hopefully, it will not. This hope is instinctive and not born of glib talk coming from the president and the prime minister assuring us that Pakistan is capable and ready to defend its integrity. Such assurances were plentiful in 1971.

As Karachi’s district magistrate in those fateful days, it was the lot of this writer to witness President Yahya and other leaders flying into Karachi from Dhaka one after the other and telling the people that the ‘miscreants’ had been crushed and that calm had returned to East Pakistan.

Gen Tikka Khan was the last to arrive past midnight one day. He was then surrounded by a gaggle of journalists who had been monitoring the news, contrary to official accounts, of the tough resistance put up by rebels long after the army crackdown. A firecracker exploding on the border did not constitute resistance was the general’s curt comment. He then sped off telling the agitated pressmen to go home and sleep and to let him sleep too. That was just months before the surrender.

Admittedly, the rebels here at this point are few, on the fringes, and all are not secessionists. India too is not poised to attack. But the point to emphasise is that if it chose to do so Pakistan would hardly have any supporter or sympathiser. Britain and China epitomise the current worldwide attitude.

According to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown the majority of the terrorist plots that his government had investigated had originated in Pakistan. And China, for the first time, did not feel persuaded to veto a UN committee resolution carrying the implication of Pakistan being branded a terrorist state if it did not outlaw religious organisations suspected of sponsoring the Mumbai attack and arrest their leaders.

The world at large and the powers that matter are all inclined to believe that the terrorists who struck so mercilessly in Mumbai had come from Pakistan. But they do not find much credence in Pakistan’s charge that India foments and finances insurgents in its tribal region. The world also believes that Pakistan is not restraining radical elements even if its intelligence agencies are not colluding in training and equipping them.

With Pakistan put in the dock in full public view and no one to defend it, the Mumbai horror is bound to recoil on the Indian Muslims among whom the government there would surely be seeking out local collaborators of the foreign attackers. In 1946, when the British finally decided to quit India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a staunch supporter of India’s unity, cautioned Muslims that by supporting partition they would become aliens in their own country. What has come to pass over a period of 60 years is much worse.

A commission headed by Mr Rajinder Sachar, a former Chief Justice of India, reported in 2006 that India’s Muslim community had sunk to the bottom of the heap, below even the untouchables, when it came to benefits flowing from government-run welfare schemes, access to education, employment, bank credit, etc. Poverty and insecurity have driven them into ghettos where they are open to exploitation by corrupt officials and Hindu fanatics. Though they form 12.5 per cent of the population their representation in the public services is less than one-third of that.

Pakistan owes it to the Muslims of India who staked their own future on its creation not to add to their woes. It may be recalled that Partition became inevitable only when Nehru unilaterally retracted after the Congress and Muslim League had both accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. Jinnah felt betrayed. For him then there was no going back despite lobbying by Lord Mountbatten and Maulana Azad.

Under that plan India was to be divided into three autonomous regions. The centre was to retain only defence, foreign affairs and communications. The three regions are now independent states but continue to carry the bitter burden of the division of Punjab and Bengal and the bloodshed and mass migrations that followed.

The passage of time and a legacy of mistrust and hostility leave no room to think about a loose federation now. But it should still be possible for the governments of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to form a bloc or union of the kind that emerged in Europe out of the hostilities of the Second World War. Evolving a common mechanism that diverts their attention and resources from the weapons of war to the poverty of their people could be the first step in that direction.

Pakistan would stand to gain more than the others because as a percentage of national income it spends twice as much on defence than India and also suffers from terrorism much more than India does. In such a collaborative arrangement 470 million Muslims of the subcontinent would count for more than they do at present, spread as they are, almost equally, over three countries.

In a long confrontation punctuated by wars the losers all round have been only the people of Pakistan and the Muslims of India. The Mumbai massacre has highlighted this fact and also underlined the need for the reversal of policies pursued so far. The controversy pertaining to culpability and evidence, as in past incidents, can lead nowhere.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

The political reality of it all

FORTUNATELY, I move around in a group that has only heard stories about war and the destruction it brings in its wake. Most of us were either too young or yet to be born in 1965 and 1971 and too aloof to feel the horrors that the Kargil conflict must have generated some years ago.

The military build-up along the borders in 2001-02, following a terrorist strike on the Indian parliament in New Delhi, did cause concern but perhaps the threat was felt for real for the first time after India blamed a Pakistani hand in the Mumbai terror strike late last month. The signs were ominous and some dark clouds still hang over the subcontinent.

But life went on as usual. The activity on the streets was understandable since everyone knows what it takes to survive in this world right now. Slightly more disconcerting for the lot fed on old-time war heroics were the antics our so-called leaders continued to indulge in, even when they took time off for an occasional swipe at India.

Indeed some of the flak that was thrown at President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani could have been duly earned, yet the picture in its entirety didn’t even come close to matching images of the past that are pasted on our memory. The unity that the enemy is supposed to have brought into our ranks on previous such moments was sorely missing this time. This despite the fact that an all-party conference had been held and statements meant to boost the nation’s morale issued to the press.

At a time when war clouds gathered, it was quite baffling to find so many of us who were still more interested in taking on their in-house opponents over a single admission to a medical college. Yes they might have had a point but surely they weren’t looking for any more proof of anyone’s ineligibility to head a crucial institution over and above the facts they already had by their side.

That the gentleman had usurped the right of the ‘original and pure’ claimant was a big enough wrong for the principled to go after him.

In comparison the instance where a father is alleged to have used his influence to get his child through a barrier is an insignificant one. And it has led to an ugly situation where educational records have been dug up and where detailed news stories where fathers may have gone the extra yard to benefit their children splashed across newspapers to compete with the emanating cries of war and peace.

There is no bigger indication of the national divide than the one provided in a recent outburst by Mian Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the PML-N. Mian Sahib had thus far maintained his distance from the rulers. He had stuck fast to his demand for the restoration of the judges and had consistently been calling for a dialogue in the northwest to curb militant activities there.

Nevertheless, he had been generous enough to assure the ruling coalition that he was not going to destabilise the government. In words, he may still be keeping up the old refrain based on his ‘wish’ to see the government complete its term. In practice, he appears to be poised for a decisive clash over power with the old and habitually fumbling rival, the PPP.

Mr Sharif told a television channel last week that Pakistan today was a picture of a failed state — which his party’s men later explained was not quite like saying that Pakistan was a failed state. He said that we had to first set our house in order and in what could turn out to be the most (and perhaps the only) unpopular remark ever since he came back from exile last year, he appeared to link Faridkot near Deepalpur to the Mumbai terror attack. He asked that if we had nothing to hide why was the government stopping the media from visiting the village.

In his interview Mr Sharif did try to link the current situation with the eight-year-long dictatorship of Gen Pervez Musharraf and reiterated that he didn’t want anything for himself but a free judiciary and a true constitution for the country and its people. He promised that he would not be a hurdle in the way of President Asif Zardari if these demands were met. Only a day or two earlier, however, he had revealed that he had been offered a deal for backing off from his campaign in the Farah Dogar examination marks case. After that, did we need a reconfirmation that the goodwill that the two sides had been feigning for some time did not actually exist?

If things go well from a PML-N point of view, a future historian would find plenty of blunders to discredit the current incumbents in power. For Mr Zardari’s line about non-state actors can, on the strength of his rule, be easily modified as actors without a state. If that is too harsh, the eight months of the PPP-led coalition are typically characterised by a sheer lack of governance that is visible to the common man. And so, the cycle will continue.

Use of the royal ‘we’

I BEGAN to think about this subject as my mind went to Mr Zardari’s excessive use of the personal possessive pronoun (my); something to which I shall soon return. The queen of the United Kingdom refers to herself in the first person plural pronoun (we) and to her things in its possessive case (our).

It was in 1169 that an English king, Henry II (d. 1189), first referred to himself as ‘we’. He was being harassed by his barons at the time, and he invoked the divine right of kings to convey that he did what he did with God’s authorisation so that his acts were God’s and his. ‘We’ then meant the king and God.

The idea caught on and subsequent kings and queens continued to use personal pronouns in the first person plural form. The practice spread to Europe, but it had already been in vogue in the Abbasid, Persian and Mughal courts. More recently, an instrument of abdication signed by Nicholas II opened thus: “In agreement with the Imperial Duma we have thought it best to renounce the throne of the Russian empire.” Commenting on the basic law of the state, the ruler of one of the emirates referred to himself as “We Qaboos bin Saad, Sultan of Oman.”

The pronoun ‘we’ is also used by popes, newspaper editors and columnists. We are not concerned with these usages. In royal usage, the intention sometimes was to assert that the speaker and his office were entitled to deference. In other situations the speaker meant to join his people with himself and wished to be taken as speaking both for himself and his people. The same holds for a high court judge or, among others, a member of parliament. ‘We’ in these cases includes both the speaker and the institution to which he belongs. A word now about the possessive pronoun ‘my’. It may denote the user’s ownership of the object named — as in ‘my car’— or the fact of his belonging to an entity — as in my country or my tribe. A politician in a democracy will avoid using it in its possessive connotation when he is referring to institutions.

Addressing a video conference organised by the Hindustan Times on Nov 22, 2008, Asif Ali Zardari declared that “I am not threatened by India”; let the people of Pakistan “force me and let the people of India force their leaders” to find a just solution of the Kashmir dispute: “I am glad I can say with full confidence that I can persuade my parliament” to consider ways of improving ties with India. On other occasions he has referred to “my economy”, “my budget”, “my deficit”, “my treasury”, “my foreign exchange reserves”, “my need” for $100bn.

In this connection it is noteworthy that he has been announcing policy initiatives and reaching understandings and accords with foreign governments without consulting the cabinet or the parliament in Pakistan.

Mr Zardari’s frequent use of the personal pronouns (I and my) raises questions regarding his self-perception. We know who and what he was and is, but we have to figure out how he places himself. We know, for instance, that he came from a moderately prosperous Sindhi land-owning family. He completed high school. His father owned an entertainment business in Karachi which he managed. Somewhere along the line, he caught Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s attention while she looked for a prospective son-in-law and Benazir was persuaded to marry him .This connection made him a public figure. He now was the husband of a formidable politician and, for periods of time, a prime minister’s husband.

Within days of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on Dec 27, 2007, Asif Ali Zardari rose to be his own man, standing taller than he had ever been. Claiming that Benazir had named him as her successor, he got the PPP’s central executive committee to elect him as the party’s co-chairman. A few months later members of parliament and the four provincial assemblies were persuaded to elect him the president of Pakistan in preference to a former judge of the Supreme Court.

As president he is required by the constitution to perform his functions upon the prime minister’s advice. One may be astonished to find that in actual practice it is the other way round: it is the prime minister who acts on the president’s advice, not he on the prime minister’s.

Before Benazir’s death Mr Zardari was not a politician, leader or ruler. Since then he has been cast in all of these roles. It is possible that the potential for them lay hidden in the inner recesses of his personality, and it came to the fore when the call for it surfaced. He does have the knack of taking people along, even leading them up the garden path, so to speak. But it is not equally clear how long he can keep them in his camp. His performance as a politician and as a ruler is, to put it mildly, problematic.

Let us now turn to his frequent use of the possessive personal pronoun in the first person singular form (my). A couple of explanations come to mind. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that he feels that everything existing in Pakistan — land, people, institutions — belongs to him. Instead of identifying himself with the country and the state, he identifies the country and the state with himself. He may reject this interpretation if confronted with it, but that doesn’t matter, for it is to be expected.

Second, he may believe that the offices of PPP chairman and president of Pakistan invest him with majesty like that of absolute kings. Yet, he may be unaware that in that case he should use ‘pluralis majestatis’ — that is, ‘we’.

One of his close associates may consider telling him to be more selective in his use of the personal possessive pronouns.

The writer is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk