THE warriors were not amused. This was plain to see. Their faces wore glum looks; the desk-thumping when it came was conspicuously half-hearted. Any other speaker in the like situation would have been cut short, the podium stormed, the mikes seized, and the man sent running for his life.
But this was no ordinary speaker. Here was the commander of all of Pakistan's armies, and its nuclear forces to boot, giving the fathers of the church a taste of their own medicine. They were not liking it at all, neither his audacity nor their own helplessness.
The annual Seerat Conference in Islamabad on the Holy Prophet's birthday is not a setting for dramatic happenings. Speeches delivered on the occasion are of the predictable kind and therefore easily forgotten. But when I accidentally tuned into the live recording of the event on PTV I sat transfixed. For there was General Musharraf uttering no homilies or pieties but talking serious business.
His message was simple if also a trifle blunt: start living in the real world. And the more effective for being plain and direct with no frills or oratorical flourishes.
Here's a precis (not a literal rendering) of what he said. Why did the sectarian fathers squabble amongst themselves? First it was Sunnis and Shias at loggerheads with each other, now another variation had crept in: Barelvis vs Deobandis. A man's faith was his own affair. In such matters what right had anyone to sit in judgement over others? This was God's prerogative, not that of mortals.
How could we call ours an Islamic state? In it was no brotherhood, unity or tolerance. Nor justice for the poor and needy. We cited with pride the exalted place given to women in Islam. But the facts on the ground told a different story. We were hypocrites. What lay in our hearts came not on our lips.
By speaking irresponsibly we gave a handle to others to malign us. Little wonder Pakistan was called all manner of things: failed state, terrorist state. We should learn to relate our utterances to our strength. We were a weak country, left behind in the race for development. While there was no question of discarding principles, it was not wise to speak intemperately. Let us first acquire strength. Then, if we wanted to, we could abuse others to our hearts' content. What need to talk of planting the banner of Islam on the Red Fort in Delhi? Did we not realize the difficulty we thus caused our brethren-in-faith across the border? We were committed to the Kashmir cause and would advance it in whatever way we could. But it was also a fact that a lot of the money collected for Kashmir went into private pockets.
Our economy was not in sync with our military strength. Japan's GDP was four times the size of the GDP of the entire Muslim world; Germany's was two times bigger. Wherein lay the fault? We lagged behind in human development (at which point the CE compared figures of universities and Ph.Ds in other countries and those in the Muslim world). Precis ends.
Newspaper reporting can often be misleading, conveying the outer impression of an event while leaving its essence untouched. So it can be with General Musharraf's speech. Mr Vajpayee has already welcomed it, a circumstance which almost ensures that it will be read in the context of India-Pakistan relations whereas to isolate it thus is to give it a wrong meaning.
High-flying rhetoric, tall claims, bigotry and intolerance are not specific to the warriors of the faith. To assume as much is to do the holy warriors an injustice. These things are true of Pakistan as a whole. As a nation are we not victims of inflated rhetoric? Intolerance, militancy and sectarianism may be the special wares hawked by the fathers of the faith but jingoism, militarism and nuke-brandishing are follies that can be laid more appropriately at the doors of the permanent establishment: the generals and mandarins who sit at the high table of national security.
General Musharraf not only sits at this table; he presides over it. But notice the irony of his performance. While he called attention to the verbal excesses of the religious armies, he studiously avoided any mention of the profligacy and practical excesses of the permanent establishment. We should bring our economic strength up to par with our military strength, he urged. But he was careful not to say we might consider scaling down our military strength to reflect more accurately our economic circumstances.
Other caveats can also be sounded. A leader cannot afford the luxury of permanent diagnosis. In his position he must not only point out the sickness; he must also do something about it. The military government has now been in power for some time. What has it done to improve law and order (a subject regarding which the CE waxed eloquent)? What victories can it claim in the fight against militant sectarianism? How has it improved the administrative functioning of the Pakistani state?
If the military's record on these scores is uneven or unconvincing, is it not proper to ensure that sermonizing not outstrip performance? Reading a lesson in realism to the accredited barons of the church may be the thing to do (they certainly deserve it). But shouldn't there also be an element of humility and self-criticism in the exercise?
In the coming days count on more such objections being heard. Even so, it pays to remember that while discourse in the realm of statecraft cannot be an end in itself, the right kind of discourse can influence political behaviour and even raise it to a higher level. Churchill's Iron Curtain speech helped define a critical moment in post-war Europe. Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" speech drew attention to an important aspect of the modern state (besides giving a revealing phrase to the language).
Far-fetched analogies are obviously misplaced but this much perhaps can safely be hazarded: in such open terms no Pakistani leader before has addressed the bugbear of national over-reach and religious fanaticism. While military leaders are not above speaking the language of hypocrisy - we need only remember the irrepressible General Zia in this connection - only a military leader sure of himself and not worried about his back could have spoken in these terms. Only a military leader could have sacked the one-man public relations firm that went by the name of A. Q. Khan. Only a military leader could have called the fathers of the faith to account without the windows being smashed and he being chased from the hall.
This only goes to show the power of the army in a politically-repressed and retarded country like Pakistan - the power to do good and, as the history of the last 53 years amply illustrates, the power to inflict evil.
In any event, this was a speech waiting to be delivered: a necessary corrective to the nonsense which fills the national atmosphere. In ladling out this corrective Musharraf also provided a glimpse into his evolution as a leader. Not long ago his government went about in mortal fear of the mullah. The fiasco over the minor changes in the anti-blasphemy law, when a solemn word given had hastily to be retracted, will not be forgotten in a hurry. Nor will images of free-wheeling religious gatherings where wild calls for jihad were made against the backdrop of gun-toting bodyguards in masks and battle fatigues.
India could have asked for nothing better. We were proving more adept at self-defamation than our enemies could have imagined. In between came the comic relief provided by the antics of a small-time cleric from my home district of Chakwal whose threats to march on Islamabad were taken seriously by the authorities. To the alarmed outsider, Pakistan seemed a ripe candidate for Talibanisation.
Juxtaposed with those exaggerated fears when the military was still testing its political strength, General Musharraf's present boldness comes across as a giant leap. Indeed herein lies an irony to beat all others. For the author of Kargil to become a leading espouser of realism is a transformation, admittedly on a much reduced scale, to set beside Nixon's journey from communist-baiting to drawing the grand design of detente.