Followers

Friday, February 10, 2012

INDIA AND PAKISTAN ON A PRECIPICE

Karamat Ghori, the ex-Diplomat from Pakistan has been writing some really explosive columns that have been carried in India by The New Indian Express. His views are very refreshing when compared with the other columnists from both sides of the great Indian divide. I admire him for the courage of his convictions, and the forthright manner in which he sets out his opinions without bothering about the egos that he would be hurting. His writing makes it obvious that the opinions expressed by him are his own and that he is not representing an individual or group that have another kind of a hidden agenda. Unfortunately, most of our columnists have a personal agenda which they are unable to hide, however hard they may try, and however impartial they may wish to be seen as. The powerful political-industrial bloc has infiltrated the media completely and, in most cases, seems to have acquired ownership of media houses, though not overtly. The havoc this influence has wreaked on governance is now becoming all too apparent to the educated middle class, and that is one reason why a simple villager like Anna Hazare could launch a mass movement with such great success.

The fact that this movement has hardly made any difference to the ground reality, and will eventually fizzle out and die, has a lot to do with the kind of Constitution we were given by our leaders after independence. Under the magnetic spell of the larger-than-life, and undoubtedly patriotic leadership of the Indian National Congress and the leaders of the other political parties, we adopted a Constitution that did not provide for any safeguards against the kind of fractured mandates we have been having, that has perpetrated the tyranny of political parties getting less than half the votes and yet controlling the Parliament and the assemblies, through convenient, opportunistic alliances with splinter groups who have won elections through fraud, intimidation, bribery, and through appeals to base sentiments aroused by caste, creed, and language. Our Constitution did not foresee that within less than a quarter-century, political leadership would pass into the hands of corrupt and criminal elements that would use the same Constitution to subvert each and every institution, including the Parliament and the state assemblies, as also the Armed Forces, the judiciary, the educational infrastructure, and the fifth estate. Anna Hazare's call for satyagraha against corruption was called unconstitutional by these same elements that sat pompously in television studios and poured invective on the poor man and his movement. All manner of dirt was tried to be unearthed, and when that failed, half-truths were dressed up as Holy Scripture and a complicit media was ever-willing to give them the maximum space. By the time the poor man came to Mumbai for his fast in December, the movement had been dissipated by sheer inertia and doubt that anything worthwhile would actually be achieved by these means. One by one the culprits who had been jailed under the first flush of Anna's movement were coming out on bail; and to top them all, Suresh Kalmadi, the chief CWG conspirator and his close associates also managed to get bail this week. The CBI, which is handling the prosecution in all these cases, will ensure that they become as protracted as possible, maybe for decades, and the courts will keep on granting adjournments after adjournments on the flimsiest of grounds. Public memory, being proverbially short, will do the rest. These men will never see the inside of a jail again, and will continue to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth. Our Constitution even allows them to fight elections since they have not been sentenced, and as long as they remain under trial, they are to be treated as equal citizens.

According to Karamat Ghori, Pakistan too finds itself in a similar precarious position, (see “Pakistan at a Precipice” TNIE of January 20th). He finds similar subversive forces are active and in power within that country. Unfortunately, the partition of 1947 did much more damage to the subcontinent than what would have been had it been only a political partition. The two-nation theory, based solely on religion, let loose a Pandora's Box of other divisive theories, and we may not yet have seen the final denouement of that ill-conceived decision. Pakistan, ostensibly was thought to be a home for the Muslims of the subcontinent, but look where it has landed? It is fractured into myriad fragments based on sect, language, culture, wealth or the absence of it. Economic power has been arrogated by the landed robber-barons of the Punjab or Sind, while political power has largely remained with the armed forces who continue to dominate the country whether in their barracks or outside. The common man has remained outside this charmed circle of English-speaking, power-broking elite, largely uneducated and illiterate. He has become easy prey to the ranting of the fundamentalists who have exploited his fear of a retributive Allah and made him a willing tool in their hands. The originally conceived secular state of Pakistan has ended up as the epicentre of global jihadi terrorism that threatens to make this land into another stone-age civilization, much like what the Taliban regime did to Afghanistan. The final paragraph of his column that says that the country remains "perilously poised on a knife's edge, and its people bemused, perplexed and harassed out of their wits" is too simplistic an analysis of the situation obtaining now in Pakistan. The only people who are in this frame of mind are a minuscule minority consisting of a few intellectuals like him; unfortunately too small in number to make any difference. They vent their frustrations through their writings, just like people like me do here.

The problem with Pakistan is that it allowed a religion to dominate its very existence. Its visceral hatred for India, a whole from which it had been wrenched apart, dictated its response to economic and political challenges, and never allowed the state to grow and develop into a healthy nation. Today the same religion has become a hydra-headed monster ready to devour the very entity that it had created. Its obsession with India drove it to spend enormous sums of scarce money on military hardware, nuclear technology, and on other totally wasteful adventures. It sought to make friends with China, who have their eyes on Pakistan like they had on Tibet. The Karakoram Highway is a case in point. Whom does this road benefit? Pakistan must ask itself this question. What kind of tourist and goods traffic does it carry from Pakistan to China? On the other hand, does it not present an all-weather, highly secure road for the Chinese to move men and troops into Pakistan at any time? The perplexed, bemused and harassed people are not making any difference to the way the country is being governed. The large, illiterate mass has no feeling that they are sitting on a precipice. They have been too deeply inoculated by the hate-India virus, and are easily deflected into religious frenzy by their mullahs and madrasas.

The other problem with Pakistan is that it identifies itself not as a part of a geographical entity that the Indian subcontinent is, but as a part of an ummah that is light years away from it in its history, culture, language and ethos. There is, therefore, a deliberate attempt at the obliteration of the historical and cultural heritage of Pakistan, while substituting it with a false, imported culture of the Arab lands. The conflict between these two histories and cultures is tearing the society apart at its seams, leaving behind a totally confused, amorphous mass unable to comprehend its future in the light of an imposed history and culture. The brilliant Japanese writer Murakami, in his magnum opus "IQ84" observes that "our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves". This is exactly what has been happening to the people of Pakistan.

India, on the other hand, in the single-minded pursuit of the American dream of wealth and material possessions, too has forgotten its great cultural and spiritual history. The middle classes have become armchair critics, discussing the rot that has set into our systems over a glass of imported Scotch whiskey, while even unwilling to make the effort of casting their votes. Their apathy has allowed the political parties to get criminal and unsocial elements elected to the legislatures, with the consequences that we are seeing now. We know how much damage the Congress party has done to the country, and we also know that enormous sums of looted wealth are lying in banks abroad, yet we are unable to maintain collective pressure on the politicians and put them where they truly belong. That Rajiv Gandhi's widow continues to hold a nation of over one billion people to ransom, and continues to influence every arm of Indian governance, is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this apathy. She is not even of Indian origin, yet by using the Gandhi surname, she is able to fool the gullible masses. It is a matter of the deepest shame that India's malnutrition figures are perhaps the worst in the world, far higher than sub-Saharan Africa. Daily revelations of one scam after another have become routine. The administration is only engaged in fire-fighting and has no time for governance.

India and Pakistan today are at a crossroads. The Bhutto legacy carried through Benazir and now through her widower is carrying Pakistan to the brink of the precipice. Indira Gandhi's legacy, carried through her son, and now by his widow, continues to erode whatever values that might have survived after the first twenty-five years of independence. The view from the brink is most disheartening. Pakistan and India both have no credible leadership alternatives in sight. Imran Khan lately has been drawing large crowds. But I think he will be like another Benazir, completely disconnected from the common people of the land. He cannot even speak proper Urdu or Punjabi, and is more comfortable speaking in English. The main opposition party in India, the BJP also has no leader who can move the apathetic middle classes. The personal ambitions of people like Advani are not allowing younger and more capable individuals to rise and take up the challenge. The Left has become completely irrelevant and its current leadership can only be described as 'pathetic'. The other political parties are nothing but private militias and gangs with dynastic leadership patterns, and behave more like the dacoits of an earlier era.

The future, I am afraid, does not augur well for both our countries. It is therefore important that voices of people like Karamat Ghori continue to be articulated, and the message disseminated far and wide. In the darkness that will come, these voices will be the only beacons that may show the light to the bewildered masses.