Adil Najam
Mohammed Hanif, the brilliant author of the engrossing book “The Case of Exploding Mangoes†(I have been planning to write about it ever since I first read it many months ago; and I will) – known to many for his stint at Herald before he joined BBC’s Urdu Service – has just written a most cogent and readable op-ed in The Times of India which is wroth reading; whether you agree with it or not. It is a good argument as well as a good read. And I say that even thought there are more than one points here that I might quibble with. But before we quibble, lets give Mohammed Hanif the floor – and a full and proper hearing. Here is the op-ed he wrote in The Times of India, in full:
Ten Myths About Pakistan
Living in Pakistan and reading about it in the Indian press can sometimes be quite a disorienting experience: one wonders what place on earth they’re talking about? I wouldn’t be surprised if an Indian reader going through Pakistani papers has asked the same question in recent days. Here are some common assumptions about Pakistan and its citizens that I have come across in the Indian media.
1. Pakistan controls the jihadis: Or Pakistan’s government controls the jihadis. Or Pakistan Army controls the jihadis. Or ISI controls the jihadis. Or some rogue elements from the ISI control the Jihadis. Nobody knows the whole truth but increasingly it’s the tail that wags the dog. We must remember that the ISI-Jihadi alliance was a marriage of convenience, which has broken down irrevocably. Pakistan army has lost more soldiers at the hands of these jihadis than it ever did fighting India.
2. Musharraf was in control, Zardari is not: Let’s not forget that General Musharraf seized power after he was fired from his job as the army chief by an elected prime minister. Musharraf first appeased jihadis, then bombed them, and then appeased them again. The country he left behind has become a very dangerous place, above all for its own citizens. There is a latent hankering in sections of the Indian middle class for a strongman. Give Manmohan Singh a military uniform, put all the armed forces under his direct command, make his word the law of the land, and he too will go around thumping his chest saying that it’s his destiny to save India from Indians. Zardari will never have the kind of control that Musharraf had. But Pakistanis do not want another Musharraf.
3. Pakistan, which Pakistan? For a small country, Pakistan is very diverse, not only ethnically but politically as well. General Musharraf’s government bombed Pashtuns in the north for being Islamists and close to the Taliban and at the same time it bombed Balochs in the South for NOT being Islamists and for subscribing to some kind of retro-socialist, anti Taliban ethos. You have probably heard the joke about other countries having armies but Pakistan’s army having a country. Nobody in Pakistan finds it funny.
4. Pakistan and its loose nukes: Pakistan’s nuclear programme is under a sophisticated command and control system, no more under threat than India or Israel’s nuclear assets are threatened by Hindu or Jewish extremists. For a long time Pakistan’s security establishment’s other strategic asset was jihadi organisations, which in the last couple of years have become its biggest liability.
5. Pakistan is a failed state: If it is, then Pakistanis have not noticed. Or they have lived in it for such a long time that they have become used to its dysfunctional aspects. Trains are late but they turn up, there are more VJs, DJs, theatre festivals, melas, and fashion models than a failed state can accommodate. To borrow a phrase from President Zardari, there are lots of non-state actors like Abdul Sattar Edhi who provide emergency health services, orphanages and shelters for sick animals.
6. It is a deeply religious country: Every half-decent election in this country has proved otherwise. Religious parties have never won more than a fraction of popular vote. Last year Pakistan witnessed the largest civil rights movements in the history of this region. It was spontaneous, secular and entirely peaceful. But since people weren’t raising anti-India or anti-America slogans, nobody outside Pakistan took much notice.
7. All Pakistanis hate India: Three out of four provinces in Pakistan – Sindh, Baluchistan, NWFP – have never had any popular anti-India sentiment ever. Punjabis who did impose India as enemy-in-chief on Pakistan are now more interested in selling potatoes to India than destroying it. There is a new breed of al-Qaida inspired jihadis who hate a woman walking on the streets of Karachi as much as they hate a woman driving a car on the streets of Delhi. In fact there is not much that they do not hate: they hate America, Denmark, China CDs, barbers, DVDs , television, even football. Imran Khan recently said that these jihadis will never attack a cricket match but nobody takes him seriously.
8. Training camps: There are militant sanctuaries in the tribal areas of Pakistan but definitely not in Muzaffarabad or Muridke, two favourite targets for Indian journalists, probably because those are the cities they have ever been allowed to visit. After all how much training do you need if you are going to shoot at random civilians or blow yourself up in a crowded bazaar? So if anyone thinks a few missiles targeted at Muzaffarabad will teach anyone a lesson, they should switch off their TV and try to locate it on the map.
9. RAW would never do what ISI does: Both the agencies have had a brilliant record of creating mayhem in the neighbouring countries. Both have a dismal record when it comes to protecting their own people. There is a simple reason that ISI is a bigger, more notorious brand name: It was CIA’s franchise during the jihad against the Soviets. And now it’s busy doing jihad against those very jihadis.
10. Pakistan is poor, India is rich: Pakistanis visiting India till the mid-eighties came back very smug. They told us about India’s slums, and that there was nothing to buy except handicrafts and saris. Then Pakistanis could say with justifiable pride that nobody slept hungry in their country. But now, not only do people sleep hungry in both the countries, they also commit suicide because they see nothing but a lifetime of hunger ahead. A debt-ridden farmer contemplating suicide in Maharashtra and a mother who abandons her children in Karachi because she can’t feed them: this is what we have achieved in our mutual desire to teach each other a lesson.
So, quibble if you will. But do tell us what you think about the argument that Hanif is making.
Keep religion in the personal domain and tolerance in the public domain. It is very easy to very quickly have too much religion. It is rather difficult to have too much tolerance. I am referring to the belief system part of religion, and not the identity part. Religion might well teach you tolerance, and I don’t know of any that does not, but what is important is to practice that tolerance and pointing out religion as the source of the tolerance is irrelevant. Be kind to each other. That’s noble. But to start preaching about the source of your inspiration for being kind runs the risk of very quickly starting to resemble some sort of an agenda… bragging at least. Media too should celeberate religious identity, if it must, in an inclusive and complementary manner, but stay well clear of belief systems except when it is as part of a legitimate, absolutely objective journalistic or scholarly activity.
@Arjun
Maybe there have been misunderstandings, and maybe you may have been misunderstood. To the extent that I have contributed, if I have contributed, I am sorry.
However, some brief points: this is a Pakistani forum and the majority commenting are Pakistanis. The bulk of the comments are forthright and frank; don’t you find it wholly admirable, and don’t you wish that if it was an Indian forum, and the bulk were Indian respondents, the answers should have the same moral fibre and the freedom from hypocrisy and cant that is demonstrated here?
Regarding some of the points that you made, at the end of your first post, in your second post, in your third post (both rather similar in nature, and probably written in a fit of temper), I have problems. The trouble is that to explain what these are, I necessarily have to explain at some length. It can’t be done in a sentence and a half. I also am uncomfortable about taking the conversation away from the original Hanif piece about myths about Pakistan prevalent in India. This is not a mailing list after all.
There is also the problem that in response, I need to be perfectly frank about some things. Do you really want me to wash Indian dirty linen on a Pakistani forum? Won’t they be irritated and wonder why we can’t take our bickering somewhere else?
If you agree, I can furnish you my mail id and we can stop troubling these good people. This is said without rancor, and with no intention to denigrate your views or to curtail your freedom of speech.
Or, if there is a different point of view, and that will necessarily come from Pakistani viewers, we can talk about these issues quite openly in this forum itself. I propose that as guests, we express no desire to take these differences further in this forum, and take it ‘off-line’; we can do so only by express invitation.
However, I leave it to your good judgement.
To Bonobashi. Thanks for the comments. Since the discussion here is about myths in Indian media regarding Pakistan, I don’t want to go off the topic too much but your observations are good in general. I however still stand for allowing free speech to the likes of Sudarshan for two reasons.
First of all, it is a part of a democratic society to give even the fringe elements a right to speak so that all ideas can be heard and then the toxic ones can be countered by better arguements. (For example for each Sudarshan that India has, it has hundreds of fiercely secular Bonbashis with better arguements so his kind does not scare me). Secondly banning speech is not practical in todays world. (Check out hundreds of hate spewing Jihadi websites). Thus the only counter to such rubbish is better ideas.
Coming back to Pakistan, I hope in exposing the myths in the Indian media about Pakistan, this thread has helped expose some myths about India in Pakistani minds as well. I hope our Pakistani friends can see us for what we are; Not a uniformly anti Pakistan\anti-muslim bunch of religious bigots but an agrumentative bunch who can think for ourselves and at times disagree in principal and yet can still be Indians.
At the risk of sounding patronizing (that is not the intent here) I hope moderate Pakistanis can realise that hyperpatriotism is as destructive as antinationalism. Pakistan is currently in the midst of a civil war for the soul of Pakistani nation and only the moderates in Pakistan can fight that battle.
Only they can create a society that MA Jinnah envisioned. I can only say that in a society were a Nobel prize winner Ahmediya can not be accepted as an equal citizen was probably not what he would have wanted.
The outcome of this current civil war is being closely watched in India since its outcome will surley decide the fate of our common South Asian homeland.
May the humane and reasonable side win.
A wonderful, yet a highly realistic op-ed indeed from MH.
People on both sides of the border (I mean common people) who are more worried about their bread and if possible some butter, are least bothered of what happens on the state level, either in India or in Pakistan. They need peace and they want to have a reasonable life (which their forefathers promised at the time of independence). Unfortunately for them the governance on both sides of the border has been a change of faces only. Brown Sahibs against Gora Sahibs ruling the roost now. It is the time the media, the intelligentsia, the leaders and the governments on both sides of this sub-continental divide should concentrate more on this core issue.
The political parties heat- up anti Pak sentiments in India and anti India sentiments on our side to fatten up their vote banks. (Unfortunately in Pakistan an additional factor
Haha, this is hilarious all over as usual. It looks like half the people commenting on me or my comments haven’t even read them :). But carry on.
Hanif’s article is interesting but doesn’t cover even half the myths or perceptions held.