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.
Adil Najam! is he out of sur these days ?
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Durrani says:
January 14th, 2009 2:27 pm
Dear
@bloody civilian
Perhaps if your beloved politicians were’nt so totally incompetent and utterly corrupt, they would not have been thrown out by the military four times in Pakistan’s history. The politicians have been part and parcel of military regimes.
I also reject the currently fashionable view among Pakistanis to blame Pakistan Army for everything. I think the people of Pakistan also share the blame for the state of affairs in Pakistan. The Army has indeed made mistakes, it has also defended the country against Indian aggression and internal terrorism. Since 2001 the army has been fighting the very extremists that have ruined FATA and NWFP of Pakistan, yet Pakistanis called such soldiers “American dogs fighting for American money” and refused to support their efforts. Its only in the last 2.5 years, and having suffered tremendously from terrorism that the same Pakistani “awam” now demands that the army eliminate extremism and accuses it of having a hidden agendas like “strategic depth”. But even now, there is no shortage of talk show hosts and politicians and commoners who still sympathize with these militants. Our awam is indeed ignorant and confused.
To Bonabashi, Amir Hussain, DAN, Arjun, Pasha, Bloody civilian and other like minded individuals:
I wish we moderates can have a permanent forum for an intelligent discussion of these sometimes taboo topics. My reason for it is as follows:
26/11 (and the subsequent massive media and political point and counterpoint that followed) has shown that no other two peoples are stuck at the hip as we are. Every political statement, media commentary and reported security move from one side resulted in a counter statement, analysis and reply by the other. Unfortunately the dialogue (on many planes) was and remains purely reactive and inflammatory.
Each side is often ignorant of the apprehensions, fears and compulsions of the other side. The moderates like us watch with alarm while extremists gloat and goad on an increasingly alarmed and confused populations towards visions of Armageddon (Sudarshan
@ bloody civilian
I do wish you’d pick a nick which’d be easier to address! It’s so inhibiting to start off swearing at your correspondent, and puts one on the defensive immediately. Presumably the original intention.
Yes, perhaps in India we don’t sufficiently appreciate the benefits that unbroken democracy has conferred. Even our most imperious politicians had the innate decency and democratic spirit to accept the verdict of the electorate (Indira Gandhi was the example that I had in mind, but after her example, all others have been more or less gracious about electoral defeat). We don’t seem to realise, as has been pointed out in various posts but most tellingly in yours, what a debilitating effect decades of autocracy do to public mores and to the general quality of political discourse.
Sometimes when we contemplate our home-grown breed of pols, we do find it difficult to think of them as blessings.
Just at the moment, we are going through a period of transition to an earthier, less polished generation, who however seem to have captured the aspirations of the masses rather better than their predecessors.
Your point about the scepticism developed in Pakistan is interesting. Never thought about it, but now that it is articulated, it seems reasonable. Egypt has a similar, or perhaps a more pronounced scepticism, bordering on the cynical but salvaged by a hope for the future, and mixed with a strong but very subtle sense of humour.
Unfortunately, I know so little about Pakistan that I can only take note of your observation, and hope that some day I can check it personally.
Why is it not present in India in quite that form? Perhaps because we tend to take it for granted that something that offends a large number of people will be set right – late perhaps, slowly and with foot-dragging perhaps, but there will be a reaction. There is also the question of how we regard our institutions. Politicians are heartily disliked; see any poll. There is serious concern in political circles about this, sometimes finding very funny expression, like the man complaining about women in lipstick threatening action against politicians instead of concentrating on the common enemy across the border. Bureaucrats are despised. The judiciary was revered, but their image is beginning to look a little worn at the edges, and they need to clean up. The Electoral Commission is highly trusted. The Armed Services are still not questioned, partly because they have steadfastly refused to take sides while in service (the Col. Purohit episode came as a terrible shock which still hasn’t worn off). Maybe for this reason, that institutions are not totally distrusted yet, the degree of scepticism hasn’t become as deep here as it is said to be in your milieu.
You had a good point to make about making secure an insecure minority. I read history in college, and am returning to it now on the other side of my working life. It does seem that there could have been far more magnanimity towards the largest minority community than was displayed. Of course, the situation was not a black-and-white one, and I might quibble with some of the facts, but your core criticism is, I think, not too far from the target. That one hurt, and deserved to.
However, with the utmost respect, and with full recognition that it is a subtle point, I am deeply unhappy about the philosophy which lies behind your fourth paragraph, and simply can’t agree that there is a national sovereignty which is distinct from state sovereignty. I believe I understand where you are coming from, but I also believe – Lenin and Stalin notwithstanding – that that is a deeply flawed position, and its extrapolation to the South Asian situation was an intellectual disaster. As for the latter-day expression that it found, in a highly distorted form, not at all in the sense that I believe you are using, in the federal structure of India, it needs urgent rectification, and may turn out costly for India unless rectified at an early date. Very interesting point, although I disagree so wholeheartedly, and I wish we had space to argue it out fully.