Karachi May 29:
For General Parvez Musharraf to travel to Delhi to resume the Lahore
Peace Process that the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had
started in February 1999 is a high-risk activity. Along the way he has
to face two separate threats: one is what might be described as the
Kargil syndrome; some hardline force or faction can term the effort as a
betrayal of the Kashmiris and or Jehadis and proceed to do what the
Kargil planners intended politically to do. The second is what awaits
him in Delhi. To appreciate this uncertainty one has to have some idea
of what lies behind the sudden decision of Mr. Vajpayee to invite Gen.
Musharraf whom he ha sort of ostracised.
Dealing with India is no longer a simple foreign policy matter here.
Thanks to unrestrained and unthinking Islamic rhetoric --- in which both
Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have played a part of active accessory
--- any government of the day runs the risk of falling foul of powerful
vested interests. The latter are primarily the over a dozen Jehadi
outfits like Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,
the Jaish-e- Muhammad and several others among major groups. Thanks to
extremist rhetoric they gain popularity among the gullible, funds flow
in, acquisition of modern small arms enhances their sense of power and
makes them a nuisance that cumulatively has become a political force.
Some call it a shackle that the rulers have devised it for their own
feet. How would Jehadi organisations react is now a major constraint for
Islamabad's policy makers.
Army's role in encouraging the Jehadis has not been inconsiderable.
These could do what the Army itself could not do. It also used them as a
lever on the government of the day from the time Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg
was the Chief of Army Staff and he decided to make the Kashmirs'
basically non-violent and spontaneous protest movement of 1989 into an
armed insurgency. The strategy was based on his assessment that with the
acquisition of nuclear capability, India can do nothing while Pakistan
can twist the Indian lion's tail in Kashmir. A collateral benefit of the
Kashmir Jehad is the creation of a strong lobby that can be used against
the government if it adopts policies that the Army does not like. Now of
course this interest group has grown so rich and powerful that it can,
on its own, act as a check on the government's ability to move in a
direction it does not approve.
It has another facet to it. The Jehadis' long association with the Army
has infected the latter with what Gen. Zia's persistent efforts to
Islamise the Army achieved and its own orchestration of heavy Islamic
propaganda through its linkages with the Urdu press has done. Indeed the
whole Rightwing has been radcialised with mixing up of the notion of
opposing India's misguided anti-democratic policies and with the one of
opposing the Hindu India as such; to all educated brainwashed and paid
Jehadis the Jehad is against Hindu India rather than any fine
discrimination among policies. The fear is that some parts of the Army
might have come to believe the notion of Jehad being waged is against
Hindu India as such. At any rate, this fear, genuine enough, has
strengthened the clout of vested interest no end.
Gen. Musharraf's first instructions after receiving Vajpayee's letter
was to begin intensive lobbying with the Jehadi outfits. He has good
reasons to fear that the Kargil syndrome might not visit his sojourn in
Delhi. One does not mean that another Kargil-like fighting will break
out. It is about its politics: Nawaz Sharif's perceived tilt towards
India was denounced by Jamaat-i-Islami (read its Jehadi outfit Hizbul
Mujahideen) and similar other parties. In the planning of Kargil
operation this politics is commonly believed to have been the motivating
factor.
Now that this is the turn of Gen. Musharraf to go to India to try to do
a deal on Kashmir, it is natural that the power of this lobby will be
seen as a force that cannot be trifled with --- not by a military regime
that has only a narrow constituency of senior Army officers and which
can be accused of a sellout so much more easily if the trend of events
shows that Musharraf is conceding too much. It is obvious that
Pakistan's strongman is not going to Delhi as a victor. For a possible
deal he cannot expect Pakistan's maximum demands to be met. Success in
talks will inevitably require give and take on both sides. Would
Musharraf be in a position to give anything at all --- and sell it to
his hard (and armed) Right?
That is a question that will hover over the conference table in Delhi. A
democratic leader with a large constituency reaches the top after
acquiring an ability and a stature that enable him or her to sell
virtually any concession he or she has to make. Not so a military
strongman who has a narrow constituency which is also narrow minded.
Well, Pakistanis have to live with this built in defect or weakness.
This may not apply if the military man-turned-politician can somehow
persuade the other side to a win-win formula in which neither side is
seen to lose. Does Musharraf has anything of the kind in his brief case?
Even so no one knows the reason why Mr. Vajpayee reversed the gear and
what precisely his political design is? This is the most important
determinant of the outcome of Musharraf visit.
Monday, May 28, 2001 CALCUTTA
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's overture to General Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistan's military ruler, not only breaks a two-year freeze in relations
between nuclear-armed neighbors but reverses the old maxim about trade
following the flag. Indians are skeptical about commercial compulsions, but
petroleum politics, among other pressures, might achieve a settlement that
the threat of a nuclear holocaust failed to achieve.
Lest Hindu nationalists see the invitation as a climbdown, Mr. Vajpayee
ended a six-month truce in Kashmir. Despite strong public condemnation by
the Pakistani foreign secretary, that sop to hard-liners at home will not
really upset the Pakistanis (or Kashmir separatists) too much, for they
have never taken the truce very seriously.
What they should seize on instead as encouraging is that India has
initiated a dialogue after previously declaring that it would not talk to
the Pakistanis until they called off what New Delhi calls their "proxy war"
in Kashmir. Even more significantly, after insisting for years that Kashmir
is a domestic problem in which Pakistan has no part, India's eight-point
agenda for the summit talks includes Kashmir.
The official reason India gives is that Pakistan has acted with "restraint"
in the last six months. In fact, two of Mr. Vajpayee's senior ministers
concluded after visiting Kashmir that Pakistan would have to be involved in
any resolution of the dispute.
Contributory factors might be the Indian assessment that General Musharraf
is here to stay and that Pakistan must be engaged to prevent the spread of
Taleban-style Islamic extremism from Afghanistan to Kashmir and other areas
of strategic importance to India.
This change of tack is partly directed at George W. Bush, whom India is
courting by supporting missile defense. But another reason lies nearer to
home, where Washington's objective of preventing a fourth war between India
and Pakistan is endorsed by a billionaire Indian businessman who has
emerged as a leading player in back channel negotiations between the two
countries. Dhirubhai Ambani's continued prosperity demands an accommodation.
A former petrol pump attendant and spice trader, Mr. Ambani has built the
world's largest petrochemical complex, sprawling over 31 square kilometers
near Jamnagar in Gujarat, not far from the border where India and Pakistan
fought a brief war in 1965. The refinery capacity could serve Pakistan as
easily as India.
The all-weather port nearby is only four days' sailing from the oil wells
of the Middle East, and can berth 300,000-ton tankers. Jamnagar would be
the obvious terminus for pipelines across Pakistan to carry crude oil from
fields in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
General Musharraf is known to be interested in land-based pipelines, which
are not as expensive as those on the ocean bed and would give him a certain
leverage with India. If plans materialize, it would be a major step toward
creating a viable South Asian common market with strong links to the Middle
East and Central Asia.
Mr. Ambani and his two sons, Mukesh and Anil, are believed to have
discussed this, as well as India-Pakistan cooperation, with Bill Clinton
when they were closeted together in the Bombay Stock Exchange during the
former president's visit last year.
Forbes assesses the Ambani fortune at $6.6 billion. Another war over
Kashmir would damage their huge investment, perhaps irretrievably.
Mr. Vajpayee is in poor health. With some of his National Democratic
Alliance coalition partners discredited in recent weeks, he has shown
considerable courage in locking horns with his party's trade union bosses
on the issue of economic reform, insisting that liberalization must
continue.
On Pakistan, he can argue that the diplomatic gamble of inviting the
military strongman is not the first risk he has taken in his efforts to
bring about a subcontinental reconciliation. His 1999 bus journey to Lahore
to meet Nawaz Sharif, the since ousted prime minister, and the declaration
that the two leaders issued constituted a major peace initiative. It came
to nothing largely because of the Kargil crisis fomented by hundreds of
Pakistani soldiers who infiltrated across the cease-fire line that divides
Kashmir between the two countries.
General Musharraf was blamed for the clandestine invasion. He repudiated
the Lahore declaration. But Mr. Vajpayee insists that his latest
conciliatory move is justified. What remains to be seen is how far he can
carry hard-liners in his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and
whether Pakistan's response is substantive or only symbolic.
Six people were killed in a skirmish in Kashmir within hours of the
cease-fire ending. If there are more deaths and the peace talks with the
Pakistani leader have to be paid for in increasing bloodshed, Kashmiris
will intensify their protest and Islamabad might find it expedient to take
their side.
General Musharraf can rescue Mr. Vajpayee from this vicious cycle by
appealing to the Kashmir militants (who depend on Pakistan for money,
supplies and sanctuary) to suspend agitation for the time being. Whether he
does so or not will depend on a combination of national and international
pressures.
The writer, a former editor of The Statesman in India, contributed this
comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar had all but accepted the Indian
PM AB Vajpayee's invitation for talks to Gen. Parvez Musharraf even
before it was received. This is of a piece with the eagerness verging on anxiety with which Pakistan's Foreign Office had been asking for talks with India. Indians suddenly came round and invited the CE. But
India-Pakistan summits are a tricky affair. They have left a trail of
bitterness after the last three of them: Shimla in 1972, 1989 in
Islamabad and 1999 in Lahore. Prospect of such a summit does not fail to raise expectations among the people on both sides and if they are not realised, there will be worsening of the situation.
Summits can certainly be useful, if they achieve a modicum of success.
That requires adequate preparations by officials. In the tense and
stalemated relations of Pakistan with India, a summit should only take
place when there is a likelihood of some success --- a few substantive
agreements that make sense to the people. That requires a readiness on
either side to make compromises --- mainly on serious matters, often
called principles. Without such flexibility, summitry is a dangerous
exercise.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of any flexibility on either side.
Pakistan remains wedded to its maximum demand on Kashmir, the core
issue, viz. Kashmiris should get the right of self-determination
preferably through a UN supervised vote. Indians, on the other hand,
would simply have none of it; they have written Kashmir into their
constitution. They think it is non-negotiable. Moreover, they are amazed that Pakistan, a poor, small and vulnerable country, should continue to threaten India --- a great power. Unless, at least one side is ready to make a compromise on its maximum demands, no summit will help; summits are not the occasions to convince, cajole or inveigle the other side. Nor does attending a summit necessarily enhance a regime's
respectability.
It is however true that there is ample scope for many useful agreements
--- provided Pakistani government is prepared to leave Kashmir issue
unresolved while it proceeds to improve trade, economic, cultural and
even political ties with India. This is an old Indian recommendation
that has never appealed to Islamabad for fear that leaving Kashmir
unattended while cooperating with India for mutual benefit will relegate Kashmir to irrelevance. Much can be said on this issue. But so long as India absolutely refuses to discuss possible changes in the status of Kashmir Valley --- which is the only real contention --- or Pakistan does not change its stance of satisfaction on Kashmir first or no progress on trade and cultural ties, no meeting at any level will break the logjam.
The starkness of the situation and its terrible dangers are well known.
Both countries very nearly went to war in 1999 over Kargil. The
alternative to making concessions --- and by both sides --- is war
almost any time. Both openly declared their nuclear status in 1998.
Briefly people thought there would now be no war. In 2000 India's Chief
of Army Staff and Defence Minister adumbrated a new doctrine: nuclear
weapons deter other nuclear weapons; a conventional war can still be
fought. In other words, India will go to war if necessary and it will be up to Pakistan to use its nuclear weapons (first). India will reply
suitably. India's recent Poorna Vijay exercise was to test this
doctrine; it has shown that it is ready for even a nuclear exchange in
the Indo-Gangetic plains.
There is one set of agreements that can still be made and these are
necessary for both. It is to agree on CBMs (confidence building
measures) vis-à-vis the two nuclear deterrents. The Americans have been
selling this idea for some years and have done admirable work in
virtually drafting such agreements. Some have been signed and more are
available for signatures. When PM Vajpayee came to Lahore he signed an
MOU for that purpose. This summit can see a sheaf of such technical
agreements. They should certainly be signed. But one has a gnawing fear
that the CBMs that have been put in place, tend to be forgotten just
when needed most. Gen. Talat Masood has written ably on this theme. The
fear is that insofar as Pakistan and India are concerned, no amount of
CBMs may be able to prevent war the way they could during the east-west
cold war.
In short, adequate groundwork has to be laid before any summit is held.
The usual practice is that a readymade agreement is inked that was
agreed upon by Foreign Ministers. In other cases, there has to be
adequate flexibility and some commonalties in ideas to enable them to
put intractable problems in a new agreed framework for solution later
--- for keeping the problem contained and isolated --- while agreements
in other fields for common good are made. This flexibility is absent in
both Pakistan and India. Pakistan has amply shown during the last 50
years that unless India provides satisfaction on Kashmir, it will not
let Indo-Pakistan cooperation, even free trade, proceed --- necessarily
at its own cost through lost opportunities for the whole of South Asia.
The SAARC has also not taken off because of that. Indian leadership has
accepted all the losses rather than accommodate Pakistan.
However, there is a theoretical possibility but no more than that: if
there is adequate statesmanship on either side, the two can succeed in
kicking off a serious search for compromises on core issues transcending the principles held so far. But statesmanship is not something that cannot be made to order nor is it a function of a top office. A failed summit can be a nasty thing. It is sure to create more frustration as a result of heightened expectations not being met. This has happened several times in the past. Even inter government relations can worsen and lead to deplorable consequences. It is time that we realise how serious is the situation between Pakistan and India really.
Obviously the deadlock on the supposed core issue of Kashmir is total.
In view of the Jihad-cum-insurgency in Kashmir, logical options for
India are limited to either giving up its own hard stance because it
could not suppress the insurgency in 10 years or it gets ready to
cripple Pakistan's ability to sustain the insurgency. There is no
evidence that India is likely to do anything of the former kind. If not, the unavoidable alternative is to extend the area of war and exert
pressure on Pakistan where it will hurt most. The escalation is built in the insurgency. But in the case of war, Pakistan will have to make a
nuclear strike. That is the Pakistani theory. India will have to reply.
What this nuclear exchange will do can be imagined.
There would be no victory or defeat. It would be a common defeat for
all. Point is there is no greater value than the safety and welfare of
the people. This value demands that nuclear weapons should not be used
for any purpose whatsoever. It should by now be clear to all that
preventing a nuclear exchange is possible only if war is not fought. If
a war takes place, both sides will race into using the nuclear weapons
first, all the formal declarations notwithstanding. It is war that has
to be made impossible by popular action in both countries. It is not for the governments to do. They have shown that they can do no better than what they have already done. Both have landed themselves into a
situation where war is the only alternative. A summit therefore can make sense if anyone can show that either of the government is willing to make a serious compromise. If not, there should be no summit.
Insofar as Kashmir is concerned, it is not that no progress can be made
at all. As Air Marshal Asghar Khan has shown that progress might be
possible if the two countries are ready for a basic, people-to-people
reconciliation on the Franco-German model and put the Kashmir Valley
into what amounts to a condominium of the two countries. The idea is
pregnant with possibilities and details can be worked out and
negotiated. But basic readiness to be flexible and make compromises is
the prerequisite. The Air Marshal has made an individual off the cuff
recommendation; it needs being sold to the people of both countries.
Needless to say that no condominium can be workable if the two countries cannot be reconciled and made friends. Unfortunately the two governments we do have are most unsuited for the task.
New Delhi, May 25 - The following is the text of the letter Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has sent to Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf:
Excellency,
India has, through dialogue, consistently endeavored to build a
relationship of durable peace, stability and cooperative friendship with Pakistan. Our common enemy is poverty. For the welfare of our peoples, there is no other recourse but a pursuit of the path of reconciliation, of engaging in productive dialogue and by building trust and confidence. I invite you to walk this high road with us.
When I visited Lahore in February 1999, with the objective of beginning a new chapter in our bilateral relations, I had recorded at the
Minar-e-Pakistan that a 'stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is in
India's interest'; that remains our conviction.
We have to pick up the threads again, including renewing the Composite
Dialogue, so that we can put in place a stable structure of cooperation and address all outstanding issues, including J&K.
I have the pleasure to extend a most cordial invitation to Begum Musharraf and you to visit India at your early convenience.
Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.
(A.B. Vajpayee)
The deadlock between top government leaders of India and Pakistan has at long last broken with the Indian PM AB Vajpayee inviting Pakistani Chief Executive to Delhi for talks. Earlier official contacts were few and concerned the minutiae of diplomacy. What real contact there was was
through Track II diplomacy. The latest in the latter series is the
ongoing visit of Maulana Ahmad Shah Bukhari, the Imam of Delhi's Jama
Masjid.
People, but more especially the rightwing parties, have been intrigued
by the extraordinarily quiet visit of Imam Bukhari. He made no public
pronouncement on arrival. He drove from Lahore and met CE Gen. Parvez
Musharraf. That has set off a hurricane of speculation and a new term,
the Ulema track of diplomacy, has been coined --- on the assumption made
by Jehadi organisations that the Imam is on a quasi-official mission to
invite Pakistan's religious party leaders to a conference of Ulema in
Delhi that will be expected to pass a resolution on Kashmir solution
that will please the powers that be in Lahore.
The context of the latest Indian PM's invitation to Pakistan's military
strongman to come to Delhi for talks --- necessarily on Kashmir, SAARC
and trade --- the ending of the ceasefire in Kashmir and the American
statements of intent on promoting Indo-Pakistani talks is naturally
clear. Some have concluded that the road that seemed to open in Kashmir
as a result of Hizbul Mujahideen's unilateral ceasefire last year has
proved to be a chimera, thus obliging Indian government to think of some
new stratagem. It would seem that this invitation is a part of India's
alternative approach.
Insofar as the Imam of Jama Masjid's trip to Pakistan is concerned, it
might aim at more than one objective. At any rate, it has to have some
link with the grand Maulvis conference in Peshawar in April, called by
JUI (Jamiat-i-Ulemai Islam) of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, ostensibly to
celebrate the 142nd anniversary of the founding of the Deoband's famous
seminary. JUI, the patron and progenitors of Taliban, used that
conference, including naturally a strong delegation of top clerics from
Deoband itself, to what might be called anointing and sanctifying the
Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Some think that RSS men like Arun Shouri
may have decided to go one-up on Pakistanis by playing the Ulema card.
At any rate, the Jehadi organisations, especially Lashkar-i-Taiba,
Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkatul Mujahideen and Jaish-i-Mohammad have
strongly reacted against this Track II by a religious-looking person and
have refused to meet him. But leaders of Kashmiri parties that do not
believe in a violent Jehad are said to be willing to meet him. Indeed,
the Jehadi organisations just mentioned have also trained some of their
political guns on Islamabad, calling it welcome of Bukhari's and others'
Track II diplomacy and readiness to consider all ideas of a Kashmir
solution like its further division, third option in some form etc as
amounting to the betrayal of Mujahideen's blood.
This pressure from hardliners against showing flexibility in talks with
India was entirely predictable. More of it is to be expected, though
some of it is obviously self serving and amenable to suppression.
Jehadi
organisations are now a vested interest here. A lot of money, arms,
political support from administration and popularity is involved. If
Vajpayee and Musharraf can somehow arrive at a modus operandi, most of
the interests of these groups will suffer. They have now acquired
political clout by virtue of the number of assault rifles they have and
the popularity in some sections they enjoy. They can be expected to go
on opposing a compromise deal.
Regarding what lies behind the Vajpayee move, a few analysts pooh pooh
the American role or compulsion of events in Kashmir. They do not see
New Delhi being pushed about the killings in Kashmir; it can tolerate
more of them almost indefinitely. They think that the true context for
this new move is India's domestic politics. BJP and Mr. Vajpayee have
just suffered a setback in the May 10 polls to 5 state Assemblies. He is
seen here as being under threat of replacement by hardline and more
RSS-friendly politicians. It could be his stratagem to start a series of
talks with Pakistan in which the whole world will hang on to every word
he utters. Given the expected massive interest in these talks, that
might be no time for his rivals to rock the boat.
Anyway, since Pakistan has all but accepted the Indian invitation, even
before it has been delivered, its course and dynamics cannot be
anticipated in the absence of precise knowledge about what South Block
has in mind. Events will soon tell us all about it.
The Pakistan Movement
The historical record, as opposed to the official narratives, of
Pakistan's creation indicate that as colonial India moved closer to
self-rule and eventual independence Muslim League was formed at Dhaka in 1906 by sections of the subcontinent's Muslim aristocracy loyal to the raj. "To look after the political interests of Indian Muslims" was its main objective. It soon attracted the support of Western educated Muslim middle classes and a secular minded M. A. Jinnah emerged as its undisputed leader. Together they launched a movement to ensure, through
constitutional means, that in case of any British withdrawal the Indian
Muslims will have equal political and economic opportunities with their
Hindu counterparts who were not only a numerical majority but much ahead in education and participation in the colonial economy and administration.
By 1940s the League's objectives boiled down to the demand for Pakistan, for reasons we need not go into here.
There is no doubt that the Muslims of India shared certain common
socio-economic conditions, beliefs, personal laws as well as certain
ethnocentric attitudes. However, none of these characteristics permeated their lives so deeply and uniformly to render them into a homogenous community. For political purposes they were recognized as a separate communal group by the British administration under the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909.
In real life the Muslim population of India as well as the part
thereof which later became citizens of Pakistan manifested a wide range of diversity in language, cultural practices, geography, social class,
rural-urban distribution and also folk spirituality. The Muslim League
faced an uphill task to mobilize these diverse people into a unified force around its agenda. Matters were made worse for the League due to the strong opposition it encountered from the political parties specifically organized around Islamic religion dominated by the ulema who claimed to be the guardians of the faith. They scoffed at the Muslim League leaders as persons of dubious religious credentials and derided their demand for Pakistan as based on the Western concept of nationalism alien to Islam's supra-national concept of the umma.
The League on the other hand, aware of the emotive appeal of
religion, did not hesitate to employ Islamic symbols to rally popular
support for its cause. Strategic as the use of this Islamic symbolism may have been, it would be equally misleading if not dishonest to infer from this that the party was seeking to create an Islamic state. No credible League leader ever invoked "Islamic Ideology" during the independence movement. Nor was the League able to generate an Islamic national consciousness among the Muslims of India, least of all in the Muslim majority areas which later became Pakistan, despite all the pep-talk about the "two nation" theory.
The actual formation of Pakistan and the drawing of its borders
was the outcome of a long and tortuous process of political negotiations, bitterly contested elections of 1937 and 1945- 46 with Muslim pitted against Muslim, and eleventh hour referenda preceding independence.
The Expediency of Islamic Rule
The idea of Pakistan as an Islamic state began to take shape after
independence. At first, the Islamic parties that had opposed the creation of Pakistan, the Jamat-e-Islami (JI) and the Jamiat-e-ulema-Pakistan (JUI) in particular, began to orchestrate the expediency of Islamic rule in the country. In their newfound homeland the ulema of these parties started a discourse of "Islamic ideology," "Islamic nationhood" (an oxymoron according to their own pre-partition rhetoric) and "Islam in danger."
On the other hand M. A. Jinnah, the elderly leader of Muslim League, could see the divisive traps hidden in this discourse and was quick to warn the nation against falling for it. "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the state," was his clear message to the new nation in his presidential address to the inaugural session of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan held in August 1947.
But Jinnah died just a year after independence, and those who
succeeded the great leader in the business of the state soon lost their
grip on democratic norms of governance and egalitarian ethics. The
Pakistani state became an arena in which various contenders of power - the Muslim League leaders of different class and ethnic backgrounds, the powerful civil servants and generals, the religious maulanas - began to vie with each other for hegemony. The emerging saga of intrigues and coups d'etat is now well known. Suffice it to say that Islam in the process became a functional resource employed to legitimize state authority by those in power. What had been a movement for the economic uplift and political rights of the Muslim masses was, after the creation of Pakistan, diverted into a major exercise to impart Islamic character to the state and nation allegedly to serve the religious aspirations of the people.
In its initial phase the mixing of Islam in the affairs of the
state took the form of a series of steps aimed at dressing up the
constitutional documents developed over time with declarations of faith
and mission statements. The first of these instruments produced in 1949
was the Objectives Resolution moved in the Constituent Assembly by the
first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, a veteran League leader who had left his electoral constituency in India. The Resolution declared that sovereignty in Pakistan rests with God Almighty and also affirmed the role of the state in enabling Muslims to order their lives in accord with the teachings of Islam. This was followed by a 1952 Report of the Basic Principles Committee of the same Assembly stipulating that the head of the state shall be a Muslim and a board of five ulema will check that no legislation contravened the injunctions of Holy Quran and sunna, the prophetic tradition.
While political intrigue spelled the demise of the first
Constituent Assembly in 1954, the Islamic provisos generated by it
continued to be reproduced and expanded is subsequent documents. The
ill-fated constitution of 1956 gave Pakistan the name of "Islamic
Republic." The 1962 constitution of the Ayub era replaced the board of
ulema by the Advisory Council on Islamic Ideology to oversee the Islamic veracity of state legislation. The 1973 constitution enacted during the Z. A. Bhutto government went a step further to name Islam as the state religion.
This was the greening of Pakistan carried on for three decades of
independence amidst great fanfare of beating the drums of Islamic ideology and chasing the demons of secularism, communism and so forth off the land.
It left the doors wide open for religio-political parties eagerly waiting in the wings to take over state power. But for all practical purposes it was a cosmetic exercise of little relevance to the daily lives of people struggling with mundane problems of survival and left on their own to weather the storms of wars with India and break up of the country. The Islamic projections of the state had practically lost their functional utility to prop up elitist regimes by the end of Z. A. Bhutto rule.
Islamization
To be politically serviceable in days to come the Idea of the
Islamic state had now to be given some substantive content and used
pro-actively. For this task Gen. Zia Ulhaq "was chosen by destiny," as the official historians of Pakistan are prone to say. The General who had deposed an elected prime minister and had him executed by manipulating the judicial process could turn nowhere but to religious sanction for his politically bankrupt rule. Claiming to be divinely inspired he embarked on a frantic mission to Islamize Pakistan's state and society, with generous input by the leadership of JI.
The center piece of this Islamization process was a selective
implementation of punitive sharia laws. The Hudud Ordinance of 1979 laid down the so called Islamic penalties for a number of offences such as drinking, theft, fornication and adultery prescribing exemplary
punishments of public floggings and hangings, amputation of limbs, and
death by stoning. Although the more gory of these punishments remained few and far between, there was an orgy of public floggings not only for petty thefts, corruptions and alleged sexual offences but in a large number of cases for political dissent.
Sharia flourishes under the shadow or the sword, as the old adage
goes, but there was much more to what Zia accomplished and left behind as a legacy which has proven to be an albatross around the neck of each of his political successors from Benazir Bhutto to Gen. Musharraf. The
elevation of Islamic political parties to the heights of ideological
hegemony and coercive power, parallel shariat courts with wide-ranging
mandate to declare any statute on the books as un-Islamic, laws
discriminating against women and minorities, Islamic taxes, public
displays of religiosity, bloody sectarian violence are parts of the same altered socio-political reality inherited from the eleven year Zia
dictatorship.
The Islamic State
While the existing realities prefigure Pakistan's Islamic state,
its fully functional form is yet to be witnessed. There is no ideal-type model of an Islamic state to go by that can be derived from the history of the Muslim world. What is sometimes referred to as the original pristine Islamic State ( Nizam-e-Mustapha in the vocabulary of Pakistan's ulema) is a misnomer because the seventh century Hijaz was a tribal society in transition which had not yet evolved into a nation state. The new vision of society given by Islam was based on the higher values of social justice, freedom, equality, fraternity, and not on any fixed ritualistic structures.
It is therefore inevitable that the means by which an Islamic
state is established in Pakistan and the shape it takes will be determined by the dynamics of locally generated socio- political forces in conjunction with the country's evolving geo-political relations. Since the advent of the Islamization process in late 1970s, followed by the Klashnikov culture of the 1980s it became evident that ideological
coercion and physical violence is the main, if not the only means, by
which any kind of Islamic state will be created in Pakistan. This is not only conspicuous in the punitive laws of the state enacted in the name of Islam, but also in the intimidating power of the Islamic parties with their greatly expanded control of seminaries, madresas, print media and armed detachments of sectarian death squads and Jehadi lashkars.
The use of coercion in pursuit of Islamic statehood is also
necessitated because of the alien character of the orthodox Islamic establishment in Pakistan represented by mainstream Islamic parties and their presiding ulema. Their brand of Islam is doctrinaire, virulently intolerant of diversity, misogynist and obsessed with jehad, contrary to the syncretic, tolerant, devotional and peace-loving Islam of the ordinary people of Pakistan steeped in the mystic spirituality of the Indus Valley and its languages.
The latter populist tradition must be suppressed in order to establish
the supremacy of the orthodox Islamic establishment.
From all indications the model of Islamic state towards which
Pakistan is being led at the moment is that of the Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan. This model in fact was conceived and nurtured inside Pakistan as a collaborative project of the Pakistani state and its powerful secretive military intelligence agency, ISI, the Islamic political parties, the JI and JUI with their jehadi formations, and the American CIA. It was imposed on the people of Afghanistan by the barrel of the gun wielded by Taliban. It is no longer a secret from where the Taliban and their supreme leader, Mulla Omar, imbibed their interpretation of Islam, obtained their military training and have since been supplied with arms and ammunition to destroy Afghanistan as known in history to rebuild the Islamic state on its ruins.
The ravages and repression carried out by the Taliban in
Afghanistan are not random acts. The destruction of Buddha's statutes
along with museums and works of art depicting living creatures, the
hacking of TV sets and VCRs, the burning of films and cinema houses, the banning of singing and dancing, stripping women of their jobs and
confining them in homes and burkas (veils), the massacres of Hazara shias and liberal Tajiks and Uzbeks are normal functions of the Islamic state according to lessons learned by the Taliban in the Deobandi-Wahabi madrasas and seminaries spread out in Pakistan from Akora Khattak to Karachi.
It is therefore not surprising that in Pakistan today the orthodox
Islamic parties led by the senior mentors of Taliban are flexing their
muscles to bring their handiwork back home. However, their chances of
success in establishing this kind of Islamic state are not very bright.
To do so, as the case of Afghanistan demonstrates, they must first
substantially complete the task of cultural desertification of Pakistan and destruction of its ethnic plurality and diversity of religious beliefs. On the other hand, the extent to which Pakistan's civil society remains hostage to the State's present Afghanistan and Kashmir policy, the deep shadows of Islamic state a la Taliban will not slip away from the land.
The rickety bus from Jammu to Ramgarh, a distance of some forty kilometres,
took more than two hours to reach its destination, stopping after every
twenty minutes to pick up large crowds of people heading for the Sufi
shrine of the Baba at Chamaliyal. It was Thursday, a day particularly
important for the Sufis, and the usual Thursday festivities were being held
at the shrine, located right on the Line of Actual Control that separates
Pakistani- and Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Lunch at Ramgarh was simple fare -- thick, hot daal and crispy rotis, washed
down with a glass of sweet, frothy lassi. There had been news of heavy
firing the night before between the Indian Border security Force and the
Pakistan Rangers in the Samba sector, where Chamaliyal lies. Luckily,
Chamaliyal had been spared the fury of the gun-shots, though it was said
that some neighbouring villages on both sides of the Line of Control had
been hit.
No vans or buses were plying to the border villages for fear of coming
within the range of the continuing shelling. My hopes of visiting the
Baba’s dargah, about which I had heard so much, seemed dim, when an amiable
Sikh drew up to me, leading his horse-drawn tonga. He offered to take me to
the dargah for a surprisingly nominal fare. I readily agreed, and hopping
into the tonga, we set off for Chamaliyal, some five kilometres away.
As the tonga wobbled along, we passed by lush green fields. Sikh families
were busy harvesting their crops. Herds of buffaloes lazed around in little
muddy pools, soaking in the winter sun. A family of Muslim cattle-grazing
Gujjars moved ahead of us, their animals sending up large clouds of dust in
the air. Meanwhile, the tonga-driver pointed out the local sights of
importance. ‘Here’, he said, pointing to a field bursting with bright
yellow mustard flowers, ‘was where more than a thousand Muslim villagers
were slaughtered overnight in the violence of 1947’. And then he went on to
relate a horrific tale of the bloody massacres of that eventful year, in
which he and his family, along with several thousand Sikhs and Hindus, had
fled across to Jammu from Sialkot, now in Pakistan, and how an equally
large number of Muslims in Jammu had been pushed across into Pakistan.
An hour later, we passed by the village of Dagh, the last settlement on the
Indian side of the Line of Actual Control. We crossed a little stream and
then headed up a narrow path. When we came out into a clearing the
tonga-driver pointed out to a clump of eucalyptus trees hardly a stone’s
-throw distance away. ‘That’s Pakistan’, he said. A sudden wave of
excitement filled me and ran down my spine. Pakistan! So close, and yet so far!
The tonga trudged down the path in the direction of the trees, streams of
sweat trickling down the horse’s hairy black coat. Gradually, the large
bulbous dome of the Baba’s dargah drew into view. We had reached
Chamaliyal. At the entrance of the shrine, we were stopped by a smart
uniformed Border Security Force guard. He wanted to know what I was doing
in the area. ‘Just a casual visitor’, I said to him. That did not fully
satisfy him, but he let me in, nevertheless.
The Baba’s dargah is, quite clearly, an Islamic structure. His grave lies
under a large, green onion-shaped dome, and in the courtyard, in the shade
of a large peepul tree, are the graves of two of his closest disciples,
again buried in Islamic fashion. However, since there are no Muslims any
more living in the area, the shrine has been considerably Hinduised. A
large, gaudy welcome arch installed by the Border Security Force with a
brightly-painted Om symbol greets the visitor at the entrance of the
dargah, and inside posters of various Hindu deities and figures have been
stuck on the walls. No one seems to remember who the Baba actually was.
Until 1947 the dargah was looked after by a Muslim family, which had to
flee Chamaliyal when a wave of mass killings was unleashed on the Muslims
of Jammu. Since then, because there are no more Muslims here, the shrine
has been looked after by the Border Security Force, which has constructed a
free community kitchen and a guest house for the large number of pilgrims
who come here from all parts of northern India.
According to local legend, the Baba was a holy man who was killed in a
battle with a local chieftain. Even after his head had been severed from
his body, so the story goes, he kept up the fight, and finally dropped dead
on the spot where his dargah stands today. Of his two closest disciples,
one was martyred along with him, while the other fled the battle-field.
That night the Baba appeared to the latter in a dream, and angry with him
for his disloyalty, cursed him with leprosy. The next morning the man awoke
to discover his body covered with sores and his limbs rotting away. He ran
to the Baba’s grave and begged him for pardon. The Baba then appeared once
again to him in a dream and told him to rub his body with the mud from a
pit near his grave and the water of a well close by and he would be cured.
He did as he was told and recovered completely. Soon, the fame of the
curative powers of the Baba’s shrine spread far and wide, and people from
all castes and communities started flocking here in the hope of curing
various skin ailments. And so it remains till this very day People with all
sorts of skin problems come here, and rubbing themselves with the mud of
the pit, which they call shakkar or sugar, and the water of the well, stand
in the sun for days on end. Scores of men and women may be seen in this
condition on any day throughout the year, looking like eerie ghouls.
The Baba is equally, if not more, popular on the other side of the Line of
Actual Control. Till the late 1980s Pakistani pilgrims were allowed to
visit the shrine during the annual urs or fair, which is held every June.
This has, however, now been stopped by the Indian authorities,
unfortunately. Instead, the Border Security Force makes arrangements for
the mud and water from the dargah to be transported in trucks to the
border, from where the Pakistan Rangers distribute it to the devotees on
the other side.
I spent an entire day at the dargah, and after a hearty lunch with a local
Sikh peasant family, I strolled over to the BSF bunker just behind the
shrine and looked beyond. Hardly a hundred metres away, across an imaginary
frontier, were the huts of the Pakistani village of Sayyedawali, and a tall
Pakistani border watch-tower, with its green and white flag fluttering
merrily away in the breeze. A group of Pakistani farmers were working in
their fields and a little country bus was gently rolling down a road. Just
then, a flock of birds flew overhead and went sailing right across the
frontier. The senselessness of that invisible blood-stained line struck me
then with a force that mere words fail to express.
Committee to Protect Journalists
330 Seventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001
The Honorable Lal Krishna Advani
Home Minister, Republic of India
Home Ministry
New Delhi, India 110 011
Via Facsimile: 91-11-301-4221
Your Excellency:
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by last week's brutal
attack against journalists in Kashmir by members of India's Border Security
Force (BSF). We are, however, encouraged by the apparently swift and
thorough BSF investigation, and hope that it will yield concrete results.
We urge you to ensure that the findings of the investigation are made public
and that appropriate action is taken against the officers responsible for
the violence.
On May 10, a group of 17 journalists were attacked by members of BSF
Battalion 194. The journalists were in the Kashmir town of Magam to cover
the aftermath of the previous day's suicide bomb attack against a BSF camp.
The attack left 11 people dead, eight of them civilians, according to local
press sources.
The journalists, mostly photographers and television cameramen, were
covering a funeral procession for three of the civilian victims when a BSF
convoy approached the crowd. The BSF members got out of their vehicles and
began firing in the air and attacking members of the funeral procession,
according to journalists who were present at the scene.
As the crowd scattered, BSF soldiers turned on journalists documenting the
assault, beating them with rifle butts and batons and destroying their
camera equipment.
Some journalists took shelter in the homes of local residents. Others fled
to the Magam police station, where they managed to contact colleagues in the
capital, Srinagar, about 17 miles (30 kilometers) to the south. After these
colleagues alerted BSF headquarters in Srinagar, BSF Deputy Inspector
General R.P. Singh left immediately for Magam.
When D.I.G. Singh arrived at the police station, he asked the journalists
there to take him to the scene of the attack and explain what had happened.
A group of four journalists escorted him to the site and also began
searching for any camera equipment that could be recovered.
The journalists were then approached by Deputy Inspector General A.K.
Mallick, the local BSF commander. He told the journalists that they had no
right to enter the area without his permission, and quickly became enraged
when this was disputed. Mallick threatened twice to shoot the journalists,
according to CPJ sources, before ordering his forces to attack them. Some 20
BSF soldiers then descended on the four journalists and bludgeoned them with
rifle butts.
When D.I.G. Singh saw what was happening, he called a halt to the attack.
But D.I.G. Mallick challenged Singh's authority, saying "Who are you? This
is my operational area." Mallick then threatened once again to shoot all
four journalists, accusing them of being "anti-national" Pakistan
sympathizers.
The journalists returned to the safety of the Magam police station, by which
time other officials had arrived from Srinagar.
Among the most seriously injured of the journalists was B. Kumar, a
cameraman from Hyderabad-based Eenadu Television (ETV), who was severely
beaten and thrown into a stream. Kumar suffered head injuries requiring 15
stitches, according to sources at ETV. Aijaz Rahi, a photographer for The
Associated Press, received a hairline fracture to his knee when he was hit
with a wooden board.
Other injured journalists included Sanam Aijaz of ETV, Merajuddin (who, like
many Indians, uses only one name), a cameraman for Associated Press
Television News, Syed Shujaat Bukhari, a correspondent for The Hindu
newspaper, Nissar Ahmed Bhat, photographer for The Hindu, Reuters
correspondent Sheikh Mushtaq and photographer Fayaz Kabli, S. Irfan of the
Press Trust of India, Fayaz Ahmad of the United News of India, Naseer Ahmad
of Zee TV , Bilal Ahmad Bhat of Asian News International, S. Tariq of New
Delhi Television, Tauseef of Agence France-Presse, Javid Ahmad Shah of the
Indian Express newspaper, and Sayed Muzaffar Hussain of the daily Srinagar
Times.
As an organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of our colleagues
around the world, CPJ condemns this organized attack by the security forces
against members of the Indian press.
CPJ respectfully asks you to make public the results of the BSF inquiry as
soon as possible, and to guarantee that the officers responsible are
punished to the full extent of the law. As you know, journalists play a
vital role in informing the public about conflict and in monitoring possible
abuses of state authority. This role must be preserved and protected.
We thank you for your attention to this matter, and look forward to your
response.
Sincerely,
Ann Cooper
Executive Director
cc:
His Excellency Atal Behari Vajpayee, Prime Minister
Gurbachan Jagat, Director General, BSF
Vijay Kumar, Inspector General, BSF
South Asian Journalists Association
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Amnesty International
Article 19 (United Kingdom)
Artikel 19 (The Netherlands)
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Freedom Forum
Freedom House
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Center for Journalists
International Federation of Journalists
International PEN
International Press Institute
The Newspaper Guild
The North American Broadcasters Association
Overseas Press Club
Reporters Sans Frontières
Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Society of Professional Journalists
World Association of Newspapers
World Press Freedom Committee
India and Pakistan have converted their Indo-Gangetic plains (and areas
beyond) into a possible theatre of nuclear war. Given its orientation,
Pakistan is sure to give a response to India's Poorna Vijay even if on a
smaller scale or later. At any rate, both would now complete the process
of inducting and actually deploying nuclear weapons into respective
armed forces. Their nuclear deterrents would inevitably be triads of
land, air and naval nuclear forces.
Poorna Vijay exercise establishes that when and if there is another
India-Pakistan war, it is expected to see a nuclear exchange. Many myths
have been exploded by what the generals --- Indian and Pakistani ---
have realistically made of nuclear weapons in South Asia. And it stands
to reason. In a war no general, on either side, can wage a war to
knowingly lose it or will wait for the other side to inflict vast
unacceptable damage before he uses his own most effective weapon. How
can Indian generals wait for Pakistanis to devastate a whole area before
they will use their deterrent? They would throw the doctrine of
no-first-use out of the window.
Indian generals have killed and cremated another spurious doctrine in
action: deterrent value of nuclear weapons for preventing war. Following
the Shanghai meeting of Neemrana Group nuclear hardliners of Indian and
Pakistani establishments were euphoric: they held that both countries
can now safely go openly nuclear and reap the peace dividend; there will
be no war due to these weapons deterrent value and behind this shield
they can reduce their ruinously expensive conventional forces. Their
only condition was that India and Pakistan will have to manage their
deterrents by negotiating a détente or groundrules or call them CBMs
(confidence building measures).
For their part, the Indian generals through Poorna Vijay have
established that (a) nuclear weapons on both sides do not deter a
conventional or even nuclear war; and (b) more importantly there is no
peace dividend following the building of a nuclear deterrent. For, after
building a nuclear deterrent you have to engage in a renewed
conventional arms race because a conventional war remains a possibility.
With Pakistanis frequently threatening to nuke if India were to exploit
its advantage and Indians making nuclear attack a part of their war
fighting doctrine, it is not possible to make the easy assumption that
humanitarian concerns might dissuade nuclear weapons' use. At any rate,
powerpolitics will nevertheless go on, requiring maximal military
strength of all kinds. The French President Charles de Gaulle powerfully
argued against the idea of any peace dividend 40 years ago. The Indians
are only confirming how right de Gaulle was and how wrong the leading
lights of the Neemrana Group were in hoping to prevent war and gaining a
peace dividend for both India and Pakistan.
It is instructive to look at what has happened to the hoary doctrine of
deterrence in real life. By real life is meant actual military
confrontation and cold war in populous South Asia. The old east-west
cold war (1946-1989) did not in a way qualify to be real life: The
Americans and the most big members of NATO had no passionate
nationalistic quarrels in which millions of people could be emotionally
involved (except partially the Americans were against the Japanese after
Pearl Harbour and to an extent there was traditional British and French
hatred of Germany). Here it is different. British India's Hindu-Muslim
problem has been carried into the foreign policies of India and
Pakistan, with Kashmir dispute making it more aggravated. Therefore,
South Asia is a better ground to test the deterrence theory.
A simple question needs to be asked. Is India more secure today than it
was at any time before it exploded its way into nuclear countries'
ranks? Is Pakistan more secure after Chaghi tests than it was before.
One knows that Gen. Aslam Beg's 1990's improvident idea that the
rumoured Pakistani Bomb was deterrent enough for India, behind which he
could convert the Kashmir intefada into an armed insurgency. For
Pakistanis the answer to the question is now available: It was given by
Defence Minister George Fernandes and Indian COS last year in words and
Poorna Vijay was an audio-visual aid to their reply: Pakistan's nuclear
deterrent --- whatever its size or quality --- does not deter an Indian
Army from fighting a conventional war that keeps in mind the possibility
of Pakistan using, at any stage, its prized nuclear weapons. As for
deterrent value of nuclear weapons, well the Indians by staging the war
games in Bikaner area have shown that they are not overly worried about
the Pakistani Bomb and that they are factoring it in their battlefield
plans. It boils down to the fact that nuclear weapons have not enhanced
Pakistan's security at all.
As for the Indians, the position is slightly different. One has no
concern with their predicament; it is basically for India's thinking
persons to ask searching questions. One can only observe a few facts in
passing. India gave up high moral ground by nuclear testing in 1998 that
had paid it rich dividends for 50 years. By going overtly nuclear, India
actually came down to Pakistan's level in powerpolitics the moment the
latter equalised. Since then, no matter what are the uses of Indian
nuclear weapons or how successful Poorna Vijay was, India has enjoyed no
particular advantage since 1998 than it did not before 1998.
It is fair to conclude from the reactions to Poorna Vijay that the
Subcontinent has become a nastier place for its peoples. Insofar as
socalled national security, the main preoccupation of the Indian and
Pakistani governments, is concerned, their respective security thinkers
--- usually the retired ambassadors, generals and senior bureaucrats ---
agreed that to make their country's security impregnable at a fairly
affordable cost, the thing to do was to develop and fabricate nuclear
weapons and their delivery mechanisms. They were coy about when to
induct and when to deploy these dread weapons, as also the number of
these toys.
Actual experience now shows that all their rosy expectations were
unfounded. Three years after the tests, India has both inducted and
deployed these weapons; how else could IAF create a nuclear war
battlefield in the exercises; the only difference could be that it
dropped dummies. That Indian soldiers were being trained to carry an
offensive operations despite a nuclear attack shows that India would
fight on despite the enemy's desperate actions. Doubtless Pakistan must
either have done the same sort of thing or would soon do so. Thus the
deterrence is now a dead duck and what is in prospect is war, with or
without the use of nuclear weapons.
It is necessary to add that the concept of national security is
inadequate as well as ambiguous. In this country, it is almost
synonymous with military defence of the realm, a basically old idea
going back to early days of nation states; it does not even fully
incorporate the 20th Century experiences of total war. What is required
is to create a sense of security in ordinary citizens, going well beyond
governments' perceptions and their military's exertions in democracies
or dictatorships. Exclusive emphasis on military defence has left
Pakistan in an unenviable state: debt ridden, left with an adverse power
equation with India, possessing only a puny nuclear deterrent and much
too small economic development not to mention their liberties not being
the bedrock of society. It faces impossible odds in a likely enough
conventional war. Its only hope is that the doctrine of deterrence
works. India on the other hand has been busy showing that they will,
instead of taking non use of nuclear weapons as a datum line, absorb
Pakistan's desperate nuclear strike and carry on achieving Poorna Vijay.
It is immaterial whether India will succeed or fail; point is it will
try to win complete victory anyhow.
What is the status of Pakistanis sense of security? With a rickety
economy, a ramshackle political system and rapidly growing poverty, they
are obviously more insecure than ever. The only hope --- not supported
by evidence --- lies in India being actually deterred, though it is
trying to show it is not. What happens when deterrence fails? Pakistan
will make one or two nuclear strikes --- necessarily on India's urban
centres not too far from the theatre of war for maximum effect. What
happens next? Not knowing what war doctrine Rawalpindi's GHQ will act
on, the writer takes it for granted that the Indians will massively
retaliate in kind. The assumption is clear: there is no defence against
nuclear weapons. Thus, we run the risk of having all the major six or
seven big town all but wiped out. Civilised, even coherent, physical
activities will come to an end. Would anyone then care to know what
happened to the original war?
Why would Indians want to go to war what do they actually aim at is not
known. It is for sane Indians to question their government about what it
is planning or doing. Hopefully some of them will make themselves heard.
That is something on which much cannot be said except to note that under
the politics of hate, promoted by the political classes of the two
countries, both are now national security states par excellence. The
larger sense of security of (some) people of India stands at a nadir
while all the Pakistanis are utterly unsecure as never before.
Worst of all, the politics that has led to competitive militarisation of
two economies and other adverse effects on politics (in both countries)
remains ascendant. The dangerous polarisation, born of 53 years old cold
war and arms races, has created the nightmare of two adversarial nuclear
deterrents. Pakistan had to say goodbye to a working democracy and
settle for frequent military dictatorships. It has become politically
weak. In India a weak and vacillating secularism has been replaced with
a paranoid and jingoistic Hindu nationalism. New Delhi, alone in the
world, found it desirable to welcome the NMD plan of the Bush
Administration. In sum, Subcontinent's outlook is dark and uncertain
with rampant jingoistic nationalism on the rampage everywhere.
The overall deadlock between Pakistan and India is certainly
discouraging. But the task unavoidably should be first to make a nuclear
exchange impossible (because it can serve no rational purpose).
Secondly, the effort must be to avoid fourth or fifth India-Pakistan
war. And finally sober and sane Pakistanis and Indians should work in
earnest for a people-to-people reconciliation so that South Asia can ---
free of the scourge of cold war, conventional arms races, nuclear
weapons --- work for a cultural renaissance, political harmony and true
economic development that can lead to higher living standards of the
people for their cultural uplift thereby.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Blasphemy is a capital crime in this volatile Islamic
nation, so Dr. Younus Shaikh, while teaching at a medical college, might
have wisely avoided any discussion of the personal hygiene of the holy
Prophet Muhammad.
But the topic came up during a morning physiology class. And the doctor
talked briefly about seventh-century Arabia and its practices regarding
circumcision and the removal of underarm hair.
Some students found his remarks deeply offensive. "Only out of respect,
because he was our teacher, did we not beat him to death on the spot," said
Syed Bilal, 17.
Instead, they informed a group of powerful mullahs, who in turn filed a
criminal complaint. Lest the matter be treated with insufficient urgency,
these clerics dispatched a mob to the medical school and the police
station, threatening to burn them down.
Precisely what Dr. Shaikh said in class last October is now a matter of
mortal dispute, but he has been jailed ever since, awaiting trial and
pondering the noose. Defending himself presents a conundrum. What can he
safely say?
Pakistan, a nearly bankrupt nation with 150 million people, a military
government and an expanding nuclear arsenal, is drifting toward religious
extremism. Blasphemy cases are its version of the Salem witch trials, with
clerics sniffing out infidels, and enemies using the law to settle personal
scores.
Accurate crime statistics are a low priority here, but the number of those
imprisoned on blasphemy charges is estimated in the hundreds. Only the most
sensational cases get much notice: when vigilantes murder the accused, or
the bold judge who set him free. When a man is condemned to die if a few
pages in the Koran are torn. When a newspaper is shut down after publishing
a sacrilegious letter.
Dr. Shaikh is charged under Provision 295-C of the law: the use of
derogatory remarks about the holy Prophet Muhammad. Whether such an offense
is intentional or not, the mandatory punishment is death.
"Please understand, I am a deeply religious man," Dr. Shaikh said recently,
professing his Islamic faith through the tight wire mesh of a jail cell. A
short, rumpled man, he had the weary look of someone trying to rub a
disturbing dream from bleary eyes. "I cannot even imagine blaspheming our
holy Prophet, peace be upon him."
Few Pakistanis have heard of Dr. Shaikh, but news of his woes has leapt the
borders, flitting across the Internet. He is associated with the
International Humanist and Ethical Union, which describes itself as an
"umbrella organization for humanist, rationalist, agnostic, skeptic,
atheist and ethical culture groups around the world." In 1999, he gave a
presentation at the World Humanist Congress.
In an attempt to save the doctor, a global letter-writing campaign was
quickly begun, with pleas aimed at Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's
military ruler. Publicity, on the other hand, has been discouraged.
The hope was that persistent statesmanship would outlast righteous anger,
with the charges then quietly disappearing. This hushed approach has proved
a frustration, however, and after declining earlier requests for an
interview, Dr. Shaikh agreed to speak of his case.
"My statements about the holy Prophet, peace be upon him, were made in his
praise only, and these have now been twisted out of context," he said in
measured phrases.
Moments later, pressed for specifics, he said: "My students asked me about
the shaving of pubic and armpit hair, and I, in describing the glory of
Allah's revelations, said that before the arrival of Islam, the Arabs did
not have these practices. And they did not."
Before his troubles, Dr. Shaikh lived alone in a small room in Islamabad.
He had studied medicine in both Pakistan and Ireland but his practice had
long periods of interruption. He preferred academic research and his
passion has been "the history of nations." After the Koran, he said, the
important books in his life have been the Encyclopedia Britannica and "The
Story of Civilization," by Will and Ariel Durant.
Pakistan may have an ample supply of free thinkers, but free speakers have
long been on the wane. Governments - civilian or military - tend to
imprison opponents. Federal laws enforce a mix of mosque and state, and
questions of religion are often presumed to have a single right answer,
like arithmetic.
"Before saying anything in this country, you must always be aware of the
forum, the place and the time," said Afrasiab Khattak, head of the Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan. "If accused of blasphemy, you are in great
difficulty. The mullahs are not known for their generosity. Even if
exonerated, you will always be in danger."
Dr. Shaikh was a member of peace and environmental groups. But while he
might have asked an occasional dissenting question at a public seminar, he
was not a well-known activist. His few writings have appeared mostly in
cyberspace, and at least some of them accuse organized religion of mass
murder, bigotry and the degradation of women. (Supporters have now removed
most of this material from the Internet.)
Last fall, as Dr. Shaikh worked part time at a small clinic, he accepted a
teaching job at the Capital Homeopathic Medical College, on the second
floor of a shopping plaza. He had no expertise in homeopathic cures, but
his subject was physiology and he knew that well enough. He was paid $89 a
month.
However badly it ended, Dr. Shaikh's brief tenure was not a contentious
one. Students liked him. If he had a fault, they said, it was for lectures
that meandered into irrelevancies like poetry or free sex in Western
countries.
Occasionally, Dr. Shaikh's digressions embarrassed his students;
occasionally, they seemed impious. One irksome topic was how Muslims had
come to practice circumcision and, for purposes of cleanliness, the removal
of pubic and underarm hair. A question arose: Had Muhammad been circumcised
before receiving God's revelations at age 40?
The ensuing discussion brought on no great ado, and Dr. Shaikh said he only
remembers saying, "The Prophet's tribe did not practice circumcision."
But the offended students repeat a different version.
"He told us the Prophet hadn't been circumcised before," insisted Majid
Lodhi, 22. "We asked, `In what book is this knowledge?' And he said, `I'm
telling you the way it was, and if you have evidence to the contrary, bring
in your proof.' "
Outside of school, the students had begun talking about Dr. Shaikh. Was he
uttering blasphemies? they asked each other. And if so, what should a good
Muslim do?
"I had heard from the sermons in the mosques that those who blaspheme
deserve to be killed immediately," said Asghar Ali Afridi, who at 28 was
older than most students and whose views were persuasive. "It was a
weakness of faith that we did not do it."
But 11 students, the entire class, did sign a letter that listed Dr.
Shaikh's possible crimes. They claimed he had said that the Prophet was not
a Muslim until age 40; that before then, he did not remove his underarm
hair or undergo circumcision; that he first wed, at 25, without an Islamic
marriage contract; that his parents were not Muslims.
Mr. Afridi was picked to deliver the letter to the Movement for the
Finality of the Prophet, a group well known for pursuing blasphemers.
"For Dr. Shaikh's own protection, we sought his arrest," said Abdul Wahid
Qasmi, secretary general of the organization's Islamabad chapter.
"Otherwise, he might have been killed in the streets."
The Movement's vigilance is most often directed at Ahmadis, who regard
themselves as Muslims but believe another prophet appeared after Muhammad.
By law, they are barred from linking themselves in any way to Islam. Each
year, many are arrested for simply reciting a Koranic verse or using the
greeting "Salaam aleikum."
Non-Muslims make up about 3 percent of Pakistan's population, and while
they have obvious reasons to fear the blasphemy statutes, there is no
shortage of opposition among Muslims as well. Even a strong advocate, the
minister for religious affairs, Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi, says the law requires
revision. He has reviewed numerous cases and said the majority originate
from "ill will and personal prejudice."
Last year, General Musharraf himself called for a procedural change,
suggesting that the merits of blasphemy cases be reviewed by local
officials before an arrest. But when fundamentalists took to the streets in
protest, he backed down.
At the Movement's headquarters, the law also comes under criticism, though
the complaint is of sluggish justice. Blasphemers may get locked up, but
not one has been executed.
"Even if someone is only half- conscious when speaking against the
Prophet, he must die," said Mr. Qasmi, who managed to sound amiable. "In
Dr. Shaikh's case, his relatives have come to see us, saying the man is
sorry and that he repents. But to be sorry now is not enough. Even if a man
is sorry, he must die."
These days, Dr. Shaikh calls himself an "Islamic humanist," stressing the
adjective. This surge in devotion is a return to his roots; he comes from a
religious family in Bahawalnagar, and his father, a merchant, is a hafiz, a
man who has memorized the Koran.
In hiring a lawyer, the family has steered away from human rights types.
Its attorney takes a rather omnibus approach. First, there is a
technicality to exploit. The students should have filed the charges instead
of the mullahs, he asserts. Second, his client never said the things
alleged, and even if he did, the words are not blasphemous.
A judge will decide. And customarily, the accusing party packs the
courtroom with zealots in a show of righteous concern. The Shaikh family,
however, has no intention of being steamrolled by hostile fundamentalists.
At a recent hearing, they brought their own mullahs - equally bearded,
equally turbaned, equally able to quote from holy books.
"No blasphemy has been committed in this case," proclaimed Maulana Abdul
Hafiz. An elderly, stern- faced man, he, too, heads a chapter of the
Movement for the Finality of the Prophet, his being in Bahawalnagar.
"Blasphemy can be committed only if issues are raised about the period
after the holy Prophet declared his prophethood. These issues are
pre-prophethood."
The mullahs from Bahawalnagar say they have tried to reason with the
mullahs from Islamabad, but these efforts have failed. "They know we are
right but they do not want to backtrack and lose face," said Maulana Hafiz,
enraged by his adversaries.
How dare they? he declared: "They tell us that we ourselves should be
cautious, that protecting a blasphemer is as bad as blaspheming itself."
[The following statement was issued on 10th May 2001 by M.B. Naqvi, President, Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) and B.M. Kutty, Secretary, Pakistan-India Peoples forum for Peace and
Democracy (PIPFPD), and published in full in the
English daily DAWN and The News on 11th and 14th May 2001
respectively.]
Today is the third anniversary of India's nuclear tests at Pokhran in
Rajasthan, leading the way to Pakistan's tests at Chaghi in Baluchistan two
weeks later. In this ominous background, we, the signatories of this
statement, feel alarmed at the dangerous possibilities inherent in the
extensive war games which India is currently conducting in the Bikaner area
of Rajasthan, with the avowed aim of fighting a simulated war in which
nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction may be used. These exercises
and their advertised nature cannot be unrelated to the state of bilateral
relationship between India and Pakistan, marked by frequent military
tensions and chronic political deadlock.
To no oneís surprise, hawks in Pakistan are in full cry with their demand
for a tit for tat reply to the Indian war games that are being held so
close to this countryís soft underbelly. And sure enough, it seems the
military government is being inveigled into conducting similar war games
with similar aims on this side.
This is a dangerous development. The Indian military exercise has
already produced harsh jingoistic reactions among the sections in Pakistan
that harbour especially hostile sentiments towards India. Pakistan replying
with its own putative war games is sure to inflame the rightwing Hindu
jingoistic sections in India. Maybe, all this will suit the embattled BJP
government in India on the one hand, while on the other, standing tough
against the huge India may earn the military regime some support. But these
petty political gains for governments in difficulties will be bought at the
tremendous price of jeopardising the interests of the largest number of
people in both countries.
These competitive war games are a dangerous business. Given the
background of communal passions in the two countries and jingoistic
sentiments spread, the situation can easily get out of hand. Any stray
incident can lead to the outbreak of actual hostilities - almost as a
continuation of simulated war games becoming the real thing.
Current military doctrines in both countries seem to be factoring
in actual use of nuclear weapons in the next war. This is madness. These
evil weapons should never be used and making people familiar with the idea
of their use by either or both sides can serve the evil purpose of making
their use certain. Hardliners on both sides are playing with fire at the
cost of the future wellbeing of their own peoples.
We appeal to all lovers of peace and progress in India to urge upon
their government to pull back from the edge of the precipice and give peace
a chance by relying on civilised ways of dialogue, patient and peaceful
settlement and adopting the goal of regional free trade and economic
co-operation paradigm based on a people-to-people reconciliation. We
further call upon the governments of India and Pakistan to sign the CTBT
without delay.
Released by
B.M. Kutty
People's Forum for Peace and Democracy
index | HOME Landelijke India Werkgroep | KRUITVAT INDIA-PAKISTAN |