PAKISTAN: THE IDEA IS SELF-DESTRUCTING

Pakistan is an idea that was doomed to fail the moment it got the shape of a state. Although MA Jinnah himself divided India into two on the basis of religion, he held on to the exactly opposite belief that had it not been for the the "angularities" between Hindus and Muslims, and communities within them, "we would have been free people long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this." Ironically, these words by were uttered just three days before Pakistan became a reality.

For many reasons, Jinnah could not see that there was a fundamental and irreconcilable clash between what he had done and what he believed, not just for his Pakistan but for the whole of India that he belonged to till August 14, 1947. That is why, despite doing what he should never have based on a set of his own beliefs, he visualised Pakistan as a state that would have nothing to do with the only one dimension along which it had been created: Islam. He did not want his creation to fall into the same trap that had divided, weakened and subjugated India in the past, and that he had pushed it into, again.

One can only speculate what would have happened had Pakistan become a secular state and had not systematically driven out/converted almost all Hindus and Sikhs who became its citizens on August 14, 1947. May be the recurring fear in some sections of Pakistan that it would have re-merged with India would have come true. It is equally possible that it may have flourished as an Independent country.

The way events have unfolded over the last few decades, and as they are playing out right now in Pakistan, it is becoming increasingly evident that the new nation sealed its future the moment it decided to define itself only on the basis of Islam, after Jinnah's demise. It is worth repeating here that Pakistan is the only multi-ethnic, multi-lingual state created from nowhere on the basis of Islam. Perhaps Jinnah was aware that the Arabs from whose land Islam emanated, and who were all Muslims, had never been politically united by their religion. Despite one language, one race and one religion, they are now divided into 22 countries. In fact, it is likely that had it not been for oil and the Americans - who are there and keeping things under tight control because of their need for that oil - not only would Arabs have remained pathetically underdeveloped, the many countries that they have created would have been at each others' throats.

Those who guided Pakistan after Jinnah obviously did not learn any lessons even from subsequent developments in the Arab word. Had they done so, they would have seen that all efforts to unite Arabs ended in failure. The brief unification of Egypt and Syria as United Arab Republic lasted just three years between 1958 and 1961. The Arab Federation between Iraq and Jordan lasted all of five months in 1958. The effort that survived the longest was the Federation of Arab Republics between Egypt, Libya and Syria that lasted five years from 1972 to 1977. Why could people of one race and one language not come together? Why did Islam fail to unite them? Was it due to various erroneous, intolerant, conflicting and violent interpretations of Islam that the concept of Muslim brotherhood could not be translated into political unity?

The first jolt to the idea and ideology of Pakistan was given by the breaking away of East Pakistan in 1971. That division was not an aberration. It could not have happened any other way. West Pakistan would never have ceded control to the more populous Eastern half; religious affinity was not strong enough to reconcile the practical demands of political power. The remaining part of Pakistan, the one known as Pakistan today, could possibly have been kept intact after that split, had its leaders learnt the right lessons and not tried to 'invent' Pakistan as a logical entity by manufacturing India's history solely on the basis of Islam, with the attendant rejection of and hatred towards all other influences and developments that are integral to this ancient land, to which they still belong as much as any one else does, even though they want to pretend otherwise.

But, Pakistan's leaders decided to take what is going to prove to be a catastrophic turn, by turning towards Wahhabi Islam, the version of the religion that is followed in Saudi Arabia. As per William Dalrymple," Saudi Arabians have invested heavily in madrasas in the North-West Frontier Province and Punjab, with dramatic effect, radically changing the religious culture of an entire region." The Taliban and the Al Qaida are the visible militant faces of this version of Islam which is completely intolerant of all other faiths. They were encouraged to flourish in Pakistan and Afghanistan because they were thought to be the perfect ideological weapons, forged on an erroneous interpretation of the concept of jihad, that could be exploited to oppose both the Western world and India, with the ultimate aim of ushering in the political rule of Islam all over the world.

Wahhabi Islam is so radical that it rejects all other versions of Islam, including Shia, too. It should, therefore, have been anticipated by the handlers and trainers of the Taliban, Lahskar-e-Toiba etc that whenever these groups thought there was an opportunity, they would try to establish the rule of this version of Islam in the whole of Pakistan. It should also have been anticipated that men following this ideology would penetrate the military too. There is little doubt that has already happened over a period of time, with the military brass turning a blind, even indulgent eye to it. The extent of the penetration is not yet fully known to outsiders, and I suspect that this will prove to be critical in the months ahead.

In February 2009, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari had admitted that his country was fighting for 'survival' in the face of the onslaught of the Taliban. No one took him seriously then, given his dubious track record. But the speed at which developments have unfolded over the last eight months proves that he was speaking the truth. The danger is real and grave.

Pakistan first tried to bury disturbing developments in the Swat Valley by buying peace with the Taliban by handing it over to them and allowing them to introduce Sharia there. Within weeks, however, the army had to go in to clean them out and re-establish control of the state. In the middle of all this, over two million people fled Swat, creating a huge humanitarian crisis. That did little to get things under control and terror attacks have continued unabated till now.

In October, a number of terror attacks, including a day long siege of the army headquarters, took place in three of Pakistan's four provinces. More dangerously, they involved not only Pashtuns but also Punjabi and Kashmiri factions nurtured and trained by the ISI to fight India. These have forced Pakistan's armed forces to launch military operations in South Waziristan where the Taliban are based, employing jet fighters, attack helicopters and tanks and around 28,000 troops. They have captured Kotkai, home town of Taliban Chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and claim that militants will be flushed out within a month. Is the story going to end there? It has only begun.

The reaction of the Taliban to the latest military offensive has impacted the whole of Pakistan like never before. Schools and colleges were shut in all four provinces following an attack on the Islamic University in Islamabad. Terror is now no longer confined to Pakistan's wild west. Also, for the first time ever, Pakistani Army has made the startling admission that the country faces a serious threat from coordinated attacks by Punjabi, Al Qaida and Taliban militants who include soldiers in their ranks and span the whole country.

In July 2009, former Pakistan President Perez Musharraf, the cocky commando who invents victory even in humiliating defeat, boasted in an interview with Karan Thapar that he foresaw no danger to Pakistan from the Al Qaida or Taliban "as long as the armed forces are there".

In that assertion was the unspoken admission that Islam, instead of keeping Pakistan together, has achieved exactly the opposite, and that the state of Pakistan survives only because the military is in a position to hold it together through the use of force. 63 years after Pakistan was created, the glue that brought it together has turned into an explosive. There is now effectively nothing left to keep the people bound together in a natural union.

The military has held out till now, even though it is having to fight the very forces that it once created to act as its 'force multipliers', as weapons of the Pakistani state against infidels in the East and West of the country. Learning from history, it has reportedly deployed non-Pashtun troops in its ongoing operations in South Waziristan. But with Punjabi extremists also beginning to join the fight against the state in the form that it exists today, a state that supports the Satan US in its ground operations in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan against 'pure Islamists', it is perhaps only a matter of time before the military faces a serious rebellion from within. Whenever that happens, Pakistan will unravel even faster than we can imagine now. It is only a question of time.

Fatima Bhutto, niece of slain leader Benazir Bhutto, can also see that Pakistan is hell-bent on self-destruction. Manufacture of fear, she says, has become its chief industry and made it a country of debilitating Chinese whispers. "What happens to a Pakistan that can no longer defend itself from its own people?", she asks. The answer to that question must be haunting many Pakistanis.

History has already proved Jinnah wrong. No one has suffered more from the Partition of India than the very Muslims for whose empowerment Jinnah forgot his own secular understanding of the factors that led to India's subjugation. Divided in three countries, they have lost the power and influence that they would have wielded in a united India. Those who are now Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have also lost the opportunity of being a part of an India that is rapidly emerging as an economic super power. They are now huddled into two small nations. Bangladesh is an almost inconsequential country while Pakistan has made such an unpardonable mess of itself that, no matter what political shape its geographical area takes, bar the shouting their bankrupt country/countries will henceforth be remote-controlled by some external power or the other. Subjugation is back.

The "angularities" between and within religions that Jinnah spoke of have, thanks to the path Pakistan has chosen, become irreconcilable ideologies - Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations - with no common ground for peaceful co-existence. But, no matter what anyone might say, the harsh reality is that in a changed world, Al Qaida, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and similar Islamic extremist groups are not going get Pakistan anywhere by pursuing the violent path of intolerance of and confrontation with those whose beliefs and practices are at variance with theirs. On the contrary, as is already more than evident, they are only going to rapidly drive Pakistan into poverty, deprivation and eventual self-destruction.

Perhaps this is one of those lessons that will be learned only after a violent course has destructively spent itself fully.

Picture: The Guardian
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IS JASWANT LOOKING ANY BETTER THAN THE COTERIE NOW?

Let us imagine that an Archbishop has written a scholarly book, after a detailed study of Christian and Islamic religious texts, and come to the conclusion that Prophet Mohammad was possibly right: Jesus too was just a prophet like him, no more. How do you think the Catholic Church will react? What do you think the Pope will do? Jaswant Singh's reinterpretation of Jinnah in a similar vein is something that cannot be accepted by both the Congress and the BJP. It is only coincidental that he was in the BJP. Had he been in the Congress, he would have been hounded out from that party. Let there be no doubt that.

But where the BJP has displayed the almost total bankruptcy of its top leadership and the post-poll panic that has gripped it, is in the manner in which it summarily expelled him telephonically, within hours of the 600 plus page book being published, without giving him a show cause notice or any other opportunity to explain. Look at the irony: Jaswant Singh has criticised Nehru - whose descendants rule India - and Sardar Patel, also a Congressman. The rebuttals and criticisms should have been coming from the Congress - any criticism of Nehru being simply unacceptable - but it is the BJP that lost its balance.

The attacks began too, with Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi laying blame for the book on the BJP by calling it the Bharatiya "Jinnah" Party. A lot more, and worse, would have been heard from the Congress camp. TV studio debates would have centred around a stout defence of Nehru's actions and a trenchant criticism of Jinnah by the Congress. Jaswant Singh would have been in the firing line of the Congress, and the BJP would have been merrily watching Nehru being dissected and exposed like never before, from the sidelines. But for that, the BJP had to take time to act against Jaswant Singh. And let the Congress make the allegation that it was not doing anything only because he had criticised Nehru!

But, in one disastrous stroke, BJP's leadership committed brainless hara kiri. It took the heat off the Congress, turned it, magnified, upon itself, and pushed a humiliated Jaswant Singh into the enemy camp, armed with sordid secrets that had the potential of devastating its top leader and badly singeing his coterie.

Perhaps the great hurry to get rid of him was necessitated by the fact the the BJP's "Pope" had himself done something similar in 2005, and did not have the courage to personally confront him. In any case, it was indicative of the low level to which some other party leaders, who have been working hard to hijack the party for some time, had sunk in their efforts to marginalise all potential threats. The book was a heaven-sent opportunity which they grabbed with the disturbing greed and speed, to make sure that there was no slip between the stolen cup and their lips.

After his expulsion, Jaswant Singh has gone ballistic in his criticism, particularly of Advani. Kandahar and the cash-for-vote scam have been near mortal blows from which Advani will not recover. The party that was Jaswant Singh's home for over three decades has also begun to look to him like the Ku Klux Klan. It is not Advani alone who has been hit hard by these outbursts. Jaswant Singh himself is beginning to look uglier with each passing day, with his carefully constructed sophistication failing to conceal his own petty vindictiveness. He can no longer claim that he is being "conservative with truth". Perhaps even that was a lie.

During the course of writing the book, when he came to the conclusion that Jinnah was a great man, Jaswant Singh should have remembered that he was a senior leader in the political landscape of India, and not a free lancer or an outsider writing just another book criticising the fundamental beliefs of the BJP as well as the Congress. At that point of time itself, he should have either gone into political retirement or should have waited till he had retired before publishing the book. But he did not display the required rectitude even then.

Jaswant Singh's pretence of injured innocence and his utterances based on it are, therefore, nearly as inexcusable as his summary expulsion by leaders who are taking the BJP down. They will all do well to join him in political retirement. The sooner that happens, the better it will be for the BJP. If they still want to bat on, they will get an invitation from Amar Singh, like Jaswant Singh has got. That is the right the place for them all.

Picture Source: Reuters
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DOES INDIA NEED "FEDERALISM" LIKE JINNAH WANTED?

After being in the BJP for more than three decades, Jaswant Singh has begun to talk of the virtues of the "federalism" that Jinnah espoused and that Nehru was opposed to. He now says that India needs federalism and not the centralising that the RSS believes in and that led Nehru and the Congress to reject the Cabinet Mission Plan and agree to the Partition of India.

To briefly recapitulate, the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 envisaged the grouping of India into three main parts: Group "A" - Hindustan, Group "B" - Kashmir, Punjab, Sarhad, Sindh, Baluchistan, and Group "C" - Bengal, Orissa, Assam. Each of these groups were to have 11 members in the Centre in a kind of a senate. You may notice that Muslims were in overall majority in areas included in Groups B and C. So, effectively, the senate would have had 22 out of 33 members from here even though non-Muslim majority Group "A" had a much bigger area and population.

As is evident from this Plan and the maps of the Pakistan that was proposed by the Muslim League, one of which is shown above, the party led by Jinnah saw India in only two dimensions: majority and minority, Hindu and Muslim. There was no space in it for ethnicity. So, the "federalism" that Jinnah spoke about and that has so impressed Jaswant Singh, was, to my uncluttered mind, something that applied only along religious lines.

There is little evidence to show, notwithstanding Jinnah's famous secular speech to Pakistan's Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1946, that the Muslim League had any intention of granting the same federal freedom to religious and ethnic groups belonging to and living in Muslim majority areas that is sought for those areas as one entity. It never saw the federal government of Pakistan limiting its role to defence, finance and foreign affairs.

The happenings in Pakistan after Partition bear this out. First, almost all non-Muslims were systematically driven out from there, even long after Partition. Then, although Bengalis of East Pakistan constituted the single largest ethnic group in that country, real power remained in the hands of the Punjabis and the Mohajirs who had left India. The federalism that Jinnah wanted for Muslims in a united India was not put in place in Pakistan because it was viewed as a unitary whole solely on a communal basis. That is why East Pakistan eventually broke the chains of religion by which it had been bound to the artificially created new country.

It would be fair to say that the concept of Pakistan could easily have been buried at the time of Partition itself. Ethnic Punjabis and Sindhis would have undoubtedly revolted and rejected Pakistan had they found themselves getting outnumbered in their land by Muslims from other parts of India who chose not to go to Pakistan. That is the real trick that Indian leaders missed at that time.

It also needs to be mentioned here that Pakistan is the only multi-language, multi-ethnic state in the world created from nowhere on the basis of Islam. Even the Arabs, the race to which the Prophet belonged, have not ever been able to form one nation state with the glue of the religion that they have taken almost all over the world. One race, one language, one religion, 22 countries. The glue of Islam has worked only in West Pakistan so far, and that too primarily because the military, that has a huge stake in its continuance as one country, has ruthlessly put down movements for separation based on ethnicity.

Coming back to the concept of federalism, India was divided on the basis of the communal argument put forth by Jinnah and the Muslim League. That having happened, does federalism necessarily have to be viewed still only in terms of devolution of greater power to the states created after Independence on a linguistic basis?

Is not federalism at work at the Centre itself?

China is a country that is dominated and run almost exclusively by the Hans. Minorities have little stake and are often suppressed ruthlessly. Han Chinese are also being consciously settled in non-Han areas to change the demographic profile for good. The USSR called itself a federation alright but power rested primarily in the hands of the Russians, before that super power broke up along ethnic fault lines. In Pakistan too, it is Punjabis, comprising half the population, who enjoy a disproportionately large share of power.

In India, however, no ethnic group enjoys a dominant position. If we look at the present Central government, for example, we see real federalism. The most powerful national leader is a Catholic lady who was born in Italy, the Prime Minister is a Punjabi Sikh and the Defence Minister is a Christian from Kerala. The Home Minister hails from Tamil Nadu, the Foreign Minister from Karnataka and the Finance Minister from West Bengal.

In India, thus, the Centre does not represent the domination of any ethnic group. In fact, in the democratic model that we are following presently, it is possible for a small regional or ideological party to exert disproportionate influence in decision making. The holding up of economic reforms by the communists in the previous government and the stalling of the disinvestment of Neyvelli Lignite by the DMK are two visible examples that readily come to mind. Of course, there continue to be some ethnic groups who still do not feel empowered and connected to the nation like most others are. This sore point needs to be addressed. India belongs to all equally.

Looking at this picture from the point of view of religion does not show an accurate image at all. That is why, attempts being made by some leaders to perpetuate the Jinnah concept of looking at all Indians following Islam as one block, irrespective of their ethnicity, must be discouraged in every manner possible. Unfortunately, despite the examples of Bangladesh and the Arab world in front of us, we are fanning this communal practice in the name of secularism. Those demonising Jinnah are, ironically, keeping his flawed legacy alive. The outcome cannot be good.

Had Jinnah foreseen that after Independence, the Congress would cease to be the force that it was then, and that after half a century, regional political parties with barely a dozen MPs would be in a position to veto decisions of the Central government, he would have been able to look beyond the very limited and communal Hindu-Muslim dimension that he allowed himself to get stuck in, in his quest for an immediate and disproportionate share of the power pie.

As subsequent developments have shown, "Hindus" would not have been in any position whatsoever to deprive "Muslims" of their rightful share of power, had India remained united. And, India would have actually become a truly federal country, not by taking power away from the Centre, but because of the fact that power would have been shared there by leaders representing Indians from all communities and from all parts of the country. Arun Shourie, however, feels that a united India would have been bullied, thrashed and swamped by Islamic fundamentalists.

Jinnah-struck Jaswant Singh is now re-discovering the virtues of federalism. Unless he is saying it only to spite the parivar that he was with for a long time, it seems that like the man he now admires, he is also not able to see federalism in full flow at the Centre. His view has also been coloured by that single hue of religion beyond which Jinnah could never look in his later years. That is why he is unable to see that in a diverse nation like India, as long as there is democracy, centralisation and federalism cannot not mutually exclusive, and that the latter can actually thrive in the former.
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Readers may also read: Jinnah claims Jaswant: Hanuman becomes Ravan
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JINNAH CLAIMS JASWANT; HANUMAN BECOMES RAVAN

A couple of days back, Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress had referred to the BJP as the Bharatiya Jinnah Party. Today, the BJP attempted to exorcise the ghost of MA Jinnah that LK Advani had brought along with him from Karachi in 2005, by expelling veteran leader Jaswant Singh from the party. The swift move, that has surprised everyone, is a stark reminder that the many wounds created by the violent Partition of India still hurt, and hurt deep.

I don't know how many have already read Jaswant Singh's 600 page biography of Jinnah, Jinnah India-Partition Independence, released on August 17, 2009 and whether anyone has written a book review. In any case, in the coming days and months, what he has written after a great deal of research spread over five years, will undoubtedly be dissected from every possible angle, and there will be extreme reactions too. For the last six decades, Indians have accepted as the whole truth the view that Jinnah was an extremely unreasonable man who used violence and the threat of it to force the division of India on a communal basis.

This demonised image of Jinnah has stood out even more jarringly in India because of the almost saintly persona of Mahatma Gandhi who practiced and took the concept of non-violence to a new level altogether. Gandhi wanted Hindus and Muslims to live together in harmony and mutual respect. But it was Jinnah, the villain, who did not allow that to happen. That is what Indians believe. In Pakistan, the part of India that Jinnah took with him literally by force, on the other hand, he is eulogised as the saviour of India's Muslims from Hindu domination. The way Pakistan has shaped since 1947 into a Hindu-hating entity - as can be seen from the history that is being taught to its children in schools - has only helped to make extremely difficult any objective assessment of Jinnah's personality and role before Partition, on both sides of the border.

Above all, the fact that India has been ruled by the Congress for most of the 62 years that have passed since Independence, has ensured that India continues to see Jinnah as no more than a hyper ambitious individual who unleashed the ugly communal demon that burnt and divided India. This has happened primarily because India has been systematically made to see Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru as the great secular visionary who had the interests of Muslims uppermost in his mind, and who laid the foundations of modern India.

Thus, while in Pakistan Jinnah's image is distorted by the thick lens of religion that Pakistan has chosen to increasingly see itself through, in India Nehru's image has been carefully cropped by scissors guided by his descendants who have ruled India for long. As a result, over time, in their respective countries, Jinnah and Nehru have become the faultless leaders that they never were. Their ugly warts have been hidden and lie forgotten.

Jaswant Singh has apparently uncovered some Indian warts. From what one has gathered till now, he has dispassionately tried to look at the role of Jinnah in India's freedom struggle. In 1916, Gopal Krishna Gokhale had praised Jinnah and called him an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. Thirty years later, the same man became the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan. No one will disagree that this transformation was remarkable. No one will also suspend elementary commonsense to say that such a total turnaround in outlook could have taken place without there being very strong environmental factors that would have, at least in Jinnah's perception, left him with no choice.

The questions that have manifestly been addressed in detail by Jaswant Singh are: what were the developments and who were the personalities that forced Jinnah to give physical shape to an idea that he wanted to use only as a bargaining tool to get a greater share of power for Muslims in India?

Jaswant Singh says that he has come to the conclusion that it was partly Nehru's intransigence and his vision of a centralised India that forced Jinnah to take the Partition route. The Congress party, not surprisingly, cannot accept a reading of history that shows Nehru as being responsible for Partition in any manner. It is goes without saying that any favourable hue that Jinnah gets has to be largely at Nehru's expense. For the BJP and the RSS, on the other hand, Jinnah, the man who divided India, cannot be the subject of any re-examination that even remotely justifies what he did to this country, even if some blame falls on Nehru. For them, the issue is foundational and ideological. Praise in any manner is, therefore, unthinkable, as Advani had earlier found out.

Where does that leave Jaswant Singh? The Congress has, not surprisingly, welcomed the BJP's swift decision to expel him from the party. In Pakistan, there is some joy and relief at the unexpected manner in which their founder has been portrayed by an Indian, and that too a politician belonging to a right wing Hindu party. That icing on the cake will ensure that Jaswant Singh's political career is terminated abruptly.

Jinnah has claimed Jaswant, as he had to. BJP's Hanuman has become Ravan.

But this debate is not going to die here. And should not. Whether Jaswant is right or not is not important. What is more important is that as a nation we must have the courage to accept and face history honestly, warts included. Non-acceptance of any praise for Jinnah and criticism of Nehru is as bad as the ignoring and/or denying of earlier developments and incidents in our history books on specious grounds. A society cannot claim to be liberal and free if it tries to distort and cleanse its history in any manner, for any political, social or ideological reasons. Unfortunately, after Independence, India has done that.

On hopes that Jaswant Singh's courageous, even if flawed, effort spurs India to take a holistic re-look at not just its modern history, but its medieval and ancient history too. India deserves it.
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Readers may also read: Does India need "federalism" like Jinnah wanted?

WHO CAN PROTECT INDIA'S SECULARISM? CONGRESS OR BJP?

A very significant development that is deeply linked to India's past and that can have a profound bearing on its future has gone almost unnoticed in a modern, secular India that either seems to have forgotten lessons from its history or simply does not want to recall them.

Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, who had launched a Muslim party, the Assam United Democratic Front(AUDF) in 2005, is now planning to repeat his successful experiment at the national level. In Assam, AUDF is fighting the Lok Sabha elections as the dominant partner in an alliance with champions of secularism like the CPI, CPM and the NCP, and is taking on the Congress, the BJP and the AGP. In 2005 Assembly elections, the party had got 18% of the votes cast, and hopes to do much better this time.

What led to the launch of a Muslim party and the rejection of the Congress by the Muslims of Assam? Sheer numbers. That is it. The Muslim population has grown rapidly in the state. It was 30.91% of the state's population in 2001 and, given the trend of growth, will be much more today. There are six Muslim majority districts in Assam now; in 1951, there were none.

Now that the percentage of Muslims in Assam has reached a significant threshold, Muslims can openly say that they no longer need to "suffer" under the umbrella of a "secular" but Hindu political party to meet their aspirations. It is numbers alone that make Badruddin say that the policies of the Congress, yes Congress, have been anti-Muslim. Heard that before? Yes, that is almost exactly what Western educated and modern Indian Muslim leaders led by MA Jinnah used to say before Partition.

There are pockets of significant Muslim population in other parts of India too. Maulana Badruddin now wants to consolidate them under an All-India Muslim party. In December 2008, Muslims of Maharashtra, fed up with the "slavery of the Congress" since 1947, asked him in to repeat the Assam experiment in the state. In February this year, he announced the formation of a national party. In UP, in districts where the Muslim population is significant, the Ulema Council has put up seven candidates to fight the Lok Sabha elections. Five of its members have just been booked for passing insulting remarks against the national flag.

The idea behind this is very simple and has a historical basis. In future, if Muslims ally with Mulayam Yadav, for example, they will want to do that from a leadership position. Influential Muslim leaders, religious and political, do not want Muslims to depend on a Hindu leader to look after their interests; Muslims must believe that only Muslim leaders can be pro-Muslim and they alone should lead them.

This is exactly what MJ Akbar means, without saying as much, when he says that Muslims have realised that they too can do a Mayawati and forge a Muslim dominated alliance with other "secular" and caste based parties that are products of the fragmented Hindu vote. The comparison with Mayawati and dalits is specious, of course; Muslims have not been downtrodden or suppressed or untouchable for thousands of years, and dalits do not demand separate, communal laws. Despite that dissimilarity, the hard fact is that the Congress is not the party of choice for Muslims. It never was, despite its best but horribly failed efforts to projects itself as one. Had it been seen by Muslims in the light that it still wants to imagine itself in, before Independence, the country would never have been divided.

The only thing that is putting brakes on the vigorous launch of an pan India Muslim party is the big presence of the BJP. Not the Congress; that party is as irrelevant as it was in 1947. There is a worry among Muslim leaders that any aggressive launch of a Muslim communal party will awaken the ghost of Partition and lead to a consolidation of the presently terribly fragmented Hindu vote in favour of the BJP. And since the percentage of Muslims is not large enough to exploit the remaining and inevitable divisions among Hindus, the BJP will actually emerge stronger and come to power easily.

The argument both for and against a Muslim party or a Muslim led alliance has nothing whatsoever to do with secularism, if you have noticed. Maulana Badruddin's new Muslim party is anti-Congress as well as anti-BJP. It is only a question of time before it becomes anti-Left in West Bengal.

Had there been no strong "Hindu" party like the BJP around, by now - or in the near future - it would not have been the dalits led by Mayawati who would have been hoping to get to power in Delhi; Muslims led by the likes of Badruddin would have been calling the shots. Secularism would have taken on an even more absurd and dangerous and potentially explosive meaning than it already has. It would perhaps have died for Muslims altogether. The Sharia would probably have been implemented in full for Indian Muslims, just like it has been in Pakistan's Swat valley. The rotten rump of a failed secular Indian state would have been remained in existence only for non-Muslims, if at all.

If you think hard and deep, you cannot escape the paradoxical conclusion that it is the BJP, the so-called communal right wing Hindu party, and not the secular Congress, that is and will, perhaps unwittingly, be the real protector and guarantor of genuine secularism in India.

Let us for a moment go back in history and try to imagine what might have happened before Independence had there been a strong party like the BJP in existence even then. In the initial years after it was born, the Congress was the party of all Indians. But after the advent of the all-powerful Mahatma Gandhi, Muslims led by Jinnah broke away from it. To them, Congress became a party of and for Hindus because the leadership of the party, despite its genuine secular credentials, was in the hands of Hindus.

That mainly is how and why the Muslim League became the party of and for Muslims. Muslim leaders were not willing to accept demographic realities that, in a democracy, would have delivered a larger share of the power pie in the hands of Hindus. The secular argument simply cut no ice with them; it was political power alone that mattered. That is essentially what led to the demand for a separate homeland for all Indian Muslims and saw the creation of Pakistan.

Would Pakistan have ever become a reality had there been a BJP-type of party to face the challenge of the Muslim League? Consider this: Pakistan has a population of around 170 million, almost all Muslims, nearly all Hindus having been thrown out from there. Many Muslims left India for the promised land but many more chose to stay back. Today those who chose India number around 120 million. Had all or most of them too migrated to Pakistan, what do you think would have happened? Pakistan would have had more than twice its present population in the same real estate. Worse, migrants would have far outnumbered the original inhabitants. Punjabis who now constitute nearly half of Pakistan's population, would have been reduced to a small minority. The weight of the population, the fight over limited land and the inevitable ethnic clashes would have led to the collapse of Pakistan almost immediately.

Had the leaders of Muslim League seen that happening, they would most probably have dropped the idea of Pakistan altogether. But, ironically, it was the Congress that came to their rescue and helped give shape to their dream. The pains that it took to project itself as a party of Muslims too made sure that only a few Muslims went over to Pakistan. And that is how that country survived.

Had there been a BJP type party then, instead of the Congress, Muslims leaders would have immediately realised that a Pakistan would simply not survive the influx of so many Muslims from India. Ordinary Muslims both in what is now Pakistan and in the rest of India too would have been frightened by the magnitude of the disaster that was waiting to engulf them due to the migration of such a huge number of people. Punjabi Muslims and Sindhis would never have voted to turn themselves into minorities and allow the plunder of their lands by swarms of refugees coming from India, even if they were Muslims. Ethnicity would have prevailed over religion for very practical reasons. Jinnah would then have perhaps had no choice but to remain in a secular India and forget about a separate Muslim Pakistan.

The BJP is today what the Congress was accused by Muslims of being before 1947: a Hindu party. The fact is that the Congress never was and never can be a Hindu party, the term 'Hindu' loosely used to include Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists too. It has been and will remain a party that wants to believe that it is the secular voice of India's minorities, particularly Muslims. That is why it could not prevent Partition and that is also why it cannot develop a proper response to the danger that the re-birth of the Muslim League in a new avatar poses to the very foundations of secular India. It remains paralysed by the mortal but misplaced fear of being dubbed "communal" and even remotely anti-Muslim.

That is why, the truth is that despite all its warts, some ugly no doubt, it is the BJP, and not the Congress, that can ensure that India remains the secular state it is supposed to be, for all its citizens irrespective of their religion. The Congress can keep paying the price of not learning the right lessons from history; the nation cannot afford to, again.
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Readers may also read:
1. Islamic India, secular Pakistan
2. Secular Indian Mujahideen
3. Why tough terror law when attacks don't stop?
4. Islamic terrorism: Muslims in India like Jews in Nazi Germany?
5. Bangladeshis are Pakistanis, not Indians; send them back
6. The Antulay betrayal

KASHMIR AND AFGHANISTAN ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME TERROR COIN

A lot has been written about the real message that the people of Kashmir Valley have conveyed through their vote in the recently held elections in Jammu and Kashmir. For the first ever time, they defied the boycott call given by the separatists and militants, and came out to vote in record-breaking numbers. The verdict they delivered was split but in such a manner that only Omar Abdullah's National Conference could form a government in alliance with the Congress party.

Ethnic Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley are the face of the anti-India sentiment that the world sees and that Pakistan has been trying to exploit since 1947 to gobble up the part of the state which is still with India. Since 1989, the instrument of a low intensity war, also referred to as terrorism, has been used by that country to wear India down to the point that it is compelled to at least start the process of accepting Pakistan's claim on the state, even if it does so without appearing to.

As part of that strategy, separatist groups, ranging from those who demand merger of the state into Pakistan to those who want 'independence' from India, have been effectively used to discredit and dismiss all instruments of governance that symbolise the fact that the state is a part of a secular India. These groups have always opposed elections because they legitimise the state's relationship with India. That is what they did this time too smug with confidence that with the Amarnath Land issue still fresh in their minds, the people in the Valley would reject these elections en masse.

The unexpectedly overwhelming response of ethnic Kashmiris and people of all other ethnic groups stunned not only the separatists but also pleasantly surprised mainstream political parties and analysts. No one, it seems, had his finger on the real pulse of the people. Yes, ethnic Kashmiris voted differently from the the way voters in the other two regions in the state did. Yes, their vote was in sum not for India. Yes, most likely they did not even vote for secularism.

But, what was most significant was not what they voted for but what they voted against. And, what they clearly came out in large numbers to reject through the silence of their vote was Islamic extremism, the increasing Talibanisation of society and the jehadi culture that has not only proved to be Kashmir's curse but has also completely claimed Afghanistan and vast swathes of Pakistani territory along its Western border.

Somewhere in their souls, Kashmiris have understood that the road that Pakistan has put them on is not going to turn their Valley into the promised Islamic paradise. And they are clear that they do not want it to become what Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan have become. They do not want to regress further in that direction which, to all but the most fanatical, is a descent into a black hole of oppression, violence and intolerance of the worst kind. In the 21st century.

These elections, therefore, represent a victory of the ordinary Muslim over the fanatic Muslim represented by the Taliban and the various jehadi groups spawned by the state of Pakistan. The significance of this unexpected and remarkable victory that can change the course of history is not limited to Kashmir. It extends right into the heart of Pakistan. And into the whole world.

In Pakistan, free and fair elections were held in 2008, perhaps for the first time after 1950. In those elections too, Pakistani Muslims voted emphatically and dramatically to tell all those who had thoroughly messed up the ideology of Pakistan envisioned by its creator Jinnah, that they wanted the country to get off the road of religious extremism that was hurtling them all towards disaster. What was even more significant was the fact that despite the presence of the Americans next door in Afghanistan, the people of the Frontier, most affected by Islamic extremism, thrashed the extremists through the ballot.

Unfortunately, Pakistan has failed to live up to the promise that that was held out by the people's verdict. The events of the last few months, including the terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, have left no one in any doubt that Pakistan has relapsed into its old ways. The military is back in effective control, the ISI is still on the destructive pathway that has brought Pakistan to the brink, and the jehadi terrorists continue to be patronised and encouraged by powerful elements as an instrument of a state policy that has become Pakistan's cancer.

Pakistan is, thus, not defined by its people. It is defined by its military, including the ISI, with the help of an influential anti-India section of the Mohajir and Punjabi elite that is closely aligned with it. It is well known that the Sindhis, Baluchis and Pashtoons have never harboured the kind of anti-India feelings that have been made central to the very idea and existence of Pakistan by its military-led elite. The military cannot shed this positioning as then the very basis of its power and motivational underpinnings will fall apart. If that happens, it will lose its muscle and centrality in the power matrix of the state. That is something it is not going to allow to happen and that is something that no one in Pakistan has the power to make a reality.

As long as the the Pakistani military establishment, of which the ISI is a part, retains its primacy as the executor of the will the state of Pakistan as defined by it, there is going to be little real change in the country's views about its neighbours either in the east or west. That means that the same destructive, expansionist policies on both fronts will continue to be persisted with.

The presence of the US in Afghanistan has forced Pakistan's military to pretend to be America's ally while it continues to covertly support, encourage and promote the elements fighting against it. The tactic being used is conceptually the same as is being used against India in Kashmir.

Wear the Americans down in Afghanistan to a point where they are forced to seek an 'honourable' exit from there and leave it back in the hands of Pakistan through a new and improved Taliban, quite like it was before 9/11, minus the Al Qaida. This is the cornerstone of Pakistan's position on the 'war on terror' as the ally of the US. Pakistani generals reckon that the US will bolt from Afghanistan much faster than India will from Kashmir. Therefore, they will do everything to ensure that the Americans effectively lose their Afghan war, just like the Soviets did. They will, in fact try their utmost, without totally giving themselves away, to ensure that the US dose not achieve a decisive victory there, because that will probably deal a death blow to the Talibani and jehadi infrastructure that has been painstakingly set up by the military over decades. The rout of these elements will wind up being a body blow to the military itself.

It needs be understood, therefore, that neither the Americans nor the Indians can afford to lose their wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir respectively. These two flash points are the the last real battlegrounds of a retreating ideology that, as per Maulana Wahiduddin, is based in the mistaken belief that "Islam is a political system and that it is the duty of all Muslims to establish the political rule of Islam in the world".

What is happening in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and elsewhere and what happened on 9/11 is not due to "random terror", an aimless jehad, that Vir Sanghvi and, possibly, a few others have suddenly discovered it to be. As Maulana Wahiduddin explains, although terror attacks will not eliminate non-Islamic rule or bring down governments immediately, jehadis believe they can at least destabilise them and pave the way for Islamic rule. Due to lack of military power to force a change through open war, this strategy of chipping away has been adopted for bringing about the desired result of establishing Islamic rule in an open time-frame beyond what is normally considered by the US and others while developing responses to defeat it.

This ideological problem affects the whole world, as it does moderate Muslims in Pakistan, India and elsewhere, including the US. A defeat in Kashmir for India and/or the US in Afghanistan will have disastrous long term consequences from which no nation of any consequence will be immune. Even a notional defeat is not an option because it will be touted as a triumph of terror and used as a powerful motivator to attract more people from around the world to join the 'holy' cause and take terror to new levels.

This is the most fundamental aspect that needs to be understood and properly internalised so that myopic and disjointed political and military strategies can be avoided in future.

Viewed in this context, the proposal of the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband that a 'resolution' of Kashmir will stop terrorism against India from Pakistan, indicates that there is still no holistic understanding in the UK of the real dimensions of the problem of terrorism from which even his own country is not free. Implicit in Miliband's statement that appeared, much to India's discomfiture, in The Guardian even as he was being given a guided rural tourism tour by Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, is the suggestion that a resolution acceptable to Pakistan will necessarily involve India giving and Pakistan gaining. As almost everyone in India already knows, if that happens, Pakistan sponsored terrorism will only get fuelled further, not put out.

There is a view in India that a strong Pakistan is needed to keep Talibanis away from India's borders. This implies that Pakistani Punjabis and Sindhis will willingly allow such elements to convert their provinces too into another Afghanistan once the protective umbrella of Pakistan is removed, and join them in their holy war against India. This deduction appears to be completely erroneous. Ordinary Punjabis and Sindhis, like the Kashmiris in India, have no illusions about the fact that these elements have become their own cancer, a fact that has been admitted even by President Zardari. But, since they are seen to be fighting against India, they do get a measure of support due to a mindset created by the ideology adopted by Pakistan that sees a secular India as an enemy that has to be defeated.

It is, therefore, only natural that once ordinary Sindhis, Baluchis and the Punjabis are lightened of the heavy ideological anti-India baggage of the state of Pakistan, they will most likely vigorously cleanse their own provinces of these elements and ensure that they are confined to FATA. They may well take steps to weaken them there and in Afghanistan too by denying them the strong ideological and logistical base that the state of Pakistan has been providing to them, and without which they cannot survive for long.

The results of the recent elections in Kashmir Valley and Pakistan have clearly indicated that ordinary Muslims do not support this ideology of terror and the social repression it promises - if it affects their own lives. They may cheer it from the sidelines, but do not want it to reside in their homes. There is no reason to believe that the people of Afghanistan do not share the feelings that their ethnic brothers on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line have expressed in the elections there. But, they are themselves terrorised by ruthless AK47 wielding fanatics who can cross all limits of brutality without batting even the proverbial eye lid.

Ordinary Afghanis may hate the presence of US troops on their soil but that does not mean that love for the Talibanis and other jehadi groups is overflowing in their hearts. If the fear factor is decisively removed from their midst, they too will not opt for a Talibanised Afghanistan.

Both India and the US, therefore, need to work in unstated unison to ensure that Pakistan's military and the ISI are weakened to a point
where they are no longer able to hijack the agenda of the people of Pakistan again. Terrorism needs Pakistan's military and the ISI to survive; they need it to flourish to protect their relevance and the idea that Pakistan has become.

Strengthening of Pakistan's military to help the US in its war in Afghanistan is not going to yield the dividends that the US is hoping for. Rather than strengthen the war on terror, it is going to lengthen it. Worse will happen in the long run if the US pushes a deal favourable to terror in Kashmir in the hope that it will enable it to de-induct from Afghanistan after wiping the Al Qaida out from there by leaving that country in the 'safe' hands of the Pakistani military.

Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin. The war on terror has to be decisively won in both these places. The US cannot afford to make the mistake that it made when the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. That mistake resulted in 9/11 and more. This time, the consequences of a mistake will be far worse for the US and the rest of the world.
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Readers may also read: Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror

9/11 TO 9/19: BEADS ON A STRING THAT NEEDS TO BE CUT

Pakistan is imploding. Its Frankenstein has grown too big and too strong to be controlled. In fact, it now wants to seize control. And in a hurry. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is under siege; its leadership is losing control to the very terrorists it once created and nurtured with great care and effort as Jehadis.

September 19, 2008, was, according to some analysts, Pakistan’s 9/11. That evening, Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel, located a shout away from the residences of Pakistan’s top leaders, was destroyed in a fidayeen attack when a truck laden with 1000 kilograms of explosives blew up at its security check post. This daring attack, within hours of President Zardari’s address to Parliament, has shaken the nation like no other attack had till now.

Between 9/11 and 9/19, Islamic terrorists have been striking with almost monotonous regularity across parts of the world, particularly in India and lately in Pakistan. To the casual observer, these attacks may not appear to have much in common. But make no mistake: they are all beads on the same one Islamic string. And that string needs to be cut.

Let us face the one uncomfortable truth that has created this explosive string: Islam is in retreat. From the heights that it had reached when the Ottoman and Mughal Empires were at their peak, the Islamic world has lost most of its might over the last couple of centuries. Had it not been for the oil beneath the sand made valuable by the West, even the economic prosperity that has camouflaged the grievous loss of political power and dominance, would not have blessed many Muslim countries, particularly in the Gulf. Fortunately, oil wealth has made the Arab world more or less comfortable with the situation. They are agitated basically by the political marginalisation of the Palestinians and their oppression by the state of Israel.

The only one nation that has not been able to reconcile to the decline of the grandeur and power of Islam and has reacted to it is Pakistan, the Islamic state carved out of India in 1947. It mistakenly believes that it is the inheritor of the Mughal empire. Powerful sections of its establishment, if not all of them, have taken it upon themselves to reclaim that lost empire. From that desire has emerged the strategy of bleeding India to death by inflicting on it ‘a thousand cuts’. In the single minded pursuit of this strategy, Pakistan has hopelessly intertwined its politics with the legacy of the Mughals, the teachings of Islam and the concept of Jehad. The breaking away of Bangladesh in 1971 should have opened many Pakistani eyes, but it had the opposite effect.

The Quranic concept of Jehad was first distorted and exploited by Pakistan as a political tool to successfully throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The spectacular success that Pakistan achieved in Afghanistan, albeit with American help, against a super power, was just the heady tonic that its establishment needed to unleash Islamic terrorists against India with renewed vigour, initially in Kashmir and later in the rest of the country.

The success in Afghanistan also proved to be equally heady for radical Islamists for whom the battle was more than just political. For them it meant a return to ‘pure’ Islam and the way of life that was prevalent during the time of the Prophet, as interpreted by them. That is what they achieved in Afghanistan after throwing the Soviets out. That is also what attracted Arab millionaire Osama bin Laden to set up base in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Laden was unable to reconcile to the domination of Christian West over the Muslim world and the presence of American troops in the Holy Land. He also believed in the restoration of the Sharia and the rejection of all other ideologies and religions of the world. It was this rare confluence of ideology and beliefs that enabled Laden give concrete shape to his ambitions in this part of the world.

Osama bin Laden’s presence and vision helped Pakistan give global shape to its jehad which was, until his arrival, limited to India, notwithstanding the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Laden believed that it was not just heretics, but America, Israel and even Shia Muslims who were the principal enemies of Islam. Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni and had the same problems with Ahmediya Muslims. So, this explosive combination quickly converted Pakistan into the natural ideological home and the physical training ground of Islamic terror groups who earnestly believed that with the power of Allah with them, they would be able to defeat not just India, as the state of Pakistan wanted, but also the remaining super power, as Laden did, and then establish the rule of Islam over the whole world.

That is where the Pakistani establishment made a fatal mistake.

Most Pakistanis do not want their country to become an Islamic state of the kind that Afghanistan was before 9/11. They are aware that even the Mughal Empire was never an “Islamic state”. The creator of Pakistan, Jinnah, in fact actually visualised a liberal, secular state that had nothing to do with the personal matter of the religious beliefs of its citizens. But, tragically, his vision, which would have produced a mirror image of the India Pakistan had broken away from, and in time exposed the contrived concept behind its creation, was summarily dumped by other Pakistani leaders in favour of an increasingly Islamised state. That idea was given a firm one way ideological direction by General Zia-ul-Haq after he overthrew Bhutto to become the ruler of Pakistan.

It is against human nature to remain static mentally and physically. The world has changed drastically over the last thousand years, thanks to the undying spirit of enquiry and the ability of man to think not just adaptively but creatively. But for Laden and the Taliban, nothing short of a return to ‘pure’ Islam will do. They want to roll back time. Their war is rooted in and is inseparable from that ideology. For them, it is not a convenient political tool to be used dishonestly and then discarded.

That is why today Pakistan is under siege. It is having to confront within Pakistan the very ideology which it successfully used to virtually annex Afghanistan. The proponents of that ideology, having been routed in Afghanistan, can naturally not accept the fact that their mother state is now sleeping with the US and has become the frontline state of their enemy in its war against them. Even elements in the Pakistani establishment and the ISI cannot live with the humiliating defeat that has been inflicted on them by the Americans. They still believe that they can defeat the US like they did the Soviets, if the state of Pakistan continues to support them. Of course they don’t want to even remember that in their war in Afghanistan, the US was with them and now there is no USSR to back them.

The tactical decision of Musharraf to join up with the US after 9/11 to save the state of Pakistan has generated a lot of emotional anger among ordinary Pakistanis. That is because they do not know how deep in trouble their country is. They do not want their country to become another Afghanistan; yet they do not want it to be on the side of the US. Their rulers know better. That is why, notwithstanding whatever he had said earlier, Zardari did not take long after getting power to say that Pakistan faced a grave danger from Taliban and that the organisation should be banned. No wonder, then, that he has come under attack so soon.

9/19 has a clear and very ominous message for Pakistan’s rulers from their creation, the Taliban and their invited guest, Osama bin Laden: join us in our holy jehad against the US or join battle with us; we are going to get you, no matter where you are.

9/19 has also made it clear that Pakistan’s jehadis-turned-terrorists have the capability and the support required to strike terror at will wherever they wish to against those who oppose them. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was not an aberration. Nor was the hijacking of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid by radicals. The Al Qaida has already said that it will kill Musharraf.

The state of Pakistan has already lost all but nominal authority in nearly the whole of Pakistan save Punjab and Sind. Now, it is under siege in the very heart of the country. Some believe that 9/19 was actually meant to be an attack on Parliament when Zardari was addressing it, to take out almost the entire political Pakistani leadership in one huge blast.

After 9/11, the US moved swiftly and decisively against those who had carried out the attacks. It could do so because Americans were united in that fight against a clearly identifiable enemy. Pakistan too has to move like that if it wants to save itself. But, Pakistanis are deeply divided in that fight and the enemy is no one else but one of their own who was till yesterday their hero.

Will Pakistan and its military be able to decisively fight with and kill and defeat Pakistanis and other Muslims fighting the US in Afghanistan and in control of large parts of Pakistan? If the answer is yes, Pakistan might survive in its present shape as a country. Otherwise, it may soon find people looking for it in a few barely read pages of history books.

Notwithstanding what Pakistan does or not to face this challenge of its own making, the world needs to realise that unless the one common string that joins almost all terror attacks that have been carried out across the globe is cut decisively, innocent lives will continue to be lost and the world will continue to remain as unsafe as it is today.
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Below is a 'must watch' dramatic CCTV footage of the minutes preceding the blowing up of the truck at the security gate of the hotel. Listen to the conversations too, if you can understand Hindi/Urdu.


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Readers may also like to read:

1. Mumbai 11/26: wake up to Islamic terror, this is just the beginning
2. Pakistan: dangers of the multi-ethnic Islamic state

MUSHARRAF GONE, PAKISTAN'S SLIDE IS ON

Just six days back, when almost everyone in Pakistan and India was celebrating the ouster of military dictator Pervez Musharraf as President of Pakistan, I had reiterated the warning that I had given just after elections earlier this year that if Pakistani politicians do not co-opt Musharraf in the country’s really serious internal war against Islamic terrorism, they may not be able to save Jinnah’s Pakistan from becoming the Pakistan of Osama bin Laden.

There must be something majorly common in the genes of Indian and Pakistani politicians. Despite knowing what happened after Indira Gandhi was defeated in 1977, Pakistan politicians have refused to learn from the Janata Party experience. That party, which came into being on a single point agenda, cracked up after it ousted Indira Gandhi, within a couple of years.

In Pakistan, the one point alliance of Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N) and Asif Zardari’s PPP, has cracked and fallen apart within a week of the ouster of Musharraf. This must count as the fastest unravelling of a national coalition anywhere in the world. Although it was evident that it was coming, the pace at which it has happened has come as a total surprise. Nawaz Sharif has this evening itself, withdrawn from the coalition and decided to sit in the opposition. His party has also decided to put up its own Presidential candidate.

Sharif and Zardari had earlier agreed that a neutral and eminent person would be made the next President. But, Zardari, displaying unbridled greed for power, unilaterally declared himself as PPP’s Presidential candidate. Tellingly, their earlier joint proposal for clipping the wings of the President by taking away his sweeping powers, including the power to dissolve the Pakistan National Assembly, has been quietly shelved by the PPP. Zardari obviously wants to call the shots as President and is not going to hold the post in a ceremonial capacity only.

The PPP has also gone slow on the reinstatement of the judges, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, dismissed by Musharraf, something which had also been agreed to by both parties. This is simply not acceptable to Sharif who has been asking for their reinstatement from day one.

Musharraf had become a hated man in Pakistan for fighting America’s war on terror against Muslims in Pakistan. Did he have a choice? Does anyone who rules Pakistan have a choice if he wants to save the nation? Nobody gave that fact a thought when the single agenda was to get rid of him. But, having got a firsthand view of the real situation , today even Zardari has gone on record to say that Pakistan faces a grave danger from Taliban and that the organisation should be banned.

For Zardari to admit this unpleasant truth publicly so quickly after the removal of Musharraf should leave no one in any doubt that Jinnah’s Pakistan is in real danger.

It is not just the Taliban which is flexing its dangerous and deadly muscles now. Other organisations which had been banned by Musharraf have also started resurfacing openly. It was reported in The Times of India of August 22, 2008 , that the Lashkar-e-Toiba has re-opened its offices, as has the Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Sipah-e-Sahaba. The Al Qaida has vowed to hunt down Musharraf. A few weeks back, Islamic terrorists had surrounded the Frontier capital Peshawar and had almost captured it before an agreement was reached with them to stay out of the city. The writ of the state of Pakistan already does not run in almost the whole of the Frontier and large parts of Baluchistan.

Despite all these grave warning signs, Pakistan’s politicians have, as always, let their pettiness and vindictiveness get the better of elementary commonsense. Perhaps they want to beat Indian politicians conclusively in this game too, no matter what the damage is to their country.

The circle is now complete. And a new one has begun. The old wine in old bottle has offered nothing new. With Musharraf gone, Pakistan’s slide into anarchy has begun in a tearing hurry. This time, things will move much faster than most people can even imagine now. General Kiyani may have to step in and take charge quickly. The Rs10 crore question is whether this time he will be able to pull his country of the quicksand of terrorism and anarchy, and save it before it is too late.

On its part, India needs to prepare itself to handle the consequences of the developments in Pakistan, including limited military options, to protect its own interests and ensure that the whole region does not become one huge ungovernable mess in the hands of assorted outfits. The call to action might come suddenly, without warning.

MUSHARRAF MAULED: JINNAH'S PAKISTAN NEXT?

When Pakistan voted the two main political parties of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to power earlier this year in an election ordered by General Pervez Musharraf, it looked like Pakistan had voted to save Jinnah’s liberal Pakistan from Arab-led Islamic fundamentalists who were determined to turn that country into a ‘pure’ Islamic state, just like Afghanistan was before 9/11. Then, everyone rejoiced at the victory of democracy and the defeat of a military dictator who was perceived to be fighting America’s war against Muslims.

To me, the situation then was reminiscent of what happened in India after Indira Gandhi was defeated in 1977 because of the excesses committed by her government during the Emergency that she had imposed solely to remain Prime Minister. That was, for India, a defining moment which could have led to its history being rewritten. But, Indira Gandhi’s opponents blew it by getting mired in the politics of personal vendetta which backfired, as it had to, and resurrected Indira Gandhi and the Congress party from the dead.

I had then posted an article, ‘A vote to save Jinnah’s Pakistan: will it?’, highlighting that the dangers facing Pakistan were far greater than what India faced in 1977. It was clear to me that Pakistani leaders needed to co-opt Musharraf in Pakistan’s internal war against terror and not repeat the mistake that Indian leaders had made. But, then itself it was beginning to appear that no lessons had been learnt and that Pakistan was heading towards a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

The mauling of Musharraf by the deadly duo of Zardari and Sharif, resulting in his resignation as President yesterday, has led to scenes of joy in Pakistan and a euphoria in the Karachi Stock Exchange. Sadly, this is really no more than a victory of the politics of petty vendetta over common sense and national interest. This mauling, rather than strengthening democracy, may actually accelerate Pakistan's slide into anarchy and fundamentalism. And that may well lead to the mauling of the Pakistan that Jinnah dreamt of by the Pakistan that Osama bin Laden is dreaming of.

At this point, it is only appropriate that I reproduce my earlier post that says it all in gripping detail.

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In 1977, India voted to dramatically and humiliatingly rout the invincible Indira Gandhi and her Congress party out of power. India had then emphatically signalled that the nation was not willing to accept the curbs and excesses that it had experienced during the Emergency. Indira Gandhi's personal defeat in her own constituency drove home the point that no matter how powerful and charismatic the leader, he/she had to respect the individual liberties that the founding fathers of the country had guranteed through the constitution.

In 2008, in the first free and fair elections held in Pakistan since 1970, the nation has voted even more emphatically and dramatically to tell all those who have thoroughly messed up the very idea and ideology of Pakistan envisioned by its creator Jinnah, that it wants to save the country from the inevitable disaster towards which they have been taking it for quite a long time now.

MA Jinnah had visualized a secular and democratic Pakistan in which there would be a complete separation between the totally free personal religious beliefs of its citizens and the functioning of the state. Though Pakistan was created as the country for all Muslims of undivided India, Jinnah was very clear that the religion had no absolutely no role to play in governance. His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 made that ideological cornerstone absolutely clear.

Jinnah’s concept of Pakistan was, unfortunately, given a hasty burial as the other leaders of Pakistan went about Islamizing the nation and ‘cleansing’ it of people belonging to other religions who were forced to either convert to Islam or flee to India. In 1973, the country drove a major nail in Jinnah’s conceptual coffin by introducing an Islamic constitution.

In 1977, just as India was taking a watershed step towards rejection of an oppressive regime, Pakistan was equally fatefully falling into the hands of a military dictator who would go on to unleash fundamentalist Islamic forces that would make Jinnah look like an infidel and push the country suffocatingly into the grip of Islamic extremists spearheaded by the Arab Al Qaida and its subordinate homegrown arm, the Taliban. The abyss that General Zia ul Haq had pushed Pakistan into had only a one way ticket till now.

Yes, there were times when victories and successes, as seen through only the narrow prism of an Islam that some mullahs and their followers preached, justified the relentless march towards increasing religious extremism. In reality, these ‘achievements’ just covered the deepening and widening cracks that were destroying the very core of Pakistan and, most importantly, concealing the fact that this was not the kind of Islam that the vast majority of voiceless, fearful and increasingly terrified Pakistanis wanted.

More than thirty years after that downhill journey started, and after a full ‘dekho’ in Afghanistan of the kind of life they would ‘enjoy’ in a fully Islamized Pakistan, those who were courageous enough to say what they really wanted to through the ballot box have told the whole wide world that they do not want the Al Qaida, mullahs and the Talibanis to run their country at all. This rejection of that extremist brand of Islam has been almost complete in the areas most affected by their domination, particularly the Frontier bordering Afghanistan.

That the people of the Frontier have soundly thrashed the extremists, despite the much hated presence of US troops next door against whom these guys are fighting, is the most telling message of this watershed election in Pakistan. This can well be viewed as nothing short of a spectacular resurrection for what the Qaid-e-Azam stood for. After 60 years, Jinnah has risen from the ideological grave in which he had been buried as dead. The expected defeat of mainstream fringe parties supporting President Musharraf should not deflect any one from the real message that the voters of Pakistan have unequivocally given to those who are going to guide the destiny of their nation in future.

Pakistan’s battle to save Jinnah’s country has not been won yet. Indeed, it has just been joined. A long and really hard fight can be expected in the future to conclusively send the mullahs and the military back to their respective barracks, particularly the former, before victory can be proclaimed. Will the battle be won?

Pakistan today finds itself in a situation quite similar to what India faced in 1977. Almost the entire opposition had then come together to rout Indira Gandhi whose misrule during the Emergency united as ideologically opposed parties as the Left and the BJP. The country rejoiced when they all won and formed the government. Much was expected from them; a new direction, a new energy, a new hope. What did they deliver? First, they got after Indira Gandhi in a most petty and vindictive manner. Then they started fighting among themselves, unable to rise above the very differences which had thwarted all their efforts to defeat the Congress earlier. Disillusionment set in soon; people forgave Indira Gandhi quickly and she stormed back to power in the next elections. And the dynasty’s pre-eminence has never been threatened ever since.

Benazir Bhutto’s PPP, Nawaz Sharif’s PML, the ANP and independents together command a two thirds majority in the Pakistan National Assembly. Enough to impeach President Musharraf should they so desire. That seems to the consuming passion of Nawaz Sharif, the man earlier overthrown by Musharraf in a military coup, above everything else. Sharif is not willing to join the government to be headed by PPP, the largest party, as long as Musharraf is President. He is also bent upon reinstating the Supreme Court judges sacked earlier by Musharraf to legitimize his presidency. As had happened in India, Pakistani politicians are seemingly unable to rise above their petty hassles for the sake of their country.

PML (Q) and MQM, the two major parties backing Musharraf, may have suffered reverses in the elections primarily because of the anger against Musharraf for becoming the stooge of the US in the latter’s fight against Muslim ‘terrorists’. But, paradoxically, the ones who have been totally rejected by the voters are those who are fighting against the US! That shows how hated their version of Islam has become in Pakistan.

People may hate Musharraf for fighting with the US, but they just do not want their country to be governed by those fighting against the US. The reaction against Musharraf is clearly emotional; the rejection of the Al Qaida and the Taliban reflects the practical realization of the Muslim who wants to live a life of freedom from the fear, the choking dogma, the oppression, the violence and the economic doom that these guys have given and promise to give in the name of Islam.

Pakistani politicians would do well to learn the right lessons from what happened in India so that they do not squander this priceless opportunity to reclaim Pakistan from the brink. Reconciliation rather than confrontation has to be central if extremist forces have to be conclusively defeated. It must be remembered that no matter who comes to power, even if it is the fiery anti-American Imran Khan, Pakistan’s fight against terror has necessarily to be on the side of the US, whether tacitly or openly. The seeing of everything from the prism of a “Muslims are killing Muslims” mindset, to quote Mr. Khan, has to be shed if there has to be any realistic hope of honouring the peoples’ verdict.

The electorally defeated extremists who want to ruin the great Satan US are the ones who are ruining Pakistan. They have to be fought collectively by all those who have Pakistan’s interests uppermost in their agenda. Expending energies in trying to overthrow Musharraf, who they would do well to co-opt in this terminal fight, and in petty infighting, will quickly disillusion the masses. That will then set the stage for a triumphant march to Islamabad by the Al Qaida, the Taliban and the clerics who incubate them. A repeat of what happened in Afghanistan will play out in the very heart of Pakistan with an intensity and ruthlessness far greater than what the world saw there. Mainstream Pakistani politicians who have quickly put Benazir Bhutto’s assassination behind them would do well to remember the final moments of President Najibullah in Kabul.

This is the real “core issue”, to borrow Musharraf’s words on Kashmir, which will determine whether Pakistan will survive as Jinnah’s country or become Osama Bin Laden's nation, the Islamic state that he and his band of religious extremists are trying desperately to create in the landmass that presently constitutes Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Destinies of nations are sometimes determined by a few course-altering events, not much different from the tide in the affairs of men that Shakespeare had written so magically about. That tide in the affairs of countries is upon Pakistan now. Pakistani politicians would do well to take it at the flood and lead Jinnah’s Pakistan on to fortune. If they miss it this time too, they may well condemn their country to remain bound in shallows and in miseries at the mercy of Arab Laden.

Will they succeed? Both Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif have already dug their heels in as if the most important issue facing the country is their mutual fight to death. The right lessons do not seem to have been learnt yet. Will they and others ever learn and display necessary magnanimity, statesmanship and clarity of purpose before it is too late for Pakistan?

Will this vote of the people of Pakistan to save the country save it? What do you think?