Arun Shourie
"Dear Arun", writes Mr. Som Benegal, the sharpest of pins to many a baloon, "Why do you always equate the Urdu press with Muslims? I write a 600 word editorial every single day in TEJ which is in Urdu -- and which is neither Muslim, nor communal in any way. (I hope I am not pseudo-secular!) There are other Urdu papers which are not Muslim; indeed some are very, very anti-Muslim. May be sometimes you should also read some voices of 'sanity' (or pseudo- sanity!)".
A telling point. Even in ordinary times we tend to generalize. When tensions rise, when controversies sharpen, we tend to do so all the more - even though that is precisely the time when we should be keeping every possible exception, every distinction in mind.
"There must be an end to appeasing Muslims," we hear that said. In point of fact the Muslims are not the ones whom governments and politicians have been appeasing. They have been appeasing brokers of Muslims -- politicians and priests who set themselves up as the leaders of Muslims. The telling point about that appeasement has been that it has done nothing for the average Muslim. In fact, it has brought great harm upon him: his real problems remained unattended; a massive Hindu reaction was stoked; he was led by that appeasement to believe that these brokers were the ones who were powerful, that they would be his deliverers -- he was thereby, disabled even further for the future.
Of course, the politicians would not have pandered to these brokers if the community had been deaf to the latter. And so there is a sense in which by bending to Bukhari or Shahabuddin governments and politicians were not just bending to the brokers but to the community -- that is, it is not just that these brokers out of the blue took up issues like Satanic Verses or Shah Bano which had little to do with the real problems of the community, the latter itself looked upon these issues as the real ones. That is true. But only up to a point: the community fell in line behind these brokers all the more blindly as the attention that leaders like Rajiv and VP Singh and a succession of governments paid them signalled to the community that these brokers were indeed the ones who were influential.
By not making the distinction between having appeased Muslims and having appeased brokers of Muslims we therefore wrongly imagine that Muslims have been hogging too much of the chapati. Worse, we blame the wrong entity and thereby plummet for the wrong remedy. The cause is not the ordinary Muslim -- it is the broker, and the leader who props up that broker, and the latter happens to be a Hindu more often than a Muslim.
Consider the infiltrators from Bangladesh. Who has been smuggling them on to the electoral rolls? Who has been legitimising their residence by pressurising local administrations to issue them ration cards? True, some of the ones who did this most systematically in Assam were Muslims -- Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Moinul Haq Choudhury, Anwara Taimur. But the ones who have been master-minding this in Delhi for instance are Congress leaders, and these happen to be Hindus.
The fact that new voices are being heard since 6 Decemeber warrants an even finer distinction. Hindus should distinguish, that is, not just between ordinary Muslims and Muslim leaders but, among the latter, between the familiar leaders -- who the Muslims themselves today see have brought such cost on their heads -- and the ones they may turn to in the future. Ayodhya has demolished, for the time being at least, the brokers who became important after 1977 -- Bukhari, Shahabuddin, Owaisi, Suleiman Sait etc. Which political leader today would be seen sending his emissary to Bukhari for points to be included in his party's manifesto? It is true of course that a few hall meetings of intellectuals, a few articles in newspapers by them do not mean that a new leadership is in place. But it is equally true that if we continue to lump the familiar old leaders and the possible new leaders together, even more so if we continue to focus only on the old leaders, we may nip a possible -- and very consequential -- change in the bud.
The Media
The media has a vital role to play in this matter. "Who created these leaders in the first place?", a leading Muslim intellectual remonstrated with me in Bombay in the wake of 6 Dec. "Don't just blame the politicians who dealt with them. You fellows in the press are the ones who made these fellows synonymous with the very word 'Muslim'. They had little following among the Muslims. It is the importance you gave them which convinced the ordinary Muslim to fall in line behind them. And now the poor, ordinary Muslim is being punished for what these leaders have been saying and doing."
"And you continue to give such persons the same sort of importance even today," he added. He gave the example of another "Imam" in Bombay whom he named. The man had been patronised and built up by a politician very powerful in Maharashtra then - a Hindu, whom he also named. The politician had patronised the "Imam" by bestowing land upon him. The "Imam" had built flats on it, and sold each flat to several Muslims. The defrauded purchases had taken him to court. In fact so intense was the hostility to the man that the "Imam" had to flee Bombay. He had been living in Goa all these years. The cases were still going on. But come the riots, the man had come back, and his statements and posturings -- all intransigent -- were suddenly again being given banner headlines by the newspapers. The politician-patron being important once again, the man had been given jeeps with whirling red lights to escort him. This sort of attention by the State, said the liberal, will without doubt lead the ordinary, frightened Muslims to believe that this was the man who could secure protection for them. The much was the result of what the politician was doing. But the result was left in no doubt by the newspapers giving so much importance to the statements of the man -- a man who had been so decisively turfed out by the community so recently.
As a result on the one hand ordinary Muslims are misled, and on the other the wrong stereotype of them is formed in the Hindu mind. Over the last few years, the stereotype among Hindus of the average Muslim has been the visage of Bukhari, the intransigence of Shahabuddin and Suleiman Sait, the bargains of Owaisi. The media has contributed to reinforcing this stereotype. When stories have had to be done and obtaining "the Muslim point of view" has been thought necessary, the reflex in newspaper offices has been to contact Shahabuddin or Bukhari and report their view as the views of Muslims in general.
Imagine if the stereotype of the Muslim in the Hindu mind today were not Bukhari, imagine if the role model in the mind of the Muslim himself were not Shahabuddin, but Mr. Abdul Kalam. He is a Muslim too, and few have done for our rocket and space programmes, and therefore for the defence of our country, what he has. The Hindu would not react the way he does to Muslims as a category. The Muslim would not conclude that the options for him are to follow Bukhari or nothing. Of course, the real remedy is to have many, many more Abdul Kalams -- for a stereotype cannot be conjured on exceptions. And that reminds us of the need for Muslims and the rest to do everything possible for improving the educational and technical standards of Muslims. But simultaneously the media can help that very upgradation by putting every Abdul Kalam at the center of the stage.
Further Distinctions
The example of Mr. Abdul Kalam points to an even more vital matter: even worse than confounding these brokers with ordinary Muslims is the tendency at such moments of tension to brand an entire group -- Muslims in this case -- as disloyal to the country. Bal Thackeray's rhetoric is an extreme example of such branding.
Many of our rulers joined up with the French, the Portugese, the English to do in their immediate rivals. There were many Hindus among them. That pattern continues to this day. To take a current example, persons who have been secreting away money in Swiss banks have been, among other things, undermining our economy; they have been making our country vulnerable by leaving it all the more dependent on foreign aid etc. Are these primarily Hindu or Muslim? The ones who engineered the bank scam -- they undermined a vital institution and much else, and thereby made our country more vulnerable. How many Hindus, how many Muslims?
It is true of course that supra-nationalism is one of the hallmarks of Islam. And there IS a sense in which Muslims here identify with what they come to see as an Islamic issue or Islamic State elsewhere. But the way out of that is not Thackeray's. The way is to inform them about the real condition of the people in these Islamic countries, to give them facts about the nature of these Islamic regimes -- about the corruption and venality, about how the enormous earnings from oil have been squandered by profligacy and mismanagement, about the woeful condition of women and minorities, about the fratricide among these regimes all supposedly belonging to a common identity. Assume for a moment that the oft-repeated charge is true -- that some persons in Muslim localities celebrate the victories of Pakistan's teams over Indian cricket teams. That a few burst crackers cannot be taken as proof of the sentiment of an entire community. But assume for a moment that Muslims in general have their heart in Pakistan and those crackers are but a symptom. Surely, the way to deal with that is not Bal Thackeray's -- of clobbering the entire community each time some one bursts crackers. The way that will work is to inform the community about the condition of mohajirs in Karachi, about that of the Ahmediyas and of women all over Pakistan, about the murderous jostling among Punjabis and Sindhis. And to have an invincible cricket team!
Things to do
Simple distinctions, and yet the more strained the times the more important it is that we keep them in mind. And there is another thing. As tensions intensify, as diferences sharpen we tend more and more to exchange views only with persons who share our views. But that is just the time when we must reach out beyond our circle.
So, lots and lots of meetings at which Muslims and Hindus speak what is in their mind and heart. And there are three keys:
*
Muslims and Hindus - whether they be intellectuals or priest -- should talk to each other directly, and not through politicians, nor through secularists who set themselves up as referees;
*
They must speak out everything that is in their hearts;
*
And the two must in a sense ask themselves diametrically opposed questions.
Hindus for instance must ask themselves what exactly the benefits are which the Muslims have wrested disproportionately from the State. The Muslims on the other hand must ask themselves whether the "victories" their leaders won in their names brought them anything, whether these "victories" are not the precise thing that convinced the Hindus that Muslims were wresting undue advantages from the State. Muslims must see that if they make a fetish of separateness -- of some chimerical "separate identity" -- they will be consigning themselves not just to separateness but to discrimination. The Hindus on the other hand must be always watchful that the well-reasoned arguments of Mr Advani do not become the occasion, that they do not come to be used as license by some local bully to wreak vengeance. Muslims must remember that irrespective of what Hindu scriptures may have said, the Hindus too will become a bit "Islamic" if Muslim leaders make intransigence the badge of commitment to the Faith. The Hindus on the other hand must keep the opposite in mind: the "victories" of Shahabuddin etc. stoked such a mighty reaction among Hindus; will the rhetoric of Bal Thackeray or Ritambhara not legitimise a reaction too?
From 'A Secular Agenda'
Showing posts with label bal thackeray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bal thackeray. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Vital Distinctions
Arun Shourie
"Dear Arun", writes Mr. Som Benegal, the sharpest of pins to many a baloon, "Why do you always equate the Urdu press with Muslims? I write a 600 word editorial every single day in TEJ which is in Urdu -- and which is neither Muslim, nor communal in any way. (I hope I am not pseudo-secular!) There are other Urdu papers which are not Muslim; indeed some are very, very anti-Muslim. May be sometimes you should also read some voices of 'sanity' (or pseudo- sanity!)".
A telling point. Even in ordinary times we tend to generalize. When tensions rise, when controversies sharpen, we tend to do so all the more - even though that is precisely the time when we should be keeping every possible exception, every distinction in mind.
"There must be an end to appeasing Muslims," we hear that said. In point of fact the Muslims are not the ones whom governments and politicians have been appeasing. They have been appeasing brokers of Muslims -- politicians and priests who set themselves up as the leaders of Muslims. The telling point about that appeasement has been that it has done nothing for the average Muslim. In fact, it has brought great harm upon him: his real problems remained unattended; a massive Hindu reaction was stoked; he was led by that appeasement to believe that these brokers were the ones who were powerful, that they would be his deliverers -- he was thereby, disabled even further for the future.
Of course, the politicians would not have pandered to these brokers if the community had been deaf to the latter. And so there is a sense in which by bending to Bukhari or Shahabuddin governments and politicians were not just bending to the brokers but to the community -- that is, it is not just that these brokers out of the blue took up issues like Satanic Verses or Shah Bano which had little to do with the real problems of the community, the latter itself looked upon these issues as the real ones. That is true. But only up to a point: the community fell in line behind these brokers all the more blindly as the attention that leaders like Rajiv and VP Singh and a succession of governments paid them signalled to the community that these brokers were indeed the ones who were influential.
By not making the distinction between having appeased Muslims and having appeased brokers of Muslims we therefore wrongly imagine that Muslims have been hogging too much of the chapati. Worse, we blame the wrong entity and thereby plummet for the wrong remedy. The cause is not the ordinary Muslim -- it is the broker, and the leader who props up that broker, and the latter happens to be a Hindu more often than a Muslim.
Consider the infiltrators from Bangladesh. Who has been smuggling them on to the electoral rolls? Who has been legitimising their residence by pressurising local administrations to issue them ration cards? True, some of the ones who did this most systematically in Assam were Muslims -- Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Moinul Haq Choudhury, Anwara Taimur. But the ones who have been master-minding this in Delhi for instance are Congress leaders, and these happen to be Hindus.
The fact that new voices are being heard since 6 Decemeber warrants an even finer distinction. Hindus should distinguish, that is, not just between ordinary Muslims and Muslim leaders but, among the latter, between the familiar leaders -- who the Muslims themselves today see have brought such cost on their heads -- and the ones they may turn to in the future. Ayodhya has demolished, for the time being at least, the brokers who became important after 1977 -- Bukhari, Shahabuddin, Owaisi, Suleiman Sait etc. Which political leader today would be seen sending his emissary to Bukhari for points to be included in his party's manifesto? It is true of course that a few hall meetings of intellectuals, a few articles in newspapers by them do not mean that a new leadership is in place. But it is equally true that if we continue to lump the familiar old leaders and the possible new leaders together, even more so if we continue to focus only on the old leaders, we may nip a possible -- and very consequential -- change in the bud.
The Media
The media has a vital role to play in this matter. "Who created these leaders in the first place?", a leading Muslim intellectual remonstrated with me in Bombay in the wake of 6 Dec. "Don't just blame the politicians who dealt with them. You fellows in the press are the ones who made these fellows synonymous with the very word 'Muslim'. They had little following among the Muslims. It is the importance you gave them which convinced the ordinary Muslim to fall in line behind them. And now the poor, ordinary Muslim is being punished for what these leaders have been saying and doing."
"And you continue to give such persons the same sort of importance even today," he added. He gave the example of another "Imam" in Bombay whom he named. The man had been patronised and built up by a politician very powerful in Maharashtra then - a Hindu, whom he also named. The politician had patronised the "Imam" by bestowing land upon him. The "Imam" had built flats on it, and sold each flat to several Muslims. The defrauded purchases had taken him to court. In fact so intense was the hostility to the man that the "Imam" had to flee Bombay. He had been living in Goa all these years. The cases were still going on. But come the riots, the man had come back, and his statements and posturings -- all intransigent -- were suddenly again being given banner headlines by the newspapers. The politician-patron being important once again, the man had been given jeeps with whirling red lights to escort him. This sort of attention by the State, said the liberal, will without doubt lead the ordinary, frightened Muslims to believe that this was the man who could secure protection for them. The much was the result of what the politician was doing. But the result was left in no doubt by the newspapers giving so much importance to the statements of the man -- a man who had been so decisively turfed out by the community so recently.
As a result on the one hand ordinary Muslims are misled, and on the other the wrong stereotype of them is formed in the Hindu mind. Over the last few years, the stereotype among Hindus of the average Muslim has been the visage of Bukhari, the intransigence of Shahabuddin and Suleiman Sait, the bargains of Owaisi. The media has contributed to reinforcing this stereotype. When stories have had to be done and obtaining "the Muslim point of view" has been thought necessary, the reflex in newspaper offices has been to contact Shahabuddin or Bukhari and report their view as the views of Muslims in general.
Imagine if the stereotype of the Muslim in the Hindu mind today were not Bukhari, imagine if the role model in the mind of the Muslim himself were not Shahabuddin, but Mr. Abdul Kalam. He is a Muslim too, and few have done for our rocket and space programmes, and therefore for the defence of our country, what he has. The Hindu would not react the way he does to Muslims as a category. The Muslim would not conclude that the options for him are to follow Bukhari or nothing. Of course, the real remedy is to have many, many more Abdul Kalams -- for a stereotype cannot be conjured on exceptions. And that reminds us of the need for Muslims and the rest to do everything possible for improving the educational and technical standards of Muslims. But simultaneously the media can help that very upgradation by putting every Abdul Kalam at the center of the stage.
Further Distinctions
The example of Mr. Abdul Kalam points to an even more vital matter: even worse than confounding these brokers with ordinary Muslims is the tendency at such moments of tension to brand an entire group -- Muslims in this case -- as disloyal to the country. Bal Thackeray's rhetoric is an extreme example of such branding.
Many of our rulers joined up with the French, the Portugese, the English to do in their immediate rivals. There were many Hindus among them. That pattern continues to this day. To take a current example, persons who have been secreting away money in Swiss banks have been, among other things, undermining our economy; they have been making our country vulnerable by leaving it all the more dependent on foreign aid etc. Are these primarily Hindu or Muslim? The ones who engineered the bank scam -- they undermined a vital institution and much else, and thereby made our country more vulnerable. How many Hindus, how many Muslims?
It is true of course that supra-nationalism is one of the hallmarks of Islam. And there IS a sense in which Muslims here identify with what they come to see as an Islamic issue or Islamic State elsewhere. But the way out of that is not Thackeray's. The way is to inform them about the real condition of the people in these Islamic countries, to give them facts about the nature of these Islamic regimes -- about the corruption and venality, about how the enormous earnings from oil have been squandered by profligacy and mismanagement, about the woeful condition of women and minorities, about the fratricide among these regimes all supposedly belonging to a common identity. Assume for a moment that the oft-repeated charge is true -- that some persons in Muslim localities celebrate the victories of Pakistan's teams over Indian cricket teams. That a few burst crackers cannot be taken as proof of the sentiment of an entire community. But assume for a moment that Muslims in general have their heart in Pakistan and those crackers are but a symptom. Surely, the way to deal with that is not Bal Thackeray's -- of clobbering the entire community each time some one bursts crackers. The way that will work is to inform the community about the condition of mohajirs in Karachi, about that of the Ahmediyas and of women all over Pakistan, about the murderous jostling among Punjabis and Sindhis. And to have an invincible cricket team!
Things to do
Simple distinctions, and yet the more strained the times the more important it is that we keep them in mind. And there is another thing. As tensions intensify, as diferences sharpen we tend more and more to exchange views only with persons who share our views. But that is just the time when we must reach out beyond our circle.
So, lots and lots of meetings at which Muslims and Hindus speak what is in their mind and heart. And there are three keys:
*
Muslims and Hindus - whether they be intellectuals or priest -- should talk to each other directly, and not through politicians, nor through secularists who set themselves up as referees;
*
They must speak out everything that is in their hearts;
*
And the two must in a sense ask themselves diametrically opposed questions.
Hindus for instance must ask themselves what exactly the benefits are which the Muslims have wrested disproportionately from the State. The Muslims on the other hand must ask themselves whether the "victories" their leaders won in their names brought them anything, whether these "victories" are not the precise thing that convinced the Hindus that Muslims were wresting undue advantages from the State. Muslims must see that if they make a fetish of separateness -- of some chimerical "separate identity" -- they will be consigning themselves not just to separateness but to discrimination. The Hindus on the other hand must be always watchful that the well-reasoned arguments of Mr Advani do not become the occasion, that they do not come to be used as license by some local bully to wreak vengeance. Muslims must remember that irrespective of what Hindu scriptures may have said, the Hindus too will become a bit "Islamic" if Muslim leaders make intransigence the badge of commitment to the Faith. The Hindus on the other hand must keep the opposite in mind: the "victories" of Shahabuddin etc. stoked such a mighty reaction among Hindus; will the rhetoric of Bal Thackeray or Ritambhara not legitimise a reaction too?
From 'A Secular Agenda'
Sunday, May 25, 2008
On Dealing With Contradictory Signals
Arun Shourie
"I shall travel back with him," says Nawaz Sharif one day on taking the bus to Delhi with the Indian Prime Minister. "We will solve half the problems on the way back." Four days have not passed, and Pakistan observes "Solidarity-with-Kashmir Day." All the usual venom is spewed forth again. What is one to make of these signals?
Look at the same thing from Pakistan's point of view. Bal Thackeray declares that Pakistan's Cricket team will not be allowed to play in India. The RSS Journal, Organiser, counsels the Vajpayee Government to cancel the engagement: we can live without Cricket, it says. Vajpayee sees the series through. "But why go by bus to Pakistan?" thunders a "saint" at the VHP's Dharma Sansad, "Go by a tank... Instead of a match on the Cricket field, there should be a final match with Pakistan on the battlefield..." Should policy makers in Pakistan base their responses on what Vajpayee has been able to see through in this one round? After all, from their eyes, he would seem to be just an individual; true, he happens to be heading a Government at the moment, their analysts will be arguing, but it is a precarious Government. Or should they base their responses on what many there are certain to be arguing, is the more durable "ideological trend" represented by the Shiv Sena, the VHP, the RSS?
In a word, how should one respond when someone who for fifty years has conceived of himself, as or whom we have conceived as an enemy sends contradictory signals?
To dismiss the favourable signal can cause one to miss out on a rare opportunity -- an opportunity to reverse hostilities of fifty years. To disregard the symptom that signifies a continuation of old attitudes can expose one to grave danger. Prudence, therefore, consists in heeding both: proceed on the basis of the signal which offers an opening, but remain alert so that, in case it turns out to have been a ruse, or for effect -- in the current case, for instance, if the peace flag is being waved merely for the benefit of Americans -- the country remains safe.
That yields an operational rule: suspend from our side things which may be construed as hostile; and continue to defeat everything hostile from the other side. To continue with the former -- for instance, rancorous rhetoric -- can become an argument in the hands of those in the other country who are opposed to charting a new course. To allow any hostile activity of the other to succeed on one's soil -- for instance, in the current case, ISI's assistance to insurgents in the Northeast -- can become an equally potent argument for those in the other country who want to persevere on the old course.
Of course, balancing one's response to the two signals remains the key. That and remaining alert -- not only must the options be kept under constant review, the other side should have reason to see that they are under review all the time. The suspension of retaliatory steps for too long, to take one example, can strengthen those on the other side who argue that the mode of pursuing hostilities they have chosen is costless; equally, it can lead the adversary into believing that deception works -- that all that is required to wave those peace flags every now and then. Either conclusion will cause it to do things which will in the end force the victim of the deception to retaliate. And relations will be worse than they were before the peace overtures began. "See, you can never trust them," those who opposed responding to the overtures will say.
The second rule is to keep from expecting miracles. They should never be led to believe that there is some magic switch that the leaders are now going to turn, and that this switch will solve everything. Nor that results will be swift in coming. Quite the contrary. Leaders must at every opportunity drill in the opposite -- that there are bound to be many setbacks, that progress cannot but be a step, a tiny step at a time. That the principal leaders on the two sides are committed to the new course is seldom enough -- look at how close Hamas has come so many times to derailing the Mid-east Peace Process.
Therefore: expect impediments, and convert them into opportunities. Imagine what would have happened had the Government give to Bal Thackerey's threat: all sorts of conspiracy theories would have been floated; and perceptions in Pakistan would have been further embittered. Because the Government stood firm, the threat worked to the opposite effect: it proved that the Indian Government sincerely believes that people-to-people exchanges are the way ahead, that they are good for both countries.
As set-backs are inevitable, leaders on both sides have to be robust enough, determined enough, and durable enough to resume the process after each reversal. Given the State of affairs in the two countries, two factors that may introduce uncertainties are obvious. First, this in the age of revolving-door governments: initiatives taken by one leader can end with him; even if he is of the same mind as the leader he replaces, the new leader will have other worries to contend with in his first few months, and many things can happen in that period to derail the process. Second, it is also the age of adversary politics: just because one Prime Minister has taken the initiative, his opponents will denounce it -- recall the minatory warnings from fundamentalists that came in the wake of Nawaz Sharif's overture. At the least, they will try to belittle the initiative -- recall the Congress response to the "going-by-bus" idea: it should not be a gimmick, the Party proclaimed, implying that a gimmick is what the Party feared it was, exactly the kind of implication which will be grist to the hawks' mill in Pakistan.
The general rule is: deafen yourself to statements. Of fringe groups. Of the opposition. Even of the leader who has reached out. He may have to go on saying several of the old things for domestic consumption -- for the domestic population has to be weaned by degrees from the conditioning of decades. The rule thus is, do not react to statement: instead, see what is happening on the ground. For us the criterion should be, "Is assistance which Pakistan is giving to insurgents in the Northeast waning or swelling?" to this reality we should react, the statement we should ignore.
Naturally, a Government has to assess not just the intention of the other to sue for peace, but also his ability to wage war. In this one must guard in particular against two sources of information -- the press of the other side, and the intelligence agencies of one's own.
If one were to assess the prospects of either India or Pakistan solely by reading the press of that country, one is certain to conclude that the country is on the brink of collapse and disintegration. That sort of an impression can lead one to delay one's response to an overture -- just wait a while, many will argue, the place is coming apart, we will soon be rid of the problem forever. But that picture which the press communicates has more to do with the nature of the media, and what it considers news than it has to do with the nature of reality in either country. We newspapermen focus almost exclusively on problems, on what is going wrong. But that is not all that is going on in the country.
What holds for newspapers, holds even more for specialised agencies, and for activists most of all. An agency like a Human Rights Commission, a group of activists dedicated to protecting the rights of some particular group will, by the very nature of its assignment, be forever looking for atrocities, injustice and the rest: an observer going by the reports of these agencies alone will conclude that the society is coming apart. The Government of the country should take its press and the reports of these agencies seriously -- to see what it has to alleviate; the Government in other country should not form a view of the first one's prospects from that press or those reports.
The position is the reverse when it comes to intelligence agencies. They are forever doing the opposite -- that is, they are only too ready to conclude that the other country is on the verge of collapse, that all it requires is just one more push. That is how they establish the case for a "bold move," for "one decisive intervention." Pakistan has tried open warfare. That having failed, its agencies and rulers thought they had hit upon the infallible, and low-cost solution: sponsored terrorism. Though over 23,000 have been killed as a result, India has not broken up. The insurrections in Punjab and Kashmir have been rolled back. But the moral which agencies such as the ISI will be drawing from the failure will be that the next time round the outcome is bound to be different: the people have once again become disillusioned with the Governments they elected in Punjab, in Kashmir, ISI analysts will be reporting; the Government at the centre is as good as non-existent, they will be reporting. So one "decisive operation", and we are home...
When confronted with such advice, the policy-maker should ask some questions of the agencies. Indeed, it would be better to preempt the advice, and order an internal study. How often in the past have the agencies forecast that such and thus operation will cause the other country to disintegrate? For instance, how often did the ISI assure Zia or his successors that the spark it was lighting would become a conflagration, that the people were on the verge of breaking out in rebellion, that all they needed were arms, and a few examples of successor? Did those rebellions break out? And what explanations did the agencies come up with to explain away their forecasts?
Is the advice they are giving now based on information that is any more reliable than the past, does it rest on fewer uncertainties?
Furthermore, a Nawaz Sharif should ask, "What do you advise I do if India does not break up, what should I do if it does not give in?" Second, "By continuing to inflict killing, am I going to be fortifying the moderates who are arguing for peace, or am I strengthening the hand of those who are urging that the only way to make us desist is to do the same thing to us?" Third, "What is the scale of the effort which will make India break, or reconcile itself to breaking up? Can we mount, and sustain an effort on that scale? Faced with that level of effort, will India just keep bearing deaths and proceeding calmly to certain break up? Will it not launch a counter-operation?"
There is an asymmetry between Pakistan and India in this regard: intelligence agencies and the armed forces have never had the clout that they have in Pakistan; it is that much more difficult for a Pakistan Prime Minister to over-ride them. Nor are those agencies the only ones that will present hurdles there: they have spawned a dozen jihadi groups -- they have become monsters in their own right by now. And with the success in Afghanistan, these organizations have acquired great prestige. Nor do they float in the air; they are backed by the network of madrasahs right across Pakistan -- there were just about 140 madrasahs in all of Pakistan in 1947, today there are over 2,500 in Punjab alone with a quarter million "Taliban". For these organizations, as much as for the intelligence agencies and the Army, jihad against India, as Pakistani papers say, is gosht-roti (bread and butter).
The agencies as well as the jihad groups and madrasahs have become a boomerang for Pakistan, no doubt; by the 18th century syllabus, the Dars-i-Nizami, the graduates of the madrasahs, for instance, are rendered totally unfit for normal, modern occupations; they are the ones who have been swelling the ranks of sectarian organizations, and executing heretics of other sects. Successive Governments have announced several measures to curb and regulate the activities of the organizations and "centres of learning". But none has been able to carry through even one of those steps.
Moves for conciliation with India will, therefore, turn on the extent to which Pakistani society feels the cost of these organizations to such an extent that, for its own safety and tranquility, it curbs them.
The agencies and organizations reinforce and broadcast further a murderous ideology, of course, but they are themselves products of that ideology. Till that ideology is turned inside out, the moves for conciliation will be overturned sooner rather than later. That is the real difficulty: for fifty years Pakistanis have been fed an "ideology" of a kind that we just cannot imagine; the ruler who proposes peace with India has to now proclaim that ideology to have been poison.
For fifty years Pakistanis have been taught that their mission, their Allah-ordanied mission is to break India, that patriotism consists in firing up the youth for that task, that he who sacrifices his life in that cause will have attained shahadat, that he will find Allah waiting for him with the most delectable pleasures in Paradise. If an operation seems to have gone well, the agencies argue, "But how can you ask us to stop when we are winning?" If it has floundered, and hundreds of their own men have been killed, they argue, "But how can we abandon it now? Are all these young men to have died in vain? This temporary setback is just a trial that Allah has put in our way to test our faith..."
On this also there is asymmetry between the two countries. Because Pakistan has been conceived of in terms of an exclusivist ideology, even when the fundamentalist groups do not get many votes, they set the agenda, they set the norms of fidelity. Here, because the world-view of the overwhelming majority is pluralist and because we have remained a plural society, every individual or group which has adopted an extreme position has been quickly isolated.
To paraphrase what F C Ikle set out in his excellent study, Every War Must End (Columbia University Press, 1991), a Nawaz Sharif will have to convince the people there, or their own experience would have had to convince people that their mission is not to "avenge" past deaths -- deaths which were completely self-inflicted in that they resulted from pursuing a "cause" which was wrong in the first place -- but to prevent further deaths. That devotion to the country consists not in wearing Pakistan down in the attempt to break India, but in saving it from the consequences of pursuing that objective. That courage does not consist in sending youth -- other people's sons -- to slaughter, but in speaking out that the goal for which they are being sent to death has been wrong. The Pakistani ruler will have to, in a sense, "betray" the very groups which Pakistani Governments have themselves spawned.
It is a formidable task. Not impossible by any means -- others have reversed course exactly in this way: General de Gaulle was carried to power by Frenchmen and Algerians who expected him to fight to retain Algeria as a colony; once in power, he led France in freeing Algeria; the Algerians who has stood by France were smothered in the sequel, the Frenchmen felt so deeply betrayed that they attempted many times to assassinate the General. But he preserved, and thereby liberated not just Algeria, he liberated France.
In a world, it is going to be a long haul. The outcome will primarily turn on internal developments within Pakistan.
For us the lesson is: respond to every gesture -- with a gesture. Never respond to a gesture with a substantive concession in the illusion that doing so will "strengthen the moderate elements in Pakistan." Quite the contrary: once a people have been fed poison, it has to work itself out of the system. It is only when, by long and painful experience, the Pakistani people have themselves come to see that the goal they have been pursuing -- by war yesterday, by terrorism today -- is not going to be attained, when they come to see that the goal itself is wrong, that the organizations and agencies which have been set up to accomplish that goal have become a deadly boomerang, only then will peace finally break out.
That realisation will come mainly from costs which Pakistani society comes to bear within Pakistan. We have little role to play in that consummation. Save one: by defeating every effort they launch on our side of the border, we will hasten the realisation.
Thus, respond to every gesture with a gesture, to every substantive step with a substantive step. And in the meantime watch the following:
* Is Pakistani assistance to violent groups in India lessening?
* To what extent is Pakistan prepared to move on issues other than securing what it has been saying is "the solution to the Kashmir problem?"
* What is happening to the standing of fundamentalist and extremist groups within Pakistan?
* What is happening there to the current staple, the anti-India indoctrination and propaganda -- for instance, what is happening to the content of broadcasts on Pakistan TV, and of the textbooks in their schools?
These will be the surer guides to what the future holds.
Daily Excelsior
February 14, 1999
"I shall travel back with him," says Nawaz Sharif one day on taking the bus to Delhi with the Indian Prime Minister. "We will solve half the problems on the way back." Four days have not passed, and Pakistan observes "Solidarity-with-Kashmir Day." All the usual venom is spewed forth again. What is one to make of these signals?
Look at the same thing from Pakistan's point of view. Bal Thackeray declares that Pakistan's Cricket team will not be allowed to play in India. The RSS Journal, Organiser, counsels the Vajpayee Government to cancel the engagement: we can live without Cricket, it says. Vajpayee sees the series through. "But why go by bus to Pakistan?" thunders a "saint" at the VHP's Dharma Sansad, "Go by a tank... Instead of a match on the Cricket field, there should be a final match with Pakistan on the battlefield..." Should policy makers in Pakistan base their responses on what Vajpayee has been able to see through in this one round? After all, from their eyes, he would seem to be just an individual; true, he happens to be heading a Government at the moment, their analysts will be arguing, but it is a precarious Government. Or should they base their responses on what many there are certain to be arguing, is the more durable "ideological trend" represented by the Shiv Sena, the VHP, the RSS?
In a word, how should one respond when someone who for fifty years has conceived of himself, as or whom we have conceived as an enemy sends contradictory signals?
To dismiss the favourable signal can cause one to miss out on a rare opportunity -- an opportunity to reverse hostilities of fifty years. To disregard the symptom that signifies a continuation of old attitudes can expose one to grave danger. Prudence, therefore, consists in heeding both: proceed on the basis of the signal which offers an opening, but remain alert so that, in case it turns out to have been a ruse, or for effect -- in the current case, for instance, if the peace flag is being waved merely for the benefit of Americans -- the country remains safe.
That yields an operational rule: suspend from our side things which may be construed as hostile; and continue to defeat everything hostile from the other side. To continue with the former -- for instance, rancorous rhetoric -- can become an argument in the hands of those in the other country who are opposed to charting a new course. To allow any hostile activity of the other to succeed on one's soil -- for instance, in the current case, ISI's assistance to insurgents in the Northeast -- can become an equally potent argument for those in the other country who want to persevere on the old course.
Of course, balancing one's response to the two signals remains the key. That and remaining alert -- not only must the options be kept under constant review, the other side should have reason to see that they are under review all the time. The suspension of retaliatory steps for too long, to take one example, can strengthen those on the other side who argue that the mode of pursuing hostilities they have chosen is costless; equally, it can lead the adversary into believing that deception works -- that all that is required to wave those peace flags every now and then. Either conclusion will cause it to do things which will in the end force the victim of the deception to retaliate. And relations will be worse than they were before the peace overtures began. "See, you can never trust them," those who opposed responding to the overtures will say.
The second rule is to keep from expecting miracles. They should never be led to believe that there is some magic switch that the leaders are now going to turn, and that this switch will solve everything. Nor that results will be swift in coming. Quite the contrary. Leaders must at every opportunity drill in the opposite -- that there are bound to be many setbacks, that progress cannot but be a step, a tiny step at a time. That the principal leaders on the two sides are committed to the new course is seldom enough -- look at how close Hamas has come so many times to derailing the Mid-east Peace Process.
Therefore: expect impediments, and convert them into opportunities. Imagine what would have happened had the Government give to Bal Thackerey's threat: all sorts of conspiracy theories would have been floated; and perceptions in Pakistan would have been further embittered. Because the Government stood firm, the threat worked to the opposite effect: it proved that the Indian Government sincerely believes that people-to-people exchanges are the way ahead, that they are good for both countries.
As set-backs are inevitable, leaders on both sides have to be robust enough, determined enough, and durable enough to resume the process after each reversal. Given the State of affairs in the two countries, two factors that may introduce uncertainties are obvious. First, this in the age of revolving-door governments: initiatives taken by one leader can end with him; even if he is of the same mind as the leader he replaces, the new leader will have other worries to contend with in his first few months, and many things can happen in that period to derail the process. Second, it is also the age of adversary politics: just because one Prime Minister has taken the initiative, his opponents will denounce it -- recall the minatory warnings from fundamentalists that came in the wake of Nawaz Sharif's overture. At the least, they will try to belittle the initiative -- recall the Congress response to the "going-by-bus" idea: it should not be a gimmick, the Party proclaimed, implying that a gimmick is what the Party feared it was, exactly the kind of implication which will be grist to the hawks' mill in Pakistan.
The general rule is: deafen yourself to statements. Of fringe groups. Of the opposition. Even of the leader who has reached out. He may have to go on saying several of the old things for domestic consumption -- for the domestic population has to be weaned by degrees from the conditioning of decades. The rule thus is, do not react to statement: instead, see what is happening on the ground. For us the criterion should be, "Is assistance which Pakistan is giving to insurgents in the Northeast waning or swelling?" to this reality we should react, the statement we should ignore.
Naturally, a Government has to assess not just the intention of the other to sue for peace, but also his ability to wage war. In this one must guard in particular against two sources of information -- the press of the other side, and the intelligence agencies of one's own.
If one were to assess the prospects of either India or Pakistan solely by reading the press of that country, one is certain to conclude that the country is on the brink of collapse and disintegration. That sort of an impression can lead one to delay one's response to an overture -- just wait a while, many will argue, the place is coming apart, we will soon be rid of the problem forever. But that picture which the press communicates has more to do with the nature of the media, and what it considers news than it has to do with the nature of reality in either country. We newspapermen focus almost exclusively on problems, on what is going wrong. But that is not all that is going on in the country.
What holds for newspapers, holds even more for specialised agencies, and for activists most of all. An agency like a Human Rights Commission, a group of activists dedicated to protecting the rights of some particular group will, by the very nature of its assignment, be forever looking for atrocities, injustice and the rest: an observer going by the reports of these agencies alone will conclude that the society is coming apart. The Government of the country should take its press and the reports of these agencies seriously -- to see what it has to alleviate; the Government in other country should not form a view of the first one's prospects from that press or those reports.
The position is the reverse when it comes to intelligence agencies. They are forever doing the opposite -- that is, they are only too ready to conclude that the other country is on the verge of collapse, that all it requires is just one more push. That is how they establish the case for a "bold move," for "one decisive intervention." Pakistan has tried open warfare. That having failed, its agencies and rulers thought they had hit upon the infallible, and low-cost solution: sponsored terrorism. Though over 23,000 have been killed as a result, India has not broken up. The insurrections in Punjab and Kashmir have been rolled back. But the moral which agencies such as the ISI will be drawing from the failure will be that the next time round the outcome is bound to be different: the people have once again become disillusioned with the Governments they elected in Punjab, in Kashmir, ISI analysts will be reporting; the Government at the centre is as good as non-existent, they will be reporting. So one "decisive operation", and we are home...
When confronted with such advice, the policy-maker should ask some questions of the agencies. Indeed, it would be better to preempt the advice, and order an internal study. How often in the past have the agencies forecast that such and thus operation will cause the other country to disintegrate? For instance, how often did the ISI assure Zia or his successors that the spark it was lighting would become a conflagration, that the people were on the verge of breaking out in rebellion, that all they needed were arms, and a few examples of successor? Did those rebellions break out? And what explanations did the agencies come up with to explain away their forecasts?
Is the advice they are giving now based on information that is any more reliable than the past, does it rest on fewer uncertainties?
Furthermore, a Nawaz Sharif should ask, "What do you advise I do if India does not break up, what should I do if it does not give in?" Second, "By continuing to inflict killing, am I going to be fortifying the moderates who are arguing for peace, or am I strengthening the hand of those who are urging that the only way to make us desist is to do the same thing to us?" Third, "What is the scale of the effort which will make India break, or reconcile itself to breaking up? Can we mount, and sustain an effort on that scale? Faced with that level of effort, will India just keep bearing deaths and proceeding calmly to certain break up? Will it not launch a counter-operation?"
There is an asymmetry between Pakistan and India in this regard: intelligence agencies and the armed forces have never had the clout that they have in Pakistan; it is that much more difficult for a Pakistan Prime Minister to over-ride them. Nor are those agencies the only ones that will present hurdles there: they have spawned a dozen jihadi groups -- they have become monsters in their own right by now. And with the success in Afghanistan, these organizations have acquired great prestige. Nor do they float in the air; they are backed by the network of madrasahs right across Pakistan -- there were just about 140 madrasahs in all of Pakistan in 1947, today there are over 2,500 in Punjab alone with a quarter million "Taliban". For these organizations, as much as for the intelligence agencies and the Army, jihad against India, as Pakistani papers say, is gosht-roti (bread and butter).
The agencies as well as the jihad groups and madrasahs have become a boomerang for Pakistan, no doubt; by the 18th century syllabus, the Dars-i-Nizami, the graduates of the madrasahs, for instance, are rendered totally unfit for normal, modern occupations; they are the ones who have been swelling the ranks of sectarian organizations, and executing heretics of other sects. Successive Governments have announced several measures to curb and regulate the activities of the organizations and "centres of learning". But none has been able to carry through even one of those steps.
Moves for conciliation with India will, therefore, turn on the extent to which Pakistani society feels the cost of these organizations to such an extent that, for its own safety and tranquility, it curbs them.
The agencies and organizations reinforce and broadcast further a murderous ideology, of course, but they are themselves products of that ideology. Till that ideology is turned inside out, the moves for conciliation will be overturned sooner rather than later. That is the real difficulty: for fifty years Pakistanis have been fed an "ideology" of a kind that we just cannot imagine; the ruler who proposes peace with India has to now proclaim that ideology to have been poison.
For fifty years Pakistanis have been taught that their mission, their Allah-ordanied mission is to break India, that patriotism consists in firing up the youth for that task, that he who sacrifices his life in that cause will have attained shahadat, that he will find Allah waiting for him with the most delectable pleasures in Paradise. If an operation seems to have gone well, the agencies argue, "But how can you ask us to stop when we are winning?" If it has floundered, and hundreds of their own men have been killed, they argue, "But how can we abandon it now? Are all these young men to have died in vain? This temporary setback is just a trial that Allah has put in our way to test our faith..."
On this also there is asymmetry between the two countries. Because Pakistan has been conceived of in terms of an exclusivist ideology, even when the fundamentalist groups do not get many votes, they set the agenda, they set the norms of fidelity. Here, because the world-view of the overwhelming majority is pluralist and because we have remained a plural society, every individual or group which has adopted an extreme position has been quickly isolated.
To paraphrase what F C Ikle set out in his excellent study, Every War Must End (Columbia University Press, 1991), a Nawaz Sharif will have to convince the people there, or their own experience would have had to convince people that their mission is not to "avenge" past deaths -- deaths which were completely self-inflicted in that they resulted from pursuing a "cause" which was wrong in the first place -- but to prevent further deaths. That devotion to the country consists not in wearing Pakistan down in the attempt to break India, but in saving it from the consequences of pursuing that objective. That courage does not consist in sending youth -- other people's sons -- to slaughter, but in speaking out that the goal for which they are being sent to death has been wrong. The Pakistani ruler will have to, in a sense, "betray" the very groups which Pakistani Governments have themselves spawned.
It is a formidable task. Not impossible by any means -- others have reversed course exactly in this way: General de Gaulle was carried to power by Frenchmen and Algerians who expected him to fight to retain Algeria as a colony; once in power, he led France in freeing Algeria; the Algerians who has stood by France were smothered in the sequel, the Frenchmen felt so deeply betrayed that they attempted many times to assassinate the General. But he preserved, and thereby liberated not just Algeria, he liberated France.
In a world, it is going to be a long haul. The outcome will primarily turn on internal developments within Pakistan.
For us the lesson is: respond to every gesture -- with a gesture. Never respond to a gesture with a substantive concession in the illusion that doing so will "strengthen the moderate elements in Pakistan." Quite the contrary: once a people have been fed poison, it has to work itself out of the system. It is only when, by long and painful experience, the Pakistani people have themselves come to see that the goal they have been pursuing -- by war yesterday, by terrorism today -- is not going to be attained, when they come to see that the goal itself is wrong, that the organizations and agencies which have been set up to accomplish that goal have become a deadly boomerang, only then will peace finally break out.
That realisation will come mainly from costs which Pakistani society comes to bear within Pakistan. We have little role to play in that consummation. Save one: by defeating every effort they launch on our side of the border, we will hasten the realisation.
Thus, respond to every gesture with a gesture, to every substantive step with a substantive step. And in the meantime watch the following:
* Is Pakistani assistance to violent groups in India lessening?
* To what extent is Pakistan prepared to move on issues other than securing what it has been saying is "the solution to the Kashmir problem?"
* What is happening to the standing of fundamentalist and extremist groups within Pakistan?
* What is happening there to the current staple, the anti-India indoctrination and propaganda -- for instance, what is happening to the content of broadcasts on Pakistan TV, and of the textbooks in their schools?
These will be the surer guides to what the future holds.
Daily Excelsior
February 14, 1999
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