Pakistan and India are two foremost examples today of why the idea of nation state as organization of humanity has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster at least in this Century. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was no doubt an iconic achievement bringing to an end the wars of religion in Europe and establishing the idea of state sovereignty. However it no longer has any relevance in the modern world where we must be governed by globally accepted minimum standards of human conduct that should trump questions of sovereignty and national identity. The two South Asian nuclear powers are essentially mirror images of each other and this is not a new development. Modi is merely taken the mask off.
Many of our indophile Pakistani ‘liberals’ have tried to argue that India is only becoming like Pakistan now. The difference between Pakistan and India has always been that Pakistanis have never attempted to be subtle about their nationalist bigotry. India has always expressed its bigotry subtly, without openly enshrining it in the Constitution like Pakistan has since 1973. Just as Pakistan has been a badly majoritarian Sunni Muslim state especially after the departure of East Pakistan, India has been a deeply communal, casteist and racist state since its very inception.
As long as these South Asian behemoths continue to fashion themselves as nation states wedded to some inane notion of a centrist national identity; the so-called Indian and Muslim Nationalism, there can never be any progress
Those like Shaikh Abdullah of Kashmir who bought into the so-called secular promises of the deeply casteist Congress Party found out to their detriment the truth of those hollow claims. Pandit Nehru, the privileged Brahmin Prime Minister, soon jailed Abdullah for a decade, reneging his promises of plebiscite in Kashmir. Deny as Indians may, Prime Minister Modi only is the logical extension of the Indian Exceptionalism that Gandhi and Nehru so passionately preached during the 1930s and 1940s. This Indian exceptionalism finds clear expression even in the otherwise secular Indian Constitution.
The constitutionally sanctioned name for the Republic of India is ‘Bharat’ which comes from Bharat Mata. She is the amalgam of all the goddesses in Hindu tradition and in particular Durga. Indian secularists argue that at least they did not name the country Hindustan. The name Hindustan — if they had bothered to look at its origins- is of a much more secular extraction than the name Bharat.
The use of the word ‘Hindu’ and the construction of ‘Hindu identity’ to define people of a collection of beliefs and gods living in Hind was a colonial construction. The idea of Bharat Mata finds closest analogy in Zion and Israel. It is not Pakistan which is the Muslim Zion, with its citizenship being based on the principle of Jus Soli. It is India that is Bharat, which is the ancient equivalent of Israel in the subcontinent. The Dalits are the real Palestinians of the subcontinent whose persecution continues despite constitutional promises and flowery language. Of all the people of the world, there is no single group that has been oppressed so much for so long as Dalits have.
Two events last week, one in India and one in Pakistan, have convinced me that so long as these South Asian behemoths continue to fashion themselves as nation states wedded to some inane notion of a centrist national identity i.e. the so-called Indian Nationalism (read Hindu majoritarianism with a thinly veiled mask of secularism) and Muslim Nationalism (read Sunni majoritarianism) respectively, there can never be any progress. In India, a portrait of Mr Jinnah at the Aligarh University’s student union caused such offense and outrage to ruling Hindu fascist party’s MLA that he led a mob of Hindu fanatics and clashed with Muslim students there.
To prove that they are more loyal than the king, the lyricist Javed Akhtar Jadu from Bollywood lent his voice to this bigotry. Javed Akhtar Jadu and his actress wife Shabana Azmi have often struck me as the sort who think that by trying to pose as some sort of uber Indian Nationalists will somehow get them acceptance in India. Then the repulsive Mullah Farhat Ali Khan of Muslim wing of the RSS — yes as ironic as there being a Jewish wing of the Nazis — announced that he would dispense Indian Rupees 100,000 to anyone who burns Jinnah’s pictures or posters in India.
This is what we come down to. Javed Akhtar Jadu, Shabana Azmi and Mullah Farhat Ali Khan perhaps are unaware about the contributions of Mr Jinnah to India, its law and constitution cannot be erased from history by burning his pictures. It was Jinnah who fought for the Indianisation of the officer corp in the Indian Army. It was Jinnah who laid the basis for the Indian Supreme Court. It is Jinnah who is the father of the Dehradun Military Academy.
In India, a portrait of Mr Jinnah at the Aligarh University’s student union caused such offense and outrage to ruling Hindu fascist party’s MLA that he led a mob of Hindu fanatics and clashed with Muslim students there
It was Jinnah who successfully defended Tilak against sedition charges. It was Jinnah who fought against the internment of Sardar Patel in 1930. It was Jinnah who not only appeared as witness in defence of Bhagat Singh but then fought the British against the Criminal Amendment designed to try Bhagat Singh in absentia. It was Jinnah who had been the foremost supporter of civil marriages act as early as 1912.
It was Jinnah who rallied support for Restraint of Child Marriages Act. Foremost though it was Jinnah and Jinnah alone in the history of the subcontinent to be called the Best Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity, not Gandhi and certainly not Pandit Nehru. In an ideal world all nation states of South Asia today would have won their independence as one major constitutional union, whose founding fathers would be Jinnah and Ambedkar not Gandhi or Nehru. Gandhi and Nehru were merely represented of vested Hindu caste interests, despite their claims to the contrary.
Yes Jinnah did demand Pakistan after 1940 and did postulate the two nation theory, which it must be stated had already been in existence long before he took to it. Equally undeniable is the fact that Jinnah was always ready to agree to a solution less than separation and even less than a confederation.
Anyone who honestly reads the Cabinet Mission Plan which Jinnah accepted can see that it was only workable solution for a multinational federation of Indian states marching together as one. This is why Shaikh Abdullah, always Jinnah’s political opponent and never his ally, stated time and again that Mr Jinnah did not want partition and that Mr Jinnah was driven to it. Perhaps Javed Akhtar Jadus, Shabbana Azmis, Farhat Ali Khans and Muslim camp followers of Sangh Parivar know better about the politics of the time than Shaikh Abdullah. So go ahead burn all the pictures of Jinnah you can find in India. You will not change the facts of history try as you may. Critics of Jinnah will not even be footnotes in history but Jinnah’s name will live on.
Meanwhile in Pakistan, Captain Safdar, son in law of our now disqualified for life Prime Minister, moved a resolution naming Quaid-e-Azam University’s Physics Department after Al Khazini an obscure scientist from 700 years ago. The impression that Safdar created was that the government is about to change the name of Dr Salam Centre of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University.
Dr Salam’s contributions to Pakistan are undeniable. He is the father of science in Pakistan. It was Salam who founded SUPARCO and under his guidance Pakistan’s space agency was the fastest growing agency in all of Asia. It was Salam who founded National Atomic Energy Commission and it was Salam who created the knowledge base and the manpower required for Pakistan’s nuclear program. So even if you erase the history and try to write out Pakistan’s greatest scientist of our history books, you would not be able to change the fact that he is the only scientist produced by the country who is respected world over for his contributions to Physics.
So what is the solution? I do not speak for India because I am not a citizen of that country and therefore it is not my jurisdiction. However, for Pakistan to progress and become a useful part of the global march of humanity, it must shed its character as a nation state and instead become a truly constitutional state emphasizing the rights of citizens and upholding the contract between the citizens and the state.
This means an immediate and unconditional end to identity politics especially that which is there to serve the majority community in Pakistan. For Pakistan to be successful it must serve every Pakistani citizen equally without regard to that citizen’s religion, gender, sect, caste, sexual orientation or beliefs. Let us transform Pakistan into the first post nation-state state based entirely on constitution and fundamental rights enshrined therein. This means going back to the drawing board and making a constitution that is keeping with the times.
The writer is a practicing lawyer and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in Cambridge MA, USA. He blogs at http://globallegalforum.blogspot.com, twitter @therealylh
Published in Daily Times, May 7th 2018.