Pakistan is the world’s sole nuclear power strategically located at the entrance to the Gulf. The Arab countries and China are making major investments in Pakistan. Two Pakistanis have been awarded the Nobel Prize. And the country has incredible natural beauty. Yet something is not quite right. The Pakistani passport ranks fifth from the bottom globally. No foreign cricket team wants to play in Pakistan. Water and power shortages are taking their toll on the quality of life, along with poverty, illiteracy and disease.
Relations with India and Afghanistan are a mess and ties with Iran are in a downward spiral.
Tilak Devasher, who has also written another book on Pakistan, begins this book by imagining what Jinnah would say if he were to return. Why has homeland for the Muslims of the Subcontinent become so deeply polarized? Why are minorities not safe? Why have the blasphemy law acquired such salience?
Jinnah had envisaged Pakistan as a secular democracy, not as a country run by the military. And he had certainly not imagined it would become an Islamic state governed by religion.
Instead, he had imagined that by partitioning India along religious lines, violence between the warring Hindu and Muslim communities would cease. Yet, even after fighting a few wars, peace between the siblings is elusive. A nuclear apocalypse cannot be ruled out.
Devasher quotes Anatol Lieven who says in A Hard Country that the military is obsessed with India. A retired general told Lieven that the average Pakistani soldier thinks the best Indian is a dead Indian. Devasher cites Lieutenant General Gul Hassan, a former Army chief, as saying that bouts of martial law have weakened the army and rendered it a dysfunctional fighting machine. He also cites General Mirza Aslam Beg, another former Army chief, who said that both the 1965 and 1971 wars with India were “a pathetic story of how not to fight a war.”
Devasher asserts, correctly, that Army needs to redefine national security. It cannot just be based on military strength alone. And it has to stop blaming all of Pakistan’s big problems on India.
Analysing the generals’ dominance of the political scene, he quotes Jinnah’s address to the soldiers, “Never forget that you are the servants of the state. You do not make policy. Your job is only to obey the decision of your civilian masters.” He contrasts that with Ayub saying in a Foreign Affairs article that politicians were a “big joke” who had “turned a perfectly sound country into the laughing stock of the whole world.”
Years later, General Zia would say that there was no place for secular democracy in Pakistan, “It was created in the name of Islam and in Islam there is no provision for Western-type elections.” Many years later, General Musharraf would justify his retaining the power of dismissing an assembly because “many politicians do not behave in a mature manner. Democracy has to be modified to our environment.” Pakistan has indeed deviated from Jinnah’s vision.
Devasher discusses problems pertaining to water, education, economy and population
Next Devasher discusses problems pertaining to water, education, economy, and population. Then he turns to Pakistan’s misguided quest for parity with India. He cites Jean-Luc Racine: Pakistan, “born out of a partition chosen by itself… found neither peace, nor the security, nor the freedom of spirit that would enable it to either live in harmony with India, or to ignore it.”
Thus, Pakistan had resorted to revanchist schemes to wrest Kashmir from India, by sending in the ‘raiders’ in 1947, ‘infiltrators’ in 1965 and ‘freedom fighters’ in 1999. As for the Indian victory in 1971, he cites Ayub’s entry into his diary dated December 1971, “The separation of Bengal, though painful, was inevitable and unavoidable…I wish our rulers had the sense to realize this in time and let the Bengalis go in a peaceful manner instead of letting India bringing this about by a surgical operation.”
Devasher asks whether Pakistan’s search for strategic depth in Afghanistan has strengthened or worsened national security. By creating the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan laid the seeds of the Pakistan Taliban. The latter rejects the legitimacy of the Pakistan state and the Constitution since it believes that neither is Islamic. It is a sworn enemy of the country which reserves the right to declare other Muslims as apostates and to wage jihad against them.
And then there is the welter of terrorist groups that have the sponsorship of the Establishment whose goal is to carry out a proxy war against India. They have brought nothing but opprobrium to Pakistan.
Pakistan was not fated to be a failing state. Devasher notes that while the dark past cannot be changed, a brighter future can be created. But in order to do that, Pakistani leaders will have to do some serious soul searching and ask whether religion should be expunged from politics. All it has done is aggravated sectarian tensions. Soul searching is also needed on the proper role of the army in national governance.
Devasher concludes with an exhortation to the civil and military leadership of Pakistan. They need to develop a vision of themselves that is not negative, which does not depend on hatred of others, and one that is not based on suspicions and conspiracies about the intentions of their neighbours. Only when they have done so will they be able to improve their economic fundamentals and the quality of life of their 208 million citizens.
It can be debated how much the fundamentals of the country have changed since Imran Khan took over the helm of the ship. The Economist, arguably the world’s most respect weekly magazine, recently wrote a blunt editorial about Pakistan, called Praetorian Penury, and a scathing commentary called Tales of Self-Harm.
In a Pavlovian response, some rejected it as an example of orientalist thinking and others rejected it as proof that the West has nefarious designs for Pakistan.
A mind is like a parachute; it only works when it’s open. Pakistanis need to open their mind to critical thinking and to find a will to make the appropriate policy changes. Otherwise, the country will continue careening toward an abyss.
The book is thoroughly researched, carefully written and well argued, if somewhat provocatively. The tone is balanced, not polemical. Indeed, there is an entire chapter based on thoughtful commentary by Pakistani intellectuals about the future of the country.
It is essential reading for Prime Minister Imran Khan and his entire cabinet. It would be a shame if they didn’t read it, saying it’s written by a man who formerly served in the Indian government.
The writer can be reached at [email protected] and Tweets at @AhmadFaruqui
Published in Daily Times, January 28th 2019.