Daily Times

Marx says: “History of India is no history; it is the history of invaders.” The history of Pakistan is no exception with the only difference that in this case the invasion persistently and relentlessly came from within. The invaders were neither white-skinned barbarians nor the plunderers of the industrialised world. On the contrary, they were the guardians of its boarders, who imposed their own version of ‘freedom’ or a legacy of slavery upon their fellow citizens.

Contrary to most of the European nation states, the children of midnight born in 1947 were neither monolithic nor homogenous societies. Both sides of the divide had a mélange of multiple nations living in their respective folds. The shearing of these states based on religion added another dimension to this conflict. It was another Sykes-Picot that shifted the paradigm of this struggle from ‘class’ to religion. Quite contrary to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire where despite uniformity of religion, the ailing empire was divided on racial lines, in the subcontinent people destined to be partitioned not only shared a common culture, language, history and heritage but were also for centuries peacefully living together.

The end of the Second World War through massive destruction fulfilled the first objective of capitalism. Without any delay, capitalism entered into the second phase of its realisation of monumental construction. War is synonymous with massive depopulation. Since capitalism has turned human beings into merchandise, it regulates their production and destruction according to the law of supply and demand. The present day Middle East is one example of this kind where besides maintaining its hegemony, capital continues to massacre millions of people, which it deems surplus for the productive process.

After the war the serious dearth of the male population brought the women, another cheap source of labour, in the market. The new era had its own demands that led to drastic cultural changes. Capitalism’s necessity made religion redundant. The aesthetics were converted into Orwellian hypocrisy, and human body was socialised either as a value-producing object or as an instrument of sexuality. The historical contest between capital and labour was intensified. The era of secular nation states began to dazzle.

Under these circumstances, cleaving the states in the name of religion seemed anachronistic. However, if realisation of capital deems religion a necessity its revival barely needs any logic. In Palestine, Balfour had already endorsed the foundation of a state based on Zionism. The ground was prepared; hence, without much ado, the history was repeated.

The war-stricken Brits left the subcontinent in cataclysm. Partition was not a temporal mayhem. It was a scar that kept bleeding, and even now keeps drenching the people of either side of the divide with blood and tears. If Pakistan was an artificially created ‘nation-state’, India was not an exception to it. Nationalism in India was a very recent phenomenon. Leaving the peasant war of freedom in 1857 aside, India in the strict sense of a nation- state had never existed. It was only under the British Raj that the process of transformation of India into a nation-state began to materialise. The gradual upsurge of the middle class heralded the beginning of nationalism in India.

The trauma of partition was the consequence of lack of revolutionary conditions in united India. Due to insufficient industrialisation, the productive forces were still in the process of development. The cultural hegemony of the proletariat, a precondition of domination was still a far cry from reality. A few mass strikes here and there were nothing more than evidence that India was heading towards industrialisation. Had there been an organised workers’ movement, India would have dodged the butcher’s knife.

The partition delivered two ‘insecure’ states. Pakistan came into being with an existential scare of annihilation, while India was threatened by the rise of China, a future Asian hegemon. The Chinese counter offence of 1962, which ended up in a humiliating Indian defeat, reinforced this fear. This settled the question of power struggle in Indian ruling elite. The future of Nehru dynasty was secured while any future possibility of Bonapartism by Indian army was sealed.

As the rood-map of Indian capitalism was laid, Pakistani politicians lacking legitimacy and vision, ungraciously, held on to the crutches of Islamic fundamentalism and American support. In bargain they offered their state as a frontline combatant against communism. The first foreign aid package was required to strengthen the army. This made the preference of the native elite obvious. Unlike the Congress, the Muslim League had no experience of any political struggle. For their preservation the feudal lords looked to the army, which obliged them by relieving them from the job of running or ruining the state.

Since then Pakistan is ruled by the Pinochets of one hue or the other. The fall of Bengal was the last straw on the back of the local bourgeoisie that was beginning to emerge. The loss of eastern wing was not only a stunning blow but a loss of a colony as well, pivotal for the exports of the commodities of the western wing. The ‘new’ Pakistan failing to pay its financial obligations declared a technical default.

Zia-ul-Haq turned Pakistan into the Prussia of yesteryear: an army with a country. Except for the Pakistan Steel Mills, practically thrust by the Russians upon Pakistan, whatever little industrialisation this state has is owned by the Pretorian guards who, in this dystopia lead the only viable institution. From the nukes to the wars and defeats, from Talibanisation to Osama bin Laden’s killing, everything continues to hinge on the decision of this institution. In this dodgy game politicians are mere playboys who are meant to adorn the covers of different political magazines wearing their grim faces.

After playing another dangerous game at Kargil, the two nuke-maniac states have yet again come perilously close to the war of absolute destruction. If the rhetoric is taken seriously, this war would assure the complete annihilation of humanity. Both sides fail to fathom the extent of lethality of these toys called nukes that have no religion. If used, not only they are bound to wilt the passion to fight another war, they will melt the nations altogether. Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be the tragedies of the distant past, but MyLai and Fallujah are very recent ones.

Do the ruling classes and the armies of these countries really want the innocent people to vanish in thin air? Do they want the womb of the earth to go barren? This would be far greater a tragedy than what their colonial masters had inflicted upon them. This is the time world must heed sanity by banishing these weapons of mass destruction. People of the subcontinent deserve a better future. It is time to recall John Lennon’s famous song of 1960s that yearned “to give peace a chance.”

For people, hunger, poverty, illiteracy and the rigged system are their real enemies. They know their interest far better than the handful of guardians or the prophets of doom ruling them. All wars are criminal, no matter how justified and necessary they appear to be. It is high time people of both countries asserted in no uncertain terms that no war but a class war was the only war worth fighting for.

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com