ARTICLE OF THE MONTH

Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA)
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Articles of the Month

*The eleven principles for my Pakistani friends, Hindol Sengupta, The News, Sept 13, 2011
*Reclaiming Jinnah’s Pakistan, Shehrbano Taseer, Jinnah Institute, August 12, 2011
*Can we afford to bypass Jinnah’s Pakistan? Raza Rumi, Jinnah Institute, August 12, 2011
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*The eleven principles for my Pakistani friends, Hindol Sengupta, The News, Sept 13, 2011
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=67369&Cat=9

"The bomb blast missed my father by three seconds, maybe four." Did you say that? Did I? I did, but as you know, my friend across the border, it could have been you. You say we share history? I say we also share a common language of exclamation - the two d's: desensitisation and despair. We the damned. We the desperate.

Writing this a day after a terror attack, targeted by another acronym, outside the High Court in the city of Delhi where I live, I write to remember the years between us since we saw the towering inferno. It seems like yesterday. Did we know then that this was the end of innocence?

Since 9/11 we have exchanged many things. You have sent us mellifluous singers, sometimes heaving, haranguing starlets, we have sent you dreams in pirated DVDs. We have loved and loathed our cricket 11s. Then, so enterprising were we, that we had our own 11. 26/11. After the terrorists attacked Mumbai, together we scared the world.

Cricket 20/20 was invented. We took turns in winning it. We exchanged petulance. Our cricketers seemed to exchange notes about wannabe-actor (actually maybe wannabe-wannabe, you know what I mean) girlfriends. We gave you Sania Mirza. You gave us Shoaib Malik. We exchanged caustic comments and crowns. When 9/11 happened, we were still closer you and I. Then the war against terror came to your courtyard. We escaped that. You were embroiled.

Ten years later, we have grown so far apart that there is no way but to come closer. But, you ask, how? Shall we start with the number 11? In all our anxiety about 11, here's one 11 we forgot. I call it the Eleven Principle. These days when you say 7/11 to anyone in India, we remember the 188 people killed in serial terror blasts on city trains in Mumbai in 2006. And yet, think of what 7/11 used to mean, and still does, in most parts of the world.

It means perpetually open for business. The idea of convenience. The idea of transaction. The idea of 'I want something and you have it. And vice-versa.'

So I write to say that 10 years after 9/11, we must reinvent the meaning of 11 in our lives. At a time when we are eager to ring the death knell to people-to-people contact, what about buy-sell-sell-buy contact? If we can do business with a country, which ruled us for, what was it, 200 years, why can we not do business with each other? What are we afraid of? Some people say if we let you sell us cement, terrorists will send bombs in it. Some people say if you buy medicines from us, some enemies will poison them. Those who say this do not understand trade. They do not understand that the root of money, trade, exchange, is trust.

What we exchange, buy and sell, does not even come to two billion dollars. I know people who are worth more than that. So do you. Hey, we do more, much, much more business with the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland!

I was in your country last year and someone told me the story of the kind of engineers you bring for advanced work in your factories. They are from the West. They want business class, even first class travel. They want mineral water and five star rooms. They think your food (our food) is too spicy. They work only eight hours a day. They don't even understand kaam chala lo. They don't get jugaad.

"If only," said this person, "we could just get Indian engineers - no problem! They are happy to travel economy. They understand jugaad. They love the food!" But you and I know our visa system. Mostly it says police reporting.

Anyone who has ever bought cotton fabric from you (and has attended the lawns), will buy little else. I bought a blue leather pair of pathani chappals from Junaid Jamshed in 2008. They have been through hell and Mumbai rains. They are as good as new and only seem to get stronger.

I have friends in your country who joke - keep Kashmir, give us Janpath (market in Delhi) or Aishwarya Rai or Priyanka Chopra. They are joking of course. As if we could solve you and us so easily.

But maybe we can make a beginning, can we not? Maybe you could take Rakhi Sawant and not send us Veena Malik. Now that would be a confidence building measure. That's too much to ask, isn't it?

Let us begin then with more mundane things - cement and cotton, medicines and machinery, songs and films. As we transact, so shall we tolerate. As we exchange, so shall we elucidate.

The 11 principle then is all about reinventing the cliché. Like in the Harry Potter movies, it can be our Patronus charm that is evoked to dispel our deepest fears. At the moment, it is the number 11.

So maybe we ought to reinvent the 11 in our lives. And think of how it could mean that we are open, accessible and ready to buy and sell till the 11th hour, always.

The writer is senior editor at Fortune magazine, India, and the founder of Whypoll, India's first citizen networking platform. His new book 'The Liberals' is out in spring 2012.

*Reclaiming Jinnah’s Pakistan, Shehrbano Taseer, Jinnah Institute, August 12, 2011
http://jinnah-institute.org/programs/open-democracy-initiative/329-reclaiming-jinnahs-pakistan

I watched my father Salmaan Taseer break into a smile as Aasia Noreen placed her ink-stained thumb on a mercy petition marked for President Zardari. Pakistan’s founder, secularist Mohammed Ali Jinnah stared down silently from his portrait on the wall.

Six weeks later, as my father was lowered into an early grave - as frothing, bearded religious fanatics took to the streets celebrating his brutal murder and Pakistan’s unforgiving blasphemy laws – I wondered what else had been buried with him.

There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for Jinnah’s Pakistan. But as long as we live by Jinnah’s words, the Pakistan he envisioned will live on. Our enemies will never win.

According to CIA’s World Factbook, we are poised to be the fifth most populous country in the world in a few years. With 60 percent of Pakistan’s 187 million strong population below the age of 24, the youth of Pakistanform a potentially powerful force for change.

We must be nation builders. It is our greatest responsibility and burden. When Jinnah addressed students in Dhaka in 1948, he emphasized education as a priority for young people and said “let me give you this word of warning: you will be making the greatest mistake if you allow yourself to be exploited by one political party or another. ” Jinnah envisioned a modern nation at peace with itself and the world. We must understand that vision instead of siding with obscurantist’s and hyper-national isolationists.

We need to be a nation of modern economists, entrepreneurs, scientists, writers, social workers, doctors, journalists, teachers and film-makers’ not a nation of angry complainers and Muslim bigots. Jinnah remarked, "No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up as prisoners.” Ultimately, the success of our nation will not depend on what we didn’t do, what we denied ourselves, what we resisted, and who we excluded. It will depend on what we embraced, what we created, and who we included.

Addressing the Punjabi Muslim Students Federation at Lahore on October 31, 1947, Jinnah said “Pakistan is proud of her youth, particularly the students who have always been in the forefront in the hour of trial and need. You are the nation’s leaders of tomorrow… You should realize the magnitude of your responsibility and be ready to bear it.” The future of every country is it’s next generation. For a progressive, pluralistic and economically sound Pakistan to succeed, there is an urgent need to harness the potential of the youth. This requires the state to invest ineducation, vocational training and skills development, technology, entrepreneurship opportunities, and job creation for both young men and women.

With a crippled economy and a hemorrhaging war on terror, our education system is in shambles. Our budget reveals that only 1.5% is dedicated to education. The failure to educate the country's children costs the equivalent of one flood a year, according to a report produced by the Pakistan Education Task Force.

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, states, “The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in such a manner as may be determined by law.”Although this year was declared Education Year in Pakistan, over 25 in million children are being denied their constitutional right to an education. Pakistan has the largest number of children out of school in the world after Afghanistan.Only 23 per cent of our children under the age of 16 attend secondary school and almost one-third of Pakistanis have received less than two years of education. 54% of Pakistan is literate (a generous estimate) and even so, being literate means the ability to sign your name.

Pakistan’s young are dynamic and thirsty to learn and be involved. But the inadequacy of quality education – critical thinking in particular – renders our country incapable of dealing with the challenges of the 21st century. It means an overwhelming majority of our population is ignorant, angry, and extreme. Tens of thousands of children are growing up to be merchants of hatred -- with a very narrow world-view and bitterly antagonistic against concepts of tolerance, individual freedoms and democracy. I lost my father, my friend and my hero because of this mindset. I do not wish for any other family to have to suffer through what mine has had to. No other nation should lose its brave heart.

The road ahead is difficult and the results will not be immediate. But as patriotic citizens with a heavy stake in our nation’s stability, we must not abdicate our responsibilities. It is in our hands what direction our nation takes. Let’s reclaim Jinnah’s Pakistan.

*Can we afford to bypass Jinnah’s Pakistan? Raza Rumi, Jinnah Institute, August 12, 2011
http://jinnah-institute.org/programs/open-democracy-initiative/329-reclaiming-jinnahs-pakistan

Notwithstanding the contradictions inherent to pre-1947 Muslim politics, Jinnah was clear about certain fundamentals. Pakistan was to be a secular, democratic state. It was not destined to be a national-security obsessed and a paranoid military-intelligence complex. Pakistan was to be a federation and Jinnah's advocacy in the 1930s and 1940s was majorly focused on achieving a de-centralized governance paradigm. Finally, the new state was envisioned as a peaceful country, which would interact and establish relations with its neighbour India following the US-Canada model. Jinnah indicated that he would not mind settling down in his native city Bombay after his retirement. All of these facts are on public record and not fantastic or imagined tenets of his vision. What was so alarming about Jinnah's vision for Pakistan that had to be virtually undone by the custodians of a Praetorian state? Not unlike Pakistan's history, Jinnah's legacy is a contested and fractured narrative.

After successive victories, the right wing of Pakistan won a significant battle under General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) when it officially established the "ideology of Pakistan". However this victory was not limited to official pronouncements but significant institutional changes were also effected to achieve a colonial archetype from South Asian history i.e. a "permanent settlement” of ideological contours. Lord Cornwallis may have undertaken such a settlement for Bengal's fertile land but Pakistan's education system, the media and the public discourse finally declared such a settlement as the sacred "truth". This sacred "truth" nullified Jinnah's vision and historic struggles to achieve a fair deal for the Muslims of India, which had culminated in the creation of a truncated and "moth-eaten" Pakistan.

In terms of domestic governance of the new polity, Jinnah's speeches to civil servants, firm advice to military officers and even to some of his errant politician colleagues were clear. The bureaucracy and the Army had to operate within the legal boundaries and a new direction for the post-colonial state had to be negotiated without undermining the rule of law and the imperative of creating a citizen-responsive state. To the military men Jinnah said the following in June 1948:“…I should like you to study the constitution which is in force in Pakistan at present and understand its true constitutional and legal implications.” And, to the civil service, his message was clear in early 1948: “You do not belong to the ruling class; you belong to the servants. Make the people feel that you are their servants and friends, maintain the highest standard of honor, integrity, justice and fair-play. If you do that, people will have confidence and trust in you and will look upon you as friends and well wishers.”

So how did we fare after Jinnah's untimely death in September 1948? We abandoned the goal of a secular-democratic state guaranteeing its minorities’ full rights with the introduction of the Objectives Resolution in 1949. This odious legal instrument became the nightmare for every constitutional draft for its vagueness and appeasement of theocratic urges had to be willy-nilly reconciled with any democratic framework. The final nail in the secular coffin came in the shape of making the Objectives Resolution an operative part of the Constitution in 1985 via Article 2-A, which today is allowing for dragging religion into everyday governance and enabling the right-wing legal profession and jurists to abuse it with impunity.

After Jinnah, the abandonment of the democratic project and the hegemony of the unelected institutions of state meant that an enemy was required to justify the existence of a military empire; and to provide it a permanent political role. In the process, we lost the Eastern wing, which reacted to military diktat and revolted against an unjust army action in 1971. By the 1980s, hating and fighting this enemy, i.e. India was not a just a nationalistic endeavour but a religious obligation, when the state adopted a particularistic interpretation of "jihad" as an official policy. This was necessary for the sustenance of General Zia-ul-Haq's long rule as well as Pakistan's profitable role as a frontline state in the anti-communist war in Afghanistan. Thus the jihad[s] in Kashmir and Afghanistan and its subsequent export to other locations across the globe were well thought out and calculated strategic shifts. The ruling elites had all but destroyed Jinnah's Pakistan. The only thing that could not be transformed in such a short time was the diversity, pluralism and essentially secular versions of lived Islam at the subaltern level. Perhaps this is the reason why Pakistan continues to survive as a viable and vibrant society, which has the capability to muster its social capital and community networks in times of serious adversity, and continue to move on. Nevertheless the un-Jinnah definition of Pakistan has gained traction, as the school system, madrassah-mosque networks and a public discourse laden with enemy-conspiracies and lies have indoctrinated two generations of Pakistanis. The average Pakistani mind today is hostage to the perennial paranoia about the un-doing of its ideological framework, protected by an arsenal of nuclear warheads and the strategic Jihadi assets, which can provide a perverse sense of national honour by wreaking havoc in the eastern and western neighbourhoods.
In such a context, economic growth, social justice and equal opportunity have been relegated to the domain of rhetoric and good intentions. The only time the political discourse veered away from national security was under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, where an agenda for social change became a plank for public mobilization and state policy. However, this was short-lived partly due to Bhutto’s indulgence of the national security institutions and partly because the military could not allow the evolution of alternative narratives of the state.

Therefore, Pakistan reverted to its original “type” in 1977: a paranoid and militant national-security state. In the three decades that followed Bhutto’s judicial murder in 1979, Pakistan was governed directly by the military for two decades and indirectly for a decade. These decades were perhaps the most damaging for they witnessed the rise of Islamism and sectarianism, and worsened relations with India. Alongside these structural shifts, centralization of power and repression of sub-national political aspirations took place, thereby turning Pakistan into an ungovernable and unworkable federation. It is only in recent years that the political elites of Pakistan have, through consensus, attempted to re-align Pakistan to a more federal complexion through 18th amendment to the Constitution, which provides a radical departure from the abominable trends of centralization of power. However, the greater challenge faced by the civil and military rulers of Pakistan holds the key to the country’s survival.

This “challenge” comprises the following: the educational system and the madrassah networks, the black laws introduced by the military under General Zia-ul-Haq and the primacy of an outdated national security paradigm. The latter is the most complex of the contemporary challenges: however, resolving it would take us closer to the viable state that Jinnah had envisioned in the late 1940s.

The radicalisation of society through the Qadris and al-Qaeda operatives within state institutions and the growing power of sectarian and Islamist militant organizations across the country, contain the seeds of Pakistan’s undoing. Contrary to the Wahabi worldview of Islam as a monolith, Pakistani Muslims are diverse, heterogeneous and steeped in the secular worship traditions of South Asia. These traditions did not emerge in a year or a decade but were formed over a millennium of interaction with the ancient cultures and religions of South Asia. Thus, the tolerant Islam of South Asia practised the art of co-existence and was not shy of finding commonalities rather than emphasizing and ossifying differences. But such inclusiveness and pluralism can only flourish in a secular state with a neutral and professional civil-military bureaucracy that reports to the representatives of the people and allows for negotiation, bargaining and accommodation - hallmarks of a democracy.

August 11 is now turning into the real Independence Day, for this was the day when Muhammad Ali Jinnah, as an official Head of State, laid down clear and unequivocal policy parameters. Naysayers within Pakistan’s liberal chatterati, its leftist minority and the right-wing fascists may exercise their democratic right and contest Jinnah. However, whether there is any other viable alternative to ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’ remains a question. Public debate in Pakistan must not bypass what Jinnah foresaw in a post-colonial Pakistan. Pakistan’s remotest chance of carving out an identity for itself will always, in one way or another, hinge upon Jinnah’s advocacy and vision for the Muslims of India.