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Last week I took
a snapshot of the ideological meltdown Pakistan is undergoing in the
heat of geo-political and geo-economic realignments. As the banners
and the scaffolding of the past policy structures come down the core
of National essence is being stripped of ornamentation and decorations.
The vaudeville of glittering night-lights is over as the cruel, unsparing
light of the morning breaks on the stage, exposing its rickety stilts
and cracked wooden planks. This may be a cruel analogy but so is the
reality. As I mentioned last week that most crucial of all is the
public perception to new realities. The leaders cannot veer into new
directions without taking the people along. I am afraid that while
the show is over, the audience is still wrapped in the aura of the
dazzling visions of last night.
It is time to wake up and peer into sunlight, however unsavoury that
may be. Let me be the bearer of bitter truths, before historians write
a black epitaph to half a century of lost dreams. Pakistan was born
out of an antithesis of Hinduism.
On
March 22, 1940 at Minto Park, Lahore at the historical All India Muslim
League annual session, which passed the Lahore Resolution, categorically
defining the demand for a separate homeland for Muslims, Quaid-i-Azam
state that, "Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions,
philosophies, social customs and literature. They neither inter-marry
nor inter-dine and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations
that are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their
concepts on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that
Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources
of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different
episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise,
their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations
under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as
a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction
of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a
state".
Gandhi, a key character of the independence movement in India, on
the other hand maintained that India was one nation and saw in the
Pakistan Resolution "Nothing but ruin for the whole of India".
He appeared to maintain a supra-sectarian, supra-political stature
throughout the struggle between Muslim League's demand for partition
and Congress's assertion for a unified India, as he tried to soft-sell
the idea for sequencing independence first and division later. In
trying to walk in the middle, he paid with his life in the end; Muslims
perceived him as a political conjurer playing for Congress and the
Hindus as a collaborator to Muslim cause.
The combined opposition of the British and the Congress to partition,
however, did soften progressively as Gandhi mediated between inflamed
political sentiments about division of India. Then followed a series
of efforts for reconciliation - Cripps Mission in 1942, Quaid-i-Azam's
talks with Gandhi in 1944, Wavell Plan and Simla Conference in 1945,
Provincial and General elections in 1945, the Cabinet Mission Plan
in 1946 leading to the Partition in 1947. In all these efforts, Muslim
League was offered various options for step-wise and tentative distribution
of power progressively between Muslim majority areas and the rest
of India but the mutual suspicions were so heightened that none of
the proposals to phase out division of India over a period of time
matured. Muslim League took a 'now or never' approach, suspecting
that once the British left India, Congress will renege on all agreements
and impose hegemony over sovereignty in India as a united political
entity. It is impossible to judge what would have transpired had Muslim
League taken an accommodating approach, and all such debates are futile
and irrelevant today in my opinion. But what followed turned the course
of destiny of the subcontinent on a path that inflicted incalculable
costs in terms of loss of life, human miseries and irreversible psychological
damage to both nations.
Mounting communal violence, threatening to plunge the subcontinent
into total anarchy, pushed Lord Mountbatton's back to the wall. As
all his efforts for an amicable resolution failed, he hurriedly put
together a bailout plan for the British Empire. He asked Lord Ismay
to chalk out a plan for the transfer of power and the division of
the country. It was decided that none of the Indian parties would
view it before the plan was finalized. The plan was finalized in the
Governor's Conference in April 1947, and was then sent to Britain
in May where the British Government approved it. Hurriedly prepared
partition plan was a game of Russian roulette that injured all the
players. India got freedom at midnight on 14th. August 1947.
The brutality of events that followed cannot be belied down to the
present day. The partition remains the single largest episode of the
uprooting of people in modern history, as between 12 to 14 million
left their home to take up residence across the border. The estimates
of how many people died vary immensely, generally hovering in the
500,000 to 1.5 million range, and many historians have settled upon
the nice round figure of 1 million.
The ethnic killings after partition defy assimilation to this day.
Was it genocide so widely prevalent in the twentieth century or something
very randomly anarchic, an uncalculated frenzy, a time of insanity?
It was certainly not a bureaucratized machinery of death installed
by vengeful regimes. The leaders had lost total control of the populace
as flames of political hyperbole burned down their own houses of power.
Nehru had to beg Mountabatten to return to Delhi from Simla to take
charge of the holocaust unfolding at the borders and deploy his military
expertise to douse the fires. In not acknowledging their political
or administrative incapability to contain ethnic retribution, politicians
have relegated violence as merely accompanying the partition, as though
it were almost incidental and ordained to the partition.
In this brutal way, the antithesis of Hinduism, transformed into an
antithesis of States. The geographical jagged edges of partition at
midnight with hatchet solutions at both ends of the subcontinent were
like shrapnels buried in the traumatized souls of the two societies.
As the communal acrimony settled, the States went on to on institutionalize
violence through a series of wars. Kashmir was the first sore point
and has turned into a bleeding ulcer after fifty years of strife.
India helped mutilation of Pakistan in 1971. Pakistan and India have
existed as a contradiction of one another for all these years - Pakistan
fearing India as a fierce and calculating predator and India viewing
Pakistan as a delinquent sibling bent upon burning its house down.
This morbid obsession of communal hate and suspicions has outlived
its historical roots now. Three generations have grown up since partition
who have no first hand experience of the trauma of partition but the
ideologues on both sides insist on keeping the fires alive, more out
of political conditioning and expediency than a genuine passion. But
it has distorted our psyche as we live to defy India, not for ourselves
or for prosperity of future generations. We have lived too long in
negation of the other rather than a reason for ourselves.
In trying to disinfect public perceptions, we must begin with focusing
on ourselves, our social and economic interests and contemporary realities.
In a world of economic competition, India is no more a friend or an
enemy than any other country with aspirations for prosperity, justice,
growth and security.
We have to turn the antithesis of India into a thesis for Pakistan
as it stands today, away from the shadows of the past. Pakistan is
a reality today, not an experiment, as Maulana Abul Kalaam Azad had
warned. We have all the credentials of a sovereign state - considerable
natural resources, entrepreneurial people, strategic geographic location,
sound administrative and logistic infrastructures and tremendous comparative
advantage in agriculture. We have been busy negating India and not
exploiting our blessings, like cutting your nose off to spite your
face.
Solution to the Kashmir conflict is going to be the stepping-stone
to developing a thesis for Pakistan. We should not sit on the table
for negating India with past baggage, but diluting concessions with
fresh opportunities. A composite peace process will roll far easier
than a piece-meal, conditional approach. We must not view concessions
as defeat but as opportunities.
P.S
This article should not be construed to vindicate India in any way;
that would be a prime example of anti-thesis mindset.
Iqbal Mustafa
06 March 2004
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