PAKISTAN : BREAKING THE CYCLEMike Ghouse, November 11, 2007 The only way to put bad policies out of circulation is to advance pragmatic sustainable ideas.
There is a paradigm shift in making. The US Foreign policy thinking is toying with the idea of supporting the Pakistan people as opposed to the Pakistan Government, i.e., from Musharraf Policy to Pakistan Policy. The hallmark of democracy is to give value to opinions, and the sign of civility is to debate, as to how an idea is good in the long haul, at the end of the game, all will own the idea, as the idea would have developed with input from participating members. The best policy is “our policy" and not “my policy". Let"s work on our language to be inclusive and goal oriented.
An acknowledgement is being made about our failed policies in
Iran,
Afghanistan and else where. A new policy may be taking shape that is going to be people centered, and Insha Allah, it should bring some positive results to our interests and the interests of
Pakistan. Any policy equation that has one party taking advantage of the other will boomerang. That is the moment you are down, the one that you took advantage of before is ready to jump on you. Any such advantage is deleterious to lasting peace or sustaining the relationship and thus, the cycle continues. Only the one with power can break that cycle with a full sense of justice, justice for one and all, other wise it will fail. President Musharraf, like many other generals, monarchs and dictators made an assumption of eternity of one"s life. It is embarrassing to hear President Bush, Senator Biden and others repeat “He is going to take the uniform down" - it is like stripping him in public. President Musharraf is clean, he has a good heart and a soul, he means good for
Pakistan and he has not robbed her wealth. However, he needs to be in touch with the public, he has shielded himself with Chamchas (Yes men) who adore him and tell him “sir, every thing is going just the way you wanted", don"t worry, we will show them, we have the power" kind of talk. It is these people that will cause a loss of a potentially a good leader to
Pakistan. President Musharraf should listen to the heroes of
Pakistan, the ones who are risking their lives on the street to restore the nation to her people. They lawyers and the journalists, they will speak the truth, although they may be motivated by politics of other kind. President Musharraf can restore his grace and dignity by going to the Pakistani Public and assuring them that he is not for life and that he has made mistakes, which he will restore the court system and he will let the media report with full freedom, and the emergency will be lifted. His intentions are good and he is not afraid of any inquiry. He has got to lay out the plan what he is going to do. If he can do that, I am certain, the public trust in him will increase and he will have a say in the future of
Pakistan. The Pakistani public is moderate and will honor him for being truthful. He has got to do that, or else, he will be made to do it. If he fails to do that, he will be asked to strip and he will have no choice but to oblige, one item at a time and then he may have to seek asylum at Crawford Ranch.Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is president of the www.FoundationforPluralism.com and is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing interfaith, political and civic issues. He is the founding president of the www.WorldMuslimCongress.com with a simple theme: “Good for Muslims and good for the world." His personal Website is www.MikeGhouse.net and his articles can be found on the Websites mentioned above and in his Blogs: http://MikeGhouseforAmerica.Blogspot.com and http://MikeGhouse.Sulekha.com Mike is a Dallasite for nearly three decades and Carrollton is his home town. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com
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Posted on November 12th, 2007
“The Pakistani public is moderate”
The Pakistani public is anything but moderate. It was founded on hate and hate breeds nothing but hate. There is a reason why Pakistan has been under military rule for a majority of its life. Hightime they concentrate more on education and economic welfare rather than bigotry and jihad.
Blame it on the religion Islam is a confused reliigion with preachings of both hate and love and ppl find it easier to spread terror in the name of Koran. Too bad an influential country like Saudi Arabia isn’t doing the role of a torch bearer to reform islam. Islam needs bottom up reformulation.
Posted on November 12th, 2007
Newindpress daily published in a column
Two nations and two emergencies
Tuesday November 6 2007 07:58 IST
S GURUMURTHY
Even when civilian rule existed in Pakistan, the army remained the ruler by proxy. So Pakistan psychologically remained army-led irrespective of whether the army was in power or the Bhuttos or Sharifs. That was why Musharraf was insistent on wearing the soldier’s attire and not kurta-pyjama.
THE real reason for the emergency in Pakistan has gone unnoticed. The respect that Pakistanis have for army uniform more than for pyjama and kurta is the real reason for the current mess in Pakistan. Consider the sequence to the emergency. Musharraf insisted on fighting the election to the office of the President of Pakistan with his army uniform on, promising to wear kurta and pyjama afterwards.
A case was filed in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against his fighting elections in soldier’s dress. The Court allowed him to fight the elections wearing the army colours but directed the result to be withheld pending its decision.
Musharaff in uniform reportedly won a landslide victory. But he feared that the Court would not allow him to assume office as President. Musharraf reacted swiftly, declared national emergency, suspended the constitution, and arrested the judges who declared the emergency illegal. But this was not his original idea.
Musharraf simply xeroxed Indira Gandhi’s emergency declaration of 1975. She too imposed emergency, suspended the constitution, arrested the opposition and got a truncated and terrified Parliament to pass laws to overrule the Supreme Court verdict which had turned her voteless in Parliament.
The terror she unleashed was enough for the Supreme Court in India to validate the illegal laws. The emergency did save Indira Gandhi and her party from being unseated by the Supreme court in the year 1975. But it could not save her from being unseated by the people 21 months later in 1977. Like she got the Supreme Court to endorse the emergency, she wanted the people of India to approve her dictatorship, when she ordered elections.
But the people of India did not oblige her, and voted her out instead. So even as the bureaucracy and the judiciary, the media and the intelligentsia failed to protect the nation, the people of India stepped in to save India.
How did this happen? An underground movement against Emergency was launched by various forces including Jana Sangh, Old Congress and Socialist parties which shed their differences and united to fight for a common national cause.
Silently organised peaceful resistance had taken the anti-Emergency message to distant corners of India. Underground pamphlets were distributed in billions to give the real news that got censored by the Emergency regime. This was to keep the people informed of the facts even as the establishment believed in the lies it was spreading. The anger of the people that had welled up against the regime remained hidden from the establishment.
Unaware of the hidden reality, the establishment went for elections to get the people’s approval for Emergency. The electors, waiting to overthrow the emergency, showed the exit gate to the dictator. This stunned the dictatorial regime and the entire world. As a result, no ambitious leader can ever think of imposing emergency in India.
Can Pakistani people do something similar? Unlikely. The psychological and political origins of free India and free Pakistan, as nations, are a contrast. While India wanted freedom from slavery, Pakistanis wanted freedom from India — read Hindus. Even as Mahatma Gandhi led Indian freedom movement by peaceful means, Jinnah resorted to ‘direct action’, an alibi for violence and bloodshed, to gain Pakistan. Result, India was born without hatred for the British, but Pakistan was born in hate for India — again read Hindus. And more, Pakistan managed to integrate that hate into its very identity. Pakistanis defined their nationalism relative to India and never even attempted to promote a positive identity as a nation. Pakistan’s relativism expressed itself in its sole urge to defeat India, whether the game was war or cricket or hockey. Its obsession against India made it a willing pawn in the hands of the US and West in their Cold War global designs.
As a result it engaged in wars after wars with India, losing them all. These wars were fought for securing Kashmir from India as the unfinished agenda of partition. The average Pakistani revered the army as the defence and offence against India. They also saw their army as the instrument to complete the unfinished mission. So Pakistan invested more money in the army and put more trust in army generals.
Thus the army became the backbone of the idea of Pakistan. Pakistanis had always had greater respect for their army, than for their political leaders. With the army popular and respected in politics, no credible political leadership sans army’s blessings could develop.
Even when civilian rule existed in Pakistan, the army remained the ruler by proxy. So Pakistan psychologically remained army-led irrespective of whether the army was in power or the Bhuttos or Sharifs.
That was why Musharraf was insistent on wearing the soldier’s attire and not kurta-pyjama to fight the elections. The soldier’s attire strikes deeper emotional chord in the Pakistani mind. So the dispute before the Court whether Musharraf could wear that emotive dress and gain unfair advantage in elections. In contrast in India, though respected, a soldier’s dress would add no electoral advantage.
So, unlike it so naturally happened in India, there is no way a Jayaprakash or a Morarji, a Chandrasekhar or a Vajpayee, an Advani or a Nanaji, a Fernandes or a Jyothi Basu can emerge in Pakistan to wage a war against the emergency. Pakistanis may attempt to over throw Musharraf by violence, but that would only deepen the violence in its DNA.
QED: The world sees Pakistan as a failed state. But the truth is deeper. Pakistan was never a nation on its own at all. It was an artificial creation that was sustained by army and generals.
Maharishi Aurobindo had said that this artificiality would not last long. What is happening in Pakistan seems to be only testifying to what the great Indian seer had prophesied.
Posted on November 13th, 2007
Good piece indeed.
A few points:
1) Musharraf’s western clothing in the guise of uniform is the influence of Kamal Ataturk, his mentor.
2) Emergency rule was opposed by one and all in India, as a grass root movement, not necessarily by the leaders listed
3) The extremists in both India and Pakistan have defined their nation by Pakistan centric or India Centric. The Vajpayee, the Advanis and their likes build their image by being anti-Pakistan. INdeed, it was Musharraf’s ill venture in that brought the nation together when BJP was as temp govt.
4) A majority of the Pakistanis that I know have never hated India, just as the majority of Indians did not hate any one let alone Pakistan.
5) The opening of the borders, movies, cultural exchanges was welcomed there overwhelmingly and I hope it continues and mitigates the conflict, so we can focus on our prosperity.
Mike Ghouse
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