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

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.

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.