Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 7, 2000
There has been a discernible
frisson of excitement in intellectual and political circles in the capital
ever since the leaders of the Mohajirs, Sindhis, Baluchis and Pakhtoons
met at Acton Town Hall in London recently and declared the demise of the
two-nation theory. Partition, Pakistan's minority groups intoned
at the now-famous September 17 meeting, was a blunder because its raison
d'etre, expounded in the 1940 Lahore Declaration (full provincial autonomy
to minority provinces and their involvement in every national endeavour,
including foreign policy formulation), was never allowed to come into play
in the area that became Pakistan.
While it is clear that
Pakistan, long regarded by India as a failed state, is in dire straits,
the crisis is in one sense that of the larger Islamic world. Its
implications for India would have to be assessed with extreme caution;
certainly it would be premature to conclude that what bodes ill for Pakistan
is necessarily good for India. This is also one instance where the
classic formula - my enemy's enemy is my friend - will not work.
All that is clear at
this juncture is that even a theocratic Pakistan is not considered Dar-ul-Islam
by its ethnic minorities, though they are all fellow Muslims. There
is a pervasive feeling, particularly among the erstwhile western UP Muslim
elite that formed the vanguard of the Pakistan movement, that the community
agreed in error when it opted for a separate homeland. In just five
decades, there is a realization that the various ethnic groups living within
what became Pakistan, though united by common adherence to a universalist
faith, have not been able to crystallize into one community, much less
one citizenry and one nation. In sharp contrast, India, after being
at bay for over a millennium, is not only a proud country seeking her rightful
place in the comity of nations, but is excitingly engaged in reasserting
her civilizational ethos.
It may be noted that
the leaders of Pakistan's negligible Hindu minority as well as the Ahmadiyas
(believers in the Koran and the Prophet, but declared non-Muslims by the
Zulkiqar Ali Bhutto dispensation), were not present at Acton Town Hall;
it is reasonable to presume they were not invited. Pakistan's new
community-of-the-discontented was not catholic enough to embrace the state's
truly voiceless and dispossessed, even though envoys of the Mohajir Qaumi
Movement (MQM) made it a point to come to New Delhi to solicit support
for their cause.
India cannot readily
endorse the view that the two-nation theory has collapsed, even though
the MQM's prognosis and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 have made it
virtually impossible for Pakistan's ruling elite to justify the Islamic
state. All that has happened is that Pakistan has failed to be a
viable modern democracy. A collapse of the two-nation theory could
be envisaged if the breakaway component realized its error in breaking
up a nation on the basis of religion, and sought to return to the mother
country within the overarching framework of its ancient civilizational
ethos. It is nobody's case that this is so. The mohajirs have
regretted leaving behind the safety of numbers they once enjoyed in India;
but they have failed to appreciate the catholicity of the Indic tradition,
and to come to terms with it.
Nevertheless, the Mohajir
leadership's blatant denunciation of the two-nation theory raises some
pertinent issues. Although it is fashionable in academic circles
to compare Pakistan with Israel, as a modern state created on the basis
of religion, the truth is at variance with popular perception. The
Jews were an ethnic as well as a religious community, with a race memory
and a lived experience of persecution in much of the world. The Jewish
state, when it came into being, was guaranteed and protected by the western
nations that helped carve out its territory, particularly the United States.
The very name Israel was sanctified by centuries-old traditions, before
it became the modern nation.
Pakistan was not similarly
privileged. The provinces woven together to form the new state were
ethnically diverse, and in the absence of a cohesive ideology and vision
for the future, religion proved inadequate to the task of moulding a nation
divorced from the sub-continent's civilizational framework. Moreover,
the colonial power that engineered Partition did not stay back to guarantee
its new progeny. This, as can readily be understood, is the reason
why the mohajir's failed to get a just deal in Pakistan. Not only
was their dream of being the super-elite in the new state carved at their
instance in the name of Allah hijacked by the predominant Punjabi Muslim
elite, but they lacked the numbers and financial and military clout to
get a fair deal in the 'promised land.' When even their descendants were
labelled mohajirs (refugees), they realized that monolithic religions unrelated
to a common cultural foundation, are a poor basis for statehood.
The MQM's hatred of Pakistan's
Punjabi Muslims highlights a perennial dilemma of Islam - it denies legitimacy
to ethnic identities and even territorial nationalism, but fails to subsume
these identities into a community with inner coherence. Pakistan,
in sum, does not have a soul; it is organically dependent upon Kashmir
and anti-India rhetoric to keep its constituents together, and even this
ploy is beginning to wear thin. It's politics is dominated by ethnic
considerations, with the concomitant sacrifice of rule of law, justice,
and fairplay. The mohajirs and other ethnic minorities have thus
become distinct sub-nations in a territory that could not become a nation-state.
MQM separatism is a corollary of the lack of inner consistency in the Islamic
state.
The mohajir discontent's
dangerous potential for Pakistan can hardly be over-stated. The way
I see it, two explosive sub-texts are concurrently being written across
the border. On the one hand, Pakistan's ethnic Muslim minorities,
rejecting the lure of a common religious heritage, will pull in different
directions, in the manner of some central European states. On the
other hand, the Punjabi Muslim elite, backed by the army, ISI and Jamaat-i-Islami,
will accelerate the old agenda of hostility to India, reinforced by the
super-distilled Islam financed by Osama bin Laden from the safety of his
Afghan sanctuary. The results will be unsettling, more for Pakistan
than for India.
India will have to calibrate
its response to the Acton summit with care. It should be clear that
we have no common cause with the MQM. And while we can have no role
or interest in the inevitable disintegration of Pakistan, we must have
in place a policy that will cater to such an eventuality. It may
be mentioned that India has made many sacrifices in the interest of a stable
Pakistan, most notable being the shoddy deal worked out with Bhutto at
Shimla. But it is quite beyond our ability to keep this hostile and
volatile country together.
The countdown for its
self-destruction was scripted at Kargil; an Indian government now perceived
as 'soft' towards Pakistan will loose public esteem, and a Pakistani regime
that makes genuine moves towards dialogue will be deposed by mad mullahs.
A combination of internal and external stresses can be expected to unravel
this artificial construction. Already there is a pronounced American
and Russian convergence on Afghanistan and Pakistan, since the Taliban
is a creature of the ISI. The growing international appreciation
of India's problems with cross-border terrorism is a reflection of this
convergence.
