'People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.' Thomas Sowell
While the Rohingyas starve, live in fenced in camps or are
on boats in high seas with no country willing to accommodate them the Islamic
organisations are loudly quiet in their response while western human rights
organisations as well as Jewish holocaust survivors espouse their cause. So
what happened to the universal brotherhood of Islam? Why don't they offer refuge
to their fellow brethren?
The Rohingyas were used by the British during the second world
war as a fifth column to defeat the Japanese in Burma. Towards this end they were resettled
in the Arakan area of Burma,
given arms, money and training by the Allied forces. After the British withdrew
from the area and new countries like East Pakistan was created, the Arakan
province was to become a part of Burma. At this time the Rohingyas
started a jihad against the Burmese government to get their territories to be a
part of Jinnah's East Pakistan. Many Islamist
organisations were active in this jihad.
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At the time the Rohingyas used the 'dar-ul-harb' concept to refuse to integrate with the Burmese
population where they were in a minority. Like their Muslim brethren in the northern
plains of India
they did not wish to live in a country where they were in a minority. They were
actively supported in this jihad by Islamic organisations in Pakistan.
The Burmese, unlike the Indians, when they defined their
citizenship laws were unwilling to accommodate this group with a separatist and
jihadist motive and the Rohingyas were deemed stateless. So, from then on the
only way out for the Rohingyas was to pay smugglers to get them out of the
Arakan province into countries where they could lead a decent life.
So why are the Islamist countries not going the extra mile
to help their brethren? Why is Pakistan
(The holy land for the pure) not inviting these Rohingyas to resettle them in
their lands? Why is the Islamic State not taking them to Iraq or Syria nor the al Qaeda making
attempts to rescue them? Can we say that NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) supersedes
the Islamic Brotherhood?
Who are the Rohingya people and why does everyone disown them? Natasha Shahid attempts to answer these questions
Outsiders in their own country
“The Rohingya come from Burma, but for many years have fled repression there to Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. […] Primarily because the Burmerse government denies them citizenship, most are stateless.” – David Mathieson,Perilous Plight: Burma’s Rohingya Take to the Seas
Of the approximately two million Rohingya alive today, 800,000 live in Burma, 200,000 in Bangladesh, 50,000 in Malaysia and around 500,000 live scattered over the Middle East, where they went looking for work. But can the Rohingya call any of these countries their home? Their treatment by the two proposed countries of their origin – Burma and Bangladesh – does not suggest so: while one has a majority tied up in refugee camps, the other is bent upon killing them to the last man. What did the Rohingya do to deserve this fate?
Rakhine, the state where most of the Rohingya community is settled
History of the Rohingya People
The origins of the Rohingya people are disputed. Followers of Islam and belonging to the Indo-Aryan stock, they themselves say that they are natives of Rakhine, the south-western Burmese state which shares its northern border with Bangladesh. Others suggest that they are of Bengali origins, and that their language is a derivative of the Bengali language. Alistair D. B. Cook suggests that their movement originated in the Middle East, and brought them to Rakhine after crossing the rest of South Asia.
Whatever their origins, most scholars agree that the Rohingya have been residents of Burma since around the 15th century AD. Archaeological evidence reportedly suggests that the Rohingya have lived in the country since the times of the Kingdom of Mrauk U (1425 AD – 1785 AD). And yet the Burmese government insists that they are not one of their “historical ethnic groups”: the major reason behind their persecution at the hands of the Burmese authorities.
One of the many boats floating on the Indian Ocean, with no country willing to let it anchor
What did the Rohingya do to deserve this fate?
Under British rule, Bengalis were encouraged to repopulate the fertile region of Arakan (now Rakhine), and the boundaries between Bengal and Arakan were removed. So, in all practicality, Bengal and Arakan became a single state making it easier for the Bengali people – who were majority Muslims – to travel to and from Arakan. This migratory trend resumed at the time of the Bangladesh Liberation Movement in 1971, when many Bengalis fled their country and settled in Arakan, instead. The Burmese government insists that most of the people who form the Rohingya community today belong to this stock: another reason behind their attempts to expel the community from the country.
During the Second World War, Japan successfully captured Burma but the British fought the Japanese invading forces on Burmese soil. After the Japanese were ousted, Burma’s Rohingya formed a political party – Arakan Muslim League – which started a political movement to be absorbed into East Pakistan at the time of the Partition of India. The party sent a request to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, himself, in May 1946 to include Arakan in his partition plan. Jinnah turned the request down, replying that he could not intrude in Burmese affairs.
Apparently Jinnah’s rejection led the Rohingya to abandon their political cause, not seeing any use in pursuing it. They decided to take up arms, instead. The target of this armed movement, termed by the Rohingya as a jihad, was at first the separation of the Mayu region in the north of Arakan – where most of their population resided – and its annexation with East Pakistan. When the Burmese government refused to cater to these demands, the Rohingya mujahideen declared jihad on their own government. There was a time when these armed rebels controlled almost all of northern Arakan, forcing the non-Rohingya inhabitants of the state to flee their homes.
This jihadist movement continued for about a decade before the Rohingya rebels finally laid arms between 1957 and 1961, primarily as a result of a military operation initiated to crush the uprising. This is when the displacement of the Rohingya began, which continues to this day.
Another abandoned boat
The Rohingya’s Current Status
After being crushed by the Burmese government in the 1960s, the Rohingya rebellion re-immerged at the time of the East Pakistani separatist movement. At the moment, it is believed to be receiving aid from Islamic terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban, and even from some countries, including Pakistan.
The recently accelerated attempts of the Burmese government at the genocide and expulsion of the Rohingya people has brought the country into the international spotlight – for all the wrong reasons. The persecution of the Rohingya, especially under the nationalist, pan-Buddhist military rule (1962-2011) has had terrible repercussions for the community. General Ne Win, the first military ruler of Burma who assumed control of the country in 1962, expelled Muslims – all Muslims, not just the Rohingya – from the army, and in 1982, under a new citizenship law, the Rohingya were declared as non-nationals.
It didn’t stop with the government: Burma’s citizens – mostly Theravada Buddhists – had an equal share in victimizing the Rohingya people. It was the Buddhist monks who initiated an anti-Muslim movement in 2001, in which pamphlets like Myo Pyauk Hmar Soe Kyauk Sa Yar (“The Fear of Losing One’s Race”) were distributed in the common public. In the same year, 200 Muslims were killed and 11 mosques were burnt down by common Burmese citizens. It is said that this movement was in retaliation to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in March, 2001 by the Taliban. The claim is very likely true, as the Burmese government brought down two mosques – Han Tha Mosque and Taungoo Railway Station Mosque – on the demands of angry Buddhist monks, who wanted to “avenge” the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.
Clearly Muslims aren’t the only ones who are over-sensitive about their religion.
Since 2012, there have been repeated anti-Muslim riots in Rakhine and elsewhere in Burma that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Muslims. An anti-Muslim riot can be sparked in Burma for a reason as little as a Facebook photograph, or for no reason at all – it’s like a haystack simply waiting to catch fire.
Verbal abuse: a member of the Burmese bureaucracy once termed the Rohingya “ugly as ogres”
Exodus
With the state of their lives in Burma, the Rohingya Muslims have no option but to leave their home country – if they can call it that. But where would they go? At the moment, they don’t seem to care. The Rohingya are fleeing Rakhine by the boatful whenever they can, even though they know their journeys do not have any destination. Many have fled to Bangladesh, where they are being kept in refugee camps. Many have managed to make it to the Middle East and Japan, while some have even reportedly made it to Karachi. These are the lucky ones.
The unlucky ones? They are stranded mid-sea with nowhere to go. We can only imagine what the state of their lives in their native country must have been for them to rather float endlessly in the middle of salty waters with no food to eat and no water to drink.
The Islamic and irrationally anti-Indian elements in the self-image of the Pakistani state have led it down a self-destructive path.
Salman Rushdie famously said that Pakistan was “insufficiently imagined”. To say that a state is insufficiently imagined is to run into thorny questions regarding the appropriate quantum of imagination needed by any state; there is no single answer and at their edges (internal or external), all states and all imaginings are contested. But while the mythology used to justify any state is elastic and details vary in every case, it is not infinitely elastic and all options are not equally workable. I will argue that Pakistan in particular was insufficiently imagined prior to birth; that once it came into being, the mythology favoured by its establishment proved to be self-destructive; and that it must be corrected (surreptitiously if need be, openly if possible) in order to permit the emergence of workable solutions to myriad common post-colonial problems.
In state sponsored textbooks it is claimed that Pakistan was established because two separate nations lived in India — one of the Muslims and the other of the Hindus (or Muslims and non-Muslims, to be more accurate) and the Muslims needed a separate state to develop individually and collectively. That the two “nations” lived mixed up with each other in a vast subcontinent and were highly heterogeneous were considered minor details. What was important was the fact that the Muslim elite of North India (primarily Turk and Afghan in origin) entered India as conquerors from ‘Islamic’ lands. And even though they then settled in India and intermarried with locals and evolved a new Indo-Muslim identity, they remained a separate nation from the locals. More surprisingly, those locals who converted to the faith of the conquerors also became a separate nation, even as they continued to live in their ancestral lands alongside their unconverted neighbours. Accompanying this was the belief that the last millennium of Indian history was a period of Muslim rule followed by a period of British rule. Little mention was made of the fact that the relatively unified rule of the Delhi Sultanate and the Moghul empire (both of which can be fairly characterised as “Muslim rule”, Hindu generals, satraps and ministers notwithstanding) collapsed in the 18th century to be replaced in large sections of India by the Maratha empire, and then by the Sikh Kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
During British rule the cultural goods of the North Indian Muslim elite (Urdu language, literate “high church” Islam, Islamicate social customs, a sense of separateness and a sense of superiority to the ‘natives’) became more of a model for the emerging Muslim middle class. But even as many leading lights of the North Indian Muslim community fought hard to promote what they saw as “Muslim interests”, they were also attracted by the emerging notion of a modern and democratic Indian whole. Some of these leaders (including Jinnah) simultaneously espoused elements of Muslim nationalism and secularised Indian nationalism and sometimes went back and forth between these ideals or tried to aim for a synthesis. Some of this multi-tasking was undoubtedly the result of sophisticated political calculation by very smart people, but it must not be forgotten that a lot of it was also a reflection of the half-formed and still evolving nature of these categories.
In this confused and somewhat chaotic setting it is hard to argue that any particular outcome was inevitable or pre-ordained. But the tension between the Muslim elite’s sense of Muslim distinctiveness (a sense cultivated by the British rulers for their own purposes at every step) on the one hand and emerging Indian nationalism dominated by Hindus on the other, led some Muslims to think about various schemes of separation. Allama Iqbal, for example, imagined a separate Muslim country in the Northwest that would serve as India’s martial bulwark against central Asian marauders, while also acting as a laboratory for the development of an as yet uncreated Islamicate culture of his dreams. In this dream, Islam is not a static revealed truth; it is an evolving idea, a fire in the minds of men that drives them to endlessly create something new and heroic, yet rooted and eternal. The audience for this romantic but sophisticated fantasy was necessarily small, but less sophisticated versions of this vision played a role in exciting the minds of many young and newly-educated men during the movement for Pakistan.
Other visions of Pakistan were cruder and more literal minded and imagined a state where perfect Islamic law (already revealed and written in books, waiting to be applied as it had once been applied in the golden ages past) replaced “failed heathen systems”. Since no orthodox school of Sunni Islamic law had actually evolved beyond medieval models there was no way those blueprints could create a working modern state. But these mythical visions had played a prominent role in the propaganda of the Muslim league and they prepared the ground in which crude Salafist fantasies would find traction in the years to come.
The historian Ayesha Jalal has convincingly argued that Mr. Jinnah in fact wanted to use the threat of partition as a bargaining ploy to secure more rights for the Muslim political elite within united India. In this view, Mr. Jinnah and his lieutenants had never fully answered the many objections that were raised against the partition scheme because they never really expected the scheme to be carried out, but via a complicated series of mistakes and miscalculations on all sides, partition ended up becoming a reality.
Pakistan as it was created did not really overlap the domain of the North Indian Muslim elite who had been the main drivers of this demand. One way to solve this problem was to imagine the actually existing Pakistan as a transitional phase between British India and the re-establishment of some future Delhi sultanate (this crackpot scheme being the official ideology of the Zaid Hamid faction of Paknationalism). The other was to imagine that the cultural heritage of the Delhi Sultanate has now been transferred in toto to Pakistan by the North Indian Muslim elite and would grow and prosper here as the unifying culture of Pakistan. This package frequently included conscious or unconscious disdain for the existing cultures of Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, Pakhtoonkhwa and Baluchistan, and an irrational determination to expiate any sign of ‘Indian-ness’ in the greater cause of Urdu-speaking North Indian Muslim high culture.
The Bengalis found this so hard to swallow that they opted out of the experiment altogether. And in spite of the creation of a pan-Pakistan middle class that has been acculturated into a (necessarily shallow) version of North Indian Urdu culture, these contradictions remain potent in the West as well. Separatist movements are one consequence of this attempt to impose a shallow and partly imaginary Pakistani nationalism on existing cultures; a more insidious consequence is the accelerated decay of deeply rooted cultural frameworks and the growth of shallow Saudi or Western (or mixed-up) cultural tendencies in the resulting vacuum.
Other contradictions at the heart of the “two-nation theory” proved equally deadly in the long run. Pakistan had been created utilising the language of Muslim separatism and the millenarian excitement generated by the promise of a “Muslim state”. And even at the outset, these ideas were not just convenient tools for the elite to achieve economic objectives (a view common among leftists). The elite itself was Muslim. To varying extents, its members shared the myths of past greatness and future Islamic revival that they had just used to obtain a state for themselves. In a world where modern European institutions and ideas were taken for granted even by relatively orthodox upper class Muslims, the disruptive political possibilities hidden in orthodox Islamism were not easily appreciated and dreams of Islamic revival could take on almost any form.
Most hardcore Islamists had not supported the Pakistan movement precisely because they regarded the Muslim League leadership as Westernised modernists ignorant of orthodox Islamic thought. But they were quick to realise that Pakistan was a natural laboratory for their Islamic experiments. The fact that fantasies of Islamic rule had been projected as models for the state made it very difficult to argue against those who claimed to speak in the name of pure Islam. Besides, orthodox Islamists possessed the twin notions of apostasy and blasphemy that are extremely potent tools to suppress any challenge to Islamic orthodoxy. These tools create problems in all modern Muslim states, but they are especially hard to resist in a state supposedly created so that Islamic ideals could “order the collective life of Muslims in the light of the Quran and Sunnah” (to quote the Objectives Resolution). Consequently the modern Pakistani state has slowly but steadily ceded ideological ground to Islamists who can legitimately claim to be closer to the Islam described in orthodox books and taught in orthodox schools.
This rise of Islamic politics was not an overnight process. In fact Left wing slogans had far more appeal in the first 30 years of Pakistan than any Islamic slogan. But the Islamists proved far-sighted and persistent and used a succession of wedge issues to insert their agenda into national politics. From the anti-Ahmedi agitation of 1953 to the successful effort to declare them non-Muslim in 1974; and from the free-lance enforcement of blasphemy laws in British times (albeit one that prominent Muslim leaders including Allama Iqbal supported in the Ilm Deen case in the 1920s) to the powerful instrument of legal intimidation, bullying and state-sponsored murder created by General Zia in the 1980s, the Islamists have steadily tightened their grip. Having adopted Islam and irrational denial of our own Indian-ness as core elements of the state, the ‘modern’ factions of the establishment lack the vocabulary to answer the fanatics. This has allowed a relatively small number of Islamist officers to promote wildly dangerous policies (like training half a million armed Islamic fanatics in the 1990s) without saner elements being able to stop them. This unique “own-goal”, unprecedented in the history of modern states, is impossible to understand without reference to the Islamic and irrationally anti-Indian element in the self-image of the Pakistani state.
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Pakistan and its Stories
I recently wrote a piece titled “Pakistan, myths and consequences”, in which I argued that Pakistan’s founding myths (whether present at birth or fashioned retroactively) make it unusually difficult to resist those who want to impose various dangerous ideas upon the state in the name of Islam. The argument was not that Pakistan exists in some parallel dimension where economic and political factors that operate in the rest of the world play no role. But rather that the usual problems of twenty-first century post-colonial countries (problems that may prove overwhelming even where Islamism plays no role) are made significantly worse by the imposition upon them of a flawed and dangerous “Paknationalist-Islamic” framework. Without that framework Pakistan would still be a third world country facing immense challenges. But with this framework we are committed to an ideological cul-de-sac that devalues existing cultural strengths and sharpens existing religious problems (including the Shia-Sunni divide and the use of blasphemy laws to persecute minorities). Not only do these creation myths have negative consequences (as partly enumerated in the above-linked article) but they also have very little positive content. There is really no such thing as a specifically Islamic or “Pakistani” blueprint for running a modern state. None. Nada. Nothing. There is no there there. Yet school textbooks, official propaganda and everyday political speech in Pakistan endlessly refer to some imaginary “Islamic model” of administration and statecraft. Since no such model exists, we are condemned to hypocritically mouthing meaningless and destructive Paknationalist and Islamist slogans while simultaneously (and almost surreptitiously) trying to operate modern Western constitutional, legal and economic models.
This argument is anathema to Pakistani nationalists, Islamists and neo-Islamists (e.g. Imran Khan, who believes a truly Islamic state would look something like Sweden without the half-naked women) but it is also uncomfortable for upper class Leftists educated in Western universities. Their objections matter to me because they are my friends and family, so I will try to answer some of them here. These friends have pointed out to me that:
India is not much better.
The US systematically supported Islamists in Pakistan and pushed for the suppression of leftist and progressive intellectuals for decades.
Colonialism.
About the India objection, I believe that objection misses the point. The Indian subcontinent is all a work in progress. Every nation has miles to go. We are by far the largest repository of REALLY poor people on planet earth. Indians (defined as anyone belonging to the wider Indian genetic and civilisational cluster, hence including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) are the most numerous population group on earth (outnumbering the Chinese by hundreds of millions) and living standards in greater India are barely ahead of “sub-Saharan Africa” (which admittedly includes South Africa, so the category is rather heterogeneous and misleading) and social and economic problems are correspondingly huge.
Culturally too, it is a remarkably heterogeneous and variegated civilization (though still recognizably “Indian”) and the modern Indian state is very far from being a model for anyone. While its founding myth and ideal are positive ideals (multicultural, secular, democratic India) its actual practice is frequently very far from those ideals. But if and when India approaches its ideal, it will have improved. And its ideal draws upon the same vast storehouse of experimentation and theorization to which every other modern country and culture contributes and from which they all draw their lessons. That India is not much better is expected. But it is swimming the same river as everyone else and with time, may swim better. It may even contribute some original ideas of its own to the great (and frequently bloody and unjust) ongoing project of human social organization in the 21st century CE. But what is (ostensibly) being attempted in Pakistan is something different. IF the “ideology of Pakistan” propaganda is taken remotely seriously then something not yet in existence elsewhere is to be created in Pakistan. This will be something religious, Islamic, republican, democratic, socialist, capitalist and fair (all elements may not apply). In principle one must concede the possibility that Pakistan and its leading intellectuals will craft something new, different and better than anything that exists elsewhere in Europe or Asia today. In practice one can take one look at said intellectuals and, well, enough said.
The US has indeed played a large (and usually negative) role in Pakistani politics (and continues to play a large role). But while US imperial intervention is a fact of life, it is not (and has never been) omnipotent or omniscient. Many countries have maneuvered from a position of dependency to one of near-independence. Pakistani nationalism and its supposedly Islamic ideal are neither a necessary result of US intervention, nor its best antithesis. The Pakistani bourgeoisie can and should dump both and still figure out how to manage US intervention.
Colonialism I will leave to the post-colonialists.
There are limits to what can be discussed on a highly educated liberal blog without getting lost in translation.
Finally, a recent concrete illustration of how the founding myths work to alter the direction of events in Pakistan.
A couple of days ago, prominent journalist (and Islamist Paknationalist) Ansar Abbasi wrote a front page “expose” in the daily The News, owned and operated by the supposedly modern and forward looking “Jang Group” (the largest media group in Pakistan). In this article, he announced that the Punjab government (led by the right-of-center Pakistan Muslim League-N; a party that is no stranger to using Islamist and Paknationalist propaganda) had deleted some “Islamic” chapters from the 10th grade Urdu language textbook for 2013. His litany of complaints included the following:
The second chapter in the old edition was on ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ written by Dr Ghulam Mustafa Khan. This important chapter highlighted the basis for the creation of Pakistan and endorsed that the country was created in the name of Islam, to make it an Islamic state, has been replaced by a new chapter on ‘Princess of Paristan’ (Paristan ki shahzadi) written by Ashraf Saboohi.
…Poetry of a Indian poet Firaq Gorakhpuri has been included in the text book and the poet is presented as a hero awarded by the Indian and Russian governments.
While the title page of the book contains the picture of Allama Iqbal, it does not contain any poem of the great poet of Islam and Pakistan. Excluding extremely impressive Islamic poetry, the new text book, however starts with a Hamd (praise of Almighty Allah) and Naat (praise of Hazrat Muhammad — PBUH).
Keep in mind that this is a textbook meant for the Urdu language class, not the Islamic studies or Pakistan studies class. One day after the publication of this attack (and its amplification on social media, especially by supporters of Imran Khan) chief minister Shahbaz Sharif ordered the “Islamic chapters” reinstated. It took less than 24 hours for matters to be corrected.
Cricketer and philanthropist Imran Khan has recently become very popular among young people educated through these textbooks. His current policy is to be all things to all people and his manifesto is progressive and liberal and completely skips the topic of Islam and the so-called ideology of Pakistan. While it is unlikely that he will overcome various hurdles and become the leading party in the coming elections, even if his party were to somehow sweep into power it will never be able to resist demands couched in the idiom of Islam and Pakistan. This is because neither he nor his fans have any vocabulary with which they can counter arguments that are obviously in line with orthodox Islam and behind which looms the specter of blasphemy and apostasy. Within their circles, some of these people can and do have conversations about modern Islam and the need to counter “extremism”, but when someone like Ansar Abbasi becomes aggressive, they will have to back down.In fact, their fate is likely to be worse than Shahbaz Sharif's because they want to achieve their modern Scandinavian Islamic state without resort to “dirty politics” or hypocrisy. It is very hard to square that circlewith resort to dirty politics and hypocrisy…without them, it is likely to be impossible.
(Listen from the 1:20 mark onwards)
Finally, it is not my claim that there is something essentially barbaric about “Islam” which makes an “Islamic” solution impossible. Islam is what Muslims make of it. It has been made many things in the past and will be made into many things in the future. But intellectual development in orthodox mainstream Sunni Islam has been moribund for centuries. This is partly due to the unusual success of blasphemy and apostasy memes that were meant to protect orthodoxy from criticism but have also made it sterile. I do not think that this is a permanent state of affairs. There are already glimmers of change. Much more will happen as orthodox controls loosen. But the time frame of that renaissance and the immediate needs of the Pakistani state do not coincide. For now, we have to stay away from Islamism or we are going to end up with Munawwar Hassan’sIslam. That’s just how things happen to be at this point in history.
History was old and rusted, it was a machine nobody had plugged in for thousands of years, and here all of a sudden it was being asked for maximum output. Nobody was surprised that there were accidents…
—Salman Rushdie, Shame
Omar Ali is a Pakistani-American physician who also moderates the “Asiapeace” discussion group on the internet. This article first appeared on 3Quarksdaily. The paintings are by Punjabi artist Shahid Mirza
Thanks to manufactured debates on TV, there is no time for irony and
nuance nor are we able to distinguish between a charlatan and an
academician
Harish Khare in The Hindu
Now that the Supreme Court has provided some sort of relief against harassment to Professor Ashis Nandy,
it has become incumbent upon all liberal voices to ponder over the
processes and arguments that combined to ensure that an eminent scholar
had to slink out of Jaipur in the middle of the night because of his
so-called controversial observations at a platform that was supposed to
be a celebration of ideas and imagination. Sensitive souls are quite
understandably dismayed; others have deplored the creeping culture of
intolerance. Some see the great sociologist as a victim of
overzealousness of identity politics. All this breast-beating is fine,
but we do need to ask ourselves as to what illiberal impulses and habits
are curdling up the intellectual’s space. We need to try to recognise
how and why Professor Nandy’s nuanced observations on a complex social
problem became “controversial.” Who deemed those remarks to be
“controversial?” And, these questions cannot be answered without
pointing out to the larger context of the current protocol of public
discourse — as also to note, regretfully, that the likes of Mr. Nandy
have themselves unwittingly countenanced these illiberal manners.
After all, this is not the first time — nor will it be the last — that a
sentence in a complex argument has been picked up to be thrashed out
into a controversy . This is now the only way we seem able to talk and
argue among ourselves. And we take pride in this descent into
unreasonableness. We are now fully addicted to the new culture of
controversy-manufacturing. We have gloriously succumbed to the
intoxicating notion that a controversy a day keeps the republic safe and
sound from the corrupt and corrosive “system.”
This happens every night. Ten or 15 words are taken out of a 3,000-word
essay or speech and made the basis of accusation and denunciation, as
part of our right to debate. We insistently perform these rituals of
denunciation and accusation as affirmation of our democratic
entitlement. Every night someone must be made to burn in the Fourth
Circle of Hell. In our nightly dance of aggression and snapping, touted
as the finest expression of civil society and its autonomy from the ugly
state and its uglier political minions, we turn our back on irony,
nuance and complexity and, instead, opt for angry bashing, respecting
neither office nor reputation. We are no longer able to distinguish
between a charlatan and an academician. A Mr. Nandy must be subjected to the same treatment as a Suresh Kalmadi.
Nandy, a collateral victim
Mr. Nandy’s discomfort is only a minor manifestation of this cultivated
bullishness. And let it be said that there is nothing personal against
him. He is simply a collateral victim of the new narrative genre in
which a “controversy” is to be contrived as a ‘grab-the-eyeballs’ game, a
game which is played out cynically and conceitedly for its own sake,
with no particular regard for any democratic fairness or intellectual
integrity. By now the narrative technique is very well-defined: a
“story” will not go off the air till an “apology” has been extracted on
camera and an “impact” is then flaunted. In this controversy-stoking
culture of bogus democratic ‘debate’, Mr. Nandy just happened to be
around on a slow day. Indeed it would be instructive to find out how
certain individuals were instigated to invoke the law against Mr. Nandy.
Perhaps the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association needs to be
applauded for having the courage to call the Nandy controversy an
instance of “media violence.”
At any given time, it is the task of the intellectual to steer a society
and a nation away from moral uncertainties and cultural anxieties; it
is his mandate to discipline the mob, moderate its passions, disabuse it
of its prejudices, instil reasonableness, argue for sobriety and inject
enlightenment. It is not the intellectual’s job to give in to the mob’s
clamouring.
‘Middle class fundamentalism’
But, unfortunately, that is what our self-designated intellectuals have
reduced themselves to doing: getting overawed by television studio
warriors, allowing them to set the tone and tenor of dialogue. There is
now a new kind of fundamentalism — that of what is touted as the
“media-enabled middle class.” For this class of society, the heroes and
villains are well defined. Hence, the idea of debate is not to promote
understanding nor to seek middle ground nor to reason together, but to
bludgeon the reluctant into conformity. Mary McCarthy had once observed
that “to be continually on the attack is to run the risk of monotony …
and a greater risk is that of mechanical intolerance.”
When intellectuals and academicians like Ashis Nandy allow themselves to
be recruited to these “debates,” even if they are seen to be
articulating a dissenting point of view, their very presence and
participation lends credibility to the kangaroo courts of intimidation.
Manipulated voices
The so-called debate is controlled and manipulated and manufactured by
voices and groups without any democratic credentials or public
accountability.It would require an extraordinary leap of faith to
forget that powerful corporate interests have captured the sites of
freedom of speech and expressions; it would be a great public betrayal
to trust them as the sole custodians of abiding democratic values and
sentiments or promoters of public interest.
Intellectuals have connived with a culture of intolerance, accusation
and controversy-stoking that creates hysteria as an extreme form of
conformity. Every night with metronomic regularity our
discourse-overlords slap people with parking tickets.
And a controversy itself becomes a rationale for political response. Let
us recall how L.K. Advani was hounded out of the BJP leadership portals
because a “controversy” was created over his Jinnah speech. And, that
“controversy” was manufactured even before the text of the former deputy
prime minister’s Karachi remarks were available in India. Nor should we
forget how Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah was banned by the Gujarat
Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, even before it was published because our
newly designated national saviour had anticipated that a “controversy”
would get created.
The Nandy ordeal should also caution against the current itch to demand
“stringent” laws as a magical solution to all our complex social and
political ills like corruption. It would be sobering to keep in mind
that Mr. Nandy has been sought to be prosecuted under a stringent law
based on the formula of instant complaint, instant cognisance and
instant arrest. Mr. Nandy is lucky enough to have respected scholars
give him certificates of good conduct, testify that he is not a
“casteist” and that he is not against “reservation.” Lesser
intellectuals may not be that fortunate. We must learn to be a little
wary of our own good intentions and guard against righteous preachers.
If we insist on manufacturing controversy every day, all in the name of
giving vent to “anger”, it is only a matter of time before some sections
of society will be upset, angry and resort to violence. If we find
nothing wrong in manufacturing hysteria against Pakistan, or making wild
allegations against this or that public functionary, how can we object
to some group accusing Mr. Nandy of bias? When we do not invoke our
power of disapproval over Sushma Swaraj’s chillingly brutal demand for
“10 heads” of Pakistani soldiers, who will listen to us when we seek to
disapprove Mayawati’s demand for action against Mr. Nandy?
Just as the Delhi gang rape forced us to question and contest the
traditional complacency and conventions, the Ashis Nandy business will
be worth the trouble if it helps us wise up to the danger of culture of
bullishness and accusation. Unless we set out to reclaim the idea of
civilised dialogue, the intellectuals will continue to find themselves
on the run.
(Harish Khare is a veteran commentator and political analyst, and former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh)
A question for the internationally recognised terrorist, ideologue and mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack, Hafiz Saeed, resident of Lahore, who has just offered sanctuary in Pakistan to our superstar Shah Rukh Khan. Pakistan was carved out in 1947 to ensure security for this subcontinent's Muslims in a separate homeland. Why, six decades later, has Pakistan become the most insecure place for Muslims in the world? Why are more Muslims being killed each day, on an average, in Pakistan than in the rest of the Muslim world put together?
This continual mass murder is not being done by Hindus and Sikhs, who were once proud residents of Punjab and Sindh but are now merely a near-invisible trace. Some Pakistan leaders even express pride in the fact that non-Muslims , who constituted around 20 per cent of the population in 1947, have been reduced to less than 2 per cent. In contrast, the percentage of Muslims in secular India has increased since independence. Hindus and Sikhs are not killing Muslims in Pakistan; Muslims are murdering Muslims, and on a scale unprecedented in the history of Punjab, the North West Frontier and Sindh. Why?
There have been riots in India, some of them horrendous. But the graph is one of ebb from the peak of 1947. When a riot does occur, as in Maharashtra recently, civil society and media stand up to demand accountability, and the ground pressure of a secular democracy forces even reluctant governments to cooperate in punishment of the guilty. When Shias, or other sectarians, are mass-murdered in Pakistan on a regular basis, the killers celebrate a "duty" well done.
History's paradox is evident: Muslims today are safer in India than in Pakistan. The "muhajirs" who left the cities of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in 1947 would have been far safer in Lucknow, Patna and dozens of cities in their original land than they are now in the tense streets and by-lanes of Karachi.
Could Shah Rukh Khan have become an international heart throb if his parents had joined the emigration in 1947? Since he is talented he would have gained some recognition on the fringes of elite society, but he could not have become a central presence of a popular culture that has seeped and spread to every tehsil and village. Nor is Shah Rukh the only Muslim superstar in Mumbai's film world; Salman Khan is bigger than him. Shah Rukh and Salman and Amir Khan do not hide their identity through an alias; their birth name is their public persona.
The television set in my office serves two main purposes: it shows cricket and offers access to an FM radio station which plays old film songs. A song by Muhammad Rafi was on the air while the previous paragraph was being written: Man re tu kahe na dheer dhare. It is a beautiful classic, written by Sahir Ludhianvi. Rafi, as his name confirms, was a Muslim. He was born in 1924 in western Punjab and came to Mumbai as a very young man in search of dreams. Those dreams had not come true by 1947. Rafi had the option of returning to Lahore. He chose to remain in Mumbai, and brought his family in what might be called the reverse direction. It was a wise choice. Mumbai made Rafi's voice immortal. Rafi, like India, was the distillation of many inspirations.
Hafiz Saeed and his ilk possess cramped, virulent minds which condemn the ragas upon which our subcontinent's music, both classic and popular, is based, as inimical. They want to destroy a shared Hindu-Muslim cultural heritage in which Muslim maestros took classical music to splendid heights under the patronage of padishahs, rajahs and nawabs . Instead of art, they possess vitriol, even as the violence they spawn turns Pakistan into a laboratory of chaos. They call themselves guardians of their nation, but they are in fact regressive theocrats who are shredding the Pakistan that Jinnah imagined.
There is an answer to the opening question. Extremists who reduce faith to a fortress do not understand a simple truth: faith cannot be partitioned. Islam was a revelation for mankind; it cannot be usurped by a minor tract of geography. Nations are created by and for men, within boundaries of language or culture or tribe. Religion comes from God; it is not a political tool for human ambition. Those who equate religion with nation distort the first and destroy the second. Pakistan has become a battlefield for dysfunctional forces because theocrats will not permit it to become a rational state.
Logic suggests a reciprocal offer: Pakistani Muslims would be safer in India. But that offer cannot extend to Hafiz Saeed. His mission is to be India's adversary. What he does not understand is that he is really Pakistan's enemy.
The US has indeed played a large (and usually negative) role in Pakistani politics (and continues to play a large role). But while US imperial intervention is a fact of life, it is not (and has never been) omnipotent or omniscient. Many countries have maneuvered from a position of dependency to one of near-independence. Pakistani nationalism and its supposedly Islamic ideal are neither a necessary result of US intervention, nor its best antithesis. The Pakistani bourgeoisie 
