Najam Sethi on Pakistan Military's Truths

 Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

The world according to Al Bakistan


In a wide ranging and far reaching “briefing”, Maj-Gen Asif Ghafoor, DG-ISPR, has laid down the grundnorm of state realism. But consider.

He says there is no organized terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan. True, the military has knocked out Al Qaeda/Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and degraded the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. But a question mark still hangs over the fate of our “freedom fighter” jihadi organisations which are deemed to be “terrorist” by the international community. That is why Pakistan is struggling to remain off the FATF black list. The Maj-Gen says Pakistan has paid a huge price in the martyrdom of 81,000 citizens in the war against terror. True, but the world couldn’t care less: these homegrown terrorists were the outcome of our own misguided policies. He says that “radicalization” took root in Pakistan due to the Afghan jihad. True, but we were more than willing partners in that project. He says that terrorism came to Pakistan after the international community intervened in Afghanistan. True, but we provided safe haven to the Taliban for nearly twenty years and allowed them to germinate in our womb. He says it was decided last January to “mainstream” proscribed organisations. True, but what took us so long to tackle a troubling problem for twenty years when we were not busy in “kinetic operations”?

Maj-Gen Ghafoor says madrassahs will be mainstreamed under the Education Ministry. A noble thought. However, far from being mainstreamed, the madrassahs have so far refused to even get themselves properly registered as per the National Action Plan. Now the Punjab government and religious parties have refused to comply. Indeed, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government is actively funding some big ones which have provided the backbone of the terrorists.

But it is Maj-Gen Ghafoor’s briefing on the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) that has generated the most controversy. He says the military has responded positively to its demand to de-mine FATA and reduce check posts but is constrained by lack of civil administration in the area and resurfacing of terrorists from across the border. Fair enough. But most of the “disappeared” are still “disappeared” and extra-judicial killings, like those of Naqeebullah Mehsud, are not being investigated. He wants to know why the PTM asked the Afghan government not to hand over the body of Dawar to the Pakistan government. He has accused PTM of receiving funds from hostile intel agencies. If that is proven it would be a damning indictment of PTM.

The PTM has responded by accusing the military of being unaccountable and repressive, a view that is echoed by many rights groups, media and political parties across the country.

In response, Major General Ghafoor has threatened: “Time is up”. Presumably, the military wants to detain and charge some PTM leaders as “traitors”. That would be most inadvisable. It will only serve to swell the PTM ranks. It may even precipitate an armed resistance, given the propensity of foreign intel agencies to fish in troubled waters. We also know how the various “traitors” in Pakistani history have ended up acquiring heroic proportions while “state realism” dictated otherwise. The list is long and impressive: Fatima Jinnah, Hussein Shaheed Suharwardi, Mujeebur Rahman, G.M. Syed, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Khair Bux Marri, Ataullah Mengal, Akbar Bugti, etc. etc. We also know the fate of “banned” organisations – they simply reappear under another name.

The PTM has arisen because of the trials and tribulations of the tribal areas in the last decade of terrorism. The Pashtun populace has been caught in the crossfire of insurgency and counter insurgency. The insurgents were once state assets with whom the populace was expected to cooperate. Those who didn’t suffered at the hands of both. But when these “assets” became “liabilities”, those who didn’t cooperate with the one were targeted by the other. In consequence, from racial profiling to disappearances, a whole generation of tribal Pashtuns is scarred by state policies. The PTM is voicing that protest. If neighbouring foreign intel agencies are exploiting their sentiments, it is to be expected as a “realistic” quid pro quo for what Pakistani intel agencies have been serving its neighbours in the past.

If the Pakistani Miltablishment has been compelled by the force of new circumstances to undo its own old misguided policies, it should at least recognize the legitimate grievances of those who have paid the price of its miscalculations and apply balm to their wounds. Every other household in FATA is adversely affected one way or the other by the “war against terrorism”. The PTM is their voice. It needs to be heard. The media should be allowed to cross-examine it. In turn, the PTM must be wary of being tainted by the “foreign hand” and stop abusing the army.

The civilian government and opposition in parliament should sit down with the leaders of the PTM and find an honourable and equitable way to address mutually legitimate and “realistic” concerns. The military’s self-righteous, authoritarian tone must give way to a caring and sympathetic approach. Time’s not up. It has just arrived.

Tarek Fatah on Sharia, Education, Kerala, Sufism, India and Islam

On the difference between a Muslim and an Islamist

Back from the enemy country

Pervez Hoodbhoy in The Dawn

RARELY are Pakistanis allowed to cross their eastern border. We are told that’s so because on the other side is the enemy. Visa restrictions ensure that only the slightest trickle of people flows in either direction. Hence ordinary academics like me rarely get to interact with their Indian counterparts. But an invitation to speak at the Hyderabad Literary Festival, and the fortuitous grant of a four-city non-police reporting visa, led to my 11-day 12-lecture marathon at Indian universities, colleges, and various public places. This unusual situation leads me here to share sundry observations.

At first blush, it seemed I hadn’t travelled far at all. My first public colloquium was delivered in Urdu at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) in Hyderabad. With most females in burqa, and most young men bearing beards, MANUU is more conservative in appearance than any Urdu university (there are several) on the Pakistani side.

Established in 1998, it seeks to “promote and develop the Urdu language and to impart education and training in vocational and technical subjects”. Relative to its Pakistani counterparts, it is better endowed in terms of land, infrastructure and resources.

But there’s a still bigger difference: this university’s students are largely graduates of Indian madressahs while almost all university students in Pakistan come from secular schools. Thus, MANUU’s development of video “bridge courses” in Urdu must be considered as a significant effort to teach English and certain marketable skills to those with only religious training. I am not aware of any comparable programme in Pakistan. Shouldn’t we over here be asking how the surging output of Pakistani madressahs is to be handled? Why have we abandoned efforts to help those for whom secular schooling was never a choice? 

To my embarrassment, I was unable to fulfil my host’s request to recommend good introductory textbooks in Urdu from Pakistan. But how could I? Such books don’t exist and probably never will. Although I give science lectures as often in Urdu as English, the books I use are only in English. Somehow Pakistan never summoned the necessary vigour for transplanting modern ideas into Urdu. The impetus for this has been lost forever. Urdu, as the language of Islam in undivided India, once had enormous political significance. Education in Urdu was demanded by the Muslim League as a reason for wanting Pakistan!

A little down the road lies a different world. At the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) the best and brightest of India’s young, selected after cut-throat competition, are engaged in a furious race to the top. IIIT-H boasts that its fresh graduates have recently been snapped up with fantastic Rs1.5 crore (Indian) salaries by corporate entities such as Google and Facebook.

This face of modern India is equally visible at the various Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), whose numbers have exploded from four to 18. They are the showpieces of Indian higher education. I spoke at three — Bombay, Gandhinagar, and Delhi — and was not disappointed. But some Indian academics feel otherwise.

Engineering education at the IITs, says Prof Raghubir Sahran of IIT-GN, has remained “mainly mimetic of foreign models (like MIT) and captive to the demands of the market and corporate agendas”. My physicist friend, Prof Deshdeep Sahdev, agrees. He left IIT-K to start his own company that now competes with Hewlett Packard in making tunnelling electron microscopes and says IIT students are strongly drill-oriented, not innovative.

Still, even if the IITs are not top class, they are certainly good. Why has Pakistan failed in making its own version of the IITs? One essential condition is openness to the world of ideas. This mandates the physical presence of foreign visitors.

Indeed, on Indian campuses one sees a large number of foreigners — American, European, Japanese, and Chinese.

They come for short visits as well as long stays, enriching universities and research centres.

Not so in Pakistan where foreigners are a rarity, to be regarded with suspicion. For example, at the National Centre for Physics, which is nominally a part of Quaid-i-Azam University but is actually ‘owned’ by the Strategic Plans Division (the custodian of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons), academic visitors are so tightly restricted that they seek to flee their jails soon after arrival.

Those who came from Canada, Turkey and Iran to a recent conference at the NCP protested in writing and privately told us that they would never want to come back.

Tensions between secular and religious forces appear high in Modi’s India. Although an outsider cannot accurately judge the extent, I saw sparks fly when Nayantara Sahgal, the celebrated novelist who was the first of 35 Indian intellectuals to hand back their government awards, shared the stage with the governor of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. After she spoke on the threats to writers, the murder of three Indian rationalists, and the lynching of a Muslim man falsely accused of possessing beef, the enraged governor threw aside his prepared speech and excoriated her for siding with terrorists.

Hindutva ideology has put the ‘scientific temper’ of Nehruvian times under visible stress. My presentations on science and rationality sometimes resulted in a number of polite, but obviously unfriendly, comments from the audience.

Legitimate cultural pride over path-breaking achievements of ancient Hindu scholars is being seamlessly mixed with pseudoscience. Shockingly, an invited paper at the recent Indian Science Congress claimed that Lord Shiva was the world’s greatest environmentalist. Another delegate blew on a ‘conch’ shell for a full two minutes because it would exercise the rectal muscles of Congress delegates!

Pakistan and India may be moving along divergent paths of development but their commonalities are becoming more accentuated as well. Engaging with the other is vital — and certainly possible.

Although I sometimes took unpopular political positions at no point did I, as a Pakistani, experience hostility. The mature response of both governments to the Pathankot attack gives hope that Pakistan and India might yet learn to live with each other as normal neighbours. This in spite of the awful reality that terrorism is here to stay.

Failures in Maths Teaching

Pervez Hoodbhoy in The Dawn

Our generals say India’s spy agency RAW is up to its nasty tricks again. No evidence provided but, okay, we’ll buy the story for now. There are two good reasons. First, it’s safer not to question the wisdom of generals. Second, they speak from deep experience, having long played the spy-versus-spy game across borders.

So let’s provisionally assume that India’s spies have engineered the odd bomb blast here and there, and send occasional gifts to the BLF or other militant Baloch movements.

But RAW’s alleged antics are pinpricks compared to the massive and irreversible brain damage that Pakistan’s schools, colleges, and universities inflict upon their students.

Imagine that some devilish enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power and makes a population stupid. One measure, though not the only one, of judging the lethality of this hypothetical weapon would be lower math scores.

No such scores are actually available, but for over 40 years my colleagues and I have helplessly watched student math abilities shrivel.

Only the wealthy customers of elite private schools and universities, tethered as they are to standards of the external world, have escaped wholesale dumbing down. As for the ordinary 99pc, with the rare exception of super-bright students here or there, some form of mental polio is turning most into math duffers.

Does being poor at math really matter? After all there are plenty of intelligent people everywhere, even brilliant ones, who hate math and therefore are bad at it. But this is only because they had dull and uninspiring teachers who never taught them that math is a beautiful exercise of reason, one step at a time. Once on track, you quickly realise that math is the most magnificent, surprising, and powerful of all human achievements.

The success of the human species over other forms of life on planet Earth depends squarely on mathematics. Without math the pyramids could not have been built, navigation would be impossible, electricity could not have been discovered and put to use, factories and industries would not exist, computers and space exploration would be unimaginable, etc.

Here’s how bad our situation is: in a recent math class, I had rather typical 18-20 year-olds from non-elite schools. They had studied geometry but their teachers had not exposed them to the notion of proof — the step-by-step process in which one starts with a proposition, carefully constructs arguments, and then triumphantly arrives at the conclusion.

Instead, they were taught math as a hodgepodge of recipes. A few they remembered, the rest were forgotten.

I nearly wept to see that barely three to four students out of 60 could prove the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. None could prove that similar triangles have proportional sides. Quite a few had difficulty with fractions, some did not know how to take the square root of four or nine or unless armed with a calculator, and translating even simple real-life situations (like compound interest) into equations was difficult. Twelve-year-old kids in Japan or Europe would have done better.

Their teachers are still worse. Earlier I had the misfortune of teaching math courses to college math teachers. In their late 30s or early 40s, most were staid and stable family men who had come to university, expecting to get a higher degree and hence a higher pay grade.

But for all their years of teaching math, they were blanks. Diluting my nominally ‘advanced math’ course to a beginning level course did not help. My conscience could not allow a single teacher to pass.

Could the use of English — a difficult language for all except ‘O’ and ‘A’ level students — reasonably explain this dreadful situation? I am sympathetic to this point of view and therefore use Urdu exclusively in my physics and math lectures, both in distance learning modules and in real-time teaching (except when a university’s regulations require that I teach in English). But this barely solves 10-20pc of the problem.

So then is the math curriculum at fault? It certainly can be improved but almost the same topics in math and science are listed in Pakistani curricula as would expectedly be covered by a similar cohort internationally. In fact, primary school children in Pakistan are expected to carry a bigger burden than overseas kids.

The impediment to learning proper math is just one — wrong learning goals, wrong attitudes. Mathematics does not require labs, computers, or fancy gadgetry. But it does demand mental capacity and concentration. Nothing is true in math unless established by argumentation based upon a rigorous chain of logic, with each link firmly attached to the preceding one. The teacher who cannot correctly solve a math problem by following the defined logic will suffer loss of face before his students.

Contrast this with the madressah model wherein truth is defined by the teacher and prescribed books. The teacher’s job is to convey the book contents, and the student’s job is to appropriately absorb and memorise. There are no problems to be solved, nor is challenging suppositions or checking logical consistency either encouraged or even tolerated.

Limited to religious learning, such learning attitudes are perfectly fine. But their absorption into secular parts of the education system is disastrous. The hafiz-i-science or hafiz-i-math, which are copiously produced, carry exactly zero worth.

Giving logic a back seat has led to more than diminished math or science skills. The ordinary Pakistani person’s ability to reason out problems of daily life has also diminished. There is an increased national susceptibility to conspiracy theories, decreased ability to tell friend from foe, and more frequent resort to violence rather than argumentation. The quality of Pakistan’s television channels reflects today’s quality of thought.

For too long education reform advocates have been barking up the wrong tree. A bigger education budget, better pay for teachers, more schools and universities, or changing instructional languages will not improve learning outcomes. As long as teachers and students remain shackled to the madressah mindset, they will remain mentally stunted. 

The real challenge lies in figuring out how to set their minds free.

Muslims that 'minority politics' left behind

KHALID ANIS ANSARI

  

 

The pasmanda’s quest for empowerment will help democratise Indian Islam and deepen democracy in the country

‘Pasmanda’, a Persian term meaning “those who have fallen behind,” refers to Muslims belonging to the shudra (backward) and ati-shudra (Dalit) castes. It was adopted as an oppositional identity to that of the dominant ashraf Muslims (forward castes) in 1998 by the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a group which mainly worked in Bihar. Since then, however, the pasmanda discourse has found resonance elsewhere too.

The dominant perception is that Islam is an egalitarian religion and that Indian Muslims on the whole, especially in the post-Sachar scenario, are a marginalised community. The pasmanda counter-discourse takes issue with both these formulations. In terms of religious interpretation, Masood Falahi’s work Hindustan mein Zaat Paat aur Musalman (2006) has convincingly demonstrated how the notion of kufu (rules about possible marriage relations between groups) was read through the lens of caste by the ‘manuwadi’ ulema and how a parallel system of “graded inequality” was put into place in Indian Islam.

---------

Also read Sreesanth - A modern day Valmiki

----------

Caste-based disenfranchisement

As far as the social sphere is concerned, Ali Anwar’s Masawat ki Jung (2000) has documented caste-based disenfranchisement of Dalit and backward caste Muslims at the hands of self-styled ashraf leaders in community organisations like madrasas and personal law boards, representative institutions (Parliament and State Assemblies) and departments, ministries and institutions that claim to work for Muslims (minority affairs, Waqf boards, Urdu academies, AMU, Jamia Millia Islamia, etc). The book also underlines stories of humiliation, disrespect and violence on caste grounds that various pasmanda communities have to undergo on a daily basis, at least in northern parts of India.

Thus, pasmanda commentators contest the two key elements of mainstream ‘Muslim’ or ‘minority’ discourse —Islam as an egalitarian religion and Indian Muslims on the whole as an oppressed community. Islam may be normatively egalitarian but actual-existing Islam in Indian conditions is deeply hierarchical. Similarly, all Muslims are not oppressed, or not to the same degree, at any rate: Muslims are a differentiated community in terms of power, with dominant (ashraf) and subordinated (pasmanda) sections. Consequently, the so-called ‘minority politics’, which has been quite content in raising symbolic and emotional issues so far, is really the politics of dominant caste Muslims that secures their interests at the expense of pasmanda Muslims. Not surprisingly, a recurrent theme in pasmanda narratives is that minority politics has singularly failed to address the bread-and-butter concerns of the pasmanda Muslims, who constitute about 85 per cent of the Indian Muslim population and come primarily from occupational and service biradaris.

The notion of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ communities in India — read primarily in terms of religious identity — is of modern origin and linked with the emergence and consolidation of a hegemonic secular nation-state project. In this sense, while ‘secular’ nationalism becomes the locus of legitimate power and violence, Hindu and Islamic nationalisms become the sites of illegitimate power. The seemingly epic battles that are constantly fought within this conceptual framework — around communal riots or ‘Hindu’/‘Islamic’ terror more recently in the post-9/11 world — have been instrumental in denying a voice to subordinated caste communities across religions and in securing the interests of ‘secular,’ Hindu or Muslim elites respectively. In this sense, the pasmanda articulation has highlighted the symbiotic nature of majoritarian and minoritarian fundamentalism and has sought to contest the latter from within in order to wage a decisive battle against the former. As Waqar Hawari, a pasmanda activist, says: “While Muslim politicians like Imam Bukhari and Syed Shahabuddin add the jodan [starter yoghurt], it is left to the Hindu fundamentalists to prepare the yoghurt of communalism. Both of them are responsible. We oppose the politics of both Hindu and Muslim fanaticism.”

Faith and ethnicity

The structures of social solidarity that pasmanda activists work with are deeply influenced by the entangled relation between faith and ethnicity. The domains of Hinduism and Islam are quite complex, with multiple resources and potentialities possible: in various ways they exceed the ‘Brahminism’ and ‘Ashrafism’ that have come to over-determine them over time. On the one hand, the pasmanda Muslims share a widespread feeling of ‘Muslimness’ with the upper-caste Muslims, a solidarity which is often parochialised by internal caste and maslak-based (sectarian) contradictions. On the other hand, pasmanda Muslims share an experience of caste-based humiliation and disrespect with subordinated caste Hindus, a solidarity which is equally interrupted by the discourse around religious difference incessantly reproduced by upper caste institutions. Since the express object of the pasmanda movement has been to raise the issue of caste-based exclusion of subordinate caste Muslims, it has stressed on caste-based solidarity across religions. As Ali Anwar, the founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, says: “There is a bond of pain between pasmanda Muslims and the pasmanda sections of other religions. This bond of pain is the supreme bond … That is why we have to shake hands with the pasmanda sections of other religions.”

This counter-hegemonic solidarity on caste lines is effectively encapsulated in the pasmanda slogan ‘Dalit-Pichda ek saman, Hindu ho ya Musalman’ (All Dalit-backward castes are alike, whether they be Hindu or Muslim). At the same time, birth-based caste distinctions are sought to be transcended from the vantage point of an egalitarian faith: “We are not setting the Dalit/Backward Caste Muslims against the so-called ashraf Muslims. Our movement is not directed against them. Rather, we seek to strengthen and empower our own people, to enable them to speak for themselves and to secure their rights and justice … We welcome well-meaning people of the so-called ashraf background … who are concerned about the plight of our people to join us in our struggle.” It is in the midst of such complex negotiations, the punctuated nature of faith and caste-based solidarities, that the pasmanda emerges as a political factor.

Overall, pasmanda politics has relied on transformative constitutionalism and democratic symbolism to attain its social justice goals — the deepening of existing affirmative action policies, adequate representation of pasmanda Muslims in political parties, state support for cottage and small-scale industries, democratisation of religious institutions and interpretative traditions, etc. Obviously, it confronts all the challenges that any counter-hegemonic identity movement faces in its formative phases: lack of resources and appropriate institutions, cooption of its leaders by state and other dominant ideological apparatuses, lack of relevant movement literature, internal power conflicts, and so on. Also, as Rammanohar Lohia said: “The policy of uplift of downgraded castes and groups is capable of yielding much poison. A first poison may come out of its immediate effects on men’s minds; it may speedily antagonise the Dvija without as speedily influencing the Sudras. With his undoubted alertness to developments and his capacity to mislead, the Dvija may succeed in heaping direct and indirect discredit on the practitioners of this policy long before the Sudra wakes up to it.” These are the challenges that the pasmanda activists face while confronting the ashrafiya-dominated minority politics. However, their struggle for a post-minority politics is on and one hopes it will democratise Indian Islam in the long run by triggering a process of internal reform. The pasmanda critique of the majority-minority or the secular-communal dyad will also contribute to a democratic deepening that will benefit all of India’s subaltern communities in the long run.

(Khalid Anis Ansari is a PhD candidate at the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands. He also works with The Patna Collective, New Delhi, and engages with the pasmanda movement as an interlocutor and knowledge-activist. Email: khalidanisansari@gmail.com)