How to conduct good meetings

 John Gapper in The FT

Jeff Bezos and Winston Churchill do not have much in common, but one is chief executive of a company that is valued at $770bn and the other stopped the Nazis invading Britain, so the advice of both is worth heeding. Amazon’s founder and the UK’s wartime prime minister agreed on one thing: the value of a good memorandum. 

Mr Bezos’s recent letter to shareholders extolled the Amazon practice of starting all internal meetings by everyone present reading a memo of up to six pages, explaining what they are there to discuss. Instead of watching a PowerPoint presentation, or breaking into an immediate debate, Amazon’s executives spend up to half an hour in complete silence, absorbing the briefing that one of them has prepared. 

“This is the weirdest meeting culture you will ever encounter,” Mr Bezos admitted in one interview. The principle is that an executive must refine his or her proposal so fully to express it in narrative form that everyone will be able to understand it. Reading the memo means that all those in the room are informed for the conversation that follows, and are not merely bluffing. 

Churchill would have appreciated the attention Mr Bezos has given to this. On August 9 1940, a month before the Blitz bombing of London started, he dictated a memo to the UK civil service on the subject of memos. “To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long.” he declared. “The discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.” 

Amazon’s approach sounds eccentric, but there is a lot of value in it. Most large companies have too many meetings in general — some executives spend their days traipsing from one airless room to another — and too many of them are disorganised and sprawling. People spout off without knowing much about the topic, or caring whether they do: it becomes a battle of rhetoric. 

Mr Bezos is a student of managerial efficiency — Amazon itself is a huge machine for sucking inefficiency out of the retail industry. He has grasped that starting out with everyone knowing the basics makes the debate both better informed and more democratic. There is less chance of a decision being taken arbitrarily or ignorantly, or of a clique of two or three people in the room controlling the outcome. 

The surprising aspect is his faith in narrative, rather than the data on which Amazon relies. You might have thought that data would rule decision-making at Amazon, but not so. He said: “We have so many metrics . . . and the thing I have noticed is that when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There’s something wrong with the way you’re measuring.” 

He believes in telling a story vividly, rather than relying on data or graphics, or packaging a business case in bullet points on a slide. Some Amazon memos can be almost like dramas: a typical memo for a new product comes in the form of an imaginary press release for the service, backed by a question and answer brief written in a way that a customer would understand. 

Churchill, a journalist turned politician, was equally a devotee of strong narratives that could shape policymaking. “Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational,” he instructed his civil servants, warning them that “most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether”. 

He and Mr Bezos also agreed on the correct place for any data and slides: somewhere at the back. “If a report relies on detailed analysis of some complicated factors . . . these should be set out in an appendix,” Churchill declared. Amazon’s data-rich executives must obey the same rule. 

Conciseness can be taken too far. Staff at the US National Security Council were told to trim their policy memos to a single page for Donald Trump because he did not like to read too much. Then it turned out that the president wanted what one official described to the New Yorker as “two or three points, with the syntactical complexity of ‘See Jane run’”, and preferred pictures. 

But preparing a crisp narrative is much harder work than spraying around some sentences on a slide. It requires someone to pause and not only to think through the thread of the argument, but to shape it in a way that can inspire others. Churchill could do that on his feet; the rest of us must concentrate. As Mr Bezos notes, it takes a lot of effort to write a “brilliant and thoughtful” corporate memo. 

The impact of narrative is clear in public speaking. The Technology, Entertainment, Design conference became a global brand by forcing speakers to hone their “Ted talks” ruthlessly for months in advance. No one is allowed to get on stage and improvise some thoughts. A corporate meeting is not a Ted event, but it is still a gathering that needs to be educated. 

Churchill, for whom making well-informed decisions was a matter of life and death, devoted some time on a day when Birmingham was bombed to setting out how to write memos. Mr Bezos has done extremely well for Amazon by appreciating the value of briefing his executives thoroughly. We should probably listen to them.

The many shades of darkness and light

If we do not recognise the multiplicity of our past, we cannot accept the multiplicity of our present


Tabish Khair in The Hindu


For most Europeans and Europeanised peoples, Western modernity starts assuming shape with something called the Enlightenment, which, riding the steed of Pure Reason, sweeps away the preceding ‘Dark Ages’ of Europe. Similarly, for religious Muslims, the revelations of Islam mark a decisive break in Arabia from an earlier age of ignorance and superstition, often referred to as ‘Jahillia’.

Both the ideas are based on a perception of historical changes, but they also tinker with historical facts. In that sense, they are ideological: not ‘fake’, but a particular reading of the material realities that they set out to chronicle. Their light is real, but it blinds us to many things too.

For instance, it has been increasingly contested whether the European Dark Ages were as dark as the rhetoric of the Enlightenment assumes. It has also been doubted whether the Enlightenment shed as much light on the world as its champions claim. For instance, some of the darkest deeds to be perpetuated against non-Europeans were justified in the light of the notion of ‘historical progress’ demanded by the Enlightenment. Finally, even the movement away from religion to reason was not as clear-cut as it is assumed: well into the 19th century, Christianity (particularly Protestantism) was justified in terms of divinely illuminated reason as against the dark heathen superstitions of other faiths, and this logic has survived in subtler forms even today.

In a similar way, the Islamic notion of a prior age of Jahillia is partly a construct. While it might have applied to some Arab tribes most directly influenced by the coming of Islam, it was not as if pre-Islamic Arabia was simply a den of darkness and ignorance. There were developed forms of culture, poetry, worship and social organisation in so-called Jahillia too, all of which many religious Arab Muslims are not willing to consider as part of their own inheritance today. Once again, this notion of a past Jahillia has enabled extremists in Muslim societies to treat other people in brutal ways: a recent consequence was the 2001 destruction of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan, not to mention the persecution of some supposed ‘idolators’ in Islamic State-occupied territories.

Achievements and an error

Both the notions — the Dark Ages followed by the Enlightenment and Jahillia followed by the illumination of Islam — are based on some real developments and achievements. Europe did move, slowly and often contradictorily, from religious and feudal authority to a greater tendency to reason and hence, finally, to allotting all individuals a theoretically equivalent (democratic) space as a human right rather than as a divine boon. Similarly, many parts of pre-Islamic Arabia (‘Jahillia’) did move from incessant social strife and a certain lack of cohesion to the far more organised, and hence hugely successful, politico-religious systems enabled by Islam. It might also be, as many religious Muslims claim, that early Islam marked some distinctively progressive and egalitarian values compared to the predominant tribalism of so-called Jahillia.

In both cases, however, the error has been to posit a complete break: a before-after scenario. This is not sustained by all the historical evidence. Why do I need to point this out? Because there are two great problems with positing such decisive before-after scenarios, apart from that of historical error.

Two problems of a complete break

First, it reduces one’s own complex relationship to one’s past to sheer negation. The past — as the Dark Ages or Jahillia — simply becomes a black hole into which we dump everything that we feel does not belong to our present. This reduces not only the past but also our present.

Second, the past — once reduced to a negative, obscure, dark caricature of our present — can then be used to persecute peoples who do not share our present. In that sense, the before-after scenario is aimed at the future. When Europeans set out to bring ‘Enlightenment’ values to non-European people, they also justified many atrocities by reasoning that these people were stuck in the dark ages of a past that should have vanished, and hence such people needed to be forcibly civilised for their own good. History could be recruited to explain away — no, even call for — the persecution that was necessary to ‘improve’ and ‘enlighten’ such people. I need not point out that some very religious Muslims thought in ways that were similar, and some fanatics still do.

I have often wondered whether the European Enlightenment did not adopt just Arab discoveries in philosophy or science, ranging from algebra to the theory of the camera. Perhaps their binary division of their own past is also an unconscious imitation of the Arab bifurcation of its past into dark ‘Jahillia’ and the light of Islam. Or maybe it is a sad ‘civilisational’ trend — for some caste Hindus tend to make a similar cut between ‘Arya’ and ‘pre-Arya’ pasts, with similar consequences: a dismissal of aboriginal cultures, practices and rights today as “lapsed” forms, or the whitewashing of Dravidian history by the fantasy of a permanent ‘Aryan’ presence in what is India.

All such attempts — Muslim, Arya-Hindu, or European — bear the germs of potential violence. After all, if we cannot accept our own evolving identities in the past, how can we accept our differences with others today? And if we cannot accept the diversity and richness of our multiple pasts, how can we accept the multiplicity of our present?

Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari

Pakistan and Radd-ul-Fasaad

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times


The Pakistan Army has launched Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad across the country to “indiscriminately eliminate residual threat of terrorism, consolidate gains of operations made thus far and further ensure security of our borders”. The ISPR statement claims that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Civil Armed Forces (Rangers) and other LEAs (police, etc) will participate in this “Broad Spectrum Security/Counter Terrorism operation”.

The key words are, first, “indiscriminately”. This suggests that in earlier operations some terrorist groups and elements were spared for one reason or another but they will be targeted this time round. The second key word is “residual”. This suggests that much of the core work in eliminating terrorism has already been done in the past and only some “cleaning” or “mopping up” remains. The third key word is “Broad Spectrum”. This suggests that operations will be conducted across the country and not just in Fata and Karachi as in the past and that both small and big targets will be fair game. In other words, the operation aims to rid us of all internal and external elements which are creating terrorist anarchy in the country.

If this operation succeeds in even half its stated objectives it would be a great boon for Pakistan. Consider.

In earlier operations, the Pakistani Taliban in Fata and the criminal terrorizing cadres of the MQM in Karachi were targeted. Of late attempts were made to eliminate a handful of leading sectarian elements in the Punjab through police encounters but no systematic attempt was made to uproot the sectarian organisations spread across Southern Punjab. In other words, the actions were discriminatory. One reason may have had to do with the political affiliations of such elements with mainstream parties that stayed the hand of the local administrations. Another may be lack of will in local and provincial governments to face any violent or militant backlash. Are we to understand that now concerted action will be taken against these elements as well? And if action is taken, what sort of action will this be? If sweeping arrests are going to be made without adequately provisioning for successful prosecution, then this will be no more than a temporary palliative because the civil courts will set them free sooner or later. But if summary military courts are to sentence them, then a whole new upgraded legal edifice has to be constructed that is accorded approval by a consensus in parliament and which is not challenged by the superior judiciary. How this is to be accomplished remains to be seen because parliament is still debating the pros and cons of extending the legal cover of military courts for a limited period of time and the Supreme Court has stayed the executions of several terrorists convicted by military courts on one ground or another.

But the problem won’t end even if all this is accomplished quickly and another few hundred are executed or jailed for life. The roots of sectarianism go deep in society and are related to the narrative of “Islamic ideology” that underpins state and society in Pakistan and permeates the political parties, state institutions, education system and media. How on earth are we going to depoliticize Pakistan’s version of Islam in a few years when we have taken six decades to enshrine it as the be-all and end-all, and what it means to be a true Pakistani soaked in this ideology? Operation Radd-ul-Fassad may rid us of a score or two of potent sectarian troublemakers but it will not make a dent in the system that gives birth to and nurtures tens of thousands of such people every year in the bowels of its madrassahs.

The second word “residual” is clearly aimed at the tip of the terrorist iceberg. If the sectarian organisations are the “residual”, what about the jihadi organisations that are unable to stop their “members” from splitting and joining sectarian, IS or TTP groups or infiltrating militants across the border into Indian-held Kashmir? Is the military establishment ready to disband these jihadi groups that trigger the proxy terrorist wars between India and Pakistan? Equally, we may ask whether this operation that claims to secure our border with Afghanistan will target the Haqqani network based in Pakistan and drive it into Afghanistan so that the Afghan government will reciprocate and deny refuge to the TTP that is sending its terrorists across the border to wreak havoc in Pakistan? Like the sectarian organisations that feed off the “narrative” of Pakistan, the jihadis feed off the continuing conflict with India over Kashmir that has now become part and parcel of our national security narrative of India as the perpetual and existential enemy of Pakistan.

These are some of the many thorny questions that remain unaddressed by Radd-ul-Fasaad. Central to the theme of eliminating terrorism is the legitimizing “idea” or “narrative” of Pakistan that feeds into it. On that score, we have not seen any serious initiative by the civil-military establishment that fashioned it in the first place.

Why the economic consensus on Brexit is flawed

Ashoka Mody in The Independent

Consensus amongst economists quickly unravels. In April 1999, “Britain’s top academic economists” voted strongly in favour of switching from the pound to the euro. Mercifully, the government had better sense.

In August 2008, Olivier Blanchard, then a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported that economists shared a common vision of macroeconomics “because”, he said, “facts do not go away.” But in 2014, reflecting on the failures of macroeconomics, Blanchard conceded that economists were “fooled” because they were not looking at the right facts.

In the past few weeks, virtually all official agencies have insisted that leaving the European Union — a British exit or “Brexit” — will impose enormous costs on the British. Indeed, these agencies have competed with each other in escalating the cost estimates.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), pithily summarised the consensus: the consequences of Brexit, she said, would be “pretty bad to very, very bad”.

The UK Treasury, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the IMF say it is a “fact” that Britain will be permanently poorer because it will trade less with the EU. In a terrifying warning, the Bank of England added that financial markets will panic and create senseless havoc.

Adding comic relief, George Osborne predicts that house prices will fall by 18 percent. Not to be outdone, G7 leaders say that the world economic system, as we now know it, will fall apart if Britain exits the EU.

Michael Mussa, my first boss at the IMF, used to say that a number must pass the “smell test” if it is to be used for making decisions. Conducting a “smell test” requires going back to core principles. When we do that, we reach a humbler conclusion: economics is neutral on whether to leave or remain. The battle for Brexit must be fought on other grounds.

All economists – not just the current protagonists – agree that a country gains by increasing its overall international trade. Greater trade makes it possible to produce more of and export what the country does best (its comparative advantage) and import what it does less well. Everyone gains.

But there is no gain in exporting to Germany, Spain and Poland rather than to the United States, Korea and China. In fact, if preferential access diverts trade away from the United States to Germany, then departure from the country’s comparative advantage hurts rather than helps, as Columbia University’s trade theorist Jagdish Bhagwati has long argued.

So the claim that Brexit will impose a huge cost rests on the twin beliefs that British trade with Germany will go down sharply and trade with the United States will not increase. Is that reasonable?

First, British trade with Germany will not decline significantly. As economists have long known, trade is embedded in business and social networks into which partners invest enormous social capital. Studies repeatedly show that businesses make accommodations in profit margins to retain the benefits of trust and reliability.

For this reason, all productive trading relationships will remain intact. For this reason too, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s threat that renegotiation of Britain’s trade arrangements with the EU would be “most difficult” and “poisonous” is bluster. Germans run a trade surplus with Britain. Mr Schaeuble can humiliate the IMF, but he dare not hurt the interests of his exporters (or his importers).

And even if British trade with the EU falls, trade with other regions will undoubtedly increase. Because Europe has been growing at a slower pace than the rest of the world, trade has been shifting away from Europe for years.

With Europe rapidly aging and struggling to revive productivity growth, the shift to non-European markets is bound to continue. Most firms already sell to multiple markets and Brexit will prompt them to strengthen their non-European networks.

What about costs of transition? Britain exports 13 percent of its GDP to the EU. Say about a quarter of those export products – about 3 percent of GDP – have to eventually be sold either in Britain or outside Europe.

If the adjustment each year costs somewhere between one-tenth and one-fifth of 3 percent of GDP, it is possible that GDP will be lower by about half-a-percent in the peak transition year. Thus the costs will be modest and short-lived.

So how do the Treasury, OECD and the IMF conclude that Brexit could reduce GDP by between 6 and 10 percent forever? The vast bulk of those large estimates come from the further assumption that reduced trade will shrink British productivity growth. This is disingenuous. There is simply no evidence that less trade lowers productivity growth – and there is not even a logical connection between productivity growth and a shift in trade from Germany to the United States.

More trade has been associated with higher productivity growth when countries have emerged from economic isolation. But for the sophisticated British economy, this possibility should be completely dismissed.

The Bank of England’s claims are the most outrageous of all. The Bank says that fear of Brexit is holding investment back and, thus, causing growth to slow down in anticipation. How can it know that? British GDP is slowing for so many reasons.

The economy has moved faithfully with the magnitude of fiscal austerity: gratuitous austerity delayed recovery from the Great Recession, brief fiscal easing in 2014 helped achieve a short-lived rebound, and now the IMF projects more austerity in the pipeline and slower growth. Meanwhile, the world economy is slowing: the United States had a weak first quarter, China is struggling and world trade is barely crawling forward. The Bank of England is cynically exploiting its authority by claiming to detect Brexit-induced anxiety in the cloud of short-term data.

But more outrageous is the Bank’s warning of mayhem if Britain votes to leave. Nobel Laureates George Akerlof and Robert Shiller have explained that people act in accordance with the narratives they live. The Bank is, in effect, building a narrative of panic, which could become self-fulfilling. The central bank’s proper role is to reassure and stand-by to stem panic.

Since 2010, official agencies have repeatedly promised global recovery. The forecasts fail because they all disregard inconvenient evidence. Now, the official consensus on the economic costs of Brexit has crossed the line into groupthink. A numerical illusion is masquerading as a “fact.” And when those in authority distort facts, they also subvert the cause of democracy.

On Pakistan's historical hero - Muhammad bin Qasim

Why blame culture is toxic for sport

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

Is ranting at players during team talks like bloodletting in the age of quack doctors?


Shouting at players: Satisfying? Yes. Effective? No © AFP



The subversive in me would love to whitewash over the usual clichés and catchphrases that are splashed on dressing-room walls and replace them with a more cynical message:

The six phases of a project:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Rewards for the uninvolved

Not very cheering, I admit, but a salutary warning about our obsession with blame - a preoccupation sustained by dodgy narratives about "causes" that leads not to institutional improvement but to self-serving politics. Having pinned the blame on someone - rightly or, more likely, wrongly - the next task is "moving on". Sound familiar?

The "six phases" were attached to an office wall by an employee at the Republic Bank of New York. The story appears in Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed's new book. Syed (a leading sports columnist and double Olympian) argues that our preoccupation with convenient blame - rather than openness to learning from failure - is a central factor holding teams and individuals back from improving. I think he is right.

Syed expresses admiration for the airline industry and its commitment to learning from failure - especially from "black boxes", the explosion-proof devices that record the conversations of pilots and other data. If the plane's wreckage is found, lessons - no matter how painful - must be learned. In the jargon, learning inside the aviation industry is an "open loop". (An "open loop" leads to progress because the feedback is rationally acted on; a "closed loop" is where failure doesn't lead to progress because weaknesses are ignored or errors are misinterpreted.) Syed presents harrowing examples from hospital operating theatres, of "closed loops" costing lives. Indeed, with its recurrent plane crashes and botched operations, the book takes the search for transferrable lessons to harrowing extremes.

One question prompted by Black Box Thinking is why is sport is not instinctively enthusiastic about evidence-based discussion. You might think that sports teams would be so keen to improve that they would rush to expose their ideas to rational and reflective scrutiny. But that's not always the case. As a player I often felt that insecure teams shrank from critical thinking, where more confident teams encouraged it.

The first problem sport has with critical thinking is the "narrative fallacy" (a concept popularised by Nassim Taleb). Consider this statement, thrown at me by a coach as I left the dressing room and walked onto the field after winning the toss and deciding to bowl first: "We need to have them five wickets down at lunch to justify the decision."

Hmm. First, even thinking about "justifying" a decision is an unnecessary distraction. Secondly, it's also irrational to think that the fact of taking five wickets, even if it happens, proves the decision was right. I might have misread the wicket, which actually suited batting first, but the opposition might have suffered a bad morning - five wickets could fall and yet the decision could still easily be wrong.

Alternatively, the wicket might suit bowling - and hence "justify" my decision - but we might bowl improbably badly and drop our catches. In other words, it could be the right decision even if they are no wickets down at lunch. What happened after the decision (especially when the sample of evidence is small or, as in this instance, solitary) does not automatically prove the rightness or wrongness of the decision.

Fancy theorising? Prefer practical realities? This kind of theorising, in fact, is bound up with very practical realities. Consider this example.

For much of medical history, bloodletting was a common and highly respected procedure. When a patient was suffering from a serious ailment and went to a leading doctor, the medical guru promptly drained significant amounts of blood from an already weak body. Madness? It happened for centuries.

And sometimes, if we don't think critically, it "works". As Syed points out, in a group of ten patients treated with bloodletting, five might die and five get better. So it worked for the five who survived, right?

Only, it didn't, of course. The five who were healed would have got better anyway (the body has great powers of self-recuperation). And some among the five who died were pushed from survival into death. Proving this fact, however, was more difficult - especially in a medical culture dominated by doctors who advocated and profited materially from bloodletting.

The challenge of demonstrating the real usefulness (or otherwise) of a procedure led to the concept of the "control group". Now imagine a group of 20 patients with serious illnesses - and split them into two groups, ten in each group. One group of ten patients gets a course of bloodletting, the other group of ten (the control group) does not. If we discover that five out of ten died in the bloodletting group and only three out of ten among the non-bloodletting group, then, at last, we have the beginnings of a proper evidence-based approach. The intervention (bloodletting) did more harm than simply doing nothing. It was iatrogenic.

Iatrogenic interventions are common in sport, too - such as when the coach tells a batsman to change his lifelong grip before making his Test debut. (Impossible? Exactly that happened to a friend of mine.) The angry team meeting is a classic iatrogenic intervention. Shouting at the team and vindictively blaming individual players, like bloodletting, provides the coach with the satisfying illusion that it works well sometimes. By "it works", we imply that the team in question played better after half-time or the following morning. Even having suffered an iatrogenic intervention, however, some teams - like some patients enduring bloodletting - inevitably play better afterwards. But on average, all taken together, teams would have playedbetter still without the distraction of a raging coach. (This insight helped win Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize, as I learned when I interviewed him.)

The great difficulty of sport, of course, is the challenge of conducting a proper control group experiment - because the game situation, pressures and circumstances are seldom exactly the same twice over. However, merely being open to the logic of these ideas, constantly exposing judgements and intuitions to critical thinking, takes decision-makers a good step in the direction of avoiding huge errors of conventional thinking.

That is why much of what Syed calls "black box thinking" could, I think, be filed under "critical thinking" - the desire to refine and improve one's system of thought as you are exposed to new experiences and ideas. Here is a personal rule of thumb: critical thinkers are also the best company over the long term. Critical thinkers are not only better bets professionally, they are also more interesting friends. Who wants to listen to the same set of unexamined views and sacrosanct opinions for decades? If you believe that your ideas don't ever need to evolve and adapt, can we at least skip dinner?

It is hard to imagine how anyone who is interested in leadership, innovation or self-improvement could fail to find something new and challenging in this book. Rather than presenting a simplistic catch-all solution, Syed takes us on a modern and personal walk through the scientific method. The book makes an interesting contrast with Syed's first book,Bounce, which proposed that talent is a myth - an argument that can be summed up in a single, seductive phrase: genius is a question of practice.

Rather than presenting a single idea, Black Box Thinking circles around a main theme - illustrating and illuminating it by drawing on a dizzyingly wide and eclectic series of ideas, case studies and lines of philosophical enquiry. The reader finishes the book with a deeper understanding of how he might improve and grow over the long term, rather than the transient feeling of having all his problems solved. The author, we sense, has experienced a similar journey while writing the book. Syed doesn't just preach black-box thinking, he practises it.

The moral crusade against Greece must be opposed

Zoe Williams in The Guardian


 

‘Greece is being sacrificed to maintain a set of delusions that enfeebles us all.’ Illustration by Robert G Fresson


‘This is our political alternative to neoliberalism and to the neoliberal process of European integration: democracy, more democracy and even deeper democracy,” said Alexis Tsipras on 18 January 2014 in a debate organised by the Dutch Socialist party in Amersfoort. Now the moment of deepest democracy looms, as the Greek people go to the polls on Sunday to vote for or against the next round of austerity.

Unfortunately, Sunday’s choice will be between endless austerity and immediate chaos. As comfortable as it is to argue from the sidelines that maybe Grexit in the medium term won’t hurt as much as 30 years’ drag on GDP from swingeing repayments, no sane person wants either. The vision that Syriza swept to power on was that if you spoke truth to the troika plainly and in broad daylight, they would have to acknowledge that austerity was suffocating Greece. 

They have acknowledged no such thing. Whatever else one could say about the handling of the crisis, and whatever becomes of the euro, Sunday will be the moment that unstoppable democracy meets immovable supra-democracy. The Eurogroup has already won: the Greek people can vote any way they like – but what they want, they cannot have.

On Saturday the Eurogroup broke with its tradition of unanimity, issuing a petulant statement “supported by all members except the Greek member”. Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, sought legal advice on whether the group was allowed to exclude him, and received the extraordinary reply: “The Eurogroup is an informal group. Thus it is not bound by treaties or written regulations. While unanimity is conventionally adhered to, the Eurogroup president is not bound to explicit rules.” Or, to put it another way: “We never had any accountability in the first place, sucker.”

More striking still is this line of the statement: “The Eurogroup has been open until the very last moment to further support the Greek people through a continued growth-oriented programme.” The measures enforced by the troika have created an economic contraction akin to that caused by war. With unemployment at 25% and youth unemployment at nearly half, 40% of children now live below the poverty line. The latest offer to Greece promises more of the same. The idea that any of this is oriented towards growth is demonstrably false. The Eurogroup president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, has started to assert that black is white.

And that brings us to the crux of the troika’s programme: what is the point of reducing this country to rubble? The stated intention at the start of the austerity package was to restore order: allow Greece to take a short hit to its GDP in the interests of building a stronger, more balanced economy in the long run. As it became clear that growth was not restored and that even on its own terms – the creditor must come first – the plan was failing, the line changed. It became a moral crusade, a collective punishment of the Greeks.

In 2012 the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, said in an interview with this newspaper, “Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax. And I think they should also help themselves collectively.” How? “By all paying their tax.” At the time, it sounded strange: how, in a country of cripplingly high unemployment, with whole families living off the depleted income of one pensioner, was the answer going to come from tax?

She was offering not a solution but a narrative: the Greeks were in this situation because they were bad people. They wanted a beneficent state, but they didn’t want to pool their resources to create one. The IMF was merely the instrument of a discipline they dearly needed. This line has broadly held – the debtors are presented as morally weaker than the creditors. To give them any concessions would be to reward their laziness and selfishness. The fact that debt is a two-way street – that the returns on debt exist because of the risk that the money might be lost, and creditors have their own moral duty to accept losses when they arise – is erased by this telling of the events.

Also airbrushed out of that story is what the late economist Wynne Godley called (in 1992!) the “lacuna in the Maastricht programme”: that while its single-currency proposal made provision for a central bank, it had nothing to say on the matter of what would replace the democratic institutions – the national governments whose power, once they had no control over their own currency, would be limited. Now we have our answer: the strongest takes control. At the moment, Germany knows best. How do we know they know best? Because they are the richest. The euro was founded on the idea that the control of currency was apolitical. It has destroyed that myth, and taken democracy down with it.

These talks did not fail by accident. The Greeks have to be humiliated, because the alternative – of treating them as equal parties or “adults”, as Lagarde wished them to be – would lead to a debate about the Eurogroup: what its foundations are, what accountability would look like, and what its democratic levers are – if indeed it has any. Solidarity with Greece means everyone, in and outside the single currency, forcing this conversation: the country is being sacrificed to maintain a set of delusions that enfeebles us all.

Natural leaders are made in retrospect

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

There is no template for the perfect captain. Some of the game's greatest were not identified as such straightaway


It took five years of not winning and patience before success came for Mike Brearley (centre) and Middlesex in 1976 © Getty Images



So England finished a tour of the West Indies with some widespread areas of consensus. The results were disappointing, the immediate future is dodgy, opportunities were missed and the captain - according to many of the loudest voices - is not a natural leader.

The tour, of course, happened in 2008-09. England lost 1-0. But Andrew Strauss, after that tricky start, became one of the most successful England captains of modern times. Now England are turning to Strauss again, this time as director of cricket, because his leadership credentials are, of course, axiomatic. How quickly people forget views they once vehemently held. Memory is not quite the same thing as intelligence, or even judgement, but it is a good first step on the road towards greater scepticism.

The problem with analysing leadership, especially captaincy, is that people forget how rare it is for successful leaders to stand out as "natural leaders" from the very beginning of their tenure. In fact, the idea of "natural" leadership is usually a retrospective trick - or narrative fallacy - used to make sense of events that, at the time, felt far more contingent and unpredictable.

The most iconic example of great captaincy is also the most misused: Mike Brearley. Perception: Brearley could wander into any team, move gully a bit deeper, and, hey presto, you win by an innings. Reality: by the time Brearley did his Ashes conjuring trick in 1981, he had indeed established a reputation for tactical and managerial brilliance. Crucially, however, that reputation was hard-earned over many years at the coalface. Even more pertinently, Brearley's captaincy could easily have been cut short before anyone noticed how good he was.

Brearley took over as captain of Middlesex in 1971. The seasons of 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975 slipped by without Middlesex winning the championship. Brearley has privately told me that in those early seasons he often found the job very difficult. Did he have enough support? Results improved, but not always evenly. In that six-year period, Brearley's gift for patience was tested. So was the constancy of Middlesex. As I write this, only one of the 18 captains of England's first-class counties has been leader for six uninterrupted seasons. Clearly there aren't dozens of Brearleys out there, if only clubs would persevere with them. But if Middlesex had been less patient - or, put differently, less anxious to jump at the first convenience - then England could have been deprived of a superb leader.

Which leads to the second problem with analysing captains. Pundits tend to have a fairly fixed idea of what a natural leader looks like, and then judge the incumbent against their own personal template.

To the alpha-male mindset, the captain should be the leader of the pack, the macho hero. To the Machiavellian world view, a captain should be streetwise and opportunistic. To the progressive, leadership relies on novelty and innovation. To the nostalgic, quite the reverse - the answers always reside in the past. To the laissez-faire, he must be relaxed. To the hard man, a captain must rule with fear.

All valid, none essential. There is no one such thing as the ultimate template for a good captain. All good leaders are different. Indeed, a preparedness to be different - rather than copying someone else - is perhaps the only prerequisite for being any good.

In terms of value added, few managers can match Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. His decisions and the wins that followed have earned Oakland hundreds of millions of dollars (as this article on FiveThirtyEight demonstrates). Despite an emotional temperament, Beane has tried to remove the cult of personality from his decision-making. This is leadership by methodology - thinking, or more accurately calculating, your way to victory.

At the other end of the spectrum stands Sir Alex Ferguson. Anyone who has read Ferguson's autobiography knows that the idea of "copying" Ferguson is inconceivable. His management was founded on the controlling and coercive nature of his personality. Some players seethe with violence. Very occasionally, that survives the transition into management. No leader achieves greatness by punching people. Some, however, clearly benefit from the impression that it would be a grave error for anyone to entirely rule out the possibility of the direct approach. Ferguson ran a pub before becoming a manager. "Sometimes I would come home with a split head or black eye. That was pub life. When fights broke out, it was necessary to jump in to restore order."

Now imagine hearing Pep Guardiola, Roberto Martinez or Arsene Wenger saying that. Inconceivable. Yet all are fine managers.



Despite England's poor finish in the West Indies, there has been no outward sign that Alastair Cook is wilting © Getty Images


Which leads us back to Alastair Cook. It is clear that Cook does not fit some preconceptions of cricketing leadership. He is not restless and ingenious, as Michael Vaughan was. He does not cast a magnetic and charismatic presence over the whole arena, as MS Dhoni does. And yet there have been fine captains who possessed neither of those assets.

Last week, after discussing captaincy in the commentary box, the brilliant statistician Andrew Samson passed me two pieces of paper about the records of two captains, each after 31 Tests in charge. The first read:

Runs: 2478
Average: 45.88
Hundreds: 8
Wins: 13
Losses: 9
Draws: 9

The second read:

Runs: 2792
Average: 60.69
Hundreds: 10
Wins: 6
Losses: 9
Draws: 15
Tied: 1

The first is Cook, the second Allan Border, the man who turned around Australian cricket in the 1980s. (Although, of course, the nature of the opposition should always be taken into account with comparative stats.)

Border had also faced criticism about his manner and tactics. But eventually his resilience and run-scoring provided such an inspiring example that his team fell in step. The two men, so different on the surface - Border was known as Captain Grumpy, where Cook is courteous and self-deprecating - share an epic capacity for endurance. Border outlasted many bowling attacks and, eventually, his critics.

The case against Cook tends to rest on the conviction that he is about to crack, that he can't take much more. This theory is conveniently self-perpetuating because it encourages his detractors to press on with their endeavours. They look eagerly for signs that the strain is becoming too great. This type of thinking contributed to his sacking as ODI captain ridiculously close to the World Cup.

Yet in the West Indies - a patchy tour for England with some poor selection errors - there was no outward sign at all that Cook was wilting. Quite the reverse. His hundred in the third Test was almost faultless.

Many bowling attacks have pinned their hopes on Cook cracking, only to find the wait inconveniently lengthy. I wonder if the detractors of Cook's captaincy will experience a similar story.

India and Pakistan: The fault is not in our stars

Badar Iqbal Chaudhary in The Dawn

Updated a day ago

In the hands of zealots and fanatics, the stories become an argument against all peace initiatives, making the journey all the more strenuous. —Reuters

“The fault, dear Brutus”, Cassius says in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,” is not in our stars, but in ourselves”.

Years and years of ‘Aman ke Aashas’ and cabinet level meetings, of confidence-building measures and sari exchanges, of showing up at swearing-in ceremonies and civil society initiatives ... and then they all come tumbling down.

Slowly, painfully, assiduously we pick up the beads and start threading them. Each pearl is accounted for, each step pondered over, but then one slip and the process has to start afresh.

Extravagant, excessive preparations are made to make an omelette of reconciliation. Then a singular egg turns out to be bad, and the food gets spoilt.

It is not that we do not comprehend the need to establish friendly relations. The inevitable falling back to the narratives of peace and of building goodwill, the talks of overcoming the barriers and the friendly gestures all betray the understanding of the necessity of peace that persists among members of the public. If there was a lack of will, these processes would never have initiated, ab initio.

When the anger subsides, the realisation returns that belligerence is not a sustainable model; it cannot persevere, it has to stop.

Why, then, do these initiatives fail time and again?

It is because the animosity is too deep, the sentiments too fragile, the composure too fickle and the hurdles too many. It is this peculiarity which exists in men the world over, but most of all in the men of the subcontinent – the unyielding hubris, and the vanity. That is all it takes to lose focus of the objectives.

All it requires is one Vikram Sood and one Amir Liaqat, and a single moment of commentary in the presence of a jeering, thumping crowd.

All it demands is a single brainwashed soldier, who knows nothing better, and a moment of inhumanity that clouds the mind, to undo years of hard work.

This then gets shared, accumulates airtime, gains public attention and plays on the minds of the two nations – the nations, mind you, who are not wary of barbaric reactions themselves.

Gojra and Gujrat; Babri mosque in Ayodhya and Sri Krishna Ram temple in Karachi; the forced conversions in Uttar Pradesh and the forced conversions in Upper Sindh; all indicate to one aspect of the two nations: despite the animosity, and the overbearing pride in individuality, we are not too different.

We are more alike in treating our minorities than we would feel comfortable to admit.

In the hands of zealots and fanatics, the stories become an argument against all peace initiatives, making the journey all the more strenuous.

Patriotism becomes analogous to war cries, and public representatives, forever ready to pounce on a chance to gain some cheap publicity, dish out threatening statements, basking in their bubbles and relishing the short-lasting pertinence.

Unfortunately, the hawks always take over the narrative in these moments. The cardinal rule of perception is that the more intense, the more enduring statements would be perceived more readily by the public. These bring in ratings, and popularity. They ring home with the fable that has been etched in the conscience of the two countries. In the river of peace, the few ripples of pugnacity get noticed, and the relative sustaining calm gets easily ignored.

Philosophy believes the solutions do exist. Saadi Sherazi, the Persian poet had written:

Garat Khoway man amad nasazawar;
Tu khoway naik-e-khawaish az dast maguzar

[If my nature does not bode well with you, you don’t have to lose your own good nature because of it.]

Or like Marcus Aurelius, one of the five good emperors of Machiavelli, puts it: “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury”.

One of the two nations would have to show magnanimity; one of the two would have to sacrifice; and one of the two would have to take a leap of faith.

The warmongering would have to take a backseat, despite the excesses from the other side. Hearts would have to be won, foremost. Paranoia would have to be placated. Without this, the current state of affairs would persist.

Building any relationship requires working, but the one that comes with this much baggage requires the most. This is a rut, escaping from which requires considerable courage, ability to forgive and a lot more forbearance than we have shown the capability of.

The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

On Pakistan - The real war is the war of narrative

Farrukh Khan Pitafi in The Dawn

 

The terrorist narrative of victimhood, denial and conspiracy theories can easily be deconstructed and dismantled.—Photo by Zahir Shah Sherazi

The closer you want to get to eradicating the menace of terrorism, the bigger this menace seems to get.

For the past week, following the attack in Peshawar, our leaders, both in Khaki and Mufti, have deliberated and deliberated. But this piece is not about them and the solutions they might come up with. It is about the sociology of the mindset that either justifies or rationalises terrorism, or impedes tangible action against it.

It is about the failure of the state and the society to come up with a narrative that can defeat the terrorists.

Terrorists of all hues — Al Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its countless affiliates, Afghan Taliban and its affiliates like the Haqqani network, India-focused terror groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and sectarian terror groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — use two weapons: incredible hatred towards their victims and a narrative to convince and recruit new supporters to the cause.

This narrative of victimhood, denial and conspiracy theories can easily be deconstructed and dismantled. But what with the rising anger in the country, fracturing of the society and the general iffiness of the times we live in, no one has done anything substantial about the issue despite harping on about it at great length.

It is time we change that.

Also read: Changing Titanic’s course

After 9/11, the United States knew whom to blame and the nation’s anger was projected outwards. After 7/7, the United Kingdom knew whom to blame, and the country was able to vent its anger. After Mumbai attack, India too, vented its anger on Pakistan and somehow managed to cool off.

In Pakistan, though, where the state had pandered to extremist inclinations for long, at the time of 9/11 there was a dictator in place, whose rise to fame and then power owed a lot to the Kargil debacle. When General Musharraf decided to take a U-turn in his Afghan/Taliban policy, he gave his people the wrong reasons for doing so.

Instead of telling them that extremism of all kinds is bad for the country; that it can easily turn against the country's own people and that nation states are held accountable if found guilty of exporting destabilising ideologies beyond their borders; he told the nation that had Pakistan not taken the step, it would have been bombed back to the stone age.

That was an admission not of flawed policies but merely of foreign pressure.

At the time, there was neither any parliament nor the free media we see today. Lack of proper debate turned the country’s anger inwards. Later, conspiracy theories of sorts would emerge, people living in denial would scavenge western media sources for whatever half-truths would fit into their narrative.

Today, we have a developed popular narrative which says that Islam is in danger, that Pakistan is about to break; all of this is linked to belief in the end of time.

Look through: Friday sermons

All faiths have eschatological predictions. Since each brand of 'endism' focuses on end of the universe, the predictions are found to be dire and can easily be exploited at any time of adversity. Our local religious extremists and televangelists have very effectively inserted these prophecies into the reactionary narrative. By raising doubts about some of the most well-documented historical developments and mixing it with this narrative, the terrorists have managed to win over a host of fence-sitters.

Just textbooks or more?

A oft-made point is the ideological indoctrination in school textbooks. It is said that our books preach hate and a distorted version of history which unhinges a young impressionable mind from the very beginning.

Be that as it may, such a thought is predicated on the assumption that all Pakistanis go to school and imbibe every word written in the textbooks. While there is no justification of hatred finding way into the school books, these books barely play even a secondary role.

Even if the textbook is saying a certain thing, what the teacher thinks and what the best friend thinks matters much more to the pupil than what is written in the book. A young child spends more time with friends, family and in front of television.

So while it is important that the curriculum must be reformed, let us not lose sight of the fact that the problem is of understated heart-to-heart oral tradition which transmits through culture.

As a child, for instance, I usually internalised much of what my father used to think with considerably less resistance, and when I met my friends, our individual sets of views would collide with each other, evolving into something new altogether.

The tragedy of television

The quality of our television news product is quite important here. In the 24/7 live news cycle where a talk show host and a news director are forced to operate at breakneck speed and take decisions on the fly, very little thought is given to quality or for that matter, narrative.

Then there is the matter of the presence of Taliban and terrorist apologists amongst our midst, which creates a problem because while the moderate majority is too divided and disorganised, the sympathisers of terrorists are very well organised and persistent. So, the resultant end product invariably confuses viewers instead of clearing their minds.

See: Our denial killed children in Peshawar

But that is not all. The reason why viewers watch our news channels a lot is because our entertainment industry has been underperforming for a decade. The power of a drama serial should not be underestimated. A playwright can say things which are difficult or impossible to say on news channels.

Sadly, however, while a debate is underway to curtail the appearance of sympathisers of terrorism on live news networks, the storytelling in the entertainment industry still remains with the same forces who played a critical role in indoctrination.

As a result, the teleplays on political matters are often found to be highly reactionary, irrational and riddled with conspiracy theories.

Hostage crisis at the pulpits

Prayer leaders don’t usually go to regular schools or watch television; their tradition is essentially oral. There is no doubt that religious seminaries (some of which are genuinely committed to spreading hate) play a crucial role in forming their worldview. But it is daily interaction with other religious-minded people and groups (Tableeghi Jamaat for instance), the availability of vast amounts literature and personal assumptions which consolidate their distorted perceptions.

The threads which feed their mindsets, some of which I have reproduced below, are of such a nature that every maulvi gets ensnared in the enemy’s propaganda with very little resistance. The message from the pulpit, may it be in the shape of the Friday sermon or the after-prayer dua, is essentially highly reactionary and counter-productive, to say the least.

What we need right now is a supply of religious scholars of integrity who can answer these questions with comfort and authority to reclaim the narrative in the mosques from the terrorists.

The terrorist's narrative

Here are some assumptions that play a crucial role in the terrorist and his sympathiser’s narrative:

Islam is in danger:

Muslims are scattered all over the world. Given their recent turbulent history it is claimed that Islam as a faith is on the brink of extinction and only violent jihad can save it. One look at the 1400 years of their history and you realise that the faith can take care of itself and needs no saviors.

These are end-of-time wars:

Islamic eschatology predicts the arrival of an Antichrist called Dajjal, and it is said that whoever chooses to side with him will never be forgiven. Now, years of propaganda has projected the West as that Antichrist. Ergo the fear that is easily exploited by terrorists.

Muslims all over the world, owing to the absence of timely 'ijtehad' or interpretation, have found it difficult to integrate with local cultures. After every two or three centuries, they are confronted with challenging times and start thinking this is the end of time.

A careful survey of Islamic literature shows no timeframe is originally given about the end. In expert hands, this element of doubt should be enough to debunk the terrorist’s propaganda.

Muslim ideal is a pan-Islamic Caliphate:

The current schools of thought in Islam took their final shape almost a millennium ago. As further debate could generate controversy, no one showed interest in challenging these dated interpretations. That era was the time of empires and nation states did not emerge until much later, till the treaty of Westphalia.

Hence, the last political model known to the Islamic thought is a theocratic Muslim empire called the Caliphate.

Explore: Political Islam: Theory and reality

Itself an interpretation, this model is highly outdated and inefficient. The Ottoman Empire was a big example of the inefficiency. However, terrorists and a long list of intellectual movements (like Hizbut Tahrir) that serve as bedrock for them, use this thought to recruit new volunteers.

If, however, you study the formative phase of Islam, you will notice that Islam as a faith is not averse to the idea of a nation state. That is another thought which can be expanded to counter the terrorist’s narrative.

Muslims are victims:

Terrorists exploit the all-pervasive feeling of Muslim victimhood to their advantage. It is stunning to see that this perception has lingered on in our country for this long.

Pakistan has accumulated over 50,000 dead bodies as gifts given to it by these 'saviours' of Muslims. How hard can it be to expose these people for who they really are?

Pakistani state is fighting terrorism due to foreign pressure:

I have explained this point at length at the start. The state must own this war and explicitly state that it is being waged for the nation's good, not under international pressure. It's a promising sign that the government is finally doing that. It will also be helpful if foreign countries didn’t appear to be pressuring the country to do more. Any concerns can be conveyed through the diplomatic channel; negotiating through the media should stop.

Democracy is evil and un-Islamic:

This, too, is an ugly propaganda tool. Democracy as the cultural 'other' is used to lure people in to the extremist side.

A bit more sensitisation about democracy and exploration of political thought in Islam would make it plain that democracy is not antithetical to the original teachings of Islam. What we lack is religious interpretation on the matter. It is tragic that no coherent work has been done in this regard during the past 13 years of fighting terrorism.

Terrorists are good Muslims:

Somewhere in their heads is this deep seated regimentation that at the end of the day, the terrorist's demand — imposition of Shariah — is a legitimate one, and so it's wrong to fight them.

This is one of the terrorist’s biggest weapons. Again, the havoc these terrorists have wreaked should speak for itself. But since, for a large number of people, it appears to have not done so, we need organised campaigns to educate the public of the real context and designs of the terrorist movement. It would help if religious figures of authority came forward shattered the myth of 'good terrorists'.

Foreign powers are doing it and blaming it on unsuspecting religious groups:

The proscribed terrorist organisations take responsibility and post videos as proof. All the apologists contributing to an alternative explanation can be and should be confronted in this regard. This can bear fruits.

Pakistan was conceived as a religious state hence it should cave in to the extremist pressure:

You will find this argument widely available in the society. But given that terrorists are essentially against Pakistani state, the state will also have to end its ambivalence on the issue and come up with an identity of the state which is not entirely dependent on religion. It is not that difficult to find such an interpretation.

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These are some of the assumptions that the terrorists play with. The state’s reluctance to address them has led to the current proliferation of terrorist outfits. It has played a crucial role in the birth and growth of such organisations. Now, it cannot shut its eyes to their mutating ideology and pretend that the problem will go away. It knows their language, it can speak to them. I understand that it is not easy to control every Friday sermon and talk in every mosque and madrassah. But if the state comes up with a coherent narrative and sells it to the opinion makers, the terrorists’ narrative can easily be undone.

Read on: Happy to be wrong

Political and democratic ownership is essential because in the past lack of it has ruined the effort. The state knows how to highlight the narrative and sell it in the media and elsewhere despite resistance from the apologists.

India. Pakistan, Kenya - In the aftermath of trauma

Ali Khan Mahmudabad in the Times of India

In the face of unimaginable trauma there is often a desire to find something or someone to blame. Although perhaps a natural reflex, the implications of this are inevitably destructive as often stereotypes are perpetuated, prejudices are entrenched and motives are ascribed in order to try and ‘rationalise’ what has happened. In the aftermath of the tragic events of the mall bombing in Kenya, the suicide attack on a Church in Pakistan and the horrific riots in Muzaffarnagar in India, there will inevitably be the usual scramble to try and create accounts that will further the narrow interests of various political and ideological groups.

Some people will deride religion, others will blame hegemonic nation-states and domestic political parties and their factions and yet others will point to socio-economic reasons. In all this those who directly suffer as a result of these terrible events either become silent symbols of a particular ideological framework or become marginalized voices whose pain is co-opted even manipulated by others.  Our actions, therefore, as citizens and members of society will have a direct bearing on whatever the outcome will be.

A few years ago there were two deplorable attacks by suicide bombers on the International Islamic University of Islamabad in Pakistan. One of the attacks was aimed at a canteen in the faculty and the timing of it was such that about 50 or 60 girls were there on their lunch break. The cowardly attack was partially thwarted by the valiant efforts of one of the janitorial staff, Pervaiz Masih, who was a Christian. Masih, wearing only ‘the armor of light,’ intercepted the bomber and prevented him from entering the canteen. He died in the attack and thus saved a number of people.

In India there have been many instances of brave people sheltering their neighbors and friends. In Muzaffarnagar, Brijender Singh Malik gave refuge to 150 neighbors, who were Muslims, knowing that he might be putting his own family in danger. In the Kenyan mall, Satpal Singh risked his life to save other people. A month ago 70 odd Muslims came together in Kishtwar in Kashmir to escort a Hindu marriage procession through volatile areas. Dr. Wajid was a part of the escort and referred to Dr. Ashish Sharma the groom as his ‘son.’ Kishtwar has also been experiencing so called ‘Hindu-Muslim violence’ for over a month. It would of course be easy to label each of these acts, as has been done by the media, as that of a Christian, a Hindu, a Sikh or a Muslim but ultimately it is impossible to deconstruct why they did what they did without doing injustice to the act itself. It requires true courage to not impose our individuality on others.

As these recent events, like tragedies past, become part of the hazy landscape of history, those time old questions confront us yet again.  How do we learn? What do we do with the memory of these events? It is firstly important to introspect and rid ourselves of our own prejudices and preconceptions. If this does not happen then inevitably we will seek to place the burden of these on other people. We will seek to see the victims not as subjects in themselves but as part of our particular story. 

In other words it is important to decide whether we want to use these experiences constructively to help re-build the lives of those affected, be a part of the history of their future or whether we want to use these events to further our own agendas. This is a hard task because it invariably means that we have to critically scrutinise ourselves and decide on what it is that we want, what defines us and what we ultimately hold to be most precious. Of course, it is never as simple as being able to make a black and white list of what is important or not for our lives are constantly in a state of change. Therefore ideally what emerges is a context in which we are perpetually in conversation with ourselves. It is when this conversation, this self-questioning, stops that space for bigotry is created.

In a recent article, a columnist for BBC Urdu, Wusatullah Khan, wrote scathingly about the way in which certain religious and social groups have been written out of the pages of Pakistan’s history. In the article he recalled the reaction of a media person to the courageous sacrifice of Masih in which the reporter said “even though Masih was from the Christian community, he sacrificed his life for the love of the homeland.” Khan wrote that the words ‘even though’ cause him great sorrow to this day. Those two words, perhaps spoken out of no malice, reveal the way in which an entire society has been conditioned to assume that a patriotic Christian in Pakistan is an aberration, not to mention the fact that standing up to oppression is not the preserve of any religion, race or country. 

The onus of bringing about change therefore lies on us, the individuals who form society. It is well known and even well accepted that governments and political parties inevitably act out of self-interest. Therefore, the responsibility of holding governments to account lies with the citizens. If anywhere, the conscience of a country resides in its citizens. Of course, if a society chooses to advocate hate or to remain silent in the face of oppression then the government will only reflect their stance.

Whether a person is pointing the finger of blame at another, or indeed pointing a gun at someone, it is important to remember that three of the fingers of that hand are pointing back at themselves. This oft quoted aphorism of Imam Ali is perhaps particularly important as each one of us has the tremendous responsibility of being able to decide how these tragedies will be seen in the future. Will we allow them to be co-opted to fuel the myopic bigotry of some people? 

It is not Hindus who pose a threat to Muslims or Muslims who are an existential danger for Hindus. The threat to all members of society is from the cynical politics of fear that thrives on creating and encouraging bogies to distract people from the very real issues at hand. The pressing issue then is whether we allow this kind of politics to take root. At this crucial juncture it is not only important to underscore how important our actions will be in determining how we look at the past but also to highlight that the intentions behind the actions are equally, if not more, important. The following quote from the Bible (Corinthians:13) eloquently illustrates this.

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”