Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
The Skripal affair: a counter view
Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn
IF one were to anchor a TV programme with the archival revelation that it was Benazir Bhutto who introduced Theresa May’s husband to the future British prime minister at an Oxford reunion ball in 1976, many of us would perhaps happily spend a lot of our precious time glued to the looped and re-looped discussion.
On the other hand, if one were to ask whether Prime Minister May posed a bigger threat to a stable world order than does President Donald Trump it would likely pass for a precipitous canard. This despite that fact that we are ever so often cautioned about the rear view mirror in the car: the objects one sees may be closer at heel than they appear. The warning can be easily applied to international politics.
What we see, or believe we are seeing, can be different from what is afoot. What seems distant or remote could be the trigger for what passes for domestic turbulence. Astute social scientists call it dialectics, whereby everything in the world can be connected with everything else.
Take the poisoning of the double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury or consider the latest chemical attack near Damascus in the rebel-held region of Douma. There are legitimate ways of seeing a link between the two. But the way the avenues of news and information have been dumbed down, it would be a challenge to engage an average citizen in a discussion on what to them would be a distant blip on their mirror, if not an imagination of a foggy mind.
So let us quickly come to the facts at hand, and we can crosscheck them too. It is a fact, after all, as distinct from false news, that Trump was elected US president in November 2016. Wasn’t he? Then his election was soon declared to be the handiwork of Russian agents. Right?
Indeed, Trump continued to annoy the deep state. He wanted to befriend Vladimir Putin and questioned the purpose of Nato. He went a step further. He began to question intelligence reports passed to him or leaked to the public.
Then came Theresa May to the rescue of the deep state with its roots on both sides of the Atlantic. When Trump in his pre-political avatar was misbehaving with women, May was already her country’s home secretary. She held that position from 2010 until she was elevated to lead her party and country in July 2016.
Her tenure as home secretary saw the destruction of Libya and the savage assault on Syria. Even more importantly, she was in the cockpit when the Crimea crisis erupted. And she had a good view of it even if she may have been privately appalled at the less than robust response that Nato was willing to offer Russia.
When she became the first foreign leader to visit President Trump on Jan 26 last year, Ms May was nursing another headache on the tour. And so her round trip to the White House included an equally vital stopover in Turkey on the way back. Leaders of both countries on her itinerary were allies of Nato and both were veering perilously close to Vladimir Putin. In a jiffy, she saw the centuries-old British policy of garrotting Russia slipping under her feet.
The mirror on the driver’s side may be telling us to watch out for Donald Trump, who everyone, including most Americans, agrees is speeding ahead rather recklessly on an uncharted trajectory. The mirror on the other side though is showing us a blip, and in a lane where it shouldn’t be. As far as the naked eye can see, the more threatening blip looks like Theresa May. Stated bluntly, Trump may be a decoy.
Double agent Sergei Skripal was swapped by Russia with the US in 2010 and sent for safekeeping to UK. There are some questions about his illness the Russians have asked, including the question: what purpose could it serve to bump off a used- up Russian double agent on the eve of a presidential election, or just ahead of the World Cup that Russia will be hosting? There can be a legitimate suspicion that Skripal and, unwittingly, his daughter fell victim to a strike by someone whose cover Skripal had blown.
But we could also ask, on the other hand, whether it is impossible for another country to replicate the poison that one country has manufactured. The question holds the key when the other side claims to know what that poison is. In other words they have the substance or can produce it to develop an antidote or, why not, to keep it in store for a useful false flag attack. This is not how it happened. This is how some questions come to mind.
A poor scientist died of smallpox in England, after all, when a laboratory accidently released the virus in 1978. The cause of Janet Parker’s infection sent shockwaves through the medical profession. It was reportedly accepted at the time that the virus had travelled through an air duct connecting a smallpox lab with Janet’s office directly above.
To assert that both attacks — in Salisbury and in Douma — can be blamed on Russia, is to state the obvious. A more involved discussion could look at the rise of John Bolton as the new national security adviser to Trump. He has advocated war with Iran, and the alleged Syrian chemical attack may tie up with that objective, as a ruse.
But why has Trump changed his tune on Russia? Has the deep state got the goods on him, in a manner of speaking? If so, Theresa May should have a better grip on the narrative. It was a former British agent in Moscow, after all, whose report is said to have brought the president of the United States to his senses, if that is the word.
IF one were to anchor a TV programme with the archival revelation that it was Benazir Bhutto who introduced Theresa May’s husband to the future British prime minister at an Oxford reunion ball in 1976, many of us would perhaps happily spend a lot of our precious time glued to the looped and re-looped discussion.
On the other hand, if one were to ask whether Prime Minister May posed a bigger threat to a stable world order than does President Donald Trump it would likely pass for a precipitous canard. This despite that fact that we are ever so often cautioned about the rear view mirror in the car: the objects one sees may be closer at heel than they appear. The warning can be easily applied to international politics.
What we see, or believe we are seeing, can be different from what is afoot. What seems distant or remote could be the trigger for what passes for domestic turbulence. Astute social scientists call it dialectics, whereby everything in the world can be connected with everything else.
Take the poisoning of the double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury or consider the latest chemical attack near Damascus in the rebel-held region of Douma. There are legitimate ways of seeing a link between the two. But the way the avenues of news and information have been dumbed down, it would be a challenge to engage an average citizen in a discussion on what to them would be a distant blip on their mirror, if not an imagination of a foggy mind.
So let us quickly come to the facts at hand, and we can crosscheck them too. It is a fact, after all, as distinct from false news, that Trump was elected US president in November 2016. Wasn’t he? Then his election was soon declared to be the handiwork of Russian agents. Right?
Indeed, Trump continued to annoy the deep state. He wanted to befriend Vladimir Putin and questioned the purpose of Nato. He went a step further. He began to question intelligence reports passed to him or leaked to the public.
Then came Theresa May to the rescue of the deep state with its roots on both sides of the Atlantic. When Trump in his pre-political avatar was misbehaving with women, May was already her country’s home secretary. She held that position from 2010 until she was elevated to lead her party and country in July 2016.
Her tenure as home secretary saw the destruction of Libya and the savage assault on Syria. Even more importantly, she was in the cockpit when the Crimea crisis erupted. And she had a good view of it even if she may have been privately appalled at the less than robust response that Nato was willing to offer Russia.
When she became the first foreign leader to visit President Trump on Jan 26 last year, Ms May was nursing another headache on the tour. And so her round trip to the White House included an equally vital stopover in Turkey on the way back. Leaders of both countries on her itinerary were allies of Nato and both were veering perilously close to Vladimir Putin. In a jiffy, she saw the centuries-old British policy of garrotting Russia slipping under her feet.
The mirror on the driver’s side may be telling us to watch out for Donald Trump, who everyone, including most Americans, agrees is speeding ahead rather recklessly on an uncharted trajectory. The mirror on the other side though is showing us a blip, and in a lane where it shouldn’t be. As far as the naked eye can see, the more threatening blip looks like Theresa May. Stated bluntly, Trump may be a decoy.
Double agent Sergei Skripal was swapped by Russia with the US in 2010 and sent for safekeeping to UK. There are some questions about his illness the Russians have asked, including the question: what purpose could it serve to bump off a used- up Russian double agent on the eve of a presidential election, or just ahead of the World Cup that Russia will be hosting? There can be a legitimate suspicion that Skripal and, unwittingly, his daughter fell victim to a strike by someone whose cover Skripal had blown.
But we could also ask, on the other hand, whether it is impossible for another country to replicate the poison that one country has manufactured. The question holds the key when the other side claims to know what that poison is. In other words they have the substance or can produce it to develop an antidote or, why not, to keep it in store for a useful false flag attack. This is not how it happened. This is how some questions come to mind.
A poor scientist died of smallpox in England, after all, when a laboratory accidently released the virus in 1978. The cause of Janet Parker’s infection sent shockwaves through the medical profession. It was reportedly accepted at the time that the virus had travelled through an air duct connecting a smallpox lab with Janet’s office directly above.
To assert that both attacks — in Salisbury and in Douma — can be blamed on Russia, is to state the obvious. A more involved discussion could look at the rise of John Bolton as the new national security adviser to Trump. He has advocated war with Iran, and the alleged Syrian chemical attack may tie up with that objective, as a ruse.
But why has Trump changed his tune on Russia? Has the deep state got the goods on him, in a manner of speaking? If so, Theresa May should have a better grip on the narrative. It was a former British agent in Moscow, after all, whose report is said to have brought the president of the United States to his senses, if that is the word.
Sunday, 8 April 2018
Pakistan: For whom the bell tolls?
Najam Sethi in The Friday Times
The bell has begun to toll. Most people think it is tolling for the general elections. Although these are constitutionally scheduled to be held no later than September 2018, there are apprehensions these could be delayed. The bell could also be tolling for the House of Sharif, particularly Nawaz Sharif. Most people are convinced that the scales of justice are weighted against him. What are the odds, and consequences, of the tolling of the bell?
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has received over 2000 petitions against constituency delimitations. It has two months in which to appraise and redress them before the national and provincial parliaments are dissolved and electioneering begins in earnest. It is also certain that most decisions of the ECP will be challenged in the High Courts because constituency revisions are critically impacting the fate of traditional candidates. Some may even appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP). Unless some swift solutions are found by the ECP and courts, God alone knows how this matter will be resolved without postponing elections.
Then there is the matter of caretaker governments. Finding consensus candidates in Balochistan and Sindh should not be difficult because the major players there are openly aligned with the powerful Miltablishment that calls the shots. But Islamabad, Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa will be less soluble and the ECP may have to step in to clear the decks. There will be unsavoury controversy, conspiracies are bound to be imputed and the electoral waters will be muddied. To top it all, scores of candidates are likely to clutch at Constitutional Articles 62 and 63 or Iqama-type inconsistencies to challenge their opponents’ nomination papers.
The fate of Nawaz Sharif’s accountability trial will also impinge on elections. If he is knocked out, the PMLN will have to consider whether to boycott elections or go down fighting with one hand tied behind its back. In the immediate aftermath, there are bound to be defections from the PMLN. Their significance will depend on how successfully Nawaz Sharif can reinforce his perception as the victim of injustice, who is turning to the people for salvation. So far, going by the big crowds he is drawing to his jalsas in comparison with the rather indifferent showing of his political opponents, he is not doing badly. But the mood of his detractors is turning ugly, a sign of what lies ahead.
The Geo/Jang Group that is propping up the Sharifs’ narrative is for the chop. “Invisible” forces have leaned on cable operators across large swathes of the country, to shut down all the group’s channels. PEMRA is helpless in redressing their complaints. They are losing money because their ads are trailing off and have therefore delayed salaries to their employees. But the Supreme Court has ordered them to “beg or borrow” and cough up. The court accuses them of receiving the largest chunk of public sector ads because of their pro-government stance but is silent in the face of their higher ranking and ratings that attract these ads even from the private sector on commercial merit. Now Saleem Safi, a top GEO journalist, who continues to ask awkward questions about the direction in which Pakistan is being herded, has been targeted – some “invisible” goons attacked his home and beat up his guard for resisting them. And so it goes on.
We are told that any talk of a judicial martial law in the offing, is hogwash. This is reassuring. But one cannot help but compare today’s situation to what transpired in December 1997 when the then CJP, Sajjad Ali Shah, wrote to the then army chief for backing against, and protection from, the government of the day. The CJP’s order was not carried out. It was forwarded to the Defense Ministry on the plea that GHQ answers to it rather than to the SC. Today, we are informed, if any order is passed by the CJP, the army “will not remain in barracks” if it is resisted by the government or parliament.
In fact, an unprecedented alignment of political forces is now grouping to “reform the country”. The original child of the Miltablishment, Nawaz Sharif, has become a dangerous outcast. The original bête noir of the Miltablishment, Asif Zardari, has become its blue-eyed boy. The judiciary, which has historically been the handmaiden of the executive arm of government, has suddenly become “independent” with the backing of the Miltablishment even though its “independence” was won from the same Miltablishment not so long ago with the struggle of the Lawyers Movement and democratic political forces. And the media that fought to win its independence from the Miltablishment a decade ago has suddenly acquiesced in its favour without a whimper.
Under the circumstances, we are right to wonder for whom the bell tolls.
Elected representatives will do the right thing on Brexit
Nick Clegg in The Financial Times
Like the suspense in an old-fashioned cowboy film before the final gunfight, tension in Westminster is already rising as MPs prepare for the “meaningful” vote on Brexit towards the end of this year. The upcoming debates in the House of Commons will be the political equivalent of scuffles in a saloon, harbingers of the real showdown to come.
Many MPs — the majority of whom would probably slip the noose of Brexit if only they knew how — are still waiting, hoping, that something might turn up. Perhaps public opinion will shift decisively against Brexit before the vote? Maybe the economic damage will suddenly become more obvious? Or could the gory details of the Brexit deal itself prompt people to think again?
The truth, alas, is much harsher. Public opinion has shifted a little in favour of the Remain camp, and a lot towards wider concern about the impact of Brexit on the NHS and the economy. But it remains firmly enveloped in an indifference towards the details of the negotiations, and a sullen belief that politicians should just “get on with it”. Advertising campaigns by anti-Brexit groups will not, on their own, shift opinion in a big way.
Equally, while there are abundant signs that Brexit has already had a chilling effect on economic growth, it has not (yet) done so in a dramatic enough fashion to force a rethink. And those who hope for a level of unforgiving detail in the Brexit deal will hope in vain: there is a shared interest between David Davis and Michel Barnier not to scare the horses, either in Westminster or the European Parliament, before the definitive votes this winter. They both want a deal, and both are happy to delay the really tricky choices about the future EU-UK relationship until after parliamentarians can do anything about it.
So MPs will have nowhere to hide. They are unlikely to be rescued by last minute developments. They will be left alone with their own consciences. And this is exactly as it should be: the vote on the government’s Brexit deal will be like no other in recent history, touching on every vital economic, security and constitutional feature of our country. That is why John Major was right to call for a free vote for MPs, and to suggest that, in the absence of an unwhipped vote, MPs should put the final deal to another vote of the people instead.
As MPs limber up to make their choice, they can at least be sure of one thing: all of the reasons which (they will be told) oblige them to support the deal will be false. Some newspapers will screech that a vote against the deal is a vote to put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street, when in truth the Fixed Term Parliament Act protects the government from an instant election.
Commentators will opine that without a deal the UK will crash out of the EU on March 29 next year, when it is obvious that the EU27 would give the UK more time. And the repeated allegation that a vote to withhold parliamentary consent would “defy the will of the people” ignores the fact that the version of Brexit presented to MPs will be utterly different to the version promised to voters, and that the world has changed dramatically since 2016.
The notion, for instance, that MPs should not be allowed to take into account America’s lurch to protectionism under President Donald Trump when assessing the best way forward is absurd. One of the greatest hallmarks of a healthy democracy, as opposed to rigid ideological regimes, is an ability to adapt in the face of changing circumstances. Democracies self-correct in a way which theocracies and authoritarian systems cannot. To deny MPs the right to make such judgments is an abrogation of democracy.
In the end, it comes down to a judgment by our elected representatives to do what they believe to be best for those they serve. Given the universal cynicism with which politicians are viewed, my hunch is that this is one bit of the Brexit jigsaw which is too readily overlooked. In the end, most MPs, most of the time, want to do the right thing.
Like the suspense in an old-fashioned cowboy film before the final gunfight, tension in Westminster is already rising as MPs prepare for the “meaningful” vote on Brexit towards the end of this year. The upcoming debates in the House of Commons will be the political equivalent of scuffles in a saloon, harbingers of the real showdown to come.
Many MPs — the majority of whom would probably slip the noose of Brexit if only they knew how — are still waiting, hoping, that something might turn up. Perhaps public opinion will shift decisively against Brexit before the vote? Maybe the economic damage will suddenly become more obvious? Or could the gory details of the Brexit deal itself prompt people to think again?
The truth, alas, is much harsher. Public opinion has shifted a little in favour of the Remain camp, and a lot towards wider concern about the impact of Brexit on the NHS and the economy. But it remains firmly enveloped in an indifference towards the details of the negotiations, and a sullen belief that politicians should just “get on with it”. Advertising campaigns by anti-Brexit groups will not, on their own, shift opinion in a big way.
Equally, while there are abundant signs that Brexit has already had a chilling effect on economic growth, it has not (yet) done so in a dramatic enough fashion to force a rethink. And those who hope for a level of unforgiving detail in the Brexit deal will hope in vain: there is a shared interest between David Davis and Michel Barnier not to scare the horses, either in Westminster or the European Parliament, before the definitive votes this winter. They both want a deal, and both are happy to delay the really tricky choices about the future EU-UK relationship until after parliamentarians can do anything about it.
So MPs will have nowhere to hide. They are unlikely to be rescued by last minute developments. They will be left alone with their own consciences. And this is exactly as it should be: the vote on the government’s Brexit deal will be like no other in recent history, touching on every vital economic, security and constitutional feature of our country. That is why John Major was right to call for a free vote for MPs, and to suggest that, in the absence of an unwhipped vote, MPs should put the final deal to another vote of the people instead.
As MPs limber up to make their choice, they can at least be sure of one thing: all of the reasons which (they will be told) oblige them to support the deal will be false. Some newspapers will screech that a vote against the deal is a vote to put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street, when in truth the Fixed Term Parliament Act protects the government from an instant election.
Commentators will opine that without a deal the UK will crash out of the EU on March 29 next year, when it is obvious that the EU27 would give the UK more time. And the repeated allegation that a vote to withhold parliamentary consent would “defy the will of the people” ignores the fact that the version of Brexit presented to MPs will be utterly different to the version promised to voters, and that the world has changed dramatically since 2016.
The notion, for instance, that MPs should not be allowed to take into account America’s lurch to protectionism under President Donald Trump when assessing the best way forward is absurd. One of the greatest hallmarks of a healthy democracy, as opposed to rigid ideological regimes, is an ability to adapt in the face of changing circumstances. Democracies self-correct in a way which theocracies and authoritarian systems cannot. To deny MPs the right to make such judgments is an abrogation of democracy.
In the end, it comes down to a judgment by our elected representatives to do what they believe to be best for those they serve. Given the universal cynicism with which politicians are viewed, my hunch is that this is one bit of the Brexit jigsaw which is too readily overlooked. In the end, most MPs, most of the time, want to do the right thing.
Saturday, 7 April 2018
How I Got Over That Dark Geographic Shadow Called Pakistan
Qudsiya Ahmed in The Wire
“Musalman ke do hi sthaan, qabristan ya Pakistan” (A Muslim has only two choices of abode – graveyard or Pakistan) is not a rhyme that a nine-year-old forgets with time. Its memory becomes stronger with age, as does the intensity of this choice. What hits her first is the option available; followed by the realisation of what is at stake — her life, and her loyalty to the country.
I have nothing to do with Pakistan. We do have family members who migrated during Partition, but I haven’t ever seen them — I have grown up abhorring all distant connections that I may have with a country which is neighbourhood for India, but for Muslims in India, is a dark geographic shadow that has chased them in the last seven decades; any allegiance to it makes them fail the litmus test of nationalism, and even today is thrown at them as their ‘natural place’.
I grew up as a very ‘conscious’ Muslim; not for my faith, but what this faith was associated with. In the mid-80s and early 90s, when my friends and classmates were fascinated with Pakistan’s fast bowlers, I couldn’t afford to ‘like’ them. I have vivid memories of 1992 when the Imran Khan-led Pakistan cricket team won the World Cup. It must have been a joyous and historic moment for their nation, but I hated that celebration — the visuals of the team bowing to the field in jubilation — because I was subjected to suspicious questioning by my Hindu Punjabi neighbours about my parents’ response to this victory, wondering if we also quietly celebrated this in our house.
An advertising poster for a film outside a movie theatre in Karachi, Pakistan. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro/Files
Pakistan became an enemy that came between my friends and me occasionally, and between my country and me often. My yearning for acceptance of my loyalty as an Indian was strong, even though it came at the cost of irrationally bashing ‘Pakistan’ for its cricket and its politics, and anything that kept me on ‘the side of my people’ was acceptable to me.
So, Pakistan, with which I had maintained a safe distance growing up, came close, uncomfortably close, when my husband had to travel to Pakistan for his journalistic pursuits. It was almost an irritation when my father had to go to the Pakistan High Commission to fetch my husband’s visa in his absence.
My work got me in touch with Pakistani academics and researchers, and that is when I began to know Pakistan as its people. I found a window into their research, courses, and universities, daily email exchange and communication grew, and very soon my Facebook profile could list at least a hundred ‘friends’ in Pakistan. In early 2017, as my son recovered from a major heart surgery at Jaypee Hospital, I learnt of a family who had traveled from Pakistan for their son’s surgery. Our children were in the same ICU, fighting bravely for life, and outside, their Indian and Pakistani mothers shared their grief and bonded over the pain that they were going through. After three months of tough fight, the Pakistani boy passed away, and I remember his inconsolable mother as she cried in disbelief at her misfortune and the futility of her struggle. The little hope and courage that I would gather every day to see my son for two minutes every morning in the ICU seemed ruptured, and I could feel her pain. I hugged her, as this was the only solace that I could offer to another mother, who happened to be a Pakistani.
A few days ago, I was at the Chaophraya Emerging Leaders’ Dialogue in Bangkok. A first of its kind in a nine-year-old Track Two dialogue between India and Pakistan, the dialogue brought together mid-career professionals who represented the next generation of leadership across industry and scholarship from both countries.
I suppose that this is the closest that I have come to Pakistan, a country that makes my position in my home country extremely vulnerable. And here I was representing India in an exchange of ideas for peaceful and productive bilateral talk between the two countries, on how they could coincide their actions to face shared challenges of climate change, extremism, and terrorism, and utilise the new media for mutual benefit. One of the most vibrant panels in the programme was on the role that women can play in foreign policy. All of us had something to contribute, and the room resonated with experiences and daily struggles that felt familiar and emphasised the similarity of everyday lives on both sides.
I can claim to know the ‘people’ side of Pakistan now, which is as humble, passionate, and desirous of amity as are the people in India. They are also progressive, articulate, and ambitious, as are my people.
I can appreciate them for what they are without the fear of being abused and demonised for this. I have come of age. But not all Indian Muslims who are subjected to verbal abuse and violent attacks and are repeatedly asked to ‘go to Pakistan’ will have the opportunity of mental healing. School-going Muslim children, who are derogatorily called ‘Pakistani’ by their classmates, will grow up as vulnerable and marginalised adults. No cricket enthusiast will ever be able to appreciate cricket for the spirit of the game, and no one will offer a hand of friendship.
So next time, when some Vinay Katiyar (founder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal) asks Indian Muslims to go to Pakistan, we should be able to tell him: I belong to India, it is my homeland, and Pakistanis are friends.
“Musalman ke do hi sthaan, qabristan ya Pakistan” (A Muslim has only two choices of abode – graveyard or Pakistan) is not a rhyme that a nine-year-old forgets with time. Its memory becomes stronger with age, as does the intensity of this choice. What hits her first is the option available; followed by the realisation of what is at stake — her life, and her loyalty to the country.
I have nothing to do with Pakistan. We do have family members who migrated during Partition, but I haven’t ever seen them — I have grown up abhorring all distant connections that I may have with a country which is neighbourhood for India, but for Muslims in India, is a dark geographic shadow that has chased them in the last seven decades; any allegiance to it makes them fail the litmus test of nationalism, and even today is thrown at them as their ‘natural place’.
I grew up as a very ‘conscious’ Muslim; not for my faith, but what this faith was associated with. In the mid-80s and early 90s, when my friends and classmates were fascinated with Pakistan’s fast bowlers, I couldn’t afford to ‘like’ them. I have vivid memories of 1992 when the Imran Khan-led Pakistan cricket team won the World Cup. It must have been a joyous and historic moment for their nation, but I hated that celebration — the visuals of the team bowing to the field in jubilation — because I was subjected to suspicious questioning by my Hindu Punjabi neighbours about my parents’ response to this victory, wondering if we also quietly celebrated this in our house.
An advertising poster for a film outside a movie theatre in Karachi, Pakistan. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro/Files
Pakistan became an enemy that came between my friends and me occasionally, and between my country and me often. My yearning for acceptance of my loyalty as an Indian was strong, even though it came at the cost of irrationally bashing ‘Pakistan’ for its cricket and its politics, and anything that kept me on ‘the side of my people’ was acceptable to me.
So, Pakistan, with which I had maintained a safe distance growing up, came close, uncomfortably close, when my husband had to travel to Pakistan for his journalistic pursuits. It was almost an irritation when my father had to go to the Pakistan High Commission to fetch my husband’s visa in his absence.
My work got me in touch with Pakistani academics and researchers, and that is when I began to know Pakistan as its people. I found a window into their research, courses, and universities, daily email exchange and communication grew, and very soon my Facebook profile could list at least a hundred ‘friends’ in Pakistan. In early 2017, as my son recovered from a major heart surgery at Jaypee Hospital, I learnt of a family who had traveled from Pakistan for their son’s surgery. Our children were in the same ICU, fighting bravely for life, and outside, their Indian and Pakistani mothers shared their grief and bonded over the pain that they were going through. After three months of tough fight, the Pakistani boy passed away, and I remember his inconsolable mother as she cried in disbelief at her misfortune and the futility of her struggle. The little hope and courage that I would gather every day to see my son for two minutes every morning in the ICU seemed ruptured, and I could feel her pain. I hugged her, as this was the only solace that I could offer to another mother, who happened to be a Pakistani.
A few days ago, I was at the Chaophraya Emerging Leaders’ Dialogue in Bangkok. A first of its kind in a nine-year-old Track Two dialogue between India and Pakistan, the dialogue brought together mid-career professionals who represented the next generation of leadership across industry and scholarship from both countries.
I suppose that this is the closest that I have come to Pakistan, a country that makes my position in my home country extremely vulnerable. And here I was representing India in an exchange of ideas for peaceful and productive bilateral talk between the two countries, on how they could coincide their actions to face shared challenges of climate change, extremism, and terrorism, and utilise the new media for mutual benefit. One of the most vibrant panels in the programme was on the role that women can play in foreign policy. All of us had something to contribute, and the room resonated with experiences and daily struggles that felt familiar and emphasised the similarity of everyday lives on both sides.
I can claim to know the ‘people’ side of Pakistan now, which is as humble, passionate, and desirous of amity as are the people in India. They are also progressive, articulate, and ambitious, as are my people.
I can appreciate them for what they are without the fear of being abused and demonised for this. I have come of age. But not all Indian Muslims who are subjected to verbal abuse and violent attacks and are repeatedly asked to ‘go to Pakistan’ will have the opportunity of mental healing. School-going Muslim children, who are derogatorily called ‘Pakistani’ by their classmates, will grow up as vulnerable and marginalised adults. No cricket enthusiast will ever be able to appreciate cricket for the spirit of the game, and no one will offer a hand of friendship.
So next time, when some Vinay Katiyar (founder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal) asks Indian Muslims to go to Pakistan, we should be able to tell him: I belong to India, it is my homeland, and Pakistanis are friends.
Britain sees the Commonwealth as its trading empire. It is sadly deluded
Nearly every Commonwealth country opposed Brexit. Leavers are wrong to hope old imperial patterns will replace EU trade
Ian Jack in The Guardian
Illustration by Matt Kenyon
Early April, 2018. In Brisbane a cheeky radio interviewer asks Prince Charles if he really does carry a personal lavatory seat on his travels, and the prince replies, “Oh, don’t believe all that crap.” Elsewhere in the Queensland capital, India win gold in the women’s weightlifting and lose to Cameroon in the men’s basketball. At Buckingham Palace, a menu is drawn up for a banquet to be attended later this month by 53 heads of state or their representatives. In Whitehall, the Department for International Trade ponders the effects on British farming of hormone-treated beef imports from Australia, which is a probable consequence of the UK’s first post-Brexit trade deal.
In one way or another, the Commonwealth is responsible for all these things: for the Commonwealth Games, which demand the presence of the heir to the throne in Australia; for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm), the 25th such conclave since 1971, which occurs in London (and Windsor Castle) on 16-20 April; and, simply by its dogged and unlikely persistence as an international grouping, for permitting the British delusion that old imperial patterns of trade can replace the present arrangements with the EU. (Enter the hormone-treated beef.)
Not that the Commonwealth itself encouraged this idea: nearly every Commonwealth republic and “realm” wanted the UK to remain inside the EU. And not that Europhobes have always prized the Commonwealth. As our present foreign secretary wrote in 2002, “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.” The Commonwealth that some Brexit campaigners had in mind was perhaps a little whiter – taking the definition of Commonwealth all the way back to the time when it meant the British empire’s settler dominions: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Newfoundland and South Africa, which were sovereign states, not colonies, and bound only by their loyalty to the crown.
Indian independence forced Britain to be more flexible about who could be included. As India would be a republic, loyal oaths were out of the question. But Britain was keen to maintain some form of the old connection “in the mistaken belief”, according to the Commonwealth historian Philip Murphy, “that India’s huge standing army would continue to underwrite British great-power status”. There were other reasons too. Historic sentiment, fear of American ambition, the need to protect British markets: together they led Britain to propose a compromise. All that would be required was that India recognise the king as the head of the Commonwealth, “as the symbol of the free association of its independent member states”, rather than pledging loyalty to him. Even so, the offer still flew in the face of the complete withdrawal that had been promised by leaders of the independence movement. But India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, finally went along with it – realising, he said, that Commonwealth membership meant “independence plus, not independence minus”.
Other countries felt the same. In his forthcoming book, The Empire’s New Clothes: the Myth of the Commonwealth, Murphy argues that Britain didn’t mastermind the growth of the modern Commonwealth as part of a grand geopolitical strategy. Newly independent colonies wanted to belong, not least because their anticolonial leaders still felt a strong sense of cultural attachment to Britain and the British institutions – universities mainly – that had brought them into contact with contemporaries from other parts of the world.
Any thought that the Commonwealth could successfully perpetuate the empire vanished with the Suez humiliation in 1956
Early April, 2018. In Brisbane a cheeky radio interviewer asks Prince Charles if he really does carry a personal lavatory seat on his travels, and the prince replies, “Oh, don’t believe all that crap.” Elsewhere in the Queensland capital, India win gold in the women’s weightlifting and lose to Cameroon in the men’s basketball. At Buckingham Palace, a menu is drawn up for a banquet to be attended later this month by 53 heads of state or their representatives. In Whitehall, the Department for International Trade ponders the effects on British farming of hormone-treated beef imports from Australia, which is a probable consequence of the UK’s first post-Brexit trade deal.
In one way or another, the Commonwealth is responsible for all these things: for the Commonwealth Games, which demand the presence of the heir to the throne in Australia; for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm), the 25th such conclave since 1971, which occurs in London (and Windsor Castle) on 16-20 April; and, simply by its dogged and unlikely persistence as an international grouping, for permitting the British delusion that old imperial patterns of trade can replace the present arrangements with the EU. (Enter the hormone-treated beef.)
Not that the Commonwealth itself encouraged this idea: nearly every Commonwealth republic and “realm” wanted the UK to remain inside the EU. And not that Europhobes have always prized the Commonwealth. As our present foreign secretary wrote in 2002, “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.” The Commonwealth that some Brexit campaigners had in mind was perhaps a little whiter – taking the definition of Commonwealth all the way back to the time when it meant the British empire’s settler dominions: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Newfoundland and South Africa, which were sovereign states, not colonies, and bound only by their loyalty to the crown.
Indian independence forced Britain to be more flexible about who could be included. As India would be a republic, loyal oaths were out of the question. But Britain was keen to maintain some form of the old connection “in the mistaken belief”, according to the Commonwealth historian Philip Murphy, “that India’s huge standing army would continue to underwrite British great-power status”. There were other reasons too. Historic sentiment, fear of American ambition, the need to protect British markets: together they led Britain to propose a compromise. All that would be required was that India recognise the king as the head of the Commonwealth, “as the symbol of the free association of its independent member states”, rather than pledging loyalty to him. Even so, the offer still flew in the face of the complete withdrawal that had been promised by leaders of the independence movement. But India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, finally went along with it – realising, he said, that Commonwealth membership meant “independence plus, not independence minus”.
Other countries felt the same. In his forthcoming book, The Empire’s New Clothes: the Myth of the Commonwealth, Murphy argues that Britain didn’t mastermind the growth of the modern Commonwealth as part of a grand geopolitical strategy. Newly independent colonies wanted to belong, not least because their anticolonial leaders still felt a strong sense of cultural attachment to Britain and the British institutions – universities mainly – that had brought them into contact with contemporaries from other parts of the world.
Any thought that the Commonwealth could successfully perpetuate the empire vanished with the Suez humiliation in 1956
Any thought that the Commonwealth could successfully perpetuate the empire vanished with the Suez humiliation in 1956, when Nehru and India sided with Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egyptover the Anglo-French assault. The ties to London began to weaken. Names changed to reflect different realities. Founded in 1930, the British Empire Games became the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, the British Commonwealth Games in 1970, and finally the Commonwealth Games in 1978.
On paper, the facts remain compelling. The countries of the Commonwealth spread across a fifth of the world’s land surface, contain nearly a third of the world’s population and produce around 15% of the world’s wealth (depending on the measure used). But how much does the Commonwealth affect the lives of the people behind these statistics? Hardly at all. The organisation defines itself as a “diverse community of 53 nations that work together to promote prosperity, democracy and peace”. Friendly politicians call it a useful talking shop. Many people in its constituent countries have never heard of it, or know the name only because of the games. Both its longevity and its apparent importance owe a lot to the enthusiasm of the Queen and the international affection for her.
Until the run-up to Brexit, the notion that the Commonwealth offered the UK economic salvation would have been comic. In 2010, it was left to Ukip’s manifesto to promise a Commonwealth Free Trade Area, which would account for “more than 20% of all international trade and investment” and enable Britain to flourish outside the EU. Ukip’s leader, Nigel Farage, later described the manifesto as “drivel”; nevertheless the Tory manifesto for the next general election, in 2015, pledged to “further strengthen our ties with our close Commonwealth allies, Australia, Canada and New Zealand”. And by the time the referendum came around, several prominent leavers, including Boris Johnson and the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, were happy to say the UK had “betrayed” the Commonwealth when it joined the EEC in 1973. It was time, as a Daily Telegraph headline had it, to “embrace the Commonwealth”.
And the Commonwealth itself had not been idle. In a desire to be more obviously useful – particularly to the UK, its biggest backer – it had begun to sell itself as a business asset, boasting on its website of the common legal systems and language that led to a Commonwealth advantage where trade and investment flows increased by up to 20% and the cost of doing business could be cut by nearly the same. According to Murphy, the atmosphere in London was further politicised when the Royal Commonwealth Society, founded in 1868 as a literary and scientific institution, merged in 2015 with Commonwealth Exchange, a far harder-nosed outfit run by a Eurosceptic Tory, Tim Hewish, who became the society’s director of policy research.
But to the Brexiteer, the Commonwealth offered more than the prospect of increased trade (from a very low base: Australia takes 1.6% of UK exports and the Commonwealth as a whole 9.5%). Before the referendum, it was also talked up as an alternative source of immigrants, and better-quality immigrants, the kind we could pick and choose, at that. The question is, from which particular part? In 2013 Johnson, then London mayor, proposed a “bilateral free labour mobility zone” between the UK and Australia, writing in the Telegraph that “we British are more deeply connected with the Australians – culturally and emotionally – than with any other country on earth”. Hewish picked up the idea and published a paper for Commonwealth Exchange that extended it to Canada and New Zealand. There was no proposal, however, to include the countries of south Asia, Africa or the Caribbean – which just as many, if not more, Britons are as deeply connected to, culturally and emotionally, as others are to Australia.
The theme of this month’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting is “Towards a Common Future”. The host runs the risk of turning into the most unpopular guest.
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