Indian Ideology - Perry anderson

INDIAN IDEOLOGY - PERRY ANDERSON (OCT 2012)

Perry Anderson has a few things to say about India which might not be palatable for most Indians.

I remember the buzz around the book when it was about to be released- the constant chatter by the twitterati and the interviews by the author to various print and social media.

But come October 2012 - post the book release - there was hardly a murmur. There were a few strong reviews all right, but they picked the book on technicalities and, to my mind, did not attempt to address the issues raised by the author.

The contentious issues raised are essentially as follows:-

-  The idea that a sub continental unity existed in India extending back to 5000 years is a myth.

-  Partition was essentially the handiwork of the Congress and not the Raj or Jinnah, with Nehru and Gandhi being the main culprits.

As Indians, we have all lapped up this great story of the grand Indian civilization – images of Kumbh Mela being performed  2500 years ago and still continuing flashes before us .We devoured Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’, Amartya Sen’s ‘Argumentative Indian’ and other such ‘feel good’ books on the same vein.

But Perry Anderson says that the story of the ‘Grand Indian civilization‘  is all wrong- it’s a myth.

Sample a few passages from the book:-

“The subcontinent as we know it today never formed a single political or cultural unit in pre-modern times. For much the longest stretches of its history, its lands were divided between a varying assortment of middle-sized kingdoms, of different stripes. Of the three larger empires it witnessed, none covered the territory of Nehru’s Discovery of India. Maurya and Mughal control extended to contemporary Afghanistan, ceased below the Deccan, and never came near Manipur. The area of Gupta control was considerably less. Separated by intervals of five hundred and a thousand years, there was no remembered political or cultural connection between these orders, or even common religious affiliation: at its height, the first of these Buddhist, the second Hindu, the third Muslim.

…The ‘idea of India’ was essentially a European, not a local invention, as the name itself makes clear. No such term, or equivalent, as India existed in any indigenous language. A Greek coinage, taken from the Indus river, it was so exogenous to the subcontinent that as late as the 16^th century, Europeans would define Indians simply as ‘all natives of an unknown country’...”

The British created India:

‘The British had taken over the subcontinent with such relative ease because it was politically and socially so tangled and fractured, but in imposing a common infrastructural, juridical and cultural grid on it, they unified it as an administrative and ideological reality for the first time in its history. The idea of India was theirs.’

And he takes Nehru and his ‘Discovery of India’ to the cleaners:

‘Nehru, on the other hand, had enjoyed a higher education Gandhi lacked, and an intellectual development not arrested by intense religious belief. But these advantages yielded less than might be thought. He seems to have learnt very little at Cambridge, scrapping a mediocre degree in natural sciences that left no trace thereafter, did poorly in his bar exams, and was not much of a success when he returned to practice law in the footsteps of his father. The contrast with Bose, a brilliant student of philosophy at Cambridge, who was the first native to pass the exams into the elite ranks of the Indian Civil Service and decline entry to it on patriotic grounds, is striking.

But an indifferent beginning is no obstacle to subsequent flowering, and in due course Nehru became a competent orator and prolific writer. What he never acquired, however, was a modicum of literary taste or mental discipline. His most ambitious work, ‘The Discovery of India’, which appeared in 1946, is a steam-bath of Schwarmerei with few equals in the period.

But ‘The Discovery of India’ – not to speak of its predecessor ‘The Unity of India’ – illustrates not just Nehru’s lack of formal scholarship and addiction to romantic myth, but something deeper, not so much an intellectual but a psychological limitation – a capacity for self-deception with far-reaching political consequences.

            ‘India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me’, he told his readers. ‘She is very lovable and none of her children can forget her wherever they go or whatever strange fate befalls them. For she is part of them in her greatness as well as her failings, and they are mirrored in those deep eyes of hers that have seen so much of life’s passion and joy and folly and looked down into wisdom’s well.’

Not all of  ‘The Discovery of India’ is of similar quality. But the Barbara Cartland streak was never far from the surface: ‘Perhaps we may still sense the mystery of nature, listen to her song of life and beauty, and draw vitality from her. That song is not sung in the chosen spots only, and we can hear it, if we have ears for it, almost everywhere. But there are some places where it charms even those who are unprepared for it and comes like the deep notes of a distant and powerful organ. Among those favoured spots is Kashmir, where loveliness dwells and an enchantment steals over the senses.’ A mind capable of prose like this was unlikely to show much realism about the difficulties facing the national movement.

The author highlights the fissiparous tendencies that almost fractured India during the time of partition, as India was ‘never a political union’:

Bengal …had a stronger common identity, a richer cultural-intellectual tradition and more advanced politics under the Raj. …In the Hindu community a movement led by Bose’s brother Sarat, and in the Muslim community by the the local head of the League, Suhrawardy, joined forces to call for United Bengal as an independent state, adhering neither to India nor to Pakistan. Mountbatten wanted only two Dominions in the sub-continent, though if it was difficult to avoid, did not rule out a third. Jinnah, to his credit, said he would not oppose a unitary Bengal.

             ….When the question was put to the Bengal Assembly, the vote was 126 to 90 in favour of unity.

….densely forested mountainous uplands inhabited by tribal peoples of Tibeto-Mongoloid origin untouched by Hinduism, with no historical connection to any subcontinental polity. In the valleys, three Hindu kingdoms had long existed, the oldest in Manipur, the largest in Assam. The region had lain outside the Maurya and Gupta empires, and had resisted Mughal annexation….

…. So remote were these from anything to do with India, even as constituted by the Victorian Empire, that when Burma was detached from the Raj in 1935, officials came close to allocating them to Rangoon rather than Delhi.

The basic point the author is making is that India was never a political union throughout its history. Period.

But, isn’t that a given? Isn’t it obvious that India was never really a political union? Why waste reams of paper on such an obvious fact?

The basic ‘idea of India’ for the present modern state, I would like to believe, does not hint at a ‘political unity’ though the ages. But rather, a ‘civilizational unity’.

If the basis of a modern nation should only be a ‘historical political unity’, then of course, India, immediately after partition, should have split up into 600 plus principalities. There were too many Maharajas, Nawabs and Princely states floating around.

To my understanding, there was never any suggestion of a ‘political unity’; but it was always the idea of a ‘civilizational unity’, that Nehru and his ilk were sold upon, and that is the foundation on which they wanted to build this brand new country called India.

Is the idea of ‘civilisational unity’ good enough to build a nation? Who decides if it is so?

Is the ‘American way’ the ‘right’ way to build a nation?
Is it ok that you systematically obliterate the indigenous ‘Red Indians’ and usurp their lands?

What about the Latin American countries? Where are the Mayans and the Incas? Is that the way to build a nation?

I would like to believe that a ‘continual civilizational and cultural unity’ is not a bad start point to build a brand new nation.

But is this enough to sustain a fledgling nation?

Well that is an existential query facing India today, that only time will answer conclusively. But one may daresay that there are fewer naysayer’s in 2013, as compared to 1947, on whether India can survive or not.

But there are a few aspects that Indians have got right in building a brand new nation.

One of them is a canon called ‘unity in diversity’. One may scoff at this, but evidence suggests that this actually works in India. 
Consider this:-

It is a fact that in India there is no subversion of any Indigenous culture. There are insurgencies, yes - folks wanting to break away from the Republic. But the point remains- there is no subversion of any indigenous culture.

So,  the Monpa’s of Tawang, the Meitei’s  in Manipur, the Ladakhi’s, the Thambi’s of Tamil Nadu all have a distinct, strong, vibrant identity of their own, within the union of India. 

The proof of the same is that you will never hear of any ‘refugees’ from India due to persecution by the state.

Which country did Dalai Lama pack his bags and come to?

When Quaid-e- Azam, Jinnah, proclaimed Urdu to be the common language of Pakistan, thereby sparking the seed of Bengali insurgency, which country did the Bangladeshi’s take refuge in?

Look at Tibet or Xinjiang in China. The indigenous population in these areas, are a shrinking minority every day, due to the Han sinicization process of China. Does this happen in India?

Things are definitely bad here in India. Lots of poverty and corruption. But one thing  no one can blame us for, is of  subversion of any indigenous culture in India, unlike say  in China.

The fact of the matter is that today, in all states including Kashmir, there have been free and fair elections and there is stability and progress.

I had attended a cultural festival in Tawang in October 2012. The crowd- all local- about 5000 strong, were dancing to their local rock stars numbers, as well as to Bollywood numbers. They even loved the crass jokes by the special guests from Bollywood  - Ehsan Qureshi and Shakti Kapoor. It was a simple depiction of how different cultural strains can co-exist together – ‘Unity in diversity’.

More damning however is the author’s take on the Congress being the main culprit behind partition and not Jinnah or the Raj.

He squarely blames Gandhi’s evocation of Hindu spirituality and invocation of Lord Ram into the political discourse that drove away Muslims -including Jinnah- from the Congress.

‘The official view in Delhi, shared across the political spectrum, has always been that it was Jinnah’s personal ambition that fired Muslim separatism, destroying the unit of the national liberation struggle ……

…Like most politicians, Jinnah was certainly ambitious. But he was also an early architect of Hindu-Muslim unity; had little mass following down to the end of the thirties; and even when he acquired one, probably aimed at a confederation rather than complete separation.

………but it was not Jinnah who injected religion into the vocabulary and imagery of the national movement, it was Gandhi. That he did not do so in any sectarian spirit, calling on Muslims to defend the Caliph in the same breath as Hindus to restore the golden age of Rama, was of little consequence once he jettisoned mobilization against the British without regard for his allies in the common struggle.

…..What remained was Gandhi’s transformation of Congress from an elite into a mass organization by saturating its appeal with a Hindu imagery. Here, unambiguously, was the origin of the political process that would eventually lead to Partition.’

Gandhi’s statements: ‘I yield to none in my reverence for the cow’..

… warning his son against marrying a Muslim on grounds that it was ‘contrary to dharma’ and – a telling simile – ‘like putting two swords in one sheath’… (did not make things better either.)

The author also blames Nehru, for being unwilling to accept the ‘cabinet mission plan’ for devolution of powers between Congress and Muslim league, which might have prevented partition.

‘..But for Nehru,.... (cabinet mission plan) was worse than partition, since it would deprive his party of the powerful centralized state to which it had always aspired, and he believed essential to preserve Indian unity. Congress had always insisted on its monopoly of national legitimacy. That claim could no longer be sustained.

But if the worst came to the worst, it was better to enjoy an unimpeded monopoly of power in the larger part of India than to shackled by having to share it in an undivided one.

So while the League talked of partition, Jinnah contemplated confederation; while Congress spoke of union, Nehru prepared for scission. The Cabinet Mission Plan was duly scuppered. Everything then turned on how the spoils were to be distributed.

There are further telling passages in the book. 

The author paints both Gandhi and Nehru as ‘black’- devious and unscrupulous characters, whereas the popular Indian discourse deifies them.

The opinions expressed by the author , are however  a matter of conjecture and ascribes intentions to Gandhi and Nehru which might not be wholly true.

The truth, of course, would probably be somewhere in between.

WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD : MARTIN JACQUES (2009)

A book on China by Martin Jacques, who feels that China will one day, rule the world.

He sets forth his arguments nicely and thereafter tries to speculate as to how the world will look like - ‘When’ China rules the world.

So will it? It’s a big ‘Maybe’, I think.

Some commentators like Nitin Pai (@acorn on twitter) do not think so. In his ‘Business Standard’  column Nitin says the title should have been “if’ and not ‘When’.

China is a freak of nature.

Else how is it that a nation, the size of a continent, can have so much of puke-worthy uniformity?

How is it that 90% of its citizens call themselves ‘Han Chinese’ and speak the same language?

How do you get 1.2 billion people to think alike?

Like I said, China is a freak of nature. Nowhere in the world will you find conformity of culture in such a large scale. Look at India or Europe and you will know what I mean.

And the secret behind this puke-worthy conformity?

It’s geography. I think.  At least partially.

Terrain friction does not permit an easy land route to China, unlike India.

To the South and South West you have the Himalayas;

To the East and South East you have the South China Sea;

To the North and North West, you have the Steppe’s and Gobi Desert.

So folks in China were left in relative isolation to develop their culture and traditions in peace till the 19^th  century .

The Mongols and Manchus who were the only invaders got sinicized in due course.

In contrast, look at India.

We had friendly neighborhood migrations/invasions throughout our known history.

Nobody’s got a clue as to who the Indus Valley folks were. Dravidians are also migrants. So are the Aryans. Then came the Persians, Greeks, Mohammedans and finally of course the ‘White man’.

We have had a ‘cultural shock treatment’ every other century. Never been left alone. Hence in India we have a mash up of everything.

Not so in China. Such uniformity is rare.

So will China rule the world?

The Chinese say “ Who can stop me?”

As a race who believe in their inherent superiority over other ‘barbarians’ of the world, they think it is just a matter of time.

With a 5000 year history, blessed with oodles of patience, Chinese are waiting in the wings.

 Deng’s comment brings out their world view:

‘Observe developments soberly, maintain our position, meet challenges calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, remain free of ambition, never claim leadership.’

Chinese conceptions of time are also slightly different. Note former Chinese premier Zhou En Lai’s reported response to Henry Kissinger’s question in 1972 about the consequences of the French Revolution: ‘It is too early to say.’

What if they do rule the world? Should it be a cause of concern?

Some of the Chinese attitudes can be considered to be a  ‘grey’ area.

Handling of ethnic minorities by Chinese is a big negative. Treatment of Tibetans and Uighurs of Xingjiang is well documented.

Oft-repeated process of Han settlement in these areas have changed  the ethnic balance.

In  Xingjiang, Hans are about 50% now, compared with 6 per cent in a 1950s census. A similar process is on in Tibet also.

Root problem is the ingrained sense of racial superiority of Chinese.

Sun Yat Sen of 1911 Revolution fame, amplifies the Chinese racial worldview:

“Mankind is divided into five races. The yellow and white races are relatively strong and intelligent. Because the other races are feeble and stupid, they are being exterminated by the white race. Only the yellow race competes with the white race. This is so-called evolution …. Among the contemporary races that could be called superior, there are only the yellow and white races. China belongs to the yellow races.”

Tibetans, to Chinese, are seen as  backward and primitive, and  should be grateful to Chinese for bringing them civilization and development.

Zhang Qingli, Communist Party secretary of the Tibet, confirms the ‘benevolent’ role of Chinese:

‘The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need …. The central party committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.’

Yuan Qinghai, a Lhasa taxi driver: ‘We don’t have a good impression of them, as they are lazy and they hate us. In their mind taking a bath once or twice in their life is sacred, but to a Han it is filthy and unacceptable.’

Lack of Democracy and a vibrant free press in China is of course another big negative.

So will China change once they get to rule the world? Or will they also mouth pious platitudes like US about freedom and democracy, while carrying on doing what they want with the world?

There are however huge positives also.

In his cult song ‘ Imagine’, John Lennon crooned:

“Imagine there’s no country, and no religion too”

China, being the freak that it is, is the one country in the world where religion is almost a non-issue.

Folks there do have some form of ancestral worship, but it is strictly a private affair.

Imagine such a world!

Where religion is actually a non-issue.

Where religion is relegated to its rightful place in society, i.e confined to one’s four walls, something private and personal.

A world where no one cares about what kind of faith you practice at home.

For this reason alone, I fervently wish China does get to rule the world and tell those religious hate mongers to lump it and just shut up.

In China today people are simply left free to get on with the business of transforming their living standards.

Folks do not talk of politics or religion. They have retreated into a private world of consumption.

Money-making, is the most valued and respected form of social activity.

Is that such a bad thing? I think not. I think it’s perfect.

With just over 20 million plus folks below poverty line, of a population of 1.2 Billion, I think the Chinese have got their priorities right.

And to think that in 1978 they had close to 300 million under poverty line.

Another aspect is the importance given to Confucian precept of filial piety and the central role of family, in contrast to  ‘Individualism’  propagated by Western Societies.

“The individualistic system, with  emphasis on the nuclear family, is in stark contrast to the traditional extended-household, arranged-marriage, kinship-based systems to be found in societies like China and India, whose values and distinctive characteristics persist to this day, notwithstanding urbanization and a dramatic fall in the size of the nuclear family.

Thus, while marriage in the West is essentially a union of two individuals, in Chinese and Indian culture it involves the conjoining of two families.”

Which system is better? The jury is out.

One thing is certain. We live in interesting times. And like the Author, I too also believe that the face of the world will change ‘If’ and ‘When’ China does get to rule the world.

Pakistan- A personal history by Imran Khan

Pakistan- A Personal History

by

Imran Khan(2011)

Imran Khan amazes me. That’s why I picked up this book.

To my mind he had it all - film star looks, oodles of talent, a heart-throb to women, an icon……

Not to forget his ‘minor’ exploits in the cricket field.

Counted amongst the best all-rounder’s the world has ever seen, Imran was one of the few Captains who inspired his team to withstand the West Indies fearsome pace onslaught in the 80’s and lived to tell the tale with pride. And of course the crowning moment was  lifting of the World cup in 1992.

Post retirement a life of leisure and contentment awaited him- writing books, becoming a sought after cricket commentator etc,  having achieved what most folks can only dream of.

But Imran was made of sterner stuff. To quote him:

“I could  never imagine…., just making a living out of cricket journalism. For me that would have been a purposeless existence, I cannot even imagine life without a passion and a purpose”

That is what drew him to politics. Into the world of Pakistani politics.

Pakistan, today, is in a mess. It doesn’t inspire much hope. It has been variously described by  commentators as ‘the nation on the brink’ , ‘failed or failing state’ etc.

Who would want risk getting into the murky world of Pakistani politics? Even Imran initially had come to the same conclusion:

“…like most of the privileged class, I was coming to the conclusion that, since Pakistan’s problems are so many and so insolvable, the best thing to do was to just look after myself. Besides, what could politics possibly give me? I had life that many young people in Pakistan and elsewhere, dreamt about – I was a rich and glamorous cricket star, jet-setting all over the world. Politics was considered a dirty business for those who could do anything else.”

But those were the years when he was immersed in Cricket and had little time to ponder over the state of affairs of the country. As he makes it clear:

“To tell the truth, I had no interest in interest in politics in the 1970s or much of the 1980s………. I had been so single-mindedly and obsessively involved in international cricket that I had no time to think about much else. Anyone who has played professional sport would understand how it completely takes over one’s life. One lives and breathes the sport, so intense is the competition and hence the focus. Over the years, I came to the conclusion that ‘genius’ is being obsessed with what you are doing.”

But in the 90's, in the twilight of his career, Imran’s thoughts turned to politics. However instead of being just being an armchair critic of Pakistani politics, he decided he needed to do something to make a difference. He was contemptuous of those who kept talking about Pakistan’s imminent doom but didn’t seem to want to do anything about it:

“What amazed me was that while almost every dinner-table conversation in the country condemned the politicians for destroying Pakistan’s potential, no one was prepared to do anything about it.  The affluent classes’ response  to the country’s downward spiral was to get Canadian passports or US green cards.  They just did not have the guts or the will to give up their comfortable lives and take on the corrupt political class.  In Islamabad it was quite common to see members of the elite, who denigrated the politicians in private, groveling at their feet at public functions.”

The scenario is pretty similar in India also. We find a lot of arm-chair specialists who give their ‘expert views’ on what ails the nation, but why don’t they get up and do something about it?

This is what prompted me to pick up this book by Imran Khan. What was it that drove Imran? Where does he get his amazing energy from?

One thing that you must not expect from Imran is modesty. Remember that infamous speech of his after Pakistan won the world cup in 1992? He had completely neglected to mention his team-mates contribution in his victory speech. But he is candid about the incident in his book:

“So happy was I for this dream of mine that at the presentation ceremony after the game, I forgot to thank the team for their brilliant performance. I was criticized for it and I must confess the speech was terrible; thinking about it still makes me cringe.  But quite frankly I had other things on my mind than making a speech.  It also has to be said that I was the kind of person who had trouble speaking to a small room of people and suddenly a microphone was thrust in my face without warning and I was expected to address a crowd of 90,000 people and hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world.”

Not very convincing. But so what ?  Imran is not very modest, probably. But that doesn’t take away any of his achievements from him.

Imran definitely feels he is a man of destiny. See how he brings parallels with other legendary figures with his own life:

“All the truly great people in history- Jinnah, Gandhi, Mother Tereas, Nelson Mandela-have had a vision and ambition beyond themselves, often achieving more than others not because of more talent but because they had bigger ambitions and selfless dreams.  The idea of constantly striving towards ever higher goals struck a chord with me, dovetailing with my own philosophy that I had developed through sports-the more you challenge yourself, the more you discover greater reserves of strength within you.  The moment your relax and stop pushing yourself is the moment you start going downhill.”

This aspect of Imran is what most fascinates and inspires me. He doesn’t believe in living on past laurels. He keeps pushing himself. Here’s how he explains his drive and energy:

“I first strove to play cricket for Pakistan, then my goal became to be my country’s best all-rounder, then the best fast bowler.  From there I wanted to become the best all-rounder and the best fast bowler in the world.  When I was  made captain the ambition became turning the team into the best in the world.  And once the cancer hospital I founded in memory of my mother became a success I set about building two more hospitals, one in Karachi and one in Peshawar.  Now my challenge in life is to bring about a socio-economic revolution in Pakistan.  After one goal has been achieved, there are always more to conquer.  As Iqbal says : ‘Other worlds exist beyond the Stars/More tests of love are still to come.”

This passage describes Imran in a nutshell.

Can you ever put him down? He epitomizes the George Bernard Shaw quote:

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Imran Khan's Idea of pakistan

Ok. Enough eulogizing Imran.

Let’s talk of Imran and what he is doing now. As Imran would agree – why waste time talking of past laurels?

So how does Imran intend to get Pakistan out of the quagmire that it finds itself in? How does he intend to bring about the ‘socio-economic revolution’ in Pakistan?

Firstly, before one looks at the solutions offered by Imran, one aspect which he covers at length in the book, is on how he has become a ‘born again muslim’ and discovered his ‘Faith’:

“Faith answered two of the most important questions, which had always nagged me.  Questions that science could never answer.  What is the purpose of existence? What happens to us after we die?”

No queries there. After all ‘Faith’ is a personal issue.

So what is Imran’s solution to the mess that Pakistan finds itself in?

‘Back to the Quran’ says Imran. He calls for an ‘enlightened Islam’ and a pure Islamic society as envisaged  by Iqbal and Jinnah:

“A true Islamic society would be no different from the democratic welfare states of Europe. Human rights are, after all, at the centre of the Quran. The right to life, justice, respect, freedom of speech and movement, privacy, protection from slander and ridicule, a secure place of residence and a means of living are all enshrined in the Quran.”

And the only difference would be:

“The main difference Islamic sharia has from Western secular society is in the realm of public morality. This protects our family system, one of Pakistan’s greatest strengths.”

So a pure Islamic society is akin to the present western  ‘welfare state’ but with stronger ‘family  and moral values’  

The Two Nation Theory

And partition was necessary because:

“Iqbal and others, …. argued that this vision of an ideal society could never be achieved as long as Muslims remained in a minority in a Hindu-dominated India.

It was not only that India, with its caste system and social inequalities, was the antithesis of everything they wanted. It was also that such a bold experiment of recreating the ideals of Islam could never be achieved in a country where Muslims were in the minority."

So that was the basis of the ‘Two nation theory’.

Does it still hold good after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971?

Imran maintains that, it was because of the fact the Pakistani establishment shifted away from the ideals of  its founding fathers, that East Pakistan broke away.

There is another school of thought doing rounds these days.

That it is not 'Religion' but ‘Geography’ that makes Pakistan a separate state- i.e people of India and Pakistan can be classified into people of the Indus valley and Ganges valley.

Marvi Sirmed, a prominent social activist in Pakistan quotes Aitaz Ahsan in her blog ‘the ideology of Pakistan’ :

“The crux of Mr Ahsan’s study was the inherent difference between the Indus valley and the Ganges civilisations, which he argues, bound all the people living northwest of the Gurdaspur-Kathiwar salient, as one, irrespective of their religion. The southern side of this cultural border constitutes Mr Ahsan’s Ganges man, who considers every intruder from the south or from the central Asia as an invader rather than a hero. He identifies his Indus man more with the Central Asian culture than the Ganges civilisation—a more ‘Indian’ civilization.”

 http://marvisirmed.com/tag/ideology-of-pakistan/

The same idea is propounded by Robert Kaplan in his recent article “What’s wrong with Pakistan?”:

The more one reads this history, the more it becomes apparent that the Indian subcontinent has two principal geographical regions: the Indus Valley with its tributaries, and the Ganges Valley with its tributaries. Pakistani scholar Aitzaz Ahsan identifies the actual geographical fissure within the subcontinent as the "Gurdaspur-Kathiawar salient," a line running from eastern Punjab southwest to the Arabian Sea in Gujarat. This is the watershed, and it matches up almost perfectly with the Pakistan-India border.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/18/whats_wrong_with_pakistan?page=0,0 

I can only respectfully submit to folks who propose the theory that ‘Ganges is India’ that they have no clue of what India is all about.

They have never been to the South or North-East of India. They simply have no idea of the bewildering diversity of India.

Enough said.

Similarly to label Pakistan as simply an ‘Indus valley civilization’ is also a tad bit simplistic.

Punjad and Sind, yes. What about Baluchistan , FATA  and other areas bordering Afghanistan?

The Indian Model for Pakistan?

To my mind even Pakistan is a mini India in terms of its diversities, albeit not on that scale. So to address an ideology of a nation in narrow terms of 'geography' or 'religion' is a recipe for disaster.

I don’t believe either Imran’s ‘Islamic state’ or Marvi Sirmed’s/ Kaplan’s ‘geography of Indus valley’  theory aptly describes the plurality of Pakistan. They need to understand that a nation is much more complex than that.

They could in fact take a leaf out of how India has been nurtured by Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar etc in its formative years and take a clue. It is an apt case study.

Jinnah in 1948, declared ‘Urdu’ as the state language of Pakistan, causing a great deal of resentment amongst Bengali East Pakistani’s, sowing seeds of discontentment which eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh.

Nehru was firmly convinced that ‘Hindi’ had to be the national language of India and he personally felt it was necessary to bond the nation together. But unlike Jinnah, he was far more pragmatic and he understood the diversity and complexity of the nascent nation.

He delayed making a decision for 15 years, and when it came up again for discussion in parliament a decade and a half later, the different langauage lobbies , especially the DMK, were up in arms and the idea of a ‘national language ‘ was quickly scrapped.  

You need to ‘soft sell’ the idea of a nascent nation to its citizen’s over a period of time. You cannot shove it down somebody’s throat. That’s where the Indian leaders showed Statesmanship in the initial years.

Drone Attacks : How Wrong

Similarly it is inconceivable to think of any part in India wherein there is no writ of the central government. 

In  FATA, Baluchistan and other tribal areas, there is no influence of the central establishment whatsoever. Even India has tribal and remote areas, much more than Pakistan in fact. But slowly and steadily over the years the establishment has made inroads, not to subvert the indigenous culture but to subtly make them come to terms with the idea of India. It has all been  about ‘soft selling’ the idea of India.

And that explains the impunity with which the  Pakistani establishment allows drone and gunship attacks on FATA , SWAT valley and parts of Baluchistan, both by own forces as well the US. These regions have never been integrated completely. Will any Pakistani allow such drone attacks on Lahore?

I totally agree with  Imran’s condemnation of drone attacks by US and the use of Pakistani military might, to include helicopter gunships, to quell the dissidence in FATA,Swat valley and Baluchistan.

These actions will only further radicalize the already alienated population. Every innocent civilian killed, will breed a hundred more terrorists. The drone attacks have found favor by some in the Indian media however.

An Alternative to Drone Attacks

@Pragmatic_desi a highly respected commentator on issues of national interest writes in his blog why drones are necessary:

“A major source of angst and anger is over the death of innocent civilians. Some innocents are surely dying in the missiles fired by these drones. But no one has made a cogent case so far that the US is deliberately targeting innocent civilians in tribal areas. They are, to use the unfortunate military term, “collateral damage”.

But all of this still misses the fundamental point of this debate. What is the alternative to these drone strikes? Bombing raids by fighter aircraft, strafing by helicopter gunships, use of missiles or pounding by artillery fire. These are the methods used by Pakistan in Balochistan and in tribal areas against the ‘bad’ jehadis. They have all the disadvantages of drone strikes, and worse. They are far more inaccurate, more visible and would be more violative of Pakistan’s sovereignty than any pilotless aircraft.”

http://pragmatic.nationalinterest.in/2012/02/06/drones-are-the-right-choice/ 

Here again I would point out to the ‘Indian’ way of dealing with insurgents and the ‘Statesmanship' and understanding  shown by the leadership.

Not too long ago we had insurgencies galore in every nook and corner of India, barring the South. We had armed ‘freedom fighters’ in Mizoram, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland   as also in Punjab and Kashmir.

Today the so called insurgents in North-Eastern states are simply a bunch of hooligans out to make a quick buck. In Punjab, the 80’s are considered a lost decade and the insurgency is long dead and buried. 

In Kashmir, it simmers on. But consider the facts.

The previous year has been the most peaceful so far in decades of fighting insurgency; and tourism  in the valley is at its peak. 

Why so?

Because the Jehadi’s are busy fighting the US in Afghanistan and the ‘bad Jehadi’s ‘ are targeting the military-ISI complex in Pakistan.

It goes to prove that, left alone, the insurgency in Kashmir would also have died a slow but sure death. It’s Pakistan’s shenanigan’s that is mucking up the waters there.

So how has India been so successful in tackling insurgency? We never used helicopter gunships and obliterated villages in our attempts to quell insurgency. Then how did we bring down violence to tolerable levels?

We did it the hard way. We had Jack boots on the ground and concerted Counter insurgency operations were carried out by our professional army, with the credo ‘no collateral damage’ and ‘no alienation of the indigenous population’.

 Simultaneously a political solution was being offered. A concerted effort of ‘soft selling ‘ the idea of India was on.

And that’s the Indian story. It’s been difficult period for the Indian establishment and the highest levels of statesmanship was displayed by the Indian leaders, which has actually brought us back from the brink. But of course, no one talks of these ‘success stories’. We are too busy highlighting the negative side.

And that is what Pakistan needs to do. With due respect to Pragmatic_desi, the Pakistani Army and the NATO forces should keep its gunships and drones in the hangers and move out of their comfort zone and do some hard soldiering on the ground. The credo should be the same what India has -i.e No collateral damage and No alienation of the locals. And simultaneously find a political solution to the problem.

It’s a long drawn and tougher way out, surely. But it is the only way out.

To conclude I do not believe that Imran’s ‘back to the Quran’ is the way ahead for Pakistan. He is making it too simplistic and his idealism is getting the better of him.

I totally agree with what Omar Ali has written in  ‘three quarks daily’

……And instead of moving away from their dangerous national narrative and learning to live with our actually existing cultures and history, the establishment is doubling down on the effort to create a new culture and a new history out of little more than wishful thinking and pictures of Jinnah and Iqbal. 

To most outsiders (and many insiders) it seems hard to believe that they are serious. But for the supporters of the deep state, the current disorder and economic crisis is entirely due to the corruption and mismanagement of the hapless Zardari regime and of “failed politicians” in general. Believing their own propaganda, these people are convinced that Pakistan's cooperation with the United States in the so-called war on terror and its pro-Western policies in general are to blame for all its internal and external crises; once the current coterie of corrupt and treacherous foreign agents is removed from power and corrupt politicians in general are sidelined or beheaded, the state will magically transform into an Islamic version of the People's Republic of China. 

It will be run by the best and the brightest of the security establishment and its chosen technocrats, cleansed of corruption, economically vibrant, and able to assert its strategic priorities in the region in the face of any and all hostility from India, Iran or NATO. That this is not even remotely close to the real situation of Pakistan is neither here nor there. Unless the corrupt and venal civilian regime is able to assert some level of control, matters may be headed into uncharted territory. Not because everyone in the military high command has gone nuts, but because there is just enough nuttiness around to slip into disaster.   We may be, as columnist Kamran Shafi says, in for a very tall high jump. Not for sure, but certainly “maybe”. And that is a very dangerous maybe. Behind the corruption and the material interests so beloved of leftists there is also a dream. And our “dream of the blue flower” may lead to dangerous places.

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/06/the-iron-guard-by-omar-ali.html#more 

  

And as @EchoOfindia tweets:

Pakistan is regressing from modernity(Imran Khan is a classic example) while India is (fitfully) embracing it.

I firmly believe that Imran has got the best interest for Pakistan at heart, and that he is a breath of fresh air in the murky land of Pakistani politics. But ‘enlightened Islam’ as the future of Pakistan just does not seem to be the right answer.

He needs  a rethink probably.