Muhammad Ali Jinnah, better known as the founder of Pakistan when India was divided in 1947 is making headlines today with controversy surrounding ex-Indian Parliamentarian Jaswant Singh’s recent book: India – Partition – Independence. Immediately following the books release, Singh was expelled from his position in the Bhartiya Janata (BJP) party, protests wherein the book was burned and a prompt ban on the work in Gujarat ensued. But why the uproar?
In a recent interview, Singh reveals the following views on Jinnah that are now apparently too controversial in India, but receiving mostly praise across Pakistan:
Jinnah was an Indian nationalist
He joined the Indian Congress party before the Muslim League implying an original loyalty to a United India and eventual shift to non secularism as a result of Congress party politics later
Jinnah fought the British for an Independent India, in tandem with fighting “resolutely and relentlessly” for Muslim rights in India
Jinnah is admirable for being a self made man, having created a position in politics for himself without the luxury of prior wealth or status
Jinnah was not anti-Hindu
Jinnah failed insofar as he received a “moth eaten” piece of divided India in the form of Pakistan and left Muslims who stayed back in India without sufficient guidance
Gandhi himself referred to Jinnah as a great Indian, so there should be no controversy in recognizing him as such today
Muslims in India today are downtrodden, live in pain and are “robbed of the essence of psychological security”
Both Indian Muslims and Pakistani’s have paid a price for Partition since both would have been stronger under a united India
To those who have not grown up or spent much time in South Asia, it may be difficult to understand why such ideas can be controversial and strike such polar chords in the hearts and minds of people divided by a man made border only 60 years ago. But the division of India, into two states resulting in an independent Pakistan saw extreme violence, mass refugee migration and that carnage left a lasting scar on South Asian mindsets. Put in a most blunt form: India suffered the bitter taste of a fractured state that is rooted among the great civilizations in history. And Pakistan suffered the bitter reality of as Singh put it, “a moth eaten”, post colonial state with perhaps an inevitably fractured and frail territory from inception. From the bizarre geopolitical landscape of Bangladesh not contingent to, yet officially part of Pakistan to the conflict over Kashmir at the very onset of partition, Singh makes a fair point in explaining partition caused profound suffering on both ends. The subsequent bitterness is manifest in perpetual hostility between both states in the form of conflicts, and in India, even on a communal level where according to Singh, Muslims are still downtrodden.
So praising Jinnah as a “great man” in India may be akin to condoning the very fracturing of India. In Pakistan, it’s lauded as an admission that their founder heroically created a homeland where Muslims would no longer be downtrodden. Singh’s work also might acknowledge that partition dealt an unfair hand to Pakistani’s, an idea that can come across as unpalatable on the Indian side. But relying on interviews from Jaswant Singh on the book so far, I think the controversy is a tired insinuation of hostility from the state. Banning the book on the grounds that:
only fuels a hostile polarization of India and Pakistan. Mind you, India and Pakistan as states are increasingly polarized, which in turn results in a division of peoples. Because my guess is that had government kept its hands out of censoring Singh’s book it might have spoken to the hearts and minds of South Asian’s disseminating novel ideas that are not divisive. Noam Chomsky once said that “states are violent institutions”, in South Asia, at the very least they are bitter, but people inherently are not. Singh’s work might have tapped into that sentiment and in the banning of it, states tighten their grip on citizens by perpetuating division and hostility in South Asia. Against a backdrop of a desire for economic growth, stability and globalization, that kind of bitterness is stale 60 odd years later. So I’m looking forward to reading the book and am lucky that my copy was reserved before the ban, in safe hands far from from protests and government intervention.
Shahrukh Khan, one of the most famous men in the world was detained in New Jersey last week and thinks it was because of his Muslim surname. I don’t condone unreasonably preferential treatment for megastars, but something is amiss when terms like “Islamaphobia” and “Racial Profiling” are internationally understood within an American context.
Travelling from Vegas last year, as I handed my pass to board a flight back to DC I was stopped and asked to wait aside for reasons not disclosed. Four French nationals were told the same. As all the other passengers boarded, we waited for at least 15 minutes and were given no explanation for being pulled aside. Eventually a burly looking woman and imperturbable looking man in black security garb arrived and said we were to be frisked. One of the French nationals and I asked why this was necessary after having already cleared regular security to which they responded, it’s just “routine”. The response doesn’t qualify as a logical answer to the question, but neither guard seemed interested in engaging in sound argumentation: futility kept me from trying to get an accurate response. The burly one frisked me and a French female who had a duffle bag much larger and fuller than my over the shoulder bag. She didn’t search the French female’s duffle, but mine was searched at length despite having been through X-ray and manual security beforehand. I watched her tinker with my book, pens, makeup pouch, stuffed toy, and laptop and mentioned to her: “You forgot to check the other girl’s bag”. She said “what?” I repeated my comment as she re-fastened my bag and handed it back to me. I walked away as she started to answer figuring a response was likely to include the word “routine” and leave any reasonable person dissatisfied.
Homeland Securities explanation to Shahrukh Khan was identical: his treatment was “routine”. But Khan said he felt “humiliated” and in saying “we should not be treated on the basis of our color or nationality” made clear that he felt racially profiled. In my experience, I didn’t feel humiliated although I was dissatisfied, because as an American national, the only variable for which I received a more in depth check than the French female, was aapparently my race. It was discriminatory, and it didn’t feel nice.
I’m not vouching for less security necessarily, but it’s time a solution is explored if these “routine” searches/detentions are increasingly discriminatory extending to variables such as race, religious affiliation and nationality. We live in too rapidly a globalizing world for the United States to come across as unwelcoming.
Polls opened today in Afghanistan with Washington watching closely in hopes that elections are peaceful and leave a lasting mark of democracy for future state building. Pakistan has the same interest on perhaps an even more immediate level. Successful elections in Afghanistan are an integral ingredient to Pakistan’s domestic offensive in uprooting dangerous factions, expanding the economy, nurturing their democracy and stabilizing relations with neighbors. But if a candidate does not receive at least 50% of votes in this first round, “elections are pushed into a second, more unpredictable round of voting“. And second round elections might agitate an already rickety political climate amidst apprehensions of violence, which is entirely detrimental for Pakistan given domestic and regional circumstances right now.
On the domestic front, Pakistan’s military continues to make progress against dangerous groups. Weakened by the death (and or disappearance) of leader Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban in Pakistan “seems to be in disarray”. Meaning Islamabad’s offensive against factions this year are bearing fruits for the War on Terror and shifting toward more stability, hopefully for the long term. But if elections in Afghanistan are pushed to a second round, weeks of political irresolution can allow terrorist groups a climate of uncertainty within which to recuperate from losses and cause turmoil. Which since 2001 has shown that a dangerous spillover effect exists wherein Afghani militant groups shift in to Pakistan harboring themselves into the nebulous, virtually imperturbable border.
Broader regional considerations also factor into Pakistan’s hopes for stable elections. The spillover of militant groups since 9/11 intensifies Pakistan’s long desired interest in seeing a democratic, stable Afghanistan where refugees may repatriate. In fact,Pakistan hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world, an underreported story that actually helps explain why dangerous factions were able to develop in Pakistan. Millions of devastated Afghans, some armed and many destitute from fighting Soviets in the 1980’s found refuge from their war ravaged country in Pakistan. A mostly destitute population seeking refuge in a developing country with highly volatile political circumstances allowed violent sectarian and religiously extremist factions to exploit and recruit refugees to their cause. In addition, there are heavy economic costs for Pakistan in maintaining such a large number of refugees. Since last years military escalation in Afghanistan, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees explains that there is around 2 to 2.1 million Afghani Refugees now living in Pakistan. He said the United Nations planned to launch an emergency appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars needed to sustain refugees that have come in just this past year. So peaceful elections in a first round that move Afghanistan in a direction of democratic stability is integral to Pakistan’s security: they relieve Islamabad of a very costly responsibility to a long-standing refugee challenge.
Although some minority, yet raucous opinions say elections ushering democratic authority are not in Islamabad’s interest because they “diminish Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan”. Thus suggesting policymakers are strategically motivated to prevent losing an allegedly malleable buffer zone that Afghanistan serves against India. It’s an unlikely, poorly reasoned notion. It attempts to be qualified by citing Islamabad’s insistence on uprooting domestic militant/fundamentalist groups, so as to avoid confrontation with a supposed malleable buffer forces. But expecting policy makers to divert efforts from turmoil at home to external threats is a laughable assertion. Before taking care of neighboring militant groups whose primary focus is not on fighting Pakistanis, Islamabad legitimately devotes resources to uprooting domestic factions who pose an immediate threat. Suicide bombings have become an almost weekly recurrence in Pakistan and with that level of instability, faulting Pakistan for not doing enough to uproot neighboring terror is outrageous. Plus, NATO forces and amplified American presence in Afghanistan furthers the absurdity of such calls for Pakistan to ignore turmoil at home and focus on Afghanistan. And neither of these allegations logically indicate a Pakistani motivation for instability so as to use Afghanistan as a buffer zone.
But perhaps the most unreasonable way of supporting a notion that Pakistan lacks interest in successful elections refers to relations with India. Specifically, that Islamabad’s refusal to remove forces from the Indian border despite current spillover from Afghanistan indicates an excessive concern with an Indian threat. A few reasons why this is incorrect: firstly, referring again to amplified U.S. and current NATO presence and given an abundance of domestic threats that require Islamabad’s attention, removing troops from the Indian border to the Afghan border does little to help Pakistan now, (especially weighted against the risks of doing so). Secondly, even if troops from were redeployed, those forces are squarely trained/equipped to face a potential Indian threat, not in counterterrorism. Which became well known much to Washington’s dismay with the military’s many unsuccessful attempts at uprooting militants from the northern regions along the Afghan border.
Finally, a refusal to redeploy forces is not because of an excessive concern given the reality of current Indian-Pakistani relations. The Mumbai atrocities occurred less than a year ago and the aftermath saw a speedy, vehement escalation of tensions. Some Indian mediaand politicians fanned the flames, and when tensions rise between India and Pakistan, the world gets nervous. By way of a counterfactual, we can tie how these tensions relate to justifying Islamabad’s decision to maintain troops on the border: If, God Forbid, another atrocity took place on Indian soil since 11/26/08 and Pakistan had redeployed troops away from the border. The result could be an even further escalation of tensions. A terrifying potential for confrontation ensues and Pakistan’s capacity to defend against an already far more immense Indian force is drastically diminished. Which itself has a potential to cause hasty, over offensive beahvior from either side. Basic lessons in Realism thus teach us that redeployment away from the Indian border is out of the question. Given history, and sensitive circumstances since 11/26 I think military strategy might advise the same. Thus from a Pakistani policymakers point of view, troops on the Indian border is a legitimate priority. If anything, one might even argue they deter confrontation.
So, allegations that Islamabad is not sufficiently committed to stable election processes in Afghanistan are just not reasonable. If anything, successful elections relieve Pakistan of deep social and economic costs through refugee repatriation. And from the Mumbai atrocities to countless civilians who suffer daily from terror and a climate of instability that allows violent factions to operate, a peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan beginning with successful elections is very much in Pakistan’s interest.
Zainab B. Jeewanjee
Zainab Jeewanjee 