Friday 28 December 2007

Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto may have been very beautiful and stylish, and she may have held degrees from Harvard and Oxford. But her superb English was in fact the mere speaking of her first language; she had little Urdu and even less Sindhi, despite Sindh’s being her (dynastic) political heartland. She was, at the end of the day, a corrupt and ineffective Prime Minister.

And Pakistan was a bad idea in the first place.

A handful of cranks and semi-schismatic priests were able to force the partition the United Kingdom against the wishes of the Gaelic-Irish working class on both sides of the Irish Sea, and of the Catholic hierarchy no less than Protestant leaders. A handful of cranks and outer-fringe rabbis were able to force the re-creation of Wilhelmine or Weimar Germany in the Levant against the wishes of almost every Jewish religious authority on earth at the time, and of the territory in question’s Jewish Arab no less than its Christian Arab, Muslim Arab and Druze Arab inhabitants.

And a handful of cranks and mad mullahs (of questionable qualifications) were able to force the establishment, against the wishes of the Indian Muslim working class and of India’s Islamic scholars, of the only country on earth where the case for an Islamic State is permanently unanswerable, since the country itself has no other reason to exist.

Quite what most Muslims in what was then India made of this is clear from the fact that post-partition India is the second-largest Muslim country on earth, even though Muslims are a minority there, and contains more Muslims than the entire population of Pakistan.

Pakistan is engaged in a nuclear arms race with its southern neighbour, but the all-powerful generals will not allow any politician anywhere near the nuclear codes, and moreover maintain a permanent unit to stage a coup whenever they feel that this is necessary, as they do with remarkable frequency.

Meanwhile, the creation of Pakistan massively boosted those who wanted Hindutva in all its caste-conscious ghastliness, in principle throughout what they see as Bharat, but in practice throughout the territory that they might be able to control, namely India. (Such people are by no means confined to the RSS and the BJP, important though those and the associated organisations are as the leading edge.)

Hence the Indian side of the nuclear arms race. And hence the fact that hundreds of millions of people in India were probably better off under the Moghuls, and certainly better off under the British.

Yet still the Muslim hundreds of millions do not jump out of the frying pan that is India and into the fire that is Pakistan.

2 comments:

  1. The main reason the Indians got nukes was because of the Pakistan Civil War/Bangladeshi War of National Liberation.

    India was non-aligned but was friendly with the USSR. Pakistan was pally with the USA. When India became involved in the war (on the Bengali nationalists/seperatist side - choose what you will)Islamabad asked Washington for help. So Nixon ordered an American warship sail just outside Indian territorial waters and let Dehli know they had nukes on board.

    The plan backfired because the Indians saw it for what it was - a threat. And they quickly got nuclear weapons not long afterwards to counter US interference. Which led Pakistan to obtain them, particuarly after the Indians decided to do their first test of their new toys near the border so the sound could be felt in Karachi.

    Concerning Indian partition, some Bangladeshi aquaintances said to me that the original hope before partition would be that a Bengali homeland composed of present day Bangladesh and parts of Western India for both Muslims and Hindus would be set up in 1947 with its capital in Calcutta (now Kolkatta). They blame Nehru and Jinna for carving up Bengal between them and bringing about some of the present problems. That why Jinna is not idolised by Bangladeshis even though he is the grandfather of the nation - the father being of course Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, idolised by Bangladeshis of all faiths as father of their nation - even the ones who complain about Muslim intolerance in their native land.

    For the record, remember the British encouraged Muslim sentiment that led to Pakistan. It was hoped that by doing this it would encourage Muslims to fight to keep India British, not call for the creation of seperate state.

    This old imperial game of divide and rule was particuarly used during the early days of World War II when the British promised Jinna some sort of state in return for his Muslim League's support of the war effort and to counter the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress's anti-British and in the case of Gandhi, anti-war stance. I think the National Congress changed its attitude once the Japanese threatened India.

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  2. Yes, making the many parts of India independent would have been a much better idea, perhaps with George VI still as Head of State of each of them (or in some way suzerain over each of the Princely States).

    But Nehru wouldn't have it, because he said that that would have made Socialsim impossible. In fact, this was the opposite of the truth: India's record on public services and on poverty relief has been pitiful, just as is that of the EU as such rather than of individual member-states, and just as would be that of the US if such things were ever attempted at federal level.

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